“Depends on your point of view, I guess,” Herman said. “To me, what you’ve got there is a precious instrument. An instrument of survival.”
I set the gun on the counter. “I suppose you sell to a lot of the flea market people – like Willie?”
“Willie?” Herman chuckled. “You wouldn’t catch Willie with a piece. Between him and that blond broad of his – What’s her name?”
“Alida.”
“Yeah, Alida. Between the two of them, you’ve got an anti-gun lobby that would beat out the NRA if they ever got organized.”
“I didn’t realize that.”
“No? Well, from what I hear, Willie got turned off by guns in Vietnam. He doesn’t say much about it, but I bet if you could get it out of him, he’d have a hell of a story why. Vietnam worked that way – or the opposite. Guys either came home loving guns or hating them.” He paused, shaking his head. “Yeah, they love them or they hate them.”
“What about the other folks at the markets? Willie’s runners, for instance – did any of them ever buy from you?”
His little eyes narrowed. “Why do you ask?”
“Well, what if Willie found out I owned a gun? Would he disapprove enough to fire me? I need the job and I’d sure hate to lose it—”
This time Herman laughed loudly. “I wouldn’t worry.”
“Why not?”
“If Willie was that intolerant, he’d never be able to make it on the flea market scene.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, look at those people – they’re all rednecks. I sell more guns out at the market than anything else.”
“But all I saw at your stand was knives.”
“I don’t display the guns for all the world to see, little girl. But folks know to ask for them anyway.”
I touched the .38 thoughtfully with my index finger. “And the cops don’t bother you?”
“Hell, no. Marchetti sees to that.”
“Mack Marchetti knows you’re selling guns out there?”
“Sure. And turns his back - for a price.”
“A price?” I feigned innocence.
Herman leaned on the counter, his hands spread flat. “I can tell you’re new on the scene. You don’t think Marchetti makes his money by renting out spaces for seven bucks a day, do you?”
“I don’t know. I hadn’t thought about it.”
“Well, think. If you had hold of a piece of land where every kind of illegal activity in the book was going on, what would you do?”
“Take a cut of it, I guess.”
“You guess.” Herman snorted. “Little girl, you’re not going to do well in the business if all you can do is guess at it.”
“Okay, now that you’ve mentioned it, it makes sense. Mack Marchetti takes a cut, in exchange for letting you people operate.”
“Right. And then what does Marchetti do with part of that cut?”
“He pays off the cops, I suppose.”
“Does that surprise you, little girl – that there are crooked cops?”
“No.”
“Good. Now maybe you’re on your way to being of some use to Willie.”
Maybe I am, I thought, but not in the way you imagine.
“So do you want this gun?” Herman asked.
“I’m going to have to think about it. It’s a lot of money.”
“What’s money, compared to your life?”
“You have a point.”
“You bet I do. Tell you what – you think about it. The gun’ll be here for a while. But don’t wait too long.”
“I won’t.”
I started for the door, glancing at the cases on either side of me as I went. The guns lay there, gleaming black and sleek and deadly.
10.
“I hope you’ll excuse the mess.” David Halpert looked dismayed at the chaos in his living room – not so much for my sake, but because it was his and he had to live with it.
The rabbi’s house was a small Victorian in Bernal Heights, on the other side of the hill from All Souls. The living room walls had been stripped for replastering, and the furniture was heaped in the center and covered with dusty plastic drop cloths. Tools and buckets of joint compound stood by the bay window, and two rolled rugs blocked the doorway to the hall. In the middle of all this sat a baby in diapers; it was chewing on a new paint roller.
“That’s okay.” I looked around for a place to sit. The only available piece of furniture was an uncomfortable-looking park bench. “I’m renovating my house, too.”
“Really?” Halpert’s eyes gleamed eagerly behind wire-rimmed glasses. It was a response I’d gotten used to receiving from other owners of partly restored houses. “How long have you been working on it?”
“About three months. I’m almost done with my living room.”
“Oh.” His face fell and he looked around, shoulders slumping inside his “Save the Whales” T-shirt. “We’ve lived here four years. This room has been like this for six months. There’s never any time…”
“I shouldn’t wonder, with all your other activities.”
“Yes, plus my wife travels a lot on account of her job, and then there are the two kids.”
As if on cue, the baby started to cry. Halpert scooped it up and cradled it expertly against his shoulder. The cries stopped. I smiled at the contrast between the infant and the big bear of a man. In cutoff jeans and no shoes, his black hair curling wildly around his head, David Halpert fit my image of a crusading young rabbi.
The baby began to beat on Halpert’s head with the paint roller. He caught its hand and said, “I’d better put her in her playpen. Normally I don’t believe in incarcerating children, but then again…Excuse me a minute.” He stepped over the rolled rugs and went down the hallway toward the rear of the house.
Resigned to discomfort, I sat down on the park bench. It was close to noon, and last night’s fog had burned off early; the temperature had risen to un-San Francisco-like heights. I took off my light jacket and folded it on the bench beside me. Halpert returned in a moment, dragging a kitchen chair behind him, and threw open the front window.
“It’s been a hectic morning,” he said, seating himself on the chair. “Did I mention that the police were here?”
“No. They got to you fast.”
“Oh, yes – it was no later than ten o’clock. They showed me a picture of the dead man.” His dark eyes grew troubled. “I recognized him. I should have recognized his name when you called last night. But it had been several years and, frankly it was one of those unpleasant experiences you try to forget.”
“Could you start at the beginning? Where did you know Jerry Levin?”
“Here in San Francisco. Do you remember about five years ago when the Hillel Foundation at San Francisco State was firebombed?”
Hillel was the Jewish student organization. “Yes. The police thought it was the work of a neo-Nazi group, but they couldn’t prove it.”
“Jerry Levin was one of the men they arrested and later let go.”
“But—”
“But he was Jewish. Yes.”
“Why would he join such a group?”
“Alienation. It’s a key word of our times.”
“Alienation from his religion, you mean?”
“And his people. Our customs, our history, our very lifestyle if you want to call it that.”
“I can see why someone might stop going to church…temple, I mean. I’m a lapsed Catholic myself. But I’ve never felt the need to firebomb the Newman Center.”
Halpert looked uncomfortable. “Catholicism, perhaps, is not so pervasive a tradition as Judaism. Our customs, if strictly followed, can be very constraining. And then, of course, there’s the history of persecution, which can induce a certain paranoia…”
Halpert was obviously one of the new breed who can be found in all branches of organized religion: modern thinkers who like to mix their age-old beliefs with a good dose of psychology. It was a school of thought I didn�
�t much understand, having been raised in the God-will-get-you-if-you’re-not-good brand of Catholicism.
I said, “Did you actually know Jerry Levin?”
“I met him in jail, after the firebombing.”
“You were in jail?”
“No, not that time.” Halpert made an impatient gesture. “I went to see Levin. I was affiliated with Hillel then and I thought I might be able to help the man. Or if not help him, at least gain some understanding of why he had done such a thing.”
“You’re certain he did?”
“I wasn’t until I talked with him. Actually, talked isn’t quite the word. It was an unpleasant scene, with him raging and screaming at me. It convinced me of his involvement in the firebombing.”
I tried to reconcile his picture of Levin with the timid, inept young man I’d talked with the day before, but couldn’t. “Was Levin a student at State?”
“Yes, in the drama department. Apparently he was an excellent actor; his instructors thought he had quite a future on the stage. But after the police released him, he dropped out of school and vanished.”
Now it made more sense. Levin had been employing his acting skills when he’d told me the story of the Torah Recovery Committee. But to what end? “Were you able to contact any member of the committee, by the way?” I asked. Halpert had promised to do so when we’d set his appointment early in the morning.
“Yes.” He looked at his watch. “In fact, Ben Cohen, their Bay Area representative, is due here about now. He knows of Levin too, and I thought you’d like to hear what he has to say firsthand.” He stood up. “Shall I make some coffee?”
“Don’t go to any trouble on my account.”
“It’s no trouble. Besides, I think I better. Ben has never been to the house before, and he’s going to be shocked at the mess. Maybe coffee will take his mind off it.”
While Halpert fixed the coffee, I wandered around the living room, stretching out the kinks that the hard bench had put in my back. The rabbi returned with a tray, and I held it while he dragged a scarred end table out from under the drop cloth. He arranged the ceramic coffeepot, matching cups, and silver spoons on the table, then went back for cream, sugar, and cloth napkins. I frowned, wondering if the attractive display didn’t just call attention to its disordered surroundings. When the doorbell rang, Halpert was there with all the efficiency of a butler.
Ben Cohen was a stocky man with gray hair and a matching pale gray suit. Halpert introduced us and unobtrusively dusted off the kitchen chair before offering it to his guest. The two of us sat in the bench and Halpert served coffee. After a glance at the room, Cohen devoted himself to adding sugar and stirring. He sipped his coffee and nodded appreciatively, then spoke in a deep, slow voice.
“Miss McCone, I understand you have been investigating this man, Levin.”
“Yes. I work for the attorney for the man who has been accused of Jerry Levin’s murder. I’m trying to build our defense.”
“Then perhaps, as David has suggested, I should tell you what we – the Torah Recovery Committee – know of Mr. Levin. Anything you can add to that, of course, will help us.”
“Help you with what?”
“The recovery of the scrolls that are still missing. But I’ll get to that shortly. You know what our work is?”
“Yes.”
He paused, stirring his coffee, obviously taking the time to gather his thoughts. “The first time we – our private investigators – became aware of Mr. Levin was well over two years ago. A young man of his description had appeared at the Temple Beth Israel in White Plains, New York, claiming to be a journalist doing an article on congregations in the New York area. He was very convincing, and the rabbi gave him permission to talk to members of the congregation. For several weeks thereafter, the man literally had the run of the synagogue. Then, suddenly, he disappeared, and at the same time, so did the temple’s Torahs.”
“Were the police called in?”
“Yes, but it was too late. The Torahs were gone, and the man had vanished completely. There was not really any proof he had taken the scrolls. But no one at the magazine he mentioned had ever been approached about such an article, nor had they ever heard the name he used.”
“If this had been an isolated incident, our interest probably would have stopped there. But soon after that, events repeated themselves. First at a temple in Yonkers, and again in Elizabeth, New Jersey. All in all, Mr. Levin robbed thirteen temples in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania over a two-year period.
“But how could he do that? Surely the thefts received publicity. Wouldn’t the congregations have been alert to someone of Levin’s description who claimed to be a journalist?”
“Levin didn’t always claim to be a member of the press. At one temple, he posed as a Ph.D. candidate doing a thesis. At another, he took pictures saying he was a photographer putting together a book. There was endless variety to his stories. And – according to the congregations – he was also extremely convincing.”
“Yes, I imagine so. He certainly did a job of that on me yesterday, where he claimed to be an investigator for your committee. But how did you learn his real identity?”
“Purely by coincidence. The last synagogue the ingratiating young man approached was Temple Emanu-el, in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia. There he was once again posing as a magazine writer; probably he assumed he was far enough away from White Plains that he could resume his first disguise. And using the same story as he had earlier was not what gave him away.”
“What did, then?” Halpert asked.
“A member of the congregation – a man who had recently moved east from San Francisco – recognized him as one of the men who had been arrested for the firebombing of the Hillel Foundation here. He went to the rabbi, but before they could confront Levin about it, he, and three of the temple’s Torahs, disappeared. It was unfortunate he got away, but at least we could identify him.”
“So you hired investigators in San Francisco,” I said.
“Yes. They showed Levin’s picture to various congregations, both here and in other parts of the state, who had unwittingly purchased stolen Torahs during the past two years. They all identified Levin as the seller. Again, he had appeared so charming and sincere that no one had though to question the rightful ownership of the scrolls he was selling until it was too late.”
“Didn’t that pretty much put him out of business?”
“It did. We’ve sent his picture and explanatory material to every congregation in the United States. But we are still interested in Mr. Levin’s recent activities because a number of the Torahs he stole – seven to be exact – are still missing. We have had him under surveillance a great deal of the time since we learned who he was and our investigators located him here. But he had not led us to those Torahs — and now he never will.”
I swirled the dregs of my coffee around in my cup, thinking over my conversation with Levin. Cohen watched me expectantly. Finally I said, “I don’t think Levin had possession of the scrolls when he died.”
“Why not?”
“Because he claimed to be looking for them. A lot of what he told me was lies, but I think they were designed to make his activities more plausible. Somehow those scrolls had gotten out of his hands, and he wanted them back.”
Cohen nodded and poured more coffee. This time he didn’t bother to add sugar.
I said, “What did your investigators find out about Jerry Levin? What had he been doing in the time between the firebombing and his appearance on the East Coast?”
“Initially he was living in a cabin in the Santa Cruz Mountains. There’s not too much information on his activities during that period; he seemed to have been fairly reclusive. After he started robbing the synagogues, he maintained the cabin and was in and out of there from time to time.”
“Probably when he came west to unload some of the Torahs.”
“Yes. A month after he was recognized in King of Prussia, he m
ade a final attempt to sell a Torah to a Palo Alto synagogue. The rabbi recognized him from the picture our investigators had shown him, and excused himself to call the police. Apparently Levin sensed the danger, because he was gone, along with the Torah, when the rabbi returned to the room.”
“And this was when?”
“Three months ago. Our investigators later learned he had remained in the cabin for one of those months, but then it burned to the ground. Soon afterward he turned up here in San Francisco, in a Tenderloin hotel. After that – until last night – he frequented the flea market on the frontage road near Brisbane, as well as the vicinity of Mr. Whelan’s house.”
“Were your investigators following him last night?”
Cohen shook his head ruefully. “No. We’d had to cut back our surveillance; unfortunately, our funds are not limitless.”
For a moment, the only sound in the room was a fly buzzing against the upper panel of the bay window. Then I said, “The cabin in the Santa Cruz Mountains – can you tell me how to get there?”
Cohen looked surprised. “Yes, I’ve visited the site. It’s near Boulder Creek.” He took out a pencil and a small notebook and drew a map that seemed reasonably in scale. “Why, may I ask, do you want to go there? It’s nothing now but charred wood.”
“I don’t know that I do. But I need to know much more about Levin if I’m to build a defense for Willie Whelan.”
“Won’t the police check Levin’s background, including that cabin?”
“The police have a plausible subject. They’ll concentrate on that end, building a case that will stand up in court.”
Cohen nodded. “Have you anything to add to what you’ve already told me?”
“No, I don’t. I only spoke to Levin the one time, and then I found him dead.”
“Then I had better be on my way.” He stood and handed me a card. “That’s where you can reach me.” With a last interested glance around the room, he started for the door, Halpert following.
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