Kellerman, Jonathan - The Theatre

Daniel had attended his last class of the day, was on the way home, as usual. He'd completed a year of law studies with good grades but no sense of accomplishment. The lectures seemed remote and pedantic, the textbooks a jumble of small-print irrelevancies designed to distract from the truth. He processed all of it without tasting, spat it out dutifully on exams, thinking of his courses as tubes of processed food ration, the kind he'd carried in his survival kit-barely enough to sustain him, a long way from satisfaction.

Gavrieli saw him, called out. Daniel kept walking-his turn to feign deafness.

He was in no mood to talk to Gorgeous Gideon. No mood to talk to anyone. Since leaving the rehab center he'd avoided old friends, made no new ones. His routine was the same each day: morning prayers, a bus ride to the university, then a return, immediately after classes, to the apartment over the jewelry store, where he cleaned up and prepared dinner for his father and himself. The remainder of the evening was spent studying. His father worried but said nothing. Not even when he collected the jewelry he'd made as a teenager-mediocre stuff, but he'd saved it for years-and melted it down to a lump of silver that he left on a workbench in the shop's back room.

"Dani, hey. Dani Sharavi!"

Gavrieli was shouting. Daniel had no choice but to stop and acknowledge him. He turned, saw a dozen faces-the undergraduates following their hero's glance, staring at the short, brown student with the kipah pinned to his African hair, the scarred hand like something the butcher had thrown away.

"Hello, Gideon."

Gavrieli said a few words to his fans; they dispersed grudgingly, and he walked over to Daniel. He peered at the titles of the books in Daniel's arms, seemed amused.

"Law."

"Yes."

"Hate it don't you? Don't tell me stories-I can see by the look on your face. Told you it wouldn't suit you."

"It suits me just fine."

"Sure, sure. Listen, I just finished a guest lecture-war stories and similar nonsense-and I have a few minutes. How about a cup of coffee?"

"I don't-"

"Come on. I've been planning to call you anyway. There's something I want to talk to you about."

They went to the student cafeteria. Everyone seemed to know Gavrieli; the woman serving the pastries took extra time to pick out an especially large chocolate roll for him. Daniel, basking in the light reflected by the halo, got the second-biggest one.

"So, how've you been?"

"Fine."

"Last time I saw you, you were pretty damned low. Depressed. The doctors said you'd been that way for a while."

Damn liar Lipschitz. "The doctors should have kept their mouths shut."

Gavrieli smiled. "No choice. Commanding officer has a right to know. Listen, I understand your hating law-I hate it, too, never practiced a day, never intend to. I'm leaving the army, too-they want to turn me into a paper shuffler."

The last statement was uttered with dramatic flourish. Daniel knew he was supposed to react with surprise. He drank his coffee, took a bite of chocolate roll. Gavrieli looked at him and went on, undaunted.

"A new age, my friend. For both of us. Time to explore new territories- literally and metaphorically, time to loosen up. Listen, I understand your depression. I was there myself. You know the first few weeks after I got out of the hospital, all I wanted to do was play games-kid's games, the stuff I never had time for because I was too busy studying and serving. Checkers, chess, sheshbesh, one from America called Monopoly-you become a capitalist, amass land, and wipe the other guy out. I played with my sister's kids, game after game. Everyone thought I was crazy, but I was just starved for novelty, even stupid novelty. After that I ate nothing but hamburgers and champagne for three weeks. You understand."

"Sure," said Daniel, but he didn't. New experiences were the last thing he wanted. The things he'd seen and done made him want to pass through life with a minimum of disruption.

"When I finished with the games," Gavrieli was saying, "I knew I had to do something, but not law, not the army. A new challenge. So I'm joining the police."

Unable to conceal his surprise, Daniel said, "I wouldn't have thought it."

"Yes, I know. But I'm talking about a new police force, highly professional-the best technology, a boost in pay, parity with the army. Out with morons, in with intelligent, educated officers: university types, high school diplomas at minimum. I'm being put in as a pakad, which is still a significant drop from my army rank, but with major supervisory duties and plenty of action. They want me to reorganize the Criminal Investigation Division, draw up a security plan for the new territories, report directly to the district commander, no underlinings, no red tape. In six months he's promised me rav pakad. After that it's straight up, in time for his retirement." Gavrieli paused. "Want to join me?"

Daniel laughed. "I don't think so."

"What's to laugh at? Are you happy doing what you're doing?"

"I'm fine."

"Sure you are. I know your personality-law won't work for you. You'll sit on your ass wondering why the world's so corrupt, why the good guys don't win. On top of that the payoff is always muddled, nothing's ever solved. And there's already a glut-the big firms aren't hiring. Without family connections it'll be years before you make a living. You'll have to handle tenant-landlord disputes and other nonsense just to scratch by. Sign up with me, Dani, and I'll see to it that you zip through the rookie course, skip through all the dirty work."

Gavrieli made a square frame with his fingers, put Daniel's face at the center. "I picture you as a detective. The hand won't make a difference because you'll be using your brains, not your fists. But it's still action, street work, not talk. You'll get priority for every advanced course, be assigned to CID and leap-frogged to rav samal. Which means the best cases-you'll build up a record quickly, be a mefakeah in no time. As I move higher, I'll take you with me."

"I don't think so," Daniel repeated.

"That's because you haven't thought at all. You're still floating. Next time you're studying, take a good look at those law books, all that English common-law crap, another gift from the Brits-their judges wear wigs and fart into their robes. Stop and consider if that's really what you want to do with the rest of your life."

Daniel wiped his lips and stood. "I've got to be going."

"Need a ride somewhere?"

"No, thanks."

"All right, then. Here's my card, call me when you change your mind."

Two weeks into the new academic year, he called. Ninety days later he was in uniform, patrolling the Katamonim. Gavrieli had offered to skip him through it, but he declined the favor, wanting to walk the streets, get a feel for the job that Gideon would never have-for all his intelligence and savvy, there was a certain naivete about him, a delusion of invincibility that surviving Ammunition Hill had only served to strengthen.

A psychic partition, thought Daniel, that separated him from the darker side of life.

It had caused him be in the wrong place at the wrong time, swept along, inevitably, with the sewage from Lippmann.

Gideon had played from his own script. There was no reason to feel guilty about what had happened. No reason for Daniel to apologize for doing his job.

He looked at his watch. What time was it in Melbourne? Eight hours later, well into the evening.

An embassy party, perhaps? Gorgeous Gideon sticking close to the ambassador, manicured fingers curled around a cocktail glass as he charmed the ladies with flattery and clever anecdotes. His evening jacket tailored to conceal the 9 mm.

Executive attache. When all was said and done, he was just a bodyguard, a suit and a gun. He had to be miserable.

As opposed to me, thought Daniel. I have plenty to be happy about. A killer on the loose, bloody rocks, and heroin. Mad Hassidim and korbanot and strange monks and missing whores frightened by flat-eyed strangers.

Sitting in this white cell, trying to put it all together. Half a kilometer southeast of Ammunition Hill.

A sticky summer. He was seventeen, three months away from eighteen, when he walked into the library and asked Doctor for a car. Had to ask twice before the fucker looked up from his surgical journal and paid attention.

"What's that?"

"A car."

"Why do you want one?"

"All the kids have their own."

"But what do you need one for?"

"Go places, get to school."

"School's that important to you, huh?" Smile.

Shrug.

"I mean, you're flunking most of your subjects. I didn't think school meant that much to you."

Shrug.

"No, I don't see why I should get you a car just like that."

Smiling in that fucking superior way. The asshole had two cars of his own, a big soft one and a low-slung sports job that looked like a hard-on, neither of which he let anyone else drive. Her car was a big soft one, too, big bucks, but it hadn't been out of the garage for a long time; Doctor had had the crankcase drained, put it up on blocks.

The fucker was loaded, all that money, all those cars, and he'd had to learn how to drive on a jalopy that belonged to one of the maids, a rusty clunker with no power steering, a real bitch to park-he'd failed the test twice because of it.

"Loan me the money. I'll pay you back."

"Oh, really?" Amused.

"Yeah."

"And how do you propose to do that?"

"I'll get a job."

"And what kind of work do you deem yourself qualified to perform?"

"I could work at the hospital."

"At the hospital."

"Yes."

"Doing what?"

"Anything."

"Anything!"

"Anything."

Doctor talked to the head janitor-a nigger retard-and got him a job in maintenance. The nigger hadn't liked the idea; he and Doctor had discussed it while he waited a few feet away. The two of them talking about him as if he were invisible.

"I dunno, Doc, it's a dirty job."

"That's fine, Jewel. Just fine."

The nigger put him to work, mopping up vomit and piss off sickroom floors, emptying catheter bags and taking out garbage-not much to find there.

After two weeks of it he smelled bad, carried the smell with him all the time. When he went near Doctor, the fucker winced.

Then the director of personnel found out about it and transferred him out of there, not wanting the son of the head honcho heart surgeon doing shitwork like that.

He got sent to the mail room, which was excellent. He didn't even have to stand around and sort-just serve as a courier, taking stuff from place to place.

He did it all summer, got a real good feel for the hospital-every office, every lab.

It was amazing how careless people were, leaving stuff unlocked-petty cash drawers, their purses out on the desk when they went to the John.

He pilfered small amounts of cash that added up to big bucks.

He stole prescription blanks and drugs, always in small amounts. Demerol and Percodan and Ritalin and Seconal and stuff like that, sold it to the junkies who roamed Nasty Boulevard, just a few blocks away.

Sometimes he opened envelopes that had checks in them and sold them at five percent of face value to the junkies. Once in a while someone was stupid enough to send a cash donation to the hospital charity fund. That belonged to him immediately.

He opened book cartons and took the interesting ones home-fancy medical texts about sex and cutting. Once he found a stack of porno books in one of the lockers in the interns' lounge-white men fucking nigger women and vice versa-took it home and cut up the women until he could work up some good scream-pictures, stared at it until it turned him on and he could really get off.

Slowly but surely, he turned the minimum-wage situation into something excellent.

The key was to be careful. To make a plan and stick with it and clean up well afterward.

He smiled at everyone, was prompt, courteous, always willing to do favors for people. Very popular. A couple of the nurses seemed to be ogling his dick; also one of the orderlies, who he was sure was a fag. But none of them interested him, unless they could scream it was borrrring.

A great summer, very educational. He delivered mail to the pathology department-those were cool fuckers, eating their lunch with stiffs all around. The head honcho pathologist was this tall guy with a British accent and a clipped white beard. He chain-smoked menthol cigarettes and coughed a lot.

One time he delivered a package of gloves to Pathology. No one was in the office. He started opening the drawers of the secretary's desk, looking for stuff, when suddenly he heard this buzzing from down the hall-one of the labs that adjoined the offices.

He went over and took a look. The door was open; the room was cold. Whitebeard was standing over this stiff. The stiff lay on a stainless-steel table-a man; it had a dick. Its skin was a dull green-gray.

Whitebeard was using an electric saw with a little round wheel-it looked like a pizza cutter-to lop off the top of the stiffs skull. There was this weird burning smell. He stood there smelling it. It sickened him but really turned him on.

"Yes?" said Whitebeard. "What have you there?"

"Box of gloves."

"Put it over there."

Whitebeard started sawing again, looked up, saw him staring. All the knives and tools. The Y-shaped cut in the stiffs chest, pinned back, the body cavity hollow, all the good stuff scooped out-you could see the spine. An older guy, the dick all shriveled; he needed a shave. On the steel tables were organ samples in trays-he recognized them all, felt good about that. A bucket of blood, vials of fluid, not that different from his experiments, but a nice big room, all out in the open.