“It is for me.”
“Are you by any chance a student of Kabbalah?” he asked.
“No.”
“Okay. Are you familiar with Donald Rumsfeld?”
“The former secretary of defence?”
“Yes. I’m not sure how closely you Canadians followed the Iraqi war but he gave a rather famous speech in which he distinguished the things we know from the things we don’t know … you remember that?”
“Yes. The known unknowns, the unknown unknowns.”
“Exactly. Like Mr. Rumsfeld-and I am sure this is where the similarities end-Kabbalah teaches that there are many layers of understanding. Many layers of knowing. You may know in your heart that something has happened to David, but in my heart, I have to ask myself: What if I told you something that David wanted me to keep confidential, and then he turned up suddenly. Would I not have done him a tremendous disservice?”
“Can you at least tell me if there was something he confided?”
“Over the years, certainly.”
“What about more recently? Did you see him in the days or weeks before he disappeared?”
“When was that exactly?”
“Last day of February.”
“Let me think about that. I’m not always so good with dates. Ah, here comes the soup. Don’t tell your mother you liked this better.” He added salt and pepper to his without tasting it, filled his spoon, blew on it hard enough to send some of it back into the bowl and slurped it loudly. Beads of it glistened on his beard. When he spooned in half a matzo ball, I decided to wait until he had finished the soup before I asked any more questions.
The waitress came and cleared our soup bowls and said she’d be right back with our sandwiches.
“So,” he said. “Did I lie?”
“About the soup? No,” I said. “So can you think of the last time you spoke to David?”
He looked up at a ceiling tile. “The last time … at least a month ago.”
“After you left Adath Israel.”
“Now that you mention it.”
“Was it at your home?”
“It must have been. Yes, at home. In my study.”
“It must have been important then.”
“Why?”
“For him to come to your house.”
“A lot of people come to my house, Jonah. They come for dinner, to play guitar and sing, to welcome Shabbos, to say goodbye to Shabbos, to be with me and my daughter-who isn’t married, by the way. In fact, I thought for a time maybe she and David … but I guess there wasn’t a spark there. Maybe he just wasn’t ready.”
Was he long-winded or avoiding answering the simplest of questions?
“Did he seem different? Upset about something?”
“We’re veering back into ethical problems.”
“Please, Rabbi. His parents are going through such hell.” Might as well throw a little guilt on the fire. Always works on me.
“As his rabbi, I-”
“But you’re not his rabbi anymore. And you weren’t when you last saw him.”
“I may not have been the head of his congregation, but I was still his rabbi.”
“You won’t help me?”
He sighed. “I’ll tell you what. Come to dinner tonight. We always make room at our table, especially Friday night. In the meantime, I’ll think it over. See if I can help you without doing David any disservice. You know Bartlett Crescent?”
“Is it in Brookline?”
“Yes. Not far from here.”
“I’ll find it.”
“Good. And if you want to have a glass of wine or two, leave your car and come on the T. We’re just up from the Washington Square stop.”
CHAPTER 14
“Sounds like a fix-up to me,” Jenn said.
“What are you talking about?”
“You and the rabbi’s daughter. Didn’t he mention she was single?”
“Yes.”
“Just dropped it into the conversation.”
“In the context of David Fine. He wanted to fix David up, not me.”
“Oh, Jonah,” she sighed. “How naive can you be?”
“Why would he fix his daughter up with a guy who’s only in town on a job?”
“Because you’re so darn eligible?”
“I don’t think I’m rabbi’s daughter material.”
“Pshaw. That’s not Yiddish, I suppose? Pshaw? It could be. It’s one of those spitting sounds you make when you explain the food.”
I had come back to the hotel stuffed to the gills. The sandwiches at Rubin’s were huge. “They come in two sizes,” Rabbi Lerner had told me with a wink. “Large and larger.” Luckily I had only ordered the large. After the soup, I had barely finished half and brought the mountainous remains back for Jenn, who was eating it as I filled her in on the rabbi.
“So you think David went to his house the night he disappeared,” she said.
“We know he got off the trolley at Washington Square. The rabbi lives just up the street from there.”
“And he wouldn’t tell you anything more?”
“He didn’t even tell me that.”
“What makes you think it’ll be any different tonight?”
“He said he’d think it over. Maybe some text or other will convince him it’s the right thing to do.”
“Man, that was good,” she said, as she balled up the wrapper of her sandwich. “And he ate a whole one?”
“And quickly. Plus soup and a side of latkes.”
“A man of appetite.”
“Big one.”
“So you’ll eat well tonight.”
“I guess.”
“While I languish here in the hotel.”
“You don’t have to. You could come with me.”
“And crowd your style? I think not. Anyway, I’m still waiting for a callback from Tim Fitzpatrick. Maybe the congressman and his sweetheart wife will invite me to dinner.”
My cellphone showed an incoming call from Hard Driver. I put it on speaker so Jenn could hear.
“Karl,” I said. “How’s it going?”
“Aw, dude, can you believe it?” he rasped. His voice is low and gravelly from years of shouting over the roar of engines; his great passion other than hacking is restoring and racing vintage motorcycles. “I broke my damn foot, man. I’m stuck behind my desk.”
“So you’re working on our stuff.”
“Fuck you, man. I’m in pain. And if Rosa finds out how I did it, I will be in such shit. Just because she’s pregnant.”
