An Accidental Murder: An Avram Cohen Mystery

by Robert Rosenberg

  “I just do. I know.”

  “Do you know where I can find him now?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “They were in Jerusalem, at the King David, ten minutes ago,” Cohen said angrily. When angered, Cohen usually lowered his voice instead of raising it. “There since yesterday.

  That’s five minutes by foot from my place. Where I found a bomb this morning. A second bomb in less than a year.” By the word year his voice had begun to rise and he had to grip the receiver tightly to lower his tone.

  “I know where you live.”

  “And so does he, apparently.”

  “I’m telling you, he had nothing to do with it. He couldn’t have.”

  “And how the hell can you be so sure?” Cohen demanded.

  “I told you, he’s being watched. Around the clock.” “We’ll see,” said Cohen, hanging up without saying goodbye. As he did, he could hear Shmulik shouting at him, “leave it be, Avram, leave it.” I can’t, Cohen said to himself. I don’t have a choice, I have to find out.

  Two minutes after he pulled the Sierra onto Emek Refaim, taking a right to the King David, he regretted taking the car. Somewhere further up the road, something was halting traffic. He waited one minute, then two, then five.

  The driver of the taxi in front of him got out of his car to see past the bus blocking the view ahead. Cohen opened his door.

  “I think it’s a suspicious object at the Liberty Bell Park,” the taxi driver announced not only to Cohen, standing one foot out of the car, but also to the driver behind Cohen.

  He was stuck in the lane, Cohen directly beside a set of bars that blocked any driver from entering one of the alleys into the oldest part of the German Colony, behind the train station.

  Cohen slammed the steering wheel, frustrated. There was no place to pull over and leave his car on the sidewalk to quickly walk five minutes to the hotel. He cursed the bomber—or the fool—who left the package behind, wherever it was at the three-road intersection around the old train station opposite the southern end of Liberty Bell Park. Now, even if he could pull over, the sappers at the intersection wouldn’t let him past the object.

  So he sat in the car under a slightly warmer midday sun, thinking about the Bernstein family. The sister, who had spoken up too late in the pregnancy for an abortion, had turned in one of her rapist brothers for killing the other out of jealousy. Like Cohen, her parents were survivors.

  Unlike Cohen, they were weakened, not strengthened by the experience. Shattered, they were helpless in the face of the scandal. There would be no life for the girl if she stayed in Jerusalem. That was for sure. The town was too small for such a scandal. Cohen had no choice because she had no choice. Nobody had a choice. In a tearful session in Cohen’s office, the father had said he had a relative abroad, a cousin in Hamburg. The daughter of his uncle.

  Cohen had called the woman, who immediately agreed to take the girl, promising a good life for the child. Late one afternoon, Cohen had driven her to the airport, taking her all the way to the tarmac, handing her a passport, promising her that the auntie would be waiting at the other side.

  The girl had taken it all passively, accepting her fate like she took the passport, with a limp hand and a look in her eye that said she deserved no better, deserved even worse.

  She had already decided she was doomed, and even if Cohen did manage with a stupid joke or two to get a hint of a smile to cross her face, nothing was going to halt the girl’s march to hell. Not even the child growing in her belly, hidden in fear so it was too late now for an abortion, gave her happiness.

  If that child had turned out healthy, he calculated in the car, he—or she—would now be in their early twenties. The cousin, whom he had called aunt from the start, using the term generically to describe the older woman to a young girl, had said that she would take care of the girl and the baby. But it was all so long ago, and Cohen was a cop, not a social worker. He felt like he was grasping water, trying to understand what had happened back then, trying to make it fit now into the events that mocked him with an inner logic he couldn’t decipher.

  The bus ahead snorted a gray cloud of exhaust and lurched forward. The long cord of traffic ahead unraveled its knots. A few minutes later, he found a place to park on Lincoln, a side street outside the YMCA’s old football field. Skirting the field, he came out onto King David Street, directly in front of the hotel. Some VIP was leaving —the concierge coming out into the street to halt traffic. He to let a small convoy depart. Two gleaming black Mercedes limousines screeched tires as they turned into the sun-dappled street and headed toward the city center. In a block or two, he thought, they’d be stuck in traffic unless they got a police escort.

  The hotel loomed ahead, its front shaded by a small grove of trees that shaded the pedestrian entrance, which bisected the curving driveway. He crossed the street and was about to enter the shaded pathway when a tall bald man, tieless, wearing sunglasses, a khaki jacket, and a blue shirt and black trousers stopped him.

  “He’s not here,” the man said, blocking Cohen’s way.

  “Who?” Cohen pretended, but already knew it was to no avail.

  “Your man.”

  Cohen reached into his jacket pocket for the cellular phone. Its battery had died. He smacked his forehead with self-accusation for his stupidity. He should have recharged the phone.

  “They call me Amos,” said the man, flipping open his wallet. Cohen didn’t need his glasses to recognize the card.

  He looked back at the Mossad officer. His eyes were hidden by the sunglasses, and his smile barely a twitch of his mouth. With no wrinkles in a clean-shaven leathery face it was difficult to tell the man’s age. Anywhere from forty to fifty. It made a difference. In the service, longevity was critical, but few lasted active after fifty-five. It was Cohen’s turn to smile, though he didn’t show it. Amos’s hardcover attache case was nicked, scratched, and dented, at least a decade old. Ajemzbond, the Israelis called them, because VIP protection squads used the briefcases to carry their equipment. But ajemzbond could also just carry a sandwich.

  In Amos’s case, Cohen guessed, there were papers. The spy’s jacket was tailored to hide a holster. Cohen was wearing his own nine-millimeter Beretta in the small of his back, tucked into the waistband of his trousers hidden by his jacket. He had made sure to take a full clip when leaving the flat. It was a precaution made from intuition.

  “He’s my responsibility,” said Amos. “And he’s not here.”

  “Who? “Cohen tried.

  Amos remained stoic. “You know.” “I don’t know,” said Cohen, not really lying. Zagorksy, Lerner, the girl. Or was she a boy? Again, he had the sensation of trying to grasp water.

  “He’s my brief,” Amos repeated. “And apparently, now you are, too.”

  “Where did he go?” Cohen asked.

  Nothing in the man’s face revealed any answer.

  “Where?” Cohen insisted.

  Amos remained stoic.

  “What can you tell me?”

  “You have to ask.”

  “The girl?” Cohen tried.

  “Nobody. A toy.”

  The expression grated on Cohen’s ear, and unlike Amos, he let his emotions show on his face. “How long has he had her?” he asked.

  “Little less than a year.”

  “What do you have on her?”

  “She’s nobody. He found her in a club.”

  “Where?”

  “Hamburg.”

  “That’s all you know about her?”

  “We know what we have to know.”

  “Her parents?”

  “An orphan. Nobody. No harm to anyone.”

  “How long have you had him?” he tried.

  “I inherited the case three months ago.”

  “Inherited?”

  “My boss died.” “On the job?” Cohen asked.

  “Heart attack,” said Amos. “He was out running his morning jog. It was a real shock. He s
tayed fit.”

  Cohen couldn’t admit as much. He lost his breath too easily nowadays, efforts that he had made in the past were tiring in ways he wished could be repaired. But he was alert, always alert. They were still in the shade of the hotel, in the driveway, looking away from each other, keeping an eye on the surroundings, watching out for others who might be watching. Across the street, a tourist was taking a photo of the hotel. Cohen turned, so that his face wouldn’t be in the picture. So did Amos. They both acted instinctively.

  Cohen tried a more friendly tone. “The last time I saw him he was selling photos to tourists while his wife brought in an education ministry subsidy. Until you people stepped in.” “That’s what they say,” said Amos, for the first time confirming what they both knew, that Lerner had turned into Zagorksy.

  “Why?”

  “There are some things I can’t tell you.”

  “I believe the man might be trying to kill me. Are you aware of that?”

  “We know about your bomb,” Amos admitted. “To be honest, there are some who wonder why the Germans didn’t hold you.”

  “Because I didn’t have the time to do it,” Cohen spat back, stating the obvious. “Does Zagorksy have an alibi?”

  “He wasn’t in Frankfurt.”

  “But he was here. In Jerusalem last night. I wasn’t. This morning, I found a bomb in my flat.” “And your cat,” said the spy.

  “Yes. And my cat,” Cohen nearly spat the word back at Amos. “That made it personal.”

  “Because of the cat?” “Because of the motive,” said Cohen, adding, “what do you know about the girl?”

  Cohen could tell in the way the crow’s feet wrinkles at the spy’s temples narrowed slightly that the question caught Amos off guard.

  “What about her?”

  “Was she in Frankfurt? And for that matter, are you sure she’s a she?” And now, for the first time, Cohen could tell that Amos was looking at him directly.

  The sunglasses hid the younger man’s eyes, but his face—a slight twitch at the corner of the mouth, a narrowing of the crow lines extending form the hidden eyes to his temples—gave away more than he intended, even though it was less than what Cohen wanted.

  “She’s a toy, that’s all. A toy,” Amos insisted.

  “Absurd,” Cohen muttered, to himself, to the spy, to the breeze. “Absurd,” he repeated, almost stumbled away, blinded by frustration, trying to hide his own confusion, hating the term a toy, that even he had used.

  Maybe he was wrong, maybe Sonia had lied to him, maybe she was wrong. But he had seen the face and remembered Lerner. It didn’t surprise him that the Mossad would have its own man inside the Russian Mafia. But so high? So vulnerable? And for what? He didn’t believe they would let Zagorksy run wild, but they couldn’t believe what Cohen’s instinct told him, that he had become a target for someone in Zagorksy’s circle, whether Yuhewitz, Witkoff, or yes, Cohen had to admit to himself, not knowing what to do with the instinct that had no real evidence, the girl.

  All through his life he had taken bits and pieces of information, putting them together to fit his purpose at the time—to survive, to succeed, to find the truth that made sense enough to give him purpose. But now, the precision of his information was only as reliable as his own memory —not of the events of the past few days, but of a time nearly thirty years earlier, almost half a life ago. In the past when he was stymied, he’d press on. Now, it made him tired. He wanted to lie down, he wanted to sleep, no, he needed sleep.

  But the questions would keep him awake. Could Maya be related to the pregnant Bernstein girl—what was her name? Where was Zagorksy’s son in all this, the boy Sonia talked about? Did he pay for lies? What did he get wrong?

  Misunderstand? How far back did the mistake go, and was it his? Worst of all, most frightening of all, he wondered if the Mossad itself might have had a hand in stopping Nissim’s investigation?

  But all he got from gnawing at his brain was a headache, realizing what was happening. As long as Zagorksy was in the country, he was protected from Cohen. Amos made that clear, leaving the old detective too proud to ask who would protect him.

  “Where are you going?” asked the spy as Cohen started stalking away.

  “Home,” Cohen admitted, not saying that he wasn’t sure any longer where that was. Suspect’s newly dug grave in the backyard had turned the garden into a cemetery. It was no place for a Cohen to live.

  32.

  When he parked behind the old YMCA football stadium— two wheels on the sidewalk—there had been room in front and back. Now an old station wagon plastered with SAVE THE GOLAN and HEBRON FOREVER stickers was bumper to bumper behind his Ford Sierra, and a new Japanese car was bumper to bumper in front.

  Inside the car, he plugged in the cellular phone through the cigarette lighter. It immediately rang to tell him he had four voice mail messages. He pulled out his little pad and started to make notes as the phone spilled its stories.

  Hagit had called, just to report that she was finally at home with the baby, and that she had decided to agree with Bendor’s plan for a ceremony at Negev headquarters in Beersheba. The damage to Nissim’s body, however, made it useless to the medical school for the students, so she had decided on a funeral at the tiny cemetery in Yeroham.

  “Cohen, it’s Raoul,” came the next message, the pathologist calling to report the same about Nissim’s body—and that yes, the riddle of the cause of death was where Nissim took the bullets, not where his car, carrying the already dead body, was pushed into the wadi. “But I hear your case goes back a long way,” said the doctor, already three years past official retirement and holding out for another two, so counting his twenty years in Argentina, he’d have thirty five years saved inpensia.

  “They’re already gossiping,” said Cohen, his paranoia growing. The situation was maddening, twisted, unreal.

  We’re all innocent until proven guilty, he reminded himself.

  The fourth message was from Rafi Peri in the hotel.

  “You wanted to know if they were leaving. They are. Two cars. Seven-seaters. Black unmarked Mercedes. From what I understand, they’re heading down to Tel Aviv.”

  Cohen worked up an angry sweat in the few minutes it took for him to get out of the tight parking spot. Driving down the narrow street, he passed the tourist who had been photographing the hotel and the Y. He was getting into a rented car.

  The tourist turned his head as Cohen passed and Cohen’s paranoia shifted gears once again, convincing him that the tourist had turned his own face away from Cohen with the same instinct that Cohen had followed when he had become aware of the camera lens pointing at the hotel—with him and Amos in the frame—only a little while ago.

  Still, the murder of the cat was madness, not professionalism.

  The mad make mistakes. That was his only comfort as he cursed his way through the claustrophobic clog of traffic in the heart of town until finally he was on the highway speeding west toward Tel Aviv, hoping without much reason to believe he’d succeed, to catch up with the two black Mercedes.

  33.

  Bernstein, for sure. But what was the aunt’s first name? It was a Jewish name, he remembered. Sarah, Rachel. What?

  He reached into his memory, trying to see in his mind’s eye the flimsy white paper with its faded purple lines and his Hebrew handwriting. The name, the address, a phone number. Hannah. That was it, Hannah Bernstein.

  She was ready, willing, even eager to get the girl. “I never understood why Irwin stayed in Jerusalem. Such a pathetic little town. Yes. Send me the girl. I will take care of her.” Why did he send her, why did he trust her? He asked her a few questions. The woman had money from reparations.

  No, she didn’t mind living among Germans. Yes, she would be able to handle all the expenses. Including the hospitalization and psychiatric care. No, she had no plans to visit Israel. “Once was enough, thank you. It is not a place for me.” She was in her fifties and in her own way (which she nev
er mentioned) she had survived the war.

  Irwin, her cousin, the father broken in Jerusalem, was already broken by the war. Not her, she didn’t have to say.

  Irwin went to Palestine. She stayed in Germany. In Hamburg, “where I was born,” she had said.

  Yes, Hannah, that was her name.

  Coming down the mountain from Jerusalem, the cellular phone found and lost its connection as he tried calling overseas.

  “Kristina Scheller’s office,” answered a secretary in the publishing house in Munich.

  “Is Miss. Scheller there?” he asked in German, realizing only after he did so that he had been pushed so far that he was now breaking one of the most basic rules of his life.

  “Who is calling?”

  “An author, Avram Cohen.”

  A moment later, his German editor was on the line.

  “Avram, how are you?” Kristina fluttered. “How wonderful of you to call. It has been so long. We worry so much for you. We … ” She was speaking in English.

  He answered in German, admitting to himself that he was becoming desperate, surprising her. “Kristina, I need a favor.”

  “Please, what? Anything I can do.”

  “I need a phone number. From Hamburg. A woman named Hannah Bernstein. I know she was living in Hamburg in 1975.”

  “You were in Hamburg in 1975?” the editor asked with surprise.

  “No, she was. Please. See if you can find her telephone number. And then call me back. Any time of day or night.

  Here’s my new number.” He recited the digits twice, to make sure she had it right, and then asked her to recite it back once to him. “I must speak with her,” he said.

  “May I ask what it’s about?”

  “I’d rather you didn’t. I’d rather not explain right now.” “Is it for a book?” asked the editor.

  “No, nothing like that,” he protested.

  “About your bombing?”

  He had to pause before answering, disbelieving that she would know about what had happened that morning, but not at all sure that some quick CNN or wire service reporter might not have picked up the story already from the Voice of Israel. He decided not to mention it. ‘ get back to me with the number,” said Cohen. “She lived alone. Unmarried.