"Good. What I'm trying to do is get a clearer picture of who Esther was. I understand you met her on the night of the prison raid."
"That's right. I drove her to the safe house."
"You and Mira," I said.
"Yes."
"You drove them to the Klingers'."
A short pause. "You know about the Klingers?"
"Mira told me."
"I see. Yes, we went to the Klingers' house in Haifa."
"How was Esther that night?"
"How was she? Scared out of her mind. It's perfectly understandable. After all, she was just in the middle of a firefight. I was pretty shaken myself. That damned raid." He shook his head, and his tone became agitated. "The plan seemed solid, but everything went to hell within the first moments. If we had to execute the same plan a year or two later, the results would have been different. But back then we were untrained and inexperienced. We paid a heavy price."
His jaw was tight enough I expected to hear teeth grind. His gaze seemed to be turned inward, to where he stored bad memories. I let a few seconds slither by before asking, "Did you see her after that night?"
He took a quick sip of beer. "I came by with a camera and snapped their picture—hers and the boy's—for the false papers. I later returned when the papers were ready. So I went by there twice, maybe one other time."
"What was she like?"
"Like?"
"Yes. For instance, how was she with the baby? Was she close to him?"
A small shrug. "How close could she have been? She wasn't his real mother."
"Mira told me Esther loved Willie."
He pursed his lips. "Well, then I suppose she did. Mira knew her better than I did. I only saw her once with the baby, when I took their picture. The other time I was at the Klingers', he was asleep in another room."
"Anything else you remember of Esther?"
He thought for a moment. "One time I was there, she told me she wanted to join the Irgun, to take action against the British. She seemed very motivated. But eventually she did nothing. A lot of maapilim were like that—they were enthusiastic about taking part in the struggle in the first few days after getting off the boat. As weeks went by, their fervor died down. They became engrossed in day-to-day living—their jobs, that sort of thing—and forgot their previous declarations of dedication and willingness to sacrifice whatever was needed for the sake of the Jewish people." He fixed me with his steely gaze. "You know, the British did not get out of our country because they wanted to. They left because we drove them out." He punctuated the "we" by thumping his chest with his fist, and I recalled Goldberg expressing his admiration for the Irgun's fighting spirit, if not their politics.
"Were you part of any resistance group? Did you fight the British?" he asked me in a challenging tone.
"No."
"When did you get to Israel?"
"September 1947."
"Well," he said, mollified, and perhaps a touch embarrassed by his emotions, "by that time the work was nearly done. And you did do your part in the war."
He sipped his beer. I took a last drag and mashed out my cigarette in the ashtray.
"Did you have any contact with Esther after she left the Klingers'?"
"No."
"When you saw her there, did she seem to get along with them?"
Another small shrug. "She and the Klinger woman—I forget her name—seemed friendly enough. The husband I didn't see after the first night. Not that I missed him all that much."
"Why do you say that?"
His face tightened with anger. "A young, able-bodied man, and all he was willing to do was dole out the occasional contribution and host poor immigrants for a few days. And even that they stopped doing after that time. We needed fighters, not innkeepers."
I leaned forward, my skin tingling as it did when I was on a case and had just uncovered something that might prove important. "Esther and Willie were the last immigrants the Klingers ever sheltered?"
"That's right."
"Why?"
"I don't know. I didn't hear about it directly from them. All I know is that we never brought more immigrants to their house."
Scratching my jaw, I leaned back in my seat and pondered this new fact. It could mean nothing. I wouldn't know till I had a chance to see the Klingers.
"Anything else you can tell me that might help with my investigation?"
He considered, taking a long pull from his bottle. He set it on the floor between his feet and shook his head. "I don't think so. Like I said, I only saw her and the baby a couple of times."
I nodded. I could think of nothing more to ask him. Maybe that bit about the Klingers would lead to something and maybe it wouldn't. Other than that, my talk with Michael Shamir was a bust. I got to my feet.
"Thanks for your time. I'll be off now."
He rose. "Say, weren't you in the papers a year or so back? Something about Operation Yoav?"
I was surprised when the discomfort that usually arose when I was asked about the day of my injury did not materialize. Perhaps because this man was also a warrior. Perhaps because of the matter-of-fact manner in which he had presented his question.
"Yes." I didn't elaborate.
He slapped me on the shoulder. "Nice work." That was the extent of his commendation. I liked that. No platitudes or flowery praise, just a crisp acknowledgment of a job well done, which was how I saw my actions in the war.
At the door, I stopped and offered him my hand. His grip was firm and warm. With his other hand he gestured at my forearm.
"You were there, in the Nazi camps?"
"Yes," I said.
"I understand it was terrible. I'm glad you survived."
It was an odd thing to say, but he seemed completely sincere when he said it. Still, I couldn't think of a proper reply. What should I have said? Thank you?
"I met a camp survivor during the war," he went on. "A French Jew. One night before a big battle in the Galilee, he started telling me what he went through during the war in Europe, how the Germans put him and his family on a train to Poland, to a concentration camp. All his family was dead, he was the only one left. Once he started talking, he didn't stop. Not for a second all through that night. Neither of us got any sleep. I think he felt compelled to tell his life's story because he was worried about the upcoming battle, worried that if he got killed, there would be no one who would know his story or that he had ever existed."
"What was his name?"
"Pierre. Pierre Levi."
"What happened to him?"
Michael Shamir pointed to his neck. "The next day he caught a bullet right here. Died on the spot."
17
I got lucky and caught a bus that was only slightly less warm than a furnace. I sat beside an overweight woman who mumbled to herself in singsong Italian while she stared out the window as if at a picture show. Behind me, two men spoke in animated Yiddish, while in the seats in front of me, a mother was busy hectoring her eight-year-old daughter in staccato Polish. That was the soundtrack of Tel Aviv, a cocktail of languages and dialects and accents all pouring past and into each other.
The bus ferried me across town and deposited me near the middle of Rothschild Boulevard. I trekked north, past Bilu Elementary School in whose basement the Tel Aviv Chamber Choir was conducting a rehearsal. Harmonious singing accompanied me as I made the turn to Lunz Street and located the building where Esther Grunewald and Willie Ackerland had lived and died.
There were six apartments, two to a floor. Esther and Willie had lived in number six. I examined the labels on the mailboxes in the lobby, hoping to find that the people who had lived in the building ten years ago were still in residence. Another disappointment. Of the six mailboxes, only one name was familiar to me—Sassoon, the landlord's name—and it appeared on two of the boxes, numbers one and six. I frowned. Did a relative of the landlord now occupy the apartment where the double murder had taken place?