Pillars of Solomon - [Kamal & Barnea 02] Page 3

  “Did you see anyone inside?”

  “I saw it only from behind. If there was someone in the cab . . .” Hanna Fatuk finished with a shrug.

  “Anything else, Umm Fatuk?”

  “I only glanced at it. The van was halfway down the block. I was watching my daughter.” Tears welled up in the woman’s eyes again. “She looked back at me. She waved. I saw her smile. Then I went back inside.”

  Hanna Fatuk had broken down at that point and Ben had left her in the collective embrace of her brother and husband. He took the picture of Leila Fatuk at the kitchen table with him, figuring the van at least gave him a place to start, something to question residents about in addition to the missing girl.

  He realized from the start that he would have to manage the entire effort on his own. Recent unrest in the larger cities of Nablus and Ramallah had led to the reassignment of Palestinian police officers out of more “quiet” zones like the district of Jericho. As a result, the detective squad remained skeletal. And the uniformed officers spent much of their time hovering protectively around the tour groups, composed mostly of professional and would-be archaeologists who came to Jericho to join a dig. Or stopped on their way to the larger digs ongoing in Petra just over the Jordanian border.

  Beyond that, several ranking officials of the Palestinian Council, along with a number of Yasir Arafat’s cabinet ministers, had chosen to buy or build lavish villas in Jericho as opposed to the Gaza waterfront. This had been good for the economy when construction was at its peak, but now, with many of the homes occupied, increased security precautions were required, which meant more patrols and manpower had to be expended when they could plainly be better used elsewhere. The police force administered by the Palestinian Authority had become thirty-five thousand strong, twice the number originally planned. Virtually all of these, though, were assigned to security and patrol units of the various, often competing branches, with only a few having been assigned to investigative duties.

  So the job of canvassing the neighborhood in search of any information pertaining to Leila Fatuk’s disappearance was left to him alone. Ben started by going door-to-door, finding no one who had noticed either Leila Fatuk or the white van. It could have been making a delivery, but no one on the street remembered receiving one in the time frame that Hanna Fatuk insisted she had seen it.

  It was no wonder. After he left the Fatuk home that morning, Ben stood at their door and imagined the van in the position where Hanna Fatuk recalled it. In the dark, set against buildings of only a slightly darker shade, the van would be virtually invisible.

  As for the neighbors, after dark many of the old stone homes would have the shutters closed over their windows. On a street like this people kept to themselves. For many of them the day began early and ended early. Still, it seemed strange that nobody had seen the girl. Ben counted eighteen homes between the Fatuk residence and the grocer, where he spoke with two groups of men playing backgammon at tables shaded by the facade. The men told him they had not been playing Monday night but others almost certainly had. Ben would come back tonight to speak to them and complete his canvass around the same time of night Leila Fatuk had disappeared.

  Even then, as it always was with an investigation, people would be reluctant to speak to him. Authority for so long had rested in Israeli hands that it remained difficult for Palestinians to trust anyone who announced himself with a knock on the door. Perhaps, too, the rumors of Israeli involvement in other such abductions would have potential witnesses fearful of the repercussions if they told what they had seen.

  But that hadn’t stopped the missing girl’s uncle, Nazir Jalabad, from mentioning the disappearance of other girls to Ben that morning. Besides the white van, that unsubstantiated assertion was the only clue he had. So late that afternoon Ben returned to the Fatuk home and knocked gently on the door. Hanna Fatuk answered, looking slightly hopeful as the stronger scent of the malfulf pushed past her.

  “Have you found out anything?”

  “Not yet, Umm Fatuk,” Ben said respectfully. “May I come in?”

  “Of course,” she said, stepping back so he could enter.

  “I would like to speak to your brother Nazir,” Ben said after she had closed the door behind him.

  Hanna Fatuk looked down, embarrassed. “I apologize for his behavior this morning.”

  “I would like to speak to him about his claims that other Palestinian girls have disappeared.”

  The woman looked back up. “He’s at work now.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “Just down the street.”

  “This street?”

  Hanna Fatuk pointed a finger out a nearby window. “Two blocks down.”

  “Where the white van was parked?”

  “I don’t know. Close, I guess. But he doesn’t remember it.” She back-pedaled a little. “Is that. . . important?”

  “No,” Ben lied. “Probably not.”

  * * * *

  CHAPTER 4

  B

  en was standingin the shadows outside Nazir Jalabad’s house, in the dusty confines of an untended garden, when Jalabad returned from dinner at his sister’s home at nine-thirty that evening. Ben waited until Nazir was almost to his door before stepping out from beneath the cover of an olive tree.

  “How was dinner at your sister’s, Nazir?”

  The big man swung awkwardly, startled. “You ...”

  “We should talk.”

  “I have nothing to say.”

  “I’m not surprised. Otherwise, you might have mentioned to me this morning that you were Hamas.”

  Nazir Jalabad’s eyes sharpened. He straightened up and glared down at Ben. “Who told you that?”

  “You just did.”

  Jalabad tried to relax. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Perhaps your sister Umm Fatuk will know.”

  Jalabad took a menacing step forward. “This has nothing to do with her.”

  Ben could smell biera kbiera, a strong Arabic beer, on his breath. “It does if you’re the reason her daughter disappeared, if she was abducted by an enemy of yours who was after revenge. Someone who was watching your house. Someone in a white van.”

  “The Israelis,” Jalabad snarled.

  “Back to that again, are we?”

  “They’ve been watching me.”

  “What about the uncles of the other Palestinian girls who disappeared? Were the Israelis watching them for the same reason they were watching you?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “Would you know how to come up with that list for me of the other victims?”

  Jalabad gritted his teeth. “I told you, that’s not my job.”

  Ben took a step closer to the big man, surprising Nazir Jalabad by drawing within range of his huge hands. “It is now.”

  * * * *

  A

  fter he had finished his business with Jalabad, Ben drove to the Palestinian Authority headquarters on the outskirts of Jericho. The building was a chiseled white stone structure that at four stories was the tallest in the area. A security guard patrolling the lobby let him in after he flashed his identification against the glass.

  Ben thanked the man and proceeded down a first-floor hall toward the sound of classical music emanating softly from one of the offices. He stopped in the doorway and found Colonel Nabril al-Asi, head of the Palestinian Protective Security Service, sitting in his leather desk chair, eyes closed and hands resting comfortably atop the armrests.

  “One of my favorites,” al-Asi said when the selection ended thirty seconds later.

  “Who was it?”

  “Bach.” Al-Asi turned his chair around to face Ben. As always he was wearing an elegantly tailored suit. “You are well, Inspector?”

  “As well as can be expected.”

  “Your phone bills indicate otherwise.”

  “Have you been spying on me, Colonel?”

  Al-Asi looked genuinely hurt. “Lookin
g out for you, Inspector. I couldn’t help but notice the number of calls you made to the United States over the past two months.”

  “This troubles you?”

  “More calls than you had made in the previous two years combined. That troubles me, yes.”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Unless you’re thinking about going back there.” Al-Asi leaned forward and straightened his tie. “I have few friends, Inspector. I can’t afford to lose one,” the colonel said, and held Ben’s stare.

  “I haven’t felt like I’ve done much good here lately, much of anything, that’s all.”

  “That’s enough, apparently.”

  “I haven’t made any arrangements, Colonel.”

  “I know. But you left the United States for a reason, Inspector. Do you really think anything there will be different for you?”

  “Maybe I’m ready to go back,” Ben said, not sounding very convincing. “Maybe I’ve done all I can here.”

  “Patience, Inspector. These are difficult times. The rules keep changing. But men like you and me, men who can change with them, will emerge better off eventually.”

  A strange way of putting it, Ben thought, since al-Asi was one of the people who wrote the rules. Under a less dignified leader, the Palestinian Protective Security Service would have been little more than a thuggish secret police. But al-Asi had molded his department in his own image, successfully leaving his true intentions and loyalties moot to the point where nobody really knew the true agenda he was pursuing. Al-Asi thrived precisely because no one fully understood him. He was known, more than anything else, for his elegant appearance and wardrobe of European designer suits. Few knew whether to call him a friend or an enemy, or whose ends he was actually serving.

  “You’re working late tonight,” Ben said.

  “Waiting for a conference call with the Israelis. Apparently they caught a pair of alleged suicide bombers about to enter the country. Their car had Israeli plates. It’s a miracle they thought to stop it.”

  “Amazing that with nine other Palestinian security agencies, the Israelis thought to contact you.”

  “Yes, isn’t it?”

  Ben had come to realize that al-Asi’s world was lived between the lines, the understated that was never quite said and could never be safely assumed.

  “They will call as soon as they confirm the men’s identities in search of information about their families and friends,” the colonel continued. “Whom they associate with. Who else should be watched.”

  “That’s what I wanted to ask you about.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “A Hamas soldier lives on Tafaret Road. I need to know if the Israelis are keeping an eye on him.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Nazir Jalabad.”

  Al-Asi nodded. “The Israelis are keeping an eye on him. How did you know?”

  “A white van was parked in clear view of his house Monday night.”

  Al-Asi shook his head. “A waste of gasoline. Jalabad is no longer active in the movement. I told the Israelis that but they wouldn’t listen. Why are you interested in him?”

  “It’s the van I’m interested in: a girl disappeared on the street the same night the van was seen.”

  “You suspect the Israelis were responsible?”

  “I doubt it. Under their typical surveillance tactics, though, there would have been a camera operating. That camera may have recorded what happened to her.”

  “We, on the other hand, don’t use cameras. Makes altering reality too difficult later. Better to film only when you know exactly what is going to happen.”

  “I need to see that tape.”

  “Officially it doesn’t exist.”

  “What about unofficially?”

  “Same thing, which means you’ll have to pay your own way on this one. Know anyone who can get you a pass?”

  “Maybe,” Ben said.

  * * * *

  CHAPTER 5

  P

  akad?”

  Danielle looked up from her desk and found Yori Resnick standing in the doorway. She realized she had been nodding out and tried to chase the fatigue from her voice.

  “Yori, I didn’t know you were there.”

  “I knocked. You didn’t hear me.”

  “Long day.” She noticed he was holding a manila folder in his hand. “What have you got there?”

  “Hyram Levy’s phone records, dating back six months,” Resnick said, advancing into Danielle’s office.

  She rose to take them from him, placed the folder on her desk.

  “Can I get you something else, Pakad?”

  “No. Thank you.”

  “Have you eaten?”

  “Get on home, Yori. We have an early day tomorrow.”

  “You’re sure?”

  Danielle nodded.

  “Good night, then.”

  She waited until he was gone before walking from her office to the coffee station down the hall. There was enough left in the pot to fill one cup and enough pastry from that morning sitting out to fill her stomach. The pastry was stale and the coffee bitter, but she felt herself coming back to life. She had forgotten what the pace of a high-profile investigation was like.

  Of course, she hadn’t realized how high profile Hyram Levy’s murder was until halfway through the morning, when the block around his Jerusalem shop became a portrait in chaos. The entire city seemed in mourning, Danielle reflected. These were people used to violence and terrorism but, strangely, not to civilian murder, especially the murder of a man as popular in the community as the Engineer. All day long her investigation had been slowed or stalled by an endless parade of dignitaries coming to visit the scene.

  It started with the mayor just an hour after she arrived. He brought his entire entourage, and Danielle had all she could do to make sure the crime scene was not compromised. He was followed by a ranking member of the Palestinian Authority who came surrounded by the press and made a statement praising Hyram Levy as a man whose door was always open to all peoples. The Israeli media were represented all day as well, and no fewer than two cabinet ministers, as well as the assistants of three more, made appearances too.

  It was from these and others that Danielle learned of Hyram Levy’s background. She could not say exactly how much was truth and how much could be passed off instead to the legend of the Engineer. Several pertinent facts were plain enough, though:

  Levy had come to Israel in the days after World War II and become one of the early defenders of freedom: a soldier, and a terrorist by some accounts, who fought the British to secure a state and then the Arabs to keep it. Unlike the other legends whose names were often mentioned in the same breath with his—men like Ben-Gurion, Begin, and Dayan—Levy had never formally entered politics. After retiring from the army as a general in the wake of the Yom Kippur War of ‘73, he had opened the shop in Jerusalem where he was murdered over twenty-six years later.

  Danielle would fill in the rest of his life as the investigation wore on. For today she was content to follow through on the basic procedures and principles. Obtaining a report from the medical examiner, for instance, and reconstructing Levy’s final days. This meant carefully scrutinizing Levy’s appointment book and phone records. Receipts for all purchases made in the past weeks. A list of all special orders he might have been trying to fill, thus providing a corresponding list of those individuals who had reason to be in the shop in the most recent past.

  Complicating her task here was that Hyram Levy’s filing system consisted of sheets of paper stuck in the tabs of his desk blotter, pinned to a corkboard in his office set in the back of the shop, and bulging out of every drawer. It would take some time to sort them out, considerably less to obtain phone records and go through his address book, or Rolodex, if he had one.

  Toward that end, Danielle had dispatched Yori Resnick to the Engineer’s house across from the Mahane Yehuda marketplace on Navron Street in the company of a forensics team. They had
returned with another box full of material. She decided to leave the task of sorting through the mountain of notes and memos to Yori, while she scrutinized Levy’s phone records, store receipts, and Rolodex if one was ever found. In this case it seemed abundantly clear that the victim had known his killer, and that meant somewhere amid these reams of information would likely be the murderer’s name.

  Danielle returned to her office, a half cup of coffee in her hand, and began to go over the phone records. She had spent the first part of the evening checking through his most recent store receipts and orders, setting up a database for the information on her computer so she could search for a pattern later. A person repeatedly billed who owed Levy money, a dissatisfied customer who felt he’d been bilked on a purchase, even someone on the unscrupulous side of the antiquities trade—one just never knew. The Engineer might have been one of the most popular men in Jerusalem, but it only took one person to want him dead.