THE clandestine meeting in the secluded hotel parking lot had gone without a hitch. Years later, he would tell investigators that somehow hed managed to appear casual about the whole thing, even though inside he was secretly terrified.
As he drove away from the other car, he could feel the weight of the cash stuffed inside the envelope hed been handed. It was nothing compared to the weight that was now dragging on his soul.
This seventy-five-hundred-dollar payment was only the first he would claim. Much more money would be coming his way if, in five nights time, the killing he had just agreed to went down as planned.
It was a short drive back to his apartment complex in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. The Landmark Towers certainly are landmarks, not for their plain white brick architecture and rows of cluttered cement balconies, but for the fact that, at eighteen stories apiece, the giant ugly boxes soar above the rest of the dull landscape where the New Jersey Turnpike and Interstate 295 cut a swath down through what a century before had been unending apple orchards and farm fields in Cherry Hill Township.
The Landmark buildings loom directly above the cloverleaf where I-295 intersects Route 70, and from their upper floors its possible to look westward along the length of Route 70s seemingly endless line of traffic lights, strip malls, fast food franchises, car dealerships, furniture stores, hotels, gas stations, and even the Garden State Park horse-racing track, to the point eightmiles beyond where the Ben Franklin Bridge rises over the Delaware River and the Philadelphia skyline forms a series of gray peaks on the horizon of neighboring Pennsylvania.
Parked at the base of Landmark Building Two, he couldnt have been less interested in the suburban sprawl and the fall-tinged trees surrounding him on this October afternoon. His attention was riveted on the envelope full of money which he was now supposed to divide into halves. As he thumbed through it, he noticed that many of the mixed bills inside were hundreds. Carefully he separated every one of those out and put them into his pile, along with the clear majority of the rest of the bills. He rolled up his larger, considerably more valuable, half of the money and wrapped it in a rubber band before shoving it into his pants pocket.
The remaining money he dumped loosely into a brown paper lunch bag. It was time to go upstairs and subcontract a murder.
As he stepped out onto the tenth-floor landing from the elevator, he already knew hed find his partner right where hed left him. It was still the middle of the day, but his younger roommate never worked; in fact, he hardly ever budged from in front of the television set within the dingy apartment they shared.
He unlocked the door and strode in, calling out, Hey, Duce!
They had started calling each other Duce after they had seen the nickname used in a gangster movie. Both of them badly wanted to be thought of as gangsters; as tough guys; as anything other than a couple of strung-out losers crawling back up from the depths of drug and alcohol dependency.
Duce didnt stir from his lounge chair in front of the TV.
The older man strode up behind the chair and upended the brown bag above Duces head.
Heres our down payment for killing Mrs. Neulander, he casually announced.
Fives, tens, and twenties rained down onto Duce like confetti.
Startled out of his perpetual stupor, Duce took a moment to consider the pile of currency falling all over his head, his shoulders, and in his lap. Then he went wild. To Duce the couple of thousand dollars hed just been showered with might as well have been a million.
Mother fucker! Mother fucker! Duce shouted in amazed elation, scooping up the bills. The fuckers serious then? he asked, staring intently for confirmation.
His roommate nodded.
Then that bitch is dead, Duce replied, shaking a fistful of the money in his friends face as his voice rose to a near scream, THAT BITCH IS DEAD!
CAROL Neulander was an extremely busy person. If someone wanted to kill her, theyd have to find her first.
Carol was the mother of three children aged 18 to 24, and the wife of Fred Neulander, the founder and senior rabbi of Congregation Mkor Shalom in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, which made her the First Lady of the more than nine hundred families that comprised the Mkor Shalom synagogues family of families.
Carol Neulander was also a successful businesswoman. She had begun a bakery right out of her home oven, and expanded it over the course of a decade to the point where, by the fall of 1994, it was a full-fledged bakery chain with two growing retail stores in the neighboring New Jersey towns of Audubon and Voorhees.
Even at age 52, with her career and social life well established, Carols day-to-day comings and goings hadnt slowed down. Her schedule was a whirl of appointments and meetings, activities and gatherings. Business and personal trips took her constantly around Cherry Hill and to the surrounding suburban and rural New Jersey townships. She also ranged frequently into the city of Philadelphia nearby and farther on up the Atlantic coast to New York City.
Carols close friends regarded keeping up with her as a challenge, but if they left a message on her answering machine they would soon hear back, perhaps as she took a few minutes to call from one of her bakerys locations. Often she would call from the car phone inher dark Toyota Camry as she drove from one appointment to the next.
Standing just over five feet tall, the 136-pound Carol was never an imposing woman, but she had a straightforward take-charge manner and she made her presence felt wherever she went. Her inherent decisiveness was tempered by a kindness and warmth that seemed to radiate from her. With well-groomed auburn hair, expensive but tasteful jewelry, and large, dark eyes, she seemed to fill up the space around her. Carol was energetic and striking and had her own complex life that consumed most of her waking hours, but she liked to take the time to understand and interact with the people she was dealing with throughout her day. It was this genuinely caring nature of hers that had endeared her to so many people over the years, and it was a characteristic which many people felt she shared with her husband Fred.
As a couple, Carol and Fred Neulander were a matched set and a walking contrast at the same time. Not much taller than Carol at five-foot-four, Rabbi Fred Neulander was a solid wall of muscle in a suit jacket, or on some days just a dress shirt and bow tie. Fred was as sharp and as charismatic as any successful politician, and could be just as arrogant and irritating. He was undeniably dynamic, he oozed self-confidence, and he had a reputation for bringing people together and making sure things got done. Now, at age 54, he was the living embodiment of the community of Mkor Shalom, which he had created by sheer force of will. It was a community that had revolved around him for over two decades, during which he had played a pivotal role in almost all of the major milestones and events in the combined lives of thousands of people. To many of the congregants for whom he had spent a lifetime being Gods messenger, Fred Neulander was the next best thing to the Boss upstairs.
Mkor Shalom, which in Hebrew means Source of Peace, was itself a monument to Freds electrifying effect on other people. It had rapidly grown to become the largest Reform Jewish synagogue in southern New Jersey, but Neulander had founded it on nothing more than a vision when, in 1974, as a young assistant rabbi at Temple Emanuel, Fred led what was in effect a palace coup d etat.
