Murder in Jerusalem (31 page)

 

“They were talking about you,” Rafi whispered to Balilty, who had suddenly appeared in the doorway. “She was telling Michael about how someone walked off with the production files, the ones you pinched. She said you took advantage of an opportunity—”

“So what? Who cares if she said that,” Balilty said with a yawn. “That was before Zadik…” He fell silent, passing a finger over the folds of his neck as if slicing it.

A light blush rose to Rafi's smooth, freckled cheeks. “Why?” he asked with emotion. “If we'd known about Zadik, wouldn't you still have taken the files?”

“Do me a favor, both of you,” Lillian protested. “Don't start up again. I don't want a repeat of yesterday's meeting.”

“No, buddy boy, I wouldn't have,” Balilty answered Rafi. “But not for the reason you think. If I'd known there was going to be a slaughter, I would have waited, because now, my friend, we'll be able to poke our noses wherever we want in that building and nobody's going to bother us.”

“Can you guys keep it down,” Sergeant Ronen complained. “It's impossible to hear them.”

Balilty kept his mouth shut and looked toward the window. He pushed the edges of the curtain to the side and peered through the one-way glass.

“He asked us to keep the curtain closed,” Lillian whispered. Balilty inclined his head and gave her a look, his lips moving as though he intended to say something, but in the end all that came out was “fffffff,” like a tire leaking air. Most of those present in the room knew this was Balilty's own personal shorthand for “fuck you.”

 

“Well, it wasn't the first time that Zadik had asked not to be disturbed. About half an hour later—with people coming and going all the time,
everyone
passed through: Hefetz, Niva, Natasha, the guy from the union, the insurance agent who's been after him for ages and made an appointment with him, Shoshana the seamstress, who asked to speak to him—and there I was like a watchdog, making sure that nobody bothered him. In the meantime there was this big ruckus, all the monitors were blaring and you couldn't even hear yourself think. The ultra-Orthodox guy in black, you know, the burned guy, came out after about twenty minutes; you'd think someone like that would wear gloves to hide his hands, but no. It was like he did it on purpose. He said good-bye politely, in a leisurely way, like he had all the time in the world. And boy, what a look he gave me! What can I tell you, I was afraid of him. Not disgusted, afraid. He said good-bye and left. After that Zadik buzzed me on the intercom. No, he didn't leave his office, he spoke to me by phone. Could I have some more water, please?

“I listened to him on the speaker. ‘Aviva,' he said, ‘don't pass any calls through. Until I leave my office I'm not talking to anyone. Is that clear?' Sure it was clear. Wouldn't it be nice if I had someone to tell not to pass calls through to me, too? Yes, of course it happens sometimes that he sits with someone or has an important phone conversation and doesn't want to be disturbed, so he tells me not to pass calls through. But in this case, everyone was looking for him all the time, phoning: the director general's secretary, the director of the Israel Broadcasting Authority, the head of the labor union at Israel Television, the spokeswoman for the minister of labor and social affairs, the insurance agent, who went to wait in the canteen. It seemed like nobody
wasn't
looking for Zadik. Even Danny Benizri's wife and the lawyer for the Hulit factory workers. Everybody! It's all written down, you can see for yourself, every incoming telephone conversation—even cell phones—they've all been registered. The outgoing ones, too.”

 

On the other side of the window they could hear Michael talking. “Wait a second,” he said. His chair squeaked, the door slammed open, and in an instant he was standing at the doorway to the adjacent room. “Lillian,” he said in a hush, “do you know if Tzilla has gotten hold of the list of incoming calls yet?”

Lillian nodded.

“On his cell phone, too?”

“The whole works,” Lillian assured him. “She's got it all organized, with the times and everything. The two days preceding as well: yesterday and the day before. If you want, she can get the whole week.”

“I want to have a look at it before our meeting,” Michael said. “Please make sure a copy is waiting for me here when I finish with—” He indicated the other side of the window. “I want to see it, and everyone should have a copy.”

Lillian nodded, and Michael examined the toothpick he was holding between his fingers before placing it once again in his mouth and returning to the room.

 

“People began trickling into my office and standing there, waiting for him. To one he'd said, ‘I can see you for two minutes before I leave,' and to another he'd said, ‘Come at ten o'clock.' Zadik had promised them all, but who did they complain to? Yours truly, of course. Hefetz shouted at me. Like I really have the authority to tell Hefetz not to enter Zadik's office! I told him what Zadik had told me, so he did me a big favor and walked away. Ten minutes later he was back, that would have been around eleven-fifteen. And Natasha, the silent one, was there, too, just standing in the corner, waiting. They say these young female journalists will do anything to get ahead, but I'm not sure about Natasha. I mean, I don't know, there's something about her—like, she's not a bad sort, really, you know what I mean? Some of them would sell their own mothers, but not Natasha. But boy, is she stubborn! She was there the whole time, from around ten o'clock. After the Orthodox guy left, I don't know when exactly, she came in, took up her position, and didn't move. She was waiting for him, you could say she was ambushing Zadik. Then the spokeswoman for the Israel Broadcasting Authority showed up, and yes, the electrician—the guy from Maintenance—he was funny, and a reporter from the
Times,
I can't imagine how Zadik could have promised to meet him…. Anyway, time passed, and Zadik wasn't coming out. It was already after eleven-fifteen, and he had a meeting outside the building. So I rang into his office. But he didn't answer. I got up from my chair and knocked on his door. No answer. I tried to open the door, but it was locked, so I called him on his cell phone. No answer. Eventually, Hefetz looked at me and said, ‘I don't like the looks of this, Aviva. Maybe something happened to him.' Those were exactly his words. Truth is, I thought so too. Maybe something had happened to him. Nothing like this had ever, well, it's not like
never,
but for so long? I didn't know what to think, especially since it crossed my mind that two people had already died, one just yesterday, even if it was only a heart attack. And Zadik, after all, was not exactly immune to heart trouble, was he?

“I have no idea if he tried to phone out. He never asked me to get anyone on the line for him. He had his own private direct line he could use without going through me, and his cell phone, too. Maybe he was just sitting there and…I mean, I didn't know about that other door. Until you told me about it, I didn't know a thing. I don't even have an idea who knew about it. I've been here fifteen years, and I certainly didn't. Should I go on? Where was I? Anyway, Hefetz called the security officer, and Alon showed up. He tried to open the door, he pounded on it, all that stuff. Hefetz said, ‘Let's call maintenance,' and then phoned himself. They showed up pretty quickly, and they, well, they opened the door. That part you know, you've seen it, you were there. But before that, before you arrived, Alon wouldn't let me in. But I couldn't help myself, I couldn't just stand there on the sidelines. I couldn't believe it, so I pushed my way in to have a look. You know, you work with a person for so many years, and you don't even think about…and then suddenly…and this is the third one, in one week, in three days! Look, you don't know me. Maybe I come across to you as a hysterical woman, but believe me, I'm not. I've seen a few things in my lifetime, in high school I even volunteered at a hospital. I come from a traditional home, that was part of our education, we were expected to be good citizens and all that. So that's the way I am, not hysterical. But something like this, even you, you have seen so much; were you able to just go on as though nothing happened? No way. I'm sure you couldn't. I saw you. Even you couldn't….”

 

She was right. Even he was not immune to what he saw in Zadik's office. It wasn't just the man's mashed face, an expression of surprise etched around the mouth (“No need to expend much effort on finding the murder weapon, is there?” asked the pathologist with quiet satisfaction, pointing with his elbow at the drill standing in a pool of blood next to the pair of stained blue overalls tossed there). Nor was it just the way the body was sprawled over the large desk. It was all these, along with the blood that had been sprayed about, giving the room the look of a slaughterhouse, that made it hard for him to take it all in. Secretly, pretending to look at the papers strewn on the floor, Michael had turned his head away from the body while the forensics people worked energetically, collecting fingerprints and scraping samples onto glass slides. Only a moment before they wrapped Zadik's body and placed him on the stretcher did he come close and take a careful look. Blood had stained everything: the light blue carpeting, the wall, it had filled the room—the windows were closed—with the sour smell of rust.

“No one knew about that door,” Aviva repeated, full of respect and humility, “until you discovered it.” Her voice trembled.

It is precisely those things you discover by chance, not by strenuous effort or resourcefulness but by diverting your attention, that often wind up leading to rare achievement and bring you a rather embarrassing notoriety. Embarrassing because you did not really earn it; rather, at a certain moment, in the middle of carrying out the job, just as the forensics people were busy examining the initial data, bending down next to the body, preparing samples for testing blood and tissues, taking photographs, marking things—just then you had to excuse yourself for a moment, get some fresh air, and that's when you discovered what no one else had bothered to notice. How had no one noticed? How was it that no one had attempted to open that door from the outside? They had thought it was a locked closet, ancient; they explained again and again that the metal cabinet that had stood in the hallway for years had concealed the wooden door. No one had noticed that the cabinet had been moved from its place, and for the time being no one could remember how much time had passed since it had been moved, or how long the light-colored door had been exposed, for all to see. Was it truly possible that people working there for years had no knowledge of a second door leading into Zadik's office?

“Once I tried opening it, years ago, but it was locked,” Hefetz had told him, while Arye Rubin had regarded Michael with surprise when asked about it. “A door? A hidden door?” He nearly smiled when he said, “Believe me, in this building there are so many alterations and tack-ons and hallways and stairways and basements and doors and windows that have been blocked up that nobody can really know.”

And then there was Niva. “Show me,” she demanded. “I have to see this. I don't want to see the inside of the room. Have they cleaned it all up? No? Then I'm not looking, I just want to see if there's really a door, and where it leads.” He brought her to the hallway and showed her; she stood in front of the door in absolute amazement and disbelief. When she placed her hand on the round doorknob and turned it, and the door opened without a sound, she looked at him again, dumb-founded. “It even works,” she said in a feeble voice. “I've been here for twenty years, and I thought there wasn't an inch of this place I didn't know. Not just here, but the String Building as well. And suddenly, a door! Right in the middle of the hallway! Where has it been hiding all this time?”

Hefetz was the one who told him the tall, narrow metal cabinet had been leaning against the door all those years, causing everyone to forget about its existence, and that the cabinet had only recently been moved. “They forgot about it?” Michael asked. “Forgot? I mean, they knew about it once and forgot?” Hefetz squirmed under Michael's scrutiny and spread his arms as if confounded. “I don't recall that I knew about it, maybe I did once, I can't swear by it. But even if I did, I didn't
know
that I did.”

Rubin intervened. “You don't pay close attention in a place you know really well, someplace you walk around every day. Whatever you take for granted ceases to exist. A cabinet has been standing here for years, but if you ask us what's inside it, we won't have a clue because it's not in use. Once upon a time office supplies were stored there, I only just remembered that now; paper, staples, that sort of thing. It was kept locked then. Now too, no? It was your people who opened it up, right?”

“Yeah, it was us,” Eli Bachar confirmed. “But nobody had a key. Not for the cabinet, and not for the door.”

“I'm sure nobody saw it, the cabinet was hiding the door for years,” Niva said. The conversation took place just after Zadik's body had been removed by stretcher; before the investigation at police headquarters they sat in Hefetz's office, near the newsroom. “But I'm telling you,” she said excitedly, “we didn't even notice that someone had moved the cabinet, even though there are plenty of observant people around here. I couldn't tell you whether that cabinet was moved yesterday or today or even a week ago. I simply didn't notice. My eyes are always on the ground when I walk, and how much do I actually get around here?”

“That's just it,” Arye Rubin said. “Paradoxically, it takes someone from the outside to discern details that we are blind to. You see,” he said to Michael in wonderment, “it was a good thing you were wandering around the hall.”