Thursday the Rabbi Walked Out (13 page)

She flipped open the file. “This one? You want me to make the correction on my typewriter? I can x it out and –”

“No, don’t bother.” He made the correction in pencil. “I’ll show it to him to explain what held it up.”

From Molly’s he drove directly to Jordon’s house, as he turned in at the gate, he heard an automobile horn, seemingly from the direction of the house. It grew louder as he drove up the driveway; and sure enough, there was a car parked in front of the door. It was Martha, her face contorted with rage as she pushed down on the horn button on the steering wheel.

He got out of his car and approached her. “What’s going on? What’s the matter? What’s the racket for?”

“Oh, it’s you, Mr. Gore.” Her face relaxed, and she even managed a shamefaced little smile. “There’s a month’s wages due me. I knocked on the door and rang the bell but there’s no answer, the old bugger must have seen it was me and won’t answer out of spite. I’d like to put a pin in the bell like we used to do when we were kids on Halloween.”

“He’s probably gone out.”

“No, look at the door. It’s not pulled to, he wouldn’t leave it like that if he weren’t in. You can just push it open.”

He walked to the door, as she got out of the car to follow him, he stabbed at the bell button. Sure enough, he could hear it ringing inside.

“See, the bell is all right. You can hear it, can’t you?”

He nodded and pushed the button once more, they waited, and she said. “I’ll bet he’s watching and waiting for me to go away.”

He shook his head impatiently and then, with sudden decision, pushed the door open and stepped in. Martha was right behind him. It took a moment for their eyes to adjust from the bright morning sunlight to the dim light of the room, somber with its curtained and draped windows.

It was the buzzing of a large bluebottle fly that drew their eyes to the figure of Ellsworth Jordon lying back in his recliner as though asleep. But there was an ugly wound at the base of the forehead, right between the eyes, from which the blood had trickled down both sides of his nose to the corner of his mouth.

Martha screamed. Gore pressed his lips tightly together and managed to repress the urge to retch.

“He’s hurt,” she moaned. “The poor man is hurt. Why don’t you do something?”

“Shut up,” he snapped, without moving, he looked around the room, noting a broken medicine bottle, the fragments of a shattered light bulb, the torn canvas of the oil painting of Jordon’s father on the wall.

“We’ve got to call the police,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “I’ll wait here while you get in your car and drive down to the corner, there’s a pay station there.”

“Can’t you call from here?” she asked.

“Fingerprints,” he replied tersely. “There may be prints on the phone.”

As soon as she had gone, he forced himself to approach the figure in the recliner, he touched the icy forehead with his fingertips and then wiped them on his trouserleg. Suddenly he thought of Billy and called out. “Billy? Are you there. Billy?” He giggled in relief as no answer came.

He backed out of the room and left the house, closing the door behind him, but making sure that the lock did not catch, as he went to his car to await the arrival of the police a wild thought occurred to him: that now there was no way of proving who had won the bet he had made the night before.

While his men worked in the living room, photographing, measuring, dusting for fingerprints, the state detective, Sergeant McLure, and a police stenographer were in the kitchen – because it had a table to write on – questioning Gore. Lanigan and his lieutenant. Eban Jennings, had taken over the dining room as a command post, where they issued orders and received reports from their subordinates.

They had just finished questioning Martha Peterson, subdued and teary-eyed, and had sent her on home.

“You believe her explanation of the door of the boy’s room being locked?” asked Jennings. “You believe this Jordon would lock a young man of eighteen in his room like a teacher would send a kid to stand in the corner?”

Lanigan shrugged noncommittally.

“Even though he knew the kid would hop out the window?”

“It’s just crazy enough to be true.” said Lanigan. “Maybe Gore might know something about it, we’ll ask him when McLure gets through with him.”

“Everything about this case seems kind of crazy; Hugh.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, this Jordon is supposed to have been a millionaire. Right?”

“That’s the reputation he had around town, we’ll probably find out more about that, too, from Gore. What about it?”

“Well, doesn’t this strike you as a funny layout for a millionaire?”

“How do you mean?”

“This dining room now, it’s clean enough, but those drapes are pretty faded and these chairs are kind of worn. Same with the other room.”

“I suppose that’s the result of having a housekeeper instead of a wife,” said Lanigan. “A wife is always after her husband to buy new stuff when it gets worn, but a housekeeper will just keep the place clean.”

“Yeah, But it’s more than that, here’s this big ark of a house three stories high, and yet everything is on the first floor. It don’t look as though the rooms on the other two floors are used at all. What was probably the back parlor, he used as his bedroom, right off the living room, mind you, and that little room next to it, that was made into another bedroom for the boy, that looks to me as though he was trying to cut down on his fuel bills.”

“Could be.” said Lanigan. “The word was that he was always careful with money. On the other hand, it could be that after he had a heart attack, his doctor might not have wanted him to climb the stairs, and naturally, he’d want the young fellow right near him in case anything should happen to him in the middle of the night. I wonder where he is, the bed wasn’t slept in.”

“Probably off somewhere for the weekend. Stands to reason he wouldn’t want to spend it hanging around with an old codger like Jordon. This Martha, now, didn’t she used to clerk in the supermarket?”

Lanigan nodded. “That’s right, she was on the checkout counter.”

Jennings nodded in decided agreement. “That’s where I saw her. Nice-looking woman. Yeah, that’s the way I like them, something solid that you can get hold of. I could make something of that girl.”

Lanigan’s look was derisive. “Yeah, you’d like to make a mother of her, that’s what you’d like. I wonder Maude puts up with you.”

“Now, look here. Hugh –”

“Did you know Celia Johnson? She used to work for Jordon, she gave up a good job to become his housekeeper, she was a bookkeeper with the Water Commission. Five days a week, nine to five. Paid vacations. Blue Cross and Blue Shield. Pension rights, and she gave it up to go to work for him. Gladys knew her. I remember Gladys explaining to me why Celia did it, she was thirty-eight at the time and not getting any younger, here was a man all alone –”

“And she thought maybe she could make him? Get him to marry her?”

“Sure. Why not?”

“You think that’s why Martha Peterson went to work for him?”

“Well, she’s not getting any younger either.”

“It could be that she just likes housework better than clerking, is all.”

“Could be.” Lanigan admitted. “But if it’s the way I think, it could be the reason she insisted that Stanley pick her up here was that she wanted to make Jordon a little jealous. Spark him up. Show him there’s some competition.”

Jennings showed some interest. “And that’s why she quit her job? Because she saw it wasn’t working and there was no sense staying on?”

“Or maybe there was something more between the two than just a job.”

Eban Jennings’s pale blue eyes showed interest, and his Adam’s apple bobbled with excitement. “She could have come back afterward to have it out with him. Or maybe she didn’t even go away, but just kind of hung around outside until she was sure the old man was alone and –”

Dr. Mokely, the medical examiner, put his head in the doorway and said. “I’ve finished here, Hugh.”

“Oh, come in. Fred. What’ve you got?”

“Death instantaneous, of course. What do you expect from a shot right between the eyes?” He set his bag down on the floor and took the chair that Jennings pushed at him with his foot.

“Powder burns?”

“Suicide?” He shook his head. “Not a chance. No powder burns.”

“Er – Doc” – Jennings swallowed his Adam’s apple – “this Jordon had a bad heart.”

The doctor laughed. “Well, he certainly didn’t die of a heart attack.”

“How do you know?” Jennings persisted. “Five of the six shots were scattered all over the room, so it must have been the last one that got him.”

“Why does it have to have been the last one?” asked the doctor.

“Because it hit him square in the forehead.” said Lanigan.

“So the person shooting could see he’d hit him, and that hitting him there he must have killed him. So would he continue shooting after that? And if he hadn’t had a heart attack, wouldn’t Jordon have tried to run or hide if someone started shooting him?”

“How would he get a heart attack?” asked the doctor.

“Say he was asleep.” suggested Jennings. “Wouldn’t the first shot wake him up?”

“I suppose.”

“Well, couldn’t that bring on a heart attack, waking up and seeing someone firing away at him?”

“All right,” the doctor conceded. “So what?”

“Then he could be dead before that last shot that actually hit him.” said Jennings triumphantly.

“When you have a heart attack, you don’t die instantaneously,” said the doctor. “And what difference would it make? It would still be murder, whether he died because he was hit or from fright because somebody was shooting at him.”

“Probably no difference.” said Lanigan. “But defense lawyers can come up with some funny angles. Can you prove it one way or the other on the autopsy?”

“I doubt it. If there were a longish time interval between the first shot that could have frightened him into a heart attack and the last one that actually struck him, it might be possible to tell – by the amount of bleeding maybe. But by the looks of things, the murderer fired off those shots in rapid succession, like a woman pointing a gun with her eyes closed and firing away until the cylinder was empty, that would mean only seconds between the first shot and the last, and I doubt if anything would show up on postmortem, as to which shot actually got him –” He shrugged. “It could be he was lying in that recliner and was awakened by the shots, he leans forward to get up and catches one between the eyes, which throws him back again.”

“Can you tell from the angle of entry?” asked Lanigan.

“I doubt it.” said the doctor. “The bone would deflect the bullet some, and we don’t know if he was lying back or sitting up, and at what angle.”

“Well, see what you can do. Now, how about time?”

The doctor smiled. “Oh, I can give you that exactly. It was eight-twenty-nine.”

“How can –” Then the chief smiled, too. “Oh, you mean the clock. But suppose one of those bullets hadn’t hit the clock?”

The doctor smiled broadly. “Then I’d say half past eight.”

“A comedian!” Jennings snorted.

The doctor grinned. “I’ll give you a spread after I’ve done the P.M.”

“But it’s the Sabbath,” Miriam protested.

“It’s terribly important. Mrs. Small.” said Mrs. Mandell. “I couldn’t sleep a wink all night. I thought I’d go out of my mind.”

“Couldn’t it wait until tomorrow?”

“No. No. It must be today.”

“Well, he’s at the temple right now for morning services and –”

“Oh, I understand. Of course.” She even permitted a tinge of sarcasm to enter her voice. “I don’t mean for you to run over and get him out of services, but I wanted to make sure he would come over this afternoon. I mean. I wanted to call him in good time before he makes any other appointments.”

“The rabbi doesn’t make appointments on the Sabbath. Mrs. Mandell, he doesn’t transact business on the Sabbath, unless it’s an emergency.”

“Well, this is an emergency.”

“All right. I’ll tell him when he gets home.” She hung up, annoyed and indignant, wishing that David had early on established the rule followed by most of his Orthodox colleagues of not answering the phone at all on the Sabbath.

While the commandment to visit and comfort the sick was enjoined on all Jews, the congregation expected its rabbi to perform this function for them, quite content to have him gain the credit for the mitzvah, an altruism on their part that Rabbi Small strongly resented.

Rabbi Small never tried to convince himself that he enjoyed the pastoral visits to the sick. Because of his natural reserve, he felt he was not very good at it, he found it hard to summon up the forced cheerfulness that the occasion seemed to require, to assure patients they were looking well, when in fact they were not. While able to feel sympathy as they talked about their aches and pains, he always grew restive and suffered considerable embarrassment when they then went on to enumerate their related complaints – against the doctor who was not interested in their case, against the nurse who was negligent, against the members of their family who were lacking in consideration.

The most trying item on his calendar was his weekly visit to Mrs. Mandell. Unlike the others whom he visited, who were apt to be in bed, or in pajamas and bathrobe if they were able to sit up, she always came down to the living room, fully dressed, her gray hair combed and brushed and tinted a delicate lavender, she was a tall, fleshy woman with a full, round face that showed no trace of illness. When he would remark on how well she looked, she would smile sadly and shake her head. “Now,” she would say, “but you should have seen me last night when I had an attack. I thought it was all up with me.”

But this was not one of his regular visits. It was some sort of emergency, she had said, he was more than a little put out when it looked as though the formula of his regular visits was about to be repeated. “I didn’t sleep a wink all last night, Rabbi,” she said.

“But that’s not unusual for you, you say. Is there some special reason why you had to see me today? Why it couldn’t wait until tomorrow?”