An Old Man's Game

by Andy Weinberger

  “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.

  Chapter 6

  UP UNTIL THE TIME you’re thirty, you’re pretty much invincible. Nothing but blue sky, that’s what most folks think anyway. If they think at all. That’s why they always like guys under thirty in the military. After thirty, well, maybe you’re still fit, maybe you can still charge up the hill, maybe you can eat a large pepperoni pizza and do fifty push-ups, no sweat, but that’s when doubt starts to creep in. Doubt is one of those funny words people hate. They put it in the same category as termites and arthritis; who needs doubt? It’s a royal pain in the tuchis. In my world, though, it’s a blessing. A person with doubt is somebody who finally knows better. Doubt stops you from strolling into a dark alley or downing that third martini. And by the time you get to be my age, doubt hasn’t just crept in, it’s sitting right there in the driver’s seat. You stir it in your coffee. Doubt is your best friend. It’s a winning lotto ticket. It keeps you alive.

  I spend the next half hour nursing that bullet in my hand while I cruise around Koreatown, past the neon barbecue joints and the ma-and-pa grocery stores and the pedicure parlors, turning down one grimy street and up another, glancing every few seconds at my rearview mirror just in case whoever left it lying on the hood has something more lethal in mind. After I’m sure I’m not being tailed, I head east on Sunset until it feeds into Cesar Chavez. The buildings take on an industrial tinge, they lose all pretense, and suddenly I’m in Boyle Heights, which used to be Jewish a long time ago but now is mostly Latino. I don’t know why, but I feel right at home here. Something real to feast your eyes on. Maybe that’s why. Proud, dark-skinned old men in starched white shirts and pearl buttons waiting patiently for the light to change. A pair of housewives gossiping. One in a long crinkled red skirt is pushing her secondhand baby carriage over the broken sidewalk. Everyone has time here. The sun is shining, and the Catholic church presides. No one, it seems, is in an infernal rush to get where they’re going. I dunno, maybe it has to do with the unemployment rate, but whatever it is, it’s not like the rest of LA.

  I pull up in front of a taqueria near Mariachi Plaza. Omar Villasenor is sitting all alone at a spindly outdoor table. He has a paper bag in one hand, and every few seconds he pulls it to his face and takes a swallow from whatever’s inside. There’s also a half-eaten bowl of guacamole and a large orange plastic basket of chips in front of him. I didn’t plan it or anything, but this is right where I thought he’d be.

  “It’s been a while, hombre,” I say. “Hace mucho que no lo veo.” I lay my bullet down on the table. Then I start to explain how it found its way into my hand. I tell him about the rabbi. About Howie Rothbart and the guys who run the doughnut shops. About Sophie Applebaum and the sermons she gave me. He listens for a long time.
Doesn’t say a word. Talking isn’t Omar’s strong suit. He’s a big, sturdy fellow in his early thirties, and, from a certain angle, he bears an uncanny resemblance to Yul Brynner. He has a shaved head, not because he’s losing ground in that department, but because he got into a fight with a barber once and vowed he’d never give them another penny. Now he shaves himself clean once a week. There’s a tiny gold crucifix that pokes out from under his yellow T-shirt and a diamond stud in his ear. Leather boots from the old country. When he was a teenager, Omar used to wrestle professionally in Mexico, where, he told me, it’s not just for show like it is in El Norte. You come up here, they expect you to be a goddamn actor. Wear a costume. Goof around in the ring. Not where I come from, man.

  When I finish talking he sighs, sets the bullet standing straight up on the table. “Somebody wants you dead,” he says. “Guess it doesn’t pay no more to be a detective.”

  “Somebody wants me to stop asking questions, that’s for sure. I don’t think it’s a threat, though. Not really.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Well, if I wanted to threaten somebody, I wouldn’t just set a bullet on the hood of a car. I’d drive by and put a hole through the windshield, that’s what I’d do. That would send a message.”

  He picks up the bullet again. “So what’s this?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe somebody thinks I’m onto something. I just wish to hell I knew what it was.”

  He takes a chip and shovels it solemnly into the guacamole, offers me some. I wave him off. “Have you shown this to the cops?” he asks.

  “No, not yet. I might, but what’s the point? What are they gonna do about it?”

  “Nada,” he agrees. “Nothing, it’s just a bullet. They won’t do nothing until maybe it’s somewhere inside your chest. And even then, probably not much.”

  I chuckle. Omar and I go way back. I saved him from a trip to prison once when the boys at the Hollenbeck Station needed a kid to do time for a rape they couldn’t solve. Or couldn’t be bothered to investigate. The public defender, Jerry Saltz, was a pal of mine. He asked me to look into it. Something’s not kosher about this, he said. His words exactly. And Omar was convenient. He was standing on the corner. In the wrong place at the wrong time. He hardly spoke English. He was young. He was poor. He was Mexican. That was in the bad old days when those kinds of things counted as evidence. Did it matter to them that it was a dark, moonless night and the woman wasn’t certain? That she said she’d clawed her assailant’s arm and Omar had no marks on him? That she was legally blind in one eye? That she couldn’t pick him out of a lineup? No, it did not. Yes, she was raped, but not by Omar. Anyway, he has never forgotten me. Even though I reassure him each time we meet, he’s a gentleman, a real mensch, and he insists he owes me a favor he can never repay.

  “So what are we going to do about this, amigo?”

  I pat him lovingly on the shoulder. “Look at me, Omar. You see I’m not quite the powerhouse I used to be. I think I need a little muscle on my side. Or at least someone who can think this thing through with me. Are you willing? I’d pay you.”

  “I won’t take your stupid money.”

  “Well, then, I’ll find someone else. Someone who will.” I should have known he was going to give me grief about this. I start to rise from the table.

  “Okay, okay, okay, pay me.”

  I sit back down.

  “But not a lot. I won’t do it if you give me too much.”

  Now we both chuckle. I reach over and grab a chip’s worth of guacamole.

  Omar thinks I may have missed something, that we should rewind the story and start back at the beginning, so we get in my Honda and drive over to Canter’s. It’s mid-afternoon and it’s not so crowded. There’s a group of tourists standing around, three jiggly women in capri pants with flabby arms and running shoes, and three paunchy men behind them, silent and looking put-upon, the way husbands do, each with a camera hanging off his shoulder. The ladies are gawking at the array of pastries in the big glass case. Like they’re all from Indiana and they’ve never seen a Linzer torte before.

  I slide past and ask Doris, the buxom old brunette who works the cash register, if Ruben is around, and before you can say Hanukkah-in-Santa-Monica, he’s sitting across from us.

  As much as anybody else, Ruben Glazer runs the joint. I used to play poker with him twenty years ago, but then he started beating me too badly and I had to quit so Loretta and I could make the rent. Like Omar, he’s a big man. Unlike Omar, he’s not what you’d call a healthy man. He still has a little hitch in his step left over from a car wreck, not terrible, but you can’t help but notice. On top of that, his pale jowly face hasn’t seen the outdoors in years, and he’s eaten more than his fair share at Canter’s.

  “Help me out here, Ruben. I’m trying to fill in the blanks about Rabbi Diamant. How he died and all.”

  Ruben raises his eyebrows. “Somebody hire you, Amos?”

  I nod. “The Board over at Shir Emet.”

  “Why’d they do that? Does that mean they think it’s murder?”

  The look on my face says I wish I knew. “They’re bean counters, I guess. They like everything a certain way. Maybe they’re just performing their due diligence. Maybe they’re worried about a lawsuit. All I know is they’ve asked me to check it out. I guess it doesn’t make sense to them, either.”

  Ruben frowns, shakes his head. “It’s a shock to the heart, I’ll say that much. A man sits there eating his lunch, talking with his friends. You know what I mean?” He puts his fist to his chest. And then boom, he’s gone. Sure ruined my day, I’ll tell you.”

  Omar shoots me a glance. It’s like we’re having the same startling notion at the same time. “Now that I think about it,” I say, “nobody’s said a word to me yet about his friends. Who was he with? You remember?”

  “Gee, I dunno.” Ruben tucks his enormous fist under his chin, not quite in the romantic manner of Rodin’s The Thinker, but if you add another thirty pounds, almost. “There were, let me see, four of them, if I recall. A couple of business guys maybe from Shir Emet, maybe not. You’d probably recognize them. One big macher, about as big as your friend here, all dressed up. And another one in a suit. But he was older and, you know, a wiry guy. And sitting next to him was this skinny yeshiva kid. Fancy yarmulke. Eighteen, twenty years old. Never seen him before. And the fourth guy? Oh yeah, right, the fourth guy, that was Joey Marcus.”

  I lift my hands, palms up, questioning. “And Joey Marcus is who?”

  Ruben acts surprised. “You don’t know Joey Marcus? Really? Everybody knows him. Joey Marcus is an agent, a promoter, I guess you’d say. Books all kinds of acts. You wanna go on Oprah, you talk to Joey. You wanna do stand-up at a club? Go see Joey. He’s been coming here for years. I’m amazed you never met him.”

  “I never wanted to go on Oprah, I guess.”

  “Yeah, well, he was there, sitting right across from the rabbi when he keeled over. That’s when all hell broke loose.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, what do you expect? Everyone jumped up all at once, tried to help. The whole restaurant, practically. Something was wrong. I guess it’s natural, only nobody knew what to do at first. You understand. People were shouting, people were on their cell phones, calling for an ambulance. A guy came running over from that booth in the corner, said he was some kind of doctor, ripped open the rabbi’s shirt right away, started pumping his chest. It was crazy. We all pulled the table away, laid him out on the floor.” Ruben shakes his head again. “I tell you, I’m still having nightmares about it.”

  “How long did it take for the ambulance to arrive?”

  He shrugs. “Ambulance? Who the hell knows? Not long, probably. Cedars-Sinai isn’t that far away. Seemed like forever, though.” He paused for a moment. “They did what they could. Gave him some kind of shot in the leg. Tried pumping his chest, just like the other guy. Then after a while they put him on a gurney and that was t
hat.”

  “You talked to the police about this?”

  “The police?” A half-laugh. “Sure, afterwards. They came by later. Much later.”

  “And they took down the names of all those people he was sitting with?”

  “Nah. I don’t know for sure, but I don’t think so. Anyway, the guys at his table didn’t stick around. They left the minute the paramedics did. Not that I blame them. Just about everybody started getting up and leaving. It was one bad dining experience. Some of them didn’t even pay their bill. Not that I care. I just hope it doesn’t go viral.”

  “So when the police arrived, they didn’t think this was at all peculiar?”

  “I don’t know what the hell they thought, Amos. They weren’t Johnny-on-the-spot. They came two, maybe three days afterwards. They said it was because they got a call from Shir Emet. So okay, they asked a few questions. But like I say, it was all cleaned up. People were sitting there, eating at that same table, like it never happened.” Ruben takes out a handkerchief, wipes an errant bead of sweat from his forehead. “It was upsetting, is what it was. It’s always upsetting when somebody drops dead in front of you. I never saw anything like that in my whole life. You know what I mean?”

  “I know what you mean, Ruben.”

  We talk some more. Ruben has Doris look up Joey Marcus’s address and phone number, and she writes them down for me on a scrap of paper. “Maybe Joey will have something more to tell you,” Ruben says. “He had a ringside seat.”

  Before I drive Omar back to Boyle Heights, I call Joey Marcus’s office in Hollywood and make an appointment for the following afternoon at three. Then, before he gets out of the car, a new idea pops into my head. I reach in the glove compartment and hand Omar my Glock 9.