“That’s just it,” Michael said, “I’m not saying anything at this point because I simply do not know.” He stopped for a minute, then repeated himself. “I simply do not know. And what about you? Do you know something that the rest of us don’t?”
“In the meantime, no,” Balilty admitted, chagrined. “But give me another day or two, and I’ll—”
“All right,” Michael declared, “I’m going to bring him here. Please leave everything as it is, don’t touch a thing. Danny, are you coming with me?”
“He is,” Shorer said. “He’s going back with you, and he’ll stay at headquarters to do some questioning.”
Balilty looked around, displeased. “And are you staying here?” he asked Shorer.
“For the time being,” Shorer replied with forced pleasantness. “And if I decide to leave I will do so, according to whatever needs to be done.
It’s not a matter of ego or prestige. Or do you think otherwise?”
“No way, not ego,” Balilty muttered. “I’m in favor of solving this case.”
“I’ll be back with Benny Meyuhas within half an hour,” Michael summed up. “Nina, please let them know we’re on our way. Have them wake Benny up if he’s sleeping.”
Next to the front door, on his way out, Michael heard Shorer ask,
“Nina, do you think you could arrange a little cup of coffee for us?”
c h a p t e r f o u r t e e n
The moment Michael entered police headquarters, he realized he would not be returning to the scene of the crime within half an hour. Echoes of the tumult could be heard all the way to the front door, and they grew louder as he climbed the stairs. Outside his office a crowd had gathered; people were jammed together in a circle around Hefetz and Danny Benizri, who were standing within inches of one another. “You think I can do whatever I want?” Hefetz shouted as he reached for the collar of Danny Benizri’s army jacket. However, in view of the look he got from Benizri—who was watching Hefetz’s hand approach as if it were a poisonous snake—Hefetz thought better of it and returned his hand to his side. “I told you,” he said, though his heart did not seem to be in it, “I received an order from the director general! Just stay out of this whole matter, I told you—” Just then, Hefetz noticed Michael and fell silent. When he resumed talking, he was no longer shouting; instead he drew even closer to Danny Benizri and spoke in a near whisper. He watched Michael from the corner of his eye, tensed up in anticipation of his reaction and awaiting it all the same. “We’re not socialists here,” Hefetz said. “Try to understand: those are yesterday’s cold noodles. You want to bring me a character profile of Shimshi’s wife? What could possibly be ne that
w about
? In
any case, they’ve all been arrested! You already filmed them on their way in to jail, what more could you show? You want to show the empty factory? The trucks? The bottles? All of it’s been all over the news for days, people are sick of seeing it, especially your pessimistic take on it!”
“Do you hear what you sound like?” Benizri shouted. It appeared he had not spotted Michael, or if he had, he was unconcerned about him or about Eli Bachar, who was standing guard, observing them from the small office at the end of the hall. Eli Bachar motioned to Michael, to which Michael responded with a nod of his head and a look that meant Eli would have to wait a moment. “What are you anyway,” Benizri spat at Hefetz, “the director general’s mouthpiece? And how about the director general himself ? He’s the government’s mouthpiece! You should be ashamed of yourself ! This’ll be the downfall of the country!” Benizri nearly choked on his anger; his face was scarlet, and veins protruded from his neck. “What do you think, they didn’t put pressure on Zadik, only on you? Don’t you remember how he’d complain about those phone calls? But he never—”
“Danny,” Schreiber said from behind as he tugged at Benizri’s arm and glanced suspiciously at Michael, “calm down. It’s not worth the—”
“Leave me alone!” Benizri shouted. “All of you, just get off my back!
We don’t get any support at all around here: on the one hand somebody’s knocking us off like flies, and on the other hand—” Suddenly, shaking, he smothered his face in his hands. Schreiber took hold of his shoulders and pulled him out of the fray.
“Listen, Hefetz,” Rubin said from behind, “I don’t know what’s happened to you, and I don’t understand anything anymore. I don’t know if you thought that if you told us here—at police headquarters, before we’re all questioned—about your plans for cutbacks, we’d shut up about it for a while. Well, I’m not buying it. Just so you know,” he said, planting himself in front of Hefetz, “you can’t just cancel overnight a show that’s been running for years and years. Not today, not just like that, not when Zadik’s body is still warm. I mean, I don’t mean that literally … But he’s barely dead, and you’re off and running to please your master.”
“Just so you people understand: our ratings are zip!” Hefetz cried.
“The public has had it, I haven’t even been given a hundred-day grace period. Do you get it? The director general, Ben-Asher, today he—they want things that are more … entertaining …”
“Did you hear what Benizri was saying?” Rubin said authoritatively.
“People are dropping like flies. And you? You people—” Michael noted that this was the first time he had heard Rubin’s voice rise to a near shout.
But Rubin did not finish what he was saying because just then Benizri shook himself free of Schreiber’s grip and attacked Hefetz, grabbing his arms and shaking him violently. “You want entertainment? Tomorrow the labor minister is giving a press conference, won’t that be a riot? People’s lives are in ruin. So what are we doing—giving the public some live flesh to chew on, some blood! Some great gossip!
Hasn’t enough blood been shed?”
“The gossip will come out in any case, Danny,” Hefetz said quietly, and Benizri let go of him at once. Hefetz wiped his brow. “It’ll appear in the papers no matter what you do, prepare for that.”
“I’m already prepared. But I’m not the problem,” Danny Benizri said in a parched voice. “You want to talk to me now?” he asked Eli Bachar. “Because if you do, that’s fine with me.” Eli Bachar nodded and motioned to Benizri to join him in a small office at the end of the hallway.
Rubin approached Hefetz once again. “I want to understand something,” he said, looking straight into Hefetz’s eyes. “You’re telling me right here, after one meeting with the director general, on the very day that Zadik was murdered in his own office, that you’re immediately pulling my show off the air? The show that’s won so many prizes, that … that … and I even have a whole program ready to be screened, completely prepared. That’s what you’re telling me?”
Hefetz stepped backward and glanced at Michael, who neither averted his gaze nor moved from where he was standing. “What the director general meant,” said Hefetz to Rubin, clearly shaken, “was not that the program has been canceled but that you will no longer be hosting it.” Silence fell on the people gathered in the hallway. Hefetz adjusted his glasses, pursed his lips, and suddenly seemed to have lost all inhibitions. “He meant that someone else would be hosting it,” he said quietly, “and that you are simply suspended. For the time being you are suspended because you have failed to raise the ratings on your show. Now do you understand? Suspended. Benizri, too. If you want an explanation, I’ll be happy to—”
A harsh laugh escaped from Rubin’s mouth like a convulsion. “I know the official explanation,” he said coolly. “What could you possibly tell me? All you could do would be to recite the director general’s words. Your master’s voice. What could you tell me? That Benizri has been suspended because he ‘exchanged critical remarks about the minister of labor and social affairs with the laid-off workers’ wives during a live broadcast’? Or that he didn’t always know how to behave himself in the face of authority? You think I don’t know what the director general’s complaints are? Zadik stood up to the guy day in and day out.
Every day he would say, ‘Let them fire me, as long as I’m in this position I’m not going to—’”
“If you’ll pardon me,” Hefetz said, calmly cutting Rubin off, his face emotionless, “Zadik is no longer with us to make matters right for you people. With all due respect, I am now the boss.”
Rubin regarded him for one long moment in silence. “I knew it,” he said at last, under his breath. “I knew that as soon as you got a little power, you would become a paradigm of the arrogant upstart slave.
But I never believed it would happen so quickly. Perhaps you yourself made it happen—”
“Watch it,” Hefetz said. “Just watch it, Rubin. Be careful what you say. There are witnesses here, and I have full backing from the director general—”
