Invisible City (Rebekah Roberts #1)(33)

“I cannot be in the newspaper. My husband is very traditional.”

“I understand,” I say.

“I thought maybe you were…” She doesn’t finish her sentence. Her face has changed from sadness to sickness. The corners of her mouth pull back and for a moment I think she might vomit. Instead, she gets up and disappears down the hallway toward the back of the apartment. I hear a door open and close. The state of the kitchen is pretty bad. The linoleum is cracked in places, and several cabinets are crooked. There are no magnets or drawings or photographs stuck to the refrigerator door. I can’t imagine what it must be like to be trapped in such a dingy domestic life at such a young age. I wonder how old her husband is.

Chaya comes back, carrying something close to her chest. She sets it down—it’s a well-worn copy of O, The Oprah Magazine. On the front, Oprah smiles broadly, offering an Easter-colored cupcake to her spring reader.

“She gave me this,” says the girl. “Take it. You go now. You cannot be here.”

At the front door, the girl peeks out, looking left and right before allowing me to exit. I try again for a little more information. “Do you know Mr. Mendelssohn, Rivka’s husband?”

The girl shakes her head. “Go,” she says, and pushes me out the door.

I begin to say “Thank you,” but before I can finish the phrase, I am talking to the door.

Zona. I walk slowly toward the sidewalk and wonder what it means. A broken vow could be an affair. And an affair is a motive for murder. But I don’t know what to do with this information. If it’s even true. I wonder if Miriam—or Saul, or Sara—could confirm?

I call in Mrs. Shoenstein’s quotes.

“You didn’t get anything from the family?” asks Lars.

“No,” I say. “They were…”

“Go to the house. They’ll come home after they bury her. See if you can get something about the gardener. Then you’re off.”

It takes twenty minutes to walk to the Mendelssohn house. I linger outside, staring, looking for some clue, some evidence of the violence, the sorrow, the trauma, on its fa?ade. But everything is sturdy and stoic. I wonder if she died in there. It’s possible. My chest tightens when I think about the way Aron Mendelssohn roared. He is a big man. A big man who owns a dumping ground.

My phone rings. It is Saul.

“Can you meet me?” he asks.

“Where?”

“There is a Starbucks on Flatbush.”

“I have to try to get some more quotes at the Mendelssohn house. Can you give me a couple hours?”

“Yes.”

I hang up and knock at the front door. No one answers, so I stand on the sidewalk and wait. The little boys are the first people I see. There are several running toward me about two blocks up. They are dressed formally, and several have one hand holding their black hats down, but they are shouting and playful, like little boys anywhere. Behind them are the girls, huddled together, wearing flat shoes on their long preadolescent feet, boxy in their shapeless coats. Most are hatless. I cross the street to avoid, and observe, them. Behind the girls are the mothers, hatted, pushing strollers. They fan out, going down different streets, into different houses. I turn and walk around the corner, toward the back entrance to the Mendelssohns. From there, I can see across the front yard without standing like a guard outside.

After about twenty minutes, I see Yakov, the boy from the bodega, come toward me, escorting two little girls. Yakov sees me, and slows. I smile a little, trying to reconnect; remember me? He opens the back gate for the little girls and tells them to go inside. They do. Yakov walks toward me and points to the iPhone in my hand.

“Is that an iPod?” he asks.

“Actually, it’s an iPhone.”

“It plays music.”

“It does.”

“Any music you want?”

“Any music you put on it.”

Yakov nods solemnly.

“Do you want to see it?”

“Yes, please.”

I hand him the phone. “Slide the bar,” I say. “You have to put in the pass code. It’s five-six-two-two.” Yakov looks up at me. “It’s okay,” I say. “I trust you.”

He cradles the phone in his left hand, carefully wipes his right hand on the side of his pants, then presses his little index finger on the touch pad: 5-6-2-2. The screen opens and he stares at it.

“The music is here?” he asks, pointing to the iPod icon.

“Yup,” I say. “You’ve used one of these before.”

“Mommy showed me,” he says.

“Oh really? Your mother had one?”

“It was a secret,” says Yakov. He presses the iPod icon and up pops a list of my music. He uses his finger to scroll slowly down, then back up again. Finally, he hands it back.

“You’re from the newspaper,” he says.

“Yes,” I say.

“My mommy is dead,” he says, lifting his eyes to me. “Did you know that?”

“I did know. I’m so sorry.”

Yakov shakes his head. “She wasn’t sick.”

“Sick?”

“Tatti says Mommy was sick. He said she was very, very sick. He said we might get sick, too. But she wasn’t sick.”