Looking around, I did not see Isser Rotner's car. A bad sign. But the theater must have had other entrances. Perhaps Rotner had parked near one of those.
Ohel Shem was a large building, wide and deep, with big windows and doors. I climbed the three stairs to the main entrance, passing between the tall columns that supported the second-floor balcony. Posters for upcoming shows hung on the outside walls, on either side of the lobby door. The door itself was closed, but when I pressed down the handle, it opened. The lobby was empty. A big rectangular space, it looked larger than it had the other night, when it had been packed with people. I crossed the threshold and drew the door shut.
Inside it was cooler. More posters crowded one wall. One of them was for Shoresh Theater's production of King Lear. Another was for an upcoming concert of the Philharmonic Orchestra. Beethoven and Mozart. A German and an Austrian. Not that I saw a difference between the two. Ahead of me were the stairs to the second floor, where the theater hall was.
"Hello! Is anybody here?" I called.
My voice echoed strangely, bouncing from one wall to the other before being swallowed up by the emptiness. I waited a moment in the silent lobby. The place felt deserted, but the unlocked door suggested otherwise.
"Hello!" I called again, and this time I was rewarded with a response.
It came in the form of an old woman pushing a mop in a bucket. She was small and stooped and had a weathered, heavily wrinkled face. A kerchief covered most of her hair. The little that showed was gray. She looked at me with almost no expression.
"Looking for someone?" she asked in a tired voice.
"Isser Rotner," I said. "Is he here?"
It looked like she was about to tell me no, but she half-turned and pointed toward the stairs.
"Up there," she said. Then she lowered her head, hoisted the mop out of the bucket, and began dragging it back and forth across the floor in slow, weary motions. It appeared that she'd forgotten I was there. She didn't even react when I thanked her for her help.
I crossed the lobby, climbed the stairs, and pulled open the door to the theater hall. Rows of empty wooden chairs greeted me like a gaping mouth full of way too many rotten teeth. The scent of last night's audience still lingered in the air. A mishmash of sweat, cologne, cigarettes, perfume. Nothing definite. Nothing that could be isolated. Everything mixed together into something that had no name.
The only other person in the theater was at the far end, on stage.
Isser Rotner.
His voice carried clear across the cavernous hall. Powerful and full of emotion. Not an unforgettable voice like his wife's, not even close, but certainly a strong one. He held a sheaf of papers in his right hand, and occasionally he consulted them. The text he was reading was unfamiliar. It wasn't from the play I'd seen the other night. But the style was similar. Maybe this was another Shakespeare play.
He read not only his part, but those of the rest of the cast as well. He used a different voice for the other roles, a lower, weaker one. He glided across stage as he spoke, moving his arms about, gesturing at empty space where I guessed other actors would stand. One time, he pointed at a vacant spot, and from his mouth poured a poetic accusation. Something about betrayal and death. It sent a chill up my spine.
He was so involved in his reading that he failed to notice my presence until I was within two rows of the stage. When he finally spotted me, he froze with his face contorted in such unadulterated hate and anger that I instinctively took a step back. With his face all twisted like that, I could well picture him committing murder. I could picture him stabbing a woman through the heart and leaving her corpse to grow cold in a cemetery. I had to remind myself that this hate and anger were not real, that they were directed at some character in the play he was rehearsing, not at me. He had no reason to hate me. Not yet, at least.
For a long moment, he stayed that way—his expression full of malice, his free hand balled into a tight fist, the tendons in his neck standing out. Then it was as though an eraser had been swept across the blackboard of his body. His expression smoothed out. His fingers unclenched. The tendons slackened. He had shed the skin of his character like a snake. There was something unnerving about the abruptness of the transformation.
He was still angry, though; the hardness of his stare made that clear. Probably because I had intruded upon his work. If he was the perfectionist his wife said, chances were he would not like a stranger to see him rehearse. But it was a normal sort of anger now. Sane, not murderous.
"Who are you?" he asked. "What do you think you're doing barging in here like this?"
"I didn't mean to intrude. The door was unlocked, so I just let myself in."
He didn't like that answer much. Or maybe it was my tone. It wasn't the least bit apologetic.
"Most people know enough not to enter a place where they've not been invited. Now answer my questions or get out of here."
I did not comply with his request. Instead, I stepped forward, planted both palms on the edge of the stage, and heaved myself up. I rose to my feet, turned around, and surveyed the rows of vacant seats.
I whistled softly. "So this is how it looks from this end." I grinned at him. A guileless sort of grin. "I wondered about that. I was here the other night, you know. I was sitting right there. Eighth row, just left of the middle. I watched you perform. I sure enjoyed myself immensely. You all did a great job, every single one of you. But you, Mr. Rotner, you were the best of the lot."
I flashed him another grin, friendly and nonthreatening and abundantly goofy. The sort of grin that belonged on the face of an idiot. On the way over to Ohel Shem, I had considered how best to approach him—if indeed I found him there. I decided to try to accomplish two things. Appeal to his vanity, which I judged to be considerable; and give the impression that I was not to be feared.
My reasoning was simple: I wanted his cooperation. I was not a policeman; he was not obliged to answer my questions. And if he were truly the killer and was worried I might somehow find proof of his guilt, he might stonewall me. On the other hand, if he did not view me as a threat, he might let something slip that would help me hang him.
How well this gambit would work remained to be seen.
"I'm glad to hear it," he said, his tone a mite friendlier than before. "But as you can see, I'm very busy."
I gave a quick nod. "Sure. Sure. Believe me, I don't want to get in the way of your work. But since I'm already here, I sure would appreciate a few minutes of your time. I would like to ask you some questions, if that's all right."
"You're a reporter?"
I chuckled. "No, not at all. My name is Adam Lapid, and I'm a private investigator. I'm working on a case concerning a former colleague of yours."
"Which colleague?"
"Anna Hartman."
I was looking right at him as I spoke her name. I wanted to see his immediate reaction. It was a good thing I did, because it lasted but a fraction of a second. There, and then gone.
I had caught him completely by surprise. I could tell that by his sharp intake of air and the way his jaw twitched. But there was something more. Something that couldn't be attributed to surprise. It was how his ears shifted back and up, like a hound before an attack. Or a wolf.
It took him a couple of seconds to find his voice. When he did, he sounded almost casual, but not entirely. I caught the faintest trace of what I thought was worry underlying his words. "You're talking about the murder?"
"Yes. I was hired to see if I could do a better job than the police had."