The Theatre - Kellerman, Jonathan

"This is a very serious matter, Rabbi. I'll begin interviewing them today. Other officers will be arriving this afternoon. We'll stay until we've talked with everyone."

"The children too?" said Kagan sarcastically.

"Adults."

"Why exclude the little ones, Inspector? We train them.to butcher Arabs as soon as they're off the breast." Kagan spread his arms, closed them, and touched a hand to each cheek. "Wonderful. Secular Zionism at its moment of glory.' He put the apple down, stared into Daniel's eyes. "What wars have you fought in? You look too young for '67. Was it Yom Kippur or Lebanon?"

"Your contacts didn't tell you that?"

"It wasn't relevant. It won't be hard to find out."

"The '67 war. The Jerusalem theater."

"You were one of the privileged ones."

"Where were you in '67, Rabbi?"

"Patrolling the streets of Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Taking on shvartzes in order to prevent them from mugging old Jewish ladies and stealing their social security checks. Not as glorious as liberating Jerusalem, but philosophically consistent with it. Or at least it was until the Jews of Israel got as soft and stupid as the Jews of America."

Daniel shifted his gaze down to his note pad. "Some of your members have police records. Have any new people with criminal backgrounds joined the settlement?"

Kagan smiled. "I have a police record."

"For disturbing the peace and illegal assembly. I'm more interested in those with a violent background."

That seemed to insult Kagan. He frowned, retrieved the second apple, and bit into it hard, so that the juice trickled over his beard. Wiping himself with a paper napkin, he held out the bowl again.

"Sure you wouldn't like some fruit, Inspector?"

"No, thank you."

"A polite Israeli? Now I'm really suspicious."

"Please answer my question, Rabbi. Have any new people joined who have violent histories?"

"Tell me, Inspector, did you risk your life in '67 so that the few could reach a new level of self-denigration?"

"Rabbi," said Daniel, "the investigation is going to proceed one way or the other. If you cooperate, everything will go faster.'

"Cooperate," enunciated Kagan, as if learning a new word.

'How long have you been involved in this investigation?"

"From the beginning."

"From the beginning," echoed Kagan. "So, no doubt you've visited an Arab home or two in the course of your investigation. And no doubt you were offered food in those homes-the vaunted culture of Arab hospitality, correct?"

Rabbi Kagan-"

"One moment. Bear with me, Inspector." Kagan spoke softly but with intensity. "You were offered food by the Arabs-quaint little dishes of nuts and fruits and seeds.

Maybe they rubbed it in donkey meat before bringing it out. Maybe they spit in it. But you smiled and said thank you, sahib, and ate it all up, didn't you? Your training taught you to respect their culture-God forbid one of them should be offended, right? But here you are, in my home, I offer you fruit, and you turn me down. Me you're not worried about offending. Who gives a damn if the Jew is insulted?"

Kagan stared at Daniel, waiting for an answer. When he'd had his fill of silence, he said, "A lovely little secular Zionist democracy we've got here, isn't it, Daniel Sharavi, descendant of Mori Shalom Sharavi? We bend over backward to pay homage of those who despise us, but kvell in the abuse of our brethren. Is that why you fought in '67, Inspector? Were you shooting and stabbing Arabs in order to liberate them-so that you'd have the privilege of providing them with free health care, welfare checks, turn them into your little burnoosed buddies? So that they could propagate like rats, push us into the Mediterranean by outbreeding us? Or was it materialism that kept your gunsights in place? Maybe you wanted video-recorders for your kids. Playboy magazine, hashish, abortion, all the wonderful gifts the goyim are more than happy to give us?"

"Rabbi," said Daniel. "This is about murder, not politics."

"Ah, said Kagan, disgustedly, "you don't see the point. They've indoctrinated you, ripped your fine Yemenite spine right out of your body."

He stood up, put his hands behind his back, and paced the room.

"I'm a member of Knesset. I don't have to put with this nonsense."

"No one's immune from justice," said Daniel. "If my investigation led me to the Prime Minister, I'd be sitting in his house, asking him questions. Demanding his travel log."

Kagan stopped pacing, turned to Daniel and looked down at him.

"Normally I'd dismiss that little speech as garbage, but you're the one who. dug up the Lippmann mess, aren't you?'

"Yes."

"How did your investigation bring you to me?"

"I won't tell that. But I'm sure you can see the logic."

"The only thing I see is political scapegoating. A couple of Arabs get killed-blame it on Jews with guts."

Daniel opened his attache case, knowing there was truth to what Kagan was saying and feeling like a hypocrite. He pulled out crime-scene photos of Fatma and Juliet, got up and gave them to Kagan. The Gvura leader took them and, after looking at them unflinchingly, handed them back.

"So?" he said casually, but his voice was dry.

"That's what I'm up against, Rabbi."

"That's the work of an Arab-Hebron, 1929. No member of Gvura would do anything like that."

"Let me establish that and I'll be out of your way."

Kagan rocked on his heels and tugged at his beard. Going over to the walnut case, he pulled out a volume of Talmud.

"Fine, fine," he said. "Why not? This whole thing is going to backfire on the government. The people aren't stupid-you'll turn me into a persecuted hero." He opened the book, moistened his finger, and began turning pages. 'Now be off. Inspector, I have to learn Torah, have no more time to waste on your naarishkeit." Another look of amusement. "And who knows, maybe after you've spent some time with us, something will rub off on you. You'll see the error of your'ways, start davening with the proper minyan."

The Gvura members were a motley bunch. He interviewed them in their dining hall, a makeshift concrete-floored space roofed with tent canvas and set up with aluminium tables and folding chairs. Clatter and the smell of hot oil came from the kitchen.

About half were Israelis-mostly younger Moroccans and Iraqis, a few Yemenites. Former street kids, all of them hard-eyed and stingy with words. The Americans were either religious types with untrimmed beards and oversized kipot or tough-talking secular ones who were hard to categorize.

Bob Arnon was one of the latter, a middle-aged man with curly gray hair, long, bushy sideburns, and a heavy-jawed face assembled around a large broken nose. He'd been living in Israel for two years, had acquired three disorderly-conduct arrests and a conviction for assault.

He wore faded jeans and crossed gun belts over a new YORK YANKEES T-shirt. The shirt was tight and showed off thick, hairy arms and a substantial belly. Poking up into the belly was the polished wooden grip of a nickel-plated.45-caliber revolver-an American-made Colt. The gun rested in a hand-tooled leather holster and made Daniel think of a little boy playing American cowboy.

In addition to the Colt, Kagan's deputy wore a hunting knife ensconced in a camouflage-cloth case, and carried a black baseball bat, the handle wrapped in adhesive tape that had long ago turned filthy gray. He was a combat veteran, he informed Daniel, and more than happy to talk about himself, starting in American-accented Hebrew but shifting to English after Daniel responded to him in that language.

"Saw hard action in Korea. Those were toughlittle suckers we were fighting-no Arabs, that's for certain. When I got back to the States I knocked around."

"What do you mean by 'knocked around"?" Arnon winked. "Little of this, little of that-doing my thing, doing favors for people. Good deeds, you understand? My last hitch was a bar in New York-up in Harlem, gorgeous place, you ever heard of it? Five years I worked the place, never had a single problem with the shvoogies." This last comment was punctuated by a toothy grin and a slap of the bat. "May I see your knife, please?"