Baltimore Noir

and use Rabbi Brenner’s name.

“They don’t ask questions, so it shouldn’t be a problem.” The rabbi gave me a meaningful look. “Nor should your task.”

“I can only try, rabbi.”

We finished our meals in silence. He picked up the check and stood first.

“Rabbi, one more thing,” I called.

He turned around.

“I hope you’re wrong.”

“And I hope I’m not,” he said, before leaving me to stare at the last strands of fettuccini on my plate.

Many families went for the pomp and circumstance that a hotel could provide, but not Rabbi Brenner. A synagogue was the only place for a wedding, he’d told me during our meeting the week before, and the Beth Jacob Synagogue on Park Heights Avenue was his choice. By the time I arrived, the place was packed. I hadn’t wanted to drive in my rented tux so I’d brought it with me, assuming I’d be able to find a bathroom to change in.

I wasn’t the only one with the same thought. A couple of other dancers from the agency I’d paid lip service to a few days earlier were also changing in the bathroom. A young boy who couldn’t have been more than twelve or thirteen looked completely stunned at what he was seeing.

“Why are you changing into your suits?” he asked.

The other guys exchanged looks so I elected to answer the question. “We’re here to dance. You been to a wedding in this synagogue before?”

The boy shook his head. “Not here, usually at a hotel in Pikesville.”

“Well, anyway,” I continued, “they want people to be really excited for the bride and groom, but sometimes there aren’t enough invited guests. That’s why we’re brought in to help.”

“Wow, that’s really cool!”

When the boy finally took off, the other two ringers laughed.

“Couldn’t have explained it better,” said the first, a short, stocky bruiser with blond hair.

“Poor kid,” said the other, taller man. “He might be traumatized!”

“I hope not, and hell, someone had to.” I didn’t want to make small talk: I had work to do.

What work exactly, I still wasn’t sure. Moshe would be sequestered in a back room somewhere, being prepared by his family and friends. There was no way I could just walk in and make myself a part of the group. I thought about trying to watch him during the pre-wedding ceremony where he would “uncover” Beryl’s veil to show she was his real bride and not an impostor, but couldn’t find an opportunity. All I could do was watch, and wait for some signal, whatever it was.

But all that watching allowed me one extra pleasure: checking out the girls. This was a wedding, so they’d be dressed up more elaborately and formally than girls I hung out with. I didn’t know what was in the water, but Beryl was far from the only beautiful girl present. There were plenty, most of them obviously preening for the mostly male crowd.

The girls waited by the canopy where the bride and groom would be married. Unlike more ultra-Orthodox places, this synagogue’s seating was allowed to be mixed when the wedding, like this one, took place on a weekday, so everyone could mingle freely. As a girl passed a boy, she flashed her brightest smile and hoped it would be reciprocated in turn. I even benefited from a couple of those smiles, so I did the only proper thing: I smiled back.

“What is this, a meat market?” I asked Sam, who was sitting next to me. The rest of his family was on his other side.

“You might say that,” he replied, a faint Russian accent inflecting his voice. “But how else are young women supposed to meet men? Weddings are the best times to do so.”

I certainly knew that. When my best friend got married right before I was sent up, I’d become instant friends-well, if you call it that, though after several rounds of JD I certainly didn’t-with the maid of honor. Never saw her again after the next morning, but I’d always remember her, and her mouth, vividly.

The ceremony began with the cantor’s intonation and the room quieted down. I’d never been to a Jewish wedding before, and the rituals fascinated me. The prayers, which I couldn’t understand, had an ancient rhythm that appealed to the buried part of me still well-versed in Latin liturgy. Seeing Beryl circle her husband seven times amused me, and I winced when Moshe broke the glass, wondering if he’d hurt his foot.

When the crowd clapped, so did I. Beryl and Moshe made a beautiful couple, and the ceremony was elegant and dignified. The only thing marring the celebrations was Rabbi Brenner’s expression of absolute disappointment. He couldn’t know where I was sitting but it didn’t matter. I felt that expression on me and a responding pang of guilt. I hadn’t done my job, even though there was no job to do.

And then chaos broke out.

It lasted maybe a minute, two tops. First there was shouting, then there was screaming, and then there was a shot. When it was all over, a man was tackled to the ground, and another one-Moshe Braverman-lay dead under the chupa. Because of security issues, police were already at the synagogue, so an arrest was quickly made, but the story wouldn’t fully emerge until a few days later, when Sam and I attended the shiva We’d closed the shop up early in order to get there in mid-afternoon, when hardly anyone else was around. Even though Beryl had barely been a bride (there’d been some question as to whether the ceremony was truly valid, but a signed document was a signed document), she was an active mourner and wept over the loss of her husband.

Rabbi Brenner’s emotions were far more controlled. Even though he’d spent much energy, and a fair amount of money, on me to prove him right, he hadn’t expected the evidence to occur in such a dramatic fashion.

“I watched it unfold and couldn’t do anything,” he told us in hushed tones, so his wife and daughter, sitting on the other side of their living room, couldn’t hear. “I couldn’t stop that boy from confronting his tormentor, the one who’d put him in the hospital and crippled him for life-silencing him with such finality. I’m not sure how I’ll live with myself.”

It wasn’t appropriate, but I put my hand on his shoulder nonetheless. “You didn’t bring this upon your family, rabbi. You had no way of knowing.”

Rabbi Brenner looked at Sam, who knew the entire story after I’d filled him in the day after Moshe’s death, then me. His face was tear-stricken. “The ways of God are far more complex than you, or even I, can possibly understand. Perhaps you are right, Mr. Colangelo, and my actions or thoughts didn’t lead to a ruined wedding and a traumatized daughter and community. But I’ll never know.”

We left soon afterwards, saying a brief but awkward hello to a still-weeping Beryl and her more stoic mother.

“Do you need me around for the rest of the afternoon?” I asked Sam, as I drove him back to Pern’s.

“No, go ahead. I’ll get one of my older grandchildren to help me out. See you tomorrow, Danny.”

I stopped Sam before he left the car.

He turned around. “What is it?”

An old memory had come flooding back. “The way you said it reminded me of the first time you used that expression.”

Sam laughed. “The day I hired you, you mean. You were so stunned I knew who you were and took you on anyway.”

“No one else would take a chance on me.”

Sam said nothing. Another memory came back.

“There was something else you said then, something about not being surprised what develops as a result. I wish Rabbi Brenner could say the same.”

When Sam looked at me, I realized just how old he was. His spirit and old-world jokes carried him through during working hours, but without them, he was every inch the man who’d survived pogroms, two World Wars, and losses I had no idea about.

His voice was unnaturally grave. “Me too, Danny.”

I put my hand on his forearm. I hoped that by gripping it, I could convey the message I didn’t dare speak aloud: that I was proud to work for him and always would be.

After I dropped him off I took the interstate back to Little Italy. My mother was waiting, and she didn’t have