Bethlehem Road Murder

by Batya Gur

  Michael looked for another minute and got out of the car. Eli Bachar glanced at his watch and sighed.

  “What?” asked Michael.

  “That car was perfectly clean. I think he even washed it yesterday,” Yair muttered, and shook his head in perplexity. “Is that what he does with his life? Wash his car all the time?”

  “There are people like that,” said Michael pensively. “Obsessive. They have to . . . Especially a brand-new car like that one.”

  “When the dog was in the Basharis’ yard, on the other side, not under the Basharis’ window, on the other side, the Beinisches’ side, he went especially crazy there, next to that Judas tree over there, and I would . . . I think . . .”

  Michael leaned on the car window and looked at Eli Bachar, who wiped his brow and grumbled: “Okay. I get it. I’ll tell Tzilla that we’ve been delayed. She’ll have to sit there again with that Moshe Avital, who’s been waiting for two hours.”

  “So come on,” said Michael patiently. “If you want to talk to him, let’s go.”

  Perhaps because of the radio and the rush of the running water—Yoram Beinisch’s foot was tapping in the puddle to the rhythm of the bass—he didn’t notice them until they were standing very close to him. Michael cleared his throat. Yoram Beinisch turned around startled and dropped the rubber hose, and the water flowed along the concrete surface of the carport.

  “Excuse me a minute,” said Yair. “I just wanted to ask you something.”

  Yoram Beinisch looked at him and said: “Ah, it’s you. What do you want? . . . You’ve already—”

  “Maybe you should turn the water off,” said Yair. “It’s a pity to waste the water. And you know that you’re not allowed to . . . It’s against the law to use a hose to wash a car. There’s quite a high fine.”

  “Okay, all right, all right. I’m turning it off. Jesus, you’d think that you were paying the water bill,” Yoram Beinisch grumbled, and with a slight limp hurried into the covered parking space. When he returned Michael noticed a large red patch on his ankle, close to the bone. “We have a plague of pigeons,” he explained. “If you park under that tree, the whole roof of the car gets covered in it. If you leave it on the roof of the car the . . . their shit, it leaves stains that don’t come off. It finishes the paint job.”

  “Do they get into the carport? The pigeons?” inquired Yair, and Michael, who stayed back on the sidewalk, intertwined his fingers in tolerant expectation, as if he weren’t really interested in what was going on.

  “No, but the car was parked outside and—”

  “Why was it parked outside if you have your own carport?” Yair asked with an innocent look, and leaned over the back wheel.

  Yoram Beinisch removed the narrow sunglasses, and his blue eyes were revealed as he carefully examined the sergeant’s face. His right eye was red, and there was a scratch under it. He set the glasses down on the roof of the car, wiped his hands on the side of his shorts once, and then again, and stuck them in his pockets.

  “What are you looking for there?” he demanded, and came up close to the back wheel, but Yair had already straightened up, and he too stuck his hands in his pockets.

  “Why wasn’t there space?” asked Yair. “Your parents must have taken up all the space, and when you got back you couldn’t get in, is that right?”

  “Yes, there’s barely ‘space’”—he used the English word—“for two.”

  “You made the carport out of garden space,” noted Yair critically.

  “Yes, there’s still enough garden space on the sides and in back,” said Yoram Beinisch, “and if you’ll excuse me now”—he glanced at Michael—“I’ve already turned off the water, no? So you haven’t got . . . Because I’m busy. So it would be better if ‘you guys’”—again, the English expression—“told me if there’s something you want from me, because if not, I have to . . .” His voice faded, and his eyes darted from Yair to Michael. Neither of them said a word.

  “They told me you found the girl,” said Yoram Beinisch, “alive and well, and that nothing happened to her.”

  “It would be a bit of an exaggeration to say that nothing happened to her,” commented Yair. “They gave her a terrible beating.”

  “I meant that she is alive and she’ll be all right. That’s what I heard them say. The woman across the way”—he nodded in the direction of the apartment block—“came to tell my mother. I heard that she’s unconscious. Is that true?”

  “Where were you last night?” asked Michael.

  Yoram Beinisch’s upper lip twitched when he replied: “What, what? What do you mean?”

  “Quite simply,” said Michael, his eyes resting again on the wounded ankle, “where were you last night?”

  “Why are you asking?” bridled Yoram Beinisch.

  “Because you came home late,” said Michael calmly, as if the fact of this explanation justified the question.

  “Who says so?” demanded Yoram Beinisch. “Who says I even went out?”

  “So you didn’t go out?” asked Michael. “Were you at home all evening?”

  “I don’t understand what business it is of yours,” Yoram growled, and took the sunglasses off the roof of the car. “Do I need to account to you for anything?” With a sharp gesture, he slammed the car door.

  “Excuse me a minute,” the sergeant said, and walked around the car and opened the front door on the right-hand side.

  Yoram Beinisch leaped forward, made a fist and pounded on the roof of the car. “What are you doing? You can’t just . . . How . . . It’s my private car . . .”

  “That’s just the thing,” said Yair as he leaned over the floor of the car. “Just because this is your car.” He pulled his head out and stood up straight. “And you also have to come with us now.”

  “What?” said Yoram Beinisch in astonishment. “What for? What the hell . . . What do you want from me?”

  “You heard him,” said Michael without looking at the sergeant. “You have to come with us for questioning. We have to ask you a few questions.”

  “So ask!” Yoram Beinisch raised his voice. “Be my guest, who’s stopping you from asking? Why should I . . .” His eyes again darted from one of them to the other and finally rested on Eli Bachar, who had slammed the door of the police car on the other side of the street. “Listen,” he said angrily, and it wasn’t clear to which of the two of them he was speaking, “do you think that I’m some sort of illiterate who doesn’t know which end is up? I don’t have to go anywhere with you. What do you think I am? Some Arab you can hassle like this? I’m not going anywhere with you. No way.” He stuck the earpiece of his glasses into his shirt, put his hands in his shorts and glared at Michael.

  “You say you didn’t leave the house yesterday?” asked Michael as if he had not heard the protest.

  “I went out, I didn’t go out—it’s none of your business. What business is it of yours? I have no intention of answering you about anything if you don’t explain to me why. If you would have told me what it is you want, I might have volunteered to help you of my own free will. Didn’t I answer him yesterday when he came to ask me about . . .” He indicated with his head the yard next door, and then Yair. “But like this?!”

  “We need the Criminal Identification people here,” said Sergeant Yair to Eli Bachar, who was standing at the edge of the carport. “They need to check out this car.”

  “What’s that? What’s that?” demanded Yoram Beinisch. “Can you just go ahead and search private property without a . . . Just like that?”

  “You’re not cooperating,” explained Michael, “and there are some things we have to know.”

  Yoram Beinisch laid his hand on the roof of the car and leaned on the driver’s door as if bodily defending his property against vandals. “What do you need to know?”

  “First of all, where were you yesterday evening and last night?”

  “At home. I told you, I didn’t go out.”

  “Did anyone else take the ca
r? Did you give it to someone, maybe a friend or a neighbor?”

  “The car was parked here, all night,” said Yoram Beinisch, and directed his gaze at the bit of the street before the carport. “All night long. It was blocking my parents’ car. Under the tree, all night, and I’ve only just brought it in now, to wash it. The hose doesn’t reach . . .”

  “Did you clean it inside, too?” interrupted Sergeant Yair as his eyes quickly scanned the area of the carport. “With a vacuum cleaner?”

  “‘Inside’?” Yoram Beinisch repeated the word as if he did not understand what it meant. “Why should I clean inside? I told you, the pigeons crapped on the roof and I—”

  Eli Bachar, who was standing behind the car, felt around with his fingers for a moment, and then the trunk opened. He looked inside. “But there’s a handheld vacuum in the trunk,” he said, picking up the appliance, “and it’s still hot.”

  “So, what does that mean?” burst out Yoram Beinisch. “Why are you rummaging around without permission? So it’s hot, from the sun. I don’t—”

  “From the sun? How?” asked Yair. “How can it be hot from the sun when there’s shade here, and it isn’t all that hot today? You’ll excuse me a minute,” he said, and took the vacuum from Eli Bachar. “We’re taking this with us.” And he mildly explained to Yoram Beinisch that the Criminal Identification lab would check its contents.

  “You can’t take anything from here that doesn’t belong to you!” shouted Yoram Beinisch. “What the hell! What are you picking on me for? If you . . .” He shook with fury. “If you don’t give that back to me right now and get out of here, I’m calling now. I’m calling a lawyer right now.” He put his hands on his hips and glared at them, his stance reminiscent of that of a third-rate actor rehearsing his part in a western.

  “Please,” Yair said, and spread his arms out wide. “We have to talk to your parents anyway, to confirm that you didn’t leave the house yesterday, so if you have no objection we’ll go inside with you now, and you’ll call your lawyer.”

  “You can’t go into the house now,” blurted Yoram Beinisch. “You can’t just . . . Only my father’s home now, and he’s resting. My mother has gone out, and even when she comes back, she’s not feeling so well, and we have company—my fiancée is here—and you can’t just . . . You’ve already spoken to me,” he protested to Yair. “Didn’t you ask me about the whole—”

  “Look,” said Michael, “you’re wasting everybody’s time. You don’t want to come with us for questioning now, so cooperate here. Do you want us to talk to you in the street or in the house? Because we’re not just going to let you go. Do you understand me?”

  “Okay, so come on in,” agreed Yoram Beinisch after thinking it over. “It’s better than going with you. And in the end, I have nothing to hide. We’ll get it over with quickly and that’s it. Just be quiet, because my father is resting now.”

  “We can start out like this and then we’ll see,” Sergeant Yair said, and looked at Michael.

  “Go ahead in,” said Michael to Yoram Beinisch. “We’re coming.”

  For a moment he looked suspiciously at them and at the car. “Why aren’t you coming in with me?”

  “Tell me,” said Michael, “what happened to your eye?”

  “It was scratched in the garden,” said Yoram Beinisch without missing a beat. “I got a branch in my eye when I was showing my fiancée the garden. You can ask her if you don’t believe me,” he added with a defiant smile, “only she’s not here right now.”

  “Should I lock the car?” Eli Bachar asked Michael. “It’ll take a while, won’t it?”

  “Lock it, lock it,” Michael said, and for a moment he felt dizzy with hunger. “And you go on in,” he ordered Yoram Beinisch. “What are you waiting for? All of a sudden you don’t want to leave us alone?”

  He followed Yoram Beinisch’s slow steps. He was dragging his foot in a slight limp as he walked past the hose and turned toward the front door. “Now tell me, what’s this about? What did you find?” he asked Yair.

  “Here, this is the thing,” the sergeant replied, and put his hand in his pocket and spread it out. In the center of his callused palm was a rose petal, which was wrinkled and brown around the edges. “And I’m sure that there are a few more of these around, or ones like them, or pieces of them, something that the Criminal Identification Unit can find,” he added confidently.

  “Tell me, are you sure that going by one petal it’s possible . . . possible to identify a whole bush?” Michael said doubtfully, and looked at Yair’s palm.

  “No,” said Yair. “The truth is that’s it’s not one hundred percent.” From his other pocket he drew out a flower, and he put the petal beside it. “You see? It looks the same, but I picked the flower today and the petal . . . Maybe it’s been there since yesterday . . . It’s no longer exactly the same shade,” he said sorrowfully, “not enough to prove anything. Maybe the Criminal Identification Unit or a big expert could. I’m not a big expert on roses at all, but first of all—the color, it’s a rare variety these days. They don’t have roses like this here in the garden. I’ve been in this garden here already. They have simple modern roses. He told me, that Australian, Peter, that Baka is a neighborhood of roses, but that’s irrelevant, and there’s no rose like this here. And this petal isn’t from a week ago, I told you. It’s at most from yesterday night, and the color—we’ll have to check, but there’s nothing like it.” He looked down and shuffled his toe before he said in a whisper: “I myself have seen you use less than this to get someone to loosen his tongue.”

  “You mean to say that you really do want to call in the Criminal Identification Unit?” asked Eli Bachar, who was standing behind them. “I thought it was a trick.”

  “No, it’s not a trick. I want them to check the contents of the vacuum cleaner and the inside of this car, because I’m ready to bet that he—”

  The door of the house opened. Yoram Beinisch stood there sticking his arm into the long sleeve of a blue shirt. He did up the buttons slowly, folded the sleeves back to under his elbows and patted his cheeks. He had changed from shorts into long pants.

  “So we’ll bring in the Criminal Identification vehicle,” summed up Eli Bachar.

  “How are you going to bring it?” whispered Michael. “Without his agreement we can only do it with a court order and we don’t have time now to—”

  “You two go ahead inside,” said Eli Bachar, “and I’ll see to all the rest.”

  “And then afterward it won’t be acceptable in court,” said Michael, “so what will we have gained?”

  “How did our friend from intelligence put it? You want it to be acceptable in court? No problem, I’ll make it acceptable for you,” promised Eli Bachar, and his greenish face gleamed with evident relish. “You go inside and leave this to me, okay?”

  “Hold on, wait a minute,” said Michael. “If you’re already going back to the office, do me a favor and get started with Moshe Avital. He’s been waiting for me since six in the morning and I can’t see how—”

  “No problem,” Eli replied, and smiled broadly. “Anything else? I wouldn’t want you remembering after I’ve already left.”

  Yoram Beinisch moved aside a little when they entered the house and continued to watch Eli Bachar, who was still standing next to the Toyota. Perhaps for this reason he didn’t notice that the sergeant’s nostrils flared as he entered the house. Yair paused for a moment and sniffed the air, and then he signaled to Michael with his eyes and said, “That’s it. That’s the smell,” and Michael inhaled deeply the faint lemony bitterness mixed with musk.

  Yoram Beinisch shut the door and walked in front of them into the living room. With his hand he indicated the white leather sofa, and both of them sat down on it across from him as he sank down into the leather love seat. He moved aside a tall, spiky vase and rearranged the carnations that were threatening to fall out. He coolly put his feet up on the thick green glass coffee table. The leather shoes he was
wearing looked new, and it looked to Michael as though the left sole was thicker than the right. And while Yair was looking around and gazing in astonishment at the large oil painting on the wall, nothing but one red streak on a white background, and beyond it the huge television set, Michael tried to tell whether the wounded ankle had been bandaged. There was no ashtray visible in the chilly, pale and polished room, and Michael wove his fingers together and in a low voice asked Yoram Beinisch what happened to his ankle. Yair looked at it, as Yoram hastened to remove his feet from the plate glass.

  “Nothing,” he said with seeming innocence. “Maybe I got a knock from the sprinkler or the fence. It’s nothing.”

  “It looks like something serious to me,” said Michael, “and I noticed that you’re really limping. Apparently it hurts.”

  His eyes never left Yoram Beinisch, who looked away and moved aside two colorful volumes of a journal in German and a ball of knitting with needles stuck in it. “Show me a minute,” said Michael in a friendly way that did not allow for refusal. “Show me that injury a minute. I know something about these things, and maybe a doctor needs to see you.”

  “No, what for?” protested Yoram Beinisch. “It’s nothing, really . . . I didn’t even feel—”

  “Show me, show me,” urged Michael, and he had already risen from the leather sofa and moved over to where Yoram Beinisch was wriggling uncomfortably in the matching leather love seat. “Allow me. I don’t want to hurt you,” said Michael. “Could you take your sock off for a minute?”

  Yoram Beinisch looked at him helplessly. Michael knew very well that the affable tone he was using and his frank interest in the welfare of the person he was talking to made it impossible to refuse. Yoram Beinisch rolled down the sweat sock, and then Yair got up and came over to them.

  “This, it looks like . . . Did someone bite you?” asked Yair with an assumed naiveté. “There are tooth marks here. You haven’t got a dog, have you?”

  “It’s nothing,” Yoram Beinisch said quickly, and hurried to cover up his foot again. “It hardly hurts anymore. It’s been a few days now.”