Monkeys.


Tough guy.


Shmuck.


He drank some more, disregarding the pain. Pushing himself toward the blackness that always came.


The kid had been bivouacked in the Sinai, reading a book in his tent-Hegel, no less, according to the military messenger. As if that made a fucking bit of difference. Picked off by some faceless Egyptian sniper. Next year, on the same spot, a bunch of assholes from Canada built a luxury hotel. A few years later, all of it was back in Egypt. Traded for Sadat's signature. The word of a fucking Nazi collaborator.


Thank you very much.


Leah never recovered. It ate her like a cancer. She wanted to talk about it all the time, always asking why us, what did we do to deserve it, Nahum? As if he had an answer. As if an answer existed.


He had no patience for that kind of thing. Got to where he couldn't stand the sight of her, the crying and the whining. He avoided her by burying himself in the double load, catching assholes, growing peaches. He came home one day, ready to avoid her again, and found her laid out on the kitchen floor. Cold as slate, waxy gray. He didn't need a fucking doctor to tell him what the story was.


Cerebral aneurysm. She'd probably been born with it. No way to know, tsk, tsk, sorry.


Thank you very much.


Fuck you very much.


Gene and Luanne wanted something authentic, so Daniel and Laura took them to The Magic Carpet, a Yemenite restaurant on Rehov Hillel, owned by the Caspi family. The dining room was long and low, bathed in dim, bluish light, the walls alternating panels of white plaster decorated with Yemenite baskets, and blown-up photographs of the '48 airlift after which the restaurant had been named. Swarms of robed and turbaned Yemenite Jews alighting from gravid prop planes. The Second Wave of emigration from San'a. The one everyone knew about. If you were Yemenite they assumed you'd come over on the Carpet, were genuinely shocked when they found out Daniel's family had lived in Jerusalem for over a century. Which in most cases meant longer than theirs.


"You were right," said Luanne. "This is very hot, almost like Mongolian food. I like it. Isn't it good, honey?"


Gene nodded and continued spooning the soup into his mouth, hunched over the table, big black fingers holding the utensil tightly, as if it threatened to float away.


The four of them sat at a corner table shadowed by hanging plants as they feasted upon steaming bowls of marak basar and marak sha'uit-chili-rich meat soup and bean soup.


"It took me a while to get used to it," said Laura. "We'd go over to Daniel's father's house and he'd make all these wonderful-looking dishes. Then I'd try them and my mouth would catch fire."


"I've toughened her up,"said Daniel. "Nowshe takes more spice than I do."


"My taste buds are shot, sweetheart. Beyond all pain." She put her arm around him, touched his smooth brown neck. He looked at her-blond hair down and combed out, wearing a little makeup, a clinging gray knit dress, and filigree earrings-and let his hand drop to her knee. Felt his feelings surface, the same feelings as when they'd first met. The mutual zap, she'd called it. Something to do with American comic books and magic powers


The waitress, one of the six Caspi daughters-Daniel could never remember who was who-brought a bottle of Yarden Sauvignon and poured the wine into long-stemmed glasses,


"In your honor," said Daniel, toasting. "May this be only the first of many visits."


"Amen," said Luanne.


They drank in silence.


"So you enjoyed the Galilee," said Laura.


"Nothing's like Jerusalem," said Luanne. "The vitality- you can just feel the spirituality, from every stone. But Galilee was fantastic, just the same."


She was a handsome woman, tall-almost as tall as Gene -with square, broad shoulders, graying hair marcelled into precise waves, and svrong African features. She wore a simple boat-necked dress of off-white silk striped diagonally in navy-blue, a strand of pearls, and pearl earrings. The dress and the jewelry set off her skin, which was the same color as Daniel's.


"To be able to actually see everything you've read about in the Scriptures," she said. "The Church of the Annunciation, realizing that you're putting your feet down in the same spot where He walked-it's unbelievable."


"Did the guide take you to see the Church of Saint Joseph also?" asked Laura.


"Oh, yes. And the cave underneath-I could just visualize Joseph's workshop, him working there on his carpentry, Mary upstairs, maybe cooking or thinking about when the baby was going to come. When I come back and tell my class about it, it will inject a real sense of life into our lessons." She turned to Gene: "Isn't it just amazing, honey, seeing it like that?"


"Amazing," said Gene, the word coming out slurred because he was chewing, the heavy jaws working, the big gray mustache revolving as if gear-driven. He broke off a piece of pita and put it in his mouth. Emptied his wineglass and mouthed thank you when Daniel refilled it for him.


"I'm keeping a log," said Luanne. "Of all the holy spots we visit. For a project that I promised the children-a Holy Land sojourn map to hang up in the classroom." She reached into her purse and took out a small note pad. Daniel recognized it as the type that Gene used, marked LAPD.


"So far," she said, "I've got eighteen churches listed-some of them we haven't actually gone into but we've passed them close by, so I consider it legal to include them. Then there are the natural landmarks: This morning we saw a stream in Tiberias that fed Mary's well, and yesterday we visited the Gethsemane garden and the hill of Golgotha-it really does look like a skull, doesn't it?-though Gene couldn't see it." To her husband: "I certainly saw it, Gene."


"Eye of the beholder," said Gene. "Are you eating all of your soup?"


"Take it, honey. All the walking we did, you need your nutrition."


"Thanks."


The waitress brought a plate of appetizers: stuffed peppers and marrows, chopped oxtail, kirshe, pickled vegetables, slices of grilled kidney, coin-sized barbecued chicken hearts.


"What's this?" asked Gene, tasting some of the kirshe.


"It's a traditional Yemenite dish called kirshe," said Laura. "The meat is chopped pieces of cow's intestine, boiled, then fried with onion, tomatoes, garlic, and spices."


"Chitlins," said Gene. Turning to his wife: "Excuse me, chitterlings." He took some more, nodded approvingly. Picking up the menu, he put on a pair of half-glasses and scanned it.


"Got a lot of organ meats here,"he said. "Poor folks'food."


"Gene," said Luanne.


"What's the matter?" asked her husband innocently. "It's true. Poor folks eat organs 'cause it's an efficient way of getting protein and rich folks throw it away. Rich folk eat sirloin steaks and get all the cholesterol and clogged arteries. Now you tell me who's smarter?"


"Liver is an organ meat and liver is loaded with cholesterol," said Luanne. "Which is why the doctor took you off it."


"Liver doesn't count. I'm talking hearts, lungs, glands-"


"All right, dear."


"Those people," said Gene, pointing to pictures on the walls. "Every one of them is skinny. They all look in great shape, even the old ones. From eating organs." He speared several chicken hearts with his fork and swallowed them.


"It's true," said Laura. "When the Yemenites first arrived, they had less heart disease than anyone. Then they started assimilating and eating like the Europeans and developed the same health problems as everyone else."


"There you go," said Gene, looking at the menu again. "What's this expensive stuff-'geed'?"


Daniel and Laura looked at each other. Laura burst out laughing.


"Geed means penis," explained Daniel, struggling to remain straight-faced. "It's prepared like kirshe-sliced and fried with vegetables and onions."


"Ouch," said Gene.


"Some of the old people order it," said Laura, "but it's pretty obsolete. They put it on the menu but I doubt they have it."


"Penis shortage, huh?" said Gene.


"Honey!"


The black man grinned.


"Get the recipe, Lu. We get back home you can cook it for Reverend Chambers."


"Oh, Gene," said Luanne, but she was stifling a giggle herself.


"Can't you just see it, Lu? We're sitting around at the church supper, with all your tight-girdled bridge buddies jabbering on and tearing people down, and I turn to them and say, 'Now, girls, stop gossiping and eat your penis!' What kind of animal they use?"


"Ram, or bull," said Daniel.


"For the church supper, we'd definitely need bull."


"I think," said Luanne, "that I'd like to go powder my nose."


"I'll join you," said Laura.


"Ever notice that?" said Gene, after the women had left. "Put two females together and they have this instinctive urge to go to the bathroom at the same time. Just let two fellows do that and people start to figure there's something funny about them."


Daniel laughed. "Maybe it's hormones," he said.


"Gotta be, Danny Boy."


"How are you enjoying your visit?"


Gene rolled his eyes and picked a crumb out of his mustache. He leaned closer, pressing his palms together prayerfully.


"Rescue me, Danny Boy. I love that woman to death, but she's got this religious thing-always has. At home I don't mind it because she raises Gloria and Andrea straight and narrow-she certainly gets the credit for what they are. But what I'm fast finding out is that Israel's one big religious candy store-everywhere you go there's some sort of church or shrine or Jesus Slept Here whoozis. And Lu can't bear to miss one of them. I'm a profane person, start seeing double after a while."


"There's a lot more to Israel than shrines," said Daniel. "We've got the same problems as anyone else."


"Tell me quick. I need a shot of reality."


"What do you want to hear about?"


"The job, guy, what do you think? What kind of stuff you've been working on."


"We just finished a homicide-"


"This one?" asked Gene, reaching into his pocket and drawing out a newspaper clipping. He handed it to Daniel.


Yesterday's Jerusalem Post. Laufer's press release had been used verbatim-just like in the Hebrew papers-with the conspicuous addition of a tag line:


.. LED BY CHIEF INSPECTOR DANIEL SHARAVI. SHARAVI ALSO HEADED THE TEAM THAT INVESTIGATED THE ASSASSINATION OF RAMLE PRISON WARDEN ELAZAR LIPPMANN LAST AUTUMN.


AN INQUIRY THAT LED TO THE RESIGNATION AND PROSECUTION OF SEVERAL SENIOR PRISON OFFICIALS ON CHARGES OF CORRUPTION AND


He put the clipping down.


"You're a star, Danny Boy," said Gene. "Only time I ever received that kind of coverage was when I got shot."


"If I could wrap up the publicity and give it to you, I would, Gene. Tied with a ribbon."


"What's the problem, threatening the brass?"


"How'd you know?"


Gene's smile was as clean as a paper cut. Pure white against umber, like a slice out of a coconut.


"Ace detective, remember?" He picked up the clipping, put his half-glasses on again. "All that good stuff about you and then they just throw in the other guy-Laufer-at the end. No matter that the other guy is probably a Mickey Mouse pencil-pusher who didn't do a thing to deserve having his name in there in the first place. Executive types don't like being preempted. How'm I doing?"


"A-plus," said Daniel and thought of telling Gene about his protekzia with Gavrieli, how he'd lost it and now had to deal with Laufer, then reconsidered and talked about the Rashmawi case instead. All the loose ends, the things he didn't like about it.


Gene listened and nodded. Starting, finally, to enjoy the vacation.


They broke off the discussion when the women returned. The conversation shifted to children, schools. Then the entrees came-a heaping mixed grill-and all conversation died.


Daniel watched, with awe, as Gene consumed lamb chops, sausage, shishlik, kebab, grilled chicken, serving after serving of saffron rice and bulghur salad. Washing it down with beer and water. Not wolfing-on the contrary, eating slowly, with an almost dainty finesse. But steadily and efficiently, avoiding distraction, concentrating on the food.


The first time he'd seen Gene eat had been in a Mexican restaurant near Parker Center. Nothing kosher there-he'd nursed a soft drink and eaten a salad, watching the black detective attack an assortment of tasty-looking dishes. He'd learned the names since Tio Tuvia had come to Jerusalem: burritos and tostadas, enchiladas and chile rellenos. Beans, pancakes, spicy meat-except for the cheese, not all that different from Yemenite food.


His first thought had been that if the man ate like that all the time, he would weigh two hundred kilos. Learning, over the course of the summer, that Gene did eat like that all the time, had no use for exercise, and managed to stay normal-looking. About a meter nine tall, maybe ninety kilos, a bit of a belly but not bad for a guy in his late forties.


They'd met at Parker Center-a bigger, shinier version of French Hill Headquarters. In orientation, listening to an FBI agent talk about terrorism and counterterrorism, the logistics of keeping things safe with that many people around.


The Olympics job had been a real plum, the last one Gavrieli had handed him before the Lippmann case. The opportunity to go to Los Angeles, all expenses paid, gave Laura a chance to see her parents and visit old friends. The kids had been talking about Disneyland since Grandpa Al and Grandma Estelle had told them about it.


The assignment had turned out to be a quiet one-he and eleven other officers tagging along with the Israeli athletes. Nine in Los Angeles, two with the rowing team in Santa Barbara, ten-hour shifts, rotation schedules. There had been a couple of weak rumors that had to be taken seriously anyway. Some hate mail signed by the Palestine Solidarity Army and traced, the day before the Games, to an inmate of the state mental hospital in Camarillo.


But mostly it was watching, hours of inactivity, eyes always on the lookout for anything that didn't fit: heavy coats in hot weather, strange contours under garments, furtive movements, the look of hatred on a jumpy, terrified face- probably young, probably dark, but you never could be sure. The look imprinted on Daniel's brain: an aura, a storm warning, before the seizure of stunning, stomach-churning violence.


A quiet assignment, no Munich in L.A. He'd ended each shift with a tension headache.


He'd sat in the front of the room during the orientation lecture and grown aware, before long, that someone was looking at him. A few backward glances located the source of scrutiny: a very dark black man in a light-blue summer suit, a SUPERVISOR identification badge clipped to his lapel. Local police.


The man was heavily built, older-late forties to early fifties, Daniel figured. Bald on top with gray hair at the side, the hairless crown resembling gift candy-a mound of bittersweet chocolate nestled in silver foil. A thick gray mustache flared out from under a broad, flat nose.


He wondered why the man was looking at him, tried smiling and received a curt nod in response. Later, after the lecture, the man remained behind after the others had left, chewed on his pen for a few seconds, then pocketed it and walked toward him. When he got close enough, Daniel read the badge: lt. EUGENE brooker, lapd.


Putting on a pair of half-glasses, Brooker looked down at Daniel's badge.


"Israel, huh. I've been trying to figure out what you are."


"Pardon me?"


"We've got all types in town. It's a job to sort out who's who. When I first saw you I figured you for some sort of West Indian. Then I saw the skullcap and wondered if it was a yarmuike or some type of costume."


"It's a yarmuike."


"Yeah, I can see that. Where are you from?"


"Israel." Was the man stupid?


"Before Israel."


"I was born in Israel. My ancestors came from Yemen. It's in Arabia."


"You related to the Ethiopians?"


"Not to my knowledge."


"My wife's always been interested in Jews and Israel," said Brooker. "Thinks you guys are the chosen people and reads a lot of books on you. She told me there are some black Jews in Ethiopia. Starving along with the rest of them."


"There are twenty thousand Ethiopian Jews," said Daniel. "A few have immigrated to Israel. We'd like to get the others out. They're darker than me-more like you."


Brooker smiled. "You're no Swede, yourself," he said. "You've also got some Black Hebrews over in Israel. Came over from America."


A delicate topic. Daniel decided to be direct.


"The Black Hebrews are a criminal cult," he said. "They steal credit cards and abuse their children."


Brooker nodded. "I know it. Busted a bunch of them a couple of years ago. Con artists and worse-what we American law-enforcement personnel call sleazeballs. It's a technical term."


"I like that," said Daniel. "I'll remember it."


"Do that," said Brooker. "Sure to come in handy." Pause. "Anyway, now I know all about you."


He stopped talking and seemed embarrassed, as if not knowing where to go with the conversation. Or how to end it. "How'd you like the lecture?"


"Good," said Daniel, wanting to be tactful. The lecture had seemed elementary to him. As if the agent were talking down to the policemen.


"I thought it was Mickey Mouse," said Brooker.


Daniel was confused.


"The Mickey Mouse of Disneyland?"


"Yeah," said Brooker. "It's an expression for something that's too easy, a waste of time." Suddenly he looked puzzled himself. "I don't know how it came to mean that, but it does."


"A mouse is a small animal," suggested Daniel. "Insignificant."


"Could be."


"I thought the lecture was Mickey Mouse, too, Lieutenant Brooker. Very elementary."


"Gene."


"Daniel."


They shook hands. Gene's was large and padded, with a solid core of muscle underneath. He smoothed his mustache and said, "Anyway, welcome to L.A., and it's a pleasure to meet you."


"Pleasure to meet you too, Gene."


"Let me ask you one more thing," said the black man. "Those Ethiopians, what's going to happen to them?"


"If they stay in Ethiopia, they'll starve with everyone else. If they're allowed out, Israel will take them in."


"Just like that?"


"Of course. They're our brothers."


Gene thought about that. Fingered his mustache and looked at his watch.


"This is interesting," he said. "We've got some time-how about lunch?"


They drove to the Mexican place in Gene's unmarked Plymouth, talked about work, the similarities and differences between street scenes half a world apart. Daniel had always conceived of America as an efficient place, where initiative and will could break through the bureaucracy. But listening to Gene complain-about paperwork, useless regulations handed down by the brass, the procedural calisthenics American cops had to perform in order to satisfy the courts-changed his mind, and he was struck by the universality of it all. The policeman's burden.


He nodded in empathy, then said, "In Israel there's another problem. We are a nation of immigrants-people who grew up persecuted by police states. Because of that, Israelis resent authority. There's a joke we tell: Half the country doesn't believe there's such a thing as a Jewish criminal; the other half doesn't believe there's such a thing as a Jewish policeman. We're caught in the middle."


"Know the feeling," said Gene. He wiped his mouth, took a drink of beer. "You ever been to America before?"


"Never."


"Your English is darned good."


"We learn English in school and my wife is American-she grew up here in Los Angeles."


"That right? Whereabouts?"


"Beverlywood."


"Nice neighborhood."


"Her parents still live there. We're staying with them."


"Having a good time?"


Interrogating him, like a true detective.


"They're very nice people," said Daniel.


"So are my in-laws." Gene smiled. "Long as they stay in Georgia. How long have you been married?"


"Sixteen years."


Gene was surprised. "You look too young. What was it, a high school romance?"


"I was twenty; my wife was nineteen."


Gene calculated mentally. "You look younger than that. I did the same kind of thing-got out of the army at twenty-one and married the first woman who came along. It lasted seven months-burned me good and made me careful. For the next couple of years I took my time, played the field. Even after I met Luanne, we had a long engagement, working all the bugs out. Must have been the right thing to do, 'cause we've been together for twenty-five years."


Up until then, the black: detective had come across as tough and dour, full of the cynical humor and world-weariness that Daniel had seen in so many older policemen. But when he talked about his wife, his face creased in a wide smile and Daniel thought to himself: He loves her intensely. He found that depth of feeling something he could relate to, causing him to like the man more than he had in the beginning.


The smile remained as Gene pulled out a bruised-looking wallet, stuffed with credit card slips and fuzzy-edged scraps of paper. He unfolded it, pulled out snapshots of his daughters and showed them to Daniel. "That's Gloria-she's a teacher, like her mother. Andrea's in college, studying to be an accountant. I told her to go all the way, become a lawyer and make a lot more money, but she's got her own mind."


"That's good," said Daniel, producing snapshots of his own. "Having your own mind."


"Yeah, I suppose so, long as the mind's in the right place." Gene looked at the pictures of the Sharavi children. "Very cute-husky little guys. Aha, now she's a beauty-looks like you, except for the hair."


"My wife is blond."


Gene gave the pictures back. "Very nice. You got a nice family." The smile continued to linger, then faded. "Raising kids is no picnic, Daniel. The whole time my girls were growing up I was watching for danger signs, probably drove them a little crazy. Too many temptations, they see stuff on TV and want it without having to wait for it. Instant highs, which is why they get onto dope-you've got that, too, don't you, being close to the poppy fields?"


"Not like in America, but more than we ever had before. It's a problem."


"There are two ways to solve it," said Gene. "One, make all of it legal so there's no incentive to deal, and forget all about morality. Or two, execute all the dealers and the users." He made a gun with his fingers. "Bang, you're dead, every one of them. Anything short of that doesn't stand a chance."


Daniel smiled noncommittally, not knowing what to say.


"Think I'm joking?" asked Gene, calling for the check. "I'm not. Twenty-four years on the force and I've seen too many kacked-out junkies and dope-related crimes to think there's any other way."


"We don't have capital punishment in Israel."


"You hung that German-Eichmann."


"We make an exception for Nazis."


"Then start thinking of dope scum as Nazis-they'll kill you the same way." Gene lowered his voice. "Don't let what's happened here happen over there-my wife would be very disillusioned. She's a serious Baptist, teaches in a Baptist school, been talking about seeing the Holy Land for years. Like it's some kind of Garden of Eden. Be terrible for her to learn any different."


Luanne was back on the subject of churches. The Holy Sepulchre, in particular. Daniel knew the history of the place, the infighting for control that went on constantly between the different Christian groups-the Greeks battling the Armenians, who battled the Roman Catholics, who battled the Syrians. The Copts and the Ethiopians banished to tiny chapels on the roof.


And the orgies that had taken place during the Ottoman era-Christian pilgrims fornicating in the main chapel because they believed a child conceived near Christ's burial place would be destined for greatness.


It didn't shock him. All it proved was that Christians were humans, too, but he knew Luanne would be appalled.


She was an impressive woman, so wholehearted in her faith. One of those people who seem to know where they're going, make those around them feel secure. He and Laura listened attentively as she talked about the feelings that came from standing in the presence of the Holy Spirit. How much she'd grown after three days in the Holy Land. He didn't share her beliefs, but he related to her fervor.


He promised himself to give her a special tour, Jewish and Christian places, as many as time would allow. An insider's visit to Bethlehem, to the Greek Patriarchate and the Ethiopian chapel. A look at the Saint Saviour's library-he'd call Father Bernardo in the morning.


The waitress-this one was Galia, he was almost certain-served Turkish coffee, melon, and a plate of pastries: Bavarian creams, napoleons, rum-soaked Savannas. They all sipped coffee and Gene went to work on a napoleon.


Afterward, logy from food and wine, they walked down Keren Hayesod, hand in hand like double-daters, enjoying the freshness of the night, the silence of the boulevard.


"Umm," said Luanne, "smells like out in the country."


"Jerusalem pines," said Laura. "They set their roots in three feet of soil. Beneath that, everything is solid rock."


"A strong foundation," said Luanne. "Has to be."


The next day was Friday and Daniel stayed home. He allowed the children to skip school and spent the morning with them, in Liberty Bell Park, Kicking a soccer ball around with the boys, watching Shoshi skate around the roller rink, buying them blue ices and eating a chocolate cassata himself.


Just after noon an Arab on a camel came riding through the parking lot adjacent to the park. Pulling the animal to a halt just outside the south gate of the park, he dismounted and rang a brass bell hanging around its neck. Children queued up for rides and Daniel allowed the boys to have turns each.


"How about you?" he asked Shoshi as she untied her skates.


She stood, put her hands on her lips, and let him know the question was ridiculous.


"I'm no baby, Abba! And besides, it smells."


"Rather drive a car, eh?"


"Rather ride while my husband drives."


"Husband? Do you have someone in mind?"


"Not yet," she said, leaning against him and putting her arm around him. "But I'll know him when I meet him."


After the rides were over, the Arab helped Benny off the camel and handed him to Daniel, kicking and giggling. Daniel said, "Sack of potatoes," and slung the little boy over his shoulder.


"Me too! Me too!" demanded Mikey, pulling at Daniel's trousers until he relented and hoisted him up on the other shoulder. Carrying both of them, his back aching, he began the walk home, past the Train Theater, through the field that separated the park from their apartment building.


A man was walking toward them, and when he got close enough Daniel saw that it was Nahum Shmeltzer. He shouted a greeting and Shmeltzer gave a small wave. As he approached, Daniel saw the look on his face. He put the boys down, told the three of them to run up ahead.


"Time us, Abba!"


"Okay." He looked at his watch. "On your mark, get set, go."


When the children were gone he said, "What is it, Nahum?"


Shmeltzer righted his eyeglasses. "We've got another body, in the forest near Ein Qerem. A repeat of the Rashmawi girl, so close it could be a photocopy."



BOOK TWO



As a small child, the Grinning Man had been a poor sleeper. Fidgety during the day and afraid of the dark, he went as rigid as hardwood during slumber, easily startled by the faintest night sound. The type of youngster who could have benefited from warm milk and bedtime stories, consistency and calm. Instead, he was yanked awake regularly by a raging of voices: the bad-machine sound of his parents tearing each other apart.


It was always the same, always terrible. He'd find himself sitting upright in bed, cold and wet from pee, toes curled so tightly that his feet hurt, waiting with a burnt-rubber taste in his mouth until the ugliness came into focus.


Once in a while, in the beginning, they did it upstairs- either of their bedrooms could serve as a killing ground-and when this happened, he'd climb out of bed and tiptoe from the Child's Wing across the landing, make a stumble-sneak to the Steinway grand, then slide under the giant instrument and settle there. Sucking his thumb, letting his fingertips brush against the cold metal of the foot pedals, the undercarriage of the piano looming above like some dark, voluptuous canopy.


Listening.


Usually, though, they fought downstairs, in the walnut-paneled library that looked out to the garden. Doctor's room. By the time he was five, they did it there all the time.


Everyone except her called his father Doctor, and for the first years of his life, he thought that was his father's name. So he called him Doctor, too, and when everyone laughed, he thought he'd done something terrific and did it again. By the time he learned that it was a stupid affectation and that other boys called their fathers Dad-even boys whose fathers were also doctors-it was too late to change.


Lots of times Doctor was cutting all day and into the night and slept at the hospital instead of coming home. When he did come home, it was always really late, way after the boy had been put to bed. And since he left for rounds an hour before the boy woke up, father and son rarely saw each other. One result of this, the Grinning Man believed, was that as an adult he had to struggle to retrieve a visual image of Doctor's face, and the picture he did produce was fragmented and distorted-a cracked death mask. He was also convinced that this problem had spread like a cancer, to the point where anyone's face eluded him-even when he managed to dredge up a mental picture of another human being, it vanished immediately.


It was as if his mind was a sieve-damaged-and it made him feel weak, lonely, and helpless. Really worthless when he let himself think about it. Out of control.


Only one type of picture stuck well-real science brought power-and only if he worked at it.


At first he thought Doctor was gone a lot because of work. Later he came to understand that he was avoiding what waited for him when he crossed the threshold of the big pink house. The insight was useless.


On Home Nights, Doctor usually put his black bag down in the entry hall and headed straight to the kitchen, where he fixed himself a sloppy sandwich and a glass of milk, then took the food into the dark-paneled library. If he wasn't hungry, he headed for the library anyway, sank into his big leather chair, loosened his tie, and sipped brandy while reading surgical journals by the light of a glass-shaded lamp with a weird-looking dragonfly on the shade. Unwinding before plodding heavily up the stairs for a few hours of sleep.


Doctor was a fitful sleeper, too, though he didn't know it. The boy knew because the door to Doctor's bedroom was always left open and his thrashing and moans were scary, echoing harshly across the landing. So scary it made the boy feel as if his insides were rattling and turning to dust.


Her bedroom-le boudoir, she called it-was never open. She locked herself in there all day. Only the smell of battle brought her out sniffing, like some night-prowling she-spider.


Though he could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times he'd been allowed in there, his memories of the place were vivid: cold space. An ice palace-that was the image that had stayed with him after all these years.


As white and bleak as a glacier. Treacherous marble floors, white porcelain trays crammed with diamond-faceted crystal bottles, the facets sharp enough to wound, beveled mirrors that spat back skewed reflections, filmy hangings of white lace, dead and sickeningly ephemeral, like the molt of some soft-boned albino reptile.


And satin. Shimmering acres of it, shiny, cold, snotlike to the touch.


At the center of the glacier was an immense white four-poster bed on a platform with a tufted satin headboard, smothered by gelatinous layers of satin-sheets and comforters and draperies and pendulous window valances; even the closet doors were padded with panels of the slimy stuff. His mother was always naked, lying exposed from the waist up under a frothy satin tide, propped up by a satin bed-husband, cocktail glass in hand, taking small sips of an oily-looking colorless liquid.


Her hair was long and loose. Harlow-blond, her face ghostly and beautiful, like that of an embalmed princess. Shoulders white as soap, with little bumps where the collarbones arched upward. Rouged nipples like jelly candy.


And always the cat, the hateful Persian, fat and spineless as a cotton ball, snuggled against her breast, piggy, water-colored eyes shining with defiance at the boy, hissing ownership of all that female flesh, branding him an intruder.


Come-a-here, snowball. Come to Mama, sweet thing.


The stink, also. More intense as he got closer to the bed. Shit-breath. The oily liqueur, redolent of juniper. French perfume, Bal a Versailles, so cloying even the recollection made him gag.


She slept all day and left the glacier at night to do battle with Doctor. Throwing open the door to her room and surging down the stairs in a swirl of satin.


They'd start. He'd wake up, jolted by the bad-machine sound-a cruel roar that wouldn't stop, as if he'd been locked in a shower, the water turned on full force. He'd get up, still groggy, trace a hypnotic path from his room to the top of the stairs, then down each step, feeling the heat of her bare feet radiating from the carpet. Thirteen stairs. He always counted in his head, always stopped at number six before sitting down to listen. Not daring to move as the machine sounds began to separate in his mind, his brain breaking the roar down into lip-smacking growls and bone-crunching syllables.


Words.


The same words, always. Hammer blows that made him cringe.


Good evening, Christina.


Don't good evening me. Where have you been!


Don't start, Christina. I'm tired.


You're tired? I'm tired. Of how you treat me. Where were you until ten after one!


Goodnight, Christina.


Answer me, you bastard! Where the hell have you been?


I don't have to answer your questions.


You goddamn do have to answer my questions!


You're entitled to your opinion, Christina.


Don't you dare smirk at me like that! WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN!


Lower your voice, Christina.


Answer me, damn you!


What do you care?


I care because this is my house, not some goddamned motel that you check in and out of!


Your house? Amusing. What mortgage checks have you written lately?


I pay the real bills, you bastard, from my soul-I gave up everything to be your whore!


Oh, really?


Yes, really, damn you.


And what is it exactly that you're supposed to have given up?


My career. My goddamned soul.


Your soul. I see.


Don't you dare smirk at me, you bastard!


All right, all right, no one's smirking. Just get out of here and no one will smirk at anyone.


I paid for everything, damn you-with blood and sweat and tears.


Enough, Christina. I'm tired.


You're tired? From what? Running around with your candy-striper whores-


I'm tired because I've been cracking chests all day.


Cracking chests. Big shot. Lousy bastard. Whore-fucker.


You're the whore, remember? By your own admission.


Shut up!


Fine. Now crawl back upstairs and leave me alone.


Don't you tell me what to do, you bastard! You're not my boss. I'm my own boss!


You're drunk, is what you are.


You drive me to drink.


Right, your weaknesses are my responsibility.


Don't laugh at me, I'm warning you-


You drink, Christina, because you're weak. Because you can't face life. You're a coward.


Bastard goddamned bastard! What's that you're guzzling, Coca-Cola?


I can handle my liquor.


I can handle my liquor.


Don't imitate me, Christina.


Fine. Now get the hell out of here. Drink yourself cirrhotic and leave me alone.


Drink yourself cirrhotic. You and your fucking jargon, think you're a hotshot. Everyone thinks you're a pompous asshole-when I worked Four West, everyone said so.


Didn't slop you from licking my balls, did it?


It made me want to throw up. I did it for your money.


Fine. You've got my money. Now get the hell out of here.


I'll stay wherever the hell I want to.


You're out of control, Christina. Rambling. Make an appointment with Emil Diefenbach tomorrow and have him check you out for organic brain disease.


And you're a limpdick asshole.


Pathetic


Stop smirking, limpdick!


Pathetic.


Maybe I am pathetic, maybe I am! At least I'm human, unlike you the fucking machine who can handle everything. You're perfect-Mister Per… Doctor Perfect! Handles anything except getting a hard-on! Doctor Limpdick Perfect!


Pathetic lush.


What is that, Coca-fucking-Cola!


Get away, Christina, I'm-


Sure doesn't taste like Coca-fucking-


Get away-


-Cola!


-Oh, shit, you spilled it all over me.


Poor baby, poor limpdick! Serves you right! Slob! Whore-fucker!


Get out of the way, you goddamned bitch! Get out of the way, damn you! I need to clean this off!


Just throw it out Doctor Limpdick. Fucking Italian suit makes you look like a greaseball, anyway.


Move, Christina!


Whore-fucker.



MOVE!



Fuck you!


I'm warning you!


I'm warning you-Ow! You-oh, you pushed me you hurt me, you lousy stinking bastard! Oh! Ow, my foot-Look at you. Dribbling. Pathetic.


You pushed me, you goddamned cocksucker!


Drunken cow!


Piece of shit!


Fucking lush!



STINKING FUCKING KIKE BASTARD!



Ah! There it is!


You're goddamned fucking right there it is, you filthy hooknosed kike limpdickl


Go ahead, let it all out. Show your true colors, bitch!



JEW BASTARD!



White trash cunt!



KIKEKIKEKIKE! CRUCIFYING BASTARD!



The second victim was identified quickly.


After he'd picked up the sheet and looked at her, Daniel's first thought was: Fatma's older sister. The resemblance was that strong down to the missing earrings.


They'd started working on the missing-kid files again, getting nowhere. But the interdepartmental gag was off, the story had hit the papers immediately, and passing her picture around brought results on Sunday forty-eight hours after the body had been found. A detective from the Russian Compound, a recent transfer from Haifa, remembered her as someone he'd busted a few months ago, for soliciting down by the harbor. A phone call to Northern District brought her file down by police courier, but she'd been let go with a warning and there wasn't much to learn from it.


Juliet Haddad ("They call me Petite Julie"), born in Tripoli, a professional whore. Twenty-seven years old, dark and pretty, with a baby face that made her appear ten years younger.


The illusion of youth ended below the slashed neck-what remained of her body was flabby, mottled, the thighs lumpy and scarred with old cigarette burns. The uterus was gone, severed and lifted out like some bloody treasure, according to Dr. Levi's report, but tissue analyses of the other organs revealed evidence of gonorrhea and primary syphilis, successfully treated. Like Fatma, she'd been sedated with heroin, but for her it was no maiden voyage: scores of sooty, fibrosed needle marks surrounded the pair of fresh ones. Additional marks in the bend of her knees.


"She was washed as clean as the other," Dr. Levi told Daniel. "But physiologically speaking, she was far from spotless-a damaged young woman, probably abused for years.


There were hairline fractures all over the skull-like spider-webbing. Some evidence of minor damage to the dura of the occipital and frontal lobes of the brain."


"Would that have affected her intelligence?"


"Hard to say. The cerebral cortex is too complex to assess retroactively. Loss of function in one area can be compensated for by another."


"How about an educated guess?"


"Not if you'll hold me to it."


"Off the record."


"Off the record, she may have had visual problems-distortions, blurring-and a dulling of emotional responses, like the patients the Russians do psychosurgery on. On the other hand, she may have functioned perfectly-there's no way to tell. I've examined brains that have necrosed to nothing-you'd bet the owner was a vegetable. Then you talk to the family and find out the guy played chess and solved complex math problems up until the day he died. And others that look picture-perfect and the owners were morons. You want to know how smart she was, find someone who knew her when she was alive."


"Any theories about the uterus?"


"What did the psychiatrists say?"


"I haven't spoken to any of them yet."


"Well," said Levi, "I suppose I can guess as well as they can. Hatred of women, destruction of femininity-removal of the root of femininity."


"Why take this one and not Fatma's?"


"Maniacs change, Dani, just like anyone else. Besides, Fatma's uterus was virtually obliterated, so in some sense he was destroying her womanhood, too. Maybe he removed this one in order to take his time with it, do God-knows-what. Maybe he's decided to start a collection-didn't Jack the Ripper start off by carving, then progress to removing organs? One of the kidneys, if I remember correctly, wasn't it? Sent a chunk to the police, claimed to have eaten the rest of it."


"Yes," said Daniel, thinking: butchery, cannibalism. Until Gray Man, such horrors had been pure theory, cases in the homicide textbook. The kind of thing he never thought he'd need to know about.


Levi must have read his mind.


"No sense escaping it, Dani," said the pathologist. "That's what you've got here-another Jack. Better bone up on maniacs. He who forgets history is condemned and all that."


According to Northern District, Juliet had claimed to be a Christian, a political refugee from East Beirut, wounded in the invasion and fleeing the Sh?tes and the PLO. Asked how she'd gotten into the country, she'd told a story of hitching a ride with an Israeli tank unit, which seemed far-fetched. But she'd showed the interrogators a recent head wound and a Kupat Holim registration card from Rambam Hospital to back the story up, along with a Haifa address and temporary-resident ID, and the police, busy with more serious matters than another small-change street-walker, had accepted her story and let her go with a warning.


Which was unfortunate, because just a cursory investigation revealed that the story was a sham. Immigration had no record of her, the Haifa address was an abandoned building, and a visit by Schmeltzer and Avi Cohen to Rambam Hospital revealed that she'd been treated in the emergency room- for epilepsy, not a wound.


The doctor who'd seen her was gone, on a fellowship in the States. But his handwriting was clear and Shmeltzer read aloud from his discharge notes:


Treated successfully with phenobarbitol and Dilantin, full abatement of overt seizure activity. The patient claims these seizures were her first, and stuck to this, despite my explicit skepticism. I wrote a prescription for a month's worth of medication which was provided to her by the hospital pharmacy, gave her Arabic-language brochures on epilepsy and admitted her for observation, including comprehensive neurologic and radiographic studies. The following morning, her bed was empty and she was nowhere to be found. She has not recontacted this institution. Diagnosis: Grand mal epilepsy. Status: Self-Discharged, Against Medical Advice.


"Translation," said Shmeltzer, "she was a little liar, conned them into free medication."


Avi Cohen nodded and watched the older man flip through the pages of the medical chart.


"Well, well, take a look at this, boychik. Under Nearest Relative or Admitting Party, there's a little army stamp."


Cohen leaned over, pretending he could make sense of it.


"Yalom, Zvi," read Shmeltzer. "Captain Zvi Yalom, Tank Corps-goddamned army captain checked her in. She was levelling about the tank unit." He shook his head. "The little slut had an official military escort."


To listen to Yalom, he'd acted solely out of compassion.


"Listen, you were there-you know how it was: the Good Border and all that. We fed hundreds of them, gave them free medical care."


"Those were political refugees," said Avi Cohen. "Christians. And all of them went back."


"She was Christian too."


"Got to know her pretty well, didn't you?"


Yalom shrugged and took a drink of orange soda. He was a handsome, somewhat coarse-looking man in his late twenties, blond, ruddy, and broad-shouldered, with immaculately manicured hands. In civilian life, a diamond cutter at the Tel Aviv Exchange. His home address in Netanya had been traced quickly through army records, and Avi had invited him for lunch at a sidewalk cafe near the beach.


A beautiful Monday morning. The sky was as blue as the sapphire in Yalom's ring; the sand, granulated sugar. But Netanya had changed, Avi decided. A lot different from the days when his family used to summer there-a suite at the Four Seasons, calls to room service for hamburgers and Cokes with maraschino cherries, all of them staying too long in the sun, getting burned pepper-red. After-dinner strolls, his father pointing out the gangsters sitting at cafe tables. Exchanging greetings with some of them.


Now, the buildings seemed shabbier, the streets more crowded, thick with traffic and exhaust fumes, like a miniature Tel Aviv. Just a block away he could see black people sitting on the front stoop of a decrepit-looking apartment building. Ethiopians-the government had settled hundreds of them here. The men wore kipol; the women covered their hair, too. Religious types, but in blackface. Strange.


"You going to get me into trouble?" asked Yalom.


Avi smiled noncommittally. He liked this, enjoyed the feeling of authority. Sharavi had made good on his word, kept him away from reading, given him a real assignment.


He's a Lebanon vet. You should be able to relate to him.


Thank you, Pakad.


Doing your job well will be sufficient thanks.


"It could really fuck me up, Avi," said Yalom.


Overly familiar, thought Avi, using my first name like that. But some military officers had an attitude problem, thought of the police as second-class soldiers.


"Speaking of fucking," he said, "is that how you met her?"


Yalom squinted with anger. He kept a smile on his lips and drummed his perfect fingertips on the table. "You a virgin, kid?"


"How about," said Avi, starting to stand, "we continue this conversation at National Headquarters."


"Wait," said Yalom. "Sorry. It's just that I'm nervous. The tape recorder bothers me."


Avi sat down again. Moved the recorder closer to Yalom.


"You've got good reason to be nervous."


Yalom nodded, reached him into his shirt pocket, and offered a pack of Rothmans to Avi.


"No, thanks, but suit yourself."


The diamond cutter lit up, turning his head so that the smoke blew in the direction of the beach, the sea breeze catching it, thinning it to wispy ribbons. Avi looked over his shoulder, saw girls in bikinis carrying towels and beach baskets. Watched the little dimples in their backs, just above the ass-slit, and longed, for a moment, to be with them.


"She was scared," said Yalom. "The place she worked was on the Christian side of Beirut, private club, members only. She was afraid the Sh?tes would come and get her after we left."


"What kinds of members?" asked Avi, remembering what Sharavi had told him about the skull fractures, the cigarette burns.


"Foreigners. Diplomats, businessmen, professors from the American University. The place was too expensive for the locals, which was one of the reasons she wanted to get out-some fundamentalists had threatened to bomb the building, slapped up a poster calling it a receptacle for the semen of infidels, or something like that."


"You see the poster yourself?"


"No," said Yalom quickly. "I was never there. This was all from her."


"Where'd you meet her, then?"


"We were pulling out of the city. She was standing in the middle of the road, near the barriers between East and West. Waving her hands and crying. She refused to move and I couldn't just squash her, so I got out, checked for snipers, talked to her, felt sorry for her, and gave her a lift. She was supposed to go as far as Bin Jbeil, but then she started having seizures and I decided to take her all the way."


"Considerate of you."


Yalom grimaced. "All right, looking back it was stupid. But I felt sorry for her-it was no felony."


Avi sipped his beer.


"How many of you banged her?" he asked.


Yalom was silent. The hand holding his cigarette began tc shake. Bad trait for someone in his line of work, thought Avi. He sipped and waited.


Yalom looked around at the adjoining tables, moved closer and lowered his voice.


"How the hell was I supposed to know she was going to get carved up?" he said. Avi saw that there were tears in his eyes, the tough-guy posture all gone. "I just got married a couple of months ago, Samal Cohen. It's my wife I'm more worried about than the army."


"Then why don't you just tell me the truth and I'll do my best to keep your name out of the papers."


"All right, all right. What I told you about picking her up out of sympathy is right-I was trying to be human. Look where it got me-when we let the Arabs massacre each other we're fucked and when we try to be human, the same damned thing. No way to win."


"You picked her up out of sympathy," said Avi, prompting. "But…"


"But a bunch of us had her, okay? She offered it for free, she was cute-looking, and we'd just been through two months of hell-the snipers, two of my best drivers were blown up by mines… For God's sake, you know what it was like."


Avi thought of his own tour in Lebanon. Hand-to-hand fighting in the streets of Beirut, routing the PLO, putting his own ass on the line in order not to shoot the women and children-the human shields those bastards used habitually. Then, a month of guard duty at Ansar Prison, feeling out of control as he stood watch over sulking hordes of PLO captives wearing the blue jogging suits the army issued them. Unable to stop the tough guys from bullying the weaker ones, unable to prevent them from building homemade spears and daggers. Hugging his Uzi like a lover as he watched the tough ones circle the flock, picking off the effeminate ones. Choosing the softest boys to be brides at mock weddings. Dressing them up like girls, painting their faces and plucking their eyebrows and beating them when they cried.


Gang-fucks when the lights went out. Avi and the other soldiers trying to shut out the screams that rose, like bloody clouds, above the grunts and heavy breathing. The "brides" who survived were treated the next morning for shock and torn anuses.


"I know," said Avi, meaning it. "I know."


"Three fucking years," said Yalom, "and for what? We've replaced the PLO with Sh?tes and now they're shooting Katyushas at us. You going to blame us for having a free taste? We didn't know if we were going to get out of there alive, so we had her, had a few giggles-it was temporary relief. I'd do it all over again-" He stopped himself. "Maybe I wouldn't. I don't know."


"What else did she say about her clients?" asked Avi, following the outline the Yemenite had suggested to him.


"They went in for rough stuff," said Yalom. "The brothel was designed to accommodate that type. Professors, educated types, you'd be surprised at the things that turned them on. I asked her how she could stand it. She said it was okay, pain was okay."


"As if she liked it?"


Yalom shook his head. "As if she didn't care. I know it sounds strange, but she was strange-kind of dull, half asleep."


"Like a defective?"


"Just dull, as if she'd been knocked around so much nothing mattered to her anymore."


"When she begged you to take her with you it mattered."


Yalom's face registered self-disgust. "She conned me. I'm a fool, okay?"


"You saw the needle marks on her arms, right?"


Yalom sighed. "Yes."


"She mention any friends or suppliers?"


"No."


"Anything about her past that could connect her to anyone? Maybe one of the educated ones?"


"No. We were in back of the halftrack, riding south in the dark. There wasn't much conversation."


"Nothing about the seizures?"


"No, that took me by surprise. All of a sudden she's all rigid, moving back and forth, teeth chattering, frothing at the mouth-I thought she was dying. You ever see that kind of thing?"


Avi remembered the epileptic kids in the Special Class. Retards and spastics, shaking and drooling. He'd felt like a freak being with them, cried hysterically until his mother had pulled him out.


"Never," he said. "What was she doing when it started to happen?"


"Sleeping."


"Lucky, huh?"


Yalom looked at the detective, puzzled.


"Lucky," said Avi, smiling, "that she wasn't going down on you when she started to shake. Hell of a way to pick up a war wound."


There was no record of Juliet's whereabouts during the four months following her release by Northern District. No pimp or whore or drug dealer admitted to knowing her; no substation had booked her. She hadn't applied for welfare or any other kind of public assistance, nor had she worked in a legitimate job and gotten on the tax rolls.


It was as if she'd gone underground, thought Daniel, like some kind of burrowing animal, surfacing only to be torn apart by a waiting predator.


She could have plied her profession independently, he knew, pulling tricks on side streets in out-of-the-way neighborhoods. Or taken an unregistered side job-as a charwoman or fruit picker. In neither case were they likely to find out about it. An employer would be less than enthusiastic about admitting he'd hired her illegally, and those who'd purchased her favors were sure to keep silent.


The strongest thing they had going for them was the epilepsy angle and the best way to work that was footwork: a canvass of doctors, hospitals, Kupat Holim clinics, and pharmacists. The medication she'd received at Rambam had run out some time ago, which meant she'd have gotten a refill somewhere.


They started, all of them, checking out neurologists and neurological clinics; when none of that bore fruit, moved on to general practitioners and emergency rooms. Showing Juliet's picture to busy people in white uniforms, searching for her name in patient rosters and charts. Eye-straining work, reeking of tedium. Avi Cohen was less than useless for most of it, so Daniel had him handle the telephones, cataloging crank calls and following the false leads and compulsive confessions that the newspaper articles had started to bring in.


By the end of the week they'd learned nothing and Daniel knew that the whole endeavor was questionable. If Juliet had been streetwise enough to get her hands on fake ID within days of coming across the border, she probably had multiples, with false names and birth dates. Her baby face would have allowed her to claim anything from seventeen to thirty. How could you trace someone like that?


Even if they managed to connect her to some doctor or druggist, what good would it do? This was no crime of passion, the victim's destiny interlaced with that of the killer. She'd been slain because of a chance meeting with a monster. Persuasive words, the exchange of money, perhaps. Then a rendezvous in some secret, dark place, the expectation of hurried sex, a recreational shot of dope. Blackness. Surgery.


He hoped neither she nor Fatma had ever known what was happening to them.


Surgery. He'd started thinking of it in medical terms, because of the anesthesia, the washing, the removal of the uterus, though Levi assured him that no special medical knowledge had been necessary to perform the extraction.


Simple stuff, Dani. A butcher orshohet or nurse or medical corpsman could have done it without special training. If I gave you an anatomy book you could do it yourself. Anyone could. Whenever something like this happens people always start looking for a doctor. It's nonsense.


The pathologist had sounded defensive, protective of his profession, but Daniel had no reason to doubt what he was saying.


Anyone.


But here they were, talking to doctors.


Hospitals.


Right after Fatma's murder, he'd thought about the Amelia Catherine, the proximity of the hospital to the dumping ground, how easy it would have been to hide the body in a big, empty building like that, sneak out at the right time during Schlesinger's shift in order to dump it. But apart from a rumor that Dr. Walid Darousha was homosexual, the Amelia Catherine people had turned up clean on every record check. And the trail he'd followed up through Silwan had made him forget about the U.N. hospital.


Did U.N. clinics, he wondered, see epilepsy patients? He was almost certain they had to-the disorder was common. Those files would be off-limits to his men. Unless he wanted to make a stink about it, get embroiled with Sorrel Baldwin and others like him. All that U.N. bureaucracy.


Baldwin-now there was something interesting. Before coming to Jerusalem, the American had lived in Beirut, Juliet's former home base. He'd earned a degree from the American University-sociology; Daniel remembered the diploma. According to the tank captain Cohen had interviewed, Juliet's brothel had catered to foreigners. American University personnel-Yalom had mentioned that specifically. A coincidence? Probably. The university was a breeding ground for Arabists; lots of them ended up working for the U.N. Still, it would have been interesting to talk to Baldwin in depth. Impossible without going through the brass.


Evidence, Laufer would bark at him. What evidence do you have for me to get my hands dirty, Sharavi? Challenging their diplomatic immunity? Stick with the case and don't run off on another tangent, Sharavi.


Since the discovery of Juliet's body, the deputy commander was in foul spirits. Pickled by his own press release, fermenting in ruined optimism. Firing off memos that inquired shrilly about progress. Or the lack of it.


Evidence. Daniel knew he had none. There was nothing to tie Juliet in with Baldwin or anyone else at the Amelia Catherine. Her body had been dumped clear across town, in the pine forest near Ein Qerem, on the southwest side of town. About as far from Scopus as you could get.


A Jewish National Fund forest, financed by the penny-in-a-blue-box donations of schoolchildren. The corpse wrapped in white sheeting, just like Fatma's. Discovered by a pair of early morning hikers, teenage boys, who'd run from the sight, goggle-eyed with fear. The Russian nuns who lived nearby at the Ein Qerem Convent had seen and heard nothing.


Then there was the matter of Brother Joseph Roselli. Daniel had dropped by Saint Saviour's hours after the discovery of the second body, found the monk on his rooftop, and showed him Juliet's death picture. Roselli had exclaimed: "She could be Fatma's sister!" Then his face had seemed to collapse, features falling, restructuring suddenly in a tight-lipped mask. His demeanor from that point had been hard and cold, taut with outrage. A completely different side of the man. Daniel supposed he couldn't be faulted for his indignation: Men of God weren't accustomed to being considered murder suspects. But the shift was sudden. Strange.


He couldn't shake the feeling that Roselli was harboring some secret, struggling with something… but the resumption of Daoud's nighttime surveillance had turned up nothing so far.


No evidence and two dead girls.


He thought about Fatma and Juliet for a while, tried to establish some kind of connection between the runaway from Silwan and the whore from Beirut, then scolded himself for going off on tangents. Obsessing about the victims instead of trying to understand the killer, because the victims had names, identities, and the killer was an enigma.


Seven days had separated the two murders. Now, a week had passed since Juliet had been found.


Was something happening right now? Another helpless woman seduced into endless sleep?


And if so, what was there to do?


He kept thinking about it-cursing his helplessness-until his belly filled with fire and his head felt ready to burst.


After a Shabbat supper during which he nodded and smiled at Laura and the children, hearing them but not listening, he went into the laundry room that Laura had converted to a studio, carrying an armful of books and monographs checked out of the library at National Headquarters. The room was bright-he'd left the light on before Sabbath, stacked Laura's stretched canvases neatly on the floor. Sitting among rolls of fabrics and tins of wax, jars filled with brushes and paint-encrusted palettes, he began to read.


Case histories of serial killers: Landru; Herman Mudgett; Albert Fish, who murdered and ate little children; Peter Kurten, a nauseating excuse for a human being who had well earned the nickname Dusseldorf Monster. According to one expert, the Germans produced a disproportionate number of sex murders-something to do with an impoverished collective unconscious.


And, of course, Jack the Ripper. Rereading a book on the Ripper case give him pause, because some experts were convinced the scourge of Whitechapel had been a Jew-a shohet whose experience as a ritual slaughterer made him an expert in anatomy. He remembered what Dr. Levi had said, and he thought of the shohtim he knew: Mori Gerafi, a tiny, kind Yemenite who seemed too gentle for the job. Rabbi Landau, who worked out of the Mehane Yehuda market. Learned men, pious and scholarly. The thought of them carving up women was absurd.


He put the Ripper book aside and forged onward.


Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis-people chasing pleasure in hideous ways. Interpol and FBI reports-the German theory notwithstanding, America seemed to have more serial killers than any other country. One estimate said there were forty or forty of them doing their dirty work at any given time, more than five hundred unresolved serial murders. The FBI had begun to program a computer in order to catalog all of it.


Thirty roving monsters. Such cruelty, such evil.


Street-corner Mengeles. Why had God created them?


He finished at two in the morning, dry-mouthed and heavy-lidded, Laura's drawing lamp the sole illumination in the silent, dark apartment.


Was it happening right now? The ritual, the outrage-an inert body laid out for dissection?


Knowing his dreams would be polluted, he went to sleep.


He awoke at dawn, expecting bad news. None came and he faked his way through Shabbat.


At nine on Sunday morning he filled an attache case with papers and went to see Dr. Ben David. The psychologist's main office was at Hebrew University but he kept a suite for private consultations in the front rooms of his flat on Rehov Ramban.


Daniel arrived early and shared the claustrophobic waiting room with a tired-looking woman who hid from eye contact behind the international edition of Time magazine. Ten minutes before the hour, Ben David came out of the treatment room with a skinny, large-eyed boy of about five. The boy looked at Daniel and smiled shyly. The detective smiled back and wondered what could trouble such a young child so deeply that he needed a psychologist.


The woman put the Time into her purse and stood.


"All right," said Ben David heartily, in English. "I'll see Ronny the same time next week."


"Thank you, Doctor." She took her son by the hand and the two of them left quickly.


"Daniel," said Ben David, taking the detective's hand in both of his and shaking it energetically. He was a young man, in his early thirties, medium-sized and heavyset, with bushy black hair, a full dark beard, light-blue eyes that never rested, and a fitful nature that had taken Daniel by surprise the first time they'd met. He'd always thought of psychotherapists as passive, quiet. Listening and nodding, waiting for you to talk so they could pounce with interpretations. The one he'd seen at the rehab center had certainly fit the stereotype.


"Hello, Eli. Thank you for seeing me."


"Come in."


Ben David ushered him into the treatment room, a smallish, untidy office lined with bookshelves and furnished with a small desk, three sturdy chairs, and a low circular table upon which sat a dollhouse in the shape of a Swiss chalet, doll furniture, and half a dozen miniature human figurines. Behind the desk was a credenza piled high with papers and toys. Next to the papers were an aluminium coffepot, cups, and a sugar bowl. No couch, no inkblots. A single Renoir print on the wall. The room smelled pleasantly of modeling clay.


Daniel sat on one of the chairs. The psychologist went to the crcdenza.


"Coffee?"


"Please."


Ben David prepared two cups, gave Daniel his, and sat down opposite him, sipping. He was wearing a faded burgundy polo shirt that exposed a hard, protuberant belly, baggy dark-green corduroy trousers, and scuffed loafers without socks. His hair looked disheveled; his beard needed trimming. Casual, careless even, like a graduate student on holiday. Not like a doctor at all, but such were the perquisites of status. Ben David had been an academic prodigy, chief of the army's psychological service at twenty-seven, a full professor two years later. Daniel supposed he could dress any way he pleased.


"So, my friend." The psychologist smiled cursorily, then shifted in the chair, moving his shoulders with almost tic-like abruptness. "I don't know what I can tell you that we haven't covered on Gray Man."


"I'm not sure, myself." Daniel pulled the forensic reports and crime summaries out of his case and handed them over. He drank coffee and waited as the psychologist read.


"Okay," said Ben David, scanning quickly and looking up after a few moments. "What do you want to know, specifically?"


"What do you think about the washing of the bodies? What's the meaning of it?"


Ben David sat back in his chair, flipped one leg over the other, and ran his fingers through his hair.


"Let me start with the same warning I gave you before. Everything I tell you is pure speculation. It could be wrong. Okay?"


"Okay."


"Given that, my best guess is that the pathologist may very well be right-the killer was attempting to avoid leaving physical evidence. Something else to consider-and the two notions aren't "mutually exclusive-would be a power play, playing God by preparing and manipulating the body. Were the corpses positioned in any way? Posed?'


Daniel thought about that.


"They looked as if they were set down neatly," he said. "With care."


"When you saw the first body what was your initial impression?"


"A doll. A damaged doll."


Ben David nodded enthusiastically. "Yes, I like that. The victims may very well have been used as dolls."


He turned and pointed to the miniature chalet. "Children engage in doll-play in order to achieve a sense of mastery over their conflicts and fantasies. Artists and writers and composers are driven to produce out of similar motivations. The creative urge-everyone wants to be godlike. Sex killers do it by destroying life. Gray Man tossed his victims aside. This one's more creative."


It sounded blasphemous to Daniel. He said nothing.


"Collecting accurate data on sex killers is difficult, because we have access only to the ones who get caught-which may be a biased sample. And all of them are liars, so their interview data are suspect. Nevertheless, the Americans have done some good research, and a few patterns seem to hold- the things I told you about Gray Man. Your man's an exceptionally immature psychopath. He's grown up with a chronic and overwhelming sense of powerlessness and helplessness-a creative blockage, if you will. He's been constructing power fantasies since early childhood and building his life around them. His family was intact. His family life was a mess but may have appeared outwardly normal to the casual observer. Normal sex doesn't work for him. He needs violence and domination-helplessness of the victim-to get aroused. In the beginning, violent fantasies were enough to satisfy him. Then, while still a child, he moved on to torturing and possibly having sex with animals. As an adolescent, he may have progressed to human rapec. When that no longer fulfilled his power needs, he began killing. Murder serves as a substitute for intercourse: beginning with some sort of subjugation and following in with stabbing and hacking-the exaggerated sexual metaphor, the literal piercing and entry of the body. He chooses women as victims but may be latently homosexual."


Thinking of the rumour about Dr. Darousha, Daniel asked, "What about an active homosexual?"


"No," said Ben David. "The key word is latent. He's fighting to suppress those impulses, may even be hypermasculine-a real law-and-order type. There are homosexual sex killers, of course, but they usually murder men." Ben David thought for a moment. "There are records of a few pansexual murderers-Kurten, the Dusseldorf Monster, did away with men, women, children. But unless you start tuning up male victims, I'd concentrate on latent homosexuals."


"How can a latent homosexual be spotted?"


"He can't."


Daniel waited for more. When it didn't come, he asked, "What about the earrings? Gray Man didn't take anything."


"Gray Man was crude, scared-slash and run. The earrings are trophies, as was the uterus taken from your second victim. Other killers take underwear, clothing. Your corpses.were found naked, so your killer may have taken clothing as well. The trophies are a temporary substitute for killing again. Mementoes, similar to the heads collected by hunters. They're used for masturbation, to retrigger the power fantasies."


Ben David glanced at the reports again. The ultimate power play is necrophilia. No mention is made of rape. Did your killer have post-mortem intercourse with the victims?"


"The pathologist found no semen," said Daniel. "It may have been washed away."


"Possible impotence," said the psychologist, "or he could have masturbated away from the body. It would make serum typing impossible-more avoidance of physical evidence. Not a stupid murderer, Dani. Definitely smarter than Gray Man."


Daniel thought: Stupid, "crude" Gray Man had eluded capture.


Ben David raised his cup and emptied it, then dried his beard with the back of one hand. "In order to dominate, you need subjugation. Some killers tie up their victims. Yours used heroin to subjugate, but it amounts to the same thing. Total control."


"Do you attach any significance to the use of drugs?"


The psychologist got up, walked to the credenza, and poured a second cup of coffee. "I don't know," he said, upon return. "Perhaps he'd experienced some sort of peak sexual experience related to drug use. A lot of what turns people on is the result of chance associations-the coupling of some random but significant event with sexual arousal."


It took a moment for Daniel to assimilate that. "An accident?"


"A Pavlovian accident-in this case, repetitive pairings of sex and violence. It may very well be the root of sexual deviance-generation- of English sadomasochists were created by the practice of caning public school students. Beat a horny adolescent frequently enough and you're going to establish a mental connection between pain and arousal. The same may be true of sexual psychopaths-most of them claim to have been abused as children, but then again, they'd say anything that was self-serving."


"Could the use of sedation indicate someone with medical experience?" asked Daniel. "Along with the fact that he took care to avoid physical evidence?"


"Do you have a physician suspect?"


"No."


"Did the pathologist feel the mutilation indicated exceptional surgical skill?"


"No."


"Then I wouldn't place much stock in that hypothesis. Why would a doctor use something crude like heroin, when he could get his hands on more precise anesthetics? What it does indicate is someone with drug experience, which, unfortunately, is no longer a small club in the country. Anything else?"


"When we talked about Gray Man, you said he would probably be withdrawn, an antisocial loner. Do you feel the same about this one?"


"At the core, all psychopaths are antisocial. They're incapable of achieving intimacy, view people as objects, have no sense of empathy or compassion. Gray Man was impulsive and meek, which led me to guess that he was socially inadequate. But this one isn't so clear-cut. He's cold, calculating, takes great care to wash the body, prepare it, clean it-he's a stage director. Arrogant and intelligent, and those types often come across as sociable, even charming. Some even have apparent romances with women, though when you examine the relationship closely it turns out to be warped or platonic. The more sophisticated sex killer doesn't doesn't necessarily shun the public eye. In fact, he may even jump right into it. He may be attracted to politics because it's also a power game: There was an Englishman-one of the homosexual killers-named Dennis Nilsen. Labor union activist, well liked by everyone, terrific social consciousness when he wasn't strangling boys. The American, Ted Bundy, was a law student, also politically active, good-looking, suave.


Another American, Gacy, entertained children with a clown act, raised funds for the Democratic party and had his picture taken with President Carter's wife. Semipublic figures, every one of them."


Ben David leaned forward.


"Internally, your man's a cesspool, Dani. Get to know him on an intimate level and the psychopathy starts popping out-lies, false claims, inconsistencies in personal history, poor impulse control, situational conscience. He believes in rules but doesn't believe they apply to him. But outwardly, he may very well look normal. Better than normal-a persuasive manipulator."


Daniel thought of Fatma's naivete, Juliet's possible brain damage. Easy pickings for someone like that.


"What about religious fanaticism?" he asked.


Ben David smiled. "The avenging murderer cleansing the world of whores? Movie nonsense. Some of these guys claim they've got some greater moral purpose, but it's more self-serving garbage and if no one buys it, they quickly drop it. Basically, they kill to achieve orgasm." He looked at the reports again.


"Both your victims were Arabs," he said. "One thing you should consider strongly is the political component."


"Neither Mossad nor Shin Bet has come up with any terrorist connections-"


"That's not what I meant," the psychologist cut in, impatiently. "Don't limit your thinking to some organized political cell. As I said, psychopaths are attracted to political issues because politics is power. I'm suggesting to you a solitary psychopathic killer whose violent fantasy life is interwoven with political elements."


Ben David shot out of his chair, went to the bookshelves, ran his fingers along the spines of the volumes, and pulled out several.


"Here," he said, placing the books in Daniel's lap.


The first three were American paperbacks. Cheap, cracked editions with brittle, yellowed paper. Daniel studied the cover illustrations: lurid, cartoonish paintings of impossibly voluptuous women, naked, bound and gagged, and tormented by hypermuscular, whip-wielding men in leather costumes so glossy they looked wet. Costumes emblazoned with swastikas and iron crosses and the SS death's-head logo. In one illustration, ribbons of blood ran down the woman's meaty thighs. In another a slavering, razor-toothed Doberman pinscher aimed its snout in the vicinity of the victim's crotch.


The women strained against their bonds and their eyes were wide with terror. Their tormentors grinned and fondled groins bulging grotesquely.


The titles: Eat This, Jewbitch. Nazi Lovemasters. Gestapo Rape.


Daniel opened one of them, read several lines of explicit, sadomasochistic pornography, and put the books down angrily.


"Disgusting."


"I got them when I was at Harvard," said Ben David, "in a used-book store near the campus. There's a small but steady market for this type of thing."


Daniel opened the fourth book. A hard-cover volume entitled This Must Not Happen Again: The Black Book of Fascist Horror. He turned pages, saw grainy photographs. Mountains of human skeletons. A row of empty-eyed corpses, partially corroded by lime, lying three-deep in a muddy ditch. Several arms and legs, waxily artificial. The leer of a German soldier as he shot a naked woman in the back.


"Read the chapter on 'Murder for Profit,'" said the psycho logist. "The surgical experiments."


Daniel found this section, skimmed it, then closed the book, his anger growing. "What's the point?"


"The point is that racist politics and psychopathy can be comfortable bedfellows. Mengele, all the other camp doctors, were psychopaths. Hannah Arendt claimed they were normal, banal men, but their psychological evaluations indicate otherwise. They were attracted to the Nazi philosophy because it fit with their psychopathic natures. Hitler reinforced and legitimized them with power and status and technology-serial killers in the employ of the State. The point is, Dani, that if Arab girls keep turning up slaughtered, you'd do well to consider that your psychopath has a thing against Arabs."


"A Jewish race murderer?" Daniel thought of the Ripper book. The shohet theory.


"It could be a self-hating Arab," said Ben David. "Serial killers often turn against their own kind. But don't exclude the possibility that a member of our tribe is running around butchering Arabs just because it's an unappetizing contingency. We're not all lambs. There's a reason for the sixth commandment."


Daniel was silent. Sen David misread the look on his face as resistance and threw up his hands.


"I don't like it either, my friend. You wanted my speculations, you got them."


"I was reading about psychopathic killers last night," Daniel reflected, "and found myself thinking about them in Nazi terms. A phrase came to mind: street-corner Mengeles."


"You see"-the psychologist smiled-"you don't need me. Your unconscious is guiding you in the right direction."


He handed the reports back to Daniel, who put them into his case and removed a folder. The summary on Schlesinger, it had finally arrived yesterday from Civil Guard Headquarters. He gave it to Ben David, saying, "What do you think of this one?"


More rapid scanning. "This tells me nothing," said the psychologist. "An old man with stomach pains-Kupat Holim claims it's in his head. The classic psychosomatic dodge."


"He was the Hagah man patrolling Scopus the night the first one turned up," said Daniel, "giving him excellent opportunity. An old palmahi, hates Arabs-which could give him a motive. He likes to drive around the city at night and he has psychological problems."


Ben David shook his head, held up the summary.


"There's nothing in here about psychological problems. He has stomach pains and persistent hunger pangs that the doctors can't identify. So they cover for their feelings of inadequacy by using psychology to blame the victim." He gave the folder to Daniel. "I'm not saying this Schlesinger isn't your man. If you have evidence, go for him. But there's nothing in here that's relevant." Ben David looked at his watoh. "Anything else?"


"Not for now," said Daniel. "Thanks."


The two of them stood and Ben David walked him back into the waiting room. A young couple sat at opposite ends of the sofa, arms folded, eyes cast downward. When the door opened, both of them looked up briefly, then returned to staring at the rug. Daniel saw their fear and shame, wondered why Ben David didn't have a separate exit for his patients.


"One moment," the psychologist told the couple. He accompanied Daniel out the front door and to the curb. The morning had filled with traffic and sunshine, the hum of human discourse filtering from Keren Hayesod to the quiet, tree-shaded street. Ben David took a deep breath and stretched.


"Psychopaths can be arrogant to the point of self-destruc-tiveness," he said. "He may get careless, make a mistake, and tell you who he is."


"Gray Man never did."


Ben David tugged at his beard. "Maybe your luck will change."


"And if it doesn't?"


Ben David placed a hand on his shoulder. His eyes softened as-he searched for a response. For the first time, Daniel saw him in a different light-paternal, a therapist.


Then, all at once, he drew away and said,


"If it doesn't, more blood."


He interviewed sex offenders and false confessors all day- wretched men, for the most part, who seemed too downtrodden to plan anything more complicated than putting one foot in front of the other. He'd talked to many of them before. Still, he considered each of them a pathological liar, put them through the entire grilling, reducing some to tears, others to a near-catatonic fatigue.


At seven he returned home to find Gene and Luanne there, the table set for guests. He didn't recall Laura mentioning a visit, but lately he'd been far from attentive, so she might very well have spelled it out for him without its sinking in.


The boys attacked him, along with Dayan, and he wrestled with them, absently, noticing that Shoshi hadn't come forward to greet him.


The reason was soon obvious. She and Gene were playing draw poker in a corner of the living room, using raisins for chips. From the size of the piles it was clear who was winning.


"Flush," she said, clapping her hands.


"Oh, well," said Gene, throwing his cards down.


"Hello, everyone," said Daniel.


"Hello, Abba." Preoccupied.


"'Lo, Danny. Your turn to deal, sugar."


The boys had run to the back of the apartment, taking the dog with them. Daniel stood alone for a moment, put his attache case down, and went into the kitchen.


He found Laura and Luanne at the table, both in light cotton dresses, examining a large white scrapbook-his and Laura's wedding album.


"You were both so young," said Luanne. "Oh, hello, Daniel."


"Hello, Luanne." A smile for Laura.


She smiled back but got up slowly, almost reluctantly, and he felt more like a stranger than ever.


"I just called your office," she said, pecking his cheek. "Dinner's getting cold."


"Sorry."


"No problem." She gave his hand a quick squeeze, released it, and went to examine the roast in the oven.


"You were some couple," said Luanne. "My, my, look at all those coins. That is simply gorgeous."


Daniel looked down at the picture that had captured her attention. The formal wedding portrait: he and Laura, holding hands, next to a ridiculously large wedding cake-his mother-in-law's idea.


He wore a white tuxedo with a silly-looking ruffled shirt, plum-colored cummerbund and bow tie-the rental store had insisted it was all the rage. Smiling but looking baffled, like a child dressed up for a dance party.


Laura looked majestic, nothing silly about her. Swallowed up by the Yemenite wedding gown and headdress that had been in the Zadok family for generations but belonged, really, to the Yemenite community of Jerusalem. A treasure, centuries old, lent to any bride who requested it. A tradition that stretched back to San'a, celebrating social equality: The daughters of rich men and beggars came to the huppah dressed in identical splendor, each bride a queen on her special day.


The gown and headdress and accompanying jewelry were as heavy as chain mail: tunic and pantaloons of crisp gold brocade; three rings on every finger, a trio of bracelets around each wrist; scores of necklaces-strings of silver and gold coins, filigree balls glowing like silver gumdrops, amber beads, pearls and gemstones. The headdress high and conical, layered with alternating rows of black and white pearls and topped by a garland of white and scarlet carnations, the pearl chin-piece hanging down to the clavicle like a glittering, shimmering beard; a fringe of tiny turquoise pendants concealing the top half of the brow, so that only the center of Laura's face was visible. The young, beautiful features and enormous pale eyes framed and emphasized.


The night before, she'd had her palms and soles smeared red in the henna ceremony, and now this. She'd barely been able to walk; the merest flick of a wrist elicited a flash of gemfire, the jangle of metal against metal. The old women tended to her, jabbering incomprehensibly, holding her upright. Others scraped out complex rhythms on finger cymbals, coaxed near-melodies from antique goatskin drums. Whooping and chanting and singing women's songs, the Arabic lyrics subtly erotic. Estelle had gotten right in with them, a small woman, like her daughter. Light-footed, laughing, whooping along.


The men sat in a separate room, eating, drinking Chivas Regal and arak and raisin brandy and Turkish coffee augmented with arak, linking arms and dancing in pairs, listening to Mori Zadok sing men's songs in Hebrew and Aramaic. Stories of the Great Ones. The Rambam. Sa'adia Gaon.


Mori Salim Shabazi. The other elders followed him, taking turns delivering blessings and devrei Torah that praised the joys of marriage.


Daniel sat at the center of the table, drinking the liquor that was placed in front of him, remaining clear-headed in the manner of the Yemenites. He was flanked by his father, who sang along in a high, clear tenor, and his new father-in-law, who remained silent.


Al Birnbaum was fading away. The liquor was turning him pinker by degrees. He clapped his hands, wanting to be one of them, but succeeded only in looking baffled, like an explorer cast among primitives. Daniel felt sorry for him, didn't know what to say.


Later, after the yihud ceremony, Al had cornered him, hugging him, slipping money into his pocket and planting a wet kiss on his cheek.


"This is wonderful, son, wonderful," he blurted out. His breath was hot, heavy with arak. The band had started playing "Qetsad Merakdim"; celebrants were juggling and dancing before the bride. Al started to sway and Daniel placed a hand on his shoulder.


"Thank you very much, Mr. Birnbaum."


"You'll take care of her-I know you will. You're a good boy. Anything you need, ask."


"Thank you very much. I appreciate that."


"You're welcome, son. The two of you will make a beautiful life together. Beautiful." A trickle of tears hurriedly wiped and camouflaged by a fit of coughing.


Later, of course, the phone calls had come. Static-laden long-distance calls buzzing across two continents. Poorly concealed cries of parental loneliness that always seemed to interrupt love-making. Not-so-subtle hints about how wonderful things were in California, how was the two-room flat working out, was the heating fixed yet, did it still smell of insecticide? Al had a friend, a lawyer, he might be able to use someone with investigative skills; another friend owned an insurance agency, could steer him into something lucrative. And if he got tired of police work, there was always room in the printing business


Eventually, the Birnbaums had accepted the fact that their only child wasn't coming home. They purchased the Talbieh apartment, all those bedrooms, the kitchen full of appliances, supposedly for themselves. ("For summer visits, darling-would you kids be good enough to house-sit?")


The visits took place every year, like clockwork, the first two weeks in August. The Birnbaums arriving with half a dozen suitcases, half of them full of gifts for the kids, refusing the master bedroom and sleeping in the boys' bunk. Mikey and Benny moving in with Shoshi.


Thirteen summers, sixteen visits-one extra for the birth of each child.


The rest of the time, the Sharavis house-sat. More luxury than a policeman could except


"You looked like a princess, Laura," said Luanne, turning a page and studying pictures of dancing Yemenites.


"I lost two pounds perspiring," laughed Laura. She poked at the roast with a fork. Then her face grew serious and Daniel thought he saw her fight back a tear.


"It was a beautiful gown," she said. "A beautiful day."


Daniel walked over to her, put his arm around her waist, enjoying the feel of her, the sharp taper inward, the sudden flare of hip under his palm. She raised the fork and he felt a current of energy dance along the surface of her skin, involuntary and tremulous like the quivering flanks of a horse after exercise.


He kissed her cheek.


She winked at him, put the roast on a platter, and handed it to him.


"Help me serve, Pakad."


During dinner, Luanne and Gene talked about their trip to Eilat. Snorkeling in the crystalline waters of the Red Sea, the coral forests below, schools of rainbow-colored fish that swam placidly up to the shoreline. The long gray shapes Gene was certain had been sharks.


"One thing I noticed," said Luanne, "was the shrimp. Everyone was selling it or cooking it or eating it. I didn't feel I was in a Jewish country."


"First-rate shrimp," said Gene. "Good-sized, deep-fried."


After dessert, everyone pitched in clearing the dishes.


Mikey and Benny laughing uproariously as they balanced stacks of plates, Shoshi admonishing them to be careful.


Then the children retreated to Shoshi's room to watch a videotape of Star Wars-the TV, VCR, and tape, donations from Los Angeles-and the women went back to the wedding album. Gene and Daniel stepped out on the balcony and Gene pulled out a cigar and rolled it between his fingers.


"I didn't know you smoked," said Daniel.


"Once in a great while I sneak one in after a really good meal. These are Cubans-picked them up in the duty-free at Zurich." Gene reached into his pocket and pulled out another. "Want one?"


Daniel hesitated. "Okay. Thank you."


They sat, put their feet over the railing, and lit up. At first the bitter smoke made Daniel wince. Then he found himself loosening up, feeling the heat swirl around inside his mouth, enjoying it.


"Speaking of sharks," said Gene, "how's your case?"


"Not good." Daniel told him about Juliet, the endless interviews of doctors and nurses, the pressure exerted on hordes of sex offenders, all useless so far.


"Boy, do I know the name of that tune," said Gene, but there was a lilt in his voice, the mellow satisfaction of homecoming. "Sounds like you've got a real winner on your hands."


"I spoke to a psychologist this morning, trying to get a profile."


"What'd he tell you?" asked Gene. He lay back and put his hands behind his head, looked up at the black Jerusalem sky, and blew smoke rings at the moon.


Daniel gave him a summary of the consultation with Ben David.


"He's right about one thing," said Gene. "The psych stuffs darned close to worthless. I've worked Lord knows how many homicides, gotten bushel-basketfuls of psych profiles, never solved a case with one of them yet. And that includes the nut-case serials."


"How do you solve them?" On the surface a foolish question, far too artless. But he felt comfortable with Gene, able to speak openly. More open than he could be with his own family. It bothered him.


Gene sat up, edged his chair closer to Daniel's.


"From where I sit, sounds like you're doing everything right. Truth is, lots of times we don't solve them. They stop killing or die and that's that. When we do catch them, nine times out of ten it's because of something stupid-they park their car near the murder scenes, get a couple of parking tickets which show up on the computer. A records check, just like you're doing. Some angry girlfriend or wife turns them in. Or the killer starts playing games, letting us know who he is, which means he's basically catching himself. We've done nothing but cut along the dotted line."


The black man sucked on his cigar and blew out a jet-stream of smoke. "These cases are hell on the ego, Danny Boy. The public gets hold of them and wants instant cure."


Keep pounding the pavement and wait for the killer to give himself away. The same thing Ben David had told him.


He could have done without hearing it twice in one day.


He got into bed, hugged and kissed Laura. "Ooh, your breath-have you been smoking?"


"One cigar. I brushed my teeth. Want me to brush again?"


"No, that's all right. I just won't kiss you." But moments later, her legs wrapped around him, the fingers of one hand languidly caressing his scrotum, the other entangled in his hair, she opened her mouth and relented.


He woke up in the middle of the night, his mind still going like a dieseling engine. Thinking of death camps and hypodermics and long-bladed knives that could sever a neck without sawing. Blood flowing in gutters, disappearing down sewer drains. A city drenched in blood, the golden stone turned to crimson. Headless dolls crying out for salvation. Himself suspended in mid-air, like one of Chagall's birds. Frozen in space, unable to swoop. Helpless.


The first time the war between the grown-ups ended differently, he'd been caught by surprise.


Usually they'd shout themselves into exhaustion, the vi-ciousness defused by alcohol and fatigue, trailing off in a mumble of last words.


Usually she would outlast Doctor, spitting out the final curse, then lurching upstairs, woozily, the boy anticipating her retreat and running ahead of her, safe in bed, hidden under the covers, as her footsteps grew faint, her dirty talk faded to silence.


Doctor usually stayed in the library for a while, walking back and forth, drinking and reading. Sometimes he fell asleep on the tufted leather sofa, still in his clothes. When he came upstairs, he, too, trudged heavily. Leaving the door open in a final act of generosity, so that the boy could share his nightmares.


The time it was different, he'd been six years old.


He knew this with certainty because his sixth birthday had been three days before, a non-event marked by gaily wrapped gifts from the most expensive toy store in town, a cutting-of-the-cake ceremony grudgingly attended by both parents. Then a double-bill monster movie accompanied by one of the maids, the one with the horse face, who had no use for children and hated him in particular.


During intermission he went to the theater bathroom and peed all over the wall, then bought so much popcorn and candy that twenty minutes later he was back in the bathroom, throwing up into his pee puddles.


So he was sure he was six.


On the night it ended differently, he wore pale-blue pajamas with a monkey and parrot pattern, sat curled on the sixth stair, massaging a polished wood baluster. Hearing the usual bad-machine sounds, happy because it was something he was used to.


Then a surprise: no dirty talk. Silence.


The tearing and ripping ended so suddenly that for a moment the boy thought they'd actually destroyed each other. Blam.


Then he heard the sound of heavy breathing, a moan-was someone being hurt?


Another moan, more breathing. Fear wrapped itself around him, cold, icy fingers squeezing his chest.


Could this be it? Was this the end?


Cautiously, like one of the robot monsters he'd seen in the movie, he made his way down the remaining seven stairs. The heavy double doors to the library were partially open. Through the opening came a narrow triangle of yellow light. Ugly yellow, like the pee puddles.


He heard more moans, tasted something sweet and bitter, and was seized with an urge to throw up. He held his breath, put his hand on his tummy, and pressed in hard to make the feeling go away. Telling himself: Go away.


"Oh!"


His mother's voice, but she sounded different. Scared. The breathing continued without her, huffing, not stopping, like a toy train: Doctor.


"Oh!"


What was happening?


"Oh, Charles!"


He gathered up his courage, tiptoed to the door. Peeked through the yellow space and saw them.


Doctor was sitting on the couch, still wearing his white shirt and tie, but with his pants and underpants down around his ankles. His legs looked gross, all hairy and thick, like a gorilla's.


She was naked, white as her nightgown, her back to the door, her white-yellow hair loose and shiny.


Her head was on Doctor's shoulder, her chin kind of squeezing into his neck. Like she was trying to vampire-bite him.


She was sitting on Doctor. Her hands were in his hair. She was rubbing his hair, trying to pull it out.


Oh, no, look at her butt!


It was hanging down like two giant eggs and there was something between it. Something going into it. A pole with black hair-fuzz around it, like a pink grapefruit popsicle. No, a pole, a wet, pink pole-his father's thing!


Oh, no. He wanted to throw up again, gagged, swallowed the bad taste, and felt it burn him down to him tummy.


The thing was a weapon. An egg masher.


You could use it as a weapon!


He stared, unable to breathe, chewing on his fingers.


It was in her. In and out. Oh, no it was stabbing her, hurting her-that's what was making her cry and moan. She was being stabbed by Doctor's thing!


He could see Doctor's face rolling back and forth over her shoulder, liked someone had cut it off but it was still alive, all sweaty. A sweaty zombie head, with a mean smile. All scrunched up and pink and wet, just like his thing.


Doctor was forcing her-both of his big hairy hands were on her butt, squeezing, the fingers disappearing into soft white skin. Squeezing her until she cried, and the neck-biting and hair-pulling couldn't stop him-he was a monster who didn't feel pain and he was forcing her, forcing his thing into her, and it was hurting her and she was crying!


"Oh… oh, Charles…"


Pink and white, pink into white. He thought of a glass of milk with blood dripping into it; when the blood hit the surface of the milk it swirled and turned all pink.


"Oh, God!" she called out. Now she was praying-it was really hurting her bad. She started moving faster, bouncing, trying to bounce off of him, to get away from him and his egg stabber, but he held on to her-he was forcing her!


"Oh, God!"


She was praying for help. Should he help her? His feet felt glued to the floor. His chest was all tight and it hurt. What could he do…?


" Yes," said Doctor, grinning and clenching his teeth and grinning again, a wet monster grin. "Oh, yes. Yes."


"Oh, God! Harder, you bastard! Harder!"


What was this?


"Give it to me, you bastard!"


Bounce, bounce.


Bounce, bounce, moan.


She was smiling, kind of.


"Harder, damn you!"


She was telling Doctor to stab her. She was telling him to hurt her!


She liked being hurt!


Doctor was monster-growling and monster-grinning, pushing the words out in between breaths that sounded like a steam engine puffing: "Here, look at it, take it."


"Oh, I hate… you."


"You love it."


"I hate you."


"Want me to stop, bitch?"


"No, oh, no."


"Say it!" Growling.


"No-don't stop, damn-"


"Say it!" Grinning.


"I love it."


"That's better. Again."


"I love it Uoveit!"


"Here, look, I'm fucking you. Feelit."


"Oh. Oh, oh. Jew… bastard… oh, oh."


"Take it."


"… goddamned kike… cock. OH!"


All of a sudden Doctor was thrusting himself up, raising his hairy butt off the couch, lifting her with him. Stabbing fast and hard and yelling "Damn!"


She flopped like a rag doll. She yelled, "I hate you!" Made a noise that sounded like she was choking. Then her fingers came loose from Doctor's hair and started to wiggle around like white worms, the kind the boy sometimes found under wet rocks in the garden.


"Oh."


"Bitch."


Then, all of a sudden, she stopped moving and Doctor was slapping her butt and laughing and grinning and the boy was running upstairs gasping and tripping, his heart fighting to burst out of his chest.


He threw up on the floor, got into the bed and wet it.


He spent an eternity under the covers, shaking and biting his lips, scratching his arms and his face until he bled. Tasting his blood. Squeezing his thing. Hard.


Hurting himself, to see if you could like it.


You could, kind of.


It wasn't until later, when he heard her come up the stairs, sobbing, that he realized she was still alive.


When the woman opened the door, Shmeltzer was surprised. He'd expected someone older, the same age as the Hagah man, maybe just a little younger. But this one was much younger, in her early fifties, younger than him. A round, girlish face, plump and pretty, though the gray eyes seemed grim. A little makeup applied well, thick dark hair pulled back in a bun, just beginning to streak with gray. A heavy, sagging bosom that took up most of the space between neck and waistline. The waistline well-padded, as were the hips. Small ankles for a heavy woman. Just like Leah. No doubt she fretted over her weight.


"Yes?" she said, sounding wary and unfriendly.


Then he realized he was being stupid, a fine detective. The fact that she'd opened the door didn't make her the wife. A niece, maybe, or a guest.


But when he introduced himself, showed his badge and asked for Schlesinger, she said, "He's not here now. I'm Eva-Mrs. Schlesinger. What do you want?"


"When do you expect him back?"


The woman stared at him and bit her lip. Her hands were small and soft; they started kneading one another.


"Never," she said.


"What's that?"


She started to say something, clamped her lips shut, and turned her back on him, retreating into the apartment. But she'd left the door open and Shmeltzer followed her inside.


The place was simple, bright, immaculately maintained. Lean Danish furniture that had probably been purchased as an ensemble from Hamashbir. Bowls of nuts and candies and dried fruits on the coffee table. Crystal animals and porcelain miniatures, all female stuff-the Hagah man probably didn't give a hoot about decorating. A teak bookcase filled with volumes on history and philosophy. Landscape prints on the walls, but no photos of children or grandchildren.


A second marriage, he told himself: the old guy hot for a young one, may be divorcing the first one, maybe waiting for widowhood. Then he remembered that Schlesinger had been in Dachau and the age difference took on a different context: Wife number one murdered by the Germans, perhaps a couple of kids gone too. Come to Palestine, fight for your life, and start anew-a familiar story; plenty of his moshav neighbors had gone through the same thing.


Were the two of them childless? Maybe that was why she looked so unhappy.


She'd gone into the kitchen and was drying dishes. He followed her in.


"What did you mean by 'never'?"


She turned around and faced him. She inhaled and her bosom heaved impressively. She noticed Shmeltzer looking at her and covered her chest with her dish towel.


What an interview, thought Shmeltzer. Very professional.


"My husband is in the hospital. I just got back from there. He's got cancer all over him-in the stomach and the liver and pancreas. The doctors say he's going to die soon. Weeks, not months."


"I'm sorry." What an inane thing to say. He'd hated it when others head said it to him. "How long has he been ill?"


"For a week," she snapped. "Does that give him a good enough alibi?"


"Gveret Schlesinger-"


"He told me the police suspected him-some Yemenite accused him of being a murderer. A few days later he had cancer!"


"No one accused him of anything, gveret. He's a material witness, that's all."


Eva Schlesinger looked at him and threw her dish down on the floor. She watched it shatter, then burst into tears, knelt, and started to pick up the pieces.


"Careful," said Shmeltzer, getting down beside her. "That's sharp-you'll cut your hands."


"I hope so!" she said and began grabbing at the shards quickly, automatically, like someone batch-sorting vegetables. Shmeltzer saw pinpoints of blood freckle her fingers, pulled her hands away, and brought her to her feet. He steered her to the sink, turned on the tap, and put the wounded fingers under the water. After a few seconds most of the bleeding stopped; only a few red bubbles persisted. Small cuts, nothing serious.


"Here," he said, tearing a piece of paper towel from a wall-mounted roll. "Squeeze this."


She nodded, complied, started crying again. He guided her into the living room, sat her down on the couch.


"Something to drink?" he said.


"No, thank you, I'm fine," she whispered between sobs, then realized what she'd said and started laughing. An unhealthy laugh. Hysterical.


Shmeltzer didn't know what to do, so he let her go on for a while, watching her alternate between tears and laughter, then finally growing silent and covering her face with her hands. She started to mutter, "Yaakov, Yaakov."


He waited, looked at the blood-speckled paper towel wrapped around her fingers, the view of the desert from the living room window. A good view, rocky crags and pinhole caves, but architecturally ths French Hill complex made no sense-towers on top of a mountain. Some developer bastard fucking up the skyline


"He had pain for years," said Eva Schlesinger. To Shmeltzer it sounded as if she were accusing him, blaming him for the pain. "He was always hungry-he ate like a wild animal, a human garbage disposal, but was never satisfied. Can you imagine what that felt like? They told him it was in his head."


"Doctors," commiserated Schmeltzer. "Most of them are jerks. How's your hand?"


She ignored the question, leaned her uninjured hand on the coffee table, and tossed out words like machine-gun bullets: "He tried to tell them, the fools, but they wouldn't listen. Instead they told him he was nuts, said he should see a psychiatrist-head doctors, they're the biggest nuts of all, right? What did he need them for? His stomach hurt, not his head. It's not normal to have pain like that. It doesn't make sense, does it?"


"Not at all-"


"All they want is to keep you waiting for hours, then pat you on the head and tell you it's your fault-as if he wanted the pain!" She stopped, pointed a finger at Shmeltzer. "He was no murderer!"


Shmeltzer saw the fire in her eyes. The bosom, moving as if imbued with a life of its own.


"Of course he wasn't-"


"Don't give me your double talk, Inspector! The police thought he was a murderer-they blamed him for the Arab girl. They killed him, put the cancer in him. Right after the Yemenite accused him, the pain started to get worse! What do you think of that? Nothing helped it-even food made it worse! He refused to go back and see more doctors. He was gritting his teeth and suffering in silence-the man's a rock, a shtarker. What he's been through in his life, I won't tell you-he could take the pain of ten men. But this was worse. At night he'd crawl out of bed-he had an iron constitution, could take anything, and this pain made him crawl! He'd crawl out and walk around the apartment groaning. It would wake me up and I'd go out and find him, crawling. Like an insect. If I went to him he screamed to me, told me to leave him alone-what could I do?"


She pounded her fist on the table, put her hands on her temples, and rocked.


Shmeltzer considered what to say and decided to say nothing.


"Such pain, it's not right, after what he'd been through. Then I saw the blood, from all ends-he was urinating it and coughing it up and spitting it. The life was flowing out of him." She unwrapped the paper towel, looked at it, and put it on the coffee table. "That's what happens to people-that's what happens to Jews. You live a good life, work hard; then you fall apart- everything comes out of you. We had no kids. I'm glad they're not here to see it."


"You're right," said Shmeltzer. "You're hundred percent right."


She stared at him, saw that he was serious, and started to cry again, pulling at her hair. Then she looked at him again, shook a fist.


"What the hell do you know! What am I doing talking to you!"


"Gveret-"


She shook her head no, got up from the couch, stood and took a step forward, catching her foot on a leg of the coffee table and reeling.


Shmeltzer moved quickly, catching her before she fell. He put his arms under her armpits and kept her upright. She reacted to the support by punching at him and cursing him, spraying him with saliva, then going all loose and limp, letting her arms fall to her sides. He felt her pressed against him, her soft bulk astonishingly light, like meringue. She buried her face in his shirtfront and cursed God.


They stood that way for a while, the woman sobbing in anticipation of widowhood. Shmeltzer holding her. Confused.


The gag cards on the wall of Fink's Bar were tacky, decided Wilbur. The kind of thing you'd see in a hick-town tavern, back in the States. Combine that with enough Wild Turkey and you could forget where you were. For a moment.


He picked up The Jerusalem Post, read the piece again, and took a sip of bourbon. Another scoop heard from.


He'd been on his vacation-ten days of R and R in Athens-when the murders story broke. The international Trib hadn't carried it-the first he'd heard of it was a page-two item in the Post he'd picked up on the plane back to Ben Gurion.


Like most foreign correspondents, he spoke no Hebrew or Arabic and depended upon native journalists for his information-the Post for the Jewish angle, the English edition of Al Fajr for the Arab side. Both were highly partisan, but that was okay; it spiced up his pieces. Anyway, it was either that or bird-dog the government spokesmen, and Israeli mouthpieces were cagey, paranoiac, always grooming themselves for victim status. Always worried someone was out to get them, invoking military censorship when they didn't want to deal with something.


The vacation had been a good one. He'd met up with an Italian photojournalist named Gina, a skinny, bleached-blond free-lance with an appetite for sauteed calamari and cocaine; they'd met on the beach, traded meaningful looks, puffed-up bios, and shared a line from a vial that she carried in her beach bag. She had a room in his hotel, checked out of it, and moved in with him, living off his expense account for a week and a half of fun and games, then woke him up early one morning with a blow-job and breakfast, left him eating dry toast as she tossed him a ciao and was out the door, back to Rome. Wild girl, not pretty, but adventurous. He hoped she hadn't given him a dose of anything.


He took another swallow of Turkey, motioned for a refill. Two murders-potential start of a serial. It just might play back home, the kind of thing the wire services sometimes went for. No doubt the Times men-New York and L.A.-had gotten hold of it, but they usually stayed away from crime stories, milked the political stuff, which was always in heavy supply. So maybe there was still something to work with.


Being out of the country when it broke bothered the Jimmy Olsen part of him, but after six months in Israel he'd needed the time off. The country was hyperkinetic; the pace could drive you crazy.


Stuff never stopped coming at you, but most of it was noise. Grabowsky had loved it-he was a certified information junkie, firing off pieces right and left, breaking productivity records before he'd ventured too far into the Bekaa and gotten his arm blown off. The day after he'd been certified a cripple, the wire service had called Wilbur in from Rio. Farewell to a beautiful assignment. A little boring-how much could you write about favelitos, generals, and sambas, and Mardi Gras was a once-a-year thing-but my, my, what a culture, white sand, all those women sashaying topless along Ipanema, caramel asses hanging out of G-string bikini bottoms.


After three fat years under the Brazilian sun, Manhattan seemed poisonous, unhealthily clamorous, a headache machine. Welcome home, Mark. Home. Backslapping and speeches from the boys in the New York office, kudos to old Grabowsky, drink to the one-armed Hemingway (could he, Wilbur wondered, learn to type with that prosthesis?), and keep the fire burning in the Holy Land, Mark. Rah, rah.


Not his style. He'd laid his Front Page fantasies to rest a long time ago, wanted to take things easy, enjoy life. The wrong man for the Israel bureau.


The pace.


A story that was milkable for a week anywhere else faded in a day here, crowded out by something new before the ink was dry. Crazy coalition government, had to be at least twenty political-parties-he was a long way from knowing all of them-constantly taking shots at one another, clawing for little smidgens of power. Knesset meetings turned invariably to shouting matches; last week there had been a fist fight. They couldn't talk softly; a real Brooklyn deli scene-the constant charges and countercharges of corruption, virtually all of it noise. The Arabs were no better, always whining, buttonholing him, wanting to see their names in print. Cries of oppression from guys driving Mercedes and living off the U.N. dole.


Everyone had an axe to grind; in the six months he'd been there, a week hadn't gone by without some kind of major political demonstration. Usually there were two or three. And the strikes-the doctors, the nurses, the postal workers. Last month the taxi drivers had decided they wanted more money from the Transportation Ministry, blocked the main thoroughfares of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv with their cabs, burned an old jalopy in the middle of King George Street, the tires stinking to high heaven. Wilbur had been forced to leave his car at home and walk everywhere, which inflamed his corns and heightened his antipathy toward the country, the obstreperousness-the Jewishness of it.


He finished his drink, put the glass down on the bar, and looked around. Six tables, five empty. Two guys in a corner: Margalit from Davar, Aronoff from Yediot Aharonot-he hadn't gotten close to either of them. If they'd noticed him come in, they didn't show it, eating peanuts, drinking ginger ale, and talking in low voices.


Ginger ale. Another problem. Newshounds who didn't take their drinking seriously. No one did. The country had no drinking age-a ten-year-old could waltz into a grocery and buy hundred-proof-and yet, no one went for it. A kind of snobbery, as far as he was concerned. As if they considered sobriety some sort of religious virtue, regarded booze as a goy weakness.


He called for another Turkey. The bartender was the owner's nephew, quiet kid, not a bad sort. In between orders, he studied from a math book. He nodded in response to Wilbur's call and brought the bottle over, poured a full measure without comment, asked Wilbur if he wanted something to eat.


"What do you have?"


"Shrimp, lobster cocktail."


Wilbur felt himself grow irritated. Patronized.


"What about soup?" He smiled. "Chicken soup. With matzo balls."


The kid was impassive. "We've got that too, Mr. Wilbur."


"Bring me a shrimp cocktail."


Wilbur looked across the bar as the kid disappeared into the kitchen, read the gag cards again. An eye chart that spelled out TOO MUCH SEX MAKES YOU GO BLIND if you read it the right way; a placard announcing ONCE A king, always a KING, BUT… ONCE A KNIGHT IS ENOUGH!


The door to the street swung open, letting in heat, and Rappaport from the Post walked in. Perfect. It was Rap-paport's byline on the murder story, and he was an American, Princeton grad, a former hippie type who'd interned at the Baltimore Sun. Young, Jewish, and fast-talking, but he didn't mind a tipple once in a while.


Wilbur motioned toward the empty stool on his left and Rappaport sat down. "Steve, old boy."


"Hello, Mark."


The Post man was wearing a short-sleeved safari shirt with oversized pockets, denim walking shorts, and sandals without socks.


"Very casual," said Wilbur appraisingly.


"Got to beat the heat, Mark." Rappaport took a bulldog pipe, tobacco pouch, and matches out of one of the big pockets and placed them on the bar.


Wilbur noticed that the other two Israeli journalists were also informally attired. Long pants, but lightweight sport shirts. Suddenly his seersucker suit, button-down shirt, and rep tie, which had looked natty when he'd dressed this morning, seemed out of place, superfluous.


"Righto." He loosened his tie and pointed to the rolled-up Post. "Just finished reading your piece. Nice chunk of work, Steve."


"Routine," said Rappaport. "Straight from the source. The police covered up the first one, fed us a false quick-solve, and we swallowed it, but there were rumors that it was too easy, too cute, so we had our feelers out and were ready for them the second time.around."


Wilbur chuckled. "Same old bullshit." He picked up the newspaper, used it for a fan. "Nasty stuff, from the sound of it."


"Very. Butchery."


Wilbur liked the sound of that. He filed it away for future use.


"Any leads?"


"Nothing," said Rappaport. He had long hair and a thick handlebar mustache that he brushed away from his lips. "The police here aren't used to that kind of thing-they're not equipped to handle it."


"Amateur hour, huh?"


The bartender brought Wilbur's shrimp.


"I'll have some of that too," said Rappaport. "And a beer."


"On me," Wilbur told the bartender.


"Thank you much, Mark," said Rappaport.


Wilbur shrugged it off. "Gotta keep the expense account going or the main office gets worried."


"I won't tell you about my expense account." Rappaport frowned. "Or lack thereof."


"Police beating their meat?" asked Wilbur, trying to get the conversation back on track. It was a little too obvious and Rappaport seemed to have caught it. He picked up the pipe, rolled it in his palm, then filled it, lit it, and regarded Wilbur over a rising plume of smoke.


"Same thing back home," said Wilbur, backtracking casually. "Stepping over each other's feet and snowing the press."


"No," said Rappaport. "That's not the situation here. Major Crimes is a fairly competent unit when it comes to their specialty-security crimes, bombs left in trash bins, et cetera. The problem with this kind of thing is lack of experience. Sex murders are virtually unknown in Israel-I went into the archives and found only a handful in thirty years. And only one was a serial-a guy last year, cutting up hookers. They never caught him." He shook his head, smoked. "Six months in Baltimore, I saw more than that."


"Last year," said Wilbur. "Could it be the same guy?"


"Doubtful. Different M.O.'s."


M.O.'s. The kid had been reading too many detective novels.


"Two in a row," said Wilbur. "Maybe things are changing."


"Maybe they are," said Rappaport. He looked concerned. The sincere worry of a good citizen. Unprofessional, thought Wilbur. If you wanted to be effective you couldn't be part of it.


"What else you have been up to, Steve?" he asked, not wanting to sound too eager.


"Sunday puff piece on the new Ramat Gan mall-nothing much else."


"Till the next pseudo-scandal, eh?"


Before Rappaport could reply, his shrimp and beer came. Wilbur slapped down his American Express card and called for another Turkey.


"Thanks again," said Rappaport, tamping his pipe out and laying it in an ashtray. "I don't know, maybe we are changing. Maybe it's a sign of maturity. One of the founders of the state, Jabotinsky, said we wouldn't be a real country until we had Israeli criminals and Israeli whores."


We. The guy was overinvolved, thought Wilbur. And typically arrogant. The Chosen People, thinking they invented everything, turning everything into a virtue. He'd spent four years on a midtown Manhattan beat for the New York Post, could tell the kid plenty about Israeli criminals.


He smiled and said, "Welcome to the real world, Steve."


"Yup."


They drank and ate shrimp, talked about women and bosses and salaries, finally got around to the murders again. Wilbur kept a running tab going, cajoled Rappaport into having anothershrimp cocktail. Three more beers and the Post man started reminiscing about his student days in Jerusalem, how safe it had been, everyone keeping their doors unlocked. Paradise, to listen to him, but Wilbur knew it was self-delusion-nostalgia always was. He played fascinated listener and, by the time Rappaport left, had filed away all his information and was ready to start writing.


Ten days since the discovery of Juliet's body, and nothing new, either good or bad.


They'd narrowed the sex offender list down to sixteen men. Ten Jews, four Arabs, one Druze, one Armenian, all busted since Gray Man. None had alibis; all had histories of violence or, according to the prison psychiatrists, the potential for it. Seven had attempted rape, three had pulled it off, four had severely beaten women after being refused sex, and two were chronic peepers with multiple burglary convictions and a penchant for carrying knives-a combination the doctors considered potentially explosive.


Five of the sixteen lived in Jerusalem; another six resided in communities within an hour's drive of the capital. The Druze's home was farther north, in the village of Daliyat el Carmel, a remote aerie atop the verdant, poppy-speckled hills that looked down upon Haifa. But he was unemployed, had access to a car, and was prone to taking solitary drives. The same was true of two of the Arabs and one of the Jews. The remaining pair of Jews, Gribetz and Brickner, were friends who'd gang-raped a fifteen-year-old girl-Gribetz's cousin-and also lived far north, in Nahariya. Before going to prison they'd shared a business, a trucking service specializing in picking up parcels from the Customs House at Ashdod and delivering them to owners' homes. Since their release they'd resumed working together, tooling along the highways in an old Peugeot pickup. Looking, Daniel wondered, for more than profit?


He interviewed them and the Druze, trying to make some connection between Juliet Haddad's Haifa entry and home bases near the northern border.


Gribetz and Brickner were surly, semiliterate types in their mid-twenties, heavily muscled louts who smelled unwashed and gave off a foul heat. They didn't take the interrogation seriously, nudged each other playfully and laughed at unspoken jokes, and despite the tough-guy posturing, Daniel started perceiving them as lovers-latent homosexuals perhaps? They seemed bored by discussion of their crime, shrugged it off as a miscarriage of justice.


"She was always loose," said Gribetz. "Everyone in the family knew it."


"What do you mean by 'always'?" asked Daniel.


Gribetz's eyes dulled with confusion.


"Always-what do you think?" interceded Brickner.


Daniel kept his eyes on Gribetz. "She was fifteen when you raped her. How long had she been… loose?"


"Always," said Gribetz. "For years. Everyone in the family knew it. She was born that way."


"They'd have family parties," said Brickner. "Afterward everyone would take a drive with Batya and all the guys would have a go at her."


"You were there too?"


"No, no, but everyone knew-it was the kind of thing everyone knew."


"What we did was the same as always," said Gribetz. "We went for spin in the truck and had her good, but this time she wanted money and we said fuck you. She got mad and called the cops, ruined our lives."


"She really fucked us up," confirmed Brickner. "We lost all our accounts, had to start from scratch."


"Speaking of your accounts," Daniel asked him, "do you keep a log of your deliveries?"


"For each day. Then we throw it out."


'Why's that?"


'Why not? It's our personal shit. What's the matter, the government doesn't give us enough paperwork to store?"


Daniel looked at the arrest report Northern Division had written up on the two. The girl had suffered a broken jaw, loss of twelve teeth, a cracked eye socket, ruptured spleen, and vaginal lacerations that had needed suturing.


"You could have killed her," he said.


"She was trying to take our money," protested Brickner. "She was nothing more than a whore."


"So you're saying that it's okay to beat up whores."


"Well, ah, no-you know what I mean."


"I don't. Explain it to me."


Brickner scratched his head and inhaled. "How about a cigarette?"


"Later. First explain me your philosophy about whores."


"We don't need whores, Hillel and me," said Gribetz. "We get plenty of pussy, any time we want."


"Whores," said Brickner. "Who the hell needs them."


"Which is why you raped her?"


"That was different," said Brickner. "His whole family knew about her."


An hour later, they'd given him nothing that cleared them, but neither had they implicated themselves. During the nights of the murders they claimed to have been sleeping in bed, but both lived alone and lacked verification. Their memories failed to stretch back to the period preceding Fatma's murder, but they recalled delivering parcels to Bet Shemesh the day before Juliet's body had been found. A painstaking check of Ashdod Customs records revealed an early morning pickup; Shmeltzer was still trying to get hold of the bills of lading from the week of Fatma's death.


The timing vis-a-vis Juliet was feasible, Daniel knew. Bet Shemesh was just outside Jerusalem, which would have given them ample opportunity to drop off the packages, then go prowling around. But where would they have killed her and cut her up? Neither had residence nor connections in Jerusalem and the lab boys had found no blood in the truck. They denied ever laying eyes on Juliet or going into the city, and no witness placed them there. As for what they'd done with the afternoon, they claimed to have driven back north, spent the afternoon at a deserted stretch of beach just above Haifa.


"Anyone see you there?" asked Daniel.


"No one goes there," said Brickner. "The ships leak shit in the water-it smells. There's tar all over the beach that can gook you up if you're not careful."


"But you guys go there."


Brickner grinned. "We like it. It's empty-you can piss in the sand, do whatever you like."


Gribetz laughed.


"I'd like for both of you to take a polygraph test."


"Does it hurt?" asked Brickner in a crude imitation of a child's voice.


"You've had one before. It's in your file."


"Oh, yeah, the wires. It fucked us over. No way."


"No way for me either," said Gribetz, "No way."


"It incriminated you because you were guilty. If you're innocent, you can use it to clear yourselves of suspicion. Otherwise you'll be considered suspects."


"Consider away," said Brickner, spreading his arms.


"Consider away," said Gribetz, aping him.


Daniel called for a uniform, had them taken back.


A repulsive pair but he tended to believe them. They were low-impulse morons, explosive and psychopathic, playing on each other's pathology. Certainly capable of damaging another woman if the right situation came up, but he didn't see them for the murders. The cold calculation that had echoed from the crime scenes wasn't their style. Still, smarter men than he had been fooled by psychopaths, and there was still the earlier Ashdod material to be looked at. Perhaps something would be found that refreshed their memories about Fatma. Before he ordered them released, he slowed down the paperwork so that they'd be cooling their heels for as long as possible, assigned Avi Cohen to drive up to Nahariya and find out more about them, keep a tight surveillance on them when they got home.


The Druze, Assad Mallah, was also no genius. One of the peepers, he was a withdrawn, stammering type, just turned thirty, with jailhouse pallor, watery blue eyes, and a history of neurological abnormalities that had exempted him from army service. As a teenager he'd burgled Haifa apartments, gorged himself on food from the victims' refrigerators, and left a thank-you card before departing: a mound of excrement on the kitchen floor.


Because of his age he'd been given youth counseling, which never took place because at that time there'd been no Druze counselors; no one from Social Welfare had bothered to drive up to Daliyat el Carmel to bring him in. But he had received treatment of sorts-severe and regular beatings at the hand of his father-which seemed to have done the trick, cause his record stayed clean. Until one night, ten years later, he was caught ejaculating noisily against the wall of an apartment building near the Technion, one hand gripping the casement of a nearby bedroom window, the other flogging away as he cried out in ecstasy.


The tenants were a married couple, a pair of graduate physics students who'd forgotten to draw their drapes. Hearing the commotion, the husband rushed out, discovered Mallah, beat him senseless, and called the police. During his questioning by Northern District, the Druze immediately con-fessed to scores of peeping incidents and dozens of burglaries, which went a long way in clearing the local crime records.


He was a blade man too. At the time of his arrest, there had been a penknife in his pocket-he claimed to use it to whittle and slice fruit. No forensic evidence had been found to contradict him at the time and Northern District had confiscated the weapon, which had since disappeared. At his trial he had the misfortune of drawing the only Druze judge at Haifa Magistrates Hall and received the maximum sentence. In Ramie he behaved well, got good recommendations from the psychiatrists and the administrators, and was released early. One month before Fatma's murder.


Another penknife had been found on him the day he'd been picked up for questioning. Small-bladed, dull, it bore no similarity to Levi's wound molds. He was also, Daniel noticed, left-handed, which, according to the pathologist, made him an unlikely candidate. Daniel spent two sluggish hours with him, scheduled a polygraph, and made a phone request to Northern District for a loose surveillance: no intrusion into the village; keep track of his license plate; report his whereabouts if he went into town.


At the same time, the Chinaman and Daoud were interrogating other suspects, working with dogged rhythm, going down the list. They agreed to do a good-guy, bad-guy routine, switching off so that the Chinaman would lean hard on the Jews, Daoud zero in on the Arabs. It threw the suspects off guard, kept them guessing about who was who, what was what. And reduced the possibility of racism/brutality charges, though that would happen no matter what you did. A national pastime.


Two days later, ten of the sixteen had been judged improbable. All agreed to be hooked up to the polygraph; all passed. Of the six possibles, three also passed, leaving three refusers-the Nahariya buddies and an Arab from Gaza. Daoud was assigned to watch the Arab.


Late in the afternoon, Shmeltzer came into Daniel's office with photocopies of the customs material from Ashdod. During the days preceding Fatma's murder, Brickner and Gribetz had picked up an unusually full load of cargo-part of an overflow shipment held up at the docks for three weeks due to a stevedore strike. The parcels were destined for the north-central region-Afula, Hadera, and villages in the Bet She'an valley, a good seventy kilometers above Jerusalem. Which was still driveable if they'd gotten off early.


Daniel, Shmeltzer, and the Chinaman got on the phone, calling each name on the bills of lading, received confirmation that the buddies had been busy for two days straight, so busy that they'd spent the night in Hadera, parking their truck in a date grove belonging to one of the package owners, still asleep when the guy went to check his trees. He remembered them well, he told Daniel, because they'd awoken filthy-mouthed, stood on the truck bed and urinated onto the ground, then demanded breakfast.


"Were there packages in the truck bed?"


"Oh, yeah. Dozens. They stood right on top of them- didn't give a damn."


Idiots, thought Daniel, they could have supplied themselves with alibis all along, had been too stupid or too contrary to do so. Maybe being thought of as potential murderers fed their egos.


Dangerous, they bore watching, but were no longer his present concern.


The Arab from Gaza, Aljuni, was their last chance-not that probable, really, except that he was a killer who liked Wades and hated women. He'd carved up one wife in a fit of rage over improperly cooked soup, maimed another, and, three months out of prison, was engaged to a third, sixteen years old. Why did women hook up with that type? Latent death wish? Was being alone worse than death?


Irrelevant questions. Daoud had nothing to report on Aljuni: The guy kept regular habits, never went out at night. No doubt he'd come to naught as a prospect. The winnowing of the sex files had been futile.


He looked at his watch. Eight P.M and he hadn't called home. He did so, got no answer, and puzzled, phoned the message operator and asked if Gveret Sharavi had tried to get in touch with him.


'Let me see-yes. Here's one from her that came in at four forty-three, Pakad. She wants to know if you'll be joining her, the children, and… it looks like the Boonkers-" 'Brokers.'


"Whatever. She wanted to know if you'll be joining them for dinner at seven-thirty."


"Did she say where?"


"No," said the operator reproachfully. "She probably expected you to call sooner."


He hung up, took a swallow of cold coffee from the cup on his desk, and put his head down. A knock on the door raised him up and he saw Shmeltzer enter, looking angry, a sheaf of papers clutched in his hand.


"Look at this, Dani. I was driving home, noticed a guy plastering this to walls, thought you might want to see it."


The papers were handbills. At the center was a head-shot photo of a Hassid, fortyish, full-bearded, with extravagant side curls. The man looked fat, with flat features and narrow eyes behind black-framed eyeglasses. He wore a dark jacket and a white shirt buttoned to the neck. Atop his head was a large, square kipah. Hanging around his neck was a sign with the letters NYPD, followed by several numbers.


A mug shot.


BEWARE OF THIS MAN! was emblazoned under the photo, in Hebrew, English, and Yiddish. SENDER MALKOVSKY IS A CRIMINAL AND A CHILD RAPER!!!!!! HIDE YOUR YOUNG ONES!!!!!! Below the warnings were clippings from New York newspapers, reduced to the point where the print was barely legible. Daniel squinted, read with tired eyes.


Malkovsky was from trie Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, a father of six, a teacher of religious studies, and a tutor. A student had accused him of forced molestation and the charge had brought forth similar stories from dozens of other children. Malkovsky had been arrested by the New York Police, arraigned, released on bail, and failed to appear at his trial. One of the articles, from the New York Post, speculated that he'd run off to Israel, citing connections to "prominent Hassidic rabbis."


Daniel put the handbill down.


"He's living here, the bastard," said Shmeltzer. "In a fancy flat up in Qiryat Wolfson. The guy I found pasting these up is also a longbeard, named Rabinovitch-also from Brooklyn, knew Malkovsky's case well, thought Malkovsky was in jail.


He moves to Israel, buys a flat in the Wolfson complex, and one day he spots Malkovsky coming out of an apartment a hundred meters away. It drove him crazy-he has seven kids of his own. He marches straight to Malkovsky's rebbe and tells him about the shmuck's history, Rebbe nods and says Malkovsky had done repentance, deserves a second chance. Rabinovitch goes crazy and runs to the printer."


"A tutor," said Daniel. "Skips bail and moves into one of the fanciest developments in town. Where does he get that kind of money?"


"That's what Rabinovitch wanted to know. He figured Malkovsky's fellow Hassidim donated it on the rebbe's orders. That may be rivalry talking-Rabinovitch is from a different sect; you know how they like to go at each other-but it makes sense."


"Why didn't Rabinovitch notify us?"


"I asked him that. He looked at me as if I were crazy. Far as he's concerned the police are in on it-how else could Malkovsky get into the country, be running around free?"


"How else, indeed?"


"It stinks, Dani. I don't remember any Interpol notices or extradition orders, do you?"


"No." Daniel opened a desk drawer, took out the Interpol bulletins and FBI bulletins and flipped through them. "No Malkovsky."


"No immigration warnings, either," said Shmeltzer. "Nothing from the brass or Customs. This rebbe must have massive protekzia."


"Which rebbe is it?"


The Prostnitzer."


"He's new," said Daniel. "From Brooklyn. Has a small group that broke off from the Satmars-couple of planeloads of them came over last year."


"To Wolfson, eh? No Mea She'arim for these saints?"


"Most of them live out in the Ramot. The Wolfson thing's probably special for Malkovsky-to keep him under wraps. How long's he been in the country?"


"Three months-enough to do damage. He's a kiddy-diddler, but who knows what a pervert will do? Maybe he's shifted his preferences. In any event, someone's making us look like idiots, Dani."


Daniel slammed his fist down on the desk. Shmeltzer, surprised at the uncharacteristic display of emotion, took a step backward, then smiled inwardly. At least the guy was human.


Qiryat Wolfson was luxury American-style; a penthouse in the complex had recently sold for over a million dollars. Crisp limestone towers and low-profile town houses, a maze of landscaped walkways and subterranean parking garages, carpeted lobbies and high-speed elevators, all of it perched at the edge of a craggy bluff near the geographical center of the municipality, due west of the Old City. The view from up there was commanding-the Knesset, the Israel Museum, the generous belts of greenery that surrounded the government buildings. To the southwest, an even wider swatch of green-the Ein Qerem forest, where Juliet had been found.


In the darkness the complex jutted skyward like a clutch of stalagmites; from below came the roar of traffic on Rehov Herzl. Daniel drove the Escort into one of the underground lots and parked near the entrance. Some of the spaces were occupied by American cars: huge Buicks, Chevrolets, Chryslers, an old white Cadillac Coupe de Ville sagging on under-inflated tires. Dinosaurs, too wide for Jerusalem streets and alleys. Why had the owners bothered to bring them over?


It took him a while to find his way around, and it was just past nine by the time he reached Malkovsky's flat-a first-floor town-house unit on the west side of the complex, built around a small paved courtyard. The door was unmarked, armored with three locks. Daniel knocked, heard heavy footsteps, the sliding of bolts, and found himself face to face with the man in the handbill.


"Yes?" said Malkovsky. He was huge, bearishly obese, the beard fanning over his chest like some hirsute bib, reaching almost to his waist. A thick reddish-brown pelt that masked his cheekbones and tapered raggedly just beneath the lower rims of his eyeglasses. His complexion was florid, lumpy, dominated by a nose squashed pita-flat and dotted with open pores. His forehead was skimpy, the hair above it dense and curly. He wore the same square skullcap as in the picture, but had pushed it back to the crown.


Swallowed up by hair, thought Daniel. Like Esau. So big, he blocked most of the doorway. Daniel looked past him, peering through slivers of space: a living room still redolent of a boiled chicken supper, the floor littered with toys, newspapers, an empty baby bottle. He saw a blur of motion-children chasing each other, laughing and screaming in Yiddish. A baby wailed, unseen. A kerchiefed woman passed quickly through the sliver and disappeared. Moments later the crying stopped.


"Police," said Daniel, in English. He took out his identification and held it up to Malkovsky's glasses.


Malkovsky ignored it, unimpressed. A wave of annoyance rumpled the knobby blanket of his face. He cleared his throat and drew himself up to his full height.


"A frummer?" he said, focusing on Daniel's kipah.


"May I come in?"


Malkovsky wiped his brow. He was sweating-from ex-ertion, not anxiety-eyeglasses fogged, perspiration stains browning the armpits of a tentlike V-neck undershirt. Over the undershirt he wore a black-striped woolen tallit katan, the ritual fringed garment prescribed for daily use, a rectangle of cloth with a hole cut out for the head, the fringes looped through perforations on each corner. His pants were black and baggy On his feet were black bubble-toed oxfords.


"What do you want?" he demanded, in Hebrew.


'To talk to you."


'Who is it, Sender?" a female voice called out. 'Gornisht." Malkovsky stepped out into the hallway and closed the door behind him. When he moved he shook.


Like the cubes of jellied calfs leg in the display case at Pfefferberg's.


"Everything's been arranged," he said. "I don't need you."


"Everything?"


"Everything. Just perfect. Tell your boss I'm perfect."


When Daniel gave no evidence of moving, Malkovsky nibbled his mustache and asked, "Nu, what's the problem? More papers?"


"I have no papers for you."


"What is it, then?"


"I'm conducting a criminal investigation. Your criminal history came to my attention and I thought it best that we talk."


Malkovsky flushed, sucked in his breath, and his eyes kindled with anger. He started to say something, stopped himself, and wiped his brow again. Turning his hands into fists the size of Shabbat roast, he began bouncing them against the convex surface of his thighs.


"Go away, policeman," he said. "My papers are in order! Everything's been arranged!"


"To what arrangement are you referring, Mr… or is it Rabbi Malkovsky?"


Malkovsky folded his arms across his chest. The flush beneath the beard was tinged with purple and his breathing sounded labored.


"I don't have to talk to you."


"That's your privilege," said Daniel, "but I'll be back in an hour with papers of my own, along with a minyan of police officers to help me deliver them. Your neighbors are sure to be intrigued."


Malkovsky stared down at him, clenching and unclenching those massive fists.


"Why are you harassing me!" he demanded, but his resistance had started to fizzle, indignation giving way to naked fear.


"As I told you, Rabbi-"


"I'm not a rabbi!"


"-your history makes it necessary for me to speak with you concerning some crimes that have taken place since you've immigrated to Israel."


"This is stupid talk. There is no history. I don't know what you're talking about." Malkovsky opened his hands, turned them palms-down, and passed one over the other in a gesture of closure. "G'nuk. Enough."


"No, not g'nuk, not until we talk."


"There's nothing to talk about. I'm a permanent resident. My papers are in order."


"Speaking of papers," said Daniel. He removed a handbill from his pocket, unfolded it, and gave it to Malkovsky.


The immense man stared at it, lips formed into a silent O. With one hand he crumpled the paper; with the other he covered his face. "Lies."


The hand opened and the paper ball dropped to the floor.


"There are others, Mr. Malkovsky, hundreds of others, plastered to walls, kiosks, all over town. It's just a matter of time."


"Lies," said Malkovsky. "Sinful gossip." He turned, half-faced the wall, pulling at his beard, ripping loose long, wiry strands of hair.


Daniel took Malkovsky's arm, feeling his fingers sink into softness. A clay man, he thought. A golem.


"We need to talk," he said.


Malkovsky said nothing, continued to shred his beard. But his posture had slackened and he allowed Daniel to lead him outside, to a quiet corner of the courtyard shaded by pepper trees in terra-cotta planters. The outdoor lighting was dim, weak orange spotlights casting electric blemishes upon the pint's knurled countenance.


"Tell me everything," said Daniel.


Malkovsky stared at him.


Daniel repeated: "Tell me."


"I was a sick man," said Malkovsky, as if by rote. "I had a sickness. a burden the yetzer horah cast upon my shoulders."


Self-pitying hypocrite, thought Daniel. Speaking of the


Evil Impulse as if it were divorced from his free will. The sight of the man, with his beard and peyot and religious garments. dredgeo up feelings of revulsion that were almost overwhelming.


'You've transferred that burden to the shoulders of oth-ers," he said coldly. "Very small shoulders."


Malkovsky trembled, then removed his glasses, as if clarity of perception were painful. Unshielded, his eyes were small, down-slanted, restlessly evasive.


"I've worked hard to repent," he said. "True tshuva-last Yom Kippur, my rebbe praised my efforts. You're afrummer mensh, you understand about tshuva."


"A necessary part of tshuva is vidduy " said Daniel. "Full confession. All I've heard from you is self-pity."


Malkovsky was indignant. "I've done a proper vidduy. My rebbe says I'm making good progress. Now you forget about me-leave me alone!"


"Even if I would, others won't." Daniel pulled out another handbill, set it down on Malkovsky's broad lap.


Malkovsky pounded his chest and began uttering the Yom Kippur confession in a high, constricted whisper. Stood there torturing his beard, spitting out a litany of transgressions.


"We have trespassed, we have dealt treacherously, we have stolen, we have spoken slander, we have committed iniquity


When he reached the last offense, he put a finger in his mouth and bit down upon it, eyes closed* kipah askew. Breathing rapidly and noisily.


"Did you ever," asked Daniel, "do it with any of your own children, or did you limit yourself to the children of others?"


Malkovsky ignored the question, kept praying. Daniel waited, repeated his question. Let the big bastard know he wouldn't be getting off with lip service.


A while later, Malkovsky answered.


The library was the best room in the house.


The living room was boring-all those couches and paintings and furniture, and stuff under glass bells that you weren't allowed to touch. When he'd been real little the maids wouldn't let him go in there at all, and now that he was nine he didn't even want to.


The kitchen was okay if you wanted food or something, but otherwise it was boring. The extra bedrooms in the Children's Wing were always locked, and his bedroom smelled of pee and throw-up. The maids said it was his imagination, it smelled fine. They refused to scrub it anymore.


He'd been in Doctor's room a couple of times, going through the drawers, squeezing the soft, striped underwear and the blue pajamas with white trim around the edges and Doctor's initials on the front pocket. The rest of the stuff was socks, sweaters; suits and pants in the closet-all boring. The only interesting thing he'd ever come across was a thick black fountain pen with a gold tip, kind of stuck between two sweaters, hiding from him. He stole it, took it into his room, and tried to write with it, and when it didn't work he snashed it with a hammer until it turned into black dust. He tasted it. It was bad and he spit it out, wiping his tongue to get the grit off, trails of grayish drool trickling down his chin.


The ice palace was always locked. Of course. She only let him in there when she was really drunk and needed him to get her an aspirin from the bathroom. Or when Sarah came to visit, which was only two or three times a year but always got her upset.


On Sarah days, she was always calling for him in a high, wiggly voice that was kind of scary-"Darling! Come he-ere! Daarling"-telling him to get into bed, drawing him in under the slimy-satin covers and putting a soft, bare arm around his shoulder. He could feel her hand squeezing him, soft and weet and sticky, her mouth breathing all that gin-breath on him. hot and sweet, but a disgusting sweet, like she'd been throwing up candy.


On Sarah days, she'd get really disgusting, lean over him so that her titties were pushing into his chest, the tops all white and shaky. Sometimes she'd lean real low so that he could look down and see the nipples, like big pink gumdrops.


Slurping his cheek and saying, "Come on, baby, tell Mama. Is that nasty little bitch high-hatting you? Is she lording it over you, is she?" While she'd be slobbering all over him, the cat would stare at him, all jealous, sneak a scratch in, then pull back so you couldn't accuse it of anything.


He didn't understand what she was talking about-high-hatting, lording-so he just shrugged and looked away from her, which got her going again, waving her empty glass and talking all wiggly.


"Little snot, thinks she's so much better than you and me, thinks she's so goddamned smart-they always do. Too smart for their own damned good, the chosen people, yeah. Chosen to ruin the world, right? Answer me!"


Shrug.


"Cat got your tongue, eh? Or maybe she spooked you- the chosen people hex. Ha. Chosen for big noses, if you ask me. Don't you think her nose is big? She's horrid and ugly, don't you think? Don't you?"


He actually thought Sarah was okay. She was seven years older, which made her sixteen, almost a grown-up, and kind of pretty, with thick dark hair, soft brown eyes, and a wide, pretty mouth. Her nose looked okay to him, too, but he didn't say so, just shrugged.


"Horrid little bitch"


Even though she stayed in the room next to his, they didn't see each other much. Sarah was either swimming or reading or calling her mother at her hotel, or going out at night with Doctor. But when they passed each other in the hall she always smiled at him, said hi. One time she brought a tin of sugared fruits all the way from the city where she lived and shared it with him, didn't even mind when he ate all the cherries.


"Don't you think she's terrible-a horrid little hook-nosed nothing? Answer me, damn you!"


He felt his arm being pinched hard, twisted between cold, wet fingers. Bit his lip to keep from crying out.


"Isn't she!"


"Sure, Mom."


"She really is a little bitch, you know. If you were older you'd understand. Ten years it's been and she still won't give me the time of day, the conceited little kike-kikette! Isn't that a fun way to say it, darling?"


"Sure, Mom."


A hot, ginny sigh and a wet-hand hug, the fingers digging in as if for another pinch, then opening and rubbing him. Down his arm to his wrist, dropping onto his leg. Rubbing.


"We're all we've got, darling. I'm so glad we can confide in each other this way."


Sarah's mother always brought her. A taxi would drop them off in front of the house; Sarah would get out first, then her mother. Her mother would kiss her good-bye, walk her to the door, but never come inside. She was a short, dark woman named Lillian, kind of pretty-Sarah looked a lot like her. She wore fancy clothes-shiny dresses, shoes with really high heels, long coats with fur collars, sometimes a hat with a veil-and she smiled a lot. One time she caught him looking at her through the living room window, smiled and waved before she got in the taxi and rode off. He thought it was a pretty nice smile.


If Doctor was home, he'd go outside and talk to Lillian, shake her hand, and pick up Sarah's suitcases. They seemed to like each other, talking all friendly, as if they had lots to talk about, and he couldn't figure out why, if they got along so good, they'd gotten divorced. He wondered if his mother and


Doctor had ever been friendly like that. As long as he could remember, it had always been fighting, the night-wars.


Twice during each visit Doctor and Sarah went out to-gether. Once for dinner, once for ice cream. He knew about it because he heard them talking, planning what they were going to eat. Rack of lamb. Prime rib. Baked Alaska. Rice pudding.


His mother heard it, too, called him in and whispered in his


"They're a pair of little piggies, absolutely disgusting.


They go to nice places and eat like pigs and people stare at them. I refuse to go along anymore-it's disgusting. You should see his shirts when he's through. She eats chocolate ice cream and gets it all over herself. Her dresses look like used toilet paper!"


He thought of that, chocolate ice cream stains looking like shit stains, and wondered what people shit tasted like.


One time he'd taken a tiny piece of the cat's shit out of the letter box and put it on his tongue and then spit it out real fast because it was so terrible. Tasting it had made his stomach hurt and he wanted to throw up for three days. All over his mother's bed-that would be good, big globs of barf all over the white satin. On Doctor and Sarah and the maids too. Running all over the house-no, flying't Dive bombing everyone with shit bombs and throw-up bombs. Pow!


Power!


One time he saw Sarah in the cabana next to the pool. There was an open window and he looked through it. She was peeling off her bathing suit and looking at herself in the mirror before putting on her clothes.


She had small titties with chocolate centers.


Her body was tan except for a white tit belt and a white butt belt and her puss was covered with black hair.


She touched her puss and smiled at herself in the mirror. Then shook her head no and lifted her leg in order to put on her panties.


He saw a pink, squiggly line peeking out from under the middle of the hair, like one of the wounds in Doctor's books.


Her butt was like two eggs, small, the brown kind. He thought of cracking them open, yellow stuff coming out.


Her head hair was dark, but not as dark as her puss hair. She stood there in her panties and brushed it, making it shine. Raising her arms so that her titties went flat and disappeared and only the chocolate tips were sticking out. Humming to herself.


He wanted to take bites out of her, wondered what she tasted like.


Thinking about it made his pecker get all stiff and hurt so bad he was afraid it would crack and fall off and all the blood would come pouring out of the hole and he would die.


It took a long time for the pain to go away.


He hated Sarah a little after that, but he still thought she was okay. He wanted to sneak into her room, go through her drawers, but she always kept the door locked. After she went back home and before the maids had a chance to lock it, he went in and opened all the drawers. All that was left was a nylon stocking box and a perfumey smell.


It made him real angry.


He kind of missed her.


He thought of cutting her up and eating her, imagined that she tasted like sugared fruit.


The house was so big it always felt empty. Which was okay-the only ones around were the maids and they were stupid, talked with an accent and hummed weird songs. They hated him-he could tell from the way they looked at him and whispered to each other when he walked by. He wondered what their pusses looked like. Their titties. Thought they probably tasted sour, like vegetables. Wondering about it made him stare at them. When they noticed it they got angry, muttered under their breaths, and walked away from him. talking foreign.


The neat thing about the library was that the double doors were always closed; once the maids were through cleaning, you could go in, turn the key in the lock, and nobody would know you were in there.


He liked the big, soft leather chairs. And the books. Doctor's books, full of terrific, scary pictures. He had favorites, would always turn to them first. The nigger guy with elephantiasis (a big word; it took him a long time to figure it out), his balls were big-hugel-each one as a big as a watermelon. He couldn't believe it the first time he saw it. The picture showed the guy sitting on a chair with his hands in his lap, the balls hanging down to the floor! He looked pretty worried. Why didn't someone just come along and chop them off so he could walk again? Clean him up and stop his worries?


Other ones he liked were the retarded people with no foreheads, and tongues as big as salamis that just hung out of their mouths. A weird-looking naked retarded lady with a real flat face standing next to a ruler; she was only thirty-seven inches tall and had no hair on her puss, even though she was old. Naked midgets and giants, also next to rulers. People missing fingers and arms and legs. One guy without arms or legs-that looked really stupid and made him laugh. Lots of other naked people, with sores and spots and bent bones and weird bumps. Buttholes and lips with splits down the middle. And naked fat people. Really fat people, so fat that they looked like they were wearing squishy clothes all full of wrinkles and folds. One woman had a belly that hung down past her knees, covering her whole puss. Her elbows were covered by hang-downs of fat. Someone, a surgeon like Doctor, should come along and cut off all that fat, maybe use it for candles or something or to give to skinny people to keep them warm. The fat people could be peeled and cleaned up to make them look nice. The ones in the books probably didn't do it because it was too expensive. They'd have to walk around like that, all covered with fat-clothes, for the rest of their lives.


One time, after looking at the fat people, he left the library, went up to his room, and made squishy, fat people out of modeling clay. Then he took a pencil and a nail file and made holes and slit-cuts all over them, chopped off their heads and arms and legs and peeled them until they were nothing more than little chunks and pieces. Then he grabbed up the chunks and squeezed real hard, let the clay squish through his fingers. Flushed them down the toilet and imagined they were drowning. Screaming: Oh, no! Oh, God! Watching them go around and around and finally disappear made him feel like the boss, made his pecker hard and sore.


On the top shelf of the carved bookcase was this big green book, really heavy; he had to stand on a chair to get it, be really careful not to drop it on Doctor's leather-topped desk, break the skull that Doctor used for a paperweight. A monkey skull, too small to have come from a person, but he liked to pretend it was from a person. One of the midgets in the pictures. Maybe he'd tried to attack the boy's family and the boy had killed him and saved everyone, like a big hero, then peeled off the skin to get the skull.


The green book was old-the date on it was 1908-and it had a long title: The Atlas of Clinical Surgery by Professor Bockenheimer or some weird name like that, from a place called Berlin; he looked it up in his junior encyclopedia and found out it was in Germany.


Someone had written something inside the cover of the book, in this weird, thin handwriting that looked like dead bugs and spider legs, it took him a long time to figure it out.


To Charles, my learned colleague, with deepest gratitude for your kind hospitality and stimulating conversation.


Best wishes, Dieter Schwann


What was neat about the green book was that the pictures looked really real, as if you could put your hand out and touch them, just like looking through a 3-D stereoscope. The book said they were pictures of models. Models made by some guy named F. Kalbow from the-this was a really hard one-Pathoplastic Institute of Berlin.


One model was a guy's face with a hole in it called a sarcoma. The hole covered the guy's nose and mouth. All you could see was eyes and then the hole-inside it was all pink and yellow. Another one was a pecker all squashed up, with some grayish, wrinkly thing around it and a big sore on the tip. Kind of like an earthworm with a red head. One he really liked to look at was this big picture of a butthole with pink flowerlike things all over it. A butthole flower garden.


It was dirty stuff. He wanted to take a knife and cut it all away and peel it, make everything clean and nice.


To be the boss, and save everyone.


The other things he really liked were the knives and tools in the big black leather case that sat next to the monkey skull.


The inside of the case was red velvet. Gold letters were stamped into it: Jetter und Scheerer: Tuttlingen und Berlin. There it was again, that same place, Berlin. It was a doctor city, probably. Full of doctor stuff.


The knives and tools were held in place by leather straps.


There were a lot of them; when you picked up the case it kind of clinked. The blades were silvery metal, the handles some smooth, white, shiny stuff that looked like the inside of a seashell.


He'd like to unfasten the straps and take the knives out, one by one, then arrange them like ice-cream sticks, making letters and designs with them on the desk top. His initials, in knife-letters.


They were really sharp. He found out by accident when he touched the tip of one of them to his finger and all of a sudden his skin had opened, as if by magic. It was a deep cut and it scared him but he felt good, seeing the different layers of skin, what was inside of him. It didn't even hurt, at first; then it started to bleed-a lot-and he felt a sharp, pumping pain. He grabbed a tissue, wrapped it around his finger, and squeezed, watching the tissue turn from white to red, sitting there a long time until the blood finally stopped coming out. He unwrapped the finger, touched the tissue to his tongue, tasted salt and paper, crumpled it, and stuffed it into his pocket.


After that he cut himself from time to time. On purpose-he was the boss over the knives. Little tiny cuts that didn't bleed for long, notches nicked into the tops of his fingernails. There was a squeezing tool in the case, off to one side, and he used it to squeeze his finger until it turned purple and hot and throbbing and he couldn't stand it any longer. He used tissues to soak up the blood, collected the bloody pieces of paper, and hid them in a toy box in his closet.


After playing with the knives, he sometimes went up to his room, locked the door, and took out nail files, scissors, safety pins, and pencils. Laying them out on his own desk, slapping together clay people and doing operations on them, using red clay for blood, making sarcoma holes and butthole flowers, cutting off their arms and legs.


Sometimes he imagined the clay people screaming. Loud, wiggly screams of Oh, no! and Oh, my god! Chopping off their heads stopped that.


That'll show you to scream!


He played with the knives for weeks before finding the knife book.


The knife book had no people in it, just drawings of knives and tools. A catalog. He turned pages until he found drawings that matched the knives in the black leather case. Spent a long time finding matches, learning the names and memorizing them.


The seven ones with the short blades were called scalpels.


The folding one on top with the little pointed blade was a lancet.


The ones with the long blades were called bistouries.


The skinny, round things were surgical needles.


The sharp spoon was a probe and scoop.


The one that kind of looked like a fork with two points was a probe-detector.


The hollow tube was a cannula; the pointy thing that fit into it was a trocar.


The fat one with the thick, flat blade was a raspatory.


The squeezing one off on the side, by itself, was a harelip clamp.


At the bottom of the case was his favorite one. It really Bade him feel like the boss, even though he was still scared to pick it up, it was so big and felt so dangerous.


The amputating knife. He needed two hands to hold it steady. Swing it in an arc, a soft, white neck its target.


Cut, slice.


Oh, god!


That'll show you.


There was other neat stuff in the library too. A big brass microscope and a wooden box of prepared slides-flies' legs that looked like hairy trees, red blood cells, flat and round like flying saucers. Human hair, bacteria. And a box of hypodermic needles in one of the desk drawers. He took one out, unwrapped it, and stuck it in the back of one of the leather chairs, on the bottom, next to the wall, where no one would notice it. Pretending the chair was an animal, he gave it shots, jabbing the needle in again and again, hearing the animal screaming until it turned into a person-a naked, ugly person, a girl-and started screaming in words.


Oh, no! Oh, god!


"There!" Jab. "That'll show you!" Twist.


He stole that needle, took it up to his room, and put it in with the bloody tissues.


A neat room. Lots of neat stuff.


But he liked the knives the best.


More interviews, more dead ends; five detectives working like mules.


Lacking any new leads, Daniel decided to retrace old ones. He drove to the Russian Compound jail and interviewed Anwar Rashmawi, concentrating on the brother's final conversation with Issa Abdelatif, trying to discern if the boyfriend had said anything about where he and Fatma had stayed between the time she'd left Saint Saviour's and the day of her murder. If Abdelatif's comment about Fatma's being dead had been more specific than Anwar had let on.


The guard brought Anwar in, wearing prison pajamas three sizes too big for him. Daniel could tell right away the brother was different, hostile, no longer the outcast. He entered the interrogation room swaggering and scowling, ignored Daniel's greeting and the guard's order to sit. Finally the guard pushed him down into the chair, said, "Stay there, you," and asked Daniel if there was anything more he needed.


"Nothing more. You may go."


When they were alone, Anwar crossed his legs, sat back in his chair, and stared at the ceiling, either ignoring Daniel's questions or turning them into feeble jokes.


Quite a change from the puff pastry who'd confessed to him two weeks ago. Bolstered, no doubt, by what he imagined to be hero status. According to the guards, his father had been visiting him regularly, the two of them playing sheshbesh, listening to music on Radio Amman, sharing cigarettes like best pals. The old man smiling with pride as he left the cell.


Twenty fruitless minutes passed. The room was hot and humid. Daniel felt his clothes sticking to him, a tightness in his chest.


"Let's go over it again," he said. "The exact words."


"Whose exact words?"


"Abdelatifs."


"Snakes don't talk."


Like a broken record.


Daniel opened his note pad.


"When you confessed, you said he had plenty to say. I have it here in my notes: '… he started to walk toward me with the knife, saying I was dead, just like Fatma. That she was nothing to him, garbage to be dumped.' You remember that, don't you?"


"I remember nothing."


"What else did he say about Fatma's death?"


"I want my lawyer."


"You don't need one. We're not discussing your crime, only Fatma's murder."


Anwar smiled. "Tricks. Deceit."


Daniel got to his feet, walked over to the brother, and stared down at him.


"You loved her. You killed for her. It would seem to me you'd want to find out who murdered her."


"The one who murdered her is dead."


Daniel bent his knees and put his face closer to Anwar's. 'Not so. The one who murdered her has murdered again- he's still out there, laughing at all of us."


Anwar closed his eyes and shook his head. "Lies." 'It's the truth, Anwar." Daniel picked up the copy of Al fajr. waved it in front of Anwar's face until his eyes opened, and said, "Read for yourself."


Anwar averted his gaze.


"Read it, Anwar."


"Lies. Government lies."


"Al Fajr is a PLO mouthpiece-everyone knows that, Anwar. Why would the PLO print government lies?"


'Government lies."


"Abdelatif didn't murder her, Anwar-at least not by himself. There's another one out there. Laughing and plot-ing.'


'I know what you're doing," said Anwar smugly. "You're trying to trick me."


'I'm trying to find out who murdered Fatma."


"The one who murdered her is dead."


Daniel straightened, took a step backward, and regarded the brother. The stubbornness, the narrowness of vision, tightened his chest further. He stared at Anwar, who spat on the floor, played with the saliva with the frayed toe of his shoe.


Daniel waited. The tightness in Daniel's chest turned hot, a fiery band that seemed to press against his lungs, branding them, causing real, searing pain.


"Idiot," he heard himself saying, words springing to his lips, tumbling out unfettered: "I'm trying to find the one who butchered her like a goat. The one who sliced her open and scooped out her insides for a trophy. Like a goat hanging in the souq, Anwar."


Anwar covered his ears and screamed. "Lies!"


"He's done it again, Anwar," Daniel said, louder. "He'll keep doing it. Butchering."


"Lies!" shouted Anwar. "Filthy deceit!"


"Butchering, do you hear me!"


"Jew liar!"


"Your revenge is incomplete!" Daniel was shouting too. "A dishonour upon your family!"


"Lies! Jew trickery!"


"Incomplete, do you hear me, Anwar? A sham!"


"Filthy Jew liar!" Anwar's teeth were chattering, his hands corpse-white, clutching his ears.


"Worthless. A dishonour. A joke for all to know." Daniel's mouth kept expectorating words. "Worthless," he repeated, looking into Anwar's eyes, making sure the brother could see him, read his lips. "Just like your manhood."


Anwar emitted a wounded, rattling cry from deep in his belly, jumped out of the chair, and went for Daniel's throat. Daniel drew back his good hand, hit him hard against the face with the back of it, his wedding ring making contact with the eyeglasses, knocking them off. A follow-up slap, even harder, rasping the bare cheekbone, feeling the shock of pain as metal collided with bone, the frailty of the other man's body as it tumbled backward.


Anwar lay sprawled on the stone floor, holding his chest and gulping in air. A thick red welt was rising among the crevices and pits of one cheek. An angry diagonal, as if he'd been whipped.


The door was flung open and the guard came in, baton in hand.


"Everything okay?" he asked, looking first at Anwar hyper-ventilating on the floor, then at Daniel standing over him, rubbing his knuckles.


"Just fine," said Daniel, breathing hard himself. "Everything's fine."


"Lying Jew dog! Fascist Nazi!"


"Get up, you," said the guard. "Stand with your hands against the wall. Move it."


Anwar didn't budge, and the guard yanked him to his feet and cuffed his hands behind his back.


"He tried to attack me," said Daniel. "The truth upset him."


"Lying Zionist pig." An obscene gesture. "QusAmakr Up your mother's cunt.


"Shut up, you," said the guard. "I don't want to hear from you again. Are you all right, Pakad?"


"I'm perfectly fine." Daniel began gathering up his notes.


"Finished with him?" The guard tugged on Anwar's shirt collar.


"Yes. Completely finished."


He spent the first few minutes of the ride back to Headquarters wondering what was happening to him, the loss of control; suffered through a bit of introspection before putting it aside, filling his head instead with the job at hand. Thoughts of the two dead girls.


Neither body had borne ligature marks-the heroin anesthesia had been sufficient to subdue them. The lack of struggle, the absence of defense wounds suggested they'd allowed themselves to be injected. In Juliet's case he could understand it: She had a history of drug use, was accustomed to combining narcotics with commercial sex. But Fatma's body was clean; everything about her suggested innocence, lack of experience. Perhaps Abdelatif had initiated her into the smoking of hashish resin or an occasional sniff of cocaine, but intravenous injection-that was something else.


It implied great trust of the injector, a total submission. Despite Anwar's craziness, Daniel believed he'd been telling the truth during his confession. That Abdelatif had indeed said something about Fatma being dead. If he'd meant it literally, he'd been only a co-participant in the cutting. Or perhaps his meaning had been symbolic-he'd pimped his ewe to a stranger. In the eyes of the Muslims, a promiscuous girl was as good as dead.


In either event, Fatma had gone along with the transaction, a big jump even for a runaway. Had the submission been a final cultural irony-ingrained feelings of female inferiority making her beholden to a piece of scum like Abdelatif, obeying him simply because he was a man? Or had she responded to some characteristic of the murderer himself? Was he an authority figure, one who inspired confidence?


Something to consider.


But then there was Juliet, a professional. Cultural factors couldn't explain her submission.


During his uniformed days in the Katamonim, Daniel had gotten to know plenty of prostitutes, and his instinctual feelings toward them had been sympathetic. They impressed him, to a one, as passive types, poorly educated women who thought ill of themselves and devalued their own humanity. But they disguised it with hard, cynical talk, came on tough, pretended the customers were the prey, they the predators. For someone like that, surrender was a commodity to be bartered. Submission, unthinkable in the absence of payment.


Juliet would have submitted for money, and probably not much money. She was used to being played with by perverts; shooting heroin was no novelty-she would have welcomed it.


An authority figure with some money: not much.


He put his head down on the desk, closed his eyes, and tried to visualize scenarios, transform his thoughts into images.


A trustworthy male. Money and drugs.


Seduction, rather than rape. Sweet talk and persuasion- the charm Ben David had spoken of-gentle negotiation, then the bite of the needle, torpor, and sleep.


Which, despite what the psychologist had said, made this killer as much a coward as Gray Man. Maybe more so, because he was afraid to face his victims and reveal his intentions. Hiding his true nature until the women lost consciousness. Then beginning his attack in a state of rigid self-control: precise, orderly, surgical. Getting aroused by the blood, working himself up gradually, cutting deeper, hacking, finally losing himself completely. Daniel remembered the savage destruction of Fatma's genitals-that had to be the orgasmic part, the explosion. After that, the cool-off period, the return of calm. Trophy-taking, washing, shampooing. Working like an undertaker. Detached.


A coward. Definitely a coward.


Putting himself in the killer's shoes made him feel slimy. Psychological speculation, it told him nothing.


Who, if you were Fatma, would you trust to give you an injection?


A doctor.


Where would you go if you were Juliet and needed epilepsy medicine?


A doctor.


The country was full of doctors. "We've got one of the world's highest physician-to-citizen ratios," Shmeltzer had reminded him. "Over ten thousands of them, every goddamned one of them an arrogant son of a bitch."


All those doctors, despite the fact that most physicians were government employees and poorly paid-an experienced Egged bus driver could earn more money.


All those Jewish and Arab mothers pushing their sons.


The doctors they'd spoken to had denied knowing either girl What could he do, haul in every M.D. for interrogation?


On the basis of what, Sharavi? A hunch?


What was his intuition worth, anyway? He hadn't been himself lately-his instincts were hardly to be trusted.


He'd been waking at dawn, sneaking out the door each morning like a burglar. Feasting on failure all day, then coming home after dark, not wanting to talk about any of it, escaping to the studio with graphs and charts and crime statistics that had nothing to teach him. No daytime calls to Laura. Eating on the run, his grace after meals a hasty insult to God.


He hadn't spoken to his father since being called to view Fatma's body-nineteen days. Had been an absymal host to Gene and Luanne.


The case-the failure and frustration so soon after Gray Man-was changing him. He could feel his own humanity slipping away, hostile impulses simmering within him. Lashing out at Anwar had seemed so natural.


Not since the weeks following his injury-the surgeries on his hand, the empty hours spent in the rehab ward-had he felt this way.


He stopped himself, cursed the self-pity.


How self-indulgent to coddle himself because of a few weeks of job frustration. To waste time when two women had been butchered, God only knew how many more would succumb.


He wasn't the job; the job wasn't him. The rehab shrink, Lipschitz, had told him that, trying to break through the depression, the repetitive nightmares of comrades exploding into pink mist. The urge, weeks later, to hack off the pain-racked, useless hunk of meat dangling from his left wrist. To punish himself for surviving.


He'd avoided talking to Lipschitz, then spilled it all out one session, expecting sympathy and prepared to reject it. But Lipschitz had only nodded in that irritating way of his. Nodded and smiled.


You're a perfectionist, Captain Sharavi. Now you'll need to learn to live with imperfection. Why are you frowning? What's on your mind?


My hand.


What about it!


It's useless.


According to your therapists, more compliance with the exercise regimen would make it a good deal more useful.


I've exercised plenty and it's still useless.


Which means you're a failure.


Yes, aren't I?


Your hand's only part of you.


It's me.


You're equating your left hand with you as a person.


(Silence.)


Hmm.


Isn't that the way it is in the army? Our bodies are our tools. Without them we're useless.


I'm a doctor, not a general.


You're a major.


Touche, Captain. Yes, I am a major. But a doctor first. If it's confidentiality you're worried about-


That doesn't concern me.


I see…Why do you keep frowning? What are you feeling at this moment!


Nothing.


Tell me. Let it out, for your own good… Come on, Captain.


You're not


I'm not what!


You're not helping me.


And why is that!


I need advice, not smiles and nods.


Orders from your superiors!


Now you're mocking me.


Not at all, Captain. Not at all. Normally, my job isn't to give advice, but perhaps in this case I can make an exception.


(The shuffling of papers.)


You're an excellent soldier, an excellent officer for one so young. Your psychological profile reveals high intelligence, idealism, courage, but a strong need for structure-an exter-nally imposed structure. So my guess is that you'll stay in the military, or engage in some military-like occupation.


I've always wanted to be a lawyer.


Hmm.


You don't think I'll make it?


What you do is up to you, Captain. I'm no soothsayer


The advice, Doctor. I'm waiting for it.


Oh, yes. The advice. Nothing profound, Captain Sharavi, just this: No matter what field you enter, failures are inevitable. The higher you rise, the more severe the failure. Try to remem-ber that you and the assignment are not the same thing. You're a person doing a job, no more, no less.


That's it?


That's it. According to my schedule, this will be our last session. Unless, of course, you have further need to talk to me.


I'm fine, Doctor. Good-bye.


He'd hated that psychologist; years later, found him prophetic.


The job wasn't him. He wasn't the job.


Easy to say, hard to live.


He resolved to retrieve his humanity, be better to his loved ones, and still get the job done.


The job. The simple ones solved themselves. The others you attacked with guesswork masquerading as professionalism.


Doctors. His mind kept returning to them, but there were authority figures besides doctors, others who inspired obedience, submission.


Professors, scientists. Teachers, like Sender Malkovsky- the man looked just like a rabbi. A man of God.


Men of God. Thousands of them. Rabbis and sheikhs, imams, mullahs, monsignors and monks-the city abounded in those who claimed privileged knowledge of sacred truths. Spires and steeples. Fatma had sought refuge among their shadows.


She'd been a good Muslim girl, knew the kind of sympathy she could expect from a mullah, and had run straight to the Christians, straight to Joseph Roselli. Was it far-fetched to imagine Christian Juliet doing the same?


But Daoud's surveillance had revealed no new facts about the American monk. Roselli took walks at night; he turned back after a few minutes, returned to Saint Saviour's. Strange, but nothing murderous. And phone calls to Seattle had turned up nothing more ominous than a couple of arrests for civil disobedience-demonstrations against the Vietnam War during Roselli's social-worker days.


Ben David had raised the issue of politics and murder, but if there was some connection there, Daniel couldn't see it.


During the daylight hours Roselli stayed within the confines of the monastery, and Daniel alternated with the Chinaman and a couple of patrol officers in looking out for him. It freed the Arab detective for other assignments, the latest of which had nearly ended in disaster.


Daoud had been circulating in the Gaza marketplace, asking questions about Aljuni, the wife-stabber, when a friend of the suspect had recognized him, pointing a finger and shouting "Police! Traitor!" for all to hear. Despite the unshaven face, the kaffiyah and grimy robe, the crook remembered him as "that green-eyed devil" who had busted him the year before on a drug charge. Gaza was rife with assassins; Daniel feared for his man's life. Aljuni had never been a strong possibility anyway, and according to Daoud, he stayed at home, screaming at his wife, never venturing out for night games. Daniel arranged for the army to keep a loose watch on Aljuni, requested notification if he traveled. Daoud said nothing about being pulled off the assignment, but his face told it all. Daniel assured him that he hadn't screwed up. that it happened to everyone; told him to reinterview local villagers regarding both victims, and save his energies for Roselli.

ТЕЛЕГРАМ

Канал с обзорами, анонсами новинок и книжными подборками

Книжный Вестник

Бот для удобного поиска книг (если не нашлось на сайте)

Поиск книг

Свежие любовные романы в удобных форматах

Любовные романы

О психологии, саморазвитии и личностном росте

Саморазвитие

Детективы и триллеры, все новинки

Детективы

Фантастика и фэнтези, все новинки

Фантастика

Отборные классические книги

Классика
ВКОНТАКТЕ

Цитаты, афоризмы, стихи, книжные подборки, обсуждения и многое другое

Книжный Вестник
БИБЛИОТЕКИ

Библиотека с любовными романами, которая наверняка придётся по вкусу женской части аудитории

Любовные романы

Библиотека с фантастикой и фэнтези, а также смежных жанров

Фантастика

Самые популярные книги в формате фб2

Топ фб2 книги