Читать книгу An Old Man's Game - Andy Weinberger - Страница 11

Chapter 5

A LOT OF PEOPLE act surprised when I tell them I own a gun. Nice Jewish boy, they ask, what the hell’s he doing with a gun? Good question. I haven’t fired it in years, but it sits in my underwear drawer just in case. I’m pretty sure it still works fine. It’s a 9mm Glock. I admit I had some qualms when I bought it because, you know, it’s German, and as a nice Jewish boy I have vast quantities of leftover luggage in my head about Germany and Germans. What they did and all that. A therapist would take one look at me and see a gold mine. Ka-ching, ka-ching. This could go on forever. Dad was even worse than me. I remember after the war he wouldn’t buy so much as a toaster if he believed it was made in Germany. That was his way of punishing them, though I think we suffered more than the German toaster company ever did.

I pull the Glock out of the drawer and slip in the magazine. Six rounds are all it takes. That’s enough, I guess. It feels familiar and—how can I explain it without sounding too weird—exciting. Maybe even a little bit sexy. Like when I was fourteen, and Rosie Abramowitz and I were fooling around on the living room couch. And a couple of buttons on her blouse came loose, and who can say whether she meant it to happen, but it was the first time I ever reached in and touched her breast. That kind of exciting. Not that one is quite the same as the other. But I figure if I’m gonna be coming out of retirement now, I ought to keep it ready in the glove compartment at least. You never know.

Carmen is in the kitchen making herself breakfast. She’s a small, sturdy, dark-haired woman who came here on a leaky boat from Havana. Even though she’s been in this country for years, her English is only slightly better than my Spanish. Still, she’s a force to be reckoned with. The fact is, everything in this house revolves around Carmen. She is the sun and the moon. I love her, Loretta loves her, and since the first day she set foot here, she has worked her ass off for us. What more is there to say? Today she’s going to take Loretta to the Craft & Folk Art Museum on Wilshire. Carmen has her own private prescription for keeping my wife healthy. You take her out, you show her the town, she says. Carmen doesn’t live with us, although I would love that. No, she shuttles back and forth between two jobs and a family. There’s a husband somewhere named Antonio who drives a truck up and down Interstate 5. She never talks about him, except once when she let it slip that he sometimes drinks too much beer. No good, the cerveza, she says, no good that man to drink and drive a truck. Carmen is the soul of responsibility. She has saved absolutely every penny she’s ever made, and I know beyond doubt that one day soon she will own the world.

I round up my car keys, kiss Loretta goodbye on the cheek. She doesn’t ask where I’m going. And I wouldn’t know what to tell her anyway. That I’m off to catch a killer? That she should wish me luck? Forget about it. She and Carmen have a date. I head down the elevator to the parking lot.

Malloy’s right, of course. He’s always right. This isn’t an old man’s game anymore, if it ever was. Still, Howie Rothbart and his shul are writing me checks to crack this thing open, so what am I supposed to do? And now there are two bodies to think about. Mr. R. will not be amused. Guess I’d better start with him.

I drive east on 3rd. Traffic is light for a change, but it’s early. You can always find a traffic jam in LA if you look for one, but for some reason, not here, not now. This is a blessing. I pass the coffee shops, the hair salons, the auto repair joints, the designer furniture outlets, and all the commercial this-that-and-the-other. Soon I’m breezing by old comfortable California bungalows from the thirties and forties, some in great shape, others like crumbling sandcastles, all surrounded by dense foliage. At last I turn onto Windsor and find myself on a calm, well-manicured street. A rich man’s neighborhood. There are older Mediterranean houses with colorful awnings and arched windows. In the front yards, with their rakes and leaf blowers, there is no shortage of Mexican gardeners looking over their shoulders, sweating in the sunlight, hard at work.

Rothbart’s home is a few blocks south of Beverly. He knows I’m coming, and he opens the door the moment I hit the buzzer. “You’re early,” he says, taking my hand. “Come, sit down, let’s talk.”

I’ve only ever seen him in a suit, but today he’s wearing a Hawaiian shirt, khaki pants, and flip-flops. His hair is wet like he just emerged from a dip in the pool.

We step down into a broad sunken den. There’s a reddish Persian carpet on the floor. It’s about half a football field long and must have cost a small fortune. The beige curtains are drawn, there are fresh-cut flowers in vases, and bookcases filled to the brim with Judaica. Ditto for art on the walls. It’s all original. All modern Israeli stuff. Oil paintings, no prints, no posters. His taste is not my taste, but when I think about it, it’s not as bad as it looks.

“How about some iced tea,” he says as though it were a given. “My wife made a pitcher before she left for work. This heat is awful. So strange for October, don’t you think?”

I nod. He disappears into the kitchen and comes back a minute later with two tall glasses.

We sit and talk. I break the news to him about Dr. Ewing. I tell him in an off-the-cuff way. I don’t try to give him the big picture. I don’t say that the cops think they have a double homicide on their hands. But Howie went to college; he can put two and two together.

“Oh dear God,” he says now, shaking his head. He closes his eyes and starts mumbling something under his breath. Maybe he’s weeping, maybe he’s saying kaddish for her. I can hardly hear him. I don’t know. Actually, there’s a lot I don’t know about Howie Rothbart, come to think of it. Just that the people at Shir Emet like him and he obviously likes them back. Enough to be president anyway, which, let me tell you, is a thankless job.

I wait until he’s finished mumbling. When he opens his eyes, again I say, “Howie, I need you to help me with something. It may be nothing, just a little bump in the road, but I’m trying to add it up.”

“What do you want to know, Amos?”

“Well,” I say, “I’m trying to connect the dots, and each time I do, something’s wrong. It’s kind of like I don’t have all the tools I need. Like I’m trying to make a violin, only all I have is a hacksaw. It doesn’t sound so good. You know what I’m saying?”

“Not exactly, no.”

“I’m missing things, Howie. I’m missing information that should be sitting right there on the surface.”

“Such as?”

“Such as, how well did you know Dr. Ewing, for example? I mean, you knew she was the rabbi’s doctor. You gave me her name and an address and a phone number when I asked. How’d that happen?”

Rothbart tugged at his chin. “Actually, I referred the rabbi to her in May. He was looking around for someone else to see.”

“Because?”

“Because he was having chest pains. Not so surprising, given the kind of foods he ate and how much he smoked. You’d think in this day and age people would know better.”

“You would. A rabbi, especially.”

He takes a long swallow of iced tea. In his other life he’s an attorney, so maybe it’s not so strange that he chooses his words before he speaks. “I’ll be honest with you. Ezra wasn’t like you or me. He wasn’t someone who blended into the scenery. You couldn’t help but notice him.”

“I don’t know what that means. Is that good or bad? What are you talking about?”

“Ezra loved people,” Howie says. “He loved ideas. He loved to eat and drink and argue. I remember the first day we met, he reminded me of Zero Mostel. You remember him—the actor from Fiddler on the Roof? You know what I mean? Larger than life.”

“Maybe he should have gone into show biz.”

“Well, he did, in a sense. I’m telling you, the congregation adored him. On Friday nights it was standing room only.”

“What about his previous doctor? Do you know his name?”

“No. Ezra said they’d had some kind of falling-out. All I could gather from him was that he was through, he was fed up. He hadn’t seen a doctor in over a year. But when you’re hurting—you know how it is. He wanted another opinion.”

“Because the old doc didn’t care for his bad habits? Is that it?”

“No one cared for his habits, Amos. But some of us put up with them.”

“And Dr. Ewing? You just pull her name out of a hat or what?”

Howie shakes his head and half-smiles. “No, no, no. Dora Ewing was leasing one of the office spaces I own in Culver City. She was new in town, not long out of college. Her name just popped into my head.” He takes another gulp of tea. “I was trying to help. He wanted a second opinion, her name came up, that’s all.”

“Yeah, well, evidently last night someone else didn’t care much for her opinion.”

That startles Howie, brings him straight back down to earth. “This is terrible,” he says. The color drains from his face. And for one tender moment I think I see a different Howard Rothbart. He’s shaken; he suddenly seems all alone and vulnerable. “Where do we go from here?” he mumbles after a while.

“I dunno,” I say. “For now I’ll just keep turning over stones, see what kind of nasty creatures crawl out.”

He nods.

I stand up. I’ve hardly touched my iced tea but I’ve run out of questions for now and it’s time to leave. “Oh yeah, one other thing. I’d like to visit the rabbi’s office and poke around, if you don’t mind.”

“No, go right ahead. But what do you think you’ll find there? It’s just books, papers, sermons. You know, the usual Torah and Talmud. His office is a shambles. Kind of like the man himself.”

I shrug. “Who the hell knows? Like you say, he was larger than life. People like that, they don’t know what they’re doing. Sometimes they leave something behind, a little crumb for old trolls like me.”

Rothbart stands up and moves in three short steps to the phone. Whatever tsuris he was feeling, whatever was hurting his heart a second ago, has passed. “His secretary’s name is Sophie. I haven’t seen her since the funeral, but I know she’s come back to work. I’ll give her a call right now. Tell her to expect you.”

“Swell.”

Shir Emet is a tan stucco fortress on La Brea not that far from Fountain. Two long rows of brassy octagonal windows form a border and stretch—one high and one low—across the length of the building, which makes me think that the architect was looking for a prayer shawl motif. The name means “Song of Truth.” I remember that much at least from my days in Hebrew school. But song of truth—it’s just a pretty phrase. I don’t really know what they believe in here. Well, let me take that back: I know what they believe, but how they believe it and to what lengths they will go to demonstrate their belief—now that’s a different jar of gefilte fish. Some people, goyim mostly, they think we’re all alike. But the truth is, you put four Jews in a room together, and we’ll form five political parties.

The parking is all on the street and metered. I have to dig around in my pockets for change. Outside, a few feet away on the sidewalk, a thin homeless man crouches with his back against the synagogue wall. His greasy hair comes down to his shoulders. His body is trembling gently. His skin along his bare arms is cracked, and he’s lived so long in the sun you can’t decide if he’s white or brown or black. Not that that makes any difference. He’s beyond all distinctions. He could be thirty years old. He could be three hundred years old. He could be a beggar. He could be God. You can’t tell. His head is covered by a red cowboy bandana and he’s staring, rheumy-eyed, into space.

Twenty feet away, a number of devout-looking males in dark coats, white shirts, and yarmulkes come and go through the thick double doors. The middle school and high school here is all boys. No girls allowed. That’s how they like it. They’re carrying prayer books and briefcases, and they pay absolutely no attention to the pariah on the pavement or to me, for that matter. I’m just a tourist in their world. They’re thinking about angels. Me, I’m a mere fleck of dust. What do they care?

I stop one of them, a gawky kid with pimples and the first tentative wisps of facial hair. “Hey,” I say, “where’s the rabbi’s office?”

Somehow this shocks him. His jaw moves up and down, but nothing comes out. I’m a guy who runs on feelings, and right away I get the distinct feeling he hasn’t spoken to another human being in months. Or if he has, it was only to another yeshiva student like himself, and all they talked about was whether or not a farmer has to milk his cows on Shabbat. You know, serious stuff. He points down the hall, turns on his heel, and rushes off in the opposite direction.

“Mr. Rothbart said you wanted to look around,” says Sophie Applebaum after she glances for a moment at my business card. “But if you just tell me what you wanted, I could probably help you find it.”

“If I knew what I was looking for I wouldn’t have to ask,” I say.

“They put me in this position because I’m organized,” she goes on as if I hadn’t said anything. “Twenty-seven years I’ve been here. The rabbi, may he rest in peace, was not what you’d call organized. Not in the least. That was always me, that was my job.”

“I appreciate that. I’m sure you have everything under control.”

“Well, as much as a person can.” Her shoulders go up and down. She’s in her seventies maybe, and this is her whole life. You wouldn’t call her obese, but you probably wouldn’t call her slim, either. She’s wearing a black blouse with large black wooden buttons and a black skirt and sensible black leather shoes. Her bifocals hang from a slender gold chain around her neck. She puts them on, blinks, takes them off, blinks again. I had an owlish, overbearing teacher like her in the sixth grade, and I remember now that we did not get along. “The rabbi kept all his sermons in here.” She points out the two green metal file cabinets against the wall. “I organized them by date, but he wrote every single one himself. No help. Never copied his ideas from anyone else.”

This is a point of pride, but somehow it doesn’t impress me the way she would like it to. “You know, his sermons probably aren’t what I’m after.”

She settles into the leather swivel chair behind the desk and leans forward. “Well, I’m sorry. That’s about all he ever did, you know, give sermons.”

“He must have had other interests. I mean, it’s a big political job, being a rabbi. You’re talking to people all day long.”

Sophie Applebaum shakes her head. “Some people, sure. He made a big point of talking to the Muslims and the Buddhists and, of course, the goyim. You’re right. But that was just for show. If you ask me, his students always came first. Those kids in the hall. He loved them. Absolutely loved them. He could talk to them for hours.” She fits her glasses back on, the better to squint disapprovingly at me. “As for the rest of the synagogue, well—” She stops. Whatever dirt she was going to dish out she decides to keep to herself.

“What about the Board?” I ask. “They paid his salary.”

The glasses come off. She shrugs again. It seems to be the only dance step she knows in life. “There were a few he was close to. A precious few. But you want to know what I really think?”

“That’s why I’m here.”

Her voice sinks to a whisper. “I think they liked him because he was such a star. The one and only reason. He was their golden boy.”

“You think?”

“Of course. And they didn’t care what he talked about either, so long as he was out there on Friday nights performing.”

“He packed the house, huh?”

“Packed the house? You never heard him, did you? He had a voice like a poet. Like Mario Lanza, like Harry Belafonte. Of course he didn’t sing. For that we have a cantor. But you know what I’m saying? A golden boy. When people heard him open his mouth, everything came to a halt, let me tell you. You could hear a pin.”

I take a seat opposite her desk. “Okay,” I tell her, “you’ve got my attention. What’d he talk about on Friday night?”

She paused, looking for just the right words. “I’m no scholar, I’m just an old woman who works here. Twenty-seven years. It’s not forever, sure. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have opinions.”

“Let’s hear them, then,” I say.

“My opinions? Okay. This is what I know—” She points solemnly to her bosom. “In my heart. Rabbi Ezra, le sholem, had a vision. He was always so restless, you understand, always searching. It’s not easy to have a vision, Mr. Parisman. Not everyone appreciates. A few of our congregants thought he said crazy things sometimes. They would come up to me now and then after services and whisper in my ear. But he wasn’t crazy at all.”

“So what’s your diagnosis?”

She smiles, pulls her glasses gently away from her face. “I think he thought about things too much. I think he was obsessed. But obsessed is not crazy, is it?” I start to respond, but she doesn’t wait for an answer. “He could behave perfectly well in the world. It was just that he was trapped by a dream. And that dream meant he was never going to be satisfied, not with the old Judaism, at least.”

“The old Judaism?”

“Well, of course, now we’re so splintered everywhere, there are many brands of Judaism. A spectrum, the rabbi used to say. Conservative, Reform, Orthodox, Reconstruction, whatever that is. But the core belief—the gist—is pretty much the same no matter what shul you go to, nu?”

“I don’t belong to any temple, Mrs. Applebaum.”

“Fine,” she says. “Fine, nebich. Never mind. Be a lone wolf. But you understand what I’m saying. Even the kids outside this door—” She points quietly to the hall where I’d just come from—“they think they have the answer. They’re sure, in fact. According to them, it’s all right there in the Torah.”

“And it’s not?”

She rolls her eyes. “All I’m saying is, you should take some time. Sit down and be still and read his sermons. Especially the last three or four. The man had a vision. I’m just a secretary, of course, I’m not learned like he was, but even I could tell.”

She opens the middle drawer to the file cabinet and pulls out a sheaf of paper. “Here,” she says, “I’ll make you copies. You don’t need to bring them back.” She rises and feeds them methodically into the copier. “This will take a few minutes, Mr. Parisman. You want to poke around in the meantime, feel free. Our rabbi had nothing to hide.”

It’s not such a large room. Not much bigger than my office at home. There are the usual tomes I’d expect to find in any rabbi’s work space—Torah and Talmud, along with endless commentary, and many of his own notes penciled into the margins. But he didn’t limit himself, I notice. Everywhere you turn there are things you wouldn’t expect—dog-eared paperbacks on psychology and philosophy strewn around, a pile of old New Yorker magazines, a biography of Martin Buber, a collection of Hannah Arendt’s essays, and some tattered Primo Levi. There’s a solid shelf’s worth of twentieth-century fiction—Lolita and On the Road and The Tin Drum and Midnight’s Children. On the carpet to the left of his leather chair is an impressive stack of used books—a hodgepodge of Egyptian archaeology and old-Hollywood film memoirs. Mrs. Applebaum hasn’t tried to organize any of this, I see. Maybe she tried once and was reprimanded. Maybe this is how she wants the rabbi to be remembered.

He has a few silver-framed family photos on the desk—his wife and daughters. From the looks of them I’d guess they were taken a long time ago. One of a five- or six-year-old girl. She’s got a tutu on, and she’s in the middle of a wild, passionate leap across a stage. Another girl in a ponytail is curled up with a cat on her lap, and there’s also a third one, a black-and-white close-up of a teenager brooding into the camera.

“How’re his kids doing?” I ask.

She gives me a you-can’t-be-serious look. “How would you expect, Mr. Detective? They’re dancing in the street.”

“Sorry.”

“We’re all sorry. We’re all heartsick, really. I spoke with his wife, Miriam, yesterday afternoon. His widow, I mean. She’s sad, sure, but I can already hear it in her voice, she’s making the best of a terrible situation. And she’ll come back. It’ll take a while, but you mark my words—she’ll be okay.”

“That’s good to hear.” I pick up the photograph of Miriam. Not a raving beauty, but there’s an ancient kindness in her eyes and a strong, knowing smile. She seems durable, tested. What every rabbi’s wife should be. I set the picture down, gently adjust the angle. “It’s been what—ten days? So they’re done sitting shivah. Everybody’s gone home. In my book, that’s when the real mourning starts.”

Mrs. Applebaum doesn’t respond to this, and for a while we’re both knotted up inside our own personal memories of loss. I can still see my mother the moment she died. She was lying on her hospital bed. The light was streaming in through the Venetian blinds. There were tubes and catheters and things but she wasn’t in any pain. Not anymore. It was early, five in the morning, but there was no such thing as time. Loretta and I were crouched silently beside her, and I was holding her hand and she was smiling. She’d stopped talking days before. Every couple of minutes, I would put some shaved ice into her mouth to keep her comfortable. She was breathing, but it was shallow and uneven. Then she sort of turned away and half-closed her eyes, like she meant to take a nap. And that was it. I was holding her hand, and I felt a flutter of tiny pulses in her fingertips. It was so beautiful and so very odd, as if some anonymous workman, a janitor, was strolling methodically, room by room, through a large empty building flicking off the lights. And when the pulsing stopped, I glanced up at her face and I knew.

“I realize you’ve got a job to do, but I wouldn’t go see them just yet,” Mrs. Applebaum says. She’s standing behind her desk and she’s muttering to herself as much as she’s talking to me. “Wait. They’re not ready. It’d be like opening up the wound all over again.”

“You don’t have to worry. It was never my intention.”

She pulls the sheaf of papers from the copying machine, staples each sermon together in the upper left-hand corner, slips them into a manila folder, and presents it to me. Nice and neat and organized. “Here. Read. This will tell you all you need to know about the man.”

I thank her and head for the door. When I step outside again, it’s just past noon and the light on La Brea is intense. There are no shadows anywhere. The homeless man, the man with the greasy hair and the rheumy eyes and the red bandana, the man who could be God, has vanished. I unlock the car door and as I do, I notice something glinting back at me from the hood. I pick it up, turn it over gently in my hand.

Someone has left me a bright shiny bullet.