Someday the Rabbi Will Leave (15 page)

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that he had no political backers, no pressure group that he was fronting for, so I had no competition. Even better, he was a bachelor, so there was no wife that I had to contend with. I could move right in and take over. And best of all, he had no position, no platform, no special ideas he was pushing, no reason for running except maybe the vague notion that it would give him some publicity that might help his law business, which isn't very lucrative right now.”

“And also a desire for power and authority?” suggested Mrs. Magnuson.

Laura considered and then shook her head. “No, I don't think so, not in the sense of giving orders. He's more comfortable taking them. Oh, maybe not orders, but suggestions.”

“You offered to direct his campaign, to back him—with money?”

Laura laughed. “Nothing like that. We just talked and I made suggestions, and before he knew it I had set up a headquarters. Well, that entailed his spending some money, and it worried him. You know, Mum, people who don't have much money are apt to be terribly anxious about running up bills.”

“Doesn't he have any money at all?”

“Oh, a few thousand which he hoards like a miser. When I made arrangements for him to speak someplace, he agreed because it meant the possibility of campaign contributions.” She chortled. “That's how I kept his nose to the grindstone.”

Her mother smiled sympathetically. “But if he wins the election—”

“Almost certain, now that we've won the primary.”

“Then he'll be going up to Boston, won't he. What will you do?”

“I'll run his Boston office, of course.”

“You mean, you'll stay with him?”

“You bet I will. I intend to ride him to Washington as a congressman, maybe even senator eventually.”

“But if he's a bachelor, he may want to marry and—”

“He'll marry me, naturally. You don't suppose I'm going to let anyone else horn in on my act.”

“You mean he's asked you.”

Laura smiled. “These days men don't. You sort of come to an understanding.”

Her mother clenched her hands nervously. “Laura, have you been, you know—intimate with him?”

“Of course. You don't suppose I'd undertake to marry him if I hadn't.”

They have no reticence these days, her mother thought. It's like trying out a car before buying. Well, maybe it
was
like that in some ways, she reflected, and perhaps it was for the best. “Do you love him?” she asked.

“Do you mean do I go all twittery when I think of him? The way I did when I was a college freshman over my math prof? No, and I wouldn't want to. But I like him a lot. We complement each other, and I expect we'll have a good marriage. And we'll have children. They're a political asset and good for campaign photographs, you know,” she added impishly.

Mrs. Magnuson hesitated. Then, “He knows you're Jewish?”

“Of course.”

“And it makes no difference to him?”

“Oh, Mum, it makes no difference to anyone these days.”

“It might make some difference to your father now that he's president of the temple here.”

“We'll have a rabbi do the ceremony, if that's what you're thinking. I made that clear to Jack from the beginning. Since it's the bride's family that makes the wedding, I felt we should do it our way.”

“You mean he's willing to convert?”

“Oh no. I wouldn't let him, even if he were willing. It would handicap him politically. I wouldn't let him convert anymore than I would convert.”

“Then I'm not sure the rabbi would do it,” her mother said doubtfully. “I think there's some Jewish regulation against it.”

“That's nonsense. Wasn't I a bridesmaid at Toby Berman's wedding a couple of years ago? The groom was Christian, and they had a rabbi, with a beard even, doing the necessary hocus-pocus. Although I do seem to remember that Toby said they had to get him from outside, from someplace in New Hampshire.”

“Well, I'll talk to your father about it. Maybe you'd better have your young man come to dinner one night first.”

“Will do,” said Laura enthusiastically. “You'll see, you'll like him, and so will Dad.”

“I hope so. I'm sure we will.” Mrs. Magnuson got up to leave. At the door, she hesitated. “Did you consider the possibility of a purely civil ceremony, by a judge? Your father knows Justice Pearsall of the Massachusetts Supreme Court.”

Laura pressed her lips together to form a thin line, a grimace which her mother knew meant that she had made up her mind and that there was no changing it. “It's my wedding, and I make the rules. And it's just as well that Jack recognize it from the beginning.”

24

The Police Chief of Revere, Cesare Orlando, Chezzie to his intimates, thought it only proper for the sake of regional harmony to report personally to Chief Lanigan. “Hugh? Chezzie Orlando. I thought I'd let you know that we took care of that hit-and-run business for you. I sent Detective Lance. You know him? He looks like an undertaker. Very good in these matters. Sympathetic, you know.”

“I guess you have to use him a lot over in your town,” Lanigan suggested.

“Now, now, Hugh. Remember, we're a city, not a small town like you. Anyway, Lance went to the address. It's an apartment house—residential hotel-type place. Not too clean, but fairly respectable. It isn't a place that gives us any particular trouble, you understand? Mostly transients, but there's some old people been living there for years.”

“I understand.”

“So there's a broad there. Looked decent enough. Not flashy. Maybe thirty-five or even a little older. They been living together for some months, she and the victim, Tony D'Angelo. These days that's practically a marriage.”

“She got a name?” Lanigan reached for a scratchpad.

“Oh, I didn't give it to you? Mildred Hanson. But when the neighbors called her Mrs. D'Angelo, she didn't correct them. Lance said she seemed like a decent woman. He took her to the morgue and she identified the body all right.”

“Get anything on him?”

“She said she thought he came from New York originally.”

“And what he did for a living?”

“She wasn't too certain except that he was in politics.”

“And you didn't know him, Chezzie?” Lanigan was frankly incredulous.

“He didn't operate local. He played with the big boys in Boston. So, for all that it's your job rather than mine, I called up a couple of pals, Italiano, as a favor to you—”

“Thanks, Chezzie, you're a sweetheart.”

“Well, like I always say, one hand washes another. Anyway, he was a kind of gofer.”

“For whom?”

“Sort of free lance, but he did a lot for the Majority Whip.”

“Anything else?”

“Look, Hugh, it's not like it was a murder, it was a hit-and-run. Oh yeah, one thing I wanted to ask you. Your people searched him. What money did they find on him?”

“Just a few bucks. Hold it a minute. Here it is, twenty-seven dollars in his wallet, and some loose change, fifty-two cents in his right-hand trouser pocket. Why?”

“The girl hinted that he had a lot of money on him, or was supposed to have.”

“I see. Where's the girl now? Where is she living?”

“She's staying on, as far as I can make out.”

“She got any money? How's she going to live?”

“Well, she's a waitress. In the Blue Moon. It's a kind of cocktail lounge.”

“Okay, Chezzie, thanks. Let me know if you hear anything.”

“You know me, Hugh.”

It was not that Detective Sergeant Dunstable was lazy, or a complainer, but he disliked doing useless work. So when he got his assignment, he said, “Jeez, Lieutenant, a guy would have to be out of his mind to have his headlight fixed in a local garage after he'd broken it in a hit-and-run.”

“So how do you know he wasn't out of his mind? Maybe he was drunk and he hits the guy and thinks he's just gone over a bump in the road. And it's Glen Lane, remember, where there's more potholes than pavement. So he drives on home and goes to bed. And the next morning when he wakes up he sees he's got a broken headlight.”

“Yeah, but—”

“So it would look pretty damn funny if we didn't bother to look, and all the time there's a gas station attendant who remembers putting in a sealed beam for a guy. And when one of the selectmen calls Hugh Lanigan on it, what's he supposed to say? ‘Officer Dunstable said a guy would have to be out of his mind to have his headlight replaced if he'd been in a hit-and-run, so I didn't bother to check the local garages.'”

“It was just a thought, Lieutenant.”

At the first garage, the proprietor shook his head and said, “It's about the hit-and-run, huh? Look, a guy would have to be out of his mind to replace a headlight locally where'd he'd just been involved in hit-and-run.”

“How do you know about it?”

“Bill Knowland mentioned it at the coffee shop this morning.”

“Oh. Well, it's routine, but we don't take any chances,” the sergeant answered stiffly.

“Try Gately's,” the garageman called after him.

On his fourth call, Sergeant Dunstable struck pay dirt. Mr. Glossop of Glossop's Automotive and Gas peered up from under sun-bleached eyebrows and said, “Yeah, I installed a sealed beam yesterday.”

“You sure it was yesterday?”

Glossop removed his heels from the top of the desk and sat up, annoyance writ large on his long weather-beaten face. “Sure, I'm sure it was yesterday. How often do I install a headlight?”

“Anyone you know?”

Glossop shook his head. “Black Chevy, a seventy-three, kind of beat up, but no one I know.”

His assistant, Tom Blakely, a large, redheaded young man, who had been pumping gas came in to make out the charge slip for a credit card and volunteered, “I know him, Sergeant.”

“You do? What's his name?”

“Well, I don't actually know him, but I've seen him around. Just a minute, Sarge.”

He went to get the customer's signature on the charge slip, and Glossop took up the story. “He drove in sometime late in the afternoon and told me to fill her up. I noticed the broken headlight and asked him didn't he want to replace it.” He looked up at the ceiling. “Maybe I used a little salesmanship on him. I kind of hinted that you guys were conducting like a campaign to see that all cars were properly equipped, and that if it got dark and he had only one headlight … Why should Sears get all the business?”

“Sure, keep it local.”

Glossop nodded. “That's the way I feel. So he got out and came around and took a look at it and said something like he must have kicked up a rock, and sure, go ahead. So I unscrewed the rim and took out what was left of the light, the neck, you know—”

“What did you do with it, the neck, I mean?”

“In the trash barrel over there.”

Tom Blakely returned. “Like I said, Sarge, I don't actually know him, but I've seen him around. I think he's new in town. He's almost as tall as me, maybe six feet, but he's on the thin side. He lives over on Maple Street, down the end, near Glen Lane. I've seen the car parked there. Last house, I think. He's got one of those stickers on the rear window, you know, Northeastern University, so I guess he goes to school in Boston.”

The sergeant walked over to the trash barrel and poked a tentative hand in. Then he came back and said, “I want to use your phone to call the station house. I gotta get someone to come down here and take that trash barrel.”

“What do you mean, take it?” demanded Glossop.

“Just for a little while. We'll return it. I just want them to empty it down there.”

“And what'll we do in the meantime?”

“There's a carton out back we can use,” said Blakely.

“What do you do on Maple Street?” Glossop asked him curiously.

Blakely grinned. “Oh, there's a girl I know lives there.”

Later at the station house the sergeant reported to Chief Lanigan. “The guy lives on Maple Street, corner Glen Lane. Name is Kramer. You want me to go down and bring him in?”

“No, we'll wait until we hear from the Registry people. If it matches up with the rest of the glass, then we'll bring him in. Good job, Sergeant.”

Sergeant Dunstable smirked. “Just a little straight detective work.”

25

“Well, what do you think of him?” asked Mrs. Magnuson as she closed the door of their bedroom behind her.

Howard Magnuson temporized as he unknotted his tie. “He's a nice-looking fellow.”

“He's obviously devoted to Laura,” said Mrs. Magnuson. “He couldn't take his eyes off her all through dinner.”

“Yes, I noticed that. Even when he was talking to me, he kept glancing over to her. Maybe it was devotion, but at the time it seemed to me he was looking to her for cues.”

“Well, he was in a strange environment,” said his wife defensively. “I can understand his not wanting to make any mistakes.”

“Oh sure, I understand.” He was trying hard to feel pleased. An innate reluctance to fool himself, however, made him add, “But you've got to admit he's no ball of fire.”

“How do you know?”

“Well, I gathered from Laura he went into politics because he isn't making it in the law. And if it weren't for Laura, he wouldn't be making it in politics. He has a few thousand bucks that he inherited, and he puts it in a savings certificate. He buys a pink car because he was able to get it cheap. He—”

“Well, who says a ball of fire is necessary for a good marriage?” demanded Mrs. Magnuson, trying a different tack. “You take a girl like our Laura, determined, strong-minded, yes, stubborn, and if she were to marry a forceful man of determination, you know what would happen? They'd tear each other apart. Maybe Laura is smarter than you are, at least in what she needs in a husband. I'm inclined to think that Laura needs a man who is easygoing, flexible—”