The Butcher's Theater

by Jonathan Kellerman

  He’d reached the David Remez intersection, just yards from the city walls, when his beeper went off.

  CHAPTER

  13

  “What’s he like?” Avi Cohen asked Shmeltzer.

  “Who?”

  They were sitting in a gray, windowless room at Headquarters, surrounded by file folders and sheaves of computer printout. The room was freezing and Cohen’s arms were studded with goose bumps. When he’d asked Shmeltzer about it, the old guy had shrugged and said, “The polygraph officer next door, he likes it that way.” As if that explained it.

  “Sharavi,” said Cohen, opening a missing-kid file. He gazed at the picture and put it atop the growing mountain of rejects. Donkey work—a cleaning woman could do it.

  “What do you mean, what’s he like?”

  Shmeltzer’s tone was sharp and Cohen thought: Touchy bastards, all of them in this section.

  “As a boss,” he clarified.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Just curious. Forget I asked.”

  “Curious, eh? You generally a curious fellow?”

  “Sometimes.” Cohen smiled. “It’s supposed to be a good quality in a detective.”

  Shmeltzer shook his head, lowered his eyes, and ran his index finger down a column of names. Sex offenders, hundreds of them.

  They’d been working together for two hours, collating, sorting, and for two hours the old guy had worked without complaining. Hunched over the list, making subfiles, cross-referencing, checking for aliases or duplicates. Not much of a challenge for a mefakeah, thought Cohen, but it didn’t seem to bother him. Probably a burnout, liked playing it safe.

  His own assignment was even more tedious: going through more than 2,000 missing-kid files and matching them up with the photo of the cutting victim. Only 1,633 were open cases, the computer officer had assured him. Only. But someone had mistakenly left more than 400 solved ones mixed in.

  He’d made a remark about clerical incompetence to Shmeltzer, who replied, “Don’t gripe. You never know where your next lead will come from. She could be one who’d been found, then ran away again—wouldn’t hurt to look at all the closed ones.” Great.

  “He’s a good boss,” said Shmeltzer. “You hear any different?”

  “No.” Cohen came across a photo of a girl from Romema who resembled the dead girl. Not exactly, but close enough to put aside.

  “Just curious, eh?”

  “Right.”

  “Listen,” said the old man, “you’re going to hear stuff—that he made it because of protekzia or because he’s a Yemenite. Forget all that crap. The protekzia may have gotten him started but”—he smiled meaningfully—“nothing wrong with connections, is there, son?”

  Cohen blushed furiously.

  “And as far as the Yemenite stuff goes, they may very well have been looking for a token blackie, but by itself that wouldn’t have done the trick, understand?”

  Cohen nodded, flipped the pages of a file.

  “He got to where he is because he does his job and does it well. Which is something, Mr. Curious, that you might consider for yourself.”

  CHAPTER

  14

  Daoud looked terrible. One glance told Daniel that he’d been up all night. His tan suit was limp and dirt-streaked, his white shirt grayed by sweat. Coppery stubble barbed his face and made his wispy mustache seem even more indistinct. His hair was greasy and disordered, furrowed with finger-tracks, his eyes swollen and bloodshot. Only the hint of a smile—the faintest upturning of lips—which he struggled manfully to conceal—suggested that the morning had been other than disastrous.

  “Her name is Fatma Rashmawi,” he said. “The family lives up there, in the house with the arched window. Father, two wives, three sons, four daughters, two daughters-in-law, assorted grandchildren. The men are all masons. Two of the sons left for work at seven. The father stays home—injured.”

  “The pools,” said Daniel. “Your hunch was right.”

  “Yes,” said Daoud.

  They stood near the top of Silwan, concealed in a grove of olive trees. The residence Daoud indicated was of intermediate size, sitting at the edge of a dry white bluff, set apart from its neighbors. A plain house, ascetic even, the masonry arch above the front window the sole decorative detail.

  “How did you find them?”

  “An idiot helped me. Deaf kid name of Nasif, lives down there, with a widowed mother. I came across him yesterday and he seemed to recognize the picture, kept calling her a bad girl, but he was too stupid for me to believe it meant anything. Then the mother came out, showed no sign of recognition, and claimed the boy was talking nonsense. So I left and went to the Old City, did a little work in the Muslim Quarter. But it kept bothering me—I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d seen the girl at the pools. So I came back this morning and leaned on her for a while and finally she told me. After pleading with me not to let on that she’d talked—apparently the Rashmawis are a hotheaded bunch, fashioned. Father’s the king; the kids stay under his thumb even after they marry. Fatma was the youngest and somewhat of a rebel—pop music, an eye for the boys. There were quarrels, the father and brothers beat her, and she ran away or was kicked out about two months ago—at least that’s what Mrs. Nasif says. According to her, no one’s seen Fatma since then and she claims no one has any idea where she went. But she may be lying, still holding back. She was frightened—the message between the lines was that the Rashmawis were capable of doing violence to the girl or anyone else who broke their rules.”

  Families, thought Daniel. The same old story? He found it hard to reconcile what had been done to Fatma Rashmawi with a family squabble. Still, the case was starting to take form. Names, places, the signposts of reality.

  “I have an idea where she went,” he said, and told Daoud the Turk’s story about Saint Saviour’s.

  “Yes, that would make sense,” said Daoud, green eyes sparkling from beneath thickened lids.

  “You did excellent work,” said Daniel. “Absolutely first-rate.”

  “Just following procedure,” Daoud insisted, but he stood up straight, threw back his shoulders with pride.

  A cock crowed and a warm breeze rustled the leaves of the olive trees. The ground was soft with fallen olives, the air marinated with the salt smell of rotting fruit.

  Daniel looked up at the Rashmawi house.

  “We’ll go together and talk to them,” he said. “But not right now. Drive over to Kishle and phone the others. Shmeltzer should be at French Hill, in Records. Tell him what we’ve learned and have him do background checks on the Rashmawis and any of their kin. Find out, also, if a file’s ever been opened on Fatma. The Chinaman will probably be on beeper—have him come here and meet me. You go home, wash up, eat something, and come back at two. We’ll proceed from there.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Daoud, writing it all down.

  The front door of the Rashmawi house opened and a young pregnant woman came out, carrying a rolled-up rug. A swarm of small children tumbled out behind her. The woman unfurled the rug, held it with one hand, and began beating it with a stick. The children danced around her as if she were a maypole, squealing with delight as they tried to grab hold of dissolving dust swirls.

  “Anything else, Pakad?” asked Daoud.

  “Nothing until two. Go home, spend some time with your family.”

  Daniel waited in the grove for the Chinaman to arrive, observing the comings and goings of the village, keeping one eye fixed upon the Rashmawi house. At twelve-thirty, a woman—not the rug beater—came out and purchased egg-plant and tomatoes from a peddler who’d managed to wheel his cart to the upper level. By twelve thirty-nine she was back in the house. The kids ran in and out of the door, teasing and chasing each other. Other than that, no activity.

  The case seemed to be drawing him back in time. This morning in the Katamonim, and now, Silwan.

  He scanned the village, wondered which of the houses was the one where his great-grandfa
ther—the man whose name he bore—had grown up. Strange, he’d heard so many stories about the old days but had never bothered to check.

  Dinner table stories, recited like a liturgy. Of how hundreds of the Jews of San’a had fled the Yemenite capital, escaping from rising levels of Muslim persecution. Crossing the mountains and setting out in search of the Holy Land. Of how the first Daniel Sharavi had been one of them, arriving in Jerusalem in the summer of 1881, an undernourished ten-year-old in the company of his parents. Of how the Jews of San’a hadn’t been welcomed with open arms.

  The other residents of Jewish Jerusalem—the Sephardim and Ashkenazim—hadn’t known what to make of these small, brown, kinky-haired people who stood at their doorsteps, near-naked and penniless but smiling. Speaking Hebrew with a strange accent and claiming to be Jews who had braved storm and pestilence, climbing mountains on foot, walking through the desert from Arabia, subsisting on seeds and honey.

  Jerusalem, in those days, hadn’t spread beyond the Old City walls—two square kilometers stuffed with ten thousand people, a third of them Jewish, almost all of them poor, living on donations from the Diaspora. Sanitation was primitive, raw sewage flowing through the streets, the cisterns polluted, epidemics of cholera and typhoid a way of life. The last thing the residents of the Jewish Quarter needed was a band of pretenders leeching off their beleaguered communities.

  After much head scratching, a test of Jewishness had been devised, the leaders of the Yemenites whisked into synagogue and tested on the finer points of Scripture by Sephardic and Ashkenazic rabbis.

  Great-great-grandfather Sa’adia, so the story went, had been the first to be quizzed. A goldsmith and teacher, a learned man with a fine, pure nature. When called upon, he’d begun reciting rapidly from the Book of Genesis, letter-perfect, without pause. Questions regarding the most obscure tractates of Talmud elicited an identical response—text and commentaries recited fluently, the finer points of jurisprudence explained concisely and clearly.

  The rabbis excused Sa’adia and called upon another man, who performed similarly. As did the next man, and the next. Yemenite after Yemenite knew the Torah by heart. When questioned about this, the little brown people explained that books were scarce in San’a, forcing everyone to use his head. In many cases a single volume was shared around the table, with one person learning to read conventionally, another upside down, still others from the left or right side. Happily, they demonstrated those talents, and the rabbis observed, astonished. The issue of Jewishness was laid to rest, the new arrivals allowed to share the poverty of their brethren.

  In the beginning they settled just outside the walls, in the spot called Silwan, near the Siloam Pool, working as masons and laborers, living in tents while they built stone houses, moving, over the years, back into the Old City, into the Jewish Quarter the Arabs called Al Sion, in order to be nearer to the Wailing Place, a stone’s throw from the Tomb of David.

  It was there, within the walls, that Daniel’s grandfather and father had been born, and from where he himself had been carried off as an infant in ’48, rescued by strangers, squalling in terror under the thunder of gunfire.

  My origins, he thought, gazing out at the village. But he felt no pangs of nostalgia, saw only the origins of a dead girl.

  CHAPTER

  15

  Warm beer, thought the Chinaman, quickening his pace. He’d been prepared to report his information on the girl, thought he’d done a pretty good job for one night out, until the Arab had called and told him of the ID. Sharp guy, Daoud. Still, the boyfriend angle was a contribution.

  The village had come alive, shutters spreading, doors nudged open, a buzz of mutters and whispers trailing the detectives’ footsteps. The corneal glint of the curious sparkled from grated windows, receding into the shadows at the hint of eye contact with the strangers.

  “Probably looks like a raid to them,” said the Chinaman.

  Neither Daniel nor Daoud responded. Both were concentrating on walking quickly enough to keep up with the big man’s stride.

  They reached the Rashmawi house and climbed the front steps. The arched window was open but covered with a bright floral drape. From inside came a drone of Arabic music and the aroma of coffee laced with cardamom.

  Daniel knocked on the door. There was no immediate answer and he knocked again, louder. At once the volume of the music lowered and was overriden by conversation. The sound of shuffling feet grew louder and the door opened. A young man stood in the doorway—eighteen or nineteen, slender, and round-faced with a prematurely receding hairline. A pair of heavy tortoise-shell eyeglasses dominated a mild face pitted with acne scars. He wore a cheap gray shirt, beltless gray trousers a size too large, and black bedroom slippers. Looking over his shoulder, he came out to the top step, closed the door behind him, and stared at each of them, dark eyes swimming behind thick lenses.

  “Yes?” His voice was soft, tentative.

  “Good afternoon,” said Daniel, in Arabic. “I’m Chief Inspector Sharavi of the Police Department. This is Sub-inspector Lee and this is Sergeant Daoud. Your name, please?”

  “Rashmawi, Anwar.”

  “What’s your relationship to Muhamid Rashmawi?”

  “He’s my father. What’s this about, sir?” There was a curious lack of surprise in the question. The flat, sad nuance of anticipated misfortune.

  “We’d like to come in and talk with your father.”

  “He’s not a well man, sir.”

  Daniel took out the photo of Fatma and showed it to him. The young man stared at it, lips trembling, eyes blinking rapidly. For a moment it seemed as if he would break into tears. Then he wiped his face clean of expression, held the door open for them, and said, “Come in, sirs.”

  They entered a long, narrow, low-ceilinged room, freshly whitewashed and surprisingly cool, its stone floor covered by frayed, overlapping Oriental rugs and mattresses draped with embroidered coverlets. A rug hung also from the rear wall, next to a row of coat hooks and a framed photograph of Gamal Abdel Nasser. All the other walls were bare.

  Directly under Nasser’s portrait was a portable television on an aluminum stand. The coffee aroma came from a small cooking area to the left: wood stove, hot plate, homemade shelves bearing pots and utensils. A battered iron saucepan sat on the stove, sizzling over a low fire. The stove’s exhaust conduit rose and pierced the ceiling. Across the room, to the right, was a flimsy-looking wooden door and from behind it came female voices, the cries and laughter of children.

  An old man sat on a mattress in the center of the room, thin, sun-baked, and wrinkled as an old shopping bag. His bare head was bald and conspicuously pale, his mustache a grizzled rectangle of white filling the space between nose and upper lip. He wore a pale-gray jallabiyah striped faintly with darker gray. An unfurled kaffiyah headdress and coil lay in his lap. To his right was a small carved table upon which sat an engraved brass pitcher and matching demitasse cup, a pack of Time cigarettes, and a string of worry beads. His left hand held a red plastic transistor radio. One of his feet was curled under him; the other extended straight out and was wrapped in bandages. Next to the ankle was an assortment of vials and ointments in squeeze-tubes. Just behind the medicines, another carved table held a well-foxed copy of the Quran within arm’s reach.

  He stared downward, as if studying the pattern of the rug, a cigarette dangling from his lips. The sound of the detectives’ entry caused him to look up, squinting. Expressionless. It was then that Daniel noticed the resemblance to Fatma—the same synchrony of features, the handsome crispness lacking in the brother.

  “Father,” said Anwar, “these men are with the police.”

  Rashmawi gave his son a sharp look and the youth rushed over and raised him to tottering feet. Once upright, the old man gave a small head bow and said, in a low, rasping voice, “Marhaba.” Welcome. “Ahlan Wa Sahlan.” You’ve found in our home a wide valley.

  The hospitality ritual. Daniel looked at the hard, weathered fa
ce, like a carved mask with its hollowed cheeks and deep eye sockets, unsure if the man behind it was victim or suspect.

  “Ahlan Bek,” he replied. The same welcome will be extended to you when you visit my home.

  “Sit, please,” said Rashmawi, and he allowed his son to lower him.

  The detectives settled in a semicircle. The old man barked an order and Anwar crossed the room, opened the wooden door, and spoke into the opening. Two young women hurried out, dressed in dark robes, their hair covered, their feet bare. Averting their faces, they padded quickly to the cooking area and began a rapid ballet of pouring, scooping, and filling. Within moments the men were presented with demitasses of sweet, muddy coffee, platters laden with dishes of olives, almonds, sunflower seeds, and dried fruit.

  Rashmawi waved his hand and the women danced away, disappearing into the room on the right. Another wave sent Anwar back with them. Almost immediately, an insectile buzz of conversation filtered through the thin wood of the door.

  “Cigarette,” said Rashmawi, holding out his pack. The Chinaman and Daoud accepted and lit up.

  “You, sir?”

  Daniel shook his head and said, “Thank you for your kind offer, but today is my Sabbath and I don’t handle fire.”

  The old man looked at him, saw the kipah on his head, and nodded. He raised a dish of dried figs from the platter and waited until Daniel was chewing enthusiastically before settling back on the mattress.

  “To what do I owe the honor of this visit?”

  “We’re here to talk about your daughter, sir,” said Daniel.

  “I have three daughters,” said the old man casually. “Three sons as well, and many fat grandchildren.”

  One daughter less than Daoud had mentioned.