“You getting sore or something?”
“A little.”
“Why?”
“I’ll tell you why. I don’t think I even knew a Jew until I was twelve years old. That’s the God’s honest truth. Oh, yeah, there was a guy who used to come around to the door selling stuff, and my mother called him ‘The Jew.’ She used to say, ‘The Jew is coming today.’ I don’t think she meant anything derogatory, or maybe she did, who the hell knows? She was raised in Italy, and she didn’t know Jews from a hole in the wall. Maybe, for her, ‘Jew’ was synonymous with peddler. To me, a Jew was an old man with a beard and a bundle on his back. Until I got to high school. That was where I met Jews for the first time. You have to remember that Hitler was already in power by then. Well, I heard a joke one day, and I repeated it to a Jewish kid in the cafeteria. The joke was built on a riddle, and the riddle was: ‘What’s the fastest thing in the world?’ The answer was: ‘A Jew riding through Germany on a bicycle.’ The kid I told the joke to didn’t think it was very funny. I couldn’t understand what I’d said to offend him. So I went home and asked my father, who was also born in Italy, who was running a bakery, well, you know, he still does. I told him the joke, and he didn’t laugh either, and then he took me inside, we had a dining room at the time, with one of those big old mahogany tables. We sat at the table, and he said to me in Italian, ‘Son, there is nothing good about hatred, and nothing funny about it, either.’ I went back to school the next day, and I looked for that kid, I can still remember his name, Reuben Zimmerman, and I told him I was sorry for what I’d said the day before, and he told me to forget it. But he never spoke to me again all the while we were in that high school. Four years, Meyer, and he never spoke to me.”
“What are you saying, Steve?”
“I don’t know what the hell I’m saying.”
“Maybe you are Jewish, after all,” Meyer said.
“Maybe I am. Let’s stop for an egg cream before we look up Norden’s wife.”
Mae Norden was forty-three years old, a brunette with a round face and dark-brown eyes. They found her at the funeral home where Norden’s body lay in a satin-lined coffin. The undertaker had done a remarkable job with the front of his face, where the bullet had entered. The casual observer would never have known he’d been shot. The room was filled with relatives and friends, among whom were his wife and his two children, Joanie and Mike. Mike was eight years old and Joanie was five. They both sat on straight-backed chairs near the coffin, looking very old and very bewildered at the same time. Mae Norden was dressed in black, and her eyes looked as if she had cried a lot in the past day, but she was not crying now. She led the detectives outside, and they stood on the sidewalk there and smoked cigarettes and discussed her husband, who lay dead on satin in the silent room beyond.
“I don’t know who could have done this,” Mae said. “I know it’s common for a wife to think her husband was well-liked, but I can’t think of a single person who disliked Randy. That’s the truth.”
“How about business associates, Mrs. Norden? He was a lawyer, isn’t that right?”
“Yes.”
“Is it possible that one of his clients…?”
“Look, anyone who shoots someone has to be a little crazy, isn’t that so?”
“Not necessarily,” Meyer said.
“My point is, sure, Randy lost cases. Is there a lawyer who doesn’t lose cases? But if you ask me whether or not any of his clients would be…be angry enough to do something like this, then I have to say how do I know what a crazy person would do? Where’s the basis for…for anything when you’re dealing with someone who’s unbalanced?”
“We’re not sure the killer was unbalanced, Mrs. Norden,” Meyer said.
“No?” She smiled thinly. “A perfectly normal person went up on that roof and shot my husband when he came out of the building, is that it? Perfectly sane?”
“Mrs. Norden, we’re not psychiatrists. We’re talking about sanity in the eyes of the law. The murderer may not have been what the law considers insane.”
“The hell with the law,” Mae said suddenly. “Anyone who takes another man’s life is insane, and I don’t care what the law says.”
“But your husband was a lawyer, isn’t that right?”
“That’s exactly right,” Mae said angrily. “What are you saying now? That I have no respect for the law, therefore I have no respect for lawyers, therefore I have…”
“We didn’t say that, Mrs. Norden.” Carella paused. “I feel certain a lawyer’s wife would have a great deal of respect for the law.”
“But I’m not a lawyer’s wife anymore,” Mae said. “Didn’t you know that? I’m a widow. I’m a widow with two young children, Mr.—what was your name?”
“Carella.”
“Yes. I’m a forty-three-year-old widow, Mr. Carella. Not a lawyer’s wife.”
“Mrs. Norden, perhaps you can tell us a few things that might help us to find the man who killed your husband.”
“Like what?”
“Did he usually leave the apartment at the same time each morning?”
“Yes. On weekdays. On Saturdays and Sundays, he slept late.”
“Then anyone who had made a habit of observing him would know that he went to work at the same time each day?”
“I suppose so.”
“Mrs. Norden, was your husband a veteran?”
“A veteran? You mean, was he in the service?”
“Yes.”
“He was in the Navy for three years during World War Two,” Mae said.
“The Navy. Not the Army.”
“The Navy, yes.”
“He was a junior partner in his firm, is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“How did he feel about that?”
“Fine. How should he have felt about it?”
“How many partners were there, Mrs. Norden?”
“Three, including my husband.”
“Was your husband the only junior partner?”
“Yes. He was the youngest man in the firm.”
“Did he get along with the others?”
“Very well. He got along with everyone. I just told you that.”
“No trouble with any of the partners, right?”
“That’s right.”
“What sort of law did he practice?”
“The firm handled every kind of case.”
“Criminal?”
“Sometimes.”
“Did your husband ever represent a criminal?”
“Yes.”
“How many?”
“Three or four, I don’t remember. Four, I guess, since he’s been with the firm.”
“Acquittals or convictions?”
“Two of his clients were convicted, two were acquitted.”
“Where are the convicted men now?”
“Serving jail sentences, I would imagine.”
“Would you remember their names?”
“No. But Sam could probably…Sam Gottlieb, one of the partners. He would know.”
“Was your husband a native of this city, Mrs. Norden?”
“Yes. He went through the city school system, and also college and law school here.”
“Where?”
“Ramsey.”
“And how did you come to know him?”
“We met in Grover Park one day. At the zoo. We began seeing each other regularly, and eventually we were married.”
“Before he went into the service, or afterward?”
“We were married in 1949.”
“Had you known him while he was in the service?”
“No. He went into the Navy immediately after graduation. He took his bar exams as soon as he was discharged. He passed them and began practicing shortly afterward. When I met him, he had his own small office in Bethtown. He didn’t move to Gottlieb and Graham until three years ago.”
“He had his own practice up to that time?”