An Accidental Murder: An Avram Cohen Mystery (2 page)

Ahuva thought he should go. She lived now in Tel Aviv, after being appointed deputy to the president of the Tel Aviv District Court, a promotion that put her on course for a seat on the Supreme Court.

“You made the bed, you’ve got to sleep in it,” she pointed out, when he said that he was having second thoughts about the whole project. “It’s too late now to change your mind. You wrote the book. You let the agent sell it. You signed the contracts.”

“They pressured me,” he complained.

She scoffed at him, but lovingly, without any condescension. “No, they flattered you. You never do what you don’t want to do.” He had paused, held his hand to his forehead, thinking.

They were on the beach at dusk, across the street from her apartment house, on an evening stroll before the dinner he planned to cook for them. The surf washed up over his bare feet, dampening his trouser cuffs. “You know,” he finally admitted to her, and himself, “when the editor called and spoke so respectfully, I really began to realize that maybe I had done something even better than I thought. I wrote the book because I had something to say.”

He was facing the horizon, the clouds on the horizon a deep purple, the setting sun turning red as it neared the water’s edge. Now he turned and looked into her eyes.

“Now they want me to do a second one.” “Congratulations,” she said, genuinely pleased for him.

“I don’t think I should agree,” he answered.

He had kept the writing of the first book secret from her—indeed, only gave her a copy of the manuscript after Lassman told him that it was good. So, confessing that he had been asked to write another one was a big step, a presentation of unexpected testimony.

“Why not?” she asked.

“I’m not sure I have anything more to say,” he told her.

“I see,” she said after the long pause. “But perhaps you will find something to say, if you work at it.” “I am not a writer,” he said. “It is not my work. You know what my work is.”

“No. I don’t. You’re not a policeman anymore. You’re retired. Enjoy it. Do what you can do, and stop thinking about what you would be doing if you were still on the force.”

She at least understood enough to know why he didn’t want to do a sequel. Counting on the expected success from the book, Lassman, Tina, and Mccloskey were already taking for granted there would be a sequel. And when he agreed to go to Frankfurt at the end of the American author’s tour they were convinced it was proof of his flexibility.

It only made it all the more shocking to all involved that he cancelled his American tour planned by TMC.

Ever since he had found himself heir to a fortune, as a result of a private case, Cohen had been trying to buy the downstairs apartment in the former British Officer’s Club in the German colony, where he had been living since the Six Day War. He would then own the entire property.

Cohen bought the upstairs two-room apartment when he and his bride had found the flat in Jerusalem a month before their January 1968 wedding. One hundred days later, Cohen was a widower, losing both his wife and their unborn child in a car bombing in downtown Jerusalem. He stayed in the apartment, owned by the estate of a tribal patriarch who made millions by bringing the first industrial bakery to Jerusalem, selling bread first to the Turkish army, then the British (who leased the house from him for their officer’s club) and finally the Israelis. Bequeathed to members of his tribe, whose own fortunes ranged from huge to nothing, the property was a subject of dispute by the heirs.

By the late eighties, when all the grandchildren and cousins were counted, twenty-eight signatures were required for the property to be sold. Some were old enough to remember the house as their grandfather’s home; others believed it was worth far more than the offers that came in through the law firm that handled all the real estate they owned in the city. So, the downstairs flat had remained closed and empty ever since Cohen’s elderly neighbor passed away in the late seventies. But six weeks before Frankfurt, a week before his planned departure for the American author’s tour, the long-standing offer Cohen had made to acquire the entire building, including his own key-money flat, won the twenty-fifth of the twenty-eight signatures needed. That set into motion a series of meetings between Cohen and Ephraim Laskoff, his banker, with the last three signatories.

It was a difficult time for Cohen—and one that he needed to see through to its end. He originally made the offer soon after the inheritance came through, but during the lengthy process of collecting signatures from all the heirs—and their heirs—doubt began to grow in his mind about the wisdom of the purchase. The last three great grandchildren of the original patriarch did not need the money and didn’t care about the property. But they hated each other enough to use Cohen’s offer as a battleground.

Each conditioned his negotiations on the others getting less for their signatures. Cohen had already crossed the Rubicon of one million dollars, and was well on his way to two, purchase price by the time the negotiations reached the final three heirs.

Along the way he saw his own efforts twisted by the heirs’ greed, he saw Jerusalem itself changing in ways that made him wonder why he wanted to stay. No family held him down there, no job demanded his effort.

The more he heard people laying exclusive claim to the city the more it sounded to him like his own original obsession to own the whole house. Just as he had seen the insanity of the family quarrel holding up the purchase, so he could see how belief in the city’s holiness was being twisted by greed into most unholy acts.

Laskoff partly prodded him on, saying it would be a wise business deal, for the demand for housing in Jerusalem was predicted to be on a constant rise toward the year 2000. “For the millennium,” Laskoff would say, pointing out that the combination of the Russian immigration, the fundamentalist birthrate, and even the limping peace process guaranteed that demand for housing in Jerusalem would remain on a constant rise for the coming years. “It’s a good investment,” said the banker. “Real estate is always a good investment in a tiny country. Even if you don’t do anything with it,” Laskoff said enthusiastically.

That’s not why Cohen wanted it. He wanted it because he could imagine having it. Yes, he had ideas. Maybe he’d open a school. Maybe a restaurant. But those were fantasies that had more to do with his self-inspection, with his wondering about how his life had forced him to be guarded with others, rather than any entrepreneurial instinct. Buying the house was crazy from the start, he began to think.

Ahuva and he would not have children. What did he need with such a large place? It was greedy of him, he thought.

Over the years, he began giving the money away. Trust funds to pay for university for the children—and a few grandchildren—of needy former colleagues, mostly subordinates from the past, and some struggling families of victims of crimes that Cohen felt guilty about because of his own failures.

And during those weeks when he should have been in America, he came face-to-face with his feelings. As the delicate game of three-way talks ensued, he would leave the meetings, sometimes with Laskoff on his heels asking whether he really wanted to go through with it, after all.

“You talked about a school, you talked about a restaurant, you talked about a library just for your friends. You’ve had so many different plans for the house, Avram, that I don’t know anymore if you want the house or something else.

You have to answer that question.” But the closer they got to a deal, the more doubt crept into his mind. It prolonged the negotiation enough to miss the author’s tour.

Carey was patient the first time, understanding that Cohen had important personal business that came up unexpectedly. But the second time Cohen called to report he’d missed the Washington to Los Angeles leg of the trip, Carey was not so calm. He pleaded, he begged, and finally he said that Cohen would be to blame if he lost his job. If anything, it was proof that Mccloskey had done his job.

Hadn’t Cohen himself described how he had often bent over backward to protect those who had been innocent, yet affected by the decisions Cohen made?

Tina was very worried. She worked hard to patch things up all around. Not only did Cohen’s canceled author’s trip hurt his deal, it also soured Carey to Lassman, which meant that she was having a difficult time selling TMC the writer’s new idea for a book about the white slavery traffic from Eastern Europe.

“I’ve got to tell you, Avram, you are not Carey’s favorite author right now. The book’s doing okay. But not great. Far from great, as a matter of fact. If at least you could have come up with a better excuse for missing the trip. If at least you had told them from the start that you wouldn’t make it. But you led them on. And we were going to use L.A. to seal a movie option,” Tina complained in a long phone call one night in early September. “Hollywood, Avram. And right now, it looks like you blew it.”

It made him nauseous to think about it. Not “blowing” Hollywood, but the idea his book—his life, he now realized —would be handled by that monster. Cohen had been to Hollywood once before, right after his unhappy retirement.

It was supposed to be a reunion, with Herman Broder, the man who had saved his life, the man who taught him to take lives, the friend who tried to liberate Cohen but instead burdened him with wealth. The trip had turned into a nightmare about his past.

So, the crisis over the missed author’s trip didn’t go away, even if Cohen tried to pretend that it did. Nonetheless, he did give in to the pressures. Which is why, a month later, he was in a burgundy Mercedes heading to downtown Frankfurt, to attend the world’s largest book fair. “If at least you gave that People interviewer what she wanted … ” Tina was saying as the car sent by his German publisher, Koethe, rolled out of the Frankfurt airport, heading to the city.

She had met Lassman and Cohen at the airport, to take them directly to the Koethe pavilion at the fair. “But you obviously didn’t give her what she wanted, because she never ran the story.” The People writer wanted Cohen to talk about Broder and the money. “Believe me,” Tina added, “a story in People would have been far more important than the New York Times review.” Cohen didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when he read the review, which called his book “a revelation.” Just a year earlier, the Jerusalem novelist who wrote the review had not offered to help with “adding some color.”

“So, please, be friendly and cooperative when we meet Carey and Herb,” Tina said as the driver sped past mist-covered green woods between the airport and the rainy city.

Cohen was in the front seat beside the driver, Tina and Lassman in the back. He blinked at the forest, hardly listening to her. The green was a color he had forgotten since childhood. “Avram,” Lassman piped up from the backseat.

“Herb is Herbert Wang, Carey’s boss. President of TMC.”

From the start, he was confused by the various names of the editors and agents and publishing houses, because he only worked visa-vis Carey and Tina, with Lassman’s help.

The American version of the book would be the final version from which all other editions would be made in translation.

But he was able to remember the name of his German publisher, Koethe. It was a name he knew from childhood.

Indeed, if there was a reason why his writing a book was so important to him it was precisely for the same reason he knew the name Koethe.

Cohen’s grandfather was a publisher, and so was his father. None of the vengeance, none of the work he did in the fifties, nothing he had ever done about his survival of the Holocaust meant as much to him as the fact that despite everything, he was able to continue the family tradition, by dedicating the book to the memory of the family he lost to the Nazis.

He remembered the name Koethe because it was often mentioned by his grandfather and father when they sat together at home talking business after dinner; Cohen, the boy, the heir, at their knees playing with his toys, but nonetheless hearing everything they talked about. The memory had come back to Cohen the moment Tina reported that Koethe had signed on for a hundred thousand marks.

For his grandfather, Koethe was the house to match. For his father, Cohen remembered, Koethe was the house to beat. But, by Kristallnacht, Koethe had stopped publishing Jewish authors, and a few weeks later, Cohen’s family press was closed.

Writing a book had served many purposes in Cohen’s life. Cathartic as an emotional release, it was an achievement he never expected of himself. But most of all, his book was his best revenge of all, and in the end, that formed the rationalization for his trip to Frankfurt. It was, after all, Koethe’s invitation.

“Look, Avram,” Lassman said excitedly when the driver from Cohen’s German publisher, Koethe, pulled into a VIP parking spot inside the fairgrounds. “There you are.” Twice as tall as a man, a poster displayed Cohen’s book cover in a billboard advertisement—Koethe was simply calling it Jerusalem Policeman—hung high over the plaza, one of six Koethe advertisements for their authors that year.

Cohen glanced up at the poster, raising an eyebrow at his own image staring out at the German city. A light rain made the plastic frame glitter, making the monochrome portrait more colorful than it really was. He turned down Lassman’s request for a picture, Tina shook her head at him, and the driver led the way to Koethe’s pavilion.

Mr. Smitbauer, president of Koethe, greeted Cohen warmly. But the publisher was clearly distracted and nervous.

The chancellor’s presence on the floor amidst all the pavilions was signaled by the bright lights of the TV cameras following him on the traditional opening day tour of the most prestigious of Germany’s trade fairs, in the city famed for being Europe’s longest-running market. Smitbauer was waiting for the chancellor to come by the Koethe pavilion. Lassman went straight for the mini-bar with sharp beer on tap that provided refreshment for the Koethe staff and guests, then immediately began flirting with one of the pretty assistants helping out at the pavilion. “The third-largest in the German hall,” Smitbauer proudly told the chancellor, who arrived barely five minutes after Cohen and Lassman.