Lineup (23 page)
AFTER
thirty-five years as a prosecutor, Tel Aviv district attorney Rachel Zuriel thought she’d probably seen everything. Nevertheless, time and again she discovered there was no end to the surprises her job could conjure up.
She rose to greet Joshua Borochov. “Good to see you, Shuki. How’ve you been?” she forced herself to say amicably.
“How are Ariel, the kids, the grandkids?” he asked, shaking her outstretched hand warmly. Not for the first time, she wondered if the loathing she felt for this man was reciprocated.
In the course of her long career, she’d faced off against countless defense attorneys. Some she respected more, others less. But Shuki Borochov belonged to a separate category: those who crossed over to the other side. They didn’t just represent the crime syndicates, they actually functioned as full-fledged members of the organization. It was a well-known fact. Nonetheless, Borochov was still entitled to put “Esq.” after his name and even served on several Bar Association committees. He showed up at every event or convention to rub shoulders with noted judges and lawyers, amusing them with his jokes and regaling them with stories about the fine restaurants he dined at in London, New York, or Paris. When she was a candidate for DA five years ago, he was on the Bar Association’s National Council and had played a large role in deterring several leading attorneys who were opposed to her appointment from launching a smear campaign against her. Although they never spoke of it, she had a strong feeling it was not by chance that she’d learned of his efforts on her behalf.
Yesterday morning, she’d called a meeting to discuss Faro. The atmosphere was tense. The cops were treading water and the investigation was going nowhere. Superintendent Navon didn’t say it in so many words, but she got the impression he thought Faro’s arrest was a mistake from beginning to end, that it was forced on him by his superiors.
Inspector Nachum’s interview in the local paper didn’t improve the mood either. “There’s something rotten in the district of Tel Aviv,” she heard a commentator declare dramatically on the radio on her way to work. Despite Navon’s efforts to assure her that it was all bullshit, that Nevo was their guy, they both knew what the repercussions would be if it came out that they’d not only charged the wrong man but had been complicit in ensuring his wrongful conviction.
When the meeting broke up, Navon asked to speak with her in private. He told her their informant in Faro’s organization had gotten cold feet and gone missing since the arrest. The higher-ups were leaning on him to make Faro believe they had a trustworthy informant who was cooperating with them. But the bottom line was that all they’d gotten from him was that Faro used some guy named George to smuggle drugs into Israel from Lebanon near Ghajar, the village that straddled the border. That’s all they had, two names: George and Ghajar. They didn’t know who George was, the extent of his activities, how he moved the drugs, or what part Ghajar played in the operation. If they had had more time to work the informant, to massage him until he was ready, they’d probably know more. “But that’s a lost cause now,” Navon said with a sigh.
The superintendent looked troubled and exhausted. What they had might not even be enough to make Faro break a sweat. And there was also the chance that the names would lead him directly to the informant, which meant that if they used them in the interrogation, they’d be handing the guy a death sentence. Two words—that’s all they had. “You may be able to build a case on them, but the whole structure is just as likely to collapse,” Navon concluded.
AS
she looked at Borochov sitting across from her, Zuriel wondered if those two words were the real reason for this meeting. He’d called last night, saying Faro’s remand hearing was two days away and they should talk. It was a perfectly normal request. He was simply asking to meet with her before the court hearing.
As soon as she hung up, she rang Navon and told him about the call. They were both experienced enough not to give it too much weight. Faro hadn’t so much as twitched a muscle when they dropped the words “George” and “Ghajar,” he reported. He’d sat opposite his interrogators for hours, saying nothing, aside from periodically intoning, “On the advice of counsel, I invoke my right to remain silent.” “Maybe the names made an impression on him, and maybe they didn’t,” Navon said, reiterating the same assessment of the situation he’d offered yesterday.
“I assume you realize Faro’s arrest has exhausted its usefulness,” Borochov said, crossing his fleshy arms on his enormous paunch. To anyone who didn’t know him, he looked like a benevolent uncle, a fat jolly man with a round, bald head and a kindly smile.
“We happen to see it differently,” Zuriel answered calmly.
Borochov laughed.
“You want to tell me what you have on him?” he said when he saw she wasn’t similarly amused.
“I assure you, you’ll find out when we issue the indictment.”
“Come on, sweetheart,” he said with what he apparently thought was a disarming smile. It only intensified her repulsion. “We’ve both been at this long enough. If you had anything solid, you’d tell me. Why play games?”
“We know about George and Ghajar,” she announced. “Actually, we know quite a lot about your client.” She watched him closely, trying to read the effect of her words from his expression.
Borochov leaned back and straightened his expensive tie. “Yeah, yeah, George and Ghajar. My client told me they were grilling him about some guy named George. He has no idea who they’re talking about,” he said, not losing his composure for a second.
Zuriel continued to watch him. Her instincts told her he was lying, that they knew very well who George was and that was the reason the lawyer was here. Faro was feeling the pressure. There’s an element of luck in any investigation. Sometimes two little words can do what mountains of evidence, surveillance tapes, and wiretaps can’t.
“So why did you ask for this meeting?” She decided it was time to cut to the chase.
“I told you. Faro’s arrest has exhausted its usefulness. I can guarantee that if you release him now, if you save us the hassle of judges and hearings, he won’t talk to the press. Total media silence from our side. In a day or two, no one will remember that the cops bungled his arrest.”
“I want to thank you and your client for your concern for the good name of law enforcement,” she said with a smile. He responded with a grimace.
Despite his silence, Zuriel felt there was something else the attorney wanted to say. He was just waiting for the right moment.
“If all you’ve got to offer is media silence, you wasted your time coming here,” she said, breaking the silence in the hope of forcing him to show his hand. “But you know I’m always happy to see you,” she added with a fake smile.
“You got an offer for me?” he asked.
She hadn’t expected him to start the haggling so soon. She had no idea what kind of charges they’d be able to file against Faro. Tossing out a number off the top of her head would be irresponsible.
“Seven years,” she fired at him. This was too good an opportunity to pass up. And years of bargaining had made her very good at the game.
Borochov rose. “I guess you’re right. We’re both wasting our time here,” he said, straightening his bright red tie again. But it seemed to her the number didn’t really faze him.
She rose as he held out his hand. “Tell Ariel I said hi. Remind him he owes me a tennis match at the next convention in Eilat,” he said with a smile.
Had she just missed her chance to put Faro behind bars? As things stood, even a twelve-month sentence would be an achievement. It was in the public interest to get a man like him off the streets.
Borochov started toward the door. She debated calling him back and telling him she was willing to try to work something out, that she was ready to listen. But she held back. She was the DA, not someone hawking her wares in the market. Besides, if she gave in too quickly, he’d realize how weak her hand was. Borochov was a smart man. He was testing her.
He opened the door and she inhaled deeply. They wouldn’t have closed a deal now anyway, she reassured herself. On the other hand, if George wasn’t worth seven years, she’d missed her opportunity. Borochov would go back and tell Faro that under the present circumstances, their best option was to fight it out in court. And she didn’t have any weapons at her disposal.
She was on her way back to her chair when he turned around.
“I almost forgot,” he said.
She repressed a smile. She’d done the right thing by resisting the temptation to call him back. Plea bargaining was no different from haggling over the price of a carpet in a Turkish bazaar.
“One of my clients may have information about the Tel Aviv rapist,” he said, coming to stand across the desk from her.
“What kind of information?” she asked, struggling to understand what was going on and how the topic of Ziv Nevo had suddenly come up.
“Where he is, for instance. You interested?” His smile grew wider.
“Which client?” she asked, although she had the feeling she knew the answer. He ignored the question.
They stood opposite each other in silence. Catching Nevo would enable the cops to save face, to say nothing of removing the threat to the women in the area.
“What does your client want in exchange for the information?” she asked, knowing nothing came free in their world.
“My client only asks that you not be greedy.”
She waited.
“Seven years is too much. You know that as well as I do, sweetheart,” he declared before turning to leave for the second time.
ZURIEL
looked out the window at the traffic on King Saul Street. She’d consult with a few people in the office, get the necessary approval, but in the end she’d reject Borochov’s proposal. It wasn’t worth losing out on a chance to strike a deal in the Faro case for a lead to the whereabouts of a rape suspect, no matter how dangerous he might be.
If she agreed to listen to what Faro had to tell her, she’d have to offer him a reduced sentence in exchange. And every day a man like that was locked up was a day with less criminal activity, and that was clearly in the public interest. When she was new to the DA’s Office, decisions like this kept her up at night. She was playing with people’s lives. A rapist versus a crime lord. One type of victim versus another.
She still didn’t take such things lightly. But over the years she’d grown accustomed to making tough decisions. You had to weigh the cost against the benefit, victim against victim, crime against crime. Being responsible for putting Faro behind bars would be the crowning glory of her career as district attorney. Everyone would know that, on her watch, one of the most dangerous crime syndicates in the country had taken a fatal blow.
IT
took a supreme effort for Meshulam to resist the urge to give Nevo one last kick as he lay at his feet on the floor. When Borochov said he was on his way, he’d promised himself he’d keep his cool until he got the lousy motherfucker to spill everything he knew. But as soon as he laid eyes on him, he lost it. That was always his problem, his short fuse. His rage took over and he didn’t stop to think.
When Nevo got out of the van, Meshulam told George’s crew he needed a minute alone with him. “He’s all yours,” they said, turning the prisoner over to him. Nevo was obviously shocked to see him there.
“Whaddya want Faro for?” His body still ached from his encounter with the geezer in Nevo’s apartment, but that didn’t prevent him from giving Nevo a punch in the gut that made him double up in agony. “What you gotta say to him you can’t say to me?”
“I didn’t do anything. I kept my mouth shut,” Nevo mumbled.
“I asked you what you need Faro for, you motherfucking loser.”
“I’m sorry,” Nevo said, struggling to straighten up. “You’re right. I should’ve come to you. I get it.”
“Where’s the car?” he asked, grabbing Nevo by the shirt and yelling in his face.
“What car? I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The terror showed on Nevo’s face.
“Don’t play dumb with me,” Meshulam whispered ominously. “You know exactly what I’m talking about—the car with the bomb, the car from Louis Marshall. Where is it? You tell the cops why you were there, shithead?”
“I don’t know. Honestly. I don’t know what you want me to say. If I knew, I’d . . . But I don’t . . .”
Nevo’s servility just enraged Meshulam more. He despised weaklings, men who had no self-respect, who whined like little girls. He even despised weepy broads. He head-butted Nevo and heard the bone break in his nose.
“Where’d you hide your family, huh? Don’t lie to me!”
Without answering, Nevo brought his hands up to his bleeding nose.
“I’m warning you. I want the truth.”
Silence.
“Who was in your apartment?” he shouted.
“The cop investigating the Tel Aviv rapes. I’ve got nothing to do with him.” Nevo himself could barely understand the muffled words coming from his mouth.
“What was he doing there?” Nevo’s answer had taken Meshulam completely by surprise.
“I don’t know . . . looking for me, I guess . . . they think I did it . . .” His speech was becoming increasingly slurred.
Meshulam landed another punch in the gut, bringing Nevo to his knees. He didn’t believe the motherfucker for a second. He and that cop had something going. They were working together. Fact: Nevo knew the cop was there. He talked to him. Fact: The car was missing. Fact: His family was in hiding. Fact.
“Where’re your wife and kid?” he asked again.
Nevo still didn’t answer.
He kicked him in the head.
He could tell the bastard was too far gone to withstand another blow. That’s the way it always was: he used his fists first and his head later. Nevo’s eyes were closed. Was he dead? Borochov had told him to keep an eye on him, that he might be Faro’s ace in the hole. He held two fingers to Nevo’s neck and felt for a pulse. Not dead, just unconscious. Meshulam breathed a sigh of relief.
THE
quiet of their desert hideaway that had been so enchanting when they got here had turned menacing. Ziv had been gone for three days, and Merav hadn’t heard a word from him. When he said it would take time, she thought he meant a day, two at most. But it had been three days, and the silence was deafening.
Gili was also getting impatient. He kept asking when Daddy was coming come back. “Everything’s fine, sweetie,” she promised over and over again, the fear in the pit of her stomach growing sharper each time she said it. She had a feeling something bad was coming.
Orit’s spacious home had begun to seem claustrophobic. Merav felt caged in as she tried to keep herself busy cleaning and cooking. But the fear wouldn’t let go, the terrifying scenarios she envisioned never stopped filling her head. The vast landscape she’d found so beautiful at first only intensified her loneliness.
Ziv had given her explicit instructions not to try to get in touch with him and not to contact her parents under any circumstances. A few hours ago she’d broken down and called his cell phone, only to discover it was switched off. Then she called her parents. Her mother sounded panicky, on the verge of hysterics. “Where are you? I’m going crazy,” she said again and again, but Merav merely answered, “I’m fine, Mom. Don’t worry about me,” before quickly disconnecting like they do on TV so a call can’t be traced.
She didn’t sleep a wink last night, just lay in bed with her eyes open, every nighttime noise making her jump. Gili often pleaded to be allowed to sleep in her bed, especially after the divorce, but in the past she’d always refused. Now she invited him in. She lay down beside him, watching him sleep, listening in dread to the jackals howling in the wilderness, waiting anxiously for the sound of her car pulling up at the house, and then she’d hear the front door open and close and Ziv would walk in and say the nightmare was over.
She went into the room of Orit’s eldest son and turned on his computer. Up to now, she’d refrained from using it because she didn’t want to encroach on the family’s privacy any more than necessary, but she couldn’t go on living in the isolation she’d imposed on herself. Ziv could be in trouble.
The headline on the news site she went into told of a man in the north who murdered his wife. She scrolled down slowly, looking for any item that might give her a clue to what happened to Ziv. She didn’t find anything. The night he opened up to her, he said he’d gotten himself mixed up with the mob, but for her own protection he refused to mention names. She could easily read something that had a bearing on his fate and not even know it, she thought.
She heard Gili playing with his stuffed animals in the other room, chatting to himself. How long could she keep him locked up here? Orit and her family would be back from their vacation in three days, and then she’d have no choice. She’d have to leave.
She went into Google and typed “rape north Tel Aviv.” As she’d expected, she got a lot of hits. The attack had been covered by all the media. She’d read about it herself at the time.
She concentrated on the items from the last seven days. Incredibly, she discovered there’d been another rape, and the police were again looking for Ziv. It occurred to her that he might’ve been lying to her the whole time, that he was guilty, and he’d been out raping another girl while she was waiting anxiously for him to return. But she dismissed the idea as soon as she saw the date of the attack. He’d been here with her when it happened.
Tears welled up in her eyes. What had they done to deserve this? How come Ziv was the prime suspect in two rapes?
Merav sat in front of the computer weeping uncontrollably. She felt lost, helpless. If Ziv hadn’t been so adamant about keeping the cops out of it, she’d call them right now and tell them that he’d been with her, lying beside her in bed when they claimed he was raping a woman in Tel Aviv. But Ziv had made her promise she wouldn’t involve the police.
She was about to switch off the computer when her eye caught the headline of an interview with Inspector Eli Nachum. Ziv had told her about the detective with the vicious piercing eyes who tricked him into confessing to a crime he didn’t commit. Skimming through the interview, she saw that Nachum was now saying that Ziv was innocent and he’d been wrong all along.
The flicker of optimism she felt when she first found the article died out very quickly when she read it more carefully. She learned not only that Nachum had been kicked off the force but that they rejected his opinion out of hand. In the official eyes of the police, Ziv was the rapist. A tremor ran through her body when she read they were now mounting a nationwide search for him.
Merav turned off the computer and started pacing the floor. All she wanted was for Ziv to come back so they could go to the police together and she could tell them he was with her the night of the rape.
Her intuition was right. Something very bad had happened. She knew that now.
She wanted desperately to help him, but she didn’t know how. What could she do? Then she remembered the letter he’d placed in her hand before he left. Should she open it?
WITH
trembling hands, she dialed the first number on the list she got from Information. It turned out there was more than one Eli Nachum in the Tel Aviv area. She prayed she wasn’t making a terrible mistake and putting Ziv in even greater danger.
But she couldn’t just sit here and do nothing. She was placing all her faith in the detective. After all, he’d made it very clear that he didn’t believe Ziv was guilty. And it wasn’t like she was calling the police. The papers said he’d been booted out.
“Stop calling me, Giladi. I have no intention of talking to you, and you can quote me on that in your fucking rag.” The voice at the other end was furious.
“Is this Eli Nachum?” she asked.
“Yes. Sorry about that. I thought you were someone else.”
“Inspector Eli Nachum?”
The longer she spoke with him, the more she began to trust him, despite her initial apprehensions. He sounded deeply sorry for what he’d done to Ziv and she heard, or imagined she heard, a desire to help that was entirely genuine.
“You have any idea where I can find him?” he asked.
She looked at the letter she’d just read. She was still reeling from what it said. The mob had forced Ziv to plant a bomb under a woman’s car, he didn’t know who. “Don’t open this letter unless you and Gili are in danger,” he’d warned her before he left.
“Merav? Are you still there?” Was she doing the right thing? For the moment, at least, she and Gili were safe. Nothing had happened to make her feel they were in any imminent danger. And he’d made her promise she’d only use the letter as a last resort.
“He left me a note with the name of the man he went to see,” she said finally, her heart pounding. It didn’t seem wise to tell him everything. If the letter fell into the wrong hands, it could have serious consequences for Ziv. She didn’t know Eli Nachum and couldn’t be sure what he’d do with it. She had to use her head. To play it safe, she wouldn’t tell him about Faro.
“Who is it?”
“David Meshulam,” she said, her voice shaking as she uttered the name of the man mentioned several times in Ziv’s letter as the one who gave him his instructions.
