The Butcher's Theater

by Jonathan Kellerman

  So no scoop, but the fact that two serials had arisen in rapid succession gave him a new slant: Thoughtful theoretical pieces about societal changes responsible for the sudden increase in brutality. No need for new sources; El Said and other academic types were more than happy to pontificate upon command.

  With that kind of spice, the pickup rate soared, especially in Europe. New York asked for more. The other foreign correspondents caught flak for not being there first—now none of them wanted anything to do with him. Ditto for Rappaport—kid was green-faced with envy, convinced he’d been robbed.

  Another source dried up. And the police weren’t saying a damn thing.

  But no problem. He had other things on his mind: The more he thought about it, the more attractive a screenplay started to look.

  He began an outline, realized he needed more to flesh it out.

  He researched the first series of killings, attributed to some ghoul they’d tagged the Gray Man, got one long retro piece out of that, and learned that the head detective on the first serial was the same one working the Butcher—Major Crimes detective named Sharavi. There were no quotes from him, no pictures. Probably a strong, silent type, or maybe he just didn’t want to field questions about his solve rate.

  Wilbur called the guy’s office at French Hill, got no answer, which was hardly surprising. He had the geezer dig up whatever he could on the detective, found a series of clippings from the previous autumn that opened his eyes nice and wide:

  Elazar Lippmann, former Member of Knesset. Ruling party loyalist with a progressive voting record and a special interest in criminology and prison reform. He’d been appointed warden of Ramle Prison, talked a lot about humane changes, education and rehabilitation. Real golden boy, little Omar Sharif mustache, good teeth—everyone seemed to like him. Good old Stevie Rappaport had even done a Friday Supplement interview with him—amateur stuff that reeked of hero worship.

  So it surprised everyone when, six months later, Lippmann was ambushed and assassinated on the way to work—machine-gunned to death along with his driver.

  Daniel Sharavi had headed the investigation, appointed directly by the deputy commander, which, considering Gray Man hadn’t been solved, meant he was either hot or well-connected.

  Efficient fellow, and thorough, Wilbur decided, making his way through the Lippmann clippings and getting a feel for the rapid pace of the inquiry: the prison turned upside down, everyone interviewed, guards as well as inmates; gang leaders and their buddies on the outside hauled in for interrogation, Palestinian activists questioned by the busload, even talks with clients Lippmann had represented as an attorney a decade ago, before going into politics.

  Plenty of intrigue, but in the end it had turned out to be just another tacky corruption case. Far from a hero, Lippmann had been a first-class sleaze. Four weeks after his death, the press murdered him again.

  Sharavi had solved this one—and quickly. Dug up the dirt on Lippmann and found the prick had been venal from day one, hit his stride when he got the warden job: two fat Swiss accounts, one in the Bahamas, a small fortune amassed selling favors—extra visitations, early release dates, exemptions from work details, even illegal weekend passes for dangerous felons. Those who reneged on payment made it up in pain—Jews locked in Arab cell blocks and vice versa, hand-picked guards looking the other way when the blood started to flow.

  Given that setup, the assassins were easy to find—three brothers of an eighteen-year-old convicted burglar who’d welshed and had his nose flattened and his anus enlarged.

  Fun guy, Warden Lippmann—in more ways than one.

  One of Sharavi’s men caught a deputy warden rifling through the boss’s desk, shredded photos in his pocket. The pictures were put together like a jigsaw, found to be snap-shots of call girls carousing with politicos—nothing kinky, just wine, hors d’oeuvres, low-cut gowns, jolly party scene. The politicos got canned. One of them turned out to be the deputy commander, another golden boy named Gideon Gavrieli. His picture they ran—Warren Beatty look-alike with a high-school quarterback smile.

  Except for attending one party, Gavrieli claimed to be clean. Someone believed him, shipped him out to Australia.

  Sharavi was promoted to chief inspector.

  Intriguing fellow, thought Wilbur. Two unsolved serials, a fuck-the-boss exposé sandwiched in between. Man in that situation couldn’t be too popular with the higher-ups. Be interesting to see what happened to him.

  Wilbur was sitting at his desk at Beit Agron when the mail came, staring at the fly fan and sipping Wild Turkey from a paper cup.

  There was a knock on the door. Wilbur emptied the cup, tossed it in the trash basket. “Enter.”

  A skinny blond kid ambled in. “The mail, Mr. Worberg.”

  Mutti, the high school sophomore who functioned as a part-time office boy. Which meant Sonia, the poor excuse for a secretary, had taken lunch again without asking permission.

  “Toss it on the desk.”

  “Yes, Mr. Worberg.”

  Half a dozen envelopes and the current issues of Time, Newsweek, and the Herald Tribune landed next to his typewriter. In the machine was a piece of Plover bond headed THE BUTCHER: A SCREENPLAY by Mark A. Wilbur. Below the heading, blank space.

  Wilbur pulled the sheet out, crumpled it, tossed it on the floor. He picked up the Herald and looked for his most recent Butcher piece. Nothing. That made three days running. He wondered if he was starting to wear out the welcome mat, felt a stab of anxiety, and reached for the drawer with the Turkey. As he put his hand on the bottle, he realized Mutti was still standing around smiling and gawking, and withdrew it.

  Dumb kid—father was one of the janitors at the press building. Mutti wanted to be the Semitic Jimmy Olson. Grabowsky, being a soft touch, had taken him on as a gofer; Wilbur had inherited him. Obedient sort, but definitely no rocket scientist. Wilbur had long ago given up trying to teach him his name.

  “What is it?”

  “Do you needing anything else, Mr. Worberg?”

  “Yeah, now that you mention it. Go down to Wimpy’s and get me a hamburger—onions, mayonnaise, relish. Got that?”

  Mutti nodded energetically. “And for drink?”

  “A beer.”

  “Okay, Mr. Worberg.” The boy ran off slamming the door behind him.

  Alone once again, Wilbur turned to the mail. A confirmation, finally, of his expense vouchers from the Greek vacation. Invitation to a Press Club party in Tel Aviv, regrets only; overseas express letter from a Nashville attorney dunning him for back alimony from Number Two. That one made him smile—it had been routed through Rio and New York, taking six weeks to arrive. Two weeks past the deadline the legal eagle had set before threatening to move on to “vigorous prosecution.” Wilbur dropped it in the circular file and examined the rest of the mail. Bills, the Rockefeller Museum newsletter, an invite to a buffet/ press conference thrown by the WIZO women to announce the groundbreaking of a new orphanage. Toss. Then something, midway through the stack, that caught his eye.

  A plain white envelope, no postage, just his name in block letters written with such force that the W in Wilbur had torn through the paper.

  Inside was a sheet of paper—white, cheap, no watermark.

  Glued to the paper were two paragraphs in Hebrew, both printed on glossy white paper that appeared to have been cut out of a book.

  He stared at it, had no idea what any of it meant, but the presentation—the hand delivery, the force of the writing, the cutouts—smacked of weirdness.

  He kept staring. The letters stared back at him, random angles and curves.

  Incomprehensible.

  But definitely weird. It gave him a little twist in the gut.

  He knew what he needed.

  When Mutti got back with the food, he greeted him like a long-lost son.

  CHAPTER

  50

  A sweltering Thursday. By the time Daniel arrived at the scene, the air was acrid with scorched rubber and cord
ite, the pastoral silence broken by gunfire and poisoned by hatred.

  Roadblocks had been thrown up across the Hebron Road just south of the entrance to Beit Gvura—steel riot grills, manned by soldiers and flanked by army trucks. Daniel parked the Escort by the side of the road and continued on foot, his pakad’s uniform earning free passage.

  A cordon of troops, four rows deep, stood ten meters beyond the barriers. Gvura people were massed behind the soldiers, eye to eye with MPs who walked back and forth, suppressing spurts of forward movement, shepherding the settlers back toward the mouth of the settlement. The Gvura people brandished fists and shouted obscenities but made no attempt to storm the MPs. Daniel remembered their faces from the interview, faces now twisted with rage. He searched for Kagan or Bob Arnon, saw neither of them.

  On the other side of the cordon was a seething mob of Arab youths who had marched from Hebron bearing placards and PLO flags. Some of the placards lay tattered in the dust. A grainy mist shimmered in the heat and seemed to hover over the Arabs—some of them had rolled old auto tires from town and set them afire. The flames had been extinguished, the tires scattered by the side of the road, steaming like giant overcooked doughnuts.

  The command post was an army truck equipped with full radio capability, stationed by the side of the road in a dusty clearing ringed by a dozen ancient fig trees. Surrounding the truck were several canvas-covered MP jeeps, all unmanned.

  Just beyond the trees was another clearing, then a small vineyard, emerald leaves shading clusters of fruit that glistened like amethysts in the afternoon sun. Four military ambulances and half a dozen transport vans filled the clearing. Some of the vans were bolted shut and under the guard of soldiers. Next to them was a civilian vehicle—a small mud-colored Fiat with Hebron plates, sagging on flattened tires, its hood pocked with bullet holes, its windshield shattered.

  A pair of vans and one of the ambulances pulled out, driving in the dirt by the side of the road until past the barriers, then turning onto the asphalt, sirens blaring, speeding north, back to Jerusalem. Daniel saw activity near another of the ambulances: white blurs, crimson blood bags, the clink and glow of intravenous bottles. He spotted Colonel Marciano’s distinctive figure at the front bumper of the truck and walked toward it. Moving quickly but cautiously, keeping one eye on the action.

  The cordon of soldiers advanced and the Arabs retreated, but not smoothly. Scuffles broke out as authority confronted resistance—shoving matches punctuated by hate-filled screams, grunts of pain, the dull, insulting abrasion of metal against flesh.

  Marciano lifted a megaphone to his lips and barked an order.

  The rear row of the cordon fired its rifles in the air and a shudder coursed through the mob.

  For a moment it seemed as if the Arabs were ready to disperse. Then some of them began shrieking PLO slogans and sitting down on the asphalt. Those who’d begun to retreat backed into them, stumbling and falling; they were lifted by front-line soldiers and pushed back. The sitters were quickly removed, picked up by the scruff and shoved over to MPs who propelled them toward the vans. More resistance, more arrests, a bedlam of bodies, boiling and spitting.

  Within seconds the Arabs had been forced back several meters. All at once, several large rocks arced from the center of the mob and rained down upon the cordon. One landed near Daniel and he ran for cover, crouching behind a nearby jeep.

  He saw soldiers raise their arms protectively, a blossom of blood spring from the cheek of one unlucky private.

  Marciano bellowed into the megaphone.

  The soldiers fired several volleys, this time over the heads of the crowd. The Arabs panicked and ran backward; a few stragglers were trampled in the process.

  More slogans, more stones.

  A soldier crumpled.

  Megaphone orders. Stones. Soldiers with rifles fired rubber bullets directly into the mob. Several Arabs clutched arms and legs in agony and fell, writhing.

  The mob was a thing of the past, now, the Arabs fanning out toward Hebron, each man for himself. Tripping over one another in a hasty sprint for safety.

  Suddenly a long-haired, bearded man of about twenty materialized out of the human swirl, dashing wild-eyed toward the troops, a long knife in one hand, a jagged hunk of concrete in the other.

  He raised the knife, threw himself at the soldiers, who closed ranks and fired. Lead bullets.

  The long-haired man’s body seemed to take off in flight, floating and gyrating, billowing smoke puffs, spouting ragged black holes. Then the holes filled with red and overflowed. Blood spurted out of him. Just as abruptly as he’d appeared, he collapsed, expelling his life-juices into the dirt.

  Some of the dispersing Arabs had turned to watch him die. They stopped, frozen, mouths shaped into paralyzed ellipses.

  The cordon advanced, walking around the dead man, pushing the remaining Arabs back. Moving forward inexorably until every rioter was in custody or fleeing.

  The road was devoid of movement now, decorated with blood, prostrate forms, and spent cartridges.

  Ambulance attendants rushed forward with stretchers, picking up wounded soldiers and Arabs, leaving for last the dead knife-wielder.

  “Let him rot!” shouted a Gvura man. Other settlers took up the cry and turned it into a chant. They began moving forward. Colonel Marciano spoke into the megaphone; the rear row of the cordon reversed itself and faced the Gvura people.

  “Go ahead,” screamed one woman. “Shoot Jews! Damned Nazis!”

  The soldiers remained impassive. Granite eyes in baby faces.

  Daniel walked up to Marciano. The colonel was surrounded by subordinates but acknowledged him with a nod as he delivered order after order in a calm, even voice.

  Marciano was a huge man—two meters tall—with an egg-shaped body that seemed to balance precariously on long, stilt-like legs. His head was egg-shaped, too—bald, brown, deeply seamed, with a large, fleshy nose and a chin that could have used some reinforcement. Soft-spoken without his megaphone, he was a career man, a hero of the ’67 Sinai assault and Yom Kippur, in charge of Judean security for the past two years. An organized thinker and reader of philosophy and history who seemed to take it all in stride.

  When the subordinates had left to carry out his orders, he gripped Daniel’s hand and said, “It’s over.”

  “The call I received said it had to do with my case.”

  “Could be. One second.”

  Two soldiers were carrying the dead Arab to the side of the road, holding him low to the ground so that his buttocks dragged in the dirt. Marciano picked up his megaphone, said, “Lift him,” sharply. Startled, the soldiers complied.

  Before the loudspeaker had been lowered, an army lieutenant came over and said, “What about them, Barukh?” Pointing to the Gvura people, who were still shouting and cursing.

  “Inform Shimshon in Hebron that movement north of the city limits is restricted for twenty-four hours,” said Marciano. “Maintain a line of troops one hundred meters to the south, and see to it that no one without legitimate business crosses it for the rest of the day. Once the line’s established, leave them alone to blow it off.”

  The lieutenant wiped his brow and left.

  “Come on,” said Marciano. He loped to the back of the truck, climbed in, and Daniel followed. The two of them sat on the hot corrugated-steel floor of the truck bed. Marciano lit a cigarette and dragged deeply, then pulled a canteen off his belt, took a swig, and passed it to Daniel. The water inside was cool and sweet.

  Marciano stretched out his long legs.

  “This is what happened,” he said. “About two hours ago, one of the Gvuranik women was standing out in front of the settlement, waiting for a lift to Jerusalem—a pregnant one. She had an appointment at Shaarei Zedek Hospital. One of Kagan’s deputies—American named Arnon—was on transport duty, supposed to be coming back with a carful of school-books, then making a return trip to pick up a Torah and take her to her appointment. He was late. She waited
by herself for a while, knitting booties.

  “Suddenly this car drives up.” Marciano pointed to the mud-colored Fiat. “Three Arabs get out, two with butcher knives. The other’s packing a pistol—one of those cheap Czech jobs, as likely to blow up in your hand as fire. They start moving on the pregnant one. She’s terrified, can’t move. They’re saying something about blood sacrifices and sin offerings, revenge for dead virgins. She starts to scream. They clamp a hand over her mouth, start pulling her into the car.

  “Meanwhile Arnon pulls up, sees what’s happening, and runs over to help. He’s got a pistol, runs toward them waving it but is afraid of hitting the woman. The Arab with the gun starts shooting—misses three times even at close range but finally gets Arnon in the belly.

  “Arnon’s down. The pregnant woman manages to break free, starts running and screaming at the top of her lungs. The Arabs go after her. Mrs. Kagan happens to be taking a walk near the outskirts of the settlement, hears the gunshots and the screams and rushes over. She’s packing an Uzi, pulls it into firing position. The Arab with the gun shoots at her, misses, then starts to run away. Mrs. Kagan goes after all three of them, opens up on the car, kills two of them right away, wounds the third. By now, Gvuraniks are streaming out. They pull the wounded Arab out of the car and beat him to death.”

  Marciano paused for a drag on his cigarette. “Pretty picture, eh, Dani? Wait, there’s more. Seems the three Arabs were only part of the gang. There are four others waiting in a flat in Hebron—knives, shroud, looks like they had a revenge party in mind. When the Fiat doesn’t show up, these guys drive up the road to investigate, see Gvura people standing over the dead bodies of their comrades, and pull out their Czechis. The Gvuraniks spot them, go after them—lots of shooting, no one hit. The Arabs step on the gas, speed back to Hebron telling everyone that the Jews are on a rampage, murdering Palestinian heroes. To make matters worse, some professor from Bir Zeit—asshole punk named El Said—is visiting an uncle, hears the news, and steps out in the middle of the souq with an impromptu speech that whips up a mob. The rest you saw.”