The Theatre - Kellerman, Jonathan

Daniel and Laura looked at each other. Laura burst out laughing.

"Geed means penis," explained Daniel, struggling to remain straight-faced. "It's prepared like kirshe-sliced and fried with vegetables and onions."

"Ouch," said Gene.

"Some of the old people order it," said Laura, "but it's pretty obsolete. They put it on the menu but I doubt they have it."

"Penis shortage, huh?" said Gene.

"Honey!"

The black man grinned.

"Get the recipe, Lu. We get back home you can cook it for Reverend Chambers."

"Oh, Gene," said Luanne, but she was stifling a giggle herself.

"Can't you just see it, Lu? We're sitting around at the church supper, with all your tight-girdled bridge buddies jabbering on and tearing people down, and I turn to them and say, 'Now, girls, stop gossiping and eat your penis!' What kind of animal they use?"

"Ram, or bull," said Daniel.

"For the church supper, we'd definitely need bull."

"I think," said Luanne, "that I'd like to go powder my nose."

"I'll join you," said Laura.

"Ever notice that?" said Gene, after the women had left. "Put two females together and they have this instinctive urge to go to the bathroom at the same time. Just let two fellows do that and people start to figure there's something funny about them."

Daniel laughed. "Maybe it's hormones," he said.

"Gotta be, Danny Boy."

"How are you enjoying your visit?"

Gene rolled his eyes and picked a crumb out of his mustache. He leaned closer, pressing his palms together prayerfully.

"Rescue me, Danny Boy. I love that woman to death, but she's got this religious thing-always has. At home I don't mind it because she raises Gloria and Andrea straight and narrow-she certainly gets the credit for what they are. But what I'm fast finding out is that Israel's one big religious candy store-everywhere you go there's some sort of church or shrine or Jesus Slept Here whoozis. And Lu can't bear to miss one of them. I'm a profane person, start seeing double after a while."

"There's a lot more to Israel than shrines," said Daniel. "We've got the same problems as anyone else."

"Tell me quick. I need a shot of reality."

"What do you want to hear about?"

"The job, guy, what do you think? What kind of stuff you've been working on."

"We just finished a homicide-"

"This one?" asked Gene, reaching into his pocket and drawing out a newspaper clipping. He handed it to Daniel.

Yesterday's Jerusalem Post. Laufer's press release had been used verbatim-just like in the Hebrew papers-with the conspicuous addition of a tag line:

.. LED BY CHIEF INSPECTOR DANIEL SHARAVI. SHARAVI ALSO HEADED THE TEAM THAT INVESTIGATED THE ASSASSINATION OF RAMLE PRISON WARDEN ELAZAR LIPPMANN LAST AUTUMN.

AN INQUIRY THAT LED TO THE RESIGNATION AND PROSECUTION OF SEVERAL SENIOR PRISON OFFICIALS ON CHARGES OF CORRUPTION AND

He put the clipping down.

"You're a star, Danny Boy," said Gene. "Only time I ever received that kind of coverage was when I got shot."

"If I could wrap up the publicity and give it to you, I would, Gene. Tied with a ribbon."

"What's the problem, threatening the brass?"

"How'd you know?"

Gene's smile was as clean as a paper cut. Pure white against umber, like a slice out of a coconut.

"Ace detective, remember?" He picked up the clipping, put his half-glasses on again. "All that good stuff about you and then they just throw in the other guy-Laufer-at the end. No matter that the other guy is probably a Mickey Mouse pencil-pusher who didn't do a thing to deserve having his name in there in the first place. Executive types don't like being preempted. How'm I doing?"

"A-plus," said Daniel and thought of telling Gene about his protekzia with Gavrieli, how he'd lost it and now had to deal with Laufer, then reconsidered and talked about the Rashmawi case instead. All the loose ends, the things he didn't like about it.

Gene listened and nodded. Starting, finally, to enjoy the vacation.

They broke off the discussion when the women returned. The conversation shifted to children, schools. Then the entrees came-a heaping mixed grill-and all conversation died.

Daniel watched, with awe, as Gene consumed lamb chops, sausage, shishlik, kebab, grilled chicken, serving after serving of saffron rice and bulghur salad. Washing it down with beer and water. Not wolfing-on the contrary, eating slowly, with an almost dainty finesse. But steadily and efficiently, avoiding distraction, concentrating on the food.

The first time he'd seen Gene eat had been in a Mexican restaurant near Parker Center. Nothing kosher there-he'd nursed a soft drink and eaten a salad, watching the black detective attack an assortment of tasty-looking dishes. He'd learned the names since Tio Tuvia had come to Jerusalem: burritos and tostadas, enchiladas and chile rellenos. Beans, pancakes, spicy meat-except for the cheese, not all that different from Yemenite food.

His first thought had been that if the man ate like that all the time, he would weigh two hundred kilos. Learning, over the course of the summer, that Gene did eat like that all the time, had no use for exercise, and managed to stay normal-looking. About a meter nine tall, maybe ninety kilos, a bit of a belly but not bad for a guy in his late forties.

They'd met at Parker Center-a bigger, shinier version of French Hill Headquarters. In orientation, listening to an FBI agent talk about terrorism and counterterrorism, the logistics of keeping things safe with that many people around.

The Olympics job had been a real plum, the last one Gavrieli had handed him before the Lippmann case. The opportunity to go to Los Angeles, all expenses paid, gave Laura a chance to see her parents and visit old friends. The kids had been talking about Disneyland since Grandpa Al and Grandma Estelle had told them about it.

The assignment had turned out to be a quiet one-he and eleven other officers tagging along with the Israeli athletes. Nine in Los Angeles, two with the rowing team in Santa Barbara, ten-hour shifts, rotation schedules. There had been a couple of weak rumors that had to be taken seriously anyway. Some hate mail signed by the Palestine Solidarity Army and traced, the day before the Games, to an inmate of the state mental hospital in Camarillo.

But mostly it was watching, hours of inactivity, eyes always on the lookout for anything that didn't fit: heavy coats in hot weather, strange contours under garments, furtive movements, the look of hatred on a jumpy, terrified face- probably young, probably dark, but you never could be sure. The look imprinted on Daniel's brain: an aura, a storm warning, before the seizure of stunning, stomach-churning violence.

A quiet assignment, no Munich in L.A. He'd ended each shift with a tension headache.

He'd sat in the front of the room during the orientation lecture and grown aware, before long, that someone was looking at him. A few backward glances located the source of scrutiny: a very dark black man in a light-blue summer suit, a SUPERVISOR identification badge clipped to his lapel. Local police.

The man was heavily built, older-late forties to early fifties, Daniel figured. Bald on top with gray hair at the side, the hairless crown resembling gift candy-a mound of bittersweet chocolate nestled in silver foil. A thick gray mustache flared out from under a broad, flat nose.

He wondered why the man was looking at him, tried smiling and received a curt nod in response. Later, after the lecture, the man remained behind after the others had left, chewed on his pen for a few seconds, then pocketed it and walked toward him. When he got close enough, Daniel read the badge: lt. EUGENE brooker, lapd.

Putting on a pair of half-glasses, Brooker looked down at Daniel's badge.

"Israel, huh. I've been trying to figure out what you are."

"Pardon me?"

"We've got all types in town. It's a job to sort out who's who. When I first saw you I figured you for some sort of West Indian. Then I saw the skullcap and wondered if it was a yarmuike or some type of costume."

"It's a yarmuike."

"Yeah, I can see that. Where are you from?"

"Israel." Was the man stupid?

"Before Israel."

"I was born in Israel. My ancestors came from Yemen. It's in Arabia."

"You related to the Ethiopians?"

"Not to my knowledge."

"My wife's always been interested in Jews and Israel," said Brooker. "Thinks you guys are the chosen people and reads a lot of books on you. She told me there are some black Jews in Ethiopia. Starving along with the rest of them."

"There are twenty thousand Ethiopian Jews," said Daniel. "A few have immigrated to Israel. We'd like to get the others out. They're darker than me-more like you."

Brooker smiled. "You're no Swede, yourself," he said. "You've also got some Black Hebrews over in Israel. Came over from America."

A delicate topic. Daniel decided to be direct.

"The Black Hebrews are a criminal cult," he said. "They steal credit cards and abuse their children."

Brooker nodded. "I know it. Busted a bunch of them a couple of years ago. Con artists and worse-what we American law-enforcement personnel call sleazeballs. It's a technical term."

"I like that," said Daniel. "I'll remember it."

"Do that," said Brooker. "Sure to come in handy." Pause. "Anyway, now I know all about you."

He stopped talking and seemed embarrassed, as if not knowing where to go with the conversation. Or how to end it. "How'd you like the lecture?"

"Good," said Daniel, wanting to be tactful. The lecture had seemed elementary to him. As if the agent were talking down to the policemen.

"I thought it was Mickey Mouse," said Brooker.

Daniel was confused.

"The Mickey Mouse of Disneyland?"

"Yeah," said Brooker. "It's an expression for something that's too easy, a waste of time." Suddenly he looked puzzled himself. "I don't know how it came to mean that, but it does."

"A mouse is a small animal," suggested Daniel. "Insignificant."

"Could be."

"I thought the lecture was Mickey Mouse, too, Lieutenant Brooker. Very elementary."

"Gene."

"Daniel."

They shook hands. Gene's was large and padded, with a solid core of muscle underneath. He smoothed his mustache and said, "Anyway, welcome to L.A., and it's a pleasure to meet you."

"Pleasure to meet you too, Gene."

"Let me ask you one more thing," said the black man. "Those Ethiopians, what's going to happen to them?"

"If they stay in Ethiopia, they'll starve with everyone else. If they're allowed out, Israel will take them in."

"Just like that?"

"Of course. They're our brothers."

Gene thought about that. Fingered his mustache and looked at his watch.

"This is interesting," he said. "We've got some time-how about lunch?"

They drove to the Mexican place in Gene's unmarked Plymouth, talked about work, the similarities and differences between street scenes half a world apart. Daniel had always conceived of America as an efficient place, where initiative and will could break through the bureaucracy. But listening to Gene complain-about paperwork, useless regulations handed down by the brass, the procedural calisthenics American cops had to perform in order to satisfy the courts-changed his mind, and he was struck by the universality of it all. The policeman's burden.

He nodded in empathy, then said, "In Israel there's another problem. We are a nation of immigrants-people who grew up persecuted by police states. Because of that, Israelis resent authority. There's a joke we tell: Half the country doesn't believe there's such a thing as a Jewish criminal; the other half doesn't believe there's such a thing as a Jewish policeman. We're caught in the middle."