Cross bones

30

“CAN MATERIALS BE CHECKED OUT?” IASKED.

“No. And Porat assured me we have everything in the collection.”

“If the pages were removed, it had to be internal.”

We considered in silence.

“Yadin announced the discovery of the palace skeletons at a press conference in November of sixty-three,” I said. “Clearly, he was interested in human remains.”

“Hell, yeah. How better to validate the Masada suicides?”

“So Yadin talked about the three people found up top, in the area occupied by the main group. His brave little zealot ‘family.’” I hooked quotes around the word. “But he ignored the Locus 2001 remains, the twenty-whatever people found in the cave below the casement wall, at the southern tip of the summit. No press at all for those folks.”

“Zip-o.”

“Whatdid Yadin tell the media?”

Jake’s fingertips worked his temples. The veins hummed blue through his whitewashed skin.

“I’m not sure.”

“Might he have had doubts about the age of the bones?”

“In his first season report Yadin stated that nothing from the cave pointed to anything later than the period of the first revolt. And he was right. Radiocarbon dates reported in the early nineties on bits of fabric found mixed with the bones fell between forty and 115C. E. ”

Missing pages. Stolen skeletons. A murdered dealer. A dead priest. It was like peering down a hall of tilted mirrors. What was real? What was distortion? What led to what?

I sensed one thing.

Some invisible thread tied everything back to the cave bones.

And to Max.

I noticed Jake steal a glance at his watch.

“You’re going to bed,” I said, sliding notebooks into files.

“I’m fine.” His body language disagreed.

“You’re eroding right in front of me.”

“I do have a bastard of a headache. Would you mind dropping me off and taking my car?”

I stood.

“No problem.”

Jake provided a map, directions, and the keys to the Honda. He was asleep before I left his flat.

I’m pretty good with directions. I’m pretty good with maps. I’m lousy with signs in unfamiliar symbols in foreign languages.

The trip from Beit Hanina to the American Colony should have taken twenty minutes. An hour later I was hopelessly lost. Somehow I’d gotten onto Sderot Yigal Yadin. Then I was on Sha’arei Yerushalaim without making a turn.

Checking the name of a cross street, I pulled over, spread Jake’s map on the wheel, and tried to pinpoint my location.

In the rearview, I noticed a car slide to the curb ten yards behind me. My mind did an automatic data log. Sedan. Dark blue. Two occupants.

A sign indicated I was near the exit to the Tel Aviv road. But which Tel Aviv road? My map showed two.

I looked for more landmarks.

Data log. No one emerging from the sedan.

I saw signs for the central bus station and a Holiday Inn. I could get directions at either.

I was smokin’. I had a plan.

I set off, intending to hit whichever institution first crossed my path.

Data log. Sedan pulling out behind me.

I felt a prickle of apprehension. It was Friday and moving toward dusk. The streets were Sabbath empty.

I turned right.

The sedan turned right.

I’d been tailed twice in my life. On neither occasion had the intent been to promote my good health.

I made a right, then a left one block later.

The sedan did the same.

I didn’t like this.

Gripping the wheel two-handed, I sped up.

The sedan stayed with me.

I hung a left.

The sedan rounded the corner behind me.

I turned again. I was now lost in a maze of smaller streets. Only one van in sight. The sedan drew closer.

One shotgun thought: Get away!

Accelerating quickly, I swerved around the van, scanning ahead, searching for a haven.

One familiar sign. A red cross. First aid. A clinic? A hospital? No matter, either would do.

My eyes flicked to the rearview.

The sedan was closing in.

I spotted a clinic in the middle of a small strip center. Pulling into the lot, I threw the car into park, and bolted for the door.

The sedan shot past. Through the rolled-up window I got one snapshot image.

Angry mouth. Viper eyes. Untrimmed beard of a muj fundamentalist.

I met Ryan in the hotel lobby at seven. By then I wasn’t sure if I’d been tailed or not. My room had been trashed. I’d been threatened by a jackal. Jake and I had been stoned. Max had been nabbed. We’d wrecked the truck. During a long, hot bath I began yielding to the view that my jangled nerves had reconfigured events.

Maybe the sedan was traveling the same route as mine. Maybe the driver was as lost as I was. Maybe the occupants were an Israeli version of our back-home testosterone-bloated, Friday-night-cruising rednecks.

“Don’t be naive,” I said to myself, taking a deep breath. That car had specific interest in my car.

Neither Ryan nor I was in the mood for a heavy meal. The desk clerk gave directions to an Arabic restaurant not far away.

As the woman spoke her eyes kept flicking to me. When I met them, they danced away. I had the feeling she wanted to tell me something.

I tried to cast friendly, inviting glances, but she didn’t volunteer whatever was on her mind.

The restaurant was marked by a sign the size of my face soap. We found it after three stops for directions. An armed doorman checked us through.

Inside, it was dim and packed. Booths lined two walls and tables filled the center. The clientele was mostly male. The few women present worehijab s. The owner didn’t believe in smoke-free sections.

We were shown to a booth so dark it was impossible to make out the printed word. I glanced at the menu then gave Ryan a take-it-away gesture.

The waiter wore a white shirt and black pants. His teeth were yellowed, his face lined from years of cigarettes.

Ryan said something in Arabic. I understood the word “Coke.” The waiter asked a question. Ryan gave a thumbs-up. The waiter scribbled on a pad and left.

“What did you order?” I asked.

“Pizza.”

“Vocabulary à la Friedman?”

“I can also ask the location of the toilet.”

“What kind?”

“American Standard?”

“Of pizza.”

“I’m not sure.”

I told Ryan about my visit to the Rockefeller.

“Getz thought the shroud was first century, made of both linen and wool, and probably imported.”

“Meaning costly.”

“Yes. And the hair was clean, trimmed, and vermin free.”

Ryan got it right away. “Good threads. Good grooming. The guy in the shroud was upper crust and had a perforated heel bone. Jake thinks it’s J.C.”

I recounted Jake’s explanation of the history of the Kidron and Hinnom. Hell Valley. Then I ticked points off on my fingers.

“High-status individual found in a Kidron tomb Jake’s certain was the Jesus family tomb. The tomb held ossuaries inscribed with names out of scripture. Jake believes the tomb is the source of the James ossuary, the possible burial box of Jesus’ brother.”

I dropped my hand. “Jake’s convinced the man in the shroud is Jesus of Nazareth.”

“What do you think?”

“Come on, Ryan. What are the chances? Think of the implications.”

We both did that for a moment. Ryan spoke first.

“How does Max tie in with this Kidron tomb?”

“I don’t think he does. And that’s another point. What’s the probability that two skeletons with claims to being Jesus Christ show up at the same, exact point in time?”

“That’s not quite true. Max was unearthed in the sixties. It’s just recently that he’s resurfaced.”

“Ferris is killed. Kaplan shows me the photo. I locate Max, then rule him out. Three weeks later I find the guy in the shroud andhe’s Jesus Christ? It’s preposterous.”

“Jake was so hot to have Max he paid your way to Israel. Who does he think Max was?”

“Someone of importance who shouldn’t have been at Masada.”

I recounted my trip to Hebrew University, and told Ryan about the missing pages from the Masada transcripts.

“Curious,” he said.

I also described my meeting with Tovya Blotnik, and mentioned Jake’s qualms about the man.

“Curious,” he said.

I debated telling Ryan about the sedan. What if the whole thing was the product of my imagination?

What if it wasn’t?

Better to be wrong than to take a rock in the head. Or worse.

I described the incident.

Ryan listened. Was he smiling? Too dark to tell.

“Probably nothing,” I said.

Ryan reached across the table and put a hand over mine. “You’re okay?”

“More or less,” I said.

Ryan rubbed his thumb back and forth across my skin. “You know I’d prefer that you didn’t set out on your own.”

“I know,” I said.

The waiter dropped two coasters on the table and parked a can of high-test Coke on each. Apparently Ryan’s Hebrew lessons hadn’t included the word “diet.”

“No beer?” I asked.

“Not an option.”

“How do you know?”

“No beer signs.”

“Always detecting,” I said, smiling.

“Crime never sleeps.”

“I think I’ll go to theJerusalem Post tomorrow, browse through the archives, see what Yadin was saying about the Masada cave skeletons back in the sixties,” I said.

“Why not use the university library?”

“Jake says thePost keeps old articles on file by topic. Should be a hell of a lot quicker than plowing through reels of microfiche.”

“ThePost will be closed on Saturday,” Ryan said.

Of course it would. I changed the subject.

“How was your interview?” I asked.

“Kaplan’s insisting he was hired to hit Ferris.”

“By whom?”

“Kaplan claims he never knew her name,” Ryan said.

“Her?”

I think Ryan nodded.

“What did this mystery woman say to him?”

“She needed a shooter.”

“Why’d she want Kaplan to kill Ferris?”

“She wanted him dead.”

Eye roll. Wasted in the dark.

“When did she solicit his help?”

“He thinks it was the second week of January.”

“Around the time Ferris was asking Kaplan to sell the skeleton.”

“Yep.”

“Ferris was shot in mid-February.”

“Yep.”

The waiter issued napkins, plates, and utensils, then placed a pizza between us. It was covered with olives, tomatoes, and little green things I took to be capers.

“How’d the woman make contact?” I asked when the waiter had gone.

“Called the pet shop.”

Ryan served slices of pizza.

“Let me understand this. A strange woman rang up, inquired about guinea pigs, then said, ‘Oh, by the way, I want you to take someone out?’”

“That’s his story.”

“Nowthat’s curious.”

“That’s his story.”

“This woman give a name?”

“Nope.”

“Could Kaplan tell you anything about her?”

“Said she sounded like a cokehead.”

The pizza was excellent. I took a moment to wade through the flavors. Tomato, onion, green pepper, olives, feta, and a spice I couldn’t identify.

“What did she offer?”

“Three grand.”

“What did Kaplan say?”

“Ten grand.”

“He got ten thousand dollars?”

“The woman counteroffered with three grand up front, three after the hit.”

“What did Kaplan do?”

“He claims he took the payout, then blew her off.”

“He scammed her?”

“What’s she gonna do? Call the cops?”

“She’s still got three grand to have him capped.”

“Good point.” Ryan served up seconds.

“Did Kaplan and this woman ever meet face-to-face?”

“No. The money was left under a trash can in Jarry Park.”

“How very James Bond.”

“He insists that’s how it worked.”

We ate and watched the crowd around us. A woman sat opposite, her face a pale egg in the darkness. It was all I could see. Herhijab hid her hair and was pinned beneath her chin. Her shirt was dark, the sleeves long, the cuffs buttoned tight at the wrists.

Our eyes met. The woman didn’t look away. I did.

“I thought Kaplan was strictly white-collar,” I said.

“Maybe he got bored and decided on a career change.”

“Kaplan could be making the whole thing up to throw you off.”

“I’ve been thrown off by lesser luminaries,” Ryan said, doling out the last two slices of pizza.

Again, we ate in silence. When I’d finished, I leaned back against the wall.

“Could the mystery woman be Miriam Kessler?”

“I posed that very question to Kaplan. The gentleman answered in the negative, saying the good widow was above reproach.”

Ryan bunched his napkin and tossed it onto his plate.

“Got any ideas?” I asked.

“Madonna. Katie Couric. Old Mother Hubbard. Lots of women call small-time crooks with no history of homicidal behavior and offer them money to commit murder.”

“Curiouser and curiouser,” I said.