Muller, Marcia - [McCone 05] Leave a Message for Willie [v1.0] (htm) (10 page)

"Willie?" Herman chuckled. "You wouldn't catch
Willie with a piece. Between him and that blond broad of his—
what's her name?"

"Alida."

"Yeah, Alida. Between the two of them, you've got an anti-gun
lobby that would beat out the NRA if they ever got organized."

"I didn't realize that."

"No? Well, from what I hear, Willie got turned off by guns in
Vietnam. He doesn't say much about it, but I bet if you could get it
out of him, he'd have a hell of a story why. Vietnam worked that
way—or the opposite. Guys either came home loving guns or
hating them." He paused, shaking his head. "Yeah, they love
them or they hate them."

"What about the other folks at the markets? Willie's runners,
for instance—did any of them every buy from you?"

His little eyes narrowed. "Why do you ask?"

"Well, what if Willie found out I owned a gun? Would he
disapprove enough to fire me? I need the job and I'd sure hate to
lose it—"

This time Herman laughed loudly. "I wouldn't worry."

"Why not?"

"If Willie was that intolerant, he'd never be able to make it
on the flea market scene."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, look at those people — they're all rednecks. I
sell more guns out at the market than anything else."

"But all I saw at your stand was knives."

"I don't display the guns for all the world to see, little
girl. But folks know to ask for them anyway."

I touched the .38 thoughtfully with my index finger. "And the
cops don't bother you?"

"Hell, no. Marchetti sees to that."

"Mack Marchetti knows you're selling guns out there?"

"Sure. And turns his back — for a price."

"A price?" I feigned innocence.

Herman leaned on the counter, his hands spread flat. "I can
tell you're new on the scene. You don't think Marchetti makes his
money by renting out spaces for seven bucks a day, do you?"

"I don't know. I hadn't thought about it."

"Well, think. If you had hold of a piece of land where every
kind of illegal activity in the book was going on, what would you
do?"

"Take a cut of it, I guess."

"You guess." Herman snorted. "Little girl, you're
not going to do too well in the business if all you can do is guess
at it."

"Okay, now that you've mentioned it, it makes sense. Mack
Marchetti takes a cut, in exchange for letting you people operate."

"Right. And then what does Marchetti do with part of that
cut?"

"He pays off the cops, I suppose."

"Does that surprise you, little girl—that there are
crooked cops?"

"No."

"Good. Now maybe you're on your way to being of some use to
Willie."

Maybe I am, I thought, but not in the way you imagine.

"So do you want this gun?" Herman asked.

"I'm going to have to think about it. It's a lot of money."

"What's money, compared to your life?"

"You have a point."

"You bet I do. Tell you what—you think about it. The
gun'll be here for a while. But don't wait too long."

"I won't."

I started for the door, glancing at the cases on either side of me
as I went. The guns lay there, gleaming black and sleek and deadly.

"I hope you'll excuse the mess." David Halpert looked
dismayed at the chaos in his living room—not so much for my
sake, but because it was his and he had to live with it. The rabbi's
house was a small Victorian in Bernal Heights, on the other side of
the hill from All Souls. The living room walls had been stripped for
replastering, and the furniture was heaped in the center and covered
with dusty plastic drop cloths. Tools and buckets of joint compound
stood by the bay window, and two rolled rugs blocked the doorway to
the hall. In the middle of all this sat a baby in diapers; it was
chewing on a new paint roller.

"That's okay." I looked around for a place to sit. The
only available piece of furniture was an uncomfortable-looking park
bench. "I'm renovating my house, too."

"Really?" Halpert's eyes gleamed eagerly behind
wire-rimmed glasses. It was a response I'd gotten used to receiving
from other owners of partly restored houses. "How long have you
been working on it?" he asked.

"About three months. I'm almost done with my living room."

"Oh." His face fell and he looked around, shoulders
slumping inside his "Save the Whales" T-shirt. "We've
lived here four years. This room has been like this for six months.
There's never any time…"

"I shouldn't wonder, with all your other activities."

"Yes, plus my wife travels a lot on account of her job, and
then there are the two kids."

As if on cue, the baby started to cry. Halpert scooped it up and
cradled it expertly against his shoulder. The cries stopped. I smiled
at the contrast between the infant and the big bear of a man. In
cutoff jeans and no shoes, his black hair curling wildly around his
head, David Halpert fit my image of a crusading young rabbi.

The baby began to beat on Halpert's head with the paint roller. He
caught its hand and said, "I'd better put her in her playpen.
Normally I don't believe in incarcerating children, but then again…
Excuse me a minute." He stepped over the rolled rugs and went
down the hallway toward the rear of the house.

Resigned to discomfort, I sat down on the park bench. It was close
to noon, and last night's fog had burned off early; the temperature
had risen to un-San Francisco-like heights. I took off my light
jacket and folded it on the bench beside me. Halpert returned in a
moment, dragging a kitchen chair behind him, and threw open the front
window.

"It's been a hectic morning," he said, seating himself
on the chair. "Did I mention that the police were here?"

"No. They got to you fast."

"Oh, yes—it was no later than ten o'clock. They showed
me a picture of the dead man." His dark eyes grew troubled. "I
recognized him. I should have recognized his name when you called
last night. But it had been several years and, frankly, it was one of
those unpleasant experiences you try to forget."

"Could you start at the beginning? Where did you know Jerry
Levin?"

"Here in San Francisco. Do you remember about five years ago
when the Hillel Foundation at San Francisco State was firebombed?"

Hillel was the Jewish student organization. "Yes. The police
thought it was the work of a neo-Nazi group, but they couldn't prove
it."

"Jerry Levin was one of the men they arrested and later let
go."

"But—"

"But he was Jewish. Yes."

"Why would he join such a group?"

"Alienation. It's a key word of our times."

"Alienation from his religion, you mean?"

"And his people. Our customs, our history, our very
life-style, if you want to call it that."

"I can see why someone might stop going to church… temple,
I mean. I'm a lapsed Catholic myself. But I've never felt the need to
firebomb the Newman Center."

Halpert looked uncomfortable. "Catholicism, perhaps, is not
so pervasive a tradition as Judaism. Our customs, if strictly
followed, can be very constraining. And then, of course, there's the
history of persecution, which can induce a certain paranoia…"

Halpert was obviously one of the new breed who can be found in all
branches of organized religion: modern thinkers who like to mix their
age-old beliefs with a good dose of psychology. It was a school of
thought I didn't much understand, having been raised in the
God-will-get-you-if-you're-not-good brand of Catholicism.

I said, "Did you actually know Jerry Levin?"

"I met him in jail, after the firebombing."

"
You
were in jail?"

"No, not that time." Halpert made an impatient gesture.
"I went to see Levin. I was affiliated with Hillel then and I
thought I might be able to help the man. Or if not help him, at least
gain some understanding of why he had done such a thing."

"You're certain he did?"

"I wasn't until I talked with him. Actually, talked isn't
quite the word. It was an unpleasant scene, with him raging and
screaming at me. It convinced me of his involvement in the
firebombing."

I tried to reconcile his picture of Levin with the timid, inept
young man I'd talked with the day before, but couldn't. "Was
Levin a student at State?"

"Yes, in the drama department. Apparently he was an excellent
actor; his instructors thought he had quite a future on the stage.
But after the police released him, he dropped out of school and
vanished."

Now it made more sense. Levin had been employing his acting skills
when he'd told me the story of the Torah Recovery Committee. But to
what end? "Were you able to contact any members of the
committee, by the way?" I asked. Halpert had promised to do so
when we'd set this appointment early in the morning.

"Yes." He looked at his watch. "In fact, Ben Cohen,
their Bay Area representative, is due here about now. He knows of
Levin too, and I thought you'd like to hear what he has to say
firsthand." He stood up. "Shall I make some coffee?"

"Don't go to any trouble on my account."

"It's no trouble. Besides, I think I'd better. Ben has never
been to the house before, and he's going to be shocked at this mess.
Maybe coffee will take his mind off it."

While Halpert fixed the coffee, I wandered around the living room,
stretching out the kinks that the hard bench had put in my back. The
rabbi returned with a tray, and I held it while he dragged a scarred
end table out from under the drop cloth. He arranged the ceramic
coffeepot, matching cups, and silver spoons on the table, then went
back for cream, sugar, and cloth napkins. I frowned, wondering if the
attractive display didn't just call attention to its disordered
surroundings. When the doorbell rang, Halpert was mere with all the
efficiency of a butler.

Ben Cohen was a stocky man with gray hair and a matching pale gray
suit. Halpert introduced us and unobtrusively dusted off the kitchen
chair before offering it to his guest. The two of us sat on the bench
and Halpert served coffee. After a glance at the room, Cohen devoted
himself to adding sugar and stirring. He sipped his coffee and nodded
appreciatively, then spoke in a deep, slow voice.

"Miss McCone, I understand you have been investigating this
man, Levin."

"Yes. I work for the attorney of the man who has been accused
of Jerry Levin's murder. I'm trying to build our defense."

"Then perhaps, as David has suggested, I should tell you what
we—the Torah Recovery Committee—know of Mr. Levin.
Anything you can add to that, of course, will help us."

"Help you with what?"

"The recovery of the scrolls that are still missing. But I'll
get to that shortly. You know what our work is?"

"Yes."

He paused, stirring his coffee, obviously taking the time to
gather his thoughts. "The first time we—our private
investigators—became aware of Mr. Levin was well over two years
ago. A young man of his description had appeared at the Temple Beth
Israel in White Plains, New York, claiming to be a journalist doing
an article on congregations in the New York area. He was very
convincing, and the rabbi gave him permission to talk to members of
the congregation. For several weeks thereafter, the man literally had
the run of the synagogue. Then, suddenly, he disappeared, and at the
same time, so did the temple's Torahs."

"Were the police called in?"

"Yes, but it was too late. The Torahs were gone, and the man
had vanished completely. There was not really any proof he had taken
the scrolls. But no one at the magazine he mentioned had ever been
approached about such an article, nor had they ever heard the name he
used.

"If this had been an isolated incident, our interest probably
would have stopped there. But soon after that, events repeated
themselves. First at a temple in Yonkers, and again in Elizabeth, New
Jersey. All in all, Mr. Levin robbed thirteen temples in New York,
New Jersey, and Pennsylvania over a two-year period."

"But how could he do that? Surely the thefts received
publicity. Wouldn't the congregations have been alert to someone of
Levin's description who claimed to be a journalist?"

"Levin didn't always claim to be a member of the press. At
one temple, he posed as a Ph.D. candidate doing a thesis. At another,
he took pictures, saying he was a photographer putting together a
book. There was endless variety to his stories. And—according
to the congregations— he was also extremely convincing."

"Yes, I imagine so. He certainly did a job of that on me
yesterday, when he claimed to be an investigator for your committee.
But how did you learn his real identity?"

"Purely by coincidence. The last synagogue the ingratiating
young man approached was Temple Emanuel, in King of Prussia,
Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia. There he was once again posing as a
magazine writer; probably he assumed he was far enough away from
White Plains that he could resume his first disguise. And using the
same story as he had earlier was not what gave him away."

"What did, then?" Halpert asked.

"A member of the congregation—a
man who had recently moved east from San Francisco—recognized
him as one of the men who had been arrested for the firebombing of
the Hillel Foundation here. He went to the rabbi, but before they
could confront Levin about it, he, and three of the temple's Torahs,
disappeared. It was unfortunate he got away, but at least we could
identify him."

"So you hired investigators in San Francisco," I said.

"Yes. They showed Levin's picture to various congregations,
both here and in other parts of the state, who had unwittingly
purchased stolen Torahs during the past two years. They all
identified Levin as the seller. Again, he had appeared so charming
and sincere that no one had thought to question the rightful
ownership of the scrolls he was selling until it was too late."