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looked too dark. In regard to Arabs, it's apparently fairly important that a Jewish girl make clear that's what she is. Seems part of the thrill for the Arab client is to be serviced by a member of the oppressor race. As for Tel Aviv, no one knows if she's ever been there. And as for cutters, no one's ever heard of such a thing."
    Shoshana was beaming—she knew her presentation had been good, and the best part was still to come. David glanced at Uri who nodded back—he had extracted the greater part of the information and now was enjoying listening to Shoshana weave it together into a tale.
    "Okay, last night, around eight o'clock, the traffic's thinning out. It's getting chilly. A tan car comes by and starts to cruise the parking lot. Fairly recent model, maybe a Renault. Maybe it had Tel Aviv plates—no one's sure. There was a man, fairly young, fairly decently dressed, European-type—no one saw him well because it was pretty dark. He gestured to Ora, she walked over to the window, they talked for half a minute, she waved to her friends and got inside. He pulled out and must have made a U-turn up the road because a minute or so later one of the girls saw them headed back toward New Jerusalem. That's it. She didn't come back, and by nine they finish up and everyone heads for home. Three points: this guy and Ora didn't act like they knew each other; no one recalls seeing the guy before; there was nothing special about the encounter—it was a typical automobile pick-up, kind that happens fifteen or twenty times a night."
    "So ...?"
    "What?"
    "How many witnesses?"
    "Just two girls, her friends."
    "Will they submit to interrogation by a hypnotist?"
    "Didn't ask them."
    "Go back tonight, Shoshana, and ask. Meantime, call the police up in Bet Shemesh and get hold of a social worker. The family has to be told and someone'll have to come up here, give us a positive ID, and waive objections to an autopsy. Make sure the social worker understands that even if the family objects we can have one done. It'll just take longer and then everyone down there will know Ora was molested and that's why she became a whore."
    "Okay. Now what do I do if the girls refuse to be hypnotized?"
    "Point to Uri, tell them how he'd love to run them in for vice and then how badly it stinks in the Russian Compound jail. Then tell them how much we'd appreciate their cooperation since basically the guy who did this is a potential threat to them and we wouldn't want to see them sliced up too."
     
    He called Anna to tell her about his case and that he had to go to East Jerusalem with Dov. "We'll probably grab some dinner at the Ummayyah. You like Dov. Why don't you meet us there?"
    But she had bought groceries and was at that moment in the midst of making Borscht Moskovskii, which she'd been thinking about the entire day. "If I don't eat it now I'll go crazy. Don't stuff yourself, David. There'll be a big bowl for you when you get home."
    They always spoke English; she had started studying Hebrew but wasn't ready yet to practice seriously. The expression she liked best was boker tov, "good morning," which she whispered sensuously into his ear every morning to wake him up.
    "How did it go today?"
    "I practiced all morning, then went to Yosef s. We worked together for four hours." She and her accompanist, Yosef Barak, were preparing the Beethoven cycle for their May European tour. "Then I shopped at the Supersol. There was a terrible scene at the check-out. A woman started screaming. 'Prices, robbers...' Then she started to sob. I kept wanting to tell her how lucky she was, how the store sold practically everything and you never have to wait in line. But I knew I couldn't help her. She was—what's the word? Inconsolable?"
    Yes, he thought, the perfect word to describe people suddenly breaking down, incredulous at the daily erosion of their savings. But he was touched by Anna's desire to console the woman, explain to her how lucky she was not to live in the