Murder in Jerusalem (23 page)

Balilty added, “Meyuhas and Rubin had a very strange relationship—sort of like brothers, unconditional love and all that, but there couldn't be two more different people—”

“They served together in the army,” Michael explained. “First in the youth movement and later as paratroopers. I understand they spent the Yom Kippur War in the Sinai Desert, nearly their entire platoon was wiped out—only six of them survived, of whom three are alive today: Rubin, Benny Meyuhas, and a friend of theirs who lives in Los Angeles.”

“Aha!” Balilty shouted. “Now I get it.” He stood up from his chair and went to look out the window, at the front courtyard and the main gate to the Russian Compound. “Hey, check this out,” he said, as if to himself. “The wives of the guys laid off by the Hulit factory are still out there. What are they hanging out around here for?”

Michael drummed his fingers on the edge of the table. “
Nu,
” he said at last, but Balilty continued to stare out the window and did not speak up.

“What? What is it you ‘get' already?” Eli Bachar shouted.

“What? What's the matter?” Balilty said innocently. “It's nothing important, it's just that in Rubin's office there's this corkboard with all kinds of large photographs. Not pictures from his news reports and not babes—not like Zadik's office either, with pictures of VIPs—you know, Zadik with Clinton or Defense Minister Yitzhak Mordechai or lots of other people—no, there's none of that with Rubin. He's got this big photo of an Arab kid with these bulging eyes, like he's starving or something, and a photo of himself with Tirzah, at the Sea of Galilee, I think, and then there are these, like, historical photos, Japanese POW camps in World War Two, and American POWs, I guess in Vietnam, they're sitting on the ground with their hands in the air—”

“What's that got to do with anything?” Lillian asked, looking suspiciously in Tzilla's direction, who was acting as though she had not heard the conversation.

“A lot,” Balilty said, strumming his lower lip with a fat finger. “Rubin and Meyuhas and those other guys were probably POWs or something. If you're with somebody under enemy fire or in a war, well, that's a bond for life, even stronger than brothers. They were together in the Yom Kippur War? There was some story about the paratroopers in the Sinai, we should look into it, but—”

“Let's get back to the medical report for a minute,” Michael said; Balilty's incessant chattering was getting to be more than he could bear. “First of all, there are these marks, the bruises on Tirzah's neck, as though someone had a firm grip on her. But the pathologist can't determine exactly when. It could be from her argument with Benny Meyuhas, which was a few days before that. The pathologist says that couldn't be, but still—”

“What?” Tzilla said, taken aback, “you want to tell me that Benny Meyuhas is a wife-beater?”

“What are you so surprised about?” Lillian exclaimed. “Don't tell me you think that just because someone's a celebrity he must be a decent human being.”

“Not just any celebrity,” Tzilla said, standing her ground. “He's the most respected director in television, the most—how shall I say it, someone that everyone knows is reputable—and now with that film of his, the story by Agnon. And the man looks, well, he certainly doesn't look like a wife-beater.”

“What exactly, in your opinion, does a wife-beater look like?” Lillian asked with forced calm. “Do you think he has some sort of crazed look about him or something? I—in Narcotics, where I used to work, there were lots of…one thing I learned was that if someone wants to hide it, he hides it; it's not like a common criminal, where you can see it written all over him. With a white-collar guy there's no external sign that gives him away, especially if he's a drug addict.”

It seemed that Tzilla was about to say something, but Michael cut her off. “In any case,” he concluded, “you can see in the report in front of you what the pathologist has to say. He writes ‘inconclusive' at the bottom of the first page.”

“One thing's for sure: there's something very strange about this accident,” Tzilla muttered. “How can a pillar fall on you, and you don't move aside? And what about how Eli heard him saying, ‘It's because of me'? They must have had some serious argument.”

“But,” Lillian reminded them all, “in the affidavit it says that Benny Meyuhas was on the roof the whole time. He never left.”

“That's not exactly true,” Michael said. “There was a break. Two in fact, one for food and one for cigarettes or something. The first was at ten o'clock and the other was”—he paused to thumb through his papers—“at eleven-thirty, when they sent for the sun gun. But who knows? He's the director. He couldn't very well disappear without someone seeing him.”

“Sure, and people could have gone to the bathroom, too,” Balilty noted. “Maybe they did, and maybe they didn't. But if you ask me, we don't have a case here. Nobody has a motive, and someone from the outside, well, there was a guard on duty and it doesn't make sense that—even if someone had the key to the back entrance, we don't know of anyone who—like who? Who?”

“We don't know yet,” Michael emphasized. “In fact, we don't know anything yet. The question is whether to start poking around or not. The decision is based more on intuition than on some particular finding.”

“What about the digoxin they found in Matty Cohen's body?” Lillian piped in. “If we add Tirzah's accident to the surplus of digoxin in Matty Cohen's blood—”

Balilty cut her off. “Even though it fits in with the general picture, the guy was taking digoxin for five years, he was a bona fide heart patient. It appears he accidentally took too much of the stuff. We don't have a case, it's just that…”

While he was speaking, Tzilla passed around additional copies of the medical documents to her husband, who gave them a quick look and handed them to Lillian.

Michael waited until Lillian had passed them on to Balilty and said, “In any case, two dead bodies in under twenty-four hours, each an accident, and with some connection between the two of them—I think it's a bit…how shall I say it—”

“Okay,” Balilty protested. “There is such a thing as coincidence, don't you think?” He smiled. “Well, then again, not where you're concerned, there's no such term as ‘coincidence' in the Ohayon dictionary, is there? But there you have it,” he said, a note of victory in his voice, “you always disagree with me, but this time it turns out you're wrong.”

“I haven't said anything yet,” Michael reminded him. “But, yes, this time, too, I have this—never mind, we'll give it another day or two, we'll put it on the back burner, but we'll keep our feelers out. I have to go back there in any event to talk to Hefetz, since he can't make it over here. They've got something big on tonight's program, and you,” he said, pointing to Eli Bachar, “you're going back to Benny Meyuhas's place like we talked about?”

Eli Bachar glanced at Tzilla, and for a moment it seemed to Michael that he saw a flicker of fear in his eyes; Tzilla lowered her gaze and shrugged. “It won't take very long,” Eli said. He looked at Michael and smiled. “Today's our anniversary,” he said quietly. “We thought we would…”

Michael looked at them both. “That's right,” he said, remembering. “The first night of Hanukkah. How many years has it been? Fourteen? You celebrate according to the Hebrew date?”

“Fifteen years. How could
you
not remember?” Tzilla said, scolding him. “You orchestrated the whole thing.”

“Well,” Balilty said mockingly, “in fact he was only the go-between, that's all, I remember how Eli—”

Michael gave him a look: all they needed now was for Balilty to start telling about how Eli Bachar had had this “fear of commitment,” and how he had given Tzilla such grief until Michael had finally intervened, speaking with him and arranging matters. Balilty lowered his gaze, grinning, but stopped talking. Michael summed up: they would meet again the following morning.

On his way out of the room Eli Bachar said suddenly, “I can't believe what an idiot I am! I don't understand how I didn't think of this earlier: Benizri told me he was with the Hulit workers, but I saw with my own eyes, when I got here I saw the wives, they were standing outside waiting for the men to be transferred from here to—and Shimshi's wife said to me, ‘Benizri is our only hope, we're waiting for him to come.' So how…where was he?”

Balilty stopped. He was fingering a cigar he had pulled from the pocket of his tweed jacket. “Don't worry.” He chuckled. “It's nothing urgent. And anyway those things always come out sooner or later.”

F
or a long moment Michael stood in the doorway of the large room, quite close to the two death notices—one announcing the death of Tirzah Rubin, the other that of Matty Cohen—and took note of the goings-on. It was impossible to recognize the place from that same morning: now, people were rushing helter-skelter, completely absorbed in preparing for the broadcast, so that anything other than the news—even the deaths of Tirzah Rubin and Matty Cohen—was shoved aside. People stood around the conference table, reading the sheets of paper that had been placed on it, talking among themselves, and shouting to others in the inner rooms. Telephones rang from every corner, muffling the sound of the computer printers busy spewing out pages: one mobile phone burst forth with
Carmen,
while another one, quite near by, rang to the theme for
Mission: Impossible
again and again until Dror Levin, the correspondent for political parties, picked up the phone and shouted, “Hello! Hello!” a look of exasperation on his face. Through the glass partition Michael could see Danny Benizri standing behind the graphic artist in her room, pointing out something to her on the screen, and in the next room he caught sight of a translator named Rivi as she spoke with a young woman in jeans and a red sweater who was gesticulating and pointing to another cubicle, where a correspondent for foreign affairs was hunched over the keyboard in front of him, typing and speaking into a telephone at the same time. If you could not hear the voices, the people in the newsroom appeared as absorbed in their activities as children at play. “Tell me, does that look like enough makeup for you to go on-screen?” he heard someone ask Karen, the anchorwoman, who was sitting on a corner sofa near the door reading from the same lined printout that had been placed in front of every seat around the conference table, until they were removed by Niva, the newsroom secretary, as she shuffled around the table handing out updated copies, her clogs registering a noisy complaint at having been commandeered into action once again. Suddenly, the voice of a child saying the blessing over the first candle of Hanukkah drowned out all the other noise in the room. Michael raised his eyes to the monitor and saw a dark-skinned, curly-headed child, his hand trembling with excitement as he stood before the glowing menorah. “What's going on here? Who made it so loud? Turn down the volume on Channel Two!” Niva shouted, adding under her breath to David Shalit, the police affairs correspondent: “See that? Channel Two uses an Ethiopian kid, and in another five minutes we'll be putting a new immigrant from Russia up there. How do you like that? We know how to play the game, too!” David Shalit did not even look up at the monitor, he merely shrugged and pointed to the page he was holding, as if to say there was no need for another one.

“Can't you see that it says six-forty-nine p.m. on this one?” she asked, indignant. “If you haven't noticed, this is the
latest
lineup; the last one was over an hour ago. Look here, see for yourself how much it's changed.” She scanned the room and called out to Karen. “Have you been to makeup? Where's Natasha? I don't understand why she isn't here!”

“Here I am, I am
too
here, what do you want?” Natasha responded from a corner of the room and approached the table.

“What's that you're wearing?” Niva scolded her. “It's not at all my job to be worrying about such things.” She tugged the sleeve of a wrinkled woman whose pale hair was gathered into a sloppy bun. “Ganit,” she said, “you're a producer, so why don't you produce already? What's with Natasha's blouse?” Niva sighed loudly, spreading her arms and raising her eyes to the ceiling. “Why should I have to worry about this? Natasha, get down to Wardrobe, do you hear me?”

“Did you edit the cabinet meeting yet?” Erez asked the political correspondent, Yiftah Keinan, who nodded.

“It's almost ready,” he said.

“Well, you're going to have to do it again, with Bibi and David Levy this time,” Erez said.

“What are you shouting for?” Yiftah Keinan protested as he tucked the shirttails sticking out from under his light blue vest into his trousers. “I only need twenty seconds for the VTR.”

“Yiftah,” Erez said impatiently, “are you prepared to tell me whether to begin with David Levy or with Bibi?”

“I told you already, start with David Levy,” he said as he went over the new lineup. “Just tell me if the VTR covers everything.”

“Yes, yes, it does,” Erez grumbled. “How many times do I have to repeat myself?”

Once again, Niva raised her eyes to the ceiling. “Why are you people shouting? Why can't people talk pleasantly to one another for once?”

Hefetz sat at the head of the table, and Michael stood behind him, peering over his shoulder at the lineup, while Erez, at the other end of the table, waved the new page at the language editor, who was quickly and carefully applying lipstick in the corner of the room. “Miri,” he called, “have you gone over this?”

“What am I, God?” she asked bitterly. “When exactly would I have had time to go over it?” Miri snapped her lipstick closed and approached the conference table.

Hefetz was talking on the phone and scanning the pages in his hand. “So you want to tell me that having one driver under the age of twenty-four is going to push my policy up by two thousand shekels?” he grumbled into the receiver. “Don't try and sell me that bullcrap, I'm no sucker and I'm not paying that kind of premium on my car. What? No, they won't pay for it from work, of course not.” He raised his head for a moment, and when he noticed Michael, he glanced at the large wall clock, nodded to him to indicate he was aware of his presence, and covered the receiver with his large hand. “You're going to have to wait,” he told him, “I just can't meet with you right now—you see what's going on. That's the way it is, you can't make any plans with someone responsible for the news. I can't stop everything. You're welcome to wait here, you can sit in that armchair at the side, you won't be in the way. Or you can go out and walk around, whatever you like. Take a seat down in the canteen, we've got a big mess with the satellite. Let's wait until she's on the air,” he said, indicating Natasha. “We've got something pretty big going down, you can stay here if you're interested. Whatever you want,” he concluded, returning to his phone call.

Erez moved his chair aside, making room for Michael to sit behind him, and said to Hefetz, “It would be nice if we knew what this ‘pretty big thing going down' was. When exactly are you planning to tell us? What am I supposed to write on the lineup? How can I edit the news without knowing what—forty minutes to air time, and look what's written here: ITEM X TWO MINUTES FIVE SECONDS NATASHA. So how do you expect me to give this a title?”

Michael sat down to observe them until Hefetz was free, since you could always learn something about people if you watched them in secret while they were occupied with their own affairs and paying no attention to you. But Zadik, who had entered the room, waved to Hefetz and, just to be sure, hurried over to him. “Where do we stand?” he asked as he leaned over the table to have a look at the papers. “What do I see here? You took Yaacov Neeman off the lineup?”

“There's no room, and I can't go overtime tonight,” Hefetz said, rising from his chair and pushing it backward. He glared at Zadik. “Can I go overtime tonight or not? No, I can't. You told me not to go overtime, so—”

“Okay, okay,” Zadik said, disconcerted, and stepped away from Hefetz. “I'm not getting involved,” he said, trying to placate him. “I was just asking. Asking is still allowed, isn't it?”

But Hefetz ignored him, shouting, “Karen, go to Miri and see about the corrections. Miri, get a move on it, this isn't a doctoral dissertation. You've still got to approve these corrections, and even then—”

Mozart's Symphony No. 40 was playing again from inside the large black bag at Michael's feet, and in an instant Niva was at his side, fishing through it. By the time she had managed to locate her cell phone, it had stopped ringing. “Oh, not again!” she grumbled as she hit the memory button. She bent down next to her bag, very close to Michael, and he heard her heavy breathing as she said, “Mother? What? What?” And then, after a minute, “Now?! We're on the air in less than an hour, and I don't have time to…never mind, in the upper right-hand cabinet…no, not there, on the top shelf…listen to what I'm telling you, why aren't you listening? Did you find it? Okay, so take it now…no, not later, God, I'm hanging up—” She turned off the phone and tossed it into her bag, shoved the bag under Hefetz's chair, and hurried to the computer printer, which was just then producing a new printout, and another, and another.

“Erez. Erez!” David Shalit shouted to the news editor, “come here, we've got to make a change in the Jerusalem murder, there's a gag order on showing photos of the barber and his girlfriend.” He shut his cell phone with a snap and said to Erez, who had joined him, “It's the hottest story today, he wasn't just any old barber, he cut the hair of the prime minister's wife. There may be fallout from this, and I have material filmed by a local television station and also—”

“The prime minister's wife?” Niva asked, butting in. “Didn't Bibi say the guy had ‘served' as his own barber?”

“His precise words were, ‘served in our home,'” David Shalit corrected her. “With a guy like Bibi and all his regal pomposity, even barbers ‘serve.' Erez, did you hear what I said? About this item, we've got to—”

“All right,” Erez answered calmly, “I heard you, don't get all worked up. First of all, I'm not sure that's really the hottest item we've got today, and second, you're going to have to be patient: I've already contacted our Tel Aviv office about this and told a lawyer for the Israel Broadcasting Authority to be prepared, there's still a chance we'll run the photos, but we have to wait and see what the judge on duty says. Now just give me a few minutes to write the titles, I've got to concentrate.” He sat at the corner of the table and hung his head over several empty pages before speaking up again. “If you ask me, this is the last time we'll hear about the laid-off strikers, tomorrow they'll already be yesterday's cold noodles.”

“Don't be so sure,” Danny Benizri said defensively. “It's not over yet.”

“Hey,” the correspondent for political parties shouted from his place at the table, “what's happening with the story about the violence at the Kahane memorial service?” He had shifted the knitted skullcap from the crown of his head and was scrutinizing a small comb he had pulled from the back pocket of his trousers. “I can't find it on the lineup. Our lives are out of control, and nobody gives a—”

“Look again,” Hefetz bellowed. “Have you people forgotten how to read? Look at item number thirteen, see where it's written, NO-CONFIDENCE /POLITICS? Is it written there? Yes? Very good. That item includes the threats to television crews, there's a shot of policemen on horseback hiding behind a tree. We talked about it this morning. Weren't you listening?”

“Wait a minute,” Zohar, the military correspondent, interjected angrily. “How is it that the story about Yitzhak Mordechai meeting with army officers about the new round of talks with the Palestinians has been dropped?” He blew his pointed nose noisily. “I spent hours on that, and—” He rapped a sheaf of papers on the table and looked around, but no one was listening to him. “I can't even get an answer,” he said bitterly. “If you'd only give it even thirty seconds…I've been out freezing my ass in that tunnel since before dawn and then caught in a downpour down south running after…and nobody even—”

“What about the mining disaster in Russia?” Tzippi called on her way in from the next room, her hand resting on her oversize belly. “Is that still pertinent?” When no one responded, she turned to Niva. “What should I do about the Russian mines?” she asked.

“Keep it, maybe we'll use it on the late-night broadcast,” Niva answered distractedly as she leafed through the pages emerging from the printer.

“And what about the Nazi gold?” Tzippi asked as she approached Hefetz. From up close the brown pregnancy splotches on her forehead were noticeable. “When did you plan that for?”

“Save the Russian mines for the week-in-review show, it'll still be pertinent by Friday,” Erez promised her. “As for the Nazi gold, we need a filmed announcement but no sound. Leave it in.”

“What do you mean, leave the Russian mines for Friday?” Tzippi complained. “If I'm still at work on Friday, you people are going to have to deliver this baby right here!”

“So leave it with Rafael,” Hefetz instructed her. “He's handling all the international news anyway, he's taking over for you, isn't he?”

“Rafael!” Tzippi shouted as she heaved herself with a loud sigh into a chair at the side of the room. “We need you in here—”

Michael glanced at the bespectacled young man with the intelligent expression, who looked to be about the age of his own son. Hefetz slapped him on the back and said, “Listen, Rafael, we've got two American stories I'd like you to do voiceovers for. One's about that shooting in a high school, a couple of teenagers who shot everybody up. Where was that again?”

“Colorado,” Rafael answered in a pleasant voice as he scrunched up his face, his eyebrows touching. “A place called Littleton, near Denver. The school is called Columbine.”

“Yeah, that's it,” Hefetz said, as if he were really in the know about all the details. “And there's another story about a new virus called Monkey Fox that's threatening to wipe us all out. Have you heard anything about that?”

Rafael nodded. “There are some pretty good pictures of the fire in Australia, too.”