Kellerman, Jonathan - The Theatre

You're repulsive. Cover yourself.

Hook-nosed bitches don't have this, do they? Hook-nosed bitches are all hairy and smelly and dirty, just like the animals they are. Hook-nose Lillian, hook-nose Sarah- Shut your mouth!

Ah, that wipes the smile off your face, the thought of your He angel having a dirty- Shut up before I-

Before you what? Beat me up? Kill me? Go ahead. I'll come back to haunt you, dance on your grave. Enough.

Not enough, Charles. It's never enough, because you're a king, lying bastard who wants to give away what's mine to some little slut because she's convinced him she's the fucking

Virgin Mary or something. What do you think, you stupid bastard. she doesn't have one too? How do you think she got into med school? Got on her knees for some admissions officer and-

Shut your goddamned filthy mouth. The truth hurts, doesn't it?

Listen, you stupid, drunken moron! She got into med school because she was a straight-A student, summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, and has more brains in her little finger than you have in your entire alcohol-besotted brain. A straight-A slurper.

All right, Christina, I'm not going to let you get to me. You're jealous of Sarah because she's a fabulous specimen and she threatens you.

She's a little hook-nosed bitch, just like her mother. Her mother's a first-class lady. I should have stayed with her.

Then why didn't you?

God only knows.

God knows, all right. Jesus knows. That you're a hypocrite and a fucking liar. She was frigid and boring and hairy. You wanted smooth white legs, some nice shiksa pussy, come in the Virgin Mary's mouth-wanted it so bad that you took me right in the examining room, all those patients still in the waiting room, and raped me, you bastard!

If any raping went on, it was you that did it-

Raped me and used me. Now you want to give what I earned-my blood money-to your hook-nosed bitch.

Enough, I'm tired. I have to operate early.

You're tired? I'm tired too. Of your bullshit. Giving her all those clothes and that trip-she's already spoiled rotten

She's a great kid and she deserves it. Discussion ended.

She slurps, just like her mother.

Her mother gave me a first-class kid.

And me? What did I give you? Tore myself up-I've never been the same!

Tore yourself? That's a laugh. You had a pelvis someone could drive a truck through.

It tore me, you fucking bastard. What did I give you, you fucking bastard?

A weirdo.

Fuck you!

He's a weird kid, Christina. No two ways about it.

Listen to me, you fucking kike. He's beautiful-that hair, like a Greek god! Those dreamy eyes. A small, straight nose. And tall-he's already your size, going to be taller than you going to be able to beat the shit out of you when I tell him to, to protect his mama.

He's weird, Christina-got all of your weird genes. Ever try to talk to him? Course not-how could you? Too damn pickled-

Fuck you, he's beaut-

Try it some time, you drunken moron. Say hello and catch the weird smile he gives you. He's like you-bizarre, stays in his room all day, all night. God knows what he does in there He's studying. He's an intellectual-it's in his eyes. Studying what? He's flunking out of school, hasn't gotten better than a D in three years. But you wouldn't know about that, would you? The headmaster doesn't call you-nobody calls you because everyone knows you're too drunk to talk. They call me. Teachers, counselors, every one of them thinks he's weird. The headmaster called me last week. In fact, I had to bribe him with a new science lab to keep your beautiful kid from getting booted out.

Did you tell the headmaster he had a crazy, cruel father who never paid any attention to him or to his mother, whom he raped? That his father killed Jesus and wanted to kill his wife, too, so he could fuck candy-stripers? Did you tell him-

No friends, no attention span, sits in class all day staring off into space-your genes, all the way, Christina. God only knows if he can overcome it. The headmaster suggested that he get psychiatric help. I talked to Emil Diefenbach-he works with a few teenagers, said he'd be happy to meet him.

You're not taking him to any kike head-shrinker.

I'll take him anywhere I damn well please. Not my son.

He's a goddamned weirdo, Christina-that's what you gave me a freak. Maybe he can be helped, I don't know. I'm going to give it a shot.

Over my dead body, you filthy, scheming bastard. All you want is to destroy him-poison his brain the way you poisoned mine, take away his share so you can give all of it to your hook-nosed-

Pathetic.

-bitch. I won't let you!

And how do you propose to stop me? I'll get a lawyer. A mother has rights. You're no mother. You're nothing, Christina. You haven't been a mother-or anything else-for a long time. I'm his parent. Jesus put me here to protect him. I'm his parent too. The only sane one he's got. Don't you dare mess with his head, you bastard! Good night, Christina.

He's not yours to mess with, you bastard! There's not an ounce you in him!

Discussion closed, Christina. Get out of my way. Take a good look at him, you bastard! His hair, his nose - there's no kike in him. He's not yours.

If only it were true. Let go of my arm.

It's true, you stupid kike bastard. He's not yours-he's Schwann's!

(Silence.)

He's Schwann's, you asshole. Don't you see the resemblance?

What the hell are you talking about?

Ah, now he's upset, now he wants to kill me. Get away from me-I'll scream.

I said, what are you talking about, Christina?

The summer Schwann stayed with us, he had me every day is what I'm talking about. We did it in the house, on the beach, in the pool!

(Silence.)

Take a good look at him. Remember Schwann's face. Strong resemblance, isn't it, Charles?

Absurd.

You were absurd, Charles. Playing hotshot doctor, giving Schwann your pompous speeches about surgery and its place in society, thinking he was looking up to you and thought you were so hot, calling you Herr Doktor Professor, and all the time it was me he was after. I was the reason he kept kissing up to you, telling you how goddamned wonderful you were. The moment you walked out the door and left him here with your books, I was Johnny-on-the-spot and we were climbing all over each other and loving it and he gave me a beautiful baby with no filthy kike blood in it, SO STAY AWAY FROM HIM, YOU BASTARD, DON'T YOU DARE TOUCH HIM, HE'S NOT YOURS!

(Silence. Heavy footsteps.)

Ah! Now he's quiet, walking off with his tail tucked between his legs. Now he's got nothing snotty to say!

The shithead will be proud of you," said Shmeltzer as he entered the conference room. "Is this communication going to be horizontal or vertical?"

"Diagonal," said Daniel. He was tacking a map of Jerusa-lem and its exurbs onto the wall next to the blackboard. The spots where both victims had been dumped were circled in red crayon. as was the cave.

Shmeltzer took his place at the table. He nodded at the Chinaman and Daoud while reaching for the coffeepot. Jt was eight in the morning, twenty hours after the discovery of the bloody rock. The room was on the ground floor of Head-quarters, white-walled and refrigerated by an overexuberant air conditioner.

Daniel finished hanging the map and picked up a pointer, Shmeltzer passed him the coffeepot and he filled his cup. The Chinaman and Daoud lit up. The cold air filled quickly with smoke and tension.

"Where Cohen?" Daniel asked the Chinaman. "Don't know. He was supposed to meet me at seven, do a walk-through of the Armenian Quarter. I haven't seen him or heard from him."

'Ah, the vagaries of youth," said Shmeltzer. He filled his cup, took a long swallow.

"We can't afford vagaries," said Daniel. He picked up the phone. left a message with the switchboard for Samal Cohen to call in immediately, then hung up, irritated. Just when he'd thought the kid was shaping up. So much for flexibility.

"Let's begin," he said, tapping the pointer to the map.

Last night he'd called each of them, informed them about the cave. Now he went over the basics, gave them time to take notes before returning to his seat and picking up the Forensics report.

"We owe Meir Steinfeld a dinner at Cow on the Roof. He worked all night and came up with more than we could have hoped for. There were two classes of animal blood in the cave-rodent and canine-and one human sample, type O, Rh positive. Both Fatma and Juliet were O-positive, but they differed on the haptoglobin test. Juliet was type two, the commonest, but Fatma was type one, which shows up in only about fifteen percent of the population. All Steinfeld found was type one, so it looks as if Juliet wasn't killed in the cave."

"That's no proof Fatma was," said Shmeltzer. "Fifteen percent isn't that rare."

"No proof," said Daniel, "but strong indications. Steinfeld estimates the volume of blood loss as monumental. Dr. Levi confirms it would have had to be fatal. The anthropometric analysis of the outline on the rock indicates a slender female of Fatma's height. A copious amount of dried blood was found in the dirt at the head of the rock, suggesting a deep. draining head or neck wound. The blood flow over the sides indicates smaller, multiple wounds on the trunk. Know of any other victims who fit that description?"

"For the sake of argument," said Shmeltzer, "here's another scenario: The Bedouins cut up one of their own women on that rock. Executed her for fucking the wrong guy or talking out of turn, then buried her somewhere in the desert."

"The time frame doesn't work," said Daniel. "Steinfeld estimates the age of the blood at three to six weeks-nothing he'll swear to, but it's definitely older than eight days, which is howJong the Bedouin have been grazing in that part of the desert. Border Patrol's had a good fix on them for some time -since the end of the rainy season they've been up north, nowhere near the cave. And the shred of cloth fits the descrip- tion of the shift Fatma was last seen wearing." He paused. "It's not ironclad, but it's well worth pursuing."

Shmeltzer nodded and drank more coffee. "All right," he said, "two killing grounds. Why?"

"I don't know," said Daniel. "And neither body was washed in that cave-there's been no water down there for four months and both bodies were washed thoroughly."

"You could bring water into the desert in bottles," said the Chinaman. "Last summer we spent a couple of weeks at my wife's kibbutz. They put me to work at the carp ponds, schlepping bottles of distilled back and forth in order to backflush the filters. Big plastic ones-they hold eight liters each, weigh about thirty kilos. Two would be enough to wash a body, don't you think?"

Shmeltzer got up and took a close look at the map. "We're talking a four-kilometer climb, Yossi. Down a mountainside in the dark. Know anyone who could pull that off while hauling sixty kilos of water, maybe a forty-kilo corpse as well?" The Chinaman grinned and flexed a huge bicep. "Is that a confession, Goliath?" Shmeltzer shook his head and returned to his seat.

"The water could have been carried down on donkey-back." said Daniel, "but no one's spotted any donkeys down there- and it would be tremendously inefficient. The more logical assumption is that Fatma was murdered in the cave and most of her blood was allowed to drain out there. The body was then moved to the second place, where the final cleanup took place. Maybe the same place Juliet was killed."

"He kills her, then moves her to wash her," said the Chinaman. "Very weird. What's the point?"

"Like a sacrifice on an altar," said Shmeltzer. "A korban, straight out of the Bible." He smiled sourly. "Maybe we should have grilled Kagan's people more thoroughly." Korbanot, the ancient Judaic sacrifices that antedated prayer. Daniel had thought of it himself-the implications dis-turbed him. Looking across the table, he sought out the single non-Jewish face. Daoud's expression was noncommittal. 'Yes," he said. "More of that same ceremonial quality." He found a piece of chalk and wrote on the blackboard:

FATMA: Killed in cave, washed? JULIET: Killed?, washed?

'There are caves near Ein Qerem," said Daoud. "Not far from where Juliet was found. And some of the streams there are still running."

Daniel nodded. "The Border Patrol began searching them at sunrise. Afif called in an hour ago-they've found nothing so far."

"Maybe we've got more than one kill spot," said Shmeltzer. "because we've got more than one killer. Why not a whole group.of murderous bastards, some crazy cult? Way things are going, it wouldn't surprise me. They could bring water down to the cave in small containers. If they used their homes, there'd be God knows how many kill spots to choose from."

"A caravan of people would be conspicuous in the desert," said Daniel. "Afif's men would have been likely to spot them with the infrared."

"Those boys are eagle-eyes but they're not infallible," said Shmeltzer. "They missed a murderer hiking four kilometers with a body over his back and gear-the knives, the sheet, some kind of portable light. Assuming he cut her at night."

"All right," said Daniel, "we won't rule it out." He wrote: multiple killers? on the board. Pausing to take a sip of coffee, he found it had turned tepid and replaced the cup on the table.

"Something else," he said. "From the outside, the cave looks impenetrable. Someone would have had to inspect it to know about it. It's not exactly a garden spot-the guides don't take tourists down there."

"Which is why I thought of the Bedouins," said Shmeltzer. "They know every crack in the sand. Or maybe we've got murderous archaeologists on our hands."