A City Called July Read Free

want Geller’s hide, if they want a running start on getting some of their own back, they have to go to the cops. They’re the only game in town on a thing like this. They are victims of fraud. They’ve had the till ransacked and you want them to look the other way. Let me think. There’s breach of trust, there’s fraud over two hundred dollars, theft over two hundred, uttering forged documents, probably false registration of titles. We’re talking about half the criminal code here, Rabbi, and you want it hushed up. I don’t believe you.”
    “We thought that you might consider …”
    “Are you kidding, Saul?” I said, trying out his first name. “A job like this requires an army of trained personnel. We are looking for a needle in a haystack, and the only thing we know for sure is that the haystack has moved out of town. You want me to hang around the hotels in Miami Beach in case he walks in, Rabbi? It’s more than a million to one that you’d ever hear from either of us again. Should I pack a bag and look for him in Europe? Have you any idea what that would cost? Saul, be reasonable. And speaking of large amounts of money, have you any idea how much he got away with? In round figures?”
    The rabbi cleared his throat and said something. I didn’t catch it. “I beg your pardon?”
    “Two …”
    “What?’
    “Two million dollars.”
    “Oh, my God! Two million! And you want to keep it buttoned up! What about his wife? What about his partners? Are they going to cooperate and help keep the lid on? You can’t just replace the divot and play through. Somebody’s going to want to yell good and loud. Rabbi, you can’t honestly tell me that that would be letting the community down?”
    “The people I’ve talked to don’t want a fuss. They don’t want to see their names in the paper. That’s not unreasonable.”
    “Look, both of you, the Law Society has a fund that tries to pick up after crooked lawyers like Geller. Don’t flatter yourself that Geller’s the first. There are lots of Gellers. There’s a Geller in every ethnic community and Gellers wearing Trinity College blazers too. Geller is universal. Where was I …?” I was riding my rhetorical bicycle too fast again. “Oh, yeah. In order to get some of their money back, first of all Geller has to be disbarred. That’s a legal process. And it can’t happen unless you go to the police.”
    “We’d just as soon …”
    “Mr. Tepperman, if a thief broke into your store, wouldn’t you phone the cops right away? Well, this is the same thing.” Tepperman was moistening his lips again. He shifted inside his grey tweed coat. His face had taken on a high colour where his skin was pulled tightly across his cheekbones. The rabbi next to him looked birdlike and brittle. They both looked at me like I’d been beating them over the heads with two-by-fours. I felt like I was trying to roll the stone away from the gate to the ghetto. I was dealing with intelligent reasonable men. I’d known both of them for years. They both looked at me with frowns on their lined faces. I was being difficult. All they wanted was no fuss. Fuss was the enemy, fuss got into the papers, fuss was at the root of anti-Semitism. They hated fuss more than they hated Geller or more than they hoped to see the two million again. You had to respect them for it, I guess.
    “Tell me about his wife. Does he have a family?”
    “A boy and a girl. Ruth, his wife, is a sensible girl. She’s Morris Kaufman’s daughter. Your family knows them. Morris was in the needle trade in Toronto. Your grandfather would have known him on Spadina Avenue. Ruth is very worried, naturally. She hasn’t seen or heard from Geller. She doesn’t know where he is; she can’t even guess. I don’t think she knows about the money. I didn’t have the heart.”
    “And the partners?”
    “Only former partners. Geller was independent for the last ten years. He used to be with Bernstein, Wayne and Hart. But