the Damascus Gate, paused at the entrance to the taxi lot. A girl, standing in the shadows of the wall, studied them a while, then walked toward them with a slow hip-swinging stride.
'Jewish?'
Dov waited until she was twenty feet away. 'Yeah, think so,' he finally said.
'Looking for a date?' She was young, still in her teens. Something about her, a cherubic quality, made David think of Rebecca Marcus without a scarf.
'We're cops.'
'So what? Cops don't date?' She laughed. 'Screw cops.' Her walk back was angry, sluttish, tough.
'Bitch,' Dov muttered. 'Nasty bitch.'
David glanced at him. 'Ever see Katzer, Dov? In the flesh, I mean.'
'Yeah, once, at a funeral down in Netanya. He and his goons were working the crowd. A woman had been killed by a terrorist bomb. He likes situations like that where everyone's nerves are raw.'
'I saw him this morning. Short guy, shorter than I thought. You know how he rants on about 'Jewish whores'?'
'He's got a big bug up his ass.'
'So, when I saw him, it occurred to me-maybe this is just the kind of guy we're looking for. Ora Goshen, a prostitute-Katzer's said a Jewess who fornicates with Arabs ought to be stoned to death. Taking off from there, reversing the reasoning, someone could say the same of an Arab boy who offers his ass to Jewish men.'
'Okay, Ora and the boy make sense. But why Susan? Why kill a Christian nun?'
'Who knows? We're talking about a fruitcake. The kind of person who's very angry. Angry very deep inside.'
He turned onto Salah el Din, honked his way through the nightly blockage of cars double-parked while their owners exchanged eroding shekels for black-market dollars inside Arab shops. He found a parking space around the corner from the National Palace Hotel, carefully locked the car and armed the alarm. Then he and Dov walked back toward the main business street of East Jerusalem.
It smelled and sounded different here than in the Jaffa-Ben Yehuda-King George triangle downtown, more like the Middle East, the scent of cardamom, the faint aroma of hashish, the pulsing rhythm of Egyptian love songs played on radios blasting out of stores. A busload of Americans tourists trudged into a belly-dancer joint. A souvenir shop owner, sucking on his water pipe, caught David's eye and smirked.
'Wow, they make us quick over here. Course, we make them pretty quick too on our side of town.'
'Actually, Dov, I think it's you they make. Only an Israeli detective would wear striped track pants and that enormous watch.'
They were fond of one another. David thought of Dov as a younger brother, endearing on account of his absurd wardrobe, thick neck, unkempt head of black curls, and the poetry he wrote-sweet and savage verse that combined the mellowness of a Jerusalem childhood with the emerging bitterness of a young Israeli cop.
The bric-a-brac shop was up two flights, above a store that sold electronic equipment, radios, cassette recorders, electric guitars. There was an acrid smell of cat urine on the first floor landing and an office door marked 'Magic Supplies.'
The junk dealer, a Mr. Aziz Mansour, was middle-aged, overweight, and worried. Behind the steel bars that divided his shop from its small entrance off the stairs were dusty piles of treasure: plates, utensils, ladles, bowls, serving platters, candlesticks made of silver, bronze, and brass.
Dov, dropping all signs of informality, respectfully introduced David as 'Captain Bar-Lev.'
Mansour bowed to show he acknowledged Israeli authority. 'As I told the sergeant this morning, I purchased the candlesticks from an itinerant peddler in the flea market in Hebron several weeks ago. Of course I had no idea they were stolen. And now I must suffer a loss for that, since I shall doubtless never again see the swindler who sold them to me, and whom I now curse for what he did.'
Like many Jerusalemites of his age, Mansour spoke a formal British-inflected English. But there was something undignified about him, a cringing quality David didn't like.
'I'm afraid it's not so simple.'
'Why not simple? I give you the objects. I do not wish to profit from stolen things.'
'We have to seal up your store. Tomorrow we'll send a truck. Everything must be brought to our offices and examined against lists of stolen goods.'
'But surely not! I have never heard of this procedure.'
'It's one we reserve for special situations.'
'Why? What is special here?'
David looked around. 'Something here is special, I'm sure. But if you object, Mr. Mansour, you must consult your lawyer. Israel is a free country. We respect the rights of everyone. By all means fight our confiscation. Meantime, your store will be sealed.'
'Confiscation! You said nothing about confiscation! Just to examine the objects, you said.'
Dov was now on the far side of the room, directing his gaze at the small collection of Torah scroll crowns he had spotted that morning amid the dusty piles.
'Perhaps we could find a way to shortcut the procedure.'
'I can do something for you? Yes? Tell me-what is it that you want please?' Mansour was angry, but David could feel him calculating, wondering what this stern police captain really wanted, whether he was hinting at a bribe, and, if so, how large.
'Frankly, for me the candlesticks are trivial. If you bought them in Hebron, then you can't be held responsible for the fact they were stolen from a house on Ramban Street. We believe the robbery was committed by Jews. We have no use for such people. I'm personally much more disturbed by a Jewish thief than by an Arab fence.'
Dov, now standing behind Mansour, queried David with his eyes. But David didn't think he'd gone too far.
'Sir, excuse me, I am not a fence. I promise you I bought the candlesticks in Hebron. Possibly one of the Jewish settlers there-'
'If you're going to tell lies, at least tell one that's plausible. Israeli settlers may steal Arab land but not this kind of junk.' He peered around the shop with great disgust. 'I'm going downstairs for a coffee. Meltzer, stay with the prisoner, advise him of his rights. When I return we'll make a preliminary search.'
He walked out without looking back. Dov would wait at least a minute, until his footsteps were no longer audible on the stairs. Then he would sit across from Mansour, gaze at him with his most pitying expression, and start to explain how tough things were going to get.
Yes, Dov would lay it all out, the nature of the captain's 'preliminary search,' how he would methodically tear the shop apart, break all the breakable objects, crush all the fragile ones, and then how various other items Mr. Mansour probably didn't even know he had would appear miraculously on the inventory list and would be identical to objects stolen from fine Israeli homes. Mansour could certainly call his lawyer but he should be advised that the captain might then turn the matter into a security affair, in which case, of course, certain rights would be suspended and the interrogation could become extremely harsh. No, of course this wasn't political, but poor Aziz had acted stupidly from the start, when it was obvious that the only thing the captain wanted was to develop a new informer in East Jerusalem. Yes, that's all. Didn't Aziz understand? Israeli policemen don't take bribes. They value information-against crooks, burglars, Jewish burglars at that, against the very people who were using poor old Aziz's shop as a place to fence the junk they couldn't sell abroad or down in Tel Aviv…
David ordered a coffee at the National Palace cafe, picked up a copy of Al-Fajr, the Jerusalem-based Palestinian newspaper, discovered various interesting things he hadn't learned from his readings in the Israeli press, and, when he thought that Dov had Mansour sufficiently softened up, paid for his coffee, left the newspaper on the table, strode back up to Salah el Din, and then noisily ascended the stairs.
Dov gave him the nod as soon as he walked in, the big nod that said Aziz was begging now to talk. David walked straight over to the pile of Torah crowns, scooped them up, brought them over to the desk, slammed them down, then addressed Mansour in short stabbing phrases while staring hard into his imploring eyes:
'I want a name, a full description, everything you know, and I want it straight and fast. From whom, Mr. Mansour, did you obtain these silver ritual objects now piled on your desk?'
Dov's first words when they were back on the street were about how amazing it was the way the good- guy/bad-guy routine never failed. They talked about it on their way to the Ummayyah.
