A waiter came to the table. “Anything else?”

All three men shook their heads.

He placed the bill on the table and left.

Schnitman looked at the carpet on the ceiling. “You’re modern Orthodox.”

“That’s what my wife says,” Decker answered. “To me, it’s still pretty fanatical. I’m a recent convert—a baal teshuvah.”

“How recent is recent?”

“Ten years. Believe me, that’s still recent.”

Schnitman bit his fingernail. “The modern Orthodox don’t like us.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because they don’t. They think we’re loafers and freeloaders and lazy bums. But it’s not true! Some people are raised to be doctors, others lawyers. Most of the Haredi have been raised to be scholars. That is what we consider worthwhile—the study of Torah. Nothing else matters.”

Decker nodded.

Schnitman looked away. “You’re probably thinking that it’s working people like you who support people who learn all day. But that’s how you get your schar mitzvah—your place in heaven.”

“No, Mr. Schnitman, I get my own place in heaven—if it exists— by doing my own good deeds. I don’t depend on people to do it for me.” Decker focused in on the man’s green eyes. “Look, Ari, let’s try to forget about the minuscule differences right now. Because compared to the world out there, all of us—you, me, Detective Novack— we’re all lumped together as those pesky Jews who are always causing problems.”

“That is the truth,” Novack said. “Just look at how the news portrays Israel.”

“Exactly. So let’s all of us do a mitzvah and try to figure out what happened to Ephraim. Because maybe that will tell us what happened to Shaynda.”

“I’m sorry. I just don’t know what happened to either of them!” His voice was thick with depression. “I’ve told you everything I could think of.”

“I dunno,” Novack said. “Maybe you haven’t told us everything because maybe you feel like you’re breaking a confidence or something.”

“Not with a young girl missing. And besides, there are no more confidences because Ephraim is dead.”

“So you can answer me if I ask you what was Ephraim’s addiction?”

“His addiction?”

“Was it pot, booze, coke—”

“It was cocaine. Ephraim was a cocaine abuser.”

“And…”

“That’s it. Just cocaine.”

“Crack or blow?”

“Blow.”

“You’re sure that was his only chemical bad habit?” Novack said.

“Addiction, Detective.” “Addiction, then. He ever mention experimenting with other drugs?”

“No. Only coke. But he had it bad. He was, at one point, going through several hundred dollars a day.”

Novack whistled. “Enough to get him into some pretty heavy debt.”

“He was in debt,” Schnitman said. “But, as I understand it, he was in the process of paying everyone off. He claimed to be making great progress.”

“Maybe it was great progress for him,” Novack said. “Maybe it wasn’t so great for the people he owed money to.”

“Possibly. I don’t know.”

“Could that have been what he meant by personal problems?” Decker asked. “He was in deep debt, maybe?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”