An Accidental Murder: An Avram Cohen Mystery

by Robert Rosenberg

  The air was almost still, cleansed on Friday by rain, dried on Saturday by the bright sun. Tomorrow it would be warm again, almost fifteen degrees centigrade in Tel Aviv, the weatherman on the radio had promised.

  A siren turned into a patrol car racing south toward Jaffa.

  He finished the cigarette, stubbed it out on the railing, and crossed the living room to the kitchen, where he dumped the butt in the trash bucket beneath the sink.

  Then he went to the phone beside the sofa. It rang twice after he punched in the number.

  “Kochinski,” mumbled a man’s voice.

  “Raoul, it’s Avram Cohen.”

  There was a brief pause. “The deputy commander?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re not police anymore.”

  “I need a favor.” “I’ve heard that before,” Raoul said. “It usually meant being on my feet for twelve more hours.”

  “You heard about Nissim?” “The accident. You always said he drove too fast.”

  “It wasn’t an accident.”

  “So they’ll send him to me.”

  “No, the body’s with the medical school.”

  “David Rath is a good pathologist. He turns out good doctors—” “Please, Raoul,” Cohen . “I just want to be sure they cover everything. I want—” “Every detail,” Raoul , knowing exactly what Cohen would say. “Yes, yes. I’ll call down in the morning.”

  “And I’ll get back to you around noon.”

  “I’m sure,” said the pathologist.

  “And Raoul,” Cohen added, “this is between you and me. Nobody needs to know we spoke. For your sake, as well as mine.” Raoul sighed. “Under the circumstances, I didn’t expect anything different.”

  Cohen laughed and hung up, then went back to the bedroom, finally feeling sleep coming on. He lay down on the bed beside Ahuva’s still body, resting his hand on her thigh as he closed his eyes and welcomed the darkness.

  19.

  “Remember,” she wrote at the end of the short note he found on the breakfast table that Monday morning, “you’re not alone—and it’s not all dependent on you.”

  Yes, he knew in his belly that she was right. But in his head he had doubts that had nothing to do with distrust of her love, or Shvilli’s loyalty, or Jacki’s eagerness, which was so much like Nissim’s own enthusiasm for the job. The doubts were about himself. Ahuva’s innocent question about a connection between Nissim’s death and Frankfurt sparked a tiny corner of under in his mind. There was neither fire nor smoke, not yet, but he could feel the molecules moving. If not for Nissim’s death, he had figured on another two weeks to finish going through the files in the dusty attic of the Russian Compound. Now, he wondered if he would have to go back again to the beginning, once he reached the end.

  The water for his coffee boiled. He dumped a tablespoon of Turkish ground coffee into the bottom of a glass, added a half a teaspoon of instant coffee, a tablespoon of sugar, and poured the boiling water onto the mixture slowly, into two stages, stirring the first time when the glass was barely a third full. Before the swirling stopped, he filled the rest of the glass and set it aside beside the morning’s Ha’aretz newspaper.

  The court order was working. Nissim’s death was a storm-related accident, not a murder. But his reputation won him a brief obituary that mentioned in three paragraphs Levy’s background as Cohen’s assistant, the Kobi Alper case, and Levy’s sometimes controversial lobbying for a full fledged special task force on the Russian underworld.

  The coffee powder had settled at the bottom of the glass.

  He took a first sip to test the black drink, then two more deeper drains on the glass before leaving the apartment.

  Downstairs, he cut through the glass lobby that overlooked the beach to one side and Hayarkon Street to the other. Ahuva’s building had seventeen stories. The first floor was commercial—a couple of boutiques, a small jewelry store, a little shop selling books, magazines and newspapers, tobacco, perfumes, and film.

  A cafe occupied the corner nearest the outdoor patio entrance to the building. Sunlight splashed across the patio from the sun rising in the east and a waitress was unfolding chairs beside half a dozen tables outside. He ordered an espresso from the barman and with the platter and coffee in one hand and the two tabloids he bought at the kiosk in the other, he went out to the patio.

  Like Ha’aretz, the two tabloids also carried the story on the pages with their coverage of the weekend storm and its effects. But the court order couldn’t prevent Ma’ariv and Yediotb from calling Nissim’s accident “mysterious.” Nothing was said about bullets, but the reporters did report that a special investigating team had been established under Caspi’s management.

  Ma’ariv carried everything Ha’aretz reported, but also ran a rare photo of Nissim in uniform, with District Commander Bendor at his side, on the steps of the Beersheba District Court the day Nissim testified against Alper. No mention was made of Big Kobi Alper’s threats, although his arrest and conviction was included in the list of Levy’s accomplishments in the last year and a half. “Now it can be revealed,” wrote the reporter looking for an angle, “Chief Superintendent Levy was a key lobbyist for the police to establish a special task force to coordinate the investigations into Russian-led organized crime in the country.”

  As he read, he began rubbing at his forearm. The eczema was trying to come out on his arm above the six-digit tattooed number on the vein side of his forearm.

  The last time it itched in that part of his body was in Frankfurt, but as the days and weeks passed, the rash shrank back until it was only a tiny red spot in the little web of flesh between his forefinger and middle finger on his left hand and then finally it was gone. Now it was returning, but only when he finished reading the obituary, which included a mention of Levy’s eight years under Cohen in Jerusalem did the detective notice his hand rubbing at the faded navy blue of the jacket sleeve.

  He stopped, trying to still the voice telling him to roll back the sleeves of the windbreaker and his shirt and attack the itching, concentrating on telling it to go away. That didn’t work either. His cortisone cream was at home in Jerusalem.

  He looked up to take his mind off the itching. A bleached blonde in a two-piece outfit that revealed age as well as skin had become the second customer of the hour for the cafe, taking the seat at the end of the row from Cohen to his far left. Like him, she was enjoying the warmth of a bright sun after the days of cold and rain. When she smiled at him he looked at the little notebook he bought at the kiosk where he got the papers and began making a list. It was only three lines long to start. He didn’t think about how long it would grow.

  His first errand was to a shop at the northern end of Dizengoff Street where cellular phones were sold on the spot with already active telephone lines. It took an hour, including the half hour wait for the phone line to be turned on. Once he understood all the functions of the phone, he paid with a credit card and crossed the street to a half empty cafe. An enthusiastic young waitress promised everything was made by hand. He ordered a croissant with an apricot filling, and when she was gone he began working the phone.

  He started with Laskoff’s office, asking Rose for the earliest appointment possible.

  “It’s good you called,” she told him. “Mr. Laskoff asked for you.” “What about?” Cohen asked.

  “He didn’t say.”

  “Is he in now?”

  “Unfortunately not.”

  “Here’s my number,” Cohen offered.

  “Mr. Cohen!” she exclaimed. “You, with a cellular phone?” “Yes, Rose. Even me,” he admitted. But it was the only way he could manage what he had to do.

  His next call was to Jacki. He dialed the direct line to Nissim’s office.

  “Head oitza’ham,” a nasal man’s voice said at the end of the line, surprising Cohen.

  Cohen asked for Jacki, using the acronym for her title as assistant to chief of Intelligence.

  “It’s for
you,” he heard Shuki Caspi say. “Tell whoever it is to call back later.” “Hello?” Jacki asked “It’s me, Avram Cohen,” he said, “but don’t let him know. Just take down this number, and call me back as soon as you’re alone.” “No problem,” the woman said.

  Cohen gave her the number and she hung up with an officious “thank you.” He wondered what Caspi was telling her—or asking—and cursed the fact that it was the young officer searching Nissim’s desk, and not Cohen himself.

  At Abu Kabir forensic labs, they told him Raoul had gone down to Beersheba for a consultation at Soroka. That made him smile. But when he tried Shvilli’s cellular phone number, he was dismayed when a female voice recording told him the subscriber was off-line at that time.

  He then spent a few minutes with Tel Aviv information getting in quick order the phone number of Witkoff Chemicals and Trade, where a man with no Russian in his accent said that Witkoff was not expected that day, “but if you leave a message, I’m sure—”

  Cohen closed the connection.

  Almost immediately, his new cellular phone rang for the first time, surprising him. Expecting Jacki, he heard Laskoff’s voice.

  “So, my friend. Even you succumbed.”

  “To what?”

  “The miracle of the mobile phone,” said Laskoff.

  “Just don’t be giving out my number,” Cohen growled.

  “Listen, I need some information.”

  “Obviously,” Laskoff said.

  “Does the name Alexander Witkoff mean anything to you? A Russian.” “Russian?” the Hungarian-born banker asked warily.

  “Yes. I’ve heard he might be part of one of the consortia bidding for the banks.”

  “I can make some calls, see what I can find out.”

  “Good, please. And whatever you can learn, please let me know.”

  “You don’t have to tell me that,” Laskoff said. “But for once, perhaps you could tell me why you need to know. Or is this one of those affairs where it’s best I don’t know?” “Just be discreet,” Cohen warned.

  “I’ll get onto it this week,” Laskoff said.

  “Today,” Cohen pleaded.

  “Av-ram … “

  “Please, Ephraim. It’s important.”

  “What about your house?” the banker asked. “I thought that was important. We’re down to the last two signatures.

  They’re pressing for another twenty thousand dollars each.” “I’m having second thoughts,” Cohen said, shocking Laskoff.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m getting tired of the greed. Not just their greed. All the greed.”

  “Look Avram, we’ve been over this—”

  “I don’t want to discuss this right now,” he interrupted.

  “Tell them I’m thinking about their offer. But first find out what you can about Witkoff.”

  He slapped the mouthpiece closed, hanging up the phone, and turned his attention to the croissant. Just as he was about to take a bite into the roll, which he had carefully spread with an apricot jam, the phone rang.

  It took him until the end of the second ring to set the croissant down. He licked his finger where some jam slid off the knife before he finally answered the phone.

  “I can’t believe that idiot,” Jacki moaned over the phone.

  “Who?

  “Shuki Caspi.”

  “What happened?” “Yes. Misha called in from Eilat. He said that he found a watchman at the marina who remembers Nissim on Friday night.”

  “Yuhewitz has a boat at the marina,” Cohen said.

  “Right. So I tell Caspi that. What does he say?” “What?” Cohen asked.

  “That the Alper brothers kept a boat down there for years.”

  “Where’s Shvilli now?”

  “Eilat.”

  “When you reach him, you hear from him, give him my cell phone number. Meanwhile, I need everything you can find in Nissim’s files.”

  “Caspi’s in a meeting with Bendor. But he’ll be back soon.”

  “Start with the Alex Witkoff file. Shvilli told me he lives in Ramat Aviv Gimel. I need whatever Nissim had. I’ll wait.”

  It took only two minutes for her to return to the phone, asking what he needed from the file.

  “How much is there?”

  “Let’s see. Not much. Some correspondence with Moscow, Interpol. Witkoff’s wanted for questioning in Russia and France.” “The Germans?” Cohen asked, instinctively.

  “No.”

  That disappointed Cohen.

  Then she laughed, surprising him. “His driving record.

  He likes fast cars. Five tickets in the last two months.”

  “He should have had his license bounced,” Cohen muttered.

  “Any of those tickets in the south?”

  “Three.”

  “When?”

  She gave him the dates—all were within the last six months.

  “Anything else?” he asked.

  “Let’s see. What’s this?” she asked herself. “Hold on.

  There’s a little notebook in here. It looks like a log. Dates.

  Names … ” “A log of what?” he asked impatiently.

  “Just a second,” she answered, almost as impatiently.

  “Eilat. Hotels, mostly. A few addresses. The marina. Wait a second. Damn. I can hear Caspi outside, talking with someone. I’d better close

  … “

  “Wait. I want Witkoff’s address. And photocopy the entire file and fax it to me.”

  She dictated the numbers and street name, added a “no problem about the photocopying,” and hung up just as Caspi must have entered the room, for Cohen could hear a man’s voice asking “who’s that?” Cohen could only assume Jacki would have an answer.

  More calls needed to be made. He dug out Phillipe Bensione’s card. The photographer’s cellular number was busy.

  Cohen took a bite of croissant, surprised at how good it was, and used the redial button twice, trying to get through to the photographer to no avail.

  He had hopes for better photos of the scene than the one that Yediotb splattered on page one. The photographer had crouched between the sun rising over the Arava, and the car had settled into about thirty centimeters of almost yellow mud on the highway beneath the Negev’s eastern cliffs. The wide angle showed all the way from the white on-red license plate that identified it as a staff car for the police to the tip of a winch crane mounted on the back of a tow truck. There it was, the head slumped against the steering wheel, the black-and-white mop of curly hair muddied by the yellow of the wet desert and the newspaper’s tabloid ink. The only red in the picture belonged to the license plate. But there was no doubt the man in the picture was dead.

  20.

  He stopped at a bank and wrote a check for cash for fifty thousand shekels. The teller looked at him disbelievingly, but her expression changed after she called his bank branch in Jerusalem. “In two-hundred shekel notes please,” he said. Sometimes, he knew, cash could be much more effective than a weapon.

  The teller, in her early twenties, probably just out of the army, said she needed the manager.

  “No problem,” said Cohen, waiting another twenty minutes before finally pocketing the cash into five bulky envelopes of ten thousand each, which he stashed in the inside pockets he had sewn into his windbreaker.

  Half an hour later he was turning off the Haifa Road into the north Tel Aviv neighborhood of Ramat Aviv Gimel. They had begun building the neighborhood just north of the university in the seventies, but in the mid eighties, with the opening of the commercial center and the completion of its country club, Ramat Aviv Gimel had flourished so that eventually it had become the setting— and name—of a television soap opera about a family ruling a fashion empire from the flashy address.

  Cohen found the building at the most northwest corner of the neighborhood. He drove slowly through a parking lot. It was half full. Jeeps, family sedans, passenger vans, and at least three sports
cars. Jacki had said Witkoff liked fast cars, Cohen remembered. He paused, foot on the brake, in the middle of the lot, thinking, looking. Three cars, lined up beside one another, caught his eye. A BMW sports car, a Mercedes two-seater, and a Land Rover. Their license numbers were consecutive, registered at the same time. All were models that could not be bought directly off a showroom floor, brought into the country as private imports. When Jacki called back to ask what to do with the photocopies, he’d ask for Witkoff’s registration numbers.

  They should be on the driving record.

  Then he pulled out of the lot to park across the street on the north side of the building. Beyond, there was only the green and yellow wild mustard scrub that covered the sand dunes stretching all the way to Herziliya. To his right below the rise on which the entire apartment block sat was the Haifa Road carrying cars and trucks north. Beyond the road were more sand dunes, but Cohen imagined that from above the penthouse one would have a view of the landing strip at little Sde Dov Airport. And beyond that was the sea.

  He got out of the car and lit a cigarette, smoking as he leaned against his car looking at the twenty-story-high building. All he could see of the penthouse was that Witkoff had turned the open space on the roof into a garden.

  A mother and a teenager who was wearing a leg cast and was on crutches came out of the building’s lobby and down to the sidewalk where the mother unlocked a gray sedan too old to belong to the building. “You heard what the doctor said,” he heard the woman say to the boy. “You were very lucky. Lucky, you hear me? So I don’t want to hear any more about motorcycles from you.” She didn’t even glance at Cohen after she made the U-turn and drove away.

  He flicked away his cigarette and crossed the street to the building’s main entrance, facing north toward the southern sand dunes of Herziliya. No security guard that he could see was watching from inside the glass lobby, but nonetheless a video camera was pointed at him from under the ceiling of the exterior lobby where he checked the mailboxes, looking for Witkoff’s name. Yes, he had the right building. The penthouse was apartment number thirty-nine.