* * *
At the café the next morning, I surprised Greta by asking to hear the news bulletin on the old, scratchy radio. She turned it on, and I listened intently as the anchor ran through a list of important items that did not interest me in the slightest.
Toward the end of the bulletin came the report I'd been waiting for. Somberly, the anchor reported that last evening in Jerusalem, a respected doctor by the name of Yosef Leitner had been murdered in his home. The killer, whose identity the police had not yet revealed, was fleeing the scene when he ran into a patrol car. The two officers inside the car shot and killed him.
I closed my eyes, bowing my head, and asked for forgiveness from Daniel and from Lillian and their daughter, Dina. I shouldn't have let him do it. I should have been the one.
Yet I knew that Daniel had been truthful when he told me he needed to do it himself. That was why he had thanked me for the opportunity. I also knew that, for Ada Leitner's sake, Dr. Leitner had needed to die yesterday. There'd been no time to plan things carefully. I was guilty of nothing, but guilt was what I felt. Not a new emotion, but the press of it on my shoulders and soul was now heavier.
I called Baruch Gafni's office, and again there was no answer. This was odd. A sense of wrongness gripped me, of some unknown calamity that had happened.
I waited an hour and telephoned again, telling myself that if this call too went unanswered, I'd go to the factory and see what was going on.
But the phone was picked up. A woman's voice, thick with tears. "I told you already: I don't want to talk to any reporters. Stop bothering me."
"I'm not a reporter," I said quickly, perplexed. "My name is Adam Lapid. I need to speak with Mr. Gafni."
A whimper. A short bout of weeping. My confusion deepened. "Mr. Gafni isn't here," she said.
"When will he be in?"
"How should I know? Maybe never." She sounded a bit hysterical now.
"What do you mean, maybe never? Where is he?"
"He's in jail," she wailed into the phone. "Mr. Gafni's in jail."
His lawyer arranged the meeting. I went to the jail, and the guards let me in with no trouble. It seemed Gafni still had some pull, though I doubted it would last for much longer.
A potbellied guard with acne scars and a nightstick on his belt led me down a dank hallway with cells on one side. The smell of mildew, concrete dust, and urine permeated the frosty air. Some of the bars were rusting, and the walls were a demoralizing unpainted gray.
Gafni had the last cell all to himself. There were two bunks, and he lay on the lower one with an arm thrown over his face as though to shield his eyes from some unbearable sight.
There was a chair by the hallway's end, and the guard dragged it noisily a few feet before the bars. "Sit here," he told me. "Don't go near the cell, and don't try to hand him anything. I'll be right there, watching."
There was the other end of the hallway, where there was a guard station consisting of a table and a couple of chairs. The guard would have to strain his ears if he hoped to catch anything Gafni and I said to each other, but he had a clear line of sight.
I told him he had nothing to worry about, and he responded with a curt nod and retreated to his post, his key chain rattling. Gafni hadn't stirred. He looked dead to the world. Maybe a part of him wanted to be dead for real.
I sat in the chair. "Mr. Gafni," I said, and had to repeat myself louder a couple of times before he shifted, slowly pulling his arm off his face before pushing himself to a sitting position. He blinked unfocused eyes in my direction, as though surprised to see me there, or maybe unsure whether his new environment was real or a nightmare.
Already it had started taking its toll on him. He still had on his regular tailored clothes, but they looked old and as though they had been made for another man. Stubble dirtied his face, and his features were slack and worn-out and pallid. His head hung forward and his chin dipped, his back rounded like a man two decades his senior.
Jail is a sledgehammer. It dents and flattens even the sturdiest men, and it can do so with terrifying speed. I'd seen it firsthand and experienced it too.
"Mr. Lapid," Gafni said, straightening his back for an instant before slumping again. "I didn't think you would be here so soon."
"I came as soon as I heard you wished to see me. You should thank your lawyer for setting it up so quickly."
Gafni nodded. "He's a good man. Expensive, but worth it. He won't come out and say it, but he thinks I've gone crazy, I can tell. He may even be planning to argue that in court when the time comes. You think I should let him?"
"It may be your best bet."
"Do you think I'm crazy?"
"I don't know. Why did you do it?"
He looked surprised by the question. "Why do you think? Because of what you told me that lowlife did to Moria."
I stared at him, dumbstruck. He didn't seem to notice. His eyes took on a strange light, and his lips curved into a warped smile, which made me think his lawyer's judgment wasn't that far off.
"It was so easy," Gafni said. "He was so stupid and greedy; the minute I told him I wanted to go ahead with his foolish business scheme, he came running to me like a dog."
I could imagine it. Though hadn't Harpaz suspected something was off? Was he so money-hungry or desperate that he'd forgotten what he'd told me, what he must have believed I'd relayed to Gafni, though in the end, I didn't get around to? Didn't he know that there was no chance in hell Gafni would ever deal with him again? Or was he, the inveterate con man, blinded to the trap he was entering by the intrinsic belief in his boundless powers of persuasion, common to all men of his ilk?
"You should have seen him," Gafni went on. "So hopeful. I'd left the street door unlocked for him, and I could hear him bounding up the stairs, a spring in his step. He had on the widest smile when he came into my office. The sort of smile he must have used on the poor women he seduced." Gafni paused for a second, eyes locked on the memory, his lips twisted with hatred for his victim. Regaling me with his tale had invigorated him. He sat straight, his gaze razor-sharp, the cast of his features firmer and younger. Reminiscent of how he'd been when I first met him—the business magnate with overwhelming confidence and full control of his destiny. But the effect was ruined by the bars between us, slicing his image to strips.
"He wasn't the pretty boy I'd always known," Gafni said. "His nose was bandaged, and he had trouble breathing. Someone had clobbered him good and proper."
"That was me," I murmured.
"You?"
"Yeah," I said heavily, remembering the crunch Harpaz's nose had made as my fist connected with his face, then him on the floor with blood coating his mouth and chin.
Gafni clapped his hands and barked out a laugh. "That's beautiful. I must say, Mr. Lapid, hiring you has exceeded my expectations. I wish I had my wallet on me so I could give you a bonus, but I'll ask my lawyer to arrange it. You've more than earned it."
"But..." I began, but didn't finish my sentence. For what purpose would telling him the truth serve? Would Gafni benefit in any way from knowing Arye Harpaz had not been Moria's lover? That she, in fact, had been engaged in a love affair with a female coworker?
"No bonus is necessary," I said.
