Masquerade

15

“Father Koesler!”

The priest spun around. The greeting had been delivered so unaffectedly and enthusiastically that it had taken him by complete surprise.

It was a woman with an uncommonly pronounced smile. Dark hair styled in bangs, no glasses, hazel eyes, about five-feet-six, comfortably filled out; she looked like someone’s idea of the stereotypical homemaker.

Who was she?

It happened all the time. Priests meet so very many people. Especially priests who move from parish to parish during their extensive tours of duty. Inevitably, no matter where he happens to be, people will accost a priest with something like, “Father so-and-so! Remember me?”

More often than not the answer had to be, “Not really.”

Which usually was followed by, “You married me!” Or, “You baptized me!”

A priest Koesler’s age will have witnessed the marriage of hundreds of couples, most of them fading into one unrecognizable melange. Ditto baptisms, first Communions, and school plays.

So he tried to be as pleased about this chance meeting as was the young woman who had greeted him. But his hesitation communicated his failure to place her.

“Angie Moore,” she supplied. “Sergeant Angie Moore. We worked together briefly last year on an arrest. .”

Aha! That was it. “Of course. . Sergeant Moore.”

It all came flooding back. “The last time I saw you you were sitting on the floor and you were cut. . bleeding. How are you now?”

She laughed. An infectious, musical laugh. “That was a year ago, Father. I’m fine. I would’ve lost more blood if I’d given to the Red Cross.”

“Good, good.” Now what? “So, what are you doing here, Sergeant?”

“There’s been a murder, Father. I work in Homicide, remember?”

Damn! “Of course. How stupid of me.”

“Did you see her, Angie?” Tully was tiring of this reunion.

“Yeah, Zoo. I saw her. And learned a lot.”

Tully explained to Koznicki and, necessarily, Koesler also. “I asked Angie to get in touch with Mrs. Winer, the rabbi’s wife. . widow. So you saw her. How did it go?”

The transformation was instantaneous. It was as if her happy surprise at meeting Koesler hadn’t happened. Angie Moore was all business.

“It was rough,” Moore said, “real rough. I guess they must have been real close. One of those exceptions, a long and happy marriage. I thought I was gonna lose her right after I gave her the news. I mean, I thought she was gonna faint. But she didn’t. She hung on. She wanted so much to know what happened she must have forced herself to hold on.”

“And then?” Tully prodded.

“And then she wanted to know how it happened. Wait a minute. .” She took her notepad out of her purse and consulted it. “I told her,” Moore said, “that it had been a mistake-the result of a fluke, an accident. That someone had intended to kill Klaus Krieg, but that her husband had accidentally been poisoned with a drink intended for Krieg.

“At first she didn’t say anything. Then she said, ‘What a waste! What a waste!’”

“Strange,” Koznicki commented.

“That’s what I thought,” Moore said. “But I got the impression she wanted to open up to me. So I just kind of kept quiet and waited. And then, she did.

“She said, ‘What a waste! Irv went to that workshop to have it out with Krieg once and for all. And that Irv should die in Krieg’s place-I can’t believe it!’

“I agreed with her. Then I asked what she meant by her husband ‘having it out’ with Krieg.

“She didn’t respond immediately. Like she was debating with herself whether to open up or not. Finally, she said, ‘You see, my husband was in a Nazi concentration camp. .’” Moore looked at Tully. “Did you know that?”

“Yeah,” Tully said. “He had a number tattooed on his arm.” Tully shrugged. “He was Jewish.”

“Well,” Moore continued, “I asked her what her husband being in a concentration camp had to do with Krieg. She didn’t say anything for several minutes, just sat looking off into the distance. Finally, I guess everything overflowed. She started to talk, so slowly and quietly at first that I could barely hear her.

“She said, ‘It was near the end, just before the camp was liberated. Irv had suffered the pains of the damned for seven years. He lasted longer than just about anyone else condemned to that hell on earth. Then something happened.’ She stopped for a moment. . as if she was struggling with herself. Finally, she seemed to come to a decision-sort of as if she had decided to trust me. Actually,” Angie looked a little ill at the memory, “I think she was so close to breaking down that she had to overflow-you know, confide in another human being. And I guess ’cause it was another woman, it was easier for her.

“Anyway, she said, ‘He became an informer, a traitor to his own people, a collaborator with the Nazis.’

“Then she broke down crying. She was sobbing so hard I put my arms around her and just held her. Finally, she pulled herself together. And she said, ‘Irv didn’t know I knew. It was the one thing, the only thing he never told me. I found out when I started researching his genealogy. He was so proud of his heritage, I wanted to get a family tree put together for him. I went to a lot of trouble, writing, getting names of his friends, his family.

“‘It was one of his friends-well, actually a distant relative-who still lives in Germany. He told me. He said Irv didn’t know that quite a few people knew what he’d done in the camp. He wanted Irv to know that the Jews who knew about it bore him no ill will. They understood. They had been there. You did what you had to. You stayed alive.’ She shook her head, and added, ‘He was just a boy.’

“Then she looked at me and she said, ‘I never told Irv. What good would it have done? It didn’t matter if they forgave him or understood. I know him. I know he never could forgive himself. So I didn’t let on I knew his secret. If he didn’t tell me, he didn’t want me to know. I couldn’t let him know that I’d found out, even if it was by accident.’

“That seemed to be all she wanted to tell me. I waited, but nothing more came. So I asked her what all that had to do with having it out with Krieg here at the conference.

“She said, ‘It had everything to do with it. Because Krieg had found out. Oh, it wasn’t that difficult. It wasn’t that difficult for me to find out, and I don’t begin to have the money, the power, the resources that Klaus Krieg has. It just wasn’t as difficult as Irv probably thought it was.

“‘See, one of the times Krieg called, Irv wasn’t in. So Krieg talked to me. I guess Krieg assumed Irv had told me what had happened in the camp. Of course, Irv hadn’t told me. And if I hadn’t found out on my own, it would’ve been a terrible way to find out-from Krieg. But if I hadn’t already known about it and if Krieg had discovered that I didn’t, he would have threatened Irv that he would tell me about it too.’

“I said,’Too?’”

Tully exhaled so audibly it sounded almost like a whistle. “Blackmail! Krieg was blackmailing Winer. That’s what it’s all about.”

“That would explain why the rabbi was so upset at Reverend Krieg’s repeated efforts to sign the rabbi to a contract,” Koznicki said.

“That’s it,” Moore said. “Mrs. Winer said that Krieg, after he got done using every legitimate means to get her husband to sign, had threatened and finally issued an ultimatum that if Winer still refused to sign, Krieg would get the story out in the open.”

“Could it have hurt that much?” Koesler asked.

The others looked at him as if he’d dropped out of the sky. They had nearly forgotten he was there.

Their reaction slightly embarrassed Koesler. Nonetheless, having surfaced, he proceeded. “I mean, it happened so long ago. In the context of where and how it happened, it is so understandable. And, according to his wife, everyone who knows about it has forgiven him.”

“I asked her the same question,” Marie said. “But she said that at very least he would lose his credibility, and very possibly the president of the synagogue would move to have him dismissed. And they’d probably do it. She was convinced that if that had happened his life both as a rabbi and a writer would end. But most of all, if it had become public, her belief was that he would just have disintegrated.”

Silence.

“So,” Tully said, “Winer came here to have it out once and for all with Krieg.”

“Do you think it possible the rabbi intended murder as a last resort?” Koznicki asked.

“Sure sounds like it,” Tully replied.

“Father Koesler has told us of his surprise at the hostility toward Krieg not only on the rabbi’s part, but from all the other writers,” Koznicki said. “Is it possible. .?”

Tully nodded. “Angie, go get Krieg. He’s in the dining room.”

Shortly, Moore returned with Krieg.

“Reverend,” Tully said, “Sergeant Moore here just got done talking with Rabbi Winer’s widow.”

“Praise God! Poor woman.”

“Yeah. Mrs. Winer said you know about a … uh. . a very compromising situation in the rabbi’s past and that you were blackmailing him, threatening to reveal his secret, unless he signed a contract with you.”

Krieg smiled in plastic benevolence.

“True?” Tully’s tone betrayed there was little fuse left.

“Whyever would a minister of the Gospel do a thing like that?”

“You deny it, then?”

“What’s to deny? Are there letters? Documents? Tape recordings of any such threat I might have made to the good rabbi, Lord rest his soul?”

Tully glanced at Moore, who shook her head.

“No hard evidence, Reverend, of any threat; just your word against the widow’s,” Tully said. “But what we’ve learned from Mrs. Winer explains a lot. So this is off the record. Rabbi Winer stood to lose everything. He came here allegedly to settle things with you. His plans might have included murder.”

“He was a man of God!” Krieg protested.

“So are you,” Tully shot back. “So are all the others in this crazy conference.” Tully slipped into a more conciliatory attitude. “Reverend, it’s been observed that you are not much liked by the writers here. Some of us have been wondering why that is. Mrs. Winer gave us an excellent reason-at least as far as her husband was concerned.”

“But I-”

“Hold on just a moment, Reverend,” Tully said. “We are not officially accusing you of anything like blackmail. And you don’t have to deny or answer to anything. Right now, anyway,” he added. “But let’s just suppose-for the sake of argument-that Mrs. Winer was on to something. Suppose her husband did have a skeleton in his closet. Suppose you knew about it. Suppose you told him you would pull that skeleton out of the closet if he didn’t sign a contract with your publishing company. Something he very much didn’t want to do. Suppose that was the reason he showed such hostility toward you.

“Now, as far as the casual observer was concerned, the high degree of hostility Winer had for you was excessive, inappropriate-improbable, to say the least. But not if you throw in blackmail.

“With blackmail thrown into the pot, it all makes sense. In fact, it would be a credible reason why Winer might want to kill you-absent some lesser way to get you off his back.

“But, instead of making an attempt on your life, Winer is murdered, with a poisoned drink meant for you. His mistake inadvertently saved your life.

“Now, who besides Winer would hate you enough to attempt to kill you? Well, for openers, how about the remaining three writers on this panel? There doesn’t seem to be much difference in the way any of them feel about you.

“Why would they show feelings toward you just like Winer’s? Could it be for the same reason Winer had?

“Whatever their reasons, I think you know why they don’t particularly care for you. And there’s one thing you’d better remember: Whoever tried to kill you missed. We haven’t caught that person yet, so he or she is still out there and still hates you enough to try to kill you.

“If I were you, I would be awfully, awfully careful. And, think about it, Reverend: You may just want to talk to us. It would give us a leg up if we knew what this person’s motive was.

“Now we can’t force you to talk to us, but if you think about it carefully enough, you might just want to.”

During Tully’s admonition to Krieg, Koesler studied the televangelist closely. It was interesting to watch the smile slide almost imperceptibly from plastic to rubber.

Strange man, Koesler concluded. He’d seemed more annoyed than shocked when he had learned of Rabbi Winer’s death. Not unlike an investor learning the market had suffered through a very bearish day. Which simile probably wasn’t far from the truth in this case.

For one reason or another, Krieg seemed to have had every expectation that he could persuade the rabbi to sign with P.G. Press. Blackmail? So, with Winer’s demise, Krieg had lost an investment. One surely would expect considerably more from the minister. But. .

And then, when it became clear that Winer had died from a poison meant for him, Krieg had looked as though he were close to death from mere shock.

Yet when Tully began talking to Krieg just now, the Reverend appeared to have put the incident out of his mind. As if it had never happened. But it was obvious all along that the murderer was still free. Free to try again. Did Krieg think that, having failed, the killer would give up?

Whatever Krieg may have thought, Tully’s lecture had brought the preacher back to earth with a thud.

Would Krieg now break down and confide in the police? Koesler guessed that the secret of what was going on between Krieg and the writers hid something that was translatable into a lot of money in the coffers of P.G. Press. A great deal of money on one side of the scale; human life-perhaps Krieg’s own-on the other side.

Koesler was reminded of the routine of the late comedian Jack Benny, in which a thief approaches Benny and says, “Your money or your life.” An extended silence follows. The thief exasperatedly repeats, “Your money or your life!” And Benny replies, “I’m thinking! I’m thinking!”

That must be what Krieg was doing now: thinking about either protecting his life or possibly adding significantly to his fortune.

Koesler had time to develop all these thoughts because Tully tolerated a lengthy silence during which one could almost perceive wheels turning in Krieg’s mind. In the end, it became apparent Krieg was not going to cooperate.

“All right,” Tully said, “we’re going back into the dining room. Angie, I want you to tell the others what you told us about your conversation with Mrs. Winer.”

The others, being interviewed in various parts of the dining room, one on one with police officers, seemed startled at the sight of Koznicki, Tully, Moore, Krieg, and Koesler entering. The interviews were put on hold while Tully introduced Moore.

In a more concise fashion than she had in the corridor, Moore recounted her conversation with Mrs. Winer. Tully noted the writers’ reactions carefully. So did Koesler. They all seemed genuinely moved with pity for the rabbi’s widow and absorbed by the rabbi’s concentration camp ordeal.

At a signal from Tully, Moore stopped short of explicit mention of blackmail. The conclusion was left to the listeners to draw. To a person, they seemed to make the connection and arrive at the inevitable conclusion.

As Moore ended her narrative, Tully asked for questions.

None.

Did anyone have any comment?

No one. Everyone seemed determined to tough it out.

Very well, then. Tully directed the detectives to resume their interviews.

In a low voice, Tully directed Moore to commence a supplementary investigation into the backgrounds of the three remaining writers. “Just in case there’s something to this blackmail thing,” he said, “dig around. See what turns up. Take two or three from our squad. If you need more help, see me.”

Things were frozen in a status quo that Koesler did not find at all auspicious. He prayed that something would break, something would happen, before another life would be forfeited.