The Theatre - Kellerman, Jonathan

"You ate already," he said.

"Yes." She picked up the brush, laid in a line of shadow long the steeple of the Antonio Belloni church. "I didn't now if you were coming home."

He looked at his watch. "Six thirty-six. I thought it would be early enough."

She put the brush down, wiped her hands on a rag, and turned to him. "I had no way of knowing, Daniel."

she said in a level tone of voice. "I'm sorry. There's an extra hamburger in the fridge. Do you want me to heat it up for you?"

"It's all right. I'll heat it up myself."

"Thanks. I'm right in the middle of this-want to finish a fer more buildings before quitting."

"Beautiful," he repeated.

"It's for Gene and Luanne. A going-away present."

"How are they doing?"

"Fine." Dab, blend, wipe. "They're up in Haifa, touring the northern coast. Nahariya, Acre, Rosh Hanikra."

"When are they coming back down?"

"Few days-I'm really not sure." 'Are: they having a good time?"

"Seem to be." She got off the stool. For a moment Daniel thought she was going to embrace him. But instead she stepped back from the canvas, measured perspective, re-turned to her seat, and began blocking in ocher rectan-gles.

He waited a few seconds, then left to make himself dinner. By the time he'd eaten and cleaned up, the boys had busied themselves again with the Stars Wars videotape. Eyes filled with wonderment, they declined his offer to wrestle.

Stacks of newspaper clippings covered Laufer's desk. The deputy commander began fanning them out like oversized playing cards.

"Garbage-sifting time," he said. "Read."

Daniel picked up a clipping, put it down immediately after realizing it was one he'd already seen. Ha'aretz was his paper; he liked the independence, the sober tone-and the reporting on the murders was typical: factual, concise, no thrill for ghouls.

The party-affiliated papers were another story. The government organ gave the crimes short shrift on a back page, an almost casual downplay, as if hiding the story would make it go away.

The opposition paper played a shrill counterpoint, using Daniel's name to segue into the Lippmann case, offering a blow-by-blow rehash of the scandal, making much of the fact that prior to his assassination the late, discredited warden had been a darling of the ruling party. Implying, not so subtly, that any rise in violent crime was the government's fault: Failure to raise police salaries had led to continued corruption and ineptitude; a poorly administered Health Ministry had failed to handle the issue of dangerous mental patients; the psychological frustration caused by the ruling party's economic and social policies engendered "deep-rooted alienation and concomitant hostile impulses in the general populace. Impulses that are at risk for spilling over into bloodshed."

The usual partisan nonsense. Daniel wondered if anyone took it seriously.

Haolam Hazeh and the other tabloids had done their heavy-breathing bit: lurid headlines and hints of perverted sex in high places. Gory-detail crime stories fighting for space with photos of naked women. Daniel put them down on the desk.

"Why the rehash? It's been two weeks since Juliet."

"Go on, go on, you're not through," Laufer said, drum-ming his fingers on the desk. He picked up a thick batch of clippings and shoved it at Daniel.

These excerpts were all in Arabic: Al Fajr, Al Sha'ab, other locals at the top of the pile, foreign stuff on the bottom.

Arabic, thought Daniel, was an expansive, poetic lan-guage. lending itself to hyperbole, and this morning the

Arab journalists had been in fine hyperbolic form: Fatma and Juliet restored to virginity and transformed to political martyrs victimized by a racist conspiracy-abducted, defiled, and executed by some night-stalking Zionist cabal.

The local publications called for "hardening of resolve"

and "continuation of the struggle, so that our sisters have not perished in vain," stopping just short of a call for re-venge-saying it outright could have brought down the heavy hand of security censorship.

But the foreign Arab press screamed it out: officially sactioned editorials from Amman, Damascus, Riyadh, the Gulf stlates, brimming with hate and lusting for vengeance, accompanied by crude cartoons featuring the usual anti-Jewish archetypes-stars of David dripping blood; hooknosed, slavering men wearing kipot and side curls, pressing long-bladed knives to the throats of veiled, doe-eyed beau-ties wrapped in the PLO flag. The kipot emblazoned with swastikas-the Arabs loved to co-opt the Nazi stuff, spit it back at their cousins. The Syrians went so far as to link the murders to some occult Jewish ritual of human sacrifice-a harvest ceremony that the writer had invented.

Vile stuff, thought Daniel, reminiscent of the DerSt?rmer exhibit he'd seen at the Holocaust Memorial, the Black Book Ben David had shown him. But not unusual.

"The typical madness," he told Laufer.

"Pure shit. This is what stirred it up."

He gave Daniel an article in English, a cutting from his morning's international Herald Tribune.

It was a two-column wire service piece bearing no byline and entitled "Is a New Jack the Ripper Stalking the Streets of Jerusalem?" Subtitle: "Brutal Slayings Stymie Israeli Police. Political Motives Suggested."

The anonymous journalist had given the killer a name- the Butcher-an American practice that Daniel had heard Gene decry ("Gives the bad guy the attention he craves, Danny Boy, and makes him larger than life, which scares the heck out of the civilians. Every day that goes by without a bust makes us look more and more like clods"). The actual information about the killings was sparse but suggestively spooky and followed by a review of the Gray Man case, using copious quotes from "sources who spoke on condition they would not be identified" to suggest that both serial killers were likely to remain at large because Israeli police officers were inept homicide investigators, poorly paid, and occupying "lowly status in a society where intellectual and military accomplishments are valued but domestic service is demeaned." Illustrating that with a rehash of the six-month-old story about new recruits having to apply for welfare, the wives' picket of the Knesset.

The Herald Tribune article went on to wallow in armchair sociology, pondering whether the murders were symptomatic of "a deeper malaise within Israeli society, a collective loss of innocence that marks the end of the old idealistic Zionist order." Quotes from political extremists were given equal weight with those from reasoned scholars, the end result a weird stew of statistics, speculation, and the regurgitated accusations of the Arab press. All of it delivered in a morose, contemplative tone that made it sound reasonable.

The final paragraph was saturated with pessimism that seemed almost gleeful: "Tourism has always constituted a vital part of the fragile Israeli economy and in light of current economic difficulties, Israeli officials have put forth especially strong efforts to negate their country's image as a dangerous place to live and visit. But given the recent handiwork of the

Gray Man and the Butcher, experts' predictions of increasing violence against both Arabs and Jews, and the subsequent inability of the Israeli police to cope with that violence, those efforts may be doomed to failure."

Daniel put the clipping down and said, "Who wrote this?"

"Wire service putz by the name of Wilbur. Replaced

Grabowski-the one who ignored cordons up in Bekaa and got his arm blown off. This one came over six months ago, spends most of his time at Fink's, drinking himself numb."

Daniel recalled a press conference he'd attended a few months ago. One of the faces had been new.

"Dark, puffy-looking, gray hair, bloodshot eyes?"

"That's him, a goddamned shikur-just what we need."

Laufer shoved aside papers and created a clearing in the middle of the desk top. "His last big story was a feature on the fig harvest-glorious Arab workers, bonded to the soil.

"Is he pro-PLO?"

"From what we can tell he has no political leanings one way or the other. Anti-work is what he is-gets his stuff secondhand and plays around with it in order to make it sound profound. All that shit about 'unnamed sources.'" The deputy commander sat down and glared at Daniel. "This time he stirred up the shitpile but good-puffs up a two-week-old story and gets every other hack hot to outdo him. Nothing would give me greater pleasure than feeling his ass under my boot, but we're stuck with him-free press and all that. We're the ultimate democracy, right? Out to prove to the goyim how righteous we are."

Laufer picked up the Herald Tribune piece, looked at it, and ripped it in half, then in half again. "Now that he's seen how successful he's been, he'll be exploiting this Butcher shit as long as it remains unsolved. And you can bet the others keep falling over one another to outdo him. Bastards." A

sickly smile spread across the pouchy face: "The Butcher.

Now your killer has a name."

Your killer. Like one parent blaming another for the behaviour of a delinquent child.

'I don't see how we can concern ourselves with the press," said Daniel.

"The point is," continued Laufer, "that your team has accomplished nothing tangible. You're giving them all a giant tit to suck."

Daniel said nothing.

Laufer raised his voice: "I've sent you four memos of inquiry in the last six days. None have been answered."

"There was nothing to report."

"I don't give a goddamn what there was to report! When I send a memo, I expect a response."

"I'll be more conscientious," said Daniel, "about responding to your inquiries."

The deputy commander stood, placed his knuckles on the top of the desk, and leaned on them, thick torso swaying, looking like a gorilla.

"Cut the crap," he said. "Get the patronizing tone out of your voice." A thick hand slapped the desk. "Now catch me up-what do you have?"

"As I said, nothing new."

"What route did you take to reach that glorious destination?"

Daniel gave him a review of procedures, the interrogation of the sex offenders, the surveillances and record checks, the matching wound molds that confirmed both women had been cut with the same knives. Knowing any mention of similarities between Fatma and Juliet would be a slap across the deputy commander's flabby-face, a reminder that his quick-solve press release was now a departmental joke.

But Laufer seemed almost to revel in the misery, making Daniel repeat himself, go over picayune forensic details that had no bearing upon the cases. When he finally seemed sated, Daniel took a copy of the handbill out of his attache case and handed it to Laufer.

The deputy commander glanced at the paper, crumpled it, tossed it into the wastebasket. "What of it?"

"I wasn't notified of his presence."

"That's correct."

"We're investigating two sex murders, and a sex offender moves into the community-"

"He's a child molester, Sharavi, not a murderer."

"Sometimes," said Daniel, "they go hand in hand." Laufer raised one eyebrow. "Upon what do you base that statement?"

Ignorant pencil-pusher, thought Daniel. And the man had attained his post all because of him. He fought to hold on to his temper.

'Upon American crime data, FBI reports… Several serial murderers have been found also to be child molest-ers. Sometimes they alternate between killing and molesting phases; sometimes the crimes occur in tandem. If you'd like, I can show you the sources."

Laufer chewed his lip, tormenting the rubbery flesh, Cleared his throat and tried to regain face. "You're telling me that most serial murderers are molest-ers.'