you?”
“So did he know or didn’t he?” Lillian persisted.
“Did who know what?!” Balilty shouted.
“The murderer,” Lillian said. “Did he know about the maintenance man or not?”
“Even if he didn’t know,” Tzilla said impatiently, “even if it all developed spontaneously—let’s say it wasn’t premeditated—then the sce-nario could have been something like this: you enter the office, something happens that makes you need to eliminate the other guy, you whomp him without giving it much thought, then you notice the work clothes and the tools and you get a great idea. What difference does it make if he knew or he didn’t know?”
“Nobody knew that a technician was supposed to come,” Michael announced. “Only Aviva. Zadik himself had completely forgotten about it. Aviva had set it up in advance, and it was penciled in to her appointment book, but in a way nobody from the outside could have understood. We checked it out.”
Lillian, however, was not appeased. “How? Did she write in code? In a secret language?”
“You’d be surprised,” Tzilla said, a note of victory in her voice.
“You’d be very surprised. She writes first names only or even just initials and a phone number and nothing else. She says she got used to setting up meetings that way when she managed the office of a division commander during her army service, since everybody was always walking in and taking a peek.”
“That’s also not a bad method for making sure your boss is completely reliant on you,” Balilty added. “It’s typical of single women who have no lives and no family and their work is their whole life.
They make sure the boss can’t manage without them.”
“Not everyone is like that,” Lillian said. She threw him an offended glance. “Some women—”
“Let’s get on with it,” Michael said. “Do you have the list, Eli, the one with who entered and exited the building, and when? Rubin’s doctor friend, for example. Is that marked in? Hand the list over to Tzilla and just tell us who the problematic people are.”
“No one,” Eli Bachar answered. “No one’s problematic. On the face of it nobody’s … everyone … the time span is just too narrow,” he explained.
“I would get back to the question of motive,” Michael said.
A ruckus broke out in the room. “Whoa, pipe down,” Michael said.
“Let’s discuss motives with regards to the murder of Zadik.”
The room fell silent.
“What’s so difficult here?” Shorer asked. “There’s no man alive without enemies. A man without enemies is a dead man.”
“Even dead men have enemies,” Balilty muttered. “Believe me, my sister-in-law’s mother—” He glanced at Michael and shut his mouth.
“All right,” Eli Bachar said. “The director general did not like Zadik.”
“Let’s get serious,” Rafi said irritably. “The director general didn’t like Zadik? Oh, come on!”
“I’m just doing what I was asked,” Eli Bachar said with mock innocence. “But if you’re asking for my impression, I’d say that folks at Israel Television really liked Zadik. All of them, even in the canteen.
They’re bawling down there like—”
“Fine,” Michael said. “Then we’re asking for your impression.”
“You see, that’s something else altogether,” Eli Bachar said. “My personal impression, no basis in fact for this whatsoever, is that, well—
did you see the five o’clock news? When they announced Zadik’s death?”
“Yes,” Michael said. “We saw it and recorded it. We recorded it, right, Tzilla?”
“That’s why we’re sitting in this room,” Tzilla said, inserting a cassette into the VCR. “Should I start the video?”
“Pay close attention to Hefetz’s speech,” Eli Bachar said. “I was there when he was giving it. Not in the studio but in the newsroom.
We all stopped what we were doing for a minute.”
Tzilla started the tape. Hefetz’s full, round face filled the screen as he proclaimed, with a grave expression, “It is with great sorrow and deep regret that the board of directors and employees of the Israel Broadcasting Authority announce the untimely—”
“He’s totally over the top,” Lillian called out. “Those are the same words they used to announce—I mean, we’re not talking about the prime minister here.”
“Never mind, that’s not important,” Eli Bachar said, shutting her up.
Michael, distracted, caught fragments of sentences: “… employees of the Israel Broadcasting Authority announce … all the citizens of the state of Israel … lucky that …”
“Wait, quiet.” Until now Emmanuel Shorer had been sitting quietly, watching. “Listen carefully to what he is saying here. Tzilla, rewind the tape, please.”
Tzilla pressed the button on the remote control and rewound the tape. “Here,” Shorer said. “Stop here. Now listen up, everybody.”
“… to carry out the principles established by Shimshon Zadik, may his memory be a blessing,” Hefetz began, his trembling voice full of emotion. “The news must go on, … I have taken upon myself to fill in as director of Israel Television and hope to function according to the will of my superiors and to express faithfully the policy of the government, to which the Israel Broadcasting Authority is subject—”
“Stop!” Shorer cried. “Stop the tape, Tzilla.”
“What happened?” Balilty wondered. “I didn’t hear anything too remarkable.”
“You didn’t?” Shorer marveled. “‘To express faithfully the policy of the government.’ We’ve never heard anything like that before: that man should not be serving as director of Israel Television under any circumstances! That is certainly not what Zadik would have done.”
“So what does it mean?” Balilty asked, his face openly astonished.
“Are you suggesting that’s a motive for murder? That maybe it was all a plot, that somebody ordered Hefetz to—you mean to say that somebody wanted to shut Zadik up so that Hefetz could take over for him and become the government’s mouthpiece? That’s what you mean?”
“We have learned,” Shorer said placidly, “from years of experience,
that in a murder case every odd detail, every exception to the rule, can turn into a lead. Do you not think this speech is quite exceptional?”
“Well, it’s certainly not standard issue,” Balilty said, squirming in his chair, “but what does it, like, mean? Do you think it’s connected to the whole issue with the ultra-Orthodox and Natasha’s investigation?”
The door opened, and a uniformed police officer stood in the doorway. He was breathing heavily, his breaths loud in the ensuing silence.
“Excuse me, sir,” the policeman said, then, noticing Emmanuel Shorer, turned to him and excused himself again.
“What’s going on, Davidov?” Shorer asked. “Has something happened?”
“They dispatched me to tell you … a body’s been found in an apartment near the Oranim gas station. They couldn’t phone in because you’re in a meeting—nobody’s answering their cell phones or beepers—so they sent me. It’s the body of a man.”
“Why the—” Eli Bachar began, irritated. “Is that any reason to—”
He fell silent when Shorer raised his arm.
“Why was it important for us to know this immediately?” Shorer asked. “Who thought it was something we needed to be disturbed about?”
“They say, sir,” Davidov explained from his position in the doorway,
“that the guy fits the description in the composite we’ve been passing around.”
“What? What did you say?” Balilty shouted as he jumped to his feet.
“They’re saying that the guy’s the right age, with burns, and dressed like an ultra-Orthodox Jew,” Davidov said, rolling the hem of his windbreaker between his fingers. “They phoned from the site by telephone—they didn’t want anyone to listen in over the transmitters or cell phones—they asked for you to get down there right away,” he said to Michael.
