Killer Look

SIX

Mike beat us to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner on First Avenue and Thirtieth Street. He came down the steps in front of the blue-brick facade of the building when the cab Lily and I rode in pulled up at two forty-five.

“Thanks for taking the time to do this, Mike,” I said, introducing him to Lily.

“Niceties to follow, ladies” he said. “Two of the Wolf-pack members are already inside, ready to take Mr. Savage away with them.”

“Has the meeting started?” Lily asked.

“No,” Mike said. “They’re just waiting on the ME’s lawyer in the conference room.”

“Did you have a chance to check out anything I told you about Lily’s intuitions yet?”

“Bottle it for now, Coop.” He wasn’t going to answer my question in front of a potential witness. My bad.

I jogged up the steps, signed Lily and me into the visitors’ log, then asked the security guard at the desk to buzz us in to the corridor that led to the conference room.

The two men inside stood up as we entered. Lily walked toward them and kissed each of them on the cheek. All three were appropriately somber.

“Alex, Detective Chapman, I’d like you to meet my uncle, Hal Savage, and my brother, Reed.”

The nattily attired brother of the deceased, who appeared to be a very fit seventy-year-old, held out his hand to Mike. “Good to meet you, Detective. Although I’m not quite sure why you’re here. I’m Hershel-Hershel Savitsky, in fact.”

Lily rolled her eyes in my direction.

“Reed Savitsky,” Lily’s half-brother said, not moving away from his chair.

“I can see the direction this is taking,” Lily said. “I’m not sure why you’re reclaiming the Savitsky name, gentlemen. Is it just for the purpose of convincing the ME that your motive is really a holy one?”

“They are the names on our birth certificates, Lily,” her uncle said. “Mind your place here. You’re fortunate that we’ve included you.”

“You know my father was not a religious man.”

“Shows what you get for keeping him at arm’s length all these years, Lily,” Reed said. “My father, the man I lived with, was really devout. It went all the way back to his roots. But then you never knew our grandparents, as I did.”

There was a knock on the door and Jeremy Mayers entered. “Am I interrupting something?”

“Nothing at all,” Hal Savitsky-Savage said, starting a new round of introductions.

Mike and I had known Jeremy for years and relied on his good counsel to the city’s chief medical examiner.

“I understand that you asked for this meeting, Mr. Savitsky, to discuss the release of your brother’s body today.”

“That’s correct,” Hal said. “I’m just wondering why this particular detective and this young lady are-”

“I’m with the District Attorney’s Office, sir.”

“NYPD,” Mike said.

Jeremy was unconcerned with our presence at the moment. “Is it correct that you have a religious objection to the autopsy, which we’ve scheduled for tomorrow morning?”

“We have exactly that,” Hal said. “And you, Mr. Chapman, you’re not the detective on the case. I met with him yesterday, at the hotel. He didn’t seem to think there’d be a problem.”

“This will be a legal decision, sir, made by my office,” Jeremy said, trying to gain control of the meeting. “The NYPD doesn’t get a vote on it.”

“Very well, then,” Hal said from his post at the head of the table. “I’m not sure what you know about Jewish law, Mr. Mayers, but it’s a well-established principle among Orthodox Jews that one cannot desecrate a corpse.”

“I’m familiar with this issue, of course. We’ve encountered it here many times, and I’m quite respectful of it.”

“Good. That’s good to know.”

“I was just reminding my uncle,” Lily said, “before you came into the room, that my father was not a practicing Jew, Mr. Mayers. Jewish? Culturally and socially, yes. But he didn’t believe in organized religion, and he’s the kind of man who would move heaven and earth to make sure there had not been any injustice that brought his life to an end.”

“Lily’s my half-sister,” Reed said, clearly ready to open the bag with all the dirty laundry in it. “We’ve never been much involved in each other’s lives, so she’s-well, ignorant’s a harsh word-but she’s not so much aware of my father’s beliefs as my uncle and I are. Lily and my dad were estranged for decades, to put it mildly.”

“About his religious beliefs, then,” Jeremy Mayers said. “What can you tell me?”

“My grandparents emigrated from Russia. They were Orthodox in the old country, despite all the repressive efforts against Jews.”

“And they were Reform by the time I was born,” Lily said.

“We were very observant, my brother and I,” Hal said. “As kids and all throughout our lives. You ought to hold your tongue, dear.”

“It didn’t seem to bother anyone that my mother was a lapsed Catholic,” Lily said. “I wasn’t there for the wedding, of course, but I’ve seen the pictures. Grandma and Grandpa threw a pretty swell party, and the guy who performed the wedding was a judge. Judge Donnelly, if I’m not mistaken.”

“My father belonged to a synagogue in London,” Reed said, talking over her. “Central Synagogue, one of the most historic in the city.”

“And to Park Avenue Synagogue here in New York.”

From the expression on Lily’s face, these facts looked like news to her.

“That must have been for entirely social reasons, Reed. If Wolf joined two fancy synagogues, it was simply a gesture of belonging to the community that supported his business ventures. Membership is one thing, showing up and believing in the purpose of being there is quite another,” she said. “He must have ponied up for Park Avenue in case his next child-bride needed a good pre-K for their future offspring.”

“Do you have proof of his membership?” Mayers asked. “Any indication of whether and when he attended services? Some way to get in touch with one of his rabbis?”

Hal Savage put his hands on the table, palms down. “I think both Reed and Lily will agree that I have had the closest relationship with my brother-the longest and closest of anyone on this Earth. We grew up in the same home, with respect for the traditions and values our parents brought with them to America. I went to work with him almost every day of our adult lives.”

Reed nodded. Lily stared her uncle down.

“We talked about this kind of thing quite often, Mr. Mayers, my brother and I,” Hal went on. “Jews believe, you know, that our bodies are sacred, that they belong to God, and not for mere mortals to do with what they wish. That’s why the corpse can’t be violated after death.”

Lily turned her head and whispered to me. “Hal’s talking the talk, but this is just mumbo-jumbo. The only bodies my father believed were sacred were those of the young babes he lusted after. And they belonged to him, he thought. Not to any higher spirit.”

“Lily?” Reed asked. “You have something you want to say to all of us?”

“You know, the first time I ever heard the word ‘autopsy,’ I can remember how creeped-out I was about it. I was just a kid, Reed, and one of the relatives-it might even have been you, Uncle Hal-called to tell my mom that your mother had died. She was so young-maybe only thirty-one or -two, right?”

Lily paused for a few seconds, perhaps just for effect, or because the memory had such a profound impact.

“I heard the word ‘autopsy’ during that phone conversation, so I went and looked it up in the dictionary. That’s what my mother had taught me to do when I came across words I didn’t understand. Kind of ironic, isn’t it? I’ll never forget what I read that day, Reed. ‘A dissection performed on a cadaver.’ Powerful image to a young kid. But I don’t recall hearing that Wolf registered a religious objection to that procedure then. So, why now?”

Reed didn’t speak.

Hal, on the other hand, jumped right in. “You know, Lily-or perhaps you don’t-that there are a couple of exceptions to Jewish law.”

“I’m ready to learn.”

“When a doctor thinks there’s knowledge to be gained from doing an autopsy-something that might contribute to saving the lives of other patients,” he said calmly to her, “then it’s permissible to do one.”

“I didn’t know you were a Talmudic scholar, Uncle Hal,” she said. “I’m surprised you don’t have a line of yarmulkes yet. Maybe sequined-or fringed, if that’s still this season’s trend. Or tie-dyed. I hear that’s big for spring.”

“Reed’s mother died of a very rare kind of cancer. There was a good reason to perform an autopsy. My brother would never have objected, despite his faith.”

“There’s another good reason to do one,” Mike said, tossing his notepad on the table in front of him, “with no disrespect meant to your religion. And that’s when a criminal investigation into the circumstances of the death is pending.”

All eyes turned to Mike.

“Where’s the detective who had this case yesterday?” Hal asked. “I want to talk to him. I want Mr. Mayers to hear from him.”

“That dude is taking orders from me now,” Mike said. “I sent him back to the hotel for some more information. He needs a refresher in Crime Scene Investigation 101.”

“What sort of information don’t you have?” Hal asked. “I can give you anything you need to know. I just want Wolf’s body to be handled properly, according to Jewish tradition, and I want him to be buried tomorrow.”

“Your brother died in a suite on the tenth floor, registered in his name-Wolf Savage.”

“I know that, Mr. Chapman. I went to that room to identify his body.”

Mike must have been onto something. He’d obviously made some phone calls after I told him about Lily’s appeal to me. I didn’t think he’d tell me what had made him flip until after we were apart from Hal and Reed-and Lily-but he was sniffing around.

“The first guys on the scene did a pretty thorough search.”

“Indeed they did,” Hal said. “Everything from examining and photographing the objects in the room to taking my brother’s clothing to grabbing his cell phone, and so on. They even found a suicide note, Detective. I haven’t been allowed to see it, but I know they found one there. They checked video cameras that proved no one else had come and gone from that suite-not even the hotel maid or room service.”

“What they didn’t stop to find out-till I sent them back today-is that every room on that floor is registered to someone from your company,” Mike said. “To a single person, who would have had access to each suite on the tenth floor.”

“Nothing sinister in that, Mr. Chapman.”

“We’ll be the judges of that,” Mike said. “I know you guys are switching back and forth between your names today-Hershel and Hal, Savitsky and Savage, but why don’t you tell me who this character is?”

Mike opened his notepad and read the name. “Velvel Savitsky. You got a Velvel I don’t know about? Somebody I can talk to? A missing relative?”

Hal just shook his head back and forth, with a totally dismissive glance at Mike.

“He’s not a missing relative at all, Mr. Chapman. He’s the dead one,” Lily said. “Velvel Savitsky was my father.”

“Velvel is the Yiddish word for ‘wolf,’ Detective,” Hal said. “Add that to a long list of things you don’t know.”

Mike looked down at the table.

“Velvel Savitsky,” he went on, “was Wolf Savage.”