This Thing of Darkness. Barbara Fradkin

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      As Green expected, the old synagogue on Chapel Street was locked up tight on a Sunday afternoon, but he had a back-up plan. He had a personal connection with the rabbi who’d served the aging inner city congregation for twenty-five years before being forced to face old age himself. Rabbi Zachary Tolner had not slipped into retirement easily but spent most of his spare time, when he wasn’t training for marathons, badgering the new rabbi and the board to ensure they didn’t forget how things should be done.

      When Green’s mother had been dying of breast cancer more than twenty years earlier, Rabbi Tolner had tried to visit her in hospital. Sid had thrown him out in a rage.

      “Where is your God!” he’d screamed, in one of the rare moments of animation Green had seen during his mother’s long ordeal. “Where was He in Auschwitz? In Majdanek, where she was a girl—a fifteen-year-old girl who had to sell her soul for...” He’d never said for what, but it was more than Green had ever learned in the years before. Or since. The rabbi had tried to calm him and simply to be with him, but Sid had retreated back into that numbness which had probably served him well in Auschwitz.

      At twenty-five, intoxicated with police work and with Hannah’s featherbrained but perfectly-formed mother, Green had been no more receptive to Tolner’s spiritual overtures than his father had been, but that had not dampened Tolner’s belief that he had a personal line of influence in the police department. Green had a stack of letters Tolner had sent him over the years complaining about everything from drug dealers on the synagogue steps to bums sleeping under the tree by the back door.

      Green knew where to find the man. Now it was time for a little payback.

      Tolner had changed little in the ten years since Green had last seen him. He was bent over the postage stamp-sized garden outside his townhouse, wearing a warped Tilley hat pulled down snug over his bald head and a pair of powder blue jogging pants concealing his spindly legs. His arms stuck out from his T-shirt, sinewy and tanned almost nut brown from a lifetime worshipping the outdoors. As Green approached, he straightened and drew every inch of his five-foot-four-inch frame to attention. His face was a web of wrinkles, but in their midst, his pale blue eyes lit with interest.

      “The mountain comes to Isaac!”

      Green laughed and extended his hand. “How are you, Zak?”

      Tolner peeled off one gardening glove and encased Green’s hand in a powerful grip.“Bored! I hope you brought something interesting.” Worry flickered his gaze. “How’s your father?”

      “Fine. Going to live to be a hundred, kvetching all the way. This is another old man. Maybe you’ve heard? Beaten to death just off Rideau Street?”

      The ready grin fled. “A Jew?”

      Green tilted his palm in uncertainty. “Possibly. We’re trying to identify him. Early seventies, five-ten, a hundred and seventy pounds, thick white hair, used a burled maple cane. Harry Rosen suit, out of date?”

      Tolner had been listening intently, his blue eyes flickering with each new description as though he were searching through some internal database. At the end of the list, he shook his head slowly. “You could try being more specific. You’re describing everybody.”

      “His hair was long and frizzy. Picture Einstein.”

      This time a faint glimmer of recognition shone in Tolner’s eyes, but still he shook his head. “Can’t you show me a picture? Even of the corpse?”

      “Too much facial damage.”

      Tolner winced. “Oy.”

      “You have an idea, don’t you?”

      “No, I don’t.”

      “Yes, you do. You blinked.”

      “Nothing that I’m going to tell you based on ‘Einstein’s hair’. What makes you think he was even Jewish?”

      Green extracted the evidence bag containing the Star of David from his pocket. “He had this in his possession.”

      Tolner took the plastic bag and held it at arms’ length. He squinted, and Green saw another flicker of recognition. “Ahh.”

      “What do you mean, ahh?”

      “Just...” Tolner lifted his shoulders in a classic Yiddish shrug. “This I recognize.”

      “Does it fit with the Einstein hair?”

      “Yes. Damn it, yes. And with the out-of-date Harry Rosen suit.” Tolner handed back the evidence bag. “Sam Rosenthal. Been a member of the shul for years, although he doesn’t come very often. Busy man, back in the days when I knew him. Travelled a lot to medical conferences, lectures and stuff.”

      “So he’s a doctor?”

      “Psychiatrist. Very well-respected years ago, when he was at the height of his career. Got a little wonky near the end, but then half those guys are wonky to start with, so it wasn’t far to go.”

      Green had been jotting notes. “Wonky how?”

      Tolner hesitated, and Green suspected he was weighing the wisdom of discretion against his love of gossip. He brushed at some specks of dirt on his T-shirt. “This is from congregants, you understand. When his wife was dying, he got Eastern religion and started meditating and searching for the deeper meaning of life. I gather he started to question all the drugs his psychiatric colleagues were prescribing. Claimed we had to respect nature’s diversity and the patient’s right to be different. Became the darling of the new age types, I think, but his colleagues were less amused.”

      “You said his wife is dead?”

      “About ten years ago. Her death was a long ordeal— ” He broke off, as if remembering Green’s mother.

      “We’re going to need DNA for a positive ID. Does he have any other family?”

      “A son somewhere in the States.” Tolner nodded towards the west.“Sam used to live in one of those mansions on Range Road overlooking the Rideau River—it’s an embassy now— but he sold it and gave half the proceeds to some group researching meditation, and he bought a falling apart Victorian dump СКАЧАТЬ