Morris Goldman who owned a garage drifted toward where the rabbi was standing, talking loudly: “-a little shrimp of a guy, bald-headed with a potbelly, and he turns out to be married to a big gorgeous redhead, a shicksayet, who is half his age. Oh, Gut Shabbes, Rabbi. I was talking about this guy Hirsh.”

“You knew him?”

“I knew him like I know any customer. You know how it is, they’re waiting around for their car, you pass the time of day. Him I guess I knew a little better than most because he had an old car so he brought it in more often-brakes, flat tire. Once I put a new muffler on.”

“How’d he come to go to you?” asked one of the bystanders. “Your garage is way out of town.”

“He worked at the Goddard Lab and I get all the cars from there. My place is off Route 128, maybe five hundred yards from the Lab. You know, right at the foot of the cutoff just before you get to the Lab. They leave their cars with me for a lube job, a tune-up, and then walk to work from there.”

“You do all kinds of work?” asked the rabbi.

“You bet, and if I say so myself I’ve got as good a crew of mechanics as any place on the North Shore. I’ve got one man, an ignition specialist, I’ve had people come from as far away as Gloucester just so he can service them. Why, your car acting up on you, Rabbi?”

“I’ve been having a bit of trouble,” he said. “She’s hard starting. And sometimes when I come to a stop, she dies.”

“Well, it could be almost anything, Rabbi. Why don’t you ride out someday and let me take a look at it?”

“Maybe I will.” He thought he saw Miriam sending out distress signals, and excused himself. “Are you tired, dear? Would you like to go home now?”

“I think I should,” she said. “I’ll get my coat.”

He was waiting for her to find her things in the cloak-room when he saw a jubilant Jacob Wasserman and Al Becker bearing down on him.

“Well, Rabbi! Things certainly look a lot different now, don’t they?”

“How do you mean?”

“This announcement by the police, by the district attorney,” exclaimed Becker. “Of course, the D.A. was pussyfooting. He’s a politician and all politicians have to double-talk, but there’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that Hirsh was murdered. He as much as admitted it. So you’re vindicated! He got you off the hook. You’re in the clear.”

“If you’re referring to the burial service I conducted, Mr. Becker, I needed no vindication from the district attorney. And if I had, I would hardly consider it good news to be let off the hook as you put it, at the cost of a man’s murder.”

“Sure, sure, nobody likes to hear someone has been murdered. I’m sorry about it. Who wouldn’t be? But don’t you see-it knocks the pins out from under Mort Schwarz and his gang. You heard that he called off the regular Board meeting Sunday?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“You’ll probably get a card in the mail tomorrow.”

“And what significance do you attach to the cancellation?”

Wasserman rubbed his hands gleefully. “We think perhaps under the circumstances they want to see how the Hirsh business comes out before they bring up the matter of your resignation. I have it from a very reliable source that Marvin Brown refused to go ahead with laying out the road.”

“Refused? Why?”

“Because the district attorney may exhume the body.”

The rabbi gave a wan smile. “It comes to the same thing in the end, doesn’t it, Mr. Wasserman?”

“Oh, but Rabbi, there’s a difference. This is the civil authority, engaged in bringing a criminal to justice.”

“Of course.”

“What we’ve got to think about now is what steps to take. As far as Hirsh is concerned-” He shrugged his shoulders. “Well, it makes no difference to him what caused his death. He’s dead; we’ve got to concern ourselves about the living. Now, the business about your resignation. You don’t really want to resign, do you?”

“I wouldn’t have if this matter hadn’t come up.”

“Good. So we have to figure out a way to keep Schwarz from reading your letter to the Board. I’ve discussed it with Becker here, and we both decided the easiest and best way would be if you wrote Schwarz recalling your resignation.” As the rabbi was about to interpose, he hurried on. “You could say that in the light of recent events there is no longer any difference between you and the administration, and for that reason you are revoking your previous letter.”

“No.”

“But don’t you see, Rabbi, without that there’s just your letter of resignation. All he has to do is to read it and call for a vote. Strictly speaking, he doesn’t even have to call for a vote. He just announces, it. But if there are two letters, he’s bound to read them both and then he’ll have to explain the issue between you. Even then, you’re not out of the woods but at least we’ll have the advantage.”

The rabbi shook his head. “I’m sorry, gentlemen, but-”

“Now look here, Rabbi,” said Becker sternly. “Jake and I have gone all out for you. We’re trying to help you the best way we can, but there’s a certain amount you’ve got to do for yourself. You can’t expect us to work our heads off, calling up people, going to see them, explaining, when you won’t do your part.”

“I expect nothing.” He turned to Miriam, who was emerging from the cloakroom. “You’ll have to excuse me. My wife is very tired.”

Becker watched his retreating figure, then turned to Wasserman. “That’s what you get for trying to help a guy.”

Wasserman shook his head. “He’s been hurt, Becker. He’s a young man, practically a boy. And he’s been hurt…”

As they walked through the parking lot to their car, Miriam said, “Mr. Becker and even Mr. Wasserman seemed rather cool, David. Was it something you said to them?”

He reported the conversation, and she smiled wistfully. “So now you have no one behind you-not Mr. Wasserman, not Chief Lanigan, not Mr. Schwarz. Do you have to quarrel with everyone, David?”

“I didn’t quarrel with them. I just refused to ask Schwarz to disregard my letter. In effect, it’s begging him to keep me on.”

“But you do want to stay, don’t you?”

“Of course, but I can’t ask. Don’t you see I can’t ask? The relationship between the rabbi and the Board of Directors requires maintaining a delicate balance. If I have to beg them to let me stay when I’m only doing my job, how can I ever have any influence on them? How can I guide them? I would be just a rubber stamp for anything they wanted to do. Once they realized they made me knuckle under while exercising my official function as rabbi, what could I do? And what could they not do?”

“I suppose so,” she said softly. “And I know you’re right, but-”

“But what?”

“But I’m just a young married woman, a couple of hundred miles from my mother and my family, and I’m going to have a baby any day now.”

“So?”

“So I wish I were sure my husband had a job.”