Dating Dead Men (26 page)

chapter thirty-four

T
ifereth Israel Synagogue occupied a full block in a residential area south of Westwood, a neighborhood distinguished by lawns so perfect they might have been putting greens. The temple's landscaping was stark and sophisticated, a few sculptured trees in strategically placed pots amid severe shrubbery. No undignified daisies here.

Ruby and I approached the entrance, enormous double doors wrought in wood and metal. “I don't suppose you know what a Haggadah is?” I asked her. “In the Jewish religion, every year on Passover, they have these special dinners called seders. They eat special foods on special plates, and they read the Passover story, from a book called the Haggadah, and the dinner guests read along and—”

We entered a cavernous stone foyer, so massive and echo-filled I stopped talking. We were desperately underdressed for this building. My gray sweats had the advantage of being clean, even if I wasn't, but Ruby's pea green velour shirt was as grimy as her face. When, I wondered, had she last bathed?

The first person we encountered was a daunting man, mid-fifties, with steel wool hair and ice blue eyes and the posture of a five-star general. A yarmulked general. “May I help you?” he asked, in a tone of voice that made it sound unlikely.

“I left something in a Haggadah last Passover. I wonder if I could look for it.”

“Are you a member here? I don't believe we've met.”

I smiled. “Hard to meet everyone in a synagogue this size. Look, I realize it's an unorthodox—so to speak—request, but it's extremely important.” At my side, Ruby nodded. “If you could just point us in the direction of someone who could show us—”

“No.”

“Uh—no?”

He gave me a stern look. “In the last week, this synagogue has twice been broken into. I therefore lack the patience I might otherwise have for unorthodox-so-to-speak requests. Good day.” He turned and walked away. Ruby nudged me.

“Hold on,” I said. “Maybe I should talk to someone else, someone who—”

“I'm the rabbi,” he said, without breaking stride.

I grabbed Ruby's arm, ran across the marble floor, and blocked his path. “I could possibly tell you something about those break-ins,” I said.

He glared and moved to go around us. Ruby and I stepped closer. “I'm sorry, Rabbi, I lied to you, I've never been in this synagogue before, I'm not even Jewish, but I need to see those Haggadoth. Look, I'll get down on my knees, it may be a gentile kind of gesture, but I'm doing it because that's how desperate I am.” I dropped to my knees, and stared at the crease in his pants. I called upon the spirit of Ruta to soften his heart.

When he spoke, there was a tinge of amusement in his voice. “A gentile who knows the plural of ‘Haggadah.' Get up, please. We'll talk in my office.”

         

W
ITH THE EXCEPTION
of a few graphic details that Ruby didn't need to hear, I told the whole story, all that I knew, and all I surmised about the diamond. Rabbi Susser sat calmly amid the clutter of his office and listened. “So what this dead convict called ‘a box of Häagen-Dazs,'” he summed up, “you believe to be ‘a box of Haggadahs.' Or, more correctly, Haggadoth.” He stood. “It's conceivable. Follow me, please.”

He led us to the synagogue gift shop, empty except for a woman at the counter, writing in a ledger. I resisted the temptation to check out the inventory and focused on her. The rabbi introduced her as Mrs. Gold, which was interesting, as she favored silver. Silver glistened on her lapel, circled her neck, dangled from her earlobes, and bangled her wrist.

“Mrs. Gold,” the rabbi explained, “supervised the cleanup after last year's Passover seder. Mrs. Gold, will you recount for us what happened that night?”

She puffed up with importance. “Well, it was unseasonably warm that week, if you remember, so we had the back door open to let some air into the kitchen, and suddenly, in pops a man from the alley, which nearly gives Rose Kaminsky a coronary—Rose had a bypass two years ago.” Mrs. Gold smoothed the silver chains on her massive bosom. “Now, this fellow is nicely dressed, not one of our homeless, but quite smelly, which makes us think he's been in the Dumpster, which he tells us he
has
been. He says there are men after him and he asks us to call the police. And while we're waiting for the police to come, what does he do but insist on helping us move the Passover china back into the storeroom. Because it's no job for ladies, he says, which I found refreshing, as anyone would who's married to Abe Gold, who won't so much as take out the trash on garbage night—”

“Mrs. Gold—?”

“Well, Rabbi, you asked me to tell the story, didn't you? So. When the police come, who does our mensch turn out to be?” She paused for effect. “A convicted criminal, turning himself in to start serving his sentence.”

“And the Haggadoth,” I said, “were they put away with the china?”

Mine was not the hoped-for response. She looked put out. “The what? Well, I don't recall specifically, but—yes, if we'd already collected them from the dining hall at that point, we'd have put them into the storeroom.”

“Where in the storeroom would we find them?” the rabbi asked.

“Those? You won't. The new ones we ordered arrived while you were in Israel, and Rabbi Lieberman gave the old ones to the poor.”

         

S
AMMY
F
ELDMAN WAS
maybe thirty years old. With his tie-dyed T-shirt and Afro hair, he looked more like a devotee of the Grateful Dead than the cantor of a temple, even a small one. He met the three of us—Rabbi Susser had insisted on coming along—at the door of his bungalow, off Barham Boulevard, in the Valley, and ushered us through an incense-scented living room into a fifties-style kitchen, where dried fruit lay on cutting boards around the countertop.

“Yemenite charoset,” he said. “Let me just put it away, before the ants get at it. Fig, anyone? Yes, our congregation, Shalom Shalom, or ‘Reform Reform,' as we're sometimes called, is the proverbial poor. We're so poor we hold services in an Episcopal preschool. I'm in charge of the communal seder this year, and your hand-me-down Haggadoth are a real score.”

“You have the books here?” Rabbi Susser asked.

“Right there.” He reached above the refrigerator for a Cutty Sark cardboard box.

Worn strapping tape gave way and the box flaps fell open to reveal a folded piece of the
L.A. Times
. Underneath were dozens of books, hardcover, slightly oversized, dark red. Old. Ruby, the rabbi, and I pulled them out one at a time and piled them on the pink Formica counter, until we got to the bottom of the box. Empty.

I fought back the urge to weep. “There was nothing else in here?”

Sammy grinned. “What, you mean the ring?”

         

S
OTHEBY
'
S,
B
EVERLY
H
ILLS
, occupied a corner of prime real estate within shouting distance of Tiffany and Cartier. Out front was a large red steel sculpture. Inside was a Berber-carpeted showroom with an exhibit of art made from recycled material such as aluminum cans and plastic grocery bags. Upstairs was the office of J. Carper Field.

“I worked for Sammy's father in the diamond district back east, many years ago. It was my first job.” J. Carper Field used a monogrammed handkerchief to polish a pair of tortoiseshell glasses. He replaced them on his nose and smiled at Sammy, Ruby, the rabbi, and me. “My passion began earlier. While my schoolfriends collected baseball cards and G.I. Joes, I collected semiprecious gems.”

“Mr. Field,” I said, “does Sotheby's have some sort of confidentiality—”

“
Suth
-eby's,” he corrected. “
‘Uh,'
as in ‘southern,' not
‘ah'
as in ‘sloth.' I'm speaking to you today not as a representative of Sotheby's, but as an aficionado of historical jewelry. Sammy thought the piece he found might intrigue me.”

J. Carper withdrew from his desk drawer a small red box and used his handkerchief to extract the contents, which he proceeded to polish, but not reveal. “Sammy was right. This is special. Not the diamond, which is good, but hardly superb. Not even the silverwork, although it is well done. What distinguishes the ring is its origin. Design, markings, and metal content place it in Germany in the thirties. Note the engraving.” He placed the ring upon a square of black suede and slid it across the desk. I glanced at my companions. The rabbi nodded at me. I picked it up.

The ring was feminine in style, ornate, elaborately etched, with an oversized diamond set flatly into silver. I squinted inside. “‘To W, worthy of a crown,'” I read aloud, “‘October 1937.' There's a tiny symbol I can't quite make out—”

J. Carper cleared his throat. “A swastika.”

I set the ring back on the desk and folded my hands in my lap.

“The silversmith who signed the piece did a lot of work for the Third Reich,” he said. “For Hitler himself, on occasion.”

Rabbi Susser indicated the ring. “And ‘W'?”

“One hears rumors. History is fifty percent rumor, it's said. It would be unprofessional to repeat the unsubstantiated, so I'll just remind you of some historical facts. In 1937, Wallis Simpson visited Germany with her new husband, Edward, Duke of Windsor. They met with Adolf Hitler. Now, if among the gifts given during that visit there was something of, say, an expensive and personal nature, it's likely that the Duchess of Windsor had the good sense not to broadcast it. The American divorcée was unpopular enough with the British, and the entire visit had become a huge public relations faux pas.” He leaned back. “As for the Nazis, while they were known for meticulous records, it takes time and effort to locate such records, those that still exist. Still, one might find it worthwhile. Even rumor can create a market for something like this.”

“A market comprised of whom?” I asked.

“Fans of the British royal family, of Wallis Simpson, who had something of a cult following, and of course, devotees of the Third Reich. With authentication, the price for this could be . . . considerable.”

“That's nice,” I said, “but we won't be selling it. We're trading it.” I reached for the ring, but Rabbi Susser clamped his hand over mine.

“I think not.”

         

“T
HE POLICE?
” I
yelled. “What will the police do, give it to charity?”

The argument had grown so heated that J. Carper Field asked us to take it out to the street—in this case, Rodeo Drive. Sammy had taken charge of the red ring box, and I longed to snatch it out of his hands.

The rabbi said, “The police will return it to its rightful owner.”

“Its rightful owner,” I said, “is a Mafia don, who's not going to care that it's a ransom payment for Ruby's ferret.”

“I'm afraid that is not our concern.”

I stepped in front of him. “It's my concern.”

Rabbi Susser put a hand on Ruby's shoulder and another on mine, and shepherded us forward. “I'm sorry, that was awkwardly said. Ruby, I do not lack compassion for your pet, and I'm very sad for you, but there is a moral responsibility here.”

“But is it your moral responsibility?” I said. “That ring just crossed your path, and not even
your
path, your synagogue's path, and—”

“And what is life, Wollie, but that which crosses our path?”

Sammy nodded his agreement. I had an urge to slap him. We came to a stop with a red light at Rodeo and Brighton Way. “Then with all due respect,” I said, “it crossed my path first, and it crossed at a bigger intersection, and it ran over a couple of lives—”

Rabbi Susser held up a hand. “People have been harmed because of this and that's unfortunate. But our feelings about that or the provenance of the ring or the character of its current owner are beside the point. The Talmud tells us unequivocally that we may not submit to blackmail.”

“What about where the Talmud says that to redeem one life is to redeem the world, because each life is a whole world?” I said.

Rabbi Susser looked surprised. “The Talmud did not refer to ferrets.”

“And I do not live by Talmudic authority.”

The light changed but I stood my ground. Around me, a camera-carrying tour group surged forward, chattering in a consonant-heavy language. I could hear Ruta clucking from the great beyond, proud of my knowledge of the Talmud, aghast at my effrontery. The rabbi glared, and it was Sammy who answered me. “Since the ring's in my possession, it's kind of a moot point, isn't it? Rabbi, my wife's cousin is a detective in the West L.A. Police Department. He'll know the procedure for returning stolen goods. Would you like me to take care of this?”

The rabbi paused. Perhaps he was reluctant to relinquish responsibility, but perhaps also reluctant to touch something that might have been touched by Adolf Hitler. “Yes,” he said finally. “As it's nearly the Sabbath, I need to be on my way. I'll call a cab.” He turned to me once more. “The message of Passover is freedom. What we're doing is the right thing to do and it will set you free.”

I watched him walk away and wondered if I could, with Ruby's help, physically overpower Sammy Feldman. Or break into his house during the Sabbath, or—

“Tell me something, Ruby—” Sammy said.

I put a protective arm around her. “Ruby doesn't talk much.”

“Gave it up for Lent, huh?” He gave her a loopy grin, as she backed away from him. “Sorry, old Hebrew school joke. What I was going to say is, I've got this hole in my pocket I'm always dropping things out of, and—well, would you look at that? Case in point.” The small red ring box hit the sidewalk with a plunk. Ruby pounced on it.

“Maybe you should carry it the rest of the way,” Sammy said. “And if you forget to give it back to me, well, I'm sure you'll do the right thing with it.”