“Park worker with a high IQ?”
“Underachiever,” I said. “That's the way I've seen it all along.”
“Ponsico's second girlfriend- the Lambert woman- sounds like an underachiever, too. Clerking. Not that she's any big suspect, because our boy's definitely male and strong- the way he carried Irit and Raymond, trussed up Latvinia.”
I got in the car. He said, “What do you think of that gene project Connor talked about?”
“Just what we need in the age of kindness, Milo. Some map that determines whose life is worth living.”
“So you're not willing to depend upon the good graces of intellectuals and insurance companies, huh?”
I laughed. “Gang bangers and dope smugglers and back-alley junkie muggers, maybe. But no, not them.”
31
At 6:00 A.M. after working since midnight, Daniel opened the shutters on the computer room's windows and breathed in light.
Putting on his phylacteries, he prayed without feeling, looking out at the tiny backyard clad in concrete.
He'd spent most of the night on the phone, accommodating the European and Asian and Middle Eastern time zones. Making police-officer small talk in four languages, calling in favors, making his way through the various law-enforcement bureaucracies that somehow never changed from city to city.
Searching for DVLL references, murders with racial and ethnic overtones, any hints of serial crimes linked to genetic cleansing, any major changes in the policies of neo-Nazi and nationalist groups and others who thought themselves superior.
Quantity wasn't the problem. Plenty of information- as democracy spread over Europe, more and more lunatics crawled out of their holes and gorged themselves on free speech. But in the end he was left with no connections to the L.A. murders, nothing even close to a lead.
He cut his prayers short, apologized to God, wrapped up the tfillin, and went into the small, dark bathroom where he turned on the shower, stripped, and stepped in, not waiting for the water to turn hot.
It took exactly two minutes forty-one seconds for the old pipes to kick in. He'd timed it yesterday, arranged his morning schedule accordingly.
But this morning he endured the cold needles.
Flogging himself for the futile night?
He'd begun with Heinz-Dietrich Halzell at the Berlin police, who'd informed him the racist presses continued to churn out the nasty stuff; the moment the polizei got an injunction, the slime just moved and started up again. And stupid punks kept beating up Turks and anyone else with a dark skin, starting brawls, desecrating graveyards.
Apology in his voice. Deeply sorry, the way only a German could be. Daniel had hosted him at a security conference in Jerusalem, last year. A really decent guy, but weren't they always the ones who let themselves feel?
Murders of retarded kids? No, Heinz-Dietrich hadn't heard of anything like that. DVLL? Not in any of their files, but he'd ask around. What was going on in L.A.?
When Daniel told him, sketchily, he sighed and said he'd ask around seriously.
Uri Drori at the Israeli Embassy in Berlin did some double-checking and verified everything Halzell had said. Daniel called him not because he didn't trust the German, but because sometimes what you learned depended on who you were.
Drori reported a slowly escalating rate of low-level incidents, repeated almost word for word Heinz-Dietrich's lament about the idiots popping up like toadstools.
It will never end, Dani. The more democracy you have, the more you get this shit, but what's the alternative?
Same story with Bernard Lamont in Paris, Joop Van Gelder in Amsterdam, Carlos Velasquez in Spain, all the others.
No murders of defectives, no DVLL.
Which didn't really surprise him. These crimes seemed American. Though he couldn't explain why.
A wonderful country, America. Huge and free and naive; big-hearted people always willing to grant the benefit of the doubt.
Even after the Trade Center bombing, you didn't see large-scale anti-Muslim feelings. The Israeli Embassy in New York tracked that kind of thing.
Free country.
But what was the price?
Last night, taking a coffee break, he'd heard police sirens, loud, close, looked out the same rear window and saw a helicopter circling low, beaming down on backyards, like some giant mantis scouting for prey.
His police scanner told him they were searching for an armed-robbery suspect- holdup at Beverly Drive and Pico.
A mile away, right near Zev Carmeli's place.
Not far from the house on Monte Mar where Laura had grown up. Her parents had sold it and bought two tiny condos. Beverly Hills, and Jerusalem, where they were now.
Before he'd left for the States, his father-in-law had warned him: Be careful, things have changed.
Gene said, Total breakdown, Danny Boy. Going to school can be hazardous to a kid's health.
Which was one reason Gene had sold his big house in Lafayette Park. Heading for Arizona… no real reason for Arizona, except that it was warm and “I'm not exactly worried about melanoma, right?”
Gene looked old. Since Luanne's death, his hair and mustache had turned snow-white and his skin bagged.
An untimely death, the poor woman had been only sixty when the massive stroke had knocked her to the floor of her kitchen. Gene discovering her, another reason to sell the house.
High blood pressure. A doctor friend of Daniel's told him blacks had more of it. Some said it was their diet, others genetics. His friend thought racism had a lot to do with it.
Daniel understood that. He couldn't count the times he'd been called a dirty Jew by Arabs and, because of his skin, a nigger by all sorts of people.
When it happened, he didn't react visibly but his heart pounded in his ears… he wondered if Gene was taking care of his diabetes. Cookies on the counter when he'd gone there to pick up the Ortiz file and the boy's shoes said otherwise.
His friend had come through for him and Daniel liked to think the favor had been good for Gene, too.
Nothing but time on his hands, poor guy. He'd called three times since returning the stuff, offering to do whatever Daniel needed.
But Daniel wouldn't go to Gene for any more favors. The man was ill, no reason to draw him in deeper.
If Sturgis cooperated.
He'd said he would, but hard to tell.
Sturgis would never score high on the Trust Index.
He stepped out of the shower just as the water warmed up, dried off, goose-bumped, amazed he hadn't felt any discomfort.
America.
Democracy had begun in Greece but its real home was here. Birthplace of official compassion, too- no country had been as kind as America. Now Americans were paying for their compassion in drive-by shootings, the breakdown of rules and values, child-murderers let out on parole.
Same thing back home. For all his country's image as a tough little fighter state, Daniel knew Israel as one big, soft heart populated by survivors and rooters for the underdog with a reluctance to punish.
That's why victory doesn't sit well with us, he thought. Why we end up the first country in history to voluntarily give back land won in battle in exchange for an ill-defined peace with people who hate our guts.
He'd watched, during the intifada, as the Palestinian Arabs made the most of Israeli democracy: staging rehearsed events masquerading as spontaneous shows of protest, exaggerating the very real brutality of the occupation with hyperbole, kids with rocks playing for the camera. The press, of course, gobbled it up like a rich dessert. Day after day of photo-op baton-to-skull and rubber-bullet hailstorm broadcast worldwide, while Assad executed tens of thousands of potential enemies in Syria and got maybe two lines of newsprint.
Still, who ever said life was fair. He'd rather live in a free society… though sometimes…