Murder in Jerusalem Read Free

destroyed, as if destruction could decipher its secret.
    Benny Meyuhas looked to the corner of the roof. Max Levin was the one who had suggested filming Gemullah’s promenade on top of the scenery building. The moon lit up the cactus in the rusty bucket they had moved to the side so that it would not appear in the frame, along with the paint-spotted rooftop they had covered in sand. From a corner of the roof, the scent of smoke wafted upward from a grill. The first time Benny Meyuhas had come up to the roof with him and had stared in wonder at the charred grill and the remains of charcoal and the pile of thin bones that cats were gnawing nearby, Max Levin had been embarrassed, as if he were sorry he had brought him to the inner sanctum of his realm. “One of the crew members,” Max explained apologetically in his strong Hungarian accent, “he has a hobby, he keeps a chicken coop next to the compressor, so at night and sometimes in the early morning the guys, you know, while they’re waiting, they fry a few eggs from the coop, and sometimes they roast a chicken, not a whole one from the coop, just wings, or a steak on occasion.”
    â€œYou people have a whole life up here, don’t you?” Hagar had said with a grin. She was standing at the corner of the roof, checking the paint spots. “Turns out that here at Israel Television,” she had said to the sky, “the head of Props is lord of the manor.” Max Levin had grimaced, his face a study in denial and opposition that worried Benny Meyuhas. Benny always tried to remain nonconfrontational with them all: “Maintaining good relations is half the job,” he would say to Hagar and anyone who would listen to him at the start of every production. “We’ll have to cover this with something, maybe sand,” Hagar had said as she wrote herself a note on the second page of her legal pad. “You want this place?” she had asked after Benny stood surveying the roof for several minutes. “Over there by the edge,” she had added, “they have a basketball court, too. They’ve got it great up here, and we had no idea!” Benny had nodded his head, yes, he wanted the place. And to his great good fortune—he didn’t even know why—Max Levin was being cooperative.
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    â€œCut!” Benny Meyuhas was now calling, looking again at the film and then at the door to the roof. “Hasn’t he come back yet?” he murmured as if to himself.
    â€œWho?” asked Schreiber.
    â€œAvi,” Hagar answered from the corner of the roof. “Benny’s waiting for Avi, he went to bring the sun gun.”
    â€œBut we have enough moonlight,” Schreiber protested.
    â€œA while back, when he went, we didn’t,” Hagar said, glancing at her cell phone. “He’ll be back soon,” she said, consoling Benny, “and Max will probably be along soon with the horse.”
    But she was wrong. For more than ten minutes Avi, the lighting technician, had been standing in front of the guard booth at the entrance to the elongated building, a sun gun in his hand, trying to convince the guard to let him in. “Identification,” the new guard repeated in his odd accent. “No ID, no enter.” Nothing helped. There was no point in phoning Hagar on the roof to come down and save him, since they were in the middle of shooting and she would never answer.
    Avi looked around, one-thirty in the morning, not a soul about. Only a persistent new guard, Russian perhaps, or maybe an Argentinian, who chased after him, fought him in his feeble attempt to get past him, unwilling to believe a word he said. Suddenly, at last, a car screeched to a halt and Max Levin stepped out. Short and chubby, he left the car door open as he approached the guard booth, his glasses hanging from a metal chain around his neck, his head inclined to the side. “Max!” Avi cried with joy. “Tell