Wednesday the Rabbi Got Wet (15 page)

“No, that’s all right. You send it to me. I’ve got to run along. I’m glad you had a nice time.”

“Oh yeah, it was a real experience.”

When he got home, Kaplan immediately went to his study and typed a letter on temple stationery to Marcus Aptaker, Town-Line Drugs, informing him that the board of directors of the temple had voted unanimously to sell the Goralsky Block and the adjacent land to William Safferstein, 258 Minerva Road. Barnard’s Crossing, and that he should address his request for renewal of his lease to him.

Don’t do it, David,” Miriam urged. “Kaplan put one over on you. Don’t give him the added satisfaction of showing him that you’re hurt.”

“I can’t just let it pass,” the rabbi said, but he took his hand off the telephone.

“But you don’t know what happened, all you know is what some woman told you they were going to do at the meeting. You don’t know if they actually did it. Why not wait until they tell you officially?”

Her husband sat down, and since he appeared receptive, she continued. “You think they voted to buy that place up in Petersville, well, what if they did? They have a right to, haven’t they? They don’t need your permission. You’re just invited to attend board meetings as a guest. You weren’t elected to the board.”

He nodded. “No, of course not, and if they want to buy a piece of land up-country for some ordinary purpose –”

“Like what?”

“Well, even for investment. I might have some thoughts on the wisdom of the move, but no real interest as rabbi of the congregation. But on the basis of what Kaplan has let drop the last couple of months, I am reasonably sure they plan to use the place as a retreat. Now that does concern me.”

“Well, I suppose since it’s a religious thing –”

He looked at her in surprise. “It’s more than that. It’s not just something that I feel they should have asked me about, like – like whether to buy a new Scroll of the Law. This retreat idea involves a change in the direction that the temple is taking. Suppose they’re considering doing away with the Bar Mitzvah at the age of thirteen in favor of a confirmation at fifteen or sixteen as is the case in many Reform temples. Or suppose they decided to institute a new seating arrangement where women would be separated from men as in Orthodox synagogues. Those are not the kinds of things where just my opinion or advice is involved. In matters of that sort which indicate a basic change in the temple, it is my consent that they must get.”

“And if they refuse?”

“Then I resign, of course,” he said simply. “I say, in effect, I am a Conservative rabbi and as such accepted a position with a Conservative congregation. Now you wish to become a Reform congregation or an Orthodox congregation. Very well, it is your right, but I cannot continue to serve.”

Miriam was troubled. “Aren’t you overreacting, David?” she hazarded. “If a few members of your congregation want to go into the woods and pray on their own –”

“It’s not a few members. It’s the president and the board of directors of the temple, presumably acting for the congregation as a whole, and using congregation monies, and they’re not just going into the woods to pray, they’re setting up a branch of the temple and are engaging this rabbi, of whose views I know nothing, to guide them.” He got up and went to the telephone.

Miriam tried once again. “Well, even as a matter of tactics, wouldn’t it be better if the board notified you about what happened at the meeting? I mean, wouldn’t it be better if they came to you, instead of you going to them? For all you know, Kaplan plans to call you sometime this afternoon or even to come over to explain it.”

He considered. “I doubt if he will, he probably expects to see me at the minyan this evening.”

“Same thing.”

He was silent as he thought about it. Finally he said, “Maybe.”

He was moody all afternoon and spent most of it in his study. Miriam realized that her husband was deeply hurt and did not disturb him. But in the evening, she entered his study and was surprised to see that he was standing in the corner praying, his lips moving rapidly as he recited the Shimon Esra, shewaited until he was finished and said. “Aren’t you going to the minyan. David?”

He shook his head. “No. I’m not, and I don’t think I’ll go for the rest of the week.”

“They’ll think you’re sulking.”

He grinned. “Let them, maybe I am, at that. I haven’t decided just what I’m going to do, but I am not going to argue this issue in the corridor with Kaplan and whoever else might decide to join in. I’ll wait until Sunday and then when the minutes of the previous meeting are read. I’ll know exactly what they did and act accordingly. If they have passed a motion to buy the land in Petersville for a retreat, then I’ll ask for reconsideration.”

“And if they reconsider and end up voting the same way?”

“Then I shall ask that they call for a general meeting of the membership where I can state my views and ask for a vote by the congregation as a whole.”

“And if they refuse?”

“Then, of course, I will resign”

On the spur of the moment while on his way home. Lanigan parked his car at the corner instead of entering the street, he winced as he always did when he saw the neon sign, YE OLDE CORNER DRUGGE STORE, JOS. TIMILTY., REG. PHARM., PROP., but he went in nevertheless. Timilty, a short, dark, stout man, came hurrying over. His Russian-style tunic of pale green nylon with Ye Olde Drugge Store stitched on the pocket in dark green had short sleeves, exposing hairy forearms, he was bald, but as though to compensate, he had bushy black eyebrows accentuated by the heavy dark frames of his eyeglasses. Even immediately after shaving, his jowls were bluish; now, late in the afternoon, they were blue-black.

“What can I do for you?” he asked, to emphasize the importance of the customer, as taught in the salesmanship course he was taking, he was new in the area, having bought the store less than a year ago from the Brundages, who had operated it as far back as Lanigan could remember.

Somewhat taken aback at the directness of the approach,

Lanigan cast about for something to buy. His eye swept along the displays, the salted nuts, the boxes of candy, the perfumes; the dog collars, leashes and rawhide chewing bones; canary and lovebird supplies; the children’s toys. But he had neither dog nor pet bird, nor child at home and he knew that if he brought home a box of candy or perfume, Amy would think he had been drinking, then he thought of the tiny sample bottle of pills Dr. Cohen had given him and drew it out of his pocket.

“A funny thing happened to me this morning,” he said. “I was in my office down at the stationhouse looking over some files, and I bent over, and by God, I couldn’t straighten up.”

Timilty nodded knowingly. “Sacroiliac,” he said positively. “First time it’s happened?”

“No, but never like this.” He went on to tell of calling Dr. Cohen,”.., and these pills he gave me, well, they worked like magic, a half an hour later, I was as good as new.” Timilty nodded, smiling the superior smile of the professional at the layman’s marveling at the wonders of science.

“Usually it takes me as much as a couple of weeks to get over an attack, but here, in half an hour – nothing. So I was wondering if you had these pills – they are just a sample that Doc Cohen had in the house – Well, I could keep a supply of them handy, then if it happened again, why, I’d have them.”

Timilty glanced at the little glass bottle the chief held out to him. “Sure, we’ve got them, there are a number of preparations that do much the same thing, muscle relaxants we call them. But you want to be careful about driving when you’re taking them, they can make you drowsy.”

“Do I need a doctor’s prescription? Because if I do –”

“No, you don’t need a prescription. How many do you want?”

“Gee. I don’t know, a dozen?” the chief suggested.

“Sure. You can always get more if you want them.” He went to the prescription room in back of the store, and Lanigan followed.

“Gosh, how do you keep track of all these medicines, Joe?”

“Oh, there’s no trouble if you have a system.” He laughed. “Old Man Brundage used to do it by instinct, I guess.” He selected a plastic tube and typed a label. “You understand. I can only put the trade name of the medication on the label,” he said. “You can write in the doctor’s name and the dosage yourself if you want to. I can’t without a prescription.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” Lanigan said easily. “You do a lot of prescriptions?”

“Fifty, sixty a day.”

“You pour them out of the big bottles into the little bottles, eh?”

Timilty was about to explain haughtily that there was a great responsibility involved, but he remembered that Lanigan was an important man in the town, so he winked and said with a grin, “That’s just about it.”

“You never actually have to make up something?”

“Oh sure. Liquid medicines, salves, suppositories, sometimes even pills. Some of the old-timers have their special prescriptions even for pills and I compound them and put them up in plastic capsules. By the time I came into the drug business, the drug houses had got it all organized.”

“Ever make a mistake?”

Timilty shook his head gravely. “Never on a drug. No druggist does, he’d go out of business.”

“But some pharmacists –”

Timilty shook his head stubbornly. “I’m not one to go around boosting the competition, but no druggist can afford to make a mistake on a prescription. Sometimes, a doctor will specify the drug of a particular pharmaceutical house, say Squibb’s, and you’re out of it. But you’ve got the identical formulation from, say, Parke-Davis, well, I’ve known of druggists who’ll give the Parke-Davis. Now that’s not really a mistake. It’s what you might call unethical, and some doctors will overlook it, while some will raise hell. My rule is that we always contact the doctor and ask him if we can make the change. Otherwise, I just don’t dispense it.”

“You mean, you just hand the prescription back to the customer and tell him you can’t fill it?”

Timilty winked again. “The usual thing is to tell him it will take a little time to fill, and we offer to deliver it.”

“I see.” Lanigan grinned. “It’s happened to me, then I’ve wondered when I got the pills what there was about them that took time since they were obviously manufactured. I mean the druggist hadn’t rolled them himself.”

“That’s business, a good businessman tries to hold on to his customers.”

“Yeah, I guess so. But look here, some druggists must be more reliable than others.”

“Not on filling prescriptions accurately,” the druggist said. “Not if they’re still in business.”

“Then how do you people compete with each other?”

“On service, price, location, personality. Just like grocery stores, the Campbell’s soup in one store is the same as the Campbell’s soup in the other. But one store is cheaper, or it’s nearer or cleaner. So you go to that one.”

“Or maybe one gives a little more than the other,” Lanigan suggested.

“How do you mean?”

“Well, you come in with a prescription for some pills, say. So one guy will fill the bottle and another guy maybe stuffs in a lot of cotton batting.”

Timilty shook his head vigorously. “The doctor indicates on the prescription how many he wants, and that’s what we give him, there are a lot of medicines where he wants you to take just so many pills and no more. Or he wants you to take the full dosage, no matter how good you feel after you’ve taken half of them. So we give exactly what the doctor calls for, no more and no less. Besides, with some pills costing seventy or eighty cents a piece, nobody is going to give any extra.”

“How about the pharmacists who work for you?”

“They wouldn’t be any different when it comes to filling a prescription.”

“I suppose each one initials or signs the prescriptions he fills.”

“What for? What would be the point?”

“Well, say something went wrong?”

Timilty looked at him in astonishment. “What could go wrong?”

Chief Lanigan pushed the Physician’s Desk Reference over to his lieutenant and said. “Now here is what Doc Cohen prescribed, and this is what Old Man Kestler received and took.”

Lt. Eban Jennings focused watery blue eyes on the small colored plate, then turned to the pill lying on the desk. His prominent Adam’s apple wobbled and he said, “Not the same at all, the druggist must have made a mistake.”

Lanigan shook his head. “According to Dr. Cohen, that’s most unlikely. I checked with Timilty, who took over Brundage’s store at the foot of my street, and he says druggists just don’t make mistakes on prescriptions. Now, he’s one of those eager-beaver business types and if he could give the competition the leg, I’m thinking he’d do it. But he agreed with the doctor – a druggist just doesn’t make that type of mistake.”

“Then what’s it mean?”

Lanigan leaned back in his chair. “Well, I’d say, if it wasn’t a mistake, and yet it happened, that it must have been done on purpose.”

“But that’s murder.” Jennings objected.

“Or manslaughter, and why not? Murders are not all committed with guns or daggers, you know. Most folks don’t have guns, or daggers either. Except for the professionals, it’s usually done by what’s at hand, the sharp instrument usually turns out to be something familiar, like a steak knife. How about Millicent Hanbury, who used a knitting needle? And how about Ronald Sykes who killed Isaac Hirsh by just closing the ventilator of his car while the motor was running? Think about it. What’s handy would be the natural thing to use, here’s a druggist with a store full of chemicals. If he wanted to kill someone, he might try to get hold of a gun. But more likely, the first thought that would come to mind would be the things he has right on his shelves.”

“Yeah, but – aw, that’s crazy. Look, Hugh, since we sold the house and took the apartment on Salem Road, I’ve traded with Town-Line Drugs. I stop in there almost every evening for the paper and some cigars, and a nicer guy than Marcus Aptaker you wouldn’t want to meet. Not that he’s one of these glad-hand boys. Kind of conservative, as a matter of fact, you know, with a sense of responsibility.