Dan Cohen smiled broadly. “It was okay. You know, a kind of change of pace. All this prayer and meditation they go in for, well, that was all right, too. After a while, you kind of get into the spirit of the thing and it’s kind of relaxing.”
“Relaxing?” Muntz asked. “Is that all? According to Chet Kaplan—he said he bumped into you after you got back—you were practically euphoric.”
“Oh, that!” Dr. Cohen chuckled. “Yeah, I guess I was. You see, this Kestler business had got me down, even though I was sure I had given the old man the right medication. Still, I was worried because, well, because Kestler is Kestler. And also because of the way you guys reacted about his suing me. As a matter of fact, that’s why I decided to go on this retreat. I’m not religious, but I thought it would be a good excuse to get away from it all. Well, I’d just come home, and I get this call from Chief Lanigan.”
He went on to tell of his meeting with Lanigan and finished with, “So it was right after that I saw Kaplan, and he asks me how I enjoyed the weekend. Well, naturally, I was feeling pretty good.”
“Then Kestler didn’t get the medication you prescribed?” Muntz asked.
“No, he got a pencillin tablet instead.”
“And he was sensitive to penicillin?”
“Uh-huh. That’s why I prescribed Limpidine.”
“So he probably did get a reaction, and it could easily account for his death,” said Kantrovitz.
“Yeah, but it was not from Dan’s prescription,” Muntz pointed out.
“So what did you do about it?” demanded Kantrovitz.
“Naturally, I was going to see Aptaker and have it out with him, but Lanigan said since the police were involved, he wanted to check it out first, so I didn’t do anything. I expected he’d get on it right away. But when I didn’t hear from him, I thought I’d stop by the drugstore on my way home yesterday—”
“And?”
“And nothing,” Cohen said. “When I got there, Aptaker was having a heart attack, so I rushed him to the hospital.”
“Aptaker is in the hospital with a heart attack?”
“That’s right. He’s my patient now. I certainly can’t say anything to him now. It would kill him. Set him back anyway.”
“But look here, you’ve got to do something about it,” Muntz said. “You can’t let Kestler go on shooting off his mouth about you, not when you’ve got the perfect answer. It won’t do your practice any good, and it won’t help the rest of us either.”
“Do you know what you’ve got to do?” Kantrovitz said solemnly. “You’ve got to take yourself out of this case. You tell Aptaker you feel he ought to have a regular heart man, that you don’t feel—”
“Competent?” asked Cohen. “Believe me, if I thought that, I’d turn him over to a cardiologist right away. But there have been no complications. I’ve got him on a low-fat, high-protein diet. I’m watching his daily EKG’s and enzyme tests and—”
“I don’t mean that you can’t handle it,” Kantrovitz said. “I mean that you could tell him that so you can get out from under. Then he’s no longer your patient and you’re free to act.”
Cohen shook his head stubbornly. “Even if he were no longer my patient, I couldn’t do it. If you took him over, Ed,” he challenged, “would you let me tell him he’d made a mistake on a prescription and someone had died from it?”
“No, but—”
“So what do you intend to do?” Muntz asked.
“I don’t know. Just sweat it out, I guess.”
Al Muntz leaned back in his chair and thrust his hands into his trouser pockets. He shook his head slowly in a kind of wonderment. “You know what, Dan? You’ve done it again.”
“Done what?”
“Got yourself a patient that you’re emotionally involved with.”
But later, when he was alone with Kantrovitz, Muntz said, “You know, Ed, he’s a damn fool but I can’t help admiring Dan. Here he is, taking a chance on wrecking his practice to avoid hurting one of his patients. Maybe that’s been his trouble all along. He believes all that stuff med school deans dish out at commencement.”
“But look here, if you were in Dan’s position, would you tell Aptaker?”
“Of course not,” Muntz said, “but I wouldn’t have let myself get in that position in the first place.”
31
Mrs. Aptaker entered the rabbi’s study and sat down gingerly. She looked about her at the walls lined with large leather-bound books, two of which were lying open on the desk.
“I hope I’m not interrupting your work,” she said.
The rabbi smiled. “Not at all, Mrs. Aptaker.” He motioned at the books on his desk. “This goes on all the time. It can wait. And how is Mr. Aptaker?”
“All right, I guess.”
“And your son? What do you hear from him?”
“Arnold? You know him? He’s coming home. I called him when his father got sick. He said he’d come just as soon as he winds up things in Philadelphia. It could be a matter of months before my husband gets back on his feet, so Arnold has to make arrangements.”
“Of course.”
“Because even if we have to sell the store, we should have someone here from the family that knows about these things, about things in a drugstore.”
“Maybe he’ll decide to stay for good,” the rabbi suggested.
She sighed. “I don’t know. Arnold didn’t get along so good with his father, especially in the store. Maybe like two women can’t work in the same kitchen, so two men, a father and a son, they can’t get along in the same business.”
“And how are you managing?”
“Well, Ross—that’s McLane, the other pharmacist, he’s very cooperative, but he’d like me to get another pharmacist to help out. But then when Arnold comes, we wouldn’t need him.”
Rose Aptaker placed the cardboard folder she had brought with her on the desk and said, “These are the letters my husband said I should show you. I looked through them before coming here. I never saw them before. My husband, you understand, he didn’t like to bother me with business matters. Maybe he thought I might worry. There’s a letter here that my husband wrote to your temple, a copy I mean, asking to renew his lease. It was sent out more than a month ago, and there was no answer until—until a couple of days ago, telling him he should ask Mr. Safferstein. That was the day my husband got his heart attack, Rabbi. Is that the way a temple should act? Not answer his letter and then finally send him a letter he should get a heart attack? That’s religion?”
“I know nothing about it, Mrs. Aptaker, but if you’ll give me a chance to read it—”
“Sure, read. But I got to get back to the store.”
“If you could leave it with me—”
“Why not?” She rose to go and then changed her mind and sat down. “When I went to see my husband at the hospital this afternoon, he seemed to have a little more spirit, somehow. He was even a little excited. I think maybe it was because of your visit, something you may have said.” She looked at him questioningly, and when he offered no comment, she went on, “So what I wanted to say, Rabbi, is that when you read over these letters and you see it’s hopeless, it would be better if you didn’t tell him right away. I mean it could wait a little while until he got stronger.”
“I said nothing to your husband, Mrs. Aptaker, only that I should like to see the correspondence he had on the lease. If he jumped to the conclusion that I could do something—”
“What difference does it make?” she demanded fiercely. “If he’s kidding himself, at least he’s getting stronger on it.”
“But he’ll have to face it sooner or later,” the rabbi insisted.
“So better later than sooner.” She made as if to rise and then thought better of it. “I don’t know if you can understand what the store means to my husband. It’s not just a living; it’s like an institution to him, like a college or a bank. If he should sell it now, even at a good price, his whole life would be like a fail
ure. Sure, we made a comfortable living, but if he sells the store, then he’ll be balancing the accounts in his mind and he’ll see that for all the time he spent there, he was working at clerk’s wages. But if he can pass it on to Arnold, then it’s in the family and it’s still his and it doesn’t make any difference how many hours a week he puts in. You know we got customers who moved to Florida ten and fifteen years ago and we still send them refills on their prescriptions.”
“I think I understand, Mrs. Aptaker,” the rabbi said kindly. He accompanied her to the door just as Miriam, who had been out shopping, arrived home. He introduced the two women.
“I hope your husband is feeling better,” said Miriam.
Rose Aptaker shrugged her shoulders and smiled sadly.
Later, as Miriam went about preparing the evening meal, she asked, “Can you do something for them, David? She looked so unhappy.”
Her husband, lounging in the kitchen doorway, shook his head. “I doubt it. Not being a member of the temple, Aptaker has an exaggerated idea of the power and authority of a rabbi. I’m afraid he’s caught in one of those situations, which probably happens quite often in business, where he suffers a sizable financial loss through nobody’s fault. And yet …”
“What is it?”
“It’s funny that Kaplan didn’t mention receiving Aptaker’s request for a renewal on his lease. He had it for some time. I’m sure he never raised the matter at any board meeting.”
“It is curious. Can you make anything of it?”
“Well, at least I can call Kaplan and ask how it happened.” The rabbi went to the phone. “He should be home about now.”
“What can I do for you, Rabbi?” Kaplan asked jovially when the connection was made.
“I was talking to Marcus Aptaker, the druggist in the Goralsky Block. You may have heard that he’s in the hospital now with a heart attack. He tells me that he wrote to the temple asking for a renewal of his lease. I wonder why you didn’t mention it at any of the board meetings.”
“Because it was a minor administrative matter, Rabbi. I didn’t say anything for the same reason that I didn’t mention the minor repair that I had made to the roof above the tailor shop. If I brought up for discussion every little item that came to my attention and that I acted on, we’d never finish.”
“It was no minor matter to Aptaker, and I intend to bring it up at the meeting.”
“Ah, Rabbi, you’re sore because I put one over on you.”
“You railroaded through the sale of the Goralsky Block. I’m going to move for reconsideration.”
“What? Because I didn’t happen to mention Aptaker’s letter to the board?” Kaplan was incredulous.
“For that, and because it has always been the practice on important matters, especially where they involve large sums of money, to hold over the final vote on a motion for at least a week.”
“You know, Rabbi, I never considered you a sore loser. You go right ahead and make a motion to reconsider. All that will happen will be that I’ll beat you again.”
Thinking it over, however, Kaplan decided he ought to alert Safferstein to the rabbi’s intention. He called and told him of the conversation he had just had.
“What does it mean, Chet?”
“Not a thing, Billy, believe me. I’ve got a real solid majority. I could even defeat him on the motion to reconsider.”
32
The next day Rabbi Small was driving along Route 128, that linear suburb of research laboratories, electronics firms and automated industrial plants. As he passed Goraltronics, Incorporated, he was suddenly struck by an idea. Forgetting his reason for being on Route 128 in the first place—that he was on his way to the monthly meeting of the Greater Boston Rabbinic Council—he took the next exit and made his way back to the plant.
Unused to the ways of large corporations, he listened patiently as Ben Goralsky’s secretary explained that he was busy and would be occupied for the rest of the week; that he would not be available for the following week either since he was going out of town; that if Rabbi Small would tell her the nature of his business she would see about the possibility of arranging an appointment some time during the week after that.
“Can’t you just tell him I’m here now?” he asked plaintively.
Her smile at his naiveté was answer enough, and he was about to turn away when Ben Goralsky came striding out of the office and saw him.
“Rabbi Small, what are you doing here? Come in.” And much to the chagrin of his secretary, he put a burly arm around the rabbi’s narrow shoulders and steered him into his private office. Ben Goralsky was a big man with a large nose and knobby cheekbones. Though he was in his midfifties, his thick black hair showed no touch of gray, even at the temples. Seated behind his desk, he beamed affectionately at his visitor.
“Tell me what I can do for you, Rabbi.”
“Well, I wanted some information about the property your father willed to the temple.”
“Oh sure, what do you want to know? I see where Bill Safferstein finally got it.”
“The board voted—” the rabbi broke off as he got the implication of Goralsky’s remark. “You mean he tried to buy it from you?”
“That’s right, from my father. He told Billy it wasn’t for sale.”
The rabbi smiled knowingly. “So as not to appear eager?”
Ben Goralsky looked at him sharply. “Why no. My father really didn’t want to sell.” He canted his head and considered. Then he laughed shortly. “Maybe that’s why Safferstein came to me—because he thought my father was just being cozy.”
“And what did you tell him?”
“Oh, I said I’d talk to my father about it. I gave him a statement on the property—you know, income, expenses, what it’s assessed for, lease obligations, the usual. On the basis of that, he made an offer a couple of days later. It was a very good offer, so I spoke to my father about it.” He shook his head. “He said he didn’t care to sell.”
“Why not, if the offer was a good one?” the rabbi asked.
“Well, at the time I thought it was because my father didn’t like to sell land. You see, we’d bought that property years ago because we had thought of building our plant there. It was right on the Salem Road with easy access for cars and trucks, but then Route One Twenty-eight opened up, and this was a better deal. In all that time, I couldn’t get my father to sell the Salem Road property. But now I’m inclined to think he didn’t want to sell to Safferstein because he was planning to give it to the temple.”
“But couldn’t he have sold the property and then given the money to the temple?” the rabbi asked.
Ben Goralsky chuckled. “And pay a capital-gains tax on the sale? Oh no, my father was too good a businessman for that.”
“You say it was a very good offer. Why do you suppose Safferstein was so anxious to get that property?”
Goralsky shook his head. “I don’t know. There’s talk of a big apartment complex for senior citizens going up on the Salem side. That would improve the block some, but not that much.”
“And can you think of why Safferstein would offer to buy the drugstore?”
“Aptaker’s? He did? Hm, now that begins to make sense.”
“It does?” the rabbi asked.
“Sure,” said Ben Goralsky. “It means he’s planning to tear down the block. It’s the land he wants, but I’ll be damned if I see why. There’s plenty of vacant land around there.”
“I’m afraid I don’t follow.”
“Look, Rabbi, the drugstore has a lease, and a lease is binding on all succeeding owners. If Safferstein’s going to tear the place down, he has to have it free of encumbrances. Any idea what he offered for the store?”
“Only that Aptaker said it was a good price. He said Safferstein wanted it for his brother-in-law.”
Goralsky laughed.
“I take it you consider the brother-in-law a figment of his imagination,” the rabbi said.
Goralsky shrugged. “
What else? He had to have some reason for buying a pharmacy.”
“How about the leases on the other stores? Wouldn’t he have to buy those, too?”
“The other stores were tenants at will,” Goralsky explained. “Only the drugstore had a lease. The old lease was about to expire, and Aptaker wrote to my father and he renewed it on the same terms, ten years. I thought it was a mistake tying ourselves up for that length of time—”
“But the tenant is equally bound, isn’t he?”
“Not really, Rabbi. If the tenant is a large corporation or an individual of solid financial status, then sure, he’s bound as much as we are. But if it’s a small man, what can we do? Suppose the drugstore decided to go out of business tomorrow, would we sue him? Or would the temple—because the lease is binding on any subsequent owner—sue him for ten years’ rent?”
“I see.”
“But I didn’t like to argue with my father about it. Toward the end he was pretty weak.”
“Yes, I remember,” the rabbi said. “When I’d come to see him—”
“Ah, but that was in the afternoon or the evening, Rabbi. In the morning he was apt to be pretty lively. Of course, that’s when he’d conduct his business.”
“You mean he actually was engaged in business even then, after he took to his bed?”
“Oh yes,” Goralsky said proudly. “He’d dictate letters and instructions every morning until almost noon. He did that right up to a few days before his death.”
“You mean he had a secretary at the house?”
Goralsky chuckled. “I guess she thought of herself as his secretary. Actually, she’s one of the girls from our stenographic pool. I’d send her out to the house every morning, and even if my father didn’t have any business, she was someone to talk to—Alice Fedderman. Her father is a member of the temple. Would you like to talk to her?”
“Why yes, if it’s all right.”
“Sure.” Goralsky spoke into the intercom. “Rabbi Small would like to talk to Alice Fedderman from the steno pool about my father. Would you have her go to the conference room. It’s free, isn’t it?”
Wednesday the Rabbi Got Wet Page 15
