The Theatre - Kellerman, Jonathan

The second day, it happened. Slant One split. The minute the office was empty, he ran in, vaulted the counter, grabbed the duplicate to twenty-eight, and vaulted back. By the time One was back, he was outside the door to twenty-eight, all ready with his equipment.

It was dark. There were a few cars; some of the other rooms were occupied, but all the drapes were drawn. No one was around-it was the kind of place you didn't want to be seen in.

He waited, with a giant hard-on, so hard he felt he could break down the door with it.

Put his ear to the door and heard mumbling, what sounded like sex-noise.

Waited some more until they had to be doing it, then slipped the key in, pushed, and ran in, turning on the lights and dancing around the room laughing and snapping pictures.

He caught them in a good pose. Audrey was sitting on Doctor, playing the egg game, just like she used to. Her eggs were smaller and firmer and kind of tan, but it was the same game, in and out.

Snap.

Screams.

What the hell-You't

Snap.

Audrey got hysterical, started crying, struggled to get off. Doctor holding on to her out of fear, shouting at him, but it ended up in her ear.

Comedy.

It looked like they hated each other, but they were still connected, couldn't get free of each other!

Excellent. Snap, snap! The mind pictures would be even better than the real ones, watching them struggle and scream, he was close to coming in his pants.

Snap.

They tried to disconnect. Fear made them clumsy, and they fell sideways.

Snap, another pose.

Snap snap.

Finally Audrey was loose, running naked and sobbing to the bathroom. He kept snapping Doctor, heard her throwing up-probably a habit with women.

Doctor's face was deep purple, his hard-on fading. He grabbed at sheets, tried to cover himself.

Snap.

"You little-" Doctor sprang up and came at him.

The guy was flabby, unhealthy. He pushed him on the chest and Doctor tumbled backward on the bed, ass to the camera.

Snap.

Doctor stood up again.

He put the camera away, smiled, and sauntered to the door.

"See you later, Dad."

The next day there was a note on his bed.

What kind of car do you want?

He got two. A Jaguar XKE Roadstar for fun, a Plymouth sedan for when he didn't want to be noticed.

He drove them for a couple of weeks, let Doctor think that was it. Then walked, one afternoon, past the secretary, without even asking permission, opened the door marked private, went in and shut it behind him.

The fucker was at his desk, writing in a medical chart. He looked up, tried to look stern, put on the head-honcho look, but couldn't pull it off. Obviously scared shitless.

"What is it?"

"We have to talk. Dad."

"Sure. Sit down."

There was a cedar humidor full of cigars on Doctor's desk. Stupid for a heart surgeon, but the guy had never practiced what he preached anyway.

He stared at Doctor, took a cigar out, licked it, and lit it.

Doctor started to say something. Something parental. Then stopped himself.

"What do you want?"

Straight out with it, no "son," no pretending it was anything other than business.

He didn't answer, let an ash grow on the cigar, flicked it on the carpet.

Doctor clenched his jaw to keep from talking.

He blew smoke rings.

"Well, Dad," he said finally, "the pictures are in a safe place with instructions to open them if anything happens to me, so if you've been thinking that fucking me over will help you, forget it."

"Don't be ridiculous. Harming you is the furthest thing from my-"

"Right."

"Believe me, all I've ever wanted for you-"

"Cut the shit." He leaned forward, dropped a gray worm of ash on the desk. On Doctor's charts. Picked up a chart.

"You can't look-"

"Why that?"

"It's confidential patient information."

"Tough shit."

Doctor sighed, put on a nicey-nicey tone: "Listen, I know our relationship hasn't been-"

"Cut the shit, I said!" He said it loud. Doctor looked nervously at the door.

He leafed through the chart. No good pictures. Borrring. Put it down.

"The photos are in packets. Dad. One addressed to Mom, one to Or. Schoenfeld, one to Audrey's parents. I can do anything I want to."

Doctor stared at him. His eyes got narrow.

Neither of them said anything for a while.

"What do you want?" Doctor finally said.

"Favors."

"What kinds of favors?"

"Whatever I want."

Doctor kept staring at him.

The cigar was starting to taste like shit. Fie ground it out on the shiny wooden surface of Doctor's desk, left the butt lying there like an old turd.

"Not a lot of favors. Dad. Just a few important ones."

"Such as?" Trying to tough it out, but totally scared shitless.

Now it was his turn to smile. "I'll let you know."

He got up, walked around to where Doctor was sitting. Slapped him on the shoulder and smiled again. "We'll be in touch, stud."

At one-fifteen Daniel received news from Tel Aviv that Aljuni, the Gaza wife-stabber, had passed his polygraph. At one-thirty p.m. he made radio contact with the Chinaman. Nothing new from the Old City.

"What's with Cohen?" he asked.

"Still feels like a dumb shit about Malkovsky, but he seems to be doing his job."

"How's Daoud doing with Roselli?"

The big man laughed.

"Share the joke," said Daniel.

"Daoud spend the morning dressed as a beggar with palsy, whining for alms near the Fourth Station of the Cross. Did such a good job that an Arab policeman smacked the soles of his feet with his baton, screamed at him to stop defiling the holy places."

"How is he?"

"Proud as hell, and sore. You should see him, Dani-all shaking and filthy. If anyone can pick up idle chatter, he can."

"Drop a shekel in his can for me," said Daniel.

"I already did. Talk to you later."

At two o'clock, Shmeltzer called in.

"The Hebrew U. archaeology department and the nature people promise to get me their hike lists as soon as possible. I had breakfast with the lady. Our request to look for the Nasser whore is being taken under consideration."

"That the best they could do?"

"There was cooperation floating between the lines-I got a breakfast date immediately, so they're taking it seriously. My feeling is they'll look for her if they can do it safely. Problem is the Amman operatives took a long time to plant-they're not going to shut down the entire operation because of something like this."

"Stay in touch with it," said Daniel. "If we need to push a little, let me know."

"I don't think pushing will help," said Shmeltzer. "Something else came up. I'm in Tel Aviv, at Beilison Hospital-the reason I didn't call sooner. I got a call from one of the doctors I talked to a couple of weeks ago-eye surgeon named Krieger, had something to say about one of his colleagues, anesthesiologist named Drori. Remember the flap last year about the doc who refused to give gas to an Arab kid? A cross-eyed baby-they were wheeling him into the operating room and the mother started praising Allah for straightening her little lion's eyes so he'd be able to throw stones at the Zionists. The doctor got pissed off, told her to screw herself, he hoped the kid went blind, then walked off the case. That was Drori."

"I remember. One of the leftist MKs wanted him brought upon charges."

"Right-Sardoffsky and his usual Marxist crap. Anyway, it blew over in two days-that was that. But according to this Krieger, Drori has a real thing for Arabs. Since the incident with the baby, he's gotten even more militant, interrogates Arab patients before he agrees to work on them, has them recite this pledge that they support the state and think Yasser Arafat's a perfidious dog. If anyone on the staff tries to talk to him about separating politics and medicine, he gets irrational-that's Krieger's term. It's come close to blows. On top of that, he's a loner, unmarried, antisocial. Krieger says several times when he's been on night shift, he's seen Drori leave the hospital, get into his car, and come back early in the morning wearing the same clothes, unshaven. Says it's obvious the guy hasn't slept, has been doing something else all night."