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news; in the Hasidic world, it’s kept out of the papers—another sign that this was an inside job. Our insular world, may it long survive, transported from Eastern Europe and rebuilt in Williamsburg, New York, an American shtetl, has made a point of knowing and keeping politicians, judges, and members of the press in our pockets. I knew too well how this worked.
    I also knew that asking questions was not an option. One question in the wrong place, one word even, could alert those who didn’t want talk. When the highest value in a community is loyalty to the greater cause, meaning the continuity of the status quo, all means to this end are imbued with religious significance, and are thereby justified. It was quickly becoming clear to me that this murder had been handed me for a reason, that it was for this case that I, a Hasidic detective, the first one in the history of Hasidism, had been bestowed upon a community that usually eschewed new things. I owed it to the higher powers that created me to pursue the murderers, but I would have to watch my step.
     
     
    At noon, I walked the ten blocks to Landau’s on Lee, my regular lunch counter, selected not necessarily for its excellence in food but for its distance from my office, because my wife insisted on some daily exercise, though I was partial to their sweet and sour pickles and their warm sauerkraut, having grown up on them, and would have walked twenty blocks for a Landau frankfurter with all the trimmings. On this day, I hoped to overhear something useful. It was late November, a cool stimulating day. I buttoned my black coat, pulled my black hat forward, and wrapped the ivory silk muffler twice around my neck, a gift from my wife when we were bride and groom.
    The windows of Landau’s were already steamy with cooking. I took the three steps down, entered, was greeted by the elderly Reb Motl Landau, who has known me, as he likes to say, ever since I was this high, indicating a place above his own head. I’m tall, 5’11”, which is considered especially tall in these parts, populated as it is by mostly small-boned Jews of Hungarian descent,
modyeros
, the Romanian Jews like to call them, intending a bit of harmless deprecation since the word is also the name of a particular nut eaten there.
    Without waiting for my order, Reb Motl set a loaded tray down in front of me, as if he’d seen me leave the office ten minutes earlier. My lunch: a frankfurter as starter, beefburger as entree, along with two sour pickles, a glass of water, and an ice-cream soda, nondairy of course.
    I took my first bite, a third of the dog, noted the three-person huddle at the far end of the lunch counter, and raised an eyebrow in question.
    Reb Motl nodded, drew five fingers of one hand together, meaning patience please, and went to serve another customer. He never played dumb and deaf with me. And we didn’t waste words.
    When Reb Motl returned, he picked up my crumpled wrappers as if this is what he had returned for, and grumbled, What don’t you already know?
    The word on the street? I asked.
    You mean word at the
mikvah
, he corrected.
    I nodded.
    Guilty, he said.
    I raised my eyebrows in question, meaning, Guilty of what?
    Read the book, Reb Motl said.
    What book? I asked, using only my shoulders and eyebrows.
    Published to make the sins of Dobrov known, Reb Motl said, and moved on. This was a busy lunch counter and he couldn’t afford to pause long enough to forfeit the momentum that kept him efficient.
     
     
    I stopped at the bookstore on my way back to the office, wended my way past the leaning towers of yarmulkes at the entrance, the piles of ritual fringes, stacks of
aleph-bet
primers. As always, Reb Yidel was behind the counter, and when I asked for the book, which turned out to be a pamphlet, really, he pointed to a stack beside the register. I looked at the title page to see who had undersigned this bit of slander, and found no name, no individual taking responsibility for