by Liad Shoham
“Don’t waste your breath, Rachel. We’re no longer interested. Go issue an indictment on the basis of what you’ve got. We’ll cope.”
Zuriel chewed on her lip. Up until a few minutes ago, she was sure the only question was how much time Faro would spend behind bars. Now she had nothing. She couldn’t go to court with no more than two words.
“So I assume we’re done here,” Borochov said, and started talking about the upcoming legal convention in Eilat.
She didn’t take in a word of what he said. She was furious with the cops for this stupid arrest that had put her in the hot seat and with herself for giving in to the temptation to play along with it. The whole house of cards had come down around her. They’d have to release Faro, and they’d thrown Nevo to the wolves to boot.
“There’s just one request I’d like to make,” she said, interrupting Borochov’s monologue. “Tell your client to let Nevo go.”
“Oh, about that. I forgot to tell you. It was a matter of mistaken identity, someone who looked like Nevo. My client has no idea where Nevo is.”
Zuriel fell back in her chair. No pill in the world would make her headache go away now.
Chapter 51
MESHULAM was standing on the corner watching the paramedics wheel a stretcher carrying the body of Yossi Golan out of the apartment on Jeremiah Street in Tel Aviv. He still ached all over from the brush with the man in Nevo’s apartment, and his face was swollen, especially his nose. It was probably broken. When he looked at himself in the mirror this morning, his face seemed even more menacing than usual.
He knew Golan well, was actually fond of the bastard. But he wasn’t sorry he was dead. The traitor had dug his own grave. There was only one punishment for loose lips in their organization. Golan knew that. So did Meshulam.
He tried to get the image out of his head, but he couldn’t help seeing the day thirteen years ago when he watched the paramedics wheel his mother’s body out of the house. He was the one who found her. She died of an overdose, just like Golan. He remembered every detail of that day, including the sour smell of death in the apartment. He was only sixteen. Miriam Meshulam hadn’t been much of a mother, but her death still hurt. It meant he was all alone now.
The memory of that awful time engulfed him. He was irritated with himself. The past was the past. He had work to do. And work was all he had left. Without it, who was he?
Shuki Borochov called last night and told him their cop informant had come through at the last minute. It turned out Navon’s squad didn’t have anything solid on Faro. In fact, they didn’t have squat. Golan had let slip a few inconsequential words to his brother-in-law about their drug operation, and the brother-in-law had told his best friend, who just happened to be a cop. How stupid can you get?
The cops and the DA had been keeping their cards very close to their chest, but they were bluffing the whole time. Shuki said that when the DA called, he more or less told her where she could stick it.
The paramedics opened the back of the ambulance and rolled in the stretcher with the body bag. Golan knew the rules. He shouldn’t have talked to his brother-in-law. There was no place in their organization for weaklings, for people who didn’t know how to keep their mouth shut, who showed no respect or loyalty.
The order to take out Golan had come directly from Faro in Abu Kabir. Borochov conveyed the message. “Be discreet,” Meshulam was told, and he understood perfectly: no bullets, no fireworks, do it quietly. As soon as he got the call, he set out from Shufa, leaving Nevo, still licking his wounds, in the hands of George’s crew.
He arranged for Golan to get some crystal meth cut with a little something extra that would do the job. The cops might suspect it was a hit, but they’d never be able to link it back to Faro. The dope had passed through too many hands along the way, and they all had good reason to keep their lips sealed. Nobody would risk going up against Faro because of a loser like Golan.
The ambulance passed him as it sped away. He could see the two paramedics laughing in the front. What did they care? When they came for his mother, they didn’t even try to resuscitate her. She was just a lousy junkie. She didn’t matter.
Meshulam turned and headed to his car. It was cold. He zipped up his jacket. He had to go back and deal with Nevo. Borochov had relayed Faro’s instructions to let the asshole go. The clowns on the force had finally figured out that he didn’t rape anyone.
There was no reason not to cut him loose. It was clear to them now that he’d been telling the truth, that he didn’t squeal. And it’s what Faro wanted. But from Meshulam’s point of view, Nevo knew too much. So far, he’d managed to keep his little side venture on Louis Marshall from Faro, but that could change. Nevo might blab. Maybe not to the cops, but to the boss, or to his buddy Noam. The last thing he needed was for Faro to take pity on Nevo and give him his old job back, and then one day while he was driving him somewhere they’d start talking and it would come out.
He didn’t want to have to live with that fear. The fact that Nevo had kept his mouth shut up to now didn’t guarantee anything. One day you’re strong and the next day you break, and then the shit hits the fan.
Faro wanted him to bring Nevo back from the West Bank, but a lot can happen on the way. Faro might be sorry about it, but he wouldn’t grieve for him. With Nevo out of the way, Meshulam could put the whole thing behind him, there’d be no evidence of the one time he fucked up in all these years. And if there was one thing he’d learned from Golan, it was that you pay for your mistakes. It could just as easily be him in a body bag if Faro found out what he’d done. He didn’t have a choice. He had to look out for himself. He couldn’t rely on anyone else.
Chapter 52
ELI Nachum parked on a side street not far from the palatial house. After the call from Nevo’s ex-wife, it didn’t take him long to put all the pieces together. In the eyes of most cops, he was public enemy number one ever since the interview appeared, but he still had a few old pals on the job. He found out from them that Meshulam was one of Shimon Faro’s soldiers. They faxed him some pictures, and he recognized the bad guy immediately as the thug who’d attacked him in Nevo’s apartment.
He’d hardly left the house since he was discharged from the hospital. He sat at home like a frail old man, useless, sluggish, in pain. When he saw the interview in the paper, he kicked himself. How could he have been so dumb? Why didn’t he realize they were playing him for a fool?
Navon called and reamed him out over the phone. Everyone else kept their distance. That was no less hurtful than Navon accusing him of being a Judas. He knew their silence meant they agreed with the superintendent. He debated calling and trying to explain, but the lame excuse that he’d been outsmarted by a twentysomething reporter made him sound even more pitiful than letting them believe he’d given the interview of his own free will.
Giladi kept trying to reach him, calling him incessantly on his cell phone and his home line. He’d even come and stood outside the house a few days ago. He claimed he was screwed over by his boss and said he’d quit his job because of it. Nachum didn’t want to hear it. He didn’t have the energy anymore. The world could go on without him. He hardly slept at night and was barely able to get out of bed in the morning. He couldn’t turn off his brain, couldn’t get rid of the constant thoughts about unsolved cases, about cases he’d solved but now wasn’t so sure, about what his future would look like if he couldn’t be a cop.
The call from Merav yanked him out of his funk in an instant, waking him up abruptly like an alarm clock. It reminded him that he wasn’t yet entitled to sink into the abyss that had begun to swallow him up, that there were still things he had to set right. Nevo had saved his life, and now he was in deep trouble. And the rapist was still at large and could claim another victim, all because of the mistakes he himself had made.
As he’d promised Merav, he didn’t tell his pals on the force why he was look
ing for information about Meshulam. He didn’t mention Nevo’s name either. He wasn’t surprised to learn that Nevo was mixed up with Faro’s organization. As soon as he realized he wasn’t the rapist, he knew he was hiding a bigger secret by refusing to say what he was doing on Louis Marshall Street that night.
Nachum pulled himself gingerly out of the car. Any incautious movement sent him a sharp reminder of his nighttime encounter with Meshulam. He looked at the wall around the house across from him with the security cameras that were plainly following his every move. He’d had a diverse career as a detective, but he’d never dealt with organized crime. There was a first time for everything.
The heavy door opened and a tall crew-cut gorilla dressed all in black came out.
“Tell your boss Inspector Eli Nachum would like to talk to him,” he said in a loud voice in case the cameras were equipped for sound.
“You’re on private property, sir. You have to leave,” the man said, gesturing to Nachum’s car.
“Tell your boss that if he doesn’t want to see the inside of Abu Kabir again today, it’s in his best interest to let me in,” Nachum said, even louder.
The man’s eyes glazed over, and Nachum realized he was getting instructions through an earbud. He went back inside and closed the metal door behind him, leaving the detective standing in the street.
He was back a few minutes later. “Follow me,” he said impassively.
“What can I do for you, Inspector Nachum?” Faro asked in a deep voice when Nachum was standing in front of him. He was sitting in a solitary lounge chair beside a pool with an elaborate waterfall in the middle of a huge lawn, taking the sun in a short-sleeved shirt and sweatpants.
“You can leave Ziv Nevo alone. I don’t know what connection he has to you and I have no intention of asking, but I want you to release him, let him go back to his family.” He’d decided not to beat around the bush. With people like Faro, the less talk the better. Especially when you know so little.
“Ziv Nevo has no connection to me whatsoever, Inspector Nachum. I can assure you I don’t have him. He drove me around a few times. Nice guy. I understand you were looking for him in relation to a rape case and that he’s no longer a suspect. I have no idea where he is. My attorney has already explained this to Ms. Zuriel. I suggest you check with her,” Faro said coolly, turning his head to watch a gardener working in a flower bed on the other side of the lawn.
The crime lord’s remarks threw Nachum for a loop. Why had Rachel Zuriel been speaking to Faro’s lawyer about Nevo?
“Anything else I can help you with, Inspector Nachum?” Faro asked derisively.
“One of your men, David Meshulam, was in Nevo’s apartment looking for him. He sent regards from Meir and referred to certain threats made in Abu Kabir.” Faro could be lying about Zuriel, trying to mess with his head. But it didn’t matter one way or the other. Nachum had come here for a reason.
Not a single muscle twitched in Faro’s face, but Nachum had spent enough hours in the interrogation room to see that he’d just told the man something he didn’t know.
“I know that because I ran into him there,” he went on, gesturing to his bruises and pressing home his advantage by catching Faro off balance again.
Faro continued to say nothing.
“You’ve got twenty-four hours,” Nachum said, pausing before he added, “It would be a shame for you to go to prison for complicity in an assault on a police officer.”
Chapter 53
FARO heard the door slam behind the old cop with the battered face. He was just released from Abu Kabir this morning, and now there was a new threat hanging over his head.
He wasn’t pleased by what Nachum had told him. Shuki Borochov said Nevo had called Noam to ask for help, and Noam had contacted him. Shuki got the idea to use Nevo as a bargaining chip to procure Faro’s freedom. Now he discovered that Meshulam had been looking for Nevo, that he’d waited for him in his apartment and assaulted a cop.
What was Meshulam hiding from him? What was he doing at Nevo’s place? Why the hell did he beat up a cop?
Faro got out of his chair. He never got a moment’s rest. It was stupid things like this you had to avoid like the plague. He spent his time running large-scale operations, and in the end he’d be brought down by something picayune. Bigger men than he, men who built empires, wound up behind bars convicted of petty crimes because they were too busy to pay attention to the little things.
He waved Yaki Klein over. He smelled a rat. Someone was lying to him.
Chapter 54
AMIT looked at the name on the screen of his cell phone and decided not to pick up for Dori this time either. The man was a deceitful snake in the grass, and he was sick and tired of his games and abuse. There was no point in talking to him anyway. He knew what Dori wanted from the dozen text messages he’d already sent. He’d seen on the Internet that today was the day the judge rendered his sentence in the case of the teenage gang convicted of robbing convenience stores in south Tel Aviv, and he wanted his crime and education reporter to get to the courthouse and cover the story. But that wasn’t all. Naturally, Dori had more up his sleeve.
The prosecutor on the case was Galit Lavie. As usual, Dori was looking to kill two birds with one stone: a small item on the gangbangers and an interview with the ADA who signed off on the indictment against Ziv Nevo for a crime he didn’t commit. “Ask her how it feels to be responsible for convicting an innocent man, what they’re doing to catch the real rapist,” he’d texted.
Under normal circumstances, Amit would do as he was told. The chances of getting Lavie to answer his questions were slim, but he ought to give it a go. He couldn’t deny that it was part of his job. He’d tried to get something out of her after Nevo’s conviction, but she’d brushed him off.
But he’d had enough. He’d been marking time ever since the interview with Nachum. The detective refused to talk to him. He’d called dozens of times, even waited outside his house. But it didn’t get him anywhere. Tamar, the server at the Zodiac Café he’d been hoping to talk to, had quit. In fact, the busy coffee shop had been nearly empty since the story came out. He’d tried several times to talk to the employees, but all he got were suspicious looks, as if they thought he was the rapist.
This morning he’d decided to try one last time. He stopped playing games and went straight to the owner. “My name is Amit Giladi. I’m a reporter, and I’m here to help you figure out which one of your customers is the rapist,” he said. “If we can do that, your business is sure to pick up again.” He didn’t expect a warm welcome, but he wasn’t prepared for the response he got. It turned out the owner had known Dori for a long time, and not just as a regular customer.
The man didn’t only refuse to talk to him, he kicked him out, screaming that Dori was “a motherfucking jackass.” Dori had fucked with him again. Would it have been so hard to warn him? He could already hear him say for the umpteenth time, “Man up, kid.” The idea of having to listen to his jeering remarks about how he was scared by loud voices infuriated him so much that he was simply ignoring the editor’s calls.
His phone beeped again when he was getting on his bike. “Go now. Get an interview with her!!! No one else to send!!!” Dori texted.
Asshole. What did he do to deserve this? When he was new at the paper, everyone told him Dori was a hard man to work for. A talented journalist but a very difficult boss. He hadn’t listened. So maybe he did deserve what he was getting.
“Working on another assignment. Go yourself,” he texted back belligerently. He started the bike, not waiting for an answer.
He had to persuade Nachum to give him another chance. He couldn’t work with Dori anymore. The only way he could stay in the profession was to get a humongous scoop, and to do that he had to find the rapist. That would be his ticket back in.
He sped toward Nachum’s house. He’d been wrong to underestima
te the veteran detective. Everything he’d told him in the hospital turned out to be true. He’d realized before anyone else that Nevo was innocent, that the real creep was still on the loose.
It was Amit’s turn to atone for his mistakes. Nachum was also trying to make amends for the blindness that had gotten Nevo convicted in the first place. Together they’d make a good team, he’d tell him. He’d give it his all, not leave any stone unturned. Eventually, just like Dori believed (and he had to give him credit for his journalistic instincts), they’d find the perp.
Then he’d show that snake in the grass who was king of the jungle. He’d take the story and give it to another paper. He’d crush Dori like the reptile he was. If it gave him a chance to make that dream come true, it was worth it to him to get down on his knees and beg Nachum to forgive him.
Chapter 55
MESHULAM decided to wait until dark before starting out from Shufa. The more he thought about it, the more determined he became. He couldn’t allow Nevo to leave the West Bank alive. He had to repair the damage he’d done, even if it meant disobeying Faro’s instructions again. He swore to himself it would be the last time. He’d learned his lesson. Starting tomorrow, he’d go back to being the disciplined soldier he’d always been, that he was meant to be. The way he’d fucked up that night, everything he’d been keeping from Faro, it would all be buried along with Nevo.
His first thought was to leave him on the road near some isolated village and let the Palestinians do the job for him. But what if he survived? If he made it back alive, he’d still be a threat. No, it’d be best to stop on a dirt road somewhere, order him out of the car, and put a bullet in his head. He’d have to dig a deep hole for the body. He didn’t need some stinking goatherd to find him and notify the authorities. He’d tell Faro he’d dropped him off in Tel Aviv and he had no idea where he went from there.