Wednesday the Rabbi got wet

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Lt. Eban Jennings sat down heavily, pulled out the lower drawer of Lanigan's desk and then, leaning back in his chair, raised his legs to rest his heels on the edge of the drawer.

"Make yourself at home," said Lanigan.

Jennings ignored the sarcasm and focused watery blue eyes on his chief as he declared solemnly, "McLane had a drugstore in Revere, and Kestler, the old man, had a chattel mortgage on it."

"So?"

"So he lost the store when Kestler foreclosed," said Jennings.

"Mm— interesting."

"Yeah." The lieutenant waited for Lanigan to digest the information. "I’ve heard it both ways," Jennings went on blandly. "Some of those I talked to, women mostly, said he would have lost his business anyway, that after his wife died. McLane kept a dirty store and was nasty to customers. His wife was in the store with him, and I suppose she'd be the one who would be tidying up all the time, then when she died—"

"Sure."

"And he was always having trouble with the people he hired. I talked to one of them, a pharmacist working for the new owner, he said he was a hard man to work for, grouchy and what you might call inconsiderate."

"What kind of store is it?" the chief asked.

"It's a small neighborhood store. My guess is that his real trouble began when the big cut-rate store opened half a dozen blocks away. If he'd been popular with the customers, they wouldn't have changed to the new store, especially where his was handier."

"Don't you believe it, Eban. People will go quite a distance to save a few pennies, and then criticize the old place to justify their disloyalty," he added reflectively.

"Yeah, could be," Jennings agreed. "That was pretty much the point of view of the grocer next door. Of course, he's suffering from some new supermarket competition himself, according to him, McLane kind of let go when his wife died, but he was sure he'd have snapped out of it in time. But"— he lowered his feet to the floor and sat upright to give additional emphasis to what he was going to say— "Jake Kestler called his loan and pushed him to the wall. Now that was about a year ago."

Lanigan sat silent, his fingers drumming nervously on the arm of his chair as he digested the implications of his lieutenant's report. Jennings broke the silence. "Look, Hugh, why don't I bring in McLane for questioning?"

Lanigan did not answer immediately, he tilted back in his chair and gazed up at the ceiling. Jennings' eyes were focused on him expectantly, his prominent Adam's apple bobbling in his scrawny neck. Finally, Lanigan spoke, his face still turned upward. "Maybe it was a mistake sending you to the FBI school and assigning you last year to that course in Boston. You've taken on big-city ways, Eban, and big-city attitudes. Something like this, if it had happened in Boston, I suppose they would immediately have brought Aptaker in for questioning, a couple of cops would have gone down to his store and taken him into custody right then and there. If there were customers in the store, too bad. If he was alone at the time, he'd have to close up for the day, and then, after they questioned him, if they found they couldn't charge him, they'd let him go, maybe they'd say they were sorry, and the poor bugger would go back to his store, happy that he'd been cleared."

He sat up straight and looked directly at Jennings. "But then he'd find out that he didn't have a store anymore. Word would have got around. Dammit, it's a drugstore. If there was the slightest suspicion that he might have made a mistake on a prescription, who'd bring in one to be filled? But this is a small town, Eban, the people here are our friends and neighbors. What's more, they vote our salaries every year at the town meeting, we can't take a chance hurting the innocent while chasing after the guilty."

"But you said yourself you were going to talk to Marcus Aptaker."

"Sure, but I wouldn't have had him picked up and brought here. I planned to drop in on him when no one was around, we would have a friendly conversation and I would explain the situation to him, then if he made an admission, I'd charge him. Or if he didn't, if he couldn't come up with an explanation, then I'd check the whole thing through first and make sure I had an iron-clad case before I'd go ahead. I wouldn't be afraid he'd leave town."

"Well, McLane—"

"McLane is different." the chief interrupted.

"Why?"

"Because he just works there," Lanigan said. "It's not his store. It's no skin off his nose if the store is ruined, he just gets a job someplace else, and if I were to have McLane brought in, or even if I went down there and spoke to him, even if he were cleared, he'd talk, he'd complain about dumb cops every chance he got, and that's the difference: because Marcus wouldn't talk, knowing it would hurt his business, and he knows me well enough to know that I wouldn't talk."

"So what are you going to do?" Jennings asked.

"Oh, I'll manage to see McLane, but I'll try to arrange it so that it's accidental-like," Lanigan replied. "In the meantime, I want you to go back to Revere and get whatever you can on McLane. Trace him back to his baptism, and the Kestlers, too. See Captain O'Day—"

"He's retired."

"I know." Lanigan said, "but he still hangs around headquarters and he can get a lot that you couldn't, as an out-of-town cop, all they'll give you is official stuff, with him in your comer they'll open up. Because I want everything— rumors, gossip, the works. I'll work this end. I'll see Safferstein—"

"Why him?" Jennings asked.

"Because he got the pills from the drugstore, and I want to check the movement of those pills right back to when they were put up."

"But look, Hugh, you start asking him questions about the pills and he'll start wondering about Aptaker's. What's to keep him from talking?"

"You're right. I'll have to play it cozy. I'll have to figure out some reason for seeing him, something that has no connection with the drugstore."