The Butcher's Theater

by Jonathan Kellerman

  “What has he done?”

  “Broken the laws of God and man. Go back to your flat, phone 100, and tell the operator that Detective Avraham Cohen needs a police wagon dispatched to this address.”

  Malkovsky started praying again. A symphony of window-squeaks and whispers played in counterpoint to his entreaties.

  “This is a nice place, very tidy,” said Greenberg, still trying to absorb the reality of the moment.

  “Then let’s keep it that way. Make that call before everyone finds out you rent to dangerous criminals.”

  “Criminals? Never—”

  “Call 100,” said Avi. “Run. Or I’ll shoot him right here, leave the mess for you to clean up.”

  Malkovsky moaned.

  Greenberg ran.

  CHAPTER

  45

  Laufer’s secretary liked Pakad Sharavi, had always thought of him as kind of cute, one of the nicer ones. So when he entered the waiting room she smiled at him, ready for small talk. But the smile he offered in return was brittle, a poor excuse for cordiality, and when he brushed past her instead of sitting down, she was caught off guard.

  “Pakad—you can’t do that! He’s in a conference!”

  He ignored her, opened the door.

  The deputy commander was conferring with his soda water bottle, polishing the metal, peering up the spout. When he saw Daniel he put it down quickly and said, “What is this, Sharavi!”

  “I need to know where he is.”

  “I have no time for your nonsense, Sharavi. Leave at once.”

  “Not until you tell me where he is, Tat Nitzav.”

  The deputy commander bounded out of his chair, came speeding around the desk, and marched up to Daniel, stopping just short of collision.

  “Get the hell out.”

  “I want to know where Malkovsky is.”

  “He’s not your concern.”

  “He’s my suspect. I want to question him.”

  “Out.”

  Daniel ignored the digression. “Malkovsky’s a suspect in my murder case. I needed to talk to him.”

  “That’s crap,” said Laufer. “He’s not the Butcher—I ascertained that myself.”

  “What evidence did he present to convince you of his innocence?”

  “Don’t try to interrogate me, Sharavi. Suffice it to say he’s out of your bailiwick.”

  Daniel struggled with his anger. “The man’s dangerous. If Cohen hadn’t caught him, he’d still be raping children under official protection.”

  “Ah, Cohen,” said the deputy commander. “Another bit of insubordination that you—and he—will be answering to. Of course, the charges against him will be mitigated by inexperience. Improper influence by a commanding officer.”

  “Cohen was—”

  “Yes, I know, Sharavi. The girlfriend at Wolfson, one of life’s little coincidences.” Laufer extended a finger, poked at the air. “Don’t insult me with your little games, you bastard. You want to play games? Fine. Here’s a new one called suspension: You’re off the Butcher case—off any case, without pay, pending a disciplinary hearing. When I’m finished with you, you’ll be directing traffic in Katamon Tet and feeling grateful about it.”

  “No,” said Daniel. “The case is mine. I’m staying with it.”

  Laufer stared at him. “Have you lost your mind?”

  When Daniel didn’t answer, the deputy commander went behind his desk, sat, took out a leather-bound calendar, and began making notes.

  “Traffic detail, Sharavi. Try calling the pretty boy in Australia if you think it’ll help you. Your protekzia’s long gone—dead and buried.” The deputy commander laughed out loud. “Funny thing is, it’s your own doing—you fucked yourself, just like now. Nosing into things that don’t concern you.” Laufer lifted a pack of English Ovals off the desk, found it empty and tossed it aside. “Like a little brown rat, rooting in garbage.”

  “If I hadn’t rooted,” said Daniel, “you’d still be pushing paper in Beersheva.”

  Laufer made a strangling noise and slammed his hand on the desk. His eyes bulged and his complexion turned the color of ripe plums. Daniel watched him inhale deeply, then expel breath through stiffened lips, saw the rise and fall of his barrel chest, the stubby fingers splayed on the desk top, twitching and drumming as if yearning to do violence.

  Then suddenly he was smiling—a cold, collaborative smirk.

  “Aha. Now I understand. This, beating Rashmawi, it’s all something psychiatric, eh, Sharavi? You’re trying for a stress pension.”

  “I’m fine,” said Daniel. “I want to work on my case. To catch criminals rather than protect them.”

  “You have no case. You’re on suspension as of this moment.” Laufer held out a fleshy palm. “Hand over your badge.”

  “You don’t really want it.”

  “What!”

  “If I walk out of here under suspension, the first place I’m going is the press.”

  “All contact between you and the press is forbidden. Violate that order and you’re finished for good.”

  “That’s okay,” said Daniel. “I’m allergic to traffic.”

  Laufer leaned back in his chair, stared at the ceiling for several moments, then lowered his gaze and directed it back at Daniel.

  “Sharavi, Sharavi, do you actually think you’re intimidating me with your threats? What if you do talk? What will it amount to? A nosy little detective, unable to solve the case he’s charged with, tries to distract attention away from his incompetence by whining about administrative manners. Small stuff, even by local standards.”

  The deputy commander folded his hands over his paunch. His face was calm, almost beatific, but the fingers kept drumming.

  A poor bluffer, thought Daniel. Shoshi would wipe him out in poker.

  “I’m not talking local,” said Daniel. “I’m talking international. The foreign press is sure to love this one—child rapist shielded by the police as he stalks the streets of Jerusalem, secret deals cut with Hassidic rebbe. ‘The suspect was apprehended assaulting his own daughter while under privileged protection of Deputy Commander Avigdor Laufer. The officer who apprehended him has been disciplined—’ ”

  “It goes higher than Avigdor Laufer, you fool! You don’t know what you’re dealing with!”

  “The higher the better. They’ll eat it with a spoon.”

  Laufer was on his feet again. Glowering, pointing. “Do it and you’ll be finished, permanently—a blighted record, loss of security rating, no pension, no future. Any decent job will be closed to you. You’ll be lucky to find work shoveling shit with the Arabs.”

  “Tat Nitzav,” said Daniel, “we don’t know each other well. Let me acquaint you with my situation. Since the first day of my marriage, my in-laws have been trying to get me to move to America. They’re fine Jews, believe deeply in the state of Israel, but they want their only daughter near them. I’ve a standing offer of a new house, new car, tuition for my kids, and a job with my father-in-law’s corporation. A very decent job—executive responsibility, regular hours, and more money than I’ll ever earn here, more than you ever will. The only hold the job has over me is the job itself—doing it properly.”

  The deputy commander was silent. Daniel took his badge out of his wallet.

  “Still want it?”

  “Damn you,” said Laufer. “Damn you to hell.”

  Lucky, thought Daniel, that he was a pencil pusher, no detective. Al Birnbaum had never owned a corporation, had spent his working years selling paper goods to printing companies. And even that was old news—he’d been retired for a decade.

  CHAPTER

  46

  He left Laufer’s office and went to his own, having gotten what he’d wanted but feeling no flush of victory.

  He’d missed the chance to interview Malkovsky because Cohen had run the whole arrest as a one-man show, booking the suspect without calling in. And if the child raper was a killer, they’d never know—another unsolved, like
Gray Man.

  He thought of calling Cohen in, dressing him down, and kicking him off the team. But the kid had saved Malkovsky’s daughter, his performance on the stakeout had been impeccable, and his intentions on the bust had been good. There’d been no way for him to suspect what was going on while he sweated over the paperwork.

  Some paperwork too. All the details of the arrest precisely documented on the correct forms, perfect penmanship, not a single spelling error. It must have taken him most of the night. In the meantime, bye-bye, Malkovsky, trundled out the back door under police escort, handcuffed to a Shin Bet operative dressed as a Hassid. A quick ride to Ben Gurion, bypass of Passport Control and Security, and first-class seating for both of them on the next El Al jet to Kennedy.

  Good scandal potential, but short-lived—people forgot quickly; bigger and better things were sure to come along—so he’d decided to use it while it was still worth something. To keep Cohen—and himself—safe, keep Anwar Rashmawi’s lawyer at bay, put an end to any nonsense about disciplinary hearings. And to get Laufer to describe his interrogation of Malkovsky, if you could call it that—three or four hasty questions in a back room at the airport, then good-bye, good riddance. Under duress, the deputy commander also agreed to have Mossad make contact with the New York investigators and attempt to question Malkovsky about the murders of Fatma and Juliet.

  A symbolic triumph, really, because Daniel no longer considered Malkovsky a serious suspect—not in light of the bloody rock discovery. The man was grossly overweight and out of shape; at the jail he’d complained of shortness of breath. An examining doctor had said his blood pressure was dangerously high. It was unlikely he’d have hiked through the desert carrying a body, though Daniel supposed he could have been part of one of Shmeltzer’s murder cults.

  Killer Hassidim—too crazy to consider.

  But that wasn’t the point. The brass hadn’t known about the rock when they’d shipped him back to New York. They’d intruded on his case, sullied it with politics.

  He’d lived through that before, refused to endure it again.

  Rooting in the garbage.

  Try calling Australia.

  He wondered about Gavrieli, wondered if he liked Melbourne, how he was taking to the duties of an embassy attaché. Gorgeous Gideon wore a tuxedo well, knew how to make conversation at parties, the right wine to drink; still, Daniel was certain he was far from fulfilled.

  Rooting and nosing. Biting the hand that had fed him—and fed him well, not scraps.

  Laufer was a fool, but his words had opened up old wounds. The guilt.

  Not that there had been any choice.

  He still wondered why Lippmann had been assigned to him. Gavrieli had never answered that one, had avoided Daniel since the day the report was filed.

  Surely he must have known it would all come out.

  Or had he expected a cover-up—or failure, a premature wrap-up? All the talk about Daniel’s talents just more toothy subterfuge used to capture another pawn, place him into position?

  Gavrieli had always had a way with words.

  They’d met in ’67, in early May, just after Passover, in the army training camp near Ashdod. A beautiful spring, balmy and dry, but rumors had settled over the base like storm clouds: Nasser was planning to move troops into the Sinai. No one was sure what would happen.

  Daniel had been a nineteen-year-old inductee, a year out of the yeshiva, an honors graduate of paratroop training still basking in the memory of his jumps—the deathly thrill of human flight. Newly assigned to the 66th Battalion, he’d reported to base in sergeant’s chevrons, a red beret, and trooper’s boots, all of it so new it felt like a Purim costume.

  At the 66th, he was put through a battery of physical and psychological tests, then assigned to a night-attack unit. Gideon Gavrieli was the commander. From his reputation, Daniel had expected a leather-face, but encountered instead a young man, tall, black-haired and blue-eyed, endowed with movie-actor looks and a double portion of arrogance.

  Gorgeous Gideon. Only six years older than Daniel, but decades more seasoned. Both parents lawyers and big in the ruling party, the father a retired general on top of that. A nice childhood in a Zahala villa, riding lessons at the Caesarea Country Club, season tickets to the Philharmonic and Habimah, summers abroad. Then three top-rated years in the army, decorations in marksmanship and hand-to-hand, a captain at twenty, onward to Hebrew U. and election as student body president. One month short of his own law degree when the southern border had started to simmer and he’d been summoned back to command. Soon, they said, he’d be a major, one of the youngest, with no intention of stopping there.

  He’d singled Daniel out right away, called him to the command post and offered him water wafers and instant coffee.

  You’re Yemenite.

  Yes.

  They say Yemenites are intelligent. Does that apply to you?

  I don’t think that’s for me to say.

  This is no time for modesty. No matter what you’ve heard, the Egyptians are going to attack us. Soon you’ll be shooting at more than paper targets. Are you intelligent or not?

  I am.

  Good. I’m glad you realize it. Now I’ll tell you, your tests confirm it. I want you to take some additional exams next week. They’ll help you qualify for lieutenant and I expect you to receive an excellent score, is that clear?

  Yes.

  Tell me, what does your father do for a living?

  He’s a jeweler.

  In the event you survive, what do you plan to do with your life?

  I don’t know.

  Do you make jewelry too?

  Some.

  But you’re not as good as your father.

  No.

  And never will be.

  Never.

  A common problem. What are your other career options?

  I’ve thought of law.

  Forget it. Yemenites are too straightforward to be good lawyers. What else?

  I don’t know.

  Why not?

  I haven’t thought about it in detail.

  A mistake. Start thinking about it now, Sharavi. There’s no use merely floating when you can learn how to swim.

  Four weeks later they were belly-down on a muddy slope northwest of Scopus, crawling in the darkness through the crosshatch of fortified trenches that surrounded Ammunition Hill. Two survivors of a five-man machine-gun detail sent to flush out Arab Legion snipers.

  No-man’s-land. For nineteen years the Jordanians had fortified their side of the hill, laying in their positions in anticipation of Jihad: trenches—forty concrete-lined wounds slashed into the hillside, some so well camouflaged they were invisible even in daylight.

  No daylight now. Three A.M., an hour since the assault had begun. First, the ground had been softened by artillery bombardment; then tanks had been used to set off enemy mines. In their wake, sappers had arrived with their noisy toys, blowing up the fences—Israeli and Jordanian—that had bifurcated the hillside since the cease-fire of ’49.

  In the other theaters, the Israeli Air Force had been employed to fine effect—Nasser’s jets destroyed before they got off the ground, the Syrians swallowing a bitter pill in the Golan. But Jerusalem was too precious, too many sacred places to risk large-scale air attack.

  Which meant hand-to-hand, soldier against soldier.

  Now the only ones left were desperate men on both sides. Hussein’s Arab Legion troops ensconced in two long bunkers atop the hill and hunkered down in the network of trenches below. The men of the 66th, squirming upward through the dirt like human worms. Measuring their progress in meters while racing the rising sun—the cruel light of morning that would highlight them like bugs on a bed sheet.

  The last thirty minutes had been a nightmare of artillery barrage and screams, the splintering of olive trees that whispered eerily as they fell, calls for stretchers and medics, the moans of the dead and dying echoing longer than could be explained by any law of physics. Thre
e hundred meters to the southwest, the Old British Police School was ablaze, the UNRWA stores used as sniping posts by the Jordanians crackling like a campfire. Curved trajectory shells arced from Legion positions, followed by grenades and automatic-weapons fire that tilled the soil in murderous puffs, sowing hot metal seeds that would never bear fruit.

  The first two men in the company had fallen simultaneously, just seconds after setting out for a shallow trench that fronted the U.N. water tank, a sniper hideout that the infrared scopes had been unable to pinpoint. The third to die was an apple-cheeked kibbutznik named Kobi Altman. The fall of his comrades had inspired him to improvise—leaping up and exposing himself on all sides as he stormed the trench, spraying it with his Uzi. Killing ten Jordanians before being cut down by the eleventh. As he buckled, Gavrieli and Daniel rushed forward, firing blindly into the trench, finishing off the last Legionnaire.

  Gavrieli knelt by the rim of the trench, inspecting it, his Uzi poised for fire. Daniel slung Kobi’s body over his shoulder and waited.

  No sounds, no movement. Gavrieli nodded. The two of them hunched low and crept forward slowly, Gavrieli taking hold of Kobi’s feet in order to share the burden. They searched for a safe spot to leave the body, a vantage point from which a grenade could be lobbed at the spindly legs of the water tower. Their plan was clear: Shielded by the aftermath of explosion, they’d run toward the big bunker on the northwest of the hill where scores of Legionnaires had settled in, firing without challenge. Lobbing in more grenades, hoping the concrete would yield to their charges. If they lived, they’d come back for Kobi.

  Gavrieli scanned the slope for shelter, pointed finally to a stunted olive sapling. They slithered two meters before the thunder of recoilless guns slapped them back toward the trench.

  The big guns fired again. The earth shuddered under Daniel; he felt himself lifted like a feather and slammed back down. Clawing at the soil, he dug his nails in so as not to fall backward into the mass of corpses that filled the trench. Waiting.

  The recoilless attack ended.

  Gavrieli pointed again. A tracer bullet shot out from the big bunker and died in a mid-air starburst, casting scarlet stripes over the commander’s face. No arrogance now—he looked old, dirt-streaked and damaged, acid-etched by grief and fatigue.