Run You Down (Rebekah Roberts #2)(25)

She gives me her cell number. “I’ll text Ryan and Sam and let them know you want to talk.”

After we hang up, I click into the search attachments for Ryan Hall. The library found two addresses: one is the Cairo address where Kaitlyn picked up the phone; one is about fifteen miles away, in a town called Greenville. I call the phone number listed for the Greenville address, but it just rings and rings.

I go into the kitchen to make coffee and while it’s brewing my phone rings. It’s a blocked number, which I assume is the city desk.

“Hi, it’s Rebekah,” I say.

“Rebekah Roberts?” It’s not the city desk.

“Yes.”

“My name is Nechemaya Burstein. Levi Goldin gave me your phone number. Are you still reporting on the death of Pessie Goldin?”

“I am.”

“Good,” he says. “I have some information I would like to share with you. I realize it is a lot to ask, but might you be able to travel to Roseville tomorrow to meet in person?”

“I might,” I say, thinking, maybe Saul will loan me his car. “Were you a friend of Pessie’s?”

“I did not know her particularly well. But I believe her death may have been part of a larger plot.”

“A plot?”

“I do not wish to say more over the telephone, if you do not mind.”

“Okay,” I say. “Let me get back to you in a couple hours. Is that all right?”

“Yes,” he says, and gives me his phone number,

When we hang up I Google Nechemaya Burstein. He is, apparently, a member of the Rockland County Chevra Kadisha, which is a Jewish burial society. His name pops up in a 2012 article in The Journal News about two men from Roseville traveling to Israel to attend a conference on Jewish burial rites.

“As our community grows, so do our responsibilities,” he is quoted as saying. “This conference is an opportunity to improve our response to those in need.”

The group’s Web site doesn’t say much—just that they are members of the National Association of Chevra Kadisha and affiliated with three funeral homes, two of which are in Roseville. I encountered a Jewish burial group once before when the NYPD allowed their members to snag Rivka Mendelssohn’s naked body from a pile of scrap along the Gowanus Canal. At the time, those black-hatted men did not strike me as the kind who would reach out to a secular female reporter with a tip. But maybe it’s different upstate.

Iris finally comes out of her bedroom about twelve thirty. She’s got her hair in a ponytail and is carrying a yoga mat.

“I figure if I’m bailing on work I should do something semi-productive,” she says, opening the refrigerator. She picks up a carton of orange juice and shakes it, then pours some into a glass that had been sitting upside down on the drying rack in our sink.

“You are a better woman than I.” I haven’t done any sort of physical exercise, other than walking to and from the subway, since getting out of the hospital in January. I know enough to know that I should; that exercise is almost as good for depression and anxiety as, well, antidepressants and antianxiety pills, but going to the gym—or yoga or Zumba or spinning or whatever Iris does—feels really, like, optimistic. Like, look at me, I’m so healthy. Fuck that.

“You working your shift?” she asks.

“Yeah,” I say.

“Brice is coming over tonight. I was thinking maybe we could all get drinks together or something. Are you done at ten?”

“Should be,” I say.

“Cool. I’d love us to hang out a little more.”

“Yeah?”

“You’d like him if you got to know him,” Iris says. “It’s stupid that you judge him by the way he looks.”

“I don’t,” I say.

“Yes, you do,” she says. “I love you, but sometimes you’re kind of a reverse snob. Just because he likes nice clothes and products doesn’t make him an *.”

“I never said he was an *.”

“He told me he loves me the other night,” she says, sitting on the sofa.

“The other night? You didn’t tell me!”

“I’m telling you now,” she says.

“Did you say it back?”

Iris nods.

“Is this a good thing?”

“I’m really happy,” she says. “It just feels fast.”

“They say when you know, you know,” I say.

“He mentioned getting married.”

“Are you serious?” Pop, there goes the pilot light in my stomach.

Iris nods.

“How long have you been dating?”

“Four months, but three exclusively,” she says. “But it’s … intense. He really knows what he wants. Ford offered him a job managing models in Asia.…”

“Asia?!”

“He’s not gonna take it,” she says. “He doesn’t want to leave New York yet.”

Yet.

“But his career is good,” she continues. “And he wants a big family.”

“How old is he?”

“Twenty-eight.”

Iris wants me to say something encouraging, which is what a real friend would do. A real friend would be thrilled for her. A real friend would feel elation, not dread.