“Refused? Why?”
“Because the district attorney may exhume the body.”
The rabbi gave a wan smile. “It comes to the same thing in the end, doesn’t it, Mr. Wasserman?”
“Oh, but Rabbi, there’s a difference. This is the civil authority, engaged in bringing a criminal to justice.”
“Of course.”
“What we’ve got to think about now is what steps to take. As far as Hirsh is concerned-” He shrugged his shoulders. “Well, it makes no difference to him what caused his death. He’s dead; we’ve got to concern ourselves about the living. Now, the business about your resignation. You don’t really want to resign, do you?”
“I wouldn’t have if this matter hadn’t come up.”
“Good. So we have to figure out a way to keep Schwarz from reading your letter to the Board. I’ve discussed it with Becker here, and we both decided the easiest and best way would be if you wrote Schwarz recalling your resignation.” As the rabbi was about to interpose, he hurried on. “You could say that in the light of recent events there is no longer any difference between you and the administration, and for that reason you are revoking your previous letter.”
“No.”
“But don’t you see, Rabbi, without that there’s just your letter of resignation. All he has to do is to read it and call for a vote. Strictly speaking, he doesn’t even have to call for a vote. He just announces, it. But if there are two letters, he’s bound to read them both and then he’ll have to explain the issue between you. Even then, you’re not out of the woods but at least we’ll have the advantage.”
The rabbi shook his head. “I’m sorry, gentlemen, but-”
“Now look here, Rabbi,” said Becker sternly. “Jake and I have gone all out for you. We’re trying to help you the best way we can, but there’s a certain amount you’ve got to do for yourself. You can’t expect us to work our heads off, calling up people, going to see them, explaining, when you won’t do your part.”
“I expect nothing.” He turned to Miriam, who was emerging from the cloakroom. “You’ll have to excuse me. My wife is very tired.”
Becker watched his retreating figure, then turned to Wasserman. “That’s what you get for trying to help a guy.”
Wasserman shook his head. “He’s been hurt, Becker. He’s a young man, practically a boy. And he’s been hurt…”
As they walked through the parking lot to their car, Miriam said, “Mr. Becker and even Mr. Wasserman seemed rather cool, David. Was it something you said to them?”
He reported the conversation, and she smiled wistfully. “So now you have no one behind you-not Mr. Wasserman, not Chief Lanigan, not Mr. Schwarz. Do you have to quarrel with everyone, David?”
“I didn’t quarrel with them. I just refused to ask Schwarz to disregard my letter. In effect, it’s begging him to keep me on.”
“But you do want to stay, don’t you?”
“Of course, but I can’t ask. Don’t you see I can’t ask? The relationship between the rabbi and the Board of Directors requires maintaining a delicate balance. If I have to beg them to let me stay when I’m only doing my job, how can I ever have any influence on them? How can I guide them? I would be just a rubber stamp for anything they wanted to do. Once they realized they made me knuckle under while exercising my official function as rabbi, what could I do? And what could they not do?”
“I suppose so,” she said softly. “And I know you’re right, but-”
“But what?”
“But I’m just a young married woman, a couple of hundred miles from my mother and my family, and I’m going to have a baby any day now.”
“So?”
“So I wish I were sure my husband had a job.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
I never interfere, Hugh. You know that. I’m no policeman and I’d be the last one to try to tell you your job, but the police department does come under the administrative supervision of the selectmen, and it’s the broader aspects”-he made a wide sweep with his arm-“that I think it’s our duty to go into.”
Alford Braddock was not the typical Barnard’s Crossing selectman. He was a native, to be sure-it was unthinkable that anyone not a Crosser born would be elected to the Board-but whereas the rest of the members were small businessmen with a taste for town politics, he was a man of considerable wealth, inherited wealth, which included a stock brokerage firm in Boston. Where others had to campaign personally, calling on voters, appearing at meetings of fraternal orders, speaking before the League of Women Voters, he blitzed the electorate with campaign posters and door-to-door house calls by a group of paid “volunteers.” He outpolled all the other candidates easily and consequently was elected chairman of the board. He was tall and distinguished with snow-white hair and the ruddy complexion of the yachtsman. His clear blue eyes were candid and without guile and yet could look hurt-hurt, but determined to bear up and not show it-when you disagreed with him.
“What is it that’s bothering you, Alford?” asked Lanigan quietly.
“Bothering me? Bothering me? Well, yes, I suppose you could put it that way. Something Dr. Sturgis mentioned. Said you were inquiring about Peter Dodge. Now he got it into his head that it had something to do with this Hirsh business. Of course, I assured him it was unlikely, most unlikely. After all, what connection would Peter Dodge have with Isaac Hirsh?”
“He might have been trying to convert him,” suggested Lanigan with a smile.
“Think so? Yes, it’s possible. A very enthusiastic fellow, this Dodge, from the Midwest I believe,” he added as though that explained everything.
“As a matter of fact, we know he was planning to see Hirsh the night he was killed,” said Lanigan. “About this Civil Rights business, perhaps.”
“Yes, that must be it. That must be the connection. He was terribly enthusiastic about Civil Rights. Now I know that for a fact, Hugh. I mean I know that personally.”
“There’s another connection, Alford. He happens to know Mrs. Hirsh. They come from the same hometown- South Bend.”
“Whatsat? Knew Mrs. Hirsh? What are you trying to say, Hugh?”
“Not a thing. I’m not suggesting anything. It’s just that we’d like to ask Mr. Dodge a few questions. We sent him a wire down in Alabama asking him to get in touch with us. But he didn’t. We called the hotel in Birmingham where he was supposed to be staying, and he wasn’t there. I don’t mean that he checked out, I mean he wasn’t there. In fact, he hadn’t been there since checking in a couple of days ago. I spoke to the hotel people and they said it wasn’t unusual, not too unusual where these Civil Rights people are concerned. They register at a hotel, but then they contact the local headquarters of their organization down there and that’s usually the last the hotel sees of them. Usually, they check out though. So we called the Alabama authorities to contact him for us, but so far we haven’t heard.”
“You’re trying to say something, Hugh. Dammit, why don’t you come right out with it? You’re trying to say that this man Dodge, an Anglican priest, got involved with the wife of this Jew, and as a result became mixed up in this murder business and ran off-flew the coop, beat it.”
Lanigan grinned. “You mean, he took a powder?”
“Dammit, Hugh, it’s no laughing matter. That what you’re trying to say?”
“It’s possible.”
“But dammit, a man of the cloth, and from my own church.”
“But he’s young, unmarried, and-to use your own word-enthusiastic.”
“Hugh, do you realize what this could mean?”
“Yeah, but I honestly don’t think it will. We don’t really have anything on him, we just want to question him. Find out if he saw Hirsh, and if he did, what time he left him.”
Braddock was obviously relieved. “You’ll probably find there’s nothing to his absence from the hotel. I mean, as far as I can gather from news stories, these people who go down to march and picket and whatnot make a point of living with the-er-with the people. You’ll probably find he has been staying in some colored sharecropper’s shack out of reach of a telephone.” Braddock smiled broadly. “You know, Hugh, you really had me going there for a minute.”