Wednesday the Rabbi Got Wet

by Harry Kemelman

  Chief Lanigan, coat in hand, came out of his office. “Hello, David.” He looked beyond him. “And Miriam, too. What’s up?”

  “Miriam lost her pearls,” the rabbi gasped.

  “You mean they were stolen? You’ve come to report a theft?”

  “No, no. She was wearing them.”

  “They’re not real pearls, Chief,” Miriam explained, “and the string was frayed.”

  “Then …” Lanigan looked from one to the other. “You better come in.” He led the way into his office. “Now what’s this all about?”

  “The pearls,” the rabbi began. “Miriam broke the strand and it gave me an idea about this business. Your theory is that Arnold switched the bottles while McLane was away from his station getting the mop or while he was cleaning up. Now picture it. They each have a pill counter in front of them. It’s a kind of plastic tray with a trough on the side. They count out the pills on the tray and then tilt it so the pills slide or roll into the trough. There’s a spout on the trough that they insert in the bottle, and the pills slide down. No chance of a pill rolling away.”

  “I’ve seen them.”

  “Now suppose you want to switch the pills after they’ve been put up in their proper bottles.”

  “Then you dump them back in the trays again,” said Lanigan promptly, “and you switch trays.”

  “Right,” said the rabbi. “And in either case, there would be the right number of pills in each bottle. But suppose you didn’t have a tray, not even a table, then how would you make the switch? You’d have to empty one bottle into the palm of your hand. Then you pour the contents of the second bottle into the empty bottle. Then you have to feed the pills you’ve got in the palm of your hand into the second bottle. And it would be a miracle if one didn’t roll away.”

  “What are you suggesting, David?”

  “That it was Safferstein who switched those pills, while he was sitting in his car under the street lamp, before the cruising car came along.”

  “Just because there was a pill missing?” Lanigan smiled. “You yourself suggested half a dozen ways in which that pill could be missing when I first spoke to you about it.”

  “True,” the rabbi admitted, “but we also have to keep in mind that he had both bottles and time enough to make the switch without fear of being observed.”

  “But why would he want to hurt the Kestlers? He didn’t even know them.”

  “He didn’t?”

  “No, and they didn’t know him.”

  The rabbi nodded as he digested this information. “All right, then let’s consider all possibilities.”

  “You going to work some of that whatdoyoucallit—pulpil—on me?” asked Lanigan.

  “Pilpul,” the rabbi corrected. “Why not? Talmudic pilpul is just logical reasoning that makes use of fine distinctions.”

  The chief grinned. “Go ahead, I’m in no hurry. It’s you folks who seem to be dressed for the evening.”

  “The Bernsteins are expecting us,” Miriam reminded him. “They’re having a lot of people over.”

  “Then we won’t be missed,” the rabbi answered tartly. “Besides, no one comes on time.” He turned to Lanigan. “Let’s suppose it was Safferstein.”

  “Why should we?”

  “Why shouldn’t we? It’s only an assumption, something to start on. Besides, there are the reasons I gave, so it isn’t a frivolous assumption.”

  “All right.” Lanigan tossed his coat on the desk, and motioning his visitors to seats, he pulled back his swivel chair. Miriam sat down, but her husband remained standing.

  “Let’s clear the ground first,” the rabbi began.

  “How?”

  “Oh, by eliminating the obvious,” said the rabbi breezily. “I mean, that if we assume that Safferstein switched the pills, then it couldn’t have been an accident.”

  “It was you who urged it was an accident originally,” Lanigan pointed out smugly.

  “But that was when we thought it happened in the drugstore. There, however unlikely, it’s possible. But not sitting alone in the car like a small boy who might play with them and then get them in the wrong bottles.”

  Lanigan grinned. “I guess I can allow that.”

  “So it was intentional,” the rabbi continued, “whether as a joke, or—”

  “I can’t see how a grown man could possibly consider it a joke to switch medicines on a couple of sick people, one of them his wife.”

  “Neither can I,” said the rabbi. “So it means he did it to hurt someone. And probably not Kestler, since he didn’t know him. But that suggests Mrs. Safferstein as the intended victim.”

  “Not a very good suggestion,” said Lanigan. “If it was his wife he wanted to hurt, he would have gone right home and given her one of the pills. But he didn’t go home at all. He went to the Kaplan house instead.”

  “Why?”

  “He said because it was storming so hard and he wanted to get in out of the weather.”

  The rabbi began pacing the floor, his head back and his eyes fixed on the ceiling as the others watched. He stopped suddenly and turned to Lanigan. “Do you know where Kaplan’s house is?”

  “Of course.”

  “And Safferstein, do you know where he lives?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Well, I just found out,” said the rabbi. “Safferstein’s house is no further from Town-Line Drugs than Kaplan’s. So if he were bothered about driving in the storm, he could just as easily have driven home.”

  Lanigan’s brow furrowed, and his head made little motions as he followed the two routes in his mind’s eye. Finally, he nodded. “You’re right, give or take fifty yards.”

  “So why did he go to the Kaplan house?”

  “You tell me,” said Lanigan.

  The rabbi smiled. “It’s strange, isn’t it? His wife is sick, so he runs out to get her medicine. And then doesn’t go home to give it to her. It’s what started me thinking of him. Because if he had made the switch, there was no point in going home. He couldn’t give her the pills he had with him, since they were Kestler’s. Nevertheless, I think he would have gone home anyway and made some excuse for not having the medicine, if only for the sake of appearances.”

  “Then why didn’t he?”

  “Because he had to go to Kaplan’s, of course.”

  “There was someone there he had to see?” asked Lanigan. “Kaplan?”

  The rabbi shook his head. “No, not Kaplan. Since it was the pills he was concerned with, I suppose it was Dr. Muntz, the man who had prescribed them.”

  “What would he want with Dr. Muntz?”

  “To show him the pills, I presume,” said the rabbi quietly.

  “But he didn’t.”

  “No, he didn’t. That’s the irony of the situation. He wasn’t able to because he was himself the victim of a switch. He had the pills in his coat pocket, and someone took his coat by mistake.”

  “But if he had shown them,” Lanigan insisted, “then nothing would have happened. The doctor would have spotted the mistake right away. There might even have been time to call the Kestlers. Then no one would have got hurt.”

  “No one? Let’s think about it.” Once again, Rabbi Small began to pace the floor, his voice lapsing into the singsong chant traditional in Talmudic argumentation. “We assu-ume he had no intention of hurting the Kestlers because he did not know them and had no reason to. A-and no intention of hurting his wife because he did not go home. Bu-ut we know that his intention was malicious. So-o, we must ask ourselves who would be affected even if neither patient took the pills?” He looked at Lanigan expectantly.

  “It doesn’t make sense, David. A-and,” he continued, mimicking the rabbi, “i-if we accept your assumption that he came to Kaplan’s house to show the pills to Dr. Muntz, it makes even less sense because what’s the point of going to the trouble of switching the pills and then having the doctor switch them back, so to speak?”

  The rabbi grinned. “Not bad. You�
�re getting the hang of it. All right, let’s see what would happen. Here’s a room full of people. Safferstein makes some excuse for showing Muntz the pills. ‘Those aren’t the pills I prescribed,’ the good doctor exclaims. ‘There’s been a mistake made.’ Then Safferstein tells him about the other bottle of pills, and Dr. Muntz says, ‘They must have switched them somehow. I better call the Kestlers and warn them.’ But the point is that kind of thing isn’t carried on in whispers. And keep in mind that there’s a good chance that Dr. Cohen might be there, too. He’d be consulted. Within minutes, everyone in the room would know what had happened, that Town-Line Drugs had made a couple of bad mistakes in filling prescriptions. And no one would be hurt? How about Marcus Aptaker?”

  Lanigan nodded slowly. “The druggist down my way said it could drive a man out of business. But what did Safferstein have against Aptaker?”

  “I know only that Safferstein had been trying to buy the drugstore,” said the rabbi, “and Aptaker wouldn’t sell.”

  Lanigan’s eyes opened wide. “What would a big-shot realtor like Bill Safferstein want with a small local drugstore?”

  “Ben Goralsky told me the drugstore had a long-term lease, ten years,” said the rabbi. “He thought it meant that Safferstein was planning to tear down the building and put something else in its place. But he wouldn’t be able to as long as the lease was in effect. What Safferstein was trying to do was drive Marcus Aptaker out of business.”

  “Damn!” Lanigan muttered. “Safferstein confided in me that he was planning to build a shopping mall there.” He nodded. “It all fits.”

  Miriam, who had been looking from one man to the other like a spectator at a tennis match, now said, “Since you have a case against Safferstein at least as good as the one you have against Arnold Aptaker, I should think you could let the young man go.”

  Lanigan stared at her for a moment and then got up. Opening the door, he called out to the desk sergeant, “That young fellow you booked earlier—Arnold Aptaker—release him.” He returned to his seat. “Of course, I’ll talk to Safferstein, but I don’t have a particle of proof. He has only to deny it, and then where am I?”

  “Well,” said the rabbi diffidently, “Miriam’s breaking her strand of pearls gave me an idea….”

  As they drove to the Bernsteins, Miriam said, “I wonder how Safferstein felt when he found out that Aptaker didn’t have a lease, that Mr. Goralsky had never got around to signing it.”

  “Probably not good,” her husband replied. “I suppose Kaplan told him Sunday after the board had voted to sell him the property. But even if he had told him that Wednesday night, it was already too late. The train had been set in motion.”

  “Do you think he planned it from the beginning and that’s why he offered to deliver the pills to Kestler?”

  The rabbi shook his head. “I doubt it. How could he have known what Kestler’s medicine would be? It could have been a liquid. No, he made the offer in good faith. He’s reputed to be a kind and generous man.”

  “Kind? Generous? And yet he was willing to gamble with a man’s life—”

  “That’s just the point,” the rabbi said. “The man was a gambler, who believed in his luck. When your luck is running, you play it for all it’s worth. If you start getting cautious, you’re apt to lose it. That’s the way gamblers think. And if it’s running and you have a setback, you double your bets. That way you force your luck back into the groove. His luck was running along nicely. He had been able to buy up all the surrounding property and now he was practically certain of getting the Goralsky Block. The only hitch was the drugstore, and he had reason to believe that he’d have no difficulty in acquiring that. Aptaker was holding out only on the chance that Arnold might come back. But Safferstein had been dealing with Aptaker for some time, and as a shrewd businessman, he sensed that the likelihood was mighty small. And then he comes into the drugstore to fill a prescription, and there is Arnold working in the prescription room and Aptaker tells him proudly that it is his son. So there’s the setback. But his luck holds. He finds he has two bottles of pills, the same size, the same number of pills, even the same shape. All he has to do is switch them and then get it known that the drugstore had made a mistake. I don’t suppose it even occurred to him that someone might get hurt.”

  “Well, I can understand how a man can get caught up in some great project and lose ail sense of proportion. You read about artists and scientists who sacrifice everything for their work. And I suppose Safferstein may have felt that way about the mall he was planning. But having caused the death of one man, needlessly as it turned out, I don’t understand why he called Dr. Muntz about the second bottle of pills. He knew they were the wrong pills. What’s more, he now knew that Aptaker didn’t have a lease.”

  “But he didn’t know for sure, because I was trying to get the temple to give Aptaker his lease,” said her husband, “and there was a chance I might be successful. And remember, there hadn’t been the slightest hint that the police were investigating Kestler’s death, so it looked as though the mistake in the pills would never become known. You might say it was Lanigan’s fault for playing his cards so close to his chest, and my fault for—”

  “By the same logic you might say it was Jonathan’s fault,” she said tartly.

  “Jonathan’s?”

  “Sure, David. If he hadn’t got sick in the middle of the night a few years back, Arnold Aptaker wouldn’t have had to get up to deliver the medicine and he wouldn’t have overslept the next morning. And he wouldn’t have quarreled with his father and—Stop!”

  He jammed on the brakes. “Now what is it?”

  “You’ve passed Harris Lane again.”

  “Well, I’ll just back up, and—”

  “Against oncoming traffic? You certainly will not, David Small. You’ll ride on and take the next turn.”

  “Oh, all right,” he said meekly.

  52

  “I don’t like it,” said Lieutenant Jennings flatly.

  “I don’t care a hellova lot for it myself,” said his chief. “And in addition I stand to lose a sizable hunk of change.”

  “You can charge it to the town.”

  “Sure,” said Lanigan sarcastically.

  “It’s a departmental expense. It was incurred while doing police work,” Jennings insisted, but without much conviction.

  “If it works. If it doesn’t, I pay for it myself.”

  “It’s your funeral, Hugh. If it was me, I’d talk to the selectmen first. Then you could be sure that the town would pick up the tab.”

  “They’d never agree to it, Eban. You ought to know that.”

  “Guess you’re right,” said Jennings gloomily. “Okay, what do you want me to do? Would you like me to make the run? My car is older than yours. Another dent wouldn’t make any difference.”

  “No, I’ll do it myself,” said the chief. “But I’d like you to go down to the garage and alert McNulty. And then hang around until we get there. The more witnesses, the better.”

  “Will do. When are you starting out?”

  Lanigan glanced at the wall clock and said, “Right now. It’s quarter past twelve.”

  As Chief Lanigan drove along Minerva Road, he noted with satisfaction that there was almost no traffic. Fortunately, when he spotted Safferstein’s car at the curb there was no other car on the road. He slowed down and very deliberately swerved into the parked car, denting the front door with his fender.

  At the sound of the crash, Safferstein came running out of the house. “Hey, what the hell, you drunk or something? Can’t you see—Oh, it’s you,” as he recognized Lanigan. “What happened?”

  “Swerved to avoid a dog,” said Lanigan sheepishly. “I guess I swerved a little too much. Gee, I’m sorry, Mr. Safferstein.”

  “You sure didn’t do that door any good,” said Safferstein.

  “I didn’t improve it,” Lanigan admitted, “and there could be some damage to the frame, too. I feel terrible. Tell you what,
why don’t you follow me to the town garage. I’ll get McNulty to take a look at it. He does all the body work on the town vehicles. He can give you an estimate on the damage for the insurance company.”

  Lanigan got back in his car and drove slowly, occasionally glancing in his rear-view mirror to make sure Safferstein was behind him. As they neared the garage, he speeded up a little so that he was out of his car and waiting as Safferstein pulled in.

  The mechanic circled the damaged car and said, “It looks as though it’s just the door, but we better check it out.”

  As Safferstein watched, interested, McNulty pulled out the front seat.

  “Hey, there’s my silver pencil,” cried Safferstein, “and my wife’s earring, and a dime, and—”

  From the other side, Lanigan pointed. “What’s that? It looks like a pill.” He reached over and picked it up. He wiped it clean of the dust and grime and held it up. “So it is,” he said. “A little oval orange pill, just like those delivered to old Kestler. There was one missing from the bottle, and I guess this is it.”

  “Oh my God!” And Safferstein buried his face in his hands.

  The gabbe studied Reb Mendel appraisingly and said, “You look better this morning, Rebbe. Your cold—”

  “It’s all gone,” said the rebbe, smiling broadly. “Look.” With lips compressed, he breathed deeply. “Nasal passages clear. No coughing. No sneezing. I feel a hundred percent better.”

  “Yesterday, you looked—”

  “Ah, yesterday, I was terrible. I ached all over. I’m sure I had a fever. And to add to my misery, you know how it is Sundays, there are always relatives. Yesterday it was my Uncle Elimelech and his oldest boy. He’s a physicist at Cornell and he insisted on telling me about some research he was doing. I doubt if I could have understood it even if my head were clear. Finally, I excused myself and went up to my room. It was early, around six o’clock, but I couldn’t keep my head up. I got undressed, took a couple of aspirins, and then some hot tea with lemon and honey and whiskey. Then I got into bed and fell asleep immediately.”