Talmon had a square face framing wide cheekbones, a bulbous nose, and a wide chin. His brown eyes were melancholy and tired and topped by ruler-straight eyebrows and a tall forehead. His brown beard and mustache could have used a trim, while his hair was cropped so short I could see the pink of his scalp through it. A black tie hung loosely around his neck. He had rolled the sleeves of his white button-down shirt to his meaty biceps. I glanced at his forearm and saw no number on it.
He looked me over when I arrived, scratching at the hair on his cheek.
"I gotta tell you, Mr. Lapid, if it weren't for Reuben Tzanani asking me personally, I wouldn't be talking to you."
"I know," I said, sitting down. "I appreciate it." To show how much I did, I placed one palm down on the table. Peeking from beneath my fingers was a five-lira note.
He glanced at the note and smiled wearily. "That won't be necessary. I am not talking to you for money. You were a policeman, Reuben told me."
"In Hungary. Before the war in Europe."
"You certainly know how things are done. Not that I am a saint or anything. Normally, I would take whatever money you put in my hand—with what they pay us, it is to be expected. I have my limits, of course. No amount of money will make me cover up a rape or an arson or a murder." He sighed, rubbing his forehead. "But this time I'd prefer to keep things…pure. As much as they can be. You can put the five liras to use by paying for the beers."
I ordered a beer for myself and another for him. I handed the note to the bored-looking, lanky waiter. The café was a small place on the ground floor of a three-story water-marked building in the center of Holon. Not that the center was much to speak of. A few shuttered stores. A post office. A health clinic. Five or six benches ringing a small copse of trees, one of which sported a vacant tire swing over a sand pit.
The interior of the café was cramped, badly lit, and smelled of cigarettes and cheap beer. The windows were smudged near the edges. Our table wobbled on uneven legs. It was the sort of place that didn't try too hard to attract customers. It had few competitors in its vicinity. It could depend on the locals to keep it going in its unambitious mediocrity. There were six tables in total. Besides our own, only one other table was occupied. We would probably need to talk fast or be asked to leave when they closed for the night. The days ended early in Holon. Here people worked hard, went to bed early, and got up early the next day to go to work again.
I looked at Talmon. His eyes were downcast, staring at the ring of condensation his beer glass had left on the table. He was smudging it with his forefinger. Or maybe he was looking at something else entirely. Something that wasn't really there. When he told me to meet him in Holon, I was sure he was after a payoff. Not that he should have gone to the trouble. I knew for a fact that policemen in Tel Aviv, like policemen in Budapest, like policemen all over the world, I imagined, received money wherever it was given them, including at their desk in the police station.
But there was another reason, apparently, and it was something that was souring his mood. Talmon looked worn, not just tired. It was more than the fatigue hard work could induce. It was something that was weighing on him from within, burdening his soul or conscience.
We sat in silence until the waiter brought our drinks and my change. He had not asked me what kind of beer I wanted, so they probably served only one kind. It was light in tone, bitter in taste, and mixed with a good deal of water. I put it down on the table at some distance from me, meaning not to touch it again.
Talmon saw my motion and smiled. "It's not much, is it? Not like what they serve in Tel Aviv. Two cities, less than five kilometers between them, and it's like a different country. Well, at least it's cold. By the way, the food here is better, if you're hungry."
I shook my head, placing the change the waiter had given me on the table. "But you can have some if you want."
"No. Not hungry either. You want to talk about Maryam Jamalka?"
"Yes."
"Reuben told me you work as a detective. You're working on this? Who's your client?"
"I'd rather not say."
"It has to be the brother. Ahmed. The one with the ugly scar on his cheek. Persistent bastard. Kept calling me and asking how the case was going, what leads did I have, did I have a suspect in mind, how long before I arrested someone? He even came by the station, came right up to my desk and demanded to see the investigation material. I thought he would take a swing at me when I told him he couldn't see it. It has to be him. I'm right, aren't I?"
His eyes were keen and perceptive. I got the sense that he was pretty good at his job. Hiding this kind of thing from him would be pointless. "You're right."
"Sure I'm right. No one else gives a damn about Maryam Jamalka. Her brother is a nag and asks too many questions for his own good, but at least he cares about her."
"What do you mean he asks too many questions?"
But it was like Talmon did not hear me. He kept talking along a different track. "He's the only one of her family who ever called me, you know that? He was the one who came to identify her in the morgue and collect the body for burial. Not her father, not her older brothers. He took care of everything. I got to admire that. The damn bothersome fool."
"Why did you say that he asks too many questions for his own good?"
"Because you don't need to be Sherlock Holmes to know who killed his sister. He's living with them in his home up north."
"The brothers."
"Sure, the brothers. Who else?"
"Ahmed Jamalka is certain they didn't do it."
Talmon snorted. "What makes him think so? They got an alibi? Don't tell me, they were delivering soup for poor people, or were they volunteering at the local hospital?"
"No alibi that I know of. He says they told him they didn't do it."
"And he believes them?"
I nodded. "Yes. He does."
"Well," Talmon said, pointing a finger at me, "in that case, he's even a bigger fool than I thought. Let me tell you something about those two brothers of his, Jalal and Kadir. The older is thirty-five, the younger thirty-three, and both were arrested for the first time twenty years ago, in 1929, when they were still teenagers. They robbed a store in Nazareth. I saw the arrest report. They beat up the proprietor. Broke his cheekbone. And that's not the only time they got in trouble with the law. Jalal spent a year in prison for assault. Kadir got six months for another robbery. And they would have done more time if their father wasn't an important man."
"Important how?"
"He's the leader of their clan, their village—their hamoulah, as they call it. It's something between an extended family and a tribe. Don't ask me precisely what it means or how it works. But his position is such that they got off easy some of the times and got off with nothing the other times."
He paused, took another sip, and wiped his mouth with a hard pull of the back of his hand, like he had just eaten something rotten. His lower lip was thrust out when he thought about the two Jamalka brothers. His brown eyes narrowed to menacing slits. He was agitated, angry. It was the natural distaste policemen everywhere had for criminals, especially those with the money, position, or power to get away with their crimes with a slap on the wrist, or not even that.
"And their sister isn't the first person they killed. Both the British and we have them down for the murders of some of their associates or competitors in various criminal enterprises. No evidence, nothing for a court to act on. But you know how it is, sometimes a policeman just knows."
I knew what he meant. Back in Hungary there were cases, often the most frustrating ones of all, when I had to watch a criminal go free despite being certain of his guilt. It rankled. It kept me up at night sometimes. I told myself that it was the price one paid for living in a civilized society, a society based on the rule of law. But sometimes it just wasn't very convincing. And I hadn't believed it at all since the war.