Wednesday the Rabbi Got Wet

by Harry Kemelman

  “Yes, sir.” And a few seconds later: “She’ll be right down.”

  “I’ll have someone take you there, Rabbi.”

  She was waiting for him when he arrived, a slim girl of nineteen or twenty, heavily made up with eye shadow, liner and mascara. Her lips were coated with a kind of white glaze. She was wearing high platform shoes and a very short skirt so that her crossed legs exposed considerable thigh. Rabbi Small had a vague recollection of having seen her at various young people’s functions at the temple, but then perhaps not—they all looked so much alike.

  “Hello, Rabbi. They said you wanted to talk to me about old Mr. Goralsky so I took along the notebook I used when I went to see him.”

  “I was interested in a letter he wrote to Mr. Aptaker who has the drugstore—”

  “Oh yes, about the lease.” She smiled. “I remember that very well.”

  “Is that so? Any particular reason?” the rabbi asked.

  “Well, it was just a little before—that is, toward the end, for one thing. But this letter I had to do a couple of times. It was like this.” She leaned forward confidentially. “He didn’t talk so good, I mean grammarwise. So he’d tell me what he wanted to say, and I’d like reword it in a business letter.”

  “I understand.”

  “We got this letter from Mr. Aptaker asking if he could have his lease renewed. So Mr. Goralsky said since he was a good tenant, he’d give him the same lease he had before without any increase in rental. So I wrote the usual business letter. You know, ‘In reply to your letter of the twentieth, I am instructing our attorneys to draw up a lease on the same terms as the present one. When you receive the forms, please sign both copies and return them to me for my signature.’ The usual. But when I typed the letter and gave it to him to sign, he was kind of put out about the way I’d written it. I guess he was having one of his bad days. He said”—and she mimicked his heavily accented English—“‘I want you should tell him because he was a good tenant and never caused me any damage to my property and always paid his rent on time and kept up the property, I’m giving him the same lease like before and not raising him the rent.’” She favored the rabbi with a self-satisfied wink. “I took it down just the way he said it. I was going to write it that way, too, because I was kind of annoyed with him. He was a nice man, but he could also be, you know, like gross.”

  “Gross? Mr. Goralsky?”

  “Well, you know, like picky—picky. But by the time I got back to the office, I’d cooled down; so I fixed it up a little, but I still put in about how he was a good tenant and all. He liked it, so that’s the way we sent it out.”

  “Mr. Aptaker wrote back—”

  Alice Fedderman shook her head. “I wouldn’t know anything about that. I only went there a couple of days more. See?” Between thumb and forefinger she held up a couple of pages of her notebook to show how little had been written. “I was told Mr. Goralsky had taken a turn for the worse and wasn’t up to giving dictation.”

  “You’re sure no other girl was sent out?”

  “Oh no. He liked me. And I liked him.”

  “Even though he was gross?” the rabbi asked with a smile.

  “Oh, you know. I didn’t mean gross like gross. I mean he was like nervous, maybe because he was so old.”

  Rabbi Small thanked her and refused her offer to escort him back to the office. “I’m sure I can find my way back,” he said.

  He merely wanted to thank Ben Goralsky for his consideration, but after they shook hands and the rabbi had turned to go, he thought of something. “You said the lawyers went out to see your father about his will. Was that because he was confined to his bed?”

  “That’s right, Rabbi. It was just three weeks, maybe a month, before he died.” His face grew somber and reflective as he added, “I guess he knew then he was going to die.” He extended his hand again, “Well, good-bye, Rabbi. I hope we’ve been helpful.”

  The rabbi smiled. “You have, Mr. Goralsky. Believe me, you have.”

  33

  Lt. Eban Jennings sat down heavily, pulled out the lower drawer of Lanigan’s desk and then, leaning back in his chair, raised his legs to rest his heels on the edge of the drawer.

  “Make yourself at home,” said Lanigan.

  Jennings ignored the sarcasm and focused watery blue eyes on his chief as he declared solemnly, “McLane had a drugstore in Revere, and Kestler, the old man, had a chattel mortgage on it.”

  “So?”

  “So he lost the store when Kestler foreclosed,” said Jennings.

  “Mm—interesting.”

  “Yeah.” The lieutenant waited for Lanigan to digest the information. “I’ve heard it both ways,” Jennings went on blandly. “Some of those I talked to, women mostly, said he would have lost his business anyway. That after his wife died, McLane kept a dirty store and was nasty to customers. His wife was in the store with him, and I suppose she’d be the one who would be tidying up all the time. Then when she died—”

  “Sure.”

  “And he was always having trouble with the people he hired. I talked to one of them, a pharmacist working for the new owner. He said he was a hard man to work for, grouchy and what you might call inconsiderate.”

  “What kind of store is it?” the chief asked.

  “It’s a small neighborhood store. My guess is that his real trouble began when the big cut-rate store opened half a dozen blocks away. If he’d been popular with the customers, they wouldn’t have changed to the new store, especially where his was handier.”

  “Don’t you believe it, Eban. People will go quite a distance to save a few pennies. And then criticize the old place to justify their disloyalty,” he added reflectively.

  “Yeah, could be,” Jennings agreed. “That was pretty much the point of view of the grocer next door. Of course, he’s suffering from some new supermarket competition himself. According to him, McLane kind of let go when his wife died, but he was sure he’d have snapped out of it in time. But”—he lowered his feet to the floor and sat upright to give additional emphasis to what he was going to say—“Jake Kestler called his loan and pushed him to the wall. Now that was about a year ago.”

  Lanigan sat silent, his fingers drumming nervously on the arm of his chair as he digested the implications of his lieutenant’s report. Jennings broke the silence. “Look, Hugh, why don’t I bring in McLane for questioning?”

  Lanigan did not answer immediately. He tilted back in his chair and gazed up at the ceiling. Jennings’ eyes were focused on him expectantly, his prominent Adam’s apple hobbling in his scrawny neck. Finally, Lanigan spoke, his face still turned upward. “Maybe it was a mistake sending you to the FBI school and assigning you last year to that course in Boston. You’ve taken on big-city ways, Eban, and big-city attitudes. Something like this, if it had happened in Boston, I suppose they would immediately have brought Aptaker in for questioning. A couple of cops would have gone down to his store and taken him into custody right then and there. If there were customers in the store, too bad. If he was alone at the time, he’d have to close up for the day. And then, after they questioned him, if they found they couldn’t charge him, they’d let him go. Maybe they’d say they were sorry. And the poor bugger would go back to his store, happy that he’d been cleared.”

  He sat up straight and looked directly at Jennings. “But then he’d find out that he didn’t have a store anymore. Word would have got around. Dammit, it’s a drugstore. If there was the slightest suspicion that he might have made a mistake on a prescription, who’d bring in one to be filled? But this is a small town, Eban. The people here are our friends and neighbors. What’s more, they vote our salaries every year at the town meeting. We can’t take a chance hurting the innocent while chasing after the guilty.”

  “But you said yourself you were going to talk to Marcus Aptaker.”

  “Sure, but I wouldn’t have had him picked up and brought here. I planned to drop in on him when no one was around. We would have a f
riendly conversation and I would explain the situation to him. Then if he made an admission, I’d charge him. Or if he didn’t, if he couldn’t come up with an explanation, then I’d check the whole thing through first and make sure I had an iron-clad case before I’d go ahead. I wouldn’t be afraid he’d leave town.”

  “Well, McLane—”

  “McLane is different,” the chief interrupted.

  “Why?”

  “Because he just works there,” Lanigan said. “It’s not his store. It’s no skin off his nose if the store is ruined. He just gets a job someplace else. And if I were to have McLane brought in, or even if I went down there and spoke to him, even if he were cleared, he’d talk. He’d complain about dumb cops every chance he got. And that’s the difference: because Marcus wouldn’t talk, knowing it would hurt his business. And he knows me well enough to know that I wouldn’t talk.”

  “So what are you going to do?” Jennings asked.

  “Oh, I’ll manage to see McLane, but I’ll try to arrange it so that it’s accidental-like,” Lanigan replied. “In the meantime, I want you to go back to Revere and get whatever you can on McLane. Trace him back to his baptism. And the Kestlers, too. See Captain O’Day—”

  “He’s retired.”

  “I know,” Lanigan said, “but he still hangs around headquarters and he can get a lot that you couldn’t. As an out-of-town cop, all they’ll give you is official stuff. With him in your corner they’ll open up. Because I want everything—rumors, gossip, the works. I’ll work this end. I’ll see Safferstein—”

  “Why him?” Jennings asked.

  “Because he got the pills from the drugstore, and I want to check the movement of those pills right back to when they were put up.”

  “But look, Hugh, you start asking him questions about the pills and he’ll start wondering about Aptaker’s. What’s to keep him from talking?”

  “You’re right. I’ll have to play it cozy. I’ll have to figure out some reason for seeing him, something that has no connection with the drugstore.”

  34

  “Is it that time of year again, Chief?” Safferstein asked, smiling as he reached for his checkbook.

  Lanigan looked puzzled. Then he remembered the last time he had come to Safferstein’s office. “You mean the Policeman’s Ball? Oh, we won’t be around selling tickets for weeks yet. No, this is a matter of personal business.”

  “Let me guess. Your wife is tired of taking care of a big house where there are only two of you now, and she wants to sell and move into a modern apartment.”

  “Wrong again,” said Lanigan, grinning. “She wants to go into business, open a store, a card and gift shop. I can’t say I’m crazy about the idea, but—”

  “Why not? It will keep her busy, and it could net her a little income.”

  “Well, these days, any extra income—”

  “Sure, and I’ve got just the place, or I will have in a couple of months. Market Street in Lynn. What’s the matter?” as Lanigan shook his head.

  “She’s already picked the place,” said Lanigan, “She’s interested in the vacant store in the Goralsky Block. I hear the temple sold it to you.”

  “Why there, Chief? It’s not much of a location.”

  “It’s on the Salem Road and there’s lots of traffic.”

  “Yes, but people on their way to Boston or in the other direction, up-country, don’t usually stop to buy a greeting card or a gift item. For that type store you need a lot of local traffic,” Safferstein pointed out.

  “Well, Amy seems to think that a lot of people come there because of the drugstore. It’s been there for over half a century and in the same hands. It’s a kind of institution. Even folks from my part of town go there. You shop Town-Line, don’t you?”

  Safferstein shook his head. “Almost never. I was in there the other night, you know, the night of the storm, because I figured all the other places would be closed, but normally I don’t trade there. By the way, I want to thank you for the courtesy your man in the patrol car showed me. You know what happened, don’t you?”

  “Oh sure, the sergeant reported it.”

  “I was planning to write a note complimenting the police force. Would it do you people any good?”

  The chief grinned. “It wouldn’t do any harm to have a letter like that in the files, especially come town-meeting time when our budget is up for review. You know, I never really understood how you came to have those pills.”

  “Just that I happened to be there talking to Aptaker when the doctor called in the prescription. The other pharmacist answered the phone and asked Aptaker if they could deliver it. Aptaker said no, but I’d heard the name and address—you could hear him all over the store—and since it seemed to be an emergency, I offered to drop it off.”

  “You knew Kestler?”

  “Never met the guy, but it was on my way home, so why not?”

  “You heard what happened to him?”

  Safferstein nodded. “Yeah, I was over to Chet Kaplan’s. I thought I’d wait until the storm lightened instead of going straight home. The doctor called Al Muntz while I was there and he told us. Tough break!”

  “Yeah, well it happens all the time,” Lanigan said philosophically.

  “Well, about that empty store. I don’t think I can rent it to you.”

  “Why not?” the chief asked.

  “I have other plans for it.”

  Lanigan had all the information he needed, but he felt he ought to pursue his original approach lest Safferstein, thinking it over, might decide it was Aptaker he was really interested in. So he said stiffly, “If you’re worried about my wife paying the rent—”

  And Safferstein, aware of how important it was for his business that he should remain on friendly terms with the town officials, raised both hands in protest. “Believe me, Chief, it’s not that.”

  Lanigan pressed him. “Do you have another tenant for it?”

  He could lie, of course, and say that he had in fact already rented the store, but then when it turned out that he hadn’t, Lanigan might feel that he had not been candid. And why shouldn’t he tell him? Everything was set, and it would be common knowledge in a few days anyway. He laughed shortly. “Look, Chief, can you keep a secret?”

  “Sure.”

  “I mean even from your wife.”

  Lanigan chuckled, “That’s a little harder, but I do it all the time. I don’t ever tell her about anything that comes into the office unless it’s already public information.”

  “Well,” Safferstein confided, “the fact is I can’t rent that store to you because I’m planning to tear down the building. I own or I’ve got options on all the land in the area. The Goralsky Block was the last parcel. I’m going to build the biggest shopping mall in New England right there along the Salem Road.”

  “I see,” the chief smiled. “You know, another reason the wife was interested in that store was that she figured if you took it over, you’d improve it the way you have other places around.”

  Safferstein smirked with satisfaction. “Just luck, Chief. I’ve been lucky.”

  “Pretty consistent though,” said Lanigan. “So maybe it isn’t just luck.”

  35

  Rose Aptaker was too tired to prepare a proper meal for herself, so she boiled a couple of eggs and afterward heated up the morning’s coffee. She had opened the store at half past eight and operated it herself until nine, when Ross McLane arrived. Fortunately, no one had asked to have a prescription filled. If a customer had come for a prescription, she would have had to tell them that the pharmacist would not be in until later and that they would deliver it in the afternoon.

  At noon she took half an hour off and went home for a sandwich and a cup of coffee; then back to the store, where she was on her feet all day until six; then to the hospital to see her husband and to assure him that everything was fine; then back to the store until they closed. She had not felt like eating at six, but had stopped off at a coffee shop for mor
e coffee and a doughnut, and that sustained her until she returned home. But now she was too tired to broil the lamp chops she had bought for her supper.

  She heard the car pull into the driveway but was too tired to move. Only when the doorbell rang did she go to the door. It was Arnold. He was flanked on either side by a large suitcase. “I’m here, Mom,” he announced.

  “So you’re here,” she said. She offered her cheek as he embraced her and then stood aside for him to enter.

  It was not as he had expected it would be. As he drove through the night, he had imagined her hugging and kissing him, murmuring “Thank God, you’ve come back to us.” He concealed his disappointment, however, and brought his bags into the hallway. It occurred to him that they had never been demonstrative with each other and that it did not mean that he was not welcome.

  “How’s Dad?” he asked.

  “He’s all right. Have you eaten?”

  “Yeah, I ate on the road.”

  “So a cup of coffee, maybe?”

  “All right.”

  “It’s from this morning,” she warned. “I cook up a whole pot in the morning and then—”

  “Fine. As long as it’s hot. This morning’s coffee will be fine.”

  His mother turned up the flame. The coffee did not take long to become hot, since she had heated it for herself only a little while before. She poured him a cup and sat down heavily opposite him.

  “You’re tired,” Arnold said.

  “Yes, I’m a little tired. I’ve been on my feet the whole day. It was busy today, thank God.”

  He sipped at his coffee in silence and then he pushed it away from him.

  “You don’t like it,” she declared.

  “I like it fine but I’ve been stopping on the road every couple of hours, drinking coffee. I guess maybe I’ve had too much. Now what’s the story on Dad?”

  She took a deep breath. “What can I tell you? He’s had a heart attack. You know what that means. He’s got to take it easy. And he’s not supposed to fret or worry. That’s what the doctor says. How a man in business lying flat on his back while his wife tries to operate the store is not going to worry he doesn’t say. When I go to see him, the first thing he asks me is how’s things at the store, and each time I tell him we’re getting along fine. So who’s kidding who?”