"None of them acted strangely, not like other guests do?"
"We have many guests here. And I make it my business not to pry into theirs." He gave me an accusatory look. He was thinking, You made me break my own rule by showing you the rooms and register.
I closed my notebook and put it in my pocket. "Thank you for your cooperation," I said. "You've been a big help."
Magda and I ate lunch together again. In her apartment, just the two of us, the baby asleep in his crib. We had potatoes and cheese and vegetables. We drank lemonade. A few times I caught her looking at me, and whenever I did, she quickly turned her eyes away. I stole the occasional glance myself. I noticed new things about her. A small beauty mark by her left ear. A curious movement of her jaw as she chewed her food. A shift in the shade of her gray eyes, depending on the light. For a moment I was struck by a fantasy—that one day, after enough time had passed, after I had returned from Germany, I would sit with this woman at a table, and it would not be her late husband's table.
Toward the conclusion of the meal, I explained my theory to Magda and showed her the three names I had copied from the hotel register. She found none of them familiar. I asked her if she'd noticed anyone watching the apartment from the hotel across the street. No, she hadn't noticed any such person.
She sighed, putting her head in her hands. "I'm so tired of this nightmare. To think that someone stalked Meir like an animal. What kind of person does such a thing, plans it so meticulously, so coldly?"
Someone like me, I thought. This was how I had done it in Europe. This was what I was planning to do again with Yitzhak and Shimon. But it wasn't the same, I thought. The men I'd killed had committed atrocities. They deserved their punishment.
Magda cleared and washed the dishes while I spread out the four letters I had—three from Kaplon to Abramo, one from Abramo to Kaplon—on the dining table and went over them again. There was something here I was missing, I felt, something that revealed some important detail about the lives of these two men or their relationship with each other.
If there was something, reading the letters twice more did not reveal it.
Magda came back into the living room, toweling her hands.
"You know what I'm scared of the most?" she said. "That this bastard is walking around free out there. He's already killed two people. Who's to say he won't do it again? Would he have gone to all this trouble to fake two suicides if he didn't plan on doing this again? He could be out there right now, stalking his next victim." She sat in a chair beside me. "I'm right, aren't I?"
"It's possible," I said.
"My God," she said, putting her face in her hands. "I'm so tired of death. First the war and then my husband, and now the thought of some maniac about to target more good men for some crazy reason. I'm so tired of it. I never want to be around death ever again."
I said nothing. I couldn't grant her her wish. No one could. All I could do was keep digging, trying to find some thread to pull that would unravel this mystery, and stop this killer before he struck again.
13
I made my way north to Café Habayit, where Meir Abramo used to sit after work prior to coming home. It was a long, narrow space on the western side of King George Street, five wooden tables indoors and another five on the uneven sidewalk. Inside, a radio was playing moody French music. I couldn't understand the lyrics, but the female singer sounded defiant and desperate and on the verge of crying.
The dark-skinned man behind the counter had a strong chin topped by a thin-lipped mouth and a short, wide nose. His curly hair was black and cut short. He had on a short-sleeved white shirt, open at the neck. An open book lay on the counter before him, and he marked his place with a pen as I approached.
I gave him the same story I had given Mr. Shitrit—that I was hired by Magda Abramo to take a look into her husband's life. It worked even better than it did with Shitrit. The man—he told me his name was Yisrael Mizrahi—was shaking his head before I had finished my spiel.
"I was at the funeral," he said. "She looked so sad. I shook her hand but didn't know what to say. People die, that's a fact of life, but a young man just kills himself one day, what can you say to his wife? I felt bad about it, but I couldn't even mumble the normal words, the 'I'm sorry for your loss. May you never know more grief.' That kind of thing."
"He was a regular here?"
"Meir? Yes. For nearly a year now. Nice man. Good customer. Not the sort who asks to keep a tab open for weeks at a time. Always paid for what he drank. Not that it was much. He liked to sit with some coffee or tea, pore over all the newspapers. Relax after work." He pointed to a stack of papers on the counter beside him. "I buy all these each morning. It pays off. A lot of my customers come in to read the papers and end up spending more on drinks alone than what they cost me."
He smiled, proud of himself, and I smiled back. I had a feeling Yisrael Mizrahi and Milosh Dobrash would like each other. I told him I'd have some coffee myself. It was hot and fresh and smooth.
"Did he sit with anyone on a regular basis, drink with anyone?"
"He mostly kept to himself. But he sometimes shared a table with a guy called Eli Grossman. Eli only comes here once or twice a week. He lives in Tel Aviv, but his job brings him here quite often. I remember he took Meir with him to Tel Aviv a couple of times."
I frowned. "To Tel Aviv?" And then the memory came and I almost smacked my forehead. The letter, the first one from Kaplon to Abramo. In it Kaplon wrote about how nice it was to meet Meir Abramo in Tel Aviv. And I had missed it, did not even ask Magda Abramo about it, about what her husband might have been doing in Tel Aviv on—when was that letter sent?—June 21. Two and a half months ago.
I suppressed my self-reproach and asked, "Why did Meir Abramo go to Tel Aviv?"
Mizrahi shrugged. "I asked him once, but he sort of evaded answering me. I got the sense that it was personal. Though, now that you mention it, maybe it did seem a bit strange. It was always on a Wednesday, every two weeks or so. Meir would come in here earlier than usual, around two o'clock, get a quick coffee, and either grab a ride with Eli Grossman or catch the bus from the corner."
"The bus to Tel Aviv?"
"I guess so. It seemed like a regular thing. Always the same hour, always the same day of the week. Eli should know more about it than I do." And before I could ask if Eli Grossman was present, Mizrahi was shouting his name, telling him to come inside for a second.
Grossman was a short, bowlegged man, with cropped red hair, a flat nose and a soft, notched chin. He wore glasses that were a bit smudged and he carried a coffee cup in one hand and a cigarette in the other as he approached Mizrahi and me.
"What're you shouting about, Yisrael? Afraid I'll run off without paying?"
"Wouldn't be the first time."
"That was a onetime mistake and it's been two months now. You still mad about that?"
Both men were smiling as if this was some script that had been said, and probably embellished, a good number of times.
"You brought up the subject," Mizrahi said. "But that's not why I called your name. This man wants to ask you about Meir."
Grossman stubbed out his cigarette and we shook hands. He said he couldn't make it to the funeral. "I was in Tel Aviv and couldn't get away. I still feel bad about it."
"You knew Abramo well?"
"Just from here."
"I understand he rode with you to Tel Aviv."
"Once every two, three weeks."
"What did you two talk about on the way?"
"Talk about? Just the usual stuff."
"Did he mention what he was doing in Tel Aviv?"
Grossman shook his head. "No. I asked him, but he said it was personal. An affair is what I think it was. The guy was meeting some woman in Tel Aviv. Though why he would keep it secret from me, I couldn't tell you. I'm not a prude, and I don't judge. And I don't know his wife, so what do I care what he does behind her back."