An Accidental Murder: An Avram Cohen Mystery

by Robert Rosenberg

  Jews. And maybe even some who aren’t Jews. But not all of them are Mafia. Not all of them are criminals. Did it ever occur to you that some of those businessmen are just that, businessmen? Legitimate businessmen. Avram, Avram, please, don’t be naive,” Yaffe complained. “The Russians changed the country and the country changed the Russians. But just because there are Russian whores doesn’t make every rich Russian a pimp. And just because a person arrives from Russia with a lot of money, doesn’t mean they are the Godfather.”

  “Money doesn’t have a smell, you mean,” said Cohen.

  “You know what I mean,” Yaffe shot back.

  Cohen sighed. Though the storm was over, the winter sea was not calm. A wave crashed against the retaining wall and some spray drizzled down on them. He pulled out a cigarette and discovered that he was over his self-imposed limit. It made him scowl, but he lit the cigarette anyway.

  Maybe Yaffe and his minister truly believed that Witkoff was clean, Maybe Shvilli was wrong. But still, he had found his book in Witkoff’s house, and if indeed the book had reached Witkoff through Sonia, it meant that the Russian banker knew of the relationship between Cohen and Levy.

  After all, for more than half the years Cohen headed CID Levy had been his chief aide. He was mentioned on many of the pages of the book’s chapters about Jerusalem.

  So why, Cohen wondered, remembering that long moment when he had held his book trembling in the penthouse living room, why had the chapter about the witness relocation scheme been the most dog-eared part of the book he had found? The connection was tenuous, too tenuous.

  Indeed, the most tangible proof that he had about Witkoff’s possible involvement in the case was that when he pulled at the thread by asking about Witkoff he found himself dealing with Meshulam Yaffe.

  “How did you find out?” he asked.

  “It’s a very small world nowadays,” said Yaffe.

  “The Germans,” Cohen guessed. “They called you when I offered them his name.” “It doesn’t matter how I know,” said Yaffe. “What matters is that you understand that you are on the wrong track. You want Nissim’s killer found? Let Shuki Caspi, and all the good people on his team, do their job.”

  “I’m not interfering with them. But if they aren’t going to investigate a possible lead, someone has to do it.”

  “And why should it be you?”

  “Because Nissim was like a son to me,” Cohen said bluntly. “And he was blamed for the sins of his fathers once before. I want to make sure that it won’t happen a second time.”

  “What are you talking about?” “You said you don’t know who Boris Yuhewitz is. Let me tell you. He seems to be running the Russian scene down in Eilat. And a few weeks ago, Nissim Levy publicly threatened him in front of a lot of people.”

  “I’ll look into it. Maybe you’re right about this Yuhewitz,” Yaffe conceded. “But that doesn’t mean that Witkoff—”

  “He was there.” “How do you know?” Yaffe asked, disbelieving.

  “It’s a small world,” Cohen said, throwing the phrase back into Yaffe’s face. Then he pulled another deep drag off his cigarette and told Yaffe the truth: “I don’t know why. I don’t know how, but I think that Witkoff might have had something to do with what happened to me in Frankfurt.”

  “That bombing?”

  “A girl was killed. And someone tried to kill me. Yes.

  And from the way you’re reacting, there’s more to it than his being a banker.”

  “You’re crazy,” Yaffe protested, starting to walk away.

  “He’s a banker, not a killer. And you, I’m afraid, have become completely paranoid. What is it the kids say nowadays?

  Get a life, Avram.” Yaffe reached into his inside jacket pocket, for a second making Cohen even more paranoid.

  But instead of a weapon it was a comb that he pulled out, running it through his already neat white hair, patting it all into place. Then with a shake of his head at Cohen, Yaffe headed back to the restaurant.

  Maybe he was paranoid, he thought. Maybe he had built a fantasy. There was only one way to find out. He took a last puff on his cigarette, flicked the butt over the retaining wall into the cold sea, and walked back to his car.

  25.

  The Exotica Club was southeast across town, in a neighborhood that by day was devoted to the car business and by night was a poor cousin to the gentrifying old port.

  From new car showrooms to one-man tool-and-die shops, from used engine parts to motor scooter repairmen, the neighborhood was known for its traffic jams reported by national radio stations. At the critical junction of two main arteries crossing the city north to south and east to west, it overlooked the Ayalon Highway, the tiny country’s central road ventricle.

  At night the streets of the neighborhood were mostly deserted, except for clusters of cars parked outside cheap wedding halls and experimental discotheques.

  That night, only one hall was hosting a wedding. Cohen drove past just as the bride climbed out of a balloon-festooned car. She gathered the long hem of the dress to avoid the grease of the sidewalk, then ran through the deepening night cold to her fluttering family at the fluorescent entrance to an office building with a street-floor display of Japanese cars.

  Cohen drove on deeper into the neighborhood, past shuttered garages and cheap restaurants that served daytime garage hands, reaching a narrow street lined by three and four-story buildings built in the sixties.

  Scattered lights showed a few offices still occupied with workers, impoverished start-ups that in their own way were gentrifying the neighborhood just as the restaurants at the old port had pushed out the ceramics traders who had used the old docks as warehouses.

  He stopped at a four-way intersection where one road was named for a kibbutz and the other for a rabbi, before glancing one last time at the page of the road atlas on the passenger seat.

  In front of him, the rabbi became a dead end. He pulled through the intersection slowly. A couple of blocks to his right, he could see the bright lights of the main thoroughfare.

  To his right, the iron gates of a body repair shop were still scarred by old election posters showing only the hairline, forehead, eyes, and nose of a past candidate. The rest of the face was torn away. Past the garage, graffiti on the wall advertised a nightclub, and then the peeling plaster wall of the repair shop’s offices were taken up by a gold on-black poster advertising cheap flights to Turkey, competing with a larger black-on-white announcement for “returning to the answer.” Three wise men from the Council of Torah Sages would teach lessons and raise a “great shout for redemption.”

  To his left, two different buildings were joined into a four-story office building. The street floor included a shuttered sandwich shop and a small printing plant. The sec— and floor had lots of little businesses, judging from the jumble of signs in the windows. The third floor was shrouded in the dark of night, and only one dim light came from the fourth, incomplete floor of unglazed windows and cement block walls. None of the signs on the windows, nor at the three separate entrances to the building pointed to the Exotica Club. He pulled out the card Lass man had given him. Number 5. He rolled down the window to check. It was the place.

  He made a U-turn, but instead of driving out he backed into a place between a Dumpster and the gutted remains of a car left out of the garage for the night. The rear of his car was up against a low retaining wall. The roar of a truck passing on the Ayalon Highway below made the cold night air suddenly seem even colder. He turned off his car lights.

  Just then, a stairwell light from number 5 flashed on, splashing new shadows into the small street. Two young men came running out of the building, scrambled up the street, and tore around the first corner to the right. Then a burly man in tight jeans, shiny shoes, and a black leather jacket ran out of the building. He pulled a blackjack out of his pocket as he raced up to the intersection after the boys.

  He looked left, then right, raised a fist and shouted something in Russian
, but he didn’t run after the young men.

  He rolled his shoulders like a boxer and replaced the blackjack in his pocket with a packet of cigarettes, lighting one and rolling his shoulders again before checking his watch.

  The gold caught a sliver of light from the sole street light on the street.

  Cohen slouched at dashboard level, watching from behind the wheel as the bouncer blew another thick cloud of smoke and hot breath into the chilly night air. He was obviously waiting for someone. Cohen waited, too.

  There was a rumble of an old taxi coming into the neighborhood.

  Two men in business suits got out of an old Peugeot station wagon. One paid the driver through the window. The other, with a thin mustache and a white scarf, limped forward a few steps.

  “Is Juliet here tonight?” the man with the mustache asked hopefully in Hebrew. He neither raised his voice nor whispered, but in the quiet of the little street at night his words carried on the cold air through the open window of Cohen’s cold car.

  The bouncer nodded. The taxi engine roared for a moment and then the car drove away.

  “Yossi?” asked the other newcomer, putting away his wallet into an inside jacket pocket as he joined his friend and the bouncer. “You sure this is the place?” He spoke American English.

  “Don’t you worry, Harry,” said the limping man. He spoke heavily accented English. “You’ll see.” Then he added in Hebrew to the bouncer, “is Sonia here?” Again the bouncer only nodded.

  “So we go have some fun, yes, Harry?” Yossi said, putting a hand on the American’s shoulder. As they followed the security man into the hallway, where the stairwell lights had timed out, Cohen heard the limping man say in Hebrew to the bouncer, “Sonia’s going to love this one. A real gentleman.”

  With that, they disappeared up the stairs. A minute later, the hallway light went out and only the lampposts illuminated the street. Cohen opened his glove compartment and pulled out his flask of cognac. He sucked at the leather-wrapped silver bottle once, lit a cigarette, and took another sip. Only when he had replaced the flask in the glove compartment and finished his smoke did he roll up the window of his car and get out into the darkness.

  26.

  On the first floor, signs pointed to an orthopedic shoe manufacturer and a laptop wholesaler and several companies claiming to be limited, whether in universal, worldwide, or simply global trade. Nothing pointed to the Exotica Club on the second floor. But on the third-floor wall, instead of tacked-up plastic plaques announcing fledgling or veteran businesses with arrows pointing either right or left down the corridors, two doors greeted him.

  Exotica Productions was written in an italic script across the reflecting glass door to his left. An arrow was drawn onto the wall with a red Magic Marker pointing at a button for a buzzer.

  It took about ten seconds for the door to open with a click. He pushed through and found himself in a corridor draped by red velvet curtains. He pretended to be drunk, and keeled slightly to his left and then right, testing for the distance . a more solid wall or door, wondering if there were openings in the curtains. At the end of the corridor, which was lit only by a bath of low-watt little lightbulbs in the ceiling, he found himself facing another door.

  He pushed through into a large lounge that included two sofas, half a dozen armchairs, a small but well-stocked bar where the bouncer was making himself an espresso, and, in one corner, a large office desk carrying a computer monitor. The lighting in the room was as dim as in the velvet corridor except at the desk, where a halogen lamp cast a spotlight on the clear surface. At the little bar, the bouncer put down a white porcelain espresso cup and turned on his seat to face Cohen. From behind the tall back of an armchair facing a large TV screen playing a video of two naked women frolicking in a field appeared the face of the mustached man from downstairs.

  “Yes, this is the place,” Cohen muttered, grinning at them all as if he were on stage and they the audience, and then asked much louder, “Is the highly recommended Madame Sonia here?”

  Acting, he was removed from himself, able to take in details. There were seven women; four blondes, two brunettes, and a tall slender black girl with gravity-defying breasts barely camouflaged by a transparent black robe that fell open and closed, revealing long limbs as she danced quietly by herself to a softly weeping electric guitar playing blues from speakers hidden somewhere in the room.

  “She’ll be right out,” the mustached man in the armchair promised, “but I was here first.”

  Cohen slightly raised two hands in mock surrender, “No problem, no problem. Are you the bartender?” he added, heading toward the bouncer at the bar. “A cognac, please.” The bouncer sighed and went behind the bar, taking down a bottle. Cohen took the second bar stool and leaned on the counter, looking at the women, smiling. The black girl danced slowly past him, her long arm stretching a long finger that gently touched his cheek until a fingernail, for a moment, scratched his two-day-old beard. He sat still. She floated away, hands on her buttocks swaying suddenly twice as fast as the music, keeping her eyes on him. Cohen smiled at her, then took a sip of the cognac the bouncer presented him.

  One of the blondes said something in Russian, and two others laughed. A fourth rose from where she had been curled up like a cat in an armchair and went to the bar, joining the bouncer/bartender behind the counter, taking a glass and pouring some soda water, then holding it beside Cohen’s glass so the bouncer, after filling Cohen’s drink, could add a splash to the soda.

  She was about to say something, except suddenly there was a flurry at one of the curtains and a laugh, and Sonia— for who else could it be?—appeared suddenly in the room with an elderly man before her, laughing cheerfully but at the same time giving instructions in Russian to the bouncer, telling Mustache in Hebrew that the American seemed very happy with Juliet, and asking the girls something in Russian, indicating Cohen with a long fingernail.

  From the tone of her voice, he decided, she was asking why one of them had not already captured his attention.

  She was short, but full-figured, her breasts holding up a strapless dress. In the dim light, she might have been a beyond-her-years teenager or in her late thirties, or even early forties. She smiled at Cohen a second time, and asked him to join her at her desk. The bouncer, meanwhile, held open the door for the elderly man who was bidding farewell to each of the girls with a little bow and peck of their outstretched hands. One of the blondes on the sofa said something in Russian, pointing at the mustached man in the armchair. Sonia waved her off and beckoned her new customer, the barrel-chested, white-haired man in the gray twill trousers, sneakers, white shirt, and a gray windbreaker jacket. Cohen took his glass to the desk and sat down in the steel and leather chair.

  “Can you tell me how you came to find our little place?” Sonia asked Cohen. There was no suspicion in the question.

  It was more like a customer survey.

  “A friend,” said Cohen. “You are Sonia? He especially noted your charms.” She smiled again. But now there was something in her eyes that showed more curiosity, as if there was something else she was supposed to know. “Your friend’s name?” she asked.

  He smiled at her. “Benny.”

  “Which Benny?”

  “From Jerusalem.”

  “The writer?”

  He nodded.

  “A good boy. So did he tell you the rules?”

  Cohen shook his head.

  “You pay in advance.”

  He nodded, reaching for one of the packets in his inside jacket.

  “We take credit cards and—”

  “I’ll pay cash. For your time.” “Barbara seems interested in you,” the madam said, looking over Cohen’s shoulder. Cohen turned to find himself facing the undulating hips of the black woman.

  “She is very appealing,” Cohen admitted, but he leaned forward and tried to smile with as much charm as he could muster. “Perhaps later, but for now, I think I prefer you.” “Later?” she as
ked, skeptical.

  “Another time perhaps,” he promised. “But you are the best here. Benny said so. And we both know that he is an accurate reporter.”

  She laughed. “A good boy,” she repeated.

  “He tries,” said Cohen.

  “Too much, sometimes,” she said, suddenly a little scornful.

  “So how much?” Cohen asked.

  “For Barbara? Six hundred shekel. For me? A thousand.

  Unless … “

  “What?”

  “You have special needs.”

  He pulled ten two-hundred shekel notes from the envelope he opened inside his jacket and spread the red bills on the gleaming surface of her desk.

  He lowered his voice. “I have special needs,” he said.

  She raised an eyebrow, suspicious, tempted, curious.

  “Talk,” he said.

  He thought he saw a flutter of suspicion in her eyes, but then she smiled and slid the money into the drawer, waving a hand at Barbara, sending her away.

  There was a little round of laughter from the Russian girls on the sofas behind him. “Yossi,” she suddenly said to the mustached man with the limp. “I know you’ve done a good job this week. Bringing the American tonight was very good. But I’m afraid, darling, that you’ll have to wait a little while. Unless of course you’d like … ” she waved a hand at the girls, none of whom seemed particularly enthusiastic about Yossi.

  The buzzer rang and she tapped the desk, making the computer mouse move and the monitor come to life. From where Cohen was sitting he could only guess there was a video card that enabled her to view on the monitor screen the person who had asked for entry to her kingdom. She sighed and pressed a button beneath the desk surface.

  “Karin,” she called out to a blonde in a red bikini, pushing herself away from the desk and rising, “you’re in charge. I’m taking … you didn’t tell me what to call you,” she said to Cohen.