Текст книги "The Butcher's Theatre"

Автор книги: Jonathan Kellerman

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Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 41 страниц)

Sunday night. The end of Christian Sabbath and all the church bells were ringing. He parked on the outskirts of the village and covered the rest of the journey on foot. By seven he was was back in the olive grove, with Daoud and the Chinaman. Watching.

"Why don't we just go in there and lay it on the line with them?" said the Chinaman. "Tell them we know about Abdelatif and ask them if they took care of him?" He picked up a fallen olive, rolled it between his fingers, and tossed it aside. Ten forty-three, nothing had happened, and he couldn't even smoke in case someone saw the glow. The kind of night that made him think about another line of work.

"They're hardly likely to tell us," said Daniel.

"So? We're not finding out anything this way. If we confront them, at least we've got the element of surprise working for us."

"We can always do that," said Daniel. "Let's wait a while longer."

"For what?"

"Maybe nothing."

"For all we know," persisted the Chinaman, "the guy's still alive, flown off to Amman or Damascus."

"Looking into that is someone else's job. This is ours."

At eleven-ten, a man out of the Rashmawi house, looked both ways, and walked silently down the pathway. A small dark shadow, barely discernible against a coal-black sky. The detectives had to strain to keep him in their sights as he made his way east, to where the bluff dipped its lowest.

Climbing gingerly down the embankment, he began walking down the hill, in the center of their visual field. Merging in the darkness for stretches of time that seemed interminable, then surfacing briefly as a moonlit hint of movement. Like a swimmer bobbing up and down in a midnight lagoon, thought Daniel as he focused his binoculars.

The man came closer. The binoculars turned him into something larger, but still unidentifiable. A dark, fuzzy shape, sidling out of view.

It reminded Daniel of '67. Lying on his belly on Ammunition Hill, holding his breath, feeling weightless with terror, burning with pain, his body reduced to something hollow and flimsy.

The Butcher's Theater, they called the hills of Jerusalem. Terrain full of nasty surprises. It carved up soldiers and turned them into vulture fodder.

He lowered the binoculars to follow the shape, which had grown suddenly enormous, heard the Chinaman's harsh whisper and abandoned his reminiscence:

"Shit! He's headed straight here!"

It was true: The shape was making a beeline for the grove.

All three detectives shot to their feet and retreated quickly to the rear of the thicket, hiding behind the knotted trunks of thousand-year-old trees.

Moments later the shape entered the grove and became a man again. Pushing his way through branches, he stepped into a clearing created by a tree that had fallen and begun to rot. Cold, pale light filtered through the treetops and turned the clearing into a stage.

Breathing hard, his face a mask of pain and confusion, the man sat down on the felled trunk, put his face in his hands, and began to sob.

Between the sobs came gulping breaths; at the tail end of the breaths, words. Uttered in a strangulated voice that was half whisper, half scream.

"Oh, sister sister sister… I've done my duty… but it can't bring you back… oh sister sister… we of the less flavored wife… sister sister."

The man sat for a long time, crying and talking that way. Then he stood, let out a curse, and drew something from his pocket. A knife, long-bladed and heavy-looking, with a crude wooden handle.

Kneeling on the ground, he raised the weapon over his head and held it that way, frozen in ceremony. Then, crying out wordlessly, he plunged the blade into the earth, over and over again. Unleashing the tears again, snuffling wetly, sobbing sister sister sister.

Finally he finished. Pulling out the knife, he held it in his palms and stared at it, tearfully, before wiping it on his trouser leg and placing it on the ground. Then he lay down beside it, curled fetally, whimpering.

It was then that the detectives came toward him, guns drawn, stepping out of the shadows.

Daniel kept the interrogation simple. Just him and the suspect, sitting opposite one another in a bare, fluorescent-bright room in the basement of Headquarters. A room wholly lacking in character; its normal function, data storage. The tape recorder whirred; the clock on the wall ticked.

The suspect cried convulsively. Daniel took a tissue out of a box, waited until the man's chest had stopped heaving, and said, "Here, Anwar."

The brother wiped his face, put his glasses back on, stared at the floor.

"You were talking about how Fatma met Issa Abdelatif," said Daniel. "Please go on."

"I…" Anwar made a gagging sound, placed a hand on his throat.

Daniel waited some more.

"Are you all right?"

Anwar swallowed, then nodded.

"Would you like some water?"

A shake of the head.

"Then please go on."

Anwar wiped his mouth, avoided Daniel's eyes.

"Go on, Anwar. It's important that you tell me."

"It was a construction site," said the brother, barely audible. Daniel adjusted the volume control on the recorder. "Nabil and Qasem were working there. She was sent to bring food to them. He was working there also and he snared her."

"How did he do that?"

Anwar's face constricted with anger, the pockmarks on his pale cheeks compressing to vertical slits.

"Pretty words, snake smiles! She was a simple girl, trusting-when we were children I could always fool her into thinking anything."

More tears.

"It's all right, Anwar. You're doing the right thing by talking about it. What was the location of this site?"

"Romema."

"Where in Romema?"

"Behind the zoo… I think. I was never there."

"How, then, do you know about Fatma meeting Abdelatif?"

"Nabil and Qasem saw him talking to her, warned him off, and told Father about it."

"What did your father do?"

Anwar hugged himself and rocked in the chair.

"What did he do, Anwar?"

"He beat her but it didn't stop her!"

"How do you know that?"

Anwar bit his lip and chewed on it. So hard that he broke skin.

"Here," said Daniel, handing him another tissue.

Anwar kept chewing, dabbed at the lip, looked at the crimson spots on the tissue, and smiled strangely.

"How do you know Fatma kept seeing Issa Abdelatif?"

"I saw them."

"Where did you see them?"

"Fatma stayed away too long on errands. Father grew suspicious and sent me to… watch them. I saw them."

"Where?"

"Different places. Around the walls of Al Quds." Using the Arabic name for the Old City. "In the wadis, near the trees of Gethsemane, anywhere they could hide." Anwar's voice rose in pitch: "He took her to hidden places and defiled her!"

"Did you report this to your father?"

"I had to! It was my duty. But…"

"But what?"

Silence.

"Tell me, Anwar."

Silence.

"But what, Anwar?"

"Nothing."

"What did you think your father would do to her once he knew?"

The brother moaned, leaned forward, hands outstretched, eyes bulging, fishlike, behind the thick lenses. He smelled feral, looked frantic, trapped. Daniel resisted the impulse to move away from him and, instead, inched closer.

"What would he do, Anwar?"

"He would kill her! I knew he would kill her, so before I told him I warned her!"

"And she ran away."

"Yes."

"You were trying to save her, Anwar."

"Yes!"

"Where did she go?"

"To a Christian place in Al Quds. The brown-robes took her in."

"Saint Saviour's Monastery?"

"Yes."

"How do you know she went there?"

"Two weeks after she ran away, I took a walk. Up to the olive grove where you found me. We used to play there, Fatma and I, throwing olives at each other, hiding and looking for each other. I still like to go there. To think. She knew that and she was waiting for me-she'd come to see me."

"Why?"

"She was lonely, crying about how much she missed the family. She wanted me to talk with Father, to persuade him to take her back. I asked her where I could reach her and she told me the brown-robes had taken her in. I told her they were infidels and would try to convert her, but she said they were kind and she had nowhere else to go."

"What was she wearing, Anwar?".

"Wearing?"

"Her clothing."

"A dress… I don't know."

"What color?"

"White, I think."

"Plain white?"

"I think. What does it matter?"

"And which earrings was she wearing?"

"The only ones she had."

"Which are those?"

"Little gold rings-they put them on her at birth."

Anwar began to cry.

"Solid gold?" asked Daniel.

"Yes… no… I don't know. They looked gold. What does it matter!"

"I'm sorry," said Daniel. "These are questions I have to ask."

Anwar slumped in his chair, limp and defeated.

"Did you talk to your father about taking her back?" asked Daniel.

A violent shake of the head, trembling lips. Even at this point, the fear of the father remained.

"No, no! I couldn't! It was too soon, I knew what he would say! A few days later I went to the monastery to talk to her, to tell her to wait. I asked her if she was still seeing the lying dog and she said she was, that they loved each other! I ordered her to stop seeing him but she refused, said I was cruel, that all men were cruel. All men except for him. We… argued and I left. It was the last time I saw her."

Anwar buried his face.

"The very last?"

"No." Muffled. "One more time."

"Did you see Abdelatif again, as well?"

The brother looked up and smiled. A wholehearted grin that made his ravaged face glow. Throwing back his shoulders | and sitting up straighter, he recited in a clear, loud voice: "He who does not take revenge from the transgressor would better be dead than to walk without pride!"

Reciting the proverb seemed to have infused new life into him. He balled one hand into a fist and recited several other Arabic sayings, all pertaining to the honor of vengeance. Took off his glasses and stared myopically into space. Smiling.

"The obligation… the honor was mine," he said. "We were of the same mother."

Such a sad case, thought Daniel, watching him posture. He'd read the arrest report, seen the reports from the doctors at Hadassah who'd examined Anwar after the assault arrest, the psychiatric recommendations. The Polaroid pictures, like something out of a medical book. A fancy diagnosis-congenital micropenis with accompanying epispaedia-that did nothing but give a name to the poor guy's misery. Born with a tiny, deformed stump of a male organ, the urethra nothing more than a flat strip of mucous membrane on the upper surface of what should have been a shaft but was only a useless nub. Bladder abnormalities that made it hard for the guy to hold his water-when they'd stripped him before booking him he'd been wearing layers of cloth fashioned into a crude homemade diaper.

One of God's cruel little jokes? Daniel had wondered, then stopped wondering, knowing it was useless.

Plastic surgery could have helped a little, according to the Hadassah doctors. There were specialists in Europe and the United States who did that kind of thing: multiple reconstructive surgeries over a period of several years in order to create something a bit more normal-looking. But the end result would still be far from manly. This was one of the severest cases any of them had ever seen.

The whore had thought so too.

After years of conflict and deliberation, propelled by cloudy motivations that he ill understood, Anwar had walked, late one night, toward the Green Line. To a place near Sheikh Jarrah where his brothers said the whores hung out. He'd found one leaning against a battered Fiat, old and shopworn and coarse, with vulgar yellow hair. But warm-voiced and welcoming and eager.

They'd come quickly to terms, Anwar unaware that he was being blatantly overcharged, and he'd climbed into the backseat of her Fiat. Recognizing the terror of inexperience, the whore had cooed at him, smiled at him, and lied about how cute he was, stroking him and wiping the sweat from his brow. But when she'd unbuttoned his fly and reached for him, the smiling and cooing had stopped. And when she'd pulled him out, her shock and revulsion had caused her to laugh.

Anwar had gone crazy with rage and humiliation. Lunging for the whore's throat, trying to strangle the laughter out of her. She'd fought back, bigger and stronger than he, pummeling and gouging and calling him freak. Screaming for help at the top of her lungs.

An undercover cop had heard it all and busted poor Anwar. The whore had given her statement, then left town. The police had been unable to locate her. Not that they'd tried too hard. Prostitution was a low-priority affair, the act itself legal, solicitation the offense. If the whores and their customers kept quiet, it was live and let live. Even in Tel Aviv, where three or four dozen girls worked the beaches at night, making plenty of noise, busts were rare unless things got nasty.

No complaint, first offense, no trial. Anwar had walked free with a recommendation that his family obtain further medical consultation and psychiatric treatment. Which the family was about as likely to accept as conversion to Judaism.

Pathetic, thought Daniel, looking at him. Denied the things other men took for granted because of missing centimeters of tissue. Treated as something less than a man by family and culture-any culture.

Sent in with the women.

"Would you like something to eat or drink now?" he asked. "Coffee or juice? A pastry?"

"No, nothing," said Anwar, with bravado. "I feel perfect."

"Tell me, then, how you avenged Fatma's honor."

"After one of their… meetings, I followed him. To the bus station."

"The East Jerusalem station?"

"Yes." There was puzzlement in the answer. As if there was any other station but the one in East Jerusalem. To him the big central depot on the west side of town-the Jewish station-didn't exist. In Jerusalem, a kilometer could stretch a universe.

"What day was this?"

"Thursday."

"What time of day?"

"In the morning, early."

"You were watching them?"

"Protecting her."

"Where was their meeting?"

"Somewhere behind the walls. They came out of the New Gate."

"Where did she go?"

"I don't know. That was the last time."

Anwar saw Daniel's skeptical look and threw up his hands.

"It was him I was interested in! Without him she'd come back, be obedient!"

"So you followed him to the station."

"Yes. He bought a ticket for the Hebron bus. There was some time before it left. I walked up to him, said I was Fatma's brother, that I had money and was willing to pay him to stop seeing her. He asked how much money and I told him a hundred dollars American. He demanded two hundred. We haggled and settled on a hundred and sixty. We agreed to meet the next day, in the olive grove, before the sun rose."

"Wasn't he suspicious?"

"Very. His first reaction was that it was some kind of trick." Anwar's face shone with pride. His glasses slid down his nose and he righted them. "But I played him for a fool. When he said it was a trick, I said okay, shrugged, and started to walk away. He came running after me. He was a greedy dog-his greed got the better of him. We had our meeting."

"When?"

"Friday morning, at six-thirty."

Just shortly after Fatma's body had been discovered.

"What happened at the meeting?"

"He came ready to rob me, with the knife."

"The knife we found you with tonight?"

"Yes. I arrived first and was waiting for him. He pulled it out the minute he saw me."

"Did you see from which direction he'd come?"

"No."

"What did he look like?"

"A thief."

"His clothes were clean?"

"As clean as they'd ever be."

"Go on."

"He had the knife, ready to do me harm, but I'd come armed too. With a hammer. I kept it hidden behind the trunk of the tree that had fallen. I pulled out ten dollars. He grabbed it out of my hands and demanded the rest. I said the rest would come in installments. Five dollars a week for every week he stayed away from her. He started adding it up in his head. He was slow-witted-it took him a while. 'That's thirty weeks,' he said. 'Exactly,' I answered. There's no other way to deal with a thief.' That made him crazy. He started to walk toward me with the knife, saying I was dead, just like Fatma. That she was nothing to him, garbage to be dumped. That all the Rashmawis were garbage."

"Those were his words? That she was dead? Garbage to be dumped?"

"Yes." Anwar started crying again.

"Did he say anything else?"

"No. From the way he said it I knew he'd… hurt her. Id come up there with intentions of killing him and knew now that the time had come. He was coming closer, holding the knife in his palm, his eyes on me, beady, like those of a weasel. I started laughing, playing the fool, saying I was only joking and that the rest of the money was right there, behind the tree stump.

"'Get it,' he ordered, as if talking to a slave. I told him it was buried under the stump, that it was a job for two men to roll it away."

"You took a chance," said Daniel. "He could have killed you and come back later for the money."

"Yes, it was risky," said Anwar, clearly pleased. "But he was greedy. He wanted everything right then and there. 'Push,' he ordered me. Then he knelt down beside me, holding the knife in one hand, using the other to try to roll the stump. I pretended to roll, too, reached out and pulled hard at his ankles. He fell, and before he could get up I grabbed the hammer and hit him with it. Many times."

A dreamy look surfaced behind the eyeglasses.

"His skull broke easily. It sounded like a melon breaking on a rock. I took his knife and cut him. Kept it for a memorial."

"Where did you cut him?" asked Daniel, wanting a wound match on tape, all the details taken care of. The body had been dug up and sent to Abu Kabir. Levi would be calling within a day or so.

"The throat."

"Anywhere else?"

"The… the male organs."

Two out of the three sites where Fatma had been butchered.

"What about his abdomen?"

"No." Incredulity, as if the question were absurd.

"Why the throat and genitals?"

"To silence him, of course. And prevent further sin."

"I see; What happened after that?"

"I left him there, went to my house, and returned with a spade. I buried him, then used the spade to roll the log over his grave. Right where I showed you."

Abdelatif's remains had been lifted from a deep grave. It must have taken Anwar hours to dig it. The trunk hiding the excavation. Which made Daniel feel a little less foolish about sitting for hours, just a couple of meters away. Watching the house, keeping a dead man company.

"The only money you paid him was ten dollars," said Daniel.

"Yes, and I took it back."

"From out of his pocket?"

"No. He had it clenched in his greedy hand."

"What denomination?" asked Daniel.

"A single American ten-dollar bill. I buried it with him."

Exactly what had been found on the corpse.

"Is that all?" asked Anwar.

"One more thing. Was Abdelatif a drug user?"

"It wouldn't surprise me. He was scum."

"But you don't know it for a fact."

"I didn't know him," said Anwar. "I merely killed him."

He wiped the tears from his face and smiled.

"What is it?" asked Daniel.

"I'm happy," said Anwar. "I'm very happy."

Like a suite at the King David, thought Daniel, walking into Laufer's office. Wood-paneled and gold-carpeted, with soft lighting and a fine desert view. When it had been Gavrieli's, the decor had been warmer-shelves overflowing with books, photos of Gorgeous Gideon's equally gorgeous wife.

In one corner stood a case full of artifacts. Coins and urns and talismans, just like the collection he'd seen in Baldwin's office at the Amelia Catherine. Bureaucrats seemed to go in for that kind of thing. Were they trying to dress up their uselessness with imagined links to the heroes of the past? Over the case hung a framed map of Palestine which appeared to have been taken from an old book. Signed, inscribed photographs of all the Prime Ministers, from Ben Gurion on down, graced the walls-the pointed suggestion of friends in high places. But the inscriptions on the photos were noncommital, none of them mentioned Laufer by name, and Daniel wondered if the pictures belonged to the deputy commander or had been pulled out of some archive.

The deputy commander was in full uniform today, sitting behind a big Danish teakwood desk and drinking soda water.

An olive-wood tray holding a Sipholux bottle and two empty glasses sat near his right arm.

"Sit down," he said, and when Daniel had done so, pushed a piece of paper across the desk. "We'll be releasing this to the press in a couple of hours."

The statement was two paragraphs long, stamped with today's date, and entitled POLICE SOLVE SCOPUS MURDER AND RELATED REVENGE KILLING.

POLICE DEPUTY COMMANDER AVIGDOR LAUFER ANNOUNCED TODAY THAT THE MAJOR CRIMES DIVISION. SOUTHERN DISTRICT, HAS SOLVED THE CASE OF A YOUNG GIRL FOUND STABBED TO DEATH FOUR DAYS AGO ON MOUNT SCOPUS, THE INVESTIGATION HAS REVEALED THAT FATM A RASHMA Wl, 15, A RESIDENT OF SILWAN, WAS KILLED BY ISSA QADER ABDELATIFAL AZZEH. 19, RESIDENT OF THE DHEISHEH REFUGEE CAMP WHO WAS KNOWN TO THE POLICE BECAUSE OF A HISTORY OF THIEVERY AND ANTISOCIAL BEHAVIOR. ABDEL-ATIF'S BODY WAS FOUND IN A GROVE NEAR SILWAN WHERE IT HAD BEEN BURIED BY ONE OF THE VICTIM'S BROTHERS. ANWAR RASHMAWI, 20. RASMAWI, WHO ALSO HAS A POLICE RECORD, CONFESSED TO MURDERING ABDELATIF IN ORDER TO AVENGE THE HONOR OF HIS SISTER. HE IS CURRENTLY IN POLICE CUSTODY.

THE INVESTIGATION WAS TECTIVES FROM MAJOR CRIMES, DANIEL SHARAVI AND SUPERVISED LAUFER.

CARRIED OUT BY A TEAM OF DE-HEADED BY CHIEF INSPECTOR BY DEPUTY COMMANDER

Public relations, thought Daniel. Names on paper.

He put the statement on the desk.

Worlds removed from the streets and the stakeouts. From the Butcher's

Theater. He put the statement on the desk.

'So? demanded Laufer.

'It's factual.'

He sat back in his chair and stared at Daniel, waiting for more.

'It's a good statement. Should make the press happy.'

'Does it make you happy, Sharavi?'

'I still have reservations about the case.'

"The knife?"

"For one." Abdelatif's weapon was thick-bladed and dull. Not even remotely similar to the wound molds taken from Fatma's body.

"He was a knife man," said Laufer. "Carried more than one weapon."

"The pathologist said at least two had been used on Fatma, which means he would have had to carry three. No others have turned up, but it's a discrepancy I can live with-he hid the murder weapons or sold them to someone. What really bothers me is the foundation of the case: We're depending exclusively on the brother's story. Apart from what he's told us, there's no real evidence. Nothing placing Abdelatif near or around Scopus, no explanation for how he got up there-for why he dumped her there. At least twenty hours passed between Fatma's leaving the monastery and the discovery of the body. We have no idea what they did during that time."

"He cut her up is what they did."

"But where? The brother said he bought a ticket for the Hebron bus. The girl went somewhere on her own. Where? On top of that, we've got no motive for why he killed her in the first place. Anwar said they parted after a tryst, with no signs of hostility. And there's the physical context of the murder to consider-the washing of the body, the way it was prepared, the hair combed out, the sedation with heroin. We didn't find a single fiber, footprint, or fingerprint. It indicates calculation, intelligence-a cold type of intelligence-and nothing we've learned about Abdelatif makes him sound that bright."

The deputy commander leaned back in his chair. Laced his hands behind his head and spoke with deliberate casualness.

"Lots of words, Sharavi, but what it boils down to is that you're searching for answers to every little detail. It's not a realistic attitude."

Laufer waited. Daniel said nothing.

"You're overreacting," said the deputy commander. "Most of your objections can be easily understood given the fact that Abdelatif was a thief and a lowlife psychopath-he tortured animals, burned his cousin, and cut up his uncle. Is murder that far removed from that kind of crap? Who knows why he killed or why he chose to dump her in a certain way? The head doctors don't understand those types and neither do you or I. For all we know he was intelligent-a damned genius when it came to murder. Maybe he's cut up and washed other girls and never been caught-the people in the camps never call us in. Maybe he carried ten knives, was a damned knife fanatic. He stole tools-why not blades? As far as where he did it, it could be anywhere. Maybe she met him at the station, he took her home, carved her up in the camp."

"The driver of the Hebron bus is reasonably certain Abdelatif was on it and Fatma wasn't."

Laufer shook his head scornfully. "The number of people they stuff in, all those chickens, how the hell could he notice anything? In any event, Rashmawi did the world a favor by polishing him off. One less psycho to worry about."

"Rashmawi could just as easily be our culprit," said Daniel. "We know he's psychologically disturbed. What if he killed both of them-out of jealousy or to impress his father-then concocted the story about Abdelatif in order to make it sound honorable?"

"What if. Do you have any evidence of that?"

"I'm only raising it as an example-"

"During the time his sister was murdered, Rashmawi was home. His family vouches for him."

"That's to be expected," said Daniel. Anwar's confession had turned him from freak to family hero, the entire Rashmawi clan marching to the front gate of the Russian Compound, making a great show of solidarity at the prison door. The father beating his breast and offering to trade his own life for that of his "brave, blessed son."

"What's expected can also be true, Sharavi. And even if the alibi were false, you'd never get them to change it, would you? So what would be the point? Leaning on a bunch of Arabs and getting the press on our asses? Besides, it's not as if Rashmawi will be walking the streets. He'll be locked up at Ramie, out of circulation." Laufer rubbed his hands together. "Two birds."

"Not for long," said Daniel. "The charge is likely to be reduced to self-defense. With psychiatric and cultural mitigating factors. Which means he could be walking the streets in a couple of years."

"Could be's and maybe's" said Laufer. "That's the prosecutor's problem. In the meantime we'll proceed based on the facts at hand."

He made a show of shuffling papers, squirted soda from the injection bottle into a glass, and offered a drink to Daniel.

"No, thanks."

Laufer reacted to the refusal as if it were a slap in the face.

"Sharavi," he said tightly. "A major homicide has been solved in a matter of days and there you sit, looking as if someone had died."

Daniel stared back at him, searching for intentional irony in his choice of words, the knowledge that he'd uttered a tasteless joke. Finding only peevishness. The resentment of a drill major for one who'd broken step.

"Stop searching for problems that don't exist."

"As you wish, Tat Nitzav."

Laufer sucked in his cheeks, the flab billowing as he exhaled.

"I know," he said, "about your people walking across the desert from Arabia. But today we have airplanes. No reason to do things the hard way. To wipe your ass with your foot when a hand is available."

He picked up the press release, initialed it, and told Daniel he was free to leave. Allowed him to reach the doorknob before speaking again: "One more thing. I read Rashmawi's arrest report-the first one, for throttling the whore. The incident took place some time before Gray Man, didn't it?"

Daniel knew what was coming.

"Over two years before."

"In terms of a Major Crimes investigation, that's not long at all. Was Rashmawi ever questioned in regard to the Gray Man murders?"

"I questioned him about it yesterday. He denied having anything to do with it, said except for the incident with the prostitute, he never went out of the house at night. His family will vouch for him-an unassailable alibi, as you've noted."

"But he wasn't questioned originally? During the active investigation?"

"No."

"May I ask why not?"

The same question he'd asked himself.

"We were looking at convicted sex offenders. His case was dismissed before coming to trial."

"Makes one wonder," said Laufer, "how many others slipped by."

Daniel said nothing, knowing any reply would sound mealy-mouthed and defensive.

"Now that the Scopus thing has been cleared up," continued the deputy commander, "there'll be time to backtrack-go over the files and see what else may have been missed."

"I've started doing that, Tat Nitzav."

"Good day, Sharavi. And congratulations on solving the case.

On Wednesday night, hours after the Scopus case closed, the Chinaman celebrated by taking his wife and son out for a free dinner. He and.Aliza smiled at each other over plates heaped high with food-stir-fried beef and broccoli, sweet and sour veal, lemon chicken, crackling duck-holding hands and sipping lime Cokes and enjoying the rare chance to be alone.

"It's good that it's over," she said, squeezing his thigh. "You'll be home more. Able to do your share of the housework."

"I think I hear the office calling."

"Never mind. Pass the rice."

Across the room, little Rafi sucked contentedly on a bottle of apple juice, cradled in his grandmother's arms, receiving a first-class guided tour of the Shang Hai as she took him from table to table, introducing him to customers, announcing that he was her tzankhan katan-"little paratrooper." At the rear of the restaurant, near the kitchen door, sat her husband, black silk yarmulke perched atop his hairless ivory head, playing silent chess with the mashgiah-the rabbi sent by the Chief Rabbinate to ensure that everything was kosher.

This mashgiah was a new one, a youngster named Stolinsky with a patchy dark beard and a relaxed attitude toward life. During the three weeks since he'd been assigned to the Shang Hai, he'd gained five pounds feasting on spiced ground veal pancakes with hoisin sauce and had been unable to capture Huang Haim Lee's king.

The restaurant was lit by paper lanterns and smelled of garlic and ginger. Chinese watercolors and calendars hung on red-lacquered walls. A rotund, popeyed goldfish swam clumsily in a bowl next to the cashier's booth. The register, normally Mrs. Lee's bailiwick, was operated tonight by a moonlighting American student named Cynthia.