She shook her head. "No one. And I use Mrs. Hersch's phone when I have to make a call, but I rarely do."
"Is that what you did that day, use Mrs. Hersch's phone?"
Her face clouded. "I saw him and I must have screamed because David started bawling like mad. I don't know how long I stood there, screaming, but then I was racing down the stairs, David in my arms. Mrs. Hersch must have heard me, because her door was open and she was about to come up and see what was wrong. I called the police from her apartment."
"You waited for them downstairs?"
"Yes. I knew Meir was dead. His face—it left no room for doubt. A policeman arrived and he went upstairs, saw for himself, and came down looking grim. He used Mrs. Hersch's phone to call a car and a police doctor. They took down Meir's body, put him in the back of the car. Only then did they call me upstairs, had me walk around the apartment to see if anything had been disturbed or taken. They showed me the note, said how sorry they were. And then they left. Later they called and told me where to pick up the body for burial. And that was that."
David woke up then and started crying. Magda rose to go to him. I bade her farewell and left.
11
Mr. Shitrit's clothing store was on the ground floor of a three-story building on Jaffa Road, three doors west from where it intersected with King George Street. The storefront window was large and dominated by two manikins clothed in tailored suits, one blue and one white. Only one manikin had a head; the other seemed to have been beheaded by its blood-red necktie.
Shitrit was a medium-sized man with drooping cheeks, large bluish bags under watery sad eyes, and bushy black eyebrows infiltrated by a scattering of gray. What little hair he had left had been carefully combed to cover as much of his scalp as was possible, which wasn't much. His skin was dark, his eyes brown, his mouth turned down. He was about fifty-five. He wore brown slacks, a white buttoned shirt, and a thin black tie. A yellow measuring tape hung over his shoulders. The fingers of his left hand clutched a half-smoked cigarette. The cigarette was of some particularly pungent brand, and thick blue smoke hung about the room. His fingertips were stained with nicotine, and when he smiled a welcoming smile, I saw that his teeth had been stained by the same substance.
His store was neat and filled with merchandise. Pants, jackets, shirts, and ties hung or lay neatly folded along two walls. Men's hats were stacked on a tall shelf. A round box full of pins and needles sat on the counter next to an ashtray heaped with crushed cigarette butts. A door behind the small counter led to an inner office or a storage area. There was a tall mirror in one corner of the room, and a curtained-off corner where customers could shed their clothes and try on new ones.
He bade me good afternoon and shook my hand. When he spoke, his voice was raspy yet pleasant. He eyed me up and down appreciatively, as if he found my physique worthy of one of his suits.
I introduced myself and said I was not there to shop. His face fell a bit at this news, and he shrugged heavily, as if he were accustomed to life's many disappointments. He eyed my clothes, and I couldn't help but notice a critical narrowing of his eyes.
"Are you sure?" he said. "I have some fine new suits that would fit you perfectly."
"Perhaps later. What I came to talk to you about is Meir Abramo."
"Meir?" He seemed surprised, then sad once more. He shrugged again, and I realized that shrugging for him was what the wringing of hands was for other people. "Meir is no more."
"I know."
"A terrible thing. I could scarcely believe it myself. Though when he failed to show up on Monday, I was worried. It was unlike him. He was a very conscientious employee. Did you know him well?"
I said that I didn't know him at all and Shitrit's forehead furrowed in puzzlement.
I explained that I was a private detective and that I was working for Magda Abrams. Earlier I had decided to keep my suspicions that Abramo had been murdered to myself. If, by chance, I stumbled upon the killer, I wanted him to feel complacent. It might be easier to catch him that way. "As you can expect," I said to Shitrit, "it was a terrible shock for her to find her husband. She saw no signs of it coming. I want to talk to the people who knew him, maybe find out some reason for him to have done what he did."
Shitrit's frown diminished but did not disappear altogether.
"She can talk to me herself," he said. "I'd be happy to tell her all I know."
"It's very hard for her, as I'm sure you understand. Especially with the baby."
I explained how the baby had come down with a fever, and that seemed to satisfy him. His forehead smoothed. He sucked deeply on his cigarette, snuffed it out, and immediately lit another one.
"Such a loss," he said, shrugging again. "Such a loss."
"How long did he work for you?"
"Almost a year. He had no experience whatsoever in the clothing business, but I liked him the moment I saw him. He was a gentleman. Wanted to be a musician, but a man with a wife and a baby on the way cannot indulge such fancies. He has to make a living, put food on the table. And he was a natural salesman. Better than anyone who ever worked for me. Better than me. Especially with younger customers. I'm nearly fifty-three, and they respond better to someone closer to their age."
A long column of ash had accreted at the tip of his cigarette, and he tapped it off into the ashtray. His eyes suddenly looked even sadder than before.
"A month ago I told him I wanted him as a partner. I have plans of enlarging the store now that the war is over. It would have required a money investment on his part, and he told me he'd think about it. But I could see he liked the idea. It may not have been his dream, but it was a good deal for him. With his talent at selling, he could have done very well for himself." Another shrug. "Then, a week before he died, he told me he may soon not be working for me at all. 'A new opportunity,' he said."
"Nothing more specific than that?" I asked.
"No," Shitrit said. "I asked him, but he said he had to keep things under wraps for the time being. I was worried—and set to be insulted—if the new opportunity was in the clothing business, but he swore it wasn't. He was excited about it. That is what makes his suicide so perplexing."
"No idea as to who offered him this opportunity?"
"Not a clue. I tried to think whether one of my clients showed any special interest in Meir, if any spoke with him more than their shopping required them to, but I could think of no one."
We talked some more. Shitrit told me some anecdotes involving Meir Abramo, but none of them were pertinent to the case. Eventually, I realized that I could get no more out of him. Before I left, he made me try on one of his suits, navy blue with subdued gray stripes and large lapels. It looked good, but I didn't buy it.
A cool breeze was leaching the heat of the day when I left Mr. Shitrit's store. A hint of autumn was in the air. The air smelled clean and crisp, especially after the smoky interior of Shitrit's store.
I checked my watch. I would have liked to visit the café that Meir Abramo had frequented after work, but I was to meet Dr. Feinstein in two and a half hours in Tel Aviv. The café would have to wait until tomorrow. I made my way to the bus terminal and twenty minutes later was on the bus heading west toward the coast.
Dr. Feinstein had an office on the top floor of a Bauhaus office building with oval balconies and a clean exterior. The building stood on Shats Street, fifty meters east of the corner of Shats and Dizengoff. The sign on the door told me that he was a medical doctor, though it didn't say what his specialty was. The door was slightly ajar. I pushed it open and entered a waiting room.