"Was she alive when you cut her like that?"
He turned to me, and his eyes were wistful when he said, "Maybe just in the beginning. You see, I slashed her neck early on. She bled out too fast."
There was a lump in my throat the temperature of ice and the hardness of rock. I had to swallow a few times to get rid of it.
It took me a moment to regain my speech. "And then you dumped her in the Yarkon."
"Yes. I figured either way I was doing the smart thing. If she got washed out to sea, I was in the clear; if she were found, I could tell Jalal and Kadir that she was dead and get them off my back. I wasn't worried about the police. I could control the investigation. Kill it while it was still young. But I didn't figure on that pissant third brother of hers hiring a detective. You know, you caused me a whole lot of trouble. If you'd just left well enough alone, those three men in Jaffa would still be alive."
"How did that happen?"
"You were sniffing around, asking questions, not heeding my warning like you should have done. And then Charlie Buzaglo called me, said you were asking around for him, and wondered what to do if you came to him."
"What did you tell him?" I asked, knowing the answer. Rosen had given Buzaglo the go-ahead to kill me. That was why Buzaglo had dared sending a team after me to Sima's place, where he thought I lived. He had Rosen to cover for him.
"That's not important anymore," Rosen said. "Buzaglo is dead."
"That he is. You arranged it. Once Buzaglo told you I had come asking questions, you sent the Jamalka brothers to eliminate him. What did you tell them, that he was her pimp? That he had killed her? That was smart of you. You wanted him out of the way so I couldn't speak with him. Without him, there can be no case against you. The poor idiot didn't understand he was signing his own death warrant when he told you I'd come to see him."
Rosen shrugged. "Who cares about someone like Charlie Buzaglo? He was scum. And who cares about Maryam Jamalka? She was a cheap prostitute and would have been killed by her family sooner or later." He looked at me. "Why did you keep on digging even when I made it clear there would be a heavy price to pay?"
I didn't answer. He wouldn't have understood. There was something missing in his soul, and I wouldn't be able to fill it with mere words.
After a minute in which I said nothing, he got to his feet and said, "So now you know everything. And I expect you to keep to your word. If you don't, if you keep on working on this case in any way, I will come after you with everything I've got. And after your friends as well."
It was an empty promise. He wanted to lull me, to get me to go back home and let my guard down. Then he would have me killed. He wasn't the sort to leave loose ends.
"Like I said," I assured him, "I am off this case from this moment on. You have my word."
"Good."
He got to his feet and started turning away, when I stopped him by saying I had just one more question.
"What?" he asked, his voice gruff and impatient.
"The reason you gave Talmon about the authorities not wanting to get into a fight with the Jamalka clan, was it true or did you make it all up?"
He smiled thinly. "It's true. Why do you think they've been allowed to run their smuggling operation for so long?"
"Yes, but did that protection extend to murder? Did your superiors know about that?"
"I think it's better if you don't know the answer to that. Are we done?"
"Yes," I said. "We're done."
"Good. And remember, I'll be watching you."
He put on his cap, adjusting it on his head so it sat perfectly centered. He looked like the perfect policeman—tall, masculine, strong, and neat. He turned on his heel and strode toward the King George Street exit. I stayed on the bench.
Across the big lawn, a man lowered the newspaper he had held before his face throughout my talk with Rosen. He folded the paper, tucked it under his arm, and walked after Rosen. I could see the scar on his cheek from where I sat.
I walked off in the opposite direction, away from what was about to happen.
24
An hour and a half before my meeting with Rosen, I had waited on another bench in Gan Meir for Ahmed Jamalka to arrive.
He wore a dark jacket over khaki slacks and a white shirt. In the glaring light of the sun, the scar on his cheek stood out like a careless brushstroke of red.
His face showed new lines of fatigue and tension. Gone was the defiant man I had met mere days ago. Now he appeared worn and deflated. He sat looking about him at the people strolling through the park, his face stony, not showing much emotion.
"Did you talk to your brothers?" I asked.
"Yes."
"And what did they say?"
"They confirmed what you told me. Inspector Rosen is their partner in the Tel Aviv police department. They've been in business together for over two years now. After they heard that Maryam was in Tel Aviv, they asked him to locate her for them."
"Did he tell them what she'd been doing in the city?"
"Two days ago." His hands shook as he spoke the words. "He told them she had been selling her body and that he had the name and address of her pimp, the man who killed her."
"Charlie Buzaglo."
"Yes."
"And they went to Jaffa to kill him."
"Yes. And you're telling me he wasn't her pimp and he didn't kill her."
"Yes and no," I said. "He was her pimp, but the person who killed her was Inspector Rosen."
I told Ahmed about the investigation I'd been running, about tracking down where his sister had lived and where she got most of her clients. I told him about her becoming involved with Charlie Buzaglo and how he had taken advantage of her. Then I told him about my talk with Buzaglo as he lay bleeding out in the street. I related what he told me about Rosen and how I figured out the connection between Rosen and Ahmed's brothers.
Throughout my narration, he kept quiet, alternately looking down at his knees or ahead at nothing in particular.
When I was done, he took a deep breath and said, "Jalal and Kadir asked me where my questions were coming from, and I told them I had hired a private investigator to discover who murdered Maryam. They laughed at me, stunned that I would pay good money on such a pointless endeavor. To them Maryam was of no importance. The only thing they cared about was the family's honor. They wanted to punish her pimp for aiding in her degradation, not her killer for ending her life. And I let them run her off from home." He removed his glasses and put his face in his hands, but not before I noticed that his eyes had gone moist. "If I had been there for her when she asked for my help," he said, "I could have saved her, couldn't I?"
He was right, of course. He was guilty of abandoning his sister to a world she could not handle by herself. A world where she was vulnerable. If he had been a brother to her, by deed and not just by blood, she would still be alive today. I thought all that but said none of it. A moment of stillness passed between us. I broke it by reaching into my pocket and drawing out the two pictures of Maryam he'd given me.
"Here. You'll want these."
He took them in his hands and gazed at them for a long moment. It felt odd to part with them after carrying them for the past eight days. I'd grown attached to this hopelessly romantic dead girl.
Ahmed let out a long breath, slipped the pictures of his dead sister into his jacket pocket, and said, "What happens now?"
"What happens now is that I am meeting Rosen right here at eleven thirty. Did you bring what I told you?"
He turned his eyes to me, and for an instant what I was seeing were his sister's eyes, as they had been captured in the photo he'd given me. And then the defiance came back. He nodded and showed me the knife he had hidden under his jacket.