Day of Atonement

Decker weighed the possibilities, leaning toward the theory that Noam’s disappearance was a voluntary decision. Big, burly boys usually don’t get snatched—too strong, too much struggle. A child molester is an opportunistic beast. Steal the ones that go the quietest. The plus was that runaways were easier to find than kidnapped children. And there was the teenager’s arrogant smirk. Boy seemed like a survivor.

But he was still a child—a sheltered one at that. The streets of New York City could easily turn an impulsive adventure trip into a horror story.

Decker pocketed the picture. To Ezra, he said, “I want to talk to your children first.”

“Why?” Ezra said. “I told you they don’t know anything.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” Decker said. “It’s just the way I was trained—”

“If they say they don’t know anything, they don’t know anything.”

“Ezra,” Shimon said, “let him talk to the kids. What could it hurt?”

“And I’d also like to look at Noam’s room,” Decker said.

“Look at his room?” Ezra said. His voice was full of suspicion. “Why? What do you think you’re going to find?”

“Ezra,” Shimon said, “just let him do it.” To Decker, he said, “Aaron, my oldest nephew, has a key. He’ll take you to the house.”

“I can take him to the house,” Ezra protested.

Jonathan put his arm around his brother. “Let’s go to shul, Ezra. We’ll walk you there. Afterward, we can learn a little.”

“Learn with you?” Ezra said.

“Learn with me,” Jonathan said. “What are you doing now? Masechet Sukkot? It’s a masechet I know pretty well.”

“We’ll all learn together,” Shimon said. “Come, Ezra.” He put his arm around Ezra’s waist. “Come.”

Decker watched as Shimon and Jonathan gently guided Ezra out the door.

Three of the same blood.

Three brothers.

9

The children had segregated themselves—the boys in one room, the girls in another. Eleven boys, eight girls—the Levines were a fecund bunch.

Decker started with the girls. Ranging in age from three to fourteen, they sat in little groups, whispering and giggling. Because the preschoolers were so young and shy, many having just a rudimentary grasp of English, he decided to concentrate on the older ones—three cousins aged seven, eight, and fourteen, and Noam’s eleven-year-old sister, Tamar. They were still dressed in their holiday clothing, full of lace and velvet and ornamented with jewelry—pearl earrings, gold chains, thin bracelets or watches. The oldest, Shimon’s daughter, wore a string of pearls. She also had on heeled shoes and a touch of lipstick.

They knew what was going on—their cousin or brother was missing. It was their job to help Decker find him. They seemed nervous and excited, but not unduly scared. It was as if Noam’s disappearance was viewed as a tricky math problem waiting to be solved.

As they talked further, Decker realized that to them, Noam was an enigma—a loner, a strange boy with creepy eyes. Even Noam’s sister viewed him with trepidation. A very strange reaction. Most sisters might view a brother as an object of hatred or jealousy. But a brother was not usually feared.

It was clear that the girls had kept their distance from Noam. But that didn’t stop them from throwing out suggestions as to where he might be. Most of the proposals were exotic and off the wall—akin to Noam’s running off and joining the circus.

Their offerings might have been wonderful projective tests, but Decker didn’t feel they gave a clue to the boy’s location. He thanked the young ladies for their time.

The boys were holed up in a guest bedroom that was hot and stuffy from sweat and hormones. The younger kids were running around, crashing into the twin beds and the walls. Five older ones had taken out a Talmud and were learning in the corner. All wore black hats and had their hair cut Marine short, which drew Decker’s attention to their ears. Some were big, some flat, some had banjo lobes, some stuck out like Alfred E. Newman’s. As he approached the group, one of the older boys put down the volume of Talmud and looked up. He had blue eyes, soft skin, also with a hint of peach fuzz. His features were those of Noam Levine, but softer, more rounded. He appeared to be around fifteen.

“Hi,” Decker said. “Aaron Levine?”

The teenager nodded.

“Your uncle Jonathan said you have a key to your house,” Decker said. “I want to look through Noam’s room.”

Again, Aaron nodded.

“Does he have his own room?” Decker asked.

“He shares with me and Boruch.”

Aaron’s eyes fell upon his younger brother. Boruch was around twelve. There was a definite family look—smooth skin, blue eyes, good jawline, dark hair. All of them resembling Breina. But Noam, at least from the photograph, projected a huskier build.

Decker told the brothers to hang on a moment and questioned the cousins first. The boys were polite and cooperative, anxious to help. The oldest one was Shimon’s son. He was Aaron’s age—almost sixteen—and didn’t have much to do with Noam. The other two also kept their distance. They all explained that their cousin was prone to wandering off by himself, but they seemed genuinely puzzled by his disappearance on Rosh Hashanah. That was not like him. After five minutes more of questioning, Decker felt they really didn’t know anything and let them go.

Then he concentrated on Noam’s brothers. Both Aaron and Boruch seemed nervous.

Decker said, “Any ideas where your brother might be?”

The boys shrugged ignorance.

“You must have some thoughts about it,” Decker pressed.

“Noam keeps to himself. He’s …” Aaron squirmed. “Lashon harah.”

Lashon harah—gossip. Disreputable in any society but a grave sin in Jewish Law. Decker said, “Aaron, if Noam is missing, I need to know everything about him. Including the incidents that make him look bad.”

“It’s nothing like that,” Aaron said. His voice cracked. A faint blush rose in his cheeks. “It’s just … Noam has a hard time fitting in. And he can be pretty obnoxious about it sometimes. It’s like he’s either off by himself or bothering me or my friends.” The teenager adjusted his hat. “Then … out of the blue, he’ll be the nicest person in the world for about a week. Do all your chores for you, straighten up your clothes, just be real … nice. But it never lasts long. I can’t figure him out. Honestly, I’ve given up trying.”

Boruch was nodding in agreement.

Decker said, “That sound about right to you?”

“Yes, sir,” Boruch said. “Noam’s always the one who remembers the birthdays, more than Abba and Eema do. But most of the time, he either ignores me or beats me up.” He paused, clearly upset. “Is he in trouble?”

Decker said, “I don’t know, Boruch.” He smiled reassuringly. It was the best he could offer the boy. “Does Noam have any hobbies—baseball-card collecting, stamp collecting? Is he into cars or hot rods?”

The boys shook their heads.

“Does he spend a lot of time riding his bike, playing sports, skateboarding—”

The boys laughed.

“Skateboarding not too big around here?”

“No,” they said in unison.

“Does he play a lot of sports?”

“Not that I know of,” Aaron said.

“Then if he doesn’t play or learn a lot,” Decker said, “if he doesn’t have any hobbies, what does he do with his time?”

Boruch said, “He spends lots of time with the computer.”

“Games?” Decker asked.

Boruch said, “We don’t own any computer games. We use it for school, for our reports. We have a Gemara program that asks us questions. It’s really neat.”

“Noam use that program?” Decker asked.

Both shook their heads no. No latency of response.

“Could you play games on the computer if you wanted to?” Decker asked.

Aaron said, “No. It doesn’t have a graphics card. Unless Noam’s put one in there. I don’t think he knows enough about computers to do that. You have to know where to put it. Then you have to reset the dipswitches. Noam can’t program. I can’t see him tinkering with the hardware.”

Boruch added, “He has trouble just using canned software.”

“Then what does he do with the computer?” Decker asked.

Aaron said, “I think he writes stuff. I once tried to look at what he was doing, but he hid the monitor with his arms.”

“Yeah, he does that to me, too.”

“Is Noam a good student?” Decker asked.

“Not really,” Aaron said. “He’s sort of … well, lazy.”

“You boys have no idea where he wanders off to?”

Again, they shook their heads.

Aaron said, “He has a few friends. They might know better than us.”

Decker said, “I’ll ask them a little later. First, how about we take a walk over to your house?”

The boys said sure.

Nice kids, Decker thought. Breina and Ezra must be doing something right.

Up until yesterday, the pain had only surfaced on his birthday. Now it was an open wound festering inside Frieda Levine’s shattered heart. None of this would ever resolve until she made peace with the one she had abandoned.

God was giving her a test, using His most precious gifts to her. Though all her grandchildren were special, Noam was her most cherished because he had always been so troubled. In the many hours they had spent together, Noam seldom talked. But oh, how he’d been captivated by her tales, entranced by the criminal cases that had passed over her desk in the years she had worked at the court.

Hours of talking her throat dry, with him staring with those mystical eyes, drinking in her every word. Communicating without speaking, saying to her: So this is what the goyishe world is like.

Noam never asked questions, even when they were begging to be asked. Frieda felt he wasn’t very bright. But unlike Ezra, who also wasn’t bright, Noam never had the determination to overcompensate.

She and Noam hadn’t talked like that in four or five years, yet she remembered those conversations as if they had taken place yesterday.

Then he had stopped coming to her.

She thought nothing of it. There is that aching point in every grandmother’s life when the grandchildren cease to look at her as fun and simply view her as an old lady. It was normal.

But it hurt a little more with Noam—his rejection had been so sudden, so complete. As the others grew, they still made periodic stabs at being interested in her, inquiring about her health, pinching her cheek, complimenting her baking skills.

Your cookies are the best, Bubbe.

But Noam had withdrawn without looking back.

Still, she couldn’t take it personally. Noam was retreating from everyone. She should have seen it for what it was, a sign of deep-seated trouble. But having been accustomed to burying grief, she had looked the other way.

Now she was encountering both of her mistakes head-on. As she lay in her darkened bedroom, shades tightly drawn, tears skiing down her cheeks, she realized that she could no longer be an ostrich. She must right what had been wronged years ago.

But first she must wait until Noam was found.

If he was ever found.

The thought gave her chills.

He would do it. Her firstborn—brought to her by God. If it was meant, if it was basheert, it would be he who would save Noam. God had deemed it so. She felt this as surely as she had felt his little feet kicking in her womb. As surely as she had seen his face emerge from her body, a head full of bright orange hair, cheeks sunburn red, his head misshapen and bruised from a long and painful labor.

The doctors had considered taking him out by cesarean. But her father had remained steadfast that she deliver normally. A cesarean would have left a scar, a telltale sign to her future husband that he had not been the first.

At the last minute, he had saved her, had come out on his own. His downy soft body molded with muscle even at birth—long limbs, big barrel chest. Nine pounds, twenty-three inches. But what she had remembered most was his temperament. He never cried—only let out small whimpers to remind everyone that he was a healthy newborn. The doctor even remarked upon it.

Big guy seems pretty happy.

Frieda heard deep soft sobs. She thought it might be Breina in the next room and she should go and comfort her daughter-in-law. Then she realized that the sounds were coming from her own throat.

Ezra’s three sons shared a room that was cramped but meticulously neat. The beds were made, the closet was organized; even the computer and work area were free from clutter. Decker asked the boys’ secret to keeping a clean desk.

Boruch let out a breathy Eeeema.

But there was a note of affection in his voice.

All three headboards touched the same wall, lined up like a hospital ward. Sheets tucked in, the pillows plumped and rolled under the top cover like the stuffings of an omelet. Above the headboards were three rows of bookshelves. Most of the space was devoted to Hebrew and religious books, but there were about a dozen textbooks of secular study. No posters or art work adorned the wall, the sole exception being a framed picture of a small elderly bearded man in a big black hat. He had a round face, scores of wrinkles, and crinkly eyes that exuded a physical warmth.

“Rav Moshe Feinstein, alav hashalom,” Aaron said.

Decker nodded, recognizing the name. Rabbi Feinstein had been the leading Torah scholar of his day, a man noted for his exceptional kindness as well as his genius mind.

He turned away from the picture. The boys were sitting on their beds. He said, “I’ll try to put everything back the way I found it, but I’m going to have to go through all the belongings.”

The brothers nodded understandingly.

Decker said, “In the meantime, I want one of you to turn on the computer and bring up any files that might be Noam’s.”

The boys didn’t move. Aaron said, “Did you discuss this with my father?”

Decker sighed. “Look, I know you’re not allowed to use computers on yom tov, but this is an emergency. If you don’t want to do it, at least tell me how to do it.”

“No, no,” Aaron said. “I’d be making you do an aveyrah. Boruch, you do it. You haven’t been bar mitzvahed yet.”

“It’s okay?” Boruch asked Decker.

“It’s more than okay; it’s very important.”

“Then I’ll do it,” Boruch said.

Decker began with the desk. Because it was so organized, the search would be a snap. Starting on the right, he opened the top drawer. It contained notebooks of math work; the second was full of lessons in other secular subjects. The bottom drawer contained sheaves of papers written in Hebrew. The left side was a carbon copy of the first. Inside the top middle drawer were office supplies—pens, pencils, rulers, a stapler, a box of rubber bands, a box of paper clips.

So much for the desk.

Boruch announced that there weren’t any files of Noam’s on the first disk. He’d try the others. Decker told him he was doing a great job, and went on to the closet.

It was as organized as the desk. Decker thought a moment. For a room housing three teenaged boys to be this compulsively tidy, Breina must be one stern taskmaster. He remarked upon that and gauged the reaction of the boys. They smiled, didn’t appear to be resentful.

The left side was open shelves containing piles of laundered and starched white shirts. Must have been around twenty of them. The hanging rack held pressed black pants, lint-free black suit jackets. Above the rack was a shelf full of black hats. The right side was more open shelving. Underwear, undershirts, socks, and a couple of dozen talitim k’tanim—small prayer shawls worn on top of the undershirt but under the dress shirt. A belt and tie rack bisected the inside of the door. Above the rack was a small square mirror.

“What size is Noam?” Decker asked.

“Shirt or pants?” Aaron asked.

“Both.”

“We wear the same shirt size,” Aaron said. “Men’s fifteen. Pants, I wear a thirty. I think Noam’s closer to a thirty-one or -two.”

“He’s heavier than you?”

Aaron said, “Heavier and taller.”

Boruch looked up from the computer screen. “I tried all of the disks here, brought up the files. I don’t see anything that looks like his stuff. Either Noam has his own disk or he erased everything he ever wrote.”

“Thanks, Boruch,” Decker said. “It was worth a try.”

Boruch turned off the screen.

Decker said, “You wouldn’t notice if any of his clothes were missing, would you?”

The boys peered into the closet.

Aaron said, “It looks about as full as it always does. But he could take a shirt and pair of pants and I wouldn’t notice.”

On the floor of the closet were the boys’ knapsacks. Decker opened Noam’s first. Just books and school supplies. His papers contained no doodling, no names of girls. Decker asked the boys if he could look inside their knapsacks. Both of them said sure. Their cooperation showed him that the boys had nothing to hide. He took a quick peek, then moved on.

He stripped the beds. Finding nothing, he removed the mattresses, checked all three out individually. Still nothing. Then he removed the box spring. Underneath Noam’s bed was a sales slip—slightly faded pink, dated ten months ago. Someone had purchased a Guns ’n’ Roses T-shirt for fifteen fifty. He asked the boys if Noam ever wore the T-shirt when the folks weren’t home.

“I never saw him wearing any T-shirt with a gun or a rose on it,” Aaron said.

Decker said, “Guns ’n’ Roses is a rock group.”

Aaron shrugged ignorance.

“How about you?” he asked Boruch. Sometimes kids confide more easily in younger siblings than in older ones.

Boruch said, “I never saw him wear any T-shirt except as undershirts for our tzitzit.” He thought a moment. “You know we have this old transistor radio. I think Noam listens to it late at night when he thinks we’re asleep.”

“I never heard anything,” Aaron said.

“I think he uses the earphone,” Boruch said. “We can listen to the radio as long as we’ve finished our studies and it’s news or sports. Abba and I are Knicks fans. Rock music is out of course. But some of the kids at school listen to it anyway. They even watch MTV—go down to the electronic stores and watch the television on display. It’s a hard thing to do because most of the stores are owned by frum yiddin and the kids don’t want anything getting back to their parents, you know.”

“You’d like a TV?” Decker asked.

“Nah,” Boruch said. “Turns your brain to rot.”

Decker smiled. The way the kid said it—just a line he’d picked up somewhere.

“Maybe that’s what he does when he wanders off,” Aaron said. “Walks around Prospect Park listening to rock music.”

Decker thought: Noam sneaking off, maybe wearing his Guns ’n’ Roses T-shirt under his traditional garb. When he was alone, like Clark Kent turning into Superman, he’d pull off his regular shirt, untuck his T-shirt, and blast his pathetic little radio.

Trying to hang out, trying to fit in.

But always looking over his shoulder, making sure no one would see him.

Decker put back the box springs and mattresses. He remade the beds, then checked the pillows. He unzipped a slipcover and felt a hard flat surface about the size of a playing card. He thought it was probably a calculator, but it turned out to be a miniature Nintendo game—Octopus. Sammy had the same game. The idea was to score as many points as you could before a tentacle squeezed you to death. He showed it to the brothers.

Boruch said, “Some of the kids at school have them. Hey, wait. Doesn’t Shmuli have this game?”

Decker nodded.

“He’s lucky.” Boruch looked at Decker with longing. “Abba won’t let me buy one, even with my own money. Says it’s a waste … which I guess it is.”

For the first time, resentment had crept into the boy’s voice.

“But if a friend brings them over,” Boruch went on, “like when Shmuli brings it over? Abba’ll let me play with it. As long as I’ve finished my schoolwork.”

Decker said, “So your abba doesn’t know that Noam has this.”

“Definitely not,” Aaron said. “Abba’s pretty strict on what we can have. But it’s not like he doesn’t like us to have fun. If we have free time, he likes us to get exercise. We have basketballs, baseballs, footballs. He even plays with us sometimes. Especially basketball.”

Slightly defensive tone. Decker said, “Well, with all you boys you must have quite a team. Noam join along?”

“Sometimes,” Boruch said.

“You know, Noam’s a little taller than me and all,” Aaron said. “But he’s not real coordinated. He’s slow.”

“He also has trouble keeping his mind on the game,” Boruch said. “I’d pass him the ball and it’s like he’d be on Mars. The basketball would bounce off his chest. Lucky he’s so big; otherwise he’d be knocked down all the time. He doesn’t play with us too much anymore. Guess it isn’t fun for him.”

“Guess not,” Decker said, thinking of his own youth. Always a head taller than anyone else, he was a natural choice for center. But like Noam, he also had weight. Lumbering across the court, it was especially embarrassing because everyone expected him to be so good. Agility was never his forte. He gave up basketball in his freshman year of high school, moved on to football. Made State All Star six months later. All he had to do was mow over the opposition—a piece of cake. At the age of sixteen, he’d been six two, one eighty-five.

He pocketed the Nintendo game. If Noam had run away, why had he taken his T-shirt but not this portable video game? Surely he didn’t forget it.

Decker thought about it for a moment.

Maybe the kid was subconsciously leaving behind clues.

Even if that wasn’t the reason, the game served the same purpose as if it had been left behind intentionally. Now Decker knew that Noam liked rock and roll and played arcade games. The shirt and the game indicated places to search.

Decker said, “I can walk you guys back to your bubbe’s now.”

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