“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 not 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 breakin 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.”
“How so?” Nina asked as she leaned over the table in what appeared to be an innocent pose, though Michael suspected there was something provocative, some taunt aimed at Balilty, about the way her oversized sweater clung to her breasts.
Shorer did not look at her. He was staring at the dead body when he said, “Naturally, we’ll be smarter when Benny Meyuhas and the sister provide positive identification of the body. Maybe Aviva should, too.
But assuming this is Sroul, it seems fairly clear that he came to Israel in the wake of Tirzah’s death. Matty Cohen was murdered because he saw something, Zadik was murdered because of something that this man apparently informed him, and then this man, if he is indeed who we think—”
“That’s him, no doubt about it,” Balilty hastened to interject. “No question at all. Does anybody doubt it?”
Shorer laid a hand on Balilty’s arm, silencing him. “If he is indeed who we think, then we can assume he was—if you’ll forgive me—the man who knew too much. And this was why he had to join the others.”
“That means,” Balilty explained to Nina, “that what we need to clarify here is why Tirzah was murdered—that is to say, who did it and why—
and then we’ll know all the rest. But that’s not easy at all, because Benny Meyuhas was up on the roof with an entire crew when she was killed.”
“That’s not entirely true,” Michael said, turning to the door. “Not at precisely the hour she was murdered. Don’t forget they took a break just then. They were waiting for the sun gun, they needed the light—”
“Okay,” Balilty admitted, displeased. “So there was a little bit of time that he left the roof to search for the sun gun in the warehouse, before he sent the lighting technician to find it. But he wasn’t alone.
Schreiber the cameraman went with him, that’s what I understood.”
“But they weren’t together the whole time,” Michael said.
“Schreiber isn’t the type of guy who can stay obediently in one place for any length of time. You can imagine him getting antsy and wandering around. After all, there are all kinds of tunnels and hallways around there, right?”
“So what are you trying to tell us?” Balilty baited him. “That at the very minute Schreiber took off, Benny Meyuhas—a real superhero, that guy—pounced on Tirzah, who just happened to be standing there next to some columns, and then raced back up to the roof as if nothing had happened?”
