“Wasn’t it Caesar, or Napoleon, who knew every man in his army by his first name?”
“I guess that’s old-fashioned. Quint explained to me that if you’re going to run an efficient organization and not get bogged down in a mass of trivia-that’s the word he used and with a flick of the hand as though brushing something away-you’ve got to operate strictly through channels. ‘I see them when I hire them and when I fire them and that’s all.’ From then on, everything goes through channels. He tells them that when he hires them, and when he fires them, he tells them why. So as far as Hirsh was concerned, anything he wanted to bring to the notice of old Iron-of Quint-had to go through his superior, Dr. Sykes.”
“I see. The Lowells talk only to Cabots and the Cabots talk only to God.”
“That’s about it, Rabbi. But, of course, Quint had a dossier on Hirsh and knew quite a bit about him. I gather that Hirsh was not too hot lately. Maybe he was at one time, but certainly not while he was at Goddard. In fact, I gathered he made a number of rather bad mistakes-the last one, just a few days before his death.”
“Why didn’t they fire him?”
“I asked the same question. I gather Quint was going to this last time because this time it was real serious, or perhaps the general had come to the end of his patience. You know, Rabbi, that could have been another argument in favor of suicide, if I had known about it at the time.”
“I wonder why Quint didn’t fire him earlier. From what you say, he doesn’t sound like the type to stand for more than one error on the part of an employee, especially one so far down the ladder as I gather Hirsh was.”
“That was Sykes. I asked the same question, and Quint said Dr. Sykes went to bat for him each time and so he played along. Even the time Hirsh got drunk Sykes managed to get him off. It started right there in the lab as a matter of fact. They were working on a special method for aging whiskey quickly by shooting an electric current through it somehow. The chemist who was working on the project mixed up a batch and brought it around for the boys to sample and give their opinions. Hirsh was one of those offered a taste and it set him off. The chemist, by the way, was fired.”
“Why?”
Lanigan laughed. “That’s another thing about this lab. You’d think they’d all be working together, sketching diagrams and circuits and formulae and whatnot on the tablecloths at lunch. Nothing like it. You see, most of their work is done for industry, and if news leaks out their clients’ stocks can be affected. I gather that in the past some of the scientists weren’t above taking a little flyer on this inside information. So the rule was laid down that everyone is to keep his nose firmly set against his own little grindstone. The men in any given section will confer with each other but they don’t contact the other sections except when absolutely necessary-and then it’s done through the department heads.”
“Interesting. So you didn’t get much from Quint. Did you question any of the other employees?”
“I did, but I got nothing that helped. As I said, everyone there tends to keep to himself. And Hirsh was a quiet sort, even withdrawn.”
“It doesn’t leave you with much.”
“No, it doesn’t.” He looked eagerly at the rabbi. “Any ideas, Rabbi? Anything strike you?”
The rabbi shook his head slowly.
“Well, it helps just to talk it over, I suppose.” But it was obvious that he was disappointed. He looked directly at the rabbi. “By the way, did you know that Ben Goralsky knew Hirsh?”
“No, I didn’t, although I saw him at the funeral.”
“S’truth. In fact, it was Goralsky who got Hirsh the job at Goddard.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The door was opened by a maid in uniform. She escorted him into the library and said she would tell Mr. Goralsky he was here.
Ben Goralsky appeared almost immediately, and showed him to a chair. “I’m glad you could come, Rabbi. My father was pleased when I told him you said you’d be over to see how he was.”
“I would have made it earlier, but I was laid up myself for a few days.”
“Yes, I know.” He hesitated. “I heard some rumors-I may have made a little trouble for you about this business with Hirsh.”
“There has been a little trouble,” the rabbi admitted.
“Well, I just want you to know I’m sorry.”
The rabbi was curious. “Your father feels strongly about the matter?”
“I haven’t talked about it with him-except that once. When this fellow Beam told me it was probably suicide, I mentioned it to my father and he was awfully upset. It was a day when he wasn’t feeling so good. I guess he thought it was near the end. He said it wasn’t according to the regulations, and he started to worry maybe you folks weren’t going to keep the cemetery on a strict Orthodox basis. You know, this being a Conservative temple, instead of Orthodox like we’re used to, you’re apt to take a lot of shortcuts and make a lot of changes. So he was worried about being buried there.”
“I see.”
“According to him, Hirsh should have been buried on the side somewhere with no ceremony or anything. He told me about one that he had seen in the old country when he was a young man. There was this girl who took her own life. She was going to have a baby, and she was still a girl-I mean, she was unmarried. They just put her in the ground, and the next day her father went to work as though nothing happened. I mean, they didn’t even mourn her for the seven days. It must have made a terrible impression on him, because he was terribly upset about Hirsh getting a regular funeral. He said if she was buried that way then Hirsh should be, too. Of course, he was confused because there’s no connection.”
The rabbi made to rise, now that the amenities were over, but Ben Goralsky waved him back. “My father’s dozing right now. I told the nurse to let me know when he wakes up. Are you in a hurry?”
“No. As a matter of fact, I wanted an opportunity to talk to you. I understand you knew Isaac Hirsh.”
“Yeah, I knew him. I knew his whole family. They lived next door to us in Chelsea, years ago. I knew his father and mother, and I knew him.”
“And that’s why you recommended him for that job at Goddard’s?”
His thick lips parted and his heavy face relaxed in a grin. He shook his head slowly. “I recommended him for that job, and I put enough muscle behind it to make sure he got it. We’re good customers of Goddard Lab, and I can talk turkey to Quint who runs the place. I got Hirsh that job because I hated his guts.” He laughed aloud at the look of surprise on the rabbi’s face.
“Like I said, they lived next door to us, the Hirshes. Both our families were mighty poor. We had this chicken business, his father had a little tailor shop. Mrs. Hirsh was all right. She was a good woman, and when she died I went to the funeral. We all did. My father closed the store so we could all go. Mr. Hirsh, he was something else again. A lazy good-for-nothing, always bragging about his precious son. We were four kids. I got two brothers and a sister, and every one of us worked in the store, after school, Sundays, nights. You had to in those days to make a living. I didn’t even finish high school. I quit at the end of my first year and went to work in the store full time. But Ike Hirsh, he finished high and then went on to college and then went on after that to become a doctor-not a regular doctor, a doctor of philosophy. He didn’t play with the other kids in the street. He was a little fat, roly-poly kid, the kind the other kids make fun of. So most of the time, he stayed inside reading books. And his father would come over to our house and brag about him. You know how Jews feel about education, so you can imagine how my father felt about us, especially in comparison with him. And old man Hirsh never let him forget it. But let me tell you something, Rabbi, my father never threw it up to us.