Pattern crimes

MAJOR PERETZ

Her name was Yael Safir, she was nineteen years old, and she was everything Rafi had feared: pretty, smart, well-liked, a soldier girl working in the computer room at the IDF Command Center in Tel Aviv. She was, moreover, the daughter of a national hero, Captain Asher Safir, killed and posthumously decorated for bravery on the Golan in '73. She'd been last seen hitchhiking her way home to Kibbutz Hulda for the Passover holidays.

The outrage in the country was immense. Yael Safir was a member of the Israeli elite. She left behind a mother, two sisters, two brothers, a pilot boyfriend, and a large circle of grieving and angry friends.

As the story hit the press a great outcry was heard. The old lady who lived upstairs stopped Anna in the hall. "What kind of an Israel do we have," she asked, "that a soldier girl can be picked up like that, then mutilated, and killed?"

Rafi walked into David's office holding a letter. "This just came into the superintendent's office. Latsky's pissing blood."

David read the letter aloud: "'What's wrong with you people? While a madmen kills our children, you're writing out tickets on Bezalel Street.' "

"Anonymous, of course. One of half a dozen or so that came in today. There were more yesterday and there'll be more tomorrow."

"What are you telling me, Rafi?"

"That the pressure's on."

"You don't think I feel that?"

"Of course you do." Rafi sat down. "Watch TV last night?"

"Katzer?" Rafi nodded. "I feel ashamed a man like that is even listened to. Anna was astonished; she couldn't take her eyes off the screen."

"Sure. Katzer's magnetic, and this is just the kind of situation he knows how to exploit. The worst of it is that he only repeats what ordinary people say: 'It's got to be an Arab. No Jew would do such a thing!'" Rafi shook his head. "An Arab transvestite prostitute and a Moroccan Jewish whore-no one gave much of a shit. An American nun-that was trouble, but we were coping with it. Schneiderman was bad, but this Yael Safir is something else. To quote Latsky: 'Now we got ourselves a capital-M Murder Case.'

"If it does turn out to be an Arab, Rafi, you know what a field day the reprisal groups will have. Can't you just see them barging into some pathetic Arab village bristling with self-righteous anger and freshly sharpened kitchen knives?"

Rafi gazed at him. "Yeah, and I can hear them too. 'You cut our girls, we cut yours.'" He shook his head and left.

Shoshana retraced Yael's movements. She had left the Command Center at 4 P.M., then waited with other soldiers at the hitching shelter just beyond the gate. She and a girl friend had gotten a lift to Ben-Gurion Airport where a couple hundred more soldiers were also waiting for rides. The scene was chaotic with drivers stopping every few seconds, picking the young people up, then speeding off into the hills. Yael's friend left first-she was heading for Jerusalem. The cars were coming fast, she said, and she doubted Yael waited ten minutes more. Later a male soldier thought he saw Yael get into a dark blue American-type van with Jerusalem plates. Kibbutz Hulda was about a twenty-minute ride from Ben-Gurion. Yael never arrived and was reported missing. She was found twenty-two hours later in the dumpster in Bloomfield Park.

"Passover eve," Shoshana explained. "Kids desperate to get home and the drivers desperate too. Everyone wants to get to his Seder. Yael's friend's family was a little religious, so Yael pushed her to take the first ride. 'My people don't care all that much,' she said. They kissed and then her friend took off. Yael just waited her turn."

"Can't anyone remember the driver?" David asked.

"Van had those kind of windows you can't see in. Even under hypnosis my witness can't recall the digits on the plates."

"Didn't anyone else get a fix on the car?"

"David, you've forgotten what it's like. When you go on leave all you think about is getting home. You're so wrapped up in that you don't pay attention to anything else. The man who picked her up probably knew that too. He chose the perfect time when those hitching stops are wild."

And now Shoshana has a favorite victim too, David thought.

The tan Renault that had carried Ora Goshen was stolen, so there was reason to believe the blue van with the one-way windows had been stolen too. David put out an all-Israel alert. No reports came in. Then he had Rebecca Marcus forward a request to the police computer unit. He wanted a printout on every dark-colored van in the country, broken down first by city, then by make. If necessary, he would have every owner checked.

Peretz: Dov had him thoroughly covered now. Five teams were on him, watching him day and night, and Dov didn't think Peretz was aware of them-he'd made no visible alterations in his routine.

"He's a strange guy, David. Doesn't go out much. Stays home most of the day. Doesn't seem to have a job. But then he takes a long walk around five, six in the afternoon. No particular direction or destination, but there's a manner he has that bothers me. Couldn't put my finger on it at first. Then I realized what it was. The way he moves -like a certain kind of dog. A hunter. A tracker. He moves around

Jerusalem like a guy maneuvering in the woods."

Although there was risk, since he was publically identified with the case, David knew he had to see this for himself.

The apartment was on Zevi Graetz, heavily perfumed this time of year by flowering jasmine. A street of fine houses and lush gardens and a sweet smell that reminded him of his boyhood. Walking here to meet Dov he remembered spring evenings playing with Gideon on Disraeli Street, kicking around a soccer ball, then bicycling through the thick aromatic air that settled with the dusk.

Dov was waiting in an old Volkswagen squareback, parked a few doors down and across the street from Peretz's home.

"He's got the whole top floor. Looks like it was added on. There's a terrace. Uri can see it from the other side. Sometimes Peretz goes out there and stands by the railing. View's probably terrific. Place must have cost a bundle."

David knew Peretz had money. Micha Benyamani and Moshe Liederman had pulled together a fairly decent file. He'd inherited from an aunt who lived in the States. The money came through just about the time he left the army and since then, as far as anyone knew, he hadn't bothered to find a job.

Some crackling over the field radio. Then Uri's voice: "Lights going out." David looked up at the apartment, saw the windows suddenly go dark.

"Going from room to room turning them off," said Dov. "Coming down now for the evening stroll."

David focused on the building door. This would be his first look at a living breathing Peretz. He had read through the dossier and studied the tapes, but so far had no clear impression of the man.

"Okay, now watch the way he sniffs the air."

And, indeed, when Peretz appeared, he paused, looked both ways, gave the air a sniff, then took off for Wingate Square with an aggressive swagger.

"Seems to like the posh parts of town." Dov started up the car. "Jerusalem Theater area, that sort of thing. Three out of four times he goes this way. Still, he always looks both directions before he starts."

Dov turned the car around, zigzagged through a couple of streets, came out by the Mayer Institute of Islamic Art. "Okay, he should pass by in a minute or so. He can work himself up to quite a pace."

Uri's voice on the radio: "He's on Chopin Street." Then: "Hey! Wait! There's a taxi-load of torchers heading your way."

Just then an old Mercedes taxi came reeling around the corner with half a dozen bearded youths packed into the back. David caught a glimpse of fanatical eyes peering out of windows. He recognized a gang of ultra-orthodox who drove the city at night. Offended by the semi-nudity of models in advertisements affixed to the sides of bus shelters, they were no longer content to paint the posters out; now they burned the shelters down.

"What I'd give to arrest a couple of those creeps," Dov said. The taxi passed. "There! See him? There he is."

David slid down in his seat as he watched Peretz pass in profile. He was striding swiftly now, head thrust forward, hands locked tightly behind his back.

"From here he usually heads for Zarefat. We had some trouble the first two nights, but now that we know him it's getting easier. There're always two of us out there on foot. Every couple of minutes we change off." Dov started the car again. "I'm going to do a pass."

David sank down again but kept his eyes on the rear-view mirror. "Now!" For an instant he caught Peretz's face and was surprised to find it troubled and grim. On the tapes he'd seemed so calm and self-assured. So, he thought, Major Peretz wears a mask.

As they took up various other positions to observe other segments of the walk, David asked himself how much he really knew about his quarry. Only son of secular South African-born parents. A loner with no close male friends. A lifetime bachelor apparently without any woman in his life-which seemed to fit with the lack of sexual assault upon the victims. Still not much to go on. Ali Saad had not been able to identify him, and neither had the two prostitute friends of Ora Goshen. But his appearance at the symposium and his former use of the double slash signature made him a plausible suspect, so far the only one they had.

"Oh oh, he's turning into the park." Dov grabbed his microphone. "Careful, Uri. It's a maze."

They were parked across from the Supersol, where Anna did most of her shopping. Peretz had just strode by them, and then, opposite the American Consulate, had turned suddenly into the labyrinthine lower portion of Independence Park.

"You know, David, it's Queersville in there this time of night."

Dov was right, this was the place and time for homosexual trysts. There were other such places, in the Old City and in East Jerusalem, but the southern base of Independence Park was notorious, and in the summer months there were always incidents, gay foreigners mugged by addicts, assignations made in expectation of pleasure but ending in beatings or fights.

"Three's not enough."

"I know." Dov ordered two more men in, then got out of the car himself.

"I'm coming too."

"He knows you."

"Can't worry about that now." They jogged along the street together, Dov trying to attach his field radio to his belt. "We'll split up and try to flank him. Shouldn't be too tough if he's just passing through. But if he's hunting…" They turned onto a footpath, then into a stand of trees.

That cloying odor again, of flowering jasmine, hanging in the still night air, thicker this time, almost like a syrup. It was a humid evening, and now, away from the street lamps, cut off from the city, wandering alone amid these silent woods, David asked himself why that particular aroma conjured up such sharp memories of his past. Gideon, he thought-something to do with him, and he realized at once that the association was stronger now than it had been earlier when he'd made his way down Zevi Graetz.

He took the right fork, skirted the edges of the Mamillah Pool where a dozen young men in tight-fitting clothing lingered against the thick trunks of eucalyptus trees.

No sign of Peretz. David was about to cross to his left when he remembered that the Renault into which Ora Goshen had stepped that night by the Damascus Gate had been stolen from the public parking lot just four hundred feet up the slope. Suppose he's not here for prey? Suppose he's after another car? He began to run toward the lot. As he charged through some bushes he nearly tripped over two men lying together on a patch of grass.

"David!" It was Dov, standing on one foot in the middle of the parking lot picking thorns out of his socks. "He's up by the Arp statue on King George. Shoshana'll be around in a minute to pick us up." He pushed in the antenna of his radio and grinned. "Almost forgot about that car."

"Garbage detail." Shoshana dumped the bag onto the desk. "Or should I say the gleanings, since I kindly removed all the soggy old teabags, raunchy old yogurt cups, and yukky orange rinds downstairs?"

Eleven A.M. The Pattern Crimes Unit room was nearly empty. Micha was on the telephone, and Rebecca Marcus, cherubic as always, straight-backed and neatly scarfed, was typing up surveillance reports. Liederman was out doing legwork for Micha, and the rest of the expanded unit was either home asleep or on Zevi Graetz waiting for Peretz who, according to Dov, had been acting increasingly nervous and thus might finally be getting ready to make his move.

David spread out the gleanings. Shoshana's delivery of extracts from Peretz's garbage sack had become a mid-morning ritual. Micha came over and together they went through the stuff, pulling out papers, uncrumpling then discussing them, while Shoshana watched, hands on her hips, in order, as she put it, "to learn detective work."

"Still scissoring," Micha said, examining various discarded newspapers from which items on the case had been cut. David scowled.

He'd once read in an American criminology textbook that psychotic murderers often assembled scrapbooks on their crimes. It had rung true to him then, but now it didn't: To clip out articles on the murders was consistent with showing up at the symposium, and thus proved nothing but an interest in the case.

"Angry. Look how he ripped this one in half." Micha passed David a fund-raising letter from the West Bank settlers' party, Gush Emunim.

"Politically he's sympathetic. 'A Greater Israel for Greater Security.' But we know he hates the mystical religious crap. Never mind the prophets' graves."

"Wonder if he's considering a political career. Look at this stuff. On every mailing list of everything right of center."

"He's an ex-officer."

"Now here's something, David."

Micha was examining a sheet of paper apparently torn from a pocket-size flip-over spiral notebook. He handed it to David. The name "Bar-Lev" had been scrawled across the top.

"You or your father?"

"If he's our killer he'd have reason to hate us both."

Micha scratched his cheek. "Funny, he puts this in his garbage. I wonder if maybe he knows…"

"What?"

"No, that's impossible." Micha shook his head. "He couldn't." Just then Rebecca called to him. "Man named Raskov downstairs. Some kind of contractor from Haifa."

Raskov! Shit! "Find out what he wants."

Rebecca listened, then covered her receiver. "He's asking to see you, David. Says it won't take long."

He didn't normally receive unofficial visitors in his office-the unit area was for police only, its exhibits and bulletin boards off limits to the press. But Raskov was special, he was in some awful way "almost family," and David was extremely curious. He had never met Judith's new husband, now stepfather to Hagith.

The moment Rebecca brought him in, David's first thought was: He looks just the way I knew he would. But then, after a minute in his company, David decided his imagined Raskov had been a lot better than the real thing.

"Hi. Call me Joe. Excuse the English but my Hebrew stinks."

A short husky individual with lightly greased wavy salt and pepper hair, Raskov had the body of an aging athlete, thick and strong through the chest. He wore the old 1950s Zionist uniform, shirt open, flowing gray chest hairs showing in the triangle, shirt collar worn outside jacket collar and lapels. Yes, the old Labor Party look even down to the tufts of hair David thought he saw sprouting from Raskov's nose and ears. Perhaps he was imagining these tufts. Perhaps he merely wanted to be disgusted by them. One thing, though, he did not imagine and which didn't fit at all with the Zionist image: the blue and white wool knit yarmulke perched on the back of Raskov's head.

"English is okay."

"Yeah, Judy told me you speak it pretty good. Look, I'm sorry to barge in on you, but I'm in town just for the day. Bunch of damn permits to get signed. So I thought-what the hell, I'll just drop in." Raskov peered around the office. It was clear he wasn't impressed. Then his eyes fell on the photo of Hagith. He motioned toward it. "On account of her."

Already David loathed him, couldn't believe Judith, his slim and elegant mathematician ex-spouse, had actually married this buffoon. But Raskov was rich, in the contracting business he was virtually a tycoon, and in any event the only thing that mattered was the effect living with this cretin might have upon his daughter.

"Don't expect you to fall all over me, Dave. But we're both grownup guys and I think we ought to talk. Guess you know the story. Judy was doing bookkeeping for my company, she had your daughter to take care of, and she wasn't getting much out of life. So, okay, you two got divorced. I'm divorced myself. That's why I moved over here. New start, build a new life, help build a new country too."

Yeah, I've seen your ticky-tacky housing blocks. So get on with it, Raskov, get to the point.

"… fell in love. And Haggi, too." Haggi! "She and I, we got along from the start. Now it isn't easy being ten, eleven years old and your daddy's up in Jerusalem and a new guy comes along and marries your ma. So, okay, we all gotta adjust. I got a twenty-five-year-old son back in the States. An okay kid but he couldn't hack it here. So, okay, we adjust a little bit…"

If only the clown could get his daughter's name right then maybe, David thought, there might be something hopeful in his slobbering good will. Judy, Haggi, Dave-these American-style nicknames grated on his ears. Still he said nothing, just gazed intently at Raskov, waiting for him, as he understood they put it in the construction business, to get to his bottom line.

"Education-no problem. I can give her the best. Bryn Mawr, Vassar, Brandeis if she wants. And I figure being around me these next few years won't hurt her English either."

"Anything wrong with Hebrew University?"

"Course not. Damn fine place. But you can't beat American training. Look, Dave, no one's trying to cut you out. But let's face it, I can give her advantages. That's why I'm here. Wanted you to see I'm not that bad a guy. Which is why I'm asking you, for your own daughter's sake-"

"What are you asking me?"

Raskov paused. For the first time since he entered the office he seemed to be at a loss for words. "I thought Judy spoke to you."

"About what?"

"Adoption."

"You want to adopt Hagith?"

"Yeah. Look, I thought Judy said-"

"What did she say?"

"Said she spoke to you and you said forget it, you'd never go along."

"She didn't have to speak to me. She knew that's what I'd say."

"Okay. I hear you. But think about it, will you? Don't just rule it out."

David stood up. "Yeah, I'll think about it, Joe. Meantime, I'm running a murder investigation here."

After Raskov left, David sat alone in his office depressed because he wasn't a rich and mighty man. But after ten minutes he'd had enough. Okay, he thought, Judith married an asshole, so that's no reason for me to feel bad. And, having decided that, he told Rebecca Marcus he was going out, then stalked down to the corner of Jaffa and King George where he quickly devoured two falafels in a row.

Micha and Liederman were on the phones trying to locate the owners of dark-colored vans. David worked with them a while, then conferred by radio with Uri, in charge of the daytime surveillance, who assured him all was quiet and Peretz was home. Then, near the end of the afternoon, he went back into his office, dialed the Raskov Construction Company in Haifa, and asked to speak to chief accountant Judith Weitz.

"It's me."

"Who?" She sounded busy. He could hear the clatter of an automatic printer in the background, most likely keeping track of Raskov's billions.

"David."

"Oh, you." Her voice was flat. "I saw you on TV."

"Bad time to call?"

"No. Joe's away. Things are always quieter when he's away."

"'He came to see me this morning."

"Really?" She sounded amused.

"Know what he wanted?"

"I can guess."

"Well-"

"It wasn't my idea. Once Joe gets an idea, there's no stopping him. He just bulls his way right on through."

"Guess that's why he's been so successful here."

"So what are you so sore about?"

"Do I sound sore?"

"Yes. You do."

"The guy's got dirty fingernails, Judith. He calls my daughter 'Haggi.' He calls me 'Dave.'"

"I think that's cute."

"I don't."

"I don't much care if you do or not. To tell you the truth, David, I don't care at all."

"What is he? Some kind of clown?"

"What?"

"Way he dresses. Half Ben-Gurion with that settler's yarmulke perched on top."

"He's entitled to his political beliefs. Frankly, if we were all as soft on territory as you, I wonder if we'd still have a country here."

So where was Joe Raskov when I was slogging through the Sinai?

"Sounds like you've changed your mind about some things."

"You bet I have. I'm keeping kosher now."

"What a splendid luxury. Arab servants help you out?"

"Look, if you're calling to express sour grapes about your lot…"

"I'm calling about my daughter! Adoption's out of the question. That he would even think! Must be out of his mind! So okay, he's a jerk. But I'm not standing by while he tries to turn her into some kind of intolerant small-minded mean-spirited self-righteous right-wing Arab-hating spoiled little bitch…"

A silence. When Judith finally spoke he could hear the new hardness in her voice. "How long since you've seen her?"

"I called last week."

"You think calling's enough?"

"We're on skeleton hours here. I'm on a major case."

"That damn police lingo. Thought I'd heard the last of it. I'll tell you something, David. I never said this to you before, but since you seem to think it's okay to call me up and discuss the condition of my husband's fingernails, I gather all the old social taboos are down and I can let loose with what I really feel."

"Go ahead." She sounded enormously angry. He imagined the set of her mouth, remembered how tightly she could draw it, so tight it almost became a line.

"As far as I'm concerned, having Joe Raskov in her life is the best thing that could happen to Hagith right now. Want to know why? Because you, David Bar-Lev, are the worst, the absolutely worst father in all Israel. The worst!" She hung up.

Two nights later David transported Anna, her cello, and her accompanist, Yosef Barak, down through the hills to Ben-Gurion Airport on the plain. David had always liked Yosef, a tall, serious balding man in his middle forties who hunched over the piano keyboard when he played. Yosef was a superb musician but lacked the ego and ambition to become a star. He wanted, however, to serve a star and was pleased to play that role for Anna. She, in turn, thought of him as a kind and diligent older brother whose impeccable musicianship and precise technique were perfect foils to her temperament.

David waited with them in the transit lounge for the announcement of their flight, listening to their tense excited talk, envying them their adventure, wishing he could leave with them, go to Europe, forget his case. Over the next thirty days they would play in twenty cities, in Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Belgium, and France. Then they would return to Jerusalem to prepare for summer appearances at the European festivals, then Jerusalem again to work up another program for a winter series in the United States.

The flight had been announced and passengers were boarding, when David heard his name called over the public-address. A last embrace with Anna, a farewell shake of Yosef s hand, a final cry of "Good luck! Great trip!" He watched them board, then rushed to the nearest telephone. Seconds later he was connected to Dov.

"Peretz. He's moving. He just got into a sharut for Tel Aviv. Almost filled now. Ought to be leaving any second. We'll follow him, of course. We got five cars. Since you're down that way, we can pick you up. Park by the side of the road just before the airport cutoff. When I see you I'll stop, Micha will take your car, and you can get in with me."

This is it. I know it. I feel it. All the time I'm getting spooked by this guy, I know sooner or later he's got to make his move."

Dov was pumped up. His Mickey Mouse T-shirt (a sure sign to David that he was prepared for war) showed wet beneath his arms. His eyes never wavered from the long maroon Mercedes taxi just ahead.

"Eight nights on a guy, you get sensitive. Those weird long walks of his, the tension building up. Last couple days I felt it, he was walking different, taking longer strides, twitching sometimes when he stopped. So tonight he does the usual, except when he hits Jaffa Gate he boards a number thirteen bus. At the bus station, when I saw him head for those sharuts, I called you because I knew it was tonight."

"How are we covering him?"

"Two carloads, six guys, waiting at the other end. Two of us, plus three more cars including Micha and Shoshana, makes fifteen. No matter what he does, walks, runs, takes a bus, grabs a cab, we're on him. Figure first thing he'll do is try and steal a car."

I"f he does we'll let him take it," David said. "If he goes for a victim we'll follow him as far as we can. Instruct the others: Don't go in unless I give the command. Only exception, if they're certain a life's at stake. But when we go in, we really move. I mean fast, Dov. Very fast."

While Dov passed all this on, and the confirmations came back from the different teams, David loosened his collar and wondered if he was really close to ending this awful case. Then, as they entered the outskirts of Tel Aviv, he became conscious of the heat.

The city, normally so dry, was steeped in a heavy noxious fog. And as always, when he entered Tel Aviv, he found himself feeling oppressed. First great modern Hebrew city, city of Bialik, the Habima Theater, the brilliant street life and literary cafes of his father's time, it now seemed shabby, bedraggled, in need of a good coat of whitewash, smelling of automobile fumes and greasy falafel stands and seething with the anger of downtrodden oriental Jews.

"Okay, they're pulling in." Dov steered through a street of low-cost shoe stores that led to the bus station, extremely busy this time of night. "He just got out. He's paying. Uri's on him. See him? There!"

David caught a quick glimpse of Peretz pushing his way through the crowd, an El-Al flight bag slung over one shoulder, Uri right behind him flanked by two other detectives on his team.

Peretz paused just in front of the station, sniffing the air, looking this way and that. Dov muttered "Here we go again," but David sensed greater energy than before. When Peretz finally took off, they followed him down the maze of narrow streets, ten of them on foot, the other five in cars. He led them rapidly to a small cheap hotel on Allenby Road, The Zion.

You don't think this is weird?" asked Dov. They were parked across the street. Micha, who had a better view of the lobby, reported that Peretz was checking in. "Guy with a beautiful apartment in Jerusalem checks into a fleabag hole like this. Kind of place you do a drug deal or maybe take a whore."

"Soon as he's up in his room, I want Micha to identify himself at the desk. He's to find out if Peretz is using his real name and if they've ever seen him here before."

Micha reported Peretz had checked in as Meir Shikun, that he had stayed in the Zion several times, and that not only did he have good ID, but a business card on which he was listed as a salesman for a Petah Tikva plastics firm.

"Okay," David said. "Get adjoining rooms. Either side of his and across the hall. Put three guys up there, and someone with the operator in case he uses the phone."

But even as these arrangements were being made, Peretz reappeared without his bag and set off again on foot.

"Let me bust his room," Dov begged. "See what's in that bag."

"No justification. He hasn't done anything yet."

"At least let me put in a mike."

"Forget it, Dov. That could botch the case."

They followed him to a stop on Allenby, where he boarded a bus that took him up Pinkster to Dizengoff Square. Shoshana and Uri got on the bus with him. The rest of them followed in cars.

"Knows Tel Aviv better than I do." Dov was keyed up but David tried to relax, staring out at the peeling flat-topped buildings, laundry strung from balconies, roofs forested with TV aerials and solar water-heater tanks. The night sky, he observed, wasn't pure black as in Jerusalem, but faintly tinged with yellow.

Once off the bus Peretz did a complete circle clockwise around the square, pausing at each intersection, waiting patiently for each light to change. Then, when he was finished, he abruptly changed direction and did another circle counter-clockwise the same methodical leisurely way, the way of an animal who fears nothing because he has no predators.

"He's nuts," Dov said, and David had to agree: They'd never seen Peretz act like this. It was more now than tension; there was something compulsive yet extremely purposeful about the way he moved.

On Dizengoff, David got out of the car. The masses of milling people provided him with protection, and he was happy for a chance to stretch his legs. Cars streaked by. Neon flashed. For all the shabbiness of Tel Aviv he recognized the city was alive. The latest Israeli pop tunes poured out of record shops. Uniformed army kids on leave, rifles slung over their shoulders, strode the wide sidewalks in search of girls. Young couples stood in line at cinemas. Street money changers and dope dealers plied their trades. The cafes were filled – people sat in them gesturing, arguing. He caught tail-ends of conversations: the mess in Lebanon, a deal on diamonds, a place to get a good TV set cheap. No visible religious people. Clothing was lurid. Flesh showed hot and moist. There was an atmosphere of informality, sex, flirtation. The modern hell-bent Israel.

Peretz entered a modest restaurant, took a table facing the street, ordered a blintz, ate it slowly, then sat watching the parade.

"Look how sharp he is. Like a big cat poised to strike." He and Dov watched from a cafe across the street. Three detectives were in Peretz's restaurant. The others were scattered about on either side of Dizengoff.

"Yeah, he's changed since he did those loops around the square. Street life turns him on. So, what's he up to? What's his move?"

"He's getting ready now to look for what he wants. And then go after it," David said.

It was more than an hour before Peretz moved again, just after midnight when the crowds began to thin. He called for his check, paid it, then took off fast. The circle formed around him, scurrying to keep up. He led them a little further down Dizengoff, then turned abruptly left on Arlosoroff.

"Shit!" said Dov. "He's headed for the beach."

It was the famous bathing beach of Tel Aviv where Halil Ghemaiem had been picked up. Crowded with innocent bathers, mothers and children by day, this long wide stretch of sand became a sordid flesh-market at night. Prostitutes of both sexes congregated, but despite complaints the Tel Aviv police were unable to contain them. Patrols went out, engaged in sweeps, but as soon as they left the whores returned.

Here, on the sand, away from the lights, figures moved like phantoms, dark gray silhouettes against the yellow-tinged night sky. The tide was out, the beach was wide, and something phosphorescent created sparkles in the tiny waves that lapped the shore. A solemn sort of dance, David thought, as he watched the transactions taking place. Figures approached one another, huddled, discussed in quick subdued tones the services required and a range of price. If no arrangement could be made, they separated again. If a bargain was struck, they moved together off the sand.

He felt useless. Peretz was out there searching for a victim and all he could do was stand by and wait. Something frightening too, he thought, about being so close to madness as it filled and drove a man.

Dov kept his back to the water, didn't want his radio seen or heard. "Contact," he whispered, "hundred fifty meters south. Foggy. Difficult to see. Shoshana thinks it's a boy. Okay-Uri says they're walking south together now, edging closer to the road. Says they're headed for the Sheraton taxi stand."

They exchanged looks, then ran back to their car.

No difficulty tracking the taxi; it drove straight to the Zion on nearly empty streets. The boy got out first, waited while Peretz paid. David got a good look at him: young, Arab, slight, with fine smooth features and dark skin. So, another male, but not a transvestite. This one wore a white tennis shirt, scuffed sneakers, and tight-fitting faded jeans.

"Seems Mr. Meir Shikun likes the boys." Dov had just returned from the lobby to their room next door to Peretz's. Micha was standing, his ear pressed against the wall. David lay exhausted on the bed.

"How often?"

"Maybe four, five times. Clerk didn't want to talk, but when Uri told him this was homicide he blabbed. Says Peretz always makes the same moves-checks in, goes out, then comes back very late with a 'friend.' "

David turned to Micha. "Hear anything?"

Micha shook his head. They were talking and laughing, but not anymore."

"What do you think?" David asked Dov.

"What're we supposed to do? Wait till he kills the kid?" David sat up. "Okay, let's bust him."

Dov and Micha smiled, then the three of them stepped into the hall. Uri and Shoshana were waiting. Dov gave them the thumbs up. Everybody grinned.

Uri approached Peretz's door, then walked backward slowly on the tips of his toes counting off the paces in pantomime. He took a deep breath, psyched himself up like a man about to lift an enormous weight. Then, his features set, he ran forward and flung himself against the door.

The lock snapped easily, the door gave way, and all five of them rushed inside. Peretz and the boy, both nude, were embracing on the bed. They turned, there was a moment of silence, the detectives gawking at the lovers, the lovers gaping back. Then pandemonium. The boy panicked. He screamed, jumped up, charged forward, trying to slip between Shoshana and Dov. Uri caught him, grasped him in his arms, then lifted him up, wriggling, off the floor. While he struggled, Peretz sprawled upon the bed, threw his hairy legs apart, and thrust his genitals forward as if they were an offering.

"So garbage men-which one of you is going to suck me off?"

"Fuck yourself, you fuckin' pervert." Shoshana glared at him and spat.

Seven-thirty A.M. They were back in Jerusalem down in the cellar of the Russian Compound, in a small windowless sound-proofed interrogation room. A single light bulb, protected by a grille, burned brightly overhead. Two straight-backed wooden chairs, one small worn wooden table with microphone, a cement floor slightly slanted toward a drain. A narrow slit of inch-thick safety glass exposed the proceedings to Rafi and the video-camera operator seated in the observation cubicle next door. The dank damp stench from a leaking sewer pipe mingled with the smell of human sweat.

"Tell me about it," David said.

"The 'tell-your-story' method? Don't be an asshole, Bar-Lev. I used to interrogate guys all the time."

"So why did you go to the symposium?"

"Hey! Was that a setup?" Peretz gave David a mock two-fingered salute.

"Why did you go?"

"Fascinated."

"By what?"

"The marks."

"What about them?"

"Already answered that."

"You said you heard they were like the marks you used to leave. I want to know who said they were."

"And I told you I heard it around. You can't keep something like that quiet, not here. Cops tell other cops. Medical examiners tell the wives. Nurses drop in on autopsies. Pretty soon everybody knows."

"Who told you?"

"An old army friend, and that's all I'm saying. I don't squawk on guys who help me out."

"What makes you think this guy helped you?"

"He was one of the few who didn't turn on me when things got tough. He knew about our unit signature, and he heard about how these bodies were getting marked. Called me, said he thought I ought to know. Well, I tell you, I was pissed. Someone out there forging my signature-I wanted to know who the fuck he was."

Forging his signature: on that subject, it seemed to David, Peretz was deranged. As if the five killings were some sort of forgery case; as if the issue of "forgery" was what it was about.

"How many nights were you watching me?" Something crafty now in Peretz's eyes.

"I ask the questions."

"But not the right ones. Eight nights. Surveillance started the second night of Passover. It was carried out by approximately a dozen men, led during the day by that huge Germanic type who smashed his way into my room, and at night by the fuzzy-headed kid wearing the funny T-shirts. So tell me: Am I right?"

David turned toward the observation slit to show Rafi how he felt. Their high-powered surveillance had been a farce. Peretz had picked up on them within the hour.

"Don't feel bad, Bar-Lev. You're looking at maybe the top reconnaissance man in Israel. I got the highest marks ever recorded at Ranger School. Your guys were good but I'm the best. I like urban tracking games. I could have played them with you guys for weeks. That part was fine. The part that wasn't was that you thought I'd killed without a reason!"

There it was again, the self-righteous rage coupled with mockery and arrogance. A truly unbearable man, David thought, the kind you send out on reprisal raids.

"…so I led you a good chase, staying home all day, going out at dusk, testing to see whether I could throw you off. Even sent you a little note in the garbage. Get it?" Peretz laughed. "Yeah, I think you did. Okay, a joke. Nothing personal, Bar-Lev." He leaned back balancing his chair on its two back legs. "Anyway, it was from my discovery I couldn't throw you off that I figured out how many of you were there." He moaned. "How I wanted to go into the Park, find someone, bring him home. Went in once but your guys were all over me. That's when I decided maybe my strategy wasn't right."

"What strategy?"

Peretz leaned forward again. "Method I'd worked out to clear my name. Make it easy for your people to follow me, reasoning that sooner or later the motherfucker would strike again, and then, since you had me under close surveillance, I'd be cleared and you'd go on to someone else. But after that foray into the park I realized I was a prisoner. So I thought: 'I'11 go down to Tel Aviv and find myself a boy. Then, if they stop me, I'll finally have it out with them, and that'll be the end of that.' " He laughed.

David stepped outside to talk to Rafi. He found him, wearing an expression of supreme disgust, puffing smoothly on his pipe. "So?"

"Makes a pretty fair case for himself."

"Could be a bluff."

"You'll check it out."

"Story on the marks won't hold unless he identifies his 'old army friend.' "

"He won't, David. Man like that won't tell. Not his style." Rafi shook his head.

"So what does that prove? That he can stonewall?"

"Getting on your nerves?"

"Damn right he is!"

"You had too much invested in him."

"Maybe so. And maybe the reason I had so much invested in him was because I didn't have any other place to invest."

"That's why I want you out of here. Go home, relax, take the rest of the day off. You're tired and you're over-involved. I'm going to throw in a regular interrogation team."

"Come on, Rafi, it's my case."

"They're experts."

"He's an expert, too, don't forget." Then he thought: Screw it! "Fine. You're right. Put them in. I am tired. I will go home. See you later. Good-bye."

He woke late in the afternoon. The apartment seemed lonely without Anna. He missed her cello in the corner and her music stand which she'd folded up and stored away. Her make-up jars were gone from the dresser, the closet was half-empty, and he missed her earrings and her pearl necklace which she liked to leave on the little table beside the bed.

He went out to walk. It was nearly sunset. The air was scented with the fragrance of the wildflowers that had sprouted all over the city's hills. It took him twenty minutes to follow the road that circled the Hinnom Valley, ascend to Mount Zion, pass the bell tower of the Church of the Dormition, then enter the Old City through the Zion Gate.

Once inside the Jewish Quarter, away from traffic, he moved quickly through the maze of angled alleyways, courtyards, hidden gardens, plazas, rebuilt synagogues, and carefully preserved archaeological sites all pristinely uniform now that the ruined quarter had been rebuilt. There were boutiques up here, tiny groceries, religious shops, galleries, restaurants and cafes, but he was interested in none of these, was intent instead upon finding his favorite overlook.

After a few false starts that led to dead ends, he found it finally by following a slinky Jerusalem cat. It was a narrow terrace beside an elegant apartment building, nothing more than a tiny balcony containing a single bench. At its edge there was a low wall, its hollow center planted with wisteria. From here there was a steep drop exposing the view: below the great pedestrian plaza; above the brooding silent Dome of the Rock; and in between the magnificent sight he'd come to see -- the Western Wall.

At this hour the light was intense, endowing the Wall with a special quality as if its enormous stones were somehow illuminated from within. This was the luminescence that he loved -- Jerusalem's stones were famous for reflecting light, but only the city's natives knew how at certain times of day they changed color, turned red-gold, then almost seemed to burn.

The huge plaza was dotted with people -- perhaps a thousand in a space that on Holy Days could contain a hundred thousand or more. David watched them: black-suited Hasidim whirling, dancing; solitary old religious men, wearing tefilin, rocking rhythmically as they prayed. Tourists in shorts and T-shirts gawking. A group from Poland choking, weeping. A wedding party rushing about for the traditional photograph before the sky turned dark. Panhandlers, soldiers, mystics, crazies, Jews who longed for reconciliation and others who favored expansion of the Zionist State.

Nightfall was at hand; in minutes the sun would disappear. And then, from the minarets in the Valley of Shiloah, David heard the muezzin call the Arab faithful to prayer. The voices echoed, overlapped across the valley, haunting cries that God was Great. The murmuring of people below on the plaza, the cries from the valley, the bells tolling in the churches on the hills -- this, he recognized, was the Jerusalem of the guidebooks, the city where members of three great faiths lived together in perfect peace.

But it was not his Jerusalem. His was a very different city: tense and angry as a wound-up spring, inhabited by criminals, whores, dope dealers, sex-killers, filled as much with evil as with good. And the three great religions -- he knew about them too, how, beneath the facade of harmony, fanatical factions plotted to spill each other's blood, seize every shrine and stone, and then claim the city exclusively for themselves.

But still he loved the place.

Micha said it had to be Peretz, that his alibis had to be faked. "Too pat," Micha said. "It all suddenly ends the night we start watching him? Come on! Then he cruises the exact spot where Halil Ghemaiem was picked up. What a joke!"

"Go ahead. Punch a hole in it," Dov said. "Just one tiny little hole."

They'd been over it a dozen times. Peretz was on vacation in Egypt when Susan Mills and Ora Goshen had been killed. An airtight alibi. A group tour. A dozen witnesses. All Israeli and Egyptian borders closely watched. No way he could have slipped out of Cairo, then back in time for the Nile cruise. He didn't have alibis for Ghemaiem and Schneidrman, but the first night of Passover, when Yael Safir was picked up, he'd attended a seder at the home of friends.

But Micha was a chess player, his mind reeled with plots and schemes, and so he devised a theory of conspiracy, a second killer who murdered the women while Peretz killed the men.

"So who's the second killer?" Moshe Liederman asked.

"It's possible. It could work."

"Yeah, it could," David agreed, "if you could name both conspirators, show they knew each other, and then prove that they conspired."

"Say two freaks get together, they agree to use an identical method and arrange airtight alibis for the murders they don't commit."

Shoshana said that sounded like a movie she'd seen, Strangers on a Train.

"How do they get together? Answer an ad in the Jerusalem Post?"

"Great try, Micha."

"It was just an idea."

"So now what do we do?"

"Forget about Peretz. Start tracking down guys from his unit," David said.

"You didn't 'fail,' " Rafi said. Hard mid-morning light striped his office floor and walls. "The symposium idea was good. You developed a suspect. No break-ins, no wiretaps. From a technical point-of-view, your investigation was a model."

"He's crazy, Rafi. You know that. He could have done it. He's crazy enough."

"Maybe, but he didn't. So now-"

"Yeah. The investigation-must-go-on."

Rafi nodded. "Go back to it. Less pressure now since the killings stopped, and Horev-Isaacson hit the news."

Aaron Horev and Ruth Isaacson: adulterous lovers found murdered in their love nest. This new murder case, assigned by Rafi to his regular homicide team, had fascinated the public. People couldn't get enough of it; it rang true to them, was imaginable, a crime of passion, not crazy like the serial case.

David asked for a last meeting with Peretz, a final go at him before they sent him home. Rafi agreed. "But be gentle, David."

"Of course. What do you think? I'm going to hang him by his heels like a Turk?"

Rafi laughed. "Watching the two of you I got the feeling you didn't like each other very much."

"So we don't. So is that any reason we can't do a little business? He knows who was in his unit. I need a list. That way I don't have to track down every fuck-up who's ever been in a military prison."

The final go-around took place in a corner booth at Fink's, a small, cozy, dark, and very middle-European restaurant-bar, a hang-out for politicians and up-scale foreign journalists.

Waiting for their table, David and Peretz bantered lightly about who was going to be the guest of whom. They struck a bargain, Peretz would pay for the drinks and David would buy the dinner.

After they sat down and ordered goulash, Peretz planted his elbows aggressively on the table.

"You hate my guts."

"Hate may be too strong a word."

"Cut the crap. I don't even care."

"So why do you bring it up?"

"Ah, the analyst's son." A mocking smile.

"Should I be impressed you checked me out?"

"Didn't have to. I knew your brother. Quite the handsome fellow was Gideon Bar-Lev. He and I used to play tennis. Well-are you surprised?"

"Since you ask, I wouldn't have thought you'd have been quite each other's type."

"Oh, we were each other's type all right. He just had a lot of trouble admitting it."

David said nothing.

"What's the matter?"

"What are you driving at, Peretz?"

"How much do you know?"

"I don't know anything."

"Really?"

"Are you telling me you went for him and, poor you!, he didn't give in?"

"Who says he didn't?"

"Who cares?"

"You care all right. You hate the thought."

"Oh, I get it. Now that he's dead you can smirk around about how he was a queer." David shook his head. "You're fucking impossible to talk to, you know."

Peretz seemed to make an effort to calm himself. When he spoke again the hostile edge was gone. "Maybe you're right. Talking's not my thing. Fighting is. But now I can't do that anymore." He took a long swig of beer. "You know why they got rid of me?"

"Way I heard it, they thought you played a little rough."

Peretz shook his head. "Wasn't that. It was my…proclivity. They couldn't handle it. Not in their manly army." He laughed.

"So, you see yourself as quite the tragic figure."

"More like a first-rate officer who served his country well and then got screwed." Peretz shook his head again. "Know something, you're not like Gideon. You don't even look like him. He was delicate and you're kind of burly. The difference, I guess, between a pilot and a cop."

"Why are you so contemptuous, Peretz?"

"I'm not-at least not of everyone. But I am, I admit, contemptuous of you. You should be in the army not the police, out in the field where the real murderers are running loose." He made a sweeping motion. "Oh, I know what you think, that I'm some kind of psychopath, that we're all the same, terrorists and counter-terrorists, bunch of nuts running around blowing each other up. I know your type. Don't believe in reprisals. Think it's self-defeating. Think the way to end the cycle is to sit down, talk it out, nobody gets too little or too much. That's the kind of bullshit you hear in the soft elite circles where nobody puts anything on the line. 'We all have to live together here on this Holy Land, nod good morning to each other, be polite, ask after each other's wives, make the desert bloom, blah-blah, blah-blah.' Meanwhile, of course, we hate each other's guts. But never mind that, just share the blessings and respect each other's precious faiths. The old bullshit. See, we're enemies, Bar-Lev. I'm contemptuous of you, and now that you know my views I'm sure you feel the same." He started to eat. "Incidentally, a very attractive lady at the bar keeps looking over this way."

David turned. It was Stephanie Porter, seated on a stool between two standing American newsmen. She mouthed "Hi." He did the same. She smiled, then turned back to her friends.

"Who is she?"

"A free-lance journalist."

"Been giving you that look, the kind that says 'I'd like to get inside his pants.' "

"You're vulgar."

"Yeah, sorry about that."

"Look, I still have a case to solve. I could really use your help."

"I knew we weren't here on account of our shared political beliefs. So what do you want?"

"List of the guys who were in your unit."

"Don't have a list."

"You could write one up."

"Tell me why I should."

"Because of the marks."

"A lot of people knew about those marks."

"Sure, but your old unit's the place to start. You say you're pissed off because someone forged your signature. Now here's your chance to get even, help catch the forger and bring him in."

"Don't sweet-talk me."

"Please consider what I said."

"I have considered it."

"And?"

"I can't see any reason I should help."

"Why not?"

"You think it's all a joke, don't you? 'My signature'-you think that's cute. But, see, to me it isn't cute. I invented it, just like I chose the guns we carried and the boots we wore and everything else. I decided everything. I handpicked every man. I was feared from Beirut to Damascus. I loved that work, loved the sport of it. That unit was my life."

"Look, Peretz, I never said-"

"Let me finish, Bar-Lev. The way I look at it, the person who killed those people tried to set me up. He carved my name onto them to try and pin his crimes on me. So now I'm going after him. If he was one of my old boys, I'm going to find him, too. When I do, I'm going to punish him. And when I'm done doing that, I'm going to break his head."