An Accidental Murder: An Avram Cohen Mystery Read online

  It was a difficult time for Cohen—and one that he needed to see through to its end. He originally made the offer soon after the inheritance came through, but during the lengthy process of collecting signatures from all the heirs—and their heirs—doubt began to grow in his mind about the wisdom of the purchase. The last three great grandchildren of the original patriarch did not need the money and didn’t care about the property. But they hated each other enough to use Cohen’s offer as a battleground.

  Each conditioned his negotiations on the others getting less for their signatures. Cohen had already crossed the Rubicon of one million dollars, and was well on his way to two, purchase price by the time the negotiations reached the final three heirs.

  Along the way he saw his own efforts twisted by the heirs’ greed, he saw Jerusalem itself changing in ways that made him wonder why he wanted to stay. No family held him down there, no job demanded his effort.

  The more he heard people laying exclusive claim to the city the more it sounded to him like his own original obsession to own the whole house. Just as he had seen the insanity of the family quarrel holding up the purchase, so he could see how belief in the city’s holiness was being twisted by greed into most unholy acts.

  Laskoff partly prodded him on, saying it would be a wise business deal, for the demand for housing in Jerusalem was predicted to be on a constant rise toward the year 2000. “For the millennium,” Laskoff would say, pointing out that the combination of the Russian immigration, the fundamentalist birthrate, and even the limping peace process guaranteed that demand for housing in Jerusalem would remain on a constant rise for the coming years. “It’s a good investment,” said the banker. “Real estate is always a good investment in a tiny country. Even if you don’t do anything with it,” Laskoff said enthusiastically.

  That’s not why Cohen wanted it. He wanted it because he could imagine having it. Yes, he had ideas. Maybe he’d open a school. Maybe a restaurant. But those were fantasies that had more to do with his self-inspection, with his wondering about how his life had forced him to be guarded with others, rather than any entrepreneurial instinct. Buying the house was crazy from the start, he began to think.

  Ahuva and he would not have children. What did he need with such a large place? It was greedy of him, he thought.

  Over the years, he began giving the money away. Trust funds to pay for university for the children—and a few grandchildren—of needy former colleagues, mostly subordinates from the past, and some struggling families of victims of crimes that Cohen felt guilty about because of his own failures.

  And during those weeks when he should have been in America, he came face-to-face with his feelings. As the delicate game of three-way talks ensued, he would leave the meetings, sometimes with Laskoff on his heels asking whether he really wanted to go through with it, after all.

  “You talked about a school, you talked about a restaurant, you talked about a library just for your friends. You’ve had so many different plans for the house, Avram, that I don’t know anymore if you want the house or something else.

  You have to answer that question.” But the closer they got to a deal, the more doubt crept into his mind. It prolonged the negotiation enough to miss the author’s tour.

  Carey was patient the first time, understanding that Cohen had important personal business that came up unexpectedly. But the second time Cohen called to report he’d missed the Washington to Los Angeles leg of the trip, Carey was not so calm. He pleaded, he begged, and finally he said that Cohen would be to blame if he lost his job. If anything, it was proof that Mccloskey had done his job.

  Hadn’t Cohen himself described how he had often bent over backward to protect those who had been innocent, yet affected by the decisions Cohen made?

  Tina was very worried. She worked hard to patch things up all around. Not only did Cohen’s canceled author’s trip hurt his deal, it also soured Carey to Lassman, which meant that she was having a difficult time selling TMC the writer’s new idea for a book about the white slavery traffic from Eastern Europe.

  “I’ve got to tell you, Avram, you are not Carey’s favorite author right now. The book’s doing okay. But not great. Far from great, as a matter of fact. If at least you could have come up with a better excuse for missing the trip. If at least you had told them from the start that you wouldn’t make it. But you led them on. And we were going to use L.A. to seal a movie option,” Tina complained in a long phone call one night in early September. “Hollywood, Avram. And right now, it looks like you blew it.”

  It made him nauseous to think about it. Not “blowing” Hollywood, but the idea his book—his life, he now realized —would be handled by that monster. Cohen had been to Hollywood once before, right after his unhappy retirement.

  It was supposed to be a reunion, with Herman Broder, the man who had saved his life, the man who taught him to take lives, the friend who tried to liberate Cohen but instead burdened him with wealth. The trip had turned into a nightmare about his past.

  So, the crisis over the missed author’s trip didn’t go away, even if Cohen tried to pretend that it did. Nonetheless, he did give in to the pressures. Which is why, a month later, he was in a burgundy Mercedes heading to downtown Frankfurt, to attend the world’s largest book fair. “If at least you gave that People interviewer what she wanted … ” Tina was saying as the car sent by his German publisher, Koethe, rolled out of the Frankfurt airport, heading to the city.

  She had met Lassman and Cohen at the airport, to take them directly to the Koethe pavilion at the fair. “But you obviously didn’t give her what she wanted, because she never ran the story.” The People writer wanted Cohen to talk about Broder and the money. “Believe me,” Tina added, “a story in People would have been far more important than the New York Times review.” Cohen didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when he read the review, which called his book “a revelation.” Just a year earlier, the Jerusalem novelist who wrote the review had not offered to help with “adding some color.”

  “So, please, be friendly and cooperative when we meet Carey and Herb,” Tina said as the driver sped past mist-covered green woods between the airport and the rainy city.

  Cohen was in the front seat beside the driver, Tina and Lassman in the back. He blinked at the forest, hardly listening to her. The green was a color he had forgotten since childhood. “Avram,” Lassman piped up from the backseat.

  “Herb is Herbert Wang, Carey’s boss. President of TMC.”

  From the start, he was confused by the various names of the editors and agents and publishing houses, because he only worked visa-vis Carey and Tina, with Lassman’s help.

  The American version of the book would be the final version from which all other editions would be made in translation.

  But he was able to remember the name of his German publisher, Koethe. It was a name he knew from childhood.

  Indeed, if there was a reason why his writing a book was so important to him it was precisely for the same reason he knew the name Koethe.

  Cohen’s grandfather was a publisher, and so was his father. None of the vengeance, none of the work he did in the fifties, nothing he had ever done about his survival of the Holocaust meant as much to him as the fact that despite everything, he was able to continue the family tradition, by dedicating the book to the memory of the family he lost to the Nazis.

  He remembered the name Koethe because it was often mentioned by his grandfather and father when they sat together at home talking business after dinner; Cohen, the boy, the heir, at their knees playing with his toys, but nonetheless hearing everything they talked about. The memory had come back to Cohen the moment Tina reported that Koethe had signed on for a hundred thousand marks.

  For his grandfather, Koethe was the house to match. For his father, Cohen remembered, Koethe was the house to beat. But, by Kristallnacht, Koethe had stopped publishing Jewish authors, and a few weeks later, Cohen’s family press was closed.

  Writing a book h
ad served many purposes in Cohen’s life. Cathartic as an emotional release, it was an achievement he never expected of himself. But most of all, his book was his best revenge of all, and in the end, that formed the rationalization for his trip to Frankfurt. It was, after all, Koethe’s invitation.

  3.

  “Look, Avram,” Lassman said excitedly when the driver from Cohen’s German publisher, Koethe, pulled into a VIP parking spot inside the fairgrounds. “There you are.” Twice as tall as a man, a poster displayed Cohen’s book cover in a billboard advertisement—Koethe was simply calling it Jerusalem Policeman—hung high over the plaza, one of six Koethe advertisements for their authors that year.

  Cohen glanced up at the poster, raising an eyebrow at his own image staring out at the German city. A light rain made the plastic frame glitter, making the monochrome portrait more colorful than it really was. He turned down Lassman’s request for a picture, Tina shook her head at him, and the driver led the way to Koethe’s pavilion.

  Mr. Smitbauer, president of Koethe, greeted Cohen warmly. But the publisher was clearly distracted and nervous.

  The chancellor’s presence on the floor amidst all the pavilions was signaled by the bright lights of the TV cameras following him on the traditional opening day tour of the most prestigious of Germany’s trade fairs, in the city famed for being Europe’s longest-running market. Smitbauer was waiting for the chancellor to come by the Koethe pavilion. Lassman went straight for the mini-bar with sharp beer on tap that provided refreshment for the Koethe staff and guests, then immediately began flirting with one of the pretty assistants helping out at the pavilion. “The third-largest in the German hall,” Smitbauer proudly told the chancellor, who arrived barely five minutes after Cohen and Lassman.

  Not wanting to meet the politician—and wanting to get as far away as he could from another wall-high poster of the cover of his book, his face alone almost as tall as he was— Cohen tried to find an unobtrusive space from which to watch.

  He found himself up against a display case of his books, and realized too late his position put him in the background of most of the photographs that would show the Koethe president with the German politician. While the politician and publisher—apparently old friends—chatted in front of the cameras, Cohen stupidly faced a hundred copies of the German edition of his book, beside a woman in her forties, cigarette dangling from her lower lip, her honey blonde hair already half white.

  “Shalom,” she said to Cohen.

  “Shalom,” said Cohen, slightly surprised.

  “That’s all the Hebrew I know,” the woman said in badly accented English, taking the cigarette out of her mouth and dumping it in her empty beer glass.

  Cohen, as he had vowed to himself so many years before, chose to answer in English. “That’s all right.”

  “My English is bad. Very bad.”

  “That’s all right, you can speak German. I understand the language. I just don’t speak it.” “I know,” said the woman. “I brought your book to Smitbauer. I am the editor. Kristina. Kristina Scheller.” She offered her hand.

  Embarrassed that he didn’t even know her name, Cohen shook her hand warmly, smiling a half grin and explaining that he had only worked on the American edition, and was surprised when Tina said the book sold in Germany. He made the decision not to interfere with the Koethe edition, not even reading the translation until it was in galleys, and even then, just skimming through it, not enjoying the German, but not finding anything to complain about. “The translator did a good job,” Cohen admitted.

  “I wish you had written it in German,” said the woman.

  Cohen said nothing to her.

  “I understand,” she said. “I think it’s why I decided to publish the book.” She smiled and they stood in silence for a minute. “You don’t want to meet the chancellor?” she asked.

  Cohen shook his head.

  From a pocket in her skirt, she pulled out a packet of cigarettes, offering him one. He shook his head, but took out one of his own cheap Noblesses from his shirt pocket packet. He was rationing them to himself, and was calculating how many he had left until the evening when she interrupted him. “Well, it looks like you might have to.”

  “What?”

  “Meet the chancellor. They’re coming this way.”

  And so, despite his efforts to keep a low profile, the shot of the smiling chancellor shaking hands with a dour-looking Cohen was taken by at least a dozen cameras both still and video.

  “So you are the one who says Israel sent us criminals in the seventies,” the chancellor said softly enough for only Cohen, and Smitbauer, who was looking on proudly, to hear.

  “Witnesses,” Cohen corrected the politician. “Informants.”

  “Well, you did good work against the fascists,” the chancellor said.

  “Nazis,” Cohen corrected him.

  Smitbauer’s smile was fading rapidly.

  “Yes, yes,” the politician said, still holding Cohen’s hand, not hearing.

  His voice suddenly rose, and speaking for the microphones pointing at them, he said, “I will be visiting your country next month. Your city, Jerusalem, is a favorite of mine.” “Good luck,” said Cohen. On his forearm, between his wrist and his elbow, he felt the itch of the eczema above the tattooed number the Nazis had given him when he was fourteen.

  Finally, the chancellor dropped his hand, and Cohen fought the impulse to scratch until the big man was gone, and the TV camera crews and still photographers, the aides and the hangers-on and the handlers from the fair and the politician’s office had all moved away.

  For the next six hours, Cohen stayed at Koethe’s pavilion, as journalists came by every half hour to interview him. Lassman disappeared from the scene when he sadly realized that none of the journalists were interested in him.

  Cohen, surrounded by people, felt alone. He answered the questions succinctly but politely, except when he realized the journalist had not read his book. In those cases, he scolded them and found an ally in Kristina Scheller. She had a beer for every two sips of cognac Cohen pulled from his flask.

  By seven, he was exhausted, with a thick headache. But at eight-thirty, he was due at a banquet thrown by Koethe in honor of their authors that year. He wanted a shower and a nap.

  Lassman had disappeared hours before. “He said he was going to find the Israeli pavilion,” one of the assistants told Cohen.

  “If he looks for me, tell him I went to the hotel,” Cohen said.

  “Do you know where to find it?” Kristina asked, coming up behind him.

  “The driver pointed it out to us as we went by. It’s almost directly across the street, no?”

  “We have a little bus to take us all at seven-thirty,” she promised Cohen.

  “I don’t mind walking.”

  “It’s raining out.”

  “It hasn’t rained in Israel since March. I miss it. Maybe it will help clear my headache.”

  “I have some pills,” she offered.

  “Mine are at the hotel,” he said. It was a lie. He had already eaten three aspirins laced with a touch of codeine, sold over the counter in Israel, and had the rest of the packet in his pocket. But he still had a headache. “I haven’t had any real exercise all day.” At home he tried to walk at least a kilometer a day.

  “You want to be alone,” Kristina decided. He nodded.

  “Well, you’d better take my umbrella,” she suggested, going to the little closet behind the reception desk of the pavilion.

  On her face as she handed it over was a look of disappointment.

  “I’ll take the van back to the hotel,” she said.

  As he expected, the walk in the rain pleased him, making his headache go away. From outside, the hotel was aglow.

  Through broad windows that showed off almost the entire first floor, Cohen could see a lobby that seemed to have been taken over by a cocktail party. He again experienced the nervous numbness he had felt earlier that day when he signed wha
t seemed to him the hundredth copy of his book for yet another stranger who had looked at Cohen with an indefinable longing that the old investigator couldn’t interpret.

  “What do they want?” Cohen had asked Kristina at the fair, and she had said, “You are now a celebrity, yes?”

  making him blurt out, “No, no thank you.”

  The doorman shook his head at the white-haired man coming out of the dark park, cutting across traffic where no traffic lights gave pedestrians permission to cross, his trouser shins wet, his shoes soaking. Cohen ignored the uniformed doorman’s looks. At the entrance to the hotel, up six red-carpeted stairs beneath a canopy, he had to tell the concierge that he was a guest at the hotel.

  At reception there was a wait of five minutes before he could catch the attention of a clerk behind the counter.

  He identified himself. Once the clerk behind the desk realized it was Mr. Cohen from Koethe’s reservations, things moved quickly. He sent a bellboy to get Cohen’s suitcase, which the driver delivered earlier.

  “Has Mr. Lassman checked in yet?” Cohen asked. It took the clerk a couple of minutes to find Lassman’s name on the reservation list. He had a room on the floor below Cohen.

  “Yes, he has been in since four o’clock,” said the receptionist.

  “And Miss. Andrews? Tina Andrews?” “Oh, no, not yet,” said the clerk, not even having to look to see if Tina’s key was in her mailbox, let alone look up the agent’s name. “She will be here at seven forty-five.

  Can I take a message for her?” “No, nothing,” said Cohen. What he was thinking of saying would best be said face-to-face. “Please have me woken in an hour,” he requested. That would leave him half an hour to get ready for the Koethe banquet.

  “No problem,” the receptionist promised.

  The bellboy led him, skirting the crowded lobby, which indeed felt more like a party than a waiting room, to the elevator doors. On the sixth floor, he confused the bellboy by tipping the young man as soon as the suitcase was on the luggage rack at the end of the bed, refusing a tour of the room.