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The Butcher's Theatre
  • Текст добавлен: 9 октября 2016, 00:29

Текст книги "The Butcher's Theatre"


Автор книги: Jonathan Kellerman


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Текущая страница: 26 (всего у книги 41 страниц)

Once, Gavrieli gasped and Daniel thought he'd stopped breathing. But after a moment his respiration returned, weak but steady. Daniel stayed close by, checking him, keeping him warm. Cradling the Uzis, his arm enveloped by pain that seemed oddly reassuring.

Suffering meant life.

It took an hour for the rescuers to arrive. When they put him on the stretcher, he started to cry.

Three months later Gavrieli came to visit him at the rehab center. It was a hot day, choked by humidity, and Daniel was sitting on a covered patio, hating life.

Gavrieli had a beach tan. He wore a white knit shirt and white shorts-apres tennis, very dashing. The lung was healed, he announced, as if the state of his health had been Daniel's primary worry. The cracked ribs had mended. There was some residual pain and he'd lost weight, but overall he felt terrific.

Daniel, on the other hand, had started seeing himself as a cripple and a savage. His depression was deep and dark, surrendering only to bouts of itchy irritability. Days went by in a numbing, gray haze. Nights were worse-he fell into smothering, terrifying dreams and awoke to hopeless mornings.

"You look good too," Gavrieli lied. He poured a glass of fruit punch and, when Daniel refused it, drank it himself. The discrepancy between their conditions embarrassed Gavrieli; he coughed, winced, as if to show Daniel that he, too, was damaged. Daniel wanted to tell him to leave, remained silent, bound by manners and rank.

They made small talk for a turgid half hour, reminisced mechanically about the liberation of the Old City: Daniel had fought with the medics to be released for the march through the Dung Gate, ready to die under sniper fire. Listening to Rabbi Goren blow the shofar had made him sob with joy and relief, his pain spirited away for a golden moment in which everything seemed worthwhile. Now, even that memory was tarnished.

Gavrieli went on about the new, enlarged state of Israel, described his visit to Hebron, the Tomb of the Ancestors. Daniel nodded and blocked out his words, desiring only solitude, the selfish pleasures of victimization. Finally, Gavrieli sensed what was happening and got to his feet, looking peeved.

"By the way," he said, "you're a captain now. The papers should be coming any day now. Congratulations. See you soon."

"And you? What's your rank?"

But Gavrieli had started to walk away and didn't hear the question. Or pretended not to.

He had, in fact, been promoted to lieutenant colonel. Daniel saw him a year later at Hebrew U. wearing a lieutenant colonel's summer uniform bedecked with ribbons, strolling through campus among a small throng of admiring undergraduates.

Daniel had attended his last class of the day, was on the way home, as usual. He'd completed a year of law studies with good grades but no sense of accomplishment. The lectures seemed remote and pedantic, the textbooks a jumble of small-print irrelevancies designed to distract from the truth. He processed all of it without tasting, spat it out dutifully on exams, thinking of his courses as tubes of processed food ration, the kind he'd carried in his survival kit-barely enough to sustain him, a long way from satisfaction.

Gavrieli saw him, called out. Daniel kept walking-his turn to feign deafness.

He was in no mood to talk to Gorgeous Gideon. No mood to talk to anyone. Since leaving the rehab center he'd avoided old friends, made no new ones. His routine was the same each day: morning prayers, a bus ride to the university, then a return, immediately after classes, to the apartment over the jewelry store, where he cleaned up and prepared dinner for his father and himself. The remainder of the evening was spent studying. His father worried but said nothing. Not even when he collected the jewelry he'd made as a teenager-mediocre stuff, but he'd saved it for years-and melted it down to a lump of silver that he left on a workbench in the shop's back room.

"Dani, hey. Dani Sharavi!"

Gavrieli was shouting. Daniel had no choice but to stop and acknowledge him. He turned, saw a dozen faces-the undergraduates following their hero's glance, staring at the short, brown student with the kipah pinned to his African hair, the scarred hand like something the butcher had thrown away.

"Hello, Gideon."

Gavrieli said a few words to his fans; they dispersed grudgingly, and he walked over to Daniel. He peered at the titles of the books in Daniel's arms, seemed amused.

"Law."

"Yes."

"Hate it don't you? Don't tell me stories-I can see by the look on your face. Told you it wouldn't suit you."

"It suits me just fine."

"Sure, sure. Listen, I just finished a guest lecture-war stories and similar nonsense-and I have a few minutes. How about a cup of coffee?"

"I don't-"

"Come on. I've been planning to call you anyway. There's something I want to talk to you about."

They went to the student cafeteria. Everyone seemed to know Gavrieli; the woman serving the pastries took extra time to pick out an especially large chocolate roll for him. Daniel, basking in the light reflected by the halo, got the second-biggest one.

"So, how've you been?"

"Fine."

"Last time I saw you, you were pretty damned low. Depressed. The doctors said you'd been that way for a while."

Damn liar Lipschitz. "The doctors should have kept their mouths shut."

Gavrieli smiled. "No choice. Commanding officer has a right to know. Listen, I understand your hating law-I hate it, too, never practiced a day, never intend to. I'm leaving the army, too-they want to turn me into a paper shuffler."

The last statement was uttered with dramatic flourish. Daniel knew he was supposed to react with surprise. He drank his coffee, took a bite of chocolate roll. Gavrieli looked at him and went on, undaunted.

"A new age, my friend. For both of us. Time to explore new territories– literally and metaphorically, time to loosen up. Listen, I understand your depression. I was there myself. You know the first few weeks after I got out of the hospital, all I wanted to do was play games-kid's games, the stuff I never had time for because I was too busy studying and serving. Checkers, chess, sheshbesh, one from America called Monopoly-you become a capitalist, amass land, and wipe the other guy out. I played with my sister's kids, game after game. Everyone thought I was crazy, but I was just starved for novelty, even stupid novelty. After that I ate nothing but hamburgers and champagne for three weeks. You understand."

"Sure," said Daniel, but he didn't. New experiences were the last thing he wanted. The things he'd seen and done made him want to pass through life with a minimum of disruption.

"When I finished with the games," Gavrieli was saying, "I knew I had to do something, but not law, not the army. A new challenge. So I'm joining the police."

Unable to conceal his surprise, Daniel said, "I wouldn't have thought it."

"Yes, I know. But I'm talking about a new police force, highly professional-the best technology, a boost in pay, parity with the army. Out with morons, in with intelligent, educated officers: university types, high school diplomas at minimum. I'm being put in as a pakad, which is still a significant drop from my army rank, but with major supervisory duties and plenty of action. They want me to reorganize the Criminal Investigation Division, draw up a security plan for the new territories, report directly to the district commander, no underlinings, no red tape. In six months he's promised me rav pakad. After that it's straight up, in time for his retirement." Gavrieli paused. "Want to join me?"

Daniel laughed. "I don't think so."

"What's to laugh at? Are you happy doing what you're doing?"

"I'm fine."

"Sure you are. I know your personality-law won't work for you. You'll sit on your ass wondering why the world's so corrupt, why the good guys don't win. On top of that the payoff is always muddled, nothing's ever solved. And there's already a glut-the big firms aren't hiring. Without family connections it'll be years before you make a living. You'll have to handle tenant-landlord disputes and other nonsense just to scratch by. Sign up with me, Dani, and I'll see to it that you zip through the rookie course, skip through all the dirty work."

Gavrieli made a square frame with his fingers, put Daniel's face at the center. "I picture you as a detective. The hand won't make a difference because you'll be using your brains, not your fists. But it's still action, street work, not talk. You'll get priority for every advanced course, be assigned to CID and leap-frogged to rav samal. Which means the best cases-you'll build up a record quickly, be a mefakeah in no time. As I move higher, I'll take you with me."

"I don't think so," Daniel repeated.

"That's because you haven't thought at all. You're still floating. Next time you're studying, take a good look at those law books, all that English common-law crap, another gift from the Brits-their judges wear wigs and fart into their robes. Stop and consider if that's really what you want to do with the rest of your life."

Daniel wiped his lips and stood. "I've got to be going."

"Need a ride somewhere?"

"No, thanks."

"All right, then. Here's my card, call me when you change your mind."

Two weeks into the new academic year, he called. Ninety days later he was in uniform, patrolling the Katamonim. Gavrieli had offered to skip him through it, but he declined the favor, wanting to walk the streets, get a feel for the job that Gideon would never have-for all his intelligence and savvy, there was a certain naivete about him, a delusion of invincibility that surviving Ammunition Hill had only served to strengthen.

A psychic partition, thought Daniel, that separated him from the darker side of life.

It had caused him be in the wrong place at the wrong time, swept along, inevitably, with the sewage from Lippmann.

Gideon had played from his own script. There was no reason to feel guilty about what had happened. No reason for Daniel to apologize for doing his job.

He looked at his watch. What time was it in Melbourne? Eight hours later, well into the evening.

An embassy party, perhaps? Gorgeous Gideon sticking close to the ambassador, manicured fingers curled around a cocktail glass as he charmed the ladies with flattery and clever anecdotes. His evening jacket tailored to conceal the 9 mm.

Executive attache. When all was said and done, he was just a bodyguard, a suit and a gun. He had to be miserable.

As opposed to me, thought Daniel. I have plenty to be happy about. A killer on the loose, bloody rocks, and heroin. Mad Hassidim and korbanot and strange monks and missing whores frightened by flat-eyed strangers.

Sitting in this white cell, trying to put it all together. Half a kilometer southeast of Ammunition Hill.

A sticky summer. He was seventeen, three months away from eighteen, when he walked into the library and asked Doctor for a car. Had to ask twice before the fucker looked up from his surgical journal and paid attention.

"What's that?"

"A car."

"Why do you want one?"

"All the kids have their own."

"But what do you need one for?"

"Go places, get to school."

"School's that important to you, huh?" Smile.

Shrug.

"I mean, you're flunking most of your subjects. I didn't think school meant that much to you."

Shrug.

"No, I don't see why I should get you a car just like that."

Smiling in that fucking superior way. The asshole had two cars of his own, a big soft one and a low-slung sports job that looked like a hard-on, neither of which he let anyone else drive. Her car was a big soft one, too, big bucks, but it hadn't been out of the garage for a long time; Doctor had had the crankcase drained, put it up on blocks.

The fucker was loaded, all that money, all those cars, and he'd had to learn how to drive on a jalopy that belonged to one of the maids, a rusty clunker with no power steering, a real bitch to park-he'd failed the test twice because of it.

"Loan me the money. I'll pay you back."

"Oh, really?" Amused.

"Yeah."

"And how do you propose to do that?"

"I'll get a job."

"And what kind of work do you deem yourself qualified to perform?"

"I could work at the hospital."

"At the hospital."

"Yes."

"Doing what?"

"Anything."

"Anything!"

"Anything."

Doctor talked to the head janitor-a nigger retard-and got him a job in maintenance. The nigger hadn't liked the idea; he and Doctor had discussed it while he waited a few feet away. The two of them talking about him as if he were invisible.

"I dunno, Doc, it's a dirty job."

"That's fine, Jewel. Just fine."

The nigger put him to work, mopping up vomit and piss off sickroom floors, emptying catheter bags and taking out garbage-not much to find there.

After two weeks of it he smelled bad, carried the smell with him all the time. When he went near Doctor, the fucker winced.

Then the director of personnel found out about it and transferred him out of there, not wanting the son of the head honcho heart surgeon doing shitwork like that.

He got sent to the mail room, which was excellent. He didn't even have to stand around and sort-just serve as a courier, taking stuff from place to place.

He did it all summer, got a real good feel for the hospital-every office, every lab.

It was amazing how careless people were, leaving stuff unlocked-petty cash drawers, their purses out on the desk when they went to the John.

He pilfered small amounts of cash that added up to big bucks.

He stole prescription blanks and drugs, always in small amounts. Demerol and Percodan and Ritalin and Seconal and stuff like that, sold it to the junkies who roamed Nasty Boulevard, just a few blocks away.

Sometimes he opened envelopes that had checks in them and sold them at five percent of face value to the junkies. Once in a while someone was stupid enough to send a cash donation to the hospital charity fund. That belonged to him immediately.

He opened book cartons and took the interesting ones home-fancy medical texts about sex and cutting. Once he found a stack of porno books in one of the lockers in the interns' lounge-white men fucking nigger women and vice versa-took it home and cut up the women until he could work up some good scream-pictures, stared at it until it turned him on and he could really get off.

Slowly but surely, he turned the minimum-wage situation into something excellent.

The key was to be careful. To make a plan and stick with it and clean up well afterward.

He smiled at everyone, was prompt, courteous, always willing to do favors for people. Very popular. A couple of the nurses seemed to be ogling his dick; also one of the orderlies, who he was sure was a fag. But none of them interested him, unless they could scream it was borrrring.

A great summer, very educational. He delivered mail to the pathology department-those were cool fuckers, eating their lunch with stiffs all around. The head honcho pathologist was this tall guy with a British accent and a clipped white beard. He chain-smoked menthol cigarettes and coughed a lot.

One time he delivered a package of gloves to Pathology. No one was in the office. He started opening the drawers of the secretary's desk, looking for stuff, when suddenly he heard this buzzing from down the hall-one of the labs that adjoined the offices.

He went over and took a look. The door was open; the room was cold. Whitebeard was standing over this stiff. The stiff lay on a stainless-steel table-a man; it had a dick. Its skin was a dull green-gray.

Whitebeard was using an electric saw with a little round wheel-it looked like a pizza cutter-to lop off the top of the stiffs skull. There was this weird burning smell. He stood there smelling it. It sickened him but really turned him on.

"Yes?" said Whitebeard. "What have you there?"

"Box of gloves."

"Put it over there."

Whitebeard started sawing again, looked up, saw him staring. All the knives and tools. The Y-shaped cut in the stiffs chest, pinned back, the body cavity hollow, all the good stuff scooped out-you could see the spine. An older guy, the dick all shriveled; he needed a shave. On the steel tables were organ samples in trays-he recognized them all, felt good about that. A bucket of blood, vials of fluid, not that different from his experiments, but a nice big room, all out in the open.

Real science.

Whitebeard smiled. "Interested?"

Nod.

Whitebeard continued to saw, pulled off the top of the scalp like a kike's beanie cap. Funny if the stiff had been a kike-the dick was too shriveled to tell.

"The cerebral cortex," said Whitebeard, pointing. "The cosmic jelly that creates delusions of immortality."

What shit.

He wanted to say: I know what it is, asshole. I've seen plenty of them scooped them out just as cool as you're doing.

Instead he just nodded. Play dumb. Play it safe.

Whitebeard lifted the brain, weighed it in a scale that looked like the one they used for vegetables in the supermarket.

"Heavy," he said. A smile. "Must have been an intellectual."

He didn't know what to say, just nodded and stared, until Whitebeard got this uptight look on his face and said, "Don't you have something to do?"

His drug sales alone were quadruple his shitty salary. It turned out to be a very profitable summer. In more ways than one.

For the first time in his life he got to watch Doctor in his natural habitat. The fucker was an even bigger asshole than he'd imagined-ordering people around, never passing a mirror without looking at himself, though why the hell would he want to look at that hook nose and that potbelly, the skin getting all red and blotchy? Red skin meant he was sick-fucker was probably going to drop dead of a heart attack one day, not be able to cut himself open and cure himself, that was for sure.

Drop dead and probably leave all the money to Sarah. Dr. Sarah, soon. But she wanted to be a psychiatrist, no cutting. Unfuckingbelievable.

He checked Doctor out real good, got to know him for the first time. Fucker never knew he was being studied. They could have been standing next to each other and he wouldn't have noticed.

To Doctor he was a freak. Weird. Some piece of shit that didn't exist.

It made him invisible, which was excellent.

Doctor liked the young ones. He found out there was truth to all her screaming about him fucking candy-stripers.

Fucker flirted with all of them, got serious with one in particular. Audrey, this little brunette, seventeen years old, fucking high school student just like Mr. Invisible. But she knew her way around.

Short but curvy-big ass, big tits, wore her hair in this ponytail and wiggled a lot when she walked.

Doctor could have been her father.

Yet they were doing it, he was sure of it. He watched her go j't.to Doctor's office after the secretary had gone home. At first she knocked and Doctor answered; later she started to use her own key. After a half hour, she'd peek her head out to see if the coast was clear, giggle, then wiggle out the door. Wiggle down the hall, swinging her purse, with this bouncy little high school walk that said I'm a winner.

Thinking no one saw.

Someone saw.

The invisible man, carrying a big carton that blocked his face. Even if he'd been visible he was safe. Pow.

He would have loved to cut her up, clean her up.

Mind picture.

Scream-picture.

Once Doctor and Audrey had a close call: One of the janitors got to work early, opened Doctor's office, and was immediately escorted out by Doctor, looking pissed. No white coat for the fucker now. Just pants and a shirt, the tie loose, the buttons not done right.

After that they started leaving the hospital. Going out, once or twice a week, to a motel just off Nasty Boulevard. Dirty-looking place, three dozen rooms around a sunken motor court, hand-painted signs on the roof advertising water beds and electric massage.

Really filthy. It offended him that people could stoop so low.

He followed them, walking because he still had no car, but it was close to the hospital, five blocks. He had long legs-no problem.

He set up his position behind a tall bush, squatted, and watched.

Doctor always drove. But he parked his car half a block away, on a dark side street, and the two of them walked to the motel, Doctor's big arm over her shoulder, Audrey wiggling and giggling. They were predictable: always went into the same room, number twenty-eight, way at the end. Borrring.

The clerk was this skinny slant, all yellow and sunken-cheeked, like he spent his off hours in an opium den. He had a small bladder, went to the bathroom every half hour or so. Or maybe he was shooting up-the guy wore long sleeves.

The room keys hung in duplicate from hooks on a particle-board rack just behind the reception desk.

He laid out his plan, ran it through his head for three weeks in a row. Just watching, trying to ignore the roaring in his head that got louder when he thought of what they were doing in there.

The key was to plan.

Week number four was action time. He'd brought his equipment, dressed in black like some ninja, feeling all tight and good and knowing he was fighting for a good cause.

The first day it didn't work. When the clerk went to pee/shoot up, there was another slant in the office, also looked like a junkie. Slant Two just stood around. When the clerk came out they talked to each other for a while.

The second day, it happened. Slant One split. The minute the office was empty, he ran in, vaulted the counter, grabbed the duplicate to twenty-eight, and vaulted back. By the time One was back, he was outside the door to twenty-eight, all ready with his equipment.

It was dark. There were a few cars; some of the other rooms were occupied, but all the drapes were drawn. No one was around-it was the kind of place you didn't want to be seen in.

He waited, with a giant hard-on, so hard he felt he could break down the door with it.

Put his ear to the door and heard mumbling, what sounded like sex-noise.

Waited some more until they had to be doing it, then slipped the key in, pushed, and ran in, turning on the lights and dancing around the room laughing and snapping pictures.

He caught them in a good pose. Audrey was sitting on Doctor, playing the egg game, just like she used to. Her eggs were smaller and firmer and kind of tan, but it was the same game, in and out.

Snap.

Screams.

What the hell-You't

Snap.

Audrey got hysterical, started crying, struggled to get off. Doctor holding on to her out of fear, shouting at him, but it ended up in her ear.

Comedy.

It looked like they hated each other, but they were still connected, couldn't get free of each other!

Excellent. Snap, snap! The mind pictures would be even better than the real ones, watching them struggle and scream, he was close to coming in his pants.

Snap.

They tried to disconnect. Fear made them clumsy, and they fell sideways.

Snap, another pose.

Snap snap.

Finally Audrey was loose, running naked and sobbing to the bathroom. He kept snapping Doctor, heard her throwing up-probably a habit with women.

Doctor's face was deep purple, his hard-on fading. He grabbed at sheets, tried to cover himself.

Snap.

"You little-" Doctor sprang up and came at him.

The guy was flabby, unhealthy. He pushed him on the chest and Doctor tumbled backward on the bed, ass to the camera.

Snap.

Doctor stood up again.

He put the camera away, smiled, and sauntered to the door.

"See you later, Dad."

The next day there was a note on his bed.

What kind of car do you want?

He got two. A Jaguar XKE Roadstar for fun, a Plymouth sedan for when he didn't want to be noticed.

He drove them for a couple of weeks, let Doctor think that was it. Then walked, one afternoon, past the secretary, without even asking permission, opened the door marked private, went in and shut it behind him.

The fucker was at his desk, writing in a medical chart. He looked up, tried to look stern, put on the head-honcho look, but couldn't pull it off. Obviously scared shitless.

"What is it?"

"We have to talk. Dad."

"Sure. Sit down."

There was a cedar humidor full of cigars on Doctor's desk. Stupid for a heart surgeon, but the guy had never practiced what he preached anyway.

He stared at Doctor, took a cigar out, licked it, and lit it.

Doctor started to say something. Something parental. Then stopped himself.

"What do you want?"

Straight out with it, no "son," no pretending it was anything other than business.

He didn't answer, let an ash grow on the cigar, flicked it on the carpet.

Doctor clenched his jaw to keep from talking.

He blew smoke rings.

"Well, Dad," he said finally, "the pictures are in a safe place with instructions to open them if anything happens to me, so if you've been thinking that fucking me over will help you, forget it."

"Don't be ridiculous. Harming you is the furthest thing from my-"

"Right."

"Believe me, all I've ever wanted for you-"

"Cut the shit." He leaned forward, dropped a gray worm of ash on the desk. On Doctor's charts. Picked up a chart.

"You can't look-"

"Why that?"

"It's confidential patient information."

"Tough shit."

Doctor sighed, put on a nicey-nicey tone: "Listen, I know our relationship hasn't been-"

"Cut the shit, I said!" He said it loud. Doctor looked nervously at the door.

He leafed through the chart. No good pictures. Borrring. Put it down.

"The photos are in packets. Dad. One addressed to Mom, one to Or. Schoenfeld, one to Audrey's parents. I can do anything I want to."

Doctor stared at him. His eyes got narrow.

Neither of them said anything for a while.

"What do you want?" Doctor finally said.

"Favors."

"What kinds of favors?"

"Whatever I want."

Doctor kept staring at him.

The cigar was starting to taste like shit. Fie ground it out on the shiny wooden surface of Doctor's desk, left the butt lying there like an old turd.

"Not a lot of favors. Dad. Just a few important ones."

"Such as?" Trying to tough it out, but totally scared shitless.

Now it was his turn to smile. "I'll let you know."

He got up, walked around to where Doctor was sitting. Slapped him on the shoulder and smiled again. "We'll be in touch, stud."

At one-fifteen Daniel received news from Tel Aviv that Aljuni, the Gaza wife-stabber, had passed his polygraph. At one-thirty p.m. he made radio contact with the Chinaman. Nothing new from the Old City.

"What's with Cohen?" he asked.

"Still feels like a dumb shit about Malkovsky, but he seems to be doing his job."

"How's Daoud doing with Roselli?"

The big man laughed.

"Share the joke," said Daniel.

"Daoud spend the morning dressed as a beggar with palsy, whining for alms near the Fourth Station of the Cross. Did such a good job that an Arab policeman smacked the soles of his feet with his baton, screamed at him to stop defiling the holy places."

"How is he?"

"Proud as hell, and sore. You should see him, Dani-all shaking and filthy. If anyone can pick up idle chatter, he can."

"Drop a shekel in his can for me," said Daniel.

"I already did. Talk to you later."

At two o'clock, Shmeltzer called in.

"The Hebrew U. archaeology department and the nature people promise to get me their hike lists as soon as possible. I had breakfast with the lady. Our request to look for the Nasser whore is being taken under consideration."

"That the best they could do?"

"There was cooperation floating between the lines-I got a breakfast date immediately, so they're taking it seriously. My feeling is they'll look for her if they can do it safely. Problem is the Amman operatives took a long time to plant-they're not going to shut down the entire operation because of something like this."

"Stay in touch with it," said Daniel. "If we need to push a little, let me know."

"I don't think pushing will help," said Shmeltzer. "Something else came up. I'm in Tel Aviv, at Beilison Hospital-the reason I didn't call sooner. I got a call from one of the doctors I talked to a couple of weeks ago-eye surgeon named Krieger, had something to say about one of his colleagues, anesthesiologist named Drori. Remember the flap last year about the doc who refused to give gas to an Arab kid? A cross-eyed baby-they were wheeling him into the operating room and the mother started praising Allah for straightening her little lion's eyes so he'd be able to throw stones at the Zionists. The doctor got pissed off, told her to screw herself, he hoped the kid went blind, then walked off the case. That was Drori."

"I remember. One of the leftist MKs wanted him brought upon charges."

"Right-Sardoffsky and his usual Marxist crap. Anyway, it blew over in two days-that was that. But according to this Krieger, Drori has a real thing for Arabs. Since the incident with the baby, he's gotten even more militant, interrogates Arab patients before he agrees to work on them, has them recite this pledge that they support the state and think Yasser Arafat's a perfidious dog. If anyone on the staff tries to talk to him about separating politics and medicine, he gets irrational-that's Krieger's term. It's come close to blows. On top of that, he's a loner, unmarried, antisocial. Krieger says several times when he's been on night shift, he's seen Drori leave the hospital, get into his car, and come back early in the morning wearing the same clothes, unshaven. Says it's obvious the guy hasn't slept, has been doing something else all night."

"Something like stalking and killing."

"That's what Krieger thinks. At first he didn't want to believe it, but the more he thought about it, the better Drori looked as our guy. He wasn't too happy about telling me all this, of course. Felt like an informer. But civic duty and all that."

"Think this could be some issue between them?"

"It's possible, but Drori sounds strange enough to look into."

"What else do you know about him?"

"His employment records show he immigrated two years ago from England-Scotland, actually. Original name was Denzer-Selwyn Denzer. Divorced his wife and left her and some kids there. Personnel notes say he's got a very good reputation medically, but hard to live with."

"Has the lack of sleep affected his performance?"

"Not yet, but they're watching him for slip-ups. They'd love an excuse to get rid of him."


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