Cohen pulled his hand away from his brow, where it had been shading his eyes. Shvilli was looking down at him.
From the grim expression, Cohen had the feeling it was more bad news. He looked at his watch. He had slept nearly two hours.
“What happened?” he asked.
“They got the body out of the car.” “And?” Cohen demanded.
“It wasn’t an accident. Nine-millimeter slugs. At least one in the head.”
Cohen sat up straight, gasping for air, coughing until he could say, “Who could have done it, Misha?”
“I’m going down to Eilat to find out. I thought you might want to come.”
Cohen rubbed at his forehead. “Do we know for sure that he was in Eilat?” he asked. He crossed his legs, sitting like a Buddha, while Shvilli dropped a knee to the ground before him.
“I’ve been over the map a dozen times,” Shvilli said.
“The nearest settlement is Kibbutz Haran. The only thing going on there for us was a pair of Australian volunteers caught growing some grass last summer. Nothing else. My bet? He was either ambushed at the corner where he went off the road, or dumped there. But he came out of Eilat.”
The assassination of a policeman was extremely rare in Israel. Years could go by without an attempt, and suddenly there would be a flurry of armed attacks. Twice while in office, Cohen had been targeted by his own targets. Once it was shots fired at him near his home. The other time, he luckily decided that day to bring his car in for a lube job, and the mechanic found the tampered rear-wheel brakes.
Usually, underworld assassins used car bombs, as well as drive-by shootings and ambushes. And, like police everywhere, the security establishment took such attacks personally.
In those two cases where Cohen was targeted the investigation went quickly, with the entire security network of the country thrown into the case. The same thing would happen now. The Shabak would attach an officer to the special investigating team, to be appointed by Bendor, and vetted by the inspector general.
Cohen wanted to be involved. And he knew it was impossible. Yes, there might be some on the fifth floor ready to vote for him, but he knew none would dare nominate him. Should he call the inspector general and volunteer?
He knew the answer. “No,” the IG would say, and for good reason that could be summed up in one word: Policy.
So how long, Cohen wondered, could he investigate on his own without the police finding out? A few days perhaps. A week. He could trust Shvilli and had no choice but to trust Jacki.
“Who would put out a hit on Nissim?”
“If you ask me, it was one of my Russians. There’s big Russian action down there. Run by a pig named Yuhewitz.
We know he’s got three whorehouses and at least two floating casinos. When he’s in town, he stays on his glamor ship at the marina.”
“But was he down there this weekend?”
“I’ve been putting out some calls.”
“Would Yuhewitz order a hit on Nissim?”
Shvilli’s face turned grim. “He knows Nissim had an eye on him. He has a lot to protect. Maybe Nissim was-down there spying and got caught. Cowboying it.”
Was that like Nissim? Cohen wondered. Yes, by learning from Cohen, Nissim had learned to act on his own when necessary. No, because unlike Cohen, Nissim’s loyalties were to his career as a professional within the system, and not to the truth for its own sake.
So he asked Shvilli, why would Nissim be down there, on his own, in danger, alone? If he was going down for a confrontation, why alone? And if it was a long-standing contract, why did the killer wait until a wintry night on a weekend? Shvilli had no answers.
“Help me up,” Cohen said, holding out a hand to his former junior officer. He had sent Shvilli into dangerous places alone in the past. He had done the same to Nissim.
He had gone alone into dangerous places more times than he cared to remember. But in the months since Frankfurt, he had often brooded over why he had run. Had he been afraid that night? No, he had decided. Not of bombs. But of the exposure. He had resolved not to get involved in the investigation of that strange incident in Frankfurt because, he said, he was done with investigating, done with that life.
He lied. To himself, mostly, as usually happens with liars.
Ahuva had shown him that. But it took Shvilli telling him that Nissim was murdered to finally make him see through the lie. For a few moments, just before dozing off in the cool fresh air at midday in the desert winter, he had indeed considered letting the system handle it all.
The traffic forensics and the autopsy, the clarification of what Nissim was doing south that wintry night; his thoughts raced, coming back to the realization that the inspector general would be correct. He had no right to get involved. He had reason perhaps, but he didn’t have the privilege and the authority—and responsibility—that comes with it.
“What’s going on?” Jacki asked, coming into the garden.
Cohen looked at Shvilli. The Georgian-born boxer with a talent for languages and disguise had an expectant look on his face, as if much more had been said between them than actually was turned into words.
Jacki was impatient. “Nu!” she demanded. “Tell me.” “On the other hand,” Shvilli said, grinning a pair of gold teeth at Cohen, “you could give me a job.”
“Michael!” Jacki hissed, shocked. “You are so rude.”
“C’mon, sir,” Shvilli said. “It could be great. Privatization?
No? Isn’t that the keyword nowadays? What do you say?”
“Michael Shvilli, have you gone out of your mind?” Jacki cried out.
“Shh,” Cohen ruled. “Is Hagit sleeping?” he asked. Jacki nodded. The master bedroom window, he remembered, overlooked the garden.
“Does she know about the shooting?” he asked, looking up to the second floor. A pale blue curtain billowed slightly in the soft breeze.
Jacki shook her head.
“So what do you say, boss? We have a deal?” Shvilli wanted to know.
Cohen shook his head sadly. “Not like this, Misha. Not in a storm.”
“You left in a storm,” Shvilli protested.
“They pushed him out,” Jacki reminded Shvilli.
“He was there,” Cohen reprimanded her with a reminder that she only heard the story from Nissim.
He looked into their eyes, and then into his own soul.
“No,” he decided. “I am not going to take responsibility for you two making rash decisions. I am not making any rash decisions. You asked me if I want to go with you. I do, but—” The phone ringing inside made him stop. “Jacki?” He asked her to answer it, but before she could respond, after two brief rings it stopped.
“Hagit must have answered,” Shvilli realized first.
Cohen looked at Jacki. And from the upstairs window above their head Cohen heard a scream. Jacki was the fastest of the three back into the house and up the stairs.
Shvilli came in second. By the time Cohen reached the second-story landing, Jacki was shouting “her water broke, her water broke!” and Shvilli was at the phone, calling an ambulance, while Hagit lay on the floor where Jacki found her, a lopsided puddle growing on the carpet beneath her, sobbing, “he was murdered, he was murdered. They told me it was an accident, but he was murdered.”
And for the first time since Shvilli called him that morning, Cohen felt his own tears creeping into his eyes.
16.
Only when the baby boy was wrapped in swaddling and the mother was sleeping soundly did Cohen feel free to act. He called the inspector general from the pay phone in the maternity ward at Beersheba’s Soroka Hospital.
“You know I can’t allow that,” the inspector general said.
“Yes,” said Cohen softly.
“You aren’t going to run off investigating on your own, are you?” the inspector general warned.
“I’ll do what I can to help,” Cohen promised.
“To help. Not interfere,” the country’s
top cop ordered.
“Who got the tza’ham?” Cohen asked, using the bureaucratic acronym for the special investigating team that would be formed.
“Shuki Caspi.”
“Who?”
“Caspi. A good boy. Born in Beersheba. Knows the territory.
Bendor brought him in from the paratroopers, and he learned fast.”
“I heard that Russians, in Eilat … “
“See, that’s just what I mean,” the inspector general complained. “You think we don’t know that? Avram, the force didn’t stop working just because you’re retired.”
The inspector general’s secretary came onto the line, reporting that the prime minister’s office was asking for him.
“I’ve got to go, Avram. I’m sorry about Nissim. We all are. That’s why I promise we’ll do our best to find his killer. I promise. If Caspi needs you, he’ll call. And when we have something, I promise personally to call you and let you know.”
Cohen hung up. A red-eyed woman was staring at him, waiting for the phone. He stepped away and considered his course of action.
Down the hall, Jacki was still at Hagit’s side, joined by Hagit’s parents. Shvilli was back at police headquarters, trying to get onto the tza’ham. “If you’re going to work for me,” Cohen had said, “my first order is get onto that tza’ham.” Shvilli took the command at face value, trusting Cohen.
“Too much perhaps,” Cohen muttered to himself now, considering his options. A sign in the little lobby where the elevators opened to the maternity ward told him that pathology was in the basement. The elevator stopped at each floor, going all the way down. He stood in the corner and watched as gurneys rolled on and off, visitors searched for departments, and doctors and nurses cursed the elevator’s slow pace. In the basement, he followed the signs through a maze of windowless tunnels that finally came to an end in front of wide-swinging doors. An empty gurney was parked outside the doors. He looked through the little glass window in the left door.
It was dark. He pushed open the door and pulled out his cigarette lighter for some light, then added a cigarette to his palm, lighting it to kill the smell of chemicals that the air-conditioning couldn’t hide. The six slabs were all clean stainless steel with basins built into the surfaces. No bodies were in sight. He moved slowly through the large room, heading toward a row of filing cabinets against a distant wall. Beyond the cabinets was a door wide enough to allow two gurneys to pass.
The first was locked. They were all locked. But on the desk was a computer monitor glowing with the blue and yellow of a program’s menu. The screen’s light illuminated a stack of files on the desk. The third folder was Nissim’s.
A registration page reported the arrival of the body at 03:13 that afternoon. That was more than five hours ago, Cohen thought angrily. The pathology should have been done as soon as the body arrived, even if it meant the pathologists had to work around the clock.
He scanned the form listing the various tests that the pathologists would seek. Another document in the file was the donor’s card found in Nissim’s wallet, saying the body’s parts could be used. The fourth was a piece of hospital stationery. A doctor’s scrawl that Cohen held close to the computer screen light to read reported that a preliminary examination found an entrance and exit for what appeared to be a bullet. “A general workup for suspected murder” was to be performed the next day, the doctor ordered. Cohen slapped the folder closed and left the lab, losing his way twice in the maze of underground tunnels before finding a set of stairs that took him to the first-floor lobby of the hospital and then the elevators back to the maternity ward.
It was close to nine, and the last of the relatives and friends of the new babies born or about to be born that day were on their way out. Hagit was in the last room on the right of a long corridor with four wards of four and six beds on each side. Her bed was beside the window. Her parents sat with their backs to the view of the dusty city.
Jacki stood behind them. Hagit had woken, cried, and taken gratefully the sleeping pills provided by the head nurse on the floor, said Jacki. “She’s coming home with us, as soon as the doctors let her go,” Hagit’s mother whispered angrily at him. Her husband kept his eyes on the sleeping woman. Cohen remained silent. “Look at her, does she look like she’s in any condition to take care of herself right now, let alone a baby?” the mother demanded.
“First let’s hear from the doctors that she’s all right,” Cohen finally said. “Jacki?” he asked the policewoman to join him in the corridor.
“This is all your fault, you know,” Hagit’s mother hissed at Cohen’s back as he left the room. Hagit’s father looked up at him, and even from across the room, Cohen could see the old man had been crying.
Jacki and Cohen waited in the hall while a family including three children, two new grandparents, and a pair of great grandparents—each held by the arm of one of their children—walked slowly by, stage whispering about the latest new member of the family.
“More problems,” Jacki told Cohen after the family was gone. “Misha called. He says the investigation’s totally locked on Kobi Alper—and they won’t let Misha into the team.” Cohen sighed. Alper was Nissim’s first big case when he went from Yeroham Station to Southern District headquarters as deputy chief of Intelligence.
Nahum Nahmani and Buki Abutbul, brothers from two different fathers, had disappeared. They had run the meat processing plant their mother inherited from a third paramour.
One night, they just never came home from work.
Levy had made forensics return three times to the plant.
He had worked informants on the street and case files from the past. Kobi had had to discipline the two younger competitors. If they had only tried to steal the brother’s territory, it would have been a dangerous situation. But they stole Kobi’s own drug supply, to capitalize the move against him. It took Nissim three months, but he managed to bring Kobi to court. The judges sent Kobi to Ramie for two life sentences. It would be at least twenty years before Kobi had any chance of getting out. Kobi had made it clear—first in interrogation, and then in court—that he would get Nissim. “You tilted the balance, you maniac,” he had shouted at Levy when the sentence was handed down.
“You’ll pay for it.”
That had been more than a year ago. Cohen had followed the case in the papers. Nissim had called the night Kobi went down. “What do you think he meant when he said I tilted the balance?” Nissim had asked.
“You were a new force in town. Maybe there were arrangements you disrupted,” Cohen suggested. “Just keep your eyes open. And watch your back.” “I’m worried about Hagit,” Nissim had said.
“Can Kobi run a contract from Ramie?” Cohen asked.
“I doubt it. He was all force himself. He had to pay his followers. And he’s running out of money. I hear he needs a new lawyer for his appeal.”
It took Levy a month to make absolutely sure that Kobi had no more friends on the street and another month to convince his wife that behind bars Kobi was no danger to either of them.
“Was Kobi making a comeback?” Cohen asked Jacki.
“Making new friends?” “Enemies, more like it,” Jacki said.
“What else did Shvilli say?” “They told him he could do what he wanted with the Russians, but as far as they were concerned, Kobi ordered it.”
Cohen shook his head. “Where is he now?”
“Ramie, of course.”
“No—Shvilli.” “Making phone calls, he said.” “He said he wanted to go to Eilat. Someone named Yuhewitz?” “Boris,” saidjacki.
“Shh!!” a nurse hissed at them, striding up the corridor from the nurses’ station. “Visiting hours are over. You aren’t supposed to be here,” she ordered, then walked past two steps to look into the ward where Hagit’s parents were still at their daughter’s bedside. “You’ll have to go, too.”
While Hagit’s parents gathered up their belongings, Cohen asked Jacki where he could find S
hvilli. “The Rendezvous club,” she told him. “It’s Shvilli’s main hangout.
You can’t miss it, on the left hand side, leaving town south into the Negev.”
Cohen nodded and headed for the elevators behind the nurses’ stand. “Just remember that I’m in,” Jacki said loudly to his back, making the nurse shush her. Cohen waved a hand to show he’d heard. He didn’t stop at the elevator, taking the stairs two at a time down the four flights to the ground floor and then out to the parking lot to his car.
17.
Was he conducting his own investigation? Was he ignoring the inspector general’s strict orders not to get involved?
He couldn’t say right then. But he did know that he was doing the only thing he could do and not feel dead. It took him less than fifteen minutes to reach the other side of the desert town, which except for the mall—OPEN UNTIL MIDNIGHT shouted the banner hanging outside, trying to drum up business—seemed to have gone as deeply to sleep as the new mothers back at the hospital.
But at the Rendezvous nobody was sleeping. A Sunday night is ordinarily quiet even in Tel Aviv’s hottest entertainment spots, let alone sleepy Beersheba. But the Rendezvous was full. Mercedes and Hondas, BMWs and two Rovers—all cars costing more than twice what an average Israeli family needed for two years—were lined up in the dusty lot outside the low-slung building at the edge of an industrial park still more under construction than built.
A bored blonde in a low-cut leotard greeted him at the door. The sound was deafening to his ears. A man with shiny black hair, wearing a blowsy red satin shirt and tight black pants, was singing in Russian, accompanying himself with an electronic keyboard sitting on a stand beneath his fingers.
More than two-thirds of the tables—and there must have been at least fifty—were taken. Some of the tables were lined up in long rows, filled by groups of families or friends. At other tables, couples dined alone. Many were singing along with the entertainer.
An Accidental Murder: An Avram Cohen Mystery Page 11