Pattern crimes

by William Bayer

  "You weren't here when it happened?"

  "Friede and I were visiting our grandchildren in New York. After we came back it was a couple of days before I noticed the hasp had been chiseled loose. The padlock, you see, was still intact. I was in the process of unlocking it when the assembly fell out of the door. Then, when I looked inside-a terrible mess, papers scattered everywhere. I called all concerned. We spent a weekend sorting things out. None of us could find anything missing so I didn't bother to report it. That's why I was so surprised when you told me what your father said."

  "Surely you've noticed how strange he's become?"

  "Yes, of course. Everybody has. But the change in his interests may not be as bizarre as people think. Kabbalah, after all, is based on the belief that one can attain great illumination about the nature of God by exploring deeply within. I wonder if the process is so different, really, than exploring the unconscious through free associations and dreams."

  "Still…"

  "I know. In the year and a half since Gideon died… But you say it was Gideon's file that was taken?" Dr. Blumenthal shook his head, perplexed. "I had my own file on him. I wonder…" He moved toward a stack of cartons, removed one, and began prowling through the one beneath.

  "You had a file on Gideon?"

  The doctor nodded. "For a while he came to me professionally." He glanced up at David. "Nothing strange in that. One never treats one's own child. If one of our children needed help we'd send him to a colleague. A great honor to the person, a gift of trust. I sent my own daughter to Avraham. And he… but I'd have thought…"

  "No," David said, "I was never sent to anyone."

  "Ah, here it is." The doctor extracted an old-fashioned marbled cardboard folder tied together with string. "But now, David, you must tell me what this is all about. Otherwise, even though he's dead, I can't…"

  "Yes, I understand."

  As they walked back to the house, the old man put his hand on David's arm. "You were upset back there. I noticed. Perhaps for a moment even a little depressed. But you shouldn't have been. If your father didn't send you to one of us for treatment that only means he didn't think you needed it. To feel badly about that would be the same as feeling jealous because your brother got extra attention when he had the misfortune to break his leg."

  The interior of the house was dark, furnished with heavy German pieces from the 1930s. After David explained why he was so curious about Gideon-his father's cryptic comments and the strange fact that the psychological portions in Gideon's medical folder were now missing from the central files of the IDF-Dr. Blumenthal agreed to speak freely of what he knew.

  "I didn't see him often. Perhaps two dozen times over the years. In no sense was he in treatment; we would just meet occasionally to talk." He untied the dossier, quickly reviewed the papers inside. "Most of these visits were during his adolescence. He had the typical troubles of a boy that age-self-image, sexual identity, some special problems having to do with your mother, and also a rather well-defined self-destructive streak. Later in his twenties he came to see me four times. He feared that he was homosexual. He found himself attracted to other men, but he resisted these feelings and wanted to be cured. We discussed his undergoing regular therapy, but he said this wasn't feasible. If the Air Force found out he'd be finished as a pilot, and he loved flying; he couldn't bear to give it up. I tried hard to reassure him. He was, you see, attracted to women too. But because of his great physical beauty men approached him frequently, and when they did their longing for him had the effect of arousing him as well. That, I think, was his problem. We're all bisexual to a certain degree. But his very attractiveness, which you probably envied as an advantage, became a kind of curse. Every time someone made an advance it only emphasized his ambiguity. Had he been less beautiful he would have been left alone, and thus better able to combat the sexual feelings he despised."

  Dr. Blumenthal consulted his dossier again. "The last time he came to me was a few months before he crashed. I remember he was very troubled. In 1981 he had flown an important mission. Perhaps you didn't know this-he was one of the sixteen pilots who flew Operation Babylon."

  David was surprised. The brilliantly executed surgical strike against the Iraqi nuclear reactor ranked with the most daring exploits of the Israeli Air Force.

  "…a secret of course. The names of the pilots were never released. They were our best pilots, some even said the finest fighter-bomber pilots in all the world. Gideon had been elated by the mission. He thought of it as the high point of his life. But when he came to me he was depressed. He had finally become involved with another man. He was terribly frightened he'd be found out, frightened of disgrace, perhaps frightened most of all of the possible reaction of your mother. And yet he felt helpless to break it off. I had the feeling then…well, I could have been wrong."

  "What?"

  "That he feared he might be blackmailed by this man. Not for money. I don't think that. And I'm certain it had nothing to do with espionage."

  "What then?"

  "I don't think he knew himself. Just that he felt trapped, that he was being led along somewhere, and that sooner or later he might be forced to do something against his will."

  "I don't understand. What did he say?"

  "I didn't make a transcript, David. My notes are only impressions of what I think I hear between the lines."

  David nodded.

  "But there's something else here. Another kind of note." Dr. Blumenthal shook his head. Suddenly, David thought, his face was flooded with grief. The doctor handed him a page out of the dossier. "Look there at the bottom."

  David squinted. Blumenthal's handwriting was spidery and difficult to read. But finally he was able to decipher the bottom line: "Treatment? Problem of exposure. Unorthodox Solution?"

  "What does this mean?"

  "At the time I didn't know, which accounts for the question mark. But just now…" He shook his head again. It could explain…"

  "What?"

  "The fact, David, that your father even had such a file. I didn't mention this to you before, but when you came to me this morning I thought this whole business about Gideon's file and the break-in was extremely odd. Of course Avraham kept papers pertaining to his sons. Every parent does. But why would they be mixed in with his patient files? Then you told me he referred to Gideon's being more perplexing than any patient he ever treated. That, I think, is a clue to the 'unorthodox treatment' Gideon was talking about. Suppose your brother, feeling he had nowhere else to turn, took his problems to your father. And suppose your father tried to treat him-an impossible task, a thing that simply cannot be done. The treatment failed, as it had to. Gideon killed himself. Your mother fell ill and died. Your father, blaming himself, became consumed by guilt. He renounced everything, sold his beautiful house, gave up his profession, went to live in a wretched neighborhood and immerse himself in Jewish mysticism. If you look at everything he's done this past year from that point of view, then his behavior starts making sense."

  David nodded. "And so does the stealing of all these papers. Whoever removed my brother's military records would also want my father's file." He paused. "But only someone very close to Gideon would have known he'd been my father's patient. You didn't know."

  "No."

  "So it had to be Gideon's lover, this man you say he feared might push him to do something against his will…"

  Later, when Dr. Blumenthal walked him to the street, David asked why Gideon hadn't come to him for treatment. "Surely he knew you'd be discreet. You wouldn't tell the Air Force."

  "He knew that, yes, but still he was afraid even to be seen making regular visits here. Afraid too that your mother would find out."

  "What was going on between them?"

  "Mother and son? Ah!" Dr. Blumenthal smiled. "The answer to that would have been the quest of the therapy-another reason your father could never succeed with it."

  " He was a soldier," he told Anna, "and my mother loved him for it.
The sharp uniform, the perfect haircut, the beautiful clean-shaven chin. He was the favorite warrior-son with the strong tanned arms and legs. He was also-and it hurts me to say this-a bit of a fascist too. He was particularly vicious in hand-to-hand combat training, and he gloried in the Israeli war machine. The helmet visors, the zippered flight suits, the cult of manliness. Muscled flesh, polished paratrooper boots, smart salutes-the whole esprit of the pilot corps. You wonder why he didn't run away. Where could he go? Cyprus? England? The United States? Without his aircraft, without the cult, he was nothing and he knew it. Fact is, he had no place to go except into the sky…so that was where he flew."

  Rafi called David in. He looked embarrassed. Superintendent Latsky had assigned a case to CID with the strong suggestion it be assigned to Pattern Crimes.

  "What kind of case?" David asked.

  "Actually a species of street scam." Rafi glanced up, met his eyes, then focused on Sarah Dorfman at her smaller desk across the room. "Small gangs. Three or four kids. One of them, eating a sausage sandwich or ice cream, picks out a well-dressed tourist, approaches him, then stumbles against him smearing mustard or syrup on his clothes. Profuse apologies. 'Oh! Dear sir! Dear Madame! I'm so sorry!' Enthusiastic efforts, then, to clean off the disgusting mess. Other kids come forward. 'Let us help. We have a rag.' Soon three or four of them are working the poor guy over, dabbing at his garments, thoroughly grinding in the mustard or syrup. Meantime, of course, expertly removing his wallet, passport, and watch. The tourist is so upset by the horrible mess they've made of him that it's only later that he realizes he's been picked completely clean."

  David stared at Rafi. "You can't be serious?"

  "It is a pattern crime, David. Though not, I admit, our usual kind."

  "Rafi, this isn't new. Arab kids have been doing it for years. It's petty street crime."

  "Yeah. Of course. But the point is, Latsky wants it stopped. The mayor's office has been complaining and the Ministry of Tourism says it costs us friends."

  "But why use detectives? All you need are a couple of cops." He felt a welling up of bitterness.

  "I have the impression Latsky's got it in for you, David. You caused him trouble with the minister. So now…" Rafi shrugged.

  "Do you have it in for me too?"

  "Of course not!" Rafi spread his arms. "When Latsky proposed this I told him it wasn't for us, but he wouldn't budge. He's a pissed-off old man without the guts to call you in and chew your ass. His is the old bureaucrat's way: Humble the subordinate, assign him a degrading task."

  "Listen, Father-I don't want to embarrass you, or pry into your business, or reproach you about something that happened in the past. Just two questions. No explanations required. None needed. No apologies either. All right?"

  Avraham nodded. "That sounds reasonable."

  "Who was Gideon's lover?" David blurted the question out.

  "Oh, David…" His father's voice was filled with pain.

  "Do you know his name?"

  Torment now disfigured Avraham's features. He turned away.

  "For years, Father, we left all this unspoken. Maybe it's time now to talk it out."

  When Avraham turned back to him the mixture of fear and relief on his face reminded David of Gutman on the night of his arrest. "It was his old schoolmate Ephraim Cohen."

  Cohen! "You're sure?"

  "Gideon told me." Avraham shook his head. "What's question number two?"

  Now David was almost afraid to broach it. But, having pushed so far, he knew he could not retreat.

  "What was the pressure Gideon feared? What was he afraid he'd be compelled to do?"

  Avraham grimaced with disgust. "The pressure, I assume, was that the affair would be revealed. As for what Ephraim wanted him to do -I haven't the faintest idea."

  "But he didn't do it, did he?"

  "No, he didn't. Which is why I think he killed himself."

  "So as not to have to bear disgrace? I think he could have handled that. I think he was strong-"

  Avraham cut him off. "Disgrace he could have handled. But not betrayal. You see, David, I think he was so wounded by Ephraim's threat, he couldn't bear to live."

  "You never pursued this?"

  "No. How could I?"

  "You could have discussed it with Ephraim."

  Avraham shook his head. "Gideon was gone. What would have been the purpose?"

  A long pause then before David spoke: "Thank you, Father. I know how painful this has been. I'll try not to bother you with this again."

  David assigned Shoshana to be the decoy in his scheme to entrap the mustard-and-syrup pickpocket gang. Now she had to assemble a suitable wardrobe.

  "How far can I go?" she asked.

  "Far as you like so long as you end up looking rich. You know: nice rich Jewish-American girl on her first UJA leadership tour."

  "She'd stay at the King David."

  "Naturally."

  "So what about a handbag from that gorgeous leather shop in the Cardo?"

  "Sounds good."

  "Expenses?"

  "See Rebecca. She'll get you an advance from The Claw."

  "Afterward, David-do I get to keep the stuff?"

  But before he could tell her "no" she had disappeared.

  He put Micha on Ephraim Cohen.

  "We know he's Shin Bet, but not much else."

  "What do we want to know?"

  "Everything. Military background. Reserve unit. Marital status. His private life too. Any weak spots you can find. Particularly any rumors about outside love affairs."

  "This'll be hard, David. A Shin Bet guy. How can I sniff around without his finding out?"

  "Just do the best you can. Go for what you can get out of the files. But use your own contacts on this one, Micha. Whatever you do, don't cut in Police Intelligence. They're in bed with Shin Bet. They share with each other all the time. There's more loyalty between them than between PI and us."

  "It's shit, David. The whole compound knows about it. David's Dogs doing patrolman's work."

  Dov's face expressed his fury and disgust, also his feelings of betrayal. Uri wore a similar expression, but less intense because he was less outraged. He was older, had more years in and thus more experience with the ups and downs of being a cop.

  Dressed in various combinations of T-shirts and track pants they were lounging against a wall just inside the Jaffa gate. For four days they'd been staking out Shoshana, who, in her high fashion garments, was strolling now around Omar Ibn El Khatab square inspecting trinkets in the windows of the tourist shops.

  "Thing that gets me," Dov said, "is that even after you bust your ass to make detective, they can break you back down this way."

  "Take it easy," Uri said. "Remember we were riding high a while back. Couple of weeks ago we were David's Dogs. Now we're being punished so we're the Rabies Squad."

  "Rabies Squad-that's not bad," David said. "Maybe we can do something with that."

  "Foam at our mouths and drool?"

  "Or maybe turn it into something," David said.

  Dov looked at him. "What do you mean?"

  "Suppose we call ourselves the Rabies Squad and take on every stinking job Latsky's got. Suppose we start acting like we've got a case of rabies-guys you don't fuck around with, guys who bite."

  He could see they liked that; he liked it too. More than anything he wanted to show Latsky that he wasn't going to be humbled or beaten down.

  "See that kid. Looks like he's cruising. He's munching something too." Uri nodded toward an alley that converged upon the square. An Arab boy, spooning ice cream from a cup, was moving toward them at a leisurely pace.

  "Remember, if he spills on her, wait till his buddies cluster around."

  Uri smiled. "Then kick ass, right?"

  David nodded. "Okay, let's spread out."

  Actually, they all agreed afterward, it was Shoshana who kicked ass the best. Even before they reached her, she had unleashed a series of ferocious chops and kicks
. The Arab kids were devastated; no rich tourist woman had ever come at them like this. She badly bloodied two of them, and smashed her foot into the crotch of the third. He fell to the pavement, curled up, held himself, and whimpered. Fascinated passersby pressed forward while frightened tourists fled the scene.

  When it was over Shoshana's fine silk blouse, which she'd bought at an expensive boutique in Yemen Moshe, was split straight down the back. But she didn't care. She loved to fight. Studying her afterward David thought: Today a decoy has been born.

  When they delivered their prisoners to the booking room at the Russian Compound, Dov introduced the beaten-up Arab youngsters as the harvest of a brilliant trap.

  "We're the Rabies Squad," he announced to the astonished guards. "We skim scum off the streets."

  He remembered an incident between Gideon and his mother. Gideonwas still in high school; David was on leave from the army. He'd spent two years as an intelligence officer compiling psychological profiles of the Egyptian General Staff.

  In those days he was courting Judith Weitz; the incident occurred one night after they'd gone out. David had returned late to the house on Disraeli Street, was mounting the stairs to his old bedroom on the third floor, when he heard voices coming from the closed upstairs sitting room, and paused on the steps to listen.

  His mother was speaking. There was something fierce and unfamiliar in her tone. She was berating Gideon, mercilessly, David thought, all the while punctuating her speech with what seemed to him to be inappropriate endearments.

  "Darling, darling…absolutely not acceptable. You must never do such a thing!…vile and cowardly…selfish…horrid. No, sweetheart! No son of mine…!"

  What were they talking about? David retreated two steps, to bring himself closer to the sitting room. Just then the door opened and Gideon appeared, wearing a pair of jeans and nothing else, his upper torso bare, gleaming with perspiration.

  "…disgusting…vile… Don't you dare walk out on me!" Their mother's voice continued to cut through the house as Gideon raised his head, saw David, and they locked eyes. Gideon's, David saw, were streaming tears.