'Why did you remove it from Tovah's finger?'
Ribikoff closed his eyes, opened them, avoided the steady gaze of the detective. 'It has nothing to do with this.'
'Did you think the girl was dead?' Mike persisted. Did he want the girl dead?
'I didn't know. I wasn't thinking.' Ribikoff crossed his legs.
'It seems an odd reaction.'
Ribikoff clicked his tongue. 'It was what it was.'
'You just wanted it back?' Mike probed softly.
The man erupted. 'Well, of course I wanted it back. The boy couldn't have married her after that, could he?' he said angrily.
Mike frowned. 'Even if she'd recovered?'
Ribikoff shook his head as if only a dummy would think otherwise, then jabbed his chin belligerently at Mike. 'It was a costly item. They would never have given it back.'
Mike was chilled by these answers. He had his suspicions about the whole arrangement. Bad feeling rocketed back and forth between the two families. The Ribikoffs were not sitting shivah with the Schoenfelds. Something was way off the normal about the Ribikoffs, but that didn't make them killers. Mike questioned Schmuel and his mother closely but learned nothing really useful.
Twenty-one
Just before noon April, Mike, and Inspector Bellaqua met in the video section at One Police Plaza to view the video of Tovah Schoenfeld's wedding preparadons. It was crowded in the room where usually only one person pored over surveillance tapes of banks, stores, fast-food chains, and the elevators of housing projects where crimes had been committed. This was an eerie first. Not many homicide detecdves got to see their vicdm alive and the murder scene being constructed.
The video opens on the synagogue with its two bloodred azalea bushes out front, then cuts to a Caucasian male, five-ten, heavy build. Distinguishing feature: a blond pompadour that stood up a good three inches. He's wearing a pink silk shirt and fusses with the
There is no audio or time frame. The next sequence shows a good-looking, skinny Latino, five-five, five-six, wearing tight jeans. His thick black hair is in a short ponytail. He's adjusting flowers in the party room, sashaying from table to table, aware of the camera. He sticks a lily stem between his teeth and poses. Cut. Next, waitresses are setting the tables with glasses, silver, napkins, plates. Three women— all have thick curly hair and gold Jewish stars around their necks. Cut to a short take of an African American, black as midnight, a big man, around six-two. He's standing by the exit door between two orange trees with an unreadable expression on his face. Cut to an elaborate ice sculpture on the food table, not yet beginning to melt. Cut to .. .
'There she is,' Bellaqua said.
Tovah appears, disconcertingly alive with her hair in rollers under a hair dryer. Her hands are splayed in front of her on a table. Only the back of the manicurist is seen as she bends over her task of painting Tovah's nails are pearl pink. The manicurist has red hair. On the table beside Tovah is the blond wig on a Styrofoam head. Behind her are many colorful dresses hanging on a clothes rack, among them her wedding gown and veil in two plastic bags. Tovah looks at the camera as if she doesn't see it.
'She looks drugged,' April commented.
'Mmmm,' Bellaqua agreed.
'Weird,' Mike murmured.
Cut to a little girl on the floor crying. Tovah leans over to hug her, hands her a hard candy The little girl takes the candy, puts it in her mouth, and stops crying. Tovah smiles.
'There. She looks okay there,' Mike said. 'Pretty girl. Likes children.'
Cut to Tovah and her mother and grandmother arm in arm. Tovah's hair and nails are done. She's smiling here, too.
'She looks fine here. Eyes are okay,' April said.
Cut to ...
'Ah,' Bellaqua sighed.
'Just look at that!' Mike marveled.
At last, Tovah is wearing her voluminous wedding dress. A small Asian male stoops to arrange the folds of the dress, then steps back and tosses a cloud of white over her. A fog drops over her. The veil makes Tovah look as if she's trapped inside a tent of mosquito netting.
'Jesus. That's something. Who's that guy?' April said.
'Name's Kim. He's from the dress store.'
'She sent someone?' April said, incredulous. Tang again. Not good. The presence of Ching's famous friend in this case was beginning to bother her.
'Guess so.'
Cut to Tovah in her ten-thousand-dollar tent walking out of the room—not into the party room, but into the corridor on the other side that leads to the elevator that leads to the rabbi's study on the second floor. The camera follows her and her mother into the study, where Rabbi Levi waits with her father and the Ribikoffs. Nothing can be seen of Tovah through her veil as an illustrated scroll of some kind is brought out and displayed. Papers are signed.
It's a long movie. Then the camera follows the bride, her train, and her family downstairs to the corridor outside the sanctuary. Cut. The film ends at the open door of the sanctuary. They groaned and played the video two more times.
'Let's get stills of all the non-family members,' April said. 'We'll see if anyone saw them.'
'Yep. And backgrounds on all of them. It's time to widen the net. Maybe one of these people hates Jews enough to kill one,' Bellaqua said. 'Ugly,' she murmured. 'Let's break for some lunch.'
They left headquarters and walked across the street for a hamburger at the Metropolitan. While they ate Mike recounted his interview with the Ribikoffs. April did not say a word about going up to COOP City to pee in a cup, but she did describe her visit to the Schoenfelds.
'Tovah was a very nervous girl, probably had an anxiety disorder that was treated with antacids and bed rest. She liked shopping trips in the city with her mother and grandmother, but didn't do well with the strict adherence to rules. Apparently Tovah didn't like controls and direction. Her sisters said she was the only one who consistently wiggled out of tasks and schoolwork and anything else she didn't want to do. She had headaches and tuned out a lot.'
Bellaqua shook her head. 'So we've got zip on the families and their friends.'
'No one who was present had opportunity. Everybody was accounted for, but. ..' Mike shrugged.
'But what?' April asked.
'The families were at odds before the incident. Ribikoff took the ring because he didn't trust the Schoenfelds to give it back, and he didn't want his son marrying a damaged item. He was thinking very clearly, almost as if he had a plan.'
'Oy.' Bellaqua picked up the tab, thought about it for a minute.
'Okay, let's take it further, then. We'll run a check on everyone Ribikoff knows, every call he made in the last month, every withdrawal from his bank. See what he was up to.' She rolled her eyes. 'It's a hell of a way to break off an engagement, but we'll follow it through.'
Mike nodded as she paid the bill. 'Thanks. They make good burgers here.'
Bellaqua didn't answer. She and April were heading for the door. Already on to the next thing.
After lunch, Mike checked with Ballistics to see what they had on the gun. He couldn't make contact with the right person so he and April headed uptown to see the blond guy in the video, the florist who called himself Louis like one of the French kings. On the way April told him about her two-minute conversation with Hollis. 'I told him we'd deal with Wendy ourselves. Do our own background on her.'
'How did he take it?'
'Seemed fine with it.'
Louis's shop was icy, and they almost walked out when they saw a woman with little packages of foil in rows all over her head sitting under a hair dryer reading a magazine. Then they saw Louis.
