The heat of the run was leaving my body, but her words and the way she was looking at me brought another kind of heat in its place. Even scared for her life, she was trying to seduce me.
"What would you have done had they come before me?" I asked. "Do you have a way to defend yourself?"
She shook her head. "Perhaps I should get something."
"That would be a good idea."
"Would it have helped Maryam if she had a weapon?"
"I don't know. A weapon is never enough in and of itself. You need the will to use it and the skill to use it well. But it's not important right now. What's important is that you get out of Tel Aviv for a few days. Do you have a place you can go to?"
"There is a lovely hotel on Mount Carmel, overlooking the bay of Haifa. It's a beautiful place, trees and greenery all around. And quiet. I stayed there a few months ago. I'd planned on going again. Now is as good a time as any."
I remembered that I'd given all the money I had on me to the taxi driver.
"I have no money to give you. I—"
She raised an eyebrow. "I have money of my own, Adam. Don't worry about that."
Of course. She had a bag all ready to go. She'd have money there too.
"What will you do while I'm gone?" she asked.
"Finish this. Find out who killed Maryam."
"And deal with her pimp?"
"That's step number one. Charlie Buzaglo made the biggest mistake of his life when he decided not to heed my warning."
Saying nothing, Sima examined my face, and I wondered what she saw there.
"I'll need the name of your hotel so I can reach you when it's safe to come back."
"Is it ever safe to come back?" she asked, and she wasn't looking at me anymore, but straight ahead into the gloom between the trees.
"It will be this time," I said, taking hold of her chin and turning her head to face me. "And it won't take long. I still don't have all the answers, but I'm close. Charlie Buzaglo wouldn't have sent those men after me if I wasn't."
She nodded and told me the name of the hotel.
We got off the bench and stepped out of the small playground and back onto the street.
"Will you be able to get there tonight?" I asked, as the time was now very late.
"The last bus runs at midnight. I'll catch it. Once in Haifa I'll find a taxi to the hotel. And then I can sleep late in a comfortable bed with clean sheets and the crisp air of the Carmel around me."
We stood facing each other, and for a moment I thought she was about to kiss me. The thought filled me with uneasy desire. I had planned never to see her again, because I knew seeing her would mean succumbing to her, and doing so would prove that my ties to my wife were not as strong as they once were. And the guilt that would follow would be hard to bear.
"Go on," I said. "You have nothing to worry about. They don't know about you."
She nodded. "See you soon, Adam."
"I'll let you know when it's safe to return."
She nodded again, turned and walked off. I watched her till she rounded the corner. Then I rubbed my face and the back of my neck hard enough to feel the skin burn. I had almost gotten her killed. Now she had to flee. This was partly my fault, but mostly the fault of Charlie Buzaglo. And he was going to pay for it.
21
I kept to side streets as I headed south toward home. It wouldn't do to be spotted by Buzaglo's men as they finally gave up on finding me. I kept my eyes open for a black Skoda but saw none. I made it to Hamaccabi Street and there was no Skoda by the curb near my building. I was safe, but who knew for how long. The four men would soon figure out that they were in a woman's apartment. They might think it was the apartment of a lover of mine and that I would show up later that night, but at some point they would go back to Jaffa and report what they'd found. Then Charlie Buzaglo would know that he had sent them to the wrong place.
How long would it take him to find out where I lived?
He would probably send someone to watch Greta's Café tomorrow, and when I didn't show up there, he would come to the conclusion that I'd gone into hiding. Then two things would happen: One, he would use all his contacts to try to figure out where I'd gone and where my real apartment was; and two, he would be worried that I was coming for him.
For now, though, he didn't know that I knew he had sent men after me. For now, he might not have his full guard up. For now, he might be vulnerable. Especially since I knew where he lived.
Still, my apartment would not be a safe place for much longer. Not while Charlie Buzaglo was a threat to me. And I needed my gun to go after him and some money to pay for a hotel room for the night.
I went up to my place, put my ear to the door, and heard nothing. I went in but didn't turn the lights on. I got my box out of its secret compartment. I took out the gun and all the ammunition I had for it. I always kept it loaded, but I checked that the magazine was full just the same. I stuck the gun in the waistband of my slacks and the rest of my ammunition in one jacket pocket. I grabbed all the money I had in the apartment and put it in the other pocket.
I was hungry, but I didn't dare spend any more time in my apartment than I absolutely had to. I found a taxi on King George Street, but the driver refused to take me deep into Jaffa at this time of night. "I'll only go as far as Hashaon Square," he said.
Once there, I paid the driver and headed south and east into the narrow streets in the heart of Jaffa. The streets were dark and dreary. Shadows crowded at the edges of shop fronts and alleyways. There weren't enough working streetlights here, and those that did work burned too feebly to banish the darkness. It was the bad part of the city, and you couldn't be sure that no one would be hiding beyond the reach of the lights, waiting to jump you. I walked close to the edge of the curb, far from alleys and murky entryways. The streets were deserted apart from a few staggering drunks and a couple of groups of bored teenage boys holding their cigarettes like the American actors they saw on the screen at the local cinema.
Two years ago, war had raged in Jaffa. Not just between Jews and Arabs, but also between Jews and British soldiers. Some of the streets still showed signs of the fighting—bullet holes in outer walls and fences, shrapnel damage to the façade of buildings. Some of the buildings exhibited tentative signs of renewal and rejuvenation. In others, repairs had been done haphazardly, leaving uneven patches of plaster and paint like badly healed wounds.
Charlie Buzaglo lived in a small house on Hasfina Street. I parked myself in a recessed doorway diagonally across the street from his door and made myself ready for a long wait.
While I waited, I ran the events of the day through my mind. If it hadn't been for the warning Rafi had given me, Sima might have been dead right now. Still, it had been a close call, not just for her, but for me as well.
And I hadn't seen it coming. Charlie Buzaglo had surprised me with this escalation. Pimping and smuggling and even the killing of a criminal associate were one thing, sending a team to murder a citizen in the heart of Tel Aviv was another. That could have proved dangerous for him, because the police would vigorously investigate such a killing. They might learn that I had been seen in his company not just once, but twice in the past week. They might ask him some uncomfortable questions.
I stood in that doorway for over two hours, and in that time not a soul passed by in the street. Then I heard the sound of a car approaching, and I took out my Luger and held it by my side. The car was a blue Ford, and there were two men in front and one in back. The car stopped by Buzaglo's building, and the driver opened his door. By the inner light of the car, I could make out his face. He was one of the four men who had come to Sima's building. The man who sat in front beside him also got out, and together they took a cursory look around the street. Their eyes went over the shadowed doorway in which I stood, but they didn't see me. Charlie Buzaglo got out of the backseat, wearing a leather jacket, hands in his pockets.