I continued south past Ha-Knesset Square, where the Israeli parliament held its sessions, and kept walking till I got to the spot where The Sun dance club had once been. Once and no more. Now only a blackened, hollow shell of a building stood, its doorway and ground-floor windows boarded shut, the windows in the second floor gaping empty black squares. Shards of glass and garbage littered the narrow courtyard, where yellow and green weeds abounded. The stench of old decay and rot hung over the place.

"Burned down," a hoarse voice to my right said.

I had been staring at the building. Now I turned toward the voice and saw a shrunken silver-haired woman wearing a shabby blue dress so faded that it must have been washed a hundred times or more. A basket dangled from her right forearm. Her accent was Russian. Deep lines gouged her cheeks. She could have been sixty or seventy-five.

"When did it happen?"

"1945. During the summer. There used to be dancing here."

"I know."

"Yes. Plenty of dancing. Not just husbands and wives, but all sorts of men and women." She shook her head, bemoaning the immorality of unattached couples dancing. "The racket the place made, the loud music. It hurt my ears."

"You live here?"

"Around the corner."

"Do you know what caused the fire?"

"Some say it was arson, that a man whose wife spent time there got angry and torched the place. The police said it was an accident. Someone left a burning cigarette, some alcohol caught on fire, and up went the whole place."

"Do you know where I can find the owner, Mr. Segev?"

"Died in the fire. He and an employee." Her lips curled. "A woman. Not his wife."

"And the rest of the people who worked here?"

A shrug. "Don't know. Haven't seen any of them in a long time."

I returned my eyes to the building. Rivlin's interviews with Mr. Segev and his staff had yielded no leads. Still, I would have liked to talk to them myself, to maybe shake something loose in their memories. Now it appeared I had encountered another dead end.

More in desperation than belief, I showed the old woman the three pictures of Esther, the two from Manny Orrin and the one of her and Willie I'd lifted from the police report. "Remember her, by any chance? She used to dance here."

The woman squinted so hard at the pictures, it looked like she'd fallen asleep on her feet. The lines on her face deepened to canals. Then she shook her head, handing the pictures back to me.

"Don't remember seeing her. Who is she?"

"Her name was Esther," I said, the bitter taste of disappointment on my tongue.

"What's she done?"

"She died."

"Oh." The news didn't seem to faze her. "So many people have been dying lately."

20