Wednesday the Rabbi got wet

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Rabbi Small heard about Kestler's death the next day at the morning minyan, although shocked that the man he had visited only the night before had died, he was not too surprised. Kestler had been over eighty and each time he had been to see him, he had seemed weaker and more fragile.

"You going to the funeral, Rabbi?" asked Chester Kaplan. "It's over in Revere at half past ten, he was a member of Bnai Shalom."

"I don't think so."

"Well, I suppose I'll have to go. I've done some legal work for the Kestlers over the years."

"It's a mitzvah to go," the rabbi observed. Kaplan brightened. "Yeah, that's right, it is."

When next he saw the rabbi at the evening minyan he reported on the event. "You should’ve been there, Rabbi, there was quite a crowd. I wouldn't have thought he was that popular." Kaplan laughed. "But when I overheard some of the remarks. I figured they had come to make sure he was dead."

The rabbi raised his eyebrows. "So?" "You know what he was, don't you?" "Small-loans banker?"

"He was a usurer, he lent money on high-risk items, he gave second and third mortgages, chattel loans, that sort of thing. His prime rate of interest was somewhere around twenty-five or thirty percent. But you should have heard the eulogy. This Rabbi Rogin who officiated went on and on about how Kestler had loaned money, 'not to the financiers or the captains of industry, but to the poor and the humble.' I suppose he asked the son about his father and then dressed it up."

The rabbi nodded sadly. "We used to eulogize only great men, but nowadays the family expect it and appreciate it even when they know better, and afterward they tend to think of him the way the rabbi eulogized him, maybe it's not a bad thing if it helps a son to think a little better of his father. Historians do the same for the statesmen and heroes they favor, and you lawyers, don't you do the same thing when you make your pitch to a jury?"

"Yeah, I guess we do," Kaplan said, as Rabbi Small was about to turn away, Kaplan had another thought. "Say, Rabbi, you used to visit the old man. How did he look to you?"

"What do you mean? He looked like a sick old man."

"Because afterward people went up to talk to Joe Kestler and offer him condolence. One woman, family I guess, went on about how surprised she'd been when she heard the news, she said when she last visited him he seemed so spry and alert, and Joe said he'd been getting along fine until he took this pill the doctor prescribed."

The rabbi looked sharply at Kaplan. "And what do you make of that?"

Kaplan grinned. "Speaking as a lawyer, I'd say Joe Kestler was laying the groundwork for a malpractice suit."