The Big Nap (17 page)

“Don’t be ridiculous. Why don’t you just ask him if he’ll meet you for a cup of coffee? Then you can delicately ask him about Fraydle.”

“Right. Like this yeshiva
bucher
is going to meet some strange woman for coffee.”

“Fine. Don’t take my advice. What do I know? I’m just an old woman. You’re the detective.”

“I am
not
a detective.”

“No. You just solve murders in your spare time.”

“Exactly. I mean, no! I don’t solve murders. I did solve that one before Isaac was born, but this isn’t a murder. I don’t even know if Fraydle is dead!”

“Who’s dead? Daddy?” Ruby asked, soundly bizarrely unperturbed at the thought.

“Nobody’s dead! Daddy’s fine! He’s just in California!”

“Don’t yell at me! Yell at Grandma, not me!”

I knelt down and gave her a hug. “Sorry, honey.” I kissed the top of her head. Then I walked over to my mother, put my arm around her, and kissed her on the cheek. “Sorry, Ma.”

“What sorry? You don’t need to be sorry. Don’t be silly.”

T
HE
next morning I woke up late and found my mother sitting in the living room, holding the telephone receiver up to a gurgling Isaac’s mouth.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Isaac is talking to his daddy,” she said.

“Sounds like a scintillating conversation. Here, give me the phone.”

I took the receiver out of her hand and made myself comfortable on the couch. Isaac immediately started nuzzling me, and I settled him across my lap.

“Hi, honey,” I said, into the phone.

“Hi, baby. I’m glad I caught you.”

“Isaac not enough of a conversationalist for you?”

“Not at all. He’s great. He burped twice and I swear he said ‘Dada.’”

“He did not. He’s only four months old.”

“Well, all I know is what I heard. What are you wearing?”

“What?”

“What are you wearing right now?”

I laughed. “Um, my father’s green flannel nightshirt.”

“Underneath?”

“Peter!”

“C’mon! Tell me.”

“I can’t. My mother’s sitting right here.”

My mother shook her head, sighed dramatically, and hoisted herself off the couch. “I’m going upstairs,” she said, and stomped away.

“Okay, she’s gone. Nothing.”

“Mmm. Come home.”

“Where are you? It’s six in the morning California time. Are you at home?” I asked.

“No, I’m in the production office. I’ve been here all night.”

“Is Mindy there?”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Juliet! You really are insane. Of course she’s not here. Would I be talking to you about your naked body if Mindy were here?”

I didn’t say anything.

“Juliet. When are you going to figure out that I love
you
? You’re the one I’m dreaming about. It’s
your
body that I’m thinking about.”

I sighed. “I know. I’m sorry. Again. As usual. I’m always sorry.” And I was, really, it just seemed like Peter and Mindy were spending so much time together. “Listen,” I said, “let’s not talk about Mindy, or my body for that matter. Let me tell you about yesterday.”

After I told Peter about everything I’d discovered I
asked him what he thought my next move ought to be.

“Well, if I were writing this as a screenplay,” he said, “I’d want to know what your motivation was. What do you want to know? What information are you missing?”

I thought for a minute. “I guess what I need to know now is if Fraydle knew about Ari, and if she did, what, if anything, she did about it. Was she planning on going forward with the marriage? What did her parents know? Were they planning on going forward?”

“Well, you can’t ask her, because she’s still missing. She
is
still missing, isn’t she?”

“I assume so. Nettie has my number here. She promised to call if Fraydle came home or if anything else happened.” I didn’t say what the anything else was, but Peter and I both knew what I meant: if she turned up dead.

“Okay, so you can safely assume she’s still missing. So you can’t ask her. Her father isn’t likely to tell you.”

“And I know Nettie would have told me if she knew anything about it. At least, I think she would have.”

“So who does that leave? The mother?”

“She won’t talk.”

“Then who?”

“Ari Hirsch.”

“So call Ari Hirsch.”

“God! You and my mother. That’s just what she suggested that I do. I’ll tell you what I told her: I asked Josh to call him for me.”

“Don’t wait for Josh. Do it yourself.”

And I did.

I found Ari’s parents’ telephone number by using my keen detective skills and calling directory assistance. Once I reached Esther, I claimed to be a clerk at a store
where Ari had placed an order and asked to speak to him.

“What kind of order?” Ari’s mother said.

“It’s a gift order, Mrs. Hirsch,” I replied. “Mr. Hirsch specifically asked us not to tell what it was. Are you his wife?”

“No, his mother.”

“Well, then I certainly can’t tell you, can I?” As soon as the words left my mouth I felt horribly guilty, imagining Esther waiting day after day for the surprise gift from her son, which would never arrive.

“He’s at the yeshiva all day today.”

A boy’s high-pitched voice answered the phone at the yeshiva.

“Can I speak to Ari Hirsch, please?” I asked.

“I’ll transfer you to the rabbi’s office. He’s in there, studying.”

A moment later a soft voice answered the phone.

I swallowed, a little nervously. I’ve had conversations with bank robbers, drug dealers, and even the worst scum of the earth, confidential informants, but for some reason this particular conversation, with a young man I imagined to be skinny and acne-covered, hunched over his sacred texts and doubting his sexuality, made me tense.

“Is this Ari Hirsch?”

“Yes, who is this?”

“Mr. Hirsch, Ari, my name is Juliet Applebaum. I’m a friend of Fraydle Finkelstein.”

“Yes. I know about you. Josh Bernstein spoke to me this morning in
shul.
”

So Josh had come through.

“Ari, is there any way we can meet? I have some questions to ask you and I’d rather do it in person.”

“Meet?”

“This is very urgent. Very. Please trust me. I must talk to you about Fraydle. It’s an emergency.”

He didn’t respond.

“I’m taking my kids to the Museum of Natural History, today,” I said. “Would you meet me there? We can talk for just a moment or two?”

The mention of my kids seemed to reassure him. He said, tentatively, “It is urgent, correct?”

“Very.”

“I must study this morning. I can meet you this afternoon at three o’clock.”

“Terrific,” I said. “In the elephant room. Right under the tusks of the lead elephant. I’ll be there with my two small children, a baby and a little girl.”

“Under the elephant,” he said, and hung up the phone.

When I hung up I looked up at my mother. She was standing over me, smiling complacently.

“What?” I said.

“A ridiculous idea,” she said.

“What was?”

“Calling him. Ridiculous, you told me.”

“Okay. Not ridiculous. A good idea. A very good idea. So, do you want to come into the city with me?”

“No. I have to go to the office for a few hours. Myron has a petition for certiorari due this afternoon and I can’t trust the temp to get it right. You only have one chance you know. If it’s late, it’s late. The Supreme Court doesn’t take excuses.”

“I know, Ma. I filed a few of those while I was the federal public defender.”

“Of course you did,” she said, clearly mourning my lost days as a professional.

“Maybe Daddy will want to come along.”

“Sure he will. He loves the museum.”

W
HEN
we got to the Upper West Side we parked the car and unloaded the kids. My father insisted on putting Isaac on his own chest in the Baby Bjorn. I was sorry I hadn’t brought my camera along to catch the two of them waddling down the street with Ruby skipping along next to them, her little hand buried in her Grandpa’s furry paw.

It was one of those perfect New York City autumn days. The air was cool and crisp and the sun shone brightly. The city looked new and polished and smelled like apples and the streets were so clean, the asphalt seemed to sparkle. Even the homeless people looked a little more cheerful than usual. I gave Ruby a couple of dollars to distribute among them on our way down the block. My usual rule is that I give money only to women, and then only if they don’t seem visibly intoxicated, but today I let Ruby hand out the bills to whomever she pleased. I wasn’t sure I should be letting her play Lady Bountiful this way, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt for her to understand that since she was lucky enough to have money, she had an obligation to share some of it with those who weren’t as fortunate.

We walked into the beautiful old Museum of Natural History and made our way to the huge hall where the herd of elephants stands, massive and imposing, in the center of the room. I sat down on a bench under the looming tusks of the lead elephant. Ruby came up and, leaning against me, stared up into the behemoth’s face.

“These elephants are all dead, right?” she asked.

“Yup,” I said.

“Somebody killed them,” she stated.

“That’s true.”

“Even the baby?”

“Even the baby.”

“Why?”

“Well, Rubes, a long time ago, people didn’t know that it was bad to kill animals. When these elephants were shot, people didn’t really understand that if you kill lots of animals, there won’t be any left.”

“They’ll be stink.”

“What?”

“Stink. Like the dinosaurs.”

“Right, exactly,
extinct.
People didn’t understand about extinction and endangered species back when these elephants were killed.”

“But now we know that’s bad, right?”

“Right.”

“And nobody kills elephants anymore. Cuz it’s bad.”

I wasn’t about to get into a discussion of wild animal poaching and the insatiable Asian market for things like elephant tusk and rhino horn, particularly since one of my last clients was a Chinese bear-bile smuggler. So I just said, “Right.”

Ruby scampered off to play with her grandpa, and I looked up. Across the room I saw a young man dressed in the garb of a Hasidic Jew. He wore a Fedora, a dark suit, and his
tzitzit
hung outside his trousers. His long sidelocks were tucked behind his ears and a patchy, light brown beard covered his chin. His cheeks were reddened with acne and pitted with scars. For all that, he wasn’t unattractive.
He had big blue eyes with long lashes and a straight nose. His full lips looked almost bruised under the mantle of his moustache.

I lifted my hand in a sort of half wave and he walked over to me.

“Ari Hirsch?” I asked.

“Yes. And you are Mrs. . . . uh, Mrs. . . .”

“Applebaum.”

“Yes, of course. Mrs. Applebaum. A friend of Fraydle’s.” He stood awkwardly, a few feet from me.

“Would you like to sit down?” I motioned to the bench on which I sat. He perched at the far end, carefully maintaining a respectable distance from me.

“Did Josh Bernstein tell you why I asked you to meet me?”

“Why don’t you tell me yourself,” he said, his voice soft.

How was I going to do this? One of the reasons I was here was my suspicion that Ari and his family might know something about Fraydle’s whereabouts. But what if he didn’t? Fraydle’s family was adamant about keeping her disappearance a secret from the Hirsches. How could I ask him if he knew where she was without giving away their secret? How could I ask him whether she knew about his sexual orientation without making him aware that
his
secret was out? I could do neither.

I’ve always believed that it’s secrecy that causes the most difficulties. If you are honest and open about your problems, then nobody can hurt you by disclosing them. I didn’t believe that either the Finkelsteins or Ari were doing themselves any favors by being so reticent. Now, maybe that decision wasn’t mine to make, but I decided to act as if it were. For the purposes of this conversation, at least.

“Ari, I don’t know how much Josh told you, but Fraydle
has disappeared. Her parents don’t want your family to know; they’re afraid your parents will call off the match. But she’s been gone for almost a week now, and I am very worried.”

“Gone? What do you mean, gone?”

“Gone as in she’s not at home and nobody knows where she is.”

“Could she have been kidnapped? What do the police say?”

“For the time being, Rabbi Finkelstein is conducting the search on his own.”

“No police?”

“No.”

“So she has just run away? Nobody has . . . has hurt her?”

“Nobody knows where she is, Ari. That’s why I asked you here to talk to me. I wonder if you might know if she has run away and if so, why.”

He shook his head vigorously. “I know nothing. I have met her only a few times. I don’t really know her at all.”

I took a breath. “Ari, there’s no easy way for me to ask this. Did you tell Fraydle that you might be a homosexual?”

The blood drained from his face. He looked at me for a moment, stricken.

“Ari? Did you tell her?”

He reached his hand to a sidecurl and tugged at it nervously.

“Ari?”

“How do you know? What did she tell you about me?” he whispered.

I said nothing. I felt guilty about letting him think that Fraydle was the source of my suspicions, but I’d promised Libby and Josh that I would keep their confidence.

Ari shook his head, as if to clear his ears of my words.

“I’m not . . . not . . . I’m not what you said,” he murmured.

“Ari, I’m not judging you, and I’m not going to tell anybody what I found out. All I need to know is whether you told Fraydle anything.”

He remained silent for another moment, winding his hair around his finger. Finally, he turned to me and said, “Fraydle knew everything there is to know. I told her about my doubts about . . . about myself. We talked about it and we decided that with her help, and God’s, I could overcome this.”