Lineup (22 page)
GILADI
was sitting in a coffee shop near the hospital gazing at the egg sandwich in front of him. He felt hungry when he ordered it, but he couldn’t eat. His conversation with Nachum had thrown him for a loop.
He’d never dreamed that was why Nachum wanted to talk to him. He’d almost ignored his call. The old cop couldn’t have anything worthwhile to tell him after he’d been so unceremoniously kicked off the case. He thanked his lucky stars that he’d finally decided to go see him.
He stuck his hand in his pocket to confirm that the recorder was still there. He’d been afraid Nachum would check to be sure he wasn’t being taped, but he hadn’t even asked. In his eagerness to share what he’d found out, to rope someone else into his investigation, to find a partner who’d agree to work with him, he hadn’t taken the most basic precautions.
Nachum’s proposition was tempting. Under other circumstances, Amit would grab it with both hands. But he’d learned his lesson from “Deep Throat.” If he’d run with the story right away and hadn’t insisted on proof, it would’ve been his byline on the scoop, not Amir Hasner’s.
He had no intention of playing cops and robbers with Nachum. He didn’t have the time to play detective. He had to strike while the iron was hot. Nachum had given him enough for a big story: former detective accuses police of ignoring leads, framing an innocent man, proceeding on mistaken assumptions while the true rapist was still at large, endangering the public. It was a shame he couldn’t get him to reveal who worked him over.
In a way, he felt sorry for Nachum. There was no doubt in Giladi’s mind that he genuinely wanted to catch the criminal, and believed he could do it too. He wasn’t entirely comfortable with what he was about to do. But like Dori said, that’s life and that’s the job. And he’d promised himself he’d keep his feelings out of it from now on.
Having made his decision, his appetite returned. He wolfed down the sandwich and leaned back in his chair. There was a pile of newspapers on the table in front of him. The headlines were filled with the prime minister’s official visit to the United States, the drought, Shimon Faro’s arrest. The north Tel Aviv rapist was old news.
Never mind, he thought. He’d be back in the headlines very soon. On Thursday the national press would carry an ad about his scoop, and on Friday it would be on the front page of his paper.
He pulled out his cell phone and punched in the number.
Dori would be over the moon. He might even start treating him better, appreciating him more. And maybe that didn’t matter, because after the story appeared, the national papers would be calling him and he could say good-bye to the local rag.
“What’s up, Giladi?” Dori barked as usual.
And then it came to him. He didn’t just have a story, he had a name too: The Ring Rapist.
SUPERINTENDENT
Navon thought he was about to have a heart attack. He’d just gotten off the phone with the district spokesperson. He’d been asked to comment on Eli Nachum’s accusations regarding the investigation of the rapes in north Tel Aviv. The story would be in the paper tomorrow.
He leaned forward and buried his face in his hands. The bombshell had landed on him just after he got back from a very pleasant lunch. Now he could feel it stuck in his gullet like an elephant. Tomorrow he would be the laughingstock of the entire country and, even worse, the entire police force.
Navon got up and paced his office restlessly. He remembered what his late father always used to say: “Those who ravaged and ruined you shall leave you.” He once heard someone explain that the biblical phrase was originally meant to be comforting and had been turned on its head in popular usage, but what difference did that make?
How could Nachum do this to him?
He considered ordering his arrest. Nothing was stopping him. By talking to the reporter, Nachum had given him legal grounds to charge him with obstruction of justice. But despite his rage, he backed down from the idea. The conflagration that would erupt tomorrow would be hot enough without adding fuel to the fire and turning Nachum into a martyr. He could already see the headlines: “Police Arrest Honest Cop Who Blew the Whistle on Their Incompetence.” Even if his arrest was thoroughly justified, it would be the stupidest thing he could do at this stage.
Never mind. Nachum would get what he deserved. The interview he gave spelled the end of his career on the force. With the rape investigation going nowhere, Navon had been weighing the possibility of bringing him back in to take over the case again. There was no way that was going to happen now. After what he’d done, Nachum would pay in blood for every drop of sweat that fell from Navon’s brow. He could kiss the job good-bye. They wouldn’t even take him back in logistics, the hole he’d crawled out of, not even if he saved a whole planeload of passengers.
Navon went back to his desk and sat down. He picked up the phone and told his assistant to get him Ohad Barel, ASAP.
Why didn’t he see it coming? He knew Nachum resented his suspension. He should have expected him to try to get revenge. And it wasn’t unusual for losers who got canned to air their dirty laundry in the press. When Navon was new on the job, he accepted the fact that he was nothing more than a peon. But the higher he climbed on the ladder, the more he realized that nothing had changed. Here he was, a superintendent, and he was still just a pawn in the game the chief was playing by arresting Faro. He was a pawn in Nachum’s game too.
The phone rang. “Ohad’s on the line,” his assistant said.
The only way to extinguish the blaze that would burst out tomorrow when the paper hit the stands was to catch Ziv Nevo. The fact that his prime suspect had fled and they hadn’t managed to track him down was an embarrassment.
Besides, when it came down to it, he didn’t understand what Nachum was going on about in the interview. The claim that Nevo didn’t fit the psychological profile of a rapist sounded like bullshit to him. The guy confessed to the first rape, and two days after he was released he did it again. The two attacks were almost identical. Add to that the fact that he’d run. There was no doubt the creep had something to hide. As soon as they caught him, Navon would roll up his sleeves and show the numbskulls how to conduct an interrogation. He gave Nevo two hours at most before he confessed to the second rape too. Then he’d shove it up Nachum’s ass.
“You wanted to talk to me?” Ohad asked.
“You’ve got twenty-four hours to bring Nevo in,” Navon said, not wasting words. “I don’t care how you do it, I want to see him here!”
AMIT
was in no hurry to get out of bed. He tossed from side to side staring idly at the ceiling. He had no reason to get up. He’d called Dori excitedly and given him the details of the amazing scoop he’d gotten from Nachum, but the editor had thrown cold water on his plans. Unbelievably, he preferred Nachum’s suggestion, that he collaborate in his private investigation.
“You wanted to be an investigative reporter, didn’t you?” he said mockingly.
Amit did his best to convince him they had to run the story now, that it couldn’t wait, but Dori was adamant. He claimed it was better to hold on to what they already knew and use it to get an even bigger story: revealing the identity of the true rapist and showing up the cops.
“Think big, Giladi, and you’ll be big,” he’d pronounced condescendingly.
Amit had crawled back to the hospital with his tail between his legs to get detective lessons from Nachum. The instructions he was given just blackened his mood even more. He had to question the employees of the coffee shop about a tall, thin man who frequented the place, usually alone, but sometimes with a girl, a different one each time. “It’s hard to imagine it’s one of the servers or kitchen workers, but you have to check them out too,” Nachum said.
“Why should they tell me anything?” Amit asked.
“Why do people talk to you when you’re covering a story?” Nachum threw the question back at him, making it clear he had no intention of going easy on him, especially not now when he had his editor’s blessing for their partnership. Great. Now he had two bosses, one worse than the other.
He’d spent yesterday in the busy coffee shop, examining every man who came in, ingratiating himself with the servers so when the time came and he asked them about a “tall, thin man,” they wouldn’t give him a strange look and walk away. After several useless hours, he’d decided to go home. He’d had enough. There was just so far you could push him. Tomorrow he’d try to draw out Tamar. She’d been especially friendly, and he’d left her a tip that was almost double the check.
For a minute he thought Nachum had him under surveillance. As soon as he got on his bike, the detective called for a report. “Zilch, nada, that’s what I got,” he said, irritated. Nachum ignored his tone and gave him more instructions. Talk to people at the neighborhood convenience stores, hair salons, gyms, parks. The cops knew about Adi Regev and Dana Aronov, but there might be more victims. Lots of rapes were never reported. The women were too scared or ashamed, or they didn’t want to go through the painful process that followed on an official complaint. But sometimes they told their girlfriends or their family, or called a rape crisis center. Moreover, the guy they were looking for was violent and used a knife. Amit might be able to identify other victims by the scars or bruises on their body. They could tell the story, even if the women themselves had kept it secret.
“Why didn’t you do all that when you were still on the case?” Amit asked petulantly.
“I made a lot of mistakes. Now I have to fix them.”
Amit debated calling Dori to complain that Nachum was running him ragged, but he thought better of it. Dori would only insult him again and call him a spoiled brat. He’d follow Nachum’s directions for a few days, until the editor saw for himself that they weren’t getting anywhere and he was neglecting other stories, and then Dori would draw his own conclusions.
“Nothing. Wasted day. Coffee shop receipts for 127 shekels. Will try again tomorrow,” he texted Dori.
“Nachum can pay for your fucking coffee, asshole,” Dori texted back an instant later.
Finally, when he was sick of lying in bed, he got up and left the house for another day of “work,” courtesy of Dori and Nachum. The moment he entered the coffee shop, he sensed that something was wrong. It had been crowded yesterday, but today it was nearly empty. What’s more, the few customers who were there were all male. Even the waitresses were gone. He looked around for Tamar. She’d said she’d be here this morning, but he didn’t see her.
He took a stool at the counter and ordered a cappuccino.
“What’s going on?” he asked the barista who’d been racing to keep up with the orders yesterday and was now bent over a newspaper.
The man looked at him as if he were an alien from outer space.
“Terror attack?” Amit asked, tentatively.
“Something like that.” The barista pushed the paper under his nose and pointed to a headline reading “Zodiac Rapist at Large.” The name in the byline was none other than Dori Engel.
He picked up on the first ring. No surprise there. The man had no scruples.
He wanted to go to the office and confront Dori in person, but he was too upset to drive. And he couldn’t wait. He had to talk to him right here and now, to scream, yell, curse, and let it all out, everything he’d wanted to say to him ever since he started working at this fucking paper.
“I expected to hear from you sooner. I guess you’ve been on vacation,” Dori said calmly.
“Don’t you have an ounce of integrity? How could you do this to me? It’s my story!” He was shouting so loud that passersby were stopping to look.
“Calm down. I did it for you,” Dori said in the same mild voice that was making him even more furious.
“For me? What do you mean for me? You stole my story! My name should be on it, not yours.”
Dori laughed. Amit imagined he could see his thin lips stretching into a satisfied smile.
“What’s so funny?” He was so mad he could hardly talk. “I want you to know I’m not going to keep quiet about this. I’ll go to the ethics committee, I’ll sue you, I’ll go to the cops—whatever it takes.”
“Pardon me,” Dori broke in, “but isn’t it your name on the interview with the Aronovs? Who wrote that one, Giladi? You or me?”
“You’re kidding me, right? That was your call! I didn’t want anything to do with that sentimental garbage.”
“Okay, Giladi, calm down. Come in and I’ll explain why I did it. Then you’ll . . .”
“No way. I quit. And I don’t plan to look the other way.” The words spilled out of his mouth before he even had time to think about what he was saying.
“Just give me five minutes. Then you can go tell whoever you want. It’s not like anyone’ll believe you anyway.”
“Five minutes,” Amit spat. He was so enraged he just wanted to go on shrieking at him, but Dori’s words had made an impact. Who would believe that Dori had stolen his story? His editor was an old-timer with a solid reputation. And who was
he
? A nobody.
“You listening, baby boy?” Dori said, interrupting his thoughts. “Good,” he went on when he got no answer. “I gotta admit, it took me a while to decide what to do with the story. Like I said—and I meant it—I want you to work with Nachum and get the real scoop. There’s nothing I want more than to have our paper reveal the rapist’s identity. But the interview deserved to be printed. The two things just didn’t go together. One of them had to go. I was gonna call you and tell you I was running the story, and then I figured out a way we could have our cake and eat it too. If your name was on the story, Nachum wouldn’t want anything to do with you. He wouldn’t even piss in your direction. But with my name on it, you can go and cry to him that your editor fucked you over, stabbed you in the back, whatever you want. You can say you want to go on working with him. You can milk it even more and tell him you quit. Get it, Giladi? Two birds with one stone. We run the story and you go on looking for the pervert.”
Amit was struck dumb by Dori’s explanation. He’d never have the gall to concoct such a scheme.
“Think about it,” Dori went on. “What choice did I have? You know very well I’m not the type of motherfucker to steal a story from one of my reporters. Just the opposite. But I have responsibilities as the editor. I have to see the big picture. I want you here, Amit.” It was the first time Giladi had ever heard him call him by his first name. “And I want you on this story. You work with Nachum and you’ll find the guy. I’d bet my bottom dollar on it. This is a big one, and it’s gonna be all yours.”
“How do I know you’re not going to screw me over again?” Amit asked, but he could feel his resistance wavering.
“Come into the office and I’ll put it in writing. You know what? I’ll even sign a statement saying you did the interview with Nachum, not me. How’s that?”
Amit didn’t answer. He hated to admit it, but there was a certain logic in what Dori was saying.
“Why didn’t you tell me? Why did I have to read it in the paper?” His temper was rising again.
“I’m trying to educate you, kid. You gotta learn how the world works.”
Amit kept silent. That was Dori’s stock excuse for all the grief he gave his employees.
“Now stop crying like a fucking baby and get to work.” The old Dori was back. “And remember, this is the last time you take a morning off,” he said, disconnecting.
