by Anna Porter
He sat in the car while Giannini scraped the newly forming ice off the windows and the windshield wipers, and he worried about the decision he’d made. Even before the tapes had arrived on his desk, he had come to feel that Zimmerman was murdered. It was instinct, more than anything else, and a conviction that Singer’s murder was connected to Zimmerman’s. But how? And what was it Singer had known about Zimmerman and that boy in the photograph?
Martelli had called late yesterday evening. He’d checked Singer’s old bank account, and no large sums had gone in or out of it in the past few months. The same was true of Singer junior’s, and Mrs. Singer hadn’t had her own bank account. When she left for Israel, she had cleared out their joint checking account of only $1,200 and left their savings at 12 per cent. That account had remained stable at $105,000 plus interest for over a year.
On the second visit, Melwyn Singer agreed that his father had been a different man after his trip to the old country. He had become morose and short-tempered. He’d even snapped at one of his grandchildren once, which he’d never done before. The last time Melwyn had seen him was the evening before he left for Toronto. He had been very upset about something, but he wouldn’t say what. All he did say was that he had some old accounts to settle. “Accounts” must have been what he’d said to Gloria that Thursday morning, his last. That’s why she had the idea he’d gone to see his accountant.
And yes, he had mentioned the name Zimmerman once before. Late last year—December—he had told Melwyn he was going to see a man called Zimmerman in New York. He thought he might have been a relative of an old friend he’d known in Hungary.
As to why on earth Melwyn hadn’t told him all this before—well, that had to do with his mother. She had asked that Melwyn keep these personal matters of his father to himself. She had been most insistent. But now that he knew about his father’s murder in the Zimmerman car, Melwyn no longer felt bound by his promise to her. Not only that, he was furious she hadn’t told her family and the police what she knew.
If Zimmerman had killed Singer, why had Gloria rushed off to Israel? With Zimmerman dead, what was there for her to fear?
David dropped Giannini at 52 Division.
Arthur was on the 9 A.M. flight from New York. After he’d performed his unpleasant duty at the morgue, David would meet him for coffee at Homicide. Meanwhile, he’d have breakfast with Judith.
Thirty-One
JIMMY HAD LEFT early for another football-team planning and practice session. Anne was brooding over a breakfast of yogurt and Cocoa Puffs, stirring the brown sugary cereal around and around in a big plastic container of strawberry liquid. Judith was drinking her second cup of coffee, sitting on the living room couch, staring at the ginger cat, which had hopped onto Judith’s favorite chair by the fireplace and was kneading the worn brown cushion while it rubbed itself against one arm, then the other.
When David rang the doorbell, she yelled “Come in” at the top of her voice. She’d been expecting him.
The cat stopped what it was doing and glared at her.
“Carpet looks good,” David said, throwing his gloves in the corner, zipping off his rubber overshoes, shaking the freezing rain off his parka. “Bugger of a day out there,” he added. “Is the coffee on?”
“How did it go?” Judith asked as she went to the kitchen to pour him a cup—black, no sugar.
“Fair, for an exhumation.” He went to sit in the chair. The cat bounced gracefully onto the arm and curled up into a ball. “He’s at the morgue now. Defrosting. We won’t know a thing till late tonight, soonest.”
“What about the gun?” Judith gave him his coffee.
“No doubt it has been fired recently, but Ballistics can’t tell whether it fired the bullets that killed Singer. We didn’t recover enough fragments to be sure. The trouble with bullets is they don’t have too many distinguishing features. Besides, a Remington-Peters explodes on impact. They make a nasty mess of the victim.”
“Would he have chosen that kind of bullet intentionally? Because he knew it disintegrates?”
“Possibly. More likely, though, because he didn’t know better. Only a crass amateur would use a Remington-Peters inside his own car.” David warmed his hands on the cup before drinking. It was only then that he turned to look at the cat. “Where did she come from?”
“That’s Zoë,” Anne replied. She had wandered into the living room. “She’s Jimmy’s Christmas present from Dad. He promised to get me a big orange parrot for my next birthday—if my marks stay good. You guys talking about another murder?” She was pulling on her lightweight, everybody-has-one, Stollery’s woolen coat with only two buttons.
“I sure hope so,” said David, thinking of Yan’s accurate assessment of his future if he was wrong.
“I put her food out on the counter,” Anne told her mother. “It’s Whiskers for growing cats. Has all the requisite vitamins and minerals, not like the cheap commercial stuff. Dad left a few tins for her. When we run out, we can get some more from the vet.”
“No doubt,” Judith said gloomily. “They’re likely twice what the other cat food costs, and you hadn’t mentioned the bit about the parrot last night.”
“Probably won’t keep my marks up this term anyway,” said Anne. “So why get your hopes up?” She was already at the door, her knapsack flung over her shoulder bulging with books. “See you around 5?”
“Right,” Judith shouted. “But there’ll be no parrot. Not if you get straight As in every subject. No goddam parrot. I’ve got this cat to contend with and that’s more than enough wildlife in this house, you hear me?” She’d jumped up from the couch and was glowering at her daughter with her best authoritative frown. “The cat’s enough.”
Anne gave her the brightest of smiles. “So we get to keep Zoë,” she said. “Thanks, Mom. See you,” she dashed out the door, letting in another gust of wind and snow.
David laughed. “I do believe you’ve just been had.”
“Typical of that bastard to give them a cat,” Judith fumed, “knowing I’d have to care for it as long as it’s alive. Never thinking how I might prefer to spend my time. Shit. If I go to Eger, I’ll have to cajole Mother into taking the kids for a few days, but I sure can’t talk her into taking on a blasted cat as well. He knows I have to work for a living. Couldn’t keep a cat on what he pays me, let alone the three of us...” She stomped into the kitchen.
Zoë sat on the counter next to her extra-special cat food. She seemed to be looking at it with disgust.
“I could take her, if you like,” David suggested. “I like cats. They have an independent streak. And they don’t fuss if you’re late.” When he saw his little joke wasn’t working, he joined her in the kitchen and offered to make scrambled eggs for two while she told him about Paris, and everything she could remember about Arthur.
“So you think Ligeti knows what you’re likely to discover in Hungary?” David asked when Judith had finished her story.
“I can’t imagine them giving me the tickets unless they at least have a damn good guess.” She snapped her notebook shut. “And whatever it is, I think it will let Arthur off the hook. No matter what Eva Zimmerman felt about her ex-husband, and I’m still fuzzy on that subject, she’s not going to point a finger at her son. Guilt, you know. Whoever she thinks killed Paul, she’s not betting on Arthur.”
“One piece of her advice I will take, “said David, “is about going to see the rabbi. Rabbis often know more than they want to tell a strange woman who attaches herself to them while they’re trying to walk home from a funeral.”
He phoned Rabbi Jonas, who was at his Bathurst Street office all morning and happy to interrupt the paperwork for the brief call David promised to make.
“Your scrambled eggs get better all the time,” Judith said when she saw him out.
“I know,” David admitted modestly. “If I could keep this up, you might change your mind and marry me after all. Are you sure you want to go to Hungary?” he asked.
“Sure talked me into it,” David said.
Thirty-Two
THE MAIN DOOR to Beth Elohim was open, but there was no one in sight. The blue marble-tiled foyer stretched in a semi-circle. At one end of the half-moon there was a wide marble staircase leading up to a corridor with a series of black doors. The one marked RABBI JONAS was open. David knocked anyway. The outer office was empty except for a desk, three black chairs, a typewriter, and a giant fern that bent over when it reached the ceiling. Rabbi Jonas emerged from the inner office. He was a slight man, around 50, with sparse hair, a hand-tied bow tie, striped shirt with white collar, and granny glasses. Definitely not David’s idea of a rabbi.
“You are Detective Inspector Parr?” he asked, squinting at David uncertainly. Obviously, David wasn’t his idea of a policeman.
“Rabbi Jonas?” David shook his proffered hand. The rabbi had a mean grip for such a slight man.
“I suppose you’re much too important to wear a uniform. The highest-ranking chap I ever met in your line of work was a staff sergeant. He still wore a uniform.” He showed David into his office, which was much like the outer office, except for the typewriter. “Make yourself comfortable,” he suggested. He sat next to David, on one of the two low-slung chairs facing his own desk, and looked at him expectantly. “So, what do you have to tell me about Paul Zimmerman?”
David told him about the XJ-S, what he knew about Singer, and his reasons for exhuming Zimmerman’s body. The rabbi kept nodding throughout. “You don’t seem very surprised,” said David.
“On the contrary, I’m always surprised when bad things happen to good people. It’s my job to remain surprised. If you grow to expect the bad things, you become too much of a misanthrope to serve God. Don’t you think?”
“I suppose so,” David agreed after a moment’s thought.
“So what can I do for you?”
“I’m not sure,” David admitted. “All I know is you were a friend of the family. You were often in the Zimmermans’ company. Did he ever confide something in you that set off trouble signals? Did you ever imagine Paul Zimmerman was being threatened? That, particularly in the last two months, some kind of cloud had settled on him?”
“Not exactly,” Jonas said. “He never even told me he was dying of heart disease, or that he wished to try another religion—though he did. Yet I saw him and Brenda on the 14th when we kicked off a fund-raising drive for a new university in Israel. There was no indication of change in Paul.”
“Did he talk to you about Arthur?”
“Arthur? Sure. But not recently. He used to worry about Arthur’s unusual choice of sexual partners, but I think he had become accustomed to that long ago. Not that they were ever going to be close.” He stared at David for a moment, as if trying to read his mind. “You’re not suspecting Arthur Zimmerman of murder, are you?”
“I don’t think we have any particular suspects yet,” David lied. He had several.
“There was bad blood between Arthur and his father, I know, but not bad enough to suspect Arthur. I’ve known him since he was a boy. A gentle soul, quiet, brooding. Eva Zimmerman had once spoken to me about Paul beating the boy. I think that’s why she left Paul, in the end.”
“And did he beat him?”
Jonas nodded sadly. “Yes. I’ve never understood why some people beat their children. I asked Paul about it, after Eva told me. It was the least I could do for her and the boy. And it wasn’t enough.”
“What did he say?”
Jonas held up his hands to indicate his helplessness. “He said his own father believed in not sparing the rod. And that Arthur reminded him too much of himself: the same rebellious nature, the covetousness, the envy of others, the inability to face reality...all that, plus the boy was a spitting image of how he had looked as a child.”
“Is that an explanation?”
“In a way. I believe he was telling me he hated himself as a child, hated the boy he had once been. It wasn’t Arthur he was hitting, it was the young Paul, who had envied a friend his good fortune so much he robbed him of his bicycle. He told me a story of how he had longed for a friend’s bike once. He had been prepared to kill to get it.”
“And did he?” David was thinking of the small black-and-white photograph: the two boys with their arms around each other’s shoulders, the image that was to bring back memories for Paul Zimmerman, as it had for Harvey Singer. “I hope your nights are long.” Neither man had too many nights left after the arrival of that letter.
“That hadn’t occurred to me. They were only kids.” Jonas stood up and walked to his window overlooking drab sandstone buildings on Bathurst Street. “There was something he once said. I haven’t really thought of it since. But at the time it bothered me. He asked if there were any circumstances when taking a human life was condoned in the Torah. God, he said, did quite a lot of smiting of His own in the old days, as did the Jews, in His name, or to protect His people.”
“When did he ask you about this?”
“A long time ago. Let’s see... A fund-raising drive for the Appeal. Maybe ’55, ’56. He cornered me with this stuff, and I was rather impatient with him. After all, we weren’t there to engage in Talmudic discussion. I was busy. There were over three hundred people to speak to. At the time, I thought he was talking about Israel, asking me to justify Israel’s defense of itself against its neighbors and the Palestinians who have sworn to wipe it out. It’s a question I’m often asked, and it makes me angry.”
“What did you tell him?”
He shrugged. “I don’t recall exactly. I think I told him that everyone is entitled to his life, and to defend it if threatened. One is not, contrary to the American constitution, entitled to the pursuit of liberty or happiness at the expense of others. That’s a latter-day concept. But we are, I think, entitled to life.”
“Did he ever ask you such questions again?”
“No.”
“Did Paul Zimmerman also beat his daughter?” David asked, trying another tack.
“No,” Jonas said with absolute certainty. “I’ve known Meredith since she was born. She doted on her father and, as far as anyone could see, he doted on her. Paul was a busy man. Didn’t have a lot of time for his family, but when they were together, you could tell he would never raise a hand to her.”
“Isn’t that odd?”
“Why?”
“Your average child-beater doesn’t usually distinguish between his children. He beats them all.” David was remembering all the times he had had to save children from their parents, before they killed them, and deliver them, screaming, to Children’s Aid. And how often he was called by the same neighbors, back to the same homes, over and over, till he no longer ached for the children, he had become numb, as the older guys on the force had predicted.
With Homicide, he saw the kids only when it was already too late to help them.
“Paul Zimmerman wasn’t very average, and maybe my theory is right. I’ve not had much experience with child-beating,” Jonas said. “Jews, generally, love their children too much to hit them, but I’ve had some experience in understanding people.”
He went to sit behind his desk, putting distance between himself and the cop, then leaned back with a sigh. “Especially my people. And Paul Zimmerman was one of them.”
***
It was 11 A.M. Arthur would have been delivered to his office by now. David thanked the rabbi for his time and headed across town to Yonge Street.
The slush had frozen into a solid black mass since this morning, making the road precarious and slow, as people piled up behind the snow removers and salt-spraying machines. This time of year, he thought, it was astonishing that people would live in Toronto by choice.
Arthur was si
tting on the same plastic chair Deidre had occupied yesterday. His fur-lined green leather coat was on the seat beside him, as was his matching green traveling case. He smoked a long black cigarette, amusing himself by trying to blow smoke rings. David was struck by Arthur’s strong resemblance to Paul Zimmerman and, as well, by the trouble he had taken to appear flagrantly different. He wore an all-white suit with a green cravat, and green zip-up leather boots. His blond hair was sculpted into a high tuft with mousse.
When David introduced himself, Arthur looked up with a bored, tired expression. He did not offer to shake hands.
“You’re the pleasant chap who invited me up here for a last peek at the body?”
“I’m sorry about the inconvenience,” said David, stiffly. “Identifying the body is a formality one can’t avoid in these cases.”
“By ‘these cases,’ I take it you mean where ‘foul play’ is suspected. Right?” with one transparent eyebrow raised. “That’s the cute little phrase you use, isn’t it? ‘Foul play’? Straight out of Hamlet and all.”
“Exactly,” David said. “I’ll try to make it as brief as I can.” For both our sakes, he thought. “Only a few questions. There is a restaurant nearby, somewhat brighter than this place, if you prefer.”
“How charming. Standard procedure?”
“I suppose.” David was determined to be as good-humored as possible. After all, the guy had just seen his father’s frozen face and would undoubtedly prefer as a sequel any one of a dozen activities to being questioned by a policeman.
Neither spoke while they struggled across the slippery street through the traffic. David paid for his black coffee and Arthur’s cappuccino and blueberry muffin, and they settled into one of the orange booths by the window. David tried a throw-away remark about the weather, but Arthur wouldn’t play.
“Why don’t we get on with it?” he asked, spooning the cinnamon off his cappuccino.
“Fine. Harvey Singer came to see you in late December last year. Let’s start with what Mr. Singer told you that day.”
