Pattern crimes

by William Bayer

  "I'll put on the siren."

  David shook his head. Something was happening in the market. People were pouring in but few were coming out. "Meet me up there on the right," he said. Then he stepped out of the car.

  As he made his way down the dark arcade that was the market axis, he heard the shrill whistles of police. He pushed past stands piled with eggplants, onions, Jaffa oranges, past vendors and buyers, through the debris of fruit skins and discarded vegetable greens, then took a shortcut through one of the little cross alleys until he came up against an immobile human mass.

  "What is it?" he asked a stooped old lady in black who was grasping her purchases to her chest.

  She looked at him, lips tight. "Katzer." And then all around David heard the name. Some whispered it, others hissed it, a few yelled it out like a cheer: "Katzer!" "Katzer!"

  Suddenly David caught a glimpse of him, escorted by police, bobbing along behind a phalanx of his supporters, sullen young males in knitted skullcaps bullying their way through the crowd. There was something thug-like, dull and stupid, about this vanguard, but the rabbi's small hard eyes gleamed with calculation.

  David watched, fascinated, as Katzer embraced a seller of olives, a seller of fish, an old man with a cane who sewed buttons and hems.

  David was surprised at how short he was; although he knew his face well from TV, this was the first time he had seen him in the flesh. Now he was struck by his animal magnetism and rabid quality too: moist eyes, sweaty beard, mouth that twisted as he spoke. Nothing otherworldly about him, nothing pious or Talmudic. This was a politician who thrived on touching faces, patting shoulders, grasping extended hands. His supporters needed him, wanted to feel his power, and Katzer eagerly obliged. But then David noticed something else. The rabbi's eyes squirreled up at the sound of a passing airplane, and then again at the pop of a beer can being opened up. A glimmer of fear: He was political meat and knew the passions he unleashed could also put a bullet in his chest.

  The cops blew their whistles, the thugs marched past, and Katzer was swallowed by the mob. Making his way back past the butcher's stalls to find Shoshana and the car, David felt his shirt sticking to his back.

  I t was a drainage ditch, dusty, overgrown with brambles, separated by bushes from the narrow access road that led up to Mevasseret. Police stakes tipped with orange fluorescent paint marked the place where the body had been found. David circled the site, careful not to walk upon it, then leaned against the car. There was a constant roar of traffic from the highway, a harsh whirling sound of speeding cars and trucks. Just the sort of spot, he thought, you might pull up to if you were starting down to Tel Aviv and then decided to stop and take a piss.

  "She was seen getting into a Tel Aviv car," Shoshana said. "Looks like whoever killed her pulled off at the exit, threw her out, then continued on his way."

  The sun was beating down full force. David looked up at the white villas glittering on the barren heights. The people who lived up there were wealthy, the kind who owned two cars. They'd drive past where he was standing several times a day. Someone would notice the body pretty quick.

  "If he really wanted to ditch her, he would have taken her into Judea. He didn't care if she was found."

  "Why care? He was done with her."

  "So just pull in the way we did, drag her out, toss an old blanket on top of her, don't even bother to cover her legs, then zip on down to the sunny coast?"

  "What's wrong with that?"

  "Nothing, if he wasn't trying to hide his workmanship. Maybe the best solution, if he wanted it displayed."

  "Think that's what he wanted?"

  David shrugged. "He couldn't have chosen a better spot. Except for his spot this morning. That was better." He took a last look at the orange stakes, then turned away.

  Back at the Russian Compound, he smiled when he saw them, Micha and Uri in sloppy army jackets, Dov Meltzer in striped track pants sporting an oversized submariner's watch. All three wore the beaten-up runner's shoes that were the trademark of Jerusalem plainclothes cops. They were sprawled out in swivel chairs while prim, smiling, orthodox Rebecca Marcus, clerk of Pattern Crimes, sat upright typing reports on her vintage Royal, her legs and arms nicely covered, her head wrapped neatly in a scarf.

  "Murder case?"

  "Triple," Shoshana said.

  "Report says the nun was tortured, but no sign of intercourse."

  "Madonna, girl-whore, boy-whore," said Dov. "Sounds like psycho-time."

  "It's psycho-time all right."

  He looked at them. They were excited. Detectives in other units sometimes called them "David's Dogs." Now they had a new and very disturbing case, perhaps the best they'd gotten in a year.

  "Shoshana and Uri work the girl this morning. Micha, you get the Arab boy, and Dov, you take the nun. They say the boy was a drug user, so find out if he dealt. This Sister Susan Mills-was she really a Madonna? How does a woman like that end up in a ditch?"

  "What about the marks, David?"

  "I'm very interested in those marks."

  "Report on the sister says the cutting was done after she was dead."

  "Ten to one it's the same with the other two."

  "An afterthought?"

  "Some kind of ritual?"

  "Sarah says you thought it could be some kind of brand," Dov said.

  David nodded. "A brand says: 'She's mine.' But this could be more. A signature. Signature says: 'I did this work. My work.' Could be either one."

  He ran Pattern Crimes like a small unit in the army-first names, anyone could say what he thought, minimal distinction between commanding officer and men. He felt closest to Dov, whom he considered the smartest, but Uri Schuster was formidable, a tracker, a bloodhound on the streets. Uri, David thought, could have been a criminal, which was why he was so valuable, and why, despite complaints that he was rough, sometimes even brutal, David was determined never to let him go. Micha Benyamani was the unit chess player, sad-faced, gaunt, a thorough paperwork-and-telephone detective. Shoshana Nahon-self-styled fighter, she made up for her inexperience with zest.

  He told Rebecca Marcus to telex to the Israeli police liaison in New York. "The U.S. Justice Department has some kind of serial killer clearinghouse. Send them a straight query: Have they ever seen these kinds of marks?"

  Rebecca smiled sweetly. "Whenever anything horrible happens, Rafi always thinks it's an American."

  "An American Jew."

  "Yes." She giggled. "But never an Israeli. Oh no! Never!"

  He called in Dov. "What happened this morning?"

  "Found a pair of candlesticks. An Arab trinket dealer on Salah el Din."

  "Good stuff?"

  "Nothing special. That blue-dye-job who was robbed last fall says they aren't worth much."

  "How did he get them?"

  "Had a story. Flea market in Hebron. But, David, there was other stuff there. Judaica. And that doesn't fit."

  "Good Judaica?"

  "I don't think so. It's a pretty dumpy place. I saw some Torah crowns. That bothered me. You don't fence stuff like that in East Jerusalem."

  "You're thinking…?"

  "Our scrolls case. It's been months. I practically forgot about it until I saw those crowns. I didn't say anything. Wanted to tell you first. The Rehavia burglaries and the stolen scrolls. We never put the two together."

  David thought about it. He didn't think they belonged together. "Silver is silver," he said. "The people burglarizing fancy houses in Rehavia need a place to unload silver that isn't worth shipping out. Meantime, the people stealing Torahs for resale in America have to get rid of the crowns because the crowns identify the origins of the scrolls. We're talking about items of fairly limited value. East Jerusalem's good for that. What time does this dealer close?"

  "Eight o'clock."

  "Okay, let's go over there around a quarter of and have ourselves a little talk."

  At four that afternoon, Shoshana and Uri brought him the girl's name: Ora Goshen,
nineteen years old, born of Moroccan-Jewish parents in the settlement town of Bet Shemesh. The boy on the horse had been right-she had indeed been working as a prostitute by the taxi stand at the Damascus Gate. The drivers knew her and a number of her colleagues stepped forward too. She was described as "attractive" and "friendly with a seductive timid manner," a girl who could turn four to six tricks a night and often started work in the early afternoon. She rented half a room in an apartment in Katamon but never took her clients there. Sometimes, when she needed a place, she'd pay an hourly rent to one of the other girls, or have her client hire a taxi, have it driven to a remote spot, then perform while the driver took coffee at a cafe.

  "She'd go with Arab men, Jewish men-she didn't care," Shoshana said, "but most of her clients were foreigners or Arabs. She didn't charge much and she liked it quick. Her landlady says she thought she was a hotel maid. She also says that Ora spoke of having been molested by her brothers and of running away from home, first to Beersheba before she came up here. Everyone agrees she's been in Jerusalem three or four months at most. No knowledge of any boyfriends, and no mention of anyone resembling a pimp. One of the girls says she and Ora have been employed several times by a well-dressed gentleman from the Foreign Office. They were paid ten times what they usually got for which they were required to attend black men, African diplomats, staying at the King David Hotel. They both used the money to buy themselves winter coats. Another time, she says, Ora was rejected by a client because he said she looked too dark. In regard to Arabs, it's apparently fairly important that a Jewish girl make clear that's what she is. Seems part of the thrill for the Arab client is to be serviced by a member of the oppressor race. As for Tel Aviv, no one knows if she's ever been there. And as for cutters, no one's ever heard of such a thing."

  Shoshana was beaming-she knew her presentation had been good, and the best part was still to come. David glanced at Uri who nodded back-he had extracted the greater part of the information and now was enjoying listening to Shoshana weave it together into a tale.

  "Okay, last night, around eight o'clock, the traffic's thinning out. It's getting chilly. A tan car comes by and starts to cruise the parking lot. Fairly recent model, maybe a Renault. Maybe it had Tel Aviv plates-no one's sure. There was a man, fairly young, fairly decently dressed, European-type-no one saw him well because it was pretty dark. He gestured to Ora, she walked over to the window, they talked for half a minute, she waved to her friends and got inside. He pulled out and must have made a U-turn up the road because a minute or so later one of the girls saw them headed back toward New Jerusalem. That's it. She didn't come back, and by nine they finish up and everyone heads for home. Three points: this guy and Ora didn't act like they knew each other; no one recalls seeing the guy before; there was nothing special about the encounter-it was a typical automobile pick-up, kind that happens fifteen or twenty times a night."

  "So…?"

  "What?"

  "How many witnesses?"

  "Just two girls, her friends."

  "Will they submit to interrogation by a hypnotist?"

  "Didn't ask them."

  "Go back tonight, Shoshana, and ask. Meantime, call the police up in Bet Shemesh and get hold of a social worker. The family has to be told and someone'll have to come up here, give us a positive ID, and waive objections to an autopsy. Make sure the social worker understands that even if the family objects we can have one done. It'll just take longer and then everyone down there will know Ora was molested and that's why she became a whore."

  "Okay. Now what do I do if the girls refuse to be hypnotized?"

  "Point to Uri, tell them how he'd love to run them in for vice and then how badly it stinks in the Russian Compound jail. Then tell them how much we'd appreciate their cooperation since basically the guy who did this is a potential threat to them and we wouldn't want to see them sliced up too."

  He called Anna to tell her about his case and that he had to go to East Jerusalem with Dov. "We'll probably grab some dinner at the Ummayyah. You like Dov. Why don't you meet us there?"

  But she had bought groceries and was at that moment in the midst of making Borscht Moskovskii, which she'd been thinking about the entire day. "If I don't eat it now I'll go crazy. Don't stuff yourself, David. There'll be a big bowl for you when you get home."

  They always spoke English; she had started studying Hebrew but wasn't ready yet to practice seriously. The expression she liked best was boker tov, "good morning," which she whispered sensuously into his ear every morning to wake him up.

  "How did it go today?"

  "I practiced all morning, then went to Yosef s. We worked together for four hours." She and her accompanist, Yosef Barak, were preparing the Beethoven cycle for their May European tour. "Then I shopped at the Supersol. There was a terrible scene at the check-out. A woman started screaming. 'Prices, robbers…' Then she started to sob. I kept wanting to tell her how lucky she was, how the store sold practically everything and you never have to wait in line. But I knew I couldn't help her. She was-what's the word? Inconsolable?"

  Yes, he thought, the perfect word to describe people suddenly breaking down, incredulous at the daily erosion of their savings. But he was touched by Anna's desire to console the woman, explain to her how lucky she was not to live in the sort of society which she, Anna, had escaped. The society she was happy to have left but the country she still desperately missed-thus her compelling need to taste Moscow-style borscht.

  At the end of the day, Micha and Dov reappeared. Micha had driven down to Tel Aviv to interview the one witness to the pickup of Halil Ghemaiem on the beach. As he spoke, he slumped deeper into his chair, sneaker-clad feet stretched to David's desk, arms hanging loose so that they touched the floor.

  "Ali Saad, heroin addict, worst eye witness I ever met. The jerks who dug him up didn't bother to try him on the IdentiKit, so I brought out mine and put him to work. Drove me crazy. We'd get a composite going, then he'd say no, it wasn't right. So we'd start again and then he'd choose a different set of eyes, ears, even formations of hair. Finally I said to him: 'What is this shit? What are you covering up?' Blank stare. Then I understood: He couldn't remember. Been too long and his brain's been fried by drugs. The only things he'll swear to are that the guy who approached Halil was dark, clean-shaven, spoke Hebrew, and was decently dressed. I got excited about the Hebrew-seemed to clinch it that he was Israeli. But then I realized this kid barely knew Hebrew himself. All he heard was something like: 'You come with me? Fuck? I got nice car.' "

  "Did Halil deal?"

  "Strictly small-time. Just enough to pay for his own."

  "Rumors of any cutters?"

  "You kidding? These kids pack knives, David. It's their clients who get cut."

  Dov had done better with his investigation of Susan Mills; listening to him David could feel how much Dov liked the murdered nun.

  "…here's an American school teacher on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, backpacking, using her Bible as her guide. She's been everywhere, Nazareth, the Galilee, Jericho, Bethlehem, you name it, and she's not on some goody-goody tour, and she doesn't dress in a habit like those nuns you see around Notre Dame de France. She wears normal stuff, T-shirts and jeans, shorts, too, when it's hot. She stays at hospices, carries an expensive Nikon and takes a million shots. Meets people wherever she goes. Priests, professors, archaeologists. In the mornings she jogs. She rented snorkeling equipment in Eilat. A very modern lady. So what do Rafi's schmuck jerk-offs conclude, the great homicide investigators assigned to track her stay in Israel? That she must have been forcibly abducted from the Holyland 'because,' and here I'm quoting from their report, 'holy Christian women such as this never '- their emphasis-'never go out except in pairs.' Un-fucking-believable. Where does Rafi get these slobs? Point is, David, the big deal about Susan Mills getting into a car turns out to be no big deal at all. This morning you asked how a nun winds up in a ditch. Well, however this particular nun wound up in one I don't think it had much to
do with her affiliation to the church."

  The three of them walked downstairs together. Cops and staff thronged the corridors. The Claw, from the superintendent's office, was gossiping with Sarah Dorfman. A jail guard, carrying a tray of cheese sandwiches, nearly slipped on the tile floor.

  The bomb disposal truck was parked near the compound gate. Micha Benyamani spotted it, turned away, quickly shook their hands, then hurried off to catch his bus. Son of a watch maker, he had been a bomb disposal specialist who quit the unit when his hands began to shake. David first met him on the police firing range, where he noticed that Micha's shooting was extremely accurate; he'd squint at the very moment that he pulled the trigger, and, for that moment at least, all his trembling would stop.

  David and Dov walked on to the police parking lot. It was dark and getting cold. They got into David's car. David pulled out onto Heleni Ha-Malka, where he honked at a trio of Ethiopian monks-black faces, black robes, black skull-tight hats. Traffic was heavy. The floodlit Old City walls looked stark. David slowed the car as he approached the Damascus Gate, paused at the entrance to the taxi lot. A girl, standing in the shadows of the wall, studied them a while, then walked toward them with a slow hip-swinging stride.

  "Jewish?"

  Dov waited until she was twenty feet away. "Yeah, think so," he finally said.

  "Looking for a date?" She was young, still in her teens. Something about her, a cherubic quality, made David think of Rebecca Marcus without a scarf.

  "We're cops."

  "So what? Cops don't date?" She laughed. "Screw cops." Her walk back was angry, sluttish, tough.

  "Bitch," Dov muttered. "Nasty bitch."

  David glanced at him. "Ever see Katzer, Dov? In the flesh, I mean."

  "Yeah, once, at a funeral down in Netanya. He and his goons were working the crowd. A woman had been killed by a terrorist bomb. He likes situations like that where everyone's nerves are raw."