I mounted the stairs to the third floor and knocked on the door marked six. No answer. Back on the ground floor, I rapped on the door to apartment one and heard a gravelly voice rasp at me to wait a minute.
A swarthy, pockmarked man of around fifty opened the door, holding a cigarette in one hand and a steaming coffee glass in the other. The cigarette was fat and Turkish, the coffee thick and the color of mud. I could not determine which emitted a stronger smell. The man wore a white undershirt tucked into black slacks. His arms were covered in dense black curls. More curls sprouted from his scalp and to them he'd pinned a small black kippah. He was five foot six, with a spare frame and dark, heavy-lidded eyes that were now peering up at me.
"Abraham Sassoon?" I asked.
He nodded. "And you are?"
I gave him my name and told him the reason for my visit. The corners of his mouth drew down to form a mournful arc when I mentioned the murders.
"Come in," he said. "Come in."
He offered me coffee and seemed not offended when I declined. We sat in two chairs that were more comfortable than they looked. Sassoon smoked and drank his coffee. I added to the stinging odors that pervaded the room by lighting a cigarette of my own. Bluish-black smoke swirled in the air between us. He told me about the day he'd discovered the bodies, touching his kippah every other sentence with nicotine-stained fingers, as if needing to reinforce his belief in the Almighty.
"You heard nothing during the night?"
His answer echoed the one he'd given Rivlin in 1939. "Not a thing. It has troubled me ever since, that I slept peacefully in my bed while a ruthless, depraved murderer was killing two of my tenants a mere two floors above my head."
"Are you a heavy sleeper?"
"I'm afraid that I am, but that's not the worst of it. I also snore. My dear departed wife used to say I sound like a locomotive undergoing a coughing fit, but it has never disturbed my sleep."
"When did you lose your wife?"
"It will be eight years in December."
I told him I was sorry for his loss. He accepted my condolences with a heavy nod.
"She didn't hear anything either," Sassoon said. "For the same reason, I suppose." He shook his head again and sucked on his cigarette.
"What can you tell me about Esther?"
He touched his kippah. "Not much, I'm afraid. I can tell you she was a good tenant. Never late with the rent, didn't make noise, seemed to get along well with the other residents. But I can't say I knew her all that much. Esther was very friendly with another tenant of mine, Natalie Davidson. Maybe you should talk to her. She and her husband and son lived in apartment three."
I nodded. I had read Rivlin's interview with Natalie Davidson, in which she had presented herself as a friend of Esther, and I was planning on talking to her.
"Do you happen to know where the Davidsons are living these days?"
Sassoon started shaking his head, but paused midway. "I got a letter from them at Rosh Hashanah two years ago. I should have it somewhere…now where did I put it…ah, here it is."
He had been rummaging in a desk drawer and now presented me with a white envelope. Inside was a generic greeting for the Jewish New Year. Printed on the envelope was a return address on Ben Yehuda Street, in Tel Aviv. I copied it in my notebook.
"Do you know where I can find the other neighbors who lived here at the time?"
The corners of his mouth curled down again, almost to his jawline. "Zelig Joselewicz in apartment two was about eighty when the murders took place. He died in hospital from the flu three…no, four years ago. Yisrael Metzner, who lived in apartment four, was killed in 1940 when the Italians bombed Tel Aviv. Lastly, there's the couple who lived in apartment five, Mr. and Mrs. Rutte. They returned to the Netherlands. They were Dutch Jews. The murders put the scare into Mrs. Rutte. She told me she didn't feel safe here any longer, that she wanted to go back to Amsterdam. You can imagine what happened to them after the Nazis invaded the Netherlands."
I could. I had met Dutch Jews in Auschwitz, though I could not recall anyone named Rutte.
"So," he continued, "the killer is really responsible for the deaths of four people, not just two."
He finished his coffee and set it aside. A dark, muddy sediment clogged the bottom third of the glass. He crushed out his cigarette in an ashtray and brushed tobacco crumbs from his fingers.
"Did Esther have any visitors? Any men who came calling?"
"I never saw any, and it's not that I forbade it, like other landlords do. As long as you pay the rent and don't make trouble, you can do what you please in your apartment. That's the way I run things."
I scratched my cheek. "I've seen pictures of Esther. I find it hard to believe that a woman as beautiful as her did not have any suitors."
"Some men don't want a woman burdened with a child. But maybe she did have someone and I never knew about it. Natalie Davidson might know."
I asked him if I could see the apartment where the murders had occurred. He raised both eyebrows.
"What good would that do you? It's been ten years. Not a stick of furniture is the same."
"Still. I'd like to see it. Who lives there now?"
"My son, with his wife and baby boy."
"The same son you sent to call the police when you discovered the bodies?"
"Yes. Haim. He's twenty-two now." Sassoon must have read the question on my face, because he added, "You think it's strange that I'd let my family live in that apartment. For two years after the murders, I didn't even rent it out. I could have done so in a heartbeat—it's a good apartment. I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Gradually, my aversion subsided. I removed all the furniture, repainted every wall, installed a sturdier door—this I did to all the apartments in the building—and rented it out. Two years ago, when my son got married and told me he wanted to move up there, I was aghast. But he persisted, and I gave in." A small shrug. "At first it felt strange, but ever since my grandson was born, it doesn't anymore. It's like the apartment has a fresh start. Come, let's go up."
We climbed the stairs together. Sassoon was showing his age, or maybe his lifetime of smoking Turkish tobacco, as he huffed with each step, pulling himself up with the metal banister. He knocked on the door before opening it, explaining that he was not sure whether his daughter-in-law was home. She wasn't. We entered the apartment and he led me to the bedroom and pointed out where the bodies had lain.
I didn't know what I expected to find. Some undefined vestige, some ember of the two fires of life that had once blazed here and had been abruptly extinguished. I certainly did not expect to find bloodstains, physical evidence, or some other clue left by the killer. In the end, I found nothing. Whatever mark Esther and Willie had left on their home was gone or beyond my sensory capabilities.
We were crossing the living room toward the apartment door when, out of the corner of my eye, I caught a blinding flash, like light being reflected from glass. I turned my gaze toward the south window, but all I could see was a strip of blue sky and below that the buildings on the opposite side of the street.
Back on the ground floor, I asked Mr. Sassoon where I might find his son.
"Haim? He's with his army unit up north. He's due back tomorrow morning. But why do you want to talk to him? He has no information that can help you."
"Maybe something will come to him that didn't ten years ago."
He appeared doubtful, but said I was welcome to return at any time. We shook hands and he wished me the best of luck.