“Hood,” Ed said. “That was David’s idea. He had no standing on the rabbinic side, but he gave a lot to get this going and came up with the idea of the donor card. He looks shy and bookish but he is tougher than people think when he thinks he is right. Which he generally is.”
“Is he tough enough for what he’s into now?”
“We don’t know what he’s into.”
“Are you sure?”
The Rabbi sipped the last of his wine and stood. “I’m afraid there’s nothing more I can tell you, Jonah. Anything else he might have told me as his rabbi, I think will have to remain confidential. If getting more information was the only reason you came to dinner, you may have to go home disappointed.”
“It wasn’t and I won’t. May I propose a compromise?”
“How does one compromise confidentiality?”
“Anything he told you while you were his rabbi is between you and him,” I said.
“Then where is the wiggle room?”
“Because you were no longer his rabbi the night he vanished. You had already resigned from the shul by then.”
He started to say one thing, stopped himself, started again and came up with, “What do you mean?” It was enough to tell me there was more.
“We’ve interviewed new witnesses,” I said, “and we’ve pieced together what happened to David.”
“That’s great!” There was a reason the rabbi had left theatre school. He wasn’t a good enough actor to sell that one.
“On his way home that night, two men tried to abduct him.”
“No!”
“They worked for an Irish gangster named Sean Daggett.”
“Have the police arrested him? Or these other men?”
“The other two are dead, Rabbi. They were shot to death last night.”
Now his face fell for real, no acting involved. “What!”
“I just found out. By accident, maybe by the hand of God, David was able to get away from them that night. He ran down Summit Path all the way to Beacon and was lucky to catch a trolley that was just pulling out. The driver confirmed it. Once David was safely away, he could have gone anywhere, but he got off at the very next stop. Washington Square. Right where you told me to get off. Now that was kind of risky for him to do. Those hoods were cruising around looking for him. So he had to have had somewhere in mind. Someone close by who would let him in.”
Shana came in from the kitchen then. “Dad, are you okay? I thought I heard something.”
“It’s about David,” I said. “I know he was here the night he disappeared.”
She looked away from me to her father, then at the floor. I liked the fact that she didn’t try to tell any lies.
“About seven-thirty,” I said, “maybe a few minutes after, he showed up at your door, out of breath, frightened. Now if you don’t want to tell me what he said, fine. I’ll find out anyway. I figured out this part fast enough. But at least confirm he got away. That he was unharmed. You couldn’t give his parents a greater gift than that.”
Rabbi Ed looked at his daughter and they made eye contact. Then he looked back at me and said, “Yes. For his parents, I can do that. He came here like you said. We were just cleaning up from dinner. I had never seen him like that. If I didn’t know him better, I would have thought he was having some kind of psychotic episode.”
“What about?”
“He didn’t tell us.”
“He wouldn’t,” Shana said.
“Right. He said it was for our own protection. All he wanted was a place to stay the night. But he made us swear not to say anything about seeing him, not even to his parents. He said that was for their protection too.”
“He didn’t say where he was going?”
“No,” Rabbi Ed said. “When I woke up in the morning he was gone.”
I looked at Sandy.
She said, “I woke up later.” It didn’t have the ring of truth.
“Did he have money?”
“About forty dollars,” Ed said. “I had a bit of cash that I gave him, about a hundred and twenty.”
“I gave him another eighty,” Shana said. “I had just gone to the bank machine.”
“So he had two hundred and forty dollars, no car, no clothes.”
“I gave him a coat when he left.”
“I thought you were asleep.”
“The night before, I meant. He told us he was going to leave early in the morning, so I made sure he had it before he went to bed.”
Okay, now she was bust-out lying.
CHAPTER 17
“So what do you think?” Jenn asked. “Is he alive?”
We were back in my room. Jenn was reclining on one bed, which I was facing in a club chair. The second queen bed was barely visible under the papers we’d been searching through. I had just told her everything about the dinner and David’s flight to the Lerners’ house the night he disappeared.
“I think he is,” I said. “At any rate, it’s the assumption we should work on. David is alive and in hiding, trying to work out whatever mess he’s in. And all we know is it will take a while.”
“What mess doesn’t? So what do we do with this news? Do we share it with his parents? With Gianelli?”
“If you were his parents, what would you make of it? Someone tried to abduct your son but he evaded it and went on the run. Does that help you or hurt you? Let’s wait until we know a little more before we call them.”
“And Gianelli?”
“Let’s wait on him too. So what happened with Carol-Ann Meacham last night? Did she go straight home after work or was she mobbed by suitors?”
The smile left Jenn’s face and she suddenly looked sheepish. She reached behind her to straighten the pillows behind her back. Fluffed them a bit and put them back the way they’d been. A sure sign she was blaming herself for something going wrong.
“What?”
“It all went fine at first. I matched her home number to an address in the phone book.”
“Where?”
“Roxbury.”
“Really? Gianelli made it sound like a war zone.”
“I wouldn’t go for long romantic walks after dark, but she lives in a real-estate pocket. The houses are big and in decent shape and apparently very affordable. Mostly because so many were foreclosures. They have signs up for a city program where you can get a fo-clo, as they are called, dirt cheap. Which Carol-Ann did, about six months ago.”
“What did you do, read her mail?”
“I did better. I found a neighbour across the street whose house is for sale. She was outside cleaning her garden and I chatted her up. Pretended I was interested in her house. Asked about the neighbours, the street. So Carol-Ann bought hers, did a little cosmetic renovation, and rents out the upstairs to help pay the mortgage.”
“Six months ago, you said.”
“Yes.”
“So she had a sudden influx of capital.”
“Yes. Anyway, I set up on a corner where I could see the house. She got there around quarter to eight, carrying her dinner. She was out of sight for about half an hour-the kitchen is at the back of the house-and then around eight-thirty she came to the front of the house and watched TV until a little after nine, when the TV light stopped flickering and she stood up. I think the phone rang and she paused what she was watching. I could see her shadow moving around, pacing, as if she were talking to someone on the phone. Two minutes later, she came out of the house and got in her car.”
“What kind?”
“White Camry. A few years old. So I followed her, and everything was fine at first but …”
“But what?”
“I realized I don’t know Boston as well as I thought I did. The Big Dig changed that whole part of the city. Plus she’s an unbelievably shitty driver. Never signalled, changed lanes at the last minute. Did unpredictable things. It was hard for me to stay on her and at this one light, she braked when it turned amber, then bombed through on the red. I had to stop and I never caught up.”
“You think she knew you were following?”
“No, I think that’s how she always drives.”
“Which direction was she heading?”
“North on Dorchester Avenue. Maybe to the Pike, maybe not. I wish we were at home,” she said. “I could call our contact at the phone company and find out who called her.”