"And did you?" the rabbi asked.
"I only got it yesterday. Besides, what's the use where he's been after me to sell him my store?"
"Safferstein wants to buy your store?"
"He wanted to. Now he doesn't have to bother, he can just wait a couple of months for my lease to expire and just take it over."
"But why would Mr. Safferstein want your store? He's in the real estate business."
"Well, he does, the last few months he must have asked me a dozen times. See, he's got this brother-in-law who's a pharmacist, and he's always hitting him up for a loan which he never pays back, and being it's his wife's brother, he can't turn him down. So he got the idea of buying my store and setting him up in business for himself. Now, if he's hot after my store, why would he extend my lease?"
"But if you haven't asked him..."
Aptaker shook his head. "No need to, and if I did, it wouldn't be asking. It would be begging, he'd just turn me down."
"But if Safferstein came to see you several times when you'd refused the first time..."
Aptaker grinned. "That's different, that's business, maybe you wouldn't know, being a rabbi, but it's like this. Suppose somebody says he wants to buy your store, you don't ask how much he's offering because you don't want to appear too eager. Besides, you wouldn't want it to get around that you were interested in selling because that might suggest that business wasn't too good and it could hurt your credit. So you kind of fence with him. 'Why should I want to sell a good business?' Or 'Why do you want to buy a drugstore when you're not even a pharmacist?' See, you don't talk serious at first, well, every time he comes in, like to buy a paper or a pack of cigarettes, he raises the question, he doesn't mind my putting him off because he's a businessman, too, so he knows the score. But then he comes to see me at home, that means he's serious. So I’ve got to talk serious, too."
Aptaker had been lying on his back, but now he turned over on his side to face the rabbi directly. "I explained to him why I can't deal with him. You see. I don't think of it as my store to do with what I please. I got it from my father and I feel I should pass it on to my son. I mean, it's not a job that you can walk away from. Where you've got something you've worked for all your life and your father before you, and you've trained your son to take it over, you don't just sell it to some stranger because he offers you a few thousand bucks. It's a family thine. So I told him I'd have to talk it over with my son and see how he felt."
"And Safferstein would come in and ask if you'd heard from your son?"
"That's right, Rabbi. But a thing like this, you can't just write a letter. You got to sit down and talk it over."
"So when Safferstein would inquire, you'd tell him you hadn't heard yet."
"Uh-huh. Because what I had in mind was maybe to take a weekend off and go see Arnold in Philadelphia where he's working."
"But wasn't he here a few days ago?"
Aptaker's face reddened. "Yeah, but we didn't have a chance to talk. Something came up and he had to go back to Philadelphia."
"And now?"
"Well, now it makes no difference," Marcus said gloomily. "My lease will expire and maybe Safferstein will make me some kind of offer for my stock. More likely, I'll have to sell it to the auctioneers."
"Have you got the correspondence on all this, Mr. aptaker? I mean the request for renewal and—"
"Sure. I'm a very systematic man, Rabbi. I got a file of all the letters I received and carbons of the letters I sent."
"Could I see it?"
"Why not? You think you can do something?" Marcus asked eagerly, then regretfully, "Believe me, it's hopeless. It's all perfectly legal. It's just my tough luck that Goralsky died when he did."
"Still, I'd like to see the correspondence if I may."
"You're welcome to it. Rabbi. When I get out of here, remind me."
"Couldn't I see it before then? Perhaps your wife..."
"All right. It's in a folder in the store. When Rose comes tonight, I'll tell her to dig it out for you."
CHAPTER THIRTY
At noon, Dr. Kantrovitz stuck his head into his colleague's office and asked. "Lunch?"
"Right." said Muntz. "Let's get hold of Dan. How about John?"
"He's not back from the hospital yet."
Dr. Kantrovitz walked the short distance to Dr. Cohen's office and called, "How about lunch, Dan?"
And Cohen, who had spent the last ten minutes in his office wondering if they would ask him, answered with alacrity, "Yeah, I'm starved."
It was not until the three men were dawdling over their coffee that Muntz asked about the retreat.
Dan Cohen smiled broadly. "It was okay. You know, a kind of change of pace, all this prayer and meditation they go in for, well, that was all right, too, after a while, you kind of get into the spirit of the thing and it's kind of relaxing."
"Relaxing?" Muntz asked. "Is that all? According to Chet Kaplan— he said he bumped into you after you got back— you were practically euphoric."
"Oh, that!" Dr. Cohen chuckled. "Yeah, I guess I was. You see, this Kestler business had got me down, even though I was sure I had given the old man the right medication. Still, I was worried because, well, because Kestler is Kestler, and also because of the way you guys reacted about his suing me, as a matter of fact, that's why I decided to go on this retreat. I'm not religious, but I thought it would be a good excuse to get away from it all, well, I'd just come home, and I get this call from Chief Lanigan."
He went on to tell of his meeting with Lanigan and finished with, "So it was right after that I saw Kaplan, and he asks me how I enjoyed the weekend, well, naturally, I was feeling pretty good."
"Then Kestler didn't get the medication you prescribed?" Muntz asked.
"No, he got a pencillin tablet instead." "And he was sensitive to penicillin?"
"Uh-huh, that's why I prescribed Limpidine."
"So he probably did get a reaction, and it could easily account for his death," said Kantrovitz.
"Yeah, but it was not from Dan's prescription," Muntz pointed out.
"So what did you do about it?" demanded Kantrovitz.
"Naturally, I was going to see Aptaker and have it out with him, but Lanigan said since the police were involved, he wanted to check it out first, so I didn't do anything. I expected he'd get on it right away. But when I didn't hear from him. I thought I'd stop by the drugstore on my way home yesterday—"
"And?"
"And nothing," Cohen said. "When I got there, Aptaker was having a heart attack, so I rushed him to the hospital."
"Aptaker is in the hospital with a heart attack?"
"That's right, he's my patient now. I certainly can't say anything to him now. It would kill him. Set him back anyway."
"But look here, you've got to do something about it." Muntz said. "You can't let Kestler go on shooting off his mouth about you, not when you've got the perfect answer. It won't do your practice any good, and it won't help the rest of us either."
"Do you know what you've got to do?" Kantrovitz said solemnly. "You've got to take yourself out of this case. You tell Aptaker you feel he ought to have a regular heart man, that you don't feel—"
"Competent?" asked Cohen. "Believe me, if I thought that, I'd turn him over to a cardiologist right away. But there have been no complications. I’ve got him on a lowfat, high-protein diet. I'm watching his daily EKG's and enzyme tests and—"
"I don't mean that you can't handle it." Kantrovitz said. "I mean that you could tell him that so you can get out from under, then he's no longer your patient and you're free to act."