An Old Man's Game. Andy Weinberger

sitting at a large round Formica table in what was maybe a group therapy room a month ago. Now the walls are covered with posters—professional close-ups of gluten-free banana doughnuts, baked doughnuts, cottage cheese doughnuts, and the one that put them on the map, sufganiyah—a cranberry jelly doughnut, from a secret recipe smuggled out of Tel Aviv. Someone has set down a mixed platter of these things, and there’s a large blue coffee urn and a stack of Styrofoam cups. Please, they say. I shake my head, tell them I can’t, I’m on a diet. They are too, they say. We trade polite commiserations over the rabbi. Alan seems genuinely upset that he’s gone. “Such a brilliant man,” he says, “snatched away before his time.”

      Dov nods. “It’s sad, yes, but I must tell you, I don’t believe I was ever quite as smitten with him as my partner here,” he says.

      “He was a poet,” says Alan. “He thought like a poet. That was the problem. Admit it, you hate poetry.”

      “Guilty as charged,” Dov says.

      I pull out a mechanical pencil and my little spiral cardboard notebook. “So I was hired, I suppose, because someone on the Board thought there were—irregularities, I guess you might say—about his death. You wanted me to follow up on the police inquiry. Is that about right?”

      “The police did nothing,” Alan says, “absolutely nothing. They wouldn’t have bothered to show up at all if we hadn’t gotten down on our knees and begged.”

      “But I guess my question is, why did you think you needed a police investigation in the first place? Or an outside detective?”

      Dov glances at Alan before he answers. “You’re a landsman, Mr. Parisman, a member of the tribe. So I’ll spell it out as best I can. Not everyone on our Board, and certainly not every person in the congregation, had such warm feelings for the rabbi.”

      “He had enemies?”

      “Enemies? That’s a word we could talk about. Let’s just say there were a few individuals who disagreed with him from time to time. I wouldn’t call them enemies. But you know what I mean.”

      “Rabbi Ezra was a dynamic and forceful leader,” Alan chimes in. “You always knew when he was in the room. He took charge.”

      “And some people in the temple resented that?”

      “Not just the temple,” Dov says. “He was also a frequent guest speaker at interfaith gatherings. Jews and Muslims. Jews and Christians. He was on a panel to end homelessness in Hollywood. He even reached out to the Palestinian community here. There’ve been breakfasts and dinners. That kind of thing.”

      I stop taking notes and look at them. “And why is that a problem? Isn’t that what rabbis do? Reach out? Try to build bridges? Keep faith with those who sleep in the dust?”

      “Ah,” says Dov, “you remember your Torah, Mr. Parisman. That’s wonderful.”

      “I try.”

      “Torah’s important, but it isn’t the only thing. You should also remember your history. On the Board, you know, we believe we have a special obligation to do that. We try our best to think through all the scenarios. So when our very controversial rabbi—a man who goes everywhere, a man who makes headlines and churns up raw emotions every time he opens his mouth—when a man like that all of a sudden drops dead, well, it affects us. What can I tell you? We stop. We wonder why. Is that so hard to understand?”

      I scratch my head in disbelief. “It’s not hard to understand that he’s gone. I get that. What I don’t get is why you guys on the Board are so skeptical. You read the obituary, I’m sure. People die all the time. There’s no rhyme or reason for that. God does what he wants, right? And my friends at the LAPD tell me he wasn’t healthy to begin with.”

      “He smoked,” Alan concedes. “And he could have dropped a few pounds, it’s true.”

      “So why all the tsimmis? Why are you upset? Was he threatened?”

      “He made waves, sometimes,” Dov says. “People whispered things about him at the shul, and I have to assume, in other places, too. There was always a little gossip in the air.”

      “What kind of gossip?”

      “Oh, I couldn’t tell you, really. I don’t listen to that kind of thing.”

      “Okay, fine. I’m just trying to get my arms around the whole scope of this, and what I’m hearing is that you both believe that somebody—either in the shul or outside the shul—might have had a reason to kill the rabbi. That’s an enemy. You may not call him an enemy, but I’ll do it for you. So my question is simply, why?”

      “Why is not a simple question,” Alan says, “I’m sorry.”

      “Well, then are we leaning toward a personal vendetta? Did he upset someone in the congregation? Or could it be larger than that? Anti-Semitism? Anti-Semitism, right here in the middle of Los Angeles? Is that where you’re going? Because I have to tell you, from where I’m sitting, that’s crazy.”

      Dov doesn’t respond immediately. He pours himself half a cup of coffee, warms his hands around it. Did I want some? No? Oh well. “We take our obligations to the temple, and especially to the children at the temple, very seriously, Mr. Parisman.” He takes a sip. “We’re building something, something important, and we don’t want things to go wrong. We don’t care for surprises. When the future of your people is on the line, the fact is, you can’t afford surprises.”

      “And what happened to the rabbi was a surprise.”

      Both of them look at me.

      “That’s about the size of it,” Dov says.

       Chapter 3

      I HAVE TO DRIVE to Dora Ewing’s the next day, so right after I take my pills and Carmen shows up to fix Loretta her coffee and morning oatmeal, and after she’s settled down all warm and comfy in front of the television, I sift through my top dresser drawer, where the socks are, to find my car keys. I haven’t driven all that much since we came to Park La Brea. It’s not retirement exactly, more like the system is quietly shutting down all on its own. We live pretty simple: there’s a Ralph’s down on Wilshire for the daily basics and a Kmart for everything else. I don’t need anything, tell you the truth. The last time I splurged and bought myself a brand-new pair of pants, Reagan was still eating jelly beans at the White House.

      But Dr. Ewing is another story. She’s in Culver City, not so far away, but still a place that used to be considered nowhere. Now I guess you could argue the other way around. People like it in Culver City because, I dunno, maybe it reminds them of the small town they left behind to come to LA. Or because someone has decided that the nondescript tract homes there are suddenly worth millions. Or maybe because it now has the fragrance of fresh money. Lots of trees and fountains in Culver City. Lots of colorful shops. Or shoppes, as they’d probably rather call them. And cute restaurants that serve tiny rich French food on even tinier plates. Which would be a problem for guys like me, if I ever went there, which I do, every ten years or so.

      I drive a blue Honda Accord from the previous century. It’s got at least two hundred thousand miles on it, and it’s not fast or pretty, but then neither am I anymore. The thing about my car is, it’s so old and ugly and beat to hell no one in their right mind would ever try to steal it. I could leave it unlocked anywhere in LA and it would still be sitting there when I got back. Okay, I’ve never put that idea to the test, but I know this much: you’d have to be crazy or desperate or both to want what I have.

      I plug a mix tape in the slot above the radio and punch the plastic buttons until the tune I want comes on. James Taylor. Just yesterday morning they let me know you were gone. Suzanne, the plans they made put an end to you. I can’t tell you how much I love that song, even though it always floats me back to Vietnam. I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain. I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end. God, it doesn’t get any more beautiful than that. And if I