Pattern Crimes (6 page)

Like many Jerusalemites of his age, Mansour spoke a formal British-inflected English. But there was something undignified about him, a cringing quality David didn't like.

"I'm afraid it's not so simple."

"Why not simple? I give you the objects. I do not wish to profit from stolen things."

"We have to seal up your store. Tomorrow we'll send a truck. Everything must be brought to our offices and examined against lists of stolen goods."

"But surely not! I have never heard of this procedure."

"It's one we reserve for special situations."

"Why? What is special here?"

David looked around. "Something here is special, I'm sure. But if you object, Mr. Mansour, you must consult your lawyer. Israel is a free country. We respect the rights of everyone. By all means fight our confiscation. Meantime, your store will be sealed."

"Confiscation! You said nothing about confiscation! Just to examine the objects, you said."

Dov was now on the far side of the room, directing his gaze at the
small collection of Torah scroll crowns he had spotted that morning amid the dusty piles.

"Perhaps we could find a way to shortcut the procedure."

"I can do something for you? Yes? Tell me—what is it that you want please?" Mansour was angry, but David could feel him calculating, wondering what this stern police captain really wanted, whether he was hinting at a bribe, and, if so, how large.

"Frankly, for me the candlesticks are trivial. If you bought them in Hebron, then you can't be held responsible for the fact they were stolen from a house on Ramban Street. We believe the robbery was committed by Jews. We have no use for such people. I'm personally much more disturbed by a Jewish thief than by an Arab fence."

Dov, now standing behind Mansour, queried David with his eyes. But David didn't think he'd gone too far.

"Sir, excuse me, I am
not
a fence. I promise you I bought the candlesticks in Hebron. Possibly one of the Jewish settlers there—"

"If you're going to tell lies, at least tell one that's plausible. Israeli settlers may steal Arab land but not this kind of junk." He peered around the shop with great disgust. "I'm going downstairs for a coffee. Meltzer, stay with the prisoner, advise him of his rights. When I return we'll make a preliminary search."

He walked out without looking back. Dov would wait at least a minute, until his footsteps were no longer audible on the stairs. Then he would sit across from Mansour, gaze at him with his most pitying expression, and start to explain how tough things were going to get.

Yes, Dov would lay it all out, the nature of the captain's "preliminary search," how he would methodically tear the shop apart, break all the breakable objects, crush all the fragile ones, and then how various other items Mr. Mansour probably didn't even know he had would appear miraculously on the inventory list and would be identical to objects stolen from fine Israeli homes. Mansour could certainly call his lawyer but he should be advised that the captain might then turn the matter into a security affair, in which case, of course, certain rights would be suspended and the interrogation could become extremely harsh. No, of course this wasn't political, but poor Aziz had acted stupidly from the start, when it was obvious that the only thing the captain wanted was to develop a new informer in East Jerusalem. Yes, that's all. Didn't Aziz understand? Israeli policemen don't take bribes. They value information—against crooks, burglars, Jewish burglars at that, against the very people who were using poor old Aziz's shop as a place to fence the junk they couldn't sell abroad or down in Tel Aviv....

David ordered a coffee at the National Palace café, picked up a copy of
Al-Fajr,
the Jerusalem-based Palestinian newspaper, discovered various interesting things he hadn't learned from his readings in the Israeli press, and, when he thought that Dov had Mansour sufficiently softened up, paid for his coffee, left the newspaper on the table, strode back up to Salah el Din, and then noisily ascended the stairs.

Dov gave him the nod as soon as he walked in, the big nod that said Aziz was begging now to talk. David walked straight over to the pile of Torah crowns, scooped them up, brought them over to the desk, slammed them down, then addressed Mansour in short stabbing phrases while staring hard into his imploring eyes:

"I want a name, a full description, everything you know, and I want it straight and fast. From whom, Mr. Mansour, did you obtain these silver ritual objects now piled on your desk?"

Dov's first words when they were back on the street were about how amazing it was the way the good-guy/bad-guy routine never failed. They talked about it on their way to the Ummayyah.

"Fear of an enemy, need for a friend—it's so basic it has to work."

"But corny, David. Everyone knows we use it."

"Doesn't matter. The need's too deep. Even an experienced cop'll fall for it if you do it right."

"So is this what we do—run scams, play tricks?"

"Yeah, of course, it's one of the things."

At the Ummayyah, David ordered a salad. The place was filled with journalists, archaeologists, Palestinian politicians, a large, noisy Arab restaurant where everyone was welcome, even a couple of tired Israeli cops. Dov ate ravenously—scooping up hummus, pulling meat off of skewers, gobbling it up, devouring an extra portion of baklava for dessert. Something about the encounter with Mansour had hungered him—perhaps, David thought, his pleasure in it, a pleasure Dov now wanted to deny. Watching him eat, David recalled the day that they were bonded, that morning three years before when they'd burst together into a youth hostel on Nablus Street, guns drawn, hearts pumping, ready to capture, perhaps even to kill.

They'd been tracking narcotics dealers, four youths whom they knew were armed. The entire PC Unit had staked out the hostel for a week, boring but demanding work. Finally David had had enough. "They're in there; let's get them. Now." Dov had grinned. He was new to Pattern Crimes. He was wearing a Mickey Mouse T-shirt and a pair of beaten-up Adidas sneakers—just the garb for a frontal assault.

The place was run-down, a two-story building with odd-shaped windows and balconies on the second floor. The usual money-changer downstairs, a motor scooter parked in front, a glass shop next door from which a huge mirror was just then being loaded onto a truck. Ten o'clock in the morning, quiet, a perfect time to make a charge. David and Dov glanced at one another, David nodded, then together they hit the door.

A rush through a dingy yellow hall past a decrepit reception desk. A charge up a set of sagging stairs. Yells in Arabic. Curses. A young man in underpants suddenly dashed in front of them across the hall. A crash. He had jumped off one of the balconies. They heard the scooter revving up below. After a chaotic chase and a quick exchange of fire, David and Dov cornered two of the dealers on the roof while Uri captured a third slipping out the back. Micha had fired at the one fleeing on the scooter and had missed, but his shots had cracked the mirror. As a result, when David and Dov came back out onto the
street
they were confronted by strange distorted images of themselves: heads not straight on necks, limbs askew, reflections which startled them, then made them laugh, and before which they instinctively embraced.

"Aren't you hungry?" Dov was looking at him.

"Anna's saving me some Russian soup."

Dov grinned. "That's a good woman, David. You're different since you met her. Everyone says you are."

"Yes, I'm different. Mellower. Easier to get along with. Less of a shit. Right? So are you finished?"

Dov nodded, grinned.

"Good. Let's go. I'll drive you home."

They didn't talk much as he swung around the Old City Walls, up by the place where Ora Goshen's body had been found. David paused at the spot, looked over at his own building across Hinnom, saw the lights in his apartment. Anna was waiting there, probably listening to music or reading a book or an American magazine.

"What are you thinking?"

"There was an old cop here this morning, Moshe Liederman. Said he thought this could turn out to be an interesting case."

"Don't you think it is? I do. You always love a pattern."

David nodded. "Yeah, but a pattern like this? Too much brutality, Dov. A man who hates women so much he'll even kill a boy who dresses up like one. Look at how he dumps them—out of his car, like trash, trash he covers up with an old army blanket because the carcasses are naked and he wants to protect the poor things from the cold. Except he doesn't cover them up all that well because he wants them found in the morning. Wants people to see what he's done. Feel his fury. See his work. Learn to fear him. Know his power.
Know."

The four-lane highway to Gillo was empty. When David hit it, he accelerated.

"What do we do about the Torah case?"

"Check out this guy Gutman. I think Mansour was too frightened to lie."

"No scrolls stolen in a while."

"Doesn't matter. It's a long-term racket. We have the new case, sure, but we still have our inventory to clear. Scrolls has been around too long. I'm getting sick of staring at the file."

They decided how they'd do it, put Shoshana on Gutman, the man Mansour had identified as the source of the Torah crowns, have her watch him on and off. Then, if Gutman looked like he might be right, send in a guy from the intelligence branch wearing a mike who could play the role of an American, say from Arizona, looking to buy a Torah for his new-built synagogue. Another scam, and it might work, and in any event they'd have developed a new informer. Except when they drove into Gillo, the modern bedroom satellite town, David knew the scroll case was nothing compared to the torn and marked-up bodies of Ora Goshen, Halil Ghemaiem, and Susan Mills.

David dropped Dov in front of his building, one of fifty huge apartment slabs, cold sheer residential bastions for the New Israeli Man. On his way back into town David was mad. A man like Dov, a police sergeant and a professional, couldn't save up enough in the New Israel to buy himself a car.

Back in the city his temper cooled. The streets were deserted; although only ten o'clock, Jerusalem was asleep. As he swept around Bloomfield Park, he was filled with a disquieting love for the place. But Jerusalem evaded him; for all his efforts to know her she continued to hold herself aloof.

On En Rogel Street he searched for a parking space, found one near the entrance to the Jerusalem of Gold Folklore Club. When he shut the car door a dog barked out, then other dogs in adjoining gardens, the barking spreading house by house through Abu Tor, then down to Shiloah and up the slope of the Mount of Offense. With a simple noise he had started a wave that now rolled across the hills.

In front of number sixteen a bar of yellow light cut across the stoop. He punched out the code that opened the apartment house door, entered, and closed it carefully behind. As he mounted the stairs and passed the various apartments, he could hear bits and pieces of the late evening news. Another big car-bomb explosion in Beirut. Katyusha rockets fired at Qiryat Shemona. An ultra-orthodox demonstration in Petah Tikva. Collapsing bank shares. The King of Jordan in Washington restating Arab claims and asking the United States for new long-term credits to purchase arms.

On the third floor he caught a hint of Anna's borscht and the sound of Janos Starker playing Bach. She was waiting up for him, just feet away, and now he paused to savor what lay in store. She would greet him, kiss him, feed him, talk to him, make him smile, lead him to their bed. There they would make love, the night city spread out before them, sparkling, still, and cold, and afterward they would lie entwined.

He slipped his key into the lock, turned it, opened the door. The aroma of the borscht and the music of Bach flowed out into the hall.

"Anna, I'm home..."

And then she was there before him, her smile so brilliant, her eyes so clear, her love for him so evident, that for a moment he felt he had to turn away lest he be blinded by so much radiance.

He strode out the back gate of the Russian Compound, past the Ticho house on Ha-Rav Kook, up narrow Ethiopia Street, then into Me'a Shearim. A mere five minutes by foot from the Pattern Crimes offices in Jerusalem Police District HQ, but for David Bar-Lev a walk into the enemy camp, the only neighborhood in Jerusalem he truly disliked.

And yet he
had
to come here.

It had been a year since his father had sold his apartment on Disraeli Street, closed down his practice, given away most of his furniture and moved to a shabby single room on an alleyway off Hevrat Shas. To devote himself to the study of Jewish mysticism, he said, to discover God within. Not that he ever actually pronounced the name of The Creator—among Kabbalists God was written G-d.

The light was fading fast, street lamps were already lit as David made his way among the clusters of yeshivas toward his father's little room. Black-suited Hasidim strode briskly by, jewelers, scholars, forgers for all he knew. An old bearded Jew with a bent back struggled up the street with a pair of canes. Cloaked youths with curled ear-locks glared at him with suspicious eyes. Men in flat fur fringed hats. Men dressed in the costumes of eighteenth-century Poles. Didn't these people realize they were living in the Middle East?