The Theatre - Kellerman, Jonathan

Finally he finished, having found no Rashmawis, and told Shmeltzer, who didn't even bother to look up as he gave him a new assignment: Go up to the Record Room and look for the same name in all the crime files. All of them. Rashmawi. Any Rashmawi.

The Records officer was a woman-nothing more than a clerk, but her three stripes outranked him. A hard-ass, too; she made him fill out a mountain of forms before giving him the computer lists, which meant writing as well as reading. More words-random assortments of lines and curves, a whirlpool of shapes that he could drown in unless he forced himself to concentrate, to use the little tricks he'd learned over the years in order to decipher what came so easily to others. Sitting at a school desk in a corner, like some overgrown retarded kid. Concentrating until his eyes blurred and his head hurt.

Exactly the kind of thing he'd joined the police to avoid.

He started with Offenses Against Human Life, the juiciest category and one of the smallest. At least this stuff was alphabetized. First step was locating the names in each subcategory that began with the letter resh-which could be confusing because resh and dalet looked similar, and even though dalet was at the beginning of the alphabet and resh toward the end, his damned brain seemed to keep forgetting that. Yud could be a problem, too-same shape as resh-if you looked at it in isolation from the other letters around it and forgot that it was smaller. Several times he got flustered, lost his place, and had to start all over again, following his fingertip down columns of small print. But finally he managed to cover all of it: Murder, Attempted Murder, Manslaughter, Death by Negligence, Threats to Kill, and the Other Offenses listing that was always tagged on at the end. In 263 files, no Rashmawis.

Offenses Against the Human Body was absolute torture-10,000 Assault files, several hundred under resh-and his head hurt a lot more when he finished, hot pulses in his temples, a ring of pain around his eyes.

Offenses Against Property was even worse, a real nightmare; burglary seemed to be the national pastime, all those two-wage-earner homes easy pickings, over 100,000 files, only some of it computerized. Impossible. He put it aside for later. Shmeltzer had the Sex Offenses printout, which left Security, Public Order, Morals, Fraud, Economic, and Administrative crimes.

He began with Security crimes-the Rashmawis were Arabs. Of 932 cases, half had to do with violations of emergency laws, which meant the territories. No Rashmawis in the territories. No Rashmawis in the entire category. But wrestling with the words had caused the pain in his head to erupt into a giant, throbbing headache-the same hot, sickening pain he'd experienced all through school. Brain strain had been his secret name for it. His father had called it faking. Even after the doctors had explained it. Bullshit. If he's strong enough to play soccer, he's strong enough to do his homework

Bastard.

He got up, asked the Records officer if there was any coffee. She was sitting behind her desk reading what looked like the Annual Crime Report and didn't answer.

"Coffee," he repeated. "Do I have to fill out a form to get some?"

She looked up. Not a bad-looking girl, really. A petite brunette, with braided hair, a cute little pointed face. Moroccan or Iraqi, just the type he liked.

"What was that?"

He turned on the smile. "Do you have any coffee?"

She looked at her watch. "You're not finished yet?"

"No."

"I don't know what's taking you so long."

Cunt. He held on to his temper.

"Coffee. Do you have any?"

"No." She returned to the report. Started reading and shut him out. Really into the charts and statistics. As if it were some kind of romantic novel.

Cursing, he returned to his lists. Offenses Against Morals: 60 Pimping cases. Nothing. Soliciting: 130 cases. Nothing. Maintaining a Brothel, Seduction of Minors, Dissemination of Indecent Material, nothing, nothing, nothing.

The Loitering for the Purpose of Prostitution subcategory was tiny: 18 cases for the year. Two under resh:

Radnick, J. Northern District Rashmawi, A. Southern District

He copied down the case number, laboring over each digit, double-checking to make sure he had it perfect. Getting up again, he walked to the counter and cleared his throat until the Records officer looked up from her goddamned report.

"What is it?"

"I need this one." He read off the numbers.

Frowning with annoyance, she came around from behind the desk, handed him a requisition form, and said, "Fill this out."

"Again?"

She said nothing, just gave him a snotty look.

Grabbing up the paper, he moved several feet down the counter, pulled out a pen, and sweated with it. Taking too long.

"Hey," said the girl, finally. "What's the problem?"

"Nothing," he snarled and shoved it at her.

She inspected the file, stared at him as if he were some kind of freak, goddamn her, then took the form, went into the Records Room, and returned several minutes later with the rashmawi, A., file.

He took it from her, went back to the school desk, sat down, and read the name on the tag: Anwar Rashmawi. Flipping it open, he sloughed through the arrest report: The perpetrator had been busted three years ago on the Green Line, near Sheikh Jarrah, after he and a whore had gotten into some kind of shoving match. A Latam detective had been on special assignment nearby-hidden in some bushes looking for terrorists- and had heard the noise. Tough luck for Anwar Rashmawi.

The second page was something from Social Services, then what looked like doctors' reports-he'd seen enough of those. Words, pages of them. He decided to scan the whole file, then go back over it, word by word, so that he'd be able to make a good presentation to Shmeltzer.

He turned another page. Ah, now here was something he could deal with. A photograph. Polaroid, full color. He smiled. But then he looked at the picture, saw what was in it, and the smile died. Shit. Look at that. Poor devil.

Sunday, nine a.m., and the heat was punishing.

The Dheisheh camp stunk sulfurously of sewage. The houses-if you cou'td ca't't them that-were mud-brick hovels wounded by punch-through windows and roofed with tarpaper; the paths between the buildings, boggy trenches.

A shithole, thought Shmeltzer, as he followed the Chinaman and the new kid, Cohen, brushing away flies and gnats and walking toward the rear of the camp, where the little pisser was supposed to live.

Issa Abdelatif.

The way the Chinaman told it, the villagers of Silwan had been less than talkative. But Daoud had leaned on an old widow and finally gotten a name for Fatma's long-haired boyfriend. She'd overheard the Rashmawis talking about him. A lowlife type. She had no idea where he came from.

The name cropped up again, in the Offenses Against Property files, subcategory: Theft by Employee or Agent. He'd sent Cohen looking for it and the kid had stayed away so long Shmeltzer wondered if he'd drowned in the toilet or walked off the job. He'd gone looking for him, ran into him jogging up the stairs. Grinning ear to ear, with a look-at-me expression on his pretty-boy face. Dumb kid.

The file itself was petty stuff. Abdelatif had worked the previous autumn as a ditch digger at a construction site in Talpiyot, and whenever he was around, tools started disappearing. The contractor had called in the police, and a subsequent investigation revealed that the little punk had been stealing picks, trowels, and shovels and selling them to residents of the refugee camp where he lived with his brother-in-law and sister. Following his arrest, he led the police to a cache at the rear of the camp, a hole in the ground where many of the tools were still hidden. The contractor, happy at getting most of his goods back and wanting to avoid the nuisance of a trial, refused to press charges. Two days in the Russian Compound jail, and the punk was back on the streets.