retired.”
“Since the temple Board decided to hire me,” I say. “Look at me, Bill, I’m born-again.”
“At your age?” He shakes his head and chuckles.
“Good help is hard to find,” I say.
His sandwich arrives, and he dives in. For a minute neither of us talk. Then Malloy leans toward me, and I can make out the vein in his forehead starting to pulse. “Amos, I saw the pictures of the body. He was hardly healthy. He was overweight. His wife said he lived for cigarettes. That he’s had hypertension as long as she could remember. That he was taking something for cholesterol. Now, what else you wanna know?” He holds up the uneaten half of his hot pastrami and lays it back down on his plate. “Maybe this is the culprit right here,” he offers.
“That what the doctor’s report said?”
“Pretty much. Probable heart attack. Could have been an aneurysm, I suppose. Either way you’re dead.”
“What about an autopsy. They even bother to do an autopsy?”
“No. No, the family didn’t want it. Orthodox folks don’t go in for that kind of stuff. Put em in the ground quick. That’s what they do.”
“He wasn’t that orthodox.”
Malloy shrugs. “Yeah, well, he wasn’t a Presbyterian, either. I know that much.”
“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
