by Batya Gur
“What’s the matter with you?” Balilty settles into a chair, crossing one leg over a knee in a proprietary way as if he were about to colonize the office, and at the corners of his mouth there is the beginning of a smirk, after which would normally come some annoying, smart-ass remark. But the loudspeaker squelches him.
“There’s nothing in the synagogue,” says Yair. “They’re coming out of the grape arbor. There’s an old kiosk here, on Yehuda Street, where it meets Mordechai Hayehudi. We’ll check it out. Over.”
“Okay, I’ve marked it. Over,” Tzilla says, and hangs back because of Balilty, who is leaning over the desk.
“Hey, kid, there’s no point in looking in that kiosk. It’s been closed for thirty years. It’s a battered old kiosk from the time of the British and no one ever goes there. Over.” The communications system goes silent. They can’t even hear the barking anymore. Tzilla calls into the speaker a few times, then looks at it helplessly.
“I’m sending Avital home to wait,” says Balilty. “I’ll take the responsibility. And I’ll talk to the boss, and he’ll talk to him there already. Where is he?”
“Who? Where’s who?” Tzilla asks, and doesn’t take her eyes off the speaker. What is she going to do if it chooses this moment to go on the blink?
“Do me a favor, sweetie. Eat something before you go completely nuts. Have you tasted the rice? Our commander, where is he? Still at the Basharis’?”
“Call him on the beeper. How should I know? What’s going on with this communications system? Isn’t it working?”
And as if in answer to her question the speaker squeaks and groans. “Tzilla, Tzilla, can you hear me? Over.”
Later, Yair said that had it not been for the rose, he would not have lingered there, even if the dog had insisted and kept on barking. And, stricken by the innocence of the blueness of her eyes, it was to Einat that he admitted that what had drawn him to the abandoned kiosk was the rose that for the first time in his life he saw blooming in the fall. “For people like me, who have spent so much time growing roses in hothouses,” he told her in embarrassment, “this strain of Old Rose is a particularly precious strain . . . It’s like a rare stamp for collectors, and everywhere in the world it blooms in the spring, once a year, and here it is, suddenly blooming in the fall.”
Because of that rose blooming in front of the entrance to the kiosk, which was mostly covered by other flowers blooming out of season, he approached and also saw the broken branches of the bush blocking the entrance. He stood in front of the rosebush and closely examined the blossoms, luxuriant in dusty pink petals, and Einat followed him. “How lovely,” she whispered breathily. “It’s like the flowers that were embroidered on cushions in my grandmother’s house. Do you know what I mean?”
“This,” murmured Peter, who suddenly stood behind them, “is centifolia, in my opinion. Right?
“I think it’s rosa gallica,” Yair said hesitantly, “but maybe it’s centifolia, as you say. We should look it up. In any case, it’s a very old bush, probably from when the British were here. Look how it covers everything,” he said, and bent over the stalks as the dog came up to him and whined.
“What is it, Storm?” asked the dog handler, and to Yair he said: “Something here is really making him nervous. More than before.”
And only then, when the dog’s breathing was close to his neck, did Yair notice the heap of damp, loose soil near the roots of the rosebush. He scattered it with the toe of his shoe. The dog leaped to the spot and dug with his paws.
“There’s something here,” said the dog handler again, “but we don’t have anything to dig with.”
The tracking dog wouldn’t let the heap of dirt alone. He stuck his moist muzzle into it, scratched in the dirt and didn’t stop whining.
“Get me a shovel,” called Yair to the uniformed policemen. A long moment went by before one of them came running up with a large shovel in his hand. Yair began to dig in the heap of dirt, feeling the softness of the soil. “Hold him now,” he ordered the dog handler. “He’s getting in the way,” and at that moment, the body was revealed. First they saw the black and white fur, and then the crushed skull.
“Oh my God,” cried Peter. “It’s Rosie, Nessia’s dog.”
Chapter 11
I feel sorry for them,” said Balilty, leaning on the stone wall, “especially for his wife. A nice woman, really. Apple tart like that I haven’t eaten for years . . . The crust . . . it melts in your mouth, definitely with butter . . . She put a whole packet of butter in there, I’m telling you.”
“Did you talk to him about the apartment in the presence of his wife?” Michael rested against the stone wall of the apartment, next to Balilty, who was waiting for him there when he’d come out of the Basharis’ house.
“Of course in his wife’s presence. It’s in their house, isn’t it?” Balilty twisted his full lower lip. “On purpose I spoke to him in her presence, so as to see if she knew.”
“Nu, and did she know?” Michael asked, and examined the end of his burning cigarette.
“Zilch,” Balilty said in amazement, and blew his nose into a paper tissue. “She didn’t know a thing. I told you, I feel sorry for her. A person buys an apartment, or almost buys one. You could say ‘buys,’ no? For a twenty-two-year-old girl, and he doesn’t say a word to his wife . . . He’s lost his marbles, that Rosenstein, if you ask me. It happens to elderly men. They lose their marbles.”
“Did you tell him that you’d checked with the other lawyer? Whatsisname—”
“Deri. Attorney-at-law Deri. Yes.” Balilty hesitated, and plucked two yellowish flowers from the jasmine bush that grew by the wall. With half an ear, Michael heard the voices of the searchers. “Look,” said Balilty. “I started out slowly, from the business of the apartment in general . . . I saw that he would rather his wife wasn’t in the room, and when she went out to the kitchen he tried to say something, but I pretended I was a complete idiot, and I mentioned the little girl and the search, and just then his wife came back and said how awful it was, Esther’s girl; you know that she”—Balilty gestured with his back at Esther Hayoun, who was still sitting on the rush stool in the front yard, surrounded by a congregation of neighborhood women—“that she’s their cleaning lady? And furthermore, she’s also the mother of your real estate agent’s father’s boyfriend.”
“I didn’t know that she worked at the Rosensteins’,” Michael said, and enumerated to himself all the coincidences and relationships that had been revealed in the events since Zahara’s body was found in the apartment Ada had bought. Against the backdrop of Balilty’s voice he tried to negate the significance of these relationships, but he immediately took himself to task: Wasn’t he the one who had said earlier that there’s no such thing as coincidence, and that these links have significance? And all of a sudden, just like that, he’s changing his mind? Maybe the meaning isn’t evident only because the full picture hasn’t yet been disclosed.
“So make a note of it,” said Balilty, obviously pleased with himself. “Esther Hayoun, the mother of the boyfriend and the mother of the girl who’s disappeared, is also the Rosensteins’ cleaning lady and has been working for them for twenty-seven years. She’s like a member of the family there, because Mrs. Rosenstein is such a nice lady her cleaning lady is like family and she knows their daughter very well and the grandchildren and everything and I’ve already tried to ask her about them but it’s better that you ask. To you she’ll speak, but not to me.”
Michael shrugged. “Do you need something from me?” he asked Balilty.
“Me?” said the intelligence officer. “Nothing. I don’t need . . . Why? Why do you ask?”
“Because you’ve started to flatter me,” said Michael.
“I wasn’t being complimentary,” cried Balilty, who until now had spoken in a low voice and kept looking around to make sure that no one was nearby. “I’m serious. There are people who talk to me, and there are those who don’t. She,” he said, indica
ting Esther Hayoun, “you can see on her face—she’s the type who doesn’t trust anyone but she knows that you’re, like, the commander and you . . . Believe me, to you she’ll speak.”
“Okay,” said Michael. “We’ll check it out in a moment. Let’s get back to the matter at hand.”
“So where were we? Ah. She brings in the coffee, his wife,” Balilty continued, and licked his lower lip, “and I’m there drinking it—also excellent, in old-fashioned cups, thin porcelain with a handle, from a good set, you can tell, with whipped cream and that tart—and I’m looking around: What a house they have! A palace! And in good taste, I’m telling you, classy, everything in its place and clean as . . . Persian carpets and oil paintings and statues and all kinds of . . . And the mister is tense, v-e-r-y tense! His hand on the cup is shaking like in the movies, like someone just before they catch him, and he looks at his wife . . . And me? I’m drinking the coffee and eating the cake as if there was nothing going on, and talking about the apartment on Railroad Street, as if it was just an apartment, and I see that his wife doesn’t know a thing. I tell him that we checked, and the apartment was really, just like he says, up for sale, but not from the bailiff and all that. And Avital, the owner? The so-called French jewelry merchant, even though they say that he’s apparently in difficulties—I wish I had his difficulties. Bankrupt shmankrupt. He was simply selling, but the apartment really was a bargain. ‘But nevertheless a real bargain,’ I say to him, Rosenstein, as if his wife wasn’t there at all. ‘You don’t have to buy every bargain. We weren’t convinced,’ I say to him, ‘that some rivalry with another lawyer is a serious reason to register an apartment in Zahara’s name.’ And his wife, she doesn’t say a word, not a word, just looks at him like that”—Balilty tilted his head to demonstrate—“and she’s listening like that without speaking and her hand isn’t shaking or anything, completely calm. A woman like that, she’s old now, but you can see that she was beautiful. In the style of Grace Kelly. Do you remember Grace Kelly? No? Some kind of princess, aristocratic?”
Michael nodded distractedly and listened to the voices of the searchers, who had spread out through the whole neighborhood. They’d been searching for hours and hadn’t found anything. In the distance, to his right, he could hear vague cries. Maybe they were calling the girl’s name.
“But there’s something else,” Balilty said, and took a toothpick out of his shirt pocket and probed his teeth. “I’m looking around,” he continued in a whisper, and threw down the toothpick and rubbed his hands together, “and there’s a piece of marble on top of the radiator, a kind of shelf, and there are photographs on the shelf. I go up to the photographs, so then Mrs. Rosenstein says to me, ‘This is our daughter, and this is her husband and here are our grandchildren’ and all that but I am looking and there are pictures of her, of that daughter, when she was a little girl, and pictures of her as a teenager and also from the wedding and from now and . . .”
Michael tensed.
“You say to yourself,” said Balilty, “How did two elegant Poles like that, with everything tip-top, suddenly have a kid that looks like that? And the grandchildren are exactly the same. The mother is blonde and even has blue eyes, and Mister Rosenstein looks one hundred percent Ashkenazi, so how did they have a kid like that?”
“What? What are you saying?” said Michael, startled. Perhaps because of the thought that had crossed his mind a moment ago about the points of connection among the people that had to do with this case, he was now attacked by a sense of foreboding, as before a disaster.
“What I’m saying,” said Balilty in sudden seriousness, “is that Rosenstein’s daughter—we have to check whether she’s adopted or something, because this is no biological child of an old Polish couple. Do you see what I’m saying?”
“But you didn’t speak to them about that?” asked Michael, trying to reconstruct the details of the conversation with the Basharis.
“About that—no,” acknowledged Balilty. “You’re the only one I’m telling this, but first thing tomorrow morning I’m checking at the Interior Ministry . . .”
“How old is she, Rosenstein’s daughter?” asked Michael.
“She’s forty-nine,” said Balilty. “I asked. I even asked where she was born. In Haifa, they said, she was born in Haifa. I don’t know why I asked,” he said pensively. “I had a feeling . . . a kind of strange feeling . . .”
“So what else came up in the matter of the apartment?” Michael wanted to put off for now the stage at which the pieces of the picture would come together.
“At a certain moment,” said Balilty with the satisfaction of a storyteller who has succeeded in capturing his listeners, “I turn directly to the missus and I ask her straight out, like brutally, whether she knows that her husband bought an apartment for Zahara Bashari.”
“And did she answer you?”
“Yes.” Balilty sighed. “She’s looking at me with those blue eyes of hers and she says to me, ‘Of course I know.’ And I’m telling you, she didn’t know a thing. And very coolly she answers me that she knew. Without any hysteria. What a woman! I would give anything to be that fly there, and see what she said to him after I left. If only they would invent some camera you could attach to a fly . . .”
“How did she explain it?” asked Michael, and at the same time the story of the baby at the Ein Shemer immigrant camp buzzed in his brain.
“My words exactly!” Balilty cried, and looked about in alarm and lowered his voice. “That’s what I asked her. ‘Mrs. Rosenstein,’ I said to her, ‘how do you explain it that your husband bought it and all that?’ And she, she smiles at me, but her eyes aren’t smiling, just her lips, and she asks me if I want another piece of cake. That’s what she talks to me about, and after that she says to me, ‘If my husband decided that, then it’s right.’ And I look at him and I see on his face that he’s wiped out, without hiding it, but I don’t know what he’s wiped out from. It was like from her knowing something he didn’t want her to know . . . but not like he’d been caught red-handed, not like he was scared, but more like . . . like he was sorry, like he wanted to spare her something. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“More or less,” Michael said pensively. “What do you think he wanted to spare her?”
“I don’t know, but it’s something that has to do with Zahara Bashari, and not something conventional, if you know what I mean. Even if there was an affair there, if he lost his marbles, it wasn’t—”
“Do you think that Zahara Bashari blackmailed Rosenstein? Is that what you’re telling me?”
“That’s it.” The intelligence officer beamed. “That’s exactly what I’m saying. Do you think so too? I say: She blackmailed him, but not in a romantic context.”
“But about what, you don’t exactly know,” mused Michael, and for a moment he wondered whether there was anything to the hypothesis that crossed his mind.
Not yet,” said Balilty, “but give me another day or two and I’ll tell you exactly what, and that’s apart from the business about the apartment. Because you see,” he said lowering his voice, “it isn’t reasonable that a man of that type, a sharp lawyer and all that, would give an apartment to a girl like Zahara out of the blue. And seriously now, I don’t really believe that he got her pregnant—for years now that man hasn’t . . . How should I put it? His prick’s in his pocket, if you know what I mean. You know what I mean?”
“I know what you mean,” said Michael.
“And the whole time,” Balilty said, and looked over into the front yard, “this whole time I have the feeling that she”—he again indicated Esther Hayoun with his eyebrows—“knows things. Why don’t you speak to her?” he pleaded. “Now, I mean. Exploit the momentum. I tried in the morning . . . Now she’s muzzy from the sedative they gave her before, that’s why she’s so quiet now. If you would have seen her before . . . at six in the morning, the way she was screaming then, but to talk—she didn’t say much, only when I asked her, after it turned out
that she works for them. I asked her about Rosenstein’s daughter, and she went pale as . . . pale as . . .” Balilty looked for the words. “Terribly pale, all the blood drained out of her face, I’m telling you, it’s not only what I said. Only because of the holiday I can’t get into the computer at the office, but tomorrow, first thing in the morning—”
“It’s the intermediate days of Sukkot and the Interior Ministry is closed. What are you going to do? Call in the director-general to turn it on?”
“Don’t you worry,” scoffed Balilty. “I have connections. My connections will go into the computer for me tomorrow, and then we’ll see exactly—I’ll have to pay for it, it’s going to cost me,” he muttered as he pulled his nose. “It’s this woman who once . . . Meanwhile, she’s lost her looks, heaven help us, but what a bombshell she was, and now she’s going to want to . . . I can’t do it, I simply can’t do it . . . But maybe I’ll get out of it just with a lunch. Maybe at the Tel Aviv port, or some Romanian grill. That’s how it goes—once she loved to make love and now she loves to eat. We aren’t getting any younger . . .” He looked up at the sky. “It’s after lunchtime,” he said mournfully. “Aren’t you dying of hunger? Coffee, at least?” he asked worriedly. “Yems are actually all right about things like that—not like the Persians.” He looked for another moment at the Basharis’ house, at the wide-open wooden gate and the tightly closed blinds, and went on to say: “I have their daughter’s birth date, the Rosensteins’.”
“So at this opportunity,” Michael said, and pulled Balilty close to him, “when you’re going into the Interior Ministry anyway, get out the details on Zahara Bashari.”
“What details?!” wondered Balilty. “We have all the data. Why on earth—”
“No,” clarified Michael, and now he himself looked right and left to make sure no one was listening to them, “not that Zahara Bashari. There’s another one. That other Zahara Bashari, the first one,” and in a few sentences he told the intelligence officer what he had heard from the Basharis. “She was also born in ’49, in a transit camp in Aden, and they told me that there’s a death certificate for her, but I want to see a copy . . .”