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 nodded. “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 air-line 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.
