Murder in Jerusalem

by Batya Gur

  “Why don’t you try me?” she taunted him.

  Stopped at a traffic light just before the bridge over Golomb Street, he told her about his father, about the stroke he had suffered when the bakery he had worked at for thirty years was shut down, about the years during which he could neither speak nor walk. About the similarity between his father and Shimshi he said nothing. He looked into her face and saw that she had understood.

  “But your father did not kidnap anyone or threaten to blow anyone up,” she reminded him.

  “I told you you wouldn’t understand,” he answered quickly—now they were stuck in a new traffic jam, on Herzog Street, just before the turnoff to Tchernikovsky—“I shouldn’t have said anything. After all, you know quite well,” he said in a burst of emotion, “that the deprived actually never get anything except through violence. What revolution ever succeeded without it?”

  “Danny Benizri,” the minister said with fatigue, wiping her brow, “do me a favor and don’t give me any history lessons just now. And turn here, please,” she said, gesturing to the parking lot of the two-story buildings at the end of Palmach Street. “Here, the second building.”

  Danny Benizri parked the car. “Wait,” he said, looking around after he had shut off the engine. “Watch out for the puddles and let me take your bag,” he said, and ignoring her protests, he followed her to the door, waiting for her to remove her key from her purse and slowly open the door. He entered the living room behind her, watched her draw the curtains. His cell phone rang just as her home phone did. He glanced at the display on his phone as she slowly raised the receiver. “Yes,” he heard her say, looking directly at him, “I’m completely alone.” He shut his own phone off. “My parliamentary assistant,” she mouthed to him. He moved behind her, quite close, while she explained to her assistant that she needed to rest, that no one knew she was back at home, that she did not wish to be disturbed. He watched as she lay the receiver next to the telephone, turning around with the thought that he was at the other side of the room, near the door, surprised to find him right behind her. As he folded his arms around her he noticed a deep crease near her left eyebrow, and it dawned on him that she was at least ten years older than he and that this was the first time in his life he had touched an older woman in this way. But something about her narrow back dulled this realization, as did the taste of her full, dry lips.

  Panic and anger flashed through her at the liberties that Benizri, this journalist, was taking with her, and a dull alarm of suspicion and danger rang in her mind, but the wave of heat rising from them both was stronger than the two of them and born of great loneliness and prolonged torment that she suddenly, at that very minute, had had her fill of. This journalist, who had stated so openly what he wanted and needed, had said something to her that she had not heard in years, which made her think that he was her friend, as illogical and unexpected as that was.

  By the time they awakened, he had already missed by two hours his appointed “chat” (“I’m only requesting that you come in,” Michael Ohayon had said to him; “this isn’t an interrogation, and you will not be read your rights”). There were five messages on his cell phone, three from Tikvah, who had been searching for him with desperation in her voice. In the third message she told him she simply did not know what to do with the baby, who had been crying since the morning; he imagined Tikvah’s gaunt, forlorn face, could picture her wandering helplessly with the baby carriage. In this cold weather she had taken the baby out in her stroller to bring Gilad home from nursery school; now Tikvah would be shut up in the house with the two of them because of the rain, and suddenly he remembered the promise he had made to Gilad. He had never lost his head like this before; he had no explanation for it, and he searched for one in Timnah Ben-Zvi’s face. She was leaning on pillows propped behind her, her eyes half closed. She opened them and returned his gaze.

  “Are you sorry or something?” she asked him quietly.

  “Sorry? No, no way. I just…” He fell silent and began dressing.

  “I…don’t think that I…do you usually…?” she stammered.

  “Oh sure,” he said sarcastically, “every day, what do you think?” Then, as her face darkened, he said, “Hey, I was only kidding. I’m not the philandering type.”

  “Nor am I. I mean, I’ve never—”

  “You’ve never had an affair?” he asked. She shook her head.

  “So maybe I should be the one asking if you’re sorry,” he asked with a slightly curious lilt to his voice, trying to conceal his own self-doubt.

  “No, I’m not at all sorry,” she answered, crossing her arms. “I’m just…how can I say this…I’m just a bit…in shock at my own behavior.”

  “In shock. She’s in shock,” he repeated as if trying out the words. “I’ve heard,” he said hesitantly with a smile, “that women make fun of men who ask if it was good for them, but I’d like to know…maybe you’ll tell me why you’re in shock—”

  “If anyone were to catch sight of us right now,” said the minister of labor and social affairs as she plumped up the large pillow behind her head, her eyes on him as he dressed, “we’d become the lead item on this evening’s news, ahead of the strikers, ahead of everything.”

  “Not on television,” Danny Benizri said as he shoved his arms into the sleeves of his sweater.

  “Well, not yet, but soon that kind of thing will be on television, too, some sensationalist program on Channel Two or—”

  “Not at Israel Television,” he assured her, pulling on his shoes. “Not at Israel’s official station,” he announced cheerfully before bending down to where she lay propped up against the headboard of the large double bed. She began to smile, but stopped when he placed his lips on her face, on her mouth. “That’s why I’m still at Israel Television,” he said as he straightened up and glanced at himself in the large mirror facing the bed. “Our priorities are still intact,” he said, and flashed her a genuinely serious smile.

  In his office at police headquarters, Michael sat listening to Natasha’s explanations. She asked if they could cut the interview short, if she could go. “I know I was late and everything, but I’ve got to be at work in another half an hour, and it’s rush hour,” she said, explaining that she still needed to put the finishing touches on her report for the evening news. She did not answer his question about the topic of her report, and after he queried her again, she said, “Journalistic immunity. I’m permitted not to answer—you said this wasn’t an interrogation.” He let her get away with it. She also refused to explain why she had arrived late, but her eyes were sparkling and she would not let go of the canvas bag in her lap. “You’ll know soon enough,” she said, trying to suppress the note of victory in her voice. “Really soon, I promise you,” she added, gazing at him with such childish exuberance that he longed to pat her gaunt cheeks. There was something about her that reminded him of an alley cat, the kind you could not tame or tether, the kind that would do anything for a fish head, or less. “I heard about that,” she said, lowering her eyes when Michael mentioned Matty Cohen’s death. “But I don’t have…I didn’t have anything to do with Matty Cohen, I’m not…I’m not important enough.”

  “You will be, one day.” He was surprised to hear himself answer like that; it was, he thought, due to the keen and open desire he could see in her slender fingers, which never stopped moving, and her long, narrow lips, which were incessantly contorting, and the way she kept stealing glances at her watch. She answered the questions that had nothing to do with her news report willingly and even enthusiastically, describing her meeting with Rubin in the editing room: “He was working on a report of his own, and I blew in like the wind, but he’s so…so professional, so understanding, that he dropped everything and gave me…” When he asked her what time it was when she came to Rubin’s office, she frowned as if to say she had no idea, but after a moment she remembered and said, “It was after one a.m. because—before that—I passed through the newsroom on the way up t
o Rubin’s office and I saw—no, someone told me—” At this point he stopped her to ask about Hefetz. She neither blushed nor paled, but she held on to her chair, stretching her arms and raising her shoulders until they reached her ears. She bowed her head so that her face was covered by a fan of her long, straight, fair hair. “Look,” she said in a quiet, muffled voice, “I don’t know what you’ve been told, but whatever it was, it’s no longer relevant.”

  “But you saw Hefetz in the newsroom, before you went up to Rubin’s office, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” she said. “He caught me as I was running upstairs to Rubin, but I didn’t tell him anything about—” She touched her canvas bag, and he understood that she had not spoken to Hefetz about what she was working on. She explained that as she had only been at Israel Television for less than a year and a half, she had hardly known Tirzah Rubin at all. “I started as a teleprompter, you know, the person who gives the cues. I’ve only been in the News Department for a few months, I barely knew her. I knew who she was, but she didn’t know who I was.” Almost in passing he asked about Hefetz’s relationship with Tirzah Rubin, and she gave him a look of surprise. “Hefetz? What about him? There was nothing special between them,” she rebuffed him. “He was in news, she was in something else altogether. They only ever met occasionally in the canteen. Nothing special.” And as with all the others he had spoken to, she denied categorically that Tirzah Rubin’s death could be anything but accidental. To the question about who, in her opinion, Tirzah could have been meeting with there at midnight, and confronting, she shrugged her shoulders and asked if he was sure it had been a prearranged meeting. She reminded him that Tirzah had been very popular, that she had never heard about her having any enemies. “But I’m not sure, I really didn’t know her—only Rubin, and he has always helped me, no strings attached.” She looked into his eyes with a gaze that made him ponder—it contained a plea, excitement, who knew what else—and then she lowered her gaze as if she were embarrassed. For a few moments he found it difficult to concentrate; he wished he had a cigarette. He chewed his toothpick, but did not derive even a flicker of satisfaction from it.

  During their staff meeting the team commented on Michael’s restlessness. Tzilla noted graciously that it must be a difficult period for a person who had smoked for so many years and given it up all at once; this roused Balilty, who inclined his head, gazed seriously at her and said, “Now his true personality will come out. You all thought he was a calm person? Nice, gentle? Tranquil? It was all thanks to the cigarettes, you can see for yourselves.”

  Tzilla scolded him. “Why are you—it’s really hard to quit smoking—we have to help him.”

  “That’s the way of the world,” Balilty said serenely. “There are gentle people and caring people who help and support others, and there are the people who don’t—I, for example, did not need to take a vacation in order to give up smoking. I just woke up one morning and said, That’s enough. I went to that guy I told you about, the one out in Beit Shemesh, I paid whatever I paid him, I was there maybe seven minutes, he did this laying on of his hands, and that was that, I quit. How many times have I told him to go there?” he asked, indicating Michael with his head. “But him? He can do it on his own: so be my guest! Did he listen to me? You know what he said about it, don’t you, Tzilla? ‘You went to one of those guys who says, Special for you today, only six hundred shekels? I don’t believe in witch doctors.’ So, please, be my guest: witness the results.”

  Michael squelched a smile. From the beginning of their relationship it had been Intelligence Officer Balilty’s custom to give him useful advice in every aspect of life: how to court women (“Look at her once like you’re crazy about her and then the next time like you couldn’t care less”); how to invest in the stock market (“Some people go to investment brokers, but I’ve studied up on it, and I can tell you just where to invest right now”); how to look for a new apartment (“Why do you live like a bag lady, all these years in such a dive? There’re a few new developments going up near our place, one right across the street”); how to gain extra days off (“How often do you get sick? Call in with a bad back, a slipped disk, just say the word and I’ll set you up with a doctor that’ll provide you with a note”); how to talk to his ex-wife (“Why do you always keep quiet? She’s the one who took you for everything you had, no?”); and how to manage his son’s life (“Give him direction, give him advice so that he thinks he’s come up with it himself, that’s what young people like”). And afterward, if Michael did not take his advice, he would be deeply offended.

  “How could I have gone to him? For what? Anyway, it only helps people who believe in it,” Michael said in self-defense.

  “So you prefer wasting two weeks of vacation on it?” Balilty grumbled. “You don’t travel abroad, you don’t go out, you sit at home reading books and thinking thoughts and you quit smoking. You probably took Valium, too, didn’t you?”

  “All right, cut it out already,” Eli Bachar said, intervening. “We’ve seen how well you do on your diets. Where are all the diet witch doctors? And didn’t you take a vacation to go to a fat farm? Just cut it out already. Can’t you see you’re getting on his nerves?”

  Michael forced a smile, a smile that was meant to conceal the restlessness and malaise he was feeling in general, and especially his impatience with Balilty’s comments. He knew he would end up exposing his true feelings if Balilty did not shut up.

  The report on Matty Cohen’s autopsy had been placed in front of each of the team members.

  “Digoxin is the stuff they give to regulate the heart rate, isn’t it?” Tzilla asked.

  “Of course. It’s already written here,” Lillian said, “right at the beginning.” She pointed to the first page of the autopsy report. “It says he had four times the proper amount of digoxin in his blood.”

  Tzilla raised her eyes from the page and glared silently at her. Michael thought he noticed a quiver of annoyance in her pursed lips, but he could not be certain, not yet.

  “For a new team member she’s pretty involved,” Balilty had said earlier, when they were standing in the hallway and he was watching Lillian from behind as she entered the meeting room. “You’d think she’d learn a little, get organized, get to know the territory. Ha! I wish I had her confidence. An hour ago she came up to me and told me that she has ‘a few suggestions’ to add to the file on this case. At first I was like—speechless—a person’s brand-new on the job, and she’s already got suggestions! What do you make of that?”

  Michael had hemmed and hawed but as usual Balilty had not waited for a response. Instead he had said under his breath, “I told her that it’s not even clear if we’ve got a case here, this is only an initial briefing. So she says, ‘Whatever,’ but you could see she was offended. Oh well, I guess that’s the way it is with Russian women. She’s Russian, isn’t she? How exactly did we get stuck with her here anyway?”

  “She’s been in Israel for more than twenty years, since the age of five, and went through the school system here, so I don’t think you can exactly call her a Russian,” Michael had said quietly. “She came to us from Narcotics with excellent references.”

  Balilty whistled under his breath. “Forget references, check out her ass,” he said quietly. “Tell me, have you ever seen an ass like that in your life? It’s like—there’s nothing like it. I’d love to give an ass like that a try once, wouldn’t you?”

  Under Balilty’s watchful gaze, Michael glanced with embarrassment at her rear end. Indeed, it was full and round beyond proportion to her narrow back and her slim hips.

  “That’s not a woman with an ass,” Balilty concluded, “that’s an ass with a woman. And her legs are too skinny. But she’s got a nice face, don’t you think?” Michael smiled against his will and sighed. It was clear that from here on in he would be hearing about her face, her rear, her chutzpah. He had accepted her onto the team because of a request made by Yaffa from forensics, who was doing a favor for a neighb
or. Yaffa had told Michael how great a neighbor she was, how she was always ready to lend a hand (“If I’m stuck, like without sugar or something, she’s always got some, and she never turns down any request. So now that her daughter’s in trouble, how could I not return the favor?”); and how the daughter, who was very talented, had gotten into a romantic entanglement with someone at work (“This guy comes along and says that he’s separated, that he’s in the process of getting a divorce; they’re always in the process, that divorce is always just about to come through, but then they tuck their tails between their legs and run for home, “for the kids’ sake”—yeah, right—and then you’re stuck alone. Why? Don’t you deserve better? Aren’t you a human being?”); and how she wanted to get away from him (“She’s eating her heart out over this guy, and how’s she supposed to get him out of her head when she sees him every day at work?”). “So what do you think of her?” Balilty had said with an expectant look, which had caused Michael to pause, intending to say something noncommittal. But just then Tzilla had called them into the meeting room.

  “Has the final report on Tirzah Rubin come in yet?” Michael asked.

  “Yeah, it’s here,” Tzilla said. “But in my opinion we don’t have a case. What do you think?”

  “I don’t either,” Michael said absentmindedly, looking at the cigarette Lillian was holding. “Aside from a couple of things Benny Meyuhas said, which I’m not sure—”

  “You can’t smoke in here,” Tzilla said sharply to Lillian. “There is no smoking during meetings.”

  “Oh, I had no idea,” Lillian said with dismay as she tossed her cigarette into a half-empty bottle of mineral water.

  “Since when?” Michael asked, astonished. “We’ve always smoked during meetings, and—”

  “First of all,” Tzilla said without looking at him, “the boss has quit smoking—and anyway, it’s a windowless room, the heating’s on, it…it makes me feel ill.”