Wednesday the Rabbi Got Wet

by Harry Kemelman

  “As long as you’re under my roof—”

  “Then Goddammit, I’ll get out from under your roof,” and he flung out of the room. He was back almost immediately with his suitcase in hand. He tossed the house key they had given him onto the coffee table. “There, I’m getting the hell out of here.” He started for the door.

  “Please, Arnold, please,” his mother begged. “Where are you going?”

  “Back to Philly. I shouldn’t have come.” He banged the door behind him.

  Unbelieving, Mrs. Aptaker stared at her husband, who glowered at the floor. “Oh, Mark, you shouldn’t—”

  “Let him go. Who needs him?”

  “No!” She pulled at the door and ran out onto the porch. She called to him, but he had already backed out of the driveway and was turning into the street.

  As Akiva drove through the night, he took on passengers: his mother first, with whom he was contrite. “I knew all along it wouldn’t work, Ma. That’s why I didn’t come back before. Dad is not a bad guy, but our chemistries don’t mix, our vibrations don’t harmonize. It’s not his fault and it’s not my fault; it’s just one of those things.”

  Then Reb Mendel, with whom he was inclined to be jocose. “I guess, Rebbe, this is one time the Insight was a bit faulty. A little grease on the telescope lens, perhaps?”

  And Leah, with whom he spoke seriously. “It’s probably for the best, dear. I’d be leaving in a few days anyway. Of course, if you were to come down to Philly, and get a job there, or even in Washington, where I could visit on a weekend—”

  His reverie was shattered by the unmistakable sound of a policeman’s whistle. Since his car was the only one on the road, he knew it applied to him. Resigned, he slowed down and stopped. In the rear-view mirror he watched the policeman dismount from his motorcycle and stroll leisurely toward him. He turned on the overhead light and began to fish through the glove compartment for his registration.

  The policeman bent down and glanced inside the car. “Hopping right along there, weren’t you, mister? You going to a fire?”

  “Look, officer, I’m driving down to Philly—say, you’re Purvis, aren’t you? Joe Purvis?”

  “Yeah. You know me?” The policeman peered at him. “You’re not—”

  “Arnold Aptaker.”

  “How about that? How are you? What’s with the whiskers?”

  “Oh, you know, just thought I’d try it. Saves on razor blades.”

  “How about that? You been in town? I didn’t see you around.”

  “Just visiting my folks for a couple of days. I live in Philly now. How long you been on the cops? I thought you were a carpenter.”

  “I was carpentering till a couple of years ago. Slim pickings during the winter, so I took the police exam. I still do some carpentering when I’m off duty, you know, for old customers.”

  “You got a brother, haven’t you?” Akiva asked, anxious to keep the conversation going on friendly lines.

  “Caleb? Yeah, he was a year behind us.”

  “I remember. He was in my English class. What’s he doing? He on the cops, too?”

  “Naw. He’s with the Courier, circulation manager. He writes to all the Crossers who’ve moved away, like to Florida, and asks them to subscribe so they can keep in touch with the town. Does pretty good, too.”

  Inspiration came to Akiva. “Say, that’s an idea.” He searched in the glove compartment and found pencil and paper. He scribbled his name and address and handed it to the policeman. From his wallet he drew a five-dollar bill. “Here’s five bucks. Give it to your brother and have him send me the paper.”

  “Well, gosh, why don’t you write him yourself and he’ll send you a form. I’m not sure how much it is.”

  “So when he sends me five bucks’ worth, he’ll send me a notice to renew. You know how it is, if I have to sit down and write a letter, I won’t get around to it.”

  “Well, all right.” The policeman folded the bill inside the address and inserted them into the sweatband of his cap. “Look, next time you come up this way, come see me. And say, take it easy for the next couple of miles. There’s branches down all along the road.”

  15

  Rabbi Small heard about Kestler’s death the next day at the morning minyan. Although shocked that the man he had visited only the night before had died, he was not too surprised. Kestler had been over eighty and each time he had been to see him, he had seemed weaker and more fragile.

  “You going to the funeral, Rabbi?” asked Chester Kaplan. “It’s over in Revere at half past ten. He was a member of Bnai Shalom.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, I suppose I’ll have to go. I’ve done some legal work for the Kestlers over the years.”

  “It’s a mitzvah to go,” the rabbi observed.

  Kaplan brightened. “Yeah, that’s right, it is.”

  When next he saw the rabbi at the evening minyan he reported on the event. “You should’ve been there, Rabbi. There was quite a crowd. I wouldn’t have thought he was that popular.” Kaplan laughed. “But when I overheard some of the remarks, I figured they had come to make sure he was dead.”

  The rabbi raised his eyebrows. “So?”

  “You know what he was, don’t you?”

  “Small-loans banker?”

  “He was a usurer. He lent money on high-risk items. He gave second and third mortgages, chattel loans, that sort of thing. His prime rate of interest was somewhere around twenty-five or thirty percent. But you should have heard the eulogy. This Rabbi Rogin who officiated went on and on about how Kestler had loaned money, ‘not to the financiers or the captains of industry, but to the poor and the humble.’ I suppose he asked the son about his father and then dressed it up.”

  The rabbi nodded sadly. “We used to eulogize only great men, but nowadays the family expect it and appreciate it even when they know better. And afterward they tend to think of him the way the rabbi eulogized him. Maybe it’s not a bad thing if it helps a son to think a little better of his father. Historians do the same for the statesmen and heroes they favor. And you lawyers, don’t you do the same thing when you make your pitch to a jury?”

  “Yeah, I guess we do,” Kaplan said. As Rabbi Small was about to turn away, Kaplan had another thought. “Say, Rabbi, you used to visit the old man. How did he look to you?”

  “What do you mean? He looked like a sick old man.”

  “Because afterward people went up to talk to Joe Kestler and offer him condolence. One woman, family I guess, went on about how surprised she’d been when she heard the news. She said when she last visited him he seemed so spry and alert. And Joe said he’d been getting along fine until he took this pill the doctor prescribed.”

  The rabbi looked sharply at Kaplan. “And what do you make of that?”

  Kaplan grinned. “Speaking as a lawyer, I’d say Joe Kestler was laying the groundwork for a malpractice suit.”

  16

  Although the telephone-repair crews worked through the night, it was not until he arrived at the clinic the next morning that Dr. Cohen heard from Dr. DiFrancesca that his patient had died.

  Cohen shook his head sadly. “Gee, that’s terrible. He was a sick old man, but I didn’t think he was in any danger of going. Maybe I should have had him come to the hospital.”

  “You can always second-guess yourself, Dan,” said Dr. DiFrancesca. He was blond and blue-eyed, with the build of a football tackle. Although only a couple of years older than Cohen, he had the easy, comfortable look of a man who had found his niche and was sure of himself. “He may have reacted to the medication,” he added. “That’s the way it looked to me.”

  “Really? Gee, I had him on the same medication some months ago, and he took it all right. What were the indications?”

  “Oh, the usual—inflammation, engorgement, evidence of difficulty in breathing. He could have developed a sensitivity, you know.”

  “There’s always that danger, isn’t there? How can you kno
w in advance? Way back, he showed a reaction to penicillin, so I switched him to tetracycline and it went all right.”

  “What did you use, Dan?”

  “Limpidine 250’s. Pierce and Proctor. Same as I gave him last night. I’ve had good luck with it.”

  “Well, I guess this time you didn’t.” DiFrancesca hesitated. “Er—the son was pretty upset and carried on quite a bit.”

  “I suppose that’s to be expected.”

  “No, I mean about the treatment, Dan. He claimed that his father was all right until he took the medication.”

  “He wasn’t all right, believe me. He was running a temperature and was in considerable distress.”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me,” DiFrancesca went on, “if he brought a malpractice suit.”

  “What makes you think so?” Cohen asked quickly.

  “Well, partly from just knowing the type. He’s the sort of guy who automatically looks around for someone to sue when anything happens.”

  Cohen nodded grimly. “I know what you mean. He comes by it honestly, though. He inherited it from his father.”

  “He kept insisting his father was all right until he took the pill you prescribed.”

  “If he was all right, why did he call me in? What did he need a doctor for?”

  “Of course, but—”

  “Look, John, the guy was eighty years old or more. He had a hundred and two temperature. He was having difficulty in urinating and when he passed he complained of a burning sensation. So it sounds like a bacterial infection. Right? It could have been viral, in which case the medication wouldn’t have done any good, but it wouldn’t have done any harm either. Now get this: he had much the same symptoms about six months back. I gave him the same medication, and it cleared up right away. So naturally, same person, same symptoms, I gave the same medication. It’s good conservative medicine. Ninety-nine doctors out of a hundred would have treated him the same way. Maybe they would have used some other tetracycline, but essentially they’re the same thing. So where’s the grounds for a malpractice suit?”

  “You don’t have to convince me, Dan. But you know how it is, he can always get some shyster to bring suit. I tried to talk to him, explained that with a man that age almost anything could happen, but that kind—” He shook his head. “That’s why I suggested that the police sergeant who came along with the ambulance should take charge of the pills, to make it part of the official record.”

  Cohen nodded. “That was good thinking. And if he does sue, well, that’s why we carry insurance.”

  DiFrancesca hesitated. “It could be a little stickier than that. For one thing, this Kestler is the sort of guy who shoots off his mouth. That could do you some damage.”

  “Yeah, I see what you mean.”

  “And Al Muntz is quite upset. Of course he called me at the house when he got home from Kaplan’s. He wanted all the details.”

  “How’s he concerned?”

  DiFrancesca was embarrassed. “He seems to feel that in a matter of this kind, the clinic could be hurt; that if there’s mud flying around, some of it could stick to the rest of us. As a matter of fact, Kestler accused me of trying to cover up for you because we were from the same office—you know, colleagues.”

  “That’s a crock, John,” Cohen said hotly. “How about the doctors at the hospital? They’re my colleagues, too. Are they affected?”

  “You know how it is, Dan. When you’ve worked yourself up to the kind of spread Al Muntz has on Beachcroft Road and you drive a Cadillac that you trade in every couple of years, you get awfully sensitive, maybe even a mite paranoid.”

  “Well, he has no cause,” Cohen said shortly. But he was worried.

  Both Muntz and Kantrovitz were at the hospital all morning, but they got back in time for lunch. The four doctors went out to eat together, but no one alluded to the case, neither on their way to the restaurant nor while they ate. However, when they were sipping their coffee, Muntz began. “About this Kestler business, Dan, John thinks there might have been an allergic reaction. What did you prescribe?”

  “Limpidine. 250’s. Four times a day for five days.”

  “Is that what it said on the bottle, John?” Kantrovitz asked.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “For infection of the urinary tract?” Kantrovitz considered and nodded. “Did you ask if he was sensitive to it?”

  “Aw, come on, Ed.”

  “Well, did you?”

  “No, I didn’t,” Cohen said. “I didn’t have to. I’d treated him with it some months before.”

  “Still, it’s always a good practice to ask, just for the record.”

  “I wasn’t interested in a record,” Cohen retorted. “I was just interested in taking care of my patient.”

  “No need to get hot about it, Dan,” said Muntz soothingly.

  “We’re just trying to help,” Kantrovitz chimed in.

  “Help how? The man is dead. Don’t tell me you haven’t ever lost a patient.”

  “Of course. That’s over and done with. We’re concerned about you now. According to John there’s a good chance of a malpractice suit.”

  “So I’m insured for it.”

  Muntz nodded. “Naturally. But John here feels that Kestler might do a lot of talking. In fact, Chet Kaplan was telling me he did a lot of yakking at the funeral.”

  “So?”

  “So that could be bad for all of us.”

  “How?”

  “Oh, you know, a lot of people have funny ideas of how a clinic works,” said Muntz vaguely.

  Ed Kantrovitz was a thin, serious man, who did not so much speak as make pronouncements. “Look at it this way, Dan,” he said. He pursed his lips while organizing his thoughts. “Somebody tells somebody that somebody died. The first thing that’s likely to be asked is who was his doctor. So suppose he says it was one of the men at the clinic. Now the person can go away thinking it might be Al or me, or John—”

  “Or me,” said Cohen. “And if they said it was one of the doctors from the hospital, it could be any one of a hundred doctors.”

  “Let’s not get too hypothetical,” Muntz suggested. “Right now we’re concerned about Kestler.”

  “Sa-a-y.” Kantrovitz snapped bony fingers. “Isn’t Kestler the guy you were telling me about a while back, Dan, the one who brought suit against you?”

  “Yeah, that’s right. When I put up my fence, he claimed part of it was on his land.”

  Dr. Muntz stared, his blue eyes protruding as though they would pop out of his head. “And you treated him?”

  “Well, he couldn’t get another doctor, and that was just business.”

  Dr. Muntz shook his head slowly from side to side. “You ought to know better than that, Dan.”

  “Well, what’s wrong—”

  “You don’t treat someone that you’re emotionally involved with,” Muntz said flatly.

  “You wouldn’t treat a member of your own family if they got sick, would you?” demanded Kantrovitz.

  “What’s wrong is that it doesn’t look good,” Muntz said. “Here’s a guy you got a right to feel sore at, and you give him a pill that maybe results in his death. What’s more, you don’t just give him a prescription. No, you call it in to make sure he gets it right away. Now that just doesn’t look good, not to the man in the street. And if there’s a trial, he’s the guy that’s going to be sitting on the jury.”

  “But the guy was sick, and I thought—I could help him,” said Dr. Cohen. “Could I just turn away—”

  “That’s exactly what you should have done,” Muntz interrupted. “He was not your responsibility. You should have told them to call the police and they would have sent an ambulance and taken him to the hospital.”

  “And if he’d got worse on the way, or even died—”

  “He wouldn’t have died. And if he had, it wouldn’t have been your fault.”

  They argued at length, keeping their voices low since they were in a public place, looking aroun
d every now and then to see if anyone was listening. And they got nowhere. Dr. Cohen insisted that it was his duty to treat anyone whom he had the knowledge and skill to help if they asked for his aid, and Muntz and Kantrovitz maintained with equal stubbornness that his first duty was to himself, that he had the right to refuse treatment if his own standing in the profession and community was thereby jeopardized. DiFrancesca remained silent for the most part, except when it looked as though the argument might become personal. Then he would shift uneasily in his seat and say, “Aw, fellers.”

  When they finally rose to return to the office, there was a distinct coolness in the manner of the two older men toward Cohen, and even a cool civility toward DiFrancesca for not having supported them.

  That evening, Mrs. Cohen found her husband unusually silent. She naturally attributed his unease to the death of his patient and wisely made no attempt to cheer him up. The next morning, however, when she noticed that his mood continued, she said, “Why don’t you go to that retreat this afternoon, Dan? It will do you good to get away for a couple of days.”

  “I don’t think I can. They leave early in the afternoon, and I’d have to postpone a couple of my patients.”

  “I’ll tell you what, put a bag in your car anyway. Then if you decide to go, you can just take off. Have Madeleine call me and say you’re not coming home.”

  17

  “Just happened to be passing and saw your car in the driveway, David.” It was Hugh Lanigan.

  “Come on in,” Rabbi Small said to the stocky man with the broad red face who was Barnard’s Crossing’s chief of police. The two men had been friendly from the first year of the rabbi’s incumbency, reason enough for the casual call. But from long experience, the rabbi had learned that there was usually some official reason for these visits, and he wondered what was in back of the police chief’s mind.

  “We were just having a cup of coffee,” said Miriam. “You’ll join us, won’t you? I’m taking a little breather from preparing for the Sabbath.”

  “Don’t mind if I do,” Lanigan replied. He set his uniform cap on the floor beside his chair and ran thick, stubby fingers through his hedge of short white hair.