Текст книги "The Butcher's Theatre"

Автор книги: Jonathan Kellerman

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Текущая страница: 38 (всего у книги 41 страниц)

The doctor hesitated, looked down at the rifle and up again at Shmeltzer.

"Put it down, you fucking little rat!"

"Oh God," said Peggy Cassidy from the floor.

Al Biyadi dropped the rifle, a second short of dying.

"On the ground, on your belly!" ordered Shmeltzer. Al Biyadi complied.

Shmeltzer kept his gun trained on Al Biyadi's spine, advanced carefully, and kicked the rifle out of the bastard's reach. He was to find out, moments later, that the weapon had been unloaded.

So pretty, thought the Grinning Man, eyeing the young cop's body laid out naked on the table.

Every muscle outlined in relief, like fine sculpture, the skin firm and smooth, the facial features perfectly formed.

Adonis. No hook-nose.

Hard to believe this one was kikeshit. He'd searched the dumbfuck's pockets, hoping to find a non-kike ID, something indicating he was an Aryan who'd somehow been duped into working for the kikes.

But there was no wallet, no papers. Just a Star of David on a thin gold chain stuffed into one of the pockets.

Hiding the kikeness. The dumbfuck was kikeshit.

It was wrong, an insult.

The dumbfuck was a genetic fluke, sneak thief of Aryan genes.

But pretty. The last time he'd seen anything male that looked this good was years ago, back in stinkhole Sumbok. Fourteen-year-old Gauguin Boy brought in dead to the Gross Anatomy Lab-sold for small change by his family, ninety pounds of medical research material.

Ninety pounds of prime protoplasm: coppery skin, smoky long-lashed eyes, glossy black hair. Little slant had died from acute bacterial meningitis; once he'd sawed open the skull and exposed the cerebral cortex, the damage was obvious, all that yellow-green mucus clogging the meninges.

But, despite the brain-rot, the body remained beautiful, firm, smooth as a girl's. Smooth as Sarah. Hard to believe he was a hundred percent slant-hard to believe he was male.

But rotten to the core, even in death:

The little slant bastard had ruined his plans!

It reaffirmed his.code:

Males were to be finished fast: the kill-blow to the face or a tracheal-rupture death-choke. The power-jolt, that final look of surprise before the lights went out.

Now you know who's in charge.

Bye-bye.

Females were to be savored. Saved. For real science.

But this one on the table was pretty. Near-female.

Female enough?

His first impulse after cold-cocking the dumbfuck had been to finish him off as he lay there, one good boot-stomp to the face, leaving him behind the reporter's building along with the other kikeshit.

Then he looked at the face, the body, saw something that made him shake.

So pretty.

He got hard.

Disturbing thoughts, as painful as bee stings, darted around in his head:

Pretty as a faggot?

Girl or boy?

He swatted away the thoughts, concentrated on the dumbfuck lying inert, under his control.

Dumbfuck was a faggot.

The SS had known what to do with faggots.

Grandpa Hermann had known what to do with faggots.

Real science. The prospect of adventure: That's what had made him hard.

He took a deep breath, held it; the bee-sting thoughts flew away. Quickly, he went through the pockets of the faggot's designer jeans, found car keys, confiscated them along with the gun the faggot had dropped, then gave the faggot a nighty-night shot of H to keep him qujet. Then, out front to the street, trying car doors until he found the lock that matched the keys.

Taking risks but enjoying the endocrine-rush. His Mideast safari almost over, why not squeeze out every bit of pleasure before moving on to the next project?

He found the car soon enough: beat-up VW bug-faggot had left it unlocked. He drove it back to the alley, dumped the faggot's unconscious body in the trunk. Found costume changes, identity changes-dumbfuck thought he knew how to play that game! Then a five-minute drive to the German

Hans,the VW stashed in the garage next to his Mercedes.

Another five-minutes and Faggot Adonis was stretched out and tlied up on the dining room table.

Kike Adonis. Too pretty-very wrong. An affront to the Schwann-code, it was up to him to avenge it.

Improvise.

And why not? Improvisation was fine if you did it with style. After all, his final act would be a grand improvisation, the ultimate fuel-jolt that really got Project Untermensch off the ground.

Surprise, surprise. Let the games begin.

The dumbfuck stirred on the table, made a clicking sound from deep in his throat.

He reached over, checked the faggot's pulse and respiration, made sure he wasn't about to vomit and choke on it.

All systems functioning normally.

Dumbfuck was quiet again. Pretty.

Yes, definitely pretty enough for a real science excursion.

Exploring the faggot cavity-Grandpa Hermann would approve.

Expand the boundaries: males, females, dogs, cats, rats, reptiles, Arachnida, Coelenterata -all soft tissue and pain receptors. The differences were minor when you got right down to it. Arbitrary. When you opened a body, looked into the welcome hole, the visceral mural, you realized the sameness. Everyone was the same.

In terms of meat.

Not mind

A fine Aryan Schwann-mind was in a different cognitive sphere from untermensch hollow-head brainscum.

And this young, naked one on his table was ikey-kikey faggot kikeshit, wasn't he?

Pretty.

But male.

More bee stings:

He'd explored a male before. It had ruined his plans.

Since then he'd been disciplined. The males finished lightning-fast, the females for exploration.

But he'd come a long way since then. Learned how to be careful, how to clean up perfectly.

Sting.

Swat.

Fuck it! He was in charge; no need to be hemmed in any longer by what Gauguin Boy had done to him.

Just the opposite: He needed to break free of constraints. Liberate himself. Dieter Schwann and Grandpa Hermann would want that, would be proud of his creativity.

Suddenly he knew why the young cop had been delivered to him: The dumbfuck was there to save him, to be savored by him. Dessert after the final act. A bouquet of roses tossed onstage after a bravura performance.

Roses from Dieter, a message: Free thyself.

His decision was clear.

Keep the dumbfuck tied up nice and snuggly-wuggly; pump him with enough H to keep him calm; then, after the final curtain had fallen, come back, wake him up, give him some more H-no, curare, just like the dog. Motor paralysis accompanied by total mental awareness!

Lying frozen on ice, corpse-helpless, but hearing and seeing and smelling. Knowing!

Exactly what was going on.

Exactly what was being done to him.

The terror all in the eyes.

Bow wow wow.

A superb plan. He finalized it in his head, started preparing a batch of new needles, thinking:

This will free me forever from Sumbok memories.

But as he thought about it, Sumbok memories bore through his mind, making high-pitched bad-machine noises, like termites crunching through masonry.

He touched himself, stroked himself, trying to get past the noise. Dropped a glass syringe on the floor and barely heard it shatter as he grappled with images. Doctor's smug, puffy face:

Well, I finally found a place for you. Not much of a med school, but a med school. Cost me a fortune to convince them to take you. If you manage somehow to g't? through four years and pass the foreign graduate exam, you might be able to find an internship somewhere.

Fucking smugsmile. Translate: You'll never do it, stupid.

Showed how much he knew, the lame fuck. For all practical purposes, he was already a doctor; all that was left was to make it legal by matching his Dr. Terrific hands-on experience with boring books, paper formalities. Then, claim his birthright:

Dieter Schwann, II., M.D., Ph.D., Aryan conqueror of the welcome hole. Mengele-magician-artisan, painting the visceral mural.

The seed preserved!

He'd filled out the application forms with a sense of joy and purpose, readied himself for the adventure, masturbating to happy graduation pictures: himself ten feet tall, in black satin doctor's robes collared with velvet, a satin mortarboard tilted with just the right cockiness. Collecting certificates of honor, delivering the valedictory, then dedicating the Dieter Schwann, M.D., Chair in Surgical Pathology and Visceral Exploration at the University of Berlin.

Bravo.

Living off those pictures for two butt-numbing days of air travel to Djakarta, only to feel the joy die inside of him as the rattling shuttle prop landed on that putrid, humid shithole of an island.

A lumpy brown patch. Water all around, like some cartoon. Sand and mud and droopy trees.

Where are we?

The pilot, a rotten-toothed half-breed, had turned off the engine, opened the door, and tossed his luggage out onto the landing strip.

Welcome to Sumbok, Doc.

Reality: mosquitoes and swamps and grass huts and pockmarked Gauguin-scum hobbling around in loincloths and T-shirts. Pigs and goats and ducks living in the huts, mounds of shit everywhere. On the south side of the island, a muck-filled stagnant bay, jellyfish and sea slugs and other disgusting things washing up on the beach, putrefying, sliming the sand. The rest of it jungle: snakes, nightmare bugs as big as rats, rats as big as dogs, hairy things that gibbered and shrieked in the night.

The so-called school: a bunch of rusting Quonset huts, cement-floored wooden cabins for dormitories, the bunks hooded with mosquito netting. One big, crumbling stucco building for classrooms. In the basement, the Gross Anatomy Lab.

A hand-painted tin sign over the front door: The Grand Medical Facility of St. Ignatius.

Big joke, ha ha.

Except that he was living it.

The so-called students: a bunch of losers. Morons, dopers, chronic complainers, perverts of sullied ethnic origin. The faculty: slant creeps with M.D.'s from dubious places. Delivering their lectures in pidgin accents no normal person could understand, taking delight in insulting the students, insisting on being addressed as Professor. He felt like hate-beaming into their slant-eyes, smiling:

Heavy starch in the shirts, One Hung Low.

Total scam, no one gave a shit. Most of the students gave up and went home after a few months, forfeiting two years' tuition paid in advance. The others got the energy leeched out of them and turned into bums-pissing away days sunning themselves on the beach, nights given over to smoking dope, jerking off under the mosquito netting, wandering the island trying to seduce twelve-year-old Gauguin-girls.

Depraved. He knew if he let himself be sucked into their apathy, he'd be sidetracked from the Schwann mission. Wondered how to insulate himself, decided an identity change was in order-identity changes always cleansed the mind, renewed the spirit.

And he knew which identity to assume, the only one that would enable him to float above it all.

He went and talked to the dean. Slantiest slant of all, nasty little shit with greasy Dracula hair, oily yellow skin, pig eyes, pencil-line mustache, potbelly as if he'd swallowed a melon. But with a fancy Dutch name: Professor Anton Bromet Van der Veering, M.D., D.Sc.

Pretentious little scrotebag.

Sitting behind a big, messy desk, surrounded by books he never read. Smoking a meerschaum pipe carved in the shape of a naked woman.

Slant took a long time to light the pipe, made him stand there for a while before acknowledging his presence. He filled the time by visualizing smashing the scrote's face, meerschaum chips atop the bloody yellow pulp like confectioners' sugar on a lemon tart

Yes, what is it?

I want to change my name, Dean.

What? What are you talking about?

I want to change my name.

Surely this is a legal matter, to be taken up with-

Legal matters don't concern me. Dean. This is a personal issue.

Talking low and serious, one doctor to another, the way he'd seen Doctor confer with his associates while discussing a case.

Scrote was confused. Dense. I really don't see what-

From now on I want to be known as Dieter Terrif.

Spelling it.

Confusion in the pig eyes: This your real name? Terrif?

In a manner of speaking.

I don't-

It's my real name.

Then why did you enroll as-

A long story, Dean.

Charming smile: And for our purposes, irrelevant. The important thing is from now on I want to be known as Dieter Terrif. When I graduate, the diploma will say Dieter Terrif, M.D.,Ph.D.

A slip. The scrote caught it, pounced on it:

We don't grant Ph. D.'s, Mister-

I realize that. I'm planning on continuing my studies past the M.D. Surgical pathology, histological research.

Scrote was definitely confused. That was the problem with dealing with inferior types.

Really, now, this is highly irregular.

Scrote fondled the breasts of the meerschaum lady, pig eyes widening as he watched the money land on his desk.

One, two, three, four, five hundred-dollar bills, fanned out like a green poker hand.

Will this help regularize it?

A greedy hand reaching out. Then, hesitation. More greed.

Five hundred more landed on the desk.

What do you say, Dean?

Well, I suppose

Little shit held a grudge against him after that, looked at him strangely every time they passed each other.

No matter. His new identity cleansed him. Six months of medical studies went by fast, despite tropical storms and heavy rains that brought more mosquitoes to the island; a plague of hairy spiders, spiny lizards, and other creepy-crawlies making their way into the dormitories, scuttling across night sheets, melding bad dreams with reality.

His fellow students woke up screaming. More morons started dropping out, talking about pharmacy school, chiropractic.

None of that second-rate bullshit for him.

He floated above it, cracking the books. Filling his head with doctor-words, taking special pleasure in Gross Lab, spending extra time there. Alone in the basement.

He had little use for food or sleep, was preparing himself for his rightful role as prizewinning pathologist on the staff of Columbia Presbyterian Hospital.

Then came the day they wheeled Gauguin Boy into the lab, brain-ravaged, but the body so beautiful.

The cadaver got assigned to another student. He bribed the moron, exchanged a disgusting, shriveled old man, plus cash, for the boy.

Came back late at night to study. And cut. Lit the lamp over his dissecting table, left the rest of the room dark. Opened the black leather case, took out a dancer and made a real science Y incision. Cracked the sternum, pinned back the skin flaps.

And saw the internal beauty.

He wanted to dive in, swim among the colors, unite with the cells, the structure, the primal soup of life.

Be as one.

And why not?

Moving automatically, without thinking, he was stripping off his clothes, his nakedness delicious and holy. The lab, hot and humid and reeking of formaldehyde and rot, crickets chirping inside and out. But he wasn't afraid, wasn't sweating, so cool with purpose, floating above it all.

Then descending. On top of the boy, the hole a window to beauty, welcoming him.

Merge.

Coolflesh.

A moment of indescribable ecstasy, then betrayal:

Pidgin curses. The lights sharp and blinding.

Professor Anton Bromet Van der Veering, M.D., D.Sc, standing in the doorway, pipe in hand, the naked-lady meerschaum resembling a tiny female victim struggling in his slimy yellow fingers.

Staring, the piggy-slant eyes so bugged out they'd become round.

Fucker expelled him that night, gave him three days to leave the island. Remained resolute, beyond the lure of more money.

The first time in St. Ignatius history. Hot death-shame took hold of him and made him tremble as he packed. He considered letting a dancer jitterbug along his own wrists, ending it all, then realized it was an honor to be expelled.

He was lucky: set free from a shitpile, separated from stink. Too clean and noble for this place. It was all part of a plan-of Schwann's plan.

Dieter-Daddy had better things in mind for him. Cleaner things.

He put aside failure-thoughts and gave himself a bon voyage party. Gauguin Girl down by the river, washing clothes. Exchange of smiles. Hi, I'm Dr. Terrific. The sweet bliss of real science, in the creamy green silence of the jungle.

He used her bucket and river water to wash her. Left her lying under an enormous mango tree-more bloody fruit to match the soft, festering ones that had fallen to the ground.

Bye-bye, stinkhole.

A stopover in Amsterdam, sluts in windows-he would have loved to play real science with them, but no time.

Back home, he went to see Doctor in his office at the hospital. Kikefuck said nothing, shot him I-told-you-so taunt-beams with his silence.

You'll find me another school. A real one.

Oh, sure, just like that.

Bet on it. Knowing he had the fucker's balls in his pocket.

But a week later the fucker was history. Keeled over in the operating room, dropped dead right on top of a patient.

First-class joke: Famous heart surgeon dies of heart attack. Raking in big bucks bypassing other people's arteries; meanwhile, his own were sludging up.

Funny, but not funny. In death, the fucker got in his last licks: left him out of the will. Everything signed over to Sarah.

As if she needed it, out of Harvard, Mass General, a psychiatrist with a brand-new Boston practice. And married to that fat little hook-nosed kikeshit, also a shrink; on top of everything else, his family was filthy rich. The two of them raking it in, with their Beacon Hill town house, summer home "on the Cape," Mercedes, good clothes, theater tickets.

He and Sarah barely noticed each other at the funeral. He stared at her tits, but kept to himself, talked to no one. She interpreted it as heavy-duty grief, wrote him a letter stinking of phony sympathy, signing over the deed to the pink Haus to him.

Throw a bone to stupid little brother.

One day he'd kill her for it.

Deprived of his ball-hold on Doctor, he took time to reassess his situation: He owned his cars. The portfolio was doing nicely-couple of hundred thou. The savings account had forty-two thou-money he'd saved up over the years from his hospital job, pill profits. His clothes, his costumes. The books in the library. The big green book. The Schwann bible. The dancers in their velvet leather crib.

He sold the pink house cheap and fast, took in another four hundred thousand. After taxes and commission, two hundred thirty thou was left.

He put it all in the bank. Boxed the books, stashed them in the Plymouth, drove around looking for a place to live, and found an apartment near Nasty: two bedrooms, two baths, clean and cheap. Twenty bucks a month extra for two parking spaces.

He spent two days scrubbing the place from floorboard to ceiling, set up bedroom number two as a lab. Went back to the hospital and got his mail-delivery job back, stole more pills than ever, and sold them for higher profit margins. Added to his fortune, spent his free time in the library.

His vacation time was set aside for travel. Medical conventions, pleasure trips, using interesting identities, becoming new people.

Travel was fun. Trapping and hunting.

Now, he'd really expanded his vistas, was an international hunter.

Back in Europe: nightwork in Amsterdam. After all those years, he'd gotten back there, found a slant window-slut, took her down to the docks, and initiated her into the world of real science.

Bought H from a diamond-eared nigger on Kalverstraat near the Dam Square, packed it without worry-U.N. luggage got V.I.P. treatment. Besides, who would think of bringing the stuff into the Middle East?

Then on to Kikeland.

A German Haus in Kikeland.

So real, so right.

While drawing up his safari plan in New York, he'd known he wanted a second place, his own place, away from the others. There was an all-night newsstand on Broadway, near Times Square. He went to it one Friday night and bought The Jerusalem Post, U.S. edition. Took it home and checked the classifieds under Dwellings, Jerusalem-rentals and read magic words:

VILLA, GERMAN COLONY, 3 RMS. AMENITIES, FURN, 1 YR. MIN.

A phone number in New York.

The German Colony. He looked it up at the main branch of the New York Public Library, in the Encyclopedia Judaica. Old southern Jerusalem neighborhood named after the German Templar sect that had lived there from the 1870's until the Fuhrer's Holy War, when they were kicked out by the British for distributing Nazi literature.

Aryans in Kikeland, brothers in spirit! So real, so right!

The kikefuck who'd run the ad was a professor named Gordon, on sabbatical at City University of New York. More than happy to rent him the place, especially after he offered a year's rent up front in cash, plus damage deposit.

Phony name, Manhattan post office box as an address.

Everything conducted over the telephone.

Cash in the mail, keys mailed to the box three days later.

A month later he was walking through the place, knowing it was rightfully his.

Old, dark, tile-roofed Haus, shadowed by big trees, hidden from the road. A main entrance in front and another through the back. A closed double garage. And a bonus he learned about months later: just south of Liberty Bell Park, hop, skip, and jump to the tower where the nigger-kike Sharavi lived.

A clear view of the tower.

Him and his dog and his nigger friends and his kikey-ikey family.

Had to be fate, everything coming together.

He'd made himself comfy in his German Haus. Would have given anything to see the look on Gordon's hooked-nose face when he returned next year and found out what had been done to his little kikenest, the trade he'd made for the fucking damage deposit.

But Doctor Terrific would be long gone, by then. On to new adventures.

The faggot-cop on the table stirred again, pretty eyelashes fluttering, lips parting as if for a kiss.

He filled a syringe with H, then decided to hold off.

Let him wake up, see the swastikas on the walls, the heads and pelts and messages from Dieter. Then put him back under.

Faggot opened his eyes wide. Then his mouth, which was quickly filled with a wadded-up cloth.

Taking in the room, gulping and thrusting and straining against the ropes.

"Hi, I'm Dr. Terrific. What seems to be the problem?"

Monday, two a.m. The cries and pleadings of Margaret Pauline Cassidy still filled Daniel's ears as he left the interrogation room.

A Mossad guard man handed him the message slip: Rav Pakad Harel needed to speak to him immediately. He left the subground interrogation suite, took the stairs up to the third floor, and wondered what the Latam chief had come up with. As he climbed, his thoughts returned to Cassidy.

Pathetic young woman. She'd entered the session spitting defiance, still believing Al Biyadi intended to marry her, that their relationship had something to do with love.

Shmeltzer had torn into her, stripped away those fantasies in no time at all.

It opened her up fast. The tape recorder was gorging itself on names, dates, and numbers by the time the brass stormed in. Laufer, his boss, high-ranking tight-lipped boys from Mossad and Shin Bet. Taking over. The case was now national security, Shmeltzer and Daniel allowed to stay but relegated to observer status.

Priorities were clear, Laufer's attitude an excellent barometer. Since the Amelia Catherine covert, the deputy commander had abandoned his hands-off stance, insisted upon receiving daily progress reports, copies of the medical charts, the Sumbok list, the logs of the surveillance from the law building. But this morning he had no time for any of it, showed not the slightest curiosity about the case.

Fine, fine, Sharavi. Rushing past Daniel in order to question the terrorists.

Daniel watched, too, sitting behind one-way glass, as a Mossad investigator walked the soil Shmeltzer had plowed.

Three interrogations proceeded simultaneously. A marathon.

Al Biyadi in one room; next door his cousin, the phony charwoman. Both of them toughing it out, silent as dust.

But Cassidy had spilled to Nahum. He'd ignored her insults, the anti-Semitic slurs, kept picking and tearing at her resistance until he made her see that she'd been used and demeaned.

When the insight hit her, she did an immediate about-face, turning her wrath upon Al Biyadi, vomiting out her shame and hurt, talking so fast they'd had to slow her down, tell her to speak so that the recorder picked up more than mush.

And talk she did: How Hassan Had seduced her, strung her along with promises of matrimony, a big house back in America, back in Huntington Beach, California. Children, cars, the good life.

Just one more assignment before settling down to eternal domestic bliss. A dozen one mores; a score.

She'd started by composing and distributing PLO literature for him in Detroit, typing and proofreading the English versions, delivering boxfuls at out-of-the-way night drops. Meeting men in cafes, smiling Arab men. In retrospect she realized they'd had no respect for her, had been mocking her. At the time she'd thought them mysterious, charming.

Running errands. Picking up parcels at Detroit Metropolitan Airport. Making coded phone calls and taking down incomprehensible messages. Side trips up to Canada, delivering packages to a row house in Montreal, returning with other packages to Michigan. Serving coffee and donuts to Hassan's friends as they met in the basement of a Black Muslim mosque. All of it in her spare time-going off shift at Harper Hospital and heading straight for her unpaid second job. But reimbursed by love, freeing her lover to complete his medical studies. The lack of romance sometimes painful. But telling herself that he was a patriot with more important things on his mind than movies and dinner dates. A patriot in jeopardy-the Zionists were watching him; he needed to maintain an apolitical stance.

He made love to her infrequently, told her she was a warrior-heroine, the kind of woman he wanted as mother of his children.

They signed up for the U.N. job together, planned to carry their activism to Palestine. Here, too, he doctored while she did the dirty work.

She composed twenty different propaganda pamphlets, found a printer in Nablus who could make them up in English, French, and Arabic. Made contact with the PLO operatives who came to the Amelia Catherine disguised as patients, growing close to one of them-Hassan's cousin, Samra. A pretty, dark girl, also trained as a nurse but working full-time for the liberation of Palestine. Hassan introduced them to each other in one of the examining rooms; an easy bond of friendship followed soon. The two women became confidantes, tutor and student.

Samra coached, Peggy performed well.

In February she was promoted to more important functions: serving as a conduit between Hassan and arms smugglers in Jordan, making payoffs, overseeing early morning transfers of the wooden crates to the big house on Ibn Haldoun.

Samra lived in a flat in Sheikh Jarrah, but the house was hers, deeded to her family-a rich family, like Hassan's. Her father had been a judge in East Jerusalem before escaping to Amman in '

Good friend, Cousin Samra.

In reality she was no cousin at all, but a wife. The one and only Mrs. Hassan Al Biyadi. A Jordanian marriage certificate found in her purse proved it, complete with signature by her father the judge.

Shmeltzer had waved the dogeared piece of paper in Cassidy's face, told her she was a gullible idiot, a stupid, stupid girl who deserved to be deceived.

She screamed denial. The old detective slapped her out of her hysteria and continued to attack her verbally, savagely, to the point where Daniel thought of intervening. But he didn't and finally the denial gave way to a new grasp on reality. Peggy Cassidy sat in her chair, shaking, gulping water, bubbling at the mouth, unable to spill her guts fast enough.

Yes, she'd known the first two Butcher victims were Amelia Catherine patients-Hassan's patients. Had wanted to tell someone-Mr. Baldwin, at least. But Hassan forbade it, said their cover was more important, they couldn't afford police probing around the hospital.

She began weeping: "Those poor women!" Hassan hadn't cared, didn't care about anyone! He was a pig-the Arabs were all pigs. Filthy, sexist pigs, she hoped they all rotted in hell, hoped the Jews killed every single one of them.

One extreme to the other.

An unstable girl. Daniel wondered how she'd cope with prison.

Amos Harel was waiting outside his office, pacing and smoking. Unlike him to show nervousness; something was wrong.

Gauloise butts littered the floor. The door was closed. As Daniel came closer, he saw the look on the Latam chief's face and a flame ignited in his belly.

"One of my men is dead," said Harel hoarsely. "Itzik Nash, strangled in the alley behind the reporter's building. Your man, Cohen, is missing-no trace of the car we gave him. We found his radio near Itzik's body. They were supposed to maintain regular contact-Cohen was probably checking up on Itzik when he got hit. The reporter's also dead, bludgeoned to pulp up in his flat, swastikas painted in blood all over his bedroom walls-his own blood, according to Forensics. They're still there swabbing and dusting. The Canadian, Carter, is the only suspect who was out last night. No one knows where the fuck he is."

Daniel knew Itzik Nash-they'd attended Police School together. A roly-poly guy with a ready arsenal of lewd jokes. Daniel visualized him wearing the thick-tongued idiot's yawn of the strangulation victim. Thought of Avi in the Butcher's hands and found himself trembling.

"God. What the hell happened!"

Harel took hold of the doorknob, twisted savagely, and shoved the door open. Inside his office sat a Latamnik-the man who'd broadcast as Relic. He was staring at the floor. Harel's throat-clearing raised his face, and Daniel saw that his eyes were lifeless, filmed over. He looked withered, a husk of himself. The code name strangely apt.

"Get the hell out here and tell him what happened," ordered Harel.

"He faked us out," said the Latamnik, coming to the doorway.

Harel put his face close to his man's, sprayed Relic with spittle as he talked: "No vidduy, just facts."

Relic licked his lips, nodded, recited: "Carter took the predictable path, Ben Adayah to Sultan Suleiman, walked right by me. I picked up his trail the moment he passed the Rockefeller, followed him up Nablus Road and into the Pilgrim's Vision Hotel. Place was empty, just the night clerk. Carter registered, went up the stairs. I leaned on the clerk; he told me the room number-three-oh-two-and that Carter had ordered a whore. I asked if Carter had ever stayed there before-did he have any particular whore in mind? The clerk said no to both. There was only one roundheels working this late-she was up in one of the other rooms, would be free in fifteen minutes. He was planning to send her up then. I warned him not to let on anything was up, took a house key, and waited in the room behind the desk. When the whore showed up and picked up the key, I followed her to three-oh-two, let her go in, waited maybe fifteen seconds, then went in myself."