Pattern crimes

ROOM 304

When Shoshana told David that Amit Nissim had identified rabbi Mordecai Katzer as the "scary-looking man with the beard," he could see the pattern beginning to come clear.

The morning after Amit's revelation he called the PC Unit together. Stationing Rebecca Marcus at the door to be sure no one walked in, he picked up a piece of chalk and approached the blackboard which Dov had mounted on the squad room wall.

At the top he drew a rectangle with three large circles inside. Below he drew a smaller box, and then another larger box at the bottom.

He pointed to the rectangle. "The van," he explained. He pointed to the three circles. "The three men who fled." He pointed to the smaller box. "The Chief of Operations." He pointed to the large box at the bottom. "The operations group-the guys we've been calling 'the goons.' "

Dov and Shoshana grinned. Micha and Uri moved uneasily in their chairs. David approached the board again.

"Okay, here's what we know." In the circle on the left he wrote "Gati" and in the circle on the right he wrote "Katzer." He stared at the circles for a moment, placed a question mark inside the one in the middle, wrote the name "Cohen" in the Chief of Operations box, and, in the goon box, wrote the names of the four men they'd confronted and photographed when they'd raided the house on Lover of Zion Street.

He pointed to Gati:

"Retired Air Force general. Doesn't like the direction the country's going. Sickened by it. Thinks we're 'soft.' Cold, secular, elitist. A failed politician with grandiose fantasies of being a 'hunter' again, maybe leading an avenging knighthood and taking on some dirty clean-up jobs."

He pointed to Ephraim Cohen:

"Former Air Force intelligence officer, once Gati's aide-de-camp, now an official in Shin Bet where he commands the Lover of Zion Street baboons. Tried to steer us wrong on Peretz. Up to his ears in the cover-up. Intermediary between Gati and the operations group which recruited the executioner, operated the van, and transported the victims to the Mei Naftoah slaughterhouse."

He returned to the rectangle, pointed to Katzer:

"Racist religious demagogue. Strong connections with Jewish terrorist groups. Has called for annexation of the West Bank, an end to 'Hellenic culture,' creation of a fundamentalist theocratic state, expulsion of Arabs, and a 'Holy War of extermination' if we're ever attacked again. Much too crude for Gati. A man of an entirely different style. They don't belong together but there they were. At a certain point in time, our cool elegant retired general and our sweaty rabble-rousing rabbi were seen, at the corner of Yehuda Ha-Nasi and Berenice streets, getting out of Cohen's van."

"A third man too." He rapped his knuckles hard against the question mark. "All we know about him now is that he was injured and limped away. He's the link. Find him and we'll have a shot at figuring out what they were doing. Do that and maybe we can stop them in their tracks. Based on what we know so far I'd say it's a safe guess these guys were hatching some kind of right-wing plot. At the very least I want to charge them with conspiracy. The preferred charge will be premeditated murder."

He told Anna: "I didn't tell them about Gideon. I didn't think they needed to know. The way I'm going to handle this is send each of them out to work on separate pieces, then put the pieces together myself. But now I wonder: not saying anything-maybe that was a mistake. It isn't that I'm ashamed, you see, or that I want to cover up for Gideon, or that I think there's anything wrong that he had those feelings for other men. But somehow dragging that in…" He shook his head. "It didn't seem appropriate."

She looked at him. "You weren't trying to cover up for Gideon, David. You were protecting your father. But I think there's going to come a point in all of this when you're going to have to think about protecting yourself."

Uri was driving. They were in an unmarked police Subaru. They had just passed the large red Calder sculpture at Holland Square and now were heading west toward the small suburban village of Ein Kerem. It had taken Uri only four days to find the van. David couldn't believe it. "How?" he asked.

"Took your advice," Uri said. "Started with gas stations. Went to the one nearest Lover of Zion Street, then tried the one just after the turn-off to the slaughterhouse. First guy I talked to there knew the car. Seems they had an account and gassed up there regularly. When I showed around Dov's pictures, a couple of the guys recognized them right away. The manager said that Yoni, the short muscle-bound one who drew the gun on Dov, came by every week to pay off the account. But no one's been by lately, not since the day of our bust. So I thought: Okay, they must have stashed that damn vehicle just the way you said.

"I started calling on garages. Anyone remember housing a big dark blue Chevrolet van? About number thirty-six down the list I hit this greasy place in Romema. They remember keeping it a couple of days, but it's not there anymore. I showed around the pictures. The boss picked out Yoni again. He even knew him by name." Uri glanced at David. "He knew him as Igal Hurwitz."

"The phony cop who took down all the names."

Uri nodded. "That's the one. Too bad little Amit doesn't remember him, but that's okay-now I know I'm onto something good. I call the boss aside, swear him to secrecy, tell him I'm with a special undercover unit investigating corruption in the Jerusalem police. Now he's interested-everybody hates the cops. So I tell him Hurwitz is suspected of taking bribes, which he's invested in this big fancy American van, and now I'm looking for the van because it could be crucial evidence when Hurwitz goes to trial. By this time the guy's frothing-he thinks he may know where that van is stashed. Hurwitz was looking for a place to store it cheap, and the garage owner sent him to a friend who owns an old ruined Arab farmhouse down in Ein Kerem."

They had entered the village, birthplace of John the Baptist. They passed a ceramics studio, a leather shop, a good art gallery, a non-kosher Hungarian restaurant, and finally an inn, a gathering place for the crafts-and-culture set, famous for its macrobiotic Sabbath lunch.

It was late afternoon. The town was almost empty. Uri swung the Subaru up a narrow road that ran back toward the Jerusalem Forest. They passed several farmhouses that had been gutted and turned into villas, then followed a dirt track which led to another farmhouse, this one still in ruins.

"The guy who owns it hasn't raised the money yet to fix it up," Uri said. "I checked him out. He's probably on the level. Didn't contact him though. Didn't want to alert our friends."

Uri parked behind a gnarled old olive tree. There were stones scattered everywhere, pieces of the house torn loose from its walls. David got out and followed Uri around to the back. Here there was a second stone structure in better shape than the first, built into the side of a slope, with a large set of padlocked wooden doors.

"Farmers used it for storage," Uri explained. "Over on the right there's a little gap in the slats." He pulled a flashlight from his pocket and gestured David forward. "Shine this in and take a look."

David found the gap and peered inside. The chromed front grill of the van was just inches from his face.

"We have to get in here."

Uri nodded. "I brought along some tools."

While he went back to the Subaru, David looked around. The stone barn could not be observed from the road, but there was a direct sightline, across the gully to the rear, to the Franciscan Church of St. John situated on the hill just behind Ein Kerem. A man, posted up there with binoculars, would be able to keep a watch.

Uri returned with an automobile jack and a pair of plumber's pliers. He set the jack under the right-hand door, then, attaching the pliers to the lower hinge-pin, carefully worked it loose. He removed the upper pin the same way, then knelt to pump the jack. The door, creaking, rose a fraction of an inch. Uri lowered the jack and pumped it up again, gently working the door up and down. When he was satisfied it would swing out, he stepped back, looked around, fetched a large flat stone, placed it a foot from the edge of the portal, then knelt again and carefully grasped hold of the bottom of the door.

"Here's where the old weight-training comes in."

He squeezed his eyes, screwed up his face, and sucked in his breath. Then, exhaling, he pulled the door off its hinges and, with an enormous groan, set it down upon the stone.

There was a ten-inch entry gap into the barn.

"Can you squeeze in there? I sure as hell can't," Uri said.

Shoulder first, David wedged himself inside. When he was clear of the portal, Uri handed him the flashlight. He switched it on and began to inspect the van.

There was barely enough room to turn around; the sides of the vehicle were just inches from the walls. He managed to get into the driver's seat, then crawled over its back into the compartment behind.

He shined his flashlight around, looked under the seats and then inside the ashtrays. Nothing. He had expected that-he knew Cohen wouldn't allow the van to be stashed until it had been thoroughly cleaned out.

Of course there was a chance the clean-up had not been perfect, something that could only be determined by a police forensic team. He could call one in now and gamble they'd pick up traces of powder or even Peretz's blood. But the odds of that were low, Cohen and his people would be tipped off, there'd be another inter-service dispute, and in the end, David knew, forensic evidence wouldn't be enough.

In fact, if there was any evidence, it would only point to the goons. David didn't particularly care about them. He wanted Gati, Katzer, the third man who'd been injured in the accident, and, most of all, he wanted Ephraim Cohen.

Now he sat in the rear seat of the van trying to imagine what the accident had been like. Two of the three were probably sitting where he was seated now, the third on the bench opposite. The driver, using the alias of Hurwitz, had been driving them in random circles around Jerusalem. A moving safe-house. Extreme precautions. Everything arranged so that three men would not be seen. But then the unexpected: Schneiderman's truck smashed into the side of their secret mobile conference room. Suddenly, in front of witnesses, the three men had been exposed.

He slid open the side panel door, squeezed out, closed it, bent down and ran his fingers lightly over its entire surface. The paint looked fresh, unscratched, and he could find no trace of damage. Which meant, he concluded, that Ephraim's men had replaced the entire panel door.

Later, when he was outside, Uri pointed out the sightline to the church.

"I saw that," David said, "but you could sit up there for a month and still miss out. When they take the van out, if they do, they'll be smart enough to move it out at night."

"So now what? Is this a dead end?"

David shook his head. "There's still the damaged door, Uri. Probably still lying around wherever it was they had it replaced."

The next morning he invited Micha out for coffee to a police hangout on narrow Rivlin Street. When they had ordered and were seated in a quiet booth in back, David asked him if he'd be willing to take on a small piece of unofficial work.

"Sure. You know me, David. What do you want me to do?"

"For a guy like you the padlock on that farm building would probably be a cinch."

Micha's hand, holding his cup of coffee, was trembling just a little bit. "What do I do once I open it?"

"Wire the ignition of the van. Nothing big, you understand. We wouldn't want to blow off anybody's legs. Just a small charge, enough to send a message. The kind of message they sent to me when they used me for target practice at the zoo."

Micha's hand was suddenly still. "Yeah, I think I'd like to do that."

"How about tonight?"

"Tonight would be good."

David stood up. "Get together whatever you need and we'll drive out there after work."

"Micha says he's just too perfect, that there's got to be some dirt."

"If there is, it's hard to find, captain. No sign he fools around with boys."

"What about girls?"

Liederman shrugged. "If he does he's pretty careful. But maybe he's got no need to fool around. His wife's the kind we used to call a dish.' "

They were standing at the overlook on the top of the Mount of Olives. It was a blazing summer day. Air-conditioned tourist buses were parked in the circular drive, tourists were milling about, taking pictures, exclaiming at the view. Several waited in line to mount a bedraggled camel which stood, its snout dripping foam, in a small dry pile of camel excrement.

"He drives a BMW. Works at that Shin Bet sub headquarters beside the Brandeis School. Couldn't hang around there. Security's too tight. But I caught him a couple times driving home at six o'clock. In the evenings he and the wife go out, usually pretty well dressed. Cocktail parties, restaurants, one night to see the Danish ballet. One evening he took off by himself. I broke contact when I saw he was heading down to Tel Aviv."

"Maybe he's got a boy down there."

"That's possible. There were fifteen of us the night we tracked Peretz. By myself in Tel Aviv…"

"Yes," David said. "I understand."

Liederman cupped his hands to light a cigarette. The gold hemisphere of the Dome of the Rock glittered far below.

"One interesting move he made. He was walking around downtown, aimlessly I thought. Then suddenly he started acting furtive. I turned away. Next thing I knew he wasn't there. I figured he'd slipped into this office building, 28 Histadrut. There's an American-style hamburger joint out front. I took a seat. Sure enough, about twenty minutes later he came out of there walking fast.

"I still had this feeling his antennae were up so I didn't take off after him. But when he was gone I went into the building and had a look. Lots of offices, small businesses, gem wholesalers, import-export firms. Then on the stairs I bumped into this old man stumbling around like he was in a daze. Minute later I saw this other guy, tall and very thin, lingering in the hall. So on the off-chance there was some connection I decided to hang around. And guess what? The thin guy was tracking the old man, which was not very difficult because the old man was almost blind. I followed them a couple of blocks-"

"Moshe, please-is there a point to all of this?"

"Well, you know me, captain. I'm not intuitive."

"So you always say."

"But still, you see, I felt it was all connected. Don't ask me how. I just had this feeling the two of them, the old man and Cohen, had come there separately to meet. Never had a hunch like that before. Never had any kind of hunch. So I thought: 'Okay, Moshe, now you finally got yourself a hunch, start acting like a detective, see where the hell it leads.' "

David nodded. He was interested.

"…by this time it was dark. They got on a bus for Talpiot. I got on too. Then, when they got off near an apartment project, I did the same. Okay, the old half-blind guy was stumbling his way toward one of those new immigrant housing blocks. Suddenly the thin guy broke off and, couple of seconds later, he and I were face to face. I stopped him, flashed my ID, demanded to see his, discovered he was an American, and then, in my rotten English, asked what the hell he was doing following around an Israeli citizen in the dark. I tell you, captain, the guy was scared. He started fumbling around. Something about his name, Rokovsky, gave me an idea, so I started talking to him in Polish, and from that point he started to relax."

"Rokovsky? Anatole Rokovsky?"

"Yeah, something like that. Do you know him, captain?"

"Not exactly," David said. "Go on. What happened then?"

"Long and short of it, he finally admitted he was following the older guy. And when I asked him why, he started telling me this story about some missing money and a loan. So where had he followed him from? I asked. In the end he told me what I wanted to know: the office at 28 Histadrut where the old man had met Ephraim Cohen. It's some kind of arts foundation. Room 304…"