Bethlehem Road Murder

by Batya Gur

  “Because of a professional disagreement—you might say competition, or rivalry. But this sounds like . . . In short, this apartment was a bargain, from the bailiff, and I didn’t want another lawyer, someone with whom I have accounts to settle, to buy it. But I also didn’t want to buy it myself. There are too many problems with property tax, or you might say she had power of attorney, sort of, Zahara, a shadow purchaser. It wouldn’t have stayed a secret forever, of course. It’s just a question of timing, and the timing—it was critical to keep it a secret.”

  “Critical? To that extent? Not even to tell her parents?”

  “Look,” the lawyer said, and touched his stubby chin, “nothing is critical, but if you go into something it becomes critical. You play it like a child who is playing in all seriousness—or you lose. I don’t believe in indifference. There’s tension, there has to be tension.”

  “And she would have taken out a mortgage?”

  “Entitlement. She was entitled to a mortgage. It’s more believable. Otherwise, how would she have explained how she had an apartment? There’s no crime here, it’s just that I didn’t want to let it get out, but I have no interest in hiding it in a murder investigation.”

  “And did you give her the rest? The down payment? Without her parents knowing? How much were you intending to give her?”

  “Look, I hadn’t given her anything yet. There’s also a savings account at the Tefahot Mortgage Bank in her name. That was at a very early stage. I was talking to her about a hundred thousand, but there’s just a memorandum of intent and we hadn’t taken any formal steps yet.”

  “Try explaining that to her father,” said Michael. “He may be as hurt by this whole apartment business as he is by any of the other things that have emerged here. And anyway, I don’t need to tell you that a memorandum of intent has the same validity as a contract.”

  “What other things?” asked the lawyer in alarm.

  “We’re asking that you do a DNA test.”

  Rosenstein looked at him in astonishment, and behind his thick glasses his eyelids trembled, opening and closing rapidly over his small eyes. “What? What kind of test?”

  “A DNA test. It’s nothing, a simple blood test. You shouldn’t have any problem with this, if you’ve told the truth about your relationship with her, and this will negate any suspicion of that sort once and for all, because . . . Of course you know . . .”

  “Know what? What do I know?” Rosenstein asked in evident panic, and tugged at the ends of his tie.

  “You know because of course she told you,” said Michael.

  “Told me what? What did she tell me?”

  “She told you about her life.”

  “Not exactly. You couldn’t say that.” Rosenstein shrank and laced his fingers together. “This and that. I know that she wanted to study singing in New York. I know all about that business of hers in the past with the Yemenite Jews. She wanted me to make a contribution to a small museum . . . at a synagogue. I said that I’d think about it . . . but . . . but not personal things. Never.”

  “What do you consider personal things?”

  “Really!” said the lawyer sharply. “Don’t play innocent. You look to me like an intelligent person. You know very well what ‘personal things’ are.”

  “What’s personal for one person isn’t necessarily personal for another.”

  “Really!” said Rosenstein, and again blinked rapidly several times. “Personal things is relationships with people—with men, things like that, not with parents. I only know that she asked not to involve her parents in the purchase, because her father is a very straitlaced man and wouldn’t agree to a stranger—someone not from the family, that is—giving her money. Nu, then he would think what you are thinking.”

  “But certainly someone dropped in on her at work, or at least phoned. If a person works somewhere for two whole years, you have to know something about her.”

  “I couldn’t tell you.” Rosenstein stared for a moment at an undefined point. “Look, I always . . . When I’m at the office, it’s to work, and not all kinds of conversations. There’s no time for such things. People are always coming in—appointments, phone calls. I don’t have time to—”

  “Well, you had time to talk to her about buying the apartment.”

  “Sometimes, when I drove her home, or if there was a special meeting, something urgent that had to be typed immediately. But I never could take the time to—” “No men ever came to the office to meet her?”

  “Not as far as I know.”

  “Are there other secretaries at the office?”

  “Two. There are two other secretaries and there’s also my partner and two interns. It’s not a small office, and there is a lot of activity. You can talk to them. I’m sure that they know more about these things than I do, if at all.”

  “So you didn’t know she was pregnant.”

  “Pregnant?!” The lawyer was startled, and removed his glasses. He polished the lenses, which had steamed up, with the checkered handkerchief. “She never . . . She never said a word to me. But never. No. Not a word.”

  “Twelve weeks. In the autopsy they found a twelve-week fetus.”

  “God,” Rosenstein choked, and held on to the stone wall that separated the two gardens of the two-family house. “I had no idea.”

  “So can we talk about a DNA test?” asked Michael. “Are you willing?”

  “Look, I’m a lawyer,” said Rosenstein, “not somebody off the streets who does whatever they tell him to right away. You can certainly understand that yourself. You didn’t really think I would agree to any such thing the moment you asked.”

  “No,” admitted Michael. “I imagined you would need time to think about it, and maybe to consult with your colleagues about whether you should.”

  “Why do I even need to be in a position like this? If I tell you that on Monday, when you say she . . .”—he swallowed some air—“was murdered, why do I have to be a suspect at all if I tell you that the whole day I was at meetings in Tel Aviv and in the evening I was with my wife at the opera? Everything can be proven. They did Puccini—Turandot. My wife likes Puccini; I don’t. People saw us at the opera. We have a subscription. Believe me that there’s no monkey business here.”

  “On that day, when you weren’t at the office, do you know whether she was at work?”

  “Of course,” said Rosenstein. “I spoke to her on the phone several times during the day.”

  “Did she sound the same as usual?”

  “As usual. Happy and full of life, as always.”

  “Did she work as usual? A full day?”

  “Even more, until five, because one of the other secretaries was on vacation for two days, and when she came back Zahara could have two days off. Because of that, we weren’t worried at all, and we didn’t even know she had disappeared.”

  “Did she usually work fewer hours?”

  “Officially until three, but frequently she agreed to stay overtime, as needed.”

  “What exactly did she do?”

  “Anything she was asked. Zahara is—was—a very intelligent girl. Officially, her job was junior secretary—answering the phones, filing, sometimes preparing materials. But because of her brains, you could give her serious things to do: to go over a file for deliberation, for example, to see if it was prepared right, to help the intern—all kinds of things. Her English was also good.”

  “Who are your interns?”

  “There are two,” hesitated the lawyer. “We considered taking another one but this hasn’t yet—”

  “Who are the two?”

  “You can summon them,” muttered Rosenstein.

  “We will, of course, but who are they? Men? Women?”

  “A young fellow, very bright, and a girl who is slightly older and even brighter.”

  “And did they have a close relationship?”

  “With Zahara?”

  “For example.”

  “I really don’t know.” T
he lawyer patted his thin hair in discomfort. “I have no idea. The atmosphere was good, at the office . . . I’ve always maintained a family atmosphere. There’s a cake when it’s someone’s birthday; that’s my secretary’s department—Frieda, who’s been working with me for thirty years. She’d know more . . . I could call her now, if you—”

  “Did you notice any change in her during the past couple of months?”

  “Do you mean because of the pregnancy?”

  “That, and in general.”

  “To tell you the truth, I haven’t,” he answered, and screwed up his face in concentration. “I can see her face—in my imagination, that is—and I can hear her voice, and it all looks and sounds the same. But people . . . You know how it is. If someone wants to hide something, he can hide it and no one will know, especially if it’s a girl. Who wants to hide something, I mean. And especially someone who’s used to performing.”

  “Did you ever hear her sing?”

  “Yes, I’ve heard her. I know something about singing. She had an extraordinary alto voice, with a very unusual range. I think . . . I thought she could have been a great singer, even of classical music, but she didn’t have the training for that. That’s already a matter of education. We took her with us several times, my wife and I, to the opera and she enjoyed it very much. If she hadn’t . . . If what has happened hadn’t happened, she could have had a future. She wanted to sing jazz. She had an idée fixe, to be like that English singer . . . not English, from the West Indies, who lives in England, Cleo Laine. Have you heard of her?”

  “I thought she was interested in Yemenite vocal music.”

  Rosenstein pursed his lips skeptically. “I heard about that, but I wasn’t convinced. It was just to make a living,” he said dismissively. “Recently, Zahara went on a bit about those ethnic things, about how they had been done an injustice or something, but she would have got over it, with time. People get over these things.”

  “How do you explain what happened?” The growl of a motor was heard at the end of the street and Michael saw a car coming in the direction of the house.

  “Explain what? The . . . the murder?”

  Michael said nothing.

  “I have no idea,” said Rosenstein. “Believe me, you think you know someone, know about his life . . . For example, I knew about her involvement with Yemenite folklore and about”—he grimaced—“her hatred of Ashkenazim. Supposedly she hated Ashkenazim, but she didn’t hate me, for example, or anyone else at the office, but in principle—well, nu, she was still at an age when principles seem to be important. What can I tell you? You think you know someone and then you always discover that there are black holes. Everyone has another life that you don’t see at all.”

  “That’s probably true about you, too.”

  “Me?” A bitter smile crossed the lawyer’s face. “With me, it’s about financial matters, like with the apartment. But I don’t break the law, because it’s not worth it to take the risk. A man of my age, if he’s achieved what I’ve achieved, doesn’t have much room for monkey business. And playing around with women never interested me, so you won’t find me involved in anything like that. But a pretty young girl, and such a successful one—that’s another story altogether.”

  “And you have no idea who could have killed her?”

  Rosenstein shook his head. “I didn’t know the people she associated with, but from what your colleague described to me about the way they found her, it was someone very, very . . . How should I put this? A psychopath. Maybe it was even”—his eyes widened in relief—“a security matter? The pregnancy one thing and the murder another? Maybe it was an Arab who abducted her without any connection to—”

  At the curb, Eli Bachar slammed the door of the police Toyota and looked around angrily. He shoved the gate open, and from the end of the stone path he beckoned to Michael. “Can I talk to you for a moment?” he asked impatiently, and again beckoned to Michael so that they could exchange a few words.

  Bachar’s narrow green eyes were burning and his voice was shaking as he tried to whisper: “Tell me, am I an idiot, or what? Like an idiot I try to locate them, and meanwhile those brothers are already under Balilty’s control. He’s acting as if he were in charge here. You give him too much freedom. I get sent to locate people, and meanwhile he takes them all and I wait around like an idiot.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Michael in an attempt to gain a bit of time until Eli Bachar cooled down. “What do you mean by ‘he takes them all’?”

  “First of all, he’s on his way here with the youngest brother, the officer. I’ve been looking for them like an . . . And I waited and waited until I found out—”

  From the corner of his eye, Michael saw Rosenstein scratching his head and shifting his weight from foot to foot. “Just a second,” he called out to him quickly.

  “I just wanted to go in to talk with the parents,” apologized the lawyer, “if it’s all right with you,” and the gloom with which he spoke was what made Michael look at him with interest. It might have been expected from an experienced lawyer like him that he would object to an attempt to interrogate him, that he would not be as cooperative as he had been, unless he had something to worry about. Or else maybe Zahara Bashari’s death really had shaken all his professionalism, Michael noted to himself, and with an inviting gesture he indicated the front door, which was still open.

  With small, quick steps Rosenstein advanced toward the house, and at the door in front of him stood the journalist, clutching the light-colored cloth bag that was hanging from her shoulder and holding in her right hand a cellular phone from which she was reading her messages. Tzilla Bachar, who had squeezed into the doorway, eluded the raised elbow and came down the path to Michael and Eli.

  “Have you seen her?” asked Tzilla when she reached them. “She was never at her place, Zahara Bashari, only told her parents that she was going there but never did. That’s what she says, anyway.”

  “Orly Shushan as an alibi for her parents,” mused Michael aloud.

  “Did you see how she looks?” whispered Tzilla. “Nothing special. You wouldn’t look at her twice with those looks. You’d think . . . But in any case, if you think how much power she has in those reports of hers she publishes every week . . . Now she wants to write an article about this case, and especially about you,” she said to Michael.

  “She has a few things to do first,” said Michael. “Take her with you to my office. I want to talk to her there, and tell her that first we’ll have to ask her a few questions and after that we’ll see.”

  “Are you going to give her an interview?” said Eli Bachar in astonishment. “But you never give—”

  “I’m not giving her anything,” Michael said, and sheltered the trembling flame of the lighter with his hand. He drew on the cigarette before he said: “Meanwhile, she’s giving us, but there’s no need to emphasize that. You,” he clarified to Tzilla, “take her in with you. I want to talk to her in your presence, so wait with her in my office. And you,” he added, turning to Eli, “summon everyone who works at Rosenstein’s—two secretaries, two interns and his partner. Have them come to us. Maybe they know something.”

  “Do you mean that I should speak to them in the meantime?” Tzilla asked, and looked at Orly Shushan, who hadn’t moved from the doorway.

  “I’m relying on you,” said Michael with a small smile. “You prepare the ground. She might be the last person who saw Zahara Bashari alive.” As he spoke he followed the reporter’s glance, which was resting on the apartment block across the street.

  He too saw the awkward little girl in the blue sweat suit who was trying to pull the dog on the end of the leash away from the curb. He mused that the child had been standing there for hours, watching all the cars that stopped, and not coming near, not coming over to ask. Standing there and watching. The dog barked loudly as the Criminal Identification car pulled up, and again the girl tried to tug the dog toward the entrance to the apartment block, as i
f the revolving blue light were emitting dangerous radiation. The journalist was following her with her gaze. It was evident in Orly Shushan’s eyes and her full, silent face that she was plotting something. Maybe she also knew that children can be wonderfully observant, thought Michael as he approached her; anyone investigating a murder case did best to talk to neighbors and especially children. It was hard to get reliable information from neighborhood gossips, he knew, although they ostensibly seemed very promising. Their prior opinions and their prejudices shaped the facts, even if they thought they’d seen something with their own eyes, and the desire to tell something sensational would cause them to make up details. But for journalists, neighborhood gossips were a treasure, because the truth wasn’t as important to reporters as the scent of blood, thought Michael as he watched her. Her protruding brown eyes looked perfectly ordinary and gave no hint of her abilities, and the shape of her figure was blurred by the big checked shirt.

  “Nevertheless, I’ll have a word with her now,” he said finally.

  “Watch out for her,” said Tzilla. “I’ve already been told that she’s dangerous. Do you remember that article about the previous police chief? After that I heard that his wife wouldn’t speak to him for a year or something. If she gets her teeth into something or someone, they’re done for. She has a special technique, they warned me. She asks innocent questions, pretends she’s a groupie, spends hours with the subject of the interview, collects gossip about him from people, writes things he never said and presents it all as if it were part of a confession. And furthermore, she gets people to talk. Remember—I’ve warned you.”

  “What do you have to warn me for?” grumbled Michael. “She’s the one being interrogated this time, not me.”

  Tzilla tipped her head to one side and regarded him skeptically. “I told you that she wants to—”

  “I don’t care what she wants.”

  “Sometimes I wonder . . . Never mind. In any case, in your position, you can’t let yourself be so naïve.”

  “Okay. We’ll take down a transcript. You’ve warned me.” He sighed, and went up to Orly Shushan.