The Theatre - Kellerman, Jonathan

"What the-" He tried to turn around. A big, warm hand clamped around him and held his head still, exerting pressure behind the ears and keeping him staring straight ahead. Another hand took hold of his belt and pushed forward, preventing him from backing off the barstool.

He looked for the bartender, someone to witness what was going on. Gone.

"Police. Come with us," said a dry voice.

"Now wait one sec-" He was lifted off the stool, all booze-limp, marched out the door to a waiting car with its motor idling.

As they dragged him, he tried to clear his head, zero in on details.

The car: white Ford Escort four-door. No chance to look at the plates. The driver was shielding his face with a newspaper.

The rear door opened. He was eased in, next to a young guy. Good-looking. Tan. Bearded. Skintight red polo shirt, tight designer jeans. Angry face.

"Seat belt," said Dry Voice, and he got in, too, sandwiching Wilbur and slamming the door shut. Wilbur examined him: an older one, limp gray suit, glasses, pale face, beak-nosed and thin-lipped. Semitic version of the guy in "American Gothic." Something about him made Wilbur's stomach queasy.

He fought to suppress his fear, telling himself: No problem, this is a democracy. No Tontons Macoute/Savak types here, unless… they weren't policemen. All he'd seen of the badge was a flash of metal-cops in a democracy weren't supposed to behave like this.

Nasty thoughts flashed through his mind. Israeli mafia. Or some crazy Arab group-even though neither of the two in the back looked like Arabs. Maybe Gvura crazies getting back at him for the riot.

A fourth man came around from the rear of the car and got in front, next to the driver. Bushy black hair, big and broad-had to be the one who'd grabbed his neck. Black polo shirt. Huge, hunched shoulders-weight lifter's shoulders. The seat creaked when he moved.

"What the hell is going on?"

"Seat belt," repeated Dry Voice, and when Wilbur hesitated, both he and Handsome reached over and fastened the belt themselves, yanking it tight over his midriff.

The driver put the Escort in gear. Kinky-haired, modified Afro with a yarmulke bobby-pinned to the crown. Crocheted black yarmulke with red roses around the border. Band of dark skin showing above a white shirt collar-a black Jew?

Kinky backed out HaHistadrut Street, onto King George, drove north, shot the amber light at the Yafo intersection and continued on Straus, weaving in and out of traffic like some joyrider.

Straight out of a second-rate foreign film, thought Wilbur. French or Italian. Only this was real and he was scared shitless.

The Escort hurtled along atbreakneck speed until coming to a red light at Malkhei Yisrael, at which point Kinky hooked into an alley so narrow its stone walls threatened to scrape the sides of the car. Kinky maintained his pace, dodging potholes and rubbish.

Wilbur's fingernails dug into his knees. His tailbone was taking a beating, though most of the impact was absorbed by the bodies of Handsome and Dry Voice, compressing him shoulder to shoulder. They stared ahead, paying no attention to him, as if he were too insignificant to deal with. Smelling of cologne and sweat. Dry Voice kept one hand in his jacket.

Very subtle.

The alley hairpinned. Kinky kept speeding.

Wilbur stared at the floor in order to keep from heaving.

They emerged on Yehesqel, turned on Shmuel Hanavi, and Wilbur thought: They are police. Taking me to National Headquarters on French Hill.

Outrageous.

He permitted himself to get angry, began selecting the precise wording of his official protest.

Then the Escort bypassed the police compound and continued north and he felt the fear rise again in his gut, stronger, mingling with booze-tinged nausea.

"I demand to-" Croaking. Sounding like a wimp.

"Quiet," said Dry Voice, meaning it.

Kinky kept up the speed. They zipped through the northern suburbs, passed Ramot Eshkol, and the city stopped looking citylike.

Goddamned desert. Empty stretches that preceded the Ramot. Then the northern heights themselves.

Ramot A.

Ramot B.

Wilbur forced himself to keep concentrating on the details, keeping his mind on the story that would come out of all this. The story he was going to shove down these bastards' throats: Reporter abducted; State Department protests. International scandal. Exclusive story by Mark A. Wilbur. TV interviews, talk shows. Dinner at the White House. No problem selling this screenplay… who'd be right to play him? Redford? Too flat

On the story, off reality.

The four men in the car didn't talk. They really didn't seem concerned with him.

That scared him.

Details:

Apartment tracts knocked up quickly for new immigrants -clusters of no-frills rectangles, cinder block faced with limestone, sitting on dry beds devoid of landscaping. Depressing. Like the housing projects back in New York, but these had a ghost-town quality to them, separated from one another by acres of sand.

Laundry on lines.

A vest-pocket park shaded by pines and olives. Kerchiefed women pushing strollers. Hassid types walking with their hands clasped behind their backs. A small shopping center.

A handful of people. Too far to notice what was happening.

Or care.

The Escort kept barreling along, traveling so fast the chassis was rattling.

Ramot Pollin.

Fewer people, then none. Things were starting to look downright desolate.

Half-finished foundations. Scaffolding. The skeletal underpinnings of buildings. A prefab gas station on a concrete pad, the windows opaque with dust and still X-taped, four oblong trenches where the pumps were going to be.

But no workers, no signs of construction activity. Some goddamned strike, no doubt.

Trenches. Tractor treads. Craters occupied by dormant bulldozers and cranes, the dirt pushed up around the rims in soft brown pyramids.

Unfinished roads bleeding off into dust.

Quiet. Silent. Too damned silent.

A roller-coaster hump in the road, then a sharp dip, another construction site at the bottom, this one stillborn, completely deserted: a single story of cinder block, the rest wood frame. Off in the distance, Wilbur could see tents. Bedouins-where the hell were they taking him?

Kinky answered that question by driving off the road, down a muddy ditch, and onto the side. He circled the cinder-block wall until coming to a six-foot opening at the rear and driving through it.

Another car was parked inside, half-hidden by shadows. Red BMW, grayed by dust.

Kinky turned off the engine.

Wilbur looked around: dark, damp place, probably the future subterranean garage. Roofed with sheets of plywood and black plastic tarp. Garbage all over the dirt floor: nail-studded wood scraps, plasterboard fragments, shreds of insulation, bent metal rods, probably a healthy dose of asbestos particles floating in the air.

During orientation, Grabowsky had amused him with stories of how the Israeli mafia buried their victims in the foundations of buildings under construction. Religious Hassid who were kohens-some special kind of priest-afraid of going into the buildings because Jewish law prohibited them from being near dead bodies.

No longer amusing.

No, couldn't be. Kinky wore a yarmulke. Nice Jewish boy, no mafia.

Then he remembered some of the stuff that guys with yarmulkes had pulled off in the diamond district.

Oh, shit.

"Okay," said Dry Voice. He opened the door. Wilbur saw the gun bulge under his suit jacket. Wool suit-asshole wasn't even sweating.

All of them except Kinky got out of the car. Dry Voice took Wilbur's elbow and led him a few feet past the front bumper.

Handsome and Iron Pumper folded their arms across their chests, stood there staring at him. Iron Pumper turned full face. Wilbur saw he was an Oriental-goddamned Oriental giant with cold slit eyes. This had to be a dream. Too much booze-he'd wake up any moment with a four-plus hangover.