Free Murder in Jerusalem by Batya Gur Page B

which you can use in the meantime…”
    Aviva flashed Eli a pleasant smile and wound a platinum curl around her finger. The inspector followed obediently.
    â€œNiva,” Hefetz called. “Did you bring the VTR from the film library to the studio?”
    â€œYeah, yeah,” she grumbled, out of breath. “I run down there like a madwoman, get to the archives, and find that Hezi…I’ll kill him if he does that one more time…next time I’m not going down to the archives for you people under any circumstances, he is so disgusting….”
    â€œWhy, what did he do?” David Shalit asked with a look of innocence.
    â€œHere, they’ve cut into the program,” Zadik said with an air of satisfaction at the sight of Nehemia the interviewer, Danny Benizri, and the director general of the Finance Ministry on the Channel One monitor. “Good job, Hefetz, you got the director of the Finance Ministry,” he said, adding, “and damn fast, too.”
    â€œWhat do you think?” Hefetz said, making light of Zadik’s praise. “They’ve kidnapped the labor minister, this is no game, they’re gonna blow themselves up and the minister, too. So what could the director of the Finance Ministry tell me, he doesn’t have time to come down to the studio? Oh, look at this guy, Sivan…what’s his name?”
    They were watching the Channel Two monitor again, the volume turned all the way down. The military correspondent stood wrapped in his parka, shivering from the cold, wiping raindrops from his brow, the microphone pressed close to his mouth, and his lips moving without a sound.
    Hefetz turned up the volume on the Channel One monitor. “Sir,” Danny Benizri said, addressing the Finance Ministry’s director general, who sat tight-lipped as he pressed a pale blue ironed handkerchief to his shiny bald pate, “there’s nothing to get angry about. I simply wish to understand what was done with the money that the government promised to give as aid to the Hulit factory last July, during the previous crisis…”
    â€œFirst of all,” the director general said, cutting Danny Benizri off as he tugged the sleeves of his blue tweed jacket over his shirt cuffs and moved his chair to the side, “I wish categorically to denounce an act that is, in my opinion, not only extremely grave, but a very, very, very dangerous precedent.”
    Danny Benizri’s dark eyes were shining. He turned to the interviewer, who held up his hand to request that he wait to speak, but Danny Benizri refused to wait. He, too, cut off his interlocutor. “That’s not what I asked you,” he cried out.
    â€œI want to make something perfectly clear,” the director general said. “Violence such as this has no place—”
    â€œThere hasn’t been any violence yet,” Danny Benizri corrected him, fingering the top button on the sky-blue shirt he had slipped into just before going on the air.
    â€œBenizri is totally out of line,” Niva said in the newsroom. “What do you call that ?” she said pointing at the Channel Two monitor, which was showing smoke billowing from the tunnel. “What’s that, if not violence?”
    She pinned her eyes on Arye Rubin, who was standing next to Zadik, watching the monitor. Finally he nodded in agreement.
    â€œHefetz,” Niva said, “Tell Dalit to get Nehemia to shut Benizri up. He can’t say that’s not violence.”
    Hefetz snapped his fingers at Tzippi, the assistant producer. “Come here,” he said. “Go downstairs and check what’s with that VTR Niva brought from the archives, see if they’ve even gotten it ready. Ask Dalit.” He resumed watching the monitor.
    On the screen appeared the three participants in this spontaneous interview: the director general of the Finance Ministry; Danny Benizri, the correspondent for labor and