As the interrogation wore on, he rationalized it away by telling the little bastard was giving in too. Acting nicer.
Treating him like an adviser, not a suspect.
Believing him.
After ninety minutes, Sharavi stopped the questions, chatted with him about trivia. Wilbur felt himself loosen with relief. Sat down, finally, and crossed his legs.
Twenty minutes later, the chatting ceased. The basement cavity had grown darker, colder. Nightfall.
Sharavi said something to Slant-Eye, who came over and offered Wilbur a cigarette. He refused. Finally, Shavari clicked the attache case shut, smiled, and said, "That's it."
"Great," said Wilbur. "Drop me back at Beit Agron?"
"Oh, no," said Sharavi, as if the request had taken him by surprise.
Slant-Eye put a hand on Wilbur's shoulder. Handsome walked over, put handcuffs on him.
"This is Subinspector Lee," said Sharavi, looking at the
Oriental. "And this is Detective Cohen. They'll be taking back to Jerusalem. To the Russian Compound, where you'll be booked for obstructing a criminal investigation and withholding evidence."
A flood of words rose in Wilbur's gullet. He lacked the will to expel them and they stagnated.
Sharavi dusted off his trousers.
"Good afternoon, Mark. If there's anything else you wish to tell me, I'll be happy to listen."
When the BMW had driven off, Daniel asked Shmeltzer, "What do you think?"
"Only thing I got from his eyes is alcoholism-you should have seen the bottles in his flat. As far as the grin goes, we didn't give him much chance to smile, did we, Dani? Nothing we've turned up in the flat or the office implicates him, and the Greek thing checks out as an alibi for Fatma's murder-though if he's got pals, that's meaningless. What did Ben David tell you about the letter?"
"That the Bible quotes could mean a real fanatic or someone wanting to sound like one. One thing's for certain: Whoever wrote it is no true scholar-the passages from Leviticus are out of sequence and out of context. The one about washing the legs refers to a male animal. It smells deceptive-someone trying to distract us."
"Someone trying to pin it on the Jews" said Shmeltzer. "Exactly this Wilbur shmuck's style." He spat into the dirt. "Ben David have anything to say about the printing used for the address?"
"The block letters were written very slowly and deliberately by someone familiar with writing English. Along with the fact that English was used for the address instead of Hebrew, that could support our foreigner angle, except that the Bible quotes were in Hebrew. But Meir Steinfeld came by just before I picked you guys up, told me about the prints and the serum and shed some light on the Hebrew. The text matched that of a gift edition Hebrew-English Bible-common tourist item, printed locally. Mass-market-no use checking bookstores. He showed me a copy, Nahum. The text is printed correspondingly. Anyone could read the English, then cut out the matching Hebrew verse. Addressing the envelope would be a different matter."
"Some fucking anti-Semite," said Shmeltzer. "Fucking blood libel."
"The alternative, of course, is that whoever sent the letter knows Hebrew and English and used both languages to play games with us, show off how clever he is. That kind of posturing is consistent with serial killers."
"If the letter-writer's the killer."
"If," agreed Daniel. "It could be pure mischief. But there's the washing reference."
"Press leak," said Shmeltzer."
"If it was, someone in the press would have used it. Even Wilbur made no mention of it specifically, just talked in general terms about sacrifices. And Ben David thought it looked promising from a handwriting perspective, said the slowness and the pressure of the writing indicated calculation and suppressed anger-lots of anger. The tearing of the paper shows that the anger is threatening to break through the suppression."
"Meaning?"
"If the writer's our killer, we're probably in for another murder. Maybe soon-today is Thursday."
"Not if Wilbur's our guy and we keep him locked up," said Shmeltzer.
"Not necessarily. You're the one who likes the group theory."
"I like this guy, Dani. Wouldn't mind cooling his ass at the compound for a while, see what a little tenderizing does to his memory for detail. At the very least we can tie him up for a while on the obstruction thing, fucking bastard."
"You enjoyed the interrogation, didn't you, Nahum?"
"Labor of love."
The two of them got in the Escort. Daniel revved up the engine, drove out of the basement and across the rocky surface of the site. Gravel spattered the underside of the car. Only a semi-circle of sun was visible over the horizon. The darkness had turned the partially framed building into something ephemeral. Atrophied.
"Speaking of obstruction," said Shmeltzer, "Drori, the anesthesiologist, is eliminated. Night of both murders he was on duty at the hospital, working emergency surgeries. Thing that pisses me off is that the Thursday night that Fatma was killed, Krieger-the one who informed on him-was there loo. They did an operation together. Krieger was trying to harass the guy."
"Personal thing, as we suspected," said Daniel.
Shmeltzer gave a disgusted look. "I tailed Drori to find out where he goes on those middle-of-the-night drives when Krieger's on duty. Straight to Krieger's flat to fuck Krieger's wife. Same old jealousy shit-bastard was trying to use us as his henchmen. If we weren't so busy, I'd pull him in, teach him a lesson."
"Anything on the desert hikes?"
"University and the Nature Conservancy still checking- the usual bureaucratic bullshit."
Daniel steered the Escort onto the road and headed south. They rode for a while without speaking, past the upper Ramot, and down toward A and B. Just ahead of them, an Egged bus had pulled up to the curb. Dozens of dark-garbed yeshiva boys alighted; their mothers, waiting at the bus stop, greeted them with soft bosoms, kisses, and snacks. The bus swung out sharply, moving nonchalantly into the path of the Escort, and Daniel had to weave sharply to avoid hitting it.
"Idiot," muttered Shmeltzer. His glasses had been knocked loose and he straightened them. A hundred meters later he said, "Busting a journalist, Herr Pakad. Going to bring down big buckets of political shit."
"I'll wear a hat," said Daniel. He pressed his foot to the floor and sped back toward the city and its secrets.
Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, thought the Grinning Man, masturbating. Then thinking: I sound like Lawrence fucking
Welk, and starting to giggle.
But it was wonderful. Sand-niggers and kikes chewing each other up. Ripping and squeaking like the little hook-nosed rodents they were.
And he, the trainer.
Project Untermensch.
He flashed a mind picture of opposing rat hordes, charging at each other on little rat feet. Pouring out of sewer pipes, up out of putrid storm drains, bubbling to the surface of sinkholes.
Little brown sand-nigger rats with little rag heads and black whiskers. Little pink-and-gray kike rats with yarmulkes and chin-beards. Yammering and shrieking and snapping, biting off snouts and lips and leaving gaping holes like the pictures in Dieter Schwann's big green book.