the Hunted (1977) (3 page)

It was getting complicated. Why go to Tel Aviv?

She could move in with him at the Four Seasons.

But Edie felt she should stay with the tour until the
y decided what they were going to do, and made sur e she'd have a flight home if they left, and all that.

Rosen said that was the tour leader's responsibility.

Edie said yes, except all Mr. Fine talked about wa
s suing the hotel. She'd be back Tuesday afternoon , promise, ready for Al Rosen's super five-star Mercedes tour of Israel.

Ordinarily the new Rosen would have accepte
d this quietly. If she came back, fine. If she didn't, tha t was all right too. But there was a problem. Edie ha d his short-sleeved safari jacket, with his passpor t and prescription sunglasses in the pocket. Up i n 507, before getting the wet towels, he'd jammed hi s shirt and jacket into her suitcase, on top of he r clothes, and sailed the suitcase from the balcony , out into the night and straight down five stories t o the pavement. All she had lost were some bathroom articles and makeup. He'd lost his sandals.

He should have driven down to Tel Aviv yesterday and picked up his passport and stuff.

That's where most of the cars were still comin
g from--Tel Aviv, sightseers. The cars passed close t o the cafe, following the circle around the parkway , then turned off on the beach road north and crep t past the fire-gutted hotel, everybody gawking up a t the honeycomb of empty balconies and at th e places where the cement was singed black. Saturday, the Shabat, had been the big day, the cars bumper to bumper all around the square, comin g and going.

There were relatively few cars this morning--
n ow that he thought about it--coming from th e street to the parkway. There were no cars standin g along the curb by the cafe. It gave Rosen a nic e view of the square.

Sunday he had read the account of the fire in th
e Jerusalem Post and looked through the Hebre w dailies, Ma'ariv and Ha'arez, for pictures. Ther e had been photos in all three papers of firemen fighting the blaze, and "before" and "after" shots of the hotel. But no pictures of rescued tourists, or o f Rosen walking around without a shirt. So he didn'
t have to worry about becoming a celebrity.

Still, he was keyed up, experiencing old anxieties, smoking again, into his third pack of cigarettes since Saturday morning. Getting away for a while with Edie felt like a good idea.

He saw the white sedan go past, moving towar
d the beach. With an Arab driving? It was possible , but not something he was used to seeing. Arab s were usually walking along the road, old me n wearing the head scarves, the kaffiyeh, and drab , thrown-away clothes, old suitcoats that had neve r been cleaned. The one in the car wore the traditional kaffiyeh--the white with black checkered lines that gave the cloth a grayish look, a double d black band holding it to his head.

The white car turned left and crept around th
e circle to the other side of the parkway, the drive r maybe looking for something or not knowin g where he was going. Rosen could see the front en d now on an angle, two vertical ovals on the grille. A BMW. The higher-priced model that would cos t roughly thirty thousand in Israel, maybe more. A n Arab driving an expensive German automobil e around Netanya, an expensive resort town.

Rosen lit a cigarette, keeping an eye on th
e BMW, waiting for it to come around this end of th e circle. When it went past he'd try to get a look a t the Arab. He wasn't suspicious, he was curious; h e had nothing better to do. He heard the BMW
, across the parkway, downshift and pick up speed.

It would probably keep going now and duck int
o the main street, away from the beach.

But it didn't. The BMW was coming around th
e near end of the circle. In second gear. Rosen coul d hear the revs, the engine winding up. He heard th e tires begin to screech, the BMW coming throug h the circle now toward the cafe, Rosen looking directly at the grille and the broad windshield, thinking that the Arab had better crank it now, and knowing in that moment that the dark face unde r the kaffiyeh looking at him through the windshiel d had no intention of making the curve. Rose n pushed the table as he lunged out of the chair. H
e saw the owner standing inside the cafe and the expression on his face, but Rosen did not turn to look around. He was to the walk space between the caf e and the tables when the BMW jumped the curb an d plowed through the first row of tables and kep t pushing, taking out part of the second row befor e the car jerked to a stop and the dark man in the ka f fiyeh was out, throwing an end of the scarf aroun d the lower part of his face and bringing the heav y Webley military revolver from beneath his coat , aiming it as the owner of the cafe dropped flat t o the tile floor, aiming at Rosen, who was inside now , running toward the back of the place between th e counter and a row of tables, and firing the heavy revolver, firing again down the aisle, steadying the outstretched revolver with his left hand and firin g quickly now, three times, before Rosen bange d through a doorway and the door slammed closed.

In the ringing silence the man with the Arab scar
f across his face stared into the cafe, making up hi s mind. He looked down at the owner of the Acapulco on the floor, his face buried in his arms. The man with the Arab scarf turned and looked up th e sidewalk in the direction of the shops that sold oriental rugs and jewelry, where the sidewalk passed beneath the arches of a street-front arcade, wher e people were standing now, watching him. He go t into the BMW and backed out, dragging a chai r that was hooked to the front bumper, braked hard , and mangled the chair as the BMW shot forward , engine winding, taking the curve into the busines s street east; and then it was gone.

The owner of the Acapulco got to his hands an
d knees and looked out toward the street for a moment, then scrambled to his feet and went to th e phone behind the counter. No--he remembere d the customer--the customer first, and he hurried t o the back of the cafe and opened the door with th e sign that said toilet.

Rosen was standing in the small enclosure, hi
s back to the wall. There was a sound of water, th e toilet tank dripping.

"He's gone," the owner of the cafe said. Rose
n stared at him, his eyes strange, and the owner of th e cafe, frightened and bewildered, wasn't sure Rose n understood him. "That man, the Arab, he's gon e now." He wanted to say more to Rosen and as k him things, but he could only think of the words i n Hebrew. Finally he said, "Why did he want to d o that to you? The Arab. Try to hurt you like that."

"He wasn't an Arab," Rosen said.

The owner of the cafe tried to speak to Rose
n and tried to make him remain while he called th e police. But that was all Rosen said before h e walked out.

"He wasn't an Arab."

Edie Broder, with Rosen's shirt and jacket in her bi
g suitcase and his passport in her tote--anxious , antsy, hardly able to sit still--took a taxi back t o Netanya from Tel Aviv and paid one hundre d twenty Israeli pounds, almost twenty dollars, fo r the ride.

It was worth it, arriving at the Four Seasons jus
t a little after one o'clock, in time to have lunch wit h her new boyfriend, God, as eager as a twenty-yearold but not nearly as cool about it. Her daughters would die. They wouldn't understand a mothe r having this kind of a feeling. They'd like him , though. He was kind, he was gentle, he was funny.

He wasn't nearly as patient as he thought he was.

She had to smile, picturing him in his Jockey short
s looking for cigarettes, holding his stomach in an d glancing at himself in the mirror. (Telling her h e was forty-five when his passport said fifty.) The n very cool with the whole building on fire, knowin g exactly what to do, keeping everyone calm as he le d them through the smoke. He was great. He migh t even be perfect. She wouldn't look too far ahead , though, and begin fantasizing about the future. No , as Al Rosen would say, relax and let things happen.

The doorman asked Edie if she was checking in.

She told him just to put the bags somewhere, she'
d let him know, and went to a house phone to cal l Rosen's room. There was no answer.

She made a quick run down to the corner of th
e lobby that looked out on the pool. He wasn't there.

He wasn't at the bar, or, looking past the bar, in th
e dining room.

At the desk she asked if Mr. Rosen had left
a message for a Mrs. Broder.

The desk clerk said, "Mr. Rosen--" As h
e started to turn away, an Israeli woman Edie recognized as a guide with Egged Tours reached the desk and said something in Hebrew. The clerk paused t o reply. The tour guide had him now and gave th e clerk a barrage of Hebrew, her voice rising, intense.

When the clerk turned away again, Edie said, "Mr.

Rosen. Did he leave a message--" The cler
k walked down to the cashier's counter and cam e back with something, a sheet of paper, and bega n talking to the Egged tour guide, who seemed in a rage now and reached the point of almost shoutin g at the indifferent clerk. The Egged tour woma n stopped abruptly and walked away.

"Mr. Rosen," Edie said, trying very hard to remain calm. "I want to know if he left a note for me, Mrs. Broder."

The clerk looked at her vacantly for a moment.

"Mr. Rosen? Oh, Mr. Rosen," the clerk said. "H
e checked out. I believe about an hour ago."

MEL BANDY SAID to the good-looking Israeli girl i
n the jeans and white blouse and no bra, "Actually , the flight was ten minutes early coming into Be n Gurion. So what do they do, they take you off th e 707 and pack you on a bus with everybody and yo u stand out there for fif teen minutes to make up fo r it. How'd you know I was Mr. Bandy?"

"I asked the air hostess," the girl said. "She poin
t you out to me."

"And you're Atalia."

"Yes, or Tali I'm called." She smiled. Nice smile
, nice eyes and freckles. "We write to each othe r sometime, now we meet."

"You got a cute accent," Mel Bandy said.

"You're a cute girl," looking down at the open nec
k of her blouse. Not much there at all, but very tender. Twenty-one years old, out of the Israeli Army, very bright but seemed innocent, spoke Arabic a s well as Hebrew and English. She didn't look Jewish.

The guy with her didn't look Jewish either. H
e looked like an Arab, or Mel Bandy's idea of a young Arab, with the mustache and wild curly hair.

The rest of him, the jeans dragging on the groun
d and the open vinyl jacket, was universal. His nam e was Mati Harari and he was a Yemenite, supposedly trustworthy. But Mel had seen the guy too many times in Detroit Recorder's Court. White , black, Yemenite, they all looked alike--arraigne d on some kind of a hustle.

Mel was carrying an alligator attache case. H
e pointed to his red-and-green-trimmed Gucci luggage coming into the terminal on the conveyor loop. The skinny Yemenite picked up the two bags , brushing the porters aside in Hebrew, and Tal i smiled and said something to the two Israeli Customs officials, who waved them past. Nothing to it.

Mel was surprised. Outside, waiting in front of th
e terminal while Mati got the car, he said, "I though t it was tight security here."

"They know you are searched before you ge
t here, in New York or Athens." Tali shrugged. "Yo u know--only if they don't like the way you look."

"It's hot here."

"Yes, it's nice, isn't it?"

Mel was sweating in the lightweight gray suit.

The next few days he'd take it easy on the booz
e and all that sour-cream kosher shit he didn't lik e much anyway, maybe drop about ten pounds. Goddamn shirt, sticking to him--he pulled his silver-g ray silk tie down and unbuttoned the collar. Goddamn pants were too tight. He gave Tali his attache case, took off his suitcoat, and, holding it in fron t of him, adjusted his crotch. What he'd like to los e was about twenty-five pounds. He hadn't though t it was going to be this hot. Shit, it had been snowing when he'd left Detroit.

The car was a gray Mercedes. Tali wanted Mr.

Bandy to get in front so he could see better, but Me
l arranged the seating: him and Tali in back. He'd se e all he wanted with the girl next to him and also b e able to talk to her without the Arab-looking guy listening. He waited, though, until they were out of the airport and passing through open country o n the way to Tel Aviv.

"Have you heard from him since we talked o
n the phone?"

"He didn't call last night or this morning," th
e girl said. "I don't know where he could be."

Mel Bandy looked over--she sounded genuinel
y worried--wondering if Rosen was getting into her.

Why not? She worked for him. Probably mad
e more than any secretary in Israel. If that's what sh e was, a secretary.

"You can't call him?"

"I tried three places. He wasn't there."

"He knows when he's supposed to get hi
s money?"