Lineup (9 page)
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first he thought it was just fear messing with his head. But as the minutes ticked by, Ziv realized he wasn’t being paranoid. The thug with the beefy arms covered in tattoos who’d been thrown into the cell two hours ago hadn’t taken his eyes off him for a second. He did his best to ignore him, to make himself invisible, but every time he raised his eyes for an instant, he saw him staring at him threateningly.
He wondered if it was like in the movies, where the sex offenders are the lowest of the low on the prison totem pole and regularly get gang-raped. He was strong enough to take care of himself. He’d kept himself fit. But right now he didn’t have much physical strength to call on. It’d been drained out of him by all the pressure and sleepless nights.
He made an effort not to think about the man glaring at him and concentrate instead on his conversation with the lawyer that morning. Rosen wasn’t very optimistic, to put it mildly. He said a trial was like a game, and at the moment the scoreboard read 2–0 in favor of the cops. They had his confession (Ziv had decided not to tell Rosen that it was just a misunderstanding), and they had the victim picking him out of a lineup. The only way he was going to get out of this was if he could change the score to 3–2. If he had an alibi for the time of the rape, for instance, that would be a game changer. But what alibi could he give? Since the divorce, he’d hardly ever left the house, certainly not at night, unless Faro called him, and there was no way he was going to tell them that.
The other option was to prove that the girl was mistaken. But Rosen was skeptical of their chances. He’d been present at the lineup and seen that everything was done by the book.
Bottom line, Rosen thought his best bet was a plea bargain. The prosecution was swamped with cases. They’d probably be willing to be generous if he saved them the headache of a trial. And a few years less in prison was nothing to sneeze at.
Rosen rubbed him the wrong way. All he talked about were the problems they had, but he never offered a single worthwhile solution. Ziv knew Rosen was bothered by the difficulties they were facing, but that didn’t mean he had to throw in the towel, did it? Ziv wasn’t ready to give up. Assaf Rosen might be a good lawyer, but he didn’t believe him, and that was the real problem. How could he win if his own lawyer didn’t believe him? If he was convinced he was guilty? What kind of chance did he have?
Tattoo stood up and walked over to him. He was a head taller than Nevo, maybe more. Ziv tensed and moved back, trying to keep some distance between them.
“You got a smoke?” Tattoo asked. Despite the reek of piss and shit from the primitive toilet, which was making Ziv sick to his stomach, he could still smell the sweaty stench of the man who sat down next to him.
He shook his head and moved back even farther, until his back was flat against the wall. The man didn’t budge, just sat there training his eyes on one of their other cell mates who was sitting on the bunk opposite them. A guy in his fifties, he looked like a seasoned junkie. Within a second or two, he got up and moved away. Ziv wished he could do the same.
Tattoo turned to him and held out his hand. “Meir.” Ziv reached out his hand. He knew something bad was about to go down.
Meir grabbed his hand and squeezed it painfully. “You’re Nevo, right?”
He wanted to ask how he knew his name, but he decided the less he said, the better. He just nodded.
“What’re you in for? What’d they charge you with?” Meir asked. Something in his tone made it clear to Ziv that his companion already knew the answer.
“They say I raped a girl,” he said quickly.
“And what do you say?”
“I didn’t do it . . . she got it wrong . . . she’s confusing me with someone else,” he stuttered.
Meir laughed. “That’s what they all say, right?”
They sat side by side in uncomfortable silence. If he could, he’d get up and move to a different bunk, but he knew he had to stay there, that their conversation wouldn’t be over until Meir said it was. He looked down at the floor, avoiding Meir’s eyes.
“What does your lawyer say? You got a lawyer, don’t you?” Meir said, breaking the silence.
Ziv nodded, ignoring the question. Meir didn’t take his eyes from him. He was waiting for an answer.
“Who understands lawyers, right? They say one thing, then something different.” Ziv tried hard to put a smile on his face.
“I hear they got the goods on you, that you’re screwed.”
“Where’d you hear that?” Ziv asked, unable to restrain himself.
Tattoo didn’t answer. Who was this guy, anyway? How did he know these things? What did he want? The questions were racing through Ziv’s mind.
“You ask me, you oughta confess. It’s best for everyone. Get it?” Meir said after another minute of tense silence.
Ziv was about to ask who “everyone” was, but he stopped himself in time. Meir kept his eyes fixed on him as if he were waiting for him to agree. What the hell does he want from me? Nevo wondered.
Then he realized what was going on. Tattoo was working with the cops! Just like Rosen warned him. He was probably an undercover cop himself. The realization filled Ziv with confidence. He had nothing to fear from him. Meir was nothing, just hot air. He stood up.
“We’re not done here,” Meir snarled.
“I am,” Ziv declared.
It happened very quickly. He’d barely taken a step when Meir seized him from behind and threw him onto the bunk on the opposite wall. He lay on top of him, squashing Ziv under his enormous weight and squeezing his throat so he couldn’t breathe. Ziv gasped for breath, trying to push his attacker off, but he was too strong and just tightened his grip.
“We’re done when I say we’re done. Get it?” he said, putting even more pressure on Ziv’s neck.
He nodded in submission, but Meir didn’t loosen his grip. His head was spinning and he felt himself losing consciousness. He nodded weakly again in case Meir hadn’t seen it the first time, but the man didn’t let up. He tried kicking at him, but it didn’t make the slightest impression. He’s going to kill me, right here and now, Ziv thought.
All of a sudden, Meir released his hold. Ziv sat up, coughing. His throat was on fire, his ribs ached, and his head was pounding.
The other prisoners were lying on their bunks, keeping their distance, pretending to be blind.
Meir gave him a cruel smile. “I’ve got a message for you from Shimon.”
Ziv froze.
Meir put his face next to his. The foul stench from his mouth was sickening. “People are talking. They say they nabbed you because of the father. He saw you on his daughter’s street that night,” he whispered in Ziv’s ear.
“I didn’t tell a soul what I was doing there!” he whispered back in terror. “Tell Shimon he’s got nothing to worry about . . . He can count on me.” Ziv did his best to sound confident.
“Not good enough,” Meir snarled. “He wants you to confess.”
“What?” He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“Confess to the rape,” Meir said drily.
“B-but . . . I swear I won’t say anything . . . I didn’t say anything till now . . . not the rape . . . I didn’t do it . . .”
“Tomorrow you tell your lawyer you wanna confess. Tell him to cut a deal. Get it?” Meir said, ignoring Ziv’s pleas.
“You can’t ask me to do that!” he said, nearly shouting.
“Save your breath. It’s a done deal.” Meir started to get up.
“Wait!”
Meir turned around, his face expressionless.
“What happens if . . . I mean if I decide not . . . ,” Ziv stammered, unable to complete the sentence, to say the words out loud, to entertain the possibility.
Meir gave him another smile. “Then Gili’ll have to pay the price,” he whispered.
A tremor went through Ziv’s body at the sound of his son’s name. Meir looked him in the eye.
“We understand each other?”
How did he get himself into this? And what was he supposed to do now?
“We understand each other?” Meir repeated.
Ziv nodded.
“One more thing,” Meir said, getting up and dusting off his pants, “after you confess, you don’t meet with anyone and you don’t talk to anyone. Even if someone shows up and says Shimon sent him, even if it’s a lawyer. They’re lying. You don’t talk to anyone at all, get it? You confess and then you keep your mouth shut.”
GALIT
Lavie was sitting in her office, wondering if the day could get any worse. It had started with a hearing in the Tel Aviv District Court at nine o’clock in the morning. A man was accused of stabbing his wife to death with a kitchen knife. The judge tried to pressure her to agree to a plea bargain and avoid a trial. “Without prejudice to either party, I would suggest you reduce the charge to manslaughter,” Judge Brill instructed. When she refused, he started threatening her with the possibility of an acquittal, talking about how the case wasn’t airtight, how some of the evidence was problematic.
When Galit was just starting out, she might have given in to that kind of pressure from the bench. But nowadays she was more immune to it. She understood that judges had a vested interest in plea bargains because they lightened their heavy caseload. So she countered the barrage from the bench by stating respectfully that the prosecution believed the evidence justified the charge of homicide.
By the time she finally got back to the office at eleven thirty, she felt like she’d been run over by a steamroller. She considered going out for coffee before attacking the pile of work waiting on her desk, but then Nachum showed up. She’d almost forgotten about his call yesterday when he asked to meet with her urgently.
She listened in silence while he told her about the phony lineup and the false report he’d filed with the court at the remand hearing. When he got to the part about the pressure he’d applied on the suspect during the interrogation and how he’d tried to get him to confess even after he’d asked for a lawyer, her head started throbbing. By the time he got to Adi’s visit to his office, she was suicidal.
Galit was furious. She was used to the cops’ screwups, but she expected more from Nachum, much more. He knew the rules and what it meant to flout them. What was he thinking? How could an old warhorse like him make those kinds of mistakes? She wanted to reprimand him, but she kept silent. She’d worked with Nachum on other cases and had learned to respect him. And he looked so morose, so upset and depressed by the whole story, that she knew anything she said would be superfluous. She also knew that whatever happened, his actions would have personal consequences for him, that there were plenty of people on the force who would be happy to use this against him. And she knew he knew it too.
Now it was up to her to decide what to do with the information, how to go forward with the case. This morning they had informed the court of the intent to press charges against Nevo and requested that he be held in remand until formal charges were filed. That gave her five days. If they didn’t issue an indictment by then, they’d have to let him go. Of course, she couldn’t do anything without the consent of the DA, Rachel Zuriel. Galit was a disciplined soldier, not the sort to provoke her superiors or overstep her authority. And the years she’d worked with Rachel had taught her it would be best to go to her with a firm recommendation on how to proceed based on careful consideration of all the facts.
Days like this made her nostalgic for the early years of her career, when everything seemed so straightforward. She’d imagined that by dissecting every case with the precision of a surgeon, all the answers she was seeking would be spread out before her with utter clarity. She’d been at it for ten years now, and during that time she’d seen a lot. She’d matured enough to realize that nothing was all black or all white. There were many shades of gray in her job, just like there were in life.
She looked around her office. A tiny cubicle overflowing with files, it looked more like a storeroom than a respectable office. She had college friends who had gone to work for large law firms and had already made partner, earning five times her salary. Still, she wasn’t sorry she’d stayed in the DA’s Office. She loved her work. It gave her a sense of mission, the feeling that what she was doing was important. She had her parents to thank for that. They’d brought her up to believe there were things in life that mattered more than money. She got up and looked out the window at the gray city. She’d waited a long time for an office with a window.
Galit looked back at the file on her desk. In legal terms, there was only one conclusion she could reach: they had no hard evidence. The confession Nachum had gotten from Nevo wasn’t worth much, and as for the lineup, the less said, the better. If Assaf Rosen knew even half the truth, Nevo would be a free man by now.
Strictly speaking, she ought to pick up the phone and tell Rosen they wouldn’t be filing charges. But things were never that simple. The last thing Nachum had said before leaving was that he was convinced Nevo was guilty. Despite all the screwups and the legal ramifications, he knew they had the right guy. Was she supposed to ignore that?
Any beginning law student would say yes without a moment’s hesitation. She was obligated to ignore the cop’s gut feeling and act only on objective evidence. But she’d been doing this long enough to know that evidence wasn’t everything, that sometimes it distorted the truth, misrepresented the facts, or clouded the issue. And sometimes, it was simply incomplete.
Nevo had linked himself to Adi Regev, had said he’d picked her at random, and had even expressed remorse. And he matched the description Adi had given not long after she was attacked. Galit agreed with Nachum that she’d withdrawn her identification not because she thought she’d fingered the wrong man, but because she was confused, frightened, and upset by being kept in the dark.
What was she going to do? Turn a blind eye to all their suspicions? Let a man who was most likely a rapist go free just because the cops botched the interrogation? And what if he did it again? How would she feel then? What would all the rules and regulations matter if she opened a new file and found photographs of another girl who’d been raped by Nevo?
She herself lived only a few houses down from Adi. The first time she saw her picture, she thought she looked vaguely familiar, like someone she might have seen around the neighborhood. She had a clear memory of the patrol car closing off the street, of the frightened whispers exchanged among the neighbors. The news had spread like wildfire: a woman had been brutally raped on their street, in the front yard of her own home; the villain had escaped.
Ever since, she pinned her hair up in a severe bun before she left the office, made sure not to get home too late, not to walk down unlit streets, to have her pepper spray within easy reach. It’d been a great relief to hear they’d nabbed the guy.
She opened the file and leafed through the documents. Nachum believed the case was still salvageable. He suggested she talk to Adi and try to bring her around. She hadn’t been involved in the investigation up to now and she wasn’t a cop, so maybe she could succeed where he had failed.
She didn’t know if he was right or not. What she did know was that he’d put a time bomb on her desk and asked her to disarm it. It was her choice. It was up to her to decide what to do now, how to proceed. But what kind of choice was it? All she had were bad options, and there’d be a heavy price to pay for whichever one she chose.
