by Batya Gur
“How so?” Nina asked as she leaned over the table in what appeared to be an innocent pose, though Michael suspected there was something provocative, some taunt aimed at Balilty, about the way her oversized sweater clung to her breasts.
Shorer did not look at her. He was staring at the dead body when he said, “Naturally, we’ll be smarter when Benny Meyuhas and the sister provide positive identification of the body. Maybe Aviva should, too. But assuming this is Sroul, it seems fairly clear that he came to Israel in the wake of Tirzah’s death. Matty Cohen was murdered because he saw something, Zadik was murdered because of something that this man apparently informed him, and then this man, if he is indeed who we think—”
“That’s him, no doubt about it,” Balilty hastened to interject. “No question at all. Does anybody doubt it?”
Shorer laid a hand on Balilty’s arm, silencing him. “If he is indeed who we think, then we can assume he was—if you’ll forgive me—the man who knew too much. And this was why he had to join the others.”
“That means,” Balilty explained to Nina, “that what we need to clarify here is why Tirzah was murdered—that is to say, who did it and why—and then we’ll know all the rest. But that’s not easy at all, because Benny Meyuhas was up on the roof with an entire crew when she was killed.”
“That’s not entirely true,” Michael said, turning to the door. “Not at precisely the hour she was murdered. Don’t forget they took a break just then. They were waiting for the sun gun, they needed the light—”
“Okay,” Balilty admitted, displeased. “So there was a little bit of time that he left the roof to search for the sun gun in the warehouse, before he sent the lighting technician to find it. But he wasn’t alone. Schreiber the cameraman went with him, that’s what I understood.”
“But they weren’t together the whole time,” Michael said. “Schreiber isn’t the type of guy who can stay obediently in one place for any length of time. You can imagine him getting antsy and wandering around. After all, there are all kinds of tunnels and hallways around there, right?”
“So what are you trying to tell us?” Balilty baited him. “That at the very minute Schreiber took off, Benny Meyuhas—a real superhero, that guy—pounced on Tirzah, who just happened to be standing there next to some columns, and then raced back up to the roof as if nothing had happened?”
“That’s just it,” Michael said, “I’m not saying anything at this point because I simply do not know.” He stopped for a minute, then repeated himself. “I simply do not know. And what about you? Do you know something that the rest of us don’t?”
“In the meantime, no,” Balilty admitted, chagrined. “But give me another day or two, and I’ll—”
“All right,” Michael declared, “I’m going to bring him here. Please leave everything as it is, don’t touch a thing. Danny, are you coming with me?”
“He is,” Shorer said. “He’s going back with you, and he’ll stay at headquarters to do some questioning.”
Balilty looked around, displeased. “And are you staying here?” he asked Shorer.
“For the time being,” Shorer replied with forced pleasantness. “And if I decide to leave I will do so, according to whatever needs to be done. It’s not a matter of ego or prestige. Or do you think otherwise?”
“No way, not ego,” Balilty muttered. “I’m in favor of solving this case.”
“I’ll be back with Benny Meyuhas within half an hour,” Michael summed up. “Nina, please let them know we’re on our way. Have them wake Benny up if he’s sleeping.”
Next to the front door, on his way out, Michael heard Shorer ask, “Nina, do you think you could arrange a little cup of coffee for us?”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The moment Michael entered police headquarters, he realized he would not be returning to the scene of the crime within half an hour. Echoes of the tumult could be heard all the way to the front door, and they grew louder as he climbed the stairs. Outside his office a crowd had gathered; people were jammed together in a circle around Hefetz and Danny Benizri, who were standing within inches of one another. “You think I can do whatever I want?” Hefetz shouted as he reached for the collar of Danny Benizri’s army jacket. However, in view of the look he got from Benizri—who was watching Hefetz’s hand approach as if it were a poisonous snake—Hefetz thought better of it and returned his hand to his side. “I told you,” he said, though his heart did not seem to be in it, “I received an order from the director general! Just stay out of this whole matter, I told you—” Just then, Hefetz noticed Michael and fell silent. When he resumed talking, he was no longer shouting; instead he drew even closer to Danny Benizri and spoke in a near whisper. He watched Michael from the corner of his eye, tensed up in anticipation of his reaction and awaiting it all the same. “We’re not socialists here,” Hefetz said. “Try to understand: those are yesterday’s cold noodles. You want to bring me a character profile of Shimshi’s wife? What could possibly be new about that? In any case, they’ve all been arrested! You already filmed them on their way in to jail, what more could you show? You want to show the empty factory? The trucks? The bottles? All of it’s been all over the news for days, people are sick of seeing it, especially your pessimistic take on it!”
“Do you hear what you sound like?” Benizri shouted. It appeared he had not spotted Michael, or if he had, he was unconcerned about him or about Eli Bachar, who was standing guard, observing them from the small office at the end of the hall. Eli Bachar motioned to Michael, to which Michael responded with a nod of his head and a look that meant Eli would have to wait a moment. “What are you anyway,” Benizri spat at Hefetz, “the director general’s mouthpiece? And how about the director general himself? He’s the government’s mouthpiece! You should be ashamed of yourself! This’ll be the downfall of the country!” Benizri nearly choked on his anger; his face was scarlet, and veins protruded from his neck. “What do you think, they didn’t put pressure on Zadik, only on you? Don’t you remember how he’d complain about those phone calls? But he never—”
“Danny,” Schreiber said from behind as he tugged at Benizri’s arm and glanced suspiciously at Michael, “calm down. It’s not worth the—”
“Leave me alone!” Benizri shouted. “All of you, just get off my back! We don’t get any support at all around here: on the one hand somebody’s knocking us off like flies, and on the other hand—” Suddenly, shaking, he smothered his face in his hands. Schreiber took hold of his shoulders and pulled him out of the fray.
“Listen, Hefetz,” Rubin said from behind, “I don’t know what’s happened to you, and I don’t understand anything anymore. I don’t know if you thought that if you told us here—at police headquarters, before we’re all questioned—about your plans for cutbacks, we’d shut up about it for a while. Well, I’m not buying it. Just so you know,” he said, planting himself in front of Hefetz, “you can’t just cancel overnight a show that’s been running for years and years. Not today, not just like that, not when Zadik’s body is still warm. I mean, I don’t mean that literally…But he’s barely dead, and you’re off and running to please your master.”
“Just so you people understand: our ratings are zip!” Hefetz cried. “The public has had it, I haven’t even been given a hundred-day grace period. Do you get it? The director general, Ben-Asher, today he—they want things that are more…entertaining…”
“Did you hear what Benizri was saying?” Rubin said authoritatively. “People are dropping like flies. And you? You people—” Michael noted that this was the first time he had heard Rubin’s voice rise to a near shout.
But Rubin did not finish what he was saying because just then Benizri shook himself free of Schreiber’s grip and attacked Hefetz, grabbing his arms and shaking him violently. “You want entertainment? Tomorrow the labor minister is giving a press conference, won’t that be a riot? People’s lives are in ruin. So what are we doing—giving the public some live flesh to chew on, some blood! Som
e great gossip! Hasn’t enough blood been shed?”
“The gossip will come out in any case, Danny,” Hefetz said quietly, and Benizri let go of him at once. Hefetz wiped his brow. “It’ll appear in the papers no matter what you do, prepare for that.”
“I’m already prepared. But I’m not the problem,” Danny Benizri said in a parched voice. “You want to talk to me now?” he asked Eli Bachar. “Because if you do, that’s fine with me.” Eli Bachar nodded and motioned to Benizri to join him in a small office at the end of the hallway.
Rubin approached Hefetz once again. “I want to understand something,” he said, looking straight into Hefetz’s eyes. “You’re telling me right here, after one meeting with the director general, on the very day that Zadik was murdered in his own office, that you’re immediately pulling my show off the air? The show that’s won so many prizes, that…that…and I even have a whole program ready to be screened, completely prepared. That’s what you’re telling me?”
Hefetz stepped backward and glanced at Michael, who neither averted his gaze nor moved from where he was standing. “What the director general meant,” said Hefetz to Rubin, clearly shaken, “was not that the program has been canceled but that you will no longer be hosting it.” Silence fell on the people gathered in the hallway. Hefetz adjusted his glasses, pursed his lips, and suddenly seemed to have lost all inhibitions. “He meant that someone else would be hosting it,” he said quietly, “and that you are simply suspended. For the time being you are suspended because you have failed to raise the ratings on your show. Now do you understand? Suspended. Benizri, too. If you want an explanation, I’ll be happy to—”
A harsh laugh escaped from Rubin’s mouth like a convulsion. “I know the official explanation,” he said coolly. “What could you possibly tell me? All you could do would be to recite the director general’s words. Your master’s voice. What could you tell me? That Benizri has been suspended because he ‘exchanged critical remarks about the minister of labor and social affairs with the laid-off workers’ wives during a live broadcast’? Or that he didn’t always know how to behave himself in the face of authority? You think I don’t know what the director general’s complaints are? Zadik stood up to the guy day in and day out. Every day he would say, ‘Let them fire me, as long as I’m in this position I’m not going to—’”
“If you’ll pardon me,” Hefetz said, calmly cutting Rubin off, his face emotionless, “Zadik is no longer with us to make matters right for you people. With all due respect, I am now the boss.”
Rubin regarded him for one long moment in silence. “I knew it,” he said at last, under his breath. “I knew that as soon as you got a little power, you would become a paradigm of the arrogant upstart slave. But I never believed it would happen so quickly. Perhaps you yourself made it happen—”
“Watch it,” Hefetz said. “Just watch it, Rubin. Be careful what you say. There are witnesses here, and I have full backing from the director general—”
“Full backing!” Rubin said. “There’s no connection at all between my ratings and suspending me, none whatsoever! There’s no connection between Benizri’s supposed infraction and—but never mind, that doesn’t matter. When we’re talking about tyranny, the authority of a despot, there doesn’t need to be a connection, or real reasons. Ladies and gentlemen,” he called to the small crowd gathered around him, “please welcome the new tyrant, the Despot of Israel Television! Please welcome the little dictator, welcome—”
“I don’t need to listen to this bullshit,” Hefetz said with loathing. “Did you want to talk to me?” he asked, turning to Michael. “Here I am. Where do you want me?” Before Michael could answer him, Hefetz looked at Rubin and said, “The show’s over, and the good life, too. Not everybody around here is going to get to do whatever he pleases. This is a new era. Do you understand that? Do you or don’t you understand that?”
“And what’s going to happen with Iddo and Eynam?” Hagar blurted. “Are you planning to dump that too?”
“Don’t worry, Hagar,” Hefetz said in a fatherly manner, “we’re planning to honor all existing contracts. Let’s wait and see how things fall when matters quiet down a little. In the meantime you should know that the director general is very much in favor…he even said—”
“Hefetz, excuse me, excuse me,” said Eliahu Lutafi, the correspondent for environmental affairs, who had pushed himself from the crowd and readjusted the skullcap on his head. “Don’t you think you could wait to the end of the thirty-day mourning period, or at the very least until the seven-day shiva for Zadik has ended? There’s something not quite—”
“Lutafi,” Hefetz said, his face pinched and drawn. “Now you’re starting up? What are you worried about? You’re staying right where you are.” Without waiting for an answer, he looked to Michael, who motioned Hefetz to join him in his office.
“Tzilla will be questioning you,” Michael told Hefetz. “She’ll be in in a moment and she’ll speak with you, and you’ll sign a statement, and then you’ll be free to leave.”
“Not you?” Hefetz asked like a child expecting to speak with the principal and instead getting the very last of the substitute teachers. “I thought that you yourself—”
“Tzilla,” Michael said into the intercom, “Hefetz is waiting for you in my office.”
After listening to Tzilla for a moment, Michael said, “I’m coming to get him, I’ve wasted enough time here. You can divide up the people waiting next to my office. I want signed statements by the morning.” To Hefetz he added, “Wait here, please. Don’t move until she arrives,” and with that he left the room without waiting for a response.
“He hasn’t said a word, sir,” said the policeman on duty outside the interrogation room on the ground floor. “He’s just sitting there, hasn’t even lifted his head. Maybe he’s sleeping, I’m not sure. Peretz is in there with him, but—”
Michael nodded. “All right,” he muttered. “Don’t worry about it. Go drink something, eat something. Your shift is already over.” The policeman curled his lips into an awkward smile and made way for Michael to pass by.
Michael opened the door in one swift motion. Benny Meyuhas did not even lift his head, but Peretz, the interrogations officer, jumped up from his seat, startled. Michael placed his hand on Peretz’s shoulder, and the policeman sat back down in his place. He tugged at the sleeve of his thin blue sweater, frowned as if to say he had failed, and said, aloud, “He won’t eat or drink. Or talk. I don’t—”
“You’re doing fine,” Michael said encouragingly. He approached Benny Meyuhas, who was sitting at the opposite side of the table. “Benny,” Michael said. “You’re coming with me now. We’re waiting for you.” While speaking he took hold of his arm, and Benny Meyuhas looked up at him, heaved himself to his feet without a word, and followed Michael out. “Come along with me, Peretz,” Michael said to the policeman. Without speaking they ascended the stairs and exited to the parking lot, where Michael’s car was waiting.
“You drive, please,” Michael said to the policeman, bending toward him and whispering the address. Peretz sat behind the wheel, and Michael opened the back door and invited Benny Meyuhas to have a seat. Benny Meyuhas did not budge for a moment, but Michael held the door open and gave him a gentle shove, causing the director to bend down and fold himself into the car. They drove the whole way in silence, Michael’s eyes constantly on Benny Meyuhas; he paid special attention as they passed the Oranim gas station. It seemed to him then that Benny Meyuhas sat up in his seat, but he did not shift or raise his head or look out the window. Only when Michael told Peretz to stop the car next to the apartment building and then said to Benny Meyuhas, “Here we are, Benny, you can get out of the car now. You know this building,” did Benny Meyuhas raise his eyes for the first time. As if the spotlights were blinding him, he shut his eyes and covered them with the palms of his hands.
“Yes,” Michael said sympathetically, “I know you’re familiar with this building. Sroul is waiti
ng for you inside.”
Benny Meyuhas regarded him with wonder. “Sroul?” he blurted suddenly. “He’s still there?”
“Why?” Michael asked with forced affability. “Where did you think he would be?”
Benny Meyuhas did not answer, and Michael stepped out of the car, leaving the door open for Benny to join him.
After several long minutes, Benny Meyuhas emerged from the car, his body stooped. He did not completely straighten up even when he raised his head to look at the building. “I’m waiting here,” he said to Michael. “Tell Sroul to come to me.”
“He’s waiting for you inside,” Michael said softly. “He can’t come outside to meet you just now. Don’t you know that?”
“Why not?” Benny Meyuhas asked. “Is he too weak?”
Michael looked into the man’s face in search of a trace of sarcasm, but the bluish light of the spotlights showed only a tortured face outlined in deep creases that seemed to have deepened in the two days since Michael had first met him, giving him the look of a man filled with so much pain and sorrow that Michael found it hard to keep his eyes on him. Benny Meyuhas gazed up toward the second floor. “He was feeling better,” he said. “He told me he’d be fine, well enough to speak with you people.”
Benny Meyuhas began to speak again, then fell silent, pursing his lips like a small child who refuses to eat another spoonful of soup and shaking his head stubbornly.
“Come with me,” Michael said, pulling him gently toward the building. At one point it seemed as though Benny Meyuhas’s legs would give way and he would collapse, but Michael, who was tensed in anticipation of any possibility, held his arm tightly and coaxed him toward the path.
Balilty, who had returned ahead of Michael, was standing with Shorer at the entrance to the apartment. They nodded in Michael’s direction but did not look at Benny Meyuhas as they made room for the two to pass by on the way into the bedroom. Nina was waiting just outside the room, a smile forming at the edges of her lips until she caught sight of Benny Meyuhas’s face, and she stepped aside. “Ronen’s in there,” she warned Michael quietly, and Michael nodded, pulling the director into the room after him. Inside the room, quite close to the door, Benny Meyuhas stopped in his tracks and gazed at the bed. Without a word he drew closer and looked. He knelt down and pressed his face into the dead man’s arm. A moment later he lifted his head and looked at Michael, who nodded in affirmation, but Benny Meyuhas continued to regard him with a questioning look.