“Did you at least talk with his doctor? Check exactly what meds he was on?”
“Oh, sure. We spoke with the doc. I put Jason and Remo on that detail. They went out to her office a couple days later. Somebody at the temple asked us if we wouldn’t mind, so we did. They didn’t see much, nothing in his file that raised eyebrows. The doctor was young, that’s all they said, a real looker. Just out of school. I’m forgetting her name.”
I consult the little cardboard spiral notepad I always carry around. “The president of the shul gave it to me already. Her name is Ewing. Dora Ewing. I’m going to chat with her next. Right after I sit down with some Board members. I made an appointment with her—day after tomorrow.”
“That was quick. How’d you ever manage that?”
“I lied, that’s how. I told her I had symptoms in the night. You know, a tingly feeling in my arms. Thought I might be a candidate for a heart attack.”
“Usually they tell you to go straight to the Emergency Room, they hear that.”
“They did. And I said I went, and by the time I got there—guess what?—I was fine. What can you do?”
“And so you decided to call her and do a follow-up, is that it?”
“Better safe than sorry, huh? A man my age needs to be careful.”
Malloy’s face is growing more serious by the minute. “You’re wasting your time,” he says. “She won’t tell you anything, even if she knew. Same goes for the family. Wait, are you saying this wasn’t done according to Hoyle? That we missed something?”
“You might have,” I say quietly. “It’s happened before.” I take a deep breath before I continue. “The Board at Shir Emet seems to think so.”
“And why’s that?” he asks. Now I can definitely hear a little snarl, the sarcasm creeping in. “What kind of learned opinions do they have?”
Bill Malloy takes great pride in what he does. Twenty years on the job, maybe more. He doesn’t like being accused of sloppy police work. “They knew the rabbi,” I say. “They were close. They played pinochle together on Wednesday nights. They probably argued about politics. What can I say? There was a bond.”
“That’s quaint,” he says. “Nice.” Then, as an afterthought—“You even a member of this temple?”
“Me? Nah. I used to be, long ago. But I got tired of all the back and forth. You know this neighborhood, how it is with Jews. We can be difficult sometimes.”
“Just like the Irish,” he says. Now he’s genial again. He takes a healthy gulp of orange juice and pushes the remainder of the coleslaw around on his plate. “Okay, so for the sake of argument, let’s pretend this rabbi of yours didn’t just drop dead, at least not the way they wrote it up in the Times obit. What then, Sherlock? You think he was murdered? Where’s your evidence? You still believe in evidence, don’t you? Or have you suddenly joined hands with the mystics in the boardroom?”
I shrug. “Look Bill, I’m with you on this. I’d like to see some proof. But, hey, they’re writing my paycheck,” I say. “That fact alone puts me in a pickle.”
“Yeah,” he says, “I got that.”
“Tell you the truth, I have no idea what tipped the scales exactly. But if you ask them, it doesn’t add up.”
His eyes flash. “You wanna know something, Amos? We wouldn’t be having this conversation, we wouldn’t be this involved at all, only we got a call from someone on your blessed fucking Board. Please look into this further. ‘Please, we’d so appreciate it.’ The man was already dead and buried, for Christ’s sake. They’re never satisfied, are they?”
“They’re a stubborn crowd, I admit.”
“Yeah, but just because somebody drops dead, that doesn’t mean it’s murder.”
“No, of course not.”
“What happened to the rabbi was a tragedy, fair enough. I’m sure his whole temple is in an uproar. But it was an accident, pure and simple. It’s still an accident, you ask me. Now just let it go.”
“I can’t do that. Not on my first day at work, anyway. What would people think?”
He gives me a quizzical look. It’s hard for him to shift gears. He understands more or less where I’m going, but whenever I joke around, it makes him uneasy.
“They all have day jobs, Bill. That’s the only reason they called me in. They’re doctors and lawyers and CPAs. They own bonds and real estate. They’re careful. Every button should be in place just so. You know what I’m saying? Believe me, they wouldn’t waste the synagogue’s money on this if they didn’t have to.”
“They need closure, maybe,” says Malloy.
“Did you read that in a book, Lieutenant? Because, you know what, that’s the very word I’m looking for,” I say, reaching over for the check. “Closure.”
Chapter 2
I HAVE A FRIEND down at the fire station on 3rd, and the next morning I spend some time on the phone talking to one of the EMTs there, a young man named Randy, who had responded to the call about the rabbi. He doesn’t remember that much, only that they did what they could and it wasn’t enough. They couldn’t find a pulse anywhere; they rolled up his pant leg and gave him a shot, of course, but the man was already clinically dead by the time they wheeled him out.
After I finish with him, I take a deep breath and call the Diamant home. I’m not really expecting to talk with his widow. I figure she’s still bound up in grief, but who knows? Instead, I have a pleasant, meandering chat with her kid sister, Leah, who’s just flown into town from Minneapolis. Leah has three children, two of them grown. She still works part-time for a cosmetics company, but eventually, when her husband retires, they’re planning to buy an RV and hit the road. I ask her how she likes Southern California, and she says the weather here is so much nicer than the Midwest, although both places have plenty of things you could recommend, don’t they…. After ten minutes of this, it turns out she doesn’t want to talk about what happened to her brother-in-law; it’s just too painful, she says. She tells me that she’s here to protect her sister. She hopes I understand.
Dov Boorstein and Alan Ross own a string of Israeli-style kosher doughnut shops, three or four in Hollywood and another dozen tucked away in strip malls in the San Fernando Valley. They’re called Van’s, and people line up for them at all hours of the day and night; don’t ask me why. Both men are on the Shir Emet Board, which is why I want to talk with them. I don’t mention on the phone that I never touch their doughnuts. Once was enough.
I take the 16 Bus on 3rd and hike a couple of blocks down to their temporary headquarters on Larchmont. It’s an upscale neighborhood; they’re working out of a building that used to be some kind of mental health facility, looks like. An arrow still up on the wall points you to Psychiatry, which is empty now except for a copying machine. Because it’s Larchmont, the rent is killing them, they tell me, and they’re just waiting, waiting and walking around on shpilkes until their new offices in North Hollywood are finally ready. They haven’t bothered to unpack much. There are cardboard boxes scattered around the beige carpet, and everything is bare except for a couple of cubicles in which young determined women are staring at screens and pounding away at computer keyboards.
My brain must be playing tricks on me. I somehow imagined that anyone in the business they’re in would naturally be older and well, okay, pudgy. But no. For doughnut mavens they’re both very slender and glowing, like they just stepped out of a shower. They’re also only in their late thirties or early forties. They’re both wearing identical black slacks and white dress shirts, and they both have small blue yarmulkes