Pattern Crimes (19 page)

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'm
old, 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."