Acts of Faith (46 page)

For what had saved him from temptation was not merely religious scruples, but rather his unabated yearning for Deborah.

“
W
ell, Mr. Lurie, indulging in a bit of peculation, are we?”

“You could have knocked, McIntyre,” Danny replied with annoyance, as the young partner unceremoniously entered his office.

“Oh, I beg your pardon. I didn’t realize you were such a stickler for protocol.”

Peter McIntyre III was being unusually arrogant to the majority stockholder in his family’s firm. He further outraged Danny by sitting down and propping his expensive Gucci loafers on the edge of the desk, remarking, “I bet you didn’t even think I knew that big a word, huh?”

“Frankly, no,” Danny answered with irritated impatience.

“Actually it’s related to the Latin
pecunia
, meaning money, which is itself derived—you won’t believe this, Danny—from
pecus
, meaning cattle.”

“Hey, will you get the hell out of here—”

Peter ignored him and continued with a grin. “Wonderful thing, Latin. Who would have thought that ‘peculation’ came from the word for cows? But then I guess they didn’t teach Latin in the schools you went to, eh, Dan?”

He leered at Danny for a moment and then drove
home his point. “But anyway it’s a crime, and you’ve committed it.”

Enraged, Danny stood up, leaned over, and shoved McIntyre’s feet off his desk.

“Now what the hell’s on your mind, Pete?”

“Well,” McIntyre began, “my family’s name for one. Mr. Alleyn’s for another.” He paused, aimed, and then fired: “And your head.”

Peter McIntyre III was determined to play out this moment for all it was worth.

“There must be a Jewish word for what you did, Mr. Lurie, something like ‘misappropriation of funds,’ ‘embezzlement,’ or ‘fraud’—check where appropriate.”

Danny shivered inwardly.

“You know something,” Pete went on quietly, “when I first met you, I thought you were the smartest guy who ever lived. In fact, I tried to copy you down to the slightest detail just to see if I could latch on to the secret.

“I bet you didn’t even notice that when you started going to Francesco for your suits, I had him cut mine too. I tried to keep up with all the reading you did. I even took a course in computing—which was one of your great gifts to our firm.”

Disquieted by this sudden flattery, Danny still did not say a word.

“I’ll even make a confession,” McIntyre continued. “I’d sometimes come back at one or two in the morning, when I knew you were working at home, and study all the documents on your desk, the words you’d circled, the notes you’d made—”

“In other words,” Danny murmured angrily, “you were a sneak thief.”

“Call it what you wish,” Peter conceded. “But it’s small potatoes compared to what you’ve done. I mean, your Walston Industries caper was a dazzling bit of legerdemain, which in other quarters might even be called grand larceny.”

Danny caught his breath. Since his urgent but short-lived “borrowing” of one and three-quarter million dollars
from the company coffers was nearly two years behind him, he had been lulled into a false sense of security. Still, he replied in what he hoped were confident tones.

“The fund I run for this firm is audited every six months, Peter. There’s never been the slightest question—”

“Oh, I know,” McIntyre answered. “There’s no one better at the old financial soft-shoe than Dan the Man. By the time you came up for scrutiny you had everything perfectly back in place. You’d already ‘bought’ Walston Industries and unloaded it—”

“For a
profit
,” Danny interrupted.

“Nominal, my friend, nominal,” his antagonist rebutted. “By curious coincidence a sum precisely equivalent to interest at the prime rate for the six days you held it. Now, dumb gentile that I am, I can’t understand why a guy with your smarts didn’t turn a better profit than that.”

“What’s your point?” Danny demanded.

“What I really want to know is what was
yours.
You must have done something incredibly … borderline with that dough. And my insatiable curiosity impels me to find out what.”

“Suppose I needed liquidity really fast to cover a temporary shortfall? Anyway, there’s no proof I ever did.”

McIntyre took his time, wanting to savor this moment like the last drop of a vintage port.

“I guess real computer literacy hasn’t hit Wall Street yet, Dan. Those poor backward supervisors only audit your printouts. They don’t inspect what might still be lurking deep down in your database.”

“Were you actually devious enough to check the contents of my private computer?” Danny was livid.

McIntyre nodded unrepentantly. “Lucky for the firm I did,” he said. “I don’t have to tell you what would happen if the S.E.C. got wind of this. Not only to you but to the entire partnership—a respected institution founded before your relatives were even puked up on Ellis Island.”

He paused for a moment. “That’s why I’d like to see
this thing worked out privately,” he said. “By the way, only my father and grandfather know about this. They’ve authorized me to speak on their behalf.”

“About what?” Danny asked.

“About something you probably won’t understand—preserving our good name. So here’s our proposal, which we regard as fair, equitable—and completely nonnegotiable.”

Danny held his breath as Peter strode up and down the large office, like a player warming up before a championship game.

He stopped at the farthest corner of the room and said softly, “You’ll sell us back your majority holding in McIntyre & Alleyn, for fifty cents on the dollar.”

“That’s outrageous.”

“Oh, I agree,” Pete replied with mock commiseration. “Believe me, Dan, I fought like hell for you. My father really didn’t want to go above twenty-five.”

Danny was speechless.

McIntyre continued, “Would you like a little time to think it over—say five or ten minutes?”

“What if I refuse?”

“Oh, that’s the beauty of it—you don’t have a choice. At the worst, the McIntyres and the Alleyns only risk embarrassment. You, my good man, risk going to the clink. Know what I mean?”

Danny flopped into his large leather chair. He closed his eyes for a moment, then sighed.

“Okay, draw up the papers and I’ll sign them. Just get the hell out of my office.”

“Sure, Danny, sure. The documents’ll be ready by eleven tomorrow, and we’d be very grateful if you were out of
our
office by twelve. Naturally, we’ll forward your mail.”

Again Pete smiled and held out his hand in valediction.

“Hey, I feel terrible leaving you here all alone. Could I buy you a drink or something? I mean, if you did something
crazy like jump out the window, that would kind of spoil the whole negotiation.”

Danny picked up the small gold clock on his desk—a Christmas present from the entire staff of the Fund—and hurled it at Peter McIntyre with all his might. It missed and shattered painfully against the wall.

“Don’t worry about it, Dan.” McIntyre smiled casually. “We can have the wall fixed. Good night, old buddy.”

I
 suppose anyone else in my position would have jumped off a bridge. But far from being desperate, I was curiously relieved. God had punished me for what had clearly been a sin. Though my motive had been only to save the
B’nai Simcha
from Schiffman’s larceny, and though the reason I had not paid that money back immediately was that the seven days of mourning for my father intervened, had I misappropriated the money for no more than thirty seconds, I would have been no less guilty.

Therefore, instead of drowning myself, or my sorrows, I went up to the little
shtibel
in the Bronx where I was now a regular. I knew that even late at night there would be one or two people studying the Bible and I could join them. Still, one of the scholars, Reb Schlomo, could sense that something was on my mind.

“You got troubles, Danileh?” I merely shrugged, but he took the response as being affirmative. “Trouble with your wife?” I shook my head. “Your health?”

“No.”

“Money troubles?” he pressed on.

Rather than be impolite, I answered, “Sort of.”

“Listen, Danileh,” the old man said compassionately. “I’m not exactly Rothschild, but if you need a few dollars, I could maybe tide you over.”

“That’s very kind, Reb Schlomo,” I replied. “But all I need is your companionship. Why don’t we read some Isaiah?”

“Fine, then, Isaiah it is.”

Three or four of us stayed up through the night, pausing only for glasses of tea. After morning prayers I finally found the courage to go home and face the rest of my life.

The lamp on my Ansafone was blinking. There was one message: “Will you please call Dean Ashkenazy at HUC.”

Five minutes later I was on the line with the head of Deborah’s old seminary. “Danny, I hope you don’t mind but I got your number from your sister,” he said. “I wouldn’t bother you if it wasn’t really serious, but I need your help.”

“How can I possibly help?”

“You know that ‘nonexistent’ synagogue up north where Deborah cut her teeth?”

“Sure, how could I forget those people?”

“Well, you’ll be happy to hear they haven’t forgotten you, either. Which is especially fortuitous since the man I was sending up this year has decided to play semipro football instead of becoming a rabbi. So I’m stuck. Will you do it, Danny?”

“By myself?”

“You mean you’ve forgotten how to read Hebrew?” the dean quipped.

I did not laugh. “With due respect, sir,” I protested, “I’m not … legitimate.”

“Come on, Danny,” he chided, “You know perfectly well that any Jew can run a service. Those people up north are counting on you to lead prayers—and especially to blow the
shofar.
”

“Will I have to give a sermon, too?” I asked nervously.

“Absolutely,” Ashkenazy replied. “And I know you’ll really enjoy going back to the books and preparing some good ones.”

I don’t have to tell you he was right.

I began to haunt the library at HUC and grew increasingly stimulated by the sort of avant-garde theology that was emanating from a whole new generation of scholars. In fact I loved so many of the books that I threw caution to the winds and actually went out and bought most of them.

I had not been so intellectually ignited since I had taken Beller’s course. When I revealed my new enthusiasm, Aaron even joked that I was “defecting to God,” but curiously I sensed that something in him was pleased.

I found myself studying till three or four
A.M.
, unable to tear myself away from the excitement of putting new perceptions onto paper.

Finally, two days before the New Year I set out, my rented station wagon loaded with books, my head filled with ideas.

I was no Deborah, but I think what I had come to call the “freeze-dried” congregation (add water once a year, and it fills the hall) responded to my enthusiasm.

Paradoxically, it was an initiation for me. Though I had read from the pulpit hundreds of times in my life, I had never given a sermon. Even my
bar mitzvah
speech, as is customary among the Orthodox, was merely an interpretation of the text to show my learning. This time I was expressing my own ideas and personal feelings, which I wanted to share with the congregation.

About our traditions. Our heritage. About what it meant to be a Jew in the year 1980. This was especially meaningful for them, since for the remainder of the year they were awash in a sea of Christians who, however tolerant, were unaware that we were their spiritual ancestors.

I tried to make everything relevant. During the Prayer For Our Country’s Leader, I referred to President Carter’s achievement in effecting the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt, and expressed our hope that it would ultimately bring harmony to that entire troubled region.

At first, I was embarrassed by the fact that they hung
on my every word. But gradually my superego permitted me to take some pleasure, and by the closing prayer on Yom Kippur, I actually felt pride.

Dr. Harris insisted that I remain after the final blast of the
shofar
so I could have dinner and a chat with him and several of the officers.

I thought at first they were trying to fix me up.

“Are you married, Rabbi Luria?”

“No,” I replied, “I don’t seem to have gotten around to it. And by the way, I’m not an official rabbi.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Mr. Newman interposed, with a kind of quiet passion. “You are to
us.
And our reason for asking is simply to find out if you have any ties in New York.”

“Only striped ones,” I jested. By now I sensed where this was leading.

They went on to tell me that during the previous year they had regularly talked about getting a permanent wandering rabbi for their scattered community.

“I think of us as a lot of loose beads,” Dr. Harris put it metaphorically, “and we need someone to make us into a necklace. We were hoping you’d be interested.”