And at that point his immunity was at an end.
He had been brought to this country from Poland at the age of six months. While one branch of the Federal government scrutinized his tax returns, another set out to revoke his citizenship and deport him. Poland would undoubtedly decline to take him back, but meanwhile he would be tied up in complex legal proceedings and his affairs would suffer. He was subpoenaed to appear before special grand juries, before this congressional committee and that, and between the Scylla of perjury and the Charybdis of contempt, there was no way Gold could keep from getting wet. Over a period of years, there was hardly a day when his presence wasn’t required in some courtroom or other, or before some investigative body. He was excessively bugged. His phone rang at all hours. His girls were followed and photographed. He himself was convoyed everywhere by state police and highway patrolmen, who maneuvered their cruisers in and out of his driveway all night, with their lights on and their radios squawking.
All this was overdoing it, of course. He was being punished before being convicted of anything. But only a few professional civil libertarians considered it objectionable. The sad-eyed little creep was unquestionably an important mobster. Everybody said so. He was labelled as such, with none of the usual quibbles like “reputed” or “alleged,” whenever his name was mentioned, which was almost constantly now. The framers of the Constitution hadn’t been thinking of protecting the rights of that kind of unsavory person.
And it worked. His legal fees were enormous. In Cuba, Fidel Castro moved into Havana and ripped off his casinos, without paying a penny of compensation. With the help of his expensive legal talent he stayed out of jail, but a lot else went. Like Fidel Castro, his old friends and comrades-in-arms, bit by bit and without making a big thing of it, began to foreclose. Scheduled payments failed to arrive in the mail. Gold was too perplexed and harassed to do anything about it. Suddenly nobody liked his suggestions. Judges who owed their robes to a word and a money-filled envelope from Murray Gold now didn’t seem to know him when they saw him on the street.
Every child on the beach knows the foolishness of building sand castles below the highwater mark. Gold had made this basic mistake, and of course the tide had come in, as it invariably does. His current girl friend moved out. The house itself was listed with real estate agents. He began having trouble meeting his lawyers’ exactions, and he had enough experience with that profession to know that they wouldn’t carry him for long.
And then one fine day, with no advance notice, where should Murray Gold turn up but in Tel Aviv, Israel, forfeiting bail in excess of a million dollars-to be precise, $1,125,000. None of that had been Gold’s money. The bonding companies had been pleased and honored to write the paper and get a piece of the prestige that goes with being number one.
He reached Israel on a regularly scheduled El Al flight, having bought a ticket openly, under his own name. He wore a tacky brown jacket and an openwork golf shirt. His pants were several inches too long, and bagged through the seat. His only luggage was a canvas flight bag. His picture in this costume appeared the next morning in most American newspapers, and probably most of the people who saw it said to themselves, “This is the Jewish Godfather? Can you believe it?”
Gold, in Tel Aviv, did his best to disappear. He rented a small apartment on a side street, hired a local lawyer and applied for refugee status under the Law of Return. He had several thousand dollars in cash, no connections, no marketable skills.
What to do about his application was discussed more than once on a cabinet level. Certainly he looked more like a refugee than most of the refugees who came in through that airport, but was he legit? Was it really possible that those millions and millions of dollars had melted away in so short a time? Someone in Shin Bet, the Israeli counterintelligence, devised a test. The Consul General of a hard-up Central American republic was induced to approach Gold secretly and offer a passport and an ironclad guarantee against extradition, in return for the token sum of $500,000, less than the annual skim from just one of his casinos. Gold seemed interested. He fired off a flurry of letters, and called a few people collect. The answers were all noes. But the strategists wondered if he had arranged those noes himself, as part of an elaborate con. Was he up to something in Israel? The government had begun to worry about the crime rate. They already had criminals enough, without importing new ones. Prostitutes were openly walking the streets. Kif was being smoked by alienated young people. Policemen had been caught stealing from appliance stores, as in all the more advanced countries. Probably Gold hadn’t led an entirely blameless life, but leaving newspaper talk aside, he had literally never been convicted of anything. Lying to Senators and showing contempt for a Federal grand jury-from the other side of the Atlantic, these niggling charges had a trumped-up look. Not for the first time in the history of the world, the Jew, perhaps, was being made the scapegoat? In his prosperous days, Gold had been a good friend of Israel, buying development bonds and contributing to money-raising projects, as long as he had money to give. Why send him back so the Americans could have the satisfaction of revoking his citizenship and deporting him? He was willing to renounce that citizenship, and he was already here. Look at those eyes. Were they the eyes of a killer?
While the authorities pondered, his tourist visa was renewed, and renewed again. He took a part-time job as a hospital orderly. And then, quite suddenly, he was arrested at two o’clock one morning.
Israel was still in a state of war with the neighboring Arab nations. Under Emergency Regulations inherited from the British, the military authorities had power to arrest any suspicious person and hold him without trial indefinitely, if necessary forever, on the vague charge of conspiracy-“conspiracy to commit, or to aid and abet those conspiring to commit, terrorist acts against the state.” These weren’t prisoners in the usual sense. They were “administrative detainees,” and how Murray Gold or anybody else got on the list was a bit uncertain. It was supposed that there was some shadowy committee in the Shin Bet, which conducted whatever investigations were thought necessary. From the decisions of this committee there was, of course, no appeal. A lawyer was no good here. Many months later, the detainee might be released, with no more explanation than he had been given when he was arrested. Presumably he would be a little more careful from then on.
Gold was taken to Ramleh Prison, in a little village near the foot of Mt. Tabor. Most of the other detainees were Arabs. Of the thirty or so Jews, about half were considered to be harborers of dangerous political opinions. The others were criminals, who could be counted on to engage in illegal activities if allowed to remain at large. This must have been the category that included Gold.
As always, he was calm and uncomplaining. To be realistic, where could he address a complaint? He was questioned frequently by police and intelligence agents. An Arab believed to be a Shin Bet informer was assigned to the next bed. Later it was learned that Gold had organized a handbook, and had done a small business in contraband cigarettes.
He remained at Ramleh for five and a half months.