Baltimore Noir - Laura Lippman [72]
When the crowd clapped, so did I. Beryl and Moshe made a beautiful couple, and the ceremony was elegant and dignified. The only thing marring the celebrations was Rabbi Brenner’s expression of absolute disappointment. He couldn’t know where I was sitting but it didn’t matter. I felt that expression on me and a responding pang of guilt. I hadn’t done my job, even though there was no job to do.
And then chaos broke out.
It lasted maybe a minute, two tops. First there was shouting, then there was screaming, and then there was a shot. When it was all over, a man was tackled to the ground, and another one—Moshe Braverman—lay dead under the chupa. Because of security issues, police were already at the synagogue, so an arrest was quickly made, but the story wouldn’t fully emerge until a few days later, when Sam and I attended the shiva We’d closed the shop up early in order to get there in mid-afternoon, when hardly anyone else was around. Even though Beryl had barely been a bride (there’d been some question as to whether the ceremony was truly valid, but a signed document was a signed document), she was an active mourner and wept over the loss of her husband.
Rabbi Brenner’s emotions were far more controlled. Even though he’d spent much energy, and a fair amount of money, on me to prove him right, he hadn’t expected the evidence to occur in such a dramatic fashion.
“I watched it unfold and couldn’t do anything,” he told us in hushed tones, so his wife and daughter, sitting on the other side of their living room, couldn’t hear. “I couldn’t stop that boy from confronting his tormentor, the one who’d put him in the hospital and crippled him for life—silencing him with such finality. I’m not sure how I’ll live with myself.”
It wasn’t appropriate, but I put my hand on his shoulder nonetheless. “You didn’t bring this upon your family, rabbi. You had no way of knowing.”
Rabbi Brenner looked at Sam, who knew the entire story after I’d filled him in the day after Moshe’s death, then me. His face was tear-stricken. “The ways of God are far more complex than you, or even I, can possibly understand. Perhaps you are right, Mr. Colangelo, and my actions or thoughts didn’t lead to a ruined wedding and a traumatized daughter and community. But I’ll never know.”
We left soon afterwards, saying a brief but awkward hello to a still-weeping Beryl and her more stoic mother.
“Do you need me around for the rest of the afternoon?” I asked Sam, as I drove him back to Pern’s.
“No, go ahead. I’ll get one of my older grandchildren to help me out. See you tomorrow, Danny.”
I stopped Sam before he left the car.
He turned around. “What is it?”
An old memory had come flooding back. “The way you said it reminded me of the first time you used that expression.”
Sam laughed. “The day I hired you, you mean. You were so stunned I knew who you were and took you on anyway.”
“No one else would take a chance on me.”
Sam said nothing. Another memory came back.
“There was something else you said then, something about not being surprised what develops as a result. I wish Rabbi Brenner could say the same.”
When Sam looked at me, I realized just how old he was. His spirit and old-world jokes carried him through during working hours, but without them, he was every inch the man who’d survived pogroms, two World Wars, and losses I had no idea about.
His voice was unnaturally grave. “Me too, Danny.”
I put my hand on his forearm. I hoped that by gripping it, I could convey the message I didn’t dare speak aloud: that I was proud to work for him and always would be.
After I dropped him off I took the interstate back to Little Italy. My mother was waiting, and she didn’t have much time. I wanted to spend as much of what was left of it with her.
I turned the key and