Sunday the Rabbi Stayed Home

by Harry Kemelman

  “You mustn’t think that way, Mr. Carter.”

  “I feel better for having unburdened myself, Rabbi. I had to say it to someone, and I just couldn’t say it to my wife. Oh, I know the Lord moves in mysterious ways, and it’s part of some great plan that’s beyond the capacity of my mind or else it’s punishment on me or maybe even on my wife for sins committed in the past. But I want you to know that my own faith hasn’t wavered-not for a moment. And if my anger blocked out the voice, maybe that was part of the divine plan, too. Or maybe it was to teach me that my anger was a wickedness.”

  “Are you suggesting the Lord would take your son’s life just to teach you to control your anger?” asked the rabbi sharply.

  “I don’t know, but it is the duty of His servants to try to understand Him. And why else did the thought come to my head?”

  “Not all the thoughts that come to a man’s head, Mr. Carter, are put there by God. And not all the things that happen are God’s work. If you see His hand in everything that happens, after a while you’ll begin blaming Him for unpleasant and wicked things that happen. Some things are the results of our own mistakes, and some things just happen by accident.”

  Carter rose. “I don’t like to hear you say that, Rabbi. It seems to me that it shows a lack of faith, and I didn’t expect it of you. But maybe you’re just saying it to make me feel better.” He rose and went to the door. He seemed hurt.

  “You’ll find, Rabbi,” he said, and he patted him on the arm, “that if you have faith, everything comes out right in the end.” He brightened and his face even relaxed in a grin. “By the bye, they’ve caught that colored fellow that took my boy’s life. They were bringing him in when I was down the station.”

  Carter left, and the rabbi turned to Miriam. “Where’s my coat?” he said. “I’m going down to the station house.”

  CHAPTER

  FORTY-EIGHT

  Ben Gorfinkle had called up in midmorning to say that he was coming home for lunch. “I want to talk to Stu. He hasn’t gone out, has he?”

  “He’s still in bed, Ben,” said his wife.

  “It’s eleven o’clock. Do you think perhaps he might condescend to get up by noon so that I can have a few words with him?”

  “Well, you kept him up so late last night quizzing him about the meeting.”

  “I stayed up just as late, didn’t I? It didn’t prevent me from getting up at a reasonable hour.”

  “Well, he’s a young boy, and they need more sleep. Is anything the matter?”

  “I just want to talk to him. You just make sure that he stays there until I get home.”

  He had finished his Spartan lunch of a sandwich and coffee by the time Stu, yawning and gaping, appeared in pajamas and bathrobe.

  “What’s up, Dad?”

  “If you’d been up, you might have got the news on the radio. This Jenkins fellow–he’s been taken into custody.”

  “Oh yeah? So?”

  “I’ve talked to one of our lawyers down at the plant. He thinks it was a mistake on our part to let Lanigan quiz you without the protection of a lawyer present.”

  “Well, natch, he’s a lawyer. What else is he going to say?”

  The elder Gorfinkle gave his son a mental mark for shrewdness. “Anyway, he agreed with me that your case is entirely different from that of the others, and if you play your cards right, you don’t have to get involved at all.” Seeing his son was about to object, he plunged on. “Now, listen to me, will you? There are just three things, three hurdles that we’ve got to get over. First, there’s the business of holding the picnic on Tarlow’s Point. If that’s a private beach, then you were trespassing. As far as I can make out, you had nothing to do with deciding to hold the cookout there, but on the other hand, you did the driving. Then again, as I understand it, even the town counsel isn’t sure whether that’s a private beach or not. It’s my opinion that you’re perfectly safe in admitting that you knew you were going to the Point. You just say that you thought it was a public beach because there have been cookouts there before.”

  “Well, sure–”

  “Just listen, will you! All right. You left before the storm, and you had nothing to do with breaking into Hillson House. Right? And when you came back–the first time, I mean–you didn’t go in, did you?”

  Stu shook his head, wondering what his father was getting at.

  “You heard them inside, and so you called out that you had come back, and they opened the door. Right?”

  “Well, I knocked–”

  “But you heard them in there. That’s why you knocked. To let them know you had come back. And you yourself didn’t go in. That’s right, isn’t it? You didn’t go in.”

  “Yeah, they came out.”

  “All right. So far, you’re in the clear. You were just like a bus driver or a cab driver who delivers a bunch of people to a party and then comes back for them. Now, when you returned to get that boy, Moose, that’s when you made a mistake, because you had no right to enter that house. One thing in your favor, of course, is that the door was open, so it was not breaking and entering. And get this. All the time you were thinking that there was this friend of yours lying sick, maybe seriously sick, in that house there–”

  “You mean Moose? He was no friend of mine.”

  “He was a classmate, wasn’t he? You never had a fight with him, did you? All right, so he was a friend of yours. And he was sick–”

  “He was drunk.”

  “You didn’t know that. All you knew was that they told you he had passed out. That’s like fainted. That’s serious. You had a car, so naturally you felt you had to go help him.” He glared at his son as though daring him to object to his interpretation.

  And when his son remained silent, he leaned forward and said, “Now, this is important, and I want you to pay strict attention. You didn’t know what was wrong with Moose when you saw him. After all, you’re not a doctor. All you know is that he was lying there still. So your idea was to get out of there fast and get some help, call the police or a doctor. The idea that he might have been murdered never entered your head. All you know is that he didn’t look right–”

  “But it had to be murder, because somebody put that sheet over his head.”

  “You didn’t see how they wrapped him in the first place, did you?”

  “No, but–”

  “Look, what I’m trying to tell you is that you were not involved with any of this. You didn’t pick the place; you didn’t break into the house; you went back to get Moose only because he was sick and you had a car; and finally, when you saw he was very sick, your one thought was to get help for him.”

  “But Didi and Bill said–”

  “You wouldn’t be likely to remember what they said. All you remember was there was some talk about Moose and how they put him to bed. The details, you just don’t remember. You weren’t there; you didn’t see anything; you don’t know anything.”

  “Yeah, I just pussyfoot.”

  “That’s it,” said his father eagerly.

  Stu rose. “And afterward, when it’s all over, what do I do? Get myself a new set of friends or move to another town? And what do I do about living with myself? I’m just a dumb kid, and you’re a smart big-time executive. Well, maybe you’re too smart. Nobody, certainly not Lanigan, is going to believe that all I had were noble thoughts. If I’m not involved, then I’m damn sure Lanigan’s not going to get me involved. Besides, I don’t think you’re worried about me, anyway.” He went to the door, and from the threshold he said, “It’s you, your reputation, you’re worried about.”

  Mrs. Gorfinkle came in. “Oh–where’s Stu? Have you finished with him?”

  “Yes, I’ve finished with him,” her husband said between clenched teeth.

  “What’s the matter? Did you quarrel again?”

  “You work and sweat and slave”–but Gorfinkle was talking to himself–“for what if not for your children? And what thanks do you get? To them you’re a hypoc
rite. You’re just thinking of yourself.”

  CHAPTER

  FORTY-NINE

  Jenkins looked curiously from the rabbi to Lanigan. “Here’s this guy been dumping on me all evening, and you wonder why I don’t want to help get him home so his daddy won’t know he’d been drinking? The way I felt it would have been better than a hootnanny to see his old man skin him alive. I don’t believe this turn the other cheek business you religious types go in for, Rabbi.”

  “Neither do we. That’s Christian doctrine. We regard it as condoning sin.”

  “Oh yeah?” He nodded. “That’s interesting.”

  “You preferred to get back at him?” Lanigan suggested.

  The Negro shrugged his shoulders. “I didn’t give it no thought if you want to know. I just wanted to split. These were kids–most of them nice kids–but kids.”

  “You only wanted to get home,” the rabbi offered.

  “That’s right. It’d been a pretty dreary evening. It wasn’t the kids’ fault, but on the other hand, they didn’t help any. I just wanted out. So I picked up my bike at Didi’s and took off. Well, I hadn’t gone far when it started to rain. I could’ve gone back to Didi’s, I suppose, but then I thought of that Hillson House, and I knew the door was open.”

  “Which was nearer, Hillson House or Didi’s?” asked the rabbi.

  Jenkins shrugged. “What difference? Hillson House was on the way. Didi’s meant going back.”

  “And you weren’t thinking about Moose lying there all nicely tied up and helpless?” asked Lanigan sarcastically.

  “Not until after I got in,” said Jenkins cheerfully.

  “Yet you were careful to wheel your bike across the sidewalk and hide it behind the bushes.”

  “Why sure, man, I had no right to be in there for all the door was open.” He looked from one to the other to see if they understood. “So I went in and put the latch on the door.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “They said the police come by and sometimes try the door. Then I looked out, and I see this car coming along. When he gets near the house, he slows down and just crawls by like he’s trying to look in, maybe. But he rides on.”

  “Paff,” said Lanigan in an aside to the rabbi. The rabbi nodded.

  “That kind of frightened me,” Jenkins went on, “so I pulled the shades down. I had a flashlight with me, but then I noticed I could still see some of the light from the streetlamp through the shades, so maybe somebody outside could see in. So I unhooked these heavy lined velvet drapes until it was pitch dark, and then I figured I was safe to use my flash.”

  “Did you go in the little room to see Moose? Was he all right?”

  “I didn’t have to see him; I could hear him snoring away. I peeked through the drapes, and this time I see this car parked right under the streetlamp, with a guy sitting at the wheel like he’s got nothing but time.”

  “The same car?” asked Lanigan.

  Jenkins shook his head. “I don’t know. I just got a glimpse of the car the first time–mostly his headlights, but at the time I don’t think it was the same one, because I started worrying about the third car.”

  “The third car?”

  “Sure. I see one car, and he passes slow. I see another, and he stops and waits. You know the drill. Trouble comes in threes. And the third car that comes along, the guy is bound to come in.” He looked at his questioners, satisfied that his logic was unassailable and that they would understand.

  “And all this time you never once thought about Moose?” Lanigan’s voice showed disbelief.

  “Sure, I thought about him,” said Jenkins. “I thought about him lying there, as you say, nice and helpless.”

  “Ah.” Lanigan hitched his chair forward.

  “I thought I ought to get some of my own back. Some stupid kid trick, but just something to make me feel better. If I’d had my paints with me, I would have painted his face black, maybe. That cracked me up–the thought of seeing his look when the kids found him like that. I thought of giving him a haircut maybe, something special, like trimming my initials in that whiffle of his, or maybe just pinching his shoes and hiding them on him. But, of course, that would have meant unwrapping him, and I didn’t want to do that.”

  “Naturally,” said Lanigan drily.

  “You think I was afraid of him?”

  “The thought had crossed my mind,” said Lanigan.

  Jenkins shook his head. “I wouldn’t fight him fair and square. Why should I? He had fifty pounds on me. But if we’d been alone together down the beach and he’d started to crack wise, I would have gone after him with a rock. I couldn’t with the kids there. They’d have stopped it.”

  “But they weren’t there now.”

  “That’s right. And I started to get mad. There I had this wonderful chance, and there was nothing I could do. So then I remembered about his cigarette case, and I decided to take it so it shouldn’t be a total loss.”

  “You took his cigarette case?”

  “Yeah, I’d noticed it earlier in the evening. One side had cigarettes and one side had sticks.”

  “Sticks?” asked the rabbi.

  “That’s right, pot.”

  “He was smoking those during the evening?” asked Lanigan.

  “Oh no, he smoked the regulars, but I’d spotted the others. I was going down to New York the next morning, and I figured they’d come in handy. The case was in his shirt pocket, and I just slid it out. And when I came back in the living room and peeked through the curtains again, I see the car is gone. Believe me, I didn’t wait. I lit right out of there.”

  “You unlatched the door for Gorfinkle and Jacobs, of course,” suggested the rabbi.

  Jenkins smiled and shook his head. “What would I do that for? No, I left it locked. They were just coming to rescue this Moose. Why make it easy for them?”

  CHAPTER

  FIFTY

  The young man was indignant. “I see him bring the prisoner in, and I try to get a pic, and this Lieutenant Jennings blocks me. Then I ask the chief for a statement, and he says, ‘No statement now.’ So I figure I’ll hang around and speak to him when things quiet down a little. So then–now get this: A guy that one of the cops tells me is the rabbi of the local snyagogue comes in and goes into Lanigan’s office. And pretty soon Lanigan and this rabbi come out, and the two of them go down to the cell-block to question the prisoner. I try to go along, and Lanigan shuts the door in my face. If a rabbi can be present while the prisoner is being questioned–and he’s not Jewish, because he’s colored, so he can’t be his spiritual adviser, that’s for sure–why can’t a reporter?”

  “All right. Let it go.” Harvey Kanter dismissed the young man and reached for the telephone. “Hello, Hugh? Harvey Kanter. How are you?”

  “Okay, and you?”

  “Never better. And the missus?”

  “She’s fine.”

  “What do you hear from the boy?”

  “Turning the West Coast upside down according to his last letter.”

  “Good. Hey, what are you doing Sunday night?”

  “Nothing that I know of.”

  “Well, Edith is planning a regular seafood dinner–clam chowder, steamers, lobsters–the works. How about you and the missus coming over?”

  “Sounds good, but isn’t it your holiday?”

  “Come to think of it.” He chuckled. “I got a brother-in-law who’s president of a synagogue, and I got to call a Catholic to tell me it’s the seder. But I haven’t kept it for so long I wouldn’t know how to start. I’ll scrounge around and find a skullcap for you if it’ll make you feel any better. Is it a date?”

  “Oh, sure, but I’ll have to check with Gladys–”

  “Edith will call her. Say, while I’ve got you on the line, what is this I hear you been doing to my boy? He tells me you won’t give him the right time.”

  “He’s pushy, Harvey. Why don’t you teach him some manners down there?”

  Kanter chuc
kled. “We don’t teach them anything these days. They come from a school of journalism, and they know it all. He’s a good kid, but he’s beeen watching The Front Page on the late-night movie, and he thinks he’s Hildy Johnson. He tells me you’ve got Jenkins. Did he talk?”

  “Oh, he talked, all right…”

  Kanter reached for a pencil and a pad of paper.

  CHAPTER

  FIFTY-ONE

  He’s lying. I just don’t buy the idea of him going out to Hillson House to get in out of the rain and then sitting around in the living room doing nothing except peer out into the street every now and then to see if the car has gone, entirely content with having scored on Moose because he’s pinched his cigarette case. If that’s all he was planning to do, why all this business of latching the door–?”

  “The police might–”

  “All right, I’ll let that go, but why pull down the shades and then draw the drapes? No, Rabbi, I’ve got a different idea of how he spent those twenty minutes. It’s my feeling that he came in there the way he says, all right, but he took all these elaborate precautions with the drapes and all because he was planning to be there for some time. He went into the room where Moose was, pinched his cigarette case, and then put that plastic sheet over his head–as he’d been thinking all along–and then came back to the living room to wait.”

  “For whom?”

  “Not for whom, Rabbi, for what. He came back to wait until Moose stopped breathing. Motive, opportunity, method–he had them all. And what’s more, that remark he made to Jacobs about covering his head when they swaddled him up in the first place–that’s going to prove premeditation. I put it to you, isn’t it damn funny that this Jenkins, who wouldn’t have anything to do with helping Moose get home, was ready to help put him to bed there at Hillson House? Why didn’t he say then, ‘To hell with him. Let him lie on the floor’? We didn’t inquire into it, but I’ll bet when we start preparing this case, we’ll find it was Jenkins who suggested swaddling him up in the first place.”

  “Yes, I suppose you will,” said the rabbi sadly. “I’m sure that, without meaning to be unfair and with no thought that you’re in fact being unfair, you’ll suggest it to Jacobs, and he’ll come to believe that it’s true.”