"Just visiting my folks for a couple of days. I live in Philly now. How long you been on the cops? I thought you were a carpenter."
"I was carpentering till a couple of years ago. Slim pickings during the winter, so I took the police exam. I still do some carpentering when I'm off duty, you know, for old customers."
"You got a brother, haven't you?" Akiva asked, anxious to keep the conversation going on friendly lines.
"Caleb? Yeah, he was a year behind us."
"I remember, he was in my English class. What's he doing? He on the cops, too?"
"Naw, he's with the Courier, circulation manager, he writes to all the Crossers who've moved away, like to Florida, and asks them to subscribe so they can keep in touch with the town. Does pretty good, too."
Inspiration came to Akiva. "Say, that's an idea." He searched in the glove compartment and found pencil and paper, he scribbled his name and address and handed it to the policeman. From his wallet he drew a five-dollar bill. "Here's five bucks. Give it to your brother and have him send me the paper."
"Well, gosh, whv don't you write him yourself and he'll send you a form. I'm not sure how much it is."
"So when he sends me five bucks' worth, he'll send me a notice to renew. You know how it is, if I have to sit down and write a letter, I won't get around to it."
"Well, all right." The policeman folded the bill inside the address and inserted them into the sweatband of his cap. "Look, next time you come up this way, come see me, and say, take it easy for the next couple of miles, there's branches down all along the road."
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Rabbi Small heard about Kestler's death the next day at the morning minyan, although shocked that the man he had visited only the night before had died, he was not too surprised. Kestler had been over eighty and each time he had been to see him, he had seemed weaker and more fragile.
"You going to the funeral, Rabbi?" asked Chester Kaplan. "It's over in Revere at half past ten, he was a member of Bnai Shalom."
"I don't think so."
"Well, I suppose I'll have to go. I've done some legal work for the Kestlers over the years."
"It's a mitzvah to go," the rabbi observed. Kaplan brightened. "Yeah, that's right, it is."
When next he saw the rabbi at the evening minyan he reported on the event. "You should’ve been there, Rabbi, there was quite a crowd. I wouldn't have thought he was that popular." Kaplan laughed. "But when I overheard some of the remarks. I figured they had come to make sure he was dead."
The rabbi raised his eyebrows. "So?" "You know what he was, don't you?" "Small-loans banker?"
"He was a usurer, he lent money on high-risk items, he gave second and third mortgages, chattel loans, that sort of thing. His prime rate of interest was somewhere around twenty-five or thirty percent. But you should have heard the eulogy. This Rabbi Rogin who officiated went on and on about how Kestler had loaned money, 'not to the financiers or the captains of industry, but to the poor and the humble.' I suppose he asked the son about his father and then dressed it up."
The rabbi nodded sadly. "We used to eulogize only great men, but nowadays the family expect it and appreciate it even when they know better, and afterward they tend to think of him the way the rabbi eulogized him, maybe it's not a bad thing if it helps a son to think a little better of his father. Historians do the same for the statesmen and heroes they favor, and you lawyers, don't you do the same thing when you make your pitch to a jury?"
"Yeah, I guess we do," Kaplan said, as Rabbi Small was about to turn away, Kaplan had another thought. "Say, Rabbi, you used to visit the old man. How did he look to you?"
"What do you mean? He looked like a sick old man."
"Because afterward people went up to talk to Joe Kestler and offer him condolence. One woman, family I guess, went on about how surprised she'd been when she heard the news, she said when she last visited him he seemed so spry and alert, and Joe said he'd been getting along fine until he took this pill the doctor prescribed."
The rabbi looked sharply at Kaplan. "And what do you make of that?"
Kaplan grinned. "Speaking as a lawyer, I'd say Joe Kestler was laying the groundwork for a malpractice suit."
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Although the telephone-repair crews worked through the night, it was not until he arrived at the clinic the next morning that Dr. Cohen heard from Dr. DiFrancesca that his patient had died.
Cohen shook his head sadly. "Gee, that's terrible, he was a sick old man, but I didn't think he was in any danger of going, maybe I should have had him come to the hospital."
"You can always second-guess yourself, Dan," said Dr. DiFrancesca, he was blond and blue-eyed, with the build of a football tackle, although only a couple of years older than Cohen, he had the easy, comfortable look of a man who had found his niche and was sure of himself. "He may have reacted to the medication," he added. "That's the way it looked to me."
"Really? Gee, I had him on the same medication some months ago, and he took it all right. What were the indications?"
"Oh, the usual— inflammation, engorgement, evidence of difficulty in breathing, he could have developed a sensitivity, you know."
"There's always that danger, isn't there? How can you know in advance? Way back, he showed a reaction to penicillin, so I switched him to tetracycline and it went all right."
"What did you use, Dan?"
"Limpidine 250's. Pierce and Proctor. Same as I gave him last night. I've had good luck with it."
"Well, I guess this time you didn't." DiFrancesca hesitated. "Er— the son was pretty upset and carried on quite a bit."
"I suppose that's to be expected."
"No. I mean about the treatment, Dan, he claimed that his father was all right until he took the medication."
"He wasn't all right, believe me, he was running a temperature and was in considerable distress."
"It wouldn't surprise me," DiFrancesca went on, "if he brought a malpractice suit."
"What makes you think so?" Cohen asked quickly-Well, partly from just knowing the type, he's the sort of guy who automatically looks around for someone to sue when anything happens."
Cohen nodded grimly. "I know what you mean, he comes by it honestly, though, he inherited it from his father."
"He kept insisting his father was all right until he took the pill you prescribed."
"If he was all right, why did he call me in? What did he need a doctor for?"
"Of course, but—"
"Look, John, the guy was eighty years old or more, he had a hundred and two temperature, he was having difficulty in urinating and when he passed he complained of a burning sensation. So it sounds like a bacterial infection. Right? It could have been viral, in which case the medication wouldn't have done any good, but it wouldn't have done any harm either. Now get this: he had much the same symptoms about six months back. I gave him the same medication, and it cleared up right away. So naturally, same person, same symptoms, I gave the same medication. It's good conservative medicine. Ninety-nine doctors out of a hundred would have treated him the same way, maybe they would have used some other tetracvcline, but essentially thev're the same thing. So where's the grounds for a malpractice suit?"
"You don't have to convince me, Dan. But you know how it is, he can always get some shyster to bring suit. I tried to talk to him, explained that with a man that age almost anything could happen, but that kind—" He shook his head. "That's why I suggested that the police sergeant who came along with the ambulance should take charge of the pills, to make it part of the official record."
Cohen nodded. "That was good thinking, and if he does sue, well, that's whv we carry insurance."