Wednesday the Rabbi got wet

CHAPTER TWENTY

Friday afternoon Rabbi Small paid his condolence visit to the Kestlers. Over the years he had performed this melancholy parochial duty many times, but he had never grown sufficiently accustomed to it to be anything but uncomfortable for the half hour or so that it usually lasted. If the deceased had been young, a child perhaps, the grief of the immediate family was apt to be overwhelming, and he always came away with the feeling that he had obtruded. On the other hand, if it were an old person, like an aged parent, the atmosphere was more subdued than sad, he knew that before his arrival, conversation had flowed easily as at any other social occasion, with perhaps an occasional joke offered, he had indeed heard the muted laughter as he approached the door which was kept ajar so that the family would not have to respond to the constant ringing of the doorbell, as soon as he entered, however, faces became sober and conversation was reduced to philosophical platitudes, as unruly school-children quiet down when the teacher appears, and he resented this dampening role in which he was cast as the professional condolence purveyor of the congregation. In his own mind, he was never at ease with it. While it was only fitting and proper to grieve over tha dead, the mourning period was also intended to help the bereaved overcome their grief, and he was perhaps doing them a disservice by plunging them into it again by his very presence. Moreover, he believed that it was wrong to simulate a grief that one did not actually feel. Nevertheless, he was taken aback when he entered the Kestler house and found Joe and his wife playing cards.

"Oh, it's you, Rabbi," Joe Kestler said. "Come right in." And then embarrassed, he explained. "The wife was kind of low, and I thought a couple of hands of gin would get her mind off— well, off things."

"I understand," the rabbi replied.

Christine Kestler seconded her husband with, "I was like all edgy. It was such a shock."

"Still, he was a very old man, and sick." the rabbi murmured.

"He could have gone on like that for years," Kestler asserted, "if Cohen hadn't fed him that pill."

Mindful of his conversation with Lanigan, the rabbi responded sharply. "Are you suggesting that the doctoa deliberately gave your father medication that would harm him?"

"I'm not suggesting anything." said Kestler doggedly. "All I know is Cohen was sore at my old man on account he sued him about a fence he put up, maybe that's why he didn't take too much time to think it out, he was in and out of here in a matter of minutes. I even complained about it, didn't I, Chris?"

"That's right," she nodded vehemently. "Joe was real sore about it."

"If the diagnosis is obvious..."the rabbi suggested.

"Then it wasn't, or my father wouldn't have died, he was sick, but all right. You saw him, then he took that pill and in less than half an hour he was dead. You saw him take the pill. You were a witness to it."

"I saw your wife administer a pill," said the rabbi coldly. "I have no way of knowing what kind of pill it was."

"Oh, that's all right," said Kestler confidently. "It was the cops in the cruising car that delivered the pills. You must have heard them drive up. In any case, they'd have a record of the time, and it was while you were here, a minute later, the wife comes up to give it to him, then when the police ambulance arrived they took the whole bottle of pills. So we got everything nailed down evidencewise."

"But I have no way of knowing that the pill that Mrs. Kestler received from the police was the one she gave your father."

"Are you saying she could have switched them. Rabbi? That my own wife would want to hurt her own father-in-law?" Kestler was aghast.

"I'm not saying anything except that the chain of evidence is not as complete as you seem to think, the discrepancy that I pointed out is what any lawyer would be certain to seize on, he might also think it strange, as would the court, that you would engage a doctor with whom you had quarreled."

"I didn't want to call Cohen. It was my father who made me. I begged him not to. But he said that suing him was just business and had nothing to do with calling for doctoring. So say he was wrong, that still don't give Cohen the right to give him the wrong medicine."

"And you think because he was angry with your father, he prescribed the wrong medicine?"

Kestler's face took on a look of great cunning, he smiled. "Oh, I'm not saying he did it deliberate, that would be murder, and I'm not accusing him of murder, all I'm saying is that because he was sore at my old man, he didn't take the time to make a careful diagnosis, so he made a mistake, that's negligence, and that's malpractice, and I'm going to sue him for it."

"When you called Dr. Cohen, he immediately agreed to come over?" asked the rabbi.

Kestler's eyes narrowed as he thought about the question, suspicious that the rabbi might be laying a trap. "Oh, I wouldn't say he agreed right away."

"And yet you persisted."

"Well, it was Wednesday," Mrs. Kestler offered.

Her husband glared at her. "The old man had confidence in him as a doctor."

"I see. So even though it was Wednesday, his day off, ha came to see your father, and your point is that he just took a quick look at him and then handed you a prescription to—"

"He didn't give me any prescription," said Kestler. "He called it in when he got home."

The rabbi showed his surprise. "When he got home? Why didn't he call it from here or just give you a written prescription?"

"Joe thought he might have some samples," Mrs. Kestler hastened to explain.

Joe Kestler shot her a venomous glance. "It was kind of late," he elaborated, "and all the drugstores were closed except Aptaker's, and I don't go in there. So I asked him if he had any samples, and he said he'd drop them off to me if he had, and if he didn't, he'd call in the prescription and they'd deliver it."

The rabbi nodded as he considered. "So here's a doctor," he said, as though he were trying to reason it out for his own understanding, "who is called on his day off by someone who has brought suit against him, and he not only comes, but offers to drop off samples of tha medication he prescribes or make arrangements for it to be delivered, and this is the man you've been slandering and are planning to sue?"

"He made a mistake," said Kestler, "and my father died. So that's malpractice. I got nothing against the doctor personally, but I got a right to sue, same as I would if my best friend rammed into me with his car."

"It's the insurance that pays," his wife added.

The rabbi rose to go. "The doctor may have made a mistake," he said, "as any man can make a mistake. Or he may have prescribed the correct medicine. If you bring the matter to court, it will be the court that will decide. But to speak evil of a man is considered a very grave sin by our law, Mr. Kestler. In our tradition, it is thought to bring on the most terrible punishments."

Remembering the disapproving looks from her husband, Mrs. Kestler feared that she would receive a torrent of abuse as soon as the rabbi left. But Joe Kestler maintained a dour and gloomy silence as he paced up and down the room in deep thought. Finally he stopped and faced her. "You know what he was trying to say?"

"Well, Joe, I think—"

"Shut up and listen. This guy Cohen is a member of his congregation, see. So he's got to take care of him, he knows I'm going to call him for a witness, and being a rabbi, he's got to tell the truth. But he's smart and can shade it which way he wants. So I think it's time I saw a lawyer. In the meantime, I don't want you shooting off your mouth about Doc Cohen. Understand?"

"But I never—" She saw his annoyance and said, "Oh, I won't, Joe. I won't say a word."