He slid his palm with the banknote beneath it to the edge of the bar, where he cupped the note in his fist and stuck it in his pocket. He brought his hand out—minus the banknote—downed the rest of his glass, poured himself another, and surprised me by taking a sip that was the epitome of daintiness. Then, still not looking at me, he said, "How come you're working this case?"
"My client is a relative of the victims," I said, choosing to refrain from explaining the whole bit about their names being false. I was there to gain information, not dish it out. Besides, he'd had his chance with this case and blew it. It was my turn now.
"No next of kin came forward at the time," Rivlin said.
"She just arrived in Israel and learned about the murders. She wants me to take another look at what happened."
"She wants to catch whoever did it?"
"That's right."
Rivlin shook his head. "Impossible. Not going to happen." He pointed a finger at me. "And if you had any decency, you would have told her so."
I tried to hide the prickle of discomfort that spread across my back. What I'd done was much worse. I had lied to my client. I had betrayed her trust.
"She knows it's a long shot," I lied. "She still wants to have a go at it."
He shrugged. "You read the report?" He had figured out that was where I likely got his name from. Like I thought, he was drunk but not out.
"Yes."
"You certainly have money to spend, don't you?" He had set his gaze on me, and there was a greedy calculation in his eyes.
I didn't correct him. Let him think I paid for the information. He was unlikely to believe me if I told him I got it as a favor. His kind never did any.
"If your information is good, you may get some more of it."
Rivlin responded with a grunt, but didn't press the issue. "If you read the report, you know as much as I do."
"Only the dry facts. What I'm interested in is your impressions, your thoughts."
"My thoughts? Want to hear what I think? I think you're wasting your time and your client's money. You're not going to find out who did it. Not a chance in hell."
"Because too much time has passed?"
"No, that's not it at all. This case was hopeless when it was fresh, when I got it, and it's hopeless now."
"Why?"
He drained his glass and refilled it.
"Think," he told me. "Think how it went down. Think how it happened."
"I want to hear what you think," I said.
He made a face that intimated he considered me to be the dumbest person he'd met in a long, long while. "Fine. I'll tell you. It's the middle of the night. He jimmies the door, gets into the apartment. She wakes up from the noise, climbs out of bed, and sees his face. He's screwed. She can finger him to the cops. All he can think is that she's a threat he needs to eliminate. He has a knife, like a lot of lowlifes do. He slashes her throat. A robbery that escalates to murder. Not exactly unheard of."
"That's the obvious conclusion," I admitted, "but why would he choose to rob Esther Kantor? She was a secretary. She didn't have a lot of money to steal."
"Maybe he thought she had more. Maybe he got the wrong apartment. Maybe he chose it at random. Who the hell can say what went through his mind?"
"Why would he break in at night when the apartment was likely occupied?"
"Maybe he thought it was empty. Maybe he's stupid. Or maybe he figures it's safer at night. It's a residential building. He comes during the day, some bored housewife might spot him."
I nodded. "All right. But why kill the baby? The baby can't point him out to the police."
"Put yourself in the bastard's shoes," Rivlin said. "He's a thief, not a killer. He's never killed anyone in his goddamn miserable life. But he's just murdered a woman. She's on the floor, blood pooling around her. He's facing the gallows if we catch him. He's on edge, panicked, can't figure out how things could have gone so wrong. All of a sudden, the baby starts bawling his little lungs out. To the killer, it sounds like an air-raid siren. Any second now, some neighbor will start wondering what all the racket is about. He needs to shut the baby up fast, and there's just one way to do it. He sticks him a few times in the chest."
"And then instead of fleeing the scene, he hangs around to scour the place for cash? When he's scared out of his mind?" I shook my head. "Doesn't make sense."
His answer came quick, and I got the impression he'd asked himself these questions a number of times over the years.
"Yeah, it does." Rivlin had taken on a lecturing tone, and for the first time he seemed more intent on me than on the wine. "He's just killed two people. He wants nothing more than to run out the door, to get as far away as possible. But he can't be sure the baby didn't wake someone up before he whacked him. Someone, some nosy neighbor, may be coming up the stairs that very moment. Our killer's got two options: take a chance and meet that neighbor on the stairs, where he's got no advantage, or wait in the apartment, and if a neighbor comes in, jump on him and take him by surprise. So he waits by the door, listening for the sound of footsteps on the stairs. A minute passes, two, three. Nothing. His heart rate slows, his breathing subsides, he's feeling more secure. It's a bad night, but he might as well get something out of it. He tosses the apartment, finds whatever he finds, and grabs the money from her purse." He gave me a satisfied closed-mouth smile. "Get it now?"
I did. It could well have happened like Rivlin said. Except for one tiny thing he'd neglected to mention.
"That doesn't explain what he did to their faces," I said. "To their eyes."
"No," he agreed, no longer smiling. "It doesn't. Nothing explains that. Nothing can explain that. It's crazy. That's my point. That's why you're wasting your time."
"What do you mean?"
He fixed me with his stare, and it might have been a trick of the light, but his eyes appeared to have more red in them than before.
"Crazy is the operative word. A crazy act by a crazy guy. Random. Unpremeditated. Irrational and pointless. Which is why I got nowhere in my investigation. Look, there are two possibilities. One, the killer knew Esther Kantor and came to kill her specifically. Only I talked to the neighbors and everyone who knew her, including the workers at the grocery store where she bought her food. She was a nice person, everyone said. Friendly. Always with a smile. No one could think of any reason why someone would want her dead, not to mention the baby, not to mention mutilating their faces like that. Two, whoever killed them was totally insane. He may have started out as a burglar, but once they were dead, something came over him, some compulsion, and he needed to cut them up and stab out their eyes. Why? No reason. There is no reason with madness. No reason we can understand. That's the whole point."
He had counted out the options on his fingers and was holding two of them in front of my face.
"That's why I got nowhere in my investigation. There were no physical clues. No one saw the killer enter or exit the building. No one had any motive to kill her. The murder didn't fit any former killing. It was a first. All I could do was wait until some clue turned up or the killer struck again. But he never did. The guy did it once and that's it. And I don't have a goddamn clue who he might be."
Rivlin stopped and drew in a breath. He suddenly looked even more weary than he had before. He picked up his wineglass and gazed into it. The red of the wine looked a little like blood. Apparently, he didn't see the resemblance, because he drank deeply from the glass. If he enjoyed it, he showed no sign of it.
"What do you think happened to him?" I asked.
"The killer?" He shrugged. "Maybe he had a heart attack the next day. Maybe he stepped on a land mine during the war. Or maybe he's the sort of killer for whom once is enough. I don't know. I'm not even sure I care anymore. I worked this case hard enough, let me tell you. Not that it did me much good. The brass chewed me out for failing to bring in results. I even had to type daily reports in English to the goddamn CID, explaining why I was getting nowhere, not that they ever offered to help any. So if you think you can waltz into this case after ten years and find the killer, go right ahead. Be my guest. Waste your time all you want, just don't take any more of mine. I'm done answering your questions. Pay the man for a second bottle and then get lost and let me drink in peace."