Murder in Jerusalem (39 page)

Michael refolded the sheet of paper and, glancing at the sergeant, said, “Good job, Yigael. Now you've got your work cut out for you: I want you to fill in the missing information, find out exactly when—and for what reason—these people were in the foreign correspondents' room, and whether they noticed anyone else entering.”

“Yes, sir,” the sergeant answered, his round brown eyes shining brightly with the compliment.

“How long will it take for you to get the results?” Michael asked Yaffa.

“About the shirt? The blood?” Yaffa answered distractedly. “Not long, maybe by tomorrow already, but the hair will take longer, that's more complicated. You know how long it takes with DNA…I hope we'll have the results by the day after tomorrow, but we'll get the blood test back first.”

“I'm going upstairs for a minute,” Michael said. “If Eli Bachar or Balilty are looking for me, that's where I'll be.”

Sergeant Yigael nodded vigorously, and Michael raced up the stairs, in part, perhaps, to test his breathing, to see whether the pressure he had felt in his chest over the previous few months, mainly when dashing up stairs—the chief reason his family doctor had insisted he quit, describing in lurid detail the effects of several lung diseases—had dulled or disappeared since he had quit smoking. Now it seemed as though the pressure had not decreased at all and that he could still hear a whistle in his breathing; he asked himself why he should suffer so, why he should give up smoking at all. Anyway, there was a NO SMOKING sign at the entrance to the editing rooms, so at least he was spared having to search for somewhere to smoke, or to break the rules, which he had done so often in the past.

Danny Benizri was sitting in front of an editing table, his black button-down shirt open to reveal a white T-shirt underneath. At the sound of the door opening he raised his face from the monitor and stopped the film; frozen on the screen was a picture of Esty, pregnant behind the wheel of the truck, her hand on her stomach, writhing in pain and gesturing to something or someone beyond the camera, while Rachel Shimshi, on her knees next to Esty in the truck, was tapping her cheeks. She was clearly rattled.

“This is the report about the wives of the laid-off workers for tonight's broadcast,” Danny Benizri explained before being asked. “It's…it's really awful, what's happening there. This one,” he said, pointing at Esty, “she lost her baby today. First pregnancy. Today's a terrible day, with everything that's happened. I just need another couple of minutes to finish.” Michael approached the monitor for a better look at the picture Benizri was describing. “With everything that's happened through this whole affair,” the reporter said, “I just don't understand how Rachel Shimshi could have let Esty come with her, pregnant like that. And it took her a while to get pregnant, too. Believe me, I'm well informed, I know this story from the inside. She had so much trouble, lots of fertility treatments, you name it. And for what? To lose the baby? That was the only reason Rachel Shimshi agreed to leave the truck. She took off the chains herself, put a stop to the whole operation. The other women didn't even know a thing about it. We called an ambulance, there was so much blood. Don't even ask what went on there. She'll be fine, but not the baby. What a huge mess from all this.”

The telephone rang, and Benizri sighed. “Yes?” he answered, impatient. “Sorry, I thought it was my wife…. Okay, I'll be there right away.”

“You're going somewhere?” Michael asked. “Because I was planning to ask you—”

“That was Hefetz,” Benizri explained. “He told me to get down there right away, I've got to—he says it's urgent.”

“It'll only take a minute,” Michael said, “and we can leave together. When exactly were you in the foreign correspondents' room?”

Benizri, who was occupied with removing the cassette from the editing machine and turning it off, stopped what he was doing and gave Michael a confused look. “The foreign correspondents' room?” he asked with feigned innocence. “I wasn't there, no way. When? Who said that?” A moment later he remembered: “Oh yeah, I was there with the graphic artist, just for a little while around noon. I remember that now, because from there I dashed out for a bite to eat, I was famished. Why do you ask?”

“How long were you there?” Michael asked.

“Maybe twenty minutes. I was talking with the graphic artist and…not very long.” Benizri placed the cassette into his travel bag and moved toward the door.

On their way to the elevator, Michael asked, “While you were there did a lot of other people enter the room?”

“As usual,” Benizri said. The elevator door opened. “The foreign correspondents' room is not exactly a private place. Sure, people came and went. I think maybe even the correspondent for foreign affairs stepped in”—he smiled awkwardly at his own joke—“and so did the foreign news editor, and…I don't remember who else. We were standing over in the corner.”

“Next to the computer?” Michael asked as they stepped into the elevator.

“Yeah, how did you know?” Benizri asked, surprised. “Why is that important?”

“And you didn't see anything special or unusual? Nothing strange?”

Benizri shrugged. “I didn't see a thing, strange or otherwise. Do you have any idea how many things I've been dealing with today?” The elevator stopped, and Michael followed him to the canteen. From the end of the corridor he could see Hefetz standing in the doorway. In one hand the acting director of Israel Television was holding a cup of coffee and in the other a yellow envelope. Hefetz cast a stern look at Danny Benizri and said, “Listen, Danny, I've just received—” He cut himself off when he noticed Michael.

“What? What did you just receive?” Benizri asked, glancing at the envelope.

“I…” Hefetz started, embarrassed. He loosened the knot in his tie, unbuttoned the top buttons on his shirt, and passed his hand over the gray chest hairs sticking up from his collar (he was not wearing an undershirt, and Michael made a mental note to verify his dress habits with someone in Wardrobe). “Not here, not like this, I didn't intend…but because of the police there's nowhere for a little privacy in this place.”

Michael ignored the reproach in his voice. “It's not that there's no
physical
location for privacy, Hefetz, you've got to be more precise: it's that there's no more privacy at all, and that's that. Very simply, the director of Israel Television was murdered here this morning. I need to know what's in the envelope too, because it may be connected to this case.”

Hefetz looked at him, disquieted. “I can promise you there is no connection,” he said faintly.

“Okay already,” Benizri said impatiently. “Tell us what this is all about, and let's get it over with. I mean, what could be so bad?”

“Fine,” Hefetz said. “Don't say I didn't warn you.” He handed the envelope to Benizri.

Danny Benizri opened the envelope and removed a stack of photographs. Unsuspecting, he looked at the first of them; a moment passed before he realized what he was looking at. He shoved the whole stack back into the envelope, looked around, and said, “God…”

“Exactly,” Hefetz said. It seemed to Michael that he could detect a faint echo of pleasure in his voice, maybe a dash of schadenfreude. “That's just what I said. This is the last thing we needed right now.”

“May I?” Michael asked as he reached for the envelope.

Danny Benizri moved his hand behind his back. “It's irrelevant, believe me,” he demurred.

“There's no such thing as irrelevant,” Michael said. “I am truly very sorry, but I must see what's in those photos.”

“It's nothing…pictures of…how could intimate photos of me with a woman have anything to do with Zadik? Something to do with blackmail, I guess.”

Michael extended his hand again, and this time Benizri placed the envelope in it.

Slowly, Michael removed the photos and looked at them. Danny Benizri scanned the corridor, terrorized, but for the moment no one was passing by.

“These certainly are intimate photos of you with a woman,” Michael said. “But this isn't just any woman, and it's pretty clear who she is, don't you think?”

“Believe me,” Danny Benizri said, pleading, “this has nothing to do with any of this, and it will only ruin everything. She…the minister…Mrs. Ben-Zvi…she had no intention…oh, my God, how could I not even have suspected…” He fell silent, watching Michael with a plaintive look on his face.

“If photos like these arrive here on the very day the director of Israel Television is murdered,” Michael said, “and if they are used to blackmail a senior correspondent at Israel Television and the minister of labor and social affairs, then there is no way
not
to make a connection between these matters.”

“There was only the photographs in the envelope,” Hefetz said. “No note, no mention of blackmail.”

“Who brought them?” Benizri asked.

“A guy with a motorcycle helmet or something,” Hefetz explained. “Young guy. He gave the envelope directly to me, thank God.”

“What do you mean, ‘thank God'?” Benizri interjected, his hands shaking and his face pale. He retrieved the photos from Michael and looked quickly through them. “Don't you get it? If there are photos like these of us—of her and me—next to her house, in the lobby of the hotel, in—look at this! It's like they shot us with a telescope, right there in the room! How could they have done this so quickly? It's just…this'll be the end of me, and not just of me—”

Michael stuck his hand out again, and Danny Benizri handed over the photographs. “Black and white,” Benizri said bitterly. “In black and white, a few in color. You know, for variety. What are you going to do?” he asked Hefetz. “Broadcast this on the evening news?”

“Are you asking that seriously?” Hefetz said, shocked.

“Of course,” Benizri answered. “I don't know anymore.”

“Are you nuts?” Hefetz protested. “What do you think I am? Do you think I'm running some lowlife rag of a newspaper, some—of course I'm not going to broadcast this! But I don't know what the big papers will do with this. With your luck, this could make the front page of
Yediot Ahronot
or something.”

“I've got to make a phone call,” Danny Benizri said in a whisper, beads of sweat gathering on his upper lip. “Excuse me, please,” he said, turning away as he removed his cell phone from a pocket and dialed. “It's me,” he said quietly before walking away.

Hefetz peered into the canteen. “Look at that,” he muttered. “Quiet as a cemetery. You can't even open your mouth around here anymore, everything you say…I've never, ever seen the place looking like this, not even during the Yom Kippur War. And believe me, I've been around. This canteen's been here for as long as Israel Television. The wall over there was built while we sat here eating. In 1969, right after Israel Television got its start, there were two groups that kept apart from one another. There were class distinctions here, not like now: there were the Poles, who had only just come to the country after they'd been tossed out of Poland, disgruntled Communists with cigarettes constantly in their mouths. They walked around with their noses in the air, laughing and making fun of everything around them, snobs who had worked in the Polish film industry and thought they knew everything. But ultimately they were refugees. On the other side of the canteen were the Israelis. We were all young, we didn't know a thing…in the seventies I would arrive from the army, from reserve duty—I was an officer—and I would show up at the canteen and I wouldn't know where I belonged. I mean, who should I sit with? The young people or the editors? With the Poles or—none of them are left, the Poles. They died, they left. Who knows where they went. But there was always shouting, there was never quiet like there is today. You could never hear the monitor like you can right now, and nobody's asking for it to be turned down. I see they've put on some rerun, I asked them to find something for the time being. But I didn't think…”

Hefetz entered the canteen and regarded the two tables around which people were sitting, then raised his eyes to the monitor. Michael followed suit. “What, then, is your opinion on the role of the author?” a young interviewer was asking with exaggerated emotion, his bald head and round face shining. He touched his small, dark beard. Two panelists began speaking at the same time, then both fell silent. They looked at one another, embarrassed, then one of them, the younger one, pointed to the other, inviting him to speak, and so the other—whose pinched face and narrow lips gave him the severe look of a monk—leaned forward and explained that the present era and the media had completely undermined the status of the artist in general and the writer in particular. “People no longer read,” he exclaimed bitterly. “If you don't give them soft porn or some story about incest in the family—”

“Incest is always in the family, isn't it?” said a woman on the panel, smiling slightly as she tossed her reddish curls, while the second man, the younger one, said, “I've actually noticed that readers—personally, I've had lots of feedback on my book
The Gypsy from Givat Olga,
and lots of excitement. Readers have written me quite positively about the erotic bits in the book.” On the screen there appeared three books, the camera focusing at length on the book he had just mentioned.

“What is this? Where did they dig this up?” Hefetz shouted as he rushed to the telephone. The woman on the screen was saying, “You asked about the role of the author? Well, the author's role is to see the truth and to tell it; sometimes she even has to lie in order to tell it beautifully, effectively, but—” Hefetz slammed down the receiver just as the broadcast was cut short and in its place appeared a caption: OUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED PROGRAMMING WILL RESUME IN JUST A MOMENT. Niva rose from her chair in the corner of the canteen and approached them with heavy, shuffling footsteps, her clogs dragging.