Kellerman, Jonathan - The Theatre

He wore faded jeans and crossed gun belts over a new YORK YANKEES T-shirt. The shirt was tight and showed off thick, hairy arms and a substantial belly. Poking up into the belly was the polished wooden grip of a nickel-plated.45-caliber revolver-an American-made Colt. The gun rested in a hand-tooled leather holster and made Daniel think of a little boy playing American cowboy.

In addition to the Colt, Kagan's deputy wore a hunting knife ensconced in a camouflage-cloth case, and carried a black baseball bat, the handle wrapped in adhesive tape that had long ago turned filthy gray. He was a combat veteran, he informed Daniel, and more than happy to talk about himself, starting in American-accented Hebrew but shifting to English after Daniel responded to him in that language.

"Saw hard action in Korea. Those were toughlittle suckers we were fighting-no Arabs, that's for certain. When I got back to the States I knocked around."

"What do you mean by 'knocked around"?" Arnon winked. "Little of this, little of that-doing my thing, doing favors for people. Good deeds, you understand? My last hitch was a bar in New York-up in Harlem, gorgeous place, you ever heard of it? Five years I worked the place, never had a single problem with the shvoogies." This last comment was punctuated by a toothy grin and a slap of the bat. "May I see your knife, please?"

"This? Sure. Genuine buck, great all-purpose weapon, had it for fifteen years." Arnon took it out of its case and gave it to Daniel, who turned it over in his palm, inspecting the wide. heavy blade, the serrated edge honed to razor-sharpness. A nasty piece of work, but from what Levi had told him, not the one he was looking for. Gray Man, on the other hand, he used a serrated blade. But duller, smaller… He gave the knife back to Arnon. "Do you own any other knives, Mr. Arnon?"

"Others? Oh, yeah. Got a tackle box that I brought over from the States-haven't had a chance to use it yet. They say there's great fishing in the Sea of Galilee. That true?"

"Yes. Your other knives, Mr. Arnon."

"A gutter and a scaler in the box, along with a Swiss Army-least, I think it's still there. Maybe a spare scaler too.

Then there's another buck for under the pillow and an antique Japanese samurai sword that I picked up in Manila. Want to know about the guns, too?"

"Not right now. Some other detectives will be here soon. They'll want to see your weapons."

"Sure." Arnon smiled. "But if I was the one cut up those Arab whores I wouldn't be advertising it, now would I? Leaving the knife around to show you."

"What would you be doing, Mr. Arnon?"

"Wiping it clean, oiling it, and hiding it somewhere. That's if, mind you. Hypothetical."

"Is there anything else you want to tell me-hypothetical?"

"Just that you're barking up the wrong tree. Gvura doesn't concern itself with an Arab here, an Arab there. It's a sociological problem-they've all gotta go."

The women were an odd mix of toughness and subser-vience, filing in after the men had been questioned. Stoic and unsmiling, they brought their children with them, resisted Daniel's suggestion that the youngsters leave.

"The questions I'll be asking aren't fitting for a child's ears." he told one of the first. She came in with three small ones, the oldest a girl of no more than four, the youngest an infant who squirmed in her grasp.

"No. I want them to see," she said. "I insist upon it." She was young, pallid, and thin-lipped, and wore a long-sleeved striped shift that reached below her knees. Her hair was covered completely with a white kerchief, and an Uzi was strapped over her shoulder. The baby's tiny fingers reached out and touched the barrel of the submachine gun. 'Why?" asked Daniel. 'To show them what it's like."

She sounded like a kid herself. A teenager asserting herself with her parents. So young, he thought, to have three of them. Her eyes were bright, vigilant, her breasts still heavy with milk.

'What what's like, Gveret Edelstein?" 'The world. Go on, ask your questions." A glance down-ward, the ruffling of hair. "Listen carefully, children. This is called harassment. It's part of being Jewish."

By noon he'd talked to a third of them, found no one who interested him, other than Arnon, with his knives and assault conviction. And even he seemed more bluster than substance, an aging tough guy living out his mid-life fantasies. His assault conviction itself wasn't much-the result of a confrontation at a rally. Arnon's left hook had landed on the nose of a peace now placard-bearer; when the police came to break it up, Arnon resisted. First offense, no jail time. Not exactly your psychopathic killer, but you could never tell. He'd have the others follow up on Cowboy Bob.

At twelve-thirty the lunch bell rang and settlement members swarmed into the dining room for salad and fried fish. They took their places automatically and Daniel realized seats were preassigned. He vacated his chair and left the hall, meeting Kagan and his wife as they came in.

"Any luck, Inspector?" asked the leader loudly. "Find any crazed killers among us?"

Mrs. Kagan winced, as if her husband had told an off-color joke.

Daniel smiled noncommittally and walked down the path toward the guard post. As he left he could hear Kagan talking to his wife. Something about melting pots, a fine old culture. what a shame.

At twelve forty-six, Shmeltzer and Avi Cohen drove up to the guard post in Cohen's BMW. Laufer had wanted four detectives questioning the Gvura people. Daniel had given in partially by pulling Avi out of the Old City for the afternoon, but this was no job for Daoud and he had no intention of removing the Chinaman from his current assignment.

He was interested in the big man's story about the flat-eyed American with the strange grin, despite Little Hook's credibility problem, because it was something-a solitary buoy bobbing in a great sea of nothingness. He double-teamed the Chinaman and Daoud again-the Arab helping out until sundown, before he began the Roselli surveillance. Those two and Cohen were to put all their energies into finding some backup for Little Hook's story, someone else who might have encountered Flat Eyes. And in locating

Red Amira Nasser. The dark hair and the fact that she was dull-witted put her in league with Fatma and Juliet. So far the only thing they'd come up with was a rumor that she had family in Jordan, had escaped there. And a medical chart at Hadassah Hospital-treatment six months ago for syphilis. No welfare payments, no other government records; a true professional, she lived off her earnings.

Avi parked the BMW next to Daniel's Escort. He and Shmeltzer got out and trudged up the sloping pathway, kicking up dust. Daniel greeted them, summed up his procedures, gave them the list of Gvura members, and told them to do a weapons check on all of them, paying special attention to Bob Arnon. Any blade that remotely fit Levi's descriptions was to be taken and tagged.

"Anything about this Arnon that makes him interesting?" asked Shmeltzer.

"He's an American, he likes to play with guns and knives, he beat up on a leftist last June, and he hates Arabs."

"Are his eyes flat?" Shmeltzer smiled sourly. He knew Little Hook from his days on the pickpocket detail, was far from being convinced of the hunchback's story.

"Bloodshot," said Daniel. "Otherwise unremarkable."

"Fucking political games, coming down here. A total waste of our time." Avi nodded along like a dutiful son.

"Okay, let's get it over with," said Daniel. "Send a report to Laufer and move on."

"Laufer knew my father," said Cohen. "He thinks I'm his boy. I think he's a shithead."

"What's with Malkovsky?" Daniel asked him.

"Nothing. Still edgy. I wish I were there instead of playing the shithead's game."

"The shithead cornered me in the hall this morning."

said Shmeltzer. "Wanted to know what we've gotten out of these sweet souls-just itching for another press release.

I told him we just started, it was too early to tell, but from the way it looked, they were all blameless as newborn lambs-did the esteemed Tat Nitzav wish us to continue in the same vein? 'What do you mean?' he says. I say,

'Should we start checkin' out the other MK's and their people too?'"

Daniel laughed. "What did he say to that?"

"Made like an old car-sputters and snorts, metal against metal-then headed straight for the bathroom. Primed, no doubt, for a little vertical communication."

Daniel got back to Jerusalem at two-thirteen, bought a felafel from a street vendor near the train station, and finished it while driving to Headquarters. Back in his office he began transcribing the interview with Kagan onto official forms, wanting to be rid of it as quickly as possible, then called the operator and asked for radio contact with the Chinaman. Before she completed the transmission, she interrupted, saying: "There's one for you coming in right now. Do you want it?"

"Sure." He endured a minute of static, was connected to Salman Afif, the mustachioed Druze, phoning from his Border Patrol Jeep.

"I'm out here with some Bedouins-the ones we spoke about that first morning. They've migrated south, found something I think you'll want to see."

He told Daniel what it was and reported his location, using military coordinates. Daniel pulled out a map and pinpointed the spot, three and a half kilometers due north from the Scopus ridge. Fifteen hundred meters past the perimeter of the grid search he'd ordered after viewing Fat-ma's body.

So close.

"What's the best way to get there?"

"I can drive up into the city," said Afif, "and take you back, retracing on the donkey paths, but it would be quicker for you to climb down the first kilometer or so on foot-to where the slope eases. From there it's a straight ride. How are your shoes?"

"They'll survive. I'm leaving now-meet you there. Thanks for keeping your eyes open."

"Nothing to it," said the Druze. "A blind man couldn't have missed it."

Daniel hung up, put his papers away, and called Forensics.

He parked the Escort across the road from the Amelia Catherine, put on a narrow-brimmed straw hat to block out the relentless Judean sun, tightened the buckles on his sandals, and got out. The watchman, Zia Hajab, was sitting at the entry to the hospital. Slumped in the same plastic chair, apparently sleeping.

Taking a quick backward look at the gully where Fatma had been found, Daniel sprinted toward the ridge, climbed over, and began his descent.

Walking sideways on bent legs, he made rapid progress, feeling nimble and fit, aware of, but unperturbed by, dry fin-gers of heat radiating upward from the broiling desert floor.

Summer was approaching-twenty-three days since the dumping of Fatma, and the case was snaking its way toward the new season. The rainy season had been brief this year, attenuated by hot easterly winds, but clumps of vegetation still clung to the terraced hillsides, denying the inevitability of summer. Digging his heels in and using his arms for balance, he half-walked, half-jumped through soft expanses of rusty terra rossa. Then the red earth began yielding to pale strips of mendzina-the chalky limestone that looked as dead as plastic but could still be friable if you knew how to work it-until soon all was pale and hard and unyielding-a crumbling, rocky course the color of dried bones. Land that would rather dissolve than accommodate, the emptiness relieved only by the last starved weeds of spring.

Afifs jeep was visible as a khaki spot on the chalk, its diameter expanding as Daniel drew near. Daniel removed his hat and waved it in the air, saw the blue Border Patrol light flash on and off. When he was forty meters away, the jeep's engine started up. He trotted toward it, unmindful of the grit that had lodged between his toes, then remembering that no sand had been found on either body. Afif gave the jeep gas and it rocked on its bearings. Daniel climbed in and held on as the Druze made a sharp U-turn and sped off.

The ride was spine-jarring and loud, the jeep's engine howling in protest as Afif tortured its transmission, maneuvering between low outcroppings of limestone, grinding single-mindedly through dry stream beds. The Druze's pale eyes were hidden by mirrored sunglasses. A red bandanna was tied loosely around his neck, and the ends of his enormous moustache were blond with dust.

"Which Bedouin clan is this?" Daniel shouted.

"Locals, like I told you. Unrelated to any of the big clans. They run goats and sheep from here up toward Ramallah, come in for the summer, camping north of the city."

Daniel remembered a small northern campsite, nine or ten low black tents of woven goat-hair, baking in the heat.

"Just past the Ramot, you said?"

"That's them," said Afif. He downshifted into a climb, twisted the wheel, and accelerated.

"How long have they been herding here?"

"Eight days."

"And before that?"

"Up north, for a month or so."

Bedouins, thought Daniel, holding on to his seat. Real ones, not the smiling, bejeweled businessmen who gave tent tours and camel rides to tourists in Beersheva. The most unlikely of informants.

The Bedouin saw themselves as free spirits, had contempt for city dwellers, whom they regarded as serfs and menial laborers. But they chose to live at bare subsistence level in terrain that had the utmost contempt for them and, like all desert creatures, had turned adaptation into a fine art.

Chameleons, thought Daniel. They told you what you wanted to hear, worked both sides of every fence. Glubb Pasha had built the Arab Legion on Bedouin talent; without them the Jordanian Army wouldn't have lasted twenty-four hours. Yet, after '67, they'd turned right around and vol-unteered for the Israeli Army, serving as trackers, doing it better than anyone. Now there were rumors that some of them were working for the PLO as couriers-grenades in saddlebags, plastique drop-offs in Gaza. Chameleons. "Why'd they come forward?" Daniel asked. "They didn't," said Afif. "We were on patrol, circling southeast from Al Jib-someone had reported suspicious movement along the Ramot road. It turned out to be a construction crew, working late. I was using the binoculars, saw them, decided to go in for a close look."