“But what goes for Arnold goes equally well for McLane,” the rabbi objected. “McLane could have distracted Arnold’s attention.”
“But he didn’t. Just a little while ago, Arnold told me he knocked over a bottle of cough syrup and McLane went into the toilet to get a mop to clean it up. I might add that McLane didn’t pretend he didn’t know who Kestler was. And McLane didn’t leave town the next day, either.”
“But if it’s a case of the two being switched, anyone who had the two bottles could have done it. Safferstein could have—”
“Now that’s not like you, David,” said Lanigan reprovingly.
“What do you mean?”
“Throwing suspicion on one of your people to save another.”
“I was merely listing the possibilities,” said the rabbi coldly.
“Yeah, but Safferstein is not one of them. Why? Because he didn’t even know Kestler, not the son or the father. And Kestler didn’t know him. They’d never had any dealings whatsoever. What’s more, Bill Safferstein had no way of knowing what would happen if he gave Kestler his wife’s medicine.”
The rabbi sat silent. Then he asked, “Are you going to charge Arnold Aptaker?”
Lanigan considered. “Not yet. Maybe there is some explanation. Look how it was with McLane. I thought I had him, and he wriggled off. Well, maybe young Aptaker can be lucky too. I’ll talk to him again. Maybe if you spoke to him first …” He looked at the rabbi questioningly. “I’m willing to gamble a little.”
“Not to mention that you don’t have a case that would stand up in court.”
“Why haven’t I?”
“Because you don’t have proof, real proof, that Kestler died from that pill,” the rabbi said. “No autopsy was performed and—”
“With what I have right now, I could get an order for an exhumation without any trouble at all. Believe me, David.”
“All right. I’ll talk to him.”
With Lanigan watching through the open door, the rabbi sat beside Akiva, and in low tones he explained the case against him. At first, the young man registered shocked disbelief, but by the time he had finished, he was confident and placid once again.
“He’s all wet,” Arnold said. “I didn’t hate Kestler. I was sorry for him. I’ll admit I was sore when it first happened, and for some time after that. I used to dream of getting revenge. You want to know something? I’d get homesick plenty of times, especially at first. And when I thought of what happened, why I wasn’t at home, I’d daydream of getting even in all kinds of ways. But never once did I think of doing it by giving him the wrong medicine on a prescription. It just never entered my mind. It was against my professional instinct, I suppose. Then when I joined Reb Mendel and the chavurah, I realized that any hatred I had for Kestler was like hatred for myself. Because he was me and I was him since we’re all part of the same unity. Do you understand?”
“And when you saw J. Kestler on the prescription?”
“Nothing. It could’ve been Joe Blow. Sure I recognized it. But nothing. No reaction. You know, sometimes you see a prescription for someone you know and you say to yourself, ‘Hm, Bill must have a bad cold.’ Like that, but that’s all.” He patted the rabbi’s arm. “Look, don’t you worry. I didn’t do anything wrong, so everything is going to be all right. You’ll see.”
A policeman came up from the wardroom in the basement. He walked by to go to the chiefs office and then stopped and did a double-take, “Hey, Arnold. I didn’t recognize you. What are you doing here?”
“Hello, Purvis,” said Arnold, smiling.
“You know him?” Lanigan called from his office. He came to the doorway.
“Arnold Aptaker? Sure. We went to high school together. Last time I saw him he had a beard like an old Jewish rabbi—” He blushed. “Sorry about that, Rabbi, it just slipped out.”
“That’s all right, officer, but nowadays it’s the young ones that have the beards.”
“And when was that, Purvis?” asked Lanigan.
“Last time I saw him? It was the night of the big storm. I was on duty patrolling the entrance to Route 1A, to slow cars down because of the broken branches on the highway ahead. And this car comes barreling along—”
“You mean he was speeding?”
The policeman colored as it occurred to him that he might be faulted for not having given Aptaker a ticket. “Well, not really speeding. Well, maybe just a little speeding. I mean maybe not enough to hand the guy a ticket, but enough to make him think I might to get him to slow down. So I blow the whistle on him and walk over and it turns out we know each other.”
“Where were you going, Arnold?” asked Lanigan.
“He said he was driving down to Philadelphia,” the policeman volunteered.
“And what time was this?”
“Oh, around three o’clock in the morning, I’d say.”
“Three o’clock Thursday morning and he said he was on his way to Philadelphia? Come in here, Purvis.” Lanigan stood aside for the policeman and then shut the door of his office behind him.
“Now, Purvis, this is important. I want you to tell me, as well as you can remember, just what he said.”
“Gosh, Chief, that was a couple of weeks ago. I just sort of walked over to where he’d stopped and said the usual—you know, like ‘Going to a fire, buddy?’ And he said something about how he was trying to make time getting to Philly. Then he recognized me and then I recognized him. Maybe I made some crack about hie whiskers, the way anyone would.”
“Of course.”
“Then I guess we talked about what various people we knew in high were doing now, and he asked me about my brother Caleb, and I told him he was working on the town paper. Then he takes out his billfold and hands me a fiver—”
“He tried to bribe you?”
“Oh no, Chief, nothing like that. You know me. If I thought he was trying to bribe me, I’d’ve hauled his ass right out of the car and taken him down to the station-house.”
“Naturally.”
“It was for a subscription to the Courier. You know about Caleb working on this campaign to get the old-timers that moved down to Florida to keep in touch with the town. I happened to mention it, and that’s when he outs with the five-spot.”
“I see. He wanted to get news of the town regularly.”
“That’s right.”
Lanigan flung open the door and called out to the sergeant on the desk, “Sergeant, book that man.”
“What charge, sir?”
“Willful murder of Jacob Kestler.”
While Akiva was being booked in the outer office, Lanigan in his own office was explaining to the rabbi. “Here’s a young fellow who hasn’t seen his folks in a couple of years, finally gets around to driving up here. He comes up Tuesday night and leaves Thursday. That’s a mighty short visit for all that driving. You’d expect him to stay through Saturday, anyway. Well, that made me a little suspicious of him. But now it turns out that he left in the middle of the night. He works at the store Wednesday evening and a few hours later, he’s on his way to Philadelphia. The courts always regard flight as evidence of guilt.”
“But—”
“Just a minute, there’s more,” said Lanigan. “Naturally I wondered about his coming back this time. I mean, if he’d done something and was running away, why would he come back? Well, he would if he thought it was safe. If we started to investigate Kestler’s death, it wouldn’t make the Philadelphia papers. Chances are it wouldn’t even make the Boston papers. So how would he know? Why would he take the chance? Well, Officer Purvis just told me that your young friend gave him five dollars to subscribe to the Courier for him. What do you think of that?”
In the cell block in the basement, the rabbi tried to talk some sense into Akiva. “You’ve got to get a lawyer. You’re just hurting yourself.”
Akiva shook his head. “No lawyer.”
“Why not?”
“Because he’d just get in the way and mess things u
p. He’d tell me what to do or he’d start filing motions or something, and it would just interfere.”
“Interfere with what?”
“With the natural course of events.”
“But when you’re arraigned tomorrow morning, the judge will assign you a lawyer if you don’t have one.”
“So he’ll assign him, Rabbi. I can’t help that, but it won’t be me lacking faith and picking one on my own.”
“How about your mother, Akiva? Are you going to call her? Would you like me to go see her?”
“She’s visiting my aunt in Boston. She’s not due back until sometime tomorrow.”
“Do you have the phone number? I’ll call her for you if you like.”
Again the young man shook his head. “No, she wouldn’t be able to sleep all night for worrying. More likely, she’d come a-running. No, she’ll find out soon enough.”
“How about the store?”
“It’s McLane’s morning on. He’s got a key.”
The rabbi tried another tack. “Why did you start out for Philadelphia in the middle of the night?”
“I’d rather not talk about that, Rabbi.”
“Then tell me why you subscribed to the Courier.”
Akiva began to laugh. “I wasn’t subscribing to no paper, Rabbi. That was a bribe I was giving Joe Purvis. He was being friendly and all that, but I still thought he might give me a ticket. If I offered him a bribe and he wasn’t on the take, I could be in deep trouble. But when he told me about his brother taking these subscriptions I gave him a fiver for one. I figured sure he’d keep it. I was pretty surprised when I actually got the paper delivered.”
“It would have been better for you if you hadn’t,” said the rabbi gloomily. “I’m afraid I’ll have to leave you now. If there’s anything I can do …”
“Yeah, there is at that, Rabbi. If you could drop off a siddur—”
“You want me to get you a prayerbook?”
“Sure. I’d like to recite some prayer besides the Shema.”
51
“I thought you’d forgotten we were due at the Bernsteins,” said Miriam when her husband returned.
“No, I didn’t forget.” He told her what had happened.
“Oh, his poor mother!”
“What’s that, the women’s lib point of view? What about his poor father? What about the poor young man himself?”
“Mrs. Aptaker is the only one of the three I’ve really ever met. Do you think Akiva did it, David?”
He shook his head gloomily. “There’s no question that Lanigan has a good case against him. There’s motive—he had reason to hate Kestler. There’s the weapon—the medicine. And there’s opportunity—he was in the drugstore at the time when the prescription had to be filled, and it looks as though he filled it. At least, the other pharmacist says he did, and Akiva doesn’t deny it. Then there’s the fact that he left town shortly after, which suggests guilt.”
“But then he came back.”
“True. But it was a couple of weeks later. And it could be argued that since there was no mention in the press that there was anything suspicious about Kestler’s death he felt it was safe to return. Particularly damning is that he took the trouble to subscribe to the town newspaper. That way he could know if the police were investigating the death.”
“It looks bad, doesn’t it, David?” she asked soberly.
“M-hm.”
“And yet you don’t feel he’s guilty. Is it because he’s religious?”
“Religious? His religion wouldn’t keep him from killing Kestler. Quite the contrary.”
“I don’t understand,” she said simply.
“The outer forms of a religion aren’t important unless they reflect the basic philosophy and ethics that are inherent in it. I got a clue to Akiva’s philosophy when he tried to convince me that he had no hatred for Kestler. It was the mystical business of everything and everyone being part of the Eternal One, and you are your enemy and he is you, so why should you hate him or try to injure him? But you can work that in reverse. You can justify hurting someone on the grounds that you are really hurting yourself. And who has a better right? When I saw him, he wasn’t the least bit worried, and he should have been, even if he’s innocent. Innocent men do get convicted occasionally. And even if they’re acquitted, it’s a troublesome and expensive business. No, he should be worried, and if he isn’t, it’s because he’s rationalized and tricked his mind into not seeing the facts. If he can do that, he can also arrange his thinking to convince himself that he did not do something that he actually did.”
“Then why—?”
“I suppose because I rather like him.”
“Look, David, if you’d prefer not to go tonight—”
“No, we might as well. There’s nothing more I can do for Arnold tonight—Oh yes, there is. I can bring him the siddur he asked for. Go ahead. Get dressed.”
“I am ready. I’ve just got to change.” She wriggled into a black sheath and then turned her back to him so that he could zip her up. Then she handed him a string of pearls so that he could clasp them around her throat as she held up the hair at the back of her neck.
He looked at the clasp critically and said, “The string is worn through. There’s just a thread.”
“Oh, it’s all right.”
“But it can break, and—”
“No great harm if it does, David. They’re not real pearls, you know. It’s just costume jewelry, but it’s all I’ve got that will go with black.”
The rabbi waited at the front door, the prayerbook he was bringing to young Aptaker in one hand while he jingled his keys impatiently in the other, as Miriam gave last-minute instructions to the baby-sitter. In the car, she reached up and pulled at the shoulder harness and buckled it at her waist. Then she tightened the strap. The rabbi’s driving was erratic at best, but when he was moody and abstracted as he was now, he was given to sudden bursts of speed and equally sudden applications of the brake, which she assumed mirrored his flow of thought.
“All right, where to?”
“The Bernsteins, dear, on Harris Lane.”
“Where’s Harris Lane?”
“Oh, it’s in that very nice section where all the big shots live, the Epsteins, the Dreyfusses. It’s right around the corner from the Saffersteins.”
“I don’t know where the Saffersteins live.”
“All right,” she said. “I’ll direct you. Go down to the Salem Road. Then you turn off on Minerva Road—”
“I know where Minerva Road is,” the rabbi said petulantly.
“Well, Harris Lane is off the upper part of Minerva.”
He drove along the Salem Road and passed the Goralsky Block.
“Minerva Road,” she murmured.
He gave her an indignant glance, “I know, I know,” and made the turn. After a couple of minutes, he nodded back and remarked, “That’s the Kestler house.”
“The white one?”
He glanced at the rear-view mirror and said, “No, the brown one before it.”
“There were a lot of cars in front. Do you suppose they were having a party?”
“It doesn’t seem likely,” the rabbi said. “It’s probably the people from the white house. Kestler is certainly not observant. Did I tell you about his playing cards with his wife during the mourning week? But I’m sure he wouldn’t have a party a couple of weeks after his father died, if only because he’d consider it bad luck. His wife would be even more apt to, I imagine. It certainly wouldn’t be observance of the mourning regulations with her, since I’m sure she’s not Jewish.”
“How did you know? Did she tell you?”
“With the name Christine?” The rabbi laughed. “The first time I came there to see the old man, she bobbed a curtsy to me the way Irish country girls do to priests. I had to explain to her—”
“Stop!” Miriam called out.
He jammed on the brakes, and she was thrown against the harness.
“It’s
back there, David. You passed it.”
“There was no street there, just an alley.”
“Well, that’s Harris Lane. It opens up into a circle. You’ll have to turn around.”
“Are you sure?”
“Mrs. Bernstein said it was two houses before the Safferstein house and that’s the Safferstein house, so that must be it. O-oh!”
“Now, what is it?” he asked testily.
“Oh, David, my pearls broke.”
“I told you—”
“It was when you jammed on the brake,” she said accusingly. “I was thrown against the shoulder strap.”
She reached up and, gathering the broken strand, she handed it to her husband. “Here, put them in your pocket. Careful! They’re falling off the string. There’s one on the floor.” She squirmed. “Ooh, one went down the back of my neck. It’s caught on my bra.”
“Well, if you think I’m going to unzip you here on the street … Get out and you can jump up and down and maybe dislodge it.”
Unfastening her safety belt, Miriam opened the door. As she slid off the seat, another bead rolled off her lap onto the car cushion. “There’s another one, David. It’s gone down in the crack between the seat and the back cushion.” Outside now, she bent forward into the car and with splayed fingers extended groped down into the crack. “No, I can’t reach it.”
“Get in,” he said.
“But David—”
“Get in,” he ordered peremptorily.
He set the car in motion. “Harris Lane is back there,” she said meekly. “Aren’t you going to turn?”
“I want to go to the stationhouse first.”
She remembered the prayerbook on the seat between them. “Oh well, coming back, it will be on the right, and there’ll be no chance of missing it.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll get to the party in good time.”
He drove to the end of Minerva Road and then headed for the center of town, negotiating the narrow crooked streets with reckless speed until he reached the police station. He was out of the car and running up the granite steps of the stationhouse when Miriam noticed that he had forgotten to take the prayerbook with him. Shaking her head at his characteristic absent-mindedness, she picked up the siddur and followed him.
Wednesday the Rabbi Got Wet Page 24