Time Bomb (27 page)

“Sy, I think what the rabbi means is something different,” said a plump woman on the far right. She had fluffy blued hair and heavy arms that shook as she used her hands for emphasis. “He’s talking about materialism. The more foolish things we collect, the more problems we get.”

“Actually, you’re both correct,” said the blond man in a conciliatory tone. “The Talmud is emphasizing the virtue of simplicity. Mr. Morgenstern is talking about procedural simplicity; Mrs. Cooper, material simplicity. When we complicate things, we drift further away from our purpose on this planet—getting closer to God. That’s precisely why the Tal—”

“It happened with the IRS, Rabbi,” said a woman with a thin, birdlike voice and a cap of dyed-black hair. “The taxes. The taxes were supposed to be for the people. Now it’s people for the taxes. Same with Social Security.
Moishe Kapoyr.
” Twist of a wrist. “Upside down.”

“Very true, Mrs. Steinberg,” said the young rabbi. “Oftentimes—”

“Social Security, too,” said Mr. Morgenstern. “They make like Social Security is something we’re stealing, the young puppies, so they shouldn’t have a new BMW each year. How many years did I work and contribute, like clockwork, back before BMWs were enemy airplanes? Now, they make like I want charity, bread out of their mouths. Who do they think baked them the bread in the first place? From trees it fell?”

The young rabbi started to comment but was drowned out by a discussion of the Social Security system. He seemed to accept it with practiced good nature, turned another page, read, finally looked up and saw us, and stood up straight behind the podium.

He raised his eyebrows. Milo gave a small nod of acknowledgment.

The rabbi left the podium and walked toward us. Tall, built like an athlete, with a sure stride. His students—old enough to be his grandparents—turned their heads and followed his path. They saw us. The synagogue grew silent.

“I’m Rabbi Sanders. Can I help you, gentlemen?”

Milo flashed the badge. Sanders examined it. Milo said, “Excuse the interruption, Rabbi. When you’re through we’d like to talk to you.”

“Certainly. May I ask about what?”

“Sophie Gruenberg.”

The baby face braced itself, as if for pain. A child in a doctor’s office, anticipating the needle. “Do you have news for us, Officer?”

Milo shook his head. “Just questions.”

“Oh,” said Sanders, looking like a prisoner who’d had his sentence delayed but not commuted.

“What?” said one of the women at the front. “What is it?”

“Cops,” said Morgenstern. “I can always tell. Am I right?” Seen front on, he was thick, with doughy features, shaggy eyebrows, and meaty workingman’s hands that he waved as he talked.

I smiled at him.

He said, “I can always tell. Those yarmulkes are sitting there like they’re ready to fly off.”

Four faces stared at us. A quartet of antique masks scored by time but strengthened by experience.

Rabbi Sanders said, “These gentlemen are indeed police officers and they’re here to ask questions about Sophie.”

“Questions,” said the plump woman, Mrs. Cooper. She wore spectacles, a white sweater buttoned to the neck, and a string of pearls. The blued hair was precisely marcelled. “Why more questions, now?”

“All we’ve gotten from the police is questions,” said the hand-waving Morgenstern. “No answers–no meat, lots of worms. How long’s it been? What, month and a half?”

The women nodded.

“You think there’s a chance?” said Mrs. Steinberg, the black-haired woman. The hair was cut in bangs and bobbed. The face below it was chalk-white and thin and had once been beautiful. I pictured her in a Roaring Twenties chorus line, doing high kicks. “Even a little bit of a chance that she could still be alive?”

“Hush, Rose,” said Mrs. Cooper. “There’s always hope.
Kayn aynhoreh, poo poo poo.
” Her soft face quivered.

Morgenstern regarded her with a look of exaggerated scorn. “What’s with this
aynhoreh
business, my dear? The evil eye? Superstition—
stupid
stition. What you got to have is rationality, the rational mind. Dialectics, Hegel and Kant—and of course the Talmud, excuse me, Rabbi.” He slapped his own wrist.

“Stop joking, Sy. This is serious,” said the black-haired woman. She looked at us, pained. “Could she possibly be alive, Officers? After all this time?”

Five faces, waiting for an answer.

Milo took a step backward. “I’d like to hope so, Ma’am,” he said. To Sanders: “We can come back and discuss this later, Rabbi.”

“No, that’s all right,” said Sanders. “We were just about to conclude. If you wait a minute, I’ll be right with you.”

He went back behind the podium, said a few more words about values and proper perspective, dismissed the class, and returned to us. The old people lingered near the front of the synagogue, huddling in discussion.

“Refreshments out in front, people,” said Sanders.

The huddle buzzed, then broke. The women hung back and Mr. Morgenstern came forward, the designated quarterback. He was no more than five three, blocky and firm-looking. A toy truck of a man in khaki work pants and a white shirt under a gray sweater vest.

“You got questions,” he said, “maybe
we
can answer them. We knew her.”

Sanders looked at Milo.

Milo said, “Sure. We’d appreciate any information.”

Morgenstern nodded. “Good you agreed,” he said, “’cause we voted on it—the people have spoken. That should be respected.”

We reassembled near the podium. Milo stood in front of it. Sanders took a seat and pulled a briar pipe out of his pocket.

“Tsk, tsk, Rabbi,” said the woman who hadn’t yet spoken. Big-boned, no makeup, brushed-steel hair tied in a bun.

“I’m not lighting it, Mrs. Sindowsky,” said the rabbi.

“Better you shouldn’t do anything with it. What do you need problems on the lips for? More meat, more worms, right, Rabbi?”

Sanders blushed and smiled, cradled the pipe in one hand and touched it longingly, but didn’t put it in his mouth.

Milo said, “I want to be straight with you people. I’ve got absolutely nothing new to tell you about Mrs. Gruenberg. In fact, I’m not investigating her case and I only came here because her disappearance may be related to another case. And I can’t tell you anything about that one.”

“Such a deal,” said Morgenstern. “You must be fun at swap meets.”

“Exactly,” said Milo, smiling.

“What can we do for you, Officer?” said Rabbi Sanders.

“Tell me about Mrs. Gruenberg. Everything you know about her disappearance.”

“We told everything to the police already,” said Mrs. Cooper. “She was here, left, and that was it. Poof. Gone.” The heavy arms rippled. “After a couple days the police agreed to talk to us and they sent a detective down who asked questions. He filed a missing persons report and promised to keep in touch with us. So far, nothing.”

“That’s because,” said Morgenstern, “they got nothing. They had something, would this man be here, asking us to go over it again? How they gonna give you what they don’t have?”

Milo said, “Do you remember the name of the investigating detective?”

“What investigating?” said Morgenstern. “He took a report—that was it.”

“Mehan,” said the rabbi. “Detective Mehan from Pacific Division.”

“Which division you from?” said Morgenstern.

“West L.A.,” Milo said.

Morgenstern winked and said, “Silk stocking detail, eh? Lots of stolen BMWs.”

Rabbi Sanders said, “Detective Mehan did more than just file a report. He examined her . . . Sophie’s house. I know because I let him in. We, my family and I, were—are—her tenants. We live side by side, kept each other’s keys. Detective Mehan went into her unit and found no evidence of any crime being committed. Everything was in order. He also checked with her bank and found out she hadn’t made any large withdrawals recently. And she hadn’t asked the post office to withhold or forward mail. So it seemed to him she hadn’t planned to take a trip. He thought she might have gotten lost somewhere.”

“Impossible,” said Mrs. Steinberg. “She knew Venice like the palm of her hand. She would never get lost. Right?”

Nods.

“True, but who knows?” said Mrs. Cooper. “Anything can happen.”

Vulnerable looks. Long silence.

“Ahh,” said Morgenstern. “All guesses. Including the bank stuff—you ask me, that means nothing. Sophie was a crafty one—she never told anyone what she was thinking or doing. Never trusted anyone—especially the capitalist bankers. So how much would she keep in bank accounts? The big bucks? Or just
narrishkeit
small change? Maybe she kept her serious cash somewhere else.”

“Where would that be?” said Milo.

“I don’t know,” said Morgenstern. “She didn’t tell no one, you think she’d tell me? I’m just guessing, same as you. Maybe in the house, under the bed, who knows? She had her ideas. Maybe she was saving up, waiting for the next revolution. So maybe she took that and left, and you wouldn’t know nothing from nothing by checking with any banks!”

The old man’s color had risen.

Milo said, “So you don’t know for a fact that she kept large amounts of cash around the house.”

I knew what he was thinking: dope.

“No, no,” said Morgenstern, “I don’t know nothing. Which puts me in the same club with everyone else. She wasn’t a
personal
person, know what I mean? Didn’t let on what she was thinking or doing. So I’m just saying, checking the banks doesn’t mean nothing as far as logical, rational thinking goes. A person could keep cash and just decide to leave—am I right?”

Milo said, “You’ve got a point.”

“He throws me a bone,” said Morgenstern. But he looked pleased.

Mrs. Sindowsky said, “Tell him about the pictures?”

“Oh,” said the rabbi, looking uneasy.

“What pictures?” said Milo.

“Detective Mehan went to the morgue and took pictures of any . . . senior citizens who’d been . . . any unidentified victims that matched Sophie in age. He brought them to me to look at. He put out some bulletins, called some other police departments—Long Beach, Orange County-—and asked if they had any unidentified . . . people. None were Sophie. Thank God.”

Four echoing
Thank God’s
.

Sanders said, “In all fairness, he seemed to be thorough—Detective Mehan. But after three weeks had passed without her showing up, he told us there was a limit to what he could do. There was no evidence of any crime being committed. The choice was to wait or hire a private detective. We talked about doing that—the detective—made a few calls to agencies. It’s very expensive. We asked the Jewish Federation to consider funding. They wouldn’t approve a detective, but they did agree to the reward.”

“Those skinflints—to them it’s chump change,” said Morgenstern.

Milo said, “Can you think of any reason she’d just leave?”

Blank looks.

“That’s the point,” said Mrs. Steinberg. “There’d be no reason for her to leave. She was happy here—why would she just leave?”

“Happy?” said Mrs. Sindowsky. “You ever see her smile?”

“All I’m saying, Dora,” said Mrs. Steinberg, “is that after all this time maybe we have to assume the worst.”

“Feh,” said Morgenstern, shaking a thick fist. “Always with the gloom and doom. Chicken Little. The smog’s falling.”

“I’ve lived,” said Mrs. Steinberg, drawing herself up, “through plenty. I know the way things are.”

“Lived?” said Morgenstern. “And what’ve I been doing? Hanging on the wall like an oil painting?”

Milo looked at Mrs. Steinberg. “Besides the amount of time she’s been gone, do you have any reason to assume the worst?”

All eyes focused on the black-haired woman. She looked uncomfortable. “It just doesn’t make sense. Sophie wasn’t the type to wander off. She was a very . . . regular person. Attached to her house, to her books. And she loved Venice—she’d lived here longer than any of us. Where would she go?”

“What about relatives?” said Milo. “She ever mention any?”

Rabbi Sanders said, “The only family she talked about were her brothers and sisters killed by the Nazis. She talked a lot about the Holocaust, the evils of fascism.”

Mrs. Sindowsky said, “She talked a lot about politics, period.”

“Tell the plain truth,” said Morgenstern. “She was a Red.”

“So?” said Mrs. Cooper, “That’s some sort of crime in this free country, Sy? Expressing political views? Don’t make to them like she was a criminal.”

“Who says it’s a crime?” Morgenstern retorted. “I’m only stating facts. The plain truth. What she was, was what she was. Red as a tomato.”

“What does that make me?” said Mrs. Cooper.

“You, my darling?” said Morgenstern. “Let’s say pink.” Smile. “When you get excited, maybe a nice shade of fuchsia.”

“Ahh,” said the plump woman, turning her back on him and folding her arms under her bosom.

Milo said, “The poster says she disappeared around here. How did that happen?”

“We were having an evening social,” said the rabbi. “A couple of weeks after Rosh Hashanah—Jewish New Year. Trying”

“Trying to rejuvenate community spirit,” Mrs. Sin-dowsky broke in, as if reciting from a lesson book. “Get a little action going, right, Rabbi?”

Sanders smiled at her, then turned to Milo. “Mrs. Gruenberg showed up but left after a short while. That was the last anyone saw her. I assumed she’d gone home. When the mail started piling up at her door, I got worried. I used my key and let myself into her unit and saw she was gone. I called the police. After forty-eight hours had passed, Detective Mehan agreed to come down.”

“And the last time you saw her—at the social—was around eight?”

“Eight, eight-thirty,” said Sanders. “That’s only an estimate—the social began at seven-thirty and ended at nine. She wasn’t there during the last half hour. We pulled up chairs and had a discussion. So she left some time before eight-thirty. No one’s really sure.”

“Did she bring a car or come on foot?”

“On foot. She didn’t drive, liked to walk.”

“It’s gotten kind of tough around here to be walking at night,” said Milo.

“Good of you to notice,” said Morgenstern. “Days aren’t so wonderful either.”