Time Bomb

“All I’m saying, Dora,” said Mrs. Steinberg, “is that after all this time maybe we have to assume the worst.”

“Feh,” said Morgenstern, shaking a thick fist. “Always with the gloom and doom. Chicken Little. The smog’s falling.”

“I’ve lived,” said Mrs. Steinberg, drawing herself up, “through plenty. I know the way things are.”

“Lived?” said Morgenstern. “And what’ve I been doing? Hanging on the wall like an oil painting?”

Milo looked at Mrs. Steinberg. “Besides the amount of time she’s been gone, do you have any reason to assume the worst?”

All eyes focused on the black-haired woman. She looked uncomfortable. “It just doesn’t make sense. Sophie wasn’t the type to wander off. She was a very… regular person. Attached to her house, to her books. And she loved Venice- she’d lived here longer than any of us. Where would she go?”

“What about relatives?” said Milo. “She ever mention any?”

Rabbi Sanders said, “The only family she talked about were her brothers and sisters killed by the Nazis. She talked a lot about the Holocaust, the evils of fascism.”

Mrs. Sindowsky said, “She talked a lot about politics, period.”

“Tell the plain truth,” said Morgenstern. “She was a Red.”

“So?” said Mrs. Cooper, “That’s some sort of crime in this free country, Sy? Expressing political views? Don’t make to them like she was a criminal.”

“Who says it’s a crime?” Morgenstern retorted. “I’m only stating facts. The plain truth. What she was, was what she was. Red as a tomato.”

“What does that make me?” said Mrs. Cooper.

“You, my darling?” said Morgenstern. “Let’s say pink.” Smile. “When you get excited, maybe a nice shade of fuchsia.”

“Ahh,” said the plump woman, turning her back on him and folding her arms under her bosom.

Milo said, “The poster says she disappeared around here. How did that happen?”

“We were having an evening social,” said the rabbi. “A couple of weeks after Rosh Hashanah- Jewish New Year. Trying”

“Trying to rejuvenate community spirit,” Mrs. Sindowsky broke in, as if reciting from a lesson book. “Get a little action going, right, Rabbi?”

Sanders smiled at her, then turned to Milo. “Mrs. Gruenberg showed up but left after a short while. That was the last anyone saw her. I assumed she’d gone home. When the mail started piling up at her door, I got worried. I used my key and let myself into her unit and saw she was gone. I called the police. After forty-eight hours had passed, Detective Mehan agreed to come down.”

“And the last time you saw her- at the social- was around eight?”

“Eight, eight-thirty,” said Sanders. “That’s only an estimate- the social began at seven-thirty and ended at nine. She wasn’t there during the last half hour. We pulled up chairs and had a discussion. So she left some time before eight-thirty. No one’s really sure.”

“Did she bring a car or come on foot?”

“On foot. She didn’t drive, liked to walk.”

“It’s gotten kind of tough around here to be walking at night,” said Milo.

“Good of you to notice,” said Morgenstern. “Days aren’t so wonderful either.”

“She wouldn’t have worried about that?”

“She certainly should have,” said Mrs. Steinberg. “With all the nogoodniks and lowlife hanging around, taking over the neighborhood- all the drugs. We used to enjoy the beach. You come around here during the week, Officer, and you won’t see us taking the sun like we used to. All of us used to walk, to swim- that’s why we moved here. It was paradise. Now when we go out at night, we take a car, in a group. Park it back on Speedway and walk to the shul, marching like a battalion of soldiers. On a nice summer night, a late sunset, maybe we’ll take a longer walk. Still all together- as a group. Even then we feel nervous. But Sophie never joined in any of that. She wasn’t a joiner. She lived here a long time, didn’t want to admit things had changed. You couldn’t talk to her- she was stubborn. She walked around like she owned the neighborhood.”

“She liked to walk,” said Sanders. “For exercise.”

“Sometimes,” said Morgenstern, “exercise isn’t so healthy.”

Mrs. Cooper frowned at him. He winked at her and smiled.

Milo said, “Rabbi, you lived next to her. What was her state of mind during the last few days before she disappeared?”

“The last few days?” said Sanders. He rolled his pipe in his palm. “Truthfully, she probably was very upset.”

“Probably?”

“She wasn’t one to express emotions openly. She kept to herself.”

“Then why do you say she was upset?”

Sanders hesitated, looking first at his students, then Milo.

“There was,” he said, “a crime. Someone she knew.”

“What crime?” said Morgenstern. “Say it. A murder. Drugs and guns, the whole shebang. Some black boy she was renting to. He got shot, over drugs.” He squinted and his eyebrows merged like mating caterpillars. “Aha! That’s the big secret you can’t tell us about, right?”

Milo said, “Do you know anything about that?”

Silence.

Mrs. Sindowsky said, “Just what we heard from the rabbi here. She had a tenant; he got shot.”

“None of you knew him?”

Shakes of heads.

“I knew of him but not him,” said Mrs. Cooper.

“What did you know?”

“That she’d taken in a boarder. Once I saw him on his little motorbike, driving home. Nice-looking boy. Very big.”

“There was plenty of talk,” said Morgenstern.

“What kind of talk?” Milo said.

“A black kid- whadya think? Was she putting herself in danger.” Morgenstern looked accusingly at the women. They seemed embarrassed. “Everyone’s nice and liberal,” he said, “till it comes to putting the mouth where the money is. But Sophie was a Red- it was just the kind of thing she’d do. You think he got her into some kind of trouble, the kid? Keeping his dope money in the house-they came to get it and got her?”

Milo said, “No. There’s no evidence of that.”

Morgenstern gave him a conspiratorial wink. “No evidence, but you’re coming around asking questions. The plot thickens, eh, Mr. Policeman? More meat, more worms.”

***

Milo asked a few more questions, determined they had nothing else to offer, and thanked them. We left, replacing our skullcaps in the leather box on the way out, walked a ways up Ocean Front, and had a cup of coffee at a teriyaki stand. Milo glared at the winos hanging around the stand and they drifted away, like sloughing dead skin. He sipped, running his gaze up and down the walk-street, letting it settle on the synagogue.

After a few moments all four old people came out of the building and walked off together, Morgenstern in the lead. An elderly battalion. When they were out of view, Milo tossed his coffee cup in the trash and said, “Come on.”

The dead bolts on the synagogue’s doors were locked. Milo’s knock brought Sanders to the door.

The rabbi had put a gray suit jacket over his shirt, had his pipe in his mouth, still unlit, and was holding an oversized maroon book with marbled page-ends.

“A little more of your time, Rabbi?”

Sanders held the door open and we stepped into the anteroom. Most of the cookies were gone and only two