Murder in Jerusalem

by Batya Gur

At six in the morning, when the sky was still completely dark and it had begun to rain again, Balilty and Schreiber were already in Michael’s office. They were stirring sugar into their coffee when Balilty’s ears perked up at the sound of footsteps running down the hall, followed by noise from transmitters and wailing police sirens.

  “What’s going on?” Balilty asked. “You call your radio monitors, and I’ll call mine,” he said to Schreiber. “Let’s see who gets some answers first.

  “Hey, there’s no reception here,” Balilty said, and walked out into the hallway. Schreiber followed him, and the two returned to the office after a few minutes.

  “I don’t believe it,” Balilty said. He turned to Michael. “What is it you like to say? ‘How wondrous are the ways of God’?”

  “That’s not exactly what I say,” Michael corrected him.

  “Okay. How does it go again?”

  Michael sighed.

  “All right, I’m sorry. ‘There’s no end to miracles.’ That’s what he says,” Balilty expounded to Schreiber.

  “Poor women,” Schreiber said.

  “What? What happened?” Natasha asked as she pulled one boot over a wool sock.

  “It’s the wives of the fired workers from the Hulit factory,” Schreiber said.

  “What happened to them?” Natasha asked.

  “They’re in big trouble,” Balilty said, scratching his forehead. “I can sympathize with them, but they’re in big trouble. You won’t believe this: all the company vehicles, like seven trucks—”

  “What did they do?”

  “I’ll tell you what they did,” Balilty said. “They stole them, drove off with seven company trucks all on their own. Then they filled them up with bottles, emptied out all the warehouses. The drivers came to work this morning and found nothing: no trucks, no—”

  “Where are they now?” Natasha asked.

  “On their way to big intersections, nobody knows which. They’re planning to dump the bottles there, block traffic. In short, big trouble.”

  “Can’t somebody stop them?” Natasha asked.

  “Nobody has yet, I guess it’s still got to be organized.”

  “Is Danny Benizri with them?” Natasha asked.

  “Are you crazy?” Schreiber asked. “You think he’s going to get himself into trouble and take part in something like this?”

  Natasha shrugged but said nothing.

  “Would you?” Schreiber asked pointedly. “Would you go with them, Natasha?”

  “I don’t know,” she answered. “Anyway, it’s some story.”

  “Don’t mind her,” Schreiber said to Michael. “Ambition has warped her brain.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  What, should I just start talking? This is hard for me, and with that tape recorder I’m…never mind, it’s hard for me to talk. Starting this morning when I woke up, I had this bad feeling. It feels like days or even weeks have passed since this morning; look, it’s not even dark outside yet, it’s only been a matter of hours. All of this has happened in the space of one day, and right from the beginning I had this feeling that I just didn’t want to start this day. Sometimes you open your eyes in the morning and before you can even think your first thought, you have a bad feeling, like you do after a dream, a bad dream. I dreamed something, too, I don’t remember exactly what. These last few nights I’ve had trouble—I used to fall asleep in a second. Ask anyone, and they’ll tell you that if Aviva has a bed and a pillow, she’ll be sleeping like a baby in an instant. That’s the way I’ve been since I was a small child. But I guess this whole matter with Tirzah and Matty Cohen has gotten to me. I, I wasn’t particularly close to either of them, but you know how it is when people work together for years. Tirzah was at Israel Television from the beginning, from when it was established, and I’ve been around for a while too, nearly twenty years, from the age of twenty-two. When somebody dies like that, so suddenly, I just…and then all these rumors about Tirzah, if it was an accident or not, well, they set me on edge. But even before, before I saw him, the ultra-Orthodox guy with the terrible burns, standing there next to my desk—I hate when people creep in like that—I was sitting with my back to the door for just an instant, talking on the phone, I had swiveled my chair around for a split second and suddenly there he was, standing next to me. No one can get into Zadik’s office without me seeing, nobody. There’s no other way into his room, that is, no other way that anyone used, until—okay, you know about all that. But anyway, everything passes by me first: telephones, meetings, people. And I didn’t leave my desk for a minute, never even had a chance to drink a cup of coffee or go to the bathroom. I was even supposed to leave early today.

  “Nothing’s clear to me anymore, nothing. I don’t understand anything at all: I mean, how is it possible that someone so…so…disfigured, so completely burned—burn marks all over his face, his hands, his neck—how could someone like that just pass through unnoticed? Nobody remembers seeing him. How can that be? Didn’t he catch anyone’s eye? People are telling me that it’s winter, everyone’s all covered up in layers of clothing. But his hands? I saw them, his hands, and I’m still upset by it. And his face! Can you imagine how frightening that is? Here’s this bearded guy in a long, black trench coat and a hat, he could fit in in any of the ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods, but his voice sounded like one of ours, I mean, his way of talking was normal, pleasant, no Yiddish inflections, no accent; a real native-born Israeli Hebrew. He came through the security officer, I know this for sure because they called me from downstairs, and they said, ‘Aviva, there’s somebody here who says he has an appointment with Zadik.’ I checked his appointment book, and there it was: Zadik had told me to write the letter S. I didn’t ask any questions, I just wrote it in. Afterward the guy left Zadik’s office and disappeared as though nobody had ever laid eyes on him. Did you people see him after that? Did you find him? I’m telling you, he disappeared.

  “It’s been a day of disappearances. Everyone disappeared. You could be sure that if you really needed somebody, they would disappear. It started first thing in the morning, these disappearances. First there was the news about the wives of the laid-off workers, how the trucks with the bottles disappeared and the women disappeared. Have you ever heard of such a thing? Like in Naples. Once I was in Naples, just for a day, but I’ll never ever forget it because I was with this guy—I can’t tell you who because everyone knows him, and I can’t really call him a miser because on the other hand—well, all in all, he was a miser. Never mind. Married, a miser, there we are in southern Italy, in Naples for the week-end, which is appropriate because it was more of an ending than a week-end. Anyway, why was I talking about this? Oh, yeah, because of the wives of the workers. In the end it turned out they took the trucks, drove them, dumped the bottles, the whole works. That’s how it was in Naples, too. There was a train strike. Total anarchy. Take a red traffic light, for example. That didn’t obligate you to stop, it was more like a suggestion—so anyway, in the morning they reported, one by one, that the stolen trucks were hitting all the most important intersections: the checkpost in Haifa, and Glilot and Shalom junctions in Tel Aviv, and the entrance to Jerusalem, and Danny Benizri is nowhere to be found. Disappeared. It took four hours to find him and, after all, he’s their man, the workers’ rep. I still don’t know where he was all that time, but it was a sign for what was going to happen all day. The first sign.

  “Then Zadik tells me, ‘Aviva, get me Benny Meyuhas on the line.’ So I started looking for him. I looked everywhere. No luck, the guy had disappeared. Even Rubin didn’t know where Benny Meyuhas had gone, and he’s his best friend. Even before, before—can I have some water, please? Sorry, with all these pills I’m not sure…but every time I picture…never mind, Benny disappeared before all that, before Zadik…excuse me…I’m sorry for crying. It’s just when you’ve been working with someone for ages, and then suddenly he’s gone…like…I still can’t believe it. To find Zadik like that, and he’s not just some nobody—we
’re talking about the director of Israel Television! In the office, all that blood. Slaughtered, how can you slaughter a person just like that? He lives a full life, and then suddenly in a single minute…Did you see how he was slaughtered? I’m sorry for being like this. All in all he was a good man, not someone who…never mind. I swear, from the very first minute I opened my eyes this morning, I was already sure it was going to be a bad day. Do you believe that some people can feel things before they happen? Not everybody, but there are people, sensitive ones, who sense vibrations, and I’m one of them. Call it whatever you like, I felt something. First thing in the morning. I got to work this morning at seven-thirty, because Zadik—excuse me, could I have some more water please? Zadik asked me to come in early because he had his weekly editorial meeting and he was expecting trouble because…never mind, it doesn’t matter now. Anyway, Zadik asked, and I…for years we’ve been…I’ve known him…Don’t think this is something dirty, there was nothing between us. It’s just, how can I say it? At first his wife was uptight. When I became his secretary, she came around to check me out. You know how it is, I’m, well, not ugly, and his wife…anyway, I’m pretty successful where men are concerned, but with Zadik there was nothing. You understand? Still, we’ve known each other for like fifteen years, I was the secretary of three of his predecessors. I’ve never gotten it on with the bosses. I’m against that sort of thing on principle, it only brings trouble. I’ve known Zadik since the time he was just a regular old reporter, I was—oh, never mind, anyway, he asked me to come in at seven-thirty. It’s winter, all dark outside, and rainy. On the radio they were already reporting traffic jams, they weren’t even talking about the factory women yet. And my car, first it won’t start, then it starts, finally, when someone pushes me, but I still made it in by seven-thirty, exactly seven-thirty, you can check to see when I punched in: seven-thirty-seven. I came in the back way, no traffic. I figured there was no getting into the city, what with all the bottles those women dumped. Tell me, how did they manage it? In the middle of the night, and no spring chickens, those women! How did they get those trucks all over the place? You’ve got to hand it to them, dumping all those bottles and grinding them up in the intersection. Really, you’ve got to give them credit, it’s just like in Naples…never mind, they’ll have endless trouble from all this…I was in the office at seven-thirty, everything dark outside, rain and winter and all that. But at Israel Television there are always people around. You know, not just the security people and the radio monitors. The canteen was already…I went down and got a cup of coffee and a hot, fresh doughnut. Not for me, I don’t…I’m on a diet, I brought it for Zadik. It wouldn’t hurt him to take off a little weight either, but never mind…it doesn’t matter anymore…I’m sorry for crying, I can’t control myself, it’s those pills or the shot, or whatever they gave me. I’m telling you everything, just like you asked, every detail. But it’s hard for me to concentrate. And I’d really like to be a help…”

  Aviva stopped talking for a minute and regarded Michael expectantly. “I can see that it’s important to you,” he hastened to assure her. “And I understand how hard this must be for you. We really appreciate this very, very much.”

  She breathed in deeply and exhaled noisily. “You asked for all the details,” she said with a pout. “And that takes time.”

  “We have as long as it takes,” Michael said reassuringly, willing himself to sound as fatherly as possible. “You have a terrific memory, and you are clearly a sensitive person.”

  A cloud of satisfaction passed over her face; as if to conceal it, she sighed and continued talking. “The guy from maintenance showed up at eight, I’ve been pestering them for a week now, you know how it is: you ask them to come, they say they’ll be there in an hour, and then no one shows up, you phone again and again, and in the end they tell you, Stop being a pain in the butt, Aviva. You get that? They don’t deliver, but you’re the pest! Anyway, the maintenance man showed up, an electrician, he needed to do something to the outer wall of Zadik’s office because it’s damp, it’s been shorting out the electricity. I called him a week ago, but with maintenance if you don’t…never mind, it was a new electrician, nice guy, I’ve never met him before. He seemed pretty young, no older than thirty-something. He wore a wedding ring. The nice guys are always married. So he arrived at eight, well, more like five minutes after eight, I can’t be sure about the exact minute, I mean, I had no idea I would need to know later…. Anyway, he came in and got started working. And the very minute he started, Zadik opened his door and started shouting. ‘What’s going on here? Are you people crazy? Stop, stop immediately!’ That’s the way it was: Zadik shouting at me and at the electrician. So I told him he couldn’t talk to the guy that way, like he was some…never mind, it doesn’t matter. I told Zadik to give the guy a quarter of an hour, until his meeting started. But Zadik said, ‘No. Have him go away and come back later.’ So this electrician, who had finally gotten started on the job, was already on his way out. He’d managed to open up the wall, and now he was leaving. ‘Where are you going?’ I asked him. I was pretty worried that the whole thing would stay like that, a big hole in the wall and lots of dust, and then he wouldn’t come back. But he laughed. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘I’ll come back after eleven. I’m leaving all my tools here, my drill, everything.’ What can I tell you, sometimes life is so…maybe if he hadn’t left his drill and all those tools…in the end, it was that drill…if he hadn’t left it…maybe Zadik would still be alive. All that blood. Look how I’m shaking. It’s the shock of it. I’ll be traumatized for the rest of my life by it. Someone who sees something like that is changed forever. Don’t you think so? You can never be quite the same. From now on I’ll never be able…oh, never mind, it’s not important.

  “All morning the telephone didn’t stop ringing. There were all sorts of calls. Everyone was looking for Danny Benizri. They finally found him. He wasn’t at home, he wasn’t answering his cell phone or his beeper. His wife told me, ‘He came home late and left early, I didn’t even see him.’ Later it dawned on me he must be with the wives of those workers, maybe they even, like, called him from the beginning, brought him in from the start. I don’t know, I heard Zadik shouting at him. The door was open, he was shouting at him over the telephone just before the meeting got started. From Zadik’s shouting I understood that Benizri had no clue about what was happening. Still, they managed to get him on toward the end of the morning program. They interrupted the regular program just before nine for a live broadcast. Channel Two scooped us, though, so Zadik chewed him out over the phone. ‘A full fifteen minutes ahead of us,’ he shouted, ‘and you’re supposed to be the workers’ man!’ Of course he was shouting at Benizri; who do you think he was shouting at?

  “So anyway, there was this block of time when Benizri had disappeared and nobody knew where he was, but that was before…later, they came to interview Zadik about the role of television during a period of financial crisis, with Benizri serving as an example of a journalist who’s become more than just a journalist. How did she put it, that interviewer, one of the famous ones, the one preparing the story? She called it journalism that ‘takes an active role in influencing reality.’ Those words of hers, they stuck with me. I mean, what’s she talking about, ‘influence’? Like Benizri is really influencing somebody? Some hero he’s become! I don’t have anything against him—Benizri’s a nice guy, a good guy—but I wouldn’t want all this to go to his head. She’s preparing a character profile of him! So then Zadik says to the electrician, ‘That’s enough, quit working and come back after eleven. Eleven-fifteen is even better, just to be sure. That’s when I have an appointment with the director general of the Israel Broadcasting Authority.’ The maintenance man shoots me a look; he’s only just put his overalls on, and here he is taking them off again. I mean, it wasn’t such a big deal, he was wearing them over his jeans and everything. And a mask, too, to protect his eyes. But still. He shoved the overalls into a corner and l
eft everything there: his tools, the drill, everything. How could I know? Nobody could have known. I even asked him, ‘Will you be coming back?’ And he said, ‘Sure I’m coming back, what’re you so worried about?’ Truth is, I don’t know what was bothering me so much. I was feeling bad, that’s it. Justifiably, it turns out. He never had a chance to go anywhere. Funny thing is, he never had to come back from anywhere, either.

  “After that—it was around nine o’clock—when all the editors were in their meeting, I slipped in and out of Zadik’s office. You know, there are always all kinds of little emergencies that I can’t phone in about but that Zadik has to respond to. And in any event, those editors, they’re not gods or anything, I’ve known them all for ages. I didn’t exactly hear what they were discussing, but every time I went in, I picked up something else. You may think I’m just some secretary, but I’m not. You can ask anyone about me. Everything I do requires brains, even, oh, never mind…I went in and out of the office, I heard all kinds of things, I was sort of generally in the picture about what they were discussing. After all, a good secretary needs to know what’s going on. So they’re talking about this new television series, Tekuma, about the founding of the state of Israel, and Diti, the programming director, says they’re not running enough promos for it and she’s arguing with Zadik, who reminds her that the show won’t be aired for another three weeks and that they’re already running nightly promos, which he says is enough. So then they’re fighting, I mean, not really fighting, just arguing, but then the argument gets a bit, well…never mind, what’s important is that I came into the room and suddenly someone asked me, ‘Aviva, you tell us: who’s right? Are we running enough promos or not?’ Well, what am I supposed to say? I mean, I just want to be on good terms with everyone, so I’m sure not going to take sides. That way I’ll get myself in trouble with the whole world. Then after that they started up with Nitzan, the scheduling director. He’s supposed to meet with Zadik and Diti and fill in all the slots. But then, like, for the cooking slot, which they just replaced with The Simpsons, he had no idea, they’d decided without consulting him and he claimed they’d made him a laughingstock and a rubber stamp. They hadn’t let him know about the change in time, and not only that: they’d been talking about approving Benny Meyuhas’s production, Iddo and Eynam, and airing it in prime time, starting with promos already, but had anybody informed Nitzan about it? Nope. All he’s been hearing about is that they’re planning to put a stop to the production altogether. So who’s going to tell him? And then there was the young woman who edits and prints the daily schedules, you know, from six in the morning until programming ends at night. Oh, I can’t sit here explaining what every person does at Israel Television—anyway, they started discussing Iddo and Eynam, and Rubin opened his mouth, I happened to be there because Diti had a sore throat and I kept bringing her more lemon for her tea. I heard Rubin shouting about Iddo and Eynam and then they screened a little of it. They asked me to watch, too, to give my opinion. What can I tell you, it was really impressive. I didn’t exactly understand what I was seeing, some kind of ceremony, either a ritual slaughter or a wedding, there was a slaughtered sheep. Yes, a sheep, what of it?! Why are you looking at me like that, what did I say? No, they slaughter a sheep and then this girl dips her…no, the girl. I can’t do this now, all that blood. But it was all before…before…never mind. They called me in and asked my opinion. I’m not just some nobody who won’t say what she thinks, I have an opinion and Zadik respects it. So I said the film was good. I told them, ‘Whatever money has been invested has already been invested, there’s so little left to do, why not finish it properly? Wouldn’t it be a shame not to?’ That’s what I think. So then Hefetz said, ‘What about the Lavi fighter jet project? Didn’t they put a stop to that after spending two billion dollars? Yes, they certainly did.’ To which Rubin replies, ‘You think this film is no good? How can you possibly think that? When’s the last time you saw something of this quality on television?’ And Hefetz says, ‘We work for Israel Television, not the BBC. This isn’t what the public wants, you have to keep the public satisfied. This show will have zero ratings, that’s for sure.’ So Rubin says, ‘Hefetz, so much has already been invested,’ and then Hefetz says, ‘So what? Since when is that a consideration? Drama sure isn’t the Lavi project, and even that they put a stop to after spending two billion dollars. So for sure we can put a stop to this.’ See what a great memory I have? That’s just the way I am, I remember everything. Tell me something and then ask me tomorrow what it was you said, and I’ll be able to give it back to you word for word. After Hefetz finished talking, everyone started shouting. I was the only one who could see that Zadik was convinced. Not by Hefetz, but by Rubin. But he wasn’t saying anything yet. He looked at Hefetz and said quietly, so that they practically couldn’t hear him, ‘If we went according to your standards, then all we’d have here, all day long, would be news and the Eurovision Song Contest.’ So Hefetz looks at him and says, ‘You got something against the Eurovision Song Contest?’ And all this takes place with the door open, because I thought I was coming in for just a minute, but I was wrong, and I had left the door to the office open. So I’m in the office listening to all this, when at last Zadik moves his chair back, angry like, and he stands up and says, ‘Aviva, find Benny Meyuhas for me. I want to inform him that he has permission to complete Iddo and Eynam.’ A few people applauded, not everybody. Hefetz didn’t say a word, he just sat there making a face. I’ve known Hefetz for a long time, too, we’ve been through a lot together. Anyway, I went to look for Benny Meyuhas. What do you mean, where? Everywhere! At home, on his cell phone, at Hagar’s. Only he wasn’t anywhere. He wasn’t answering his home phone, or the cell, even Hagar didn’t have a clue where he was. So how could I know? I mean, she was his shadow, did you know that? It’s not important, it’s just that later, when all the stuff started, before what happened happened, before…” She covered her face with her hands and breathed deeply, then removed her hands and looked at him, horrified. “Before I found Zadik lying like that across his desk…his head…all that blood…”