Free Murder in Jerusalem by Batya Gur

full blast.
    â€œIf that’s so,” Zohar intoned nasally from the entrance to the tunnel, “then the police have reason to believe that the unemployed workers are in possession of explosives, and there’s no telling how far they’ll take this. In the meantime,” he said into the microphone, “there are still no negotiations between the unemployed workers and the police. We have been asked to inform the public that the Jerusalem–Etzion Bloc bypass road is closed to traffic and that drivers are requested to travel by alternate routes and to refrain from approaching this area.”
    â€œBenizri,” Hefetz shouted at the glass partition, “what are you still doing here? Didn’t I tell you to get down to the recording studio and get on the air? Nehemia is already down there, and Niva went to the archives to fetch that documentary you made about the Hulit workers last year. Why are you still here? Didn’t I tell you to get down there? Did I or didn’t I? Everyone heard: I did!”
    Danny Benizri, who was standing inside the graphic artists’ room, did not respond immediately. Zadik could see him leaning over the computer screen and explaining something to Tamari. He hurried into the room and saw the sketch she had already prepared, the roads and the tunnel with two trucks at one end and two at the other. So there actually were a few departments here where things worked properly, Zadik wished to tell someone when he had returned to his place, but when he looked up from the computer screen, his eyes met those of Arye Rubin, who was standing next to him expectantly.
    â€œI only need two minutes,” Arye Rubin told him. “Maybe three.” Zadik shrugged his shoulders and spread his arms in a gesture of helplessness.
    At the doorway to the room, Inspector Eli Bachar stepped backward to make way for Benizri, who was on his way out at a run, en route to the recording studio on the ground floor.
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    â€œJust two minutes,” Rubin pleaded with Zadik. Zadik caught sight of Natasha watching them from the corner of the conference room.
    â€œHang on, Rubin, just hang on,” Zadik said, pointing at the monitor. Once again the picture faded and Zohar disappeared; in his place the screen showed policemen running in every direction. “I don’t get this at all,” Zadik said, annoyed. “Where are they running now, what are these guys filming? Look where the Channel Two cameraman is positioned and where—”
    â€œZadik, calm down.” Hefetz had popped up suddenly at his side and was watching both the monitor and Inspector Eli Bachar, who was leaning against the wall next to the bulletin board. Thanks to his white shirt and his short gray jacket, probably no one else there knew what he was doing in the newsroom.
    â€œFor your information,” Hefetz told Zadik, “Zohar was tuned in to the police broadcasts the whole time. He’s always first on-site, no other reporter was there when he arrived, but what do we get for all his efforts? Do we get anything for all his efforts? No, we don’t. Who’s running things around here? Us? No. Not us. Who? The technicians! So don’t tell me afterward that it’s a disgrace that Channel Two gets there before us, because they don’t have a technicians’ union!”
    Zadik hoped that because of the ensuing tumult—the noise of two monitors running at once, the constant ringing of telephones, the incessant chatter—no one had heard Hefetz, but just then an unfamiliar burly man in blue coveralls poked his head in from the foreign correspondents’ room and said, “How ’bout not blaming the technicians for everything that goes wrong?”
    At the same time, David Shalit approached Eli Bachar, tapped him on the arm, and in an intimate, almost mocking tone said, “Inspector Eli Bachar, sir, to what do we owe this pleasure?” Eli Bachar smiled