by Batya Gur
“So what are we wasting our time on this for?” Eli Bachar asked, enraged. “Don’t we have enough work to do as it is?”
“First of all,” Balilty said, “I’d like to point out that if Hefetz could leave the building so easily without anyone noticing, then other people could too. Not just today—I mean yesterday—which was a particularly tough day, but on other days, too. And anyway, it’s just a side story, you know, so we won’t get bored. We all already know the story of Zadik’s death, right?”
“Right,” Michael said, “but we don’t have enough—for the time being, we don’t have enough of a case. Maybe when forensics gets the DNA results—”
“But it’s clear we’re talking about Zadik’s blood on that T-shirt,” Lillian reminded them. “It says so in the preliminary report.”
“The blood is one thing,” Balilty was quick to point out, “but we still don’t know who the T-shirt belongs to. And there’s that gray hair that could be—”
Michael’s beeper sounded. He looked at the display screen and said to Tzilla, “It’s from the forensics lab at Abu Kabir. Give them a call, would you, and see what they have to say.”
“Already?” Eli Bachar asked, incredulous. “What could they possibly find that quickly? It’s only been three hours since—”
“First of all,” Balilty said, “three hours is a pretty long time, and second of all, maybe they found something really important.”
Tzilla dialed the phone, and when she was put through to the pathologist, she handed the receiver over to Michael. He listened for a long moment, then said, “Hang on a minute, I’m going to put you on the loudspeaker, we’re holding a short team meeting right now.” Everyone in the room could hear the distraught voice of the pathologist: “Final stages, spreading, terminal,” he was saying.
“What?” asked Lillian, alert and tense. “What was that?”
“Cancer, that’s what. Our Sroul had cancer,” Balilty announced. Into the loudspeaker he said, “Dr. Siton, can you tell us where? Which kind?”
“Lung cancer.” The pathologist’s hoarse voice crackled through the speaker. “It seems he only had a few weeks left to live. When a person’s living, you don’t make such predictions, because you can never really know, but since this man is no longer with us, I can tell you—off the record, it won’t appear in my autopsy report—that it was only a matter of weeks. Incidentally, in America they tell the patient the truth to his face because they’re afraid of being sued for malpractice.”
Shorer stood and approached the loudspeaker. After informing the pathologist who he was, he asked, “What does this mean physiologically? How would it have affected him? I mean, is it right to assume that strangling him would have been quite simple, since the illness itself involves difficulty in pulling air into the lungs?”
“Yes,” the pathologist answered, a note of sarcasm in his voice. “It’s easier to strangle someone who is about to stop breathing anyway.”
“Excuse me for a moment, Dr. Siton, this is Michael Ohayon again. I have a question: in the state he was in, wouldn’t he have required assistance of some kind—an oxygen tank or something?
“Naturally,” the pathologist said through the speaker. Michael gave Nina an inquisitive look; she shrugged as a way of saying she knew nothing about it. “There must be some sort of oxygen tank in the vicinity, no doubt about it.”
“There was nothing of the sort there,” Nina said, a look of panic spreading across her face. “We took apart the entire apartment, there was nothing—the only place we didn’t touch was under the sink, it appeared nobody had touched anything there for ages.”
“Impossible. There must be something,” the pathologist declared. “He could not have managed without oxygen—take a better look around. It won’t necessarily look like an oxygen tank, there are small models—something called a cannula, looks like a pair of eyeglasses. It’s two holes in a tube that you wear on your nose like a small mask, with a pipe running from it to the patient’s back, where a little tank—which looks like a thermos—sits in a backpack. There must be one somewhere in that apartment, and a tank, too, even a small one. Didn’t you find anything that even—”
“Yes!” Nina cried suddenly. “There was a thermos! Silver, I didn’t understand…it was in the kitchen, I thought…we checked for fingerprints, but we only found the dead man’s. Nothing else. The thermos was in a kitchen cupboard, looks like some futuristic soda-making machine. Is that right?”
“Send somebody to bring it in,” Michael told Tzilla. “Right away.” Turning to Nina, he said, “What about those glasses? Wasn’t there a pipe attached to a mask that looked like a pair of glasses?”
“No,” Nina said. “But we weren’t able to check the surroundings because it was dark. Maybe it’s outside. We’ll be able to search as soon as it’s light outside and the rain has let up.”
“How could a man in his condition,” Shorer asked the pathologist, “manage such a long flight?”
“I’m sure he was given steroids. We haven’t checked his blood yet, but I’m certain we’ll find steroids. Lots of them, and strong ones,” the pathologist said. “There are anabolic steroids that can keep you on a constant high for days. They give you the false impression that you have strength. Afterward you crash, if the steroids don’t finish you off first.”
“Excuse me,” Sergeant Ronen asked when the doctor had finished speaking, “but why are we so concerned with lung cancer and oxygen masks? The guy was strangled to death, there’s proof of it. So why is it important—I mean, isn’t it more important for us to finally hear what Benny Meyuhas had to say?”
“We’ll get to that,” Michael assured him, “in just another minute. But first of all this is of the utmost importance, since we did not understand until now what it was that prompted Sroul to come forward now and tell Tirzah Rubin a few weeks ago something that had been bothering him for more than twenty years.”
“What, you mean like because he was going to croak?” Eli Bachar asked. “Like he wanted to confess before he died?”
“But he was religious,” Lillian said. “Don’t you people know that religious Jews don’t do confession before they die? I mean, what are we talking about here, gentiles?”
“Every person confesses in one way or another before dying,” Shorer said. “Especially if something is weighing heavily on his conscience.”
“What was weighing heavily on his conscience?” asked Tzilla. “Do we know yet?”
Michael looked at Shorer. “We don’t yet, but perhaps we still will.”
“Did Meyuhas know?” Balilty asked. “I mean, about the cancer? Do you think he knew about the guy’s condition?”
“We’ll have the answer to that question very soon. If you’ll excuse me for a moment—” Michael rushed to his office.
He flung the door open and startled the two men sitting across from one another at his desk, but still managed to hear Yigael ask Benny Meyuhas, “So he came to your house by surprise to pick you up?” To Michael the sergeant said, “We’re trying to formulate a testimony. I thought it would help if we worked on his statement together.”
Michael sat down next to Benny Meyuhas and signaled to Yigael to keep silent. “Tell me,” he said to Meyuhas, “was Sroul a healthy man?”
“What do you mean?” Benny Meyuhas asked Michael. “Apart from the burns and all that?”
“Yes,” Michael said, “apart from his injury.”
Benny Meyuhas frowned in bewilderment and said, “Yes, you know, like the rest of us, I guess. We’re not getting any younger…”
“No, no,” Michael said. “I’m asking whether he discussed his condition with you. His medical condition.”
“His condition?” Benny Meyuhas asked, confused. “I mean, he wasn’t looking so good, but I thought it was because of the flight or the circumstances. I have no idea what medical condition you’re referring to.”
“When I asked you why Sroul suddenly told Tirzah his big secret,” Michae
l said impatiently, “you explained that according to what Tirzah had told you, he’d said that you were all growing older and there was no way of knowing what the future holds and that therefore he had decided to tell her. I asked you about it, remember? It’s written in the brief, and we’ve got you talking about it on film. I asked you why he waited so many years and suddenly—”
“Yes, you asked, but I really don’t know,” Meyuhas said. “I told you that I don’t know, that I don’t have any explanation other than the fact that he had great faith in Tirzah, and it turns out they spent a fair amount of time alone together. You know how it happens sometimes that people suddenly tell a secret they haven’t shared with anyone for years? Tirzah told me he’d said that we’re all growing old. But I’ve already told you that, haven’t I?”
“So you don’t know anything about a fatal illness, any difficulties breathing?”
“No,” said Benny Meyuhas. “I’d noticed how thin he was, but it had been years since the last time I’d seen him. As for his breathing, well, he was once a very heavy smoker. But why are you asking?”
Michael looked at him in silence. “It’s not important at this moment,” he said. He was just about to return to Balilty’s office when the intercom rang and he hastened to lift the receiver. He heard the voice of Yaffa from forensics on the other end of the line. In a subdued voice—quite unusual for Yaffa—she said, “Listen, Michael. Are you listening? I’ve been trying to reach you on your beeper for over an hour.”
“What? What is it?” Michael asked, low on patience. “Have you finished?”
“Listen,” she said, clearing her throat. “I don’t know how to tell you this, I’ve never had a thing like this happen before…” She hemmed and hawed, until finally Michael lost his patience completely and demanded that she tell him whatever it was immediately. As he listened, he felt his leg muscles go limp suddenly, and he grabbed the edge of the desk and slumped into the chair next to Benny Meyuhas, aware of the puzzled looks he was getting from Yigael and from Benny Meyuhas. “I have no idea how something like could this happen,” she said, her voice muffled. “There’s no point in putting the blame on someone, the responsibility is mine in any case: it simply disappeared. There’s no plastic bag. Do you remember how we put it in a small plastic bag next to the shirt? Well, we’ve got the shirt, but we’re still searching for the bag with the strand of hair. Don’t worry, though,” she said, quick to make up for it, “we haven’t given up. It’s just that I can’t give you the answer you’re waiting for yet.”
Michael hung up the phone before he could hear any more of what Yaffa had to say and raced back to Balilty’s office, where he found his Special Investigations team embroiled in an argument. Balilty’s voice could be heard right through the closed door as he shouted, “How am I supposed to work like this if I’m not told the complete story? In the middle of the Meyuhas interrogation I’m booted out, sent back urgently to work on Hefetz. What are you hiding from me? Our whole team is meant to be involved.”
“All in good time,” Shorer said as Michael took his seat. “It is not possible to know everything all at once, believe me.”
“You’re the boss,” Balilty said, openly hostile. “You get to decide. Just don’t come complaining to me that I neglected to tell you something important or that we didn’t solve this business quickly enough.”
“Benny Meyuhas did not know about Sroul’s lung cancer,” Michael said quietly. “He had no idea about it.”
“How about Rubin? Did he?”
“That,” Michael said, “we’ll know in another couple of hours, I hope.”
“Where is Rubin anyway?” Lillian asked. “I told him to wait on the bench, and then they told me you’d taken him,” she said, looking at Balilty.
“He went home,” Balilty said. “He’s waiting for a phone call from his friend Benny Meyuhas, who’s supposed to call him when we’re done with him, right?” he asked Michael.
“Yes, exactly,” Michael said.
“You let him go home?” Lillian cried out. “I thought he was…I told him to wait outside until—”
“It’s all right,” Balilty said, trying to calm her down. “I told him to go home, don’t worry.” He chuckled. “He may think he’s alone, but he’s not, not for a single minute. His telephone is—”
“Without a court order?” Eli Bachar asked, worried. “Nobody’s asked for a court order. So we’re doing without it?”
“Believe me,” Balilty assured him, “it’ll be fine. I’m telling you, on my honor.”
“With all due respect,” Eli Bachar said, “when we bring this to the prosecuting attorney’s office so it can be considered legally binding in court, your promises and your word of honor won’t be worth shit.”
“Gentlemen,” Shorer cried, giving them both a look of reproach, “how many years is this business between you two going to continue? You should both be ashamed of yourselves, two grown men. Balilty, do you have a court order to tap that phone or not?”
Balilty said nothing.
“I see,” Shorer said.
“There wasn’t enough time. Until I get the duty judge out of bed and all that—”
“I see,” Shorer repeated. “So it’s not for use in court; whatever it is that we’ll hear over the phone will be for our use only, which is still something. How long will it take you to get a court order?”
“I’ve got someone already on the way to the duty judge,” Balilty said, “and he should be back any minute now, I promise. I didn’t want to go there myself, I would have missed this meeting. And I didn’t want to miss this meeting because I thought we’d finally get to hear what it was Tirzah came back from America with, what it was she learned there.”
“Not now, Danny,” Shorer said, shutting him up. “That’s not material for now.”
“Anyway,” Balilty said, “I told Rubin to phone here at eight this morning and that we’ll be able to tell him then what’s happening with Benny Meyuhas, so that then he can, like, talk to him.”
“People,” Michael said to the room, “we’ve got two hours until eight o’clock rolls around. You can take a short rest, after that we’ve got a production that needs—” He looked at Shorer and fell silent.
“Needs what?” Tzilla asked. “I’ve got to have the details.”
“You’ll get them soon enough,” Shorer reassured her. Turning to Michael, he asked, “Where do you want to do it?”
“At Israel Television, I think,” Michael said, examining the toothpick he had removed from his shirt pocket.
“In Rubin’s office?” Shorer asked.
“No,” Michael answered after careful consideration. “In the String Building, near the scene of the first murder.”
“Well, Monsieur Poirot, this is genuine Agatha Christie, isn’t it?” Balilty muttered. “That’s where you think we’ll have the fatal meeting that’ll get him to talk?”
“It’s worth trying,” Eli Bachar said. “And it’ll give us the chance to—”
Shorer flashed a concerned look at Michael.
“So, you need all of us there?” Nina asked. Michael glanced at Shorer, placed a hand on his arm, and said, “We’ll know that in a little while. In the meantime, you’re all on standby. Everyone.”
“Hey, look, it’s already getting light outside,” Nina exclaimed. “And it seems the rain has cleared up, too.”
In place of a response, there was a knock at the door. In the doorway stood Elmaliah the cameraman. Bleary-eyed, he asked when they would finish up with him; behind him a curl of smoke rose in the air, and he made way for Hefetz to enter the room. “May I have a word with you?” Hefetz asked Michael. “I’ve got to talk to you about something.” Looking at the assembled team, he fell silent.
Michael stepped outside and motioned to Hefetz to follow him to his office at the end of the hallway. He removed a pile of cardboard files from one of the chairs and, in silence, offered Hefetz a seat. When he sat down, Michael felt for the first time just ho
w very tired he was. He could not decide, however, whether it was the hair that had disappeared from the forensics lab—about which he had told no one, not even Shorer—that had broken his spirit, or whether it was this interminable contact with life and death for days on end without sleep that had caused his limbs to feel so very weak. Or maybe it was having given up smoking, that strange mourning he felt inside: true mourning. What was he mourning, anyway? That faithful convoy of cigarettes that had suddenly been stopped short after so many years? Or was it that multitude of times and people and loves and essential life moments that were hanging from that priceless chain of cigarettes?
Quitting smoking—which he was supposed to regard as the “beginning of a healthy life”—seemed merely to be the end of many lives and the start of something detached, severed, and there was no way of knowing what new spark would come along to carry it forward. He wondered how he could ever make anyone understand how those little creatures made from paper, tobacco, and a flame had become the pillar of fire that had led him on his long journey through the wilderness. He was stunned by this train of thought; perhaps even this tendency to exaggeration stemmed from the extreme fatigue brought on by giving up smoking.
“Is it okay if I smoke in here?” Hefetz asked as he looked at the plume of smoke rising from the cigarette in his hand. “I’d actually given it up, but yesterday I couldn’t take it anymore. This is my first in more than three years,” he said, taking a heavy drag. “They tell you it’s not good for your health, but in the end you die of something anyway, right? If not a heart attack, then somebody comes along and kills you.”
“How can I help you?” Michael asked, snapping the toothpick between his fingers into two.
“I don’t know what to do about Meyuhas,” Hefetz said. “I don’t know what to tell people, how to deal with it on the news, whether or not to announce that he’s been detained on suspicion of murder. And the worst of it is…” He fell silent and stared at the butt of his cigarette.