A Hole In One

by Paul Weininger

  “Aren’t silencers supposed to be illegal?” Straub questioned the seller.

  “Let me see your I.D. for a minute,” said the dealer, needing to assure himself that Straub was not an undercover (UC) agent, and Straub produced it for him. “If you had been a UC then I would have said I was just teaching people how and why these fake silencers are illegal.”

  “Fuck no, I’m not a UC agent, you think I would ask you a question like that while you were holding a gun in your hand? Why a fake silencer?”

  The dealer whispered, “It’s not fake and they’re not exactly illegal. If for example, you wanted to shoot a raccoon going through your trash at night, you’d want to take care not to wake the neighbors. That’s a situation where you can legally use a silencer.”

  This crap was convincing enough for Straub to accept without further concern. “How much?” he asked.

  “I’ll sell you the gun and silencer for $1100 with any credit card and I’ll even throw in a box of .45 caliber shells.” Straub talked him down to $885 cash for all three items. The seller placed the gun, silencer, and a box of bullets into a long cardboard tube, which had originally held a large poster, wrapped it in newspaper and gave the package to Straub.

  “The cops won’t check what you bought,” the dealer said quietly. “If anybody asks, just say it’s a reproduction Samurai sword.” Cash talked big and loud. In a louder voice, he said “You just complete this form at home and you’ll get your permit in the mail,” in case somebody standing nearby was listening.

  Glancing around, he whispered, “Tell you what, though. I’ll let you leave with both today if you’ll just sign this form with any old name and address here. This will make sure that if there are any UC agents roaming around, they’ll see me handing you a proper form. Make it look like you’ve completed the form and you can take the gun home with you today.”

  Dick left the arena nervously with the rolled-up package under his arm. He even said goodbye to one of the state troopers at the front door, who then half-saluted him in a friendly return gesture.

  Twenty minutes later, that same seller was arrested by a roving undercover FBI agent for similar infractions he had witnessed with other customers. It was just dumb luck for Straub that the agent missed his transaction by less than a half-hour, or he would have had a lot of explaining to do behind bars.

  Dick Straub found a local shooting range and frequently went there after work. He practiced shooting for several weeks until he became a sharpshooter with the .45. He did not bring the silencer because he knew that police officers also came to practice.

  A major part of Dick’s plan was to take two shots at all four of golf partners, not necessarily intending to kill them, but to confuse the police. They would be uncertain if the target was one of the golfers, or all four of them, or whether more shootings would take place at others not involved with golf. The police would not know how to resolve the shootings, why they occurred, or who the shooter was.

  Dick began shooting at each of the foursome on different days over the next few months. He continued to develop his plans to the smallest detail, holding them firmly in his mind. He wanted nothing left to identify him in what was about to happen.

  He went to different Home Depots to purchase the individual items he felt he needed. These included a pair of rubber painter’s gloves, a ten-foot by ten-foot canvas painter’s tarp, some heavy cordage, and a gallon of bleach. He didn’t want any single Home Depot to have a record of purchasing all four items at the same store, paying cash for them rather than using his company credit card.

  Two weeks later, Straub followed Rabbi Bloom home from the synagogue for the fourth time. This time however, he didn’t just continue to drive by, but parked his worn-green pickup truck three blocks away from the house at a Circle-K convenience store. He knew it would be relatively empty after the normal breakfast crowd of coffee, donuts and chips customers. Still wanting to assure himself of not being noticed, he parked in the rear of the store. He waited behind the store until it got to be approximately 10:45 a.m. and, leaving the truck there, Straub walked the three blocks to the Rabbi’s house.

  Carrying the gear he’d purchased, he approached the Rabbi’s home that morning with the gun and attached silencer hidden under his sweat suit. Once at the Rabbi’s house, he stashed the gear in some shrubs beside the house. Straub rang the Rabbi’s doorbell, pulled out the gun with the silencer attached, and waited for the door to open. When Rabbi Bloom opened the front door, for a second he thought he was staring at a full-length mirror image of himself. As he stood there dumbfounded, Straub shot him squarely in the forehead, throwing the Rabbi back against a front closet door and enabling Straub to climb over the body and close the front door without being seen.

  He then placed the tarp on the floor near the front door, lifted the Rabbi and placed him on top of the tarp and wrapped his body with it, tying it snugly with the rope. The floors were made of hard granite, so there were no scratch marks left as he drug the tarp to the extra-large horizontal freezer he had found in the three-car garage, after a short search of the premises. There were only two cars parked in the garage, with the freezer near the door in what would have been the third spot. This gave him an idea that seemed much better than his original idea of dumping it in the desert. Straub placed the body into the freezer, not expecting it to ever be found. After moving into the home and living there as the Rabbi, his plan was to never open it again.

  Over the following days, Straub went through the house many times to familiarize himself with it. He opened Neil’s closets looking for clothes to wear and dressed himself in one of the Rabbi’s suits. Standing before a mirror he instantly became, to all appearances, Rabbi Neil Bloom himself, which pleased him immensely. He also went through the Rabbi’s papers and bank statements, and was thrilled to learn how rich he was about to be, once he learned to replicate the Rabbi’s signature. Now that he had the keys to the Rabbi’s fancy cars, he called his old boss, telling him he was taking a new job in Las Vegas and where he had left the old green pickup.

  Poor no more, he thought with profound satisfaction. “All I have to do now is give convincing performances at the synagogue.” Remarkably, he was able to bring them off almost flawlessly, and nobody seemed to notice the difference, not even the Rabbi’s mistress Carol.

  Straub’s expectation that the corpse would never be found, however, was a huge mistake. One night six weeks later, the neighborhood was struck by a severe thunder and lightning storm, causing the power to go out for three days. The body began to stink the terrible odor of death due to the freezer thawing out. This caused Straub to get nervous the stench might leak out of the house and be detected by the neighbors. He figured that if someone noticed the smell and asked him about it, he would tell them that he was holding a dead deer carcass in the garage for a hunter friend until he returned from a business trip, for fear that if he left in his own backyard it would in bring other animals, perhaps even a bear, to feed on it.

  This idea didn’t do much to calm his nerves. In something of a panic, Straub decided to burn the body so it would be unrecognizable, so he went out and bought a can of gasoline. When he returned, he took the tarp with the Rabbi’s dead body wrapped inside and pulled it through the house, past the kitchen, and out of the sliding back doors. He found a rake right next to an unlocked shed and started raking leaves and pine needles to the middle of the backyard to form an oval of about eight feet long by four feet wide.

  He then dragged the tarp-covered body out of the house and heaved it onto the pile of leaves. Looking around and not seeing anyone nearby, he placed the gun and silencer under the body and raked more leaves onto the rolled-up tarp This still wasn’t enough to cover the evidence, so Straub began raking both sides of the yard to gather more leaves and pine needles to fully cover the body to a height of about five feet. He took the can of gasoline and poured it all over the leaves, then tossed the canister on the pile without getting any gas on himself.

>   He returned to the house and cleaned all the body’s leaking fluids off the floor with rags he found in the garage, using as much bleach as necessary to remove any visible stains, then threw the rag and gloves into the center of the pile. He used the rake end to press them into the leaves about two feet down and then threw the bamboo rake into the pile as well.

  A few seconds later, he lit a match and threw it onto the pile along with the matchbook. The pile immediately burst into flames and billowing smoke, which should have been worrisome, but Straub was oddly confident that the size of Rabbi’s estate—at least three acres, he figured—would provide adequate privacy. He used the side yard to go back to the front door, hoping that if he were seen now, people would assume that the Rabbi was just getting home from the synagogue.

  Unfortunately for Straub, the next-door neighbor, Frank Weissman, was taking his trashcans to the curb to be picked up the next morning. As he was returning to his front door, he caught a glimpse of Rabbi Neil pulling the bundle into his backyard, lighting it on fire and walking back to his front door. He called out “Good morning, Rabbi,” and waved to him.

  Straub waved back at him rather weakly, since he didn’t know the neighbor’s name, and went inside Neil’s house.

  Weissman saw the fire in the backyard and knocked on the Rabbi’s door to ask him, “What are you burning in the backyard, Neil?”

  “Well, I had a lot of dead leaves to burn,” Straub replied, but thanks to his Hebrew studies, Straub quickly thought to add “While I was at it I decided to destroy two old worn-out Torahs,” which he had learned must be disposed of by fire.

  Later, knowing the Rabbi was now inside his home, Frank snuck into the Rabbi’s backyard to make sure the fire wouldn’t reach his own yard. Instead he found a scene that was as horrific as some of the stories his father had told him of atrocities during the Holocaust. He ran back to get his wife Colleen and show it to her. After noticing a skull protruding from the ashes, they ran back to their own home and called 911. Two black and whites arrived and put out the fire with the extinguishers that all police cars carried, and notified the sheriff about what they had found. Detectives Sommerville and Pratt arrived shortly thereafter, and Straub’s brief but spectacular run as Rabbi Bloom was soon finished.

  Acknowledgements

  Considering that this is my first attempt at writing a novel, I would like to convey my gratitude to the following people for their help in getting me there:

  First and foremost, I want to thank my wonderful wife of 36 years, Helen, who not only believed in my ability to write a book but actively supported me in writing it. She provided invaluable assistance in proofreading my manuscript and in editing parts of it with me. She is my love forever.

  I am also grateful to Stan Pawlowski, for suggesting the idea of including golfing in my story line to make it more interesting; to Ken Ulsh, who sketched the original concept of the book’s cover; to graphic artist Alex Lee, who designed the final cover and made requested changes with great patience; to Ed Smith, for his photograph of me for the biography page; and to Vivian Freeman Chaffin for the interior layout.

  Finally, I want to thank my editor, Hugh Gardner, who not only became a literary mentor to me but also a dear friend, and my publishing consultant, Larry Upshaw, who put us together.

  About the Author

  Paul Weininger is a debut author who began this novel at age

  74. He was born in Switzerland in 1946, came to the United States in 1953, gained his U.S. citizenship in New York in 1958, and earned a B.A. in psychology from Long Island University in 1967.

  His social science background and affable personality suited him well for a career in Human Resources, which occupied his entire professional life, culminating in the role of Director of Labor Relations for the largest food wholesaler in the country at the time, with 30,000 employees to look after. He retired in 2013.

  Always a voracious reader, Paul often wondered if he could write a book himself. Among other hobbies he dabbled with in retirement, this piqued his interest more than anything else, even golf. His engaging crime mystery A Hole in One is the result.

  Paul Weininger lives with his wife, Helen, in a suburb of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.