Murder in Jerusalem (22 page)

 

During their staff meeting the team commented on Michael's restlessness. Tzilla noted graciously that it must be a difficult period for a person who had smoked for so many years and given it up all at once; this roused Balilty, who inclined his head, gazed seriously at her and said, “Now his true personality will come out. You all thought he was a calm person? Nice, gentle?
Tranquil
? It was all thanks to the cigarettes, you can see for yourselves.”

Tzilla scolded him. “Why are you—it's really hard to quit smoking—we have to help him.”

“That's the way of the world,” Balilty said serenely. “There are gentle people and caring people who help and support others, and there are the people who don't—I, for example, did not need to take a vacation in order to give up smoking. I just woke up one morning and said, That's enough. I went to that guy I told you about, the one out in Beit Shemesh, I paid whatever I paid him, I was there maybe seven minutes, he did this laying on of his hands, and that was that, I quit. How many times have I told him to go there?” he asked, indicating Michael with his head. “But him? He can do it on his own: so be my guest! Did he listen to me? You know what he said about it, don't you, Tzilla? ‘You went to one of those guys who says, Special for you today, only six hundred shekels?
I
don't believe in witch doctors.' So, please, be my guest: witness the results.”

Michael squelched a smile. From the beginning of their relationship it had been Intelligence Officer Balilty's custom to give him useful advice in every aspect of life: how to court women (“Look at her once like you're crazy about her and then the next time like you couldn't care less”); how to invest in the stock market (“Some people go to investment brokers, but I've studied up on it, and I can tell you just where to invest right now”); how to look for a new apartment (“Why do you live like a bag lady, all these years in such a dive? There're a few new developments going up near our place, one right across the street”); how to gain extra days off (“How often do you get sick? Call in with a bad back, a slipped disk, just say the word and I'll set you up with a doctor that'll provide you with a note”); how to talk to his ex-wife (“Why do you always keep quiet? She's the one who took you for everything you had, no?”); and how to manage his son's life (“Give him direction, give him advice so that he thinks he's come up with it himself, that's what young people like”). And afterward, if Michael did not take his advice, he would be deeply offended.

“How could I have gone to him? For what? Anyway, it only helps people who believe in it,” Michael said in self-defense.

“So you prefer wasting two weeks of vacation on it?” Balilty grumbled. “You don't travel abroad, you don't go out, you sit at home reading books and thinking thoughts and you quit smoking. You probably took Valium, too, didn't you?”

“All right, cut it out already,” Eli Bachar said, intervening. “We've seen how well you do on your diets. Where are all the diet witch doctors? And didn't you take a vacation to go to a fat farm? Just cut it out already. Can't you see you're getting on his nerves?”

Michael forced a smile, a smile that was meant to conceal the restlessness and malaise he was feeling in general, and especially his impatience with Balilty's comments. He knew he would end up exposing his true feelings if Balilty did not shut up.

The report on Matty Cohen's autopsy had been placed in front of each of the team members.

“Digoxin is the stuff they give to regulate the heart rate, isn't it?” Tzilla asked.

“Of course. It's already written here,” Lillian said, “right at the beginning.” She pointed to the first page of the autopsy report. “It says he had four times the proper amount of digoxin in his blood.”

Tzilla raised her eyes from the page and glared silently at her. Michael thought he noticed a quiver of annoyance in her pursed lips, but he could not be certain, not yet.

“For a new team member she's pretty involved,” Balilty had said earlier, when they were standing in the hallway and he was watching Lillian from behind as she entered the meeting room. “You'd think she'd learn a little, get organized, get to know the territory. Ha! I wish I had her confidence. An hour ago she came up to me and told me that she has ‘a few suggestions' to add to the file on this case. At first I was like—speechless—a person's brand-new on the job, and she's already got suggestions! What do you make of that?”

Michael had hemmed and hawed but as usual Balilty had not waited for a response. Instead he had said under his breath, “I told her that it's not even clear if we've got a case here, this is only an initial briefing. So she says, ‘Whatever,' but you could see she was offended. Oh well, I guess that's the way it is with Russian women. She's Russian, isn't she? How exactly did we get stuck with her here anyway?”

“She's been in Israel for more than twenty years, since the age of five, and went through the school system here, so I don't think you can exactly call her a Russian,” Michael had said quietly. “She came to us from Narcotics with excellent references.”

Balilty whistled under his breath. “Forget references, check out her ass,” he said quietly. “Tell me, have you ever seen an ass like that in your life? It's like—there's nothing like it. I'd love to give an ass like that a try once, wouldn't you?”

Under Balilty's watchful gaze, Michael glanced with embarrassment at her rear end. Indeed, it was full and round beyond proportion to her narrow back and her slim hips.

“That's not a woman with an ass,” Balilty concluded, “that's an ass with a woman. And her legs are too skinny. But she's got a nice face, don't you think?” Michael smiled against his will and sighed. It was clear that from here on in he would be hearing about her face, her rear, her chutzpah. He had accepted her onto the team because of a request made by Yaffa from forensics, who was doing a favor for a neighbor. Yaffa had told Michael how great a neighbor she was, how she was always ready to lend a hand (“If I'm stuck, like without sugar or something, she's always got some, and she never turns down any request. So now that her daughter's in trouble, how could I not return the favor?”); and how the daughter, who was very talented, had gotten into a romantic entanglement with someone at work (“This guy comes along and says that he's separated, that he's in the process of getting a divorce; they're
always
in the process, that divorce is
always
just about to come through, but then they tuck their tails between their legs and run for home, “for the kids' sake”—yeah, right—and then you're stuck alone. Why? Don't you deserve better? Aren't you a human being?”); and how she wanted to get away from him (“She's eating her heart out over this guy, and how's she supposed to get him out of her head when she sees him every day at work?”). “So what do you think of her?” Balilty had said with an expectant look, which had caused Michael to pause, intending to say something noncommittal. But just then Tzilla had called them into the meeting room.

“Has the final report on Tirzah Rubin come in yet?” Michael asked.

“Yeah, it's here,” Tzilla said. “But in my opinion we don't have a case. What do you think?”

“I don't either,” Michael said absentmindedly, looking at the cigarette Lillian was holding. “Aside from a couple of things Benny Meyuhas said, which I'm not sure—”

“You can't smoke in here,” Tzilla said sharply to Lillian. “There is no smoking during meetings.”

“Oh, I had no idea,” Lillian said with dismay as she tossed her cigarette into a half-empty bottle of mineral water.

“Since when?” Michael asked, astonished. “We've always smoked during meetings, and—”

“First of all,” Tzilla said without looking at him, “the boss has quit smoking—and anyway, it's a windowless room, the heating's on, it…it makes me feel ill.”

“All right,” Lillian said, crossing her legs and shifting uncomfortably in her chair. “I had no idea. I'm sorry.”

Michael looked at Tzilla in wonder. All these years she had never complained: windowless rooms and stuffy cars and everywhere, she had never been with him without his smoking, and she had never once commented on it or asked him to stop. Sometimes she would sigh and give him a sorrowful look when he lit up, and only once she had said to him, “You know, one day some doctor is going to tell you you have to quit, and you will, so why wait until then?” He glanced around and saw that Eli Bachar had lowered his gaze at his wife's outburst and said, “Enough, Tzilla, let it go.” Suddenly Michael perceived that something was going on between the members of his investigations team. After all, it was clear that the cigarette had not brought on this outburst; anything, if necessary, could serve as the excuse.

“You've spoken with Danny Benizri,” Michael said to Eli Bachar. “What have we learned from him?”

“Nothing significant,” he responded uncomfortably. “First he showed up two hours late, even more than that, saying he'd been with the Hulit factory workers, that he'd escorted them or something like that. Then later he wasn't sure, he didn't know anything about Benny Meyuhas or Tirzah Rubin, didn't know anything about anyone. Only Rubin, who was his guru. And Hefetz, who he doesn't get along with. That sort of thing. That was all.”

“Right,” Balilty said mockingly, “like all the rest of them. Nobody knows anything. On principle they won't help us. I've heard there's like this tradition, all over the world, that police and journalists don't get along—”

“Bullshit,” Lillian said, cutting him off. “I've sat with that correspondent for police affairs, the redhead, Shalit, and he's always been very cooperative. He's never quoted something I asked him not to. All these reporters have given us their full cooperation—”

“Only if it's vice versa,” Tzilla noted. “Only if they need you. But if you need them? I mean, I just saw in the paper that the Union of Television Workers, about 350 people, is striking against the Tel Aviv police force for assaulting them, for denying them access to crime sites—”

“First of all, those people are not employed by the Israel Broadcasting Authority; they're government employees,” Balilty explained. “And anyway, there are things we know on our own,” he mumbled, peering at the coffee grinds at the bottom of his mug as he rotated it in his hands. All the others were drinking from Styrofoam cups, but Balilty claimed they ruined the taste of the coffee, so he had brought his own mug from home, which was kept in Michael's desk drawer. Everyone was expecting him to continue speaking, but he fell silent.

Michael chewed the end of his pencil and waited.

“So,” Eli Bachar asked Balilty, “what are you waiting for? For us to get down on our knees and beg?”

“There are all kinds of issues,” Balilty answered mysteriously. “Where there are people there are problems, tensions, interests. All kinds of things.”

“How about something in the matter of Tirzah Rubin?” Michael asked finally.

“Yeah, her too,” Balilty confirmed as he examined the bottom button on his shirt, which looked as if it were about to pop off. He straightened the sleeves of his blue sweater, which everyone knew had been knitted by his wife in only two weeks (“And I didn't even know about it”), and wrapped them around his large belly, and only then he started speaking about Tirzah Rubin, who was Arye Rubin's wife and then had gone to live with his very best friend, Benny Meyuhas (“Instead of the opposite, the opposite happened. Did you get that? Instead of going from the boring one to the interesting one, she went from the interesting one to the boring one, from the classy one—Rubin is one classy guy—to Benny Meyuhas, who looks like her grandfather”), who she'd been with for seven, eight years. “She left Rubin because of all his skirt-chasing,” he explained, examining his fingertips, “but I don't know whether she knew about the son he had with Niva Pinhas. Have you people met her?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Eli Bachar said with a sigh. “There was no avoiding it, was there? She's not exactly the shy and fearful type.”

“She screams all the time, there really are women like that,” Balilty explained, as if he was particularly knowledgeable in this area. “Secretaries in the media are known to be especially tough—all of them, even the junior ones—so imagine one in the newsroom…. I always say, you want to get to the director general, make sure you get on the good side of his secretary…. Never mind, where were we? Oh, yeah, whether Tirzah Rubin knew about the kid. I don't know, but I do know that Rubin took great pains to keep any information about him from reaching her, even after she'd left him. He'd be about six, maybe a little older, and he doesn't have a clue who his father is,” he said in wonder, explaining that Tirzah could not carry full-term. “She had four miscarriages, lots of fertility treatments, poor thing, you should see her file at Hadassah Hospital. They couldn't help her.”

“That means,” Lillian chimed in, stroking her pointed chin and prodding the dark mole at the base of her neck, “that now the kid can be told. Like, now Rubin has nothing to hide?”

“Yes,” Balilty affirmed, “that's exactly what it means. What do we learn from this?”

“That Niva Pinhas gains something from Tirzah's death?” Lillian ventured.

Michael nodded. “But Niva Pinhas was in the newsroom when Tirzah was killed. She never left there. In fact, she just happened to be filling in for someone else that evening, we checked.”

“There were a lot of people in the building. They were there, and people saw them there,” Eli Bachar said. “Hefetz was around, and Rubin, and the skinny young woman with the blue eyes—”

“Natasha,” Tzilla said.