“I get that he’s nervous, and that any involvement in a murder case is an extreme situation for Rabbi Levy and for the seminary,” I said. “But it certainly sounds like he had more than a professional attraction to Naomi. Can you push the lieutenant to get some guys up here for a more thorough interview?”
“That and scoring his phone records for starters.”
“I hate how this job makes me distrust everybody. I mean, maybe he was just picking up on her despondency.”
“And maybe he was just picking up on her, Alex. Gotta check it out.”
“I know we do, but sometimes it’s the worst part of my work. Makes me wish I’d been a prima ballerina,” I said, giving a tug to the sleeve of Mercer’s black leather jacket.
Both of us reached for our cell phones to check for messages. It was almost one in the afternoon. I held mine at arm’s length while Pat McKinney railed at me at the top of his lungs for not sticking around to give him details about the morning’s murder. Rose Malone, calling on Battaglia’s behalf, made the same complaint with more dignity.
“Hot water?” Mercer asked.
“Tepid. It will come to a boil by the end of the day, I’m sure. McKinney will be in the front office stirring the pot to try to nail me. Nothing from Mike about the autopsy?”
“Should be done by now,” Mercer said, checking his watch. “One from Special Victims. The serial rapist in the transit system hit again. Brooklyn, this time. And Vickee, warning me that headquarters is getting hell from the mayor’s office about these cases. He doesn’t want any more bodies in churchyards, can you imagine?”
“I need to be careful what I wish for,” I said as the phone vibrated in my hand and Mike’s number came up on the screen. “And the mayor better pray a little harder. Hello?”
“Who’s buried in Grant’s Tomb?”
“What?” I hadn’t heard that question since reruns of Groucho Marx went off the air.
“You heard me. Grant’s Tomb. Who’s buried there? And why don’t you smile when you see me?”
My head jerked and I looked up the steep hill we were climbing as we crossed Broadway going west. I couldn’t help but break into a grin and wave when I saw Mike at the top.
“Ulysses S. Grant, Detective Chapman.”
“Half right.”
“And Julia Boggs Dent-Grant. First Lady. Beloved wife.”
“Cross-eyed, she was. D’you know that surgeons wanted to correct her crossed eyes when she moved to the White House? But General Grant said he liked her just that way.”
“You ought to learn some tolerance from Ulysses’s attitude, Mikey. Why are you here?”
“Came to pay my respects to the general.”
Mercer and I continued due west, up the steep incline and across Riverside Drive, where the wide expanse of the Hudson River opened up below the stately granite and marble monument — the second largest mausoleum in the Western Hemisphere — built by a mourning nation as a tribute to Grant’s leadership to save the Union.
We sat on the great steps, catching the sunlight that brightened the dull March landscape, flooding the area between the two huge sculpted eagles that guarded the tomb.
“Any surprises at Naomi’s autopsy?”
Mike was halfway into a ham-and-cheese sandwich. He’d brought a second one for Mercer and a yogurt for me. “Nope.”
“Signs of sexual assault?”
“Inconclusive. No seminal fluid. Minor bruising on the thighs, but that could have come during a struggle anyway.”
“Mercy, mercy.”
“How can you say that, Mr. Wallace?” Mike asked. “You see any mercy in this matter? You think it was such a blessing to be beheaded by a dull hatchet?”
“The ME says that’s what the weapon was?” I asked.
“Let’s leave it at the fact that it wasn’t such a clean slice. He’s not sure what kind of blade, but it might have done with a good sharpening. Probably same one as for this new victim. Naomi’s killer didn’t get the job done with just one strike.”
“Any thoughts about drugs? That maybe Naomi was unconscious before she was mutilated?”
“I hope it’s the case for both women, but tox won’t be ready for at least a week.”
The complicated tests for toxicological finds in the blood and tissue were impossible to be rushed. It often took weeks, depending on the substance tested for, to get an answer to whether drugs were present and in what amounts.
“Did Chirico have anything to add?” I asked. Not that there were any good thoughts to have about this case.
“Not yet. Wound himself up in this one tighter than a tick on a dog’s ear. He doesn’t like anybody screwing with the Mother Church. The guy won’t budge from his desk. What’d you get?”
Mercer repeated what Rabbi Levy had told us about Naomi Gersh. All of it fit with her brother’s description of her as a pariah, and of her profound loneliness as she struggled to find a way to live her life. He also noted the rabbi’s apparent interest in helping Naomi relieve some of that gloom by suggesting a date.
“Then there’s this Bellevue piece,” Mercer said. “If you ask me, Naomi’s quirks were growing on the rabbi. She might have pushed back because she thought he was coming on to her. She told him she had a friend she had to see who’d been sick. Said he’d been at Bellevue.”
“A veritable whackjob? Now we’re talking,” Mike said.
“I thought I’d ride down there and rattle some cages. We have a pretty specific window. Naomi told the rabbi about this guy last week, and if he’s a Bellevue psych patient, I can start to look at discharges in the days before the murder—”
“And escapes. Eyeball the escapes too.”
“You’re going to need a subpoena. I’ll cut you a few when I get down to the office.”
“Ask one of your posse to do it for him right now,” Mike said. The stunning team of lawyers who worked Special Victims — Nan Toth, Catherine Dashfer, Marisa Bourges — would drop most of what they were doing to back up Mike and Mercer on any case. “I’m going to take you for a ride, Coop.”
“Where?”
“The Bronx. I got a hunch.”
“About Naomi?”
“No. About a church.”
“I wouldn’t dream of crossing you on that subject. Mercer, when you get to Bellevue, you should think about the emergency room too.”
New York had some of the finest private medical centers in the world, including the New York University facility adjacent to Bellevue. But cops knew the best trauma treatment was in the ERs at hospitals one would never choose for open-heart surgery: Harlem, Metropolitan, and Bellevue.
“Already doing that. Maybe Naomi didn’t like the rabbi calling her friend crazy ’cause she didn’t think he was crazy. Could have been at Bellevue for an injury. Treated and released.”
“Maybe he was giving his machete a practice run,” Mike said. “Hurt himself in the process. Or drugs.”
There were scores of people a day in and out of the Bellevue ER. Hundreds more who were in outpatient programs or coming in to receive meds. If you wanted to do one-stop shopping for the mentally ill in Manhattan, this hospital was the place to start.
“I’ll go straight to administration. Will you call Laura and ask her to fax up the subpoenas?”
“Right now.”
“Coop’s office at six tonight?” Mercer asked.
“Deal.”
Once again we went in separate directions, Mercer downtown and Mike and I heading due east to take the Triborough Bridge to the Bronx.
“You’re not telling me where?”
“No secret. It’s a long shot, not a secret. I’m taking you to my alma mater. The old church there — St. John’s — may have a clue or two.”
