Now You See Me... Read online

  “Because the bell is ringing.”

  It was. My heart skipped a beat. “You’re kidding, right?” I scurried off the bed and hurried to the peephole.

  He was wearing navy Dockers and a powder blue V-neck sweater that showed the white of his T-shirt. His black velvet yarmulke was off-center on his black hair, the way it usually is.

  “I can’t believe you drove two hours just to be with me,” I said when he was inside the room.

  “Chocolate chip are my favorites.”

  He put his hands on my waist and licked the crumbs off my lips. He’s over six feet tall, and I was barefoot, so he had to bend down to kiss me. It was a long kiss that left me breathless and curled my toes and probably gave him a permanent crick in his neck, but he didn’t complain.

  Later, lying next to him, I told him about Reuben Jastrow and felt his muscles tense.

  “I didn’t want to spoil the mood, Zack, but I had to tell you.”

  “So I wasn’t the only one to drive two hours to see you,” he said, his gray-blue eyes somber. He folded his arms beneath his head. “I can’t imagine what the Bailors are going through. I wish I could do something.” He turned to me. “Should I call Rabbi Bailor?”

  Rabbi Bailor had been Zack’s teacher, too. Zack had been a grade ahead of me at Sharsheret (the high school has a coed population but separate buildings for girls and boys), along with my ex-husband, who is on the board of the synagogue where Zack is rabbi. Life is complicated.

  “Definitely not. Jastrow didn’t even want me to tell you. I told him I don’t keep secrets from my husband.”

  Zack nodded. “Anyway, Rabbi Bailor might feel awkward if I called him. It must have been hard for him to ask you for help.”

  “Technically, his brother-in-law asked. I’m not even sure Rabbi Bailor wants my help. And I have no idea where I’d start looking for his daughter.”

  “You’re a reporter, Molly. You’re good at getting information out of people. And Andy Connors may be willing to help you.”

  “Maybe.”

  Connors is an LAPD detective with whom I’ve become friendly over the past five years. He’s generous with information when he can give it, but I’ve never asked him for a personal favor. I explained that to Zack.

  He raised himself on one elbow. “This isn’t about Connors helping you. You don’t want to do this, do you?”

  “I have mixed feelings.”

  He linked his fingers with mine. “Why are you resisting? Is it because she’s Rabbi Bailor’s daughter?”

  “That’s part of it. I don’t like the fact that Jastrow lied to me, for one thing.”

  “Jastrow explained why. If he’d told you right away that he was here on behalf of the Bailors, would you have given him the time of day?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “Meeting with Rabbi Bailor will be awkward, Zack. And yes, I’m still hurt by what he did. But that’s petty, considering what he and his wife are going through. I feel terrible for them.”

  “I guess you have your answer,” Zack said.

  “What if I can’t find her, Zack?”

  “Then the Bailors are no worse off than they are now.”

  “They could be wasting precious time. I still think they should go to the police, Zack. I told that to Jastrow again, before he left. Just because Hadassah told her sister she’s safe doesn’t mean she is.”

  Chapter 5

  There were two things Hadassah hadn’t anticipated: how much she would miss her family, and how much the lies would trouble her.

  The secret had been enough, at first, to block out both concerns. From her waking moment on Sunday, the secret had enveloped her, had filled her consciousness, had made it difficult for her to think of anything else as her fingers flew across the keyboard, knowing that his fingers were on a keyboard just miles away, typing words that made her heart sing while she dressed and packed her bag and woke the boys and said good-bye to her mother.

  See you tonight, sweetie.

  Hadassah had worried, because how was it possible that no one would detect the excitement that surged through her like electricity? She must look different. She felt different. But Laban, she remembered learning in class, had seen Rachel and Leah every day and had detected no sign that his daughters were about to steal away with his son-in-law, Jacob, and their families and possessions.

  And anyway, Aliza had been drunk with sleep and dashed hopes, and her mother had been oblivious. “Did the boys brush their teeth?” she’d asked.

  Later that night, and early the next morning, Hadassah’s excitement had been muted with panic that buzzed in her head and tightened her chest until she was perspiring and nauseated with fear.

  What had she done?

  He had calmed her, the way he always did. It was natural to be nervous, he’d told her. She had never disobeyed her parents, had never made a decision on her own even though she was eighteen years old, legally an adult, something her parents seemed not to recognize. If they hadn’t kept her back a year, she would be making her own decisions, wasn’t that so? What she wanted to do with her life, who she wanted to marry?

  Some girls her age were already engaged to men they’d known only weeks—less time than he and Dassie had known each other. And yes, both sets of parents had checked out the other family and the young man and woman, but that wasn’t a guarantee, was it? You never really knew someone until you lived with that person—what was truth, what was exaggeration or lies.

  And Dassie’s parents wouldn’t approve of him, even though he loved her and cherished her. They would never think he was good enough for their daughter. A rabbi’s daughter. They probably wanted her to marry a rabbi’s son, someone like her brother, who learned Torah all day. They would lie. “Let’s wait until after Aliza is engaged, sweetheart.” And who knew when that would be? Two years, three? And in the meantime they would try to change Dassie’s mind, and set her up with young men they chose for her.

  “You know that’s what will happen, Dassie.”

  Unless Dassie didn’t love him? Or maybe, like her parents, she thought he wasn’t good enough? “If you’re not sure,” he’d said, “if you want to go home . . .”

  Today had been bad. With each day that passed she felt more like a prisoner, though she understood that it was risky for her to leave the apartment, or go on the balcony, or open the blinds.

  “My neighbors are nosy,” he’d said. “We have to keep a low profile until the time is right. . . .”

  But she felt isolated and lonely, especially when he was away, sometimes even when he was with her. More than once she’d been tempted to phone her family, or Sara. It wasn’t a good idea, he’d told her. They would try to convince her to come home. He was right, of course. So she’d given him her cell phone.

  “Only if you want to,” he’d said. “I’ll give it back whenever you say. The nice thing is, my charger works for your phone. Another bond,” he’d joked.

  There was no other phone in the apartment. He’d moved in a few months ago and planned to get phone service, but he had his cell phone, so he was in no rush.

  It was a nice apartment, nicer than she’d expected, and he’d tried hard to make it her home. He’d scattered rose petals on the large sleigh bed that first night. He’d filled the closet with clothes he’d bought her (some of the clothes weren’t to her taste, but she hadn’t told him) and stocked the fridge and small pantry with foods she liked. He’d bought several of her favorite CDs, which she’d played, keeping the volume low, on the sound system he kept in a teak wall unit in the living room. He had a large mix of CDs, classical to heavy metal. She found most of the ones he favored depressing, especially the sound track from Romeo and Juliet. “I Would Die for You.” He played that song over and over and knew the lyrics by heart.

  “That’ll be our song, Dassie,” he told her.

  She would have chosen a different song, one that didn’t talk about death and twisting knives and bleeding hearts, but she didn’t want to hu
rt his feelings.

  Also in the wall unit were hundreds of books and knickknacks, including a black marble owl that stared at her knowingly and a thirty-two-inch TV. During the day, while he was out, she spent hours watching TV, letting other people’s faces and voices fill her head so there was no room for her thoughts. Katie Couric and The View, and Ellen De-Generes and Oprah and Judge Judy, reruns of Seinfeld, Friends, Will and Grace—so many shows that she’d seen at Sara’s or some of her other friends. Not at home. Her parents had never owned a TV.

  She wondered what they were doing now. If she were home, she would be helping her mother, braiding the challas and brushing them with an egg wash after the dough rose. If she shut her eyes she could smell the yeast, and the dill her mother sprinkled into the soup. Chicken this week, last week it was split pea. Her father was probably at the dining room table, learning the week’s Torah portion with Yonatan and the other boys, unless he was at a meeting, or talking with Gavriel, who had barely said ten words to her when he was home in October for Sukkot, because he was always out on a date. Aliza was, too. Hadassah knew they were angry at her, would blame her if the shadchonim stopped calling because she had brought shame to the family.

  And the lies, so many lies. One had followed the other. They nibbled at her now like tiny insects, made her face hot and her skin itch when she allowed herself to think about them.

  “Sometimes you have to lie to protect yourself,” he’d told her. Abraham had told the king that Sara was his sister, not his wife. Isaac had done the same. And Jacob had conspired with his mother, Rebecca, and lied to his father to steal the birthright from Esau.

  “You’re not stealing anything, Dassie, are you?” he’d asked.

  Peace of mind, she had thought but hadn’t said. Trust. Things she could never return . . .

  But she trusted him, too. And loved him. And he loved her.

  Those weren’t lies.

  Chapter 6

  Thursday, November 18, 7:03 p.m. Along the 8100 block of Santa Monica Boulevard. A woman reported that an unknown Caucasian male thief stole her wheelchair that she had left just outside a store while making a purchase.

  The Bailors lived on Cardiff in Pico-Robertson, an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood that, Zack and I joke, will soon have more kosher restaurants than residents. I parked in front of the two-story house, a dark gray stucco with a lighter gray trim and a narrow but tidy flower bed thickly planted with pansies. Aside from the addition of a black wrought-iron gate in the driveway and the two cars parked in front of it—a black Honda and a silver minivan— nothing had changed since the first time I’d been here fifteen years ago, when I was one of thirty-plus girls at a sophomore barbecue in the middle of Sukkot, the eight-day harvest holiday that starts five days after Yom Kippur.

  At the time I had been Rabbi Bailor’s student for less than two months, but I’d had a crush on him since my freshman year. I wasn’t alone in my infatuation (I had to share him with most of the girls in my school), and I’d had to adjust my fantasy to include a wife and children. If I couldn’t have Rabbi Bailor, I wanted someone just like him.

  He was in his early thirties then, younger than our other male teachers and, despite the bump on his nose, better looking, too—slim and broad-shouldered, with a square chin darkened by a perpetual fiveo’clock shadow, and straight, jet-black hair that he was always pushing away from his eyes. It was the eyes—dark brown, soulful—that held you spellbound and pinned you to your seat, eyes that made you squirm if you weren’t prepared and, if you were, made your heart soar when he smiled at you as though you were the only one in the room and said, “Very good,” in a heavy Brooklyn accent that conjured up the high school basketball court where, we’d heard, he’d obtained the nose bump and the small scar on his chin.

  He was a restless man, always in motion. When he wasn’t attacking the blackboard with his bold, jagged script, he was striding between the rows of desks, sometimes backward, keeping us on our toes while he bounced on his, constantly adjusting the black velvet yarmulke that migrated to the side of his head, jiggling the keys in his pants pockets, tossing his chalk from palm to palm as he pondered an answer or a question. He spoke rapidly, too, and would wait for us to supply the missing word or syllables of a phrase or sentence, maybe because his mind was racing ahead to the next thought. I don’t think he was conscious of his trait or our contribution. The one time we let him flounder for several long, excruciating seconds, he looked confused until someone (I think it was Aggie) came to his rescue. He laughed goodnaturedly, but his face was pink, and we never had the heart to tease him again.

  From the way he eyed me when he laughed that day, I think he suspected that I was behind the prank. I wasn’t, but peer loyalty and the horror of being a goody-goody prevented me from telling him so. I didn’t blame him for thinking I was the instigator. Unlike my two older sisters, Edie and Mindy, class valedictorians who had earned glory for the Blume name, I had earned frequent visits to the principal’s office, prompted by teachers’ complaints.

  I was “excessively exuberant.” I was too inquisitive, too persistent. I was argumentative and lacked respect for authority. My appearance and behavior didn’t reflect the modesty of a true bas Yisroel, a daughter of Israel.

  But in Rabbi Bailor’s class, I was a model student, and he was my champion. He not only tolerated my endless questions (about the Bible and Jewish law, about philosophy, about the temptations of the secular world) but encouraged them and my spirited arguments— some of which, I’ll admit, were a ploy to get his attention. If he didn’t have an answer, he’d say so and research the subject. And while I’m sure he disapproved of the brevity of my uniform skirt and the dark crimson polish on my nails, he never said anything—at least, not to me. His acceptance and honesty and dedication inspired me. I wanted desperately to please him, to make him proud. That’s why his betrayal was so devastating.

  I tried not to think about that now as I sat facing the rabbi and his wife at the white-cloth-covered dining room table where, before things soured, I’d enjoyed several Shabbat meals. It was Thursday evening, and preparations for the Sabbath were in evidence. An eight-armed silver candelabrum and tray occupied one end of the table, and a mélange of aromas wafted in from the kitchen. Gefilte fish, beef seasoned with garlic and onion, dilled chicken soup, the yeasty perfume of freshly baked challa.

  The room was as I’d remembered it. With the exception of a modest china closet that displayed an assortment of silver chalices, a Chanukah menorah, and other ritual items, the pale peach walls were lined with floor-to-ceiling dark wood bookcases crammed with gilt-lettered, oversized, leather-bound volumes of the Talmud and its commentaries. In the adjoining living room there were more texts on the coffee table, more filled bookcases. The furniture, mismatched, seemed incidental.

  Rabbi Bailor had aged well. His black hair was streaked with silver, and there was more gray than black in the trim beard that hid the scar on his chin, but he was still handsome. I couldn’t remember when I’d first noticed the beard. Ten years ago? Twelve? Over the years I had seen him at a wedding or a funeral, in one of the kosher markets or bakeries. I’d avoided looking at him, and I suspect he’d avoided looking at me, too.

  I had occasionally seen Mrs. Bailor, too. She had her runaway daughter’s vivid blue eyes, the strawberry-blond hair, the angular chin. In high school, after coming to terms with the fact that there was a Mrs. Bailor, I had liked that she was pretty. Rabbi Bailor deserved pretty. Now she looked tired and drawn, her pallor unrelieved by lipstick or blush, her eyelids puffy and red. Her hair was covered with a black crocheted snood instead of her usual wig, and she looked different. Younger, actually.

  Many Orthodox married women cover their hair. I do it, for Zack. As my mother and Mindy had promised, it’s less cumbersome than I’d expected, but after eight months I’m still eager to remove my hat or wig the minute I’m home, and I miss feeling the wind in my hair, the sun on my head. And it isn’t second nature. Severa
l times I’ve left the house bareheaded and have had to return for a covering.

  I wear hats more often than my wig, which is almost identical to my shoulder-length highlighted blond hair, but that evening I’d opted for the wig, and a navy skirt that covered my knees, coupled with a long-sleeved cowl-neck gray sweater. Practically a school uniform, I’d realized as I finished changing from my travel clothes. Freud would have had a field day.

  “My wife and I appreciate your coming here,” Rabbi Bailor said. “It’s good to see you, Malka.”

  “Molly.”

  Malka is the Hebrew for Mala, the paternal Polish-Jewish great-grandmother I never knew. I’m proud to carry her name, and it’s what all my Judaic studies instructors had called me, but I suppose I wanted to assert my independence. I’m not your student.

  He nodded. “Molly.”

  His eyes, surrounded by a network of crow’s-feet, hadn’t lost their intensity, and the look he gave me—a little hurt, I thought—made me feel small. I was thirty years old, but I folded my hands in my lap and felt as though I were back in school.

  “Mazel tov on your marriage,” Nechama Bailor said, filling the awkward silence. “We were happy to hear your good news. That was six months ago?”

  She didn’t sound happy. She sounded burdened with the effort of making small talk. I didn’t blame her.

  “Eight. Thank you.” Zack had wanted to invite the Bailors to the wedding. I had nixed it, just as I had nixed inviting them to my first wedding.

  “I’m glad you and Zack found each other,” Rabbi Bailor said. “I hear that his congregation loves him. I told him he had great potential, even though he wasn’t exactly serious about my class.” A half smile played around the rabbi’s lips. “I knew you had great potential, too, Molly.”

  “Did you?”

  “Yes,” he said, ignoring my sarcasm. “And I was right. You’ve had several books published. You write a weekly column. Kol ha’kavod.” Kudos.

  “Thanks.”