“What’s your bet?” Mike asked. “Antiwar? Pro-choice? Fur coats?”
“Be serious.”
“I’m very serious. For one of those causes, she was willing to go to the mats. Pushing the envelope to get something she believed in.”
Laura stood in my doorway, her arm blocking the eager young woman who wanted to enter. “Emily is from IT — with court papers for you.”
I waved the girl in, took the blue-backed misdemeanor cases from her hand, and cupped the receiver against my neck.
“Here’s your answer,” I said, folding the disposition sheets over so that I could see the date and place of occurrence on each of the complaints. “Both arrests occurred at the same place. Dag Hammarskjold Plaza. One last December and another in January.”
The small, tranquil city park on the entire south side of the block between First and Second Avenues on East Forty-Seventh Street had been named for the Swedish diplomat and Nobel peace prize winner who had been Secretary-General of the United Nations.
“Right opposite the U.N.”
“Exactly. But it’s not about war,” I said. “Naomi was leading a protest, a day of international solidarity for an Israeli feminist group that has been denied the right to pray, like men do, at the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem.”
“Well, Coop. Maybe we’ve got a holy war on our hands after all.”
TEN
MIKE extended a hand to help me out of the yellow cab in front of a recently renovated tenement building on Avenue B at four the same afternoon.
“What happened to Daniel?” I asked.
“Strike one. Manhattan South sent a team to his old job, ’cause the commish was afraid he’d hear about Naomi on the news. But he hasn’t worked there lately.”
“Someone told him?”
“Yeah. Yeah. One of the guys he used to hang with told him. Good way to piss me off.”
“So he’s crushed. Give him a break. And let’s get out of the drizzle,” I said, pushing open the vestibule door.
“Not so broken up as you’d think. He hasn’t seen much of Naomi in almost six years. His buddies at the theater didn’t even know he had a sister.”
“But this is her apartment.” I knew the address from the court papers. “How did Daniel get in? If he didn’t have much of a relationship, you wouldn’t think he’d have a key.”
“Nope. The super opened up for him. Now he’s stonewalling me.”
Mike pressed the buzzer with the paper marker labeled Gersh next to the mailbox for 2D. It took almost three minutes for a voice to respond through the intercom.
“Yes?”
“I’m still here, Daniel. I’d like to talk to you.”
“What about that warrant, Detective?”
“I got one right here. A living, breathing warrant. Meet Assistant DA Alex Cooper. Open up, Daniel. This is a condolence call, not a strip search.”
There was another short hesitation before the buzzer sounded. Mike entered, climbing the steps in front of me. When we reached 2D, the door was ajar and the chain was bolted across the opening.
“Let me see your papers.”
“I realize this is a difficult day,” I said, “but we don’t need a warrant. You have no legal standing to keep us out of your sister’s apartment. We’re simply here to talk to you.”
“Me, I’m the battering-ram type, Daniel. Works every time and it gets the neighbors’ attention. Coop here favors the more polite approach.” Mike pressed his arm against the door to test its give.
Daniel pushed it closed and removed the chain.
“May we come in?” I asked.
He shrugged and stepped back to let us enter.
Mike scoped the room — a large studio apartment lined with brick and board bookshelves, with little more in it than a double bed against the wall, a pair of beanbag chairs, a couple of crates that served as a living area, and a tiny kitchenette. Two doors were opened in the back, revealing a bathroom and a closet. I introduced myself to Daniel, trying to figure whether his reserve was grief or a natural shyness as I expressed my sympathy for his sister’s brutal death.
“May I sit down?”
“Yeah, sure.” He motioned to the chairs, but I chose the side of the bed. I knew I would sink into the shape- shifting beans and end up below eye level with him. Daniel wasn’t ready to sit, answering me but keeping a watch on Mike.
“I’ve got a lot of questions about Naomi that I’d like to ask you,” I said. “Is there anything you want to know before we begin?”
“Nah. The cops told me the stuff about her body,” he said. “I really don’t want to hear any more of that.”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-seven.”
“What do you do?”
“Right now I’m a prop guy. Move scenery and equipment at a theater. I’m supposed to start acting classes in the summer.”
“Have you worked at the show very long?”
“It’s a temp job,” he said, scratching his sandy brown hair, which hung below the collar of his sweatshirt in a long, tangled snarl. “I only moved to New York in the fall.”
“From?. .”
“Chicago. I lived near Chicago with my mother.”
“Does she know about Naomi yet?” I asked, hoping to distract Daniel while Mike lifted a suitcase out of the closet.
“She’s my mother. Not Naomi’s,” Daniel said. “You mind leaving her luggage alone, Detective?”
“All packed up and ready to go,” Mike said. “Your sister do that, or you?”
“Just don’t touch it, okay?” Daniel Gersh walked toward Mike. He was tall and well built, with a jangly kind of energy that made him appear skittish and nervous.
“Ms. Cooper’s talking to you.” Mike backed off the suitcase and walked over to the windowed wall that housed the sink and small oak dining table.
The apartment was neat and clean. I knew it would be gone over by crime-scene detectives and was confident — as Mike was— that Daniel wasn’t leaving with the suitcase or any other property of his late sister’s, if that was what he had come here to do. Nothing appeared to be out of place. It didn’t look like the young woman had been butchered in her home.
“Can I just get you to focus on some questions that would help us try to figure out what happened to Naomi?” I said.
“Then stop asking about me, okay? What do you want to know about her?”
“Why don’t you start with the family background?”
Daniel had planted himself in the middle of the room. “Naomi’s a lot older than I am. Seven years. My father — our father, I mean — he met her mother in college. Got her pregnant and her family put a lot of pressure on them to get married. So they did. But it didn’t last very long. Like a year after Naomi was born, it was over.”
I could hear the rustling noise as Mike pulled back the shower curtain in the bathroom, and Daniel hurried
