The Butcher's Theater

by Jonathan Kellerman

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

  “What if. Do you have any evidence of that?”

  “I’m only raising it as an example—”

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

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

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

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

  “Could be’s and maybe’s,” said Laufer. “That’s the prosecutor’s problem. In the meantime we’ll proceed based on the facts at hand.”

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

  “No, thanks.”

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

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

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

  “Stop searching for problems that don’t exist.”

  “As you wish, Tat Nitzav.”

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

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

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

  Daniel knew what was coming.

  “Over two years before.”

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

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

  “But he wasn’t questioned originally? During the active investigation?”

  “No.”

  “May I ask why not?”

  The same question he’d asked himself.

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

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

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

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

  “I’ve started doing that, Tat Nitzav.”

  “Good day, Sharavi. And congratulations on solving the case.”

  CHAPTER

  22

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

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

  “I think I hear the office calling.”

  “Never mind. Pass the rice.”

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

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

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

  The waiter was a tiny, hyperactive Vietnamese, one of the boat people the Israelis had taken in several years ago. He rushed in and out of the kitchen, bouncing from table to table carrying huge trays of food, speaking rapidly in pidgin Hebrew and laughing at jokes that only he seemed to understand. The large center table was occupied by a party of Dutch nuns, cheerful, doughy-faced women who chewed energetically and laughed along with Nguyen as they fumbled with their chopsticks. The rest of the customers were Israelis, serious about eating, cleaning their plates and calling for more.

  Aliza took in the activity, the polyglot madness, smiled and stroked her husband’s forearm. He reached out and took her fingers in his, exhibiting just a hint of the strength stored within the oversized digits.

  It had taken her some time to get used to it. She’d grown up a farm girl, on Kibbutz Yavneh, a bosomy, big-boned redhead. Her first beaus, robust, tractor-driving youths—male versions of herself. She’d always had a thing for big men, the muscular, bulky types who made you feel protected, but never had she imagined herself married to someone who looked like an oversized Mongol warrior. And the family: her mother-in-law your basic yiddishe mama, her hair in a babushka, still speaking Hebrew with a Russian accent; Abba Haim an old Buddha, as yellow as parchment; Yossi’s older brother, David, suave, always wearing a suit, always making deals, always away on business.

  She’d met Yossi in the army. She’d worked in requisitions and had been attached to his paratrooper unit. He’d stormed into her office like a real bulvan, angry and looking ludicrous because the uniform that had been issued to him was three sizes too small. He started mouthing off at her; she mouthed back and that was it. Chemistry. And now little Rafi, straw-haired, with almond eyes and the shoulders of a working man. Who’d have predicted it?

  As she’d gotten to know Yossi, she’d realized that they came from similar stock. Survivors. Fighters.

  Her parents had been teenaged lovers who escaped from Munich in ’41 and hid for months in the Bavarian forest, subsisting on leaves and berries. Her father stole a rifle and shot a German guard dead in order to get them across the border. Together they traveled on foot, making their way through Hungary and Yugoslavia and down to Greece. Catch
ing a midnight boat ride to Cyprus and paying the last of their savings to a Cypriot smuggler, only to be forced off the boat at gunpoint, five miles from the coast of Palestine. Swimming the rest of the way on empty stomachs, crawling half-dead onto the shores of Jaffa. Avoiding the scrutiny of Arab cutthroats long enough to reach their comrades at Yavneh.

  Yossi’s mother had also escaped the Nazis by walking. In 1940. All the way from Russia to the visa-free port of Shanghai, where she lived in relative peace, along with thousands of other Jews. Then war broke out in the Pacific and the Japanese interned all of them in the squalid camps of Hongkew.

  A tall, husky theology student named Huang Lee had been held captive there, too, suspected of collaborating with the Allies, because he was an intellectual. Dragged out periodically to endure public floggings.

  Two weeks before Hiroshima, the Japanese sentenced Huang Lee to death. The Jews took him in and he evaded execution by hiding in their midst, being passed from family to family under the cover of darkness. The last family he stayed with had also taken in an orphan from Odessa, a black-haired girl named Sonia. Chemistry.

  In 1947, Sonia and Huang came to Palestine. He converted to Judaism, took the name Haim—“life”—for he considered himself reborn, and they married. In ’48 both of them fought with the Palmah in Galilee. In ’49 they settled in North Jerusalem so that Huang Haim could study in Rabbi Kook’s Central Yeshiva. When the children came—David in 1951, Yosef four years later—Huang went to work as a postoffice clerk.

  For twelve years he stamped packages, noticing all the while the enthusiasm with which his co-workers devoured the dishes he brought for lunch—food from his childhood that he’d taught Sonia to cook. After saving up enough cash, the Lees opened the Shang Hai Palace, on Herzl Boulevard, in back of a Sonol petrol station. It was 1967, when spirits were high, everyone eager to forget death and find new pleasures, and business was brisk.

  It had remained brisk, and now Huang Haim Lee was able to hire others to wait on tables, free to spend his day studying Talmud and playing chess. A contented man, his sole regret that he hadn’t been able to transmit his love for religion to his sons. Both were good boys: David, analytic, a planner—the perfect banker. Yossi, wholly physical, but brave and warmhearted. But neither wore a kipah, neither kept Shabbat nor was attracted to the rabbinic tractates that he found irresistible—the subtleties of inference and exegesis that captivated his mind.

  Still, he knew he had little to complain about. His life had been a tapestry of good fortune. So many brushes with eternity, so many reprieves. Just last week he’d shoveled dirt over the bare roots of his new pomegranate tree, the last addition to his biblical garden. Experienced the privilege of planting fruit trees in Jerusalem.

  Aliza saw him smile, a beautiful Chinese smile, so calm and self-satisfied. She turned to her husband and kissed his hand. Yossi looked at her, surprised by the sudden show of affection, smiled himself, looking just like the old man.

  Across the room, Huang Haim moved his bishop. “Checkmate,” he told Rabbi Stolinsky, and got up to take the baby.

  Elias Daoud’s wife had grown fatter each year, so that now it was like sharing a bed with a mountain of pillows. He liked it, found it comforting to reach out in the middle of the night and touch all that softness. To part thighs as yielding as custard, submerge himself in sweetness. Not that he would have ever expressed such sentiments to Mona. Women did best when they were keyed up, just a little worried. So he teased her about her eating, told her sternly that she was consuming his salary faster than he could earn it. Then silenced her tearful excuses with a wink and a piece of sesame candy he’d picked up on the way home.

  Nice to be off-duty, nice to be in bed. He’d acquitted himself well, done an excellent job for the Jews.

  Mona sighed in her sleep and covered her face with a sausage of an arm. He raised himself up on his elbows. Looked at her, the dimpled elbow rising with each breath. Smiling, he began tickling her feet. Their little game. Waking her gently, before climbing the mountain.

  She was exactly the kind of girl his father would have hated, Avi knew. Which made her all the more attractive to him. Moroccan, to begin with, purely South Side. One of those working-class types who lived to dance. And young—not more than seventeen.

  He’d spotted her right away, talking with two other chickies who were total losers. But no loser, this one—really cute, in an obvious look-at-me kind of way. Far too much makeup. Long hair dyed an improbable black and styled in a fancy, feathery cut—which made sense because she’d told him she cut hair for a living; it was only logical that she’d want to show it off. The face under the feathery bangs was sweet enough: glossy cherry lips, huge black eyes, at the bottom a little pointy chin. And she had a great body, slender, no hair on her arms—which was hard to find in a dark girl. Tiny wrists, tiny ankles, one with a chain around it. And best of all, big soft breasts. Too big for the rest of her, really, which played off against the slenderness. All of it packed into a skintight black jumpsuit of some kind of wet-looking vinyl material.

  The fabric had given him his opening line.

  “Spill your drink?” Giving her the Belmondo smile, curling it around the cigarette, putting his hands on his hips and showing off his tight physique under the red Fila shirt.

  A giggle, the bat of an eyelash, and he knew she’d agree to dance with him.

  He could feel the big breasts, now, as they did the slow dance to an Enrico Macias ballad, the discotheque finally quiet after hours of rock. Nice soft mounds flattening against his chest. Twin pressure points, the hardness in his groin exerting a pressure of its own. She knew it was there and though she didn’t press back, she didn’t back away from it either, which was a good sign.

  She ran her hand over his shoulder and he let his fingers explore lower, caressing her tailbone in time with the music. One fingertip dared going lower, probing the beginnings of her gluteal cleft.

  “Naughty, naughty,” she said, but made no attempt to stop him.

  His hand dipped lower again, moving automatically. Cupping one buttock, nice and rubbery, all of it fitting into his palm. He pinched lightly, went back to massaging her lower back in time with the music, humming in her ear and kissing her neck.

  She raised her face, mouth half-open, kind of smiling. He brushed her lips with his, then moved in. There was a tangy taste to the kiss, as if she’d eaten spicy food and the heat had remained imbedded in her tongue. His breath, he knew, was bitter with alcohol. Three gin and tonics, more than he usually allowed himself. But working the murder case had made him nervous—all that reading, not knowing what he was doing, petrified of looking stupid—and now that it was over he needed the release. His first night back in Tel Aviv since the hassle with Asher Davidoff’s blonde. It wouldn’t be his last.

  In the end it hadn’t turned out bad. Sharavi had asked him to write up the final draft of the report, wanting him to be some damned secretary. The thought of all those words had made his knees go weak and he’d surprised himself by opening his mouth.

  “I can’t do it, Pakad.”

  “Can’t do what?”

  “Anything. I’m going to quit the police force.” Blurted it out, just like that, though he hadn’t come to a decision about it yet.

  The little Yemenite had nodded as if he’d expected it. Stared at him with those gold-colored eyes and said, “Because of the dyslexia?”

  It had been his turn to stare then, nodding dumbly, in shock, as Sharavi kept talking.

  “Mefakeah Shmeltzer told me you take an extraordinary amount of time to read things. Lose your place a lot and have to start over again. I called your high school and they told me about it.”

  “I’m sorry,” Avi had said, feeling stupid the moment the words left his lips. He’d trained himself long ago not to apologize.

  “Why?” asked Sharavi. “Because you have an imperfection?”

  “I’m just not suited for police work.”

  Sharavi held u
p his left hand, showed him the scars, a real mess.

  “I can’t box with bad guys, Cohen, so I concentrate on using my brains.”

  “That’s different.”

  Sharavi shrugged. “I’m not going to try to talk you into it. It’s your life. But you might think of giving yourself some more time. Now that I know about you, I could keep you away from paperwork. Concentrate on your strengths.” Smiling: “If you have any.”

  The Yemenite had taken him for a cup of coffee, asked him about his problem, gotten him to talk about it more than anyone ever had. A master interrogator, he realized later. Made you feel good about opening up.

  “I know a little bit about dyslexia,” he had said, looking down at his bad hand. “After ’67, I spent two months in a rehabilitation center—Beit Levinstein, near Ra’nana—working on getting some function back in the hand. There were kids there with learning problems, a few adults too. I watched them struggle, learning special ways to read. It seemed like a very difficult process.”

  “It’s not that bad,” Avi replied, rejecting the pity. “A lot of things are worse.”

  “True,” said Sharavi. “Stick around Major Crimes and you’ll see plenty of them.”

  The girl and he had been dancing and kissing for what seemed like hours but had to be only minutes because the Macias song had just ended.

  “Anat,” he said, escorting her off the dance floor, away from the crowd, away from her loser buddies, to a dark corner of the discotheque.

  “Yes?”

  “How about going for a drive?” Taking her hand.

  “I don’t know,” she said, but coyly, clearly not meaning it. “I have to work tomorrow.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Bat Yam.”

  Deep south. Figured.

  “I’ll drive you home then.” Her back was to the wall and Avi put his arm around her waist, leaned in and gave her another kiss, a short one. He felt her body go loose in his arms.

  “Umm,” she said.

  “Would you like another drink?” Smile, smile, smile.