Invisible City (Rebekah Roberts #1)(66)

Morgan raises his eyebrows; I’ve impressed him.

“What about this Saul Katz character?” asks Morgan. “Is he a suspect?”

Larry’s phone rings. He answers quietly.

“They’re sort of acting like he might be, but I think they’re just pissed he’s talking to the press.”

Morgan considers this.

I am not dressed to meet the boss. My dirty hair is twisted up in a plastic clip and I’m a month overdue for a lip and eyebrow wax. Albert Morgan is in a hand-cut navy suit. Cuff links on Monday night. I must look like a child: no makeup, chipped purple nail polish, old red Doc Martens on my feet.

“Ms. Roberts,” he says. “What are you hoping will happen after we leave this meeting?”

“Well,” I say, “I’m hoping you don’t fire me.”

“Go on.”

“I know I’ve f*cked up the sourcing, but I’ve got a ton of information on Rivka Mendelssohn. She had a daughter who died about a year ago. And she was considering a divorce. She had looked at apartments with her boyfriend. And her husband had threatened her recently.”

“This is on the record?”

“Yes.”

“From Saul Katz?” asks Mike. Why is he being such a dick?

“No,” I say. “From a social worker who knew her. And two girls—young women—who were friends with her. They’re all part of this group of ultra-Orthodox who are, like, questioning. On the margins. I have a picture, too.”

I take the snapshot out of my pocket. I hadn’t even looked at which one I’d gotten. It’s the one of her in the wedding dress. I hand it to Morgan.

He looks at the photo and nods.

“Write that up for tomorrow,” says Morgan, handing the photo to Mike. “Friends talk about her, say she was rebelling, the boyfriend, the dead child, whatever you have. But we can only milk the victim for a day. There are about five hundred murders in the city every year. This is a corruption story. We need to connect the husband to the Jewish patrol. I have a very angry commissioner on my ass, but from what I can tell, it’s his people he should be angry at, not mine. You let a source use you. Don’t do it again.”

“I won’t,” I say.

“Background your sources. Ask the library.”

“I will,” I say.

Larry gets off his call. “That was my source in Brooklyn homicide. They just arrested Saul Katz.”

“For what?” I ask.

“Impersonating a police officer and obstruction,” says Larry. “They say they’re looking at him for the murder.”

“On the record?” says Morgan.

Larry nods. “They called him a ‘person of interest.’”

Morgan rubs his hand over his mouth. “Okay,” he says. “We need two stories. Larry, you write up the arrest. I don’t want Rebekah near that. She’s compromised. I don’t think you need to get too detailed about his relationship with the paper. Maybe just that Katz had been speaking to a Trib reporter about the case. Rebekah, we’ll have to name you.”

I don’t bother arguing. Hopefully, Larry will gloss over the fact that I failed to realize Saul was no longer an active member of the force when I used him as an NYPD source. After all, it makes the paper look bad, too.

Morgan turns to me. “You write up the story about the boyfriend and the divorce. Mike, make sure photo gets the image. Rebekah is on the family and the Shomrim tomorrow. Confirm a financial connection. Have the NYPD comment on their relationship with the group. Do they train them? What’s the deal? And get the family on the record about the murder investigation. Who do they think did it? Are they worried it won’t get solved?”

I pull out my notebook to scribble his directions. He continues.

“Ms. Roberts, you have not yet lost your position here. But consider yourself on probation. Larry, you’re lead on this. Update me tomorrow.”

After Morgan leaves, Larry and I follow Mike back to the city desk and we sit down at two computers no one is using. I flip through my notes as I wait for the machine to boot up. These PCs were out of date when I started college.

“So,” says Larry, “who do you think did it?”

I hesitate. “I’ve been thinking the husband. She was dumped in his yard. She was cheating. These people don’t take stepping out of line lightly. And infidelity is totally unacceptable in women, from what I can tell. Like, automatic loss of custody of the kids. I tried to talk to the husband, and he scared the shit out of me. He looked desperate. And the people I talked to, the other outsiders, they said he threatened her. Said he’d take her kids away, shun her, that sort of thing. They said he was really angry. And this was, like, a week or two before she died.”

“What did Saul think?” asks Larry. “Did he say anything? He was feeding you information, but was it to send you in the wrong direction?”

“I didn’t feel like he had a direction,” I say. It’s nice to be able to bounce what I’ve learned off Larry. Unlike some of the old-timers I’ve met, he seems genuinely interested in his work, despite the fact that he’s probably been doing it for more than three decades. I bet I can learn a lot from him. “He never speculated on who might have killed her. Just that he was sure the department was f*cking it up. Not interviewing people. Kowtowing to the community.” I tell Larry who the man Saul assaulted was, and why he said he did what he did. “Obviously, the assault didn’t make the papers, but I don’t remember reading anything about a rabbi sex scandal either,” I say. “Did we cover it?”