Pattern crimes

THE WITNESS

In every district there's a busybody. Find her, play up to her, get her talking about her neighbors. Discover who stays home during the day, who goes to work, and did she hear anything about an accident? Knock on doors between noon and two when the accident took place. Talk to the news store owner, the shoemaker, the garbage collectors, the Arab maids. Make lists. Figure out which apartments overlook the intersection. Talk to the residents and if they're not at home come back in the evening when they are. Show familiarity. The woman who lives on the corner-is it true her son's retarded? What about traffic patterns, and who owns those cars parked out on the street, and who's reliable, and who's not, and who takes a midday snooze?

At last David had set a task at which Moshe Liederman excelled. He was good at chitchat, spoke excellent Polish, was patient with the old ladies, generous with cigarettes. In four days he and the other four detectives heard a lot about Aaron Horev and Ruth Isaacson. But no matter how many people they asked about an accident, they couldn't find anyone who knew anything.

David said this was impossible, that when a truck hits a van and there's a confrontation between a nun and a cop, someone has to see something or at least hear some noise. But the intersection was nearly deserted that time of day. This was a bedroom community; no orthodox people; most of the wives held jobs. There were kids of course, but they were either infants or at school. Still, maybe, on that particular day, for one reason or another, someone had stayed at home.

Go back. Ask again. It's hard, but people will help if they see how much you care. The intersection could be viewed from thirty windows. Check each one again. There has to be a witness. Has to be.

Amit Nissim, six years old, short, pixieish, with bangs of light brown hair and playful dark brown eyes, was home from school that day with a cold. Her aunt was in the hospital recovering from gastrointestinal surgery, her mother had to visit her, so she asked old Mrs. Shapira next door if she would look after Amit while she was gone. Mrs. Shapira said sure, and could Mr. Nissim help her by changing some light bulbs when he got home. Yes, certainly. A bargain was struck. And when Mrs. Shapira lay down for her noontime nap, she left Amit on her sofa with a doll.

Later Amit heard noise, people talking loudly on the street. She went to the window, saw a woman quarreling with a man. Was there a truck? She wasn't sure. She remembered a woman clutching a camera and a man in uniform trying to snatch it away.

Mr. and Mrs. Nissim did not like the way their daughter was being questioned. Amit was blinking, a sure sign to them that she was under stress. She wasn't used to so much attention, six police officers hanging on her words. She was intimidated. Couldn't they tell? Anyway, she hadn't seen any accident so would they all please leave now before the child became even more upset.

David sent the others out, then tried to calm the Nissims down. Mrs. Nissim hid her pregnancy beneath a cotton smock; Mr. Nissim lounged in a faded tennis shirt and polyester shorts. David peered around their living room. Behind the maroon sofa with the bright orange cushions, he observed a new Japanese stereo and a pile of tape cassettes. A short shelf contained the usual books: Hebrew editions of Exodus and Story of My Life by Moshe Dayan; copies of Michener's The Source and Kurzman's biography of Ben-Gurion in English. An oil painting of an old Jew praying at the Western Wall was prominently displayed, the paint laid on very thick, the scene garishly sentimentalized. David could see that the Nissims were good people -decent, law-abiding Jerusalemites. He knew that if properly approached they would cooperate.

"Your daughter has seen something very important," he told them. "But you were right to stop us. We didn't interview her properly. The proper way, without exerting pressure, is to turn the interview into a game. Amit is a vital witness. Would you consider allowing us to talk with her a second time? There'll be no intimidation. We'll videotape the interview, and when it's over that'll be the end of it. We won't bother her again."

After a brief whispered consultation, the Nissims solemnly agreed.

Since there could only be two interrogators, David asked himself who in the unit would be best. Shoshana? Too impatient. Liederman? Too old. He finally settled on huge weight-lifting Uri Schuster who, though tough, even brutal on the streets, was a lovable teddy bear with kids.

They set the whole thing up in Mrs. Shapira's apartment, just the way it had been that day: at noon with no one else around and a dark Chevrolet van and Schneiderman's truck positioned on the street just as they were in the insurance diagram.

David and Uri brought along two cartons of toys: a van, a truck, little buildings to create a model of the intersection, and various male and female dolls including dolls dressed in different military uniforms and one dressed as a Jerusalem cop. On one of the females they pasted a tiny photo of Susan Mills, and on one of the males, a photo of Schneiderman. They also made up dolls for Ora Goshen, Halil Ghemaiem, Yael Safir, and the murdered lovers, Ruth Isaacson and Aaron Horev, and they had a dozen more faceless figures with them too.

When everything was ready, Uri escorted Amit to the window, showed her the cars out on the street, and then asked her to use the toys to make a model of what she'd seen.

"That's right, Amit-the truck here at the corner, yes, and the van has just driven into it so they're together just like this… Now look at all these girl dolls. Do you see one that's like the woman with the camera? This one? Good. Put her just where she was when you saw her having the argument. And which of these boy dolls looks most like the uniformed man? The policeman. You're sure? And that they were standing together on the sidewalk here, like this, facing the truck? Uh huh…"

Yaakov Schneiderman was driving the truck-now Amit remembered. She also remembered him standing beside it after the collision, hands on his hips, shaking his head, inspecting the damage, then kicking the wheel of the van. Did she recognize any of the other dolls? Yes, these two, Horev and Isaacson-they came over during the argument. The woman with the camera was speaking in another language, and they came over to help her understand the policeman, who was getting mad.

So, Uri summarized, there were four of them on the sidewalk, and Schneiderman over by the van. Anybody else? Yes, three more men, two of them helping a third who seemed to be hurt. Using the dolls Amit reconstructed exactly what she'd seen: the hurt man placing his arms across the shoulders of the other two, and then the three of them together limping rapidly away.

"All three of them? You're sure, Amit? Up this way, up Berenice Street? And what about the others? Oh, you mean this was before the argument? But the other night you said you heard the quarreling and that's when you went over to the window to look out."

Amit had forgotten. When Mrs. Shapira had gone to her bedroom, she had gone over to the window because she wanted to go outside and play. Then she saw the truck coming and saw it hit the van. Then she saw the policeman get out of the driver's door of the van and then she saw the woman who spoke the other language taking pictures of everything. The policeman wasn't nice to the lady, or to the couple who'd been passing by and stopped to help. He made them all show him their identity cards, and then he spoke very angry words and wrote down all their names…

So, three men and a phony cop had been in a dark blue van, and after Schneiderman had hit it the three men, one injured, had fled the scene. The cop, who, of course, had been "Igal Hurwitz," had taken charge, exchanged names with Schneiderman, then demanded that Susan Mills turn over her film. Important evidence, he'd told her, but Susan had refused. Amit Nissim remembered hearing Ruth Isaacson explain to the cop that the American woman didn't like his attitude.

When they left Amit, after thanking her and presenting her with a gift of the policewoman doll, Uri, who'd been so calm and paternal during the interview, began shadowboxing on the stairs. A quick succession of left jabs, then four quick rights, then a hard right cross.

"Horev-Isaacson! Same case! Congratulations, David-you were right! But you know something? When you told us that the other day I thought you were full of shit…"

Horev and Isaacson-all of Israel knew about them.

Aaron Horev: engineer, devoted husband of Rivka, obstetrician at Hadassah in Ein Karem. Three boys: Zvi, Yigal, and Ehud. A typical, honest, striving, middle-class Jerusalem family, with a two-bedroom apartment in Gillo and a good second-hand Fiat sedan.

Ruth Isaacson: librarian at the Mount Scopus campus of Hebrew University, wife of Asher Isaacson, professor of geology at Givat Ram. The childless Isaacsons, close friends of the Horevs, owned a comfortable two-bedroom house on Bezalel. They'd done their own fix-up, put a sleek modern menorah in their window, parked their shiny Japanese car out front.

The assignations took place at 49 Alexandrion, in a second-floor apartment belonging to Ruth's friend, Zena Raphael. The arrangement, as it was later revealed, was that for the reasonable sum of fifty thousand shekels a month, the lovers had the optional use of Zena's place, including sheets and towels, from noon to two each weekday afternoon.

How often they actually met there was a matter of dispute. Zena said possibly once or twice a week; a neighbor said every afternoon. But there was no dispute about the finale. A little after 6 P.M. on Thursday, April 18th, Zena Raphael returned home by bus from a long and tiring day. She unlocked her door, carried her groceries to her kitchen, rinsed her oranges, made tea, then went to her bedroom to lie down. From the doorway she saw two nude and tangled bodies. The lovers, each shot expertly twice in the head, lay dead in each other's arms.

Who had done it? Asher Isaacson? Rivka Horev? Rivka's brother Samuel, who had always despised Aaron? Some said Zena had done it, that she was herself in love with Aaron and madly jealous of Ruth. Rafi's homicide investigators weren't sure. The clean method of the double slaying, four precisely fired shots from a. 22 caliber Beretta, suggested the possibility of a professional hit. And since the "injured parties" in the affair had each been at work at the time, Rafi was basing his investigation on the theory that one or the other of them might have contracted the executions out.

All parties claimed innocence. Asher Isaacson hired an attorney. Rivka Horev, persecuted by reporters, took her three sons to Haifa and threatened to leave Israel for good. The religious demagogue, Rabbi Mordecai Katzer, described the double killing as the wages of infidelity, a consequence of "perverted values" and "secular Hellenism" in Israeli life.

"So now you want Horev-Isaacson?" Rafi's sad eyes drooped with skepticism. He sat back in his chair, hands clasped behind his head.

"I've got a witness."

"A six-year-old. David-please…"

"I'm telling you, Rafi, she may be six but she's very very good. Look at my tape. See if you believe her. Horev and Isaacson saw the accident-that's why they were killed."

After Rafi looked twice at the tape he agreed that Amit made a convincing witness. "You didn't lead her and she makes good sense," he said. "Too bad there's no corroboration."

"So?"

Rafi paused. "So-okay, you get Horev-Isaacson. I'll have to tell Latsky, but we won't mention this to anybody else. My homicide guys will just have to keep spinning their wheels. Which is about all they've been doing anyway." He leaned back and lit his pipe. "Of course on one level you've solved it. Now we understand the motive. Get rid of witnesses. Conceal two of them in a phony serial case. Sacrifice three other people including an innocent soldier-girl. Knock of a pair of lovers too."

"Ruthless people."

"So what's behind it?"

"A cover-up. The witnesses saw something dangerous," David said.

"What?"

"I've been thinking about that. It couldn't have been obvious, or they would have had to kill all of them right away. The killers didn't do that. They executed them slowly. Spent two months playing out a complicated charade. So the witnesses-Schneiderman, Mills, Horev and Isaacson-saw something that maybe didn't register as important at the time, but that might appear to be very important in retrospect later on. Four guys, one of them dressed like a cop, driving in an illegally registered van. Something about connecting them-that's what it's got to be. Guys who were going to do something so bad they were willing to kill seven innocent people rather than have four of them look back at some future date and remember seeing them together."

David kept his unit up until 4 A.M. talking out the case. Their first decision had to do with Amit. Since everyone else who'd seen the accident had been murdered, she might now be in danger too. She would have to be protected. David assigned Shoshana to guard her, with Uri and Liederman as relief.

Their second decision concerned Susan Mills. She'd refused to turn over her film to the phony Hurwitz. That could account for the fact she'd been tortured before she'd been killed. Had she talked? She was strong-willed, Dov reminded them-he'd always admired the American nun. So it was possible to presume she hadn't talked, which meant the dangerous photos she'd taken might still be around. David gave the order: Go to every photo store and film-processing outlet in the city working in concentric circles from the Holyland Hotel. Show pictures of Susan to the shopkeepers. Had the nun ever come into their stores? Had she bought film, left off rolls to be developed? Had they any uncollected developed pictures in their files?

At dawn David went home to sleep. He rose in the early afternoon, made coffee, ate some yogurt, and fixed himself a salad. He was in the midst of taking a shower, long and hot, thinking of Anna, becoming excited at the thought that she'd be home in just a week, when he heard the sound of the buzzer downstairs. He turned off the water, wrapped himself in a towel, and went out to the intercom to find out who was there.

"Yigal Gati. I tried your office. They told me you were home."

"General Gati?" Even through the intercom he recognized the famous voice.

"Yes. I'd like to come up and talk if it's not inconvenient."

"I'll buzz you in," David said.

He rushed around the apartment straightening up, wondering what he'd done to deserve this visit from a living legend. He was still struggling into his pants when the doorbell rang. He pulled on a sweater before he opened up. When he did, the general stared with faint disgust at the wet bath towel he was still holding in his hand.

"Worked late last night. I just got up."

"Maybe I should have phoned." But, as David noticed, the general continued to stand there, not offering to come back at a more convenient time.

When David offered him a drink General Gati requested a glass of water. "Bottled," he called into the kitchen. When David brought the glasses back into the living room he found Gati standing before the large window looking out.

"Superb view."

David handed him his water. "Never tire of it. We love it here."

The general turned to him slowly. "Of course you do, a lovely home like this in Abu Tor."

Then, it seemed to David, he became the subject of a deep examining gaze, the kind of gaze, he recognized, which he often applied himself. It was as if the general was trying to penetrate his mind, searching out some weakness he might exploit. David tried to return the gaze but found it difficult. All he could see was the public face, so familiar from a thousand photographs: Gati, the retired Air Force commander whose daring tactics had been so decisive in the wars of '67 and '73, his thick short gray hair brushed forward like an ancient Roman senator's, his dazzling dark blue eyes unwavering and cold.

"This is an unofficial visit. I'm an ordinary citizen, just like everybody else these days." A tight little smile, then, that suggested he knew he was a lot more than that. "It's in that capacity, nothing more, nothing less, that I took the liberty of dropping by."

David motioned him to the couch.

"Spent my life in the military. I'm a blunt guy, so instead of jerking you around and mentioning the names of mutual friends, I'll get right to the point. I'm here to plead a case."

David took a long sip of water. "Go ahead," he said. "Plead away."

"This is a request for mercy because from what I understand there's probably no decent legal defense. You're wondering what I'm talking about." That fake tight little smile again. "A man named Gutman, whom I understand you arrested a few weeks back."

David nodded. "We arrested him."

"He's in a lot of trouble now."

"Not surprising, considering he's a thief."

"Just a thief? Or perhaps a victim too?"

"A lot of Israelis have been victimized, general. Not all of them have turned to crime."

"Ah," Gati smiled tightly again, "a tough guy. I heard you were. I respect that. I am too."

"What's your interest in Gutman?"

"Known him more than forty years. We served together in the Jewish Brigade. After the surrender, I served with him in Germany, British Occupation Zone. Perhaps you're familiar with some of the different things we did."

So this was how father knew Gutman, and how Gutman recognized me the night of his arrest. " You knew my father?" David asked.

"Of course."

"The 'hunting seasons'?"

The general nodded. "We called them that."

"Gutman was a hunter?"

"One of the best. And a fine fighter later on. We killed quite a few Arabs together, Jacob and I. You may not know it, but Jacob Gutman was one of the heroes of Latrum in May of '48."

The thrust to Jerusalem, one of the legendary achievements of the first war fought by the Jewish State. The rusted tanks and broken armor were still in place, reminders to modern travelers driving the highway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

"And now he brokers stolen Torahs."

Gati rose, walked over to the window, stood with his back to David staring out. "Torahs. Sure. Why not? What does he care? He can't survive on his lousy pension so why shouldn't he supplement it by selling Torahs to born-again American Jews? Way this country is today, what the hell should he think? This pretty young virgin we married almost forty years ago. We look at her now. Do you know what we see?" He turned back to the room, stood at parade rest with his legs apart. "A tarted-up old whore. When we can stand to look at her. When looking at her doesn't make us puke."

He turned back to the window. "You were born after Independence, David. Gutman and I were grown men then. We fought for something and we knew what we were fighting for, and one thing we weren't fighting for was the soft-bellied society you've got out there today. Oh, sure, it's sweet out there." He gestured toward the city. "Maybe a little decadent, but what the hell? Everyone's got himself a refrigerator, a washer, a drier, and a car, and the people you need to fix your plumbing are extortionists so sometimes, when your toilet leaks, you just leave it that way because you can't afford to get it fixed."

He turned again; now his body was silhouetted against Jerusalem, and David had trouble reading the expression on his face. "…except Jacob Gutman doesn't like leaking toilets. Not that he's so fastidious, you understand. Just that in that regard he's like everybody else. So, good Jew that he is, he knows how to survive. He does what a Jew has always done. Opens up a little shop.

"Now there're all kinds of little Jewish shops. Tailor shops. Dry goods shops. Little grocery stores. Places to buy some lace, some shoes, maybe borrow money on a watch. All those kinds of shops have one goal in common: Sell things for more than you pay out. It's called business. And who's to say who's the sharpie and who's the thief and who's the honest Jewish businessman?

"For a guy like Gutman, those kinds of fine distinctions got blurred along the way. He looks around and thinks: I was one of those few guys who went around occupied Germany in '45 and '46 cleaning things up, doing a little public-service de-Nazification with my pals Gati and Doc Bar-Lev. I actually planned a lot of those missions, the way we'd show up at a guy's house, oh-so-polite in our nicely pressed British uniforms, show him our well-forged summons for interrogation, apologize for the intrusion to his wife, then lead him off politely to our borrowed official truck. Then I'd get in the back with him, pull the canvas flaps shut, and break his neck, quick, the way the Brits taught us in their commando school. Then we'd dump him by the side of the road-no burial necessary because you only take that kind of trouble with a human being. Then on to the next guy the authorities didn't care about. You know, the little guy, the average run-of-the-mill little murderer. And I, who'd done all that, who'd taken upon myself the nasty exterminator's job, find that now that I'mold, my wife's gone, and my daughter's dead, I don't have a marketable skill worth shit in this wonderful meretricious New Society of ours. I look around and what do I see? Everyone stealing, extorting, buying luxuries, getting rich. The country I fought for acting like a harlot running to the Americans for hand-outs every time she overspends. So what should I do? Pretend she's still the same? Hell with that! I'll set myself up in a kind of little Jewish shop. I'll pick up old Torahs, not ask too many questions about where they're from, and sell them to Americans who'd rather buy one cheap than pay a scribe to write one new."

Gati stepped forward, sat down, looked hard at David, and then, for the first time since he'd come into the apartment, he gave a classic Israeli shrug. As if to say: "Well, that's it, my plea, I rest my case." Then, while David stared at him amazed, he took up his water glass, and slowly, carefully wet his lips.

When Anna called from Paris after midnight, he sensed the tension in her voice.

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing. I just wanted to talk. I'll be home soon. Just a couple more days. Can't wait. Oh, David-I miss you so much…"

She sounded, he thought, as if she were about to cry.

His door was open but Rebecca Marcus knocked anyway. "Man on the phone, David. Won't give his name. Insists on speaking to you."

Raskov? No, he'd identify himself "Okay, ask him what he wants -I'll listen in."

Rebecca nodded. David pushed a button and picked up the dead-key on his phone.

"… say it's one of Peretz's old boys and I know about the 'signature.'"

"Can you describe it?" Rebecca asked.

"Sure. Pairs of cuts across the tits."

Silence for a moment, then Rebecca's voice, controlled: "Just one moment, sir. I'll see if the captain's available now."

When Rebecca reappeared at the door her face looked drawn. David signaled her to start a trace. Then he took the call.

"Bar-Lev here. We don't usually talk to people until they tell us who they are."

"And if they have information?" The voice was rough, the accent North African.

"If you're looking for a reward-"

"I'm not."

"So what do you want?"

"Got a list."

"What kind of list?"

"Guys in Peretz's unit."

"Your name on it too?"

"Fuck you, policeman. Why you giving me all this shit?"

"If you want to help us out and you don't want to identify yourself, kindly drop your list to us in the mail."

"Can't do that."

"Why not?"

"You want the list or no?"

David thought a moment. "Okay, I want the list."

"Come to Anna Freud Garden. Givat Ram. Three this afternoon."

"Wait a minute! I didn't say-"

"Don't stall, Bar-Lev. And come alone. Nobody else. Or you don't get the list." He hung up.

"It's just a patch of bushes in the middle of the campus," said Dov. Not isolated at all. At three o'clock there'll be a mob."

"So what kind of a secret meeting place is that?" Micha asked.

"Suppose some kid comes up to David with a slip of paper. Go to X. Then go to Y. Treasure-hunt style. It would be tough to keep him covered."

"Anna Freud-maybe he knows about your father," Shoshana said.

"That's pretty sophisticated. This guy didn't sound like that."

"Suppose he's for real?"

"Fine. We could use a list. And if he's faking, part of the conspiracy, we need to know that too." They all looked at him. Dov seemed worried. "What's he going to do?" David asked. "Shoot me in the head?"

"I don't like it. All of a sudden like this. I mean, now we're way past Peretz."

"But we've been working on a list. Word could have gotten around. We know details on the marks have gotten out. Listen-I know if I don't go we'll kick ourselves tomorrow. So I go. Okay? Everyone agrees?"

He waited in the Anna Freud Garden from a quarter of three. The sun was hot and the bullet-proof vest they'd urged him to wear was uncomfortable and made him sweat. Students lay about on blankets sunbathing, talking, several couples kissing, a few actually reading books. By five he'd had it. He got up, shook his head and stalked off. He met Micha and Dov in the parking lot.

"It was a test, David. To see if you'd show up alone."

"Could be. Hundreds of windows around. I could have been easily observed. Or maybe it was just a stunt. So to hell with it! Guy calls back, I don't want to talk to him. Then we'll see how bad he wants me. Next time he can sweat."

At ten that evening he was listening to one of Anna's records, an old Pierre Fournier recording, when his telephone rang. It was the same caller. "You walked out on me."

"Fuck you," David said, and hung up.

When the phone rang again he sat watching it, letting the rings penetrate the music, echo against the apartment walls. Finally, after fifteen rings, he picked it up. "Yeah? What do you want?"

"Sorry. Got held up. No way to get in touch."

"No big deal. Forget it."

"Don't you want the list? I can give it to you tonight."

"Call my office in the morning. Work it out with someone else."

"Wait! I'm serious."

"Funny, I don't think you are."

"Give me another chance."

"Tell me: Why do you care so much?"

"When we meet I'll tell you everything. Then you'll understand." A pause. "I know you're not afraid, Bar-Lev. What have you got to lose?"

"My sleep."

"Oh come on…" There was something coaxing in the man's voice this time, taunting too, that went beyond mere toughness and made him curious.

"How about a cafe on Ben Yehuda?"

"Uh uh. The Biblical Zoo."

"They lock up at sunset."

"You're a cop. The guard'll let you in."

"What about you?"

"I'll be there."

"So, are you a cop too?"

"Come alone, Bar-Lev. Midnight by the leopard's cage. If I don't show up within ten minutes, go home. Forget me. You'll know I'm just a fake."

Midnight by the leopard's cage-something appealingly melodramatic about that. Stupid, perhaps, to go alone, but even more stupid if anyone tried to harm him. The people who'd done the killings were certain to know that they couldn't stop an investigation by murdering the officer in charge.

Still, he put on the sweaty bullet-proof vest, tucked his Beretta in his belt, and, on his way out, stopped, went back, and picked up an extra clip.

The Biblical Zoo was in Romema, only a twelve-minute drive across the city that time of night. Here were collected all the animals mentioned in the Bible, each cage bearing an appropriate quotation: "He shall come as an eagle against the house of the Lord"; "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?" He knew the place well, had taken Hagith there many times. A good refuge from the noise of the city, a nice quiet place to spend a Sabbath afternoon.

He circled the zoo, noted that in some places its exterior fence would not be difficult to breach. On one side shanties were built right up against it. On another he saw tears and holes.

This, he decided, would be his way in-no reason to use the entrance and alert the guard. He parked, armed his car alarm, walked slowly back to a place where he'd spotted a rip in the lower part of the fence. It was eleven-thirty. He looked both ways, then crouched, spread the fencing, and crawled in on his belly, being careful not to scratch his head or back.

He made his way cautiously into the park. The ground was sandy, the foliage dry. He caught the sharp smell of wild animals, then began to hear strange noises, bleats and howls ("The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb…"), squeals and hoots of exotic birds, and an occasional serpent's hiss.

The leopard's cage was between the bears and the storks, beside the pit that contained the lions. A popular place in the zoo. There were wooden benches before it erected under trees. A concrete path wound among the cages. Faint light cast from street lamps across the road filtered through the dusty leaves.

He chose the darkest most shadowed bench, quietly took a seat. As his eyes adjusted to the dark he tried to familiarize himself with the many sounds around. He differentiated among the grunts of the animals, the traffic, and the low-level background noise of late-night Jerusalem. After a while he felt confident he would be able to tell if anyone approached.

Eleven-fifty. There was a disturbance up the hill behind him between the beavers and baboons. The animals up there had suddenly turned silent. David froze, his body tensed. When he first heard the ping against the railing two feet to his right he thought someone had thrown a pebble or a stone. Then, a split-second later, when he heard it again he knew what it was, leapt off the bench, and dove face-first for the ground.

Pffm-pffm! Pffm-pffm! The sound of a Beretta. 22, armed with a silencer, fired in rapid double bursts the way they taught trainees at the intelligence schools. As he crawled off the concrete walk into the trees, he knew there was more than one man firing. From the number of double bursts he decided there were two, possibly three, and that they were rapidly closing in.

He drew his own Beretta, fired once, blind, into the shrubbery, then caught a quick glimpse of a figure running, stooped, above him to his left. He was being flanked. He turned the other way, fired again, then rose to a crouch. Then he dashed, head low, to his right past the wild boar, toward a cage where a solitary water buffalo stood gazing out at him with stupid glassy eyes.

Yes, there were three of them, spread out in a line on the high ground, slowly forcing him down into the lower corner of the zoo. He wouldn't be able to crawl out under the fence down there; he wouldn't have the time. But if he could get one of them he might have a chance to break through and lose himself in the woods on the other side. Time now, he decided, to go on the offense, take one out, then try and slip by the other two. He was wondering just how he could do this when he heard a new sound, burp!-burp!-burp!-burp!, fire from an Uzi directed from the sector where he'd first entered the park. But this new fire was not aimed at him. Someone, an unseen ally, was there spraying the high ground with bullets, driving his attackers back.

"Hey! Hey, Bar-Lev! They're gone." He recognized the voice and it was not the voice from the phone. He crouched by the buffalo's cage until he saw Peretz, Uzi slung low over his shoulder, striding toward him down the path.

"It's okay. Really. I scared them off. Fuckers too chicken-shit to make a stand…"

David stood up, furious. "This your set-up, Peretz?"

"Relax, Bar-Lev."

"'Peretz and his boys.' All that phony crap about a 'list.'"

"For a guy who's just been rescued you're a pretty ungrateful son-of-a-bitch."

"You're telling me you were just passing by and just happened to hear the noise? Far as I'm concerned, this was your little show. Consider yourself under arrest."

"For what? Saving your life? Don't make me laugh." But Peretz was laughing anyway.

"You think it's funny?"

"Three guys trying to kill a cop-no, not funny at all. Look, I saw you were in trouble so I decided to intervene. I've been following you the last ten nights. Saw all the stuff you've been doing up on Berenice Street."

"Following me?"

"Bet your ass. I told you: I want this guy. I want to break his head."

"You're crazy!"

"Aren't you glad? If I weren't so crazy, you'd probably be lying dead right now down there by that cage full of baboons."

David shook his head. He believed him. Peretz was a killer, not a man who arranged elaborate practical jokes.

"You and I have to talk."

"Sure. Okay. But let's get the hell out of this zoo. Stinking animals. Another minute here and I'm going to puke."

From Peretz's apartment, David phoned Dov, woke him up, told him to have the zoo sealed off, and then at dawn to send in a team to search for slugs and shells. Then, while Peretz opened a bottle of red Carmel, he went out onto the terrace where he found an odd contraption, a cushioned three-seater swing hanging from a rusting frame.

He walked across the terrace, grasped hold of the railing, and stared out at Jerusalem. Across the Old City he could see the Dome of the Rock, at night a mysterious floating presence, its golden dome glowing softly beneath the three-quarters moon.

His hands were shaking even as he gripped the ironwork. A delayed reaction to the ambush, he knew. He'd been stupid to go to the zoo alone. Maybe I'm getting soft, he thought. Stephanie warned me and I didn't listen. Taking it for granted that no one would go after me-that was really dumb.

Peretz appeared with the wine and glasses, set them down, sprawled out on the swing and began to push himself back and forth. For a while David continued to stand at the railing. Then, as the creaking of the swing picked up in tempo, he turned and faced Peretz. He didn't bother to conceal his disgust.

"You were following me-why?"

"Nothing illegal in that."

"You said you'd be looking up your boys." Peretz nodded. "So, why follow me?"

"I want this guy real bad."

"If I find him, you don't get him, Peretz. Don't you realize that?" No answer. "Mess around with the police, you're going to be in a lot of trouble."

"Okay, Bar-Lev. Let's make a deal. I'm an officer. Put me in your unit. That shouldn't be too hard to arrange. We'll work together. The two of us will be unstoppable. We'll make a terrific team."

When David shook his head, Peretz stuck out his foot and stopped the swing. "Why not? Just tell me-why the fuck not?"

"First, I don't want to work with you. We hate each other's guts -remember? Second, the last thing I'm going to do is give you a license to break somebody's head."

Peretz gazed at him, furious, then shrugged and poured himself a second glass of wine.

"Interesting bunch of guys there in the zoo tonight," he said casually. "First-class ambush tactics. Really had you by the balls. Course they couldn't do much to you, not with those baby pistols. Things are only good for close-up work. If they'd really wanted to nail you they'd have brought in bigger stuff."

"So what are you trying to tell me?"

Peretz hauled his legs up onto the swing, then lay down across the three seats and stared up at the sky. David could imagine the many seductions he must have engineered on this old, rusty, swinging outdoor bed.

"You see, Bar-Lev, I don't think they really wanted you dead. More like they wanted to scare you off. Or, since they probably know you're not the type who scares, wanted to let you know they know you're there and let you know that they're there too. Because those guys weren't amateurs. They were well-trained men. Elite military training. Could be veterans of a crack unit. Or Mossad. Or Shin Bet guys. Or even active IDF Intelligence Corps. So Big-Shot, ever think of that?"

Sunday at noon he drove down to Ben-Gurion Airport to meet Anna's plane from Brussels. He used his credentials to enter the customs hall, and then, when he saw her, he watched her a while, savoring his joy in her return.

Yosef spotted him first. "David!" Her head snapped up. She saw him and then she smiled, and when she did he knew he was a very lucky man.

"We got fabulous reviews," Yosef said, as they started the drive up to Jerusalem. "Anna's gotten very strong. She doesn't play anymore like a talented kid. There's a new confidence. The audiences picked up on it and the better they liked her the better she played."

Yosef was sitting in back with the cello. Anna sat beside David, her fingers resting gently on his arm.

"So is this true?" David asked.

She grinned, then shrugged.

"Now she's ready for America," Yosef said. "Last time she impressed them. This time she'll knock them dead."

Later, when he began the climb into Judea, she and Yosef turned quiet. The hills glittered tan and gold. A lone hawk riding the thermals circled in the distance.

Finally Anna spoke. "Oh how I missed this place!"

"It's home," David said.

She nodded.

"And no one will ever take it away from us," Yosef said. "We won't let them. Ever."

Late that afternoon, after she had hung her clothes, and set up her music stand, and placed her cello in the corner and her pearl necklace on the little table beside the bed, she came to him and they made love. Afterward she slept against him, her head pressed to his shoulder, her body molded to his flank. At eight o'clock, they went out to East Jerusalem to eat.

At the Ummayyah she gazed around, taking in the boisterous atmosphere. As always the place was alive, waiters rushing about with skewers of meat, journalists huddled in booths with Palestinian politicians, Israeli tourist guides exchanging gossip with Roman Catholic archaeologists.

"Welcome back," he said, "to the Middle East."

She asked him about his case. He told her everything, and when he got to the part about the zoo, she reached across the table and grasped his hand.

"No footprints. Or rather too many. The ground there's a mess. We found plenty of shells too-theirs, Peretz's, and mine. A few slugs. They didn't match the ones in the lovers' heads."

"This is too dangerous, David."

He nodded. "Dangerous maybe, but not 'too dangerous'-not yet." He was tempted then to tell her about Stephanie's warning, but decided he had better not. He didn't want to explain why he'd gone to see her, or bring up Stephanie's speculations about Anna's past. But then Anna surprised him. Without prompting, she told him that just before she'd called him from Paris, Titanov had phoned her at her hotel.

"From where?"

"Moscow. They won't let him travel. Not because they blame him for my defection, but to make an example of him, so that every musician understands he or she is responsible for the person he or she is sleeping with. But he didn't call to complain about that."

"Why did he call you?" David asked.

"To beg me to come back. For the good of the country, he said, but really, he said, because he still thought about me all the time." She shook her head. "I wasn't touched. I didn't believe a word of it. He's a selfish man. Still, he sounded desperate. I think he thinks that if he could persuade me to come back, they'd let him travel again."

"What did you tell him, Anna?"

"That I'm never coming back, that I never cared for him, and that I'm in love now with another man." She smiled. "He took it pretty well, said he knew all that but still he wanted me to come home. You see, he kept giving himself away. 'I want you, I need you,' never mind what I might want or need myself. He even asked me about you, seemed to know who you were. 'An Israeli cop,' he said, a little contemptuously, and then he asked how could I fall so low. 'You're not even Jewish,' he said. He was speechless when I told him I've been thinking I might convert."

"Is that true?"

"Could be." She gave him her best, most flashing smile. "One thing for sure-I'm going to start studying Hebrew seriously. Tomorrow I'm enrolling in a class."

"Susan Mills used a tourist photo shop, Samuelson's on King George next to that old German bookstore. They remember her well. She bought a hell of a lot of film." Micha spread out photocopies of the receipts on David's desk.

"They did her processing too," said Dov. "But when we add up the number of rolls she bought and the number she had developed, we come up twenty short. We found eight in her luggage and one in her camera. So there're still eleven unaccounted for."

"I doubt she came to Israel without film."

"Right. So at least eleven."

"Maybe she took them to another shop?"

"Doubt it. She was a creature of habit. Took the same bus from the Holyland every morning with a list of the places she wanted to see. Then she'd knock them off methodically, then she'd head downtown. She usually hit the photo shop at noon."

David nodded. "Okay-let's see what we've got. They know she has film on the accident, including shots of the guys in the van. They want that film. Their guy 'Hurwitz' has already quarreled with her about it. Now suppose someone new calls her up and apologizes, someone with a very sincere voice who speaks perfect English and claims he's Hurwitz's boss. She agrees-after all, she's a decent Christian lady only too glad to help out police when they're polite. This new guy drops by her hotel, picks her up, and takes her away to be tortured. But why torture her if she gave them what they wanted? No, that isn't how it went. They lured her out, she got suspicious, and when she figured out that they weren't cops, she didn't give them anything at all."

"So where's the film?"

"Maybe still at the shop?"

"It isn't. We checked."

"So maybe she did talk," Micha said.

"No. She didn't," Dov insisted.

David glanced at him, wondered if Dov's strong identification with Susan Mills was blinding him to real possibilities. David was all for the investigator immersing himself in the victim's life, so long as the immersion didn't prevent the investigator from facing unpleasant truths.

"Either way it doesn't matter," he finally said. "They took the film from her room, or, if it was still being developed, they found her receipt, took it back to the shop, and claimed the film as their own."

"They knew her at Samuelson's."

"Even when there's a name on the ticket they just look at the number. At least that's how they do it at the place I take my film."

"We'll go back there."

"This time make sure you talk to all the clerks. If someone else picked up those rolls, he wouldn't know she usually came by at noon. He'd probably go in late, around closing time when the staff is tired and gearing up for the bus ride home…"

"So then what did Gati say?" Avraham's eyes gleamed as he gnawed on a piece of chicken.

David glanced over at Anna and winked. It had been her idea to invite his father for dinner. She had prepared a feast of chicken Tapaka, using her clothes iron to weigh down the chicken on the griddle.

He said he thought that if people understood Gutman's background he might never have to go to trial. When I suggested to him that this was maybe a little naive he didn't seem to understand. 'But don't you see? He's an atheist,' he said. 'Torahs mean nothing to him. Far as he was concerned he was just selling parchment. What's so bad about that?' "

Avraham threw both hands into the air. "This is our Great Military Genius?" David was pleased. The old man was enjoying himself, and, best of all, the two of them were getting along.

"You never told me you knew him, Father." David refilled his glass.

"I've never been one to reminisce." Avraham toasted Anna. "Some of the good old days were better than others."

"What kind of man is he?" Anna asked.

"Not nice. Not nice at all. A warrior. The kind who thrives on war."

"Didn't he go into politics?"

Avraham waved his hand. "He tried, but he didn't have appeal. Gati was a soldier's soldier. Wouldn't kowtow. Didn't know how to play the game." He reached for the platter, took a second piece of chicken. He smiled at Anna. "This is very good, my dear."

"Not kosher, I'm afraid."

"I told you-don't worry about that. You're an excellent cook." He toasted her again, then turned back to his son. "So," his eyes were excited, "what did you say to him next?"

"Told him it wouldn't matter if Gutman had been brokering stolen newspapers. He'd been caught in possession and for that he'd have to go to trial."

"You're right of course. A crime's a crime, a thief's a thief, and," he gave David a significant nod, "a detective, I suppose, is always a detective."

"What will happen to Gutman now?" Anna asked.

"Most likely he'll go to prison. I really can't see them letting him off. Unless, of course, there was something truly extenuating. I told Gati there's a classic method people use. They turn religious-put on a skullcap, grow a beard, and tell the judge about their new-found faith. But I told him that, unfortunately, due to the nature of Gutman's crime, I didn't see how this particular technique could possibly work."

Avraham roared with laughter. Then he wiped his mouth. "You did well, my boy. I only wish I'd been there-just to see Yigal Gati's stricken face."

The remainder of the dinner continued to be fun, Anna was pleased, and when Avraham thanked her and said good night the two of them embraced. In the car, as David started the drive back to Me'a Shearim, Avraham complimented him on having found such a fine companion.

"You should maybe consider marrying her?" he asked tentatively.

David was amused. "She isn't Jewish."

"So what? You can marry in Cyprus. Isn't that what people do?"

They drove the rest of the way in silence. When they arrived at Hevrat Shas and Avraham opened the car door, David saw an old religious man wandering up the street and then he thought he saw his father wince. "Those missing files I mentioned…"

"Yes. I meant to ask-"

"Don't bother yourself. Turns out I was wrong. Blumenthal's garage was ransacked but nothing was taken. Whoever broke in was probably looking for valuables. When he didn't find any I think he just got mad and threw around my papers in a fit of spite."

After his father disappeared into his building, David chopped his hand against the steering wheel.

Damn! Why does he lie to me? He pressed his bruised hand against his mouth.

There had been a temporary clerk who had worked at Samuelson's Photo Shop during the height of the April tourist season. A veteran of Lebanon, stoned half the time, according to Mr. Samuelson-nice, but not someone he'd wanted to keep on.

Dov found him working for a rug cleaning firm that serviced the finer homes in Rehavia. He showed him Susan's picture. Yes, the young veteran remembered her, she'd been in the shop, had bought lots of film and brought it back to be developed. But she'd returned to America earlier than expected-he remembered that because her nephew had come in with one of her claim tickets to pick up her final batch of prints.

"Nephew? Her Israeli nephew?"

"Yeah, an apologetic kind of kid. Said his aunt was concerned, didn't want to stick the shop, and had made him promise to pick up her film and pay off her account."

Dov ran out to his car for his IdentiKit, spent an hour with the veteran working up a composite of Susan's "nephew." When he brought the composite in David studied it. An ordinary looking young man, clean-cut and nondescript. "Nice Jewish boy," David said.

Yosef Barak had spoken of a new authority in Anna's playing, a new confidence. Yet now, when David watched her practice, he sensed something troubled in the way she played.

"Is anything the matter?" he asked her one morning.

She shook her head. "No. Why do you think there is?"

"You seem…I don't know, disturbed somehow. I just wondered if you were having trouble. After such a big success in Europe to come back here could bring you down."

"Oh, David-this isn't a backwater. Jerusalem's my home." She frowned. You know I set high goals for myself. Sometimes I think Yosef is too quick to praise."

"So there is something?"

"Just concentration. Don't worry, I'll get it back. All I have to do is," she smiled, "you know: 'practice, practice…' " She kissed him on his neck.

Avraham called. "Something I forgot to tell you. We laughed a lot about Gati the other night, but later, when I thought about it, the approach he made to you rang false. He and Gutman always hated each other and from what I've learned there's never been a reconciliation. So the question is: Why is he trying to get Gutman off? I don't know the answer, but it's something you might think about. Employ an old Kabbalistic principle: Look for the hidden cause because the surface is never real."

He went to Rafi, laid out the case, explained why he thought the worst was yet to come:

"Okay, Peretz is a fruitcake. But now I think his crazy forger theory is correct. My symposium idea was good, but not that good-it was a shot in the dark, not an airtight trap. So a certain 'friend,' whom Peretz refuses to name, a guy he trusts who stuck with him when times were tough, tips him off there's a killer using his signature and there's going to be an open discussion at the Rubin Academy about what this killer might be like. Naturally Peretz goes. But we don't notice him. He sits there and listens like a normal member of the audience. Then five days later someone in a dark blue van picks up Yael Safir at the Ben Gurion hitching stop, and just about the time she's being killed and dumped I'm meeting a guy named Ephraim Cohen, who just happens to have been a friend of my brother, and who works for one of the covert services, or so he says. Ephraim wants to pass along a tip about Peretz from an unnamed source whom he claims was helping us in that Mossad-owned video truck. So we go after Peretz, he's a logical suspect, and if he hadn't gone to Egypt we might still be trying to break him down. You see, Rafi-it's much too slick. Peretz is tipped off about the symposium, he goes, and then I'm tipped off that he was there."

"You think this guy, Cohen-?

"Yeah, I think he's part of it. Wanted me to think he was Mossad, but I checked him out and it turns out he's Shin Bet. Which means his story about passing on a 'tip' from the video technician was bullshit, something he made up to sucker me in."

"What about the ambush at the zoo? How did they find out that you were onto them?"

"Our inquiry about Hurwitz-that must have triggered the alarm. When they heard I was asking about their cop-who-didn't-exist, they realized I was getting close. Which means, far as I'm concerned, that they're wired in here too."

Rafi tensed up. "That's a pretty awful suggestion, David. Hard to go along with it unless you bring me proof."

"Oh, I'll be bringing you proof, you know that. For now it's just a theory."

"Awful…"

"Why resist it? You're always bitching about corruption. Now, faced with the possibility of a really supreme example of official rot, why do you want to turn away?"

"Look, dammit-!" Rafi was angry.

"You look! Everyone knows Shin Bet has murdered prisoners. Everyone knows about Mossad assassination squads. A superpatriot like Peretz recruits violent sociopaths to staff out his counter-terror squad. High embassy officials in Washington recruit American Jews to spy on their own government. So how come, when I mention the possibility this thing could reach in here, you suddenly lock up your mind? Why, Rafi? What's so damn sacred about the cops? We're the garbage men, remember. So maybe we stink a little too."

Rafi sat stiff in his chair. David was glad Sara Dorfman wasn't in the room. "Remember that girl I was going with last fall?"

"The American shikse. Yeah. I never liked her."

"She's an agent."

"They all are."

"She gets into the sack with people in the cabinet."

"What's that got to do-?"

"She tried to warn me off. Said she heard I was up to my ass in something big and that if I kept on the way I was going I could end up getting hurt. I'm telling you, Rafi, this thing feels big, feels like it's getting ready to explode. I'm telling you that, now, up front, and that I don't like being set up for a shoot, and I don't like being shot at, and that I'm following this wherever it goes. There've been murders, innocent people killed, and no matter what the reason turns out to be, it's not going to be anywhere good enough. Not for me."

"The Righteous Martyr"