The Butcher's Theatre (21 page)

Issa Abdelatif.

The way the Chinaman told it, the villagers of Silwan had been less than talkative. But Daoud had leaned on an old widow and finally gotten a name for Fatma’s longhaired boyfriend. She’d overheard the Rashmawis talking about him. A lowlife type. She had no idea where he came from.

The name cropped up again, in the Offenses Against Property files, subcategory: Theft by Employee or Agent. He’d sent Cohen looking for it and the kid had stayed away so long Shmeltzer wondered if he’d drowned in the toilet or walked off the job. He’d gone looking for him, ran into him jogging up the stairs. Grinning ear to ear, with a look-at-me expression on his pretty-boy face. Dumb kid.

The file itself was petty stuff. Abdelatif had worked the previous autumn as a ditch digger at a construction site in Talpiyot, and whenever he was around, tools started disappearing. The contractor had called in the police, and a subsequent investigation revealed that the little punk had been stealing picks, trowels, and shovels and selling them to residents of the refugee camp where he lived with his brother-in-law and sister. Following his arrest, he led the police to a cache at the rear of the camp, a hole in the ground where many of the tools were still hidden. The contractor, happy at getting most of his goods back and wanting to avoid the nuisance of a trial, refused to press charges. Two days in the Russian Compound jail, and the punk was back on the streets.

A rat-faced little pisser, thought Shmeltzer, recalling the arrest photo. Long stringy hair, a weak chin, a pitiful mustache, rodent eyes. Nineteen years old and no doubt he’d been stealing all his life. Forty-eight hours behind bars wasn’t what lowlifes like that needed. A little hard time—getting his ass battered at Ramie—and he would have thought twice about misbehaving. Then maybe they wouldn’t be trudging through donkey shit looking for him… .

All three of them carried Uzis, in addition to the 9 mms. Armed invaders. An army truck was stationed outside the entrance to the camp. Establishing a strong presence, showing who was in charge. But still they had to look over their shoulders as they sloshed through the muck.

He hated going into these places. Not just the poverty and the hopelessness, but the fact that it made no damned sense at all.

All that crap about the Arabs and their strong sense of family, and look how they treated their own.

Fucking King Hussein. In the nineteen years he’d occupied Judea and Samaria, he hadn’t done a goddamned thing in the way of social welfare. Too busy building himself that goddamned palace on the Hebron road and knocking up his goddamned American wife—no, back then it was still one of the Arab ones.

Once a year the refugees sent letters to the Welfare and Labor Ministry in Amman, and if they were lucky, each family received a few dinars or nine kilograms of flour three months later. Thank you, King Shit.

But the do-gooders—the private agencies—were all over the place, or at least their offices were. Air-conditioned places on the nicer streets of Bethlehem and East Jerusalem. The Saint Victor’s Society, the American Friends Services Committee, the Lutherans, AMIDEAST, UNIPAL, ANERA, with all that American oil money behind it. And the U.N., with its big white sign plastered across the the front of the barbed-wire fence that surrounded the camp. ADMINISTERED BY THE UNITED NATIONS RELIEF AND WORKS AGENCY. Administered. What the hell did that mean?

Not to mention the Saudis and the Kuwaitis. And the fucking PLO, big business with its banks and factories and farms and its airports in Africa—a report he’d just seen estimated the bastards’ net worth at 10 billion. Abu Mussa got a hundred grand American each month just for entertainment expenses.

All that money, all the goddamned do-gooders, and the people in the camps still lived like wretches. Where the hell did all of it go? The U.N. guy’s Mercedes parked right in front of the camp was a partial answer—they got them

subsidized for $4,000 American—but Mercedes alone didn’t start to explain it.

A big scam—the kind of theft he would have loved to investigate.

The U.N. guy was a sour-looking Norwegian with a kaffiyah hanging around his neck. Playing Great White Father, with his clipboard and pen on a chain, gazing down on the sixty or seventy people queuing up in front of him for some sort of privilege. When the three of them came in he’d looked down his nose at them, as if they were the bad guys. Gave them a hassle even though he had no legal jurisdiction over anything. But Dani had said not to make waves, so they put up with it for a while, watching the bastard fill out forms, screw around, and give them lemon-sucking looks before coming up with Abdelatifs address. Meanwhile the people in the queue had to wait for whatever morsel the Norwegian was doling out. Typical.

As if it were up to the Jews to solve the problem the Arabs had created—to eat the shit that nobody else had an appetite for. And the goddamned government fell into it, playing the liberal game—putting the refugees on the Israeli welfare rolls, giving them houses, schooling, free medical care. Since ‘67 their infant mortality had dropped way down. More little pissers to contend with.

Far as he was concerned, the people in the camp were cowards and the descendants of cowards. They’d run away from Jaffa and Lod and Haifa and Jerusalem because the Arab Legion had scared the shit out of them with those hysterical radio broadcasts back in ‘48. He’d been a wet-eared kid of eighteen, remembered it well. Harsh voices screaming that the Jews ate babies alive, would cut the tits off their women, grind their bones, fuck their eye sockets, and drink their blood.

Jihad had begun, the voices promised. A Holy War to end all wars. The infidels have been attacked and will soon be routed and driven into the Mediterranean. Leave at once and return soon with the victorious forces of the United Arab Armies. Not only will you reclaim your homes, noble brothers, but you will be privileged to confiscate everything the filthy Zionists have accumulated.

Thousands of them listened and believed, falling over one another to escape. Swarming up into Syria and Lebanon and Gaza, pouring into Jordan in such numbers that the Allenby Bridge sagged under their weight. And when they got there, what did their Arab brethren with the strong family ties to do for them? Built camps and locked them up. Just temporary, Ahmed. Wait in your nice little tent. Paradise is coming soon—dead Jews and endless virgins to fuck.

Still waiting, he thought, eyeing a shriveled old woman sitting in the dirt and pounding chickpeas in a bowl. The door to her hovel was open; inside was an equally shriveled old man, lying on a mattress, smoking a narghila. Fucking political footballs.

The educated ones had found jobs, settled all over the world. But the poor ones, the defective and stupid ones, stayed in the camps. Living like barnyard animals—breeding like them too. There were 400,000 of them still penned up in Lebanon and Jordan and Syria, another 300,000 dumped in Israel’s lap after ‘67, with 230,000 in Gaza alone. Far as he was concerned, you build a wall around the Strip, stash them all there, and call it Palestine.

Three hundred thousand wretches. The spoils of victory.

The location the Norwegian had given them was midway through the camp, a mud house that looked as if it were melting. Empty oil drums were stacked along one side. Lizards ran over them, chasing insects.

Maksoud, the brother-in-law, sat at a card table in front of the house in a greasy white shirt and snot-shiny black pants, playing sheshbesh with a kid of about twelve. The firstborn son. Privileged to sit with the old man and piss his life way.

Not that the old man was so old. A sleepy-looking guy, pasty-faced, maybe thirty, with a ratty-looking mustache no better than Abdelatif s, skinny arms, and a potbelly. A livid worm of scar tissue ran the length of his left forearm. Nasty-looking.

He shook the dice, looked at their Uzis, rolled, and said, “He’s not here.”

“Who’s not here?” asked Shmeltzer.

“The pig, the leech.”

“Does the pig have a name?”

“Abdelatif, Issa.”

A thick-skinned lizard ran up the side of the building, stopped, bobbed its head, and climbed out of sight.

“What makes you think we’re looking for him?” asked the Chinaman.

“Who else?” Maksoud moved two backgammon discs. The kid picked up the dice.

“We’d like to look inside your home,” said Shmeltzer.

“I have no home.”

Always polemics.

“This house,” said Shmeltzer, letting him know by the tone of his voice that he was in no mood to take any shit.

Maksoud looked up at him. Shmeltzer looked right back, kicked the side of the house. Maksoud gave a phlegmy cough and yelled, “Aisha!”

A short, thin woman opened the door. In her hand was a grimy dish towel.

“These are police. They’re looking for your pig brother.”

“He’s not here,” said the woman, looking scared.

“They’re coming in to see bur home.”

The boy had rolled double sixes. He moved three discs into his home zone and removed one from the board.

“Ahh,” said Maksoud, and he rose from the table. “Put it away, Tawfik. You learn too well.”

There was an overtone of threat in his voice, and the boy complied, looking frightened, just like his mother.

“Get out of here,” said Maksoud and the boy ran off. The brother-in-law pushed the wife out of the way and went inside. The detectives followed him.

Just what you’d expect, thought Shmeltzer. Two tiny rooms and a cooking area, hot, filthy, smelly. A baby on the floor wearing a skullcap of flies, a chamber pot that needed emptying. No running water, no electricity. Crawling bugs decorating the walls. Administered.

The wife busied herself with drying a dish. Maksoud sat down heavily on a torn cushion that looked as if it had once been part of a sofa. His paleness had taken on a yellowish cast. Shmeltzer wondered it it was the light or jaundice. The place felt dangerous, contagious.

“Have a smoke,” he told the Chinaman, wanting something to burn away the smell. The big man pulled out his pack of Marlboros, offered it to Maksoud, who hesitated, then took one and let the detective light it for him.

“When’s the last time you saw him?” Shmeltzer asked when the two of them were puffing away.

Maksoud hesitated and the Chinaman didn’t seem interested in waiting for an answer. He started walking through the room, looking, touching things, but lightly, without seeming intrusive. Shmeltzer noticed that Cohen seemed lost, not knowing what to do. One hand on the Uzi. Scared shitless, no doubt.

Shmeltzer repeated the question.

“Four or five days,” said Maksoud. “Insha’Allah, it will stretch to eternity.”

The woman gathered enough courage to look up.

“Where is he?” Shmeltzer asked her.

“She knows nothing,” said Maksoud. A glance from him lowered her head just as surely as if he’d pushed it down with his hands.

“Is it his habit to leave?”

“Does a pig have habits?”

“What did he do to piss you off?”

Maksoud laughed coldly. “Zaiyel mara,” he spat. “He is like a woman.” The ultimate Arabic insult, branding Abdelatif as deceitful and irresponsible. “For fifteen years I’ve been putting him up and all he creates is trouble.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“From the time he was a baby—playing with matches, almost set the place on fire. Not that it would be a great loss, eh? Your government promised me a house. Five years ago and I’m still in this shithole.”

“What else besides the matches?”

“I told him about the matches, tried to knock sense into him. Little pig kept doing it. One of my sons got burned on the face.”

“What else?” Shmeltzer repeated.

“What else? When he was about ten he started to knife rats and cats and watch them die. Brought them inside and watched. She didn’t do a thing to stop him. When I found out about it I beat him thoroughly and he threatened to use the knife on me.”

“What did you do about that?”

“Took it away from him and beat him some more. He didn’t learn. Stupid pig!”

The sister suppressed a sniffle. The Chinaman stopped walking. Shmeltzer and Cohen turned and saw the tears flowing down her cheeks.

Her husband stood up quickly and turned on her, screaming. “Stupid woman! Is this a lie? Is it a lie that he’s a pig, descended from pigs? Had I known what lineage and dowry you brought I would have run from our wedding all the way to Mecca.”

The woman backed away and bowed her head again. Wiped a dish that had dried long ago. Maksoud swore and settled back down on the cushion.

“What kind of knife did he use on the animals?” asked the Chinaman.

“All kinds. Whatever he could find or steal—in addition to his other fine qualities he’s a thief.” Maksoud’s eyes scanned the putrid house. “You can see our wealth, how much money we have to spare. I tried to get hold of his U.N. allotment, to force him to pay his share, but he always managed to hide it—and steal mine as well. All for his stinking games.”

“What kinds of games?” asked Shmeltzer.

“Sheshbesh, cards, dice.”

“Where did he gamble?”

“Anywhere there was a game.”

“Did he go into Jerusalem to play?”

“Jerusalem, Hebron. The lowest of the coffeehouses.”

“Did he ever make any money?”

The question enraged Maksoud. He made a fist and shook one scrawny arm in the air.

“Always a loser! A parasite! When you find him, throw him in one of your prisons—everyone knows how Palestinians are treated there.”

“Where can we find him?” asked Shmeltzer.

Maksoud shrugged expansively. “What do you want him for anyway?”

“What do you think?”

“Could be anything—he was born to steal.”

“Did you ever see him with a girl?”

“Not girls, whores. Three times he brought home the body lice. All of us had to wash ourselves with something the doctor gave us.”

Shmeltzer showed him the picture of Fatma Rashmawi.

“Ever seen her?”

No reaction. “Nah.”

“Did he use drugs?”

“What would I know of such things?”

Ask a stupid question …

“Where do you think he’s gone?”