Pattern Crimes (12 page)

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."