"Oh?"
"It was your clothes. Every dress I saw you in fitted you perfectly. Someone had to have made them to measure. Varda made them, didn't she?"
Dahlia nodded. "She used to come here every few weeks, tell me the goings-on at the theater, measure me, and make me the best dresses I've ever owned. I actually thought she liked me."
"She only visited you in order to torment you further. That's why she told you Isser was having an affair. She knew it would hurt you. She never imagined it would make you realize he had been unfaithful before, or that it would cause you to hire someone like me to investigate Anna's murder."
Dahlia pursed her lips. "I guess she was a great actress after all. Maybe I should have given her another chance." She drew in a breath. "Well, it's too late now. Anything else you wish to discuss, Mr. Lapid?"
"Just one more thing," I said. "I know why you weren't afraid of living with your husband, even when you thought he was a murderer. You have cancer. You will be dead within three months."
She gawked at me. "How do you know this?"
"Your doctor told me."
"Dr. Lipowsky?"
"Yes. I visited the hospital a few days ago, to have my arm looked at. I met him and we had a little chat."
"He told you my condition? How dare he!" Her grip on her cane was so tight, her knuckles shone white through her skin.
"You gave him permission, remember? You told him he could tell me anything I wanted to know regarding your health, current or past."
Dahlia narrowed her eyes, then broke out laughing. The laughter quickly devolved into a particularly nasty coughing fit that shook her entire body and made sweat pop on her forehead.
I brought her some water and she gulped it down. I returned to my chair.
"Your husband knew about your illness, didn't he?"
"Yes," she said.
"So you figured he had no reason to murder you. He could just wait a little and inherit everything. As long as he didn't know that you were the one who'd hired me, you were safe in his presence."
She smiled at me. "You see, Mr. Lapid, I knew you were the right man for the job."
46
After I left Dahlia's apartment, I spent the day wandering the streets of Tel Aviv. I was looking for the old man who had sold me the painting. I walked the length and breadth of the city, gripped by a terrible fear that the old man was dead.
I finally found him in late afternoon, sitting on a dirty street corner in the south of the city, his paintings arrayed before him like a rejected offering to some disinterested god. The old man looked tired and ancient, slumped and stooped, his lined face browned by the sun. I offered to buy him a meal, and together we sat at a rickety table in a tiny café that served hot soup and sandwiches and very little else.
The old man spooned his soup quickly into his mouth. I gathered he did not eat his fill on a regular basis. I asked him if he remembered the painting I'd bought from him.
"What painting?" he asked.
"The one with the mother and two young daughters walking together down a European street."
"I painted that one sixteen years ago. Lovely, isn't it?"
"Very. Do you remember it in detail?"
"Every brushstroke. I remember every painting I ever made."
I perked up. "Could you paint it again for me?"
"Again? Why do you need a second painting?"
"The first one was destroyed when my apartment was broken into."
The old man shook his head. "Stealing is bad enough, but destroying a work of art, that is something else entirely."
"Can you do it?" I asked. "I'd be happy to pay you double what I paid for the original."
The old man studied me, and I think he saw the anguish in my soul, because his expression turned tender. "It meant a lot to you, didn't it?"
"Yes," I said.
"I wish I could help you," he said, lifting his hands to show me fingers thick-knuckled and bent with arthritis, "but I'm unable to paint anymore. Everything I sell, I painted years ago."
I sagged in my seat, a spear of grief cutting through me.
"I can tell you about it," he offered, thinking to mitigate my disappointment. "I can tell you who the woman and girls were."
"No," I said quickly, forestalling the revelation. "Let me keep on imagining who they were. Let me have that, at least."
Afterword
Dear reader,
Seeing a novel take shape from the blank page to the last word is a remarkable experience. It is surpassed only by knowing your book is read by another person. So I thank you from the bottom of my heart for reading A Deadly Act. I hope that you enjoyed it. If you did, I'd be grateful if you'd take the time to leave a review on its Amazon page. Thank you. I appreciate it.
I thought you might wish to know a little about the places Adam Lapid visits in the pages of this novel. Naturally, I invent quite a bit, but some of the locations are real.
For instance, Ohel Shem is a real building on Balfour Street in Tel Aviv. It stands to this day, though the second-floor balcony and the columns that once supported it are gone. Today, it houses a children's theater. Naturally, this theater has nothing to do with anything you read in this novel.
Trumpeldor Cemetery is real, as well, and is described as accurately as whatever talent I possess allows. If you ever visit Tel Aviv, you may wish to take a guided tour of the cemetery. You may find it quite interesting.
Metzudat Ze'ev still stands at King George 38, though the building mentioned in this novel has been replaced by a high-riser. Today, Metzudat Ze'ev serves, in part, as the national headquarters of the Likud Party. Likud was created through a merger of Herut with several other right-wing parties in 1973.
All the political parties mentioned in A Deadly Act did once exist. The political posters Adam saw on a bulletin board were used in the campaign leading up to the 1951 General Election in Israel.
Shoresh Theater and all the characters who worked in it are entirely the creations of my imagination.
As for the novel itself, it took me quite a long time to write. At one point I jettisoned 20,000 words and proceeded in an entirely new direction. One or two times, I wasn't sure I'd ever complete it. But little by little, word by word, the story coalesced and I realized that the end was in sight. In the final two weeks of writing, I wrote at more than double my usual pace. And when I got to the last page, I felt that I had done a good job. I hope you feel that way, too.
A Deadly Act is the fifth novel in the Adam Lapid series, which currently comprises five novels and one short story. Just in case you missed any of them, here is a list of all the entries in the series so far.
5. A Deadly Act
6. The Unlucky Woman (a short story)
I've also written a standalone thriller called The Payback Girl and a handful of short stories, in various genres.