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Synopsis
TODAY, I AM A DEAD MAN
For suburban sleuth Christine Bennett, the chance to visit the Holy Land is a dream come true. Her best friend Melanie Gross will be in Jerusalem at the same time for the Bar Mitzvah of her very wealthy cousin. Although he’s long past the customary age of thirteen, Gabe is planning a lavish party and is flying family and friends over from the States to celebrate. Not accustomed to traveling, Christine is thrilled to have Melanie along to share the experience.
The beauty and mystery of the golden city is overwhelming, and Christine is excited about exploring every part of it—until Gabe disappears without a trace, turning her vacation tour into a trail of clues that leads to a cold and cunning killer. . . .
Release date: December 18, 2007
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Print pages: 272
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The Bar Mitzvah Murder
Lee Harris
PROLOGUE
I have more or less grown accustomed to change. While the biggest change in my life happened several years ago when I was thirty and was released from my vows as a Franciscan nun, the more recent changes have also had a great impact on me as well as on my family. When I met Jack, my husband of most of my secular years, he was a detective sergeant with NYPD, going to law school at night. Today he is both a lawyer and a recently appointed lieutenant, having passed his test with flying colors. He says that after law school everything else is easy. As I watched him study, I wasn’t so sure that was true, but I’m glad he thinks so.
When Jack finished law school, he left the Sixty-fifth Precinct in Brooklyn, where he had worked for many years and where I had met him when I was researching a 1950 murder. At that point, he began the first of a couple of jobs at Police Headquarters, generally referred to as One PP for Police Plaza, more commonly known among cops as the Puzzle Palace. But once he passed the lieutenant’s test and received his promotion, commemorated by a big ceremony at One PP followed by a smaller one for the family in his office, a familiar cycle began again. He was transferred to a precinct following the rule from the Personnel Bureau that “new bosses of all ranks have to return to a uniform field command, a precinct, for at least six months after promotion.” For various reasons Jack had thought he might get a pass on the rule, but it didn’t happen and his life and therefore mine were turned upside down again. He began to work on rotating shifts. The chart, with its many changes and exceptions, can make family life very hectic.
I am a creature of habit and I like to sleep when it’s dark and do everything else when it’s light. Having a four-year-old just seemed to reinforce what I think of as a normal schedule. But crime doesn’t adhere to any schedule and I suspect there’s more of it in the dark hours than the light, so Jack psyched himself up and fell in step with four of these tours, then three of those followed by two days off, or was it three off? Talk about ships passing in the night.
A couple of days after Jack began the new assignment, someone called here at home and asked me if the boss was there. I was a little taken aback but realized he meant Jack. When Jack came home a little while later, I teased him about it.
“Yeah, I’m a boss,” he said.
“OK, boss. Just checking.”
I started calling him that now and then, and one afternoon Eddie asked when Daddy Boss was coming home. That really tickled Jack, and the name stuck for the duration of the assignment.
They were a tough six months for me and for Eddie, who couldn’t figure out why Daddy was here one day but not the next, but I noticed something both interesting and amusing; Jack loved it. Yes, he complained about the shifts, but his spirits were high. He loves the action of a precinct, the interaction with the men and women on the job. He is really so well suited to that kind of life that I sometimes wonder what made him decide to get a law degree.
To add to his enjoyment, if you can call it that, he was assigned to what is officially Midtown South or MTS, as the cops in that precinct call it. It’s over on West 35th Street and is billed as “the busiest police station house in the world.” That’s no exaggeration. It’s always buzzing.
I was almost afraid he’d ask to stay on, but happily, when the six months were almost over, something unexpected came up. Although the commanding officer of the precinct, a full inspector, wanted to keep Jack there, just last week word came “from on high,” as he told me, that he was wanted back in the Puzzle Palace. So he has begun the routine of cleaning out his desk and locker, something we’ve lived through twice before. What amazes me is the accumulation of stuff that finds its way home, only some of which is to be relocated in the new office. But coming from a family of pack rats, I’m the last one to voice criticism.
Tomorrow I’m going into the city to join the party at MTS and meet the cops Jack’s been working with. And next week we all start sleeping through the night once again.
It was just at that point between the end of one assignment and the beginning of another when my friend across the street, Melanie Gross, called me somewhat breathlessly.
“Chris, you’ll never believe what I’m going to tell you.”
I laughed. “I must be talking to Mel.”
“You are and I am. I just got home from school and took in the mail and found one of those quarter-inch-thick square envelopes on cream-colored paper hand-lettered by a calligrapher.”
“A wedding invitation?”
“That’s what I thought, but I was wrong. It’s from Hal’s cousin Gabe, a real sweetie who’s made a bundle and gives half of it to charity. He got very interested in Judaism a few years ago and felt he hadn’t been given a proper religious background. So he’s having a Bar Mitzvah.”
“His son is turning thirteen?” I said, recalling what I’d learned from Mel in a conversation some time ago.
“No, no, no. He’s having the Bar Mitzvah. It’s for him.”
My head began swimming. “You told me a Bar Mitz- vah was to mark a boy’s passing to manhood at the age of thirteen.”
“And that’s what’s usually done. But some men who think they didn’t do it right, or maybe didn’t do it at all, have one when they’re older. And that’s what Gabe is doing.”
“So you get to go to a big party with lots of good food and all the relatives you haven’t seen since the last Bar Mitzvah.”
“Right. But Gabe is having this one in Jerusalem.”
“Wow!” I said. “Will you and Hal go?”
“Gabe’s flying us over and putting us up at a hotel.”
“That’s why you’re breathless.”
“That is exactly why I’m breathless. Can you believe it?”
“Honestly? No. That sounds like the extravagance to end all extravagances.”
“But that’s Gabe. He’s very generous and he can afford to be.”
“Mel, that is just stupendous. Are you taking the kids?”
“Chris, I haven’t even called Hal yet to tell him. But why not? Even if they miss a couple of days of school, it’ll be worth it for the experience. And I’ll have to take off myself, won’t I?” She said this last as though it had just occurred to her, which I guessed it had.
It was quite a story to tell Jack when he got home. He was as astounded as I at the expenditure involved but agreed it was a great opportunity for Mel and her family to visit the Holy Land.
Little did I know . . .
1
The party at Midtown South was a real pleasure for me. I had heard names and descriptions for six months, and now I matched them up with faces. One of the more artistically talented members of the precinct had written a short skit lampooning my husband, and when it was performed it had me rolling in the aisles. All in all, it was a fun afternoon and I was glad I’d been invited.
The following Monday, Jack got up at a normal hour, by which I mean the same one at which I normally arise, and had breakfast with us and went to his new office in the Legal Bureau at One PP, the car laden with cartons of stuff he could not live without. When he came home that evening he had some startling news.
“I found out today who it was that requested me for this new job,” he said when we were comfortably ensconced in our usual places in the family room with cups of coffee and cookies, the paper, the TV, and a fire in the fireplace.
“It wasn’t just some committee thing?”
“It came right from the desk of the Deputy Commissioner of Legal Matters and went directly to the PC’s desk.”
“Jack, the commissioner?”
“Himself. And then came straight down like a rocket, ensuring that the transfer would take place ASAP. The blessing of the chief of personnel came later. This was a non-stop transfer.”
I put my cup down. “I’m not sure I understand.”
“I’m not sure I understand, either. The captain told me today. Seems they want me for something special, but frankly, I don’t have the vaguest.” “I hope it’s interesting,” I said, still spinning a bit from the mention of the police commissioner. It certainly sounded as though Jack had been noticed by people high up in the administration.
“Yeah, me, too. I hope they don’t want me to write proposals or anything like that. I’d lose my mind.”
Nothing happened for a week. Jack went to meetings, met people, found a chair that fit his bottom better than the first one, and that was it. In the meantime, I walked my new kindergartener to school each morning, finally agreeing to have him walk with Mel’s children, who, although a few years older than he, are good friends.
Mel and Hal accepted their great invitation, and Mel and her mother went out looking for a perfect dress for the event. Mel was just thrilled. She had never been to Israel, although her husband had gone there on a teen tour twenty years earlier, during which he scared his parents to death by never writing a single letter. This time, he told us with a grin, his mother was coming along and she could write all the cards she wanted.
Finally, in the second week of his assignment, Jack called in the afternoon. “You’re not gonna believe this,” he said.
I had heard that before. “Tell me.”
“I just heard—oops, gotta go.” And the phone slammed, leaving me in the dark.
I have more or less grown accustomed to change. While the biggest change in my life happened several years ago when I was thirty and was released from my vows as a Franciscan nun, the more recent changes have also had a great impact on me as well as on my family. When I met Jack, my husband of most of my secular years, he was a detective sergeant with NYPD, going to law school at night. Today he is both a lawyer and a recently appointed lieutenant, having passed his test with flying colors. He says that after law school everything else is easy. As I watched him study, I wasn’t so sure that was true, but I’m glad he thinks so.
When Jack finished law school, he left the Sixty-fifth Precinct in Brooklyn, where he had worked for many years and where I had met him when I was researching a 1950 murder. At that point, he began the first of a couple of jobs at Police Headquarters, generally referred to as One PP for Police Plaza, more commonly known among cops as the Puzzle Palace. But once he passed the lieutenant’s test and received his promotion, commemorated by a big ceremony at One PP followed by a smaller one for the family in his office, a familiar cycle began again. He was transferred to a precinct following the rule from the Personnel Bureau that “new bosses of all ranks have to return to a uniform field command, a precinct, for at least six months after promotion.” For various reasons Jack had thought he might get a pass on the rule, but it didn’t happen and his life and therefore mine were turned upside down again. He began to work on rotating shifts. The chart, with its many changes and exceptions, can make family life very hectic.
I am a creature of habit and I like to sleep when it’s dark and do everything else when it’s light. Having a four-year-old just seemed to reinforce what I think of as a normal schedule. But crime doesn’t adhere to any schedule and I suspect there’s more of it in the dark hours than the light, so Jack psyched himself up and fell in step with four of these tours, then three of those followed by two days off, or was it three off? Talk about ships passing in the night.
A couple of days after Jack began the new assignment, someone called here at home and asked me if the boss was there. I was a little taken aback but realized he meant Jack. When Jack came home a little while later, I teased him about it.
“Yeah, I’m a boss,” he said.
“OK, boss. Just checking.”
I started calling him that now and then, and one afternoon Eddie asked when Daddy Boss was coming home. That really tickled Jack, and the name stuck for the duration of the assignment.
They were a tough six months for me and for Eddie, who couldn’t figure out why Daddy was here one day but not the next, but I noticed something both interesting and amusing; Jack loved it. Yes, he complained about the shifts, but his spirits were high. He loves the action of a precinct, the interaction with the men and women on the job. He is really so well suited to that kind of life that I sometimes wonder what made him decide to get a law degree.
To add to his enjoyment, if you can call it that, he was assigned to what is officially Midtown South or MTS, as the cops in that precinct call it. It’s over on West 35th Street and is billed as “the busiest police station house in the world.” That’s no exaggeration. It’s always buzzing.
I was almost afraid he’d ask to stay on, but happily, when the six months were almost over, something unexpected came up. Although the commanding officer of the precinct, a full inspector, wanted to keep Jack there, just last week word came “from on high,” as he told me, that he was wanted back in the Puzzle Palace. So he has begun the routine of cleaning out his desk and locker, something we’ve lived through twice before. What amazes me is the accumulation of stuff that finds its way home, only some of which is to be relocated in the new office. But coming from a family of pack rats, I’m the last one to voice criticism.
Tomorrow I’m going into the city to join the party at MTS and meet the cops Jack’s been working with. And next week we all start sleeping through the night once again.
It was just at that point between the end of one assignment and the beginning of another when my friend across the street, Melanie Gross, called me somewhat breathlessly.
“Chris, you’ll never believe what I’m going to tell you.”
I laughed. “I must be talking to Mel.”
“You are and I am. I just got home from school and took in the mail and found one of those quarter-inch-thick square envelopes on cream-colored paper hand-lettered by a calligrapher.”
“A wedding invitation?”
“That’s what I thought, but I was wrong. It’s from Hal’s cousin Gabe, a real sweetie who’s made a bundle and gives half of it to charity. He got very interested in Judaism a few years ago and felt he hadn’t been given a proper religious background. So he’s having a Bar Mitzvah.”
“His son is turning thirteen?” I said, recalling what I’d learned from Mel in a conversation some time ago.
“No, no, no. He’s having the Bar Mitzvah. It’s for him.”
My head began swimming. “You told me a Bar Mitz- vah was to mark a boy’s passing to manhood at the age of thirteen.”
“And that’s what’s usually done. But some men who think they didn’t do it right, or maybe didn’t do it at all, have one when they’re older. And that’s what Gabe is doing.”
“So you get to go to a big party with lots of good food and all the relatives you haven’t seen since the last Bar Mitzvah.”
“Right. But Gabe is having this one in Jerusalem.”
“Wow!” I said. “Will you and Hal go?”
“Gabe’s flying us over and putting us up at a hotel.”
“That’s why you’re breathless.”
“That is exactly why I’m breathless. Can you believe it?”
“Honestly? No. That sounds like the extravagance to end all extravagances.”
“But that’s Gabe. He’s very generous and he can afford to be.”
“Mel, that is just stupendous. Are you taking the kids?”
“Chris, I haven’t even called Hal yet to tell him. But why not? Even if they miss a couple of days of school, it’ll be worth it for the experience. And I’ll have to take off myself, won’t I?” She said this last as though it had just occurred to her, which I guessed it had.
It was quite a story to tell Jack when he got home. He was as astounded as I at the expenditure involved but agreed it was a great opportunity for Mel and her family to visit the Holy Land.
Little did I know . . .
1
The party at Midtown South was a real pleasure for me. I had heard names and descriptions for six months, and now I matched them up with faces. One of the more artistically talented members of the precinct had written a short skit lampooning my husband, and when it was performed it had me rolling in the aisles. All in all, it was a fun afternoon and I was glad I’d been invited.
The following Monday, Jack got up at a normal hour, by which I mean the same one at which I normally arise, and had breakfast with us and went to his new office in the Legal Bureau at One PP, the car laden with cartons of stuff he could not live without. When he came home that evening he had some startling news.
“I found out today who it was that requested me for this new job,” he said when we were comfortably ensconced in our usual places in the family room with cups of coffee and cookies, the paper, the TV, and a fire in the fireplace.
“It wasn’t just some committee thing?”
“It came right from the desk of the Deputy Commissioner of Legal Matters and went directly to the PC’s desk.”
“Jack, the commissioner?”
“Himself. And then came straight down like a rocket, ensuring that the transfer would take place ASAP. The blessing of the chief of personnel came later. This was a non-stop transfer.”
I put my cup down. “I’m not sure I understand.”
“I’m not sure I understand, either. The captain told me today. Seems they want me for something special, but frankly, I don’t have the vaguest.” “I hope it’s interesting,” I said, still spinning a bit from the mention of the police commissioner. It certainly sounded as though Jack had been noticed by people high up in the administration.
“Yeah, me, too. I hope they don’t want me to write proposals or anything like that. I’d lose my mind.”
Nothing happened for a week. Jack went to meetings, met people, found a chair that fit his bottom better than the first one, and that was it. In the meantime, I walked my new kindergartener to school each morning, finally agreeing to have him walk with Mel’s children, who, although a few years older than he, are good friends.
Mel and Hal accepted their great invitation, and Mel and her mother went out looking for a perfect dress for the event. Mel was just thrilled. She had never been to Israel, although her husband had gone there on a teen tour twenty years earlier, during which he scared his parents to death by never writing a single letter. This time, he told us with a grin, his mother was coming along and she could write all the cards she wanted.
Finally, in the second week of his assignment, Jack called in the afternoon. “You’re not gonna believe this,” he said.
I had heard that before. “Tell me.”
“I just heard—oops, gotta go.” And the phone slammed, leaving me in the dark.
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