"Hired by whom?"
"I'm sorry, but I can't divulge that. It wouldn't be ethical. I'll just say it's a relative of Miss Hartman."
"Anna had no family. She came to this country from Czechoslovakia alone as a teenager. Her family stayed behind in Prague. All died."
He said this in a voice bereft of inflection. Zero emotion. Like he was relating a statistical fact and not discussing the eradication of an entire family of our people.
"Her close relatives were all killed by the Nazis, that's true," I said. "But a cousin survived and recently arrived in Israel. This cousin, upon learning of the unsolved murder of Miss Hartman, hired me to investigate it." This was what I had told Dahlia I would say. With Jews pouring into Israel in large numbers from all corners of Europe, it was a plausible story.
Rotner's jaw twitched again. He was hiding it well now, but his anger was still there, simmering just below the surface. He did not like me, or maybe just the reason I was there. His dark eyes appraised me, as though trying to weigh my worth. Or he might have been gauging the gravity of the threat I posed him.
"It seems like a fool's errand," he said, "considering the time that's passed and that the police couldn't solve the crime. Speaking of ethics, did you tell your client that?"
"I most certainly did. I told my client that the chances that I would discover the identity of the killer were next to none. I told her this would likely be a waste of money. She decided to proceed anyway." I shrugged, the grin once more plastered on my face. "Maybe I should have tried harder to convince her, but it's her money, after all. I figured she's well within her rights to give some of it to me."
"And this client is Anna's cousin?"
"That's right."
"Strange, but I don't recall Anna ever mentioning having a cousin."
"You seem to have known Miss Hartman quite well."
"We worked together for several years. Naturally, I learned a thing or two about her."
"You weren't close?"
"Not any closer than I am to the rest of the people working with me."
"You never saw each other outside the theater?"
He eyed me for a beat before answering. "What are you insinuating?"
"Nothing. Nothing at all. I'm just curious. I'm simply trying to get a sense of who Miss Hartman was, who her friends were, that sort of thing."
"Sounds to me like you're trying to rake up some muck that's not even there. If you think that I or anyone in this theater had anything to do with Anna's murder, you're insane. It's quite clear what happened."
"Oh?"
"Anna was attacked by some lunatic. Someone on the hunt for a young, pretty woman. It was bad luck. Nothing more."
"You seem very sure of that."
"That's what the police thought."
I blinked in surprise. "How do you know that?"
"From the detective in charge."
"Meltzer? You two talked about the case? When?"
"A few weeks after the murder. He explained that catching a random murderer often takes time. Between the lines, I understood that the case might never be solved."
"Why did you go see him?"
"Because I cared about Anna as a colleague, Mr. Lapid, and I wanted to make sure everything was being done to catch the animal who killed her."
Or you wanted to know what the police were up to, I thought, whether they were taking another look at you.
I said, "After reading the police report, I must say I agree with you. I told my client that this was probably what happened, but she said I should keep an open mind." I shrugged again. "And since she's the one paying me, I might as well try to follow her instructions."
"I think you're wasting your time. And her money."
"You're probably right, Mr. Rotner. Most likely, I'll go through the motions, ask some questions, and come to the same conclusion the police did. Still, I need to do something to justify my fee. I wouldn't feel right otherwise."
I was sending him a message. I was hinting that I wasn't going to dig too deeply, that I wasn't going to put in much of an effort. I simply wanted to do enough to be able to look at myself in the mirror and not see a thief staring back at me.
Whether he'd gotten the message or not was unclear. He was clutching the sheaf of papers—the script of the play he'd been rehearsing when I arrived—in both hands now, and I noticed his grip was so tight his fingers were crumpling the pages.
We were five feet apart. It was the closest I had ever been to him. I could smell his cologne, see the shallow lines that ran across his forehead, the tiny wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. He had a small chickenpox scar at his temple. According to his wife, he had been born in 1905 and was forty-six years old. He looked good for his age. Lean and fit, tall and straight. A man very much in his prime.
His eyes were very dark—a deep brown like old, water-soaked wood. They bored into me with a sharp intensity. I could tell that his mind was busy, but what his thoughts were, I couldn't say.
He was an actor, a good one, and now that he had recovered from the surprise I had engendered, he had regained firm control over himself. His expression was inscrutable. The little he had shown me so far might have been but the tip of an iceberg or the entirety of his emotions. There was no way to tell. But what was clear was that both my presence and my mission perturbed him to one degree or another.
If he had his way, no one would be taking a second look at Anna Hartman's murder. And this, of course, made me very suspicious.
His eyes remained fixed on my face for another long moment. Then, with a loud intake of air, he broke off his probing stare and lightly tapped his thigh with the rolled-up script. After which, for the first time, he smiled at me.
That smile filled me with awe. It was just right: warm and charming, but not overly so. The sort of amiable, easygoing smile of a person who hasn't a care in the world. The sort of smile you offer a bothersome stranger you decide to indulge out of the goodness of your heart. The smile of someone who has nothing to hide and nothing to fear.
I had no doubt that this smile was contrived, but this was only because what I'd been told about him, and also because I had seen him that night in Café Kassit. If this had been my first encounter with him, I would have likely found his smile to be utterly genuine.
And just then it struck me that, when he was in control of himself, Rotner was more than merely a good actor. He was an excellent one. Which meant that he could tell me one lie after another, and I might fail to see through a single one of them.
Which made my job that much harder.
He was still smiling when he said, "Well, Mr. Lapid, as I said, I think you're wasting your time, but I can spare you a few minutes. Who knows? Maybe you'll find the evidence that will finally bring justice for poor Anna."
"Thank you, Mr. Rotner. I'll do my best to be brief. Can you tell me when you first met Anna Hartman?"
"It was, I believe, 1938. We were looking to hire new people, and she auditioned for us."
"She was, what, eighteen at the time?"
"Just about. She had just graduated high school."
"Do you remember the part she auditioned for?"
"It doesn't work like that. We don't hire people for a specific role. Each person who comes to audition is given the text of a scene in advance. I don't remember what scene Anna performed. We switch them from time to time."
"Her audition was good?"
"Good enough for her to be called back for another round of auditions. This time, she had to act three different roles. It's a way to make sure a person can play a range of characters. We want versatile actors."
"And I assume the second audition also went well."
"Yes. And after that, she was hired. She became one of us."
"Who made the decision to hire her?"