Pattern crimes

by William Bayer

  "…come back in here, darling! I insist! Immediately!"

  But Gideon just stood there, eyes still locked with David's, his chest heaving as he wept. Finally unable to bear this vision of anguish and vulnerability, David broke contact and continued up the stairs.

  "Okay," said Micha, reading from his notes, "we got ourselves a pretty fancy boy. Ephraim Cohen: thirty-two years old, born on Kibbutz Giv'at Haim. Graduate of Balliol College, Oxford. Did two years' graduate work in Arab studies at Harvard. Distinguished military record: fighter pilot, later detached to General Yigal Gati as a special aide. Served in Air Force intelligence. Six years ago he transferred to General Security Services. Married to Dr. Shira Aloni, another kibbutznik, now associate professor of botany, Hebrew University. The Cohens have two children, a boy and a girl. They live in a handsome flat on Arlosoroff just across from the Van Leer Foundation. Cohen is known as an Anglophile; he favors fine English tailoring and speaks the language like an upper class Brit. He's also fluent in Arabic. Far as his politics go, I couldn't pick up much. He's not religious, nor, so far as I can tell, associated with any particular faction within Shin Bet. Basically, David, what you've got here is a typical young, elite, secular Israeli, well-off, probably Labor Party liberal, ambitious, hardworking, superbly educated, and very well connected. If there's a blot I can't find it. In a funny way he seems…"

  "What?"

  Micha squinted. "A little too perfect, know what I mean? Maybe just too good to be true."

  "So, Rafi," David asked, "has Latsky found us another dirty little job?"

  Rafi laughed. "Latsky's shitting in his pants."

  The last time Rafi had described Latsky's anxiety, he'd told David the superintendent was pissing blood.

  "Why? All we did-"

  "No, not that. A male body turned up, hidden pretty well in a gully near Kafr Aqab. It could have lain there for years if some Bedouin hadn't stumbled by. The vultures made a pretty good meal of the guy, but the forensic team managed to get some prints. He checks out as a bully-sadist from the Haifa waterfront. Military records show he was sentenced to five years in prison for assault on an officer. Then suddenly he was released."

  "One of Peretz's boys. The 'Executioner.' How was he killed?"

  "Hard and slow."

  "He was marked, of course." David didn't bother to conceal his sense of vindication.

  "Since Peretz's story to you finally checks out, the minister's changed his mind. Congratulations, David." Rafi grinned. As of now you're back on the case."

  Anna described "toska" to him-a melancholy longing that struck her sometimes when she played, a sad and anguished yearning for her motherland.

  She smiled when she told him that toska was a feeling no expatriate Russian could avoid.

  "Targov feels it very strongly," she said. "I think he could die of it if he allowed himself." Then, after a pause: "Sometimes, David, I think that's why he came."

  "To die?"

  She nodded. "To die here in Jerusalem."

  On a golden Sabbath they went together to The Shrine of the Book to see the Dead Sea Scrolls. "They are like title deeds to us," David explained. "Proof of our ownership of this land."

  Later, facing the black wall outside, the wall that symbolized the forces of darkness that prevailed before the revelations of the Book, he said: "The case involves my entire life. I keep looking for an elegant solution. There're all these different paths leading off in different directions, and I don't know which one to follow to get me through the maze."

  She placed her hand against his cheek, then arched up on her toes and kissed him between his eyes. "The same problem with my sonata," she said softly. "A thicket of ideas. Lots of different ways to play different sections. But no clean clear line leading to the finish."

  Sometimes, after they made love, early in the morning or late in the afternoon before the sky turned dark, he would turn to her, look directly into her eyes, and then would see all the colors of the sun spreading out from her pupils in a wheel of fire.

  A fine private house in the German Colony. An old lady in a green housedress, her white hair arranged in chaotic wisps, greeted David at the door.

  "Moshe Liederman? Yes, he's here, young man. Up three flights, then follow the corridor."

  Old wood steps creaked beneath his feet. He smelled dead flowers, and then, on the third floor, the dark aroma of rooms closed up and rarely aired. Down the corridor past old black-framed schoolroom etchings of classical Roman scenes. At the end an open door revealed a narrow attic room.

  Liederman, wearing a worn gray sweater, sat crouched over a wooden desk. He was reading clippings, a cigarette in his hand. When he heard David's steps he looked up, surprised.

  "Captain Bar-Lev!" He started to rise.

  "Stay still, Moshe." David peered about. The room was lined with shelves packed with folders containing old newspapers and books. "So this is your archive. Okay if I sit down?"

  Liederman cleared a pile of papers off a chair. His thumb and forefinger were stained with nicotine.

  "I'm honored. But you should have warned me. I'd have straightened things up and bought some beer."

  David inspected the room again. "Tell me what you've got here? And what you're trying to find out?"

  Liederman was cautious at first, perhaps afraid David would find him Holocaust-obsessed. But soon he revealed the dimensions of his archive: a vast collection of Polish newspapers from the years 1938 to 1944, in Polish and Yiddish, as well as mimeographed underground newsletters and other circulated tracts produced after the Yiddish papers were closed down. It was an archive that documented the destruction of Polish Jewry, the core collection inherited from his father, then supplemented by years of methodical attendance at estate sales, and purchases made at flea markets and in secondhand stores.

  "So what are you seeking in all this?"

  "I read through it looking for an answer."

  "An answer to what?"

  "To how it could have happened, how this culture, so bittersweet, so vibrant and alive, was so suddenly and utterly destroyed. But of course I know how that happened. The historians have explained it very well." Liederman paused. "Perhaps I read through it just to feel the loss. Perhaps," he added, "just to feel."

  "Listen, Moshe-there's something I'd like you to do. I can't promise it'll be useful, but it's possible it could prevent another tragedy. You told me you're good at following and that you like to look under every stone."

  Liederman smiled. "I like that more than anything."

  "In that case," David said, "you may enjoy this very much. I want you to follow a certain Shin Bet officer. His name is Ephraim Cohen…"

  "Shoshana, remember that little scrapbook you put together for Amit, the one with all the men who'd been on TV panel shows? I want you to make up another one for her, this time of 'scary-looking' guys with beards."

  Uri lived North of Jerusalem on Le'a Goldberg Street in the suburb of Neve Ya'acov. David drove out there on Saturday afternoon, spent twenty minutes searching out the address, and then, when he finally found the Schuster's first-floor apartment, came face to face for the first time with Uri's wife.

  "You must be Captain Bar-Lev," she said. She was a stout broadly built woman with gleeful twinkling eyes. "Uri's down there." She pointed to the basement stairs.

  He made his way to the cellar, then followed a corridor that led past storage and utility rooms. He passed a laundry room, smelled the dry hot air of the driers, the aroma of detergent, and the sweat of people waiting for their wash. He was about to return to Mrs. Schuster for more detailed directions, when he heard sounds of panting and then a harrowing groan.

  "Uri?"

  He moved toward the sounds, found himself in the doorway of a windowless low-ceilinged room. The bare concrete walls were dank. Uri, wearing a sleeveless singlet, was working out with a set of ancient barbells. There were beads of sweat on his hairy shoulders, and, when he recognized David, a sudden expression of distress, a
s if he were embarrassed at being caught doing something so stupid as lifting weights.

  As they talked Uri mopped himself with a towel.

  "I want you to find the van."

  "That's impossible. They got rid of it."

  "Cleaned it up, painted it, altered the registration, hid it away. But junked it? No. That's too rich even for them."

  "How am I going to…?"

  "Auto paint shops. Repair shops. Gas stations. They have to maintain the vehicle. And this isn't New York-there aren't that many fancy American vans around. I brought the pictures Dov took of the four goons and the girl." He handed them to Uri.

  "Well, with these it's different, David. Yeah. Maybe…"

  "When you find it don't move in, just let me know."

  "No criticism intended, David," Rafi said. 'But aren't you putting an awful lot of your case into the hands of a six-year-old child?"

  "She's almost seven."

  "Be serious."

  "Okay, Rafi, if it weren't for Amit we wouldn't know about Gati or be able to place four of our victims at the accident scene. If I really thought she was going to be our star witness at a trial, then, sure, I admit she couldn't possibly support the case. But I don't think of her that way. For me she's a source, very reliable up to now, who just might lead me to another one of the three guys who were in that van. When I finally find out who they are, then I'll know what this case is all about. And then, maybe, I'll be able to figure out a way to break it open and bring in the bastards who think it's okay to kill some 'wild cards' so they can make suckers out of stupid cops."

  "Was Gideon really so vulnerable?" Anna asked. "From the way you've described him I've gotten an impression of a kind of icy prince."

  "Sure, he was that, but underneath he was troubled. When I listened to Dr. Blumenthal I felt sick at heart. I wished we'd been closer. I wished he'd trusted me. But the way things are here I can understand why he didn't think he could."

  "Yosef's gay."

  "Yosef's an artist. When he does his reserve duty he gives concerts at military bases. Pilots are different. And Israel is different too. We're just starting to acknowledge life-styles that are taken for granted in the States. To live openly as a homosexual here is to accept the fact that generally one is going to be reviled."

  "Would you have helped him, David?"

  "I like to think so." Sorrowfully David shook his head. "On his own terms he was in a terrible kind of bind."

  "So he committed suicide."

  "At that time, in his particular state of torment, he must have felt that was his only way. Ephraim wanted him to do something and threatened that if he didn't he'd be exposed-grounded and disgraced."

  "But wasn't that a bluff? Ephraim was involved too. Worse, he was married. Seems to me he would have been even more disgraced."

  "That's logical, Anna. But this wasn't a poker game in which Gideon was coolly sizing Ephraim up. The issue wasn't whether Ephraim would follow through on his threat. My father put his finger on it: It was the betrayal implicit in the threat itself. The thing you have to remember about these Shin Bet creeps is that almost all their operations are based on manipulation. They're trained to find a person's weakness and then exploit it. Ephraim, who'd known Gideon since boyhood, must have thought he knew all his weaknesses: his fear of exposure, and of being shamed before our mother, and his self-hatred on account of being attracted to men. The one weakness that perhaps he didn't know about was Gideon's extreme sensitivity to the slightest hint of personal betrayal. So here he was threatened with betrayal by one of his closest, oldest friends, a man moreover with whom he may have been in love and with whom he was physically involved. What could he do? Yield to Ephraim's blackmail and perform the illegal mission? Or kill himself because he couldn't perform it, and couldn't face the threatened consequences? In an extreme emotional crisis situation like that, the question of whether Ephraim was bluffing would have been almost irrelevant."

  "But, David, what was the illegal mission?"

  "That," he said, "is what I'm going to find out."

  THE UNVEILING

  Here was Sergei, living free and retired in this gorgeous sun-struck city, behaving like a bored old pensioner in Minsk. He rarely ventured out, and, on the few occasions that he did, it was to buy a Russian language newspaper and take it to a drab suburban park. There he'd read it, leave it on his bench, then walk back to his hideous housing block. He did not look around, gaze at buildings, absorb the beauty, breathe deeply of the air.

  Targov spent three days following him. When it became too tedious he turned the job over to Rokovsky.

  "Listen," Targov told him, "this is a little man who lives a little life. Not one who dreams up vast schemes to be carved out in the desert sand."

  "The work is his. I've verified that."

  "Who paid for it?"

  "I told you. An American group, some kind of fine arts foundation."

  "Why choose him?"

  "Perhaps out of pity."

  "Perhaps this, perhaps that. There's something wrong here, Tola. I want facts. You must find out for me: Why Sokolov? Why?"

  At night Targov visited the warehouse where "The Righteous Martyr" was stored. Rokovsky had arranged for the sculpture, covered with a plastic sheet, to be placed upon timbers so that it was suspended a foot above the floor.

  Targov, wearing work clothes, wriggled beneath it, dragging along a flashlight, a hammer, and a pot of clay.

  If it should fall now and squash me, he thought, it would probably serve me right.

  Once beneath the hollow bottom, he sat up straight so that his torso was literally inside the statue. Using the hammer, he carefully broke the seal he had painted to match the bronze, then reached up, unclasped the hidden tube, pulled it out, and set to work patching up the hiding place with clay.

  When he was finished he shined his flashlight around. Finding his repairs seamless, he lowered himself and wriggled out. When he stood up, triumphant, grasping the tube, he moved too fast and strained his back.

  In three days the unveiling would take place. The plumbers had installed the pipes, the sod had been laid, and now masons were busy positioning the paving stones so that viewers could circle "The Righteous Martyr" without treading on the grass.

  "There seems to have been some sort of military fund," Rokovsky said. He and Targov were on the first of their three daily inspections of the site.

  Targov grimaced. "You told me a foundation."

  "A joint venture. Each put up a certain amount. The foundation funded the design; the military paid for the actual work. The work, by the way, is entitled 'Circle in the Square.' "

  "How much?"

  "Ten thousand for Sokolov. Impossible to estimate how much to move the sand."

  "Ten thousand dollars! Impossible!"

  "That much, Sasha, is a fact."

  "But something's not a fact-is that what you're telling me?"

  Rokovsky nodded. "There is something queer about the deal."

  "What?"

  "Difficult to say. Maybe it's just my feeling. The designs were drawn in a most exacting manner, like architect's plans, precise to the centimeter, as if the measurements were crucial, and the exact angles to the compass points as well."

  "Tola, for God's sake! What does all that mean?"

  Rokovsky shrugged. "Maybe Sokolov didn't make the drawings."

  "He could have come up with the idea, then hired a draftsman…" But why the hell am I arguing the other side?

  "I spoke to the engineer in charge of the project. He was quite certain about this, absolutely firm: Sokolov never, ever, not one single time, contacted him or visited the site."

  Targov strode away. He couldn't understand it. The whole business was just too maddening.

  "Okay, rent a car," he yelled across the freshly watered lawn. "No more planes. This time we drive. We'll leave right after lunch."

  Down rocky roads, across sinuous sands, through a stony wasteland of sweltering emptiness. W
hen they finally arrived, exhausted, eyes tired, throats parched, Targov shook his head.

  "You see, Tola, in the middle of nowhere it serves no purpose, none at all. Oh, I know the theories-I've read them in the art magazines: how the difficulty in reaching the site is inextricable from the work; how the inaccessibility is the point, blah-blah-blah… But Sokolov the trinket carver! Such grand concepts never entered his brain. I'm telling you: Israelis don't waste money. There's a fraud being perpetrated here."

  "Good. Now what are we going to do about it?"

  "To begin with, get out the Polaroid and photograph the damn thing from every side. I'm telling you, this shape means something. 'Circle in the Square'-that's not even what it is. It's a circle in a trapezoid. I've seen it before, too, but, in my pathetic dotage, I just can't remember where…"

  On Sokolov's face an expression of bemused contempt. "So it's you," he said, blocking the door.

  "Pardon me, Sergei, but were you expecting someone else? Irina's gone home. She didn't say good-bye? Oh dear!"

  Sergei, glancing meaningfully at the tube in Targov's hand, stepped back into his room. "Is that the punishing instrument?" He asked. "I meant it, Sasha. I decline to participate in your self-serving little farce."

  "I brought it anyway, in case you changed your mind."

  "I won't."

  "Don't be so sure. I may give you a new reason to want to knock me off."

  "Don't you understand: the sweetest vengeance I can have is to wake up every morning thinking of you waking up remembering what you did."

  "I'm not here to discuss vengeance, Sergei. My unveiling is tomorrow. I'm inviting you to come. I'd like you to be my honored guest."

  "So if I won't lie in the shrubbery with your ridiculous rifle, I'm to sit at your right hand cheering with the notables."

  "You're in trouble, Sergei Sergeievich!"

  "Not me, Aleksandr Nicholaivich! I bear no guilt."

  "Twice I've been out to see your earthwork. You didn't design it. You acted as a proxy. For whom? And why? You'd better tell. Because I promise you this, Sergei: The fraud won't stand."