Boston Cream jg-3

by Howard Shrier

  “It sounds dumb, I know, but you said yourself, apart from his skills, what did he have? A simple mugging gone wrong, we’d have found his body by now.”

  “But you’d need more than one guy to perform that kind of operation.”

  “How many more?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s got to be a few. I’ll ask Dr. Stayner. So what are you going to do about Daggett?”

  “Me? Nothing. What’s Daggett got to do with me? He doesn’t live in Brookline and as far as I know he has no place of business here.”

  “You have reason to believe a crime took place.”

  “Maybe. But even if I believe it, there’s nothing I can act on. The best I can do is work behind the scenes a bit, see what else I can find. Just don’t expect me to bail you out of anything. You’re on your own here.”

  Didn’t I know it.

  I called Jenn as soon as I was out of the Brookline station and filled her in on my lovely chat with the Boston PD. I was pissed at Gianelli, pissed at the mugs from Boston. My heels were pounding bits of mica out of the sidewalk as I stalked toward my car.

  “What do you think of Gianelli’s theory?” I asked.

  “That David was kidnapped and made to operate on a gangster? That had to have been a Bogart movie.”

  “Who plays the surgeon? Fredric March?”

  “Or Leslie Howard. And are they supposed to have kidnapped an entire team? What did they do, show up with a bus?”

  “Unless they already had a team in place and just needed one more. Look, I know it sounds too film noir,” I said, “but Gianelli and I agreed on this much: the fact that McCudden and Walsh were involved tells us this was no random mugging, it was a legitimate kidnap attempt. I think the poker angle is bullshit.”

  “So do I.”

  “And two different people have told us David couldn’t have manipulated the organ donor waiting list. We know ransom was out and there was nothing for him to embezzle. So what else did David Fine have in the world worth taking him for, if not this very special expertise of his, this world-class talent?”

  “Maybe he witnessed something.”

  “What, like a Mob hit?”

  “It’s no less wacky than the Bogart script.”

  “Still doesn’t explain the ten thousand he had. All right. Maybe I’ll find out something at dinner tonight. David might have gone to Rabbi Ed for help that night and he might know where he is.”

  “That’s two mights in one theory, Holmes. And where he went that night is not necessarily where he is now.”

  “No. Listen, I’m going to drive back to the hotel and drop off the car. I want to take the T to dinner.”

  “The T-aren’t you a local boy!”

  “I want to take the same ride David took, if he took it, get off where he did and walk to Rabbi Ed’s from there. I doubt there’s any sign of anything after two weeks but I’ll walk it. Try to see it through his eyes.”

  “Good idea.”

  “Plus you need the car.”

  “To do what?”

  “See what Carol-Ann Meacham does on a Friday night.”

  Stayner himself didn’t call-he had left for the weekend-but one of his residents, Tania Hutchison, phoned me as I was walking into the hotel lobby. “According to Dr. Stayner,” she said, “the minimum team required to perform a simple transplant such as a kidney would be five. You’d need a lead surgeon, an assistant surgeon, an anesthesiologist, a scrub nurse and an OR nurse.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Ideally, you’d have one more nurse, but he said you could get by with five if the organ is coming from a cadaver.”

  “And if not?”

  “With a live donor, we always have two teams. The organ is taken out by one team, carried next door, where a second team one implants it while it’s fresh. Meanwhile, the first team tends to the donor. Prepares him or her for post-op care.”

  “Can it all be done by one team?”

  “Yes … but it would take a lot longer. They not only have to do it all, they’d have to rescrub in between.”

  “What about space? How big a theatre would you need?”

  There was a moment of silence while Tania considered it. “Not that big. You really just need a table with good light, and room for the team and their instruments. You could do it in the type of room where simple day surgeries are done. Cosmetic surgery, arthroscopy, that type of thing.”

  “Okay. So how well do you know David?”

  “We’ve spent a lot of time together,” she said. “A lot of time. We were residents together before being awarded our fellowships. And we were the only two who won them. I know his mind pretty well, what kind of problems he enjoys solving, how he approaches challenges, which is always the same. Study it closely, really closely, know everything about it and how it works, let it simmer a bit and then move decisively. And brilliantly. I don’t know if he plays chess, for example, but he’d be unbeatable if he does.”

  “Apparently he prefers poker.”

  “No! David? Really? Huh. I don’t associate him with that. But I can see that he’d be good at it. His temperament is actually pretty moderate for a surgeon. Some want to grow up to be Napoleon, I swear. I’m way more uptight than David, I can tell you that much. Although the last few weeks there …”

  “What?”

  “He never talks about anything personal. I don’t know to this day if he’s straight or gay. My gut feeling is he’s straight but I know he’d never go out with someone not Jewish so I never tested the waters. Maybe when he-”

  “Tania? Did he seem upset?”

  “Right. Sorry. Yeah, he did to me. It’s hard to describe changes in someone who keeps to himself as much as he does, but it’s like his screws got a little tighter. He’s always been pretty serious but the last few weeks he looked more grim. Not just soaking up information, which is like oxygen to him. Stewing about something. Did you ask Dr. Stayner?”

  “Yes. He said he hadn’t noticed a change.”

  “I doubt David would show any weakness around him. Stayner’s his idol. He’d never disappoint him. Or never did until he dropped out of sight.” Then she hesitated and said, “What feels the worst is I’ve really benefited from his disappearance. I’ve assisted on all of Stayner’s surgeries since then and if David doesn’t come back, I’ll be first in line for a fulltime position. It’s everything I’ve wanted since I started Harvard and I can’t enjoy it. I can’t tell you how badly I want him to come back.”

  I thought of Ron Fine’s deeply lined face and the catch in his voice when he spoke about his missing son. I said, “You don’t have to.”

  CHAPTER 16

  The southern sky was dark indigo when I got off the trolley but there were still lighter shades of blue to be seen in the northwest as I walked up Washington Street. The air was cool and damp, the street lights blurred by ragged mist. I looked down at the sidewalk and curb as I walked, like you do when you’ve lost a ring or wallet and you’re retracing your route, as if I might actually see something. Look! There! A vital clue that explains it all. Suddenly we know why one of the most stable people on earth suddenly had to run for his life. Footprints materialize that show the way he went. Snippets and fragments are discovered. There! On that branch! The snagged bit of cloth our forensic team will analyze to ferret out his location.

  Oh, wait. We have no forensic team. Which was fine because there was no cloth snagged on the bare branches that hung over the street. There were no vital clues. No footprints or fragments, no clouds of his breath still steaming in the night air. No rings or wallets in the gutter. Nothing but an oily swirl of water running next to the curb.

  Someone was playing blues guitar on Rabbi Ed’s street, and not badly. I could tell it wasn’t a recording: at one point as I neared his house, the player stumbled once and had to start his riff again. It sounded like an early 1960s Chicago style: no fuzz or pedal effects, just a nice clear tone that emphasized the actual notes, and he could play them, bend
them, make them sing pretty well. I had a vision of a teenaged boy in one of the neighbouring houses, learning at the feet of the masters. Then I got to Rabbi Ed Lerner’s house and realized it was coming from the bay window on the ground level. When I knocked on the door, the music stopped, and I heard a searing screech of feedback before the amp shut off.

  The house was a cottage with vinyl siding painted a deep green and white shutters framing the leaded windows. The garden in front had low shrubs along the walkway still wrapped in burlap coverings.

  Rabbi Ed was perspiring when he opened the door. He wore the same white shirt and blue jeans he’d had on at the restaurant. “Sorry,” he said, wiping his brow with a sleeve. “I always shvitz a little when I play. Must be my soul coming out.”

  “You sounded great.”

  The hall was wide, with dark wood wainscotting, archways and door jambs. He led me into the study at the right of the entrance. A turquoise Stratocaster rested in the cradle of a guitar stand next to an old Fender Twin amp. They looked like they could blow a high school dance apart.

  “Long before I became a rabbi,” he said, “when I was in theatre school, if you can believe it, I played in a band with some of the kids. We called ourselves the Castoffs and I was the lead guitarist.”

  “I’m still digesting the theatre part.”

  “Scratch a rabbi, find an actor. Or, God forbid, a comedian. Anyway, that was my undergrad experience. It didn’t take me long to realize I’d never make it as an actor and I didn’t want to be a hanger-on. I made a total break.”

  “But you still have your guitar chops.”

  “That I can always practise on my own,” he said. “You can’t really act in your living room. And if ever I fall on hard times, that’s a 1961 Stratocaster. I could retire on it. Listen, I have to change for dinner, I’m not wearing this sweaty thing for Shabbos. You want a drink or anything? Glass of wine? I have some Scotch, nothing fancy, but I think there’s Chivas.”

  “Chivas on ice would be great.”

  “Let me get you that and I’ll tell Shana you’re here. I did tell you my daughter would be joining us?”

  “I thought her name was Sandra.”

  “To everyone else, yes. Sandra or Sandy, depending if it’s work or friends. But to me, it’s Shana.”

  He went off to get my drink and I looked around his study. There was a large wooden desk against the wall in one corner, with a closed laptop barely visible under sheaves of paper. He had bookshelves along one entire wall, with a collection of Judaica and philosophy like David Fine’s, only three times the size. The other wall was dominated by an aquarium in which four or five turtles swam lazily, bumping up against driftwood that stood like a tree in the middle. On the wall above it were photos of Ed Lerner in a variety of settings: breaking ground at a construction site along with three other men, all in hardhats; cutting a ribbon in front of the Holocaust Memorial; decorating a sukkah; accepting an oversized cheque from a man in front of a building called the Vilna Shul.

  I leaned in closer. The man presenting the cheque was the congressman from the Eighth District, Marc McConnell. Couldn’t miss that hair and height.

  I heard footsteps behind me and ice clinking in a glass. I took a breath to compose myself before turning to face the rabbi. If there was anything to ask about the photo, I wasn’t sure what it was yet.

  It wasn’t him standing there with my drink. It was his daughter and she had two drinks. She looked nothing like him, wasn’t cut from the same ursine cloth at all. She was in her mid-twenties, about five-five, with deep grey-green eyes and chestnut curls that spilled past her shoulders. There was the finest mist of freckles across a face that met every qualification for lovely. Shana was the right nickname for her. It means pretty or sweet in Yiddish. One of the nicest compliments you can give a woman is to say she has a shana punim, a sweet face. Which she had.

  She passed one drink to my left hand and offered her right. “I’m Sandy Lerner.”

  “Jonah Geller.”

  “The detective,” she said, smiling. Her teeth were straight and white like she’d never had a coffee in her life.

  “Yes.”

  “I shouldn’t joke about it. It’s terrible about David being missing. Dad is pretty distraught about it. But I’ve never met a detective, police or private.”

  “You’re lucky then. No one hires us for fun.”

  “Any luck so far?”

  “Not much,” I said. “We have theories but no real clues to support them or tell us where David is now.”

  She wore a white blouse with a maroon brocade vest over it and a green peasant skirt cinched tight at the waist with a lighter green scarf knotted at one side. “How is his family doing?”

  I shook my head. “If I can’t find him, they’ll be crushed.”

  “I feel awful for them.”

  “So what’s your experience of David?”

  “A great person,” she said. “I know my dad was hoping I’d go for him, and I thought he was very sweet, and cute in a boyish kind of way, but there wasn’t any chemistry. But I really admire what he’s doing. Some guys my age are so directionless, they can barely find their way to class.”

  “Where do you study?”

  “Tufts. I’m doing a master’s in urban planning and heritage conservation.”

  “Great city for it.”

  “Yes. The thing about David,” Sandy said, “is he needs a little more balance in life. His idea of a perfect evening would be a few hours of studying followed by a few more hours of it.”

  “And yours?”

  “Could be anything. A ball game, as long as it’s not freezing. A concert, a play, a walk. Brunch in the north end. The beach in the summer. It’s not that I don’t read or study-I do, but even the Talmud says there’s a time for study and a time for action.”

  “The rabbi’s daughter heard from.”

  “I only quote that because it’s one of Dad’s favourites. When he wanted me to play outside as a kid, that’s the one he’d throw at me.”

  “There’s my drink!” Rabbi Ed called from the doorway.

  “Sorry, Dad, it was just sitting there.”

  “I thought maybe I was starting to forget things. So? We set? Let’s have Shabbos dinner.”

  It began, as it must, with candles. Sandy put simple white ones in two polished silver candlesticks, then covered her head with a white lace cloth. Rabbi Ed handed me a yarmulke from some long ago bar mitzvah, the inscription inside too faded to read. Sandy lit a match and held it until its flame became regular. She took each candle out, melted its bottom and replaced it, secured by wax. She shook that match out, lit another and looked at her father. He lowered the lights. She lit each candle, shook the match out, then covered her eyes with her other hand, leaving the fingers slightly apart so she could see the candlelight through the gaps. I held my palm out and watched my fingertips glow red in the flame.

  She sang the blessing in a reverent alto, letting it resonate in her chest and ring in her head. We followed in lower tones. Rabbi Ed lifted a pewter kiddush cup and sang the brief blessing over wine. Then Sandy handed me a bread knife. There was a braided challah on a wooden cutting board on the table. I took the knife and surprised them with a reasonably melodious Hamotzi over the bread.

  “The boy has upbringing,” Rabbi Ed said.

  Sandy said “Good Shabbos” to her father and kissed him on the cheek. He wrapped his arms around her and gathered her close and planted a warm wet one on the top of her head.

  “Good Shabbos.”

  He reached across to take my hand. Then Sandy and I shook hands for the second time. She leaned in and gave me the lightest kiss on the cheek. I breathed in her scent as I returned the kiss.

  We were in a small dining room off the kitchen with a harvest table and unyielding wooden chairs with slotted backs. There was a hutch filled with gold-rimmed china and another crammed with Seder plates, menorahs, more candlesticks and kiddush cups. Rabbi Ed saw me looking a
t it and said, “You spend enough years as a rabbi, you could open a gift shop. Everyone who goes to Israel brings me back something, as if I don’t have enough already.”

  We had soup and roast chicken and polenta grilled with a bruschetta topping. Fortunately, Sandy and I were able to subsist on a quarter chicken each, as Rabbi Ed helped himself to a half. It was probably what he ate when it was just him and his daughter. The food was good and the wine, unlike the more syrupy kosher concoctions, was a fine Cabernet from Napa.

  We talked about the similarities between Boston and Toronto, big liberal cities that were medical and academic hubs. We noted the significant rivalries in three sports-not that the Leafs or Jays had done anything recently to rival the success of the Red Sox and Bruins, never mind the Patriots and Celtics. We talked about Israel, as Jews inevitably do, and about the rising tide of anti-Semitism in France, Sweden and other countries with unassimilated, assertive Muslim populations. We talked about how Sandy did a degree in literature-“after which I was offered my pick of jobs, Barnes or Noble”-then got into urban planning, which she thought would satisfy both her academic ambitions and her activist nature. “There’s so much history in Boston to preserve,” she said. “Is there a lot in Toronto?”

  “No. We had too many fires for that.”

  We talked about everything but the night David vanished.

  When the coffee came and the honey cake had been cut, I told the Lerners they had a lovely home and thanked them for welcoming me into it.

  They both murmured that it had been their pleasure.

  “How long have you lived here?”

  “My late wife, Hannah, and I bought this house thirty years ago. Shana was born here. I’ve actually lived in Brookline since I was a boy,” the rabbi said. “My parents were part of the great Jewish flight of the sixties.”

  “From where?”

  “Back then, if you were Jewish and you weren’t in the suburbs, you were in Dorchester and Mattapan, along Blue Hill Avenue. That’s where my parents grew up.”

  “What happened to it?”

  “Social engineering. One of those great projects that have a noble objective and disastrous outcome.”