Wednesday the Rabbi Got Wet (18 page)

“He wanted to. Now he doesn’t have to bother, he can just wait a couple of months for my lease to expire and just take it over.”

“But why would Mr. Safferstein want your store? He’s in the real estate business.”

“Well, he does, the last few months he must have asked me a dozen times. See, he’s got this brother-in-law who’s a pharmacist, and he’s always hitting him up for a loan which he never pays back, and being it’s his wife’s brother, he can’t turn him down. So he got the idea of buying my store and setting him up in business for himself. Now, if he’s hot after my store, why would he extend my lease?”

“But if you haven’t asked him…”

Aptaker shook his head. “No need to, and if I did, it wouldn’t be asking. It would be begging, he’d just turn me down.”

“But if Safferstein came to see you several times when you’d refused the first time…”

Aptaker grinned. “That’s different, that’s business, maybe you wouldn’t know, being a rabbi, but it’s like this. Suppose somebody says he wants to buy your store, you don’t ask how much he’s offering because you don’t want to appear too eager. Besides, you wouldn’t want it to get around that you were interested in selling because that might suggest that business wasn’t too good and it could hurt your credit. So you kind of fence with him. ‘Why should I want to sell a good business?’ Or ‘Why do you want to buy a drugstore when you’re not even a pharmacist?’ See, you don’t talk serious at first, well, every time he comes in, like to buy a paper or a pack of cigarettes, he raises the question, he doesn’t mind my putting him off because he’s a businessman, too, so he knows the score. But then he comes to see me at home, that means he’s serious. So I’ve got to talk serious, too.”

Aptaker had been lying on his back, but now he turned over on his side to face the rabbi directly. “I explained to him why I can’t deal with him. You see. I don’t think of it as my store to do with what I please. I got it from my father and I feel I should pass it on to my son. I mean, it’s not a job that you can walk away from. Where you’ve got something you’ve worked for all your life and your father before you, and you’ve trained your son to take it over, you don’t just sell it to some stranger because he offers you a few thousand bucks. It’s a family thine. So I told him I’d have to talk it over with my son and see how he felt.”

“And Safferstein would come in and ask if you’d heard from your son?”

“That’s right, Rabbi. But a thing like this, you can’t just write a letter. You got to sit down and talk it over.”

“So when Safferstein would inquire, you’d tell him you hadn’t heard yet.”

“Uh-huh. Because what I had in mind was maybe to take a weekend off and go see Arnold in Philadelphia where he’s working.”

“But wasn’t he here a few days ago?”

Aptaker’s face reddened. “Yeah, but we didn’t have a chance to talk. Something came up and he had to go back to Philadelphia.”

“And now?”

“Well, now it makes no difference,” Marcus said gloomily. “My lease will expire and maybe Safferstein will make me some kind of offer for my stock. More likely, I’ll have to sell it to the auctioneers.”

“Have you got the correspondence on all this, Mr. aptaker? I mean the request for renewal and –”

“Sure. I’m a very systematic man, Rabbi. I got a file of all the letters I received and carbons of the letters I sent.”

“Could I see it?”

“Why not? You think you can do something?” Marcus asked eagerly, then regretfully, “Believe me, it’s hopeless. It’s all perfectly legal. It’s just my tough luck that Goralsky died when he did.”

“Still, I’d like to see the correspondence if I may.”

“You’re welcome to it. Rabbi. When I get out of here, remind me.”

“Couldn’t I see it before then? Perhaps your wife…”

“All right. It’s in a folder in the store. When Rose comes tonight, I’ll tell her to dig it out for you.”

At noon, Dr. Kantrovitz stuck his head into his colleague’s office and asked. “Lunch?”

“Right.” said Muntz. “Let’s get hold of Dan. How about John?”

“He’s not back from the hospital yet.”

Dr. Kantrovitz walked the short distance to Dr. Cohen’s office and called, “How about lunch, Dan?”

And Cohen, who had spent the last ten minutes in his office wondering if they would ask him, answered with alacrity, “Yeah, I’m starved.”

It was not until the three men were dawdling over their coffee that Muntz asked about the retreat.

Dan Cohen smiled broadly. “It was okay. You know, a kind of change of pace, all this prayer and meditation they go in for, well, that was all right, too, after a while, you kind of get into the spirit of the thing and it’s kind of relaxing.”

“Relaxing?” Muntz asked. “Is that all? According to Chet Kaplan – he said he bumped into you after you got back – you were practically euphoric.”

“Oh, that!” Dr. Cohen chuckled. “Yeah, I guess I was. You see, this Kestler business had got me down, even though I was sure I had given the old man the right medication. Still, I was worried because, well, because Kestler is Kestler, and also because of the way you guys reacted about his suing me, as a matter of fact, that’s why I decided to go on this retreat. I’m not religious, but I thought it would be a good excuse to get away from it all, well, I’d just come home, and I get this call from Chief Lanigan.”

He went on to tell of his meeting with Lanigan and finished with, “So it was right after that I saw Kaplan, and he asks me how I enjoyed the weekend, well, naturally, I was feeling pretty good.”

“Then Kestler didn’t get the medication you prescribed?” Muntz asked.

“No, he got a penicillin tablet instead.”

“And he was sensitive to penicillin?”

“Uh-huh, that’s why I prescribed Limpidine.”

“So he probably did get a reaction, and it could easily account for his death,” said Kantrovitz.

“Yeah, but it was not from Dan’s prescription,” Muntz pointed out.

“So what did you do about it?” demanded Kantrovitz.

“Naturally, I was going to see Aptaker and have it out with him, but Lanigan said since the police were involved, he wanted to check it out first, so I didn’t do anything. I expected he’d get on it right away. But when I didn’t hear from him. I thought I’d stop by the drugstore on my way home yesterday –”

“And?”

“And nothing,” Cohen said. “When I got there, Aptaker was having a heart attack, so I rushed him to the hospital.”

“Aptaker is in the hospital with a heart attack?”

“That’s right, he’s my patient now. I certainly can’t say anything to him now. It would kill him. Set him back anyway.”

“But look here, you’ve got to do something about it.” Muntz said. “You can’t let Kestler go on shooting off his mouth about you, not when you’ve got the perfect answer. It won’t do your practice any good, and it won’t help the rest of us either.”

“Do you know what you’ve got to do?” Kantrovitz said solemnly. “You’ve got to take yourself out of this case. You tell Aptaker you feel he ought to have a regular heart man, that you don’t feel –”

“Competent?” asked Cohen. “Believe me, if I thought that, I’d turn him over to a cardiologist right away. But there have been no complications. I’ve got him on a lowfat, high-protein diet. I’m watching his daily EKG’s and enzyme tests and –”

“I don’t mean that you can’t handle it.” Kantrovitz said. “I mean that you could tell him that so you can get out from under, then he’s no longer your patient and you’re free to act.”

Cohen shook his head stubbornly. “Even if he were no longer my patient, I couldn’t do it. If you took him over,

Ed,” he challenged, “would you let me tell him he’d made a mistake on a prescription and someone had died from it?”

“No, but –”

“So what do you intend to do?” Muntz asked.

“I don’t know. Just sweat it out, I guess.”

Al Muntz leaned back in his chair and thrust his hands into his trouser pockets, he shook his head slowly in a kind of wonderment. “You know what, Dan? You’ve done it again.”

“Done what?”

“Got yourself a patient that you’re emotionally involved with.”

But later, when he was alone with Kantrovitz, Muntz said. “You know, Ed, he’s a damn fool but I can’t help admiring Dan, here he is, taking a chance on wrecking his practice to avoid hurting one of his patients, maybe that’s been his trouble all along, he believes all that stuff med school deans dish out at commencement.”

“But look here, if you were in Dan’s position, would you tell Aptaker?”

“Of course not.” Muntz said, “but I wouldn’t have let myself get in that position in the first place.”

Mrs. aptaker entered the rabbi’s study and sat down gingerly, she looked about her at the walls lined with large leather-bound books, two of which were lying open on the desk.

“I hope I’m not interrupting your work,” she said.

The rabbi smiled. “Not at all, Mrs. aptaker.” He motioned at the books on his desk. “This goes on all the time. It can wait, and how is Mr. aptaker?”

“All right, I guess.”

“And your son? What do you hear from him?”

“Arnold? You know him? He’s coming home. I called him when his father got sick, he said he’d come just as soon as he winds up things in Philadelphia. It could be a matter of months before my husband gets back on his feet, so Arnold has to make arrangements.”

“Of course.”

“Because even if we have to sell the store, we should have someone here from the family that knows about these things, about things in a drugstore.”

“Maybe he’ll decide to stay for good,” the rabbi suggested.

She sighed. “I don’t know, Arnold didn’t get along so good with his father, especially in the store, maybe like two women can’t work in the same kitchen, so two men, a father and a son, they can’t get along in the same business.”

“And how are you managing?”

“Well, Ross – that’s McLane, the other pharmacist, he’s very cooperative, but he’d like me to get another pharmacist to help out. But then when Arnold comes, we wouldn’t need him.”

Rose Aptaker placed the cardboard folder she had brought with her on the desk and said, “These are the letters my husband said I should show you. I looked through them before coming here. I never saw them before. My husband, you understand, he didn’t like to bother me with business matters, maybe he thought I might worry, there’s a letter here that my husband wrote to your temple, a copy I mean, asking to renew his lease. It was sent out more than a month ago, and there was no answer until – until a couple of days ago, telling him he should ask Mr. Safferstein, that was the day my husband got his heart attack, Rabbi. Is that the way a temple should act? Not answer his letter and then finally send him a letter he should get a heart attack? That’s religion?”

“I know nothing about it, Mrs. aptaker, but if you’ll give me a chance to read it –”

“Sure, read. But I got to get back to the store.”

“If you could leave it with me –”

“Why not?” She rose to go and then changed her mind and sat down. “When I went to see my husband at the hospital this afternoon, he seemed to have a little more spirit, somehow, he was even a little excited. I think maybe it was because of your visit, something you may have said.” She looked at him questioningly, and when he offered no comment, she went on, “So what I wanted to say, Rabbi, is that when you read over these letters and you see it’s hopeless, it would be better if you didn’t tell him right away. I mean it could wait a little while until he got stronger.”

“I said nothing to your husband. Mrs. aptaker, only that I should like to see the correspondence he had on the lease. If he jumped to the conclusion that I could do something –”

“What difference does it make?” she demanded fiercely. “If he’s kidding himself, at least he’s getting stronger on it.”

“But he’ll have to face it sooner or later,” the rabbi insisted.

“So better later than sooner.” She made as if to rise and then thought better of it. “I don’t know if you can understand what the store means to my husband. It’s not just a living; it’s like an institution to him, like a college or a bank. If he should sell it now, even at a good price, his whole life would be like a failure. Sure, we made a comfortable living, but if he sells the store, then he’ll be balancing the accounts in his mind and he’ll see that for all the time he spent there, he was working at clerk’s wages. But if he can pass it on to Arnold, then it’s in the family and it’s still his and it doesn’t make any difference how many hours a week he puts in. You know we got customers who moved to Florida ten and fifteen years ago and we still send them refills on their prescriptions.”

“I think I understand. Mrs. aptaker.” the rabbi said kindly-He accompanied her to the door just as Miriam, who had been out shopping, arrived home, he introduced the two women.

“I hope your husband is feeling better,” said Miriam. Rose Aptaker shrugged her shoulders and smiled sadly.

Later, as Miriam went about preparing the evening meal, she asked, “Can you do something for them, David? She looked so unhappy.”

Her husband, lounging in the kitchen doorway, shook his head. “I doubt it. Not being a member of the temple, aptaker has an exaggerated idea of the power and authority of a rabbi. I’m afraid he’s caught in one of those situations, which probably happens quite often in business, where he suffers a sizable financial loss through nobody’s fault, and yet…”

“What is it?”

“It’s funny that Kaplan didn’t mention receiving Aptaker’s request for a renewal on his lease, he had it for some time. I’m sure he never raised the matter at any board meeting.”

“It is curious. Can you make anything of it?”

“Well, at least I can call Kaplan and ask how it happened.” The rabbi went to the phone. “He should be home about now.”

“What can I do for you, Rabbi?” Kaplan asked jovially when the connection was made.

“I was talking to Marcus Aptaker, the druggist in the Goralsky Block. You may have heard that he’s in the hospital now with a heart attack, he tells me that he wrote to the temple asking for a renewal of his lease. I wonder why you didn’t mention it at any of the board meetings.”