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wasn’t particularly interested in finding out.
    Yariv finished checking his e-mail and idly surfed the news on the Internet to calm his nerves. Everything will work out in the end. You always land on your feet, he told himself in an effort to lift his spirits. Some people were born lucky, and you’re one of them. He could say he wasn’t there, that she made it all up because she was distraught with grief over the death of her African lover. Who was she anyway? Nothing but an anonymous volunteer in an organization no one had ever heard of. He could count on Regev to have a field day with the “bleeding heart leftist” who had turned her back on her country and its “fine lads.”
    Yariv was scrolling down to an article about a new spray that claimed to enhance virility when he stopped suddenly and began scrolling back up the page. His head started pounding again, harder than ever. He recognized the building in the photograph under the headline, “Woman in Her 30s Found Dead in Her Tel Aviv Apartment.”

Chapter 12
    BOAZ Yavin was sitting in the living room rocking Sagie in his arms, praying for him to fall asleep quickly. “Your turn,” Irit had said, poking him in the ribs with her elbow when the baby woke up for the umpteenth time.
    He looked at his watch. Two thirty in the morning. He was exhausted. The past few nights he’d hardly gotten any sleep. “His teeth are coming in. He’ll sleep better soon,” Irit had assured him as she shoved him out of bed. Despite his crankiness, he kept his thoughts to himself and refrained from reminding her what she’d said when they were debating whether to have another child. “The third kid takes care of itself,” she’d insisted.
    The room was lit only by the flickering blue light of the television. Yawning, Boaz turned his attention to the repeat broadcast of the evening news as he continued stroking Sagie’s head. Suddenly, his hand froze.
    He recognized the face of the woman filling the screen. It was the girl who’d screamed at him near the old bus station just a few days ago, before Faro’s thugs dragged her away.
    It was cold in the house, but he found himself sweating. His eyes were glued to the TV, which now showed cops and paramedics outside an apartment building. He turned up the volume just a bit, not wanting to wake Irit. He kept hearing the word “murder,” and it was making his head spin.
    He’d called Itzik to tell him about the girl and was told to get out of there fast. He was glad to cut his visit short. He hated the place. With any luck, after this incident they wouldn’t make him do the rounds there anymore. It didn’t happen that way. Itzik was furious, but a lot of money changed hands on those “rounds,” and he had no intention of canceling them because of some interfering woman.
    On the screen, a young policewoman was talking. “At this point, we’re looking into every possibility, following every lead,” she said somberly.
    Did it have anything to do with what happened at the old bus station? Sagie started whimpering again. Boaz rocked him distractedly, keeping his eyes on the TV in an effort to learn as much about the murder as he could.
    He had no one to blame but himself and his own greed. He was working at an accounting firm when they caught him using privileged information to play the stock market. That was right after Shira was born, and he and Irit were having a hard time making ends meet. It was in the firm’s interest to keep it quiet. They agreed not to go to the police if he returned the money. All of a sudden he had a huge debt, two kids, and no job. He was too ashamed to tell Irit. His whole world had collapsed; he was a broken man.
    But then, in his darkest moment, someone came to his rescue, just like in a fairy tale. A week after he lost his job, Itzik, one of the firm’s clients, proposed that he work for him