Saturday the Rabbi Went Hungry

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The district attorney is not happy with me,” said Lanigan. He had stopped by the Smalls on his way home. “And I don’t think he’s happy with you either, Rabbi.”

“What have I done?”

“A district attorney doesn’t mind going into court with a clear case and winning it. Just as a ballplayer doesn’t mind hitting a home run. But to dump a murder case in his lap, with no suspects and a good chance that the murderer may never be found, that he doesn’t like. And that’s why he’s not happy with you. And he’s not happy with me because he thinks I bungled it. It never occurred to me that it might be murder, so I didn’t take the normal pre-cautions on fingerprints and-”

“But the fingerprints were wiped off.”

“On the light button, yes, but what about the steering wheel and door handles and handles on the garage door? You might assume that if the murderer took the trouble to wipe the light button he’d wipe off the rest, but it doesn’t necessarily follow. You’d be amazed how often they slip up. And they can slip up on the most obvious thing while being scrupulously careful on the least likely. If I had thought there was a possibility of murder, I would have handled it differently. And I should have considered the possibility. No, I’m afraid I don’t look good in this case so far.”

“That will make you look all the better when you find the culprit,” said Miriam.

“That’s not going to be easy. This isn’t like any other case.”

“How do you mean?” asked the rabbi.

“Well, in any crime there are three basic questions, three lines of investigation you might say, and where they meet, that’s your answer. There’s opportunity, there’s weapon, and there’s motive.” The chief ticked them off on his fingers. “Here, what was the weapon? The car. That means that anyone who can drive can be said to have access to the weapon. If you wanted to stretch it, he wouldn’t even have to know how to drive a car.”

“I’m afraid I don’t follow you there.”

“Well, say Hirsh had made it back to the garage and then passed out. Anyone passing, seeing him, could just pull down the garage door and that would do it.”

“But then Hirsh would have been behind the wheel-not on the passenger seat,” the rabbi objected.

“Yeah, that’s right. All right, so the murderer-or at least an accomplice-is anyone who can drive a car. That still leaves an awful lot of people. So we come to opportunity. Well, considering how accessible or available the weapon was, it means it could be anyone who might have been at the Hirsh house or was passing by sometime around eight o’clock in the evening.” He grinned. “That kind of eliminates your people, Rabbi. Just their luck it was Yom Kippur and they were all in temple. It gives them a collective alibi.”

The rabbi smiled faintly.

“And so we come to motive. And that’s what makes the case particularly hard, because you see you don’t need much of a motive for this killing.”

“Why is that?”

“Because it doesn’t involve much doing-not much planning and not much nerve either. Look here, suppose you see a man drowning and although you’re a good swimmer and could easily reach him you just turn away. See what I mean? Deliberately to plan on drowning a man takes resolution and nerve; you wouldn’t do it unless you hated him or had good reason for wishing him dead. But to just turn away-that you might do if you happened only to dislike him. Why should I go to the trouble, you’d say, especially if life would be easier with him gone.

“Take me, for example. I’m considered a pretty decent, lawabiding citizen. I’m considered a good husband and a good father, and even the people I deal with professionally-criminals and lawbreakers-speak of me as fair and honest. But every now and then thoughts go through my head-”

“This is common to all men.”

“Of course. It isn’t what you think but what you do that matters. But what if the opportunity came to do one of these things just when it happened to occur to me, and it involved no great risk on my part, no real action-just a turning away-failing to do something rather than doing it. Do you see what I mean, Rabbi?”

“All right, I see the point you’re trying to make. You mean that in this kind of killing, almost accidental and so easy, no great animus is required.”

“That’s it.”

“So where does that leave you?”

The chief shrugged. “With damn little to go on.”

“Suppose you ran the story in the newspapers. That might turn up something.”

Lanigan shook his head. “It will have to wait for a few days, I’m afraid. The D.A. thinks we may be able to come up with an answer if the story is kept secret.”

“Then you do have a lead.”

“Not really,” the chief said. “Beam’s idea, but the D.A. thinks it’s worth checking. And, mind you, from a straight, logical basis, it’s possible. He’s got it in his head that the widow did it. Why? Because then his company won’t have to pay off. His argument is that as far as we know she’s the only one who profits. She becomes richer by fifty thousand dollars for one thing, and for another she gets rid of a husband who was not only old enough to be her father but was no bargain in a lot of other respects, too.”

“She married him when he was an alcoholic. Does Beam think that now that he at least partially reformed, he was a less desirable husband?”

“I’m just giving you his idea, Rabbi. There’s a little more to it. He feels that business about having him buried in a Jewish cemetery with the Jewish rites was just a big act to show how devoted she was, like another woman might pretend to faint or weep whenever she thought someone was watching. That if all this had been on the up and up, she wouldn’t have bothered to bury him in the Jewish cemetery since he had no feelings about it when he was alive.”

“Such involved psychological analysis,” said the rabbi. “I wouldn’t have thought our friend Beam capable of it.”

“Well, of course, he’s seen a lot of this kind of thing,” said Lanigan apologetically. “I can understand where he might be suspicious of any unusual manifestation of grief on the part of the widow. And when you add the fact that she didn’t answer the phone when the Marcuses rang-”

“But that happened after ten o’clock, and according to the autopsy Hirsh was already dead sometime before nine.”

“According to Beam, the fact that she didn’t answer shows she left the house. If she left then, she could have left earlier. Suppose she sees him drive into the garage but doesn’t see him get out. So she goes across the street. Maybe she tries to rouse him. Maybe she gets a kind of revulsion and says, all right, stay there. It crosses her mind that it might be easier without him. Then later after ten, just before the Marcuses called, she runs out to see what the situation is. Is the motor still running? Is he still alive? She finds him dead and runs back in time to get the second call. Then she plans what she’s got to do after that. She goes home, makes believe she hasn’t noticed the garage door is down, and calls the police so that they can discover the body for her.”

“You keep referring to Beam. How do you like it?”

“Mrs. Hirsh doesn’t seem that kind of person to me, but I’ve had enough experience to know my feelings about people don’t mean a darn thing. On the other hand, what else have I got? It’s a logical starting point-she’s the only one we know who profits from his death.”

“I see.”

“So we’re keeping it quiet for a few days-at least until we can check Mrs. Hirsh out.”

“And if it’s not Mrs. Hirsh, do you have any other leads?”

“We’re checking into anyone who might have had any contact with Hirsh. It’s all we can do. I went over to the Goddard Laboratories yesterday to see the big boss himself.”

“Goddard?”

“No, Lemuel Goddard has been dead for several years. He was local-a Crosser in fact. He started the lab when he retired from G.E. They retire them at sixty-five there, whether they’re ready or not. Lem Goddard wasn’t ready, so he started a lab of his own. He had a place-an old warehouse in Lynn. Then he went public and sold stock. They expanded and built this place on Route 128. When he died, the Board of Directors decided that the man they wanted to head up the organization was not a scientist but an administrative expert, so they got this army general, Amos Quint. One of these desk generals from the Quartermaster Corps. Iron-arse Quint, I understand he used to be called in Washington.” He glanced at Miriam. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Small, that just came out.”

She smiled faintly. “I’ve heard the word.”

“There’s nothing so army as one of those desk generals,” the chief went on. “His secretary who brought me into his office didn’t actually salute but she kind of stood at attention.” He laughed. “When I asked him how well he knew Hirsh, the general says, ‘I make it a point not to know my men well.’ How do you like that?”

“Wasn’t it Caesar, or Napoleon, who knew every man in his army by his first name?”

“I guess that’s old-fashioned. Quint explained to me that if you’re going to run an efficient organization and not get bogged down in a mass of trivia-that’s the word he used and with a flick of the hand as though brushing something away-you’ve got to operate strictly through channels. ‘I see them when I hire them and when I fire them and that’s all.’ From then on, everything goes through channels. He tells them that when he hires them, and when he fires them, he tells them why. So as far as Hirsh was concerned, anything he wanted to bring to the notice of old Iron-of Quint-had to go through his superior, Dr. Sykes.”

“I see. The Lowells talk only to Cabots and the Cabots talk only to God.”

“That’s about it, Rabbi. But, of course, Quint had a dossier on Hirsh and knew quite a bit about him. I gather that Hirsh was not too hot lately. Maybe he was at one time, but certainly not while he was at Goddard. In fact, I gathered he made a number of rather bad mistakes-the last one, just a few days before his death.”

“Why didn’t they fire him?”

“I asked the same question. I gather Quint was going to this last time because this time it was real serious, or perhaps the general had come to the end of his patience. You know, Rabbi, that could have been another argument in favor of suicide, if I had known about it at the time.”

“I wonder why Quint didn’t fire him earlier. From what you say, he doesn’t sound like the type to stand for more than one error on the part of an employee, especially one so far down the ladder as I gather Hirsh was.”

“That was Sykes. I asked the same question, and Quint said Dr. Sykes went to bat for him each time and so he played along. Even the time Hirsh got drunk Sykes managed to get him off. It started right there in the lab as a matter of fact. They were working on a special method for aging whiskey quickly by shooting an electric current through it somehow. The chemist who was working on the project mixed up a batch and brought it around for the boys to sample and give their opinions. Hirsh was one of those offered a taste and it set him off. The chemist, by the way, was fired.”

“Why?”

Lanigan laughed. “That’s another thing about this lab. You’d think they’d all be working together, sketching diagrams and circuits and formulae and whatnot on the tablecloths at lunch. Nothing like it. You see, most of their work is done for industry, and if news leaks out their clients’ stocks can be affected. I gather that in the past some of the scientists weren’t above taking a little flyer on this inside information. So the rule was laid down that everyone is to keep his nose firmly set against his own little grindstone. The men in any given section will confer with each other but they don’t contact the other sections except when absolutely necessary-and then it’s done through the department heads.”

“Interesting. So you didn’t get much from Quint. Did you question any of the other employees?”

“I did, but I got nothing that helped. As I said, everyone there tends to keep to himself. And Hirsh was a quiet sort, even withdrawn.”

“It doesn’t leave you with much.”

“No, it doesn’t.” He looked eagerly at the rabbi. “Any ideas, Rabbi? Anything strike you?”

The rabbi shook his head slowly.

“Well, it helps just to talk it over, I suppose.” But it was obvious that he was disappointed. He looked directly at the rabbi. “By the way, did you know that Ben Goralsky knew Hirsh?”

“No, I didn’t, although I saw him at the funeral.”

“S’truth. In fact, it was Goralsky who got Hirsh the job at Goddard.”