I wonder if I coulda been a rabbi, he thought as he started out of the apartment again. I wonder if I would have been successful at it. People tell me I talk to people well. Maybe I woulda been successful. I had the right upbringing, that’s for sure.
He had been brought up by his aunt and uncle in a kosher home after his parents had been in a fatal car accident. At the age of seven, what did he know and what could he object to? Vaguely, in the beginning, he resented the strict observance of the Sabbath. Saturday had always been a day of joy and play. Now it was quiet meditation. Even today, it seemed odd to work and live normally on the Sabbath.
He had been a very good student in school and a very polite boy. The first time that cost him was when Bobby Dennis tripped him in front of some girls and he excused himself. They started calling him the “Jolly Yellow Giant.” It got to him, and when Dennis tripped him again, he let go with a left jab that folded the creep up like a loosened paper poster.
Barry grew up quickly. He was five feet eleven in the tenth grade and weighed over one hundred and eighty pounds. For some reason, his physical size seemed incongruous with the vocation of a rabbi and when he told his teachers his plans, they looked at him with restrained disbelief. They knew he came from a religious home and they knew he followed the law, but he looked like a potential football player, not a potential rabbi.
He began his first year at Yeshiva University and met Shirley Feinberg on the steps of the New York Public Library. She was struggling to hold on to her pile of books. A rabbi could marry, of course, and sex was not the original sin, but Shirley was a middle-class Jewish girl who ate ham and eggs and went to synagogue only when she was invited to a bar mitzvah.
She liked him from the start, but her mother was very discouraging. After all, what kind of a living does a rabbi make? But there was something immediately enticing about Shirley. He liked the way she curled her lip up at the end and drove her tongue into his mouth when they kissed. Her lovemaking was fast and furious, and when he undid her bra in the living room of her house at one thirty in the morning, he was surprised at the bountiful bosom that came pouring out.
“My mother makes me wear these tight bras,” she said in explanation.
“Don’t apologize. I like a well-kept secret.”
She won him over with her sarcastic humor and general good nature. Actually, he had developed an increasing indifference to the vocation of rabbi, but his aunt and uncle had become his mother and father, and they lived for the day he would conduct services in a synagogue. To them it would be visible proof that they had fulfilled their great responsibility to the memory of his parents. Barry broke their hearts. He left Yeshiva a week after the second semester had begun.
Ironically, it was Shirley’s mother who suggested police work to him. She was always talking about the “success” of her brother, a detective in narcotics. Any other Jewish mother would have liked to see her daughter marry a doctor, but Shirley’s mother wished only that Shirley would marry a narcotics detective, or some detective. It was all the same.
Barry enrolled in the police academy that summer. Although he was bright, big, and quite capable, he would have never made detective as fast as he did if there wasn’t pressure to promote some token Jews. B’nai B’rith had financed an investigation of the police department and concluded that it was laden with subtle anti-Semitism. Public pressure began to mount, and the commissioner sought out good Jewish candidates. Barry fit the bill. Shirley’s mother was temporarily satisfied and Barry and Shirley got married.
Although there were other Jewish men in his precinct, Barry Wintraub became the standard-bearer of the religion as far as they were concerned. It wasn’t by choice. He didn’t wear his religion on his sleeve. But because he was so well versed in the precepts of his faith, he inevitably corrected the others when they voiced their misconceptions and misinformation about Jews. Finally, the men jokingly referred to him as “the Rabbi.” He laughed to himself, because none of them knew how close he had come, but he voiced no objections nor acted in any way offended. Few would want to tangle with him if he did become angry.
Now, at forty-two, he was still in fine physical shape. He stood six feet four and weighed over two hundred and ten pounds. Workouts in the gym with weights and calisthenics had provided him with powerful, thick arms and round shoulders. He was barrel chested and small waisted. When he was in his gym shorts, the muscles in his legs jumped with every step. He was the only one in the precinct who could hold a captain’s chair straight out with one hand, chewing gum and smiling as he did it. Everyone respected his strength—especially his partner, Bob Baker.
“You don’t think there was anything deliberate about puttin’ a Jew and a black together, do you?” Baker once asked him. Barry thought about it and concluded there probably wasn’t.
“But it looks like there was,” he admitted. “Some probably hope we won’t get along.”
“We’ll get along just as long as you keep your place, kike,” Baker said, and the relationship fastened itself on a foundation of sick humor. The partners developed great respect for each other.
“Do you think we deliberately like each other to prove the bigots wrong?” Wintraub once asked. Baker thought about it and concluded they didn’t.
“But it looks like we do,” he admitted. Wintraub laughed.
“Get in,” Baker shouted as soon as he pulled up to the curb.
“What’s the fuckin’ rush?”
“Chief just got me on the radio. He thinks there might be some kind of religious war ’bout to break out ’round here.”
“Why? Who was the victim?”
“A member of the JDL. One of your boys.”
“Who took the call?”
“Jacobi and Doyle.”
They sped two blocks down, three blocks over, and two more blocks down. The black-and-white was parked by the sidewalk. Several JDL members were still gathered in front of the synagogue. Patrolman Jacobi stood on the sidewalk talking to a young man wearing a small black yarmulke, a thin dark jacket, and jeans. Danny Goldstein’s body was covered with a police blanket, but his feet stuck out and the fingers of his right hand were visible.
“Whaddaya got?” Wintraub asked, stepping out of the car.
“Eighteen-year-old, white male. Name’s Danny Goldstein.”
“How?” Baker asked.
“Some blood on the back of his neck. Can’t tell what kind of wound. Hafta wait for an autopsy, I guess.”
“How long you gonna leave him out here, for God sakes?” Barry said.
“Figured we’d hold the call till you guys saw it all. The chief said …”
“Yeah, yeah, we know what the chief said,” Baker said. “Who’s this?”
“My name’s Mark Lederman,” the young man with Jacobi said. “I found him. He left the meeting only a little while before I did.”
“By himself?”
“No, with two others.”
“What two others?” Barry said.
“Martin Feldman and Larry Griff.”
“Get their addresses, Baker.”
“They’ll be here soon,” Lederman said. “We already called them.”
“Who’s we?”
“We,” Lederman said. His eyes were glassy and filled with the mixture of anger and sorrow. Wintraub studied him for a moment, ultimately letting the boy’s repetitive response go for the moment. Then he lifted the blanket off Goldstein’s body and studied it. Baker joined him.
“Anything missing?” Barry asked, looking at Jacobi and Lederman.
“Wallet’s still on him and his watch.”
“Nothing’s missing but his life,” Lederman said.
Barry dropped the blanket back over the body and approached Lederman again.
“You have some ideas about this?”
“No,” he said quickly and looked to the group
across the street.
Barry followed his gaze and studied the scene.
“Who leads this army?”
“Their leader’s a Rabbi Kaufman,” Jacobi said. “He went to tell the Goldsteins. I got his address here for you.”
“Thanks,” Barry said, taking it.
“Someone in the alley took him from behind,” Baker said.
“Of course behind,” Lederman said. “Daniel was a black belt.”
“Black belt? You mean karate?”
Lederman nodded and looked down again.
“Listen,” Baker said, “if you guys have some known enemies, it would help us get a start on this to know of them.”
“Are you kiddin’?” Lederman said. “Known enemies? We’re Jews.”
“I’m black.”
“Congratulations.”
“Now listen …”
“Here comes Feldman and Griff,” Lederman said.
Two more young men stepped out of a taxi and started toward them. Barry pulled Baker aside.
“All right,” he said, “we’ll question these two guys and some of the others. Then we’ll follow the body to autopsy. In the morning, we’ll go see this Rabbi Kaufman. My guess is these guys are not going to be very cooperative unless their leader gives them the green light.”
“You Jews aren’t a very trusting bunch, are ya?”
“Reminds you of when we go into Harlem and question the brothers about a crime, don’t it, Baker?”
“Tryin’ to say somethin’, Wintraub?”
“Yeah. You get Jacobi’s flashlight and give the alley another going over and I’ll talk to these two.”
“Givin’ me the dirt work again, honky?”
Barry smiled. Before they split up, Jacobi approached them and took them farther aside.
“I just got a thought,” he said.
“Go on.”
“Maybe they’re all acting like this because one of them is responsible. Why else would they be so tight-lipped about it? They lost one of their own.”
“Maybe they’ve been burned before,” Baker said.
“When?” Jacobi asked, some indignation visible in his face.
“Here and there over the last two thousand years,” Wintraub said.
7
“‘A round puncture wound in the back of the neck, made by a sharp cylindrical metal stem, an ice pick, for example.’ This description of the point of impact and body damage makes it sound as if a surgeon committed the murder,” Wintraub said. He put the autopsy report down and looked out the window of the car. He and Baker were on their way to interview Rabbi Kaufman.
“Coulda been a lucky stroke or coulda been someone who’s learned his craft well.”
“From what we’ve learned so far, anything’s possible.”
“According to Jacobi, this Rabbi Kaufman doesn’t work in a synagogue. He’s kind of controversial. Leads the young JDL members and conducts services for them like their personal rabbi. He’s been arrested a number of times for demonstrations. A hard guy.”
“I think I heard of him, now that you mention all that.”
“He’s a real militant. Was even asked to leave Israel once by the Israeli government.”
“Um.”
“This is gonna be one helluva waste of time,” Baker said as they turned onto Kaufman’s block. “Never a fuckin’ place to park.”
“You’ll hafta go in front of the fire hydrant. It’s this brownstone.”
“Settin’ a bad example for the citizens.”
Ignoring him, Barry said, “What was it, 1B? I’ll go on in alone.”
Baker studied him. “You’re not kiddin’, are you?”
“No. I’ve been thinking about this. I want to put it on terms of a brother dealing with a brother. Isn’t that a good way to put it?”
“Right on,” Baker said. “I always believed you people were clannish.”
Barry stepped out of the car and looked around. The street was deserted. He felt a bump in his jacket pocket and reached in to pull out one of Jason’s toy metal cars. The kid was always stuffing his things into Barry’s clothes. Barry analyzed it and came up with the theory that the kid was trying to tell him he should be spending more time with him. The kid’s right, he thought and started up the stone steps.
“Mazel tov,” Baker called out.
Barry gave him the finger and walked on.
It was an old apartment building, and the entrance opened without any security buzz. The first floor was terribly cluttered. There was a baby carriage against the far wall, cartons piled against the door of another apartment, and a collection of rusted metal toy trucks and cars scattered against the side wall a ways down the corridor. Someone had left a mop sticking out of a dirty pail of water nearly smack in the middle of the corridor.
He walked to 1B, unzipped his jacket, and knocked softly. A few quiet moments passed. He brushed back his loose, thick brown hair and knocked again. The sound of small footsteps was heard. The handle turned slowly, and the door opened against a chain lock. A little boy, about nine or ten years old, peered through the crack. He wore a yarmulke and a very loose white shirt.
“Yes, please,” he said.
“I want to see Rabbi Kaufman. My name’s Wintraub. I’m a policeman,” Barry said and flipped open his identification.
The boy stared at the gold shield and then closed the door. A few moments later, it was opened again.
Rabbi Kaufman was not an imposing man physically, especially in relation to Wintraub, but his demeanor and his strong, handsome face with dark eyes, sharp cut chin, and straight, almost Romanesque nose gave him the appearance of a gladiator. Everything about him—his posture, his slow careful movements, his way of studying people—suggested a soldier. He wore his yarmulke far back, almost completely off the top of his head. It was pinned to his cropped dark brown hair.
“You’re here about the Goldstein boy,” Kaufman said. It was completely a declarative sentence, registering no doubt whatsoever. Barry nodded. The rabbi went on, “I gave all the information I had to the patrolman who came immediately.”
“I know that.”
“What do you want?”
“Just to talk, Rabbi.”
“We’re sitting shiva.”
“Not at the boy’s home?”
“This is the boy’s home. We are all of the House of David,” he said. His eyes burned with anger.
“So am I of the House of David,” Barry said.
“Do you come as a Jew or as a city policeman?”
“As a Jewish city policeman,” Barry said.
The first sign of relaxation in Rabbi Kaufman’s face occurred around his eyes. He stepped back to let Wintraub enter. The little boy stood behind the rabbi, in the doorway to another room. He leaned against the wall and ran his arm up the side of the door frame. Barry smiled at him and wondered how his boys would look with a yarmulke on them all the time.
“What is it you wish to know?” The rabbi gestured for Barry to take a seat in the living room that was off to the left. It consisted of a small couch, an easy chair, one round table, and a wooden rocker against the window. There was one standing lamp next to the rocker. On the far wall was a picture of an old Jewish man leaning over to touch a small boy’s shoulder. The boy looked as though he had been crying.
“Was there any special reason why the Goldstein boy was chosen out of the group?”
“He was alone, an easier mark—and he was a Jew.” Kaufman remained standing.
“You seem absolutely positive that this was not an attempted mugging.”
“That isn’t a serious statement. Nothing was taken from the boy, not his watch, not his wallet, nothing.”
“Maybe the mugger was frightened off. Goldstein was found very shortly after the attack.”
“Hardly. Muggers are thieves who kill when they are resisted. They don’t assassinate and then rob. There was no sign of resistance. Goldstein was surprised and murdered. He would have resisted otherwise. He was trained in self-defense and he was a brave boy. But you know all this, Lieutenant. What is it you’re after?”
“I want to know what you know. I can do something about it.”
“Can you?” Rabbi Kaufman sat on the couch. “What can you do? Hunt down the killer and take him in so that the lawyers and judges can make a nice comfortable settlement because the court calendar is so crowded?”
“If you and your organization do anything on your own, we’d only have to hunt you down.”
“The difference is we’re used to being hunted down. Throughout time, we have been the prey. We can’t be threatened with a condition that marks all our history. Try a different argument.”
Barry wiped a hand over his face and sat back. He thought for a few moments and contemplated the man sitting across from him. Rabbi Kaufman had a slim build, but there was a hardness evident in his forearms and shoulders. He remembered how people found it incongruous for he himself to be a rabbi because of his physical presence. A rabbi was not necessarily a soft-spoken, quiet man with gentle eyes any longer. He didn’t wear old suits or have a pale face with a heavily outlined beard and mustache.
“Will you be able to get to the murderer?”
“Perhaps,” Kaufman said.
“Will you be able to prevent it from happening again?”
“I strongly doubt it.”
“You believe this murderer acted on orders then?”
“Most probably we are dealing with an organized movement. Yes, I believe that.”
“Then you might only scratch the tip of the iceberg. Revenge that is committed quickly and at the height of passion is usually unsatisfactory in the long run. You don’t have the capabilities we have. We can make a more significant dent in them.”
“Like you’ve done in Russia, or on the borders of Israel?”
“I didn’t say we could end anti-Semitism or persecution. I just said we can get at the true heart of any organized group of killers,” Barry replied, the veins in his forehead straining.
The Terrorist's Holiday Page 5
