“Right. Sorry. Yeah, he did to me. It’s hard to describe changes in someone who keeps to himself as much as he does, but it’s like his screws got a little tighter. He’s always been pretty serious but the last few weeks he looked more grim. Not just soaking up information, which is like oxygen to him. Stewing about something. Did you ask Dr. Stayner?”
“Yes. He said he hadn’t noticed a change.”
“I doubt David would show any weakness around him. Stayner’s his idol. He’d never disappoint him. Or never did until he dropped out of sight.” Then she hesitated and said, “What feels the worst is I’ve really benefited from his disappearance. I’ve assisted on all of Stayner’s surgeries since then and if David doesn’t come back, I’ll be first in line for a fulltime position. It’s everything I’ve wanted since I started Harvard and I can’t enjoy it. I can’t tell you how badly I want him to come back.”
I thought of Ron Fine’s deeply lined face and the catch in his voice when he spoke about his missing son. I said, “You don’t have to.”
CHAPTER 16
The southern sky was dark indigo when I got off the trolley but there were still lighter shades of blue to be seen in the northwest as I walked up Washington Street. The air was cool and damp, the street lights blurred by ragged mist. I looked down at the sidewalk and curb as I walked, like you do when you’ve lost a ring or wallet and you’re retracing your route, as if I might actually see something. Look! There! A vital clue that explains it all. Suddenly we know why one of the most stable people on earth suddenly had to run for his life. Footprints materialize that show the way he went. Snippets and fragments are discovered. There! On that branch! The snagged bit of cloth our forensic team will analyze to ferret out his location.
Oh, wait. We have no forensic team. Which was fine because there was no cloth snagged on the bare branches that hung over the street. There were no vital clues. No footprints or fragments, no clouds of his breath still steaming in the night air. No rings or wallets in the gutter. Nothing but an oily swirl of water running next to the curb.
Someone was playing blues guitar on Rabbi Ed’s street, and not badly. I could tell it wasn’t a recording: at one point as I neared his house, the player stumbled once and had to start his riff again. It sounded like an early 1960s Chicago style: no fuzz or pedal effects, just a nice clear tone that emphasized the actual notes, and he could play them, bend them, make them sing pretty well. I had a vision of a teenaged boy in one of the neighbouring houses, learning at the feet of the masters. Then I got to Rabbi Ed Lerner’s house and realized it was coming from the bay window on the ground level. When I knocked on the door, the music stopped, and I heard a searing screech of feedback before the amp shut off.
The house was a cottage with vinyl siding painted a deep green and white shutters framing the leaded windows. The garden in front had low shrubs along the walkway still wrapped in burlap coverings.
Rabbi Ed was perspiring when he opened the door. He wore the same white shirt and blue jeans he’d had on at the restaurant. “Sorry,” he said, wiping his brow with a sleeve. “I always shvitz a little when I play. Must be my soul coming out.”
“You sounded great.”
The hall was wide, with dark wood wainscotting, archways and door jambs. He led me into the study at the right of the entrance. A turquoise Stratocaster rested in the cradle of a guitar stand next to an old Fender Twin amp. They looked like they could blow a high school dance apart.
“Long before I became a rabbi,” he said, “when I was in theatre school, if you can believe it, I played in a band with some of the kids. We called ourselves the Castoffs and I was the lead guitarist.”
“I’m still digesting the theatre part.”
“Scratch a rabbi, find an actor. Or, God forbid, a comedian. Anyway, that was my undergrad experience. It didn’t take me long to realize I’d never make it as an actor and I didn’t want to be a hanger-on. I made a total break.”
“But you still have your guitar chops.”
“That I can always practise on my own,” he said. “You can’t really act in your living room. And if ever I fall on hard times, that’s a 1961 Stratocaster. I could retire on it. Listen, I have to change for dinner, I’m not wearing this sweaty thing for Shabbos. You want a drink or anything? Glass of wine? I have some Scotch, nothing fancy, but I think there’s Chivas.”
“Chivas on ice would be great.”
“Let me get you that and I’ll tell Shana you’re here. I did tell you my daughter would be joining us?”
“I thought her name was Sandra.”
“To everyone else, yes. Sandra or Sandy, depending if it’s work or friends. But to me, it’s Shana.”
He went off to get my drink and I looked around his study. There was a large wooden desk against the wall in one corner, with a closed laptop barely visible under sheaves of paper. He had bookshelves along one entire wall, with a collection of Judaica and philosophy like David Fine’s, only three times the size. The other wall was dominated by an aquarium in which four or five turtles swam lazily, bumping up against driftwood that stood like a tree in the middle. On the wall above it were photos of Ed Lerner in a variety of settings: breaking ground at a construction site along with three other men, all in hardhats; cutting a ribbon in front of the Holocaust Memorial; decorating a sukkah; accepting an oversized cheque from a man in front of a building called the Vilna Shul.
I leaned in closer. The man presenting the cheque was the congressman from the Eighth District, Marc McConnell. Couldn’t miss that hair and height.
I heard footsteps behind me and ice clinking in a glass. I took a breath to compose myself before turning to face the rabbi. If there was anything to ask about the photo, I wasn’t sure what it was yet.
It wasn’t him standing there with my drink. It was his daughter and she had two drinks. She looked nothing like him, wasn’t cut from the same ursine cloth at all. She was in her mid-twenties, about five-five, with deep grey-green eyes and chestnut curls that spilled past her shoulders. There was the finest mist of freckles across a face that met every qualification for lovely. Shana was the right nickname for her. It means pretty or sweet in Yiddish. One of the nicest compliments you can give a woman is to say she has a shana punim, a sweet face. Which she had.
She passed one drink to my left hand and offered her right. “I’m Sandy Lerner.”
“Jonah Geller.”
“The detective,” she said, smiling. Her teeth were straight and white like she’d never had a coffee in her life.
“Yes.”
“I shouldn’t joke about it. It’s terrible about David being missing. Dad is pretty distraught about it. But I’ve never met a detective, police or private.”
“You’re lucky then. No one hires us for fun.”
“Any luck so far?”
“Not much,” I said. “We have theories but no real clues to support them or tell us where David is now.”
She wore a white blouse with a maroon brocade vest over it and a green peasant skirt cinched tight at the waist with a lighter green scarf knotted at one side. “How is his family doing?”
I shook my head. “If I can’t find him, they’ll be crushed.”
“I feel awful for them.”
“So what’s your experience of David?”
“A great person,” she said. “I know my dad was hoping I’d go for him, and I thought he was very sweet, and cute in a boyish kind of way, but there wasn’t any chemistry. But I really admire what he’s doing. Some guys my age are so directionless, they can barely find their way to class.”
“Where do you study?”
“Tufts. I’m doing a master’s in urban planning and heritage conservation.”
“Great city for it.”
“Yes. The thing about David,” Sandy said, “is he needs a little more balance in life. His idea of a perfect evening would be a few hours of studying followed by a few more hours of it.”