Land, Jon

by [Kamal

  “Stay back!” al-Shaer ordered the Cleaners when they started forward again. He lowered his voice. “You’ve heard things about me, too, I suppose. How I drank too much and killed a few patients.”

  “I’ve heard the rumors,” Ben conceded, nodding. “I should have asked.”

  “Nobody ever does. The truth is that I was a hakeemna for my village and held in the highest esteem everywhere else, believe it or not. It was I who initiated the blood-donor programs in Nablus, Ramallah, and Hebron. The procedures I dictated for identification and contact are still used today.”

  “What happened?”

  Al-Shaer’s voice grew distant. His eyes drifted away from Ben’s. “There were two of them, a young girl and an elderly man. The young girl had taken an Israeli bullet that ricocheted off a building. They came and got me out of a restaurant. She was half dead by the time I reached her. We got her to my office. There was little I could do, but I tried anyway. A mistake as it turned out: when she died, I was issued a warning by the local Israeli military commander. He claims he had proof I was drinking.”

  “I’m surprised he cared.”

  “He cared about finding a reason to yank another physician out of the West Bank.” Al-Shaer swallowed hard. “The episode with the elderly man happened later that same week. I hadn’t been drinking at all when they brought him to my office; feverish, blood pressure sky rocketing. It didn’t take more than a quick examination to determine his appendix had burst. He had minutes to live, no time to get him to a hospital, so I operated on the spot. And I saved him! I saved him, Inspector!” Al-Shaer’s features fell as quickly as they had risen. “But he died of a heart attack before we could get him to the clinic. A soldier reported seeing me drinking in my office earlier in the day: a diet soda, that was all, but not according to him. I was arrested and sent to the Ansar 3 detention camp in the Negev.”

  Ben looked at him in silence.

  “I’m telling you this,” al-Shaer continued, “because I want you to understand that loss is something quite well known in this part of the world. You might say it’s what holds us together as a people. Get used to it.”

  “Believe me, I am.”

  Al-Shaer shrugged and finally signaled the Cleaners to proceed. They emerged through the glass doors and laid a stretcher next to Dalia Mikhail. They lifted her onto it carelessly and hoisted the stretcher up and out, as the medical examiner looked on, fingering his pack of cigarettes longingly.

  Al-Shaer’s eyes shifted suddenly and Ben followed them to the living room beyond to see Danielle Barnea making her way through, escorted by an officer on either side. Pretending as though they weren’t there. Stopping to let the brothers carry Dalia on by.

  “I came as soon as I heard,” she said, stopping at the doorway. “I offered to have a full forensics team accompany me, but was refused permission.”

  “Doctor al-Shaer can handle things as well as they can,” Ben said, his eyes on the fat man, seeing him in an entirely different light. “Just don’t lose the body this time.”

  Al-Shaer allowed himself a small smile and walked through the apartment, cigarette already dangling from his mouth when he reached the door.

  “Come on out, Pakad. The crime scene’s already been corrupted beyond repair.”

  Danielle stayed where she was. “You knew her, didn’t you?”

  “Shaath tell you that?”

  She shook her head. “He didn’t have to.” She cleared her throat. “Three killings in Jericho now, ten total, and he deviated from many of his established patterns to boot. Strange.”

  Ben looked up from the splotchy outline on the deck that had been Dalia Mikhail. “Not strange at all.”

  “You think he did this to get to you?”

  “I’m sure of it.”

  “This isn’t the Sandman.”

  “No, it’s al-Diib, and he’s repeating the pattern. The Sandman came at me when I was getting close. The Wolf is doing the same, going after someone— the only person—I cared about, because I must be getting close again.”

  “You think he’d go through all that just to scare you off?”

  “I was already scared.” Ben’s entire expression, his very demeanor, seemed to change as Danielle stood there watching. “I’m not anymore.”

  He turned away from her toward the lush foliage to the east that rustled softly in the night breeze, questions of entry, fingerprints, and potential physical evidence very far from his mind. He saw himself climbing a staircase, the Sandman struggling to fit his wife’s nightgown over his clothes, having to tear it to manage. Hitting him at home.

  Al-Diib trying the same thing. In for a big surprise.

  I’m going to kill you, you bastard. This time, I’m going to kill you. . . .

  * * * *

  * * * *

  Chapter 26

  B

  en lingered in the apartment for the rest of the night, if for no other reason than to keep al-Asi’s team stewing outside. Danielle insisted on staying with him, until another officer delivered a message from Officer Tawil that it was urgent Inspector Kamal meet him in the Baladiya, saying he had made a potential breakthrough in the case. Ben had forgotten what Tawil was following up. There’d been some messages, notes, nothing he could remember now.

  “We’ll take my car,” Ben suggested to Danielle, watching the Protective Security Service men heading for the villa before he even had the door closed.

  Ten minutes later, Ben pulled to a halt on Jaffa Street slightly up from the Hisbe, four blocks from the alley where the victim had been found.

  “Good morning, Inspector,” Officer Issa Tawil greeted Ben somberly when he emerged from the car. “I’m told you had a very difficult night.”

  “Left me very cranky, and very impatient, Tawil. Now tell me about this breakthrough.”

  Before he could begin, the young officer’s eyes widened at the sight of Danielle emerging from the passenger side. “You have not had the opportunity yet to meet Pakad Danielle Barnea of the Israeli National Police.”

  Danielle nodded at Tawil and Ben was struck by the way the morning sun caught her face so that it looked as though a master artist had applied her flesh tones with perfectly measured strokes. Apparently Tawil noticed it too, his stare lingering uncomfortably.

  “Chief Inspector Barnea and I are working together to catch al-Diib. She is to be afforded all respect due any other superior officer,” Ben told him. “Our interests are identical. We will be holding nothing back. Now tell me the reason for dragging us here.”

  Tawil cleared his throat, refocused his thinking. “It’s about a car, Inspector.”

  “As I recall, I assigned you to check hotels and inns in search of a missing guest who might have been our unidentified victim.”

  “I completed that task last night, Inspector. No such place reports any missing guest.”

  “Then tell me about this car.”

  “I got to thinking about your comments concerning the victim’s shoes, how they only had a thin layer of dust affixed to their soles, matching only the samples from Jaffa Street.”

  “So?”

  “So your conclusion was, he couldn’t have walked very far before he was murdered. Then how did he get to the area he was killed in? No buses run at this hour. We checked the taxi services and found nothing. That meant he either drove or was dropped off, and since there were no abandoned cars in the vicinity, we ruled out driving himself.”

  “That much I recall, Tawil.”

  The young officer looked at Danielle, then back at Ben. “Please follow me.”

  He led the way down a through street that ran off Jaffa and connected with another main avenue on the other side. He stopped at a narrow two-story white stone house squeezed between two others halfway down, one of the few on the street with a driveway.

  “I got to thinking where the victim might have left his car if he did drive,” Tawil continued. “I asked all the residents in the immediate vicinity who had private parking
places or driveways.” He looked at the home in front of them. “The man who lives here has already gone to work, but I have his statement. He told me a man knocked on his door late Sunday night and paid him fifty American dollars to let him leave his car in this driveway for a while.”

  “Did he describe the man?” Ben asked excitedly.

  Tawil shrugged. “It was night. He has bad eyes. He remembers brown hair, dark eyes. Relatively tall, six feet anyway, with a firm build.”

  Ben looked at Danielle. “Consistent with the autopsy report.”

  “The resident was much more specific about the car, Inspector: a yellow or cream-colored BMW.”

  “What about the license plates?”

  Another shrug. “He never looked.”

  “Did he say for how long the car’s owner intended to leave his vehicle?”

  “Not long. An hour at most. The man agreed, of course, took the money, and went to bed.”

  Ben paced about the driveway, as if the uneven gravel surface might tell him something. “So our victim parks here, not wanting his car to be noticed. He walks toward his meeting, intending to be back after only an hour, you said. What happened when he didn’t come back at all?”

  “When the man living here woke up early the next morning, the car was still in his driveway. When he returned from work that afternoon, it had not been moved. He waited until the next morning, when he had it towed by a local shop.”

  “He didn’t call the police.”

  “He did, but we did not respond.”

  “But you’ve found the car, haven’t you?” Ben questioned, feeling a glimmer of hope rise inside him.

  Tawil’s features sank a little. “I thought I had. That was to be my surprise this morning, taking you to the station where it was being stored. Only they lost it.”

  “Lost it?”

  “It was stolen from one of their bays.”

  “Damn.” Ben thought of the prostitute’s murder and now of the equally convenient theft of what might have been the murder victim’s car.

  “It was not a professional job, Inspector,” Tawil added, as if reading his mind. “Glass was broken everywhere, the lock hacked open, not picked. I think it was amateurs, kids probably, trying to make a fast buck at the Mabara.”

  “Cemetery?” Danielle raised her eyebrows as she translated the word into English.

  “In this case, a square in the slums of Nablus where black market goods are sold,” Ben explained. “Called that because it borders an ancient graveyard. But don’t let the name fool you. The Mabara has been very profitable since the gradual end to the occupation has reduced the flow of expensive items to the West Bank.”

  “I would have thought just the opposite would happen.”

  “So did everyone else. But our currency has little value and distributors don’t see it being worth their time and effort. That has opened the door for a lively black market to fill the gap. The merchants of the Mabara offer items not always available before, but at a ridiculous cost. Color televisions, VCRs, even air conditioners ...”

  “And cars,” Tawil added.

  “Most everything there has been stolen. You can forget about unopened boxes and manufacturer’s warranties, Pakad,” Ben continued. “In the Mabara you pay your money and hope for the best.”

  “You think this car might be there now?” she asked.

  “An expensive item like that often takes considerable time to move,” Tawil responded with a hopeful shrug.

  Danielle looked at both of them. “Then what are we waiting for?”

  * * * *

  Y

  ou can see it now,” Ben said, pointing through the chalky windshield for Danielle’s benefit. Their drive had taken them west along dusty roads to Nablus. “Just up ahead.”

  Of all the West Bank towns and settlements, Nablus was by the far the most commercial. The Mabara, the square where the black marketeers had set up shop, was squeezed amid rubble from run-down, rat-infested buildings on the edge of the ancient cemetery.

  The setup in those spaces from which the rubble had been pushed aside looked to Danielle similar to that of the flea market in Old Jaffa, albeit lacking the colorful merchants and artistically arranged merchandise. Here, those with enough money bought from stacks of boxes or chose their wares from open crates. She could see the VCRs and color televisions, the air conditioners all of Jericho longed for. This was where Ben had bought the fans for his apartment, albeit not in uniform.

  Most of the electronics equipment came from Israel, and there were rumors that Israeli merchants were the Mabara’s largest suppliers. Deals were cut every day, profits shared on a reasonably equal basis. Peace, it seemed, was working out much better for the black marketeers than for the people at large. Danielle wondered if Ismail Atturi’s refrigerators had been headed here, maybe even his guns.

  Ben parked in the street and climbed out ahead of Tawil and Danielle. He could feel Tawil draw even with him and stand cautiously alert. Danielle hung slightly back, taking in the surroundings. The trio moved forward as one, through the array of difficult negotiations that dropped to a hush when they passed by. Quiet, caustic murmurs followed them like hungry dogs.

  “Go away!”

  “What do you want here?”

  “We aren’t hurting anyone.”

  “Mind your own fucking business!”

  The remarks grew bolder as they drew deeper into somebody else’s world. Ben was glad no one was selling guns—or carrying them, so far as he could see. Since the Authority had backed up its insistence that Palestinians not be allowed to own guns with stiff penalties for violators, both supply and demand had dropped considerably.

  The available cars were squeezed together behind a jagged cap rock wall. A pair of men looked to be doing the selling. There weren’t many takers. The few men and women who’d ventured behind the wall were clearly browsing.

  “What do you want?” a short, fat salesman asked Ben in an accusing voice.

  “Maybe I’m here to buy,” he said, scanning the assortment of cars. “You have specials for cops?”

  “You serious?”

  “I’m here, aren’t I?”

  The fat salesman seemed to relax a little, embarrassed by his earlier apparent indiscretion. “So you are. A man must have his transportation, and I have some very good models to choose from.” He leered at Danielle. “Or something for the young lady perhaps?”

  Ben felt Tawil touch his shoulder gently. He turned and followed the line of his finger to a mustard-colored BMW on the far right. The salesman fell in behind them as they started toward it.

  “A wise choice!” he beamed. “An excellent choice!”

  They found the doors unlocked and opened the front ones. Ben checked the center console, Tawil the glove compartment. Danielle lingered behind them to watch for any misplaced motion on the other side of the wall.

  “Empty,” Tawil reported.

  “Here, too,” Ben followed.

  “Of course!” the salesman said, clapping his hands lightly. “You think I would sell you a car that had not been thoroughly cleaned?”

  Ben straightened up. “I think we’ll take this one off your hands.”

  “Splendid!” The salesman’s features sank just a little. “But we haven’t discussed the price yet.”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  “Of course! Of course, it doesn’t!”

  “You see, we’re going to do you a favor. We’re going to take it off your hands, and we’re not going to arrest you. A fair bargain, don’t you think?”

  “What is this bull-—”

  Ben lashed a hand out and grasped the salesman’s fleshy throat before he could complete the word. “We don’t want to be swearing in front of a woman now, do we? See, this car belonged to a man who was murdered Sunday night. Since it is in your possession, I can only assume you were involved.”

  “But—”

  “Worth a tidy sum, I should expect. Enough to keep you in hard currency for
your next thousand meals if you watch your diet. I don’t know why, but if you get me the keys now I am going to forget how I came by this car. This really is your lucky day.” Ben removed his hand from the man’s throat.

  The salesman was waving his arms concedingly, starting to move away. “A moment, just a moment!”

  He hurried toward the open space in the center of the batch of cars where the other salesman was waiting. Ben kept his eyes on him the whole time, unsnapped the restraint on his pistol.