good night the two of them embraced. In the car, as David started the drive back to Me'a Shearim, Avraham complimented him on having found such a fine companion.
'You should maybe consider marrying her?' he asked tentatively.
David was amused. 'She isn't Jewish.'
'So what? You can marry in Cyprus. Isn't that what people do?'
They drove the rest of the way in silence. When they arrived at Hevrat Shas and Avraham opened the car door, David saw an old religious man wandering up the street and then he thought he saw his father wince. 'Those missing files I mentioned…'
'Yes. I meant to ask-'
'Don't bother yourself. Turns out I was wrong. Blumenthal's garage was ransacked but nothing was taken. Whoever broke in was probably looking for valuables. When he didn't find any I think he just got mad and threw around my papers in a fit of spite.'
After his father disappeared into his building, David chopped his hand against the steering wheel.
Damn! Why does he lie to me? He pressed his bruised hand against his mouth.
There had been a temporary clerk who had worked at Samuelson's Photo Shop during the height of the April tourist season. A veteran of Lebanon, stoned half the time, according to Mr. Samuelson-nice, but not someone he'd wanted to keep on.
Dov found him working for a rug cleaning firm that serviced the finer homes in Rehavia. He showed him Susan's picture. Yes, the young veteran remembered her, she'd been in the shop, had bought lots of film and brought it back to be developed. But she'd returned to America earlier than expected-he remembered that because her nephew had come in with one of her claim tickets to pick up her final batch of prints.
'Nephew? Her Israeli nephew?'
'Yeah, an apologetic kind of kid. Said his aunt was concerned, didn't want to stick the shop, and had made him promise to pick up her film and pay off her account.'
Dov ran out to his car for his IdentiKit, spent an hour with the veteran working up a composite of Susan's 'nephew.' When he brought the composite in David studied it. An ordinary looking young man, clean-cut and nondescript. 'Nice Jewish boy,' David said.
Yosef Barak had spoken of a new authority in Anna's playing, a new confidence. Yet now, when David watched her practice, he sensed something troubled in the way she played.
'Is anything the matter?' he asked her one morning.
She shook her head. 'No. Why do you think there is?'
'You seem…I don't know, disturbed somehow. I just wondered if you were having trouble. After such a big success in Europe to come back here could bring you down.'
'Oh, David-this isn't a backwater. Jerusalem's my home.' She frowned. You know I set high goals for myself. Sometimes I think Yosef is too quick to praise.'
'So there is something?'
'Just concentration. Don't worry, I'll get it back. All I have to do is,' she smiled, 'you know: 'practice, practice…' ' She kissed him on his neck.
Avraham called. 'Something I forgot to tell you. We laughed a lot about Gati the other night, but later, when I thought about it, the approach he made to you rang false. He and Gutman always hated each other and from what I've learned there's never been a reconciliation. So the question is: Why is he trying to get Gutman off? I don't know the answer, but it's something you might think about. Employ an old Kabbalistic principle: Look for the hidden cause because the surface is never real.'
He went to Rafi, laid out the case, explained why he thought the worst was yet to come:
'Okay, Peretz is a fruitcake. But now I think his crazy forger theory is correct. My symposium idea was good, but not that good-it was a shot in the dark, not an airtight trap. So a certain 'friend,' whom Peretz refuses to name, a guy he trusts who stuck with him when times were tough, tips him off there's a killer using his signature and there's going to be an open discussion at the Rubin Academy about what this killer might be like. Naturally Peretz goes. But we don't notice him. He sits there and listens like a normal member of the audience. Then five days later someone in a dark blue van picks up Yael Safir at the Ben Gurion hitching stop, and just about the time she's being killed and dumped I'm meeting a guy named Ephraim Cohen, who just happens to have been a friend of my brother, and who works for one of the covert services, or so he says. Ephraim wants to pass along a tip about Peretz from an unnamed source whom he claims was helping us in that Mossad-owned video truck. So we go after Peretz, he's a logical suspect, and if he hadn't gone to Egypt we might still be trying to break him down. You see, Rafi-it's much too slick. Peretz is tipped off about the symposium, he goes, and then I'm tipped off that he was there.'
'You think this guy, Cohen-?
'Yeah, I think he's part of it. Wanted me to think he was Mossad, but I checked him out and it turns out he's Shin Bet. Which means his story about passing on a 'tip' from the video technician was bullshit, something he made up to sucker me in.'
'What about the ambush at the zoo? How did they find out that you were onto them?'
'Our inquiry about Hurwitz-that must have triggered the alarm. When they heard I was asking about their cop-who-didn't-exist, they realized I was getting close. Which means, far as I'm concerned, that they're wired in here too.'
Rafi tensed up. 'That's a pretty awful suggestion, David. Hard to go along with it unless you bring me proof.'
'Oh, I'll be bringing you proof, you know that. For now it's just a theory.'
'Awful…'
'Why resist it? You're always bitching about corruption. Now, faced with the possibility of a really supreme example of official rot, why do you want to turn away?'
'Look, dammit-!' Rafi was angry.
'You look! Everyone knows Shin Bet has murdered prisoners. Everyone knows about Mossad assassination squads. A superpatriot like Peretz recruits violent sociopaths to staff out his counter-terror squad. High embassy officials in Washington recruit American Jews to spy on their own government. So how come, when I mention the possibility this thing could reach in here, you suddenly lock up your mind? Why, Rafi? What's so damn sacred about the cops? We're the garbage men, remember. So maybe we stink a little too.'
Rafi sat stiff in his chair. David was glad Sara Dorfman wasn't in the room. 'Remember that girl I was going with last fall?'
'The American shikse. Yeah. I never liked her.'
'She's an agent.'
'They all are.'
'She gets into the sack with people in the cabinet.'
'What's that got to do-?'
'She tried to warn me off. Said she heard I was up to my ass in something big and that if I kept on the way I was going I could end up getting hurt. I'm telling you, Rafi, this thing feels big, feels like it's getting ready to explode. I'm telling you that, now, up front, and that I don't like being set up for a shoot, and I don't like being shot at, and that I'm following this wherever it goes. There've been murders, innocent people killed, and no matter what the reason turns out to be, it's not going to be anywhere good enough. Not for me.'
'The Righteous Martyr'
BIG SUR.
TWO MONTHS BEFORE…
They'd just rolled away the scaffolding. The enlargers, a crew of Italians from San Francisco, were busy packing up their gear.
'She's begging now,' Rokovsky said.
'So let her beg,' Targov replied.
'It's so pathetic. I wish you'd relent. Maybe just this once.'
