Gafni held up a magnanimous hand. "I've decided, and I'll hear no more about it. Now, where was I? Ah, yes, I was telling you about the smile Arye was flashing as he came into my office. It vanished awfully quick when he saw the gun." He made a gun with his right hand and stared at it as though it were the real thing, his lips pulled back, showing small teeth and pink gums. He was reliving the moment, intoxicated on the memory. It made me cringe, all the pleasure he derived from remembering his act of murder.
"I could have killed him right then and there. I'm a pretty good shot. I've owned a gun for years, and I practice regularly. I could have put one in his chest and called it a day, but that would have been too good for the slimy snake. Much better than he deserved."
"So what did you do?" I asked. A sense of incipient horror had come over me. For I bore at least some responsibility for this killing. Gafni's motive was my erroneous report that Harpaz had been Moria's lover.
"I shot him in the knee," Gafni said, in a tone of even contentment, as though reporting on the signing of a routine contract, not the slaying of a man. "Then, when he was on the floor, blubbering and wailing, I told him he should have kept his filthy hands off my daughter. Between his sobs and whimpers he denied it, the liar, so I shot him in the other knee. There were bone fragments and blood everywhere, drenching the papers he'd brought over for me to sign. And I signed them all right. With my bullets and his blood."
"And then?" I asked when he stopped, the question leaving my lips of its own accord. For a part of me wanted to hear not one more word, to get up now and leave and never return. But I knew I'd be glued to this chair, in this moldy, depressing hallway, until the story was finally laid to rest.
"Arye lost consciousness from the pain," Gafni said, oblivious to my discomfort and horror, "but I wasn't done with him yet. I poured a bucket of water over his face. That woke him up. Then I ordered him to apologize for ever laying a finger on Moria, for being in her... in her..." He had trouble finishing the sentence, then clamped his eyes shut and forced it out. "In her bed. Again he denied ever touching her, and I shot his right hand and then his left, the two hands that touched my Moria. Finally, I shot him in the crotch. I still had one bullet left, and I thought of ending it, of putting the last one in his head. But no. I didn't want it to end that quickly. So I just sat on the edge of my desk and watched him while he wept and wailed and bled and begged for mercy. Until he could do none of those things anymore, or anything else for that matter. Only then, I telephoned the police and told them to come."
The silence that followed this confession was as oppressive as the walls and bars around us. The air itself was harder to pull into my lungs and then push out again.
I thought of Arye Harpaz—lying, deceitful, manipulative Harpaz. He had planned awful things, tried to exploit Moria to further his ends, and he had even tried seducing her, which was what Gafni had killed him for, what I'd told Gafni Harpaz had succeeded in doing.
I was responsible, but I felt only a smidgen of guilt over Harpaz. He had been a man without scruples. A man who had used others. He had planned to defraud Gafni. There was justice in Gafni killing him instead. And Harpaz had also sworn vengeance on me. Who could say what form that vengeance might have taken? Perhaps even murder. Now that threat was erased. At least on that score, I could breathe easier.
But his manner of death both horrified and perplexed me. This was more than simple retribution or punishment. This torture was incongruous with a father angry at a man who'd seduced his adult daughter.
"Why did you want him to suffer so much?" I asked.
Gafni's eyes fluttered. He seemed to be in some other place, and it took him a second to look at me. "What?"
"Why didn't you just kill Harpaz? Why did you need to torture him?"
"He deserved it," Gafni stated simply.
"But why? Just for sleeping with Moria? She was a grown woman. It's not such a terrible thing, is it?"
Something rippled on his face. He brushed a hand along his mouth and chin, closing his eyes and then reopening them. "She killed herself because of him. He's the man in the note."
"Why do you think so? I never told you that."
His face darkened. "You never told me anything about that, did you? What good are you? Maybe you don't deserve that bonus after all." He pushed out his lip and gazed around his cell with a bewildered expression, as though seeing it for the first time. Then he deflated like a pierced balloon, only silently, losing what he'd regained while in the throes of his killing tale, and returning to the hunched, weathered old man he'd been when I'd first roused him from the bunk.
"Who else could it be?" he said in a sullen voice, looking at his kneading hands. "Who else?"
I didn't answer. There was even less point in telling him the truth now than earlier in our conversation. Besides, I felt no obligation whatsoever to be honest with him. Because Gafni did not deserve the truth from me. Because, and I had no idea why, Baruch Gafni had just lied to my face.
I stood across the street from the building, just as I had done some weeks before, gazing up at her apartment. But then it had been night, and now it was day, and no light shone in her window.
I didn't want to go up there. I didn't wish to see her. But I knew I would do just that. As I had done several times before, though always with a different purpose in mind.
Wishing to postpone the moment, I got out my pack of cigarettes, then swore when I couldn't find my lighter. A mother walking past with a little girl in tow shot me a disapproving look; she didn't like my language. The girl, a rosy-cheeked beauty of four or five, looked over her shoulder at me, and I gave her a wink. She smiled in return, and it made me feel better. I shoved the cigarettes back in my pocket and crossed the street.
I knocked on her door. She opened it with a broad smile on her perfect lips. She had on a red dress that emphasized the swell of her hips and the bloom of her breasts. Sheer stockings through which flawless caramel skin peeked.
Her hair was pulled back apart from a pair of ringlets dangling teasingly on either side of her face. Her large dark eyes sparkled with triumph. It had been a while since I'd come by, yet here I was again. A man with a need on her threshold. Just as it should be. The natural order of things.
But my need today was not the sort she was accustomed to. Sima Vaaknin was in for a surprise.
"Adam," she purred, subtly shifting her stance to enhance the already-considerable allure of her curves, "so nice to see you again."
"Hello, Sima."
She pouted, though her eyes remained mischievous. "Why the serious tone and the long face? Aren't you happy to see me?"
"Can I come in?"
Instead of answering, she leaned a little forward, studying my face. "Something's changed about you. It's your nose, isn't it? It's different."
"It got broken in a fight."
"I like it. It fits your face," she said, not asking whom I'd fought with, or why or when. That was the nature of her interest in me. It waxed and waned according to some mysterious internal logic I never understood.
She moved aside, and I brushed past her, catching a tantalizing musky scent that wafted from her hair and skin.
In her living room, I remained standing while she kicked off her shoes and reclined on her sofa, pulling her legs at an angle beneath her. Her breathing had deepened, a show of excitement, but I suspected that was mere artifice, one of the many tools of seduction she could employ with unsurpassed expertise. Show a man that you desired him and he'd forget the tidy sum of money he would soon be parting with for the pleasure of your company.
"There's coffee in that pot," Sima said, fluttering her fingers at the coffee table. "I just made it not five minutes ago. Have some. It's very good."
I could believe it. Its aroma left no room for doubt as to its quality and authenticity. This was real prime coffee.
Then I noticed there were two cups on saucers by the pot.
"Are you expecting someone?" I asked.
"No one in particular. But I've learned it pays to be ready for company. You can never know when someone will drop by. Like you did." She ran a light hand over her calf, curling her stockinged toes. "Don't worry, Adam. No one will disturb us."
