An Accidental Murder: An Avram Cohen Mystery

by Robert Rosenberg

  “Avram,” he said.

  “Avi,” she changed it. He winced. She didn’t notice, but spoke over his shoulder. “I’m taking Avi to my room for a while,” she announced to Karin.

  “What about me?” whined Yossi.

  “You can have Juliet when your American finishes,” Sonia offered, “or maybe you’d like Barbara.” The dancing girl heard her name, grimaced, but then moved her dance toward the mustached man in the armchair, slowly descending in front of him as Cohen followed Sonia.

  They went through a slit she knew in the curtain, leading to another draped and dimly lit corridor, long and narrow, lined by six doors on each side. Over two of the doors, a little light flashed, indicating the room was occupied.

  Vaguely through the first door they passed, Cohen could hear the rolling English of an American trying to speak French. Probably with Juliet, Cohen decided.

  Sonia led him to the last door on the right, opening it to a room about the size of his little living room study at home.

  Instead of windows, there were mirrors on three of the four pasteboard walls that were covered with a wallpaper of swirling red, purple, and black paisley. Light came from low-watt bulbs, illuminating details like the fur-covered handcuffs on the night table beside the huge bed, which was covered in black sheets. He crossed the room to a brighter light coming through the beaded curtain. It led to a shower stall, bidet, and toilet, as well as sink and counter and the bright lights of a makeup studio mirror.

  He doubted the room was microphone or camera free, but he was past the point of caring. She made it clear she was a professional at work. She knew the risks. So far, all she knew was that Cohen wanted to talk.

  “I like talk,” she said as she came into the room. “But it is not so easy for me. In Hebrew. In Russian I am much better. But I’m learning. Maybe you can teach me something new. A veteran Israeli like you … “

  He took her hand in his and put an arm around her waist and said, “I’m hear for talk, not sex,” in a very low voice.

  “Information. Benny gave you a package to deliver. A book. A letter.”

  She went to the boudoir table, looked in the mirror, then plucked a tissue from a box on the cosmetic table. She dabbed at the corner of her lips, then slid open a drawer and pulled out a red lipstick that she applied carefully, leaning forward toward the mirror. Only when she was satisfied with her appearance did her eyes go to his, reflected in the mirror.

  “Such a smart boy, and so foolish,” she finally said. “Is there a problem? Is Benny in trouble?” she asked.

  “Should he be?”

  “I have not seen him for a long time.” “He’s been busy,” Cohen said. “Did you deliver the book?” “Yes,” she admitted.

  “To?”

  “Benny knows.”

  “No, he doesn’t.”

  “Yes, he does.” “All Benny knows is that you said you would give it to a boss.”

  “I did.”

  “Who?”

  “Why?” “It was my book.” “Benny says it was his.”

  “Benny helped. It is my story.”

  She looked him up and down. “Police, yes? Remembrances?

  Yes?”

  He nodded.

  “I didn’t read it,” she reiterated, trying to make him believe her. “Just passed it on.” “To Witkoff,” he said. “Alexander Witkoff.” He stated it as a fact, and was surprised by her reaction.

  “Who?” she asked, asking so bluntly, so simply, so honestly, that his instincts told him to trust her precisely because specifically, in that instance, an honest ignorance of Witkoff’s name cost her nothing. He sat down, stunned by the surprise.

  Misunderstanding his slump to the edge of the bed, she got up from the cosmetic table and crawled onto the bed until she reached his shoulders and tried to ease the tense muscle bunched at the base of his neck and across his shoulders.

  “There, isn’t that nice?” she asked. “Why don’t we take a nice hot shower together. Why worry about Benny? So smart, so foolish. But you are different … “

  He stood up, not so much angry as impatient, tired, and hungry. He wanted to move on, but he had to try again, just to be sure. “Alexander Witkoff?”

  She pouted innocence. “Avi, Avi,” she offered, reaching for his hand. “Yes, I know an Alexander. Several. Even Witkoffsky, a teacher when I was in polytechnic in Leningrad. But no, his name was Fyodr. Not Alexander.

  What do I care about a Witkoffsky?”

  “Two people are dead because you gave that book to someone,” he said.

  “I’m impressed. So I must be careful what I say,” she snapped, but it was boredom, not fear, that made her suddenly mean. “So, who is this Witkoff?” “I thought he was a boss. Your boss. I needed to be sure, before I could … ” “I told you. I have no owner. Benny wanted to meet someone very high, very high. I know this man. He is very high.”

  “But he is not your owner?”

  “I have no owner,” she protested again. “I am a businesswoman.

  Partners, yes, I have partners. Not owners.

  And the man is not a partner. He does not need places like this anymore. He comes to see me. For personal attention.

  Older men have special needs.” She smiled at him. “If you let me, I will show you how well I know—” “How much did Benny pay you?” he .

  She scowled. “I know what Benny wanted. To meet … ” she paused, not saying the name itself. “To meet this man. I know this man. Benny is a good boy. He tries too hard, but he is a good boy. He wanted some help. And what was the help? Deliver a book, a letter. What harm can that be?”

  He decided that she was confident from the start. Confidence was her natural immunity. She was a professional, he decided.

  “Here’s ten thousand shekels,” he said suddenly, surprising her, pulling out one of the envelopes and spreading the pale red cash on the black sheets. “I want the man’s name.”

  She picked up one bill, holding it to the dim light, checking that the crisp new bill wasn’t counterfeit. On one side, the country’s second president, a poet and Zionist ideologue, looked out mournfully. On the other, a little girl with a pencil and eraser worked in a notebook, while in the background of the bill Hebrew letters floated in the red sky. 200 new SHEQALIM it said in English and Arabic beneath the girl.

  She started to gather all the money. He grabbed her wrist much faster than she could have expected. She did not resist.

  He looked for needle tracks. He found an old white-line scar of a suicide attempt perpendicular to the veins on her wrist. She smiled at him and said, “You underestimate me.” “I’m sorry,” he said bluntly. “The money is yours,” he added, still restraining her attempt to take the cash. “For the information.”

  She considered his hand on her wrist, the money on the bed, and then his face, looking into his eyes, shaking her head. “It’s not enough.”

  “Benny didn’t pay you this much.”

  “I didn’t tell him a name.” She considered the sum. “If I do this, if I tell you, if he finds out I told you … “

  “I won’t tell him.” It was not the first time Cohen promised confidentiality to an informant.

  “You know,” she said, studying his eyes, “I believe you.”

  But then she smirked, almost laughing at his innocence.

  “But he can find out.”

  “If he is as rich, as important as you say, why should such an important man trust a woman like you. Working in a place like this?”

  Again she smirked at him and he became aware of her hand in his lap. “I am special, perhaps,” she offered. “Especially with older men,” she added.

  “He’s my age?” Cohen asked.

  She patted at his shoulders, to test his fitness perhaps.

  “You, I think, have a better body.” She looked back at his face and gently brushed back some of Cohen’s white hair.

  “But your face is older. Maybe five, maybe ten years.” She raised an eyebrow,
and added, “maybe twenty. I’m impressed.” “So you are a toy for him,” he asked.

  She grinned at him. “A favorite toy.” “Why?” he asked. “Why?” he repeated, changing his tone to offer negotiation.

  She looked at the money on the bed again and shook her head. “It’s not enough.”

  “He is rich. If he likes you so much, why doesn’t he take you out of here?”

  “You are rich,” she tried. “Why don’t you?”

  “How much?” he asked.

  “To buy out my business? Let me retire the way I want?

  More than you have.” “He won’t know you told me.”

  “Can you guarantee that? Can you be sure that if I tell you, if I help you, my life will not be in danger?”

  “Your life is in danger here.”

  “You may have a strong body, but if you are threatening me, Andrei is a boxer.”

  Cohen pulled a second packet of cash from his jacket pocket. “Your friend won’t know,” he said, keeping his eyes on hers. The second ten thousand made her eyes flicker.

  He could see her thinking, her eyes searching his to find out how much further she could stretch the negotiations.

  She was right. There was a risk, even if Cohen did his best to avoid divulging his source. But he was right, he saw her thinking, life is a risk. And to earn twenty thousand shekels in fifteen minutes for nothing more than a name was not an easy proposition to turn down.

  She swallowed, said, “Zagorsky, Vlad Zagorsky,” then reached greedily for the money.

  “You are sure?” he ordered.

  “Zagorsky, yes, that’s who you want.” “Describe him.” She smiled, and he realized that she could do better than that.

  “Pictures,” he said.

  She bit her lower lip.

  “Don’t lie to me, please,” he asked, and maybe it was the age in his voice, the weariness or the pain, or simply her own fatigue, but after she thought a long time, looking at him and perhaps into her own soul, she nodded, and got up from the bed, making sure to take the cash with her.

  A few minutes later, he was watching the television set in the corner of the room. It began with a black-and-white shot of the very room in which Cohen was now sitting on the edge of the bed. First Sonia entered, then a man.

  Upon Cohen’s chest a heavy weight suddenly fell and pressed. He lost his breath momentarily, gasping enough to make the madame worry a customer was about to drop dead in her place, but he waved away her sudden maternal instincts as she tried patting him on the back, as if he was choking on a piece of food. He took a deep breath, then exhaled in a shallow, painful sigh.

  “You know him?” Sonia asked. “You know Zagorksy?” she asked again.

  But what could Cohen say then, what could he tell her—or himself—that the man whose scarred face was turning from grimace into the repose of climax could not be a Russian Mafia boss of bosses, that it was improbable, impossible, inconceivable. For one thing, Cohen thought, the man on the television screen so enthusiastically enjoying Sonia’s skills was not named Zagorksy.

  27.

  In the Russian Compound attic, among files that looked faint in daylight but clear under a little halogen light that he brought when he worked at night, Cohen had found a case file that at the time, while searching for his relocated witnesses, he had barely glanced at with interest. He remembered the case well. It was in the seventies, when for a few brief years, in exchange for wheat from America, the Kremlin had allowed a few thousand Jews a month out of the Soviet Union. And it was the first time that as head of CID in Jerusalem he had directly felt the heavy foot of interference from one of the big brothers—Shabak, Aman, or Mossad—suddenly trodding on his own as he tried to solve a murder.

  The murdered woman had been a cardiologist in the Soviet space program who had become slightly famous in her struggle to win permission from the Soviet authorities to leave Leningrad for Israel. Her name was Masha Karlin sky, and she had been found, her throat sliced from ear to ear, on the sitting room floor of the two-room flat she and her husband had been assigned in what was considered the best new immigrants’ hostel in Jerusalem.

  Masha Karlinksy, the Russian-Jewish scientist who bravely, famously, survived the gauntlet of Soviet repression of her ambition to move to Israel was also, well, somewhat promiscuous.

  There weren’t many secrets in the hostel, with six stories of one-and two-room flats suitable for single people and small families, built on stilts on the steep slope looking west to the Valley of the Cross. “Passionate,” said her supporters.

  “Greedy,” said her detractors. The husband, Yevet, had put up with it stoically in Leningrad, said the gossips, because her position as cardiologist to the cosmonauts— and his, as a gynecologist who treated some of Leningrad’s most powerful women—had provided them with privileges unavailable to more ordinary citizens of the Communist state. All those privileges were lost, of course, once they begun their campaign for emigrant visas, but they were lucky, nonetheless.

  Both were handsome people who spoke English.

  Whether it was their striking good looks combined with obvious professional capabilities, or simply good luck, their cause quickly became internationally known, their faces appearing on posters at demonstrations from Jerusalem to Paris to London and Washington. In short, they managed to get out, landing in the Jerusalem hostel for new immigrants, and already before they learned Hebrew they were both granted jobs at Hadassah Hospital.

  Their first year in Israel, they had managed at least to maintain the facade. But he was no research scientist—he needed patients, and he hadn’t moved to the West to work shifts in a hospital. He wanted a private clinic of his own and hated Jerusalem’s cloistered feel, traveling by bus to other towns in the country, looking for an opportunity to restart his career. She, on the other hand, was a researcher who had worked in a rarefied atmosphere and while she was having a harder time with Hebrew than he, her real problem was that while Hadassah had a good R&D budget, the nearly three years she had lost in her profession while campaigning for their freedom had had their effect.

  No longer a star in her profession, she had become bitter, unable to appreciate Yevet’s own efforts to find them an apartment they could afford outside of Jerusalem. In Leningrad, at least, her job had granted her a status that gave them a large apartment by Soviet standards of the time—four rooms for the childless couple—so each could have an office at home, as well as at their respective laboratories.

  In the hostel, they had barely thirty square meters.

  Shouting had often been heard from behind their door. On at least one occasion, she had stormed out of the hostel late one night. He had chased her down the hall shouting “Whore!” all the way to the lobby. Only there had he realized he was only wearing his underwear. He’d returned to his room, glaring at anyone who dared catch his eye. She had been back in the hostel two days later, apologetic and demure, but the quarreling had resumed after a week. The murder had taken place six months later.

  All this Cohen had discovered relatively quickly in the investigation that had begun early one rainy Sunday morning in the early spring of 1974, when the blood pooling out of Masha Karlinksy’s body lying on the floor of the small apartment had begun seeping out into the hallway outside the front door. A child riding his tricycle in the corridor had rolled home to the last door on the left, tracing a pattern of blood on the beige stone floor. The child’s mother’s screams as she traced the blood stains back to the source brought up the hostel manager, who had opened the locked door to the Karlinsky apartment and found the body. He had called the police.

  Cohen had arrived on the scene with a troop of investigators and a pair of translators who had sat in on almost all the interviews. Within an hour of his arrival at the hostel, Cohen had learned of the routine shouting and screaming that had gone on behind the closed doors of the famed activist-doctors’ room. And when his crews, sent to find the husband at Hadassah Hospital, had called in to repo
rt that Yevet was nowhere to be found, the suspicion had fallen heavily on the missing husband.

  However, as so often happens in an investigation, as the evidence—witness testimony, forensics, and motive— poured in during the day, the weather vane of suspicion had begun to shift.

  That very first day, with Yevet still missing, the two man crew that couldn’t find him at Hadassah did find a second-year medical student whose aghast reaction on the spot when learning of the murder had led to a quick confession of having been one of Masha’s sex partners—and of knowing that there was at least one other. But the student had had a strong alibi—he had been in attendance at an all night surgery on a man mangled in a car accident the previous night. And Masha had definitely last been seen alive at nine-thirty, at the end of the TV news playing in the lobby.

  So the student’s alibi held—on the spot they confirmed it— but it took a while for the pair of investigators to believe that the student really didn’t know the name of another sex partner Masha had taunted him about. All the student knew was that the second lover was an Englishman.

  A second Cohen crew found the English lover in the ulpan Hebrew school run in the basement floor of the hostel.

  He was actually a new immigrant from Wales, who hadn’t seemed surprised that Masha had ended the way she did, “considering her behavior,” he had told Cohen when brought to the temporary HQ set up in the hostel manager’s office. “Ask Lerner,” added the Welshman, shifting suspicion once again. “Ask how she betrayed Lev Lerner.”

  Mrs. Lerner, who lived with her husband Lev two floors down from the Karlinskys in the hostel, was slightly built, with a firm handshake and a slight limp from a shortened right leg. But despite those apparent weaknesses, she had defended her husband with all her might.

  “He is on a photographic expedition,” the woman had told Cohen. Their tiny apartment’s walls were a small gallery of desert scenes in black and white. Their bathroom doubled as a darkroom. To make money, she told him—just as the hotel manager had said—Lerner sold prints to tourists.