Then the little boy licked his lips and frowned. “But sometimes it feels like it.”
“Especially when you see scary stuff like today?” said Decker.
“Aw, that doesn’t bother me,” Jake said mustering up bravado. “That was kinda neat … neat of.”
“Eema’s other brother, the one that’s not a rabbi, sees dead bodies all the time,” Sammy said. “He’s a pathologist and owns cemeteries … cemeteries, him and Eema get into fights about that all the time because he’s a kohain—a Jewish priest—and kohains aren’t supposed to to be around corpses.”
“Your uncle’s not religious?” Decker asked.
Sammy nodded. “Him and Eema fight about that, too. You can bet that we don’t see much of Uncle Robert.”
They rode another mile in silence. Decker broke it.
“Are you interested in medicine, Sammy?” he asked.
“No way,” Sammy answered. “I don’t like blood.”
“How about business? Like your New York uncles?”
“Borrrrring,” said Sammy.
Decker smiled.
“Well, you boys have plenty of time to figure out what you want to be. Heck, it’s okay to do a lot of different things in a lifetime. I used to do ranching when I was a kid in Florida. I did construction work in high school. I was a lawyer for a while, and I don’t see myself as being a cop forever. You’ve got loads of time to experiment.”
Sammy mulled that over for a while.
“You know what I’d like to be?” he said. “I think I’d like to be a journalist. Maybe write editorials that make people think.”
The kid was all of eight and a half.
The grounds of Yeshivas Ohavei Torah were located on twenty acres of brush and woodland in the pocket community of Deep Canyon. It was twenty freeway minutes from the police station and fifteen minutes from Decker’s ranch. The locals of Deep Canyon were working-class whites, and they and the Jews had little to do with each other, but over the past few years there had grown an uneasy, mutual tolerance.
The locals weren’t the only ones who felt uncomfortable with the Jewish community. The Foothill cops were equally baffled by the enclave, imagining it a slice of old Eastern Europe that had been frozen in a time warp. Actually, the yeshiva embodied aspects of both past and present, but the cops never delved that deeply. They had nicknamed the place Jewtown, which is what Decker had called it before his own personal involvement. Now, at least when Decker was around, they referred to it by its rightful name.
The lot for the yeshiva had been cut out of the mountainside. Huge boulders had been hauled away and the ground had been leveled, leaving a mesa of flat land surrounded by thick foliage, evergreens, and hillside. Set in the middle of a broad carpet of lawn was the main building—a two-story cement cube that contained most of the classrooms. On one side were smaller buildings—additional classrooms, the library, the synagogue, and the ritual bathhouse. The other side was open space for a thousand feet, then housing—a dormitory and a cluster of prefab bungalows.
Most of the yeshiva residents were college-age boys engaged in religious studies, but the place also had a high school, with secular and Jewish curricula, and an elementary school for children of the kollel students—married men studying Talmud full time. Private homes were provided for the kollel families, the two dozen rabbis who served as full-time teachers, and the headmaster—the Rosh Yeshiva. He was a meticulously dressed, distinguished man in his seventies named Rav Aaron Schulman. Rina’s husband had been his protégé and most brilliant student. Because of that, she and her sons had been allowed to stay on after he died.
Rina had once admitted to Decker that she was an outsider at the yeshiva. The women who lived on the grounds simply came along with their husbands or fathers. The school catered exclusively to men, and as a widow, she had no role there whatsoever. Though the residents treated her kindly—it was demanded of them by the Torah—she still felt like an interloper living in free housing, even though she taught math at the high school and operated the ritual bath. She knew she’d have to leave one day, but in the meantime she was grateful for the interlude that let her try to figure out what to do with the rest of her life.
Decker parked in front of the main gate, told Ginger to stay, and walked with the boys across the lawn. The place was almost empty at this time of the year; most of the boys had gone home to their families. Still, a seminar was being held on the grass. A full-bearded rabbi wearing a black suit and hat sat with five pupils—bochrim—under an elm. The students and their teacher were engaged in animated dialogue. Decker and the kids walked down the main pathway, turned onto a dirt sidewalk that cut through the residential portion, and stopped in front of a white bungalow.
“I’d appreciate it if you boys didn’t mention the bones until after I’ve spoken with your mother.”
They nodded.
Rina opened the door at Decker’s knock, her eyes widening with surprise, lips opening in a full smile.
“I didn’t expect you guys back until tomorrow!”
Sammy fell into his mother’s arms and embraced her tightly. He leaned his head against her breast and hid his gaze from hers. Rina cupped his face in her palms and looked at him, noticing moisture in his eyes and the tremble of his lower lip. She kissed him on his forehead and he broke away. Jake gave her a playful hug and smothered her face with kisses.
“I think they missed you,” Decker said.
“Happy to be home?” she asked them as they went inside.
The boys nodded.
“I’ve got surprises for you both. They’re on your beds.”
“Oh boy!” Jake exclaimed, heading for the bedroom. Sammy lagged behind.
“Shmuel,” she said, holding his arm, “is everything okay?”
He nodded.
“Something’s bothering you.”
“I’m fine, Eema. I’m just tired.”
“Okay,” said Rina, disconcerted at his evasion.
He gave his mother another hug, then trudged off to the bedroom.
“What happened?” she asked Peter as soon as they were alone.
“Could I have a cup of coffee, Rina?”
“Uh … Uh. Of course,” she said. “Sit down, Peter. You look exhausted.”
He took a seat on the left side of her brown sofa, letting his head flop back against the cushion, then ran his hands over his face.
“Why are the boys upset?” she asked.
“It’s complicated. But everyone’s fine.”
“Okay,” she said. “Relax. I’ll make coffee and then you can tell me what’s going on.”
Her house was tiny—800 square feet crammed with mementos—tchatchkas, she called them. Display cases full of Jewish figurines, propped photos, and sketches of Israel. The white walls were dotted with landscapes of the Judean dessert, charcoals of the Old City of Jerusalem and the Wailing Wall, and photos of the Lower East Side of New York. Hanging above the sofa was a magnificently colored and elaborately scrolled Hebrew document—her wedding contract, her ketubah.
That’s what a Jewish marriage is, she had said. A contract. You’re supposed to know what you’re getting yourself into.
But do you ever really know, he had wondered out loud.
Emotionally, of course not. But a ketubah spells out the specific obligations for