nose. “Something about his clothes.
Was he wearing a coat? A suit jacket? A sweater? What?”
Matty could hear his own voice; it too sounded as though it were coming from far away. The words were flowing out of him: “No, no coat, I don’t … don’t …” Suddenly everything was spinning around him and the pain in his arm grew stronger and the one in his chest, too. Not a stabbing pain, but a prolonged one, as though someone were trampling him with a large foot … worse … as if … he were being smashed, something was smashing his chest, something huge, something of enormous strength—another minute, and he’d be hearing the snap of his own bones. He could hear mumbled voices, people were touching him, opening the buttons on his shirt. He was cold, cold and in pain. It became impossible to breathe anymore. Suddenly everything was a fog.
“Well, well, well, this is truly a surprise,” Zadik said without a hint of joy at the sight of Chief Superintendent Michael Ohayon in his doorway. “I never expected to see you here.” He rose from his chair, hastening to the door to greet him and blocking the way into his room. He cast an expectant look at Eli Bachar, but Eli Bachar, who had no intention of explaining why he had brought his commander along with him, returned his gaze with a blank look.
“I knew the police would get in here to ask questions,” Zadik sputtered, passing his hand over his stubbled gray chin. “But I never thought they’d sent their big star over.”
Michael Ohayon spread his arms as if to say, Look what’s been happening around here, what do you expect? “We’re here in the matter of the … accident involving Tirzah Rubin,” he said, casting a sidelong glance at Zadik’s clouded face. “And about another matter—”
“What matter?” Zadik asked. “Something that justifies your presence at Israel Television?”
Michael paused. They had not notified Zadik of Matty Cohen’s heart attack, and at the emergency meeting convened by the district commander and the commissioner of police—after they had summoned an ambulance and after it appeared that Matty Cohen’s heartbeat had stabilized, though he was still unconscious—Emmanuel Shorer had warned Balilty and Ilan Katz about what might be in store for them with regard to the family; he even mentioned the possibility of a lawsuit, and asked how it was that they had not discerned Matty Cohen’s condition. “Believe me, sir,” Balilty said, his hand on his heart,
“there were no signs whatsoever. He was breathing with difficulty, but with the kind of weight that guy had on him …” Michael was well aware that Matty Cohen had complained about feeling unwell, but he remained silent. Eventually the commissioner of police cut the meeting short, reminding them all that this was not the time for investigating the matter, expressing hope that Matty Cohen would return to normal, and promising that they would engage in a proper discussion
“when things settled down a bit.” He departed, leaving a whiff of
threat behind him, which Emmanuel Shorer reinforced when he turned to Michael and instructed him to inform Zadik—with sensitiv-ity and gentleness—what had happened to Matty Cohen “before we conduct our own internal inquiry into the matter.”
Eli Bachar, who was standing behind Michael, watched how Aviva moistened her lips until they were glossy, and left her pink tongue fluttering at their edges without once taking her large eyes, outlined in blue eye shadow, off Michael. Here again was proof of what Michael had always told him: No matter what situation people find themselves in, their true personality will always burst through and overcome the circumstances. Aviva would barely admit that she was searching for love, and would never acknowledge that she was looking for a husband. Some people think those are one and the same, but Eli Bachar knew better. There was no fooling him, he knew how to recognize the difference: a woman looking for love was less active about it than Aviva. Until Michael had shown up, she had been considering Eli Bachar for the role, but now he had suddenly been cast aside. If he looked at Michael through Aviva’s eyes, as if seeing him for the first time, like we look afresh sometimes at people close to us, people we’ve stopped really noticing, then he saw how impressive his height was, saw his youthful profile, how his short graying hair gave him a look of restrained austerity, how the dark eyes under the heavy brows gave him an air of mystery. Eli Bachar stole a glance at the arc of his aquiline nose—Eli’s wife Tzilla, who worked with them on one of the Special Investigations teams and did not care if she was a secretary or a coordinator as long as Michael was in charge, would call his nose
“manly”—at his pronounced cheekbones, and at his slightly crooked chin. Tzilla had once remarked that “if it had had a cleft in it, he’d be a darker version of Kirk Douglas,” and Eli had never forgotten this remark, which even now, for a split second when he recalled his wife’s voice as she said it, awakened in him a spark of jealousy that he hastened to extinguish. He was incapable of jealousy toward Michael, the godfather of his children, after so many years in close proximity. After all, he, too, loved Michael, not only Tzilla. But there was no doubt about it, the man was what, forty-six, forty-seven? but he seemed age-less, and with just one look at him you knew he was a free agent, not tied down to anyone, that there was no woman in his life. You could tell by … well, Eli did not know just how. Maybe it was his gaze—
lonely, severe—the way sometimes he would stare at a point just over the shoulder of the person he was talking to, the gaze that was now causing Aviva to take stock of herself in the compact mirror she kept in her drawer. Or maybe it was because of his smile, even though he wasn’t smiling just then, that special attention he gave to women, the way you could tell he wasn’t afraid of them. Eli noticed, too, the look Michael gave Aviva when he entered her office; he saw Michael’s eyes narrow for just an instant and knew that he was aware she was checking him out. Eli knew, too, that Michael had not remained indifferent to it.
“Why don’t we step inside your office?” Michael suggested to Zadik in a soothing tone. “I understand that you haven’t been having an easy time around here. We’re going to have to—” He caught sight of Aviva, her chin propped in her hand, her large, moist green eyes fixed unabashedly on him. She made no attempt to hide the fact that she was listening to their conversation.
“All right,” Zadik said with a sigh, and with heavy footsteps he turned around and walked to his large desk, behind which he sat down. “I’m still in shock,” he said as Michael and Eli Bachar seated themselves across from him. “I’m talking to you as if everything’s just fine, but don’t think it is. I’m still in shock. Anyway, what exactly is there to investigate here? This wasn’t some murder, it was an accident.
And I’ve been thinking: the entire police force is dealing with the strikers today … never mind, I’m getting off the track … what … what are you doing here?”
Michael nodded toward Eli Bachar. “I’ve been called in to help.”
“Just like that government minister, who shall remain nameless: when your friends call, you come,” Zadik muttered. “Not that I’m not glad to see you,” he hastened to add wryly, “but believe me, we’re talking about a woman who … a person that worked with me like this,”
he said, holding up two crossed fingers. “I still can’t, I still can’t …
don’t you have anything better to do today?”
“The striking workers from the Hulit factory have already been
arrested,” Eli Bachar said. “They’re all taken care of.” In a slightly bitter tone, he added, “Believe me, they’ll get what’s coming to them. But the truly guilty parties won’t be punished at all.”
“That’s the way it is in this country,” Zadik agreed under his breath.
He pressed the telephone intercom. “What would you like to drink?”
he asked them.
“Coffee,” Eli Bachar answered. He turned to Michael with a questioning look on his face. Michael shrugged in halfhearted agreement.
“Cream? Sugar?”
“Whatever,” Eli Bachar responded.
They waited for Zadik to instruct Aviva to bring them coffee.
Eli Bachar glanced at Michael, who nodded. “We would … we’d like to request that the funeral be postponed.”
“Postponed?” Zadik said, stunned. “Tirzah’s funeral? How can we postpone it? The announcements have been printed, we’ve notified the whole world, how can we postpone it? And why? Why? And until when?”
“Look,” Eli Bachar said, “there’s … the pathologist found several things that—”
“What is this?” Zadik asked, perplexed. “What did he find? Where?”
Michael chose his words carefully. “There were findings that raise questions,” he explained.
“What kind of findings?” Zadik asked.
“For example, there were bruises on her neck.”
“On Tirzah’s neck?” Zadik asked.
