by Batya Gur
“How can you say I’m used to getting everything I want?” Michael protested.
“Okay, maybe not everything,” said Balilty, softening after giving him a hard stare. “Maybe there’s something you wanted that didn’t fall into your lap, even though I’m damned if I know what it is,” he grumbled, and he softened again. “I don’t mean everything, but there are areas where you’re used to getting whatever you want. This time it may not be so easy, because I, for example, may not be able to come running when you call, because I may be working on another case. In other words, I may be too busy. Did you ever think of that?”
“What are you working on?” asked Michael suspiciously.
“Tell me, are you no longer with us at all? Don’t you read the newspapers? Has this business with the baby—I haven’t even see her yet—fried your brains completely? Haven’t you even heard of our latest coup?” Balilty looked at him curiously. “You’re not the same man I knew, I don’t know. . . . You make me feel disoriented, you’re completely out of it.”
“Recently,” Michael admitted with embarrassment, “I haven’t really been in touch. I’ve had all kinds of things—”
“So you don’t know that we’ve found pictures worth millions? Picassos? Van Goghs?”
“I haven’t heard about it,” confessed Michael.
“How would you hear? You’re too busy warming bottles day and night, changing diapers, running home like some . . . Your mind’s not here.” Balilty shook his head and looked reflectively at the seat in front of him.
“How many times do you intend to tell me that?”
“You sound exactly like a woman,” said Balilty disapprovingly, and Michael made a face. “Why are you so sensitive? I like babies, too,” Balilty said quietly, and he chewed energetically. “Here’s the story,” he said, and he took his feet off the seat in front of him. “Are you with me? A few days ago we caught this woman, Clara Amojal, the owner of an art gallery in Tel Aviv, with a French tourist, Claude Raphaël. Very respectable people, she has to be about forty-five but she’s a looker, a real looker.” He paused as if conjuring her up before his eyes. “Caught them with six paintings, including a Picasso and a Van Gogh.”
“How did you get onto them?”
“We were tipped off,” admitted Balilty. “We would never have caught them otherwise. But we got an anonymous phone call, someone called the police three days ago with a license plate number, the fraud division got onto it, and I . . . they brought me in because I’d brought them in on the van Gelden painting. We stopped them on the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway. Thanks to the anonymous phone call. All the caller said was do yourselves a favor, search the car. Motti—do you know him? the baby face with the pink cheeks?—Motti took the tip seriously and decided to go for it. They stopped the car and searched it and found six paintings. Don’t ask!” he said chuckling. “It’s a museum. I’m telling you, you sit in that apartment in Yefe-Nof—a really fancy place, not far from where Begin lived—with the six paintings from the car and the eight we found in the apartment, and you’re in Paris. Van Gelden’s painting’s nothing compared to those.”
“Do you think there’s a connection with the van Gelden case?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know much yet,” said Balilty. “We arrested the pair, the art dealer and the Frenchman, but they don’t know anything about van Gelden. They hadn’t been in business long. There’s apparently a Jerusalem man involved, but we haven’t found him yet. I interrogated them myself for two days, a polygraph test and so on. Their lawyer,” he grumbled, “got me to agree to let them go when the test turned out okay.”
“You agreed? How could you agree to such a thing? You already had them locked up and you agreed? We never—”
“I figured that it’s worth trying,” Balilty interrupted impatiently. “I’ve got my eye on them. They can’t take a piss without us knowing about it. Everything’s covered. The apartment, the car, the business in Tel Aviv. While they’re outside they may lead us further. Anyway, they didn’t seem to be lying about van Gelden. They don’t know any-, thing about it. Interpol is very interested in the case.”
“If the paintings aren’t forgeries,” said Michael.
“Even if they are, they’re at a very high level. The experts have been examining them for two days already and they haven’t found any proof yet that they’re fakes. I tell you, the forensic lab is a joke compared to them, even with all their microscopes and their computer scanners. Do you know how to determine if an old or important picture is a forgery or not?”
Michael shook his head.
“Didn’t you also study that at the university?”
Michael shook his head again. “I have no idea,” he assured him.
“Good,” said Balilty with a satisfied sigh, “because I can give you an expert lecture on it. You’ll surprised by what I know now about colors!”
Michael murmured something admiring.
“No, don’t say, Very interesting.’ It’s a whole world, I tell you, a whole world! For example, if a painter in the seventeenth century wanted a particular blue, let’s say ultramarine, do you know that shade of blue?”
Michael looked at the Forensics people, who had left the stage and were scattering through the hall, and at the two who were bearing down on the row where they themselves were sitting. “Okay, it’s a very deep blue,” Balilty continued didactically. “In the seventeenth century they used a semiprecious stone, I happen to know it because Matty likes it, and I once had a girlfriend who called herself a goldsmith . . . anyway, there’s a stone called lapis lazuli, which the ancient Egyptians liked. Do you know it?”
“I think so,” said Michael. “I’m not sure.”
Balilty looked gratified. “Well, in the seventeenth century they used to grind it into powder to produce ultramarine. You’re a historian, aren’t you?”
Michael smiled.
“This is historical knowledge,” promised Balilty. “It was only in the nineteenth century that they began to obtain this color artificially. That way you can tell the age of the painting. And if this method doesn’t work, do you know what the ultimate method is?”
“No, what?”
“The ultimate method,” said Balilty rolling the words pleasurably around his tongue, “is to bombard the picture with radiation, and then put photographic film on the painting to measure the radiation emitted by the chemical substances in it. Did you know that?”
“Certainly not. It sounds incredible,” said Michael, who was truly astonished. “Are you sure? Is that information reliable?”
“What do you mean?” said Balilty, offended. “I’m telling you!” He laid his hand on his heart. “I got it from the finest experts! I’ve been sitting with a Frenchwoman from Interpol for the last two days. It’s her specialty. She’s got a pair of other specialties, too,” he added with a wink. “And afterward you can compare the results of that test with a chemical analysis. And there’s something else, too: If the picture is painted on wood, like they did in Italy until the middle of the sixteenth century and in Holland until the beginning of the seventeenth—did you know that it’s possible to count the age rings on the edge of a wooden board?”
Michael shook his head. The people from Forensics were already very close to them.
“And what I’ve learned about the age of the wood they painted on!”
“Van Gelden’s painting was on canvas,” Michael reminded him.
“I know,” said Balilty. “I was only telling you.”
“Do we have to move?” Michael asked Shimshon, who was standing at the end of their row with another man from Forensics.
“You can go on sitting here for a minute,” said Shimshon, and he went on talking to the man next to him.
“Do you want me to put you into the picture here?” Michael asked Balilty, who put his head to one side, smiled, and said: “Why not? I may as well hear the facts. It’s hot as hell in here. What are they looking for now?”
Michael explai
ned.
Balilty pursed his lips in a skeptical expression: “How would the weapon get down into the hall? If one of them did it, it would make more sense for it to be near the body, the string or whatever it was. I’d concentrate on the backstage area. On unexpected places, too—kitchens, filing cabinets. And it wouldn’t necessarily be here at all. Only if the murderer’s still here.”
“I’d like you to speak to Nita when she wakes up,” said Michael hesitantly as they rose to leave the hall. “For you to be the one who interro—who asks her the necessary questions. About her spare strings, too.” Balilty stopped between the end of the row and the wooden doors.
“Please,” said Michael. “You know I can’t do that myself.”
Balilty cocked his head and grinned. “What are you going to tell Shorer?” he asked.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Michael muttered.
“He’d never have sent you if he knew—”
“Shimshon!” someone shouted from the back of the stage. “Shimshon!” Shimshon abandoned the last row before the gallery and bounded lightly toward the stage. Michael looked at Balilty, and they turned back and climbed onto the stage. One of the Forensics people was standing in the wings, his face shining with sweat. “Over there, just lying there,” he marveled, pointing to an old baby grand piano that stood where the corridor curved toward the stairs leading to the back entrance. On top of the piano was a big pile of music scores, old newspapers, and a large roll of the yellow packaging tape that had been used to seal doors and windows during the Gulf War. There was a thick layer of dust on everything, and more piled papers on the floor at the foot of the instrument. “I opened the lid completely by chance,” the investigator said to Shimshon, “not thinking I’d find anything. There’s so much stuff on the lid, it’s as if it hasn’t been touched in years,” he said, a proud smile already spreading over his face as he handed something to Shimshon, who carefully took the thin metal wire, one end of which was still coiled around a small wooden peg, and held it in his open palms as if he were a priest holding the consecrated host. He breathed over it carefully. Michael went over to them, and Balilty leaned against the corridor wall close by.
“What do you say?” Michael asked Shimshon.
“It could be. Definitely, but we have to examine it. Of course it must have been wiped clean,” he grumbled as he looked through the magnifying glass Yaffa was now holding over the wire stretched between his hands. “It’s from a string instrument, no doubt about it,” he said with satisfaction.
“Here, in a plastic bag, just lying inside!” said someone triumphantly.
“Now we’ll find the gloves, too,” said Shimshon. “If there’s a string, there’ll be gloves, because it’s impossible to do what he did without gloves and not cut your fingers. Have you looked at the musicians’ hands?”
“We’re looking,” said Michael, “at everybody’s hands. We haven’t found a single cut yet.”
“I suppose musicians have to be careful of their hands,” said Shimshon absently as he put the string into a transparent bag. “You must be on good terms with God,” he said to Michael. “I have to hand it to you, you were right and I was wrong. Touché,” he announced, making a deep bow and doffing an imaginary hat.
“Before we celebrate, we have to send it to Solomon,” said Michael. “To see if it’s the murder weapon.”
“We’ve changed places,” said Shimshon, smiling. “Now you have to check it out, be the skeptic. . . . Anyway, the main thing is we’ve found something.”
“Gloves? You want gloves?” The cry came from near the piano, and Yaffa, both hands outstretched, was waving a pair of fine, light-brown, thick leather gloves at them, a wide smile on her face. Shimshon ran up to her and snatched them from her hands. “Where were they?” he demanded. “Lying here innocently,” said Yaffa, pointing at the piano, “just underneath beyond the pedals.”
“These are no ordinary gloves,” said Balilty. “That’s soft, special leather. They don’t belong to just anyone.”
“We’ll have to question the musicians about that, too,” said Michael as he looked at the fine fur lining of the soft leather gloves.
“They could belong either to a man or a woman,” said Shimshon. “Someone with quite big hands.”
“Lots of musicians have big hands,” said Yaffa. “I noticed that today. And they’ve got long arms, too.”
“As if the body adapts itself to their needs?” mocked Shimshon. He put the gloves carefully into a little bag. “The best thing would be,” he reflected aloud, “if we could take all the musicians to the lab and test for traces of fur on their hands.”
“Too late,” said Balilty. “They all washed their hands after the fingerprinting, especially the one we’re looking for.”
“No such thing,” said Shimshon heatedly. “You could find it under their fingernails. It takes days for all the traces to disappear.”
“Aren’t there any prints inside? Isn’t it possible to find prints inside the glove?”
“We’ll test, we’ll see,” muttered Shimshon. “But we have to look at their hands.”
“We’ll look,” promised Michael. “But you have to remember that precisely the person we’re looking for may no longer be in the building.”
Shimshon handed the sealed bag to Yaffa. They were still standing in the corridor next to the piano. One of the Forensics crew was emptying the contents of a trash bin into a big plastic bag, and Michael looked unseeingly at the hands in thin plastic gloves as they rummaged through rotting apple cores and candy wrappers. The moment he heard the sounds—the others went on talking as if they hadn’t heard anything—he froze. His heart pounded. In the distance, from the direction of Theo’s office, he could clearly hear the warm tones of a cello, and as he hurried toward the other wing, where Theo’s office was, he realized that the notes were very familiar, and at the door he no longer had any doubt that someone was playing, wonderfully, something he knew well, maybe Bach. But then he heard the scratchy, muffled sound, and he knew that it was not Nita playing, but a recording, an old one at that.
Inside the room Theo stood at the radio, his hands at the knobs. The radio had been playing at full volume, which Theo had just turned down. His face was very pale and his expression one of horror. “I didn’t intend to play music here now, I just wanted to hear the news, to see if they already were . . .” he said tremulously. “I switched it on without looking, and there was the Voice of Music”
Michael stood on the threshold and looked at Nita lying on her back. Her open eyes, pupils dilated, were staring at the ceiling. The hoarse sounds of the old recording filled the room. Now, as he stepped inside, he suddenly noticed the sound of the accompanying organ.
“I couldn’t switch it off, because of Thelma Yellin,” Theo said, as if in self-defense, as the sounds came to a stop. He looked at Nita, who kept her eyes fixed on the ceiling.
“You have been listening to the Adagio from Bach’s piano Toccata, Adagio, and Fugue in C major, arranged for cello and organ by Arnold Holdheim,” the announcer solemnly said, adding that the recording, from the early fifties, was from the Voice of Israel radio archives and was played in honor of the cellist Thelma Yellin, whose hundredth birthday it was today. In the time remaining before the news, the announcer said that Yellin, who had been a student of Casals’s and had done much for music in Israel, died in 1959 at the age of sixty-four.
Theo’s hands trembled as he turned off the radio. Michael leaned against the wall. Nita did not turn her head. Her eyes, very dark because of the dilation of her pupils, stared straight ahead, and her voice was hollow and hoarse as she said: “Maybe it’s my turn now—and that’ll be it.”
Michael sat down next to her on the sofa. “What are you talking about?” he asked, alarmed, laying his hand on her arm.
“Thelma Yellin. It’s no coincidence,” she mumbled and closed her eyes. “It’s a sign that—”
“A sign that what?”
&n
bsp; “A sign that it’s my turn now. First Father, then Gabi, and now me.”
Michael held her cool, dry hand. He wanted to shake her, or suddenly embrace her, but he suppressed these urges.
“And then Theo. After me, or before me,” she said as if she were vomiting the words one after the other. But her face abruptly went white, and she sat up straight and said: “And Ido? What will happen to Ido? Where’s Ido?” She trembled violently and lowered her feet to the floor.
“He’s fine, I promise you. I spoke to the babysitter just now, only a minute ago, and he’s fine.”
“But after me, what will happen after me, who’ll bring him up?”
“There’ll be no after you!” said Michael. “You’re staying alive.”
“Forever,” said Nita, “like everyone else.”
“In the meantime forever,” said Michael, and he couldn’t resist putting his arm around her.
Theo sank into a chair and buried his face in his hands. Michael turned his head, sensing that they were not alone in the room. Balilty was standing in the doorway and silently surveying the scene. Michael looked at him questioningly, and Balilty shrugged his shoulders and stepped back. Michael stood up and joined him outside the room.
“She’s awake,” he said to Balilty. “She should go home now. Somebody has to talk to her as soon as possible, and it shouldn’t be me. Will you go with them? And take their statements? At home?”
“Do I have a choice?” asked Balilty, rummaging in his pockets. He took out a piece of paper and held it at arm’s length. “What’s written here?” he asked finally. “What time is written here? My glasses. . . .”
“Half past five.”
“Does it say the Israel Museum?” he asked loudly, keeping his expression carefully nonchalant.
“Yes, and there’s a phone number, too.”
