An Old Man's Game

by Andy Weinberger

  “I just want you to know that I’ve put Jason and Remo out there to keep an eye on Blanchard. He hasn’t gone anywhere yet, but when he does, I expect he’ll be coming in your direction. You’re home, I hope.”

  “Well, not quite. I have to have one more chat with Howie Rothbart first. It seems someone was trying to get him to terminate the rabbi’s contract a month before he had that unfortunate little incident at Canter’s.”

  “Really. Who?”

  “That’s what I’m going to find out. As I told you before, somebody in that shul didn’t like him.”

  “Well, okay, but after that, I don’t want you hanging out on the sidewalk. Is that understood?”

  “I’m glad to see that you’re finally taking what I say seriously, Bill.”

  “I always take what you say seriously. You may be an old fart, but you’re good at putting two and two together. I never said you weren’t.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Oh, yeah, I almost forgot. We checked those phone numbers you gave us. Two of them belong to Christian churches, evangelicals. One in the San Fernando Valley, the other in Fallbrook near San Diego, both of them pretty militant when it comes to abortion and gays. Another one is the number of LocknLoad—it’s a gun and ammo shop out in Duarte. One’s the number for something called MB Enterprises in Pasadena—we have no effing idea what that is.”

  “That’s four numbers. I gave you five.”

  “Right. You did. The last number belongs to Howard Rothbart.”

  “My, my. What goes around, comes around.”

  “Doesn’t it, though.”

  I get out of the car and shut the door. “I’ll keep you posted, Bill. I have a feeling we’re getting close on this one.”

  “Yeah, well, just don’t get too close is all I’ve got to say.”

  “Omar’s been telling me the same thing,” I reply. “You guys are both a bunch of old ladies.”

  “We’re the police, Amos. Let us do our job.”

  The sun is setting as I stroll across the lawn and ring Howie’s doorbell. It takes him a long time to answer it, but when he sees me standing there yet again, he looks strangely resigned.

  “I hope you don’t mind, Howie. I have a few more questions.”

  He waves me into the living room. “I don’t mind, Amos. But remember, you’re doing this on your own dime.”

  We sit down on the couch. Now he’s wearing khakis and a gray Brooks Brothers shirt with the sleeves rolled halfway up his arm, which is a step up from before. But he still hasn’t bothered to shave. And this time he doesn’t offer me lemonade or coffee or anything.

  He plumps up a maroon throw pillow and tucks it behind his back. “So. What can I do for you this evening?”

  “Well,” I say, “a little birdie told me that the rabbi wasn’t universally beloved at the temple.”

  “Hell, I told you that myself. He had some radical ideas. We Jews live and breathe radical ideas. Freud. Marx. Einstein. Nothing wrong with that in my book.”

  “Not unless somebody wanted to kill you for those ideas.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  I stand up and stretch, make like I might be fed up with his shenanigans, that I’m maybe about to head for the door. Then I lean back around and face him. “Somebody wanted you to tear up the rabbi’s contract a few days before he died, Howie. Tell me about that.”

  His rubs his hand quickly over his lips. “It’s true. Someone came to me. He was unhappy with the rabbi’s commentary that Friday night.”

  “And what did you do?”

  “Do?” He shrugs. “I listened to him, that’s all. That’s what a temple president does. You have to listen to all sides.”

  “You didn’t tell him you’d consider it?”

  “I consider everything, Amos. But that doesn’t mean I act on everything I consider. Far from it.”

  “So this disgruntled fellow. He has a name, I presume. What is it?”

  Howie pauses. “I’d rather not say.”

  “Because?”

  He shifts his weight around on the couch, readjusts the pillows. “This hasn’t been easy for me, Amos. You know that. It’s already cost me a great deal. Dora, the woman I loved. Or thought I loved. Hell, I don’t know what I think anymore. It cost me Dora. It cost me Dora and it cost me my wife, someone I didn’t even realize I needed until she was gone. I’ll probably end up losing this house and God knows what else.”

  “What’s that got to do with this man?”

  He looks up at me. His eyes are large and pleading. “This man isn’t just anyone. He’s helped me through all kinds of problems. He’s well meaning. He’s generous. Okay, he disagreed with the rabbi, we all did from time to time. But it would be a mistake, it would be unfair to drag his name into this tragedy. You’ll have to trust me on this, Amos.”

  “Well, now, that’s the trouble, Howie. I don’t.”

  “You don’t what?”

  “I don’t trust you. Not anymore. You brought me in because you said you wanted to find out what happened. You wanted the truth. You wanted to get to the bottom of things. The congregation needed to know, you said. Then, after Dr. Ewing dies and Jonah Siegel winds up in a puddle on a railroad track, you suddenly turn around and say you’ve changed your mind. You really don’t want to know what happened. You just wanted me to make an effort, that’s all, give it the old college try. Do the honorable thing, then call it a day.”

  “I said that, yes. And I meant what I said.”

  “Yeah, but now I hear that someone was pressuring you to fire the rabbi right before he dies. Someone was so upset he came down here and gave you hell because the rabbi still had a job. If I’m a cop and I hear that, you know what I’m thinking? I’m thinking I want to talk to this guy. I’m thinking if this guy is mad enough to want the rabbi fired, maybe he’s mad enough to want him dead.”

  “Not this guy. You can argue that, but it makes no sense.”

  “Why’s that?”

  Howie folds his hands in his lap. “Because when he heard about what happened at Canter’s, he was the guy who insisted we hire a private detective. In fact, he put up the money to hire you.”

  “He told you to hire me?”

  “Not you, specifically. But an outside investigator. He said we needed to do the right thing. That the police would never do a thorough enough job. So in a sense, you owe him, Amos.”

  I pull my cell phone out of my jacket pocket and start flipping through the photographs looking for the ones Omar sent me. “Tell me, Howie, does the name Eric Wayne Blanchard mean anything to you?”

  “Eric Blanchard? No. Should it?”

  “I dunno. Remember last time we spoke, I mentioned how I was being followed around?”

  “I think you did say something about that, yes.”

  “Well, it turns out Eric is my shadow. Big bruiser of a guy. Served in Iraq. Born-again Christian. My pal Omar and I just had a chat with him at his place in Santa Monica.”

  “I don’t understand where this conversation—”

  Just then I find what I’m looking for. I bring the phone up close so that Howie can see. “It’s just that this Eric, he’s an unpleasant fellow, you know. There he is in this picture. The one with the short red hair hunched over his sandwich. Recognize him now?”

  Howie studies the phone, turns it from side to side, shakes his head. “I’m afraid not, sorry.”

  “Actually, that’s okay. But here’s what I don’t understand. For some strange reason, he had your phone number tucked away in his coat pocket.”

  “Really?”

  I flip to the next photo. “Never mind about Eric. This is the one I’m really interested in. You know him, Howie?”

  His eyes glisten and I can see I’ve hit pay dirt. “That’s him,” he whispers after a moment. “That’s Mordecai Bloom. The man who hired you.”

  Chapter 20

  LORETTA IS IN a great mood tonight. Carmen took her to her Aunt Lucita’s house in Highland Pa
rk, and they spent the afternoon cooking and baking and decorating the family altar for the Day of the Dead. It’s not my holiday, but since she’s so happy, that’s all that counts. I throw a couple of lamb chops and garlic in the frying pan and reheat the asparagus and wild rice dish I invented yesterday. I even ask Carmen if she’d like to stick around for dinner, but she says no, she’s had a long day and besides she has kids and a hungry husband to look after.

  When everything is ready, I light a candle and set it down. We sit across from each other at the kitchen table. I pour myself a small glass of merlot, letting it breathe for a minute the way they tell you to do on all those cooking shows. Loretta has her tomato juice. The doctor, the current one, a young guy who hails from Pakistan and studied at UCLA, thinks wine just might interfere with the medication she’s on. The previous doctor didn’t care one way or the other. They call that scientific progress, I guess.

  “L’chayim,” I say. I wink at her and take a sip.

  “L’chayim,” she says back. The tomato juice makes her shudder. “Too cold.”

  Halfway through the meal, she turns to me. She wants to know what I do all day.

  “You know what I do all day, honey. I’m still on a murder case. Remember the rabbi who died?”

  She nods.

  “Well, I think I’m getting close to the end.”

  Maybe it’s all the mumbo jumbo around the Day of the Dead, maybe it’s the idea of a murder case, or maybe it’s because she’s conflating all these things in her mind at once, but she puts down her knife and fork. The look on her face is hard to read. “You know who killed the rabbi?”

  I half-nod. “I know someone who probably wanted to kill the rabbi. He had a reason, at least.”

  She considers this. “Have you called the police?”

  “Not yet. I could be wrong. But even if I’m right, they need a lot more information before they can do anything.”

  “You’re chasing him, then. The murderer.”

  “That’s right.”

  “He could be a ghost,” she says, without skipping a beat. “What if he’s a ghost?”

  I smile at her. “You believe in ghosts, Loretta? In your whole life, have you ever seen a ghost?”

  “I’ve seen things that scare me.”

  I reach across and cover her hand with my own. “Me too, honey. Me too.”

  Later that evening, I pick up another of Rabbi Ezra’s sermons and settle down on the couch. Tonight, he begins, I think it is time to lay our cards on the table. I know that a few of you have expressed concerns lately about the tenor of my Friday evening essays. You may be worried that we have lost our guiding star. That we are dabbling in places we shouldn’t be. That we’re not conducting business as usual anymore. Has the rabbi lost his mind? Does he secretly hate Jews? Why is he saying these things?

  Well, let me reassure you all, I haven’t lost my mind. And I have nothing but love in my heart for the Jewish people. But Judaism is not an ordinary religion. It is not simply about finding consolation in the arms of God. In fact, I would argue that Judaism has very little to do with God. Judaism is a philosophy, a way of looking at the universe and discovering the truth so that we may move forward as a people. How do we do this? There are many ways to learn. One way is through our texts. We read the Torah, we read the Talmud. And we can accept what the Torah says verbatim, or not. We can treat the Torah as the word of God and therefore immutable, or we can treat the Torah as a collection of wisdom and literature that improves with midrash, with interpretation. I would suggest that if we accept the Torah just as it is, then we do ourselves a great disservice. We sell ourselves short, my friends. We deliberately ignore all the data, all the science that we know in our hearts to be true. Judaism is a philosophy that, above everything else, seeks the truth. Even if that truth seems to lead us into uncharted waters.

  As I’ve said on previous occasions, the evidence is pretty compelling that we Jews were never in Egypt, at least not in the way it is written in Exodus. We were not slaves in Egypt. We did not rise up as a people and suddenly leave Egypt. There was no forty years in the desert and therefore no transformative experience on Mount Sinai. Exodus, rather, is probably a metaphor for our time in Babylon when we were held captive. This is what we know to be true: The Exodus tale, along with most of the Torah, was more than likely cobbled together in Babylon by a group of rabbis. Why? Well, we need only to look at the story.

  Although it is clothed with personalities, Exodus is really a series of bargains and rewards. If the Jews follow the way of the Lord, they will be rewarded. Change your behavior, and you will change your circumstances. By the same token, if the Egyptians don’t heed the word of the Lord, they will pay a price. It’s a quid pro quo. And in their dire circumstances in Babylon, the rabbis were trying desperately to keep their tribe together. They needed everyone to be on the same page. Everyone had to believe. So what do you do when someone is having a bad day? You offer them a better tomorrow. You offer them the Promised Land. That makes sense, my friends, and that’s in all probability what happened. It’s a magnificent story, I will admit that. It has magic, it has plagues, it has adventure and mayhem. It has the Ten Commandments, which is a wonderful addition to the world’s ethics, although much of it, we assume, was lifted from the Code of Hammurabi. And crowning everything, it has the promise of God that the Jews will one day inherit the land of Israel. It’s a contract. Signed and sealed. Except now we know very well that God was not a party to it. God didn’t promise anything. The rabbis in Babylon promised us that it was ours. The rabbis in Babylon said that God meant for us to have it, that no one else would ever have a valid claim to it. Every time I read that section in Exodus, I must say it takes my breath away. I don’t believe there is another religion on earth that speaks quite so specifically or so eloquently about real estate. This land is set aside. This land, and only this land, is holy. This land belongs to the Jews.

  My phone rings then. It’s Malloy. “You still breathing?”

  “Of course I am.”

  “That’s good to hear. Because I don’t want any more bodies on my beat.” There’s a pause. “Did you lock the door? Is your gun loaded?”

  “Yes, and yes. And why do you want to know?”

  “No reason. It’s just that Blanchard took off in his Audi sometime in the last hour, and my guys weren’t paying attention, not enough, anyway.”

  “So they lost him?”

  “You could say that. He probably just went out for dinner somewhere. They expect him back. But in the meantime, you know, I thought I’d give you a heads-up. Also, I’d—well, we’re not perfect around here, so I’d like to apologize.”

  “Well, he hasn’t knocked on the door yet.”

  “That’s good, I’m glad. Oh, the other thing on my mind—did you talk with Howie Rothbart again? Anything come of that?”

  “Howie’s a fountain of information, Bill. Once he opens his lawyer’s mouth, you can’t shut him up.”

  “So. I’m listening.”

  “I showed him the picture Omar took of Eric Blanchard. Howie didn’t know him, never heard the name before, couldn’t figure out how the heck Blanchard had his phone number written down. Then I showed him the one of Blanchard’s friend, the one we call the weasel. That was a different story. Turns out the weasel’s real name is Mordecai Bloom. Sometimes he calls himself Malcolm Bloom when he’s around gentiles. Howie knows him real well.”

  “Mordecai Bloom. Malcolm Bloom. What the hell kinda name is Mordecai? Spell it out for me, will you.”

  I do. I tell him it’s a Jewish name. Mordecai, from the Book of Ruth.

  “Never read it,” he says. “That in the Bible?”

  “It is,” I say. “You ever been to a Purim Party? It’s kind of a Jewish Mardis Gras. Food and drink and crazy costumes. That’s the Book of Ruth right there.”

  “I’ll wait till they make the movie,” he says, “Now, what do you know about Bloom?”

  “Not much. Bloom was p
robably Blum, a hundred years ago when his family lived in Düsseldorf or Hamburg or Warsaw. Means flower. So maybe they were gardeners or florists once upon a time. Or maybe not. Back then they swapped names around like baseball cards.”

  “You’re a regular linguist, Amos. I had no idea.”

  “Never mind,” I say. “But remember those phone numbers you looked up? I’ll bet you another lunch at Canter’s that MB Enterprises is his.”

  “I’ll see what I can find.”

  “You can run him through your machines,” I say. “I hope you do. But I wouldn’t think that Mr. Bloom has a criminal past. Definitely an odd duck, though.”

  “Why you say that?”

  “Well, according to Rothbart, he was the guy who wanted the rabbi fired.”

  “How come?”

  “No idea,” I say. “And it doesn’t matter. Then, after Diamant dropped dead in the middle of lunch, with Bloom sitting right beside him, he was also the guy who ponied up the money to have me investigate.”

  “Mordecai Bloom hired you?”

  “Yeah, well sorta. He didn’t ask for me. But he put up the cash for the temple to hire someone. They were just going to leave it with the police.”

  “Doesn’t sound like something a murderer would do, bring in a detective.”

  “No, I agree. But this guy has his fingers in lots of pies, it seems. He and Blanchard are partners in something. Whatever they’re doing, it may be legal, but it doesn’t sound too kosher. And apparently, he’s helped Rothbart out in all kinds of ways.”

  “What do you mean—all kinds of ways?”

  “He’s loaned Howie money once in a while, and he’s loaned the temple money before, when they got into a jam. That’s what I was told. Also, Howie didn’t say this outright, but—it looks like Bloom gave him some inside tips on Israeli tech stocks.”

  “Hey,” Malloy says, “I could use a friend like that.”

  “You and me, both,” I say. “I don’t know what his day job is, but he has influence and some smart, well-placed friends.”

  “And money,” says Malloy.

  “And a shitload of money, yes. Money doesn’t seem to be an obstacle in his world.”