“I wish you were thirty years younger, Amos. I hope you know that. You’d make one terrific cop.”
“I wish I was thirty years younger myself,” I tell him. “I also wish I still weighed the same as when I came out of the Marines. I wish I had hair. I wish I could sleep though the damn night. But that’s over with.”
He laughs, tells me to keep my pants on and he’ll call me in the morning as soon as he stumbles onto anything useful about Mordecai Bloom.
Later on, after I swallow some more of my pills and brush my teeth, I curl up next to Loretta’s back. She’s warm and sweet. I slide my arm around her middle and she coos gently in her sleep. Maybe she’s dreaming of ghosts, I don’t know. I don’t care.
Chapter 21
HE HAS A LARGE, wood-shingled place on Palmetto, just off Orange Grove. It’s one of the choicest sections of Pasadena. Two stories, with an attached garage. The houses here are set back from the street, and though I’m sure they’ve all been thoroughly modernized within, their exteriors have that buttoned-down intellectual feel I remember from my college days in Berkeley. Except for the occasional Lexus or Mercedes sitting in some of the driveways, it’s also straight out of the last century. Any East Coast robber baron would probably feel right at home here. Up and down the block there are small plastic signs planted discreetly in the grass or in flowerbeds, notices from security firms telling burglars like me to beware. Fine. I wasn’t planning on breaking in, anyway.
I’m parked beneath an enormous sycamore tree across the street. I was going to wait for Malloy to get back to me, but knowing how long things can take with the police, I finally just said to hell with it, called the number Howie Rothbart gave me, and made an appointment. Bloom’s secretary didn’t seem at all surprised to hear from me, especially when I mentioned it was about the rabbi’s death. So it’s three in the afternoon, and here I am.
I ring the doorbell, and in no time at all a pert, pleasant young woman appears. She has short dark hair and a close-fitting black pants suit. Everything about her is balanced; she seems poised and ready, like a ballerina. Her name is Ada. “You must be Mr. Parisman,” she says. “Right this way. Mr. Bloom is expecting you.”
She leads me down a carpeted hall and into what looks like a rich man’s small private library. Three out of the four walls are lined with books, some of them leather-bound, gold leaf, antiquarian stuff. Tacitus. Dante. Boccaccio. Machiavelli. In the middle of the room there’s an elegant mahogany desk. It probably once belonged to Louis XVI, I’m guessing, but what do I know? It’s older than I am, that’s for sure. There’s a black phone and a silver laptop computer on it, and hunched over behind the computer sits Mordecai Bloom. He’s a wiry man about my age.
“Mr. Bloom,” Ada leans in and whispers to him, “your three o’clock is here.”
He glances up at me from his computer and, in the same moment, rises and shakes my hand. The first thing you notice about him are his eyes. How intensely he gazes at everyone and everything. If you’re waiting for him to blink, you’ll wait a long time. He’s wearing a starched white shirt and a purplish tie, but his sleeves are rolled up and he’s undone the top button near the collar, which gives him an oddly lost and disheveled look, like he works for a newspaper. “Malcolm Bloom,” he says. “A pleasure.” His own hand is cool and smooth and delicate. I get the feeling he’s never handled anything rougher than a lettuce leaf. “Mr. Parisman, please, have a seat. Can I get you a drink? Water? Coffee? Tea?”
“No, no,” I say, “I’m good.”
He nods, settles back. For a moment, he studies his computer screen, then presses a few buttons and turns to me. “So,” he begins, “I’m told you want to speak with me about Rabbi Ezra.”
“I do. I’m the fellow that Shir Emet hired to look into it.”
“Yes, yes,” he says. “I remember Howard mentioned you at one of the Board meetings. Said you were top-notch.”
“Well, I’m not nearly as active as I used to be. In fact, I was kind of half-retired. This all just came up out of the blue. Caught me by surprise.”
“Of course. I understand. Still, we’re grateful that you looked into it.” He leans back, stares calmly. He’s waiting for me to lead off, and there are so many things I want to ask him, I hardly know where to start.
“You seem to have two names,” I begin. “Should I call you Malcolm or Mordecai? Why don’t we get that out of the way first.”
“In Israel I was Mordecai. It’s my Hebrew name. Here I’m mostly Malcolm. Except among landsmen. I’ll answer to anything, however.”
“Okay,” I say, “so if you don’t mind, I’d like to find out what you might know about the rabbi’s death.”
“Other than what was written in the newspaper?”
I nod.
“Before I answer that, perhaps you can clear up my own confusion. I thought—I was led to believe, anyway—that we had dispensed with your services, Mr. Parisman.”
“Oh, you have. Howie fired me a few days ago. I’m officially out of a job.”
“And yet you’re here?”
Again I nod. “I like to keep busy. And some things get me worked up, what can I tell you? I’m a passionate guy. When you reach my age, you need a reason to get up in the morning. It’s not about the money. I’m sure you understand that, Mr. Bloom. You don’t strike me as a man who cares about money.”
“How very admirable.” He leans back in his chair. “And you’re right, I suppose. I don’t really care about money. I care about the truth,” he says.
“Funny. That’s just what Howie Rothbart said when he brought me into this. That was all he cared about, the truth.”
“He’s a good man, Rothbart. They’ve got a good president down at that shul.”
“They? I thought it was your shul. Aren’t you a member?”
Bloom shakes his head. “I go to a lot of different temples. I like to hear everybody’s opinions, you know. Each one can be so different. But in the end I don’t play favorites. It’s just my way.”
“So let me understand. You live here in Pasadena. You don’t belong to Shir Emet in Hollywood. I get that. But when the rabbi died, you were willing to donate the money to hire me? How come?”
“As I said before, Mr. Parisman, money isn’t my concern. I have plenty of money.”
“And you just wanted to help them find the truth.”
“I did what I could, yes.”
“But now you’ve decided to get rid of me. I don’t mean to be rude, but just what prompted that?”
“The only thing I ever seem to buy for myself”—he points vaguely with an outstretched arm to his surroundings—“is a new book now and then. My one bad habit. On the other hand, I don’t have a bottomless bank account. I gave a certain amount to the cause, and I expected—I hoped, rather, that it would lead to some resolution. Unfortunately, it didn’t.”
“Okay. I apologize for not catching the killer fast enough. But you know what’s odd? Me and my friends at the LAPD have been working this case for weeks, and we still don’t know the basic facts.”
“Such as?”
“Such as whether it was even a murder. There’s never been an autopsy. I’m still not sure that Ezra Diamant didn’t just drop dead on his own dime.”
“He did. I’m quite sure he did.”
“How do you know?”
“Well, I was there, eating lunch with him. Sitting right beside him. I watched the whole thing unfold.”
“But you never told the police?”
“Police? What police? They didn’t come around when it happened. Just the paramedics. One minute we were eating, the next minute he was gone. It’s as simple as that, really.”
“But if it was so simple, Mordecai, why on earth did you insist on hiring me to investigate?”
He cups his hands under his chin. “I don’t claim to be a medical expert. I only saw the man die. It was sudden. It was unexpected. And remember, Ezra Diamant wasn’t just any man. He was, as Howard Rothbart to
ld you, a rising star. A celebrity.”
“And that’s why you wanted to check it out?”
“I was prepared to leave things as they were. But it was important for the continuity of the shul. The congregation was upset, apparently. The temple phone was ringing off the hook. People needed assurances. They wanted to know that there was no foul play, nothing out of the ordinary.”
“So the Board held an emergency meeting?”
“You bet they did. That same afternoon. Someone on the Board thought that if the police looked into it, if they issued a report, maybe that would help. That’s what they voted to do. But when Rothbart spoke to me about it later that evening, I told him, sure, go ahead, but don’t get your hopes up.”
“Why?”
“In my experience, the police generally do a perfunctory job. They don’t like to go the extra mile. If it looks like an accident, they’ll call it an accident. They mean well, but the truth is, they’re hemmed in by forms and regulations. How shall I put this? Unless there was a knife sticking out of the rabbi’s back, it was always going to be an accident.”
“I see.”
“Yes, and that’s why it was my idea to bring in someone like yourself. An outsider. Someone independent. I didn’t expect it would change all that much in the end. But a gesture was necessary. You were there, I guess you’d say, for the optics.”
I try not to let him see how small that makes me feel. I try to continue right on. “So tell me,” I ask, “why exactly were you having lunch with him in the first place? And who was there?”
Bloom looks me squarely in the eye. “Let’s not play any more games, Mr. Parisman. I believe you’re quite familiar with everyone who was there that day. Joey Marcus, Eric Blanchard, Jonah Siegel, and myself. And you also know the purpose of the meeting.”
“I’d like to hear your version, if you don’t mind.”
“Well, I don’t know precisely why Jonah was there. The rabbi invited him at the last minute. Maybe he was looking for a free meal. But Joey Marcus is a well-known promoter. He came to talk about a possible book deal. That, and some television appearances.”
I take out my cardboard notebook and jot that down. “Okay, what about you and Blanchard?”
“My associate and I were on hand to discuss funding. The rabbi, of course, was talking up his concept of a new Judaism.”
“And you found that intriguing?”
He suppresses a laugh. “Intriguing? No, I wouldn’t say that. Amusing, perhaps. And if he ever achieved it, devastating.”
“But still you wanted to fund it?”
Mordecai Bloom pauses. His fingers play quietly on the desktop. “To be honest, I had no intention of ever putting significant money into his ideas. Have you read his sermons? Of course you have. His secretary gave you copies. But do you realize their implications?”
“I went to Hebrew school a million years ago. I got bar mitzvahed. That’s about as far as it went.”
He sighs. “Let me lay it out for you then, Mr. Parisman. For you it may all sound theoretical. You may not give a damn. But in his sermons, Rabbi Diamant argued that the Exodus story was fabricated. If Exodus is fiction, that changes everything. If Exodus is a fiction, then the promised land of Israel is also a fiction.”
“So what kind of Judaism was he talking about?”
“Oh, he wanted something lyrical, I suppose, a Judaism that extolled the poetry and the ethical wisdom of the Torah and the Talmud. A mobile Judaism. A Judaism that would do just fine in Hollywood, or anywhere in the diaspora, for that matter. A Judaism that no longer required the state of Israel. As far as he was concerned, we could simply walk away and leave it to the Arabs.”
“And I take it that’s not something you could accept.”
“I was born in Israel, Mr. Parisman. I grew up on a kibbutz in the Negev. I fought in the Six-Day War. I have killed people to preserve the state of Israel.”
He says this calmly, without blinking. To him, it’s merely a fact, like white wine goes well with fish. I glance around the room, the old books, then back at him. “Tell me, Mordecai, just what do you do? I don’t get it. I mean, how did you wind up here? And why should somebody like you care what this meshuggener rabbi in Hollywood talks about on Friday nights?”
He folds his arms resolutely in front of him. The way he’s letting all this information about himself just spool out without any seeming regard makes me think he has nothing to hide. On the other hand, his friend Blanchard was following Omar and me around. It was probably Blanchard who left me that bullet on the hood of my car. What’s that all about?
“I’ve done many things in my life, Mr. Parisman. But since I moved to America thirty years ago, I’ve become what you might call a consultant.”
“You have clients?”
“Only a few. But they’re very generous. I’m in conversation with some Christian organizations around the country. And with the government of Israel.”
“You work for the Israeli government?”
“No, not officially. But we talk from time to time. Israel’s a very small country. People my age all know one another. Have you ever been there?”
I shake my head.
“Pity,” he says. “Anyway. I try to help them out. Give them a sense of what the Jewish community in America thinks about this and that.”
“And so your friends in Israel—you informed them about Rabbi Diamant and his ideas?”
“Certainly. They’re always very keen to hear about people like that.”
“And your Christian clients? Are they as keen?”
“For different reasons, yes. The evangelicals—that’s who I advise mainly—are thinking about the end of days and the second coming of Christ. They don’t deviate from the Bible. For them every single word is true.” He leans forward, puts his hands on the desk and lowers his voice slightly. “This isn’t something I subscribe to, mind you, but you know, to each his own.”
“I don’t suppose the Israelis or your Christian friends had any useful notions about what should be done with the rabbi, did they?”
“No one said he should be murdered, if that’s what you mean. They did talk about neutralizing him.”
“Which means what in your world?”
“Well, since the poor man is dead, it means nothing now. He had an idea about Judaism. Some would call it a brilliant idea. Whatever. He also was a dynamic and charismatic personality. You go on the air with those two things and, if you’re lucky, if the stars are aligned just right, you could have a movement. It could spell trouble. I’ve seen it happen before.”
“And you were determined to stop that.”
“I didn’t have to stop it, Mr. Parisman. He died before I could even lift a finger.”
He’s not irritated by my questions, not yet, anyway. In fact, he seems to enjoying batting things back and forth. To him, it’s all a rather pleasant game. It’s badminton. I shift around slightly in my seat. “So, let’s try this backward, then. If he had lived, and you were going to stop him, how did you imagine that would work?”
Bloom stands up. He stretches his arms and when he does, his eyes grow dim as if he’s remembering something, although I doubt he’s ever going to tell me what it is. “In the old days,” he says, “I was more active. I didn’t stop and think. I found myself in difficult situations. And I did a few things I’m not so proud of. Now, I listen, and sometimes I give advice. But I like to believe that my real work is helping people interpret the truth.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I’ll tell you what I mean. After I left Israel, I tramped around Europe and Asia. When you’re young, you know, you want to explore. And I spent a wonderful couple of years in Japan studying Zen. One day I was in the supermarket in a little town near Kyoto, and I had a sudden craving for orange juice, which is common in Israel but not in Japan. So I asked them if they had any, and they nodded. Then they took me to the refrigerated section. And yes, they had it in all kinds of varieties. They ha
d one hundred percent orange juice, fifty percent orange juice, thirty percent orange juice. Even something called ten percent orange juice. To the Japanese it was all orange juice. Now, you and I may agree that at some point in the dilution process, it’s really no longer orange juice, just flavored water. But that’s a personal judgment.”
“And so what did you glean from that? What do you do with this insight?”
“Well, don’t you see? We can apply the same measuring stick to almost everything. To the platitudes people say about Israel. We can say ‘Israel is a democracy.’ Or ‘Israel is the underdog.’ Or ‘Israel is surrounded by implacable enemies.’ All these statements are true, to some degree. Or they were true once. Or they could be true—fifty percent, thirty percent—depending on your definition of things.”
“You still haven’t explained what you would have done to stop Ezra’s new religion.”
“Honestly? If it came down to it, I’d probably have offered him a great deal of money to launch it. I’d promise to back him. I’d start out by making a documentary of his life. Why? Because a thorough documentary cannot be done overnight. It would take months and months. And I’m sure we’d learn things, we’d film things that you probably wouldn’t want to include in the final cut. Not if you were going to lift him up in people’s eyes. Scenes that would otherwise wind up on the cutting room floor. But we wouldn’t do that. We would present an absolutely fair picture of the man, consistent with who he was.”
He takes his seat again. There’s a long moment of silence as he arches his fingertips together lightly beneath his chin. “Did you know about his daughter, the lesbian? How he beat her? Imprisoned her?”
I nod. “We’ve met.”
“Well, then you see what I’m getting at. The rabbi was not perfect. Who is? We try, but we so often come up short. My documentary would speak to that. How brilliant he is, how his life is bathed in sunshine but, sadly, in the end, like everyone else, there are these nagging periods of darkness.”
“And he wouldn’t go along with that portrait.”
An Old Man's Game Page 17