Kellerman, Jonathan - The Theatre

Roselli looked upward and Daniel followed his gaze. The blue of the sky was beginning to deepen under a slowly descending sun. A passing cloud cast platinum shadows over the Dome of the Rock. The bells of Saint Saviour's rang but again, trailed by a muezzin's call from a nearby minaret.

Daniel pulled himself away, returned to his questions.

"Do you have any idea how Fatma ended up in the Old City?"

"No. At first I thought she may have gravitated toward The Little Sisters of Charles Foucauld-they wipe the faces of the poor, and their chapel is near where I saw her. But I went there and asked and they'd never seen her."

They'd come to the last of the casks. Roselli put down the watering can and faced Daniel.

"I've been blessed, Inspector," he said, urgently. Eager to convince. "Given the chance for a new life. I try to do as much thinking and as little talking as possible. There's really nothing more I can tell you."

But even as he said it, his face seemed to weaken, as if buckling under the weight of a burdensome thought. A troubled man. Daniel wasn't ready to let go of him just yet.

"Can you think of anything that would help me, Brother Roselli? Anything that Fatma said or did that would lead me to understand her?"

The monk rubbed his hands together. Freckled hands, the knuckles soil-browned, the fingernails yellowed and cracked. He looked at the vegetables, down at the ground, then back at the vegetables.

"I'm sorry, no."

"What kind of clothes did she wear?"

"She had only one garment. A simple shift."

"What color?"

"White, I believe, with some kind of stripe."

"What color stripe?"

"I don't remember, Inspector."

"Did she wear jewelry?"

"Not that I noticed."

"Earrings?"

"There may have been earrings."

"Can you describe them?"

"No," said the monk, emphatically. "I didn't look at her that closely. I'm not even sure if she wore any."

"There are many kinds of earrings," said Daniel. "Hoops, pendants, studs."

"They could have been hoops."

"How large?"

"Small, very simple."

"What color?"

"I have no idea."

Daniel took a step closer. The monk's robe smelled of topsoil and tomato leaves.

"Is there anything else you can tell me, Brother Roselli?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing at all?" pressed Daniel, certain there was more. "I need to understand her."

Roselli's eye twitched. He took a deep breath and let it out.

"I saw her with young men," he said, softly, as if betraying a confidence.

"How many?"

"At least two."

"At least?"

"She went out at night. I saw her with two men. There may have been others."

"Tell me about the two you saw."

"One used to meet her there." Roselli pointed east, toward the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate, with its grape arbors and fruit trees espaliered along the walls. "Thin, with long dark hair and a mustache."

"How old?"

"Older than Fatma-perhaps nineteen or twenty."

"An Arab?"

"I assume so. They talked to each other and all Fatma spoke was Arabic."

"Did they do anything other than talk?"

Roselli reddened.

"There was some… kissing. When it got dark, they'd go off together."

"Where to?"

"Toward the center of the Old City."

"Did you see where?"

The monk looked out at the city, extended his hands palms-up, in a gesture of helplessness.

"It's a labyrinth, Inspector. They stepped into the shadows and were gone."

"How many of these meetings did you witness?"

The word witness made the monk wince, as if it reminded him that he'd been spying.

"Three or four."

"During what time of day -did the meetings occur?"

"I was up here, watering, so it had to be close to sunset."

"And when it got dark, they left together."

"Yes."

"Walking east."

"Yes. I really didn't watch them that closely."

"What else can you tell me about the man with the long hair?"

"Fatma seemed to like him."

"Like him?"

"She smiled when she was with him."

"What about his clothing?"

"He looked poor."

"Ragged?"

"No, just poor. I can't say exactly why I formed that impression."

"All right," said Daniel. "What about the other one?"

"Him I saw once, a few days before she left. This was at night, the same circumstances as the time we took her in. I was returning from late Mass, heard voices-crying-from the Bab el Jadid side of the monastery, took a look, and saw her sitting, talking to this fellow. He was standing over her and I could see he was short-maybe five foot five or six. With big glasses."

"How old?"

"It was hard to tell in the dark. I saw the light reflect off his head, so he must have been bald. But I don't think he was old."

"Why's that?"

"His voice-it sounded boyish. And the way he stood-his posture seemed like that of a young man." Roselli paused. "These are just impressions, Inspector. I couldn't swear to any of them."

Impressions that added up to a perfect description of Anwar Rashmawi.

"Were they doing anything other than talking?" Daniel asked.

"No. If any… romance had ever existed between them, it was long over. He was talking very quickly-sounded angry, as if he were scolding her."

"How did Fatma respond to the scolding?"

"She cried."

"Did she say anything at all?"

"Maybe a few words. He was doing most of the talking. He seemed to be in charge-but that's part of their culture, isn't it?"

"What happened after he was through scolding her?"

"He walked away in a huff and she sat there crying. I thought of approaching her, decided against it, and went into the monastery. She was up working the next morning, so she must have come in. A few days later she was gone."

"Following this meeting, what was her mood like?"

"I have no idea."

"Did she look frightened? Worried? Sad?"

Roselli blushed again, this time more deeply.

"I never looked that closely, Inspector."

"Your impression, then."

"I have no impression, Inspector. Her moods were none of my business."

"Have you ever been in her room?"

"No. Never."

"Did you see anything indicating she used drugs?"

"Of course not."

"You seem very sure of that."

"No, I'm… she was young. A very simple little girl."

Too pat a conclusion for a former social worker, thought Daniel. He asked the monk: "The day before she left she was wearing the striped white shift?"

"Yes," said Roselli, annoyed. "I told you she only had the one."

"And the earrings."

"If there were earrings."

"If," agreed Daniel. "Is there anything else you wish to tell me?"

"Nothing," said Roselli, folding his arms across his chest. He was sweating heavily, gripping one hand with the other.

"Thank you, then. You've been very helpful."

"Have I?" asked Roselli, looking perplexed. As if trying to decide whether he'd been virtuous or sinful.

An interesting man, thought Daniel, leaving the monastery. Jumpy and troubled and something else-immature.

When Father Bernardo had spoken about Fatma, there had been a clearly paternal flavor to his concerns. But Roselli's responses-his emotional level-had been different. As if he and the girl were on a peer level.

Daniel stopped on Bab el Jadid Road, near the spot where Roselli had twice seen Fatma. He tried to put his impressions of the monk into focus-something was cooking inside the man. Anger? Hurt? The pain of jealousy-that was it. Roselli had spoken of Fatma being wounded, but he seemed wounded himself. A spurned lover. Jealous of the young men she met at night.

He wanted to know more about the redheaded monk. About why Joseph Roselli, social worker from Seattle, Washington, had turned into a brown-robed roof-gardener unable to keep his mind on sacred meditation. And his thoughts off a fifteen-year-old girl.

He'd put one of the men-Daoud-on a loose surveillance of the monk, run a background check himself.

There were other matters to be dealt with as well. Who was Fatma's long-haired boyfriend and where did she go with him? And what of Anwar the Punished, who knew where his sister had found sanctuary. And had scolded her shortly before she disappeared.

Words, thought Avi Cohen. A flood of words, clogging him, choking him, making his head reel. And on Saturday night, no less. His heavy date: the goddamn files.

Looking at the missing-kid pictures had been tedious but tolerable-pictures were okay. Then Shmeltzer had gotten the phone call and announced that it had all been for nothing. That his job had changed; there was a new assignment: Go back over the same two thousand files and search for a name-a hell of a lot more complicated than it sounded, because the computer boys had scrambled the folders, and nothing was alphabetized. Pure hell. But the old guy hadn't seemed to notice his slowness-too caught up in his own work.

Finally he finished, having found no Rashmawis, and told Shmeltzer, who didn't even bother to look up as he gave him a new assignment: Go up to the Record Room and look for the same name in all the crime files. All of them. Rashmawi. Any Rashmawi.

The Records officer was a woman-nothing more than a clerk, but her three stripes outranked him. A hard-ass, too; she made him fill out a mountain of forms before giving him the computer lists, which meant writing as well as reading. More words-random assortments of lines and curves, a whirlpool of shapes that he could drown in unless he forced himself to concentrate, to use the little tricks he'd learned over the years in order to decipher what came so easily to others. Sitting at a school desk in a corner, like some overgrown retarded kid. Concentrating until his eyes blurred and his head hurt.

Exactly the kind of thing he'd joined the police to avoid.

He started with Offenses Against Human Life, the juiciest category and one of the smallest. At least this stuff was alphabetized. First step was locating the names in each subcategory that began with the letter resh-which could be confusing because resh and dalet looked similar, and even though dalet was at the beginning of the alphabet and resh toward the end, his damned brain seemed to keep forgetting that. Yud could be a problem, too-same shape as resh-if you looked at it in isolation from the other letters around it and forgot that it was smaller. Several times he got flustered, lost his place, and had to start all over again, following his fingertip down columns of small print. But finally he managed to cover all of it: Murder, Attempted Murder, Manslaughter, Death by Negligence, Threats to Kill, and the Other Offenses listing that was always tagged on at the end. In 263 files, no Rashmawis.

Offenses Against the Human Body was absolute torture-10,000 Assault files, several hundred under resh-and his head hurt a lot more when he finished, hot pulses in his temples, a ring of pain around his eyes.

Offenses Against Property was even worse, a real nightmare; burglary seemed to be the national pastime, all those two-wage-earner homes easy pickings, over 100,000 files, only some of it computerized. Impossible. He put it aside for later. Shmeltzer had the Sex Offenses printout, which left Security, Public Order, Morals, Fraud, Economic, and Administrative crimes.

He began with Security crimes-the Rashmawis were Arabs. Of 932 cases, half had to do with violations of emergency laws, which meant the territories. No Rashmawis in the territories. No Rashmawis in the entire category. But wrestling with the words had caused the pain in his head to erupt into a giant, throbbing headache-the same hot, sickening pain he'd experienced all through school. Brain strain had been his secret name for it. His father had called it faking. Even after the doctors had explained it. Bullshit. If he's strong enough to play soccer, he's strong enough to do his homework

Bastard.

He got up, asked the Records officer if there was any coffee. She was sitting behind her desk reading what looked like the Annual Crime Report and didn't answer.

"Coffee," he repeated. "Do I have to fill out a form to get some?"

She looked up. Not a bad-looking girl, really. A petite brunette, with braided hair, a cute little pointed face. Moroccan or Iraqi, just the type he liked.

"What was that?"

He turned on the smile. "Do you have any coffee?"

She looked at her watch. "You're not finished yet?"

"No."

"I don't know what's taking you so long."

Cunt. He held on to his temper.

"Coffee. Do you have any?"

"No." She returned to the report. Started reading and shut him out. Really into the charts and statistics. As if it were some kind of romantic novel.