Masquerade

by William Kienzle

  “And now you’re going to tell everyone what I had to eat for Sunday dinner.” Krieg was contemptuous. “Really, Inspector, how long is this going to go on? What earthly difference can it make what I ate?”

  Koznicki, his expression of thoughtful interest unchanged, continued to gaze at Koesler. Tully looked as if he were withholding judgment. Moore and Mangiapane were kids watching “Sesame Street.”

  “Actually,” Koesler replied, “it wasn’t so much what you ate as what you didn’t. The main course was beef Stroganoff. And I noticed that Rabbi Winer ate everything else that was served that night except the Stroganoff. He just toyed with that. Didn’t eat a bit of it.”

  Krieg sighed noisily, signifying a boredom he was being forced to endure.

  “When you arrived, Reverend, everyone else was just about finished with dinner.”

  “That’s what I said. Or, if this is some sort of kangaroo court, perhaps I’d better phrase it, ‘I stipulated to that.’”

  “But, Reverend, the dinner had not been served in common dishes. Each person was given an individual serving—a plate with the food already on it.”

  “So?”

  “So, it wasn’t a case of the food’s being cold. It wasn’t cooling in a common dish all the while we ate. Your meal, Reverend, was undoubtedly being kept warm since you were expected for dinner. But you looked at the remains of what had been served and decided to have something different than the rest of us.”

  “That’s a crime?”

  “Impolite, perhaps. Unmannerly, maybe. Not a crime. Not yet.”

  “And what is that supposed to mean?”

  “You had what the rest of us had as far as the salad and vegetables were concerned. But as the main course, you had an omelet. And you had milk, followed by coffee with cream.”

  “I did?”

  “The kitchen staff undoubtedly could corroborate that.”

  “Marvelous, Father Koesler; you have a unique memory. I can’t imagine anyone else who would—or would want to—recall everything I have to eat.”

  “Oh, it didn’t make all that great an impression at the time. It was only later that I began to wonder about it, without even knowing I was wondering, in fact. And I began wondering the very next evening when we had dinner together again.”

  “What did I eat, good Father?”

  Koesler smiled. “We were served a fruit salad, beef broth, lamb, and red potatoes.”

  “And I suppose the kitchen people could corroborate that again. Inspector, must I sit here and listen to this drivel?”

  “For the moment I would do so if I were you,” Koznicki said. “Father Koesler is not in the habit of wasting anyone’s time.”

  Krieg’s countenance hardened. “All right, Father. We had salad, broth, lamb, and—what?—potatoes.”

  “And coffee,” Koesler said.

  “And coffee,” Krieg repeated.

  “Except that this time I noticed that only Sister Janet took cream in her coffee. I passed the cream to her and noticed that no one else asked for any.”

  “Meaning I didn’t have cream in my coffee. Well, that should do it . . . whatever ‘it’ is.” Krieg dripped sarcasm.

  “‘It,’ Reverend Krieg, is dietary laws. It occurred to me when I was thinking of your growing up as a Catholic child learning Catholic habits, idiosyncrasies, superstitions, whatever, from your mother.”

  “My mother!” There was a decided change in Krieg’s attitude. At mention of his mother, he became perceptibly aggressive. “What does my mother have to do with any of this?”

  “Just about everything,” Koesler replied. “I was thinking of you in terms of myself. Two Catholic kids growing up in a Catholic environment. I was thinking of you learning about the rosary as I did, watching as Mother recited it regularly and fervently. Then it occurred to me: Maybe you were without any discernible Catholic mannerisms because you didn’t really grow up in a Catholic atmosphere. You didn’t learn the rosary from your mother. But you did learn that you should never mix dairy and meat products in the same meal.”

  “This is an outrage!” Krieg erupted. “My mother is a saint! How dare you drag her into this sordid affair!”

  “I think you’re right, Reverend: It is a rather wretched affair and your sainted mother doesn’t belong in it. It’s just that she taught you dietary customs. She taught you so well, you observe them without even thinking. That’s not odd. Catholics follow Church rules, regulations, and laws out of pure habit. There are any number of Catholics who still do not eat meat on Fridays. Outside of a certain few Fridays, it’s not even a matter of law any more. But many Catholics continue to exclude meat from their Friday menu. It’s a matter of ingrained habit.

  “When you saw the remnants of beef Stroganoff on the plates, instinctively you knew you could not eat that dish because it contained both meat—the beef—and a dairy product—sour cream. A sign to your chauffeur and he ordered a different dinner for you. I noticed him being very insistent with the waitress.

  “So instead of Stroganoff you had an omelet. No meat in that, nor in the salad or vegetables—both of which you ate. Keeping the meal clear for dairy products, you added a glass of milk, and cream in your coffee.”

  “I don’t—” Krieg began.

  “Just give me one more moment,” Koesler broke in. “The following evening, if you’ll recall, we were served fruit salad, consommé, lamb, and potatoes. No dairy product. After dinner, you had coffee without cream. Remember? Sister Janet was the only one who took cream. People who drink coffee take it black, or with cream, or with cream and sugar, or with sugar. And that’s the way they drink it all the time. Once you notice how a person takes coffee, you know how to serve it from that time on to that individual. Unless . . . unless the person is consciously or unconsciously observing some dietary restriction, such as one that does not permit meat and dairy products at the same meal.”

  There followed a few moments of silence.

  Then Krieg said quietly, “And where are you going with this line of reasoning, Father Koesler?”

  It was the unspoken question on the minds of everyone else in the room.

  Instead of directly addressing Krieg’s question, Koesler said, “All I’ve really been doing Reverend, is putting together building blocks that seem to fit. For instance, Rabbi Winer was the only other person who did not eat the Stroganoff.”

  “So two people out of eight don’t care for Stroganoff. That seems normal enough.”

  “And the first word I heard you say was a Yiddish one. The rabbi was telling his story at dinner Sunday night. You happened to reach the dining room just as he got to the punch line. Only you were the one who said it: ‘Gevalt!’”

  “Oh, come now, Father—Officers—isn’t this getting a bit thin? English-language dictionaries are filled with foreign words that are so popular and common that they are accepted in ordinary English usage. ‘Gevalt!’ is just one of many foreign words that are understood by almost everyone. I just have no idea what you’re driving at. Does anyone?” Krieg looked at the others but got no reaction. The police were busy absorbing, weighing, and evaluating the interchange between the priest and the minister.

  “Reverend,” Koesler said with some solemnity, “I think you know, I really think you know very well where I’m heading. Although at this point as I was mulling over these facts just a few minutes ago, I was hesitant to take the hypothesis I was forming any further. Then I decided I owed it to too many people not to follow through to whatever end it might lead.”

  Tully noticed a change in Krieg’s eyes. They began darting about the room, as if things were closing in, as if he were being pressed into a corner.

  “I noticed,” Koesler continued, “that the information sheets that Sergeant Moore gave me state that you were born here in Michigan, within the Detroit Archdiocese, in fact, in Imlay City. There is only one Catholic parish in that city,” Koesler added parenthetically, smiling at the memory of his classmate giving him much more in
formation than required. “Sacred Heart parish was established as a mission in 1874 and as a parish in 1928. Anyway, it’s been there much more than long enough to have served you and your parents.

  “By the way, I could just as easily have gotten like information from any Catholic parish in the world. But it was convenient checking things out with the pastor there who happens to be my classmate.

  “First, I asked him to check the baptismal record. He found your record easily from the alphabetical listing. We already knew the year of your birth, and figured, correctly, that you would have been baptized shortly thereafter. That’s the custom among Catholics.

  “There was your name, date of birth, date of baptism, names of godparents, and your parents’ names. Your father, Helmut Krieg, and your mother, Rebecca Weissman. And next to your mother’s name, the letters AC—Acatholica—non-Catholic.

  “Then, I asked the pastor to see if he could locate a marriage record for your parents. He did. They were married at Sacred Heart parish just a year before you were born. The form included spaces for the name of the priest who witnessed the ceremony, the two witnesses, the date of marriage, your parents’ parents’ names—your mother’s parents were Asa Weissman and Sarah Blum—your parents’ names, their residences, and their place of baptism. Your father was baptized in a Cleveland Catholic Church. Your mother was never baptized. She was Jewish. And a dispensation from the impediment of disparity of cult was granted, so your father, a Catholic, could validly marry your mother, a Jew, who would remain a Jew.

  “Since your mother was Jewish, it confirmed the hypothesis I had formed without this verification: that, by Jewish law, you are a Jew.”

  An extended silence followed.

  “This,” Koesler said finally, “may be why you were so familiar with the rabbi’s Jewish joke. This is why neither the rabbi nor you would eat the meat-and-dairy-mixed Stroganoff. This is why you stayed with a meatless meal on Sunday and, when meat was the main dish on Monday’s menu, you passed on all dairy products—even to not taking cream in your coffee. You didn’t learn the rosary from your mother. Instead, you learned the customs of Judaism, chief among which are the very strict dietary laws for which Jews are known.”

  Another significant pause. Tully beckoned Mangiapane to him. He whispered to Mangiapane, who nodded and left the room. Koesler didn’t know what that was about, but, he reflected, it was not the first time someone had walked out on one of his sermons.

  At length, Krieg looked at Koesler and spoke. “So Jews would consider me to be Jewish. So what?”

  “No,” Koesler said, “I think you’ll find that if the Jews accept you as one of them—and they have very strict laws governing who is Jewish—the rest of the world will agree with them.

  “But back to the building blocks. Once we establish the fact that you grew up being Jewish, lots of other details fall into place. The first, and most important, of these blocks is that your situation is precisely the same as the four writers you were blackmailing. You could not afford—any more than they—to have your secret revealed.

  “How would it look for one of the world’s leading Christian evangelists to be Jewish? Your considerable following may or may not be sympathetic to the cause of Israel as a state. But how would they, as fundamentalist Christians, react to being led by a Jew? If your ancestry were revealed, you stand to lose everything. Not unlike the nun, the monk, the rabbi, and the priest, eh?

  “So, then, I ask myself, what if one of the writers discovered your secret? What would happen if one of them found out you were Jewish? If I could discover this secret, surely someone else could. The problem would be in arriving at the initial suspicion that you might have Jewish ancestry. Who would be in a position to suspect such a thing?

  “Maybe Marie, Augustine, or David Benbow would search for some flaw in your background to use as a bargaining chip. But where would they look? To your private life? To your corporate affairs? They would not find anything, would they?

  “But of course there was another person of Jewish heritage in our group: Rabbi Winer.

  “A few moments ago I told you I called Sacred Heart parish in Imlay City. I neglected to mention that when I asked for your record of baptism and your parents’ record of marriage, my classmate commented that mine was the second call this week for those very same records. I asked who had called for them and he said an official with the Windsor tribunal. Now, isn’t that an odd coincidence?”

  Judging by the reaction of everyone in the room, including Krieg, the consensus was, yes, that was an extremely odd coincidence.

  “Well,” Koesler continued, “that somewhat complicated my line of thought. And I do not relish complications. I had to find out who else was interested in these documents.

  “I’ve been in situations similar to Father Dunn’s, when a call will come from a chancery or tribunal in some other diocese for one record or another. There’s nothing particularly secret about such information. The presumption is that another diocese has need of the record, so you give the information readily, without question. It was the coincidence—that our neighboring diocese in Canada and I should want the same information at roughly the same time.

  “So I phoned the Windsor tribunal and found—not to my great surprise, really—that no one there had called for such information.

  “Then I checked with the college’s switchboard for outgoing long distance calls from Rabbi Winer’s room. And what do you suppose? There was a call to Imlay City. Clever of the rabbi to masquerade as a tribunal official. But why did he do it?

  “I don’t know what Rabbi Winer may have observed before we assembled here at Marygrove. P.G. may have published a specialized treatment of rabbis or Judaism, I don’t know. But I do know that Rabbi Winer saw the same things I saw on Sunday evening. It was his joke whose punch line you stole, Reverend. He might have wondered how you would be familiar with the Yiddish word for ultimate frustration or agony. But, I understand that many non-Jews, especially those who’ve been in the military service, or those who’ve heard Myron Cohen’s act, or those who have Jewish friends, may well be familiar with either that specific joke and/or that specific word.

  “And, having toyed with—but not touched—his serving of beef Stroganoff, he saw you order a special dinner that began and ended with dairy products and not meat. That, in itself, of course, would not have been nearly enough for the rabbi to arrive at any hard conclusion. Except that he, like the others, was looking for something, anything. And he would have been much more sensitized to Jewish dietary laws than a Gentile. Apparently, it was enough to trigger his inquisitiveness. He had access to the same press release I saw. He knew you were born in Imlay City and that you had been a Catholic. Proof was only a phone call away—for him as well as for me.

  “Once he learned that you were officially Jewish, he saw his magic bargaining chip. And it was evident in his behavior. Before his discovery he meekly agreed to appear at this convocation and was submissive to you at dinner.

  “And then came the remarkable transition. Rabbi Winer challenged you among ourselves, and before the students. Indeed, the rabbi was the only one of this faculty who dared oppose you publicly.

  “You know, I’ve always thought one of the strongest proofs for the resurrection of Jesus was the transformation of the Apostles. From the first time we meet them as Jesus calls them to follow Him, the Apostles never come off as particularly admirable or courageous men. And that includes their deserting Jesus when he was crucified. Then, something very definitely happened. Something had to have happened for these ordinary men, who very justly could have been termed cowards, to change so dramatically. One day they are cowering behind locked doors, hiding from their enemies. Then, suddenly, they become fearless. They are transformed, in an instant, into true, brave, and courageous followers of Jesus.

  “Something had to have happened. I believe it had to be the resurrection of Jesus—his triumph over death—just as they claimed.

  “Well, to a less
er degree, something had to have happened in the life of Irving Winer. One day he meekly comes to this assembly when summoned. The next day he becomes the one and only fearless opponent of Reverend Krieg. Something had to have happened. I believe, Reverend, it was the discovery of your Jewish heritage. He knew. He knew.

  “He must have told you on Monday what he had discovered. You probably denied it, but he had the proof.

  “You saw that your only hope was in getting rid of the only one who knew your secret. You didn’t have much time but you used it well. He knew your secret and you knew his. It was a Mexican stand-off. You had to find a way of upsetting that balance in your favor.

  “And that, Reverend, is why you killed him.”

  “Now, wait!”

  But Krieg’s voice no longer snapped with a commanding tone.

  “After dinner on Sunday,” Koesler continued, “you offered us drinks from your impressive supply. We each selected a liqueur. As the polite host, naturally you chose last. You chose the Frangelico—which happened to be the same bottle Rabbi Winer had selected. Later, you took advantage of that coincidence. Then, when the rabbi was found dead from drinking the poisoned Frangelico, we reached the conclusion you were leading us to.

  “And, maybe—now that I think of it—we may just have uncovered another reason why you wanted the police in on this and why you made sure I’d be here and, you hoped, would summon the police.

  “As far as Marie, Augustine, and Benbow were concerned, you held all the cards. The possibility that you might have had a secret past likely would never have occurred to any of them. But Rabbi Winer shared your Jewish heritage, at least in part. If any one of your victims might have stumbled upon your secret it surely would have been the Rabbi. You must have had good reason to fear that something—some unconscious habit, some quirk of behavior—might give the Rabbi cause to delve into your background and ferret out the truth you feared might be discovered. And, indeed, it seems he did.

  “In such an eventuality, should it occur, you had to have an alternate plan. One that would do away with the Rabbi while making it appear that you had been the real target and that it was your life that had been—and continued to be—threatened. And for this scenario, you, of course, needed the police. And I got them for you.”