“Anyway, I showed up that day to make sure he didn’t do anything stupid. We stayed in eye contact and everything was working just fine till she showed up—a school teacher who was there with her students and another teacher. I didn’t know what she wanted from me. Turned out she was offering me a ride on the Ferris wheel as a way of raising my spirits. You know who I mean. She was all over the papers. Her parents sued the park’s management and won just a few days ago. Amazing what lawyers can do. At any rate, I accepted her offer. To be honest, I was a bit proud. Everyone was sure I was a real homeless man. We got onto a rather empty section of the wheel. She said she wanted to hear me and with all the noise around …
“You already know where this is going. She asked me about my life and I served up some of the character’s back story. As soon as the wheel started to spin, everything changed. Everything. She started talking about the hypocrisy of our society, a society that scorns people like me and ignores truly dangerous characters, who, thanks to their sheep’s clothing, walk around freely, unmolested. I tried not to laugh till she pointed at the businessman with the fancy attaché case, standing near the hotdog stand. She said he didn’t fool her for a second. I asked what she meant, and she said she knew that behind those dark glasses was a pair of predatory eyes. From that moment on, everything sped up. I didn’t even have time to think. She looked down to point Adam out, but he was in the middle of a conversation with some kid, and all of a sudden she started to go crazy—‘Oh my God, I can’t believe it!’—then she started to yell the kid’s name. Who can hear a woman shouting at an amusement park, you ask. And you’re right. But at that moment it seemed possible. Especially when they started to leave, Adam and the kid, and my idiot of a brother put his long arm around the kid’s shoulders in an innocent hug that drove the teacher mad. When she realized there was no way anyone was hearing her, she stood up, tried to draw attention. I didn’t know how to stop her when she started waving her arms. I had no choice. I couldn’t bear the thought that my brother would be tried for seducing a minor. Before she found her voice, I grabbed her legs, lifted a little, and pushed. It all happened in a matter of seconds. I couldn’t believe how easily her weight relented and, more so, how no one seemed to notice. Only about a second before she landed did people become aware of what was happening. Then all hell broke loose. The wheel stopped at the perfect time, though. I hopped off and flew the hell out of the park.
“You want to hear the great irony? Half an hour after I got home, the two of them walked in, giggling, on their way to the computer, while I scraped the makeup off my face as fast as I could, not believing that over the course of the last hour I’d gone from an innocent man to a murderer and, worst of all, the motive for the crime was sitting in the next room totally unperturbed! I could go deep into my state of mind at that time, but I have a feeling it doesn’t interest you one bit. So that’s it, end of story. I’ve spared you the need for evidence and witnesses. The perfect confession, no? I thank you for listening.”
Still standing in front of the glass, he bowed deeply, till the applause in his ears subsided. A weary grin hung off his face. He turned toward Adam and sighed. “Believe you me, Adam, this kind of relief is worth murdering for.”
For the first time since he had assumed a fetal position on the floor, Adam looked up. “You’re a sick man, Shahar.”
Shahar put a hand out to him. “Get up, Adam, the show’s over. They’re going to come in here any second, and you don’t want to give them the satisfaction of seeing you like this.”
Adam got up unassisted and plodded back to his chair. He sat down and stared at the wall. Shahar mimicked him.
Ten minutes later, the door opened and the investigating officer strode in, accompanied by five yawning policemen. The brothers wondered what had detained them. As soon as the investigator opened his mouth, it became clear. The stern-faced ranking officer turned to Shahar and asked him, in a tone that hid years of fandom, “Well, Shahar, now that we’ve let you see your brother, you ready to talk?”
Shahar exchanged a surprised look with Adam and then donned a weighty expression. His voice measured, he said, “Sure, but I haven’t got much to say. I attacked that woman for no reason. I have no idea what made me act that way.”
The officer glared at him, remained silent for a minute, and snuffed a cigarette out on the floor. “Take him away,” he told two of the uniforms. As they pulled Adam to his feet and out of the room, the investigator asked, “You sure she didn’t do anything? Maybe say something that pissed you off?”
Shahar shook his head. “She didn’t get the chance.”
“Maybe you knew her from somewhere else?”
Shahar shrugged. “Sorry, but I’ve never seen her before.”
The investigator caught the shard of a smile on the actor’s lips as Shahar looked over his shoulder, but by the time he turned his head, he had missed the one that passed across Adam’s face, already on the other side of the door.
28
Four Undertakers, a Client, and a Liar’s Chair
Two friendly undertakers laid Keren to eternal rest in a glass sarcophagus. When they were through, Ben thanked them for taking his tight schedule into account and allowing him to go to the front of the line. The undertakers produced angelic smiles and, before turning to the next body, winked at him, saying there was no need to get too down, for she was now in a far better place.
Ben took the miniature key from the golden-haired undertaker and turned the lock on the sarcophagus three times, as asked. The bald undertaker took it back from him, placed it on his tongue and, throwing his head back, swallowed, convulsing slightly.
Looking at Ben’s expression, the golden-haired one clarified. “Just another safety precaution against tomb raiders, necrophiliacs, and postmodern artists.”
Ben thanked them again and headed out, a faint smile on his face as he thought about the last time he’d visited the strange cemetery. His smile faded, though, when he considered the investigator’s likely response to his current condition. He had gone to see all of his close family members and come up empty. The little man would offer a heartfelt apology and say he had done everything in his power to locate the missing woman, but even an old hand such as himself had never seen a missing-person file go as cold as this one. Ben would look at him, eyes glazed, and thank him for all the hard work. A few more hollow sentences would pass through their lips, followed by a firm handshake and a final farewell. Then loneliness. Then the futility of searching for a needle in a haystack, fighting windmills. His brain would comb through an inventory of clichés. With time, his fierce determination to find his wife would become more and more self involved and …
A bitter cry echoed through the hall, violating the deathly silence. Turning around, Ben saw a woman lying flat on top of a young man’s body, probably her son, pounding his chest and slapping his face in a desperate attempt to resuscitate him. The man by her side, perhaps her husband, looked around and begged her to stop. She refused to be calmed and began flailing at him, alternating between weeping and laughing, unintentionally providing rather amusing entertainment to the other visitors, who dealt with their loved ones’ second deaths as a simple but brutal fact, an attitude the anguished mother was reluctant to adopt.
Ben nodded at her sympathetically, and rather than stare at the distraught family like everyone else, he looked back at the undertakers one final time before leaving. The image that caught his eye was far more intriguing. Farther down along the hall, he spotted one of the undertakers talking to a man who had his back to Ben. He was wheelchair bound, and as Ben strode in his direction, he wondered who this particular athletic paraplegic was burying.
The bald one handed the key to Robert, pointed to the lock, and mumbled a few words of explanation. Ben didn’t know why he felt himself go weak at the sight of the distant dead man, and only as Robert swiveled the key a third time and handed it back to the undertaker did Ben get close enough to the proceedings to feel the sweat stream down his back and the hammer stroke of his pulse throb mercilessly in his temples—the undertaker took the key, opened his mouth, and lost his balance as Ben tackled him to the marble floor, grabbed the key out of his hand, and stood up, looking down in amazement at the Mad Hop, strewn on his back, frozen in a position of sweet sleep, his mouth slightly open like a child waiting for a surprise with his eyes closed, his hands tranquilly folded over his belly, his bearing, chillingly euphoric.
“What’s going on here?” Robert called out, his tone going from annoyance to surprise when he recognized the man standing over him and the equal measure of surprise on his face.
“I was just about to ask you the same thing,” Ben said.
The golden-haired undertaker helped his stunned colleague to his feet. “Why’d you do that?” he asked.
“That’s my friend there,” Ben said, pointing at the Mad Hop, “and there’s no way he opted for eternal sleep.”
“You’d be surprised to hear how many people find that option a viable one,” the golden-haired one exclaimed. “Everyone can choose their own escape to…”
“Oh shut up already!” Ben snapped. “The guy lying in that coffin did not opt for eternal sleep. No way. Anyone takes a step in the direction of that sarcophagus and we have ourselves a big problem.”
“Ben, why make such a scene,” Robert asked in a soft voice, “when we both know there’s nothing that can be done? I feel your pain and your anger, but what choice do we have but to accept the frustrated investigator’s fate?”
“Frustrated? Samuel wasn’t frustrated.”
“Not as a man, my friend, but as an investigator. By the way, was he able to track down your wife?”
“No, but what’s that got to do with anything?”
Robert laid a hand on his star. “I’m sorry to put things so bluntly, especially when I’m the one responsible for your acquaintance, but the Mad Hop hasn’t solved a single case in the last ten years. Not one. And in the end, his stubbornness has exacted a very steep price.”
“What? So why did you go out of your way to glorify him when we met?”
“Because I, too, was lured by blind faith and a general belief in the goodness of mankind. Not for a second did I think that he was a crook.…”
“Samuel? A crook?” Ben pushed aside thoughts of the lie detector’s strange tactics and his use of trickery and deceit.
“One of the biggest,” Robert said, sighing and leaning back in his chair, “one of the biggest.”
“You brought him here?”
Robert nodded. “I couldn’t just leave him in the state he was in. Even crooks deserve a proper burial.”
“How do you know he punched in a seven over three?”
“Samuel called me and asked me to come over to his house as soon as possible. I thought maybe he had some new information regarding Catherine. When I got there, the door was open. I found him lying on the floor. I bent down and tried to pick him up but he was unresponsive. Much like you, Ben, I couldn’t believe that the Mad Hop had opted out in this way, but the note he’d left on the table was conclusive.”
“Note?” Ben asked, looking at the investigator’s still body.
“He apologized to all those whose trust he’d betrayed. He admitted that he wanted more than anything else to be a superior private eye in this world but that desire turned into an obsession, which clouded his judgment. Hence the dizzying string of failures. Hence the feeling of worthlessness. Hence the decision to put an end to the tragic farce.”
The doleful effect of Robert’s words did not stop Ben from barking “Forget it!” when the golden-haired undertaker took a step forward and put out his palm for the key.
“Why won’t you give back the key?” Robert asked.
“Because then he’ll swallow it and I won’t have any way of getting Samuel out.”
“What do you mean ‘getting Samuel out’?” the bald undertaker asked.
“I’ll explain in a second,” Ben said, “but first tell me: what happens if someone who never pushed the magic numbers is buried in a sarcophagus of eternal sleep?”
“There’s no such thing. It’s unthinkable that we would force someone…”
“No, I don’t mean you guys. I’m just wondering if there’s a way to prove that someone actually chose the option of ultimate sleep.”
“Of course,” the baldheaded one guffawed, “you see if he wakes up.”
“But if he wakes up after you’ve swallowed the key?”
The golden-haired one giggled. “Take it easy. Once they’ve been put in their eternal beds, they don’t wake up.”
Ben nodded, walked over to the sarcophagus, shoved the key in place, and flipped the lock three times.
“What are you doing?” the undertakers yelled in unison.
Ben smiled and extended his hand to Robert. “Come. Out of the chair. Let me put Samuel in there. It’ll save us all a lot of time.”
“Are you out of your mind or have you just forgotten that I’m a cripple and can’t go anywhere without my wheelchair?”
“Oh, but I’ve seen your form in the hundred meters,” Ben said.
Before Robert had the chance to respond, Ben apologized and cracked him on the back of the head, breaking his neck and pulling him out of the chair. On the ground, Ben flipped the Belgian onto his back and used Robert’s thumb to press 3 once on his godget, ending the dead man’s moaning. Within moments, his eyelids were fluttering and he had dropped into a deep sleep.
The undertakers looked on in shock. “Don’t you get it?” Ben asked. “I did that just to demonstrate that it’s entirely possible that you’ve been locking innocently sleeping people in these sarcophagi.”
“Like Robert,” he added, still not seeing comprehension in their eyes. “What would happen if I put him as is in a sarcophagus and locked it up? Pushing three once assures eight hours of dreamless sleep, right? What happens when those are up?”
“He’d keep on sleeping,” the golden-haired one mumbled, exchanging bashful looks with his friend.
“In other words, if I wanted to do away with Robert, not only would it be easily done, but I’d also have your help. In the previous world, you’d be seen as accomplices to a murder. And I think that’s a little worse than pummeling a phony cripple—a fact you’ll be able to verify quite easily in a few hours when he wakes up.”