Tuesday the Rabbi Saw Red

by Harry Kemelman

She amplified. “This time of year, people don’t start checking in until late afternoon or early evening.” She flipped through the cards in the file. “Here—4:20, 4:38, 5:02.”

  “What time did Miss Dunlop check out?” asked Lanigan.

  The woman colored. “Why, I seem to remember that she stopped by in the evening to leave the key and say she was going out for a bite. I don’t think—no—I’m sure of it; she didn’t come back. You remember, Al, I said I thought she might have gone to a movie.”

  Lanigan asked Mrs. Jackson whether she had made up the girl’s room the next morning, whether the bed had been slept in.

  “I don’t remember,” she said warily. “I’m sure it must’ve been or I would’ve remembered.”

  “One person or two?”

  “How would I know that?”

  “Oh, you’d know all right.”

  “I—I don’t remember.”

  As they drove off, Lanigan said, “I’m sorry, David, but I’m afraid your friend Fine had no alibi. Neither the manager nor his wife saw him, there were no guests in the motel, and with the phone out of order no one could have called in and thus confirm he was there at a certain hour.”

  “There’s the girl …”

  Lanigan shook his head. “Not very good. No corroboration. And she’s in love with him obviously, so it wouldn’t be hard to believe she’d lie for him. Of course, Fine’s lawyer might put her on the stand and hope she’d make a good impression on the jury. And she might, too, until the D.A. started tearing into her. He’d make her out to be a common whore, even worse for knowing he was a married man.”

  CHAPTER

  FORTY-NINE

  Lanigan and the rabbi entered the station house, and the desk sergeant called out, “Say, Chief. Grace just phoned from the neighbor’s to say she’s locked out. All right if I run down and let her in?”

  “Okay,” said Lanigan, “I’ll cover the desk.”

  He glanced over the blotter. “How come you didn’t log in the call?”

  “Why, it’s my wife, Chief. It’s a personal call.”

  “A citizen phones to say she’s locked out of her house and I dispatch a sergeant to help her. That’s regular business. Every call has to be recorded, you know that. All right, get going.”

  Lanigan shook his head as he logged in the call. “Are you planning to go to see Mrs. Fine, David?”

  The question caught the rabbi unprepared. “Why would I do that?” he asked.

  Lanigan regarded him with interest. “Well, you saw her husband in jail, didn’t you? All I know is if it was one of ours, the priest would go as a matter of course.”

  “But I’m not a priest. I don’t have that sort of relationship with the people in my congregation. Besides,” he said, “I had some trouble with her a while back.”

  “Oh?” said Lanigan.

  “It was nothing serious,” said the rabbi.

  Driving home, he was far from convinced that he should see Mrs. Fine. For all he knew she was not even at home, she probably had gone back to her parents, and he certainly had no desire to face Mr. and Mrs. Chernow as well.

  But he had to pass the Fine house and when he saw a light on he stopped.

  Edie Fine opened to his ring. “Oh, it’s you, Rabbi,” she said, obviously surprised. “I—I was just on my way to my folks—”

  “May I come in?”

  “Well, all right, but I don’t have too much time. I’m due there for dinner.” She led the way into the living room. “I suppose you want to tell me you had nothing to do with Roger being—I mean, that business Friday night, I didn’t put them up to it, you know.”

  “It’s quite all right, Mrs. Fine. As a matter of fact, I saw your husband this morning. I found him not at all depressed.”

  “Well, I’m glad to hear that. Of course, I know it’s all a horrid mistake, and it could happen to anyone, but it makes you wonder.”

  “What does it make you wonder, Mrs. Fine?”

  “Why, about all sorts of things. Whether there’s any justice in the world. About the police and the law courts and—if it pays to be decent—”

  “Mrs. Fine!” He spoke sharply. “I am pleased to say that your husband appears to be bearing up well under this ordeal. I suppose that’s because he is certain of his innocence. When I see him again, I should like to tell him you are bearing up well, too.”

  She stared at him, and then understanding came to her. She said in a quiet, controlled voice, “Yes, you tell him that. Thank you.”

  When he arrived home, instead of giving Miriam his usual, matter-of-fact, husbandly peck, he embraced her, kissing her on the lips with considerable authority.

  “Well,” she said in surprise, “what brought this on?”

  “I have had a very unpleasant day,” he said, “but I learned that I love you very much.”

  “Well, if you learned that, you must tell me about it.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Then at least let me fix you a drink.”

  “No, but I’d like a cup of coffee.”

  “So would I.” And she went inside to put on the pot.

  He unlaced his shoes and kicked them off. Then, punching a pillow into place, he stretched out on the divan. But the phone rang and he went to answer. It was the assistant district attorney.

  “Yes, Mr. Ames. What can I do for you?”

  “Sergeant Schroeder has just been to see me. He’s quite annoyed with you. And I’m not sure that I’m entirely pleased with you myself.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” said the rabbi. “Is it his feeling in general or is it something he thinks I did?”

  Ames chuckled appreciatively. “He’d like me to order you picked up as a material witness. It’s what you would probably call a sin of omission. A Kathy Dunlop came to see you with information bearing on this case. He thinks you should have reported it to the police.”

  “I see. So she went to you people with her story.”

  “She did.”

  “Well,” said the rabbi, “I thought about it and decided that her uncorroborated story would not be of much use to the police, whereas reporting it might very seriously affect a matter in which I have some responsibility. I balanced one against the other and decided not to report it for a while.”

  “Indeed? And what matter is that, Rabbi?”

  “The relationship between Mr. and Mrs. Fine. I performed the marriage, you know.”

  “You were afraid Schroeder might go see Mrs. Fine?” There was a pause. “All right, Rabbi, I’ll buy that. Now how about your little trip to the Excelsior? That is purely police business.”

  “I can justify that, too.”

  “Save it, Rabbi. Why don’t you join me after your class tomorrow morning in Hendryx’s apartment. You can tell me all about it there. And Rabbi,” he said, “it better be good.”

  He hung up as Miriam came into the room with a tray. “More trouble?” she asked in concern.

  “Nothing serious. And nothing I have to worry about until tomorrow. Tonight I’m looking forward to a quiet evening at home.”

  She heard a car and went to the window.

  “Oh, David, the police cruising car has just pulled into our driveway.”

  Sure enough, there was a peremptory knock on the door and Miriam went to answer. The policeman tipped his hat and said, “How do you do, Mrs. Small. I brought you your tickets to the Policeman’s Ball.”

  “You deliver them in person now?” asked the rabbi.

  “The chief thought it might be good for public relations. You know, get to know the people. We’ve got quite a program in public relations going down at the station.”

  “Well, I think that’s a wonderful idea,” said Miriam. “Why not do a good job of it and come in and have a cup of coffee?”

  “That’s very nice of you, Mrs. Small, but my partner is outside.”

  “Well, bring him in, too.”

  “It’s the latest wrinkle in police work,” said the first officer, as he and
his partner sat on the edge of their chairs, gingerly balancing coffee cups on their knees. “Public relations. It’s all on account of these young people that go around calling the police pigs and other things. Then when you have to arrest one of them, they accuse you of police brutality. So the purpose of our campaign is to get the public to back their police, to know them. I suppose it makes sense, but personally I feel that the ones who aren’t looking for trouble already know the police are there to protect them; the others are just sore because we try to prevent them from doing mischief.”

  “Is that your view, too?” asked Miriam of the other officer.

  “Well, things might be different in the city, ma’am. But here in Barnard’s Crossing everybody knows everyone on the force. So to me this public relations is like extra duty.”

  “That you’d just as soon do without, eh?” asked the rabbi.

  “Oh, I don’t mind,” he said quickly. “We volunteered. It’s nice meeting people like this, having a cup of coffee and chatting, not in the way of business you might say.”

  “Maybe they ought to try the same thing in the city,” Miriam suggested.

  The policeman shook his head. “It wouldn’t work there. You take these young people, well, here we know all of them. I’ve umpired games for them when they were in Little League and Joe here has been coach and manager of a team for years. They call us by our first names. But in the city, they don’t know the police and the police don’t know them. The same ones that are so nice to us here, when they get into the city they can become a bunch of raving maniacs when they come up against the police.” He turned to his partner. “Remember how they carried on the day we had to drive Miss Hanbury back to college?”

  “Yeah, the day the place was bombed. They were pretty hot, I can tell you.”

  “You drove back Dean Hanbury after the bombing?” asked the rabbi. “Why was that?”

  “Well, she’d just got home,” said Joe, “and phoned us to say she’d found one of her windows open. Lots of times people leave them open and then forget, so when they get home they call the police on account they think somebody might have broken in.” He turned to Miriam. “Now don’t let that keep you from calling us any time you think there’s anything wrong, Mrs. Small. We don’t mind. We’re only too happy if it turns out you did it yourself and forgot. Well, anyway, we went right out to Miss Hanbury’s house and I looked around, for footprints, maybe a mark of a jimmy on the sash, but I couldn’t find anything.”

  “And while he was looking,” his colleague continued, “a call came through on the radio about the explosion at the college. They wanted Miss Hanbury right back in Boston, and since she’d just driven out we offered to take her. And when we got to the school, there was this crowd of kids hanging around, ragging the officers who were guarding the building. They were jeering at them and laughing, even though the police were just doing their duty. Now if something like that happened here, we’d know every one of them and make a point of talking to their parents.”

  When they left, Miriam set about preparing dinner. As she worked, she talked—about the children, about conversations she had had in the supermarket that morning, her voice raised so that it would carry from the kitchen. But the rabbi was unresponsive.

  When she finally came into the living room to tell him that dinner was ready, he said, “I don’t think I care for anything right now, Miriam.”

  “Is something wrong, David?”

  “No, I’m just not hungry. I—I’ve got some work to do.” And he got up and went to his study.

  Later, much later, he was still there, not reading, not working, but abstracted, gazing off into space. When she asked if he were coming to bed, he did not answer but just shook his head in momentary annoyance.

  CHAPTER

  FIFTY

  The morning traffic was heavier than usual and the rabbi did not find a parking spot until a few minutes after nine. By the time he reached his office, it was ten minutes past. He was quite certain that his students had already left, but he hurried nevertheless on the chance that a few might have waited. To his surprise, when he reached the classroom he found the normal complement of students.

  “There was a breakdown on the bridge,” he explained by way of apology, “and traffic was single lane all the way.”

  “Oh, that’s all right, Rabbi,” said Harvey Shacter magnanimously. “We voted to wait until a quarter past.”

  “That was very considerate of all of you,” said the rabbi. He smiled. “It shows perhaps you have begun to acquire the traditional Jewish attitude toward learning and study.”

  “You mean we got a special one?” asked Shacter.

  “Of course,” said his friend Luftig scornfully. “Get A’s and make honors or Phi Bete.”

  “No, Mr. Luftig, that’s not it,” said the rabbi. “Quite the contrary, in fact. The rabbis held that learning should not be used as a spade to dig with, by which they meant that it should not be put to practical or material use. Learning and study are with us a religious duty, and hence not competitive. A’s, honors, Phi Beta Kappa—these are the rewards of competition.”

  “So if you’re not going to get any practical benefit, what’s the sense?” asked Shacter.

  “Because the desire for knowledge, knowledge for its own sake, is what distinguishes man from the lower animals. All animals have an interest in practical knowledge—where the best food supplies may be found, the best places to hide or bed down—but only man goes to the trouble of trying to learn something merely because he does not as yet know it. The mind of man yearns for knowledge as the body yearns for food. And that learning is for himself alone, just as is the food he eats.”

  “So you mean it’s not kosher if a guy studies to be a doctor or a lawyer?” asked Shacter.

  “He means he’s not supposed to get money for it,” said Mazelman.

  “No, Mr. Mazelman, that’s not what I mean. The learning one acquires to become a doctor or a lawyer, or a carpenter or a plumber for that matter, is of a different kind. It is practical learning for the purpose of society. And we favor that kind of learning, too. There is also a rabbinical saying that a father who does not teach his son a trade is making a thief of him. So you see, there are two kinds of learning: one for yourself and the one for society.”

  “What a doctor or a lawyer learns, isn’t that for himself?” asked Lillian Dushkin.

  “It feeds his mind, to be sure; everything one learns does that. But primarily he is training himself to serve society. A doctor does not learn about all kinds of sicknesses just to cure himself. Certain branches of medicine don’t apply to himself at all, such as obstetrics—”

  “They apply to women doctors.”

  “You’re quite right, Ms. Draper,” acknowledged the rabbi.

  Luftig was struck by a thought. “If there are two kinds of learning, shouldn’t there be two kinds of teaching, too?”

  The rabbi considered this. “That’s a good point, Mr. Luftig. Professional study should be relevant. I don’t see any sense in teaching medieval church law to the law student or the humours theory of disease to a medical student.”

  “Shouldn’t all study be relevant?” asked Luftig.

  “Why? Why should that matter in liberal arts study? There, anything that interests you—and it could be medieval church law or Latin epigraphy for that matter—is worth studying. Or to put it another way, in liberal arts study everything is relevant.”

  “Then how do you justify quizzes?” asked Mark Leventhal. “Aren’t you breaking your own rules by giving us grades?”

  “Yes, I suppose I am. But I have to follow the regulations of the school.”

  “What would you do if you had your way?” Leventhal persisted.

  The rabbi thought a moment. “Well, since you receive credit toward an earned degree, I’d have to distinguish between those who made a proper effort and those who didn’t. So I’d just have two marks—pass and fail. And I’d try to devise an examination that would indi
cate interest rather than just information.”

  “How could you do that?”

  “I don’t know offhand. I suppose you might have the choice of answering all the questions, or just a few, or even one at great length.”

  “Hey, that’s a good idea.”

  “Right on. Why don’t we do it that way?”

  “Maybe the other teachers—”

  “Hey Rabbi, you going to teach next semester, too?”

  It was one of numerous questions, but the class fell silent after Shacter asked it, as though it had been in all their minds.

  “I have not arranged to,” said the rabbi.

  “Maybe you could teach full-time,” said Lillian Dushkin.

  He realized that the questions indicated their approval of him as a teacher, and it was pleasant to hear. “Why would I want to do that, Miss Dushkin?” he asked.

  “Well, it must be a lot easier than rabbi-ing.”

  “Yeah, but you make less,” Shacter pointed out.

  “Aw, he wouldn’t care about that,” Luftig countered.

  “A rabbi is a teacher anyway,” Leventhal pointed out. “That’s what the word means.”

  It crossed his mind that earlier in the year he would have considered this free discussion of his future career impertinent, but he had come a long way since his first week of teaching. “You’re quite right, Mr. Leventhal,” he said. “And you’re right, too, Miss Dushkin, teaching is easier. But I intend to go on being a rabbi and ministering to a congregation.” He looked out the window at the apartment across the street and saw what he assumed were plainclothesmen moving purposefully between the Hendryx apartment and a car parked in front of the building. He turned to the class once again and smiling wryly, he said, “As for teaching next semester, I’m not sure I’ll even be able to finish this one.”

  Later, when the class was over and he was returning to his office, Mark Leventhal fell in step beside him. “You know, Rabbi, my folks want me to go to Cincinnati when I get through here. They’d like for me to become a rabbi.”

  “Is that so? And you, how do you feel about it?”

  “Well, I was planning to go to graduate school and then get a job teaching at some college.”