The girl mocked him. “Please … please … you’re surprised?”
she answered him with a question. “Such a big man you are, so important. You have killed, no? Arranged killing, no? And you, too, Alex, you too have done such things,” she added to Witkoff. “But not me? Why not me?
He killed,” she added, pointing at Cohen. “This, this, saint … ” she snarled the word. “He says so in the book.”
“I saved your mother,” Cohen protested. “I didn’t kill her.”
“You sent her to hell. And that’s where I was born,” the girl said in a matter-of-fact voice. The grin, a scowl really, grew slowly across her face. Her eyes narrowed as her hands moved back to her hips. She leaned backward against the broad desk behind her.
The thumping inside his skull had been growing stronger all morning. Maybe that’s why he remembered too late the switchblade letter opener on the desk.
“And that’s where I’m going to send you!” she cried out, reaching behind her and then throwing, with no little expertise, the pointed knife straight at him.
He dodged too late, and the knife struck deep into his lower chest. He gasped, and knew from the pain that the knife had lodged in his lower lung. He fired nonetheless, yet knowing he would miss, watching as the girl acrobatically rolled over the desk to hide.
Shvilli swung to fire. “No,” Cohen gasped, wondering absurdly what other tricks she knew. Shvilli halted.
“Maya!” Zagorksy cried out, as the girl reappeared from behind the desk, a gun held with two hands, aiming at Cohen.
He dropped to the floor as she fired, landing on his side, aware of the knife lodged in his ribs digging deeper into his lung. He didn’t have the breath to shout at Shvilli this time. The Uzi burst and Cohen looked up.
The girl was looking down at her perfect breasts, with disbelief that turned into a strange look of satisfaction as she looked up at Cohen. Her cold green eyes rolled back, and she dropped.
He grunted as he pulled the knife out of his side and again as he rose to his feet, the pounding in his head echoing the submachine gun bullets that had rocked the penthouse living room.
Blood drained from his wound, a growing rivulet that he tried stemming with one hand, the Beretta still aimed with the other.
“Boss,” Shvilli cried out, “I’ve got it, you can rest. Sit down. Lie down, boss … “
“I’ll wait,” he gasped. He looked around the room.
Zagorksy was sitting forward in his chair, a hand over his eyes. Witkoff was watching Cohen carefully. The blonde was in shock, too frightened to speak, let alone whimper.
Yuhewitz was sweating profusely, his teeth chattering. The two bookkeepers were silent. So were the two guards, one wounded, the other tense but frozen. But the mysterious tourist was smiling at Cohen and suddenly he realized that no matter what happened next, there would always remain that man’s presence in the meeting as a mystery for which he doubted he’d ever have an answer. In the distance, he could hear sirens. A neighbor must have called, Cohen thought. He looked down at his shirt. Blood was trickling between his fingers down his shirt.
Suddenly, the roar of beating helicopter blades swerved close to the building and then backed away. The unit, Cohen figured. Gunshots would mean terrorists. They sent the unit. He looked at the blood on his fingers and suddenly thought foolishly, I’m too old for this. A strong wave of exhaustion swept over his body with a thrashing warmth. But still, he remained standing. The phone rang in the apartment. Shvilli looked at him. Cohen shook his head. “I’ll get it. Keep them covered.” His voice came out as a raspy whisper, the breath painful and short.
He went to the desk, each step painful, slowly stepping around the table to the body of the dead girl. He looked down at her lifeless eyes, still open. Only then did he pick up the receiver, the splattered blood sticky on the plastic.
He said hello, and then listened to the voice at the other end, aware that everyone—except Shvilli—was staring at him.
“It is safe now,” he said to the negotiating officer on the end of the line. There was a pause and then he said, “I am retired Deputy Commander Avram Cohen. We will need ambulances.” Then he hung up, too tired to talk anymore.
Nonetheless, even after the medics ripped away his shirt and put the first bandage on him before strapping him into the stretcher for the ride down the elevator, out into the bright sun and then into the cool shade of the ambulance, he forced himself to stay awake.
Only in the ambulance carrying him to the hospital did he dare close his eyes. When he awoke, he thought, as the siren began its whoop, he’d tell Ahuva that he was moving to Tel Aviv. Maybe she’d let him move in. “Maybe,” he murmured out loud, before dropping into the welcoming darkness.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Born and raised in Boston, and living in Israel since 1973, Robert Rosenberg has been writing professionally since 1976, in a career that has spanned daily, weekly, and monthly journalism, as well as the Avram Cohen mysteries.
In 1995 he founded Ariga, an online web ‘ publishing for business, pleasure and peace in the Middle East at http://www.ariga.com He lives in Tel Aviv with his wife, the artist Silvia Cherbakoff, and their daughter, Amber.
An Accidental Murder: An Avram Cohen Mystery Page 24
