Pattern crimes

by William Bayer

  DAVID'S DOGS

  It was past midnight. Shoshana was posted on watch in the lobby at 28 Histadrut. Uri had the janitor and night watchman ensconced in a first floor office, while David, Micha and Dov set to work opening up room 304. The words "Holyland Arts Foundation" were stenciled in black on the frosted glass door. The lock was serious; Micha said he wouldn't be able to open it without leaving marks. But there was a transom, also made of frosted glass, which Dov felt certain he could breach, then fish through to catch and throw the bolt inside.

  As Dov unscrewed the transom fixtures, Micha, who'd done preliminary research, filled David in.

  "Very low-key type of operation. They buy up paintings and sculptures by Israeli artists, arrange shipment to the States, and then exhibit the works over there. They also make contributions to Israeli art schools, encourage exchange of art teachers, fund promising young Israeli artists, and occasionally commission a major work to be placed in a public location-a development town, say, or on an army base."

  "So who's behind it?" David asked.

  "Americans, some kind of Christian evangelist group. Been operating here close to three years. They pay their rent on time, never bother anybody and, according to their neighbors, seldom get visitors. The old mama-type who works in the front room is sweet and kind of dumb. She sits out there, smiles, and sorts the mail. Actually, since she's only here part-time, the place is mostly closed."

  Once they were inside, however, David was disappointed: no hidden safe, no concealed tape recorders, no windows made of one-way glass. Just two small offices, both shabbily furnished-a waiting room with hard wooden chairs, a desk, a phone, and an answering machine, and an inner office with another desk, a metal filing cabinet, and on the walls photographs of various works of contemporary Israeli art.

  He opened a drawer of the filing cabinet and started rifling through file folders. Most contained copies of letters between the Foundation's home office, in Dallas, and various Israeli galleries. He found one marked "Negev Earthwork: Circle in the Square." It was the only folder that was empty.

  "Of course it's empty," Dov said. "It's the one we're interested in."

  "Is this some kind of Shin Bet safe-house?" Micha asked.

  "A good safe-house is a residence. Here, there's only access during business hours."

  "Still it could be a front," Dov said. "Money gets sent in, art gets shipped out. It's looks like any one of a hundred little foreign religious charities. No one pays attention, because what they do is so ineffectual and nice."

  "Maybe just a little too ineffectual," David said. "Question is: Is this a legitimate Shin Bet operation, or is it related somehow to our case? How's your English, Dov?"

  "Damn good-you know that."

  "Ever been to Dallas?"

  Dov shook his head. Then suddenly he grinned. "Hey! You're kidding, David. You are, aren't you? Oh wow! Just turn me loose!"

  Latsky bit into his lower lip. "Suppose it is a valid Shin Bet operation?"

  "So what's the harm?" David asked. "All we want to do is check it out."

  "Still…"

  "Come on. What's bugging you? Is it the money?"

  "I have a discretionary fund…"

  "So what's the problem?"

  "Too much of a long shot." Latsky squinted, then lit a cigarette. "You got some hearsay Cohen went in there. So what does that prove? Nothing." He squinted again, then exhaled. "You're floundering. Because you can't make head or tail out of this you want to dispatch twenty percent of your force to the goddam U.S.A."

  "Give me five days. If Dov doesn't come up with anything I'll haul him back. He can hitch free on El Al far as New York, and from there-"

  "Fine! Send him! Do whatever the hell you want. Since they found that executioner's' body you've been the minister's fair-haired boy." Latsky stubbed out his cigarette. "Just don't ask me for any written orders. As far as I'm concerned this meeting never happened. I never authorized anything. You're operating on your own."

  David drove Dov Meltzer down to Ben-Gurion Airport, waited while he cleared customs, then escorted him onto the plane.

  Dov looked nervous. "I've got reserve duty coming up, so maybe I won't come back. Maybe I'll join the traitors driving taxis around New York."

  David leaned over the seat. "Find me something, Dov. Investigate the hell out of this. Because Latsky's right, I am floundering. I'm not sure what I'm doing anymore."

  He and Micha drove out to the Negev to look at the earthwork. After half an hour of trudging around it, Micha gave his verdict: "I see why they call it 'Circle in the Square.' But you know something, David-it's a crock of shit."

  "So why's everyone so concerned about it? What's Cohen's involvement? Why is Sokolov acting panicked? If Targov's right and Sokolov didn't design it, why pay him good money to sign the plans?"

  Micha looked at him. "There's something going on."

  "That's right, but what? I want to know. Use your contacts, Micha. Find out who authorized this thing. No one lives around here. There's no decent road in, and when you get here there's nothing to see. So if it's really just a crock of shit, then what the hell's the point?"

  Liederman wanted to go down to Tel Aviv: "To try and find that Arab kid," he explained. "You know, the one Peretz picked up off the beach. If I could find him I could bring him up here and then try to sick him onto Cohen. Dangle him, you know. Maybe Cohen would bite."

  "Forget it," David said. "He's too smart to bite an Arab."

  But later he realized Moshe Liederman had begun to think like a detective. He was getting hunches, following them up, and he'd grasped the basic method of entrapment-finding the suspect's weak spot and then exploiting it by dangling bait.

  H e told Anna: "I'd like to have some photographs of Cohen together with a man. Then I'd haul him in, and, if he refused to cooperate, I'd threaten to show them to his wife."

  "David! You wouldn't do that!"

  "No, of course not," he said. "But I sure as hell wouldn't hesitate to make the threat."

  Uri found the panel door through a garage in Netanya that specialized in Chevrolets. The foreman of the body shop remembered replacing the door, and directed Uri to a junkyard further down the coast. Here Uri made his way between carcasses of demolished Fords and torn-up Fiats, broken axels, shattered windshields, smashed-in radiators, and assorted burned-out truck engines crusted with grease and dirt. It took him two days but he finally found the panel door, and when David sent it over to the forensic lab at National Police H.Q., they were able to match paint marks in the dents with scrapings of paint taken from Schneiderman's truck.

  "All of which proves," Rafi said, "that Schneiderman hit a van. But doesn't prove it was the van in Ein Kerem."

  "Maybe not," David said, "but I never counted on establishing a solid chain of evidence."

  "Then why did you go to so much trouble, David?"

  "Confirmation. You see, Rafi-now I know I'm right."

  Dov's first call came through in seventy-two hours: "Think it's hot in Jerusalem. You should see the way we're sweating here."

  "What have you got?"

  "First, and this wasn't hard, Holyland Arts is owned by a Texas corporation called Militants for Christ, Inc. It's a spin-off of an Oklahoma oil company. The sole owner is a certain Harrison Stone, a big-deal oil and gas multimillionaire. He's also a part-time TV preacher-cool, soft-spoken, and very very slick. Around here they call him 'The Wizard of Ooze.' Some kind of local joke-I don't get it, but what the hell. Anyway, though Stone's certainly a fundamentalist, he's not a fire-and-damnation type. Makes his TV sermons in a cool reasonable tone of voice from behind a corporate desk. Something interesting: There's no church-no staff, no building, no parishioners. It's a private philanthropy and strictly a one-man show. And according to people in the Jewish community, Stone's a very big fan of Israel."

  "Has he been here?"

  "Plenty of times. Trouble is I can't find out exactly when. But get this, David-he's also a close pal of
Rabbi Katzer. Katzer was here last year soliciting funds, and not, I hear, just from local Jews. Stone supposedly arranged several very private meetings between Katzer and wealthy Texan Christian fundamentalists. Pledges of serious money are rumored to have been made in exchange for unspecified promises. It's all kind of vague, no one knows exactly what went on, but from the little I've been able to uncover I'd have to say your conspiracy theory is looking good."

  David felt a rush of excitement; a little more of the concealed pattern had been revealed. "How did you dig all this up so fast?"

  "I had help from a local lady reporter name of Gael Rubin. She wrote a series of articles on Stone, something very difficult to do because it's almost impossible to get near the guy. He's a take-over specialist who operates with a lot of secrecy."

  "What do you think?"

  "Don't know yet. But the operation here doesn't fit with those crummy offices we saw."

  "You got pictures?"

  "I shot some off the TV."

  "Have the consulate wire them to me. So-what does your pretty reporter girl say?"

  "Did I say she was pretty, David?"

  "She is, isn't she?"

  "Yeah, she is." Dov laughed. "And she says Stone is sinister. Says that except for the religious stuff he plays it quiet, stays in the background, always works through proxies. Then, when he's ready to gobble something up, he strikes out of nowhere like a shark."

  He told her: "Here I am working on a murder case that in some tangential way involves my brother, my father, and myself. And now it seems to involve you too. Your old lover has somehow stumbled into some strange back room of it. At least I think he has. So many intersections…" He shook his head. "I think this could only happen here. Only here, Anna, in Jerusalem…"

  Micha confirmed that Holyland Arts had funded the design of "Circle in the Square" and that Israeli military engineers had done the actual work, paid for out of an IDF cultural and recreational fund.

  "Far as I can tell, no specific individual authorized it. The way it works with this fund is that once properly prepared papers are filed in the appropriate manner they get shuffled through the bureaucracy from desk to desk. Each officer adds his initials and several months later the project comes out the other end approved."

  "If that's how it works then I pity Israel," David said. But still he wasn't satisfied. "Bring in Sokolov," he instructed Micha. "Time now to put him on the grill."

  There was something about the old man that filled David with ambivalence. His face bore the stamp of vulnerability one saw often in the older generation of European-born Israelis. The look of internal disturbance, of having been deeply and indelibly wounded in the past, totally opposed to the famous "Sabra look"-the strong, set, committed features and direct unblinking gaze. A disturbed face but David knew he must distrust his sympathy. Often those who looked most disturbed had been deformed in sinister ways.

  Was Sergei evil? Targov had told Anna that he was, but examining him now, across the small table in the tiny basement interrogation room, David could not be sure. There was pathos in the taut forehead, the terrible teeth, the bushes of white hair that sprang Ben-Gurion style from the sides of his shriveled head. His eyes, greatly magnified by his extra-thick spectacles, were frightened. No wonder-he had received an official summons; the man had spent fifteen years in Soviet camps.

  Still, there was a hint of craftiness that belied the injured stare. David recognized the face of a man who could channel his hurt into a mercenary rage. He knew the type-the cheater, the stealer, the professional litigant, the man who behaves as if money can salve his wounds.

  "Before I start asking questions, let me make several matters clear. We're investigating a case in which you may or may not be involved. As of now you're not a suspect, and we have no plan to bring any charges. However, if you lie to us you'll be charged with perjury, and, I warn you, the penalties for that can be severe. I say this because I want you to understand that there's nothing to be gained by concealing the truth."

  Sergei nodded, his face alert and tense.

  David flicked his finger at the pile of drawings which Micha had removed from the walls of Sokolov's bedroom and which now lay between them on the table. "We know you didn't make these. We know you were paid to sign them and claim authorship of 'Circle in the Square.' For us that's no crime. What we want to know is how you came to sign these drawings. Who approached you? What did they offer you? What deal did you strike? And, most important, why… why did they need you?"

  Sergei hesitated. His hugely magnified eyes blinked and darted and finally came to rest. They were aimed at the place where David's forefinger touched his signature on the top drawing of the pile.

  "This is your signature."

  Sergei nodded.

  "But you didn't make these drawings?"

  Sergei shook his head.

  "Who asked you to sign them?"

  "I received a letter from the foundation."

  "The Holyland Arts Foundation?"

  "Yes."

  "What did the letter say?"

  Sergei coughed, then looked nervously away. "That my situation, as a new citizen and a sculptor, had come to their attention. That I was invited to come in and discuss the possibility of receiving a commission to create a public work."

  "So you went to the foundation offices. Whom did you meet?"

  "Mr. Hurwitz."

  "Igal Hurwitz?"

  Sergei nodded.

  "So what did this Mr. Hurwitz have to say?"

  "He was sympathetic when I told him about my loss of sight. He convinced me this would be no problem-that it would be possible for me to conceive a work and then leave its execution to someone else."

  "Had you ever been involved in conceptual art?"

  "I was a carver. My specialty was carved ballerinas."

  "Did you tell this to Hurwitz?"

  "He said it didn't make any difference."

  "Did he then suggest a particular 'conception' to you?" Sergei hesitated. "Well?"

  "Yes."

  David tapped the pile of drawings. "And this is what he suggested?"

  "Yes."

  David sat back. "You're being truthful. I appreciate that you're not trying to mislead me or shade the truth. Let's go a little deeper now. Who brought up the matter of money?"

  "Hurwitz did."

  "What did he say?"

  "He told me there would be a fee."

  "Did he say how much?"

  "Depending upon the size of the final work, it would range between five and ten thousand dollars."

  "That's quite a lot of money just to sign some drawings."

  "Apparently it was worth it to them." Sergei smiled. It was that smile that caused David to decide that he disliked him, but he kept his dislike to himself.

  "Yes, I see that," he said. "Of course they wanted your signature. But didn't you think it a little strange to be offered foreign currency?"

  "The foundation is American."

  "But Hurwitz was Israeli."

  "He was a foundation employee. He made that clear."

  "And you didn't ask him any questions about why you'd been chosen, or why the fee would be so large, or what the 'Circle in the Square' was supposed to represent?" Sergei shook his head. David sat back again. "Yes," he said, "I understand. There you were being presented with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Here was this foundation representative offering you a substantial sum of money, and not only that-also legitimacy as an environmental sculptor. Who were you to question what was behind this fortuitous stroke of fortune?"

  "Exactly!" Sergei smiled; his interrogator understood him. There was no danger for him here, no need to conceal the truth.

  "So you signed the drawings?"

  "I signed them, of course."

  "All of them?"

  "Yes."

  "Without asking any questions?"

  Sergei smiled again. "I don't believe I said a single word."

  "Of course not. Why should you
speak? To ask questions then could have blown the deal. In fact the drawings were already prepared, weren't they? They were right there waiting for you in the office when you arrived. And the money was there too, wasn't it? A pile of it. Cash." David gazed at him. "The drawings were there, and the pile of cash right there beside them. That's how it was, wasn't it? Wasn't it?"

  Sergei nodded eagerly. His interrogator was such an intelligent man. He seemed already to know the answers to everything he asked.

  "And you never asked any questions, and you have no idea why you were chosen, and that's all you do know."

  "Yes!" Sergei exclaimed. "Yes!"

  David leaned forward. "So why is it that you went back and demanded additional money?"

  Sergei shook his head. "I never did!"

  "Several days ago you were seen returning to the foundation offices."

  "I went back-yes! I saw Hurwitz-yes! But I never demanded anything."

  "So why did you go back?"

  "I needed a loan."

  "You'd already spent the full ten thousand!"

  "Life is expensive here, difficult for an immigrant. You must know that."

  "Yes, I know," David said. "The foundation had helped you. Now you hoped that they might help you again."

  "That's it!"

  "Did Hurwitz agree to make the loan?"

  "He said he'd have to consult the Dallas office."

  "And now you're waiting to hear?"

  "Yes, I'm waiting. I'm waiting…" Sergei's eyes glazed over as his voice drifted off.

  Seeing that he was finally exhausted, David stood up and extended his hand. "Congratulations, Mr. Sokolov. You are now a legitimate Israeli artist. We appreciate your coming in. Sergeant Benyamani will return you to your home."

  Later, with Micha, he examined the videotape of the interview. "He's slick. He could be lying, but I don't think he was," Micha said. "The setting was too intimidating."

  "He lied about the loan."

  Micha agreed. "But he's shrewd, shrewd enough not to ask questions when he sees a pile of cash."

  "They were shrewd to pick him," David said. "He was perfect. He made a perfect schnook."