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bucket and Vim and paint remover and whatever, rolls up his sleeves, and goes to work.”
    ”How do you know he was a Nazi?”
    ”He told me,” the rabbi said. ”The time I took him out a cup of coffee. ‘Why are you doing this?’ I asked him. ‘Because I was a Nazi,’ he said. More than likely he was SS as well.”
    ”And why is that, Rabbi?”
    ”They were the only ones with the money and the resources and the organization to be able to leave Germany before the end,” he explained patiently. ”Of course, they had the most reason to leave, as well, as it was estimated they were responsible for something like ninety-five percent of all the atrocities.”
    ”And where’d they go? South America?”
    ”South America,” he agreed. ”Uruguay. Argentina alone gave them seven thousand blank passports. South Africa.”
    ”Here?” I asked uneasily.
    ”In Mr. Allan Ryan’s book, he estimates ten thousand came here. Naturally, they’d all be trembling old men now in their middle seventies, like me.” He took off his skullcap, looked at it, gave it a little shake, then put it on again. ”Not a particularly cheerful subject for such a festive occasion, if I may say so, Mr. Daniel. Have you some particular interest in the subject? A professional one, perhaps?”
    ”I sure as fuck hope not,” I said, but under my breath. To the diminutive rabbi I merely repeated what I had told Mr. Aaron Lubinski, that a passing interest, nothing more, had been aroused by Nathan’s library.
    ”Oh, yeah,” I said, snapping my fingers. ”I know what I did want to ask you about. Did you ever happen to come across those rabbi mysteries? Monday the Rabbi Slept Late, Tuesday he did something else and Wednesday I can’t remember what?”
    ”Indeed I did,” he said, nodding. ”I have the whole series. My son, the well-known comedian, sends me one every time I have a birthday. He thinks he’s shocking me.”
    ”So what do you do?”
    ”I pretend to be deeply shocked,” he said. ”Who am I not to give my only son what he wants most?” He went off to rejoin Mrs. Rabbi, who was beckoning energetically to him from a nearby table, one of two that had been left in place when the rest were dismantled to provide space for cutting the rug. I went off, rather hastily, to put the merest splash of booze in my ginger ale.
    It was a little after eleven when the party started running down; some of the more elderly of the guests had already left, as had some of the ones with young children. I tracked down Aaron Lubinski and asked him to please join us in his cousin’s den in five.
    ”Why not?” he said.
    I cut in briefly on Evonne, who was dancing a spirited cha-cha-cha with the best-looking of the ushers, and asked her the same thing.
    ”Sure, toots,” she said.
    When we had all gathered, Annie got me Frank on the phone.
    ”Anything?” I asked him.
    ”One fender,” he said. ‘Annie took care of it.”
    ”OK, roger and out,” I said. ”Tell the head hot-rodder I’ll be down in a few minutes to pay him off.”
    Frank said, ”OK, pal,” and rang off.
    ”What fender?” I asked Annie.
    She looked at a slip of paper in front of her.
    ”Fender of some kind of a technicolor circus car,” she said. ”Completely totaled.”
    ”Very funny,” I said.
    ”Fender of a dark green Buick Le Sabre,” she said. ”The name on the keys was Jacob Vineberg. Couldn’t find a Jacob Vineberg. Was directed to a Samuel Vineberg. Told him his fender had been slightly dented by one of the parkers. He laughed. I said, ‘What’s so funny?’ He said, ‘It’s not my fender, it’s my brother’s, so let him worry.’ ”
    ”How about you, babe?” I said to Evonne. ”See anything untoward?”
    ”Well,” she said, frowning prettily, ”I don’t know if it was untoward or not but I saw a man in one of the bedrooms smooching with a lady who wasn’t the one he came with.”
    ”Well!” I exclaimed. ”Did you ever!”
    ”I saw something,”