Someday the Rabbi Will Leave (23 page)

Lanigan thought for a moment. “You know what I'd like?” He leveled keen, blue eyes on the sergeant. “I'd like to know what this Tom Blakely was doing that Wednesday night.”

Sergeant Dunstable laughed. “I can tell you that. You know, I had to be at the selectmen's meeting that night on that liquor store case. I was the one that caught the kid with the phony I.D. card who bought the beer. So when I was through testifying, I went down to the Ship's Galley, around half-past nine, it was, and Tom Blakely was there tying one on.”

“Tying one on?”

“Yeah, you know, getting drunk. He said something about his girl having stood him up. I guess he'd been there for some time. Then, it must have been after ten, they refused to serve him, and he left, I suppose to go home and go to bed.”

“That would be the sensible thing to do,” Lanigan agreed. “Do you know what kind of car he drives?”

Dunstable shook his head. “I could find out easy enough.”

“Never mind. It's not important. You've been very helpful, Sergeant.”

40

Rabbi Small leaned back in the visitor's chair in Chief Lanigan's office. “I met Paul Kramer and he told me that someone had come to see you—”

“That's right. A girl who said she'd been with him all night.”

“So what are you going to do now?”

“Not a damn thing. Why should I? It's out of my hands now. It's up to the D.A.”

“You reported it to him?”

“Of course. And he's supposed to notify the defense attorney. I presume he did.”

“And now what happens?”

Lanigan shook his head. “That depends on the defense attorney, how he wants to play it. He might try to get the D.A. to quash it. Or he might save it for the trial and spring it then.”

“But I don't understand. It clears him, doesn't it? If she's prepared to testify that she was with him all night and that they didn't leave the house—”

“But the D.A. might not believe her, David,” said Lanigan patiently. “And Paul's lawyer might not, either, in which case, he'd do better holding it until the trial in the hope of befuddling the jury enough to acquit.”

“Would a girl risk her reputation to admit she had spent the night with a young man if it were for anything less than a conviction for a felony?” the rabbi demanded.

“Yes, David, she would. You just don't know young people. They're not like you when you were their age. It's a different breed.”

“I've had dealings with them,” said the rabbi. “I've held postconfirmation classes and—”

“That's entirely different. They come to these classes for religious purposes. You are a rabbi, so they're on good behavior and careful not to say anything that you would disapprove of. But I see them when they get into trouble. You assume the girl would be ashamed to admit that she has been with a boy all night—”

“Paul was, too,” the rabbi observed.

“Sure, because boys, especially young boys still in their teens, tend to be conservative. At least, about sex. But young women have changed. They're not shy about admitting that they have slept with a man. On the contrary, they're apt to be shy about admitting they're virgins. In their friends' eyes, that means they're square and probably unattractive. It was no sacrifice for the girl to come to me with that story, any more than it would have been if she had come to tell me that she had spent the night with her friend, Beth McAllister. It didn't mean a thing to her.”

He put both hands on the desk and continued, “All right, so what do we have? We have an uncorroborated story. She says she spent the night with him. But you can't ask her mother if it's true because her mother thinks she was at Beth McAllister's. You ask McAllister and what do you get? When you finally get her to admit she was covering for Fran? Only that she was given a phone number which she was to call if Fran's mother wanted to talk to her. What number? She can't remember. She wrote it down on a piece of paper, but of course she didn't bother to save it. Or she could have Paul's number, but how do we know it wasn't given to her when Fran and Paul cooked up their story? As for Fran Kimball herself, she says no one saw her go into Paul's house, or leave it the next morning.

“But even if we believe her story that she was with Paul all night, that still doesn't let him off the hook. It doesn't prove that they didn't go out at all. Here's a scenario. She goes to his house to study. Around ten o'clock, one of them suggests that they knock off for an hour. Go someplace for a beer, or for a hamburger and coffee. On the way back they come by way of Glen Lane and they have the accident. And then—” He broke off as a thought occurred to him. He smiled broadly. “Even better. Suppose
she
was driving and
she
had the accident. Naturally, she's in a panic and is afraid to report it to the police. She begs him not to squeal on her, and he agrees, providing she spends the night with him. Then when he's arrested, he makes her come to see me. What do you think of it?”

“I think your ‘even better' makes them both much worse,” said the rabbi dryly. “Have you considered the possibility that they both might be telling the truth? Whether Paul did it, or the girl, or both together, would he then have parked his car out in the open on Glen Road when he could have parked it in his own garage?”

“He might if he was drunk, or high on pot.”

“Even if he were drunk that night, would he then have had his headlight replaced at a local garage? That was in the afternoon of the following day. He would have been cold sober by then.”

“Not necessarily,” said Lanigan. “If it was alcohol, I guess he would have got over it. But if it were drugs, it could very well have carried over to the next day. But question for question, would anyone in his right mind have gone to the trouble of framing someone else for a road accident when all he had to do was ride off and no one the wiser? And, mind you, his own headlight wouldn't have been broken. What's more, think of the chances he would be taking. He might be seen while he was breaking the headlight, and then again when he drove back and dropped the glass near the body. Why would anyone take all those risks?”

“He could have—”

“And don't tell me he could have been drunk or high, David, because I used those.”

“I was going to say that he could have hated Paul,” said the rabbi primly.

“And wanted to avenge himself for some hurt he had suffered? Possible, but just barely. That would really be stretching the long arm of coincidence. Right after he has a serious road accident, he comes across the automobile of his enemy a few hundred yards beyond, and it's out in the open instead of being parked in a garage, and the owner is not around, and it's dark and late at night. It would have to be someone local or the chances are they wouldn't be using Glen Lane. But the Kramers are new here. They've been here only a couple of months. No chance of any terrible feud having developed. And wouldn't Paul have known about it? Yet when you went to see him, he suggested that he had been framed by the police. If he had so great an enemy, why didn't he mention
him
as a possibility instead of the police? Framing someone for a homicide is a pretty reprehensible thing, or don't you think so?”

“Of course it is,” said the rabbi. “We probably regard it as more serious than you do. It's a breach of the commandment ‘Thou shalt not bear false witness' and we punished it more severely.”

“Oh yeah?”

“In biblical law the principle was if someone bore false witness, ‘then shall ye do unto him, as he purposed to do unto his brother.'”

Lanigan nodded. “Sounds reasonable. Of course, we're not easy on a perjurer, either. But I think it applies only to sworn testimony in a court. In the present case now, there isn't much that we could charge the culprit with, except willful destruction of property.”

“And bringing the glass to the body on the road?”

“Ah, I suppose we could charge him with interfering with the police in the performance of their duty. But I don't think either one is likely.”

“Can't you check it out?”

Lanigan shook his head slowly. “It's out of my hands now, David. It's the D.A.'s baby. Of course, if new evidence were to come along, I'd look into it before passing it on to the D.A. But I can't just go looking on the chance that I might find something, not with the iron-clad case we've got against Kramer. I don't have the manpower for that.”

“Will you at least keep an open mind?”

“I always try to.”

The rabbi rose and made for the door, when Lanigan called out, “How's Jonathon these days?”

“All right. Why do you ask?”

“Just that I've seen him downtown a lot in the afternoon.”

“Oh, he's been going down to Republican headquarters after school. He does little odd jobs, runs errands, that sort of thing for extra pocket money.” He smiled broadly. “He thinks now he wants to go into politics.”

“Gave up on brain surgery, did he? Well, let's hope it doesn't last long.”

“You and me both,” said the rabbi.

41

Halperin chuckled as from the other end of the phoné he heard, in deep, solemn, liturgical tones, “Rabbi Halperin speaking.”

“Hey, Herb,” he called out gleefully. “Come off it. It's me.”

“Morris!” And this time, the better part of an octave higher, “How are you?” And with sudden concern, “Nothing wrong, is there?”

“What's wrong is that I'm here and my kid brother is way out there in a hick town that nobody believes exists and you can't even find on a map. Look, Herbie, listen to me. I've got a proposition for you.” He explained the situation in the temple.

His brother listened patiently and then said, “Gee, Morris, I'd love to take it, but I just can't. I can't be a party to a plot to kick a guy out of his job. And this Rabbi Small of yours, he's supposed to be kind of special. He's a real scholar. He had a piece in the last
Quarterly—”

“Look, kiddo, his leaving has nothing to do with you. We're getting rid of him because we don't want him. Maybe he's special and all that, but he just doesn't get along with the congregation. He hasn't practically from the beginning. Half a dozen times he's managed to stay on just by the skin of his teeth. If you don't take it someone else will, so why not you?”

“Well, there's also this business of the wedding.”

“So we've all got to make little adjustments in our thinking every now and then. And didn't you once do the same thing when you were a Hillel director? When the dean's daughter married the professor—”

“That was entirely different. Her grandmother was Jewish, so her mother was Jewish—”

“Yeah, like I'm Irish.”

“I mean, according to Halacha—”

“I know all about Halacha and all that jazz. You were cutting corners there and you know it. So all I'm asking is, you do the same here. Nobody's going to know about it. If there's a newspaper announcement, your name won't be mentioned, or we'll spell it wrong. It's going to be done at the guy's house. Let me talk to Dolly—”

“I'm on the extension, Morris,” said the rabbi's wife.

“Fine, so you know what this is all about. Now you've got to work on Herbie. It's his big chance. This guy, the president of our congregation, you know who he is? He's Howard Magnuson.
The
Howard Magnuson of Magnuson and Beck. I'll tell you the kind of guy he is. He gave me three cases, just three cases so far, and I made more than I made on my entire practice all last year. He warned me, he actually warned me, not to charge too little because it might make him look bad. That's the kind of guy Herbie would be connected with.”

“Yes, but you said it was only temporary. How long is temporary?”

“You know how these things are, Dolly. It's not so much temporary as a trial period, because we're not sending the Ritual Committee to hear him and size him up. I'm going to show them that videotape you sent, but he'll still be coming here sight unseen. But if he doesn't mess things up, if he just keeps his nose clean, then he's in like Flynn, believe me. It's Herbie's big chance. He may not get another for a long time.”

“We've got some leads, Morris.”

“Leads, shmeads. You're in Kansas and Kansas leads to Arkansas. This is the East Coast I'm talking about. You're half an hour from Boston and Cambridge. There's the theater and concerts and all the universities.”

“Well, suppose we think it over and let you know by the end of the week, say.”

“No sirree. Look, it's ten o'clock now. You ring me by eleven tonight. No later. I'll be waiting right here by the telephone.”

When the phone rang at eleven, it was Dolly Halperin who spoke,” All right, Morris, we'll go along. Now what do we do?”

“You don't do anything, Sweetheart. For the present you just sit tight. Then Sunday night if we can get things rolling by then, or the following Sunday night, I'll call you. My idea is that Herbie should come alone first. He'll stay with us. Then if all goes well, you'll come out with the kids and look for a house. But don't say anything until you hear from us. Okay?”

“You're the boss, Morris.”

Morris glanced at his watch and decided that it was not too late to call Magnuson. “It's all set,” he announced. “I had to do quite a selling job, and I don't think I could have done it without an assist from my sister-in-law, but he finally agreed.”

“And my little problem?”

“Oh yeah, I explained that that was part of the deal. I told him there would be no publicity for him, although there might be on the marriage. I mean, it's going to be done in your house. So if your daughter sends a notice to the papers, she doesn't have to say who actually officiated. Or she could even say it was the Reverend Halperin, which might suggest a Protestant minister. I mean, having a rabbi is to fulfill her promise to her grandmother who's not around anymore. Right? So there's no reason for her to publicize it, is there?”