Kellerman, Jonathan - The Theatre

Sophisticated rich kid, thought Daniel, irritated that his intuition had been wrong. North Tel-Avivnik. Politician's son with plenty of travel experience. Which explained the foreign threads. He took the hand and let go of it quickly, surprised at how much instant dislike he'd built up for the new hire.

"The briefing was yesterday," he said.

"Yes, I know," said Cohen, matter-of-factly, without apology. "I was moving into a new flat. No phone. Tat Nitzav Laufer sent a messenger over but he got lost."

A smile, full of boyish charm. No doubt it had worked wonders with Asher Davidoff's blonde. A samal connected to the deputy commander-what was a rich kid like this doing as a policeman?

Daniel walked toward the door.

"I'm ready, now," said Cohen, tagging along.

"Ready for what?"

"My assignment. Tat Nitzav Laufer told me it's a heavy case."

"Did he?"

"Sex cutting, no motive, no suspect-"

"Do you and Tat Nitzav Laufer confer regularly?"

"No," said Cohen flustered. "He… my father-"

"Never mind," said Daniel, then remembered that the kid's father had died recently, and softened his tone.

"I was sorry to hear about your father."

"Did you know him?" asked Cohen, surprised.

"Just by reputation."

"He was a tough guy, a real ball-breaker." Cohen uttered it automatically, without emotion, as if it were a psalm that he'd recited hundreds of times before. Daniel felt his hostility toward the new hire rise again. Pushing the door open, he let it swing back for Cohen to catch and stepped out into the sunlight. There was an unfamiliar car in the parking lot. A red BMW 330i.

"My assignment, Pakad?"

"Your assignment is to be present for all meetings at precisely the time they're called."

"I told you, my flat-"

"I'm not interested in excuses, only results."

Cohen's eyebrows lowered. His icy blue eyes clouded with anger.

"Is that understood, Samal Cohen?"

"Yes, Pakad." The right thing to say, but with a hint of arrogance in the tone. Daniel let it pass.

"You'll be assigned to Mefakeah Nahum Shmeltzer. Call him at eight tomorrow morning and do what he tells you to do. In the meantime, there are some files I want you to go through. At National Headquarters-the computer boys are getting them ready." He reached into the envelope, drew out a photo, and handed it to Cohen. "Go through each file and see if you can find a match with this one. Don't look only for exact matches-take into account that she may have changed her hair style or aged a bit since the file was opened. If there's any sort of resemblance, set it aside. Keep meticulous records, and when in doubt, ask questions. Got it?"

"Yes." Cohen looked at the picture and said, "Young."

"A very astute observation," said Daniel. Turning his back, he walked away.

He covered the three-kilometer walk quickly, with little regard for his surroundings, walking southwest, then west on Yehuda HaNasi, where he entered the Katamonim. The neighborhood started deteriorating when he came to Katamon Eight. Some evidence of renewal was visible: a newly painted building here, a freshly planted tree there. The government had been pushing it until the recession hit. But for the most part it was as he remembered it: curbless streets cracked and litter-strewn; what little grass there was, brown and dry. Laundry billowed from the rust-streaked balconies of decaying cinder-block buildings, the bunkerlike construction harking back to pre-'67 days, when south Jerusalem faced Jordanian guns, the sudden, murderous sniping attributed by the Arabs to a soldier "gone berserk."

Berserk marksmen. Lots of shootings. Bitter jokes had arisen: The psychiatric wards of Amman had been emptied in order to staff Hussein's army.

The change of borders in '67 had brought about a shift in character in other poor districts-Yemin Moshe with its cobbled alleys and artists' studios, so inflated now that only foreigners could afford it; even Musrara had begun looking a little better-but the lower Katamonim remained a living monument to urban blight.

During his rookie days, he'd driven patrol here, and though his own origins had been anything but affluent, the experience had depressed him. Prefab buildings knocked up hastily for tides of Jewish immigrants from North Africa, strung together like railroad cars and sectioned into dreary one-hundred-square-meter flats that seemed incurably plagued with mildew and rot. Tiny windows built for safety but now unnecessary and oppressive. Rutted streets, empty fields used for garbage dumps. The flats crammed with angry people, boiling in the summer, clammy and cold in the winter. Fathers unemployed and losing face, the wives easy targets for tirades and beatings, the kids running wild in the streets. A recipe for crime-just add opportunity.

The pooshtakim had hated him. To them, the Yemenites were an affront, poorer than anyone, different-looking, regarded as primitives and outsiders. Smiling fools-you could beat them and they'd smile. But those smiles reflected an unerring sense of faith and optimism that had enabled the Yemenites to climb up the economic ladder with relative haste. And the fact that their crime rate was low was a slap in the face to the poverty excuse.

Where else could that lead but to scapegoating? He'd been called Blackie more times than he could count, ridiculed and ignored and forced to come down hard on defiant punks. A hell of an initiation. He'd endured it, gradually ingratiated himself with some of them, and done his job. But though it had been his idea to work there in the first place, he'd welcomed the completion of his assignment.

Now he was back, on a Shabbat, no less, embarking on an outing that was a long shot at best.

On the surface, coming down here did have a certain logic to it. The girl was poor and Oriental, maybe a street girl. Though other neighborhoods bred that type, too, Eight and Nine were the right places to start.

But he admitted to himself that a good part of it was symbolic-setting a good example by showing the others that a pakad was still willing to work the streets. And laying to rest any suspicions that a religious pakad would use Shabbat as an excuse to loaf.

He despised the idea of disrupting the Sabbath, resented the break in routine that separated him from family and ritual. Few cases made that kind of demand on him, but this one was different. Although the dead girl was beyond help, if a madman was at work, he wouldn'd stop at one. And the saving of a life overrode Shabbat.

Still, he did what he could to minimize the violation- wearing the beeper but carrying no money or weapon, walking instead of driving, using his memory rather than pen and paper to record his observations. Doing his best to think of spiritual things during the empty moments that constituted so much of a detective's working life.

An elderly Moroccan couple approached him, on their way to synagogue, the husband wearing an outsized embroidered kipuh, mouthing psalms, walking several paces ahead of his wife. In Eight and Nine, only the old ones remained observant.

"Shabbat shalom," he greeted them and showed them the picture.

The man apologized for not having his glasses, said he couldn't see a thing. The woman looked at it, shook her head, and said, "No. What happened? Is she lost?"

"In a way," said Daniel, thanking them and moving on.

The scene repeated itself a score of times. On Rehov San Martin, at the southern tip of Nine, he encountered a group of muscular, swarthy young men playing soccer in a field. Waiting until a goal had been scored, he approached them. They passed the photo around, made lewd comments, and giving it back to him, resumed their game.

He continued on until eleven, eating a late breakfast of shrugs, ignorance, and bad jokes, feeling like a rookie again. Deciding that he'd been stupid to waste his time and abandon his family in the name of symbolism, he began the return trip in a foul mood.

On his way out of Eight, he passed a kiosk that had been closed when he'd entered the district, a makeshift stand where children stood in line for ice cream and candy bars. Approaching, he noticed that a particularly sickening-looking blue ice seemed to be the favorite.

The proprietor was a squat Turk in his fifties, with black-rimmed eyeglasses, bad teeth, and a three-day growth of beard. His shirt was sweat-soaked and he smelled of confection. When he saw Daniel's kipah, he frowned.

"No Shabbat credit. Cash only."

Daniel showed him his ID, removed the photo from the envelope.

"Aha, police. They force a religious one to work today?"

"Have you seen this girl?"

The man took a look, said casually, "Her? Sure. She's an Arab, used to work as a maid at the monks' place in the Old City."

"Which monks' place?"

"The one near the New Gate."

"Saint Saviour's?"

"Yeah." The Turk peered closely at the photo, turned serious. "What's the matter with her? Is she-"

"Do you know her name?"

"No idea. Only reason I remember her at all is that she was good-looking." Another downward glance: "Someone got her, right?"

Daniel took the picture away from him. "Your name, please, adoni."

"Sabhan, Eli, but I don't want to get involved in this, okay?"

Two little girls in T-shirts and flowered pants came up to the counter and asked for blue ice bars. Daniel stepped aside and allowed Sabhan to complete the transaction. After the Turk had pocketed the money, he came forward again and asked, "What were you doing at the Saint Saviour's monastery, Adon Sabhan?"

The Turk waved his hand around the interior of the kiosk and gave a disgusted look.

"This is not my career. I used to have a real business until the fucking government taxed me out of it. Painting and plastering. I contracted to paint the monks' infirmary and finished two walls before some Arabs underbid me and the so-called holy men kicked me off the job. All those brown-robes-fucking anti-Semites."

"What do you know about the girl?"

"Nothing. I just saw her. Scrubbing the floor."

"How long ago was this?"

"Let's see-it was before I went bust, which would be about two weeks."

Two weeks, thought Daniel. Poor guy's just gone under. Which could explain all the anger.

"Did you ever see her with anyone else, Adon Sabhan?"

"Just her mop and pail." Sabhan wiped his face with his hand, leaned in, and said conspiratorially: "Ten to one, one of the brown-robes did her in. She was raped, wasn't she?"

"Why do you say that?"

"A guy has needs, you know? It's not normal, the way they live-no sex, the only women in sight a few dried-up nuns. That's got to do something to your mind, right? Young piece like that comes around, no bra, shaking like jelly, squatting down, someone gets heated up and boom, right?"

"Did you ever observe any conflict between her and the monks?"

Sabhan shook his head.

"What about between her and anyone else?"

"Nah, I was busy painting," said Sabhan, "my face to the wall. But take my word for it, that's what happened."

Daniel asked him a few more questions, got nothing more, and examined the Turk's business license. On it was listed a Katamon Two home address. He committed it to memory and left the kiosk, heart pounding. Quickening his pace to a jog, he retraced his path but turned east onto Ben Zakai, then northeast, making his way up toward the Old City.

He'd reached the David Remez intersection, just yards from the city walls, when his beeper went off.

"What's he like?" Avi Cohen asked Shmeltzer.

"Who?"

They were sitting in a gray, windowless room at Headquarters, surrounded by file folders and sheaves of computer print-out. The room was freezing and Cohen's arms were studded with goose bumps. When he'd asked Shmeitzer about it, the old guy had shrugged and said, "The polygraph officer next door, he likes it that way." As if that explained it.

"Sharavi," said Cohen, opening a missing-kid file. He gazed at the picture and put it atop the growing mounting of rejects. Donkey work-a cleaning woman could do it.

"What do you mean, what's he like?"

Shmeitzer's tone was sharp and Cohen thought: Touchy bastards, all them in this section.

"As a boss," he clarified.

"Why do you ask?"

"Just curious. Forget I asked."

"Curious, eh? You generally a curious fellow?"

"Sometimes." Cohen smiled. "It's supposed to be a good quality in a detective."

Shmeitzer shook his head, lowered his eyes, and ran his index finger down a column of names. Sex offenders, hundreds of them.

They'd been working together for two hours, collating, sorting, and for two hours the old guy had worked without complaining. Hunched over the list, making subfiles, cross-referencing, checking for aliases or duplicates. Not much of a challenge for a mefakeah, thought Cohen, but it didn't seem to bother him. Probably a burnout, liked playing it safe.

His own assignment was even more tedious: going through more than 2,000 missing-kid files and matching them up with the photo of the cutting victim. Only 1,633 were open cases, the computer officer had assured him. Only. But someone had mistakenly left more than 400 solved ones mixed in.

He'd made a remark about clerical incompetence to Shrneltzer, who replied, "Don't gripe. You never know where your next lead will come from. She could be one who'd been found, then ran away again-wouldn't hurt to look at all the closed ones." Great.

"He's a good boss," Shmeitzer. "You hear any different?"

"No." Cohen came across a photo of a girl from Romema who resembled the dead girl. Not exactly, but close enough to put aside.