An Old Man's Game. Andy Weinberger

      “Gee, I dunno.” Ruben tucks his enormous fist under his chin, not quite in the romantic manner of Rodin’s The Thinker, but if you add another thirty pounds, almost. “There were, let me see, four of them, if I recall. A couple of business guys maybe from Shir Emet, maybe not. You’d probably recognize them. One big macher, about as big as your friend here, all dressed up. And another one in a suit. But he was older and, you know, a wiry guy. And sitting next to him was this skinny yeshiva kid. Fancy yarmulke. Eighteen, twenty years old. Never seen him before. And the fourth guy? Oh yeah, right, the fourth guy, that was Joey Marcus.”

      I lift my hands, palms up, questioning. “And Joey Marcus is who?”

      Ruben acts surprised. “You don’t know Joey Marcus? Really? Everybody knows him. Joey Marcus is an agent, a promoter, I guess you’d say. Books all kinds of acts. You wanna go on Oprah, you talk to Joey. You wanna do stand-up at a club? Go see Joey. He’s been coming here for years. I’m amazed you never met him.”

      “I never wanted to go on Oprah, I guess.”

      “Yeah, well, he was there, sitting right across from the rabbi when he keeled over. That’s when all hell broke loose.”

      “What do you mean?”

      “Well, what do you expect? Everyone jumped up all at once, tried to help. The whole restaurant, practically. Something was wrong. I guess it’s natural, only nobody knew what to do at first. You understand. People were shouting, people were on their cell phones, calling for an ambulance. A guy came running over from that booth in the corner, said he was some kind of doctor, ripped open the rabbi’s shirt right away, started pumping his chest. It was crazy. We all pulled the table away, laid him out on the floor.” Ruben shakes his head again. “I tell you, I’m still having nightmares about it.”

      “How long did it take for the ambulance to arrive?”

      He shrugs. “Ambulance? Who the hell knows? Not long, probably. Cedars-Sinai isn’t that far away. Seemed like forever, though.” He paused for a moment. “They did what they could. Gave him some kind of shot in the leg. Tried pumping his chest, just like the other guy. Then after a while they put him on a gurney and that was that.”

      “You talked to the police about this?”

      “The police?” A half-laugh. “Sure, afterwards. They came by later. Much later.”

      “And they took down the names of all those people he was sitting with?”

      “Nah. I don’t know for sure, but I don’t think so. Anyway, the guys at his table didn’t stick around. They left the minute the paramedics did. Not that I blame them. Just about everybody started getting up and leaving. It was one bad dining experience. Some of them didn’t even pay their bill. Not that I care. I just hope it doesn’t go viral.”

      “So when the police arrived, they didn’t think this was at all peculiar?”

      “I don’t know what the hell they thought, Amos. They weren’t Johnny-on-the-spot. They came two, maybe three days afterwards. They said it was because they got a call from Shir Emet. So okay, they asked a few questions. But like I say, it was all cleaned up. People were sitting there, eating at that same table, like it never happened.” Ruben takes out a handkerchief, wipes an errant bead of sweat from his forehead. “It was upsetting, is what it was. It’s always upsetting when somebody drops dead in front of you. I never saw anything like that in my whole life. You know what I mean?”

      “I know what you mean, Ruben.”

      We talk some more. Ruben has Doris look up Joey Marcus’s address and phone number, and she writes them down for me on a scrap of paper. “Maybe Joey will have something more to tell you,” Ruben says. “He had a ringside seat.”