Answer: “Never heard of ’em.”

To 2 women: “Righteous Men being murdered?”

Both: “Yes!”

“Where? Who?”

“Don’t know but it’s terrible!”

“How do U know? Know victims? Told by friends?”

“Just feel it.”

After ten minutes I drift over toward Manning, who’s now with a different threesome of women. I come in on the tail end of him telling a joke, apparently about an assimilated American Jew denying his religious identity.

MANNING

“. . . I am not a Jew, my father is not a Jew, and my grandfather, olev ha-sholom, is not a Jew either.”

The ladies laugh, but with an edge.

ORTHODOX WOMAN #1

(to Manning)

How do you come to speak “olev ha-sholom” so perfectly? You are not a Jew?

MANNING

I’m Roman Catholic, ma’am. My wife was Jewish.

The women absorb this soberly. They don’t literally glance to one another, but that’s the sense of their reaction. I have joined the group fully now. I’m standing with the three ladies, facing Manning.

ORTHODOX WOMAN #2

You said “was.” Did your wife cease to be a Jew?

Manning blanches. I myself know only that Manning’s wife took her own life after the tragic death of her young son. Manning was put on leave immediately after, and later entered rehab. I know no further details, as I’ve said, and have deliberately not put myself in the way of acquiring any.

The three women clearly intuit the significance of Manning’s use of the past tense. Their reaction is one of compassion.

The females are in their forties, all attractive, clearly wives and mothers. Despite living in an intentionally isolated community, they do not appear sheltered or cut off from the realities of the city or the world. The first woman asks Manning, gently but pointedly, if he has been listening carefully to the Rebbe’s discourse.

ORTHODOX WOMAN #1

Did you understand what he said about HaSatan? The Evil One changes form. He can inhabit even our own hearts without us knowing it.

Manning regards her uncertainly.

ORTHODOX WOMAN #2

By taking your wife from her people, you took her from God.

Manning smiles uneasily.

MANNING

Well, perhaps a different interpretation of—

ORTHODOX WOMAN #2

No. From God.

Suddenly from across the auditorium comes a woman’s scream.

Every face in the congregation spins toward the door at the top of the stairs, the chamber to which the Rebbe retired. One of the Rebbe’s daughters stands in this space. She cries something in Yiddish, then collapses and plunges in a tangle of limbs.

The gathering erupts into pandemonium.

A bodyguard and two other men appear in this same upper doorway; they scuttle down the staircase to aid the Rebbe’s daughter.

ORTHODOX MAN

(cries from stairway)

The Rebbe! Someone has murdered the Rebbe!

Manning’s right hand flies to the holster. Empty! Our weapons, we both now remember, have been secured by the Shomrim.