Magozzi chuckled, started to rinse the plates and put them in the dishwasher. ‘If I remember correctly, you had Grace MacBride pretty firmly pegged as the Monkeewrench killer in one of your “nice and neat” scenarios.’

‘She was a perfectly logical suspect.’

‘But the zebra did it.’

‘So just that one time, I might have been a little misguided. Doesn’t mean I’m not dead-on with this one. You got a Tums or something? That last brat is talking back in a foreign language.’

‘In the cupboard with the glasses.’

‘You’ve got glasses? How come I was drinking soda out of a can?’

‘You wanted a glass?’

‘Jeez, Leo, I’m not totally uncivilized.’ He found the Tums and popped a few, leaned back against the counter and chewed thoughtfully. ‘You know, speaking of Monkeewrench, we could ask them to plug Gilbert and Kleber into the software they used on all the cold cases, see if anything pops. Man, that program rocked. Found connections in seconds we’d been looking for for years.’

‘Couldn’t hurt, I suppose. I’ll give Grace the names tonight, ask her to run them.’

Gino gave him a sidelong glance of scrutiny, and Magozzi grimaced. He was going to get another lecture.

‘You know I love Grace McBride, right?’

Magozzi rolled his eyes.

‘Hey, I don’t mean to bust your balls over this, but tell me honestly, what kind of a future do you see for yourself with her? You gotta face it, Leo, she’s walking wounded. Paranoid as hell. And her track record for normal relationships stinks. I mean, the last man she loved was a serial killer.’

Magozzi glowered at him. ‘She’s getting better, Gino.’

‘Oh really? Then how come she took her piece to the movies last week?’

‘A lot of weirdos go to the movies these days.’

‘Leo, you went to a Sunday matinee to see a cartoon. Hey, don’t get me wrong, I’m all for working with Monkeewrench – they’re great folks, every one of them. But I think you need to be careful, maybe keep the relationship about work for now.’

‘Are you finished?’

‘Yes. End of lecture.’

‘Thank you. And don’t call them Monkeewrench.’

Gino cringed. ‘Oh yeah, I forgot. Damn, I just can’t get that name out of my head.’

And neither could the rest of the city, Magozzi thought.

‘They come up with a new one yet?’

‘Not as far as I know.’

Gino’s chin jutted forward. ‘I’m going to give that some thought. Help them out.’

16

It was one-thirty and eighty-four degrees by the time Magozzi and Gino arrived at Biederman’s Funeral Home, and both of them were miserably hot, back in their jackets to conceal their guns.

Sol Biederman was waiting for them at the front door. He looked a little better than he had yesterday when they’d met over the body of Morey Gilbert, but his eyes were still rimmed with red. Another downer about getting old, Magozzi thought. Tissues took a lot longer to recover from crying jags, and just about everything else.

Sol led them into a vast sitting room filled with furniture that had been fashionable thirty years ago. The air smelled of fading flowers and scorched coffee, and the stale, cloying scent of the cheap cologne someone had worn to the last viewing.

The air-conditioning, if there was any, was turned very low. Gino flopped into a maroon wing-back chair, grabbed a tissue from a nearby box, and mopped his forehead.

‘Who would have thought April could be so warm, eh? I have a man working on the air conditioner now, but in the meantime, please take your jackets off, Detectives. Be comfortable.’

‘Thanks, we’re fine,’ Gino said, his reddening face belying his words.

‘I’m not expecting anyone until five. We’re alone here. No one will see your guns except me, and I’m very good at keeping secrets.’

Gino was out of his jacket before by-the-book Magozzi could give him so much as a dirty look for defying department policy. He’d just decided to shame Gino by sweltering in his jacket when Sol gestured to his own bare arms below the short sleeves of his shirt.

‘If you don’t remove your jacket, Detective Magozzi, I’ll be forced to put on mine. I’m an old man. I could die from the heat.’

Magozzi grinned and slipped off his sports coat while Sol settled in a nearby chair.

‘I assume you have some follow-up questions for me. I’m afraid I wasn’t much help to you yesterday.’

Gino pulled out his notebook. ‘You did fine yesterday, Mr Biederman. And we understand how upset you were. But the problem is, everything got a little more complicated this morning.’

Sol nodded sadly. ‘I heard about Rose Kleber. Her daughter called shortly before you arrived. Such a terrible thing, an unbelievable thing, and I had to ask myself, is there a madman out there killing old Jews?’ He looked from Gino to Magozzi. ‘That’s why you’re really here, isn’t it? You’re wondering the same thing.’

‘We’re looking at a lot of things, Mr Biederman,’ Magozzi said. ‘So you knew Rose Kleber? She was a friend of yours?’

Sol shook his head. ‘Not a friend exactly, but it’s a small community. Everyone passes through here eventually. I took care of Mrs Kleber’s husband when he died ten years ago.’

‘Was she a friend of Mr Gilbert’s?’

‘Not that I know of.’

‘And you would have known that, because you were Morey Gilbert’s best friend, right?’

Sol looked off into the middle distance, blinking rapidly. He didn’t answer for a moment, as if it had taken that long for the question to travel across the space between them. ‘Yes, absolutely. I would have given my life to save Morey’s.’

It was such a calmly delivered, matter-of-fact statement that Magozzi believed it immediately.

Gino leaned forward in his chair. ‘This is the deal, Mr Biederman. These two killings weren’t random. They weren’t accidents. Somebody wanted both Morey Gilbert and Rose Kleber dead, and if the same person killed them both, that means they had something in common we haven’t discovered yet: something that might lead us to the killer. So any little detail you can remember, even if it was just Morey mentioning her offhand, or recognizing her on the street, anything like that could really help us out.’

Sol thought about it for a moment, then shook his head. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t think so.’

‘They were both in concentration camps during the war. I’m sure you knew that,’ Magozzi said.

Sol raised his left arm, showing the faded numbers on the underside. ‘Of course I knew.’

Gino gaped at the old man’s arm. ‘You know, my whole life I never met one person who was in a concentration camp, and now you’re the third in twenty-four hours.’

Sol gave him a small smile. ‘We don’t exactly advertise, but there are more of us than you might imagine. Especially in this neighborhood.’

‘Damn, I’m really sorry,’ Gino said.

‘Thank you, Detective Rolseth.’ He looked down at the ropy veins in his old hands. ‘I’m trying to imagine why someone would want to kill people who survived the camps. What’s the point?’ He spread his hands in a poignant gesture. ‘We’re all old. Pretty soon we’re going to be dead anyway.’

And what do you say to that? Magozzi thought, taken aback by the man’s directness. ‘We’re taking a look at hate crimes.’

Sol met his eyes and held them with a gaze so riveting Magozzi couldn’t have looked away if he tried. ‘When you hate Jews enough to want to eliminate them, you kill the breeders, Detective, you understand?’ Magozzi tried to nod, but it felt like his neck was frozen. ‘The Nazis taught us that. That’s what they called the young ones – breeders – as if we were animals. Sure, they killed old people, but only because they were useless, they got in the way. This has to be something else.’

Gino hadn’t moved since the old man had started talking. Finally he released a long exhale and spoke softly. ‘Then we need to find some other connection between your friend Morey and Rose Kleber. Like we said before, something else they had in common that would put them both in a killer’s path. Maybe they met each other back in the camps, kept up some sort of contact over the years?’