'Anywhere there was a game.'
'Did he go into Jerusalem to play?'
'Jerusalem, Hebron. The lowest of the coffeehouses.'
'Did he ever make any money?'
The question enraged Maksoud. He made a fist and shook one scrawny arm in the air.
'Always a loser! A parasite! When you find him, throw him in one of your prisons-everyone knows how Palestinians are treated there.'
'Where can we find him?' asked Shmeltzer.
Maksoud shrugged expansively. 'What do you want him for anyway?'
'What do you think?'
'Could be anything-he was born to steal.'
'Did you ever see him with a girl?'
'Not girls, whores. Three times he brought home the body lice. All of us had to wash ourselves with something the doctor gave us.'
Shmeltzer showed him the picture of Fatma Rashmawi.
'Ever seen her?'
No reaction. 'Nah.'
'Did he use drugs?'
'What would I know of such things?'
Ask a stupid question
'Where do you think he's gone?'
Maksoud shrugged again. 'Maybe to Lebanon, maybe to Amman, maybe to Damascus.'
'Does he have family connections in any of those places?'
'No.'
'Anywhere else?'
'No.' Maksoud looked hatefully at his wife. 'He's the last of a stinking line. The parents died in Amman, there was another brother left, lived up in Beirut, but you Jews finished him off last year.'
The sister buried her face and tried to hide herself in a corner of the cooking area.
'Has Issa ever been up to Lebanon?' asked Shmeltzer- another stupid question, but they'd walked through shit to get here, why not ask? His Sheraton companion had turned up nothing political, but it had been short notice and she had other sources yet to check.
'What for? He's a thief, not a fighter.'
Shmeltzer smiled, stepped closer, and looked down at Maksoud's left forearm.
'He steal that scar for you?'
The brother-in-law covered the forearm, hastily.
'A work injury,' he said. But the belligerence in his voice failed to mask the fear in his eyes.
'A knife man,' said the Chinaman, as they drove back to Jerusalem.
The unmarked's air conditioning had malfunctioned and all the windows were opened. They passed an army halftrack and an Arab on a donkey. Black-robed women picked fruit from the huge, gnarled fig trees that lined the road. The earth was the color of freshly baked bread.
'Very convenient, eh?' said Shmeltzer.
'You don't like it?'
'If it's real, I'm in love with it. First let's find the bastard.'
'Why,' asked Cohen, 'did the brother-in-law speak so freely to us?' He was behind the wheel, driving fast, the feel of the auto giving him confidence.
'Why not?' said Shmeltzer.
'We're the enemy.'
'Think about it, boychik,' said the older man. 'What did he really tell us?'
Cohen sped up around a curve, felt the sweat trickle down his back as he strained to remember the exact wording of the interview.
'Not much,' he said.
'Exactly,' said Shmeltzer. 'He brayed like a goat until it came down to substance-like where to find the pisser. Then he clammed up.' The radio was belching static. He reached over and turned it off. 'The end result being that the bastard got a bunch of shit off his chest and told us nothing. When we get back to Headquarters, I'm sending him a bill for psychotherapy.'
The other detectives laughed, Cohen finally starting to feel like one of them. In the back the Chinaman
