Murder in Jerusalem (45 page)

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.

“He's dead,” Michael said after a long silence.

Benny Meyuhas jumped up and threw himself on the emaciated body, then burst into a loud and piercing wail. In the midst of his crying he called out, “Sroul! Sroul! It's all my fault! My fault!” He continued to sob, his voice now faint and stifled as though bubbling up from the depths of his body. Sergeant Ronen looked at Michael in shock, poised to pull Meyuhas from the bed, but Michael held his hand out to stop him. They stood waiting: Nina near the door, Sergeant Ronen in the corner, and Michael next to the bed, waiting for the wave of sorrow to subside.

They waited in silence as Benny Meyuhas pulled himself up from the body and knelt next to the bed. He covered his face with his hands as though in prayer, until finally he stood up, with great difficulty, turning around to look at Michael, his eyes drained of color as though they had suddenly been gouged out, leaving only emptiness behind.

“When was the last time you saw him?” Michael asked.

“Today,” Benny Meyuhas responded hoarsely, though now he seemed grounded and completely in focus. “This afternoon, late, just before I came to the television station. He told me to come and tell you…he wanted me to…but I couldn't do it…” Again, sobs emerged from the depths.

Michael led him out into the hallway and toward the living room, where chairs had been set up, along with a table with a recording device on it.

“Where do you want this?” Balilty whispered from the doorway, where he was standing with a video camera. “We set it up in here because there's a door between the rooms,” he explained. “This way it's easy, or relatively easy, since you insisted on doing this here instead of back at headquarters, and Shorer says—”

“You people decide,” Michael concluded. He looked at Nina as she got Benny Meyuhas settled on one of the chairs and pointed the microphone at him. “You're better at that than I am,” he said distractedly. “But I don't want you people in the room with us.”

“That's the whole idea,” Balilty said in a stage whisper. “We'll be in the next room listening to every word, and we thought we'd put the camera next to the window.”

Michael nodded, entered the room, and sat facing Benny Meyuhas. He motioned to Nina to leave, pressed a button on the tape recorder, quietly mumbled the date, time, and name of the interviewee into the microphone, then looked at Benny Meyuhas and said, “Are you ready to begin?”

Benny Meyuhas pressed his hands into his face and from behind them said, “I have no one left…I have nobody left to protect.” He sat up straight in his chair. “What do you want to know?” he asked.

Y
ou
?” Rubin said, surprised to find Lillian standing in the doorway to Balilty's office. “Where's the big boss? I thought that he would—”

Lillian straightened the sleeves of the long green men's shirt she was wearing, sat down across from Rubin, and placed an orange file on the table between them. “For the time being,
I'll
be asking the questions. Do you have a problem with that?” she asked, inclining her head. With artificial affability she added, “I've heard you have nothing against women, but suddenly it would seem—”

“No, no, no, perish the thought!” he said with elaborate formality, a smile on his face. “I've always said that women constitute the
better
part of the world.”

“So,” Lillian said, an inquisitive look on her face, “you've been sent a woman, and what do you do? Complain!”

“No, that's not what I meant,” Rubin apologized. “It's just…surprising. I had understood that…oh, never mind; as far as I'm concerned, you're welcome to begin whenever you're ready.”

“Ready I am,” Lillian said, and she pressed the button on the recording device. For a quick moment she turned her head to the back, toward the wall and the window, which appeared completely dark and was covered by a curtain; from the other side one could see everything that was taking place in Balilty's office.

Rubin followed her gaze; his eyes skittered from Lillian to the recording device until finally he aimed a bluish, focused stare at her. “I would like to speak with Benny,” he said as if sharing a secret. “I've already requested permission several times. Chief Inspector Ohayon promised me that—”

“No problem,” Lillian said pleasantly. “We'll just finish up here, and then we'll see. By then, Chief Inspector Ohayon may be able to escort you himself.”

She gestured to the door, implying that Michael would soon return, but Rubin looked toward the door and said hesitantly, “I don't feel comfortable talking with you people before I—” Lillian flashed him a look of anticipation, forcing him to finish his thought: “First I want to speak with Benny to make sure he's all right.”

“Why? Why is the order of events so important to you? Do you need to coordinate your stories?” Lillian asked teasingly. Rubin chuckled, as though she had been joking, but then she grew serious and added, “Right now this has nothing at all to do with Benny. I won't even ask about him for the time being, okay?”

“Okay,” Rubin said. “What would you like to know?”

“First of all,” Lillian said, getting straight to business, “we're checking the issue of physical presence.”

“‘The issue of physical presence'?” Rubin said mockingly. “What kind of pompous expression is that? You mean, where was I and what was I doing?”

Lillian stretched her lips into the likeness of a smile and said, “The question, to be more specific, is whether you left the building today.”

“Today. You mean after…after Zadik—”

“Yes,” Lillian said with exaggerated friendliness. “Let's say, between eleven o'clock and eight.”

“Eleven o'clock this morning?” Rubin asked, wrinkling his brow.

“Until eight this evening,” she offered cheerfully.

“Twice,” Rubin said. “Both times with permission.”

Lillian opened the orange file, flipped through several pages, and perused the information written there. “Is that so?” she asked. “And who gave you permission?”

“What is this?” Rubin asked. “Are you keeping a file on me?”

Lillian placed her elbows on the desktop and rested her chin in her hands, then stared at Rubin in anticipation, completely ignoring his question. Rubin glanced at the file and began talking. “All right. The first time, early in the afternoon, it was our security officer who gave me permission when I explained to him about my mother,” he said impatiently. “The second time would have been around six this evening, with permission, I believe…I can't be certain, I can't recall if I got permission myself or whether it was my producer, or perhaps Hefetz. Believe me, I don't remember.”

“Was this after Benny Meyuhas arrived, or before?” Lillian asked.

“After,” Rubin said after pondering the question for a moment. “Yes, absolutely, it was after he arrived. I remember, God, it's hard to believe it was just—” He glanced at his watch. “It's already one in the morning, that was seven hours ago, I can't believe it. It feels like a century ago.”

“So you left twice. For how long each time?” Lillian asked sweetly.

“The first time it must have been…what, about eleven o'clock?”

“Twelve-forty-seven,” Lillian told him after glancing at the page on the table in front of her. “Precisely. You said you'd been summoned to the old-age home where your mother lives. Someone from the facility called us to confirm this.”

“Well, then,” Rubin said, “since someone called, you know it's true. I don't understand where the problem is.”

“No.” Lillian shrugged. “There's no problem, it's just that—”

“What?” Rubin asked irritably.

“It came up in the conversation,” Lillian said very slowly, “that your mother takes digoxin, doesn't she?”

“I don't know,” Rubin said, perplexed. “I don't know the exact medical names…I'm not a doctor. But—”

“They told us you went to bring a prescription for her, something urgent. Did you not? Is it not true that she needed to have a prescription filled?” Lillian asked with mock innocence. “We understand the prescription was for digoxin. If you had to ask the pharmacist for it, then you certainly know—”

“Who says I asked the pharmacist for it?” Rubin asked irritably. “Listen, young lady,” he said—Lillian blinked but said nothing—“my mother is eighty-three years old and has serious health problems. Why don't you verify
that
over the phone? Why don't you ask them at the old-age home? And anyway, what does all this have to do with—?”

“Well, that's just it,” Lillian said, still with the sweetness of a diligent little girl eager to cooperate. “In fact we did verify it, and what we discovered was—” She stopped as if to check her papers and secretly glanced at the curtained wall; for a moment she imagined how they would all be sitting there critiquing her performance, how Tzilla, who was interrogating Hefetz at that moment, would take issue with this and that when she watched the video recording later, using her criticism to vent her frustrations. But Lillian managed to continue: “What we discovered was that she does, in fact, take digoxin, and that she should have had eight ampoules in her cupboard. But there were only four.”

Rubin spread his arms in an elaborate gesture of surprise and helplessness, then let them fall noisily to his lap. “I certainly have no control over that,” he said as though registering a complaint. “Is that my responsibility, too?”

“Well, we figured you could surely help us out,” Lillian said. “We wondered how it could be that two evenings ago you visited your mother,” she said, glancing at her papers as though she did not already know what was written there by heart. “It says here you saw her the day before at seven o'clock, and then suddenly, the next morning, the digoxin had disappeared.”

“I don't know anything about that digoxin,” Rubin said impatiently. “And when exactly was I at my mother's at seven in the evening? Which day?”

“No,” Lillian hastened to amend, “not seven in the evening. Who said evening? Seven in the
morning
. You were there at seven the next morning, the night after Tirzah was killed.”

“All right,” Rubin conceded, “I visited her in the morning on my way to work. I wanted to see if she was…she loved Tirzah, my mother was very attached to her. I wanted to know, I was afraid they would tell her about Tirzah or she'd hear about it on the news—”

“No, you're misunderstanding me,” Lillian persisted. “Not only did you visit her, but after that visit the ampoules of digoxin suddenly disappeared. So we were thinking—”

“I don't know what you want from me,” Rubin said, annoyed. “What would I want her digoxin for?”

Lillian sat up straight in her chair, her hands clasped on the desk, her fingers interlaced. “Matty Cohen was taking digoxin, too, just like your mother. Matty Cohen died of an overdose of digoxin. Did you know that?” Lillian asked with sincere interest, just as she had been taught.

“No,” Rubin answered, furious, “I did not know that. Sorry if that surprises you. Is digoxin such a rare drug?”

“No, I wouldn't say it was,” Lillian said, “it's a drug that regulates heart rate, the drug you purchased for your mother and which you now suddenly don't know anything about.”

“It could be that I got mixed up,” Rubin admitted.

“And what about at six in the evening, or whenever it was?” Lillian asked.

“What? What about six in the evening?” Rubin asked, completely confused. He glanced at his watch. “Why don't you tell me where Benny is? Why don't you answer my questions about him? I want to speak with Benny, and at the rate you're going—”

“No, I'm talking about the second time you left the building with permission,” Lillian said, ignoring his outburst. “You said it was at six o'clock?”

“What do you want from me?” Rubin exclaimed with the obvious antagonism of a person being pursued. “God,” he cried out in anguish, “it was with a whole crew: a cameraman and a soundman, everyone. We went to Umm-Thuba, do you know about Umm-Thuba?” His tone shifted from nervous agitation to condescension. (“Pure aggression,” Tzilla would call it later when they listened to the tape and watched the video featuring Rubin's face, drained of color, and Lillian's back. “She made him completely lose his composure,” Tzilla would say with admiration and not a word of criticism against Lillian.)

But throughout the interrogation Lillian was tenser than ever at the thought that Tzilla would join the group behind the curtain, watching her every move, eager to see her fail. It wasn't that the process of interrogating a suspect was foreign to her, not only in her position as an investigator for the Youth Department as an expert on drug users, but also since she had interrogated dealers and parents and anyone else who passed through Narcotics. But now they were listening to her from the other side of the wall. (Tzilla had told her, without looking her in the eye, that this was a “crucial interrogation.” This made Lillian regard her and think, I'm sure you don't want me to be the one doing it, but she did not say a word; “I'm also sure they forced you to take me on here,” she thought, mortified, until she reminded herself that no one here, not even Tzilla, could read her mind. Even Michael Ohayon could not do that.)

“Of course,” Lillian said shortly to Rubin, as though they were both aware that he was needlessly wasting their time. “But after all, you sent the crew back, and you returned alone. You weren't with them the whole time.”

“After we made our inquiries and completed the filming,” Rubin said, “I wanted time to speak in private with the mother of the boy from that village. When you talk with someone in private, without a crew and away from the cameras, everything looks different. She cooperated completely, it was very important for the report. I didn't know then that they would be relieving me of my duties on the show—”

“So you stayed on to speak with the mother of the boy who's the star of your report?” Lillian scanned her papers to verify his statement.

“Yes, it's a program about doctors who cover up for—”

“Yes, I know,” Lillian said. “We are well aware of which program you were filming, the one about the Palestinian youth tortured by the Israeli secret services. That's what you've been spending all your time on lately, isn't that so?” She was trying to sound provocative; while Rubin remained silent, she could not help noticing the slight twitch in his eye. (Earlier, Balilty had told her, “Don't forget to rile him up a little, that always brings out the best in them.”) “We know how deeply devoted you are to the struggle for human rights, that's your big issue, isn't it? You're pursuing justice in the case of a Palestinian youth who threw a Molotov cocktail—”

“He's a child, not a youth,” Rubin protested.

“Sixteen is a youth, nearly the age of an Israeli soldier,” Lillian insisted. “Tell me, when they attack Jewish citizens of settlements over the Green Line, are you this perturbed? The truth: if they had picked on a sixteen-year-old settler youth, would you have made a program about
him
?”

“You're mixing everything up,” Rubin complained. “That's cheap demagoguery. But I'm accustomed to that nonsense, I hear it all the time. It's like I've already said twice before: first of all, we're not talking about picking on someone here, we're talking about very serious physical torture. You don't even want to know the details, believe me…. Furthermore, if the settlers weren't occupying territory, if they were living on land that belonged to them, inside the Green Line, then nobody would toss Molotov cocktails at them. And anyway, my program deals in a general manner with human rights abuses and the resulting injustices perpetrated on—”

“—the Palestinian people,” Lillian said, completing his sentence. “Human rights abuses and the resulting injustices perpetrated
solely
on the Palestinian people, and not on anyone else; that's what the viewer sees when he watches your show.”

“Can I go see Benny now?” Rubin asked, repulsed. “I think this argument is—this is not the reason you brought me here, is it?”

“No, it isn't,” Lillian admitted. “It's to find out about that missing hour and a half.”

“What hour and a half?”