Past Imperfect

One

I spent the morning of Yom Kippur 1957 sprawled on my living room sofa, munching on crullers from Davis Bakery and perusing the Street & Smith’s football yearbook. Yom Kippur is the Day of Atonement, the most solemn of the Jewish High Holy Days. By all rights I should’ve been in synagogue beseeching God’s forgiveness for my assortment of sins over the previous year.

But it had been a hell of a week. A member of the Sohio board of directors hired me to find his teenage daughter after she ran off with the carpenter who’d spent the summer building a gazebo on the family estate. After considerable legwork, I tracked the two of them to a seedy boarding house in Lorain. There I used my tact and charm to convince the princess to return to her parents, but not before she doused me in elderberry wine and bit my left hand. Her father showed his appreciation for a job well done by accusing me of gouging him on the bill and shorting me by fifty bucks. After all of that, I preferred to do my beseeching on Yom Kippur in the comfort of my own home.

I was watching Perry Mason on television that evening when the telephone rang. Benny, it’s Herb Kline, said the voice on the line.

Rabbi…?

We missed you at services today. I hope everything’s all right.

Who is this?

It’s really me, Benny.

Jesus, Herb, I said. I didn’t realize you’d be taking attendance.

I only knew you weren’t there because I went looking for you. We had an incident this morning with one of our congregants. I think I need your professional help to sort it out.

What happened?

This isn’t something to discuss over the telephone, he said. Can we get together?

Sure. I guess so.

How soon can you get here?

Herb Kline and I grew up on the same block in Glenville. He’d been known as Rabbi since the ninth grade, when he cold-cocked a cracker transplant from West Virginia who called him a stinking Jew boy in gym class. Herb took the nickname to heart. After high school, he headed downstate to Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati.

I could conceive of only one scenario at Yom Kippur services that might put the Rabbi in immediate need of a private investigator. One of the faithful must have lost a wallet, watch, or something else of value. The owner likely dropped or misplaced his property. Herb, however, must’ve had some reason to suspect theft. He’d want me to get to the bottom of things as discreetly as possible—a handle-without-scandal assignment. The congregation’s reputation could take a hit if news of a pickpocket began circulating.

The Temple parking lot was dark and empty when I pulled my new Edsel in shortly after ten o’clock. I went to a side door and knocked, in keeping with Herb’s instructions. A moment later, a light came on. Through the window I saw a Negro janitor walking toward me with a ring of keys.

Yom Kippur services are over, he said as he opened the door. You’re a few hours late.

I’m here for a bris on Monday morning, I responded. I’m a couple of days early.

The Temple’s membership had long outgrown its building. Most gatherings featured wall-to-wall congregants, giving the place a steamy, claustrophobic feel. My visit that evening was something else again. The emptiness and quiet made the surroundings seem unfamiliar, so much so that I got lost on my way to the Rabbi’s study.

Eventually I found Herb. He was sitting at his desk, devouring a plate of baked chicken and mashed potatoes. I startled him when I came in the room.

Benny, you’re here, he said as he stood with a napkin tucked in his belt. Thanks for coming.

Not at all, Rabbi.

I apologize for this, he said, pointing at his dinner. I didn’t have time to go home, so I asked Eleanor to bring me something here.

If that’s your story, Herb, Yom Kippur technically ended at sundown. Presumably you didn’t jump the gun in breaking the fast.

The Rabbi started to defend himself but stopped when he realized I was just giving him the business. He returned to his seat and put down his knife and fork. I took the chair on the opposite side of the desk.

So why don’t you tell me who lost what, and why you think it was stolen, I started.

I don’t understand, Benny.

I figure somebody lost something valuable during services today, and you want me to find out where it went.

A theft sounds downright quaint compared to what happened this morning. Do you know Mendel Kahn?

I know of him, I said. Big into real estate. He’s on your board of trustees if I’m not mistaken.

Right. He’s also a former Nazi collaborator, according to the man who assaulted him during services.

You better explain that headline.

Mendel had gotten up to say hello to a friend, said Herb. "As he walked back to his seat, a man sitting on the aisle stood up and blocked his way. ‘It’s you!’ the man screamed. ‘It’s you! Farreter! Karsew!’"

What does that mean?

‘Traitor. Butcher.’ Then the guy started shoving Mendel around.

How did Kahn react? I asked.

The Rabbi shook his head. He didn’t react at all, at first, he said. Mendel just seemed dazed. Then some members of the congregation got between the two of them and asked the guy what he was screaming about. Services stopped for about half an hour while he explained. Mendel stayed calm. He listened to the allegations, then told everyone why they weren’t true.

What was the guy claiming?

He said he and Mendel came from the same town in Poland. According to him, Mendel was part of the Jewish council that ran the ghetto and took bribes from families trying to protect their husbands and sons from forced labor. Later, there were bribes from families trying to avoid deportation to Auschwitz.

That’s pretty serious stuff, I said after taking a deep breath.

There’s more, Herb continued. The guy said that later, when Mendel showed up at the concentration camp, the Nazis made him a kapo.

What’s that?

An inmate flunky who helped in overseeing the other inmates. Mendel got the job, according to the guy, and was absolutely brutal. He hit the other prisoners, and once beat one of them to death.

Who was the man making the accusations? I asked.

Marty Bluestein’s cousin from Michigan. He just happened to be here for the holidays.

An unfortunate coincidence for Mendel Kahn…

It’s a case of mistaken identity, according to him, said the Rabbi. Mendel’s from Poland, all right, and he was in the Nazi camps, but he says he wasn’t from that town, and the circumstances were different.

One of the Temple’s elder statesmen escorted Bluestein’s cousin from the building. Services resumed, and Kahn stayed till the end. As he exited, a few congregants approached to console him for the ordeal he’d endured.

But Kahn’s protestations of innocence didn’t convince the Rabbi. I’ve never completely trusted Mendel, he said. There’s always been something about him that didn’t add up.

Like what?

Like how did he have the cash to invest in real estate so soon after emigrating to this country?

Just exactly what do you want me to do about this?

I’ve got to stay out in front of this problem, Herb explained. I’ve got to know whether Mendel’s history is subject to attack.

It came down to a matter of dollars and cents. The Temple was raising three-quarters of a million dollars to buy land in Beachwood for construction of a new building. The board of trustees appointed Kahn as chairman of the committee in charge of the project, and he was aggressively soliciting funding pledges from the bigwigs in the Jewish community. Herb believed those commitments would vanish if Kahn were exposed as a Nazi collaborator.

No one will want their name associated with a building promoted by a war criminal, the Rabbi said.

So how am I supposed to find out whether Kahn did the Nazis’ dirty work? I asked. That was more than ten years ago, on a different continent.

If this were easy, I wouldn’t need a professional to investigate, Herb said. And by the way, you’re going to have to wait for payment, till I figure out where to tuck this into the budget.

The Rabbi shook my hand vigorously as I turned to leave. Thank you for taking this on, he said. You’re doing the Temple a great service.

You aren’t really giving me much of a choice, I muttered.

This is a once-in-a-lifetime assignment, Benny. How could you pass it up?

How could I pass it up? I should’ve found a way. As I drove home that night, I foresaw only frustration in trying to prove either the sinister past Bluestein’s cousin ascribed to Kahn or the benign version Kahn claimed for himself. This was not how I’d planned to spend my fall. I couldn’t help but see it as my penance for taking a free pass on Yom Kippur.

Two

I would’ve preferred not to call Marty Bluestein on a Sunday, but I wanted to get in touch before his cousin left town, so I dialed his number the next morning just after ten. Bluestein answered on the third ring. He and I had seen each other around over the years, so I didn’t have to explain who I was.

I heard there was a little excitement at Temple yesterday morning, I said after the obligatory pleasantries.

Yeah, Bluestein answered. My cousin ran into a long-lost friend.

I was wondering whether I could come talk to him about it.

What’s your interest?

I have some business with Mendel Kahn, I said. I want to make sure he’s on the up-and-up.

It was a flimsy subterfuge. But I didn’t dare reveal that Rabbi Kline had hired me to investigate one of his most prominent congregants.

Sure, come on over, said Marty.

Bluestein owned a dry-cleaning business on Kinsman near Lee Road. He and his wife lived a couple of miles east of there, on a side street in Cleveland Heights. I pulled up in front right at noon.

Divina went to visit her niece, to give us a chance to talk, Bluestein said as he showed me into the living room. Let me go get my cousin.

What’s his name, Marty?

Jacob. Jacob Gertner.

A few moments later, Bluestein led a tall, slump-shouldered man in from the back of the house. I estimated Gertner’s age at around thirty-five. He wore a dark maroon knit shirt buttoned to the top under his wrinkled black suit. When we shook hands, he smiled just enough for me to see his mouthful of dentures.

Jacob first came here from Europe but found Detroit better to his liking, Bluestein explained as we sat down. He still comes back to town for most of the Jewish holidays.

Ford, Gertner responded curtly when I asked him where he worked. Tractor manufacture at Highland Park. He spoke with a thick accent, but I could understand what he was saying.

I heard about the brush-up at the Temple yesterday morning…

Ach, Gertner grunted as his jaw tightened and his face turned bright red. He appeared angry that I’d brought up the subject, though he must’ve known why I came.

Come on, Jacob, Bluestein said. Mr. Gold wants to hear what you have to say about Mendel Kahn.

That is not his name, snarled the cousin. He is Yitzhak Fried, and he is from the same town in Poland where I am from.

What can you tell me about him? I asked.

Like I said yesterday, Fried was on the Council that ran the ghetto. Then I saw him at Auschwitz. The man is a murderer. He deserves to die.

Gertner spent the next hour and a half giving me the background. He came from Bedzin, a Polish town with around fifteen thousand Jews before the War. The Nazis forced them into a ghetto after invading and crammed in another ten thousand from surrounding areas.

Fried was a lawyer in town. The Germans nominated him to serve on the Council that ran the ghetto. It had responsibility for everything—rationing food, making medical care available, regulating the meager business Jews could still conduct, fulfilling whatever whim the Nazis chose to indulge.

According to Gertner, Bedzin Jews resented the Council, believing it was all too willing to push the Nazi agenda. Fried supposedly took this to an extreme by informing the ghetto police about a surprise attack the Jewish resistance was planning on the local German authorities.

They should have killed him then, Gertner said.

Fried went on to distinguish himself as the most corrupt member of a notoriously corrupt Council. As the official in charge of employment matters, Fried assigned men and boys to fill the Germans’ quota for their various labor camps outside of Bedzin. The conditions were inhuman and the pay often nonexistent. Families gave Fried bribes to keep their husbands and sons from having to go. Fried would take their money or jewelry or whatever they had of value. With the loot in hand, he often chose those very men and boys for the next work detail demanded by the Nazis.

Later, the Council had to designate families for transport to the Auschwitz death camp. Fried and his compatriots would choose twice as many people as the Nazis decreed, then accept bribes from those who still could offer something to buy their way out. This only provided a temporary reprieve for the victims. All the Jews from Bedzin eventually ended up in a cattle car to Auschwitz, including Fried himself and his fellow Council members.

Fried, however, didn’t meet his demise in the gas chambers. The Nazis instead put him in charge of a crew working at a big rubber factory, where he again distinguished himself in a notorious way. Most laborers at the factory didn’t last more than a couple of months. Fried’s Jews (as he called them) had an even shorter life expectancy, given the brutal way he thrashed them when their efforts didn’t meet his exacting standards.

Fried made a show of it. He carried a wooden club wrapped in leather and swung it wildly. The Germans on site liked nothing better than to watch him savagely pummel one of his own.

Did you see this yourself? I asked Gertner.

I worked in a different part of the factory. But I talked to the men on Fried’s crew, and everybody knew how he treated them.

I heard you said at Temple yesterday morning that Mendel Kahn once killed a man.

Yitzhak Fried, corrected Gertner. "A member of his crew spilled a bucket of soapy water at the factory when he went to mop the floor. Fried struck him three times from behind, and the last one snapped his neck. The man fell down and drowned in the

puddle."

So what happened to Fried at the end of the War? I asked as I lit a cigarette.

I never knew, Gertner replied. He disappeared from camp when they were shutting it down before the Russians arrived.

You mean he escaped?

He might have. We all were hoping someone had killed him.

Neither you nor anyone you know ever saw him again?

Not until yesterday.

That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, Mr. Gertner, I said. How sure are you that Mendel Kahn in Cleveland is the same man you’ve been describing?

There’s no doubt whatsoever. The man at temple yesterday was Yitzhak Fried.

So what do you think, Marty? I asked Bluestein after Gertner had excused himself. Could Kahn really be Herr Fried?

I just can’t tell, Bluestein answered. My cousin almost never talks about his experiences in the camp. I don’t think he’s crazy… I suppose he might be right.

But what about Kahn? Is he the sort of person who could extort blood money from his neighbors and bludgeon a man to death?

I must admit, Benny, I find it a little hard to swallow.

When Gertner reentered the living room, I asked whether there were any differences between the way Fried looked and the way Kahn had appeared the previous morning.

Fried has put on a lot of weight, and he is a little shorter than I remembered, said Gertner. Also, he wore a mustache in Bedzin. He does not have one now.

Anyone you can think of who could identify our man in Cleveland as Fried?

Most of the people from Bedzin died at Auschwitz, Gertner said. Some may have survived.

How about men from the rubber factory?

Again, I am sure there are some survivors, but I would not know how to find them.

I took down Gertner’s telephone number and address in Detroit, thanked him for his time, and wished him safe travels back home. I fought off the impulse to give an assurance that we’ll get the bastard, or something to that effect, for several reasons. I wasn’t a partisan in this conflict. At least not yet. My charge from the Rabbi was to get the facts—just the facts. Also, I wasn’t all too sure Gertner had the right man. His antipathy toward Fried ran so deep he was bound to react viscerally to anyone who even vaguely looked like him. The ID might have resulted more from Gertner’s rage than it did from any actual resemblance between the supposed before-and-after picture.

There was another reason I didn’t play cheerleader for Gertner’s cause. I wanted him to be wrong in fingering Mendel Kahn. In May 1945, I marched into the Ebensee concentration camp as part of the liberating force of the Eightieth Infantry Division. There I witnessed unspeakable horrors I’d spent the years since trying to erase from my memory.

Kahn was no friend of mine. I didn’t even know the man. Still, his exposure as a Nazi collaborator would bring the nightmare back to life. As I drove home Sunday afternoon, I found myself hoping that my session with Jacob Gertner had been a complete waste of time.

Three

On Sunday evening, I had dinner with Sylvia Smolens at her apartment on Shaker Square. I’d been seeing Sylvia steadily for nearly three years. She and I had a standing date on Saturdays, but given the holiday, we postponed the weekly rendezvous by twenty-four hours.

Sylvia was a widow. Her husband died in the Battle of Bloody Ridge, in Korea, the summer of 1951. For two years afterwards, Sylvia stayed in bed, staring at the ceiling. By the time I met her, she had pulled herself together. She went to work downtown keeping the books for a jeweler in the Hippodrome Building. I got to know her when I still had my office there.

How’d the Browns do today? Sylvia asked as we sipped our coffee with dessert.

They played last night, in Pittsburgh.

Who won?

What, you lay a bet on the game? I teased. Since when do you care about football?

You’d be surprised. I told you I was a cheerleader at Heights.

Sylvia could almost still pass as a member of the pep squad. She was of average height and on the slender side, but curvaceous in build. She had dark brown hair, blue eyes, a thimble of a nose, and a clear, unwrinkled complexion. She almost always had her thin lips made up in the same bright red color. Sylvia was the pensive sort, and she often had an earnest-but-concerned expression on her face. When she smiled, she displayed a mouthful of white, perfectly aligned teeth.

So tell me more about this mysterious new case, Sylvia said, changing the subject. Who are you investigating, and what did he do?

I really can’t talk too much about it, Syl. My client could get in a lot of trouble if anyone found out about this job.

I hope it’s all on the up-and-up…

It’s not illegal, if that’s what you mean, I said. It’s just extremely sensitive. The person I’m investigating could have my client fired if he found out what I was doing.

Well, by all means, don’t get caught then.

A short while later, we made our way into Sylvia’s living room and played tenuously at a game of backgammon. Between rolls, Sylvia asked whether I’d thought any more about her brother’s offer.

Hon, do we really have to talk about that?

Of course not, she replied. Not if you don’t want to.

The truth was, I’d been dodging the question for some time. Sylvia’s brother Ronald was a corporate lawyer with his own small firm. Ron wanted to add a litigation practice, and he’d invited me to join him as a full partner to spearhead the effort.

I was an attorney as well as a private investigator. I’d started out exclusively in the law, and did pretty well at it, before the War. But I returned from my tour in Europe with what could charitably be described as an addled brain, and by the time I put the puzzle back together, my trial skills had atrophied to a point where I needed to find a new way to earn a living. Detective work fell into my lap, and I did at least passably well at it. But I kept my law license, just in case…and after a few years, I got a random chance to return to the courtroom in a high-profile, high-stakes lawsuit. The experiment turned out well—so well, in fact, that I’d taken on several other cases in the ensuing years.

It’s just that you’re always saying how frustrated you are with your work, said Sylvia.

And she was right: As a lawyer, I felt like a frustrated private investigator; and when I was working cases as a private eye, I felt like a frustrated lawyer. I always had complaints about whichever job I was working, and pined for the profession that was currently on hold.

I shrugged. Perpetual dissatisfaction is part of my inimitable charm. I make accentuating the negative into an art form. In my eyes, the glass is always half empty, and ready to spring a leak.

That sums it up, alright, said Sylvia, Always the pessimist!

But of course, this rosy perspective largely explained how even thinking about Ronald Blumenthal’s generous proposition turned into a wrenching ordeal. But there was something else at play. The way I saw it, deciding my future with Sylvia’s brother meant deciding my future with her as well. Marriage to Sylvia seemed like part of a package deal, along with the corner office and membership at Lake Forest Country Club.

It only made sense. Ron never would’ve offered partnership to a part-time attorney with a spotty practice who didn’t also happen to be a future in-law.

I was convinced I loved Sylvia Smolens. But I couldn’t come to grips with the prospect of marriage. I’d had a wife, years earlier, but the marriage crashed and burned, and the divorce nearly destroyed me. Afterwards, I became committed to avoiding a repeat performance, no matter what.

My aversion to wedlock had already scotched one serious relationship—when it came time to fish or cut bait, I chose the latter option, even though I couldn’t have adored my then-girlfriend any more than I did. I now found myself in the same bind with Sylvia, the only woman I desired—but maybe not quite enough to have and to hold till death did us part. I just couldn’t