Read Online An Accidental Murder: An Avram Cohen Mystery by Robert Rosenberg - Free Book Online

in Europe—often to Germany—in exchange for information that resulted in convictions. It worked as an option into the mid-eighties, but by then enough of the Israeli “exports,” as they were known to the few who knew of the practice, had grown into gangs struggling for turf, and the German police caught on to the ploy. Since then, coordination, not concealment, became the byword on relations between the two forces.
    Cohen ran through the names and faces in his memory.
    Off the top of his head he could think of at least twenty— but none of them, at least as far as he knew them in their day as state witnesses and squealers from the street, were capable let alone had reason to want to try to kill him. He could find out, perhaps, he told Leterhaus, “but only at home.” “Terrorists, perhaps,” Leterhaus suggested. “An Israeli policeman. A famous Israeli policeman,” he repeated.
    “Famous now, because of your book. You write about hunting Nazis. Perhaps someone seeks revenge for the revenge you wanted.”
    Cohen snorted with disbelief.
    “Perhaps Arabs?” Leterhaus tried. “Maybe even fanatic Jews?”
    “I am not Salman Rushdie,” Cohen grumbled.
    “No, you are not,” said Leterhaus. “I liked yours much better. Very inspirational.”
    “Thank you.”
    A junior detective arrived, to whisper something in Leterhaus’s ear.
    “The dead woman is Marina Berendisi. From a Turkish family. And we found the chambermaid’s cleaning cart. In a storeroom in the basement. I must ask you again, why a bomb? Why you?”
    “I don’t know,” Cohen could only say. “But I’m sure that you and your people will find out. No?”
    Cohen didn’t mean it as an insult, but Leterhaus took it as such. He didn’t say so, but Cohen could see it clearly in the German’s eyes. Cohen had a hundred ideas in his head about who might want to kill him, but when he asked himself who would have gone to all the trouble to do it here, in Frankfurt, a city he had never visited, in a country he had left almost fifty years earlier, he had no answer.
    He racked his brains for names of Israeli criminals he had sent to Germany, and Leterhaus took down the names.
    It was probably useless. “I have no idea what name they might be using here,” he admitted.
    “This is great, Avram,” Tina said behind him. Somehow she managed to get past the guard at the elevators and came up behind Cohen in the corridor where he was talking with Leterhaus. She was thrilled. “A murder, a bomb. Think of the press we can get from this. Carey’s in seventh heaven.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “The press, the publicity, it’s perfect. For sales. Forget everything he said about suing you. He loves you. You’ve got the perfect excuse why you can’t go on tour.”
    “Someone is dead, Tina,” Lassman reminded her.
    “Of course, I know. Poor girl. But it really solves our problem, doesn’t it?”
    And Lassman had to agree. Meanwhile, Cohen asked Mathis to ask the hotel expert for the fastest connection from Frankfurt to Tel Aviv. Nobody tried to stop him. He wouldn’t have cared if they had. He didn’t care if people thought he was running into hiding.

8.
    The first available flight out of Frankfurt that night was to Rome. From there, he caught a flight to Tel Aviv. He bought a first-class ticket and rode with a sleepy English rock and roll band and some bankers allowing themselves giddiness with celebration after signing a half-billion-dollar deal.
    Cognac helped him sleep most of the way, but it was an uneasy race home ahead of the dawn, made uneasier when he saw the morning’s tabloids at the newspaper stand at the arrivals hall at Ben-Gurion. His photo, getting into a car outside the hotel in Frankfurt, was on the front page of the morning Ma’ariv. He had avoided all the press in Germany —except Lassman, of course, who had stuck to him, like Tina, all the way to the airport.
    But he had heard a Hebrew question among those shouted at