His eyes went to a point over my shoulder, and I swiveled my head to follow his gaze. There, on the nightstand by the bed, stood a picture. I had to cant my head and squint to see it fully. It showed a man and a woman standing close together, the man dressed in a suit and tie and the woman in a white dress and a veil that was pulled back, exposing her face. A wedding photo. The man was Michael Shamir and the smile on his face was as bright as a chandelier. The woman was an attractive brunette, and for the second time that day I found myself staring at the familiar face of a person whom I had before only seen in a picture. Mira Roth's picture.
What was her name?
I fumbled in my mind for the elusive memory, feeling it slip through my mental fingers a couple of times, till I finally caught it. "Talia," I muttered. "Your wife's name. It's Talia, isn't it?"
He stared at me in apparent shock, but did not answer. He probably wondered where I had learned the name. I explained about the picture Mira had shown me and watched his expression soften. Now I understood what Mira had meant when she said Michael Shamir had given up his family for the cause of the Irgun. For hadn't Mira said that Talia Shamir had also taken part in that raid and died during it?
"I'm sorry. Your wife was very beautiful."
"Yes. She was." His eyes were downcast, staring, I imagined, past the bottle in his hands, past the soles of his feet and the floor beneath them, all the way to years ago, when his wife was still with him. His voice, which was thick with prolonged mourning, left me with no doubt—he was no competition for the affection of Mira or any other woman. His wife had been dead twice as long as mine, but he was still very much in love with her.
Witnessing his grief, I was ashamed to have been jealous of him. I felt a kinship with this man, for weren't we both soldiers, hadn't we both killed, and weren't we both alone in the world?
I inhaled from my cigarette, tapping loose ash into the ashtray.
"Let me tell you why I'm here. Then I'd like to ask you a few questions. I'll keep it brief so you can get some sleep."
"That would be good," he said, raising his head and taking a quick pull from his bottle.
"I'm a private investigator, and a week or so ago I was hired to locate a woman and a boy who had come to Palestine from Germany in 1939. I managed to learn that they traveled on the
"That's right, I did."
"Their names were Esther Grunewald and Willie Ackerland, but the false papers you furnished them bore the surname Kantor. You remember them?"
"Yes. Who hired you to find them?"
"The mother of the boy. If you recall, she had given the child to Esther Grunewald for safekeeping and planned on coming after them."
"The mother," he said in surprise. "I was certain she was dead. I always wondered what sort of woman would give her son away."
I was surprised to find myself bristle at this criticism of Henrietta, for hadn't I voiced a similar sentiment, and to her face? "I'd say she saw the future more clearly than most German Jews did, wouldn't you agree?" And most Hungarian ones, I added to myself.
"Yes," he said. "I suppose you're right."
I drew a calming breath. "Anyway, she managed to survive the war and only recently made
"Yes. It's terrible what happened to them."
"How did you learn of their deaths?"
"Mira told me. I've never seen her so upset. Not before nor since, and I've seen Mira in tough spots, believe me."
"Why do you think that was?" I asked, keeping my voice casual, hoping he might let slip why Mira took the murders of Esther and Willie so much to heart.
He disappointed me. "I don't know," he said. "Maybe it was because a child had died. Women are more emotional than men, especially when children are concerned. Or maybe it was because of how they died."
"What do you mean, how they died?"
"Well, I don't know the details, but I remember the papers implying that the murders were brutal. Was that right, do you know?"
"Not exactly," I said. "They died quickly enough, but the maniac disfigured their faces."
He grimaced, shaking his head. "Hard to imagine."
"Be glad you can only imagine it. I've seen the pictures. They're not pretty."
That brought the conversation to a standstill. I crushed out my cigarette. He finished his beer.
"I'm going to have another," he said. "Change your mind and join me?"
I shook first my head and then another cigarette from the pack. I had ignited it and taken a drag by the time he returned from the kitchen, a fresh bottle in his hand.
