I was considering how to best take out the two bodyguards when out of the shadows further down the street came the roar of an engine as a car screeched to a halt meters away from Charlie Buzaglo and his men. Two tall men leapt out of the car, their right arms outstretched before them, guns in their hands. The guns flashed like fireworks, and the blast of their reports echoed in the narrow street.
One of Buzaglo's men got it right away. I saw a plume of blood gush out of his throat and drench the front of his shirt. He fell back against the hood of the Ford and slumped down to a sitting position, head lolling on his chest, dead. The next couple of shots smashed into Buzaglo's Ford, punching holes in the side panels, shattering a passenger window. Buzaglo's other man got out his gun and managed to squeeze off one wild shot before getting hit in the leg. He toppled to the road with a shriek of agony, landed hard on his side, and his gun fell from his hand and clattered away from him. Buzaglo was running toward the front door of his building when he got it in the small of his back. He fell down on the sidewalk and tried crawling toward the door.
One of the two attackers walked to the man who was shot in the neck and put another bullet into him. The other one went to where Buzaglo's second guard lay clutching his leg with one hand and shot him in the head, putting an end to his howling. One of the car's headlights fell across the second shooter's swarthy, mustached face. The other one said something to him in Arabic, and I couldn't make out any of the words, apart from the first one, Kadir, and I knew that these were the two Jamalka brothers. The two criminals and murderers, who Talmon was certain had murdered their sister, and who Ahmed Jamalka was certain had not.
Buzaglo was grunting in pain, inching his way like a wounded snake toward his building. The two brothers turned their heads toward him. They were about to finish him off. If they did, I would never know what had happened to their sister.
I raised the Luger and fired.
The slug got Kadir Jamalka in the shoulder. He swiveled like a dreidel and fell. Jalal turned in my general direction, mouth gaping in surprise, and fired. He couldn't see where I was, and the bullet went wide. I took aim at him, but he was already moving, dragging his brother behind the cover of their car. He pulled Kadir to his feet and fired again at me over the roof of their vehicle, a wild series of shots that made me duck my head and flatten myself into the doorway. I heard a car door slam and an engine rev and the sound of tires wailing against the tarmac as they tore off. I dared a glance and saw the car slewing round the near corner as they took it at top speed.
The sound of gunfire echoed in my ears like faraway thunder. The air was thick with the smell of spent gunpowder. I started crossing the street and paused when my shoe fell on something hard. It was the shell casing from the Luger. I picked it up, put it in my pocket, and went to where Charlie Buzaglo lay.
He was lying face down, right cheek flat against the sidewalk stones, hands by his head, like a man trying to surrender. Blood was pumping out of his back, and he was groaning softly. I got down beside him and made sure he could see my face.
"Get me to a hospital," he said, the words coming out in wheezy, short exhalations.
"Only if you tell me what happened to Maryam Jamalka," I told him. "If you don't, I'll leave you here to bleed out in the street like a dog."
"You son of a bitch."
I shrugged. "The more time you waste, the more blood you lose. Talk or die. Your choice. Tell me what happened to Maryam Jamalka. What happened on the night she was arrested? Why didn't you take her back? Who killed her?"
Blood was bubbling out of his lips now, and his face was losing color. Oddly, sweat beads sprouted along his forehead. I knew that I had given him a false choice. He was going to die anyway. Even if I got him into the car that very moment and stomped on the gas pedal the whole way to the hospital, he wasn't going to make it. He would die here on this dismal Jaffa street. It bothered me none. If lying to this rat was what I had to do to get to the bottom of this case, then so be it.
He started talking. The story came in fits and bursts between grunts of pain and shaky breaths. I asked him a few questions at first, but then I just let him talk, worrying that he might die on me before I got the whole story. It only took him a couple of minutes to tell me everything he knew, and what he told me filled in most of the gaps in what I had uncovered so far, painted in the blanks in the mental picture I had begun to draw, and added grim color and rough texture and horrible truth.
When he was done, Charlie Buzaglo let out a last faint whimper of air and died. And I knew who had killed Maryam Jamalka.
22
I left Buzaglo and his men in the street where they lay and walked quickly away from the scene of the firefight. No neighbors came out to their balconies to see what was going on. No one rushed down from their apartment to offer help. No lights flared in any of the windows. I could understand that. It was better to keep one's head down, to hope that the bullets didn't find their way into your bedroom. It was better to keep your eyes averted, because becoming a witness might place you in danger, might make you a target.
Still, someone would call the police eventually. Or someone's curiosity would get the better of them and they would take a peek out their window. I wanted to be long gone by then.
I walked with my head down till I was a few streets away. Then I leaned against a low fence and let myself rest for a few minutes as the last dregs of adrenaline faded from my bloodstream. I was shaking, and my body was tired, craving to lie down and get some sleep. I put a cigarette between my lips and started walking again. I kept on walking till I got out of Jaffa and into Tel Aviv.
Near the southern tip of Hayarkon Street, I found a hotel. It wasn't much, though with a cleaner and better-looking façade than the Jaffa Star Hotel, where Maryam Jamalka used to take her clients. I registered under a false name and got a second-floor room.
The room was small. A bed, one nightstand, a tiny washroom, a tall and narrow closet with two hangers in it. But it was clean and tidy and smelled fresh, and the window looked on the Mediterranean.
I stood by the window for some minutes, watching the reflection of the moon and stars on the rolling and shifting surface of the sea. The smell of salt and seaweed was thick in the night air, the whisper of gently breaking waves soothing. I kept the window open, laid my Luger and knife within easy reach on the nightstand, took off all my clothes, and slipped into bed. I fell asleep within minutes and slept the rest of the night through without dreams.
I woke after nine o'clock, feeling refreshed but hungry, went down to the street, and picked up a newspaper. The shooting in Jaffa was front-page news. The headline blared the body count, and the article lamented the sordid conditions in certain parts of Jaffa and the crime that was rife there. The article ended with an exhortation for the police to take harsher measures to bring about law and order to the areas in question. The article did not mention the names of the three dead men, nor did it provide any details as to the firefight that claimed their lives. The police had commented, saying that a full investigation had been launched and that the culprits would soon be apprehended. They made sure to mention that all three victims had a criminal record. This was done to calm the general public, to give the impression that such things only happened among criminals, never to law-abiding citizens.