Land, Jon

by [Kamal

  Al-Shaer just looked at him, too shocked to be enraged.

  “I also want everything back five meters in the alley and forward five meters into the street sifted.”

  “Sifted?”

  “For foreign material, anything anomalous to the scene.”

  Al-Shaer tapped his head dramatically. “Of course! How could I have forgotten? Very important to find out where our faceless victim was before he came here to be killed.”

  “Not him necessarily.”

  “What? Who, then?”

  “Al-Diib,” Ben said.

  * * * *

  Chapter 4

  B

  y thetime Benwalked backto theedge ofthe crowd,a jeep carrying four more police officers had arrived, followed closely by the ambulance driven by the brothers who used to clean rugs. The crowd booed the arrivals and slapped the ambulance with their hands as it crept toward the alley.

  Ben watched the scene, recalling the mayor’s words about what the murders were doing to the climate in the streets. Clearly the people were lashing out at anything even remotely resembling authority. Ben had not been in Palestine for the intifada, but had heard the atmosphere then had been similarly tense. The prospects for violence always seemed strong now and that did not bode well for the prospects of a final peace being achieved.

  The reinforcements had come none too soon, for the Hisbe’s merchants were starting to prop up the shutters draped over their storefront displays of fruits and vegetables lining the street, the smells of fresh produce already drifting into the air. Others were opening retail establishments that featured hand-woven baskets, rugs, and a vast array of merchandise. A difficult situation was about to become even more complicated. In addition to the normal complement of shoppers, the curious would come, drawn by word of mouth toward a new attraction amid the usual fare.

  Ben waited for the four new officers to disperse along the front of the crowd before addressing the three who’d already been here when he arrived. The yellow crime scene tape, its DO NOT CROSS! warning printed in English since it was the only version Ben could obtain, flapped in the breeze behind him.

  “Who was first on the scene?” he asked.

  “Me,” said the one in the center, bearded and gaunt, his uniform a poor fit over his frame. “I was closest when the call came in.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Moussa Salam.”

  “Did you see anyone in the area upon your arrival?”

  “No one, sir.”

  “What about lights burning in any of the windows of the apartments along the street?”

  “I . . . didn’t notice.”

  “Think back. Try.”

  “I secured the alley. I didn’t think to—”

  “There were lights,” the officer on Salam’s right interrupted. He was a much older man whose hair showed flecks of gray and whose beard was mixed evenly between salt and pepper. “But I’m not sure from which buildings now.”

  “Why does it matter?” Salam challenged.

  “If lights are on, then people are probably awake. One of them may have seen something that can help us.”

  “A long shot,” noted the third officer Ben knew as Fakhar. Dark with very curly graying hair and a scruffy beard.

  “A starting point,” said Ben.

  “At the time of the murder it would have been too dark for anyone gazing down or across the street to have seen anything clearly in the alley,” Fakhar noted, a slight edge to his voice.

  “You are correct, of course,” Ben acknowledged. “But they may have seen something else, someone passing by, for instance.”

  “At such an hour? Why?” challenged Salam.

  “A late night walk. Perhaps returning from a friend’s home.”

  Fakhar was busy making notes on a small memo pad pulled from his lapel pocket. “Yes, Inspector,” he said, and wedged the memo pad back in his pocket.

  “We are not merely looking for the person who reported the crime. We are looking for anyone who might have seen anything. A car parked nearby. A figure they can describe moving too fast or slow, standing out. Anything amiss in the late night or early morning routine they have come to be used to.”

  A fourth officer sliced his way through the crowd toward them, an excited expression lighting over his features. He gazed quickly at the trio standing rigid in front of the alley and then looked at Ben, composing himself.

  “I apologize for leaving my post, sir.”

  “And you are . . .”

  “Officer Issa Tawil.”

  “And where were you?”

  “Speaking with someone, sidi. A witness.”

  * * * *

  T

  awil was easily the youngest of the four officers, barely college age if he’d been American, with a beard that failed to obscure his boyish face.

  “You know who I am, Issa?” Ben asked him, after they had slipped through the crowd and moved across Jaffa Street.

  “I recognized you, sidi.”

  “You shouldn’t address me in such a formal manner. It occurs to me that your brother officers will certainly frown on your sharing information with me, as it is. They would have wanted the opportunity to talk you out of it. That could cause a young man of limited tenure some problems.”

  Tawil smiled. “But a man of such limited tenure could not be expected to recognize you as anything but a superior officer.”

  Ben nodded, holding back a smile. He would have added Tawil’s name to the list of potential detectives instantly, had it still been his list to make. “Now tell me about this witness.”

  “I was patrolling the back of the crowd just before you arrived when she yelled for me from her window.”

  “She . . .”

  “An old woman. Terrible eyesight. She thought I had come to remove her garbage. Her apartment is just over here, off the street.”

  “Off the street?”

  “Yes, sir. She could never have seen the alley, or anyone even close to it.”

  Ben stopped as they reached the other side of Jaffa Street. “Then what did she see?”

  “Another witness.”

  * * * *

  Chapter 5

  B

  en went alone to the old woman’s apartment, stopping at the head of the alley to turn and look back. He was standing diagonally across from the alley where the murder had taken place, between forty and forty-five yards away. At this distance he thought it might be possible to catch a clear view of a face caught in the moonlight. But the view deteriorated and then vanished altogether the further he ventured down the alley to where the old woman lived.

  The entrance to Rula Middein’s apartment was a rickety door lacking both a knob and a lock. Leaking bags of garbage lay strewn in the alley beneath it. Ben held his nose against the stench and cringed as his feet sloshed through some of the loosed remnants. The stairs to the doorway were rotting and he took them lightly, wishing for a railing. An inner stairway awaited him once inside, another door at its top. Wide open, as if he were expected.

  “Ya halla! ‘Ahlan wa sahlan!” a friendly voice called in welcome as his feet thumped noisily upon the plank floor outside the apartment. “Come in! Come in!”

  Another few steps forward brought a luscious smell to his nose, a happy contrast to the one from the alley. Passing inside the apartment, he could hear a spoon clinking against the side of a bowl. A single wall and curtain separated the kitchen from the rest of the shabby but good-sized apartment. A square wooden table, ancient, rested directly before him. It looked to be too heavy for the flimsy floor supporting it. A dozen places had been set around the table.

  Beyond what passed for the dining area lay a neat assembly of patched furniture. Ben ran his eyes over the pieces and could see how even the patches had deteriorated, evidence of aging hands struggling with the inevitability of decay. He saw a radio but no television. Another curtain separated this room from the old woman’s bedroom. The two curtains were the only things in the ap
artment that matched.

  The one leading to the kitchen parted and Rula Middein emerged balancing a spoon before her, free hand cradled beneath it to catch any spilled excess.

  “Taste,” she ordered, jabbing the spoon Ben’s way. “Il-kabab wilful.”

  He opened his mouth and sampled the kebab and beans.

  “Ajib!” he complimented. “Ajib, haja.”

  The old woman glistened at his use of such a reverent title. Her white hair hung in poorly combed clumps. She pulled the spoon away with a frail hand and sniffed the food herself, reveling in Ben’s acceptance of her madafah, hospitality.

  “More spices, you think?”

  “No. It’s perfect as is. Leave it.”

  The old woman beamed. “You can stay and eat with us maybe? I have many to feed,” she said, gesturing to the already-set table. “But there is always extra. I should set an extra place?”

  “Not tonight.”

  “Of course, you must eat with your own family. Forgive me. Families are good. You have children?”

  “No,” he told her, feeling a dull ache rise out of his stomach.

  “A man like you should,” she scolded. Rula Middein held the spoon like a baton, conducting life as it should still be. “I have many children, children and grandchildren.” Again she gestured toward the table. “They will be here soon. For dinner. We always eat together. A family.”

  The sun found an angle through the blindless windows and only then did Ben notice the thick layer of dust coating all the plates. The silverware looked rusted, destroyed by the humid Jericho air.

  “You will stay?” the old woman asked hopefully.

  “Another time.”

  “Promise!”

  “I promise.”

  Satisfied, Rula Middein retreated to the kitchen to finish the meal no one would be coming to eat. Ben trailed the old woman slowly, careful not to alarm her.

  “Other police were here before. They couldn’t stay either.”

  “They sent me, so we could talk.”

  “They ask questions.”

  “I know.”

  “You ask same ones?”

  “Some.”

  The woman’s shoulders slumped. She looked sad for the first time since Ben had entered the apartment. “Was bad thing happened last night.”

  “One of my men said you saw something, someone.”

  “I saw police at entrance to alley, shouted at them to come up. One did. Nice boy named Issa. I tell him to get rid of garbage. He says he’ll try.”

  “So will I.”

  “You promise?”

  “It will be gone by this afternoon.”

  The old woman went back to tending the ancient stove, seeming to lose interest in him.

  “The young officer told me you saw someone last night.”

  She replied without turning from her pots. “See him every night. Asked officer to do something about that too.”

  “Who is it that you see?”

  “Sleeps in alley.”

  “Tell me about him.”

  “Al-sabi, a beggar boy. Sometimes I see him during day at Baladiya. Stealing. Running. I want to invite him to dinner but ...” She shrugged her boney shoulders. “He run away before I can. At night I don’t go out.”

  “A wise decision. And this boy, he was in the alley last night?”

  “Every night.”

  “Describe him.”

  “Dirty. Long hair hanging like pieces of rope. Don’t see many with hair so long.”

  “His clothes?”

  “Pale. Used to be white maybe.”

  “Both shirt and pants?”

  “Match,” she said, and then looked up at him with what little hope her eyes could still muster. “You help boy?”

  “I’ll be waiting for him tonight,” Ben told Rula Middein. “When he comes back.”

  * * * *

  H

  e met officerIssa Tawilback onJaffa Street.

  “Well?”

  “You did good work, Issa.”

  “Thank you, sidi.”

  “The old woman told me about the boy who sleeps in her alley. A resident of one of the refugee camps you think?”

  “Almost certainly. The Einissultan camp would be my guess, based on the old woman’s description of his clothes.”

  “An excellent deduction.”

  “Drawn from experience this time, Inspector,” Tawil said, features sobering. “I grew up there.”

  “A difficult place for a child.”

  “Or an adult.” The young officer’s eyes met Ben’s. “But you are no stranger to hardship either, Inspector.” He hesitated, cleared his throat. “Commander Shaath sent a message while you were upstairs with the woman. He has returned to the office with another patrol and has left you the car.”

  “Very considerate of him ...”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Nothing.” Ben stopped, eager to change the subject. “Do you think the boy will return?”

  “I wouldn’t if I were him, not if he saw anything, but you never know. He has staked out the Hisbe as his territory. Finding another is not as simple as it may seem. You will wait for him tonight?”

  “Yes.”

  “I would like to join you.”

  Ben was about to resist, then changed his mind. He could treat it like a training exercise, pretend like Rula Middein that things were still the way they belonged. “Say midnight, unless I find the boy before then.”

  “In the camp?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let me, sidi. After all . . .” Tawil completed his thought with a shrug.

  “This is something I must do, Issa.”

  “Even for the police the camps are not safe.”

  “Precisely why I must go there alone.”

  * * * *

  Chapter 6

  W

  e would liketo goover itagain,” oneof themen insuits told the Shin Bet agents assembled in the center of Old Jaffa. “One more time.”

  His remarks were aimed at all of them, but Danielle was uncomfortably certain that his stare lingered on her the most. She, after all, had been the first to draw and fire her weapon. In the suspicious minds of the three men who had come to assess what had occurred hours earlier and make an account, that made her the easiest target to pin blame on. One civilian had been killed and two seriously wounded in the shoot-out. And the three men dispatched internally started with the notion that Shin Bet had erred and worked from there— another ramification of the Rabin assassination.

  Danielle wasn’t sure which branch of the government these men actually worked for. They existed in a professional vacuum, summoned only when the possibility of a mishap existed and disappearing once satisfied (though perhaps disappointed) that it didn’t. They had become the government’s personal terrorists, feared more than any enemy from outside the state, the word they passed down law even if the facts didn’t always add up to that.

  The Shin Bet agents stirred anxiously and returned to their original positions.

  The area where the shoot-out had occurred had been cordoned off. The bodies had all been removed, replaced by lines of chalk or tape to simulate their positions. The Shin Bet team had already done its best to reenact the events of the gun battle a number of times. Two soldiers had been recruited to play the roles of Tice and Atturi, the only two involved here whose careers did not hang in the balance.

  “Agent Barnea,” one of the mystery men called to her, “if you don’t mind.”

  Danielle took her place in the street. She knew she had acted properly and didn’t care very much if the men found otherwise. In fact, she might welcome that, because she had been looking for a way out for a long time now.

  She had completed her mandatory tour in the army looking forward to starting a family, becoming a wife and mother. But then her oldest brother was killed and a new resolve filled her. It was the desire for vengeance at first that helped her complete the rigorous training for the elite Sayaret at the top
of her class. Once she began serving in this new and dangerous capacity, though, the desire for anything but cold precision vanished. The world of quick-strike commandos has no room for emotion, and she quickly came to embrace that as the therapy she needed most of all. There would be time for a family later.