by Batya Gur
Michael intended to say something about the poet Natan Alterman and how an entire generation of Israelis had grown up with his poems—as he himself had—and he very nearly recited the line, Even in that which is old and familiar there is a moment of birth. But one look at the impervious expression of this lonely, abandoned man—even the word “abandoned” seemed too festive, too pretty, too Alterman-like in the face of the emptiness and neglect surrounding them—caused him to change his mind. Instead, he said, “Have you checked it all out already? Have the forensics people been through his belongings? May we handle them?”
“Yeah, they’ve been through it all,” Nina confirmed. “They’re in the bathroom now, checking…what is it you want to look at here?” she asked as Michael knelt down to the pile of clothing in the corner and extracted two photographs he found underneath a few shirts. He studied them for a while, then passed one to Shorer, who was standing over him, asking to have a look.
“All right,” Shorer said as he gazed at the stained, yellowing photograph that featured the gang they recognized from the photo in Benny Meyuhas’s house and on the corkboard in Arye Rubin’s office at Israel Television. “There’s no question about it, this is our man.”
“You mean the name on the passport and the burn marks on his face and hands weren’t enough for you people?” Nina asked. “I knew this was the guy from the minute I laid eyes on him. I was sure of it, even though he doesn’t look exactly like the composite. How many men could possibly fit this description?”
“One in Jerusalem, maybe two in all of Israel,” Balilty remarked. He was standing in the center of the room, staring at the body. “Tell me what gives with this apartment. There’s nothing here, just a couch and space heater in the living room, a few pieces of furniture in here, and a nearly empty fridge. What is this place? Who found him, the neighbor? Where is she, this neighbor?”
Michael listened to Nina explain that the apartment had remained empty because of a legal entanglement due to a divorce: “The owners of the apartment—his sister and her husband,” she said, indicating the dead man, “can’t reach an agreement. Believe me, I know how that goes: the apartment gets stuck, it’s neither for rent or sale. The neighbor told me that this guy’s sister lived here until just two months ago, didn’t want to leave because she was afraid if she did he would take control and walk off with everything. So what happened was that they both lived here. They didn’t talk to one another, but lived together. He was on the living room couch, she was in here, in the bedroom. They didn’t utter a word to each other, made one another’s life hell but neither one gave in. Finally—this is what the neighbor says, she’s on good terms with the sister…Hey,” Nina said to Shorer, “do you want to hear it from the neighbor herself? She asked that if you do, we should go over to her place because it’s pretty hard for her to look at…him…”
“He, she, them,” Balilty complained. “Don’t these people have names?”
“Why don’t you just tell us for the time being, later she can come give her testimony,” Shorer said, looking at Michael. Michael nodded, then stepped aside and motioned to Eli Bachar.
“What? You want me to go down and talk to her?” Eli Bachar said, casting a look of animosity in Balilty’s direction.
“Take Lillian along and get the woman’s testimony,” Michael said. “In any case there are too many people hanging around here.”
“But do they get to stay?” Eli Bachar asked, looking at Balilty and Sergeant Ronen. He muttered something else, but Nina flashed him the look that a teacher gives a pupil who is disturbing the class, then spoke in a loud voice, as if to cover up his disruption. To Shorer she said, “The lawyer told Dalia—Dalia Gottlieb, sister of Israel Hayoun, the dead man; her husband is called Eldad, he’s an accountant, the neighbor says he’s a real sleazy guy—so the lawyer told her she could leave the apartment without losing her rights to it, there’s some kind of…I didn’t really understand, even though I went through it once. Remember that?” she asked Michael suddenly; in fact, he had no recollection, and gave an indecipherable wave of his hand which he hoped she would not put to the test. “Whoa, what crap that guy gave me! Do you remember how, after we’d already decided to get divorced and he’d left, then he showed up, went to sleep on the couch so he wouldn’t lose his rights to the house? His lawyer put him up to that. Good thing we didn’t have any kids. But this Dalia has two kids, grown and out of the house. Now she’s living on her own in Pisgat Zeev, waiting for the sale of this apartment. You wouldn’t believe it, but there’s demand for apartments around here,” Nina prattled on. “This neighborhood isn’t much of anything, but it’s accessible to everywhere and—” She stopped talking and stood pondering the single bed in front of her, where the dead body of a man still lay.
“Nina,” Shorer said, “we’re waiting for you to explain how he was discovered.”
“Oh, sorry, I thought…The neighbor, Iris Marciano is her name, has a key. Her sister and brother-in-law came for a visit from up north in Maalot with their two children and she needed an extra mattress. So she went upstairs to fetch the mattress from the living room couch. Dalia Gottlieb didn’t even know her brother was in the country, and she certainly didn’t know he was here; even the neighbor, Iris Marciano, didn’t know he was here. She never heard a thing. Can you imagine what a shock it was for her to find him like that? She didn’t touch anything, she ran straight out and called us. I came right away and found him just like that, just like he is now. He never even told his sister he was coming, didn’t phone her or anything. He just showed up, and that’s all.”
“What about other neighbors, in the next building?” asked Shorer. “How could they not have seen light in the apartment or heard voices or steps or noises? Didn’t they hear anything at all?”
“No, nothing. She was sick, the neighbor,” Nina said, “she had the flu. Her son was on a youth movement field trip. After all, it’s Hanukkah vacation. She’s a single parent, her husband left her two years ago. So she was alone, sick with the flu. She had a high fever for two days, she didn’t hear or notice a thing. That’s what she says. You can ask her again,” said Nina, as she licked her full lips, then bit the lower one. “If you ask me, there are a lot of strange things here, any way you look at it.”
“Okay, we’re asking,” Michael said, his interest piqued. “What, for example?”
“Well, for one thing, what was he doing here in the first place? There’s no sign that he’s been here for two days. Maybe he drank a glass of water or made himself a cup of coffee, but when did he arrive? Did he sleep here? The neighbor says she knew Dalia’s brother lived in America, that he was a rich man. He even helped his sister pay the divorce lawyer and all that. That’s what the neighbor says. So why did he hole up in this dump? Why didn’t he go to a hotel?”
“Do me a favor and show me the rest of his things, the documents you’ve got stashed in the brown bags,” Shorer said, and Nina handed them over without a word. He leaned over the table and went through the papers in a rush, stopping when he came across a clipping from a newspaper stuck inside Sroul’s American passport. “What do you say about this?” he asked Michael, handing him the clipping. Michael glanced at the obituary announcing Tirzah Rubin’s death.
“You think he saw the obituary and got right on a plane?” Balilty wondered aloud. “That’s the way it is with old friends: there’s no replacing them, that’s what I’ve always said. These were his school chums, he’ll never have better friends than that, no way. They’re like family, especially in this country. That’s so Israeli, you know? It’s what’s so nice about life here, what with youth movements and field trips.” Motioning toward the photograph resting on the table, he said, “Look at that smile. How much do you want to bet that he didn’t smile like that too often after that?”
No one responded, but everyone looked at Michael, who was sitting on the wooden chair next to the table, going through the papers. “This is all you found?” he asked, and Nina nod
ded. “There’s no wallet here, no credit cards, no cash. Did you find any of those elsewhere, like in his suitcase or his pockets?”
“No,” Nina said. “We didn’t.”
“But we’re not talking about a robbery here,” Shorer mumbled. “No one here has mentioned that possibility, have they?”
“No,” Nina responded. “The place wasn’t even broken into. Everything points to this guy having let in someone he knew. In the kitchen there was—there is—an electric kettle, cups with coffee in them. The cups were washed, but in the sink there is evidence that they drank coffee.”
“He was hosting someone here,” Lillian interrupted. “The forensics people say that there was at least one other person in the kitchen besides him,” she said, pointing toward the dead body. “We don’t know yet whether it was a man or a woman.”
“So there’s no money. Nothing, in fact, except the passports and airline ticket?” Michael asked.
“I wouldn’t say that,” Balilty muttered. While they were talking, he had bent down next to the narrow bed holding the dead body, looked underneath it, thrust his hand beneath the decrepit mattress, pulled out a purple, oblong plastic folder—the kind distributed by travel agents, the tickets and itineraries inside—and ran his pinky over what remained of the gold lettering, nearly erased by time. From inside the folder he extricated an old, yellowing newspaper clipping along with a few letters in their envelopes, held together by a small rubber band. There was silence in the room until Balilty broke it. “Most important thing is that the forensics team has finished their work,” he said mockingly. “They’re done searching,” he said, looking around. He called out, “Joe! Joe, Joe! Where are you?”
A member of the forensics team appeared in the doorway. “What is it now?” the man asked, fatigued.
“I understand that you people have finished up in here, right?” Balilty asked, waving the purple ticket folder.
“What’s that?” the forensics expert asked as he drew near, examining the folder. “Where did that pop up from?”
“Right here.” Balilty pointed to the bed. “He put the things most important to him under his head, and guess what? It wasn’t money or credit cards; it was something completely different, something that could provide a lead for us. That is, it could provide a lead, but only if we actually find it, if we’re not told that ‘we’ve finished with this room.’”
“What I meant was that we finished dusting for fingerprints and all that,” Joe explained, wiping his forehead with his arm, careful not to let his latex gloves touch his skin.
“That’s not fair,” Nina interjected. “How could he have looked there with the body still on the bed? The doctor only just got started—you yourself heard him say that they’re ready to break down the bed just as soon as the body’s been removed. They simply haven’t gotten to it yet, that’s all.”
“What’s important is that we’ve gotten to it now,” Shorer said, flashing a look of warning at Balilty, who was poised to answer him.
Michael examined the tabletop. Joe from forensics said, “We’ve already taken prints from there. Only thing left is the bed,” he said, motioning toward the doctor. Michael made a quick swipe of the table with his forefinger and spread the newspaper clipping on it. Nina and Balilty drew near.
“I don’t understand this,” Nina said. “What is it?”
“What’s the caption underneath the photo?” Balilty asked.
“Nothing,” Michael answered. “No caption. Just the date, written by hand: the twelfth of October, 1973. That’s all.”
“What do we have here?” Shorer asked, only now joining the others.
Balilty bent his head and examined the photographs from up close. “Hang on a minute,” he said. “Look over here, Jo-Jo. And bring your magnifying glass.” Joe left the room for a moment and returned immediately, handing a magnifying glass to Balilty in silence.
“It’s a photograph of prisoners of war,” Balilty said after a moment. “Looks to me like Egyptians, in the Sinai.” He lifted his eyes from the photo. “That’s what it looks like to me at first glance. Probably from the Yom Kippur War,” he said before examining the date.
“How’s that relevant?” Nina asked.
“I heard they spent a few days as prisoners of war in Egypt,” Balilty said as he returned to studying the photograph, using the magnifying glass. “Here, the date’s written on it,” he mumbled.
“Who? Who were prisoners of war?”
“These three guys, the ones in that other photo, the ones who were together in the army—”
“That’s not exactly the way it was,” Michael said, “but that’s not important for the moment.”
“What else did you find?” Shorer asked.
“Letters. Three, I think,” Michael said. “I need to read them carefully. Not here,” he added, though while he was talking, he removed each from its envelope and unfolded them. “One is from 1975, the second from 1982, and the third is dated one month ago. They’re all,” he said, riffling through them, “from Tirzah. Here at the bottom, signed, ‘Love, Tirzah.’”
“Tirzah Rubin met up with him in America a few weeks before she died,” Balilty explained to Shorer. “We think it was about Iddo and Eynam, the film Benny Meyuhas was making. You know, the one they ran out of money for? We think she might have contacted him to ask for backing.”
“I suggest,” Michael said, looking at Shorer, “that we bring Benny Meyuhas here. Right now, before they remove the body.”
Shorer was silent a moment, then said, “That may just do the trick. I don’t get the impression that something else will cause him to talk, and we can’t—you don’t want to wait until after the autopsy?”
“No,” Michael answered. “I want to see him look at the body. I want to watch him when he sees it.”
“Now?” Balilty asked. “You want him here now?” He removed his cell phone from the inner pocket of his jacket.
“No, no, Danny,” Michael said. “I’m going to bring him here myself.”
“Yourself?” Balilty said, astounded. “Alone? I can get someone to bring him here—”
“No. Me, by myself,” Michael insisted.
Puzzled, Balilty regarded him until suddenly his eyes lit up with comprehension. “I get it,” he said, pleased.
Michael nodded, though his intention was unclear. He himself did not know precisely why he was insisting on bringing Benny Meyuhas there himself from police headquarters. When he had seen the expression on Benny Meyuhas’s face, that deadened, absent look—as if some great terror had frightened all expression away—he had ordered that special surveillance be placed on him, had instructed them not to let Benny Meyuhas out of their sight for even a moment. And now, when he pictured Benny Meyuhas’s face, he believed that only under his own surveillance, on the way back to this apartment and in the apartment itself, would he manage to prevent the impending disaster he could not stop feeling was headed their way.
Shorer said, “Michael’s afraid that no one else will take care of him like he will. Isn’t that so? Do I know who we’re dealing with here, or what?”
Embarrassed, Michael nodded inconclusively again. He did not feel comfortable forming the words, in front of everyone, that would describe the strange feeling he felt throbbing inside him for this odd creative genius, Benny Meyuhas, a man who had expressed something so meaningful about Agnon’s story Iddo and Eynam, perhaps the most meaningful thing he had heard for a long while; and this had turned him instantly, in Michael’s mind, into a precious and vulnerable creature.
“I’m sure you’ll be safe,” Balilty assured him, “but I’m coming with you anyway.”
Michael thought to protest but could not find anything to say. In any event they had nothing more to do there until the body was taken away. “Good idea,” he said at last. “Come with me and start searching for a new lead on this case.”
“What, like—” Balilty was confused. He made a circular motion with his hand that Michael did no
t comprehend. “Like you want me to ask who left the Israel Television building? I mean, they haven’t been letting anyone in or out. Nobody left without us knowing about it. Only with our permission.”
“Nevertheless,” Michael insisted, “there are always exceptions. You know as well as I do that the minute we start checking, we’ll find that quite a few people left the building. Even Hefetz went out to eat with the director general, and I doubt it was in some hole-in-the-wall right next to the building, like he’s sure to tell you. You know it’s easy to say one thing and do something else altogether. I don’t need to tell you it’s possible to go places without moving your car, so that also proves nothing—there are plenty of taxis around. In short, everything needs to be looked into all over again, and anyway, most of these people are being questioned right now at headquarters.”
“Are you sure this is connected to what’s been happening at Israel Television?” Nina asked. “I know I’m not involved in all that, but—”
“Oh, come on!” Balilty cried out maliciously. “This guy, what’s more or less the last thing he did in his life? He visited Zadik. Right? And when he left Zadik’s office, Zadik was slaughtered like some…that much you know, right? And we have the composite drawing of him, okay? And now he’s been knocked off, too. I mean, what more do we need to know? This isn’t some kiddies’ game!” Nina glared at him and Balilty snorted, then settled down a bit and continued. “There’s no sign of a break-in or a robbery here. He was hosting someone, and if you ask me it had to be Meyuhas, and I’d bet Meyuhas was also the one…” Balilty’s voice faded and then, uncharacteristically hesitant, he added, “But blow me down if I can think of a motive.”
“Oh, there is one,” Shorer insisted. “We simply do not know yet what it is.”
“How do you see it, sir?” Nina asked Shorer. “Do you believe all these murders are connected?”
“Of course!” Balilty shouted. “How could they not be?”
“It certainly appears that way,” Shorer replied, plucking the ends of his mustache. “They seem to be connected. In fact, they seem to have grown one from the other.”
