The Theatre - Kellerman, Jonathan

Treated successfully with phenobarbitol and Dilantin, full abatement of overt seizure activity. The patient claims these seizures were her first, and stuck to this, despite my explicit skepticism. I wrote a prescription for a month's worth of medication which was provided to her by the hospital pharmacy, gave her Arabic-language brochures on epilepsy and admitted her for observation, including comprehensive neurologic and radiographic studies. The following morning, her bed was empty and she was nowhere to be found. She has not recontacted this institution. Diagnosis: Grand mal epilepsy. Status: Self-Discharged, Against Medical Advice.

"Translation," said Shmeltzer, "she was a little liar, conned them into free medication."

Avi Cohen nodded and watched the older man flip through the pages of the medical chart.

"Well, well, take a look at this, boychik. Under Nearest Relative or Admitting Party, there's a little army stamp."

Cohen leaned over, pretending he could make sense of it.

"Yalom, Zvi," read Shmeltzer. "Captain Zvi Yalom, Tank Corps-goddamned army captain checked her in. She was levelling about the tank unit." He shook his head. "The little slut had an official military escort."

To listen to Yalom, he'd acted solely out of compassion.

"Listen, you were there-you know how it was: the Good Border and all that. We fed hundreds of them, gave them free medical care."

"Those were political refugees," said Avi Cohen. "Christians. And all of them went back."

"She was Christian too."

"Got to know her pretty well, didn't you?"

Yalom shrugged and took a drink of orange soda. He was a handsome, somewhat coarse-looking man in his late twenties, blond, ruddy, and broad-shouldered, with immaculately manicured hands. In civilian life, a diamond cutter at the Tel Aviv Exchange. His home address in Netanya had been traced quickly through army records, and Avi had invited him for lunch at a sidewalk cafe near the beach.

A beautiful Monday morning. The sky was as blue as the sapphire in Yalom's ring; the sand, granulated sugar. But Netanya had changed, Avi decided. A lot different from the days when his family used to summer there-a suite at the Four Seasons, calls to room service for hamburgers and Cokes with maraschino cherries, all of them staying too long in the sun, getting burned pepper-red. After-dinner strolls, his father pointing out the gangsters sitting at cafe tables. Exchanging greetings with some of them.

Now, the buildings seemed shabbier, the streets more crowded, thick with traffic and exhaust fumes, like a miniature Tel Aviv. Just a block away he could see black people sitting on the front stoop of a decrepit-looking apartment building. Ethiopians-the government had settled hundreds of them here. The men wore kipol; the women covered their hair, too. Religious types, but in blackface. Strange.

"You going to get me into trouble?" asked Yalom.

Avi smiled noncommittally. He liked this, enjoyed the feeling of authority. Sharavi had made good on his word, kept him away from reading, given him a real assignment.

He's a Lebanon vet. You should be able to relate to him.

Thank you, Pakad.

Doing your job well will be sufficient thanks.

"It could really fuck me up, Avi," said Yalom.

Overly familiar, thought Avi, using my first name like that. But some military officers had an attitude problem, thought of the police as second-class soldiers.

"Speaking of fucking," he said, "is that how you met her?"

Yalom squinted with anger. He kept a smile on his lips and drummed his perfect fingertips on the table. "You a virgin, kid?"

"How about," said Avi, starting to stand, "we continue this conversation at National Headquarters."

"Wait," said Yalom. "Sorry. It's just that I'm nervous. The tape recorder bothers me."

Avi sat down again. Moved the recorder closer to Yalom.

"You've got good reason to be nervous."

Yalom nodded, reached him into his shirt pocket, and offered a pack of Rothmans to Avi.

"No, thanks, but suit yourself."

The diamond cutter lit up, turning his head so that the smoke blew in the direction of the beach, the sea breeze catching it, thinning it to wispy ribbons. Avi looked over his shoulder, saw girls in bikinis carrying towels and beach baskets. Watched the little dimples in their backs, just above the ass-slit, and longed, for a moment, to be with them.

"She was scared," said Yalom. "The place she worked was on the Christian side of Beirut, private club, members only. She was afraid the Sh?tes would come and get her after we left."

"What kinds of members?" asked Avi, remembering what Sharavi had told him about the skull fractures, the cigarette burns.

"Foreigners. Diplomats, businessmen, professors from the American University. The place was too expensive for the locals, which was one of the reasons she wanted to get out-some fundamentalists had threatened to bomb the building, slapped up a poster calling it a receptacle for the semen of infidels, or something like that."

"You see the poster yourself?"

"No," said Yalom quickly. "I was never there. This was all from her."

"Where'd you meet her, then?"

"We were pulling out of the city. She was standing in the middle of the road, near the barriers between East and West. Waving her hands and crying. She refused to move and I couldn't just squash her, so I got out, checked for snipers, talked to her, felt sorry for her, and gave her a lift. She was supposed to go as far as Bin Jbeil, but then she started having seizures and I decided to take her all the way."

"Considerate of you."

Yalom grimaced. "All right, looking back it was stupid. But I felt sorry for her-it was no felony."

Avi sipped his beer.

"How many of you banged her?" he asked.

Yalom was silent. The hand holding his cigarette began tc shake. Bad trait for someone in his line of work, thought Avi. He sipped and waited.

Yalom looked around at the adjoining tables, moved closer and lowered his voice.

"How the hell was I supposed to know she was going to get carved up?" he said. Avi saw that there were tears in his eyes, the tough-guy posture all gone. "I just got married a couple of months ago, Samal Cohen. It's my wife I'm more worried about than the army."

"Then why don't you just tell me the truth and I'll do my best to keep your name out of the papers."

"All right, all right. What I told you about picking her up out of sympathy is right-I was trying to be human. Look where it got me-when we let the Arabs massacre each other we're fucked and when we try to be human, the same damned thing. No way to win."

"You picked her up out of sympathy," said Avi, prompting. "But…"

"But a bunch of us had her, okay? She offered it for free, she was cute-looking, and we'd just been through two months of hell-the snipers, two of my best drivers were blown up by mines… For God's sake, you know what it was like."

Avi thought of his own tour in Lebanon. Hand-to-hand fighting in the streets of Beirut, routing the PLO, putting his own ass on the line in order not to shoot the women and children-the human shields those bastards used habitually. Then, a month of guard duty at Ansar Prison, feeling out of control as he stood watch over sulking hordes of PLO captives wearing the blue jogging suits the army issued them. Unable to stop the tough guys from bullying the weaker ones, unable to prevent them from building homemade spears and daggers. Hugging his Uzi like a lover as he watched the tough ones circle the flock, picking off the effeminate ones. Choosing the softest boys to be brides at mock weddings. Dressing them up like girls, painting their faces and plucking their eyebrows and beating them when they cried.

Gang-fucks when the lights went out. Avi and the other soldiers trying to shut out the screams that rose, like bloody clouds, above the grunts and heavy breathing. The "brides" who survived were treated the next morning for shock and torn anuses.

"I know," said Avi, meaning it. "I know."

"Three fucking years," said Yalom, "and for what? We've replaced the PLO with Sh?tes and now they're shooting Katyushas at us. You going to blame us for having a free taste? We didn't know if we were going to get out of there alive, so we had her, had a few giggles-it was temporary relief. I'd do it all over again-" He stopped himself. "Maybe I wouldn't. I don't know."

"What else did she say about her clients?" asked Avi, following the outline the Yemenite had suggested to him.

"They went in for rough stuff," said Yalom. "The brothel was designed to accommodate that type. Professors, educated types, you'd be surprised at the things that turned them on. I asked her how she could stand it. She said it was okay, pain was okay."

"As if she liked it?"

Yalom shook his head. "As if she didn't care. I know it sounds strange, but she was strange-kind of dull, half asleep."

"Like a defective?"

"Just dull, as if she'd been knocked around so much nothing mattered to her anymore."

"When she begged you to take her with you it mattered."

Yalom's face registered self-disgust. "She conned me. I'm a fool, okay?"

"You saw the needle marks on her arms, right?"

Yalom sighed. "Yes."

"She mention any friends or suppliers?"

"No."

"Anything about her past that could connect her to anyone? Maybe one of the educated ones?"

"No. We were in back of the halftrack, riding south in the dark. There wasn't much conversation."

"Nothing about the seizures?"

"No, that took me by surprise. All of a sudden she's all rigid, moving back and forth, teeth chattering, frothing at the mouth-I thought she was dying. You ever see that kind of thing?"

Avi remembered the epileptic kids in the Special Class. Retards and spastics, shaking and drooling. He'd felt like a freak being with them, cried hysterically until his mother had pulled him out.

"Never," he said. "What was she doing when it started to happen?"

"Sleeping."

"Lucky, huh?"

Yalom looked at the detective, puzzled.

"Lucky," said Avi, smiling, "that she wasn't going down on you when she started to shake. Hell of a way to pick up a war wound."

There was no record of Juliet's whereabouts during the four months following her release by Northern District. No pimp or whore or drug dealer admitted to knowing her; no substation had booked her. She hadn't applied for welfare or any other kind of public assistance, nor had she worked in a legitimate job and gotten on the tax rolls.

It was as if she'd gone underground, thought Daniel, like some kind of burrowing animal, surfacing only to be torn apart by a waiting predator.

She could have plied her profession independently, he knew, pulling tricks on side streets in out-of-the-way neighborhoods. Or taken an unregistered side job-as a charwoman or fruit picker. In neither case were they likely to find out about it. An employer would be less than enthusiastic about admitting he'd hired her illegally, and those who'd purchased her favors were sure to keep silent.

The strongest thing they had going for them was the epilepsy angle and the best way to work that was footwork: a canvass of doctors, hospitals, Kupat Holim clinics, and pharmacists. The medication she'd received at Rambam had run out some time ago, which meant she'd have gotten a refill somewhere.

They started, all of them, checking out neurologists and neurological clinics; when none of that bore fruit, moved on to general practitioners and emergency rooms. Showing Juliet's picture to busy people in white uniforms, searching for her name in patient rosters and charts. Eye-straining work, reeking of tedium. Avi Cohen was less than useless for most of it, so Daniel had him handle the telephones, cataloging crank calls and following the false leads and compulsive confessions that the newspaper articles had started to bring in.