There is nothing so eternal as Anglo-Saxon etched in graphite.

  Silvermine Park is south of the Road, and no one ventures there at night. During the day, the park is thronged with governesses idly chatting about the last time they saw Sweden, gently rocking shellacked blue baby buggies. But after sunset, not even lovers will enter the park. The Stem, further south, explodes the moment the sun leaves the sky. Gaudy and incandescent, it mixes Chinese restaurants with Jewish delicatessens, pizza joints with Greek cabarets offering belly dancers. Threadbare as a beggar’s sleeve, Ainsley Avenue crosses the center of the precinct, trying to maintain a dignity long gone, crowding the sidewalks with austere but dirty apartment buildings, furnished rooms, garages, and a sprinkling of sawdust saloons. Culver Avenue turns completely Irish with the speed of a leprechaun. The faces, the bars, even the buildings seem displaced, seem to have been stolen and transported from the center of Dublin; but no lace curtains hang in the windows. Poverty turns a naked face to the streets here, setting the pattern for the rest of the precinct territory. Poverty rakes the backs of the Culver Avenue Irish, claws its way onto the white and tan and brown and black faces of the Puerto Ricans lining Mason Avenue, flops onto the beds of the whores of La Vía de Putas, and then pushes its way into the real crucible, the city side streets where different minority groups live cheek by jowl, as close as lovers, hating each other. It is here that Puerto Rican and Jew, Italian and Negro, Irishman and Cuban are forced by dire economic need to live in a ghetto that, by its very composition, loses definition and becomes a meaningless tangle of unrelated bloodlines.

  Rabbi Solomon’s synagogue was on the same street as a Catholic church. A Baptist storefront mission was on the avenue leading to the next block. The candy store over which the man named Finch lived was owned by a Puerto Rican whose son had been a cop—a man named Hernandez.

  Carella and Meyer paused in the lobby of the building and studied the nameplates in the mailboxes. There were eight boxes in the row. Two had nameplates. Three had broken locks. The man named Finch lived in apartment 33 on the third floor.

  The lock on the vestibule door was broken. From behind the stairwell, where the garbage cans were stacked before being put out for collection in the morning, the stink of that evening’s dinner remains assailed the nostrils and left the detectives mute until they had gained the first-floor landing.

  On the way up to the third floor, Carella said, “This seems too easy, Meyer. It’s over before it begins.”

  On the third-floor landing, both men drew their service revolvers. They found apartment 33 and bracketed the door.

  “Mr. Finch?” Meyer called.

  “Who is it?” a voice answered.

  “Police. Open up.”

  The apartment and the hallway went still.

  “Finch?” Meyer said.

  There was no answer. Carella backed off against the opposite wall. Meyer nodded. Bracing himself against the wall, Carella raised his right foot, the leg bent at the knee, then released it like a triggered spring. The flat of his sole collided with the door just below the lock. The door burst inward, and Meyer followed it into the apartment, his gun in his fist.

  Finch was a man in his late twenties, with a square crew-cut head and bright green eyes. He was closing the closet door as Meyer burst into the room. He was wearing only trousers and an undershirt, his feet bare. He needed a shave, and the bristles on his chin and face emphasized a white scar that ran from just under his right cheek to the curve of his jaw. He turned from the closet with the air of a man who has satisfactorily completed a mysterious mission.

  “Hold it right there,” Meyer said.

  There’s a joke they tell about an old woman on a train who repeatedly asks the man sitting beside her if he’s Jewish. The man, trying to read his newspaper, keeps answering, “No, I’m not Jewish.” The old lady keeps pestering him, tugging at his sleeve, asking the same question over and over again. Finally the man puts down his newspaper and says, “All right, all right, damn it! I’m Jewish.”

  And the old lady smiles at him sweetly and says, “You know something? You don’t look it.”

  The joke, of course, relies on a prejudice that assumes that you can tell a man’s religion by looking at his face. There was nothing about Meyer Meyer’s looks or speech that would indicate that he was Jewish. His face was round and clean-shaven, he was thirty-seven years old and completely bald, and he possessed the bluest eyes this side of Denmark. He was almost six feet tall and perhaps a trifle overweight, and the only conversation he’d had with Finch were the few words he’d spoken through the closed door, and the four words he’d spoken since he entered the apartment, all of which were delivered in big-city English without any noticeable trace of accent.

  But when Meyer Meyer said, “Hold it right there,” a smile came onto Finch’s face, and he answered, “I wasn’t going anyplace, Jewboy.”

  Well, maybe the sight of the rabbi lying in his own blood had been too much for Meyer. Maybe the words “sonei Yisroel” had recalled the days of his childhood when, one of the few Orthodox Jews in a Gentile neighborhood, and bearing the double-barreled name his father had foisted upon him, he was forced to defend himself against every hoodlum who crossed his path, invariably against overwhelming odds. He was normally a very patient man. He had borne his father’s practical joke with amazing goodwill, even though he sometimes grinned mirthlessly through bleeding lips. But tonight, this second night of Passover, after having looked down at the bleeding rabbi, after having heard the tortured sobs of the sexton, after having seen the patiently suffering face of the woman in black, the words hurled at him from the other end of the apartment had a startling effect.

  Meyer said nothing. He simply walked to where Finch was standing near the closet, and lifted the .38 high above his head. He flipped the gun up as his arm descended, so that the heavy butt was in striking position as it whipped toward Finch’s jaw.

  Finch brought up his hands, but not to shield his face in defense. His hands were huge, with big knuckles, the imprimatur of the habitual street fighter. He opened the fingers and caught Meyer’s descending arm at the wrist, stopping the gun three inches from his face.

  He wasn’t dealing with a kid; he was dealing with a cop. He obviously intended to shake that gun out of Meyer’s fist and then beat him senseless on the floor of the apartment. But Meyer brought up his right knee and smashed it into Finch’s groin, and then, his wrist still pinioned, he bunched his left fist and drove it hard and straight into Finch’s gut. That did it. The fingers loosened and Finch backed away a step just as Meyer brought the pistol back across his own body and then unleashed it in a backhand swipe. The butt cracked against Finch’s jaw and sent him sprawling against the closet wall.

  Miraculously, the jaw did not break. Finch collided with the closet, grabbed the door behind him with both hands opened wide and flat against the wood, and then shook his head. He blinked his eyes and shook his head again. By what seemed to be sheer will power, he managed to stand erect without falling on his face.

  Meyer stood watching him, saying nothing, breathing hard. Carella, who had come into the room, stood at the far end, ready to shoot Finch if he so much as raised a pinky.

  “Your name Finch?” Meyer asked.

  “I don’t talk to Jews,” Finch answered.

  “Then try me,” Carella said. “What’s your name?”

  “Go to hell, you and your Jewboy friend both.”

  Meyer did not raise his voice. He simply took a step closer to Finch, and very softly said, “Mister, in two minutes, you’re gonna be a cripple because you resisted arrest.”

  He didn’t have to say anything else, because his eyes told the full story, and Finch was a fast reader.

  “Okay,” Finch said, nodding. “That’s my name.”

  “What’s in the closet, Finch?” Carella asked.

  “My clothes.”

  “Get away from the door.”

  “What for?”

  Neither of the cops answered. Finch studied them for ten seconds, and quickly moved away from the door. Meyer opened it. The closet was stacked high with piles of tied and bundled pamphlets. The cord on one bundle was untied, the pamphlets spilling onto the closet floor. Apparently, this bundle was the one Finch had thrown into the closet when he’d heard the knock on the door. Meyer stooped and picked up one of the pamphlets. It was badly and cheaply printed, but the intent was unmistakable. The title of the pamphlet was “The Bloodsucker Jew.”

  “Where’d you get this?” Meyer asked.

  “I belong to a book club,” Finch answered.

  “There are a few laws against this sort of thing,” Carella said.

  “Yeah?” Finch answered. “Name me one.”

  “Happy to. Section 1340 of the Penal Law—libel defined.”

  “Maybe you ought to read Section 1342,” Finch said. “The publication is justified when the matter charged as libelous is true, and was published with good motives and for justifiable ends.”

  “Then let’s try Section 514,” Carella said. “A person who denies or aids or incites another to deny any person because of race, creed, color or national origin…”

  “I’m not trying to incite anyone,” Finch said, grinning.

  “Nor am I a lawyer,” Carella said. “But we can also try Section 700, which defines discrimination, and Section 1430, which makes it a felony to perform an act of malicious injury to a place of religious worship.”

  “Huh?” Finch said.

  “Yeah,” Carella answered.

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about the little paint job you did on the synagogue wall.”

  “What paint job? What synagogue?”

  “Where were you at eight o’clock tonight, Finch?”

  “Out.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “You better start remembering.”

  “Why? Is there a section of the Penal Law against loss of memory?”

  “No,” Carella said. “But there’s one against homicide.”

  The team stood around him in the squadroom.

  The team consisted of Detectives Steve Carella, Meyer Meyer, Cotton Hawes, and Bert Kling. Two detectives from Homicide South had put in a brief appearance to legitimize the action, and then went home to sleep, knowing full well that the investigation of a homicide is always left to the precinct discovering the stiff. The team stood around Finch in a loose semicircle. This wasn’t a movie sound stage, so there wasn’t a bright light shining in Finch’s eyes, nor did any of the cops lay a finger on him. These days, there were too many smart-assed lawyers around who were ready and able to leap upon irregular interrogation methods when and if a case finally came to trial. The detectives simply stood around Finch in a loose, relaxed semicircle, and their only weapons were a thorough familiarity with the interrogation process and with each other, and the mathematical superiority of four minds pitted against one.

  “What time did you leave the apartment?” Hawes asked.

  “Around seven.”

  “And what time did you return?” Kling asked.

  “Nine, nine-thirty. Something like that.”

  “Where’d you go?” Carella asked.

  “I had to see somebody.”

  “A rabbi?” Meyer asked.

  “No.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t want to get anybody in trouble.”

  “You’re in plenty of trouble yourself,” Hawes said. “Where’d you go?”

  “No place.”

  “Okay, suit yourself,” Carella said. “You’ve been shooting your mouth off about killing Jews, haven’t you?”

  “I never said anything like that.”

  “Where’d you get these pamphlets?”

  “I found them.”

  “You agree with what they say?”

  “Yes.”

  “You know where the synagogue in this neighborhood is?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you anywhere near it tonight between seven and nine?”

  “No.”

  “Then where were you?”

  “No place.”

  “Anybody see you there?” Kling asked.

  “See me where?”

  “The no place you went to.”

  “Nobody saw me.”

  “You went no place,” Hawes said, “and nobody saw you. Is that right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “The invisible man,” Kling said.

  “That’s right.”

  “When you get around to killing all these Jews,” Carella said, “how do you plan to do it?”

  “I don’t plan to kill anybody,” he said defensively.

  “Who you gonna start with?”

  “Nobody.”

  “Ben-Gurion?”

  “Nobody.”

  “Or maybe you’ve already started.”

  “I didn’t kill anybody, and I’m not gonna kill anybody. I want to call a lawyer.”

  “A Jewish lawyer?”

  “I wouldn’t have—”

  “What wouldn’t you have?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You like Jews?”

  “No.”

  “You hate them?”

  “No.”

  “Then you like them.”

  “No, I didn’t say—”

  “You either like them or you hate them. Which?”

  “That’s none of your goddamn business!”

  “But you agree with the crap in those hate pamphlets, don’t you?”

  “They’re not hate pamphlets.”

  “What do you call them?”

  “Expressions of opinion.”

  “Whose opinions?”

  “Everybody’s opinion!”

  “Yours included?”

  “Yes, mine included!”

  “Do you know Rabbi Solomon?”

  “No.”

  “What do you think of rabbis in general?”

  “I never think of rabbis.”

  “But you think of Jews a lot, don’t you?”

  “There’s no crime about think—”

  “If you think of Jews you must think of rabbis. Isn’t that right?”

  “Why should I waste my time—”

  “The rabbi is the spiritual leader of the Jewish people, isn’t he?”

  “I don’t know anything about rabbis.”

  “But you must know that.”

  “What if I do?”

  “Well, if you said you were going to kill the Jews—”

  “I never said—”

  “—then a good place to start would be with—”

  “I never said anything like that!”

  “We’ve got a witness who heard you! A good place to start would be with a rabbi, isn’t that so?”

  “Go shove your rabbi—”

  “Where were you between seven and nine tonight?”

  “No place.”

  “You were behind that synagogue, weren’t you?”

  “No.”

  “You were painting a J on the wall, weren’t you?”

  “No! No, I wasn’t!”

  “You were stabbing a rabbi!”

  “You were killing a Jew!”

  “I wasn’t any place near that—”

  “Book him, Cotton. Suspicion of murder.”

  “Suspicion of—I’m telling you I wasn’t—”

  “Either shut up or start talking, you bastard,” Carella said. Finch shut up.

  The girl came to see Meyer Meyer on Easter Sunday.

  She had reddish-brown hair and brown eyes, and she wore a dress of bright persimmon with a sprig of flowers pinned to the left breast. She stood at the railing and none of the detectives in the squadroom even noticed the flowers; they were too busy speculating on the depth and texture of the girl’s rich curves.

  The girl didn’t say a word. She didn’t have to. The effect was almost comic, akin to the cocktail-party scene where the voluptuous blonde takes out a cigarette and 400 men are stampeded in the rush to light it. The first man to reach the slatted rail divider was Cotton Hawes, since he was single and unattached. The second man was Hal Willis, who was also single and a good red-blooded American boy. Meyer Meyer, an old married poop, contented himself with ogling the girl from behind his desk. The word shtick crossed Meyer’s mind, but he rapidly pushed the thought aside.

  “Can I help you, miss?” Hawes and Willis asked simultaneously.

  “I’d like to see Detective Meyer,” the girl said.

  “Meyer?” Hawes asked, as if his manhood had been maligned.

  “Meyer?” Willis repeated.

  “Is he the man handling the murder of the rabbi?”

  “Well we’re all sort of working on it,” Hawes said modestly.

  “I’m Artie Finch’s girlfriend,” the girl said. “I want to talk to Detective Meyer.”

  Meyer rose from his desk with the air of a man who has been singled out from the stag line by the belle of the ball. Using his best radio announcer’s voice, and his best company manners, he said, “Yes, miss, I’m Detective Meyer.”

  He held open the gate in the railing, all but executed a bow, and led the girl to his desk. Hawes and Kling watched as the girl sat and crossed her legs. Meyer moved a pad into place with all the aplomb of a General Motors executive.

  “I’m sorry, miss,” he said. “What was your name?”

  “Eleanor,” she said. “Eleanor Fay.”

  “F-A-Y-E?” Meyer asked, writing.

  “F-A-Y.”

  “And you’re Arthur Finch’s fiancée? Is that right?”

  “I’m his girlfriend,” Eleanor corrected.

  “You’re not engaged?”

  “Not officially, no.” She smiled demurely, modestly, and sweetly. Across the room, Cotton Hawes rolled his eyes toward the ceiling.

  “What did you want to see me about, Miss Fay?” Meyer asked.

  “I wanted to see you about Arthur. He’s innocent. He didn’t kill that man.”

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19