This bothered me on more than one level. There was the possibility that whatever information Mira harbored—if she indeed did harbor any—might have proved useful to my investigation, and there was the personal aspect. I was attracted to her, and I did not want to believe that she would lie to my face. Yet, this was what I did believe, though I could not imagine a reason why she would do so. For without Mira's cooperation, I would have no case. I would not know that Esther Grunewald and Willie Ackerland had been murdered. Mira was eager to avenge these murders. Why would she hamper my investigation by keeping information from me?
At the corner of Tchernichovsky and Hamaccabi, I debated the wisdom of making this an early night. I was tired, and I had two new books to read. But I did not want to be alone with my thoughts in my apartment just yet. I kept on walking, made the turn to Allenby Street, and a few minutes later entered Greta's Café.
The place was nearly full and Greta waved hello to me while carrying a tray of drinks to a table of four. She was too busy to chat, which was a shame because I felt like talking.
I sat at my table, smoking, playing chess, surrounded by the ruckus of laughter and boisterous conversations, and tried to clear my mind. I gave up after an hour, said a quick goodbye to Greta, who seemed sad to see me leave, and walked back up Allenby Street.
I caught a movie at Migdalor Theater and then went home. After showering, I stood before the mirror and pulled down my lower lip. Rivlin's punch had left twin lacerations across the inside of my lip. Both cuts looked red and raw, but neither was bleeding. I ran my tongue over them, but could not taste blood. I turned off the bathroom light and got into bed.
As I lay staring up into darkness, I wondered whether my getting punched by Rivlin would prove sufficient to keep the nightmares away, or if I had to draw blood for this to happen. I couldn't be sure, because it had been a very long time since I had been hit and not struck back, not since I was liberated by the Americans. I had closed all the windows as a precaution in case I screamed in my sleep. Two hours later, when the dark dreams came, I discovered I had acted wisely.
16
It was around nine in the morning when I flipped open my notebook and looked over the list of names I had gotten from the police report and Mira Roth, trying to decide who I should go see first.
Michael Shamir was the closest. He lived on Gadera Street, which was less than a ten-minute walk from my apartment. There was a good chance he'd be at work at this time of day, but I decided to risk it. In truth, I was curious to meet this man who had inspired such admiration in Mira.
I pulled on a white shirt, blue pants, and black shoes—the other pair I owned was brown—and headed out. The heat was back in force and the air was as still as a dead man's heart. The sun was ascending in the east, with not a cloud in the sky to muffle its scorching rays. I ambled so as not to build too much of a sweat. This worked only partially and prolonged the length of my hike to thirteen minutes.
Michael Shamir lived in a run-down three-story building with a facade that used to be a brilliant white but was now smudged black and gray from exhaust fumes and absorbed moisture. The front door was missing its handle and the corners of the lobby sported an accumulation of dirt and brittle leaves. The lobby smelled stale, as if it had not been washed in weeks. A dead cockroach lay on its back in the middle of the floor with its crooked feet sticking up, and a procession of ants were busy dismantling it. I stepped over both carcass and ants and went up the stairs to the top floor, my shoes making scuffing sounds against the dust on the steps.
I knocked on the door to apartment five and waited. No answer. I knocked a second time, a bit harder, with similar results. I had turned away from the door when I heard footfalls approaching on the stairway.
The first thing I saw was the top of his head. His hair was black and cropped very short. He was toting a grocery bag in each hand and climbed with his head bowed. Then, probably alerted by the landing light that I had flicked on earlier, he paused, eight or so treads from where I stood, and raised his head.
His face was familiar, and it took me a second or two to figure out from where. He was the second man in Mira's picture of the four young warriors—the other, Yohanan, had died during the prison raid. In that picture, he had been a youth of around twenty. Now he was thirty or so and showing the ten years that had passed.
His face looked longer and leaner than it had been in that picture, almost ascetic, giving him a monkish cast. His hair was receding at the temples, though the rest of it was dense. Perpetual frown lines furrowed his tall forehead. His eyes were set deep and the color of walnut and seemed captured in a permanent squint, as if he was staring into the sun. They were intense eyes, the eyes of a man who had seen and done things. Between the eyes began the slope of a Roman nose and beneath that was a mouth that seemed incongruously full. The chin was neither big nor small, neither protruding nor sunken. Chin and cheeks were dusted with black stubble. He had not shaved that morning.
He was five nine and had a wiry build. Lean muscle bunched under the skin of his outstretched, bag-wielding arms, and a vein stood out in each of his biceps. He looked fit, but not as formidable as I had expected him to be. All told, he was not a handsome man. Mira's admiration for him did not stem from his looks.
He stared at me for a long moment, not moving. "Looking for someone?" he said finally, in a soft, velvety voice.
"Michael Shamir. That's you, isn't it?"
"That's right."
"My name is Adam Lapid. I got your name and address from Mira Roth."
His eyebrows rose a fraction. "Mira Roth? Is that a fact?"
"Yes. She gave me a note to give to you."
I fished the note Mira had given me out of my pocket and held it out to him. He climbed the rest of the way, set down the two bags, and plucked the note from my hand. He read it with seeming care. I watched his face while he did so. Not much of a reaction, a slight deepening of those frown lines, an upward flick of the eyes to assess my face. On their way back to the note, the eyes paused for a fraction of a second on the number tattooed on my forearm, but did not give away his thoughts. When he was done reading, he folded the note and did not return it.
"Better come in, then," he said.
While he unlocked the door, I reached down and grabbed one of the grocery bags. He muttered a low thank you, hoisted the other bag, pushed open the door, and led the way inside.
I had expected his apartment to match the rest of the building. It didn't. The walls were freshly painted, the floor clean. The kitchen, which opened to the right a couple of feet from the door, was about the size of mine and immaculate. No crumbs on the counters, no dirty dishes in the sink, no grime on the small window. We set the bags on the floor and he proceeded to unpack them. Bread and dry goods went into a cupboard; cheese, milk, and vegetables he put in the icebox. None of the food items were contraband. Either he was one of those rare souls who did not partake of the black market, or I had caught him on a good day. When the last of the food was in its place, he said, "I'm gonna have a beer. Want one?"
"Too early for me."
He shrugged and tugged out a bottle from the icebox. Condensation sparkled along the glass. He popped the cap, took a swig, smiled a small smile, and said, "I just got back from work, so this is like a nightcap. How about some water?" I nodded and he filled me a glass from the tap. "Let's go to the other room."