Murder in Jerusalem Read Online Free PDF Page B

anorexic, no, no, no, don’t light a cigarette here, the windows are closed because of all this rain and my throat is already killing me. Come tell me what you think is really going on with Rabbi Elharizi, what you think he’s plotting to do with all that money and that getup and Canada. Let’s try to guess what could be going on there and why, and then together we’ll figure out what to do about it.”

CHAPTER TWO
    H ere’s the lineup. In spite of everything, we managed to get it done on time,” Niva said as she placed a sheet of paper with the list of news items for the evening program on the table in front of Zadik. “Just look at them,” she added incredulously, handing an identical sheet to Erez, the news editor, who was sitting next to Zadik, and placing another in front of the empty seat next to him. “Unbelievable. I can’t get over the fact that everyone’s already here. I’ve never seen this place so full this early in the morning.”
    Zadik sat at the head of the long conference table. Pale light penetrated the room through the large window spotted with dried raindrops, throwing light on his short gray hair and the last traces of night in his red eyes and in the dark circles under them, which gave his full, round face the look of an exhausted playboy. He looked at the serious expressions of all those present, then glanced up at the clock hanging on the wall opposite, behind the two monitors broadcasting Channel One and Channel Two, respectively. He intended to reply to Niva—the veteran secretary of the News Department, known for her sharp tongue—with something witty, but his own secretary, Aviva, beat him to it. As usual, she was sitting behind him in a comfortable chair as though not even listening, scrutinizing the dark line she had drawn around her full lips, then placing the lipstick and the small, round mirror inside her makeup kit and the makeup kit inside her purse. She zipped up her purse with a flourish, placed it under her seat, and said, “It’s just too bad that somebody had to die around here for people to show up for the morning meeting on time.” She stretched one long leg to the side and added, “And it’s already eight-twenty, even today we’re running late,” then examined her calf and the narrow ankle below it.
    Zadik pulled the perforated edges from the paper, went over the lines of the chart and the air times for each item with the pen he had just banged on the table to call the meeting to order, and added two exclamation points after the words “gaining momentum,” which appeared next to the headline STRIKE TODAY. From the corner of his eye he glimpsed Niva’s pink scalp peeking through her short and wispy red hair. She had arrived at work a few days earlier with this new red haircut in place of the disheveled gray curls she had had previously. She leaned toward Aviva, touching her shiny red shoe. “New?” she asked.
    â€œCan you believe it, one hundred and twenty shekels, Italian leather, and look how nicely it shows up my leg,” Aviva said, smiling, as she meticulously straightened the sleeves of her thin blue sweater, folded her arms, and stretched her body so as to show off her breasts. For a brief moment Zadik regarded these two women, so different from one another; he had often thought about Niva as a woman who had “let herself go,” an expression he had learned from Rubin that meant she did not make an effort to cultivate her femininity. It was Rubin who had explained to him once, on a trip abroad, that women who stop dyeing their hair or watching their figures, the ones who hide their bodies in flannel shirts and thick wool socks, can claim a thousand times that they are in favor of the “natural look” and that they are tired of looking like Barbie dolls and that they are fighting to free women from all the bullshit that men have conditioned them to,