The Butcher's Theater

by Jonathan Kellerman

  Exactly the kind of thing he’d joined the police to avoid.

  He started with Offenses Against Human Life, the juiciest category and one of the smallest. At least this stuff was alphabetized. First step was locating the names in each subcategory that began with the letter resh—which could be confusing because resh and dalet looked so similar, and even though dalet was at the beginning of the alphabet and resh toward the end, his damned brain seemed to keep forgetting that. Yud could be a problem, too—same shape as resh—if you looked at it in isolation from the other letters around it and forgot that it was smaller. Several times he got flustered, lost his place, and had to start all over again, following his fingertip down columns of small print. But finally he managed to cover all of it: Murder, Attempted Murder, Manslaughter, Death by Negligence, Threats to Kill, and the Other Offenses listing that was always tagged on at the end. In 263 files, no Rashmawis.

  Offenses Against the Human Body was absolute torture—10,000 Assault files, several hundred under resh—and his head hurt a lot more when he finished, hot pulses in his temples, a ring of pain around his eyes.

  Offenses Against Property was even worse, a real nightmare; burglary seemed to be the national pastime, all those two-wage-earner homes easy pickings, over 100,000 files, only some of it computerized. Impossible. He put it aside for later. Shmeltzer had the Sex Offenses printout, which left Security, Public Order, Morals, Fraud, Economic, and Administrative crimes.

  He began with Security crimes—the Rashmawis were Arabs. Of 932 cases, half had to do with violations of emergency laws, which meant the territories. No Rashmawis in the territories. No Rashmawis in the entire category. But wrestling with the words had caused the pain in his head to erupt into a giant, throbbing headache—the same hot, sickening pain he’d experienced all through school. Brain strain had been his secret name for it. His father had called it faking. Even after the doctors had explained it. Bullshit. If he’s strong enough to play soccer, he’s strong enough to do his homework. . . .

  Bastard.

  He got up, asked the Records officer if there was any coffee. She was sitting behind her desk reading what looked like the Annual Crime Report and didn’t answer.

  “Coffee,” he repeated. “Do I have to fill out a form to get some?”

  She looked up. Not a bad-looking girl, really. A petite brunette, with braided hair, a cute little pointed face. Moroccan or Iraqi, just the type he liked.

  “What was that?”

  He turned on the smile. “Do you have any coffee?”

  She looked at her watch. “You’re not finished yet?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t know what’s taking you so long.”

  Cunt. He held on to his temper.

  “Coffee. Do you have any?”

  “No.” She returned to the report. Started reading and shut him out. Really into the charts and statistics. As if it were some kind of romantic novel.

  Cursing, he returned to his lists. Offenses Against Morals: 60 Pimping cases. Nothing. Soliciting: 130 cases. Nothing. Maintaining a Brothel, Seduction of Minors, Dissemination of Indecent Material, nothing, nothing, nothing.

  The Loitering for the Purpose of Prostitution subcategory was tiny: 18 cases for the year. Two under resh:

  Radnick, J. Northern District

  Rashmawi, A. Southern District

  He copied down the case number, laboring over each digit, double-checking to make sure he had it perfect. Getting up again, he walked to the counter and cleared his throat until the Records officer looked up from her goddamned report.

  “What is it?”

  “I need this one.” He read off the numbers.

  Frowning with annoyance, she came around from behind the desk, handed him a requisition form, and said, “Fill this out.”

  “Again?”

  She said nothing, just gave him a snotty look.

  Grabbing up the paper, he moved several feet down the counter, pulled out a pen, and sweated with it. Taking too long.

  “Hey,” said the girl, finally. “What’s the problem?”

  “Nothing,” he snarled and shoved it at her.

  She inspected the file, stared at him as if he were some kind of freak, goddamn her, then took the form, went into the Records Room, and returned several minutes later with the RASHMAWI,A. file.

  He took it from her, went back to the school desk, sat down, and read the name on the tag: Anwar Rashmawi. Flipping it open, he sloughed through the arrest report: The perpetrator had been busted three years ago on the Green Line, near Sheikh Jarrah, after he and a whore had gotten into some kind of shoving match. A Latam detective had been on special assignment nearby—hidden in some bushes looking for terrorists—and had heard the noise. Tough luck for Anwar Rashmawi.

  The second page was something from Social Services, then what looked like doctors’ reports—he’d seen enough of those. Words, pages of them. He decided to scan the whole file, then go back over it, word by word, so that he’d be able to make a good presentation to Shmeltzer.

  He turned another page. Ah, now here was something he could deal with. A photograph. Polaroid, full color. He smiled. But then he looked at the picture, saw what was in it, and the smile died.

  Shit. Look at that. Poor devil.

  CHAPTER

  18

  Sunday, nine A.M., and the heat was punishing.

  The Dheisheh camp stunk sulfurously of sewage. The houses—if you could call them that—were mud-brick hovels wounded by punch-through windows and roofed with tarpaper; the paths between the buildings, boggy trenches.

  A shithole, thought Shmeltzer, as he followed the Chinaman and the new kid, Cohen, brushing away flies and gnats and walking toward the rear of the camp, where the little pisser was supposed to live.

  Issa Abdelatif.

  The way the Chinaman told it, the villagers of Silwan had been less than talkative. But Daoud had leaned on an old widow and finally gotten a name for Fatma’s long-haired boyfriend. She’d overheard the Rashmawis talking about him. A lowlife type. She had no idea where he came from.

  The name cropped up again, in the Offenses Against Property files, subcategory: Theft by Employee or Agent. He’d sent Cohen looking for it and the kid had stayed away so long Shmeltzer wondered if he’d drowned in the toilet or walked off the job. He’d gone looking for him, ran into him jogging up the stairs. Grinning ear to ear, with a look-at-me expression on his pretty-boy face. Dumb kid.

  The file itself was petty stuff. Abdelatif had worked the previous autumn as a ditch digger at a construction site in Talpiyot, and whenever he was around, tools started disappearing. The contractor had called in the police, and a subsequent investigation revealed that the little punk had been stealing picks, trowels, and shovels and selling them to residents of the refugee camp where he lived with his brother-in-law and sister. Following his arrest, he led the police to a cache at the rear of the camp, a hole in the ground where many of the tools were still hidden. The contractor, happy at getting most of his goods back and wanting to avoid the nuisance of a trial, refused to press charges. Two days in the Russian Compound jail, and the punk was back on the streets.

  A rat-faced little pisser, thought Shmeltzer, recalling the arrest photo. Long stringy hair, a weak chin, a pitiful mustache, rodent eyes. Nineteen years old and no doubt he’d been stealing all his life. Forty-eight hours behind bars wasn’t what lowlifes like that needed. A little hard time—getting his ass battered at Ramle—and he would have thought twice about misbehaving. Then maybe they wouldn’t be trudging through donkey shit looking for him. . . .

  All three of them carried Uzis, in addition to the 9 mms. Armed invaders. An army truck was stationed outside the entrance to the camp. Establishing a strong presence, showing who was in charge. But still they had to look over their shoulders as they sloshed through the muck.

  He hated going into these places. Not just the poverty and the hopelessness, but the fact that it made no damned sense at all. />
  All that crap about the Arabs and their strong sense of family, and look how they treated their own.

  Fucking King Hussein. In the nineteen years he’d occupied Judea and Samaria, he hadn’t done a goddamned thing in the way of social welfare. Too busy building himself that goddamned palace on the Hebron road and knocking up his goddamned American wife—no, back then it was still one of the Arab ones.

  Once a year the refugees sent letters to the Welfare and Labor Ministry in Amman, and if they were lucky, each family received a few dinars or nine kilograms of flour three months later. Thank you, King Shit.

  But the do-gooders—the private agencies—were all over the place, or at least their offices were. Air-conditioned places on the nicer streets of Bethlehem and East Jerusalem. The Saint Victor’s Society, the American Friends Services Committee, the Lutherans, AMIDEAST, UNIPAL, ANERA, with all that American oil money behind it. And the U.N., with its big white sign plastered across the front of the barbed-wire fence that surrounded the camp. ADMINISTERED BY THE UNITED NATIONS RELIEF AND WORKS AGENCY. Administered. What the hell did that mean?

  Not to mention the Saudis and the Kuwaitis. And the fucking PLO, big business with its banks and factories and farms and its airports in Africa—a report he’d just seen estimated the bastards’ net worth at 10 billion. Abu Mussa got a hundred grand American each month just for entertainment expenses.

  All that money, all the goddamned do-gooders, and the people in the camps still lived like wretches. Where the hell did all of it go? The U.N. guy’s Mercedes parked right in front of the camp was a partial answer—they got them subsidized for $4,000 American—but Mercedes alone didn’t start to explain it.

  A big scam—the kind of theft he would have loved to investigate.

  The U.N. guy was a sour-looking Norwegian with a kaffiyah hanging around his neck. Playing Great White Father, with his clipboard and pen on a chain, gazing down on the sixty or seventy people queuing up in front of him for some sort of privilege. When the three of them came in he’d looked down his nose at them, as if they were the bad guys. Gave them a hassle even though he had no legal jurisdiction over anything. But Dani had said not to make waves, so they put up with it for a while, watching the bastard fill out forms, screw around, and give them lemon-sucking looks before coming up with Abdelatif’s address. Meanwhile the people in the queue had to wait for whatever morsel the Norwegian was doling out. Typical.

  As if it were up to the Jews to solve the problem the Arabs had created—to eat the shit that nobody else had an appetite for. And the goddamned government fell into it, playing the liberal game—putting the refugees on the Israeli welfare rolls, giving them houses, schooling, free medical care. Since ’67 their infant mortality had dropped way down. More little pissers to contend with.

  Far as he was concerned, the people in the camp were cowards and the descendants of cowards. They’d run away from Jaffa and Lod and Haifa and Jerusalem because the Arab Legion had scared the shit out of them with those hysterical radio broadcasts back in ’48. He’d been a wet-eared kid of eighteen, remembered it well. Harsh voices screaming that the Jews ate babies alive, would cut the tits off their women, grind their bones, fuck their eye sockets, and drink their blood.

  Jihad had begun, the voices promised. A Holy War to end all wars. The infidels have been attacked and will soon be routed and driven into the Mediterranean. Leave at once and return soon with the victorious forces of the United Arab Armies. Not only will you reclaim your homes, noble brothers, but you will be privileged to confiscate everything the filthy Zionists have accumulated.

  Thousands of them listened and believed, falling over one another to escape. Swarming up into Syria and Lebanon and Gaza, pouring into Jordan in such numbers that the Allenby Bridge sagged under their weight. And when they got there, what did their Arab brethren with the strong family ties do for them? Built camps and locked them up. Just temporary, Ahmed. Wait in your nice little tent. Paradise is coming soon—dead Jews and endless virgins to fuck.

  Still waiting, he thought, eyeing a shriveled old woman sitting in the dirt and pounding chickpeas in a bowl. The door to her hovel was open; inside was an equally shriveled old man, lying on a mattress, smoking a narghila. Fucking political footballs.

  The educated ones had found jobs, settled all over the world. But the poor ones, the defective and stupid ones, stayed in the camps. Living like barnyard animals—breeding like them too. There were 400,000 of them still penned up in Lebanon and Jordan and Syria, another 300,000 dumped in Israel’s lap after ’67, with 230,000 in Gaza alone. Far as he was concerned, you build a wall around the Strip, stash them all there, and call it Palestine.

  Three hundred thousand wretches. The spoils of victory.

  The location the Norwegian had given them was midway through the camp, a mud house that looked as if it were melting. Empty oil drums were stacked along one side. Lizards ran over them, chasing insects.

  Maksoud, the brother-in-law, sat at a card table in front of the house in a greasy white shirt and snot-shiny black pants, playing sheshbesh with a kid of about twelve. The firstborn son. Privileged to sit with the old man and piss his life way.

  Not that the old man was so old. A sleepy-looking guy, pasty-faced, maybe thirty, with a ratty-looking mustache no better than Abdelatif’s, skinny arms, and a potbelly. A livid worm of scar tissue ran the length of his left forearm. Nasty-looking.

  He shook the dice, looked at their Uzis, rolled, and said, “He’s not here.”

  “Who’s not here?” asked Shmeltzer.

  “The pig, the leech.”

  “Does the pig have a name?”

  “Abdelatif, Issa.”

  A thick-skinned lizard ran up the side of the building, stopped, bobbed its head, and climbed out of sight.

  “What makes you think we’re looking for him?” asked the Chinaman.

  “Who else?” Maksoud moved two backgammon discs. The kid picked up the dice.

  “We’d like to look inside your home,” said Shmeltzer.

  “I have no home.”

  Always polemics.

  “This house,” said Shmeltzer, letting him know by the tone of his voice that he was in no mood to take any shit.

  Maksoud looked up at him. Shmeltzer looked right back, kicked the side of the house. Maksoud gave a phlegmy cough and yelled, “Aisha!”

  A short, thin woman opened the door. In her hand was a grimy dish towel.

  “These are police. They’re looking for your pig brother.”

  “He’s not here,” said the woman, looking scared.

  “They’re coming in to see our home.”

  The boy had rolled double sixes. He moved three discs into his home zone and removed one from the board.

  “Ahh,” said Maksoud, and he rose from the table. “Put it away, Tawfik. You learn too well.”

  There was an overtone of threat in his voice, and the boy complied, looking frightened, just like his mother.

  “Get out of here,” said Maksoud and the boy ran off. The brother-in-law pushed the wife out of the way and went inside. The detectives followed him.

  Just what you’d expect, thought Shmeltzer. Two tiny rooms and a cooking area, hot, filthy, smelly. A baby on the floor wearing a skullcap of flies, a chamber pot that needed emptying. No running water, no electricity. Crawling bugs decorating the walls. Administered.

  The wife busied herself with drying a dish. Maksoud sat down heavily on a torn cushion that looked as if it had once been part of a sofa. His paleness had taken on a yellowish cast. Shmeltzer wondered if it was the light or jaundice. The place felt dangerous, contagious.

  “Have a smoke,” he told the Chinaman, wanting something to burn away the smell. The big man pulled out his pack of Marlboros, offered it to Maksoud, who hesitated, then took one and let the detective light it for him.

  “When’s the last time you saw him?” Shmeltzer asked when the two of them were puffing away.

  Maksoud hesitated and the
Chinaman didn’t seem interested in waiting for an answer. He started walking through the room, looking, touching things, but lightly, without seeming intrusive. Shmeltzer noticed that Cohen seemed lost, not knowing what to do. One hand on the Uzi. Scared shitless, no doubt.

  Shmeltzer repeated the question.

  “Four or five days,” said Maksoud. “Insha’Allah, it will stretch to eternity.”

  The woman gathered enough courage to look up.

  “Where is he?” Shmeltzer asked her.

  “She knows nothing,” said Maksoud. A glance from him lowered her head just as surely as if he’d pushed it down with his hands.

  “Is it his habit to leave?”

  “Does a pig have habits?”

  “What did he do to piss you off?”

  Maksoud laughed coldly. “Zaiyel mara,” he spat. “He is like a woman.” The ultimate Arabic insult, branding Abdelatif as deceitful and irresponsible. “For fifteen years I’ve been putting him up and all he creates is trouble.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “From the time he was a baby—playing with matches, almost set the place on fire. Not that it would be a great loss, eh? Your government promised me a house. Five years ago and I’m still in this shithole.”

  “What else besides the matches?”

  “I told him about the matches, tried to knock sense into him. Little pig kept doing it. One of my sons got burned on the face.”

  “What else?” Shmeltzer repeated.

  “What else? When he was about ten he started to knife rats and cats and watch them die. Brought them inside and watched. She didn’t do a thing to stop him. When I found out about it I beat him thoroughly and he threatened to use the knife on me.”

  “What did you do about that?”

  “Took it away from him and beat him some more. He didn’t learn. Stupid pig!”

  The sister suppressed a sniffle. The Chinaman stopped walking. Shmeltzer and Cohen turned and saw the tears flowing down her cheeks.