Lineup (25 page)
ELI
Nachum parked on a side street not far from the palatial house. After the call from Nevo’s ex-wife, it didn’t take him long to put all the pieces together. In the eyes of most cops, he was public enemy number one ever since the interview appeared, but he still had a few old pals on the job. He found out from them that Meshulam was one of Shimon Faro’s soldiers. They faxed him some pictures, and he recognized the bad guy immediately as the thug who’d attacked him in Nevo’s apartment.
He’d hardly left the house since he was discharged from the hospital. He sat at home like a frail old man, useless, sluggish, in pain. When he saw the interview in the paper, he kicked himself. How could he have been so dumb? Why didn’t he realize they were playing him for a fool?
Navon called and reamed him out over the phone. Everyone else kept their distance. That was no less hurtful than Navon accusing him of being a Judas. He knew their silence meant they agreed with the superintendent. He debated calling and trying to explain, but the lame excuse that he’d been outsmarted by a twentysomething reporter made him sound even more pitiful than letting them believe he’d given the interview of his own free will.
Giladi kept trying to reach him, calling him incessantly on his cell phone and his home line. He’d even come and stood outside the house a few days ago. He claimed he was screwed over by his boss and said he’d quit his job because of it. Nachum didn’t want to hear it. He didn’t have the energy anymore. The world could go on without him. He hardly slept at night and was barely able to get out of bed in the morning. He couldn’t turn off his brain, couldn’t get rid of the constant thoughts about unsolved cases, about cases he’d solved but now wasn’t so sure, about what his future would look like if he couldn’t be a cop.
The call from Merav yanked him out of his funk in an instant, waking him up abruptly like an alarm clock. It reminded him that he wasn’t yet entitled to sink into the abyss that had begun to swallow him up, that there were still things he had to set right. Nevo had saved his life, and now he was in deep trouble. And the rapist was still at large and could claim another victim, all because of the mistakes he himself had made.
As he’d promised Merav, he didn’t tell his pals on the force why he was looking for information about Meshulam. He didn’t mention Nevo’s name either. He wasn’t surprised to learn that Nevo was mixed up with Faro’s organization. As soon as he realized he wasn’t the rapist, he knew he was hiding a bigger secret by refusing to say what he was doing on Louis Marshall Street that night.
Nachum pulled himself gingerly out of the car. Any incautious movement sent him a sharp reminder of his nighttime encounter with Meshulam. He looked at the wall around the house across from him with the security cameras that were plainly following his every move. He’d had a diverse career as a detective, but he’d never dealt with organized crime. There was a first time for everything.
The heavy door opened and a tall crew-cut gorilla dressed all in black came out.
“Tell your boss Inspector Eli Nachum would like to talk to him,” he said in a loud voice in case the cameras were equipped for sound.
“You’re on private property, sir. You have to leave,” the man said, gesturing to Nachum’s car.
“Tell your boss that if he doesn’t want to see the inside of Abu Kabir again today, it’s in his best interest to let me in,” Nachum said, even louder.
The man’s eyes glazed over, and Nachum realized he was getting instructions through an earbud. He went back inside and closed the metal door behind him, leaving the detective standing in the street.
He was back a few minutes later. “Follow me,” he said impassively.
“What can I do for you, Inspector Nachum?” Faro asked in a deep voice when Nachum was standing in front of him. He was sitting in a solitary lounge chair beside a pool with an elaborate waterfall in the middle of a huge lawn, taking the sun in a short-sleeved shirt and sweatpants.
“You can leave Ziv Nevo alone. I don’t know what connection he has to you and I have no intention of asking, but I want you to release him, let him go back to his family.” He’d decided not to beat around the bush. With people like Faro, the less talk the better. Especially when you know so little.
“Ziv Nevo has no connection to me whatsoever, Inspector Nachum. I can assure you I don’t have him. He drove me around a few times. Nice guy. I understand you were looking for him in relation to a rape case and that he’s no longer a suspect. I have no idea where he is. My attorney has already explained this to Ms. Zuriel. I suggest you check with her,” Faro said coolly, turning his head to watch a gardener working in a flower bed on the other side of the lawn.
The crime lord’s remarks threw Nachum for a loop. Why had Rachel Zuriel been speaking to Faro’s lawyer about Nevo?
“Anything else I can help you with, Inspector Nachum?” Faro asked derisively.
“One of your men, David Meshulam, was in Nevo’s apartment looking for him. He sent regards from Meir and referred to certain threats made in Abu Kabir.” Faro could be lying about Zuriel, trying to mess with his head. But it didn’t matter one way or the other. Nachum had come here for a reason.
Not a single muscle twitched in Faro’s face, but Nachum had spent enough hours in the interrogation room to see that he’d just told the man something he didn’t know.
“I know that because I ran into him there,” he went on, gesturing to his bruises and pressing home his advantage by catching Faro off balance again.
Faro continued to say nothing.
“You’ve got twenty-four hours,” Nachum said, pausing before he added, “It would be a shame for you to go to prison for complicity in an assault on a police officer.”
FARO
heard the door slam behind the old cop with the battered face. He was just released from Abu Kabir this morning, and now there was a new threat hanging over his head.
He wasn’t pleased by what Nachum had told him. Shuki Borochov said Nevo had called Noam to ask for help, and Noam had contacted him. Shuki got the idea to use Nevo as a bargaining chip to procure Faro’s freedom. Now he discovered that Meshulam had been looking for Nevo, that he’d waited for him in his apartment and assaulted a cop.
What was Meshulam hiding from him? What was he doing at Nevo’s place? Why the hell did he beat up a cop?
Faro got out of his chair. He never got a moment’s rest. It was stupid things like this you had to avoid like the plague. He spent his time running large-scale operations, and in the end he’d be brought down by something picayune. Bigger men than he, men who built empires, wound up behind bars convicted of petty crimes because they were too busy to pay attention to the little things.
He waved Yaki Klein over. He smelled a rat. Someone was lying to him.
AMIT
looked at the name on the screen of his cell phone and decided not to pick up for Dori this time either. The man was a deceitful snake in the grass, and he was sick and tired of his games and abuse. There was no point in talking to him anyway. He knew what Dori wanted from the dozen text messages he’d already sent. He’d seen on the Internet that today was the day the judge rendered his sentence in the case of the teenage gang convicted of robbing convenience stores in south Tel Aviv, and he wanted his crime and education reporter to get to the courthouse and cover the story. But that wasn’t all. Naturally, Dori had more up his sleeve.
The prosecutor on the case was Galit Lavie. As usual, Dori was looking to kill two birds with one stone: a small item on the gangbangers and an interview with the ADA who signed off on the indictment against Ziv Nevo for a crime he didn’t commit. “Ask her how it feels to be responsible for convicting an innocent man, what they’re doing to catch the real rapist,” he’d texted.
Under normal circumstances, Amit would do as he was told. The chances of getting Lavie to answer his questions were slim, but he ought to give it a go. He couldn’t deny that it was part of his job. He’d tried to get something out of her after Nevo’s conviction, but she’d brushed him off.
But he’d had enough. He’d been marking time ever since the interview with Nachum. The detective refused to talk to him. He’d called dozens of times, even waited outside his house. But it didn’t get him anywhere. Tamar, the server at the Zodiac Café he’d been hoping to talk to, had quit. In fact, the busy coffee shop had been nearly empty since the story came out. He’d tried several times to talk to the employees, but all he got were suspicious looks, as if they thought he was the rapist.
This morning he’d decided to try one last time. He stopped playing games and went straight to the owner. “My name is Amit Giladi. I’m a reporter, and I’m here to help you figure out which one of your customers is the rapist,” he said. “If we can do that, your business is sure to pick up again.” He didn’t expect a warm welcome, but he wasn’t prepared for the response he got. It turned out the owner had known Dori for a long time, and not just as a regular customer.
The man didn’t only refuse to talk to him, he kicked him out, screaming that Dori was “a motherfucking jackass.” Dori had fucked with him again. Would it have been so hard to warn him? He could already hear him say for the umpteenth time, “Man up, kid.” The idea of having to listen to his jeering remarks about how he was scared by loud voices infuriated him so much that he was simply ignoring the editor’s calls.
His phone beeped again when he was getting on his bike. “Go now. Get an interview with her!!! No one else to send!!!” Dori texted.
Asshole. What did he do to deserve this? When he was new at the paper, everyone told him Dori was a hard man to work for. A talented journalist but a very difficult boss. He hadn’t listened. So maybe he did deserve what he was getting.
“Working on another assignment. Go yourself,” he texted back belligerently. He started the bike, not waiting for an answer.
He had to persuade Nachum to give him another chance. He couldn’t work with Dori anymore. The only way he could stay in the profession was to get a humongous scoop, and to do that he had to find the rapist. That would be his ticket back in.
He sped toward Nachum’s house. He’d been wrong to underestimate the veteran detective. Everything he’d told him in the hospital turned out to be true. He’d realized before anyone else that Nevo was innocent, that the real creep was still on the loose.
It was Amit’s turn to atone for his mistakes. Nachum was also trying to make amends for the blindness that had gotten Nevo convicted in the first place. Together they’d make a good team, he’d tell him. He’d give it his all, not leave any stone unturned. Eventually, just like Dori believed (and he had to give him credit for his journalistic instincts), they’d find the perp.
Then he’d show that snake in the grass who was king of the jungle. He’d take the story and give it to another paper. He’d crush Dori like the reptile he was. If it gave him a chance to make that dream come true, it was worth it to him to get down on his knees and beg Nachum to forgive him.
MESHULAM
decided to wait until dark before starting out from Shufa. The more he thought about it, the more determined he became. He couldn’t allow Nevo to leave the West Bank alive. He had to repair the damage he’d done, even if it meant disobeying Faro’s instructions again. He swore to himself it would be the last time. He’d learned his lesson. Starting tomorrow, he’d go back to being the disciplined soldier he’d always been, that he was meant to be. The way he’d fucked up that night, everything he’d been keeping from Faro, it would all be buried along with Nevo.
His first thought was to leave him on the road near some isolated village and let the Palestinians do the job for him. But what if he survived? If he made it back alive, he’d still be a threat. No, it’d be best to stop on a dirt road somewhere, order him out of the car, and put a bullet in his head. He’d have to dig a deep hole for the body. He didn’t need some stinking goatherd to find him and notify the authorities. He’d tell Faro he’d dropped him off in Tel Aviv and he had no idea where he went from there.
Meshulam got up and went into the room where they were holding Nevo. He was lying on the bed, his face black-and-blue from the beating he’d taken from him yesterday. That was another reason he couldn’t bring him back to the city. On second thought, he saw he wouldn’t have to risk using a gun. In the shape Nevo was in, he could finish him off with his fists.
He went back into his room, lay down on the bed, and closed his eyes. The stomach cramps that had started yesterday were still tormenting him. He had to get some rest. It would be dark in an hour and a half and then he’d get going. It would all be over soon and he could put it behind him.
YAKI
Klein was standing over him when he opened his eyes.
“Get up, Meshulam. We’re leaving.”
He looked around. It was dark out. How long had he slept? Had he missed his chance? He leaped out of bed and stood facing Klein.
“Everything okay? What’s going on?” he asked, trying to hide his surprise.
“Faro wants you back in Raanana now,” Klein said.
“What’re you doing here?” Meshulam didn’t understand.
“I told you, Faro wants you back in Raanana,” Klein repeated.
Meshulam moved aside and looked at the closed door to Nevo’s room. Klein was the last person he wanted to see now. If Faro wanted him in Raanana, why didn’t he call? Why did he send Klein?
“Fine,” he said after a short pause. “I’ll go take care of the package and I’m coming.” He nodded toward the closed door.
“He wants you to bring Nevo with you,” Klein said.
“What? Why?” This was bad, very bad.
Klein shrugged.
What was going on? Why was Klein here? What did Faro want with Nevo? Did he know? No, that wasn’t possible. Nevo had been here the whole time. He hadn’t talked to anyone.
“Go back and tell Faro I’m on my way,” he said in a last-ditch effort. Having Klein around jeopardized his plan. But maybe he still had a chance. After Klein left, he’d get Nevo and make sure to lose him on the way back.
“No can do. Faro told me to bring you with me. He wants you both in his office in an hour.”
