It was drizzling, sharp little droplets stinging my face. I lit a cigarette, watched the smoke as the wind whipped it away into nothingness. It reminded me of the gas the police had used against us the other night.

When the cigarette was done, I tossed the stub into the road and walked on south, passing Bikur Hulim Hospital, the street descending steeply, pine and cypress trees dotting both sidewalks. I didn't need to ask for directions; I'd been to Café Atara on one of my previous visits to Jerusalem.

I stopped at the corner of Jaffa and Strauss, outside Maayan Shtub, the large clothing store, and waited for a traffic cop on an elevated platform in the middle of the intersection to signal for me to cross. On the other side of the road began King George Street.

The house on the corner, number 2, carried a plaque commemorating the founding of the street in 1924. Herbert Samuel, the British high commissioner, had attended. The plaque was in three languages: Hebrew on the left; Arabic on the right; and in the middle, English, like a buffer to stop the other two from tearing each other apart.

One night in 1948, Lehi members had changed all the street signs along King George, renaming the street King David. Following a formal request from the British government after Israel had secured its independence, the original name was restored.

Down King George was Frumin House, where the debate in the Knesset neared its end, where I prayed that honor and good sense would prevail and the government would lose the vote. It had to. Despite everything. The alternative was unbearable.

I moved on, past Yampolski Pharmacy; Allenby Café, from which wafted the scent of latkes; and the Talitha Kumi building, which until the Second World War had been a school for girls run by German nuns, and now hosted a variety of businesses, offices, and studios.

Approaching the corner of King George and Ben Yehuda, with Frumin House about a hundred meters ahead, I saw half a dozen police vehicles of various sizes. Ranged across the intersection and the street beyond was a mass of officers behind barbed-wire barricades, armed and watchful, ready for the resumption of hostilities, though there was no sign of any.

Suddenly, I was seized by an acute dread that one of them would recognize me from the other night. That an officer would point his finger and yell, "There's one of the bastards. Let's get him!"

But no one pointed. No one yelled. In fact, none of the cops paid me any mind. Still, I was relieved when I turned onto Ben Yehuda Street, out of their sight.

Heading east again, I realized I was tracing the same path I had the other night, only in reverse. I had walked this street as part of the crowd of demonstrators en route to the Knesset, with Menachem Begin's speech resounding in my brain.

But now the crowd was gone. There were no banners. No thudding mass of feet. No coats with a yellow star pinned to their breast. No eyes glowing with insult, grief, and determination. There were still a few anti-government posters here and there—plastered on walls, on a noticeboard, a couple nailed to trees, all of them wet to near illegibility—but other than that, no sign of the recent upheaval, of the argument still raging.

I felt like a soldier retreating from a battlefield after a defeat. But no. It was not over yet. The Knesset had not yet decided. There was still hope.

Café Atara stood near the center of Ben Yehuda Street, at number 7. The sign above the entrance displayed a triple-pronged crown over a steaming cup of coffee, with the café's Hebrew name floating on the steam. Each of the three prongs doubled for the letter A, with the letters T and R printed in the spaces between, together spelling the café's name in English, a relic of the time when a sizable proportion of its clientele had been made up of British soldiers and officials.

The space inside was large, longer than wide, with a short counter on the left side and pastries under glass at the far end. And in between, a scattering of square tables that could sit four, with straight-backed chairs around them.

The café was nearly full. I felt underdressed. Many of the men wore suits and ties. Government officials, or maybe employees of the Jewish Agency, whose building was a short walk away on King George.

I found a table and sat facing the entrance. I checked my watch. I was early. There was still time for Naomi Hecht to arrive.

I ordered a coffee and drank it slowly. Atara boasted of the finest coffee in Israel, and it wasn't bad, but it didn't hold a candle to Greta's. My heart gave a twinge when I thought of Greta, how she'd looked when she said, How could you, Adam? after I'd told her I'd participated in the charge on the Knesset. I gritted my teeth and pushed the memory away. Naomi Hecht would be here soon. I needed to focus.

The waiter came by, asking if I wanted a newspaper, but I declined. I did not want to read any more about the government's projected triumph.

When I finished my coffee, it was already ten minutes past the appointed time at which Naomi Hecht had said she'd meet me. I smoked a cigarette, telling myself to be patient. When the cigarette was done, she'd still not arrived. The waiter asked if I wanted to order anything else. I said I was waiting for someone; she would be arriving shortly. He gave a little bow and moved off. I thought I caught a little smirk on his lips. He'd seen his share of hopeful, delusional men waiting for women who never showed up.

Maybe Naomi Hecht had never intended to come. Maybe she had made this date just to get me out of her hair. Or maybe Paula had had a word with her, convinced her to steer clear of me.

I lit another cigarette, telling myself that when it was done, I'd leave. I checked my watch again. Twenty-five minutes late. At the next table over, two men in sharp clothes were talking about the United Nations. Something to do with a resolution the Arabs were about to introduce against Israel. At another table, a man pulled out a chair for a smartly dressed woman who'd just walked in. One less delusional man in the world.

When the cigarette was down to its filter, I snuffed it out in the ashtray as though it had offended me, crushing it flat. I'd go back to the hospital, I decided, make a nuisance of myself, get Naomi Hecht's address one way or another, go pound on her door and make her talk to me. I was angry enough to do it.

Swearing softly, I rose from my chair and was digging in my pocket for my wallet when I heard a deep female voice say, "Leaving already, Mr. Lapid?"

Raising my eyes, I saw Naomi Hecht standing on the other side of the table.

Her nurse's uniform was gone. In its place she wore a knee-length dark-blue dress over black wool stockings, a brown coat that was beginning to show its age, a gray scarf she was unwinding from around her neck, and a furled umbrella hooked on a forearm. No hat, no makeup, and no smile, despite the suggested humor of her question. Without her nurse's cap and the bobby pins she'd worn at the hospital, her short black hair had more volume and body. Her skin was pale apart from under her eyes, where inadequate sleep had tinged it purple, the bruises of fatigue. I estimated her age at twenty-seven or twenty-eight, a few years older than Moria had been.

"I thought you weren't going to show," I said, pulling my hand out of my pocket and sitting back down.

"An emergency at the hospital," she said, taking the chair opposite mine. That was the extent of it. She'd given me an explanation. No apology was warranted. I studied her face, wondering if the emergency had been real. I decided it had been, or else why had she come at all?

The waiter approached. I asked Naomi Hecht what she'd like. She ignored me and proceeded to order coffee and a small pastry directly from the waiter. I signaled to him to double the order. He took her umbrella and coat and deposited them by the door, where there was a coat rack and an umbrella stand.

"You don't like me, do you?" I asked when the waiter had gone.

"You're very perceptive."

"Care to tell me why?"

"You're the detective, don't you know?"

"I think it's because of Moria's father. Am I right?"

She didn't answer. She smoothed a napkin on the table, not taking her eyes off me. Out of the hospital, in regular clothes with her hair freer, she looked less severe, but there was still something intimidating about her, something that suggested getting too close might get you burned or bitten. Her eyes, despite the natural warmth of their hazel color, had the texture of hard wood.

"Do you know why Moria hated his guts?" I asked.

"What makes you think she did?"

"He told me they didn't get along. Of course, that could mean just that and nothing more. But he also said they had barely any contact for years, which suggests a more powerful aversion on her part. But what really tells me Moria hated her father is a photo album I found when I visited her apartment this morning. She'd cut her father's image out of all the pictures. You only do that to someone you detest through and through."

The waiter served our coffee and food. The pastry was rolled like a snail's shell, with frail lines of cinnamon snaking through it. It smelled and looked delicious, but I bet that in past years, before rationing, the cinnamon lines had been thicker, the sugar and butter more plentiful. Were they serving better pastries these days in Munich and Hamburg and Bonn? Were they richer, sweeter, bigger?

Naomi Hecht stared at the food, then away at the window looking out on Ben Yehuda Street. "I didn't know about that," she said thoughtfully.

"What do you know, Mrs. Hecht?"

She looked at me. "About what?"

"You know what. Moria and her father. Do you know why she hated him?"

"Why not ask your client?"

"He won't tell me."

"I suppose he has his reasons."

"I'm sure he does."

"Why do you need to know? What does that have to do with Moria's suicide?"

"Maybe nothing. I don't know. That's the point. I hardly know anything about her life. I won't know why she decided to end it until I do."

"Why does your client care? What difference would it make?"