Bethlehem Road Murder

by Batya Gur

  Alon nodded. “I’ve just finished photographing,” he said, and laid the camera very gently between his feet.

  Dr. Solomon tried to stretch the woman’s legs. Even when they were folded beneath her, in shiny stockings with gold threads that gleamed in the beam of the spotlight, it was possible to see how long and shapely they were. She lay on the dusty concrete surface in a close-fitting gray woolen dress, in the pose of a film actress asked to play dead. In the smooth black hair that covered her head like a dark halo shone ends dipped in blood, and it was easy to imagine that the pulp of the face was only the sophisticated makeup of a horror film. The beams of the spotlights directed straight at the crime scene sharpened and reinforced the shadows, which gave the water tanks the look of primeval monsters.

  “You know her,” said Balilty. It was both a question and a statement. He nodded his head in the direction of the ground floor, where Ada Efrati was waiting.

  “We went to high school together,” Michael replied quickly, before Balilty could ask whether he had “something going with her too.”

  “Did you have something going with her too?” asked Balilty.

  “Don’t talk nonsense,” said Michael sharply.

  “Okay, so don’t tell. Who’s talking nonsense?” protested Balilty with a kind of crooked smile. “There aren’t any women left in this city any more who haven’t gone down on their knees to you. They say that you’re . . . you know, they talk about your eyes and all that. I could see the way she was looking at you. And also that real estate agent who—”

  “Enough already,” said Michael with a wave of his arm.

  “Who found the house for you? Her?” Balilty gestured with his head at the ladder Linda O’Brian had descended, and laid his hand on the yellow tape that surrounded the scene.

  Michael did not reply.

  “I don’t know about her. What is she? She looks completely cuckoo. Is she a serious person? Like that? With that nightgown she goes around in? Is she listed in the Board of Realtors?”

  Michael nodded and rolled the menthol cigarette between his fingers. “She just looks that way . . . and it’s not a nightgown. And anyway, it’s irrelevant. She’s a real estate agent who specializes in this neighborhood,” and he immediately reprimanded himself for attempting to convince Balilty of her bona fides. And to go into details about the way she dressed? What did he care what Balilty thought?

  Balilty gave a derisive snort. “Don’t you know that all real estate agents are crooks?” he demanded. “Do you call that work? Anyone could do it. Couldn’t I sell a house to someone? It’s, like they say in Yiddish, luftgescheft. Just think how much money they make, from something you were too lazy to find out for yourself.”

  Michael leaned forward, the better to follow the movements of Alon, who was now holding the dead woman’s rigid palm in his left hand—even from a distance it was obvious that rigor mortis had set in—while with his right he dug with delicate tweezers under the long red fingernails. One might have thought that a skirt chaser like Balilty would be concentrating on the shapely body inside the gray woolen dress, and the shiny, long black-red hair spread around her like a train, and the pulp of the face, and would suggest all kinds of hypotheses about beauty that had been destroyed. But Balilty did not pause in his tirade (though the moment after he saw the body he had said: “Some chick! Wow, what a body! What would you give her—twenty-five?” and Dr. Solomon had shrugged and remarked, to the same tune he had been humming throughout the examination, “There was some work here on the nose, and she has dieted a lot.”).

  “Did you win the lottery or something? What got into you? What’s so urgent—have you come into an inheritance? What does Yuval say about it? Have you even shown it to him? Let me understand—have you gone completely crazy?” demanded Balilty.

  “I showed it to him. Of course I showed it to him, but he isn’t going to live here—he moved to Tel Aviv. What are you worried about? It’ll be all right,” Michael said in a tense, low voice, and looked down, at Ada Efrati—in his mind she was still Ada Levi—who was now standing at the bottom of the ladder. With a tanned and slender long-fingered hand, she pushed aside a lock of her short, dark hair, which was threaded with gray. The beam of the spotlight under which she was standing wrapped her face in a cloud of webs. She was still standing beside the architect.

  “You see,” chided Balilty, “tomorrow morning they had planned to start renovating, and now their whole timetable has been disrupted. You see, you mustn’t plan anything around things like that.”

  The architect climbed the ladder, and halfway up she stopped and cleared her throat as if waiting for her turn to talk to Michael, who was watching her ascent. Repeatedly, she tried to attract their attention, until Balilty shut up for a moment. “Excuse me,” she said in a thin, shaking voice. “Are you Chief Superintendent Ohayon?”

  Michael nodded.

  “They told me that you’re . . . that you’re in charge of the . . .”

  Michael nodded.

  “Forgive me for bothering you with our problems. I know this isn’t the time and place, but a lot of people are depending on this and I have to . . . There’s the matter of a schedule here . . . We had intended to start the renovations tomorrow morning, and I have to know . . . approximately . . . what to tell the contractor. We still have to . . . Never mind. Would it be possible to know when, more or less . . . that is, not definitely . . . how much time it will take until we can . . .” She cleared her throat again. “Are you, um, going to close the house up? How much time will it take before we can start to work? That is, would it be a matter of days, or weeks, or months?”

  Michael took a drag of his cigarette and looked over at Dr. Solomon and at Yaffa from Forensics, whose ponytail cascaded down her back as she knelt on the floor and felt the rough, dirty concrete with her hands, searching for some small, invisible object. The fading daylight was not penetrating the cracks between the roof tiles, and Michael had not allowed Balilty to break even one of them to let in more illumination, in case the rain came in and destroyed evidence. “Wait until it’s absolutely necessary,” he had ordered.

  “I already told the contractor that everything would be delayed in the meantime,” the architect explained, “and of course Ada also understands this, but we do need to have some idea, because we can’t keep the people on like this. This is a pretty big job.”

  “There you go,” said Balilty victoriously. “Now you see what renovations are. You have no idea what you’re getting into.” He turned to the architect: “Are they all Arabs, the workers?”

  “The contractor is from Beit Jalla,” she replied, “but I always work with him.”

  “Always,” grumbled Balilty. “‘Always’ doesn’t apply anymore. We’ve seen their true face. They fire on Gilo, slaughter people . . . In any case they won’t be able to get to work because of the closures . . .”

  “I even worked with him during the intifada,” she protested limply.

  “That intifada was Disneyland compared to this,” said Balilty dismissively. “You shouldn’t work with Arabs. It would be better if you brought Romanians.”

  “Drop it now, Danny,” said Michael. “There are more urgent things right now.” And to the diminutive architect, who was hugging her skinny body as if to conceal the trembling she could not control, he said: “I will be able to give you an estimate only after everyone’s finished here. Not before tomorrow morning.” She nodded, and with small steps retreated back down the ladder.

  But Balilty did not let go: “I know this building. Not this one,” he hastened to say, indicating his surroundings. “I mean the one that you want, the one you’ve supposedly bought . . . I’ve known that street ever since I was born . . . When we were little, my grandmother lived in the new housing projects in Baka, on Bethlehem Road. We used to go there—it’s not far. Lots of times we played in the yard behind the building, over there . . .”

  Michael, who was not looking at Balilty’s face, suddenly heard
a new tone that concealed a smile, and because of that he turned toward him.

  “I played doctor and patient there, with this girl . . . What’s ’er name. I don’t even want to say her name out loud. Today she’s a very important woman, in the Prosecutor’s Office . . . We know her, so do you. Today she’s called Aster,” he blurted derisively, “but then they just called her Estie. And I’m sure that she remembers very well, and is just pretending . . . Okay, so she’s really become a celebrity. Do you know her? Do you know who I’m talking about?”

  Michael nodded slightly, in limp acknowledgment.

  “There, in the basement of the building. It’s the corner building, isn’t it? Between Yiftah Street and Bethlehem Road, right? So there,” continued Balilty, “there’s where we played doctor and patient, and that was the first time I’d ever seen . . . Never mind . . . I’m telling you, I know that building. You can’t move in without renovating—electricity, pipes, floor tiles. You have to knock down walls, change windows—the renovations alone will cost you a bundle. How much did you settle for?”

  In front of them, in the middle of the attic, the pathologist was watching his intern, and in an authoritative voice that had dropped the tune he said to him: “Write it down, write it down just to make sure, even before the autopsy. I don’t trust this device.” He glanced at the little microphone hanging around his neck and immediately continued to speak: “A fracture in the back of the neck, in the second vertebra . . . bruises on the neck . . . apparent strangling . . .” Again he looked at the intern, who wiped his hands on the side of his pants and put an open notebook down on one of the water tanks and wrote.

  Michael bent down and examined one of the plastic bags into which Alon had put her pointy-toed gray shoes. He touched the edges of their narrow high heels and peeked inside them, feeling the inner sole, where, though blurred, the manufacturer’s label was legible.

  “This is an expensive Italian shoe,” said Alon from Forensics. “It’s all leather, even the outer sole, and this dress, it’s not just any old dress. From what I can see it’s good wool. I just don’t understand,” he said, looking at Balilty, his immediate superior, “how a girl like this, with shoes like these and a dress like that, climbed up into a place like this.” He indicated the opening in the ceiling and the ladder that was leaning on its rim. “Was she holding her shoes in her hand? How did she lift her legs to reach the rungs of the ladder?”

  “Nu,” said Balilty. “It’s not such a big mystery. For this you don’t need a doctorate in chemistry. You hold the dress like this”—with both his hands he rolled up an imaginary dress and tucked its hem into the waistband of his trousers—“and you hold the shoes here”—he indicated his armpits—”or you give them to someone to hold for you. Have you forgotten that she wasn’t alone here?”

  “She has a run in her stocking,” noted Alon.

  “It’s a big hole, not a run,” corrected Yaffa, who was still kneeling on the other side of the body. “It had to have happened here. Someone like

  this, with a dress like this and shoes like these, wouldn’t go around in public for half a minute with a hole like that in her stocking. She would have died of embarrassment.” Yaffa suppressed a sly smile and hastened to blur the impact of her remark: “The stockings, too. They must have cost at least forty-five shekels. Not cheap.”

  “Yaffa,” Michael said, and moved closer to her. “Tell me, Yaffa, in your opinion, is it possible that she wasn’t carrying a purse? With a dress and shoes like that, no wallet?”

  “Unthinkable,” shot back Yaffa without pausing to think. “In the pocket of her coat, here”—she indicated a small plastic bag—”there was a tissue and a piece of an ATM slip. I tried to identify it, but you can only see yesterday’s date and the hour. Look,” she said as she removed the tape and a tiny piece of paper from the plastic bag with her gloved fingers. “Don’t touch it yet,” she warned, and pulled back her hand. “You aren’t wearing gloves, and there’s no sign of the account number or the name.”

  Michael, who in any case had not intended to touch it, didn’t say anything.

  “And there’s also no sum and no bank branch or anything, just the date and the time—ten P.M., so we already know A, she was still alive at ten, and B, she had some cash on her. So where’s the money? Where’s that lipstick she has on?” She glanced at what had once been a face. “It’s certain that she had a lipstick and a comb and makeup and even perfume. There’s no question—a woman like that doesn’t go out without her purse.”

  “The ATM slip doesn’t necessarily have to be hers—there’s just a date, and it could be that it wasn’t she who withdrew money, but someone else,” suggested Alon, “and it could be that the person who was with her took the money.”

  “Not just the money, but the whole purse. It’s a sure thing that she had a handbag. It’s a sure thing it was gray like the shoes,” said Yaffa, and to his astonishment Michael heard the hint of envy that had slipped into her voice. “Just her coat alone—it’s pure silk and brocade. Look at this. If she had a coat like this . . .” Her voice faded as she smoothed the brocade collar and ran her finger around the petals embroidered on the glossy fabric. “It’s a lightweight coat, and it’s definitely not from here,” she said as she fingered the label. “Look. ‘Made in France.’ Not from Taiwan, from Paris. What did I tell you?” Softly she folded the coat into the large bag she had spread on the concrete floor. “Even the lining is pure silk, and this is how she threw it on the floor . . . Maybe she was even lying on it at the beginning”—she sighed—“and maybe he was the one who threw it down there. He, what does he care about a coat, if he doesn’t care about a person’s life?”

  “Maybe we’ll find the purse tossed away somewhere, maybe even up here,” Michael indicated a circle in the dark space. “We’ll have to do a search all around here. And also downstairs and in the yard, because she must live somewhere.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Alon. “Of course she lives somewhere.”

  “I’ll tell you what he means.” Balilty twisted his thick lips. “Keys. The boss is talking about keys. Does a person leave home without keys? To the car, to the house, to the office, God knows what. Everyone has keys. Were there keys in the coat pocket?”

  “No,” said Alon, “but maybe the person she was with has them. Maybe they live together.”

  “Tell me,” said Balilty with evident impatience, “how long have you been working for us?”

  “A month. Why?” Alon’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down his long thin throat.

  “So they haven’t taught you to think yet?”

  Alon was silent, and Michael looked at Balilty and said to him: “Enough, Danny. That’s enough, okay?” But Balilty continued to examine the fellow from Forensics who was shifting his weight from one foot to the other, and it was clear that he had absolutely no intention of stopping.

  “Because,” he drawled, “I’m wondering how you see it. People who live together, what would they be doing in a hole like this? A woman like that on dirty concrete like this? What would she be doing here if she had a house to be in?”

  The prominent Adam’s apple in Alon’s throat rode up and down, and he lowered his eyes. “I don’t know,” he said in a barely audible voice. “I don’t have much experience, but I’ve heard that people like . . . variety, and Dr. Solomon thinks that before he . . . that they . . . fu . . . that there was a quickie here. He doesn’t know for sure yet, but it looks that way, so maybe they came for a change of scenery.”

  “Can you say whether she was alive when she got here, or that she was strangled first and then dragged up here?” Michael asked the pathologist.

  “I think she was completely alive here,” said Solomon, “but I’ll be able to tell you definitely only . . .”

  “Okay, okay,” soothed Michael. “I won’t make you commit yourself.”

  “Tell me,” said Balilty to Alon from Forensics. “Are you crazy? Is this a place they would come to for a change o
f scenery for fucking? Does this look like a romantic place to you? With all the . . .”—he took in the musty air with a wave of his arm—“all the water tanks from the year one, with the dust and the spiderwebs and the dead pigeons? For that they would take a hotel room or something. They’d come to this place only if there were no alternative or if they had to go into really deep hiding.”

  “These aren’t ordinary people,” pleaded Alon. “You’re already dealing with a strangler. He smashed her face. He’s a pervert, isn’t he?”

  “To strangle someone and smash her face in is one thing, and to fuck is another thing,” said Balilty. “And only one person does the strangling, and the other comes here with all her Italian shoes and her cashmere and her silk, right?”

  Alon was silent for a moment, then suddenly said: “And with Poison.”

  “What’s that?” asked Balilty, confused.

  “Perfume. Very fashionable,” explained Alon. “You can still smell it. I can.”

  “Okay, so you have a sense of smell. But they didn’t live together, that’s for sure,” said Balilty. “Maybe we need more manpower to make a search here. There has to be a purse. With keys and lipstick and everything. Let’s just pray he didn’t take it with him. In my opinion this whole thing could be connected to the security situation . . .”

  “You think there was an Arab . . . ?” asked Alon.

  “I say this: There’s a tense situation now, right? Never mind tense, there’s a war on, right? So we have to take into account that—”

  “I’ve noticed, in fact, that there have been fewer break-ins and murders recently. Since this whole mess began there have hardly been any complaints about break-ins . . . ,” insisted Alon.

  “Nu, it’s hard to work like this, with squad cars at every corner. That’s why there are fewer burglaries,” dismissed Balilty.

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying,” said Alon.

  “But one or two can get through, especially if there are Arabs here doing renovations,” Balilty said, and looked down the opening at the ground floor. “Where’s that contractor? I want to talk to him.”