I said, "You realize that there's no direct proof connecting your husband to this murder. For all you know, he might indeed have been in the theater that night, and the only reason he asked you to lie for him was to avoid being questioned by the police. Or he might have been with another woman and did not wish for this to be exposed."
For the first time, she seemed disappointed with me. "You forget something, Mr. Lapid. You forget how Isser was that night, when he slept beside me after returning late. His nightmare, the tension in his body, the fear that gripped him. This was before the police came to see him in the morning, before he even knew about the murder. Unless he had committed it."
Heat rose to my cheeks. She was right. If her description of her husband on that night was accurate, it was indeed suspicious. I attempted to hide my embarrassment by scratching a nonexistent itch on my nose and said, "Do you really think your husband is capable of something like that? Of murdering a woman?"
"Yes," she said, and her tone was of such utter conviction that for a moment I was struck dumb.
I looked at her cane, at the way her right leg was bent awkwardly before her, at her braced neck. The way she held herself, the self-assurance she projected, contrasted sharply with her physical condition. "In that case, do you feel safe being here alone with him?"
Her lips bent into something approximating a sneer. "Don't worry about me, Mr. Lapid. I'll be fine. All I need from you is to know whether you're my man or not."
The way she said this brooked no argument. She wanted my protection just as much as she wanted me to commiserate with her on her injuries. Which was to say, not at all.
I said, "Why do you need me? Why not just call the police and tell them you lied?"
"And what if they do nothing? What if they decide I'm lying right now as opposed to then? Or maybe they'll think I'm crazy. You did, didn't you? I don't blame you. Being stuck in this damn apartment, deprived of what you love most, can do that—though I don't suppose you would know anything about that, would you?"
But I did. I knew exactly what she meant. And it was the absolute truth. Madness always lurked at the edges of profound loss.
She did not wait for me to answer. "Even if the police did reopen the investigation, there's no guarantee they'll lock Isser up. Those incompetent fools, in all likelihood, they'll fail to find the evidence necessary to convict him. If that happens, I'll be condemned as a liar or a madwoman. I'll have ruined my reputation for nothing. And my reputation is very dear to me, Mr. Lapid. It is practically the only thing of worth I have left."
She started coughing again, her body shaking, but this time the fit lasted but a few seconds. She wiped the spittle off her lips and regarded me with her large expressive eyes.
"I'll sacrifice my reputation if it leads to Isser being branded a murderer and thrown in prison. Not for anything less. That's why I need you."
So I was right. This was about revenge, not justice. I asked myself whether this was a battle I wished to take part in. For a moment I was about to reach into my pocket, retrieve the thirty liras nestled within, give them back to her, and tell her I did not wish to be a pawn in some covert war she was waging on her husband. But something stayed my hand.
Part of it was base greed. A thirty-lira retainer did not land in my lap every day. And if she was willing to pay me this much just to listen to her, she would probably be willing to cough up more if I actually took the job.
The other part had nothing to do with either Dahlia or her husband. It had everything to do with Anna Hartman.
I did not know her, but if what Dahlia had told me was indeed true, she was a victim of murder. An unsolved murder.
Her killer roamed free, unpunished. And she was dead, without justice.
This was not about to change on its own. Dahlia would not officially retract her earlier statement. I had no illusions that I would be able to change her mind on that score.
I could go to the police myself and tell them what she told me, but I doubted it would do any good. She would simply deny it, and if she was as good an actress as she claimed, they would likely believe her. My word alone would not suffice to compel them to reopen an old case.
No. The only way Anna Hartman's killer would ever be brought to justice was if I went after him myself.
Dahlia's voice severed my contemplation. "What will it be, Mr. Lapid? Will you help me make sure my husband is punished?"
"No," I said.
She frowned, obviously surprised by the bluntness of my refusal. "I'll be happy to pay you an additional sum for your services. Thirty more liras? Forty?"
"Forty," I said. "If the case drags on for some reason, I may come back to you for more, and you'll decide whether you want me to carry on or not. For now, forty will do, but not to prove your husband is a murderer."
Her frown deepened, and I saw anger glint like lightning in her eyes. "Who the hell do you—"
"Your husband may be a liar, a cheater, and the biggest son of a bitch in Israel," I said. "He hurt you like no man should ever hurt his wife. I understand why you want to see him suffer, but I won't be your instrument of vengeance. Deciding in advance who is guilty of a crime and then trying to find evidence to convict him is not the way I do things, Mrs. Rotner. I'm willing to look into this case, but my goal will be to catch the murderer, whoever he might be. You want to hire me? That's what you'll be paying for. Justice for Anna Hartman, no matter who killed her."
She gave me a look that should have resulted in an attempted murder conviction. Her right hand, perhaps unconsciously, had closed around her walking stick. I could tell by the taut tendons in her hand that her grip was a tight one, as though she were clutching a weapon.
I attempted to placate her. "If you're correct, it won't make a difference, right?"
She considered me for a moment longer, unmoving, again reminding me of a piece of statuary. Then she drew in a long breath through her nose, and the tension in her face slackened. "You're right, it won't. All right, Mr. Lapid. Consider yourself hired."
6
When I left her apartment, it was just past four in the afternoon. The wind had picked up. Leaves swirled along the sidewalk, pirouetting around my shoes before skittering away. I crossed the street and stared up at her window. Was she standing there, leaning on her cane, watching me watching her? The way the sun glared off the windowpane made it impossible to see inside.
We had talked some more once the deal was struck, but I'd gotten almost nothing useful from her. Just some background information on the theater and on her husband, including his habit of frequenting Café Kassit or Café Roval after a successful performance. Superficial stuff. She did not wish to open her life before me; that was not what she'd hired me for. And as for Anna Hartman, it was plain as day how little Dahlia thought of her by how little she knew about her, despite them having been colleagues for over six years. She summed up her opinion of the dead woman in one short, skewering sentence: "Her ambition far outweighed her talent."
I started walking south, then cut west on Dizengoff Street. An ice vendor stood at the rear of his wagon near the corner of Shmaryahu Levin Street, chopping up ice blocks for a line of waiting customers. A gaggle of boys had gathered, too. They were hungrily sucking on ice splinters—the byproduct of the chopping—and grinning as though what they held in their hands was a piece of three-layer cake and not frozen water.
A little further on, I came upon a bulletin board plastered with election posters. Israel's second general election was to take place the following month, on July 30, 1951, and the various parties were engaged in vigorous campaigning. At least seven different parties were represented on this single bulletin board. David Ben-Gurion's ruling party, Mapai, had a poster listing its plans for the next four years—security and prosperity and increased immigration. The poster appeared in Hebrew, of course, but also in Yiddish and Russian, to appeal to those new citizens who still hadn't mastered the national tongue. Elsewhere, I'd seen it in Spanish and French.