Lunz Street ran east to west between Yehuda Halevi Street and Rothschild Boulevard and was two hundred meters long from end to end. I started on the eastern side and began knocking on doors. Only half my knocks were answered, and only half of those by people who had lived on Lunz Street at the time of the murders. One woman, clutching a baby to her hip, turned white as a sheet when she learned of the atrocity that had happened on her street. Another informed me that her upstairs neighbor had always struck her as strange. "I'd take a look at him if I were you," she suggested with a whisper. "He's a suspicious one." The neighbor in question turned out to be a portly, gentle-faced man in his late fifties who had emigrated to Israel from Iraq in 1947. Another neighbor, a black-bearded man in his early forties, remembered the murders well, and Esther even better. "What a beauty she was," he said wistfully. "It's always a shame when a beautiful woman like her dies." And what did he think of Esther, besides her looks? He told me he had never exchanged a single word with her. Willie he mentioned not at all.
By the time I'd made it to the building directly opposite the murder scene, I was hungry and thirsty and frustrated. All my stair-climbing and door-knocking and questioning had yielded nothing. Esther remained a mystery to me. I trudged up the stairs to the third floor with a heavy tread, cursing under my breath for my arrogance in believing I could solve this hopeless case, and knocked on another door.
At first there was no answer, but I could hear shuffling noises from within. So, my foul mood getting the better of me, I pounded on the door with my fist, jarring it in its frame.
The man who opened the door partway looked frightened to see me. I smoothed the scowl off my face and told him I was sorry if I'd disturbed him. He muttered something that sounded like "It's all right," but might have been something else. I mechanically gave him what had by now become my standard opening, which was to give my name and ask how long he had lived on Lunz Street.
"Since 1935," he said.
Good. Four years before the murders.
"Did you know Esther Kantor?"
A slight hesitation. A jerky shake of the head. He was under average in height, thirty-two or thirty-three years old, and had a face rich with poor features—pasty skin; beady brown eyes; small mouth with pencil-thin, colorless lips; an almost nonexistent chin; and a hook nose with gaping nostrils.
"She was the woman who was murdered on this street with her baby ten years ago. Ring a bell?"
"No."
It might not have rung any bells for him, but it did for me. Warning bells. He was the first neighbor who'd lived on Lunz Street at the time of the murders who claimed not to remember them. Murders were rare in Tel Aviv, and the double murder of a woman and baby was the rarest among the rare. It would take a singularly insular person not to know of such a murder, especially when it happened in the building across the street from his own.
I studied the man with revived interest. His name, I knew from a small sign on his door, was Manny Orrin. Now I noticed the furtive brown eyes that twitched onto mine and away like a pair of agitated flies, and the way his bony hand gripped the half-open door, hairless knuckles turning white. He was blocking the doorway with his narrow body, not just depriving me of physical entrance, but blocking my line of sight into his apartment. I shifted my body sideways, angling my head slightly to try to peer past him, but he turned his body in relation to mine, effectively depriving me of the view.
"Mr. Orrin," I said, plastering on a sheepish smile. "I've been on my feet for many hours and I, well, I would be grateful if I could make use of your bathroom."
Before he could formulate an excuse why that was not possible, I uttered a relieved thank you, took a decisive step forward, and pushed the door open, brushing past him into the apartment. I cast my eyes quickly about the room. I had three seconds, no more, before he recovered from my brusque entry.
Everything seemed perfectly ordinary. A dining table on the right. A radio on the left. A big leafy potted plant by the door to the balcony. A sofa, rug, and two padded chairs. Heavy gray curtains on the windows. Bookshelves.
Wait. Eyes back. There, just visible on the floor behind the potted plant. A camera, with an elongated lens like a snout. I moved left for a better view. Black with a chrome top, with the name KODAK stenciled across the front. Sleek, elegant, professional.
The thought flashed through my mind: Camera lens. Blinding light reflected off glass. And right across Lunz Street, clearly visible from the nearby window, was the apartment where the murders had taken place, where I had stood ninety minutes before.
Turning to the man, I said, "You like spying on people, Mr. Orrin?"
He just stood there in the open doorway, gawping at me. His mouth hung open and the tip of his tongue lay pink and quivering across his lower lip like a beached salmon.
I noticed other things. Photographs, a great many of them, adorning the walls—of people, trees, and buildings in Tel Aviv, and of the sun setting into the Mediterranean. Quality photographs.
"You're a photographer?"
Orrin swallowed, recovering from his shock. "I don't take kindly to people who barge into my home. I would like you to leave."
"No," I said simply.
"No?" He became flustered, agitated, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. His top lip glistened with fresh sweat.
"Not until you answer my question: Are you a photographer?"
"Ah, yes," he stammered. "I own a photography studio."
"And you're sure you never heard about the two murders that occurred in that building right across the street?"
Orrin rubbed his hands together nervously. "Well, now that I've had time to think about it, I do remember something. Not the details, you understand, just the general fact that it happened."
"So a moment ago you had no recollection of it and now you suddenly do?" I had pitched my voice intentionally lower and narrowed my eyes threateningly.
"Yes," he said, and offered a self-deprecating smile that served only to make him look more insincere, "I'm afraid my memory is weak and—"
Ignoring him, I knelt down and grabbed the camera from the floor.
"Put that down! That's mine!" His voice came in a screech. He rushed at me, arms reaching forward, fingers curled like claws. Rising to my full height, I thrust one hand on his sunken chest and shoved him away. He fell on his ass and back, yelping in pain. I strode to the door and shut it and turned the key in its lock. This might take some time, and I did not want interruptions. I flipped the camera over and rewound and extracted the film. I set the camera on a table and weighed the film in my hand.
Suddenly, I heard a scuffing sound and sensed motion coming from behind. I instinctively jerked my head aside. The candlestick Orrin wielded swished past my ear and smashed into the wall, gouging an ugly trench in the flowery wallpaper.
I whipped around and sank my fist in his gut, just under the belly button. He was soft around the middle, and my punch folded him in half, knocking the air out of him. He crumpled to the floor, clutching his abdomen. The candlestick clattered on the tiles beside him. I set my foot on it, holding it down.
Taking another quick look out the window and across the street, I saw the living room of apartment six in Mr. Sassoon's building, where his son, Haim, lived with his wife and baby boy. The same apartment where Esther and Willie had lived.
I gazed down at Manny Orrin. He was lying on his back, breathing hard, his cheeks flushed with effort and pain. I loomed over him, holding the film so he could see it. “What’s on this that’s worth bashing my head in?”
Orrin didn't answer, so I prodded his side with the tip of my shoe. He cringed.
Looking at his miserable face, it came to me. “You like taking pictures of women? Is that what’s on this film?”