it were some kind of romantic novel.
Cursing, he returned to his lists. Offenses Against Morals: 60 Pimping cases. Nothing. Soliciting: 130 cases. Nothing. Maintaining a Brothel, Seduction of Minors, Dissemination of Indecent Material, nothing, nothing, nothing.
The Loitering for the Purpose of Prostitution subcategory was tiny: 18 cases for the year. Two under resh:
Radnick, J. Northern District Rashmawi, A. Southern District
He copied down the case number, laboring over each digit, double-checking to make sure he had it perfect. Getting up again, he walked to the counter and cleared his throat until the Records officer looked up from her goddamned report.
'What is it?'
'I need this one.' He read off the numbers.
Frowning with annoyance, she came around from behind the desk, handed him a requisition form, and said, 'Fill this out.'
'Again?'
She said nothing, just gave him a snotty look.
Grabbing up the paper, he moved several feet down the counter, pulled out a pen, and sweated with it. Taking too long.
'Hey,' said the girl, finally. 'What's the problem?'
'Nothing,' he snarled and shoved it at her.
She inspected the file, stared at him as if he were some kind of freak, goddamn her, then took the form, went into the Records Room, and returned several minutes later with the rashmawi, A., file.
He took it from her, went back to the school desk, sat down, and read the name on the tag: Anwar Rashmawi. Flipping it open, he sloughed through the arrest report: The perpetrator had been busted three years ago on the Green Line, near Sheikh Jarrah, after he and a whore had gotten into some kind of shoving match. A Latam detective had been on special assignment nearby-hidden in some bushes looking for terrorists- and had heard the noise. Tough luck for Anwar Rashmawi.
The second page was something from Social Services, then what looked like doctors' reports-he'd seen enough of those. Words, pages of them. He decided to scan the whole file, then go back over it, word by word, so that he'd be able to make a good presentation to Shmeltzer.
He turned another page. Ah, now here was something he could deal with. A photograph. Polaroid, full color. He smiled. But then he looked at the picture, saw what was in it, and the smile died. Shit. Look at that. Poor devil.
Sunday, nine a.m., and the heat was punishing.
The Dheisheh camp stunk sulfurously of sewage. The houses-if you cou'td ca't't them that-were mud-brick hovels wounded by punch-through windows and roofed with tarpaper; the paths between the buildings, boggy trenches.
A shithole, thought Shmeltzer, as he followed the Chinaman and the new kid, Cohen, brushing away flies and gnats and walking toward the rear of the camp, where the little pisser was supposed to live.
Issa Abdelatif.
The way the Chinaman told it, the villagers of Silwan had been less than talkative. But Daoud had leaned on an old widow and finally gotten a name for Fatma's long-haired boyfriend. She'd overheard the Rashmawis talking about him. A lowlife type. She had no idea where he came from.
The name cropped up again, in the Offenses Against Property files, subcategory: Theft by Employee or Agent. He'd sent Cohen looking for it and the kid had stayed away so long Shmeltzer wondered if he'd drowned in the toilet or walked off the job. He'd gone looking for him, ran into him jogging up the stairs. Grinning ear to ear, with a look- at-me expression on his pretty-boy face. Dumb kid.
The file itself was petty stuff. Abdelatif had worked the previous autumn as a ditch digger at a construction site in Talpiyot, and whenever he was around, tools started disappearing. The contractor had called in the police, and a subsequent investigation revealed that the little punk had been stealing picks, trowels, and shovels and selling them to residents of the refugee camp where he lived with his brother-in-law and sister. Following his arrest, he led the police to a cache at the rear of the camp, a hole in the ground where many of the tools were still hidden. The contractor, happy at getting most of his goods back and wanting to avoid the nuisance of a trial, refused to press charges. Two days in the Russian Compound jail, and the punk was back on the streets.
A rat-faced little pisser, thought Shmeltzer, recalling the arrest photo. Long stringy hair, a weak chin, a pitiful mustache, rodent eyes. Nineteen years old and no doubt he'd been stealing all his life. Forty-eight hours behind bars wasn't what lowlifes like that needed. A little hard time-getting his ass battered at Ramie-and he would have thought twice about misbehaving. Then maybe they wouldn't be trudging through donkey shit looking for him
All three of them carried Uzis, in addition to the 9 mms. Armed invaders. An army truck was stationed outside the entrance to the camp. Establishing a strong presence, showing who was in charge. But still they had to look over their shoulders as they sloshed through the muck.
He hated going into these places. Not just the poverty and the hopelessness, but the fact that it made no damned sense at all.
All that crap about the Arabs and their strong sense of family, and look how they treated their own.
Fucking King Hussein. In the nineteen years he'd occupied Judea and Samaria, he hadn't done a goddamned thing in the way of social welfare. Too busy building himself that goddamned palace on the Hebron road and knocking up his goddamned American wife-no, back then it was still one of the Arab ones.
Once a year the refugees sent letters to the Welfare and Labor Ministry in Amman, and if they were lucky, each family received a few dinars or nine kilograms of flour three months later. Thank you, King Shit.
