An Accidental Murder: An Avram Cohen Mystery (4 page)

“You missed an amazing night,” Lassman bragged the next morning when, bleary-eyed, the translator showed up at the Koethe pavilion. “After dinner we went to a discotheque, and then back to another hotel. Amazing scene.

Agents, publishers, editors. Everyone getting drunk.

And,” he paused for effect. “I got lucky.” “Good for you,” Cohen said, not meaning it.

He had slept badly through most of the night, only finding sleep with a final cognac alone in his room near dawn, and then needing the wake-up call at nine in the morning. He spent the morning wandering around the fair on his own.

Occasionally, he’d be stopped by a stranger, and asked for an autograph. Twice, a small crowd grew around him, strangers all, smiling, eager, wanting. It frightened him each time a little more. In Jerusalem, even the strangers were familiar to Cohen, who knew every alleyway and courtyard in the heart of the city, both east and west. For the first time in a long time, he felt himself fighting the feeling of being lost.

He was twenty minutes late for the Koethe luncheon, arriving at their pavilion only to find a nervous Kristina Scheller waiting for him.

“You are late,” she complained.

“I’m sorry, I got lost.”

She shook her head, as disappointed as the day before, when he turned down her advances. “Well, we can go join them, or go have lunch on our own,” she suggested.

“I’m not very hungry,” he admitted. It was only partly true. He had fallen to the temptation of two different sausages sold at two different refreshment stands between the halls. And with each sausage and sauerkraut, he had a tall beer. He was full, for now, and secretly glad he had missed another heavy luncheon.

“Well, what would you like to do?” she asked.

“I like cookbooks,” he admitted.

She beamed at him, and took his arm. For the rest of the afternoon, she led him from one pavilion to another, as he looked through the newest cookbooks the worldwide book industry had to offer that year. But at five, he was back at his hotel, waiting in the lobby for Tina and Lass man, Carey Mccloskey and Herbert Wang, the president of TMC. He was finally going to meet the voice from the other end of the planet.

Around him now in the hotel lobby, men and women air kissed and embraced, shook hands and stood in small circles, briefcases and handbags in hand, talking. A few held drinks— wineglasses or whiskey glasses. Behind the reception desk, four uniformed clerks overseen by a worsted-suited manager were handling a crush of guests.

Through the plate glass window to the street, Cohen could see the busy traffic of a boulevard divided by a large park. A waitress walked by carrying a tray of drinks. He stopped and pointed to one of the tall glasses with white wine. She smiled at him. He took a glass, and then, before she could move on, he took another glass. He drained one, turning slowly as he drank, looking for Tina.

“Avram?” said a voice behind him. The voice was familiar.

He turned.

“Avram Cohen?” asked the young man in the blue suit with a yellow and red polka-dotted bow tie hanging under a sharp Adam’s apple. His pinched features included a narrow nose, squinty eyes, and an almost lipless mouth.

“Carey?” Cohen guessed.

“You’re just what I thought you would be,” the editor exclaimed, grabbing Cohen’s arms with both hands and pulling him forward to air-kiss. With a glass in each hand, Cohen took the embrace passively, careful not to spill the full, second glass he had taken from the waitress.

Mccloskey backed away from Cohen as if to inspect him, and then clucked his tongue and shook his head.

“You’re gorgeous. Just what I expected. Fantastic.” Suddenly, his tone changed to disappointment, “If only you had agreed to go on tour,” he said. “We would have had a hit, a real hit on our hands. Now we have to play catch up.”

“Now Carey,” Tina’s buzz saw voice interrupted, coming from behind Cohen, “don’t get bitchy.”

She was not a pretty or even handsome woman. But she carried herself with a low-key but constant sexual energy that Cohen figured probably played a part in her success as an agent—though with Mccloskey, Cohen suspected, the voice was more persuasive than a peek at her cleavage.

“What’s done is done. We’re here to fix things, aren’t we, Avram?” she said.

“Tina, darling,” said Carey, welcoming her effusively with the same air-kissing with which he greeted Cohen.

“I’m so glad to hear that.” He suddenly smiled to someone beyond the circle and waved a few fingers, not far from Cohen’s face. The detective noticed a large gold ring, inscribed with a florid script and studded with a dark stone. Then just as suddenly, Carey was smiling at Cohen.

“Good,” the editor continued. “Can I be frank?” he suddenly asked, lowering his voice.

“Please,” said Tina, icily.

“The truth is,” Carey said, “Mr. Wang is not very happy, and asked me to find out just what’s going on before he meets with you, Avram. So, shall we go find a quiet corner?” he suggested. “And find out?”

“What about Benny?” Cohen asked.

Carey looked at Tina. “Do we need him, you think?”

She shrugged.

“I’d prefer to wait for him,” said Cohen. “After all, if not for him, there would be no book.”

“Yes, yes,” Carey relented, making no effort to hide his impatience, “you’re right.” He pursed his lips for a moment, thinking, and then excused himself to say hello to a friend. “You know, I’ll be right back,” he promised, “or you come get me when Benny shows up,” he offered, and without waiting for a response, joined a short fat man in a tailored suit. Arm and arm, the two went off to huddle in a corner, the little fat man looking over his shoulder once at Cohen and then laughing at something Carey said.

“You are, you know,” Tina said when they were gone.

“What?” he asked.

“Well, maybe not gorgeous,” she admitted, “but definitely attractive.”

“I’m an old man,” he protested, not wanting to explain Ahuva.

“I’m sorry you think so,” she shot back. “How’s the wine?” she asked, reaching for the full glass he was still holding. While she sipped, she scanned the crowd.

He answered her anyway. “A Riesling,” he said. “Too sweet for my taste. Keep it.”

“Ah, yes, you prefer cognac.”

Across the lobby, Cohen watched the elevator doors open and close twice. Still no sign of Lassman. But Carey came back. “No Benny?” he asked impatiently.

Cohen shook his head. Carey checked his watch. So did Tina.

“Avram,” she said first, “we really have to be at Koethe on time. And Carey’s probably … “

“I’ve got to be at the Intercontinental … ” Carey said.

“I’ll call up to him,” suggested Cohen.

“Avram, really, I’m sure he can find us,” Tina promised.

“Of course,” said Carey, putting his hand on Cohen’s broad back and steering him through the crowd to an alcove where a corner of red leather chairs around a low coffee table covered with leftover cups of coffee and pastry, liquor glasses, and cigarettes, was being vacated by a party of six.

Carey took the seat Cohen would have preferred—facing the lobby—and Tina sat on a sofa between the two men who were in chairs at opposite ends of the coffee table.

Cohen had a view of the glass entrance to the hotel, but the weather had changed from a misty drizzle to a more intense rain that created trails of windblown water on the window. The wet glass refracted the lights of the traffic outdoors, both the cars passing the hotel and those pulling into the driveway to disgorge or collect passengers.

“Now Avram,” Carey began, leaning forward in his chair. “As you know, we are not happy about you missing the tour. Sales are far from what we expected.”

“I know.”

“But it’s nothing that can’t be fixed,” Tina jumped in, with a nervous smile at the editor and a slightly pleading look when she turned to Cohen. “He’ll do a tour, of course. He knows what it says in his contract.” Carey smiled at the Jerusalemite. “I’m sure he does,” he said. “We put a lot of money into this book,” he added.

“I’ll pay it back,” Cohen said softly.

Neither the agent nor the editor heard him. He repeated himself.

Tina looked at him with shock. Carey was curious.

“What do you mean, you’ll pay it back?” Carey said.

“Just what I said,” said Cohen. He gestured over his shoulder with a wave of his hand toward the crowded lobby, then pointed out the window toward the misty glimmer of the fair building. “I don’t belong here. I don’t.

This really was a mistake. Maybe the book was a mistake.”

“Now Avram, you don’t mean that. The book’s wonderful,” Tina exclaimed, so shocked her voice rose loud enough to make the nearest clutch of people break off their own discussion. She smiled uncomfortably at them and then back at Cohen. “And you’ll be wonderful on tour.” One last time she turned to Carey as she tried to convince both men that everything was under control.

Carey ignored her, instead squinting at Cohen as if he were a particularly interesting item on display. Only a flash going off somewhere behind Cohen in the lobby made Mccloskey blink. “Let’s hope,” he said, softly, almost too softly for Cohen too hear, “that they want your picture, as well.”

“What do you mean by that?” Tina demanded, but it seemed as if she knew the answer. Cohen didn’t.

“Sorry I’m late,” Benny interrupted as he entered the alcove. “Frank Kaplan’s here,” he said with an exaggerated nonchalance, sitting down next to Tina, who had to pull at her briefcase to give him space, distracting her from her concentration on Carey.

“Tell me about him,” Cohen asked, directing the question to all three of the literary professionals, surprising them all with his sudden curiosity.

“You know him?” Tina asked.

“Sort of,” Cohen said.

“He practically invented the disaster genre,” Benny said enviously, reaching for a menu beneath a tea cup and saucer. “He’s sold millions of books, literally millions … God, the service here is bad,” he added, almost knocking over a half-drunk bottle of beer left in the remains of the last party that had used the table. “Anyway, Kaplan is … ” But Carey wasn’t interested in Kaplan. “Benny,” he said in a casual tone, “Avram says he’s ready to drop the whole thing. Pay TMC back, and, and, and, I don’t know what.

What, Avram?”

“Oh, no, please, no,” Lassman moaned, slumping back in the sofa as if suddenly defeated. “Not after everything we’ve been through. Not now.”

Tina, too, was shocked, but with Carey’s tone of voice.

Her mouth seemed to drop open, but she, too, turned to Cohen, wondering the same thing as the editor.

Carey ignored Lassman’s moaning and Tina’s gaping, facing Cohen. “What do you want, Avram? To pull the book off the market? Buy back all the copies? Make it go away? It’s too late for all that, Avram. It’s out there,” Carey pointed out, and then his sarcasm gave way to frustration.

“Jesus, Avram, what is your problem?”

Maybe my problem is that from the start I let you all call me Avram, he thought, almost saying it aloud. It wasn’t that he felt superior. It was that he felt threatened by the intimacy it included in its use. He learned that while he was writing the book. But that didn’t make it any easier for him. For years, people called him Deputy Commander Cohen, and or just plain Cohen. Behind his back, he was sometimes known as Hacohen Hagadol, the High Priest, but that was only used by his loyalists, and never to his face. Avram was for very few. And now, even Lassman was calling him Avram.

But that wasn’t really the problem, he knew, once again realizing that as much as writing the book had liberated him from his past, its physical existence as an object, printed in tens of thousands of copies, had taken over his life in ways he never expected, never wanted, never needed.

The book was supposed to answer questions—about the Holocaust, about Israel, about Jerusalem. He didn’t want to have to explain it—or himself. And as far as he was concerned, that was the publisher’s problem, not his.

“Avram,” Carey suddenly said, thinking he might have understood. “Are you afraid? Is that it?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Lassman jumped in to defend Cohen. “Cohen? Afraid?”

Cohen snapped his fingers at his translator, silencing him. “Of what?” he asked Carey, challenging the editor.

Carey shrugged. “I don’t know. Cameras? Microphones?

Fame? I mean, are you the same Avram Cohen who wrote Tear can be, must be conquered by willpower’?”

“Carey!” Tina exclaimed, offended for Cohen’s sake.

“It’s all right, Tina,” Cohen said softly, keeping his eyes on the editor.

Carey had learned a lot about Cohen during the months they worked on the manuscript. They had never met face-to face, but as Cohen thought back on the time since they had first met on the phone, him stumbling over the name Mccloskey, and Carey laughing and saying “just call me Carey, and I’ll call you Avram,” Cohen realized that Carey knew a lot more about him than he did about the young American. Maybe Carey’s right, he thought. Maybe. He might have admitted it, if Frank Kaplan had not at that moment been pushed into the alcove by the same little fat man Carey had gone off with while they waited for Lassman.

Kaplan loudly gave an order to park him facing Cohen.

The little fat man quickly abandoned the wheelchair and stood beside Carey, who could do nothing to hide the expression of amazement on his face as the old author growled at Cohen, “I owe you an apology. Let me buy you a drink.”

Before he could answer, a photographer following Kaplan into the alcove flashed a snap in his eyes, unexpectedly blinding Cohen for a second. He naturally shaded his eyes with his hand. “Of course, you owe me one, too,” Kaplan added with a wry smile.

Cohen dropped his hand. A moment before, while Kaplan maneuvered into position beside Cohen, Tina had been grinning—nervously—from ear to ear. Suddenly, she looked worried.

Carey leaned back in his chair, arms crossed against his chest, studying Kaplan, who was patting Cohen on the shoulder as if they were old friends. The photographer remained poised, waiting for action to capture.

Cohen sighed. “You don’t owe me an apology.” “I’m glad to hear that,” Kaplan said.