Murders of retarded kids? No, Heinz-Dietrich hadn't heard of anything like that. DVLL? Not in any of their files, but he'd ask around. What was going on in L.A.?

When Daniel told him, sketchily, he sighed and said he'd ask around seriously.

Uri Drori at the Israeli Embassy in Berlin did some double-checking and verified everything Halzell had said. Daniel called him not because he didn't trust the German, but because sometimes what you learned depended on who you were.

Drori reported a slowly escalating rate of low-level incidents, repeated almost word for word Heinz-Dietrich's lament about the idiots popping up like toadstools.

It will never end, Dani. The more democracy you have, the more you get this shit, but what's the alternative?

Same story with Bernard Lamont in Paris, Joop Van Gelder in Amsterdam, Carlos Velasquez in Spain, all the others.

No murders of defectives, no DVLL.

Which didn't really surprise him. These crimes seemed American. Though he couldn't explain why.

A wonderful country, America. Huge and free and naive; big-hearted people always willing to grant the benefit of the doubt.

Even after the Trade Center bombing, you didn't see large-scale anti-Muslim feelings. The Israeli Embassy in New York tracked that kind of thing.

Free country.

But what was the price?

Last night, taking a coffee break, he'd heard police sirens, loud, close, looked out the same rear window and saw a helicopter circling low, beaming down on backyards, like some giant mantis scouting for prey.

His police scanner told him they were searching for an armed-robbery suspect- holdup at Beverly Drive and Pico.

A mile away, right near Zev Carmeli's place.

Not far from the house on Monte Mar where Laura had grown up. Her parents had sold it and bought two tiny condos. Beverly Hills, and Jerusalem, where they were now.

Before he'd left for the States, his father-in-law had warned him: Be careful, things have changed.

Gene said, Total breakdown, Danny Boy. Going to school can be hazardous to a kid's health.

Which was one reason Gene had sold his big house in Lafayette Park. Heading for Arizona… no real reason for Arizona, except that it was warm and “I'm not exactly worried about melanoma, right?”

Gene looked old. Since Luanne's death, his hair and mustache had turned snow-white and his skin bagged.

An untimely death, the poor woman had been only sixty when the massive stroke had knocked her to the floor of her kitchen. Gene discovering her, another reason to sell the house.

High blood pressure. A doctor friend of Daniel's told him blacks had more of it. Some said it was their diet, others genetics. His friend thought racism had a lot to do with it.

Daniel understood that. He couldn't count the times he'd been called a dirty Jew by Arabs and, because of his skin, a nigger by all sorts of people.

When it happened, he didn't react visibly but his heart pounded in his ears… he wondered if Gene was taking care of his diabetes. Cookies on the counter when he'd gone there to pick up the Ortiz file and the boy's shoes said otherwise.

His friend had come through for him and Daniel liked to think the favor had been good for Gene, too.

Nothing but time on his hands, poor guy. He'd called three times since returning the stuff, offering to do whatever Daniel needed.

But Daniel wouldn't go to Gene for any more favors. The man was ill, no reason to draw him in deeper.

If Sturgis cooperated.

He'd said he would, but hard to tell.

Sturgis would never score high on the Trust Index.

He stepped out of the shower just as the water warmed up, dried off, goose-bumped, amazed he hadn't felt any discomfort.

America.

Democracy had begun in Greece but its real home was here. Birthplace of official compassion, too- no country had been as kind as America. Now Americans were paying for their compassion in drive-by shootings, the breakdown of rules and values, child-murderers let out on parole.

Same thing back home. For all his country's image as a tough little fighter state, Daniel knew Israel as one big, soft heart populated by survivors and rooters for the underdog with a reluctance to punish.

That's why victory doesn't sit well with us, he thought. Why we end up the first country in history to voluntarily give back land won in battle in exchange for an ill-defined peace with people who hate our guts.

He'd watched, during the intifada, as the Palestinian Arabs made the most of Israeli democracy: staging rehearsed events masquerading as spontaneous shows of protest, exaggerating the very real brutality of the occupation with hyperbole, kids with rocks playing for the camera. The press, of course, gobbled it up like a rich dessert. Day after day of photo-op baton-to-skull and rubber-bullet hailstorm broadcast worldwide, while Assad executed tens of thousands of potential enemies in Syria and got maybe two lines of newsprint.

Still, who ever said life was fair. He'd rather live in a free society… though sometimes…

And now he was thinking of Elias Daoud again, resolutions tossed to the wind.

The ginger-haired Christian Arab from Bethlehem had been his best homicide detective, playing a major role in the Butcher investigation, never letting the divided-loyalties thing get in the way though it hadn't been easy- no one but Daniel had trusted him.

The closing of the Butcher file got everyone on the team promotions, but Daoud's had taken a bit more prodding of the pencil pushers.

Daniel had been obdurate and finally Daoud ended up a mefakeah, Southern Division's first Arab inspector. The raise in pay for a guy with seven kids had made it more than just another ribbon.

Daoud was kept on Daniel's squad and Daniel assigned him to the few nonpolitical homicide cases that came up: Old City gang stuff, the drug and watermelon rackets, nothing with any security overtones. For Daoud's protection as well as for the brass. Daniel didn't want him branded a collaborator.

Then the intifada heated up. More rhetoric, more audacity, more violence- the wall of fear broken down, vermin scurrying through the rubble.

Religious militancy found new life, too, and Christians in Bethlehem, and Nazareth, and everywhere else Christian, remembered Beirut and grew less vocal, many of them bribing their way across the border to Jordan and onward to families in Europe and the States.

One morning, in the midst of a serious investigation into the Ramai gang's role in the hashish trade, with Daoud scheduled to give a progress report, everyone waiting in a restaurant on King George Street, the guy didn't show.

Right away Daniel knew something was wrong. The man was a walking wristwatch.

He dismissed the griping detectives, called Daoud's house, got a disconnected line.

The usual twenty-minute drive to Bethlehem took him less than fifteen. Before he got to the city outskirts he saw the military jeeps and the police Ford Escorts, blue lights flashing, people milling around, the simmering feel of an impending riot.

He showed his badge and made his way past grim faces to Daoud's house. Police tape had been wrapped around the little limestone cube and chickens circled the muddy ditch that passed for a yard. No more olive-wood crucifix in Daoud's window- when had that changed?

It had been a long time since Daniel had been there. Now, he realized what a sorry place it was, objectively. Not much better than the hovel in Yemen where Daniel's father had been born. But the promotion had allowed Daoud to finish payments on it, the guy had been so proud.

The uniform at the door warned him not to go in for his own sake, but he did anyway, thinking of Daoud, the young, fat wife Daoud loved madly and plied with chocolates, seven little kids…