'It's not important.'
They drank in silence for several moments. His father was the first to speak.
'You're caught up in something ugly.' A half-whisper. 'Extreme violence.'
Daniel stared at him, astonished.
'How did you know that?'
'It's not difficult. Your face has always been a mirror. When you came into the shop you looked burdened. Mournful. As if a cloud had settled over your brow. The way you looked when you came home from war.'
Daniel had placed the brooch in his bad hand in order to drink; suddenly he felt his fingers close around it. The clumsy press of numbed flesh against frail filament. Stupidly destructive. Alarmed, he uncurled his fingers and placed the jewelry back upon the worktable. Looking at his watch, he stood.
'Have to be going.'
His father climbed down from the stool, took his son's hands in his.
'I'm sorry if I've upset you, Daniel.'
'No, no. I'm fine.'
'Whatever it is, I'm sure you'll get to the bottom of it. You're the best.'
'Thank you, Abba.'
They walked to the door. Daniel pushed it open and let in the heat and noise of the plaza.
'Will you be praying with Mori Zadok tomorrow?' he asked.
'No,' said his father sheepishly. 'I have an? engagement.'
'On Rehov Smolenskin?'
'Yes, yes.'
Daniel couldn't suppress his grin. 'Regards to Mrs. Moscowitz,' he said.
The old man's eyebrows rose in exasperation.
'She's a nice woman, Abba.'
'Very nice. The nicest. But not for me-that's no sin, is it?' A hand went up and adjusted the beret. 'Now she's decided that the way to my heart is through my stomach-a Hadassah course in Yemenite cooking. Bean soup and kubaneh and kirshe every Shabbat. In addition to all her Ashkenazi food. I eat until I ache, for fear of hurting her feelings. Which is also why I haven't been able to tell her we're not a destined match.' He smiled balefully at Daniel. 'Can the police help in such matters?'
'Afraid not, Abba.'
Shared laughter followed by an expectant silence.
'Shabbat shalom, Abba.'
'Shabbat shalom. It was good to see you.'
His father continued to hold his hands. Squeezing. Lingering. Suddenly, the old man brought the damaged hand to his lips, kissed the scar tissue, and let go.
'What you do is also an art,' he said. 'You must remember that.'
On the way back up to The Star, he passed close to the shwarma stand, caught a glint of metal, and stopped: a long bladed knife, flashing like a silver minnow in the hands of the counterman. Assaulting the meat as it turned slowly on the spit, the lamb splitting open and crackling with surrender as layer after layer fell from the cone. An everyday thing; he'd seen it thousands of times without noticing.
The counterman was a lanky Moroccan Jew, face wet with perspiration, apron dotted with gravy. He finished preparing a sandwich for a customer, saw Daniel staring, shouted out that the shwarma was fresh, and offered to cut the detective a juicy one. Shaking his head no, Daniel resumed his climb.
The door to The Star was wide open, leading to a small, dim entry hall backed by a curtain of painted wooden beads. Parting the beads, he walked in.
Luncheon business was brisk, the cedar-paneled front room fan-cooled and filled with a comfortable mix of tourists and regulars, the robust chorus of laughter and conversation competing with a background tape of French and Italian pop songs.
The walls of the restaurant were hung generously with pictures and figurines, all rendered in a stellar motif. Over the bar was an oil portrait of a younger David Kohavi, darkly fierce in his general's uniform. Just beneath the painting was a Star of David hewn from Jerusalem stone, at its center the word HaKohav-'the star'-and a dedication from the men of Kohavi's battalion in raised bronze letters. The fire-burnished bronze of melted bullet shells.
Emil the Waiter was washing glasses behind the bar, stooped and gnarled in a billowing starched shirt and black bow tie. When he saw Daniel he came forward and escorted the detective toward an unmarked door at the rear of the restaurant. Just as the waiter's hand settled on the doorknob, Kohavi himself emerged from the kitchen, dressed, despite the season, in dark suit and tie, a white-haired version of the man in the painting. Bellowing a greeting, he shook Daniel's hand and motioned Emil back to the bar.
'I've set up a table for you. Five, right?'
'If they all show up.'
Kohavi pushed the door open. 'One already has.'
The rear banquet room was almost empty. Papered in a burgundy print and lit by crystal lamps in sconces, it
