Invisible City (Rebekah Roberts #1)(13)

I get off the D train at Fifty-fifth Street and New Utrecht Avenue just after seven. Every sign is in Hebrew and there isn’t a soul on the street. Streetlights glow weak orange over the stores. It doesn’t exactly make sense, but I kind of feel like I’ve been transported to a 1930s Polish village. There is a milliner, a kosher meat market, a bakery, a florist, a tailor, a cobbler. There is a store for purchasing gravestones. There is a women’s clothing store with the windows iced over as if it were a porn shop. Fifty-five ten is a brick building with three floors. The ground floor appears to be a commercial space of some kind, with racks of clothing and shelves of products inside. A small, hand-lettered sign leaning against the inside of the window says Boro Park Mommies. I try the front door, but it is locked. The buzzer panel has three buttons, all unmarked. I step back and make sure I’m in the right place. Fifty-five ten New Utrecht Avenue. I call Cathy.

“I’m here,” I say. “It looks like it’s some kind of shop. Is there an apartment number or something?”

“Nope, just 5510 New Utrecht Avenue, LLC.”

“Okay,” I say. “There’s nobody on the streets.”

“Shit,” says Cathy. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of that. It’s f*cking Sabbath.”

“Oh, right,” I say.

“I thought you were Jewish?”

“I am,” I say. I don’t tell her that I’ve never once observed the Sabbath.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I should have remembered that. You’re gonna have a hard time getting anybody.”

“Well,” I say, “I’ll buzz.”

“Great.” She hangs up.

I buzz the top buzzer. Nothing. Again. Then the other two. Nothing. I buzz again. I wait. I buzz again. I buzz for five minutes. If there’s anybody up there, they are either incredibly stoic, or deaf.

I call Cathy and tell her no one is answering. She says to hang around and see if anybody goes in or out. I walk up the block and across the street, then take shelter in the heated vestibule of a Citibank. While I wait, I pull out my phone and Google “Smith Street Scrap Yard and Boro Park Mommies.” The fifth link is to an article from 2011 on a Web site called YiddishReader.com: “Mendelssohns donate space, funds to new mothers.” That’s it. Mendelssohn. The boy said his name was Yakov Mendelssohn. According to the article, the family founded an organization that provides assistance to new mothers, and clothing and supplies for families in need. Aron Mendelssohn is quoted as saying, “My wife, Rivka, and I visited a similar organization in Jerusalem and we strongly believe in the importance of nurturing Jewish children through assisting their mothers.”

Rivka. Rivka is the Hebrew version of Rebekah. I am named for my mother’s sister Rivka. According to my father, my mother had—has (I vacillate between referring to her in the past and present tense)—four sisters and three brothers. Rivka, the second oldest, died of an allergic attack when she was eleven. The girls were upstate, at a camp where Jewish families from Brooklyn sent their children. Rivka and my mother, who was nine, were walking back from a pond where they’d gone to try fishing. They were swinging their homemade poles and Rivka managed to smack open some kind of hive. My mother was a few steps ahead and escaped the worst, but the bees or wasps or whatever they were attacked Rivka. And she was allergic. She fell there, as little Aviva ran for help. When my mother came back, Rivka’s eyes were swollen shut and she was gasping for breath. She died at the hospital.

I scroll through the search results for something else on the family, but don’t find anything. I look up and see a man walk quickly to the door of 5510, open it, and slip inside. Fuck. I call Cathy to tell her the boy’s last name was Mendelssohn.

“Great,” says Cathy. “The library got a hit on the LLC that owns the building. Aron Mendelssohn?”

“That could be the father,” I say. “I found an article about him and his wife creating a charity that seems like it’s based here. And I remembered that the little boy said his name was Yakov Mendelssohn.”

“Okay. Let me see if the library can confirm that Aron Mendelssohn actually owns the yard. In the meantime, let’s get to his house. It’s not far from where you are. If he does own the yard, he’ll know what’s going on with the dead body on the property. He might be our best chance of ID’ing the victim, because the cops aren’t giving anything out.”

“Right. Somebody went in the office. I’ll wait and see if he comes out.”

She gives me the Mendelssohn home address and I walk across the street to 5510. I’m not there two minutes when the man appears. He’s rushing, and lets the door slam behind him.

“Sir,” I say, skipping to catch him. “Excuse me, sir?”

He keeps walking a moment, then turns toward me. We make eye contact briefly. It’s the tall man from the gas station.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” I say quickly. “I’m a reporter from the Tribune. I was at the scrap yard earlier today and I just wanted to ask you a couple quick questions. Your family owns the yard, right?”

The man says nothing.

“Sir?”

He shakes his head and begins walking away.

“Mr. Mendelssohn, wait.…”

That gets his attention. He stops and turns again.