An Accidental Murder: An Avram Cohen Mystery (20 page)

“Witkoff. Alexander Witkoff.” He spelled it for her.

“He is one of your relocated informants?” she asked, with a natural disdain for another policeman’s snitches and obvious disapproval of the Israeli police’s former practice of using Germany as a dumping ground for criminals.

He thought for a second, still feeling the paranoiac jolt he experienced when she had told him Leterhaus had died in an accident. He had his phones checked regularly. Too many private investigators were on trial for wiretapping; and while the bureaucracy was still knee deep in old paper, the intelligence services had long pioneered eavesdropping through the phones. In any case, Cohen was tired of phones and Udi Hason had never found anything both times in two years that Cohen had called, suspicious there were bugs on his phones.

“He originates from Russia,” he finally decided to tell her.

“Oh,” she said. “Do you know what city, please?”

“Moscow, I believe.”

“And he is an informant?” she asked again.

“No,” he admitted. “But please, just check the name in your database. Please.” He was begging. Hating himself for it, he added, “a few seconds of computing time. Helmut was able to check the computers at the BKA and END.”

“I see,” she said, making him think she didn’t. “Is that all? “she added.

“It is rather urgent.” “Excuse me?” she asked, offended by the idea that he could impose his schedule upon her.

“Helmut often looked up names while I waited … “

“Mr. Cohen,” she said, “I assure you this will be handled with all due speed.”

“Please, take my phone number. Call me any time of the day or night … ” But instead of making the promise, she said, “Of course, if we need you further we will be in touch. Thank you for calling, good day.”

“No, if anything turns up, you let me know,” he shouted down the line at her. But by the time he added, “that was my deal with Leterhaus,” the line had fallen dead.

He could understand the German police. Many times he had wondered how he would have treated such a crime if it had occurred on his patch. Understaffed, pressed by the daily crunch of events, the attempted bombing of a famous tourist visiting the city would get a lot of attention at first, but with the author gone—and the innocent bystander only one of the city’s thousands of hotel workers—how much time would any top floor of any police department allow a full press on the case? If within the first seventy two hours they didn’t make an arrest, the likelihood of one dropped daily, as would the effort, until the investigation became a routine hour—a week, a month, a year—of noting that nothing new had turned up.

He couldn’t blame them. It was a peculiar case, so with each passing day and week that the Israelis turned up nothing on the radical Jewish right, the Germans found no leads among the Jew-haters, and Cohen himself had failed to provide Leterhaus with a useful name from the past, Cohen’s case had become his alone.

His own impassioned plea for the peace process in the epilogue of his book had made all the experts rule out an organized Arab gang picking him as a target. His position as chief of CID in Jerusalem had indeed made him part of the war effort, but never, in all the years that he had run CID, which had arrested thousands of Arabs in the city for both all the mundane and extraordinary reasons that the police had made arrests in Jerusalem, had any Palestinian group ever targeted him—or indeed any other police commander —for vengeance. Several radical right-wing Jewish groups had, however, named him as a traitor.

He found Leterhaus’s home phone number on his yellow pad. Beneath the phone number was Leterhaus’s home address, which the German police officer had given Cohen in the hopes that one day the Israeli might come back “under different circumstances” and they could visit as friends.

At the time, Cohen had doubted he would ever do that.

Now, he wondered if he should write a condolence note to the dead officer’s wife. But before he could decide, the cellular phone rang.

“Boss, it’s me. I’m back in the office.” It was Shvilli.

“Can you talk?”

“They picked up Kobi Alper’s little brother Itzik this morning—at the airport. They’re convinced he was trying to get out of the country because of the hit.”

“Nearly three days later—ridiculous,” Cohen pointed out.

“Don’t be so sure. They started looking for him on Sunday morning and only found him today. The last time he was definitely seen was sunset Friday at his mother’s. The Alpers never miss their Friday evening dinner with their mother—unless they’re in jail.”

“You were telling me about Nissim meeting a woman in the lobby of the hotel,” Cohen reminded the detective.

“Yes. ‘,’ Pinny said. ‘.’ “

“A working girl?”

“From Pinny’s description, maybe. But from a very high-quality house. Yuhewitz owns a house like that.”

“Was she registered in the hotel? Did Pinny find out?”

“He only saw them for a minute. They were leaving together.”

“And Pinny hasn’t seen her since?”

“I don’t know.”

“Ask him. Find her. And another thing. Nissim’s phone records.” “I know, I know,” Shvilli protested. “Jacki says she’s trying to get them. But Caspi’s cheap, real cheap. He’s a shit.

He’s trying to prove he can fill Nissim’s shoes. Carry all the weight himself. Someone ought to tell him that police work is teamwork. And Bendor loves his ass because Caspi came from the paratroopers. Besides, Caspi never liked Nissim. And he knows I was close to Nissim. Believe me, boss, I’m not getting much cooperation from him.”

Cohen let Shvilli get the resentment off his chest.

“Michael,” he finally said softly. “Forget Caspi. Tell me about the Russians. That meeting? What were they discussing?”

“I’m working on it, believe me. I’ve got a source who was inside. But it’s like he’s disappeared. ‘ just missed him,’ ‘ was just here’—everywhere I look for him, he’s gone or hasn’t been around.”

“Witkoff? Could he have been doing business in Germany?

In Frankfurt?”

There was a long silence. For a second, Cohen wondered if again the phone line was to blame.

“You mean if he had something to do with what happened to you there?” Shvilli asked back, disappointment in his tone, as if he had just discovered something he wasn’t sure he wanted to know about Cohen. Now it was Cohen’s turn to think hard before answering. He did not want to sound paranoid, even though, if asked, ever since he had heard Nissim was dead he had simply followed intuitions dictated by emotions. But before he spoke, Shvilli added a request to his question. “I have to ask you something, boss. About that business.”

“Frankfurt?”

“Yes.”

“Go ahead.”

“Is it true you didn’t want to help?”

“Actually, I’ve been digging in the archives,” said Cohen.

“An old case, perhaps … “

“But that night, you left, you could have stayed. It’s like you … ” Shvilli was asking if he had been afraid.

“Ran?” Cohen filled in the blank.

“Yes.”

“I was leaving anyway,” Cohen said, not wanting to explain, not needing to explain, suddenly certain of his intuition, if not the evidence. “Find out, Michael. From Yuhewitz, from Yudelstein, whoever you can ask. Does Witkoff have business in Frankfurt?” It was his last question before hanging up.

He checked his watch. He wanted to make sure of something Lassman couldn’t tell him. Did Sonia actually pass the book onto Witkoff or did the Russian get it from someone else? He was pondering these questions, knowing that he needed more than a hunch, when the phone on his desk rang again.

“Raoul?” he answered hopefully.

“Hello, Avram,” came the reply. Recognizing the voice, Cohen clenched the receiver tightly, knowing that he had failed to keep his efforts a secret. A call from Meshulam Yaffe meant only one thing: politics. The ultimate survivor in the police bureaucracy, Yaffe was now a special assistant to the minister of police. He had survived three ministers in three years, specializing in keeping the hem sewn between the professional needs of the police force with the political needs of his political masters. Just as he had a tailor keep his uniform well cut, he followed the fashions, tailoring his position according to the power balance between the fifth floor of police headquarters and the police ministry on the sixth floor of the government office complex across the valley in Sheikh Jarrah.

“What do you want, Meshulam?” Cohen asked brusquely.

“How are you?”

“Get to the point,” Cohen ordered.

“My condolences. On Nissim Levy. I know how you two were close.”

“Get to the point.”

“Avram, please. Can’t you for once be gracious!” Yaffe was an emotional man.

“I know you too well, Meshulam. There’s something you want.”

“Please, Avram, I’m serious. The minister sends condolences.

Everyone here does, in fact.”

“Thank you.”

“See, that didn’t hurt, did it?” “What do they want?” Cohen asked a third time.

“It’s what you want, Avram,” Yaffe said, pointing out the obvious.

“Stop waltzing, Meshulam,” Cohen demanded. “What are you calling about? I accepted your condolences. What else do you want? And please don’t tell me about the academy needing new sports equipment for the gym.”

“It’s not about the equipment,” Yaffe said.

“Then what?”

“I know that you spoke with the inspector general. And that he asked you not to interfere.”

“With what?”

“Av-ram! Please.”

They were in a battle of wits that they had played for years, going back to when Yaffe was the police liaison for all the foreign officials in Jerusalem. From diplomats to clergymen, if they got into trouble with the police, Yaffe was their official address at the police, while Cohen’s department —often in coordination with the Shabak counterintelligence agency—ran the investigation. Yaffe’s job was to prevent scandals. Cohen’s job was to get to the truth.

While still on the force, Cohen had usually gained the upper hand. But it all was a matter of information. And right now, Yaffe definitely knew more than Cohen. At the very least, Yaffe knew how he learned about Cohen’s inquiries. Had Witkoff already realized Cohen was asking questions? Did Shvilli let it slip that his information about Nissim in Eilat went first to Cohen? And where was Jacki—running back and forth between Hagit and Levy’s old office now, according to Shvilli, already occupied by Shuki Caspi. He couldn’t rule out a call from Frankfurt to Bonn to Jerusalem. And he wondered if there was something Yaffe learned at Ramie—where Kobi Alper was incarcerated —that made the politician’s politician call him. In short, there was only one way to go—surprise Yaffe. He did so by suggesting they meet, to talk. That night.

Meanwhile, Cohen decided to get some sleep. He needed it for the night ahead.

It was Yaffe’s idea to meet at Balkan, in Tel Aviv. It had simple, obvious fare: grilled and baked meats, soups, and salads, but nobody ate there for the fare. It was the restaurant of choice for the power elite. Ministers and generals, industrialists and publishers—they all ate there.

For its first two generations, the restaurant was across the street from the wholesale fruit and vegetable market behind the defense ministry. The third generation closed the twelve-tables-and-a-bar place and joined the gentrification of the old port of Tel Aviv at the very northern end of the seaside boardwalk. The old storefront place could barely handle fifty people at a time. The converted warehouse next to the skin-diving club on one side and overlooking the Mediterranean on the other had tables and chairs to seat two hundred.

From a glum brown-and-green decor, the restaurant changed into a place brightly lit by the open sky of the western horizon. The menu also changed, now emphasizing seafood and pasta, much more fashionable than the Balkan-Jewish food the grandparents had cooked.

To reach the entrance to the restaurant, Cohen had to walk to the end of the parking lot, past the broad plate glass windows.

Yaffe was looking out for him, and waved for Cohen to join him at the table of six. But Cohen shook his head and pointed at the entrance, for Yaffe to join him there.

“I thought you’d join us for dinner,” said Yaffe. “Shaul Machnes is coming. He said he would like to meet you.” “The MK’?” asked Cohen.

“Yes.”

Cohen shook his head. “I’m not here to socialize,” he said, “especially not with an MK. Follow me.”

Yaffe tried to protest with a “but,” but Cohen walked into the darkness of the port’s most western edge, beside the retaining wall that prevented the Mediterranean sea from rising onto the asphalt surface of the old port and washing the nightclubs and restaurants away. So Yaffe apologized to the waiter, whom he had told to bring a chair and add a setting for Cohen at the table for seven, and scurried to catch up with Cohen.

They walked beside the retaining wall until Cohen stopped, distant from all the parked cars, in a darkness Cohen estimated was impenetrable to anyone sitting inside the restaurant and at a place that gave him a view of all the cars entering the port. On the way down to Tel Aviv, Cohen had done the calculations in his head, reaching the obvious conclusion: If Yaffe knew that Cohen was investigating Witkoff, Cohen assumed that Witkoff himself also must know. He couldn’t be sure, of course. That’s why he was meeting Yaffe. To find out just how much Yaffe knew.

“Why all the paranoia?” Meshulam asked.

“You tell me,” said Cohen. “You’re the one who called, worried I would vandalize something.”

“That’s precisely the point. You are mistaken.” “About what?” Yaffe sighed. “We understand that you take Nissim Levy’s murder very hard,” he began. “And obviously, if you

“MK: Member of Kuesset, the 120-seat Israeli Parliament.

have any relevant information, we’ll be happy to take it, follow it up. But … “

“But what?”

“Do I have to spell it out for you?”

“That you can’t do anything about the Russians?”

“No, that you can’t do anything about it. Leave it to us.”

“Meanwhile, I understand the investigation’s focusing on the Alper brothers.”