The Butcher's Theater

by Jonathan Kellerman

  “This isn’t likely to be any better,” Weinroth assured him, gathering up his cigarettes and pointing at the telescope. “Mostly blank space, and if you see anything sexy, you broadcast it on the security band—the other guys take it from there.”

  Katz picked up a stack of photographs from the table and shuffled through it. “I’m supposed to commit all of these to memory?”

  “These eight are the main ones,” said Weinroth, taking the stack and pulling out the permanent Amelia Catherine staff members. He placed them faceup on the table. “The rest are volunteers. I haven’t seen one of them come near the place yet.”

  Katz studied the eight, lingering on a candid of Walid Darousha, whom the camera had caught scowling.

  “Nasty-looking character,” he said.

  “He’s in Ramallah with his boyfriend, and according to Major Crimes, he’s low priority. So don’t play psychoanalyst—just look and log.”

  “Up yours,” said Katz jovially. “Which ones are high priority?”

  Weinroth jabbed the photos. “These, for what it’s worth.”

  Katz stared at the pictures, drew a line across his forehead. “Etched permanently on my mind.”

  “For what that’s worth,” said Weinroth. “I’m off.” He took two steps, turned, and leered. “You want me to look in on your wife and comfort her?”

  “Sure, why not? Yours has already been taken care of.”

  Avi sat low in the unmarked car, strained his eyes, and watched the front door of Wilbur’s apartment building on Rehov Alharizi. The moon was a low white crescent, the dark street blinded further by the hovering bulk of the tall buildings that rose from the east. The Chief Rabbinate, the Jewish Agency, Solel Boneh Builders, the Kings Hotel. Important buildings—official buildings.

  As a child he’d spent plenty of summer days in official buildings, harbored dim memories of official visits perceived from a waist-high perspective: shiny belt buckles, rippling paunches, jokes he didn’t understand. His father convulsing with laughter, his big hand tightening with amusement, threatening to crush Avi’s small one . . .

  Forget that crap and concentrate.

  The hum of an automobile engine, but no headlight flash, no movement up and down the block.

  Nothing suspicious in the mailbox or at Wilbur’s office at Beit Agron—the latter he could personally verify because he’d delivered the office mail himself, covered the entire press building. No one but the janitor had approached Wilbur’s suite all day. At six the reporter left, in shirtsleeves, with no briefcase, and walked toward Fink’s for his usual soak. By eight he hadn’t returned, and, following the plan, Avi was relieved by one of two Latam men who’d been watching the reporter’s flat. He drove to Alharizi and parked half a block down from Wilbur’s building, a nicely kept, two-story fourplex. Then he waited.

  And waited. For all he knew, the bastard wasn’t even coming home tonight, had picked up some chick and was sacking out at her place.

  The street was deserted, which meant none of his daytime identities—street cleaner, postman, sausage vendor, yeshiva boy—were of any use; the costume changes lay tangled and unused in the trunk of the unmarked car.

  And what an unmarked! His own wheels were out of the question—the red BMW stood out like a fresh bloodstain. In its place Latam had dredged up a terminally ill Volkswagen, oppressive little box, the gears protesting every nudge of the shift lever, stuffing coming out of the seats in rubbery tufts, the interior smelling of spoiled food, leaking petrol, and stale cigarette smoke.

  Not that he could smoke—the glow would give him away. So he sat doing nothing, his only company a plastic two-liter Coke bottle to piss in. Each time he was through with it he emptied it in the gutter.

  Sitting for almost four hours, his ass had fallen asleep; he had to pinch himself to get the feeling back.

  Nash, the Latam guy at the back of the building, had the better deal: run a dry mop up and down the hallway, then stake out the alley. Fresh air, at least. Exercise.

  Every half hour the two of them checked in with each other. The last check had been ten minutes ago.

  Aleph, here.

  Bet, here. Grunt.

  Not a very social guy, Nash, but he supposed most undercover types weren’t picked for their conversational skills. The opposite, even: They were to be seen and not heard.

  He checked his watch. Eleven-forty. Reached for the Coke bottle.

  Midnight, Talbieh, the Sharavi household was silent, the women and children all asleep.

  Rather than return to the hotel alone, Luanne had chosen to stay for the night, sleeping in the master bedroom, on Daniel’s side of the bed. She and Laura came into the studio, nightgowned and cold-creamed—the borrowed gown half a foot too short on Luanne—and gave their husbands quick kisses before trundling off together. Daniel heard little-girl giggles, conspiratorial whispers through the thin bedroom door before they fell asleep.

  A pajama party. Good for them. He was glad they were coping by keeping occupied, had never seen Laura so busy: museum outings, shopping trips to the boutiques on Dizengoff Circle and the Jaffa flea-market stalls, lectures, late movies—now that was a change. She’d never been much of a cinema buff, rarely stayed up past ten.

  Changes.

  And why not? No reason for her to give up her life because the case had turned him into a phantom. Still, a small, selfish part of him wanted her to be more dependent. Need him more.

  He finished chewing one of Shoshi’s chicken sandwiches—dry, but an architectual masterpiece, so lovingly prepared: the bread trimmed, the pickles quartered and individually wrapped. He’d felt guilty biting into it.

  He wiped his mouth.

  “Whoa,” said Gene. “Whoa, look at this.”

  Daniel got up and walked to the black man’s side. Next to three sandwich wrappers and the Sumbok roster was the newly arrived homicide file on Lilah “Nightwing” Shehadeh, spread out on the table/desk, opened to one of the back pages. The file was thick, stretching the limits of the metal fasteners that bound it to the manila folder, and anchored to the desk top by Gene’s large thumb.

  “What do you have?” Daniel leaned over, saw a page of photocopied murder photos on one side, a poorly typed report on the other. The quality of the photocopy was poor, the pictures dark and blurred, some of the printed text swirling and bleeding out to white.

  Gene tapped the report. “Hollywood Division never figured it for a serial because there was no follow-up murder. Their working assumption was that it was a phony sex-killing aimed at covering up a power struggle between Shehadeh’s pimp and a competitor. The pimp, guy named Bowmont Alvin Johnson, was murdered a few months before Shehadeh; bunch of other fancy boys were interviewed—all had supposed alibis. Shehadeh and Johnson had split up before he was killed, but the same detectives handled both cases and they remembered finding a purse at his apartment that his other girls identified as once belonging to Shehadeh. The purse was stored in the evidence room; after she turned up dead, they took a closer look at the contents. No trick book—she probably took that with her when she left—but the next-best thing: some scraps of paper with names that they figured to be either her dope suppliers or customers. Twenty names. Eight were never identified. One of them was a D. Terrif. There were also several D.T.’s. Now the punch line. Look at this.”

  He lowered his index finger to a spot at the center of the Sumbok page.

  Terrif, D. D.

  Daniel remembered the name. One of the three he’d thought might be Arabic.

  His hands were trembling. He put one on Gene’s shoulder, said, “Finally.”

  “Bingo.” Gene smiled. “That’s American for ‘we done good.’ ”

  A Latam detective named Avram Comfortes sat in the soft mulch beneath the orange trees that surrounded Walid Darousha’s large, graceful Ramallah villa, inhaling citrus fragrance, shooing away mice and the night moths that alighted upon the trees and sucked nectar from the flowers.

  At fifte
en minutes past midnight, the metal shutters to Darousha’s bedroom window cranked open. They’d been sealed shut for an hour, since Darousha and the watchman had finished a late supper, the doctor cooking, the watchman eating.

  An hour. Comfortes had a good idea what had been going on inside, was glad he didn’t have to look at it.

  The window was small, square, laced with grillwork—the old-fashioned kind, ornate enough for a mosque. Framed inside was a clear view of the doctor’s bedroom. A large room, painted blue, the ceiling white.

  Comfortes lifted his binoculars and saw a sepia-tone family portrait on the far wall, next to an old map of pre-’48 Palestine—they never gave up. Under the map was a high, wide bed covered with a white chenille spread.

  Darousha and Zia Hajab sat under the spread, side by side, naked to the waist, propped up by wildly colored embroidered pillows. Just sitting there, not talking, until Hajab finally said something and Darousha got up. The doctor was wearing baggy boxer shorts. His body was soft, white, and hairy, generous love handles flowing over the waistband of the underpants, breasts as soft as a woman’s, quivering when he moved.

  He left the bedroom. Alone, Hajab fingered the covers, wiped his eyes, stared straight in Comfortes’s direction.

  Seeing, the undercover man knew, only darkness.

  What did guys like that think about?

  Darousha came back with two iced drinks on a tray. Tall glasses filled with something clear and golden, next to a couple of red paper napkins. He served Hajab, leaned over and kissed the watchman on the cheek. Hajab didn’t seem to notice, was already gulping.

  Darousha said something. Hajab shook his head, emptied the glass, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Darousha handed him a napkin, took the empty glass and gave him the second one, went back to his side of the bed and just sat there, watching Hajab drink. Looking happy to serve.

  Funny, thought Comfortes, he would have expected the opposite, the doctor in charge. Then again, they were deviates. You couldn’t expect them to be predictable.

  Which made them well worth watching.

  He picked up his logbook, made a notation. Writing in the dark, without benefit of seeing the letters. But he knew it would be legible. Plenty of practice.

  At twelve-thirty, from his perch atop the Law Building, Shimshon Katz saw movement through his telescope. Human movement, originating at the rear of the Amelia Catherine, then hooking around to the front of the hospital and continuing southeast on the Mount of Olives Road.

  A man. Swinging his arms and walking in a long, loose stride. The relaxed stride of someone without a care in the world.

  The man stopped, turned. Katz saw him quarter-face, enough to match him with his photo. He resumed walking and Katz followed him through the scope, using one hand to switch on the videotape interface. Hearing the whir of the camera as it began to do its job.

  Probably nothing, just a walk before bedtime. The administrator, Baldwin, had done one of those twenty minutes ago, along with his cute little Lebanese girlfriend: a stroll along the ridge, stopping for a couple of minutes to look out at the desert, then back inside. Lights out.

  But this nightwalker kept going, toward the city. Katz watched the silhouette grow smaller, turned up the magnification on the scope, and nudged it gently in order to keep the departing figure in his sights.

  He continued following and filming until the road dipped and the figure dropped from view. Then he got on the police radio, punched in the digital code for the security band, and called Southeast Team Sector.

  “Scholar, here. Progress.”

  “Relic speaking. Specify.”

  “Curly, on foot down the Mount of Olives Road, coming your way.”

  “Clothing and physicals.”

  “Dark sport coat, dark pants, dark shirt, dark shoes. No outstanding physicals.”

  “Curly, no vehicle, all dark. That it, Scholar?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Shalom.”

  “Shalom.”

  The communication was monitored by Border Patrol units stationed in the desert above Mount Scopus and near the Ras el Amud mosque, where the Jericho Road shifted suddenly to the east. The man who’d answered the call was a Latam man, code-named Relic, stationed near the entry to the Rockefeller Museum at the intersection of that same road and Sultan Suleiman, the first link in the human chain that made up Southeast Team Sector. The second and third links were undercover detectives positioned on Rehov Habad at the center of the Old City, and the Zurich garden at the foot of Mount Zion.

  The fourth was Elias Daoud, waiting nervously at the Kishle substation for word that a suspect was headed due west of the city walls.

  The radio call came in at Daniel’s flat when he was on the phone to the American Medical Association offices in Washington, D.C., trying to find out if a Dr. D. Terrif was or had ever been a member of that organization. The secretary had put him on hold while she consulted with her superior; he handed the phone to Gene and listened closely to what Katz was saying.

  Wondering, along with the rest of them, if Dr. Richard Carter had anything else in mind tonight, other than a casual stroll.

  CHAPTER

  63

  A miracle, thought Avi, watching Wilbur stumble toward his front door, carrying something in a paper bag. Amount of liquor the shikur had inside of him, it was a miracle he hadn’t ended up in some gutter.

  One forty-three in the morning—late-ending party or an all-nighter cut short?

  Through his binoculars he saw the reporter fumble with his keys, finally manage to find the right one, scratch around the front-door lock.

  Put a little hair around it. Though from the looks of this jerk, even that wouldn’t help.

  Wilbur finally got the key in and entered the fourplex. Avi radioed the Latamnik in back to let him know the subject was home.

  “Aleph here.”

  No answer.

  Maybe the reporter had walked through the building straight to the back alley—to throw up or get something from his car—and the undercover man couldn’t give himself away by answering. If that was the case, any transmission would be a betrayal.

  He’d wait a while before trying again, watch for some sign that Wilbur was up in his room.

  For ten minutes he sat impatiently in the Volkswagen; then the lights went on in the reporter’s second-story window.

  “Aleph here.”

  The second radio call went unanswered, as did a third, five minutes later.

  Finally, Avi got out of the car, jogged the half block to Wilbur’s building on brand new Nikes, and tried the radio again.

  Nothing.

  Maybe Nash had seen something, followed Wilbur into the building, and he should hold back.

  Still, Sharavi’s clear instructions had been to stay in regular contact.

  Follow orders, Cohen. Stay out of trouble.

  He was in front of the fourplex, enveloped by darkness. The light in the reporter’s flat was still on, a dim amber square behind blackout shades.

  Avi looked up and down the street, pulled out his flashlight, and insinuated himself in the narrow space between Wilbur’s building and its southern neighbor. He walked over wet grass, heard a crunch of broken glass, stopped, listened, and inched forward until he’d slipped completely around the building and was standing in the alley.

  The back door stood partially open. The section of corridor it revealed was black as the night. Wilbur’s leased AlfaSud was parked in the small dirt lot along with three other cars. Avi made a mental note to record their license plates, continued slowly toward the door.

  He smelled something foul. Shit. Really ripe shit, had to be close by—he wondered if he’d gotten any on the Nikes or his pants. Wouldn’t that be wonderful!

  He took a step closer; the shit smell was really strong now. He had visions of it coating the bottom of his cuffs, clicked on the low beam of the flashlight, ran it over his trousers, then onto the ground in front of him.


  Dirt, a bottle cap, something odd: shoes.

  But vertical, pointing up at the sky. A pair of running shoes attached to white ankles—someone else’s trouser legs. A belt. A shirt. Splayed arms.

  A face.

  In a split second he made sense of it: the body of the Latamnik, some sort of cord drawn tight around the poor guy’s neck, the eyes open and bulging, the tongue distended and sticking out from between thickened lips.

  A froth of saliva.

  The smell.

  Suddenly his homicide course came to mind, the English-language textbook that had made him sweat. Suddenly he understood the shit smell: death by strangulation, the reflexive opening of the bowels . . .

  He turned off the flashlight at once, reached frantically under his shirt for his Beretta; before he could get it out, felt stunning, electric pain at the base of his skull, a cruel flash of insight.

  Then nothing.

  Bitter-mouthed and queasy, Wilbur dragged himself out of the shower, made a halfhearted attempt at drying himself off, and struggled into his robe.

  What a night—crap topping off crap.

  They’d gotten to him, the Chosen People had.

  CP: 1. MW: 0.

  No more Butcher stories, not a single sentence since Sharavi and his storm troopers had put him through their Gestapo . . .

  Jesus, his head hurt, he felt feverish, sick as a dog. Stupid broad and her cheap brandy—thank God he’d had the presence of mind to pick up the bottle of Wild Turkey.

  Thank God he hadn’t wasted it on her. The bottle was waiting, still sealed, on his nightstand.

  Ice cubes in the freezer; he’d filled the tray this morning—or was it yesterday morning? No matter. Important thing was, there was ice. And Turkey. Pop the seal—deflower the seal—and get some good stuff in his system.

  A single, solitary cheerful thought at the end of a very crappy day.

  Several crappy days.

  Wiring his stories and watching for pickups, but not a single goddamned line in print. Good stories, too: human-interest follow-up on the Rashmawis, most of it made up but poignant—goddamned poignant. He knew poignant when he saw it. Another one with a Tel Aviv U. shrink armchair-analyzing the Butcher. And an interview with a disgruntled former Gvura creep exposing how Kagan cadged funds out of rich, respectable American Jews, silk-stocking types who insisted their names be kept secret. The piece he’d written had busted the secret wide open, listing names along with dollar amounts. He’d tacked on a tasty little summary tying the whole thing in with a Larger Social Issue: the conflict between the old Zionist idealism and the new militaristic . . .