“What do I tell the heirs?” Laskoff moaned.
“That they taught me something about greed,” said Cohen with the same simplicity that he used earlier. “And I appreciated the lesson.”
Laskoff knew Cohen well enough not to be astounded, but he had to ask, “That’s all?”
“What else do I have to tell them?”
“They might sue. We signed some memorandums of understanding.”
“Settle it.”
“How do I know you won’t change your mind again?”
“You’ll have to trust me,” said Cohen. He turned to look at Shvilli, who was finishing his own phone call. “I have to go. I’ll be in touch.”
“That’s what you always say. And whenever you get in touch, it’s a crisis,” Laskoff complained.
But Cohen knew that Laskoff loved the occasional excitement that he brought into the private banker’s life.
“Goodbye, Ephraim,” he said gently, cutting off the conversation and closing the phone. Shvilli was doing the same. Cohen went back to the table.
“You still think that bombing in Frankfurt, and what happened this morning, are connected to what happened to Nissim?” asked the undercover man.
Cohen pulled at an earlobe. “No, and yes.”
“Usually it’s yes and no.” “It’s an unusual situation,” admitted Cohen.
“You haven’t explained it to me.”
“I’m not certain myself.” “You have to trust me,” said Shvilli.
“I do trust you.”
“You’re not telling me something.”
Cohen nodded, almost sadly. “It has nothing to do with Nissim, or you. And I’m not even sure if it’s true. It’s my gut talking to me, not my mind. And you know how much I hate that.”
“Yes.”
Again silence fell between them.
“You were right,” said Shvilli. “I talked to Yudelstein again. He says that Witkoff went crazy when he heard that Yuhewitz’s boys did Nissim.”
“Did he tell you where we can find them?”
Shvilli’s smile grew until the row of gold teeth on his lower left jaw twinkled in the sun.
“They’re at Witkoff V he said.
34.
They weren’t surprised to find a pair of black Mercedes parked in the beating sunlight outside the tall apartment building, the two drivers doubling as guards in the shade of the building’s entrance. Cohen rolled slowly past the building. “You know them?” he asked Shvilli, then quickly added, “more important, do they know you?”
Shvilli shook his head. “No. Who are they?”
“Zagorksy’s drivers.”
“So he’s here, too.”
Cohen nodded.
“How are we going to do this?” Shvilli asked, as Cohen parked.
Cohen thought. “Casually and cautiously,” he finally said. “Pass me the cane on the floor in the back,” he instructed Shvilli.
“What’s this for?” asked the Georgian.
“I twisted my ankle a couple of months ago, needed it for a few days,” said Cohen, taking the short staff. “You’re accompanying me to the orthopedic surgeon’s, for a consultation,” he told Shvilli.
Cohen hobbled up the path to the building, leaning heavily on the cane. Shvilli walked slowly beside him. As they approached the guards, Cohen said in a whining voice to Shvilli, “The doctor better give me some better painkillers.”
Shvilli just nodded.
One of the guards flicked away a cigarette and watched the old man on the cane approaching. He said something in Russian to the other guard and neither challenged Cohen and Shvilli.
With the elevator doors closed, Cohen dropped the cane and pulled out his Beretta, pulling back the barrel to cock it. Shvilli did the same with his Desert Eagle .457, a much larger gun than Cohen’s, which the undercover man kept in an armpit holster under his brown suede leather jacket.
They rode silently, as if they had done so hundreds of times before, though only once many years before had Cohen and Shvilli been together so close to the edge. But just before the elevator doors opened, Shvilli smiled and said, “You know what that asshole downstairs said?”
“No.”
“That he pitied me for having such a whining father.”
Cohen grimaced, and then the elevator started to slow down at the sixteenth floor. They stood facing the elevator doors, waiting for the ride to end and the doors to slide open, their guns already pointed toward whatever lay beyond those doors.
The elevator stopped. Cohen’s finger moved from the trigger guard to the trigger. Shvilli did the same. The door slid open. A guard was waiting, but stupidly, too casually for his profession, his mini-Uzi was slung over his shoulder, not pointing back at them.
Cohen’s gun, already drawn waist high as the doors opened, moved quickly upward to aim between the guard’s eyes as he stepped into the landing area, shoving the guard backward up against the wall. Shvilli unslung the Uzi, held his own gun barrel to pursed lips and hissed “Shh … “
Nothing else was spoken, but it was clear what the guard was thinking. How far did his loyalty to his boss go?
Cohen’s eyes asked the guard the same question as he pointed with his free hand to the penthouse door, his Beretta rock-still and aimed at the guard’s face, his smile more menacing than ever.
For a flicker of a second, the guard’s eyes seemed to calculate his chances. Cohen shook his head, still silent, still smiling, still pointing with his left hand at the apartment door, still keeping his eyes locked on the guard’s.
Shvilli added a jab with the Uzi into the guard’s kidneys.
It made the guard stand straighter for a second of pain, but then like air let out of a balloon whatever remained of his self-confidence drained away. His shoulders slumped.
Keeping his gun trained on the hair ridge over the guard’s nose, Cohen backed the guard toward the apartment door.
Just then, the muffled sounds of a voice rising into a shout could be heard behind the brass and fake-wood door. The guard looked back with worry at Cohen, who just nodded his command. Shvilli rang the bell, but not before he had the Uzi slung over his shoulder, his finger on the trigger, the safety set to automatic.
The three-tone melody instantly silenced the shouting inside. An instant later the door opened, held by yet another broad-muscled guard, the angry question on his face turning into surprise at the sight of the old man wielding the Beretta and Shvilli with the Uzi.
A man’s voice from inside the apartment called out something in Russian.
“He wants to know who we are,” Shvilli whispered to Cohen.
For a moment, riding up the elevator, Cohen had thought they could both die when the elevator doors opened. The thought flashed through his mind without fear or regret, but merely a recognition of the odds that should have been against him except for one thing and one thing alone. The very self-confidence and sense of immunity with which the bodyguards and their bosses exuded their control prevented them from imagining a threat from an old man, indeed from anyone other than their known competitors. It was his gamble, and luck, as he knew so well, could only be created by taking chances, controlling time itself.
“They’re about to find out,” Cohen said.
35.
Everyone in the room froze at the sight of Cohen and Shvilli’s entrance, the two guards with their hands held high pushed forward weaponless in front of the invaders.
Cohen scanned the room. Witkoff was in the rocking chair, at the head of the meeting; Zagorksy to the host’s right, Yuhewitz to his left. The girl was nowhere to be seen. Nor was Witkoff’s blonde. Cohen stole a glance into the kitchen. It was empty.
Three other men were in the room. Two were probably bookkeepers or lawyers, thought Cohen. The third was the tourist Cohen had seen with the camera outside the King David. His eyes narrowed on seeing Cohen, but he said nothing.
Cohen motioned with his head for the two guards they had taken captive to move across
the room. They obeyed, hands high in the air. Witkoff started to rise from his chair.
Shvilli waved the mini-Uzi to indicate the host should sit down.
Yuhewitz snarled something in Russian at Shvilli.
Cohen let off a shot into the ceiling, surprising even Shvilli. Witkoff threw his hands over his head, Yuhewitz fell to the ground. “Silence,” Cohen added softly. “Get up,” he said to the Eilat boss. Zagorksy only smiled slightly. It was the same smile that made the scar across the Russian’s face grow, which Cohen had recognized from twenty years before when watching the video in the brothel.
“Misha?” Witkoff asked, indicating he meant Shvilli, the tone of the question neither rhetorical nor curious. His eyes went to Yuhewitz, who was trying not to shake in his seat. Witkoff said something in Russian.
Cohen swung his gun to aim at Witkoff. “Silence, I said.”
Witkoff fell silent.
“What did he say?” Cohen asked Shvilli.
“That Yuhewitz is an idiot.”
“Mr. Cohen,” Witkoff suddenly said in a friendly tone.
“I am so glad to meet you. Your book was wonderful.” He spoke a simple Hebrew with a strained attempt not to let the Russian accent through, which of course only made it stronger.
“This is Cohen?” Yuhewitz asked, his voice trembling.
Everyone ignored him. In the distance, beyond the open window to the sea, the sound of a propeller plane taking off from Sde Dov Airport was the only sound in the room—except for Cohen’s heart, pounding away inside his chest, the pulse beating under his skull.
“The girl,” Cohen finally said, breaking the silence, then snapped, “Higher!” at one of the bodyguards, whose arms appeared to be slowly lowering. There was the sound of cloth tearing as the guard’s jacket tore at the armpit.
Nobody smiled.
“The girl,” said Witkoff, calmly. He looked at Zagorsky.
So did Cohen.
“She had nothing to do with it,” said Zagorksy, but the conviction in his tone was hollow.
“Enough of that,” Witkoff reprimanded Zagorksy, and his eyes went back to Cohen. “Yes, the girl. How stupid, no? Love is stupid, no?” “Stop it,” Zagorksy demanded.
“I know what happened,” Cohen said.
“So you know I had nothing to do with it,” Yuhewitz piped up. “It was all her fault.” “No,” said Witkoff, nodding toward Zagorksy. “It was actually his.”
“Where is she?” Cohen demanded. “Here? In the apartment?
Where?” His cellular phone suddenly rang from inside his jacket pocket. He ignored it.
The sudden trill of a woman’s laugh answered Cohen’s question.
Strange, he thought, as she came into the room from a side door to Cohen’s left, followed by the buxom blonde who had opened the door for him only a few days earlier.
The mole was smaller than he remembered. All those artist sketches were misleading. He wondered how he could have made such a mistake.
But there was no time for wondering now. The girl, tall, tightly wrapped in a pair of jeans and a white T-shirt, paused as she came into the living room, and scanned all the faces until she settled on Cohen. Her green eyes were as cold as her father’s, as cold as her uncle’s.
They seemed almost amused, those eyes, with none of the fear—nor surprise—that he could see in the expressions of all the other people in the room. If anything, there was a slight measure of disappointment, as if she were hoping for a more worthy adversary.
There was no doubt now, as far as he was concerned. Her hands were casually jammed into her rear pockets, and if not for the circumstances she could have been a model posing for a provocative advertisement for the T-shirt, or perhaps the jeans, or even a perfume. Behind her was Witkoff’s desk, a gleaming wooden surface unmarred by papers. They were all staring at her now, except the blonde, whose eyes worriedly shifted between Cohen and her boss Witkoff.
“The Jerusalem policeman,” the girl finally said, in German.
Her voice was soft and had a natural hoarseness that made it sound like a whisper. “Avram Cohen.” There was no disguising the hatred.
He nodded. “Raise your hands.”
She held them out to show she held nothing. Her eyes glittered with expectation.
Witkoff asked Zagorksy something in Russian. Again Cohen fired a bullet from the pistol into the ceiling over Witkoff’shead.
Both Russians blanched, the bookkeeper and the tourist— Cohen still wanted to know what he was all about—threw themselves to the floor, hands over their heads.
“Quiet,” Cohen said softly, his voice a deep rumble.
“Hebrew. English. German. No Russian,” he ordered, with a cold half-grin on his face. “But first, quiet.” He turned to the girl. “Why?” he asked her in German.
She only smiled. Her black hair was cut in a bob, her lipstick a bloody red. There was another lipstick smudge on her cheek and Cohen realized it was the same dark orange on the blonde’s lips.
“Why?” Cohen repeated. “The bombs? The murders?
What was it all for?”
Zagorksy answered for her. “She is obsessed,” he said sadly.
“And you knew this?” Witkoff asked. “And let her come here?”
Cohen fired a third time. He could only assume that somewhere in the neighborhood someone would hear the shots and call the police. It was going to be their only way out. But he needed something solid from someone—the girl, Zagorksy, Yuhewitz, someone—if the plan were to work.
He looked at the girl. There was nothing masculine about her. He had no doubt that she was the young woman he had seen in the corridor in the hotel. He had been wrong.
“Do you have a son?” he suddenly asked Zagorksy, surprising them all, except the girl, whose laugh trilled again, softer, slighter, but no less provocatively than her stance.
Zagorsky nodded.
“Is he here?”
Zagorksy shook his head.
The blonde started to whimper in fear. Witkoff told her to be quiet.
The bigger guard, the one who opened the door to them, suddenly took a step forward. Without warning, Cohen fired the Beretta, knowing his aim. The heavy man dropped to the floor, gasping, not screaming, clutching a shattered knee.
Witkoff didn’t move. Yuhewitz moaned. Zagorksy shook his head with dismay. The girl smiled. And still, Cohen’s expression didn’t change.
“There are sixteen more bullets in this,” Cohen said softly. “And plenty more in that,” he pointed to the Uzi in Shvilli’s hands.
“I must get out of here—” one of the bookkeepers spluttered.
“Quiet!” both Witkoff and Zagorsky snapped at him simultaneously.
“Now tell me,” Cohen demanded of the girl, “why. Why do you hate me so much? To kill? Why?”
The girl spat.
“Why?” Cohen asked the girl again with a patience that belied the pounding in his veins, the thudding in his head.
An executive jet at the airport runway far beyond the open sliding window made a distant roar as it took off. The girl turned to look over her shoulder out the window, ignoring Cohen for a second.
Then she turned back. “My mother hated you,” the girl finally said in a simple voice. “She hated you and I hate you. It is simple, no?”
“I helped her,” Cohen protested.
“You sent her to hell,” the girl shot back. “And me with her,” she added bluntly.
“This is hell?” Zagorksy broke in. “You said you loved me.”
“You bought me,” she shot back at him. “I sold you what you wanted.”
“I helped her,” Cohen protested again to the girl.
The girl laughed at that. “Helped her? You sent her to that witch.”
“Her aunt?”
“Ha! “the girl cried.
“You were a baby. How could you know?” “She told me everything. Everything.”
“That your uncle is your father?”
“They’
re both dead.” “Yes,” Cohen admitted. The jailed twin had been murdered in his bed in Ramie prison two years after his arrival in the jail. “But I had nothing to do with that.”
“You sent her away. To the witch. So I’d end up like this.
Here.” “Idiot,” Witkoff shouted at Zagorsky, adding something more in Russian.
“Quiet!” Cohen shouted, then asked Shvilli to translate.
“You brought her here,’ ” the Georgian quoted Witkoff.
” ‘ knew this and brought her here.’ “
“She didn’t tell me this. She told me he had arrested her mother. Sent her to the gutter in Germany. That’s what she told me.” “And did you tell him,” Cohen asked Zagorksy, pointing toward Witkoff, “that you knew me, too?” “You know him?” Witkoff asked, astounded.
Zagorksy shook his head with dismay, not denial.
At the far end of the room, the tourist from outside the King David was suddenly leaning forward tensely. But Cohen needed to know more from the girl.
“Who made the bomb?” Cohen tried asking her.
She laughed. “It is so difficult? Only men can do this?”
“Who taught you?” “A man,” she said, in a matter-of-fact manner that made it clear she could get any man to do anything for her, if she decided.
“Yosef,” Yuhewitz said. “She fucked him and he did anything she asked.”
“He did not,” she protested. “The devices were mine.
Mine.”
“Why Nissim? Why have him killed?”
She shrugged. “You sent my mother to die, why shouldn’t I send your loved ones to die?”
“What are they talking about?” Witkoff demanded again from Zagorksy.
But Zagorksy was staring at the girl, ignoring the question.
“You used me,” he finally realized.
She laughed at him. “And you didn’t use me? That’s the way the world works. I use you, you use me. We all use each other, no? And those who don’t know how to do it, well, they lose.” “Please, no … ” Zagorksy said softly, staring at her.
An Accidental Murder: An Avram Cohen Mystery Page 23
