The Dog Who Knew Too Much Page 6

  As if on a signal from each other, the dogs turned, taking the stairs at a speed I couldn’t even aspire to, and disappeared. I climbed to the fifth floor at my usual pitiful, human pace. Because Lisa never took the elevator.

  “She’s called Ch’an,” Avi said. At the sound of her name, the Akita turned and looked at him. She was large for a bitch, probably about eighty-five pounds. “Outside,” he said, waving his arm toward the windows, “they call her Charlie. But of course Lisa did not name her Charlie Chan.”

  “You mean she gave a Japanese dog a Chinese name?” Ch’an, I had read recently, was the Chinese term for Zen, or meditation.

  Avi’s eyebrows went up. “You’ve been studying. You are so like Lisa.”

  “It’s just that I’m walking in her shoes, trying to understand her life so that I might, one day, understand her death.” Avi winced. “I love the t’ai chi, Avi, but I don’t know much more about Lisa now than I did the day I met you, certainly nothing that would explain in the slightest what happened.”

  “In China,” he said, “if one wants to study t’ai chi, seriously study it, the way Lisa did, it is necessary to be accepted by a master. You cannot go to a school, pay your money, and be taught t’ai chi, the way you can here. Every family guards its secrets,” he said. “They will not teach just anyone.”

  “I—”

  He raised his hand to stop me. Both dogs, thinking his gesture was meant for them, lay down.

  “In China,” he said, “tradition dictates that the student follow the teacher, and that is how he learns. Here we place great emphasis on education. It is different. But even the way we teach here, giving our students helpful images and patiently correcting postures, we still count the time of study in decades instead of years. Even that may be optimistic. So we try to find peace and beauty along the way. Now, about Lisa”—he pointed to the black shoes, their toes touching the wall—“a few days, Rachel, would be on the optimistic side in this study, too, wouldn’t it?

  “Twenty years or forty years, there isn’t enough time in the world to know someone after they are gone. It’s just not possible to get a true portrait of a human being from the detritus of his or her life and the opinions of others.

  “Zen teaches you who you are, Rachel. Once you know that, you will know everything you need to know.”

  Then why, I wondered, had Alan Watts said, “Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth”? Or was that my grandmother Sonya, the night her false teeth fell into the split pea soup?

  “And t’ai chi—” I interrupted him.

  “Yeah, yeah, Zen in motion.”

  So what else could I do? I took off the pink high-tops, put on Lisa’s t’ai chi shoes, and silently, standing behind my mentor, I practiced the form. Afterward Avi asked me to do a silent round, and this time, instead of working with me, he watched.

  Something was different. Perhaps the study now had forged a link with the past, with the t’ai chi I had studied so long ago and thought I had forgotten. Or perhaps concentrating on what I was doing rather than on watching Avi was what made the difference. Now when I placed my foot in an empty step, it felt as flat as a sheet of paper. I felt at ease, my body remembering everything, energy moving up my spine, over my head, spilling down my chest, connecting me to the earth beneath my feet and the universe above and beyond.

  “Better,” he said, stroking one side of his beard and then the other with the back of his hand, like a cat cleaning its whiskers.

  But the moment I stopped moving, all my confidence fled. I felt only the enormous weight of my ignorance. It was a familiar feeling. The work I do is like driving in heavy fog. Sometimes it clings to the windshield, and you can’t see an inch in front of you. At best it rolls a foot or two away, or lifts for a moment and allows a tantalizing glimpse of the road ahead before closing in all over again. Most of the time I feel as if I were driving blind.

  I slipped off Lisa’s shoes and put on her sneakers. When I looked up, Avi was holding Ch’an’s thick, black leather leash.

  “Come in the morning Monday. We have a staff meeting. You can meet the others. Maybe they will answer some questions for you. And leave your boy at home. Only bring Ch’an with you.”

  I began to shake my head.

  “Can’t you do this one thing for me?”

  He didn’t wait for an answer. The master was used to obedience.

  “Lisa—”

  “Yeah. I know,” I said. “Lisa never took the elevator. She always took the stairs. And I do, too. But this I can’t do for you.”

  “But Lisa always brought Ch’an to school with her.”

  “Lisa always brought her dog to school. And I—”

  But he wasn’t listening. He was looking toward the big windows.

  “Even on the night she died,” I said.

  He nodded.

  “I was asleep when the police called me. They said there was an emergency and asked if I could come right away with the keys. They didn’t say what it was. They didn’t tell me what had happened here. I thought a pipe was leaking. I had no idea.

  “There were so many people here, so many. I could see them from down the block. I got confused. I couldn’t understand why. A fire, I thought. There must have been a fire.

  “Then I saw.

  “She was lying on the street, under a yellow tarp. I could see one of her hands, the palm up”—he turned his hand to show me—“sticking out from under the plastic.

  “They asked me to look. They asked if I could identify her. One of the detectives slipped his hand around my upper arm and another one drew the tarp back, uncovering her face, her beautiful face.”

  Avi shook his head and began to cry. He took a wrinkled handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his eyes.

  “We walked up the stairs,” he continued. “The door was locked, of course. Lisa wouldn’t have left it open when she was here alone late at night, even with Ch’an to protect her. I unlocked the door, and one of the two detectives who came up to the studio took my arm and pulled me aside. The other drew his gun, he shouted ‘Police’ and waited, but there was no sound, nothing. We stayed in the hall and he went in.

  “For a moment I was just blank, just seeing the hand, turned up, like so, as if to catch rain. Then I remembered Ch’an and was polluted by the fear that the detective would be frightened of her and shoot.

  “‘Don’t be afraid,’ I called out to him. ‘Don’t shoot the dog.’

  “The second one opened the door wide, and we both stepped in. The room was dark, the way we worked last night, you and I, the studio lit only by the moon. It was empty.

  “The first detective was just walking into the office, and I heard him gasp. I thought to myself, God, no, someone else is lying dead on the floor.

  “We went to the doorway to see, myself and the other detective. But it was Ch’an who had startled him. That’s all it was. She was lying on her mat, her head up, her front paws crossed, one over the other, looking at us, as if nothing at all had happened.” He put a hand on his chest and rubbed it, as if by doing so he could erase his grief.

  “What about the note, Avi? Where was the note?”

  “It was on the desk, in front of the computer. ‘There’s a suicide note,’ the first detective said. I am not ashamed to tell you, the tears were flowing from my eyes that night, too, Rachel. I don’t know why, but the thought of her sitting at my desk and writing … Poor Lisa.”

  “Did you read it? Did they show it to you?”

  “Yes, yes, I read it,” he said. “First the second detective read it. They each leaned over the desk to read it. No one touched it. They asked me to do the same. To read it, but not to touch it. I did. They asked me if it was Lisa’s writing. I told them it was.” Avi took a few breaths. When he had calmed himself, he continued. “Even then,” he said, “with all three of us in the room, Ch’an never moved. She just stayed on her mat, watching us. I guess she was in shock.”

  “She was just being
an Akita,” I said.

  “What do you mean?”

  If he didn’t understand Ch’an after living with her, how could I explain her to him?

  I looked at my watch. “I have to get up early,” I told him. “I better go.” I tapped my leg for Dash, but then hesitated at the door. “Will you keep Ch’an, Avi? I don’t think Lisa’s parents want her.”

  The Akita had gotten up when Dashiell did. She stood quietly next to Avi, looking off to the side, as if she were in another world and none of this had anything to do with her.

  “She belongs here, Avi, with you.”

  “Go home, Rachel,” he said. “It’s late. Let me not keep you any longer.”

  11

  Was There a Message Here?

  I couldn’t remember if it had been the homeopathic veterinarian or the holistic dentist who had told me about Rabbi Lazar Zuckerman, but he hadn’t asked how I’d heard about him, so I hadn’t had to lie to a man of God.

  I had left a message for him yesterday afternoon. He had left one for me after sundown, when he could use the phone without breaking the laws of God. He said I could come the following morning. But since I hadn’t spoken to him, I hadn’t had the chance to say I was bringing a pit bull with me.

  He was seventy-five if he was a day, but crouching so that he could embrace Dashiell, he looked about eight. His eyes, behind rimless glasses, were a faded hazel, but wise and full of light. I think it’s a job requirement. He had a full head of hair, steely gray ringlets, a black yarmulke held onto the back of his head with a single bobby pin, and the obligatory rabbinical beard, long, full, and wonderfully unkempt.

  “Rabbi Zuckerman,” I said.

  He stood and looked intensely into my face.

  All the way here I had been expecting short and stout, perhaps because of his deep, rich voice, but the rabbi was as tall and slender as a young tree, if not quite as lithe.

  “I hope it’s okay about the dog?”

  He waved his hand in front of me, as if he were saying hello, to stop the false apology. “Come, come, both of you,” he said, leading me into a dining room off to the right, “we have important work to do.”

  We sat at a dark mahogany table on chairs so huge I felt my feet wouldn’t touch the ground. Or was it the rabbi who made me feel as if I were a child? There were heavy velvet drapes on the windows, wine colored, swagged back with white curtains beneath, but still the light came into the room, showing the sheen of the much-polished table and the age of the faded, flowered wallpaper and worn oriental rug.

  Rabbi Zuckerman placed his hands on the table and waited. After the long walk, Dashiell didn’t need to be told to lie down. Sighing heavily, he plotzed right next to the rabbi’s chair, showing his innate respect for such obvious authority. I reached into my pocket and drew out the copy of Lisa’s suicide note and the samples of her known handwriting the rabbi’s message had asked me to bring along, letters I had found in the briefcase her mother had given me what seemed like a hundred years ago, in Sea Gate.

  He pushed his glasses up onto his forehead and into that mess of curls and brought Lisa’s note up close to his face. I thought he was speaking to me, but realized he was humming—Bach’s Sonata no. 1, if memory serves. He studied the three words for a very long time. Then he carefully placed the copy down on the table, smoothed it flat with both hands, and looked at it some more.

  Next he picked up one of Lisa’s letters. These had been written to her mother and father, and so, like anyone else’s letters home, they were fairly egocentric, bland, and reassuringly cheerful. But it wasn’t the content that the rabbi was studying. For him, the writing itself was the message. What I’d remembered hearing was that a Rabbi Zuckerman on Eldridge Street had a passion for graphology, that he’d been studying handwriting and the things it revealed about character for thirty or so years.

  “Suicide, you said, yes?”

  I nodded.

  He began to hum again, this time keeping time with his foot tapping away on the threadbare carpet. By now five letters were spread out in front of him. He studied them and nodded.

  “Su-i-cide,” he said. “Hmmph.”

  “Rabbi Zuckerman, I was wondering if you—”

  “Shah,” he said. With one hand he reached up and brought his glasses back down to rest on his nose. He got up, causing Dash to momentarily lift his head, and disappeared into the kitchen. I could hear the water running. So could Dashiell, who got up and followed him. A moment later I could hear the sound of one dog drinking, considerably louder than the sound of one hand clapping.

  The rabbi returned with two jelly jar glasses, which he placed on the table. He bent and opened the server at the wall behind the head of the table, taking out a bottle of sherry. As he poured, he hummed. Then, handing me one of the glasses, he said, “So.”

  “Rabbi Zuckerman,” I started again, “I was wondering if you could tell if the same person, if Lisa Jacobs, who wrote the letters, also wrote the suicide note. I realize that the note only has three words, well, two and a signature, but—”

  “There’s a lot of energy in her writing. Strength of body, strength of mind. A remarkable woman. Remarkable.”

  He took a sip of sherry.

  So did I. When in Rome, so to speak.

  “Ambition. Optimism. Self-control.”

  “But—”

  Dashiell had remained in the kitchen. I could hear his tags as he flopped over onto his side on the no-doubt-cooler kitchen floor.

  “The hand holds the pen,” the rabbi said, “but the brain controls the hand. Thus the writing reveals character.”

  He picked up one of the letters and pushed his glasses back up onto the crown of his head.

  “You have never before used the clues from handwriting in your detective work?”

  “No, never.”

  “But you are hoping for a definitive answer. She did. She didn’t. If she didn’t, who did?”

  “No, not that much.”

  He took a sip of sherry.

  “Rabbi Zuckerman, Lisa’s parents—”

  “Yes, I know,” he said. “I can see from her letters. For the parents, there is no more sun to rise in the morning. The world is now dark for them. So, Rachel, what do you hope to give them?”

  “What they asked me for,” I said. “Some understanding of why.”

  He nodded.

  I waited.

  The rabbi hummed.

  “This young woman,” he finally said, “the woman who wrote with such a regular hand, everything in balance, the proportions pleasing, she was tenacious, self-willed, powerful, a determined person. The writing, you see, shows a person’s hand.”

  I nodded.

  “She was confident, more confident than vain. There are no flourishes, no embellishments, no hauteur. Do you know this word?”

  I nodded.

  “Young people nowadays,” he said, “they have no vocabulary. They read only what is sprayed on walls. Do you own a dictionary, Rachel?”

  “Yes, Rabbi.”

  “That’s good,” he said. He looked back at the letters. “I don’t believe this was an empty person with an insatiable craving for attention. No, no, no, a focused person, a strong person, but a self-centered person too, someone who put herself first. A disciplined person, the writing up and down, up and down. Vertical. A thinking person.”

  “But Rabbi Zuckerman, did she write all five letters? Did she write the last letter?”

  “Did she write the last letter? You think she did not?” he asked.

  “What I think is that she did not kill herself, Rabbi. I think someone else did that. I can’t buy suicide. It makes no sense. There was no history of depression—”

  “Look here, Rachel, in these letters, the lines are straight or sometimes they rise ever so slightly, up, up, up, like so,” he said, pointing, “and so and so, showing optimism, not depression. Depression makes the lines go down, sometimes off the page, as if the person were too weary of spirit to notice their
writing had walked off the paper. Not your Lisa.”

  “That’s what I mean. Her home is serene and lovely. She loved her work. Her parents doted on her. It doesn’t seem she could have, would have killed herself. It—”

  “So, forgery. Is that what you think?”

  “I—I don’t know any other way to explain the note.”

  “When someone forges another’s writing, Rachel, they tend to pay attention to the obvious, in this case, the L in Lisa, the loops, the flourishes. But Lisa did not embellish. Her writing is small, neat, and simple. The forger tends to forget the smaller items, the little letters in between, and these areas can give him away. But we have so little to go on here. Three words.”

  “So you can’t tell?”

  “Can I tell? Can I tell?”

  I watched quietly as he studied one of the letters again, his nose nearly touching the page. He was so focused, nearly obsessive in the attention he paid to each letter. Yet he was clearly sensitive, too, not the kind of man who would ignore the needs of his guests, even when one of them was a dog. He was old, but he was strong, the way a tree is, able to sway in the wind and not break. You could see that when he moved. But he was also soft. You could see that in his eyes, his yin and yang in perfect balance.

  For a moment I pictured myself living here, making gefilte fish every Friday morning, going to the mikveh once a month. Was there a message here?

  “The last letter was written more quickly than the other four,” he said. “Forgery is almost always written slowly, deliberately.” He stood and began to pace. “Even if the forger practiced Lisa’s writing, one does not dash off a note in someone else’s handwriting. When copying, one takes his time.” He leaned over the table now. “Not only does the L look like Lisa’s writing, Rachel, but the I in I’m sorry looks as if she wrote it. And the small i, see how straight, how precise, now look in her other letters, see, the same, the same, and here, the same.”

  The rabbi fished in his jacket pocket, came up with a magnifying loupe in a green leather case, and took his chair again, sighing as he sat. He held it over the suicide note, moving it slowly over each letter in each word.