Saturday the Rabbi Went Hungry (24 page)

“Refused? Why?”

“Because the district attorney may exhume the body.”

The rabbi gave a wan smile. “It comes to the same thing in the end, doesn’t it, Mr. Wasserman?”

“Oh, but Rabbi, there’s a difference. This is the civil authority, engaged in bringing a criminal to justice.”

“Of course.”

“What we’ve got to think about now is what steps to take. As far as Hirsh is concerned –” He shrugged his shoulders. “Well, it makes no difference to him what caused his death. He’s dead; we’ve got to concern ourselves about the living. Now, the business about your resignation. You don’t really want to resign, do you?”

“I wouldn’t have if this matter hadn’t come up.”

“Good. So we have to figure out a way to keep Schwarz from reading your letter to the Board. I’ve discussed it with Becker here, and we both decided the easiest and best way would be if you wrote Schwarz recalling your resignation.” As the rabbi was about to interpose, he hurried on. “You could say that in the light of recent events there is no longer any difference between you and the administration, and for that reason you are revoking your previous letter.”

“No.”

“But don’t you see, Rabbi, without that there’s just your letter of resignation. All he has to do is to read it and call for a vote. Strictly speaking, he doesn’t even have to call for a vote. He just announces, it. But if there are two letters, he’s bound to read them both and then he’ll have to explain the issue between you. Even then, you’re not out of the woods but at least we’ll have the advantage.”

The rabbi shook his head. “I’m sorry, gentlemen, but –”

“Now look here, Rabbi,” said Becker sternly. “Jake and I have gone all out for you. We’re trying to help you the best way we can, but there’s a certain amount you’ve got to do for yourself. You can’t expect us to work our heads off, calling up people, going to see them, explaining, when you won’t do your part.”

“I expect nothing.” He turned to Miriam, who was emerging from the cloakroom. “You’ll have to excuse me. My wife is very tired.”

Becker watched his retreating figure, then turned to Wasserman. “That’s what you get for trying to help a guy.”

Wasserman shook his head. “He’s been hurt, Becker. He’s a young man, practically a boy. And he’s been hurt… “

As they walked through the parking lot to their car, Miriam said, “Mr. Becker and even Mr. Wasserman seemed rather cool, David. Was it something you said to them?”

He reported the conversation, and she smiled wistfully. “So now you have no one behind you – not Mr. Wasserman, not Chief Lanigan, not Mr. Schwarz. Do you have to quarrel with everyone, David?”

“I didn’t quarrel with them. I just refused to ask Schwarz to disregard my letter. In effect, it’s begging him to keep me on.”

“But you do want to stay, don’t you?”

“Of course, but I can’t ask. Don’t you see I can’t ask? The relationship between the rabbi and the Board of Directors requires maintaining a delicate balance. If I have to beg them to let me stay when I’m only doing my job, how can I ever have any influence on them? How can I guide them? I would be just a rubber stamp for anything they wanted to do. Once they realized they made me knuckle under while exercising my official function as rabbi, what could I do? And what could they not do?”

“I suppose so,” she said softly. “And I know you’re right, but –”

“But what?”

“But I’m just a young married woman, a couple of hundred miles from my mother and my family, and I’m going to have a baby any day now.”

“So?”

“So I wish I were sure my husband had a job.”

“I never interfere, Hugh. You know that. I’m no policeman and I’d be the last one to try to tell you your job, but the police department does come under the administrative supervision of the selectmen, and it’s the broader aspects” – he made a wide sweep with his arm – “that I think it’s our duty to go into.”

Alford Braddock was not the typical Barnard’s Crossing selectman. He was a native, to be sure – it was unthinkable that anyone not a Crosser born would be elected to the Board – but whereas the rest of the members were small businessmen with a taste for town politics, he was a man of considerable wealth, inherited wealth, which included a stock brokerage firm in Boston. Where others had to campaign personally, calling on voters, appearing at meetings of fraternal orders, speaking before the League of Women Voters, he blitzed the electorate with campaign posters and door-to-door house calls by a group of paid “volunteers.” He outpolled all the other candidates easily and consequently was elected chairman of the board. He was tall and distinguished with snow-white hair and the ruddy complexion of the yachtsman. His clear blue eyes were candid and without guile and yet could look hurt – hurt, but determined to bear up and not show it – when you disagreed with him.

“What is it that’s bothering you, Alford?” asked Lanigan quietly.

“Bothering me? Bothering me? Well, yes, I suppose you could put it that way. Something Dr. Sturgis mentioned. Said you were inquiring about Peter Dodge. Now he got it into his head that it had something to do with this Hirsh business. Of course, I assured him it was unlikely, most unlikely. After all, what connection would Peter Dodge have with Isaac Hirsh?”

“He might have been trying to convert him,” suggested Lanigan with a smile.

“Think so? Yes, it’s possible. A very enthusiastic fellow, this Dodge, from the Midwest I believe,” he added as though that explained everything.

“As a matter of fact, we know he was planning to see Hirsh the night he was killed,” said Lanigan. “About this Civil Rights business, perhaps.”

“Yes, that must be it. That must be the connection. He was terribly enthusiastic about Civil Rights. Now I know that for a fact, Hugh. I mean I know that personally.”

“There’s another connection, Alford. He happens to know Mrs. Hirsh. They come from the same hometown – South Bend.”

“Whatsat? Knew Mrs. Hirsh? What are you trying to say, Hugh?”

“Not a thing. I’m not suggesting anything. It’s just that we’d like to ask Mr. Dodge a few questions. We sent him a wire down in Alabama asking him to get in touch with us. But he didn’t. We called the hotel in Birmingham where he was supposed to be staying, and he wasn’t there. I don’t mean that he checked out, I mean he wasn’t there. In fact, he hadn’t been there since checking in a couple of days ago. I spoke to the hotel people and they said it wasn’t unusual, not too unusual where these Civil Rights people are concerned. They register at a hotel, but then they contact the local headquarters of their organization down there and that’s usually the last the hotel sees of them. Usually, they check out though. So we called the Alabama authorities to contact him for us, but so far we haven’t heard.”

“You’re trying to say something, Hugh. Dammit, why don’t you come right out with it? You’re trying to say that this man Dodge, an Anglican priest, got involved with the wife of this Jew, and as a result became mixed up in this murder business and ran off – flew the coop, beat it.”

Lanigan grinned. “You mean, he took a powder?”

“Dammit, Hugh, it’s no laughing matter. That what you’re trying to say?”

“It’s possible.”

“But dammit, a man of the cloth, and from my own church.”

“But he’s young, unmarried, and – to use your own word – enthusiastic.”

“Hugh, do you realize what this could mean?”

“Yeah, but I honestly don’t think it will. We don’t really have anything on him, we just want to question him. Find out if he saw Hirsh, and if he did, what time he left him.”

Braddock was obviously relieved. “You’ll probably find there’s nothing to his absence from the hotel. I mean, as far as I can gather from news stories, these people who go down to march and picket and whatnot make a point of living with the – er – with the people. You’ll probably find he has been staying in some colored sharecropper’s shack out of reach of a telephone.” Braddock smiled broadly. “You know, Hugh, you really had me going there for a minute.”

Lanigan grinned.

“You’ve got a real suspect now, haven’t you? This insurance fellow?”

“Brown? Marvin Brown? We’re interested in him. At least we’d like to know where he was at the time.”

“No alibi, eh?”

“We haven’t asked him yet.”

“Why not?”

“Well, there’s no hurry. We have nothing on him except a couple of points of contact with Hirsh. He’ll keep. It won’t do any harm to let him stew for a while. These quick, nervy types – they get bothered and start worrying if you leave them alone, and after a while they’re apt to do something just a little foolish.”

Braddock rubbed his hands. Police business was fascinating, and as chairman of the Board of Selectmen he was in on the ground floor. “I get it, I get it,” he said.

“Actually, we find Mr. Benjamin Goralsky a lot more interesting.”

Braddock sat up straight. “Goralsky? Ben Goralsky of Goraltronics? Hold on a minute, Hugh, now you’re barking up the wrong tree. I know the man. He’s one of the finest specimens of his race. His plant employs over a thousand people from around here. When they went public, our firm helped float the initial stock issue, and we’ve been close to them ever since. No, nothing there, I assure you.”

“Well, maybe not, but we plan to have Ben Goralsky down and ask him a lot of questions.”

“I won’t have it, Hugh. You’re planning some kind of psychological third degree and I won’t permit it. You haven’t got anything on him, and you’re just going on a fishing expedition. Well, I won’t allow it. There are things in the wind that you don’t know about and this could have repercussions that would affect the whole community.”

“You mean the merger?”

“Who said anything about a merger? What do you know about a merger?”

“Oh, come now, Alf, everybody knows there’s talk of Goraltronics being involved in a merger.”

“Well, maybe, maybe. I suppose there are rumors floating around. Well, I’ll admit it, but you keep this under your hat, understand? It’s true – there is a merger in the offing. And it could be a tremendous thing for this whole area. I don’t mind admitting that my firm is a little interested, and right now things are very touchy. Understand? So I’m telling you to keep your hands off Ben Goralsky.”

“And let him get away with murder?”

“Dammit, he’s not getting away with murder. You prove that he did it, and he’s all yours. But until you have something definite on him, you leave him alone. And that’s an order, Hugh. Because if you badger him and come up with nothing, I’ll personally have your head.”

Sergeant Whitaker was a young man, and ambitious. Three nights a week he went into Boston to attend law school. If all went well, he would be able to stand for his bar examination in another four years. It would be a tough grind, but at least Chief Lanigan was understanding and tried not to schedule him for night duty on those evenings when he had school. Tonight he was working late, but since it was Friday and his class did not meet, he did not mind. True, he hadn’t had dinner and Aggie was always upset when he couldn’t eat with her and the children, but Lieutenant Jennings had made it plain he wanted all his assignments covered before he went off duty, no matter what time that was. Whitaker’s sergeant’s stripes were quite new, and he had no intention of letting the lieutenant down.

He was seated now in the Goralsky kitchen across the table from Mrs. Chambers, the housekeeper. His notebook was spread out before him, and though he tried hard to be the dignified, impersonal police officer conducting an important investigation, it was difficult. Mrs. Chambers was from the Old Town and knew him from the time he was a grubby little school urchin.

“Now what is it you want to know? You’re not planning to cause Mr. Goralsky any trouble, I hope. Because if you are, I’ll have no part of it. Mr. Ben is a fine, decent gentleman, and his father is an old dear, for all he’s a foreigner and talks funny.”

“As I explained, Mrs. Chambers, this is just a routine investigation that I’m conducting –”

“Well, aren’t we grand, conducting investigations. And what is it you’re investigating?”

“We’re just checking anyone and everyone who had any connection whatsoever with the late Isaac Hirsh, the man whose picture I showed you. It’s just routine.” He flipped the pages of his notebook. “I’ve been at it all day and I must have questioned twenty people or more.”

“Well, I never laid eyes on the man.”

“Did he never come here at any time? Think now.”

“Who you telling to think, Henry Whitaker? I told you I never laid eyes on him, didn’t I?”

“Well, did Mr. Goralsky, Mr. Ben Goralsky, did he ever mention the name Hirsh?”

“Not to me, he didn’t.”

“And the old man?”

“Not that I remember.”

“Well now, think back to the evening of September 18. That was a Friday night. It was the night of the big Jewish holiday –”

“That was the night the old gentleman took sick.”

“And Mr. Ben got home early I suppose. At least, all the rest of them, the Jews, I mean, worked a short day, so I suppose he did too.”

“That’s right. And all the servants were dismissed early too, so it wasn’t that they were taking any special privileges that they weren’t passing on to others.”

“But you stayed on.”

“Well of course. Who else was there to take care of the old gentleman, and him burning up with fever?”

“So Mr. Ben got home around three? four?”

“Around four it was, as near as I can remember.”

“And he remained here at home until it was time to go to the temple, I suppose.”

“He didn’t go to the temple. At least he didn’t go to pray. He just drove the rabbi and his wife there and came right back.”

“So while he was gone, you were here alone with the old man.”

“That’s right. I was right up there in his room sitting by his bed.”

“And when Mr. Ben got back from driving the rabbi to the temple, he came up to the room to see how his father was getting along, I suppose.”

“No.” She shook her head decisively. “He didn’t come up because he didn’t want his father to see him. You see, his father assumed that he had gone to the temple and would have been upset if he knew he hadn’t. So Mr. Ben stayed out of sight.”