Pattern crimes

by William Bayer

  Now, at last, a stricken look. The crafty old zek was scared. He said nothing, just gulped and turned away. "I don't know what you're talking about."

  "Well, here's food for thought," Targov said, rising, pulling out an envelope, laying it carefully on his chair. "Since I know you've never been out there, you couldn't possibly know what's been going on. Here are my photographs. When you recover from your little terror, examine them closely and compare them to your own. I think you'll find some interesting changes. There have been-how shall I put it?-erosions. Yes, certain erosions which most certainly do not coincide with the pristine vision you conjured up during all those painful years on strict regime."

  Out on the street, Targov walked briskly to Rokovsky, waiting in the rented car.

  "He's scared now. Maybe unnerved enough to move. Wait here and follow. I'll get myself back to Mishkenot."

  They were alone in the luxury restaurant behind the artist's residence. Anna, looking unhappy, said that she and her cello had unaccountably become estranged.

  "Renew the friendship," Targov suggested.

  "Easier said than done."

  "The detective-maybe he's the problem."

  She shook her head. "David wants desperately to help."

  Targov thought for a moment. "There's a drawing by Balthus. The Guitar Player.' It's very sexual."

  "Naturally." She smiled.

  "A man sits on a stool plucking at the genitals of a woman who lies across his lap like a guitar. He makes her sing. You could do that with your cello. Indulge yourself. Make love to your instrument. Think of it as, well…a little outside affair." She giggled. "Seriously, I wonder if it was a mistake for you to settle here. Everyone's so tormented. Loudmouths too. The pressures. The paranoia. All that's bound to take a toll."

  "Oh, Sasha," she said, "you don't understand. I wouldn't dream of living anyplace else. No outside affairs either-if that's what you're hinting at."

  He grinned, shrugged, then turned serious. "I've seen Sokolov several times but our encounters have not been satisfactory. He refuses to despise me-he won't forgive, and he won't retaliate. But I don't bring him up to burden you with that. For years I've lived with guilt; I'll manage to live with it some more."

  "Then why do you bring him up, Sasha?"

  "Because there's something very peculiar going on. He's involved with something here, something that's not quite right. He claims to have designed some simple-minded pattern they've carved out in the Negev, some sort of enormous environmental sculpture. But I'm absolutely positive he had nothing to do with it even though he's listed officially as the artist."

  Anna shook her head. "I don't understand why you're telling me this."

  "It's a fraud. Your boyfriend, the detective-I thought he might be interested."

  "David's working on a murder case, Sasha. He barely has time now to sleep."

  "Yes, of course. I'm sorry. Will he at least come to my unveiling?"

  "Both of us will come, of course."

  "I promise to astound you, Anna…" Tears filled his eyes.

  Rokovsky, usually so glacial and ironic, was excited, nearly feverish. He paced about Targov's apartment at Mishkenot, puffing vigorously on a cigarette.

  "Oh, he moved all right! In a way I'd never seen before. Agitated. Extremely agitated. Like a tightly wound spring just starting to uncoil."

  Targov smiled. "So the twisted wire no longer holds the bottle's shape."

  Rokovsky stared at him. "Pardon me?"

  "Nothing, Tola. Just a passing thought. Where did he go so fast?"

  "He boarded a bus, got off at Zion Square, plunged into the mob. He headed up Ben Yehuda like a demon, then, at the intersection near that big department store, he looked around as if afraid he was being followed."

  "He didn't see you?"

  "He doesn't know me. Anyway, he can barely see. But he was scared and angry. I'm telling you, Sasha, whatever it was he saw in those Polaroids, it gave him one big boot in the ass."

  "So where…?"

  "The foundation, the one that funded the design. He stormed up the stairs, then walked straight in without bothering to knock. I stood outside and listened to the argument. He was furious. The other man tried to calm him down."

  "What did he say?"

  Rokovsky stopped pacing, spread his arms. "You know I don't speak a word of Hebrew. But Sokolov doesn't speak it so well himself. Occasionally he'd slip into Russian. I understood enough. He was demanding extra money."

  "More than the ten thousand? Incredible!"

  "Maybe not so incredible if he was threatening to talk."

  "I see what you mean. The fraud…"

  "It's fishy as hell. Sokolov signed the drawings and was paid. But now things are different and he thinks he's entitled to more."

  "Did he get it?"

  Rokovsky shrugged. "I don't know. Finally he quieted down. When he left he looked exhausted. I followed him back on the bus, saw that he was going home. Then, when I started to look for a cab, I was stopped by another man who turned out to be a cop."

  "What?"

  "I'm telling you, Sasha-this thing is serious. The cop started yapping at me. Wanted to know who I was following and why. When he saw my American passport he changed his tune. Said he'd picked us up when we left the office building. He wanted to know which office Sokolov had been visiting. I told him, of course. He let me go and it was only later that I realized he'd been following the other guy-the guy Sokolov had gone there to meet."

  Targov, astonished now and totally confused, slapped himself on the top of the head.

  The unveiling took place at noon. The sun beat mercilessly, but the Israelis, out of respect for the occasion, had placed umbrellas behind the dais.

  The Mayor of Jerusalem was there; he made a gracious speech. Several ministers attended, the Director of the Israel Museum, and leaders of the Russian emigre community, each of whom embraced Targov in a slobbering Russian hug.

  Targov was tense. Would Sergei change his mind? The plan, fashioned so coolly back in California, now struck him as insane. Fact is, he thought, I'm a terrible coward. I'm nearly sixty-one and still afraid to die. Irina was right: I want to be like Trotsky. But even Trotsky would have flinched if he'd known the hour of his death.

  There was another thing-"The Righteous Martyr" didn't look all that splendid or even righteous anymore. It was one thing to view it inside a studio; here, beneath the sky, it seemed smaller, somehow diminished. Jerusalem was a great city packed with great works of public art. The Martyr was good, but no masterpiece, and it most certainly did not dominate its site.

  So, another illusion melted away, along with the image of the saintly Sergei and his sense of himself as a man who could face bullets with a smile. Now all he wanted was to get through the unveiling--get through it alive.

  "…and so we give our fondest thanks to Aleksandr Targov, who has donated this fine bronze work to commemorate the martyrdom of the suffering refusnik Soviet Jews. Let this site henceforth be the rallying point from which we demonstrate. Let it be the place from which we shout: 'Let My People Go…' "

  Targov modestly accepted the mayor's thanks, then the mayor's wife pulled the cord. The veil fell. "The Righteous Martyr" stood revealed in all its mediocre competence. Polite applause. Targov stiffened. If he's going to shoot he'll do it now. But there was no shot, the applause faded, and then the audience started to disperse.

  Anna kissed him on both his cheeks. The detective warmly shook his hand. Rokovsky led him to the car that would carry them to the reception at the mayor's home.

  As they drove off from the site Targov slowly shook his head: He had survived, and, perhaps best of all, Sergei Sokolov had proved himself a coward too.

  Early the next morning frantic knocking at his door. It was the director of Mishkenot, her face contorted with distress.

  "An outrage, Mr. Targov. A desecration. No words to describe our shame. That such a thing could happen here-it is not, I assure you, the Jewi
sh way. But," she added sternly, "the damage will be repaired. And the culprit, we vow it, will be punished as he deserves."

  "What culprit? What the hell are you talking about?"

  "I just don't understand it," the woman said. "Sometime in the night a maniac fired bullets at your sculpture. He hit it, too, and, I regret to say, shot off the martyred figure's nose."

  Targov stood stunned for a moment. Then he began to laugh. "Have you read Gogol, Madame? If so you'll understand. The nose, you see, is an organ with which all of us Russians are constantly obsessed."

  ROOM 304

  When Shoshana told David that Amit Nissim had identified rabbi Mordecai Katzer as the "scary-looking man with the beard," he could see the pattern beginning to come clear.

  The morning after Amit's revelation he called the PC Unit together. Stationing Rebecca Marcus at the door to be sure no one walked in, he picked up a piece of chalk and approached the blackboard which Dov had mounted on the squad room wall.

  At the top he drew a rectangle with three large circles inside. Below he drew a smaller box, and then another larger box at the bottom.

  He pointed to the rectangle. "The van," he explained. He pointed to the three circles. "The three men who fled." He pointed to the smaller box. "The Chief of Operations." He pointed to the large box at the bottom. "The operations group-the guys we've been calling 'the goons.' "

  Dov and Shoshana grinned. Micha and Uri moved uneasily in their chairs. David approached the board again.

  "Okay, here's what we know." In the circle on the left he wrote "Gati" and in the circle on the right he wrote "Katzer." He stared at the circles for a moment, placed a question mark inside the one in the middle, wrote the name "Cohen" in the Chief of Operations box, and, in the goon box, wrote the names of the four men they'd confronted and photographed when they'd raided the house on Lover of Zion Street.

  He pointed to Gati:

  "Retired Air Force general. Doesn't like the direction the country's going. Sickened by it. Thinks we're 'soft.' Cold, secular, elitist. A failed politician with grandiose fantasies of being a 'hunter' again, maybe leading an avenging knighthood and taking on some dirty clean-up jobs."

  He pointed to Ephraim Cohen:

  "Former Air Force intelligence officer, once Gati's aide-de-camp, now an official in Shin Bet where he commands the Lover of Zion Street baboons. Tried to steer us wrong on Peretz. Up to his ears in the cover-up. Intermediary between Gati and the operations group which recruited the executioner, operated the van, and transported the victims to the Mei Naftoah slaughterhouse."

  He returned to the rectangle, pointed to Katzer:

  "Racist religious demagogue. Strong connections with Jewish terrorist groups. Has called for annexation of the West Bank, an end to 'Hellenic culture,' creation of a fundamentalist theocratic state, expulsion of Arabs, and a 'Holy War of extermination' if we're ever attacked again. Much too crude for Gati. A man of an entirely different style. They don't belong together but there they were. At a certain point in time, our cool elegant retired general and our sweaty rabble-rousing rabbi were seen, at the corner of Yehuda Ha-Nasi and Berenice streets, getting out of Cohen's van."

  "A third man too." He rapped his knuckles hard against the question mark. "All we know about him now is that he was injured and limped away. He's the link. Find him and we'll have a shot at figuring out what they were doing. Do that and maybe we can stop them in their tracks. Based on what we know so far I'd say it's a safe guess these guys were hatching some kind of right-wing plot. At the very least I want to charge them with conspiracy. The preferred charge will be premeditated murder."

  He told Anna: "I didn't tell them about Gideon. I didn't think they needed to know. The way I'm going to handle this is send each of them out to work on separate pieces, then put the pieces together myself. But now I wonder: not saying anything-maybe that was a mistake. It isn't that I'm ashamed, you see, or that I want to cover up for Gideon, or that I think there's anything wrong that he had those feelings for other men. But somehow dragging that in…" He shook his head. "It didn't seem appropriate."

  She looked at him. "You weren't trying to cover up for Gideon, David. You were protecting your father. But I think there's going to come a point in all of this when you're going to have to think about protecting yourself."

  Uri was driving. They were in an unmarked police Subaru. They had just passed the large red Calder sculpture at Holland Square and now were heading west toward the small suburban village of Ein Kerem. It had taken Uri only four days to find the van. David couldn't believe it. "How?" he asked.

  "Took your advice," Uri said. "Started with gas stations. Went to the one nearest Lover of Zion Street, then tried the one just after the turn-off to the slaughterhouse. First guy I talked to there knew the car. Seems they had an account and gassed up there regularly. When I showed around Dov's pictures, a couple of the guys recognized them right away. The manager said that Yoni, the short muscle-bound one who drew the gun on Dov, came by every week to pay off the account. But no one's been by lately, not since the day of our bust. So I thought: Okay, they must have stashed that damn vehicle just the way you said.

  "I started calling on garages. Anyone remember housing a big dark blue Chevrolet van? About number thirty-six down the list I hit this greasy place in Romema. They remember keeping it a couple of days, but it's not there anymore. I showed around the pictures. The boss picked out Yoni again. He even knew him by name." Uri glanced at David. "He knew him as Igal Hurwitz."

  "The phony cop who took down all the names."

  Uri nodded. "That's the one. Too bad little Amit doesn't remember him, but that's okay-now I know I'm onto something good. I call the boss aside, swear him to secrecy, tell him I'm with a special undercover unit investigating corruption in the Jerusalem police. Now he's interested-everybody hates the cops. So I tell him Hurwitz is suspected of taking bribes, which he's invested in this big fancy American van, and now I'm looking for the van because it could be crucial evidence when Hurwitz goes to trial. By this time the guy's frothing-he thinks he may know where that van is stashed. Hurwitz was looking for a place to store it cheap, and the garage owner sent him to a friend who owns an old ruined Arab farmhouse down in Ein Kerem."

  They had entered the village, birthplace of John the Baptist. They passed a ceramics studio, a leather shop, a good art gallery, a non-kosher Hungarian restaurant, and finally an inn, a gathering place for the crafts-and-culture set, famous for its macrobiotic Sabbath lunch.

  It was late afternoon. The town was almost empty. Uri swung the Subaru up a narrow road that ran back toward the Jerusalem Forest. They passed several farmhouses that had been gutted and turned into villas, then followed a dirt track which led to another farmhouse, this one still in ruins.

  "The guy who owns it hasn't raised the money yet to fix it up," Uri said. "I checked him out. He's probably on the level. Didn't contact him though. Didn't want to alert our friends."

  Uri parked behind a gnarled old olive tree. There were stones scattered everywhere, pieces of the house torn loose from its walls. David got out and followed Uri around to the back. Here there was a second stone structure in better shape than the first, built into the side of a slope, with a large set of padlocked wooden doors.

  "Farmers used it for storage," Uri explained. "Over on the right there's a little gap in the slats." He pulled a flashlight from his pocket and gestured David forward. "Shine this in and take a look."

  David found the gap and peered inside. The chromed front grill of the van was just inches from his face.

  "We have to get in here."

  Uri nodded. "I brought along some tools."

  While he went back to the Subaru, David looked around. The stone barn could not be observed from the road, but there was a direct sightline, across the gully to the rear, to the Franciscan Church of St. John situated on the hill just behind Ein Kerem. A man, posted up there with binoculars, would be able to keep a watch.

  Uri r
eturned with an automobile jack and a pair of plumber's pliers. He set the jack under the right-hand door, then, attaching the pliers to the lower hinge-pin, carefully worked it loose. He removed the upper pin the same way, then knelt to pump the jack. The door, creaking, rose a fraction of an inch. Uri lowered the jack and pumped it up again, gently working the door up and down. When he was satisfied it would swing out, he stepped back, looked around, fetched a large flat stone, placed it a foot from the edge of the portal, then knelt again and carefully grasped hold of the bottom of the door.

  "Here's where the old weight-training comes in."

  He squeezed his eyes, screwed up his face, and sucked in his breath. Then, exhaling, he pulled the door off its hinges and, with an enormous groan, set it down upon the stone.

  There was a ten-inch entry gap into the barn.

  "Can you squeeze in there? I sure as hell can't," Uri said.

  Shoulder first, David wedged himself inside. When he was clear of the portal, Uri handed him the flashlight. He switched it on and began to inspect the van.

  There was barely enough room to turn around; the sides of the vehicle were just inches from the walls. He managed to get into the driver's seat, then crawled over its back into the compartment behind.

  He shined his flashlight around, looked under the seats and then inside the ashtrays. Nothing. He had expected that-he knew Cohen wouldn't allow the van to be stashed until it had been thoroughly cleaned out.

  Of course there was a chance the clean-up had not been perfect, something that could only be determined by a police forensic team. He could call one in now and gamble they'd pick up traces of powder or even Peretz's blood. But the odds of that were low, Cohen and his people would be tipped off, there'd be another inter-service dispute, and in the end, David knew, forensic evidence wouldn't be enough.

  In fact, if there was any evidence, it would only point to the goons. David didn't particularly care about them. He wanted Gati, Katzer, the third man who'd been injured in the accident, and, most of all, he wanted Ephraim Cohen.

  Now he sat in the rear seat of the van trying to imagine what the accident had been like. Two of the three were probably sitting where he was seated now, the third on the bench opposite. The driver, using the alias of Hurwitz, had been driving them in random circles around Jerusalem. A moving safe-house. Extreme precautions. Everything arranged so that three men would not be seen. But then the unexpected: Schneiderman's truck smashed into the side of their secret mobile conference room. Suddenly, in front of witnesses, the three men had been exposed.