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Authors: Robert Rosenberg
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him in the lobby when he was escorted out in a pack of security, and at the bottom of the stairs outside the hotel, where Koethe’s black Mercedes S600 waited to take him to the airport, more reporters doused him with TV camera lights, flashing cameras, and questions while he, Tina, and Lassman got into the car.
The headline in Ma’ariv asked “Who Tried to Kill Avram Cohen in Germany?” with a subhead reminding the reader that Cohen was “the secretive millionaire detective” whose “controversial autobiography” had been published in the United States. He didn’t buy the paper. Instead he strode briskly to his car in the long-term parking lot. Dawn caught up with him on the road to Jerusalem, the white sun blaring into his bleary eyes. All he wanted was a hot shower, a drink, and his bed. Traffic was already thick coming into the city, but he caught a green wave of traffic lights from the foreign ministry all the way to Liberty Bell Park, and from there, it was only a couple of blocks home. Getting out of his car in the tin-walled shack that had long served as the garage in the corner of the property in the little side street off Emek Refa’im, he could hear the phone ringing in his upstairs apartment. He didn’t rush to answer.
So he ignored the speaker playing the message on the answering machine as he came into the apartment, dropping his bag on the living room-turned-study floor, unbuttoning his shirt, kicking off his trousers, and unbuckling his belt as he headed to the bathroom.
When he came out of the shower, there was another voice, a second message. It was an American TV network “trying to reach Deputy Commander Cohen—for the second time.” Cohen didn’t respond. As soon as the man hung up, the phone began ringing again.
Cohen went to the machine, rubbing his hair with a towel, absentmindedly turning on the computer to collect his e-mail, as he picked up a pair of half-spectacles he had lately needed to read—because of the computer, he forlornly admitted to himself—and peered down at the answering machine. Through the little plastic window he could see the tape had come to its end. In the five years he had owned the machine, it had never done that before.
He looked at the phone for its fourth ring. At the end of the sixth, the machine would answer. He answered on the fifth.
“Hello?” he asked gingerly.
“Is this Avram Cohen?” a screechy-voiced woman asked.
“Who is this?”
“I think it’s too bad they didn’t get you,” the voice shrieked at him. “You should rot in hell, you Arab-lover.”
He hung up, unplugged the phone, and looked at the monitor screen.
Through the second phone line, the computer was connecting to his Internet provider. The two modems whistled at each other and within a minute, his mail client software was opening his mailbox.
“Downloading 1 of 173,” the message bar said.
Ordinarily, he received an average of five mail messages a day, all lists to which he subscribed, but only rarely participated.
Two were about food and recipes, one a historical discussion of the era of the Romans and the Jewish Wars; there were occasional digests that announced new recordings, and one in which Jews and Arabs tried at civility in a discussion of the future of Jerusalem.
He had early on signed up for several law enforcement discussion groups, but too much conspiracy theory and not enough intelligence showed up in them. He had retreated from them all.
But he had conducted brief exchanges with individuals on some of the lists, a question here, an answer there. And TMC had a Web site, where for a few weeks during the site’s construction—without his knowledge—Cohen’s email address had appeared. As soon as he found out about the TMC site, he asked that his e-mail address be removed, and he changed his username at his Internet service provider.
Once let loose, information is free, he knew. He clicked at the cancel button, but the program wanted to go on, so
The headline in Ma’ariv asked “Who Tried to Kill Avram Cohen in Germany?” with a subhead reminding the reader that Cohen was “the secretive millionaire detective” whose “controversial autobiography” had been published in the United States. He didn’t buy the paper. Instead he strode briskly to his car in the long-term parking lot. Dawn caught up with him on the road to Jerusalem, the white sun blaring into his bleary eyes. All he wanted was a hot shower, a drink, and his bed. Traffic was already thick coming into the city, but he caught a green wave of traffic lights from the foreign ministry all the way to Liberty Bell Park, and from there, it was only a couple of blocks home. Getting out of his car in the tin-walled shack that had long served as the garage in the corner of the property in the little side street off Emek Refa’im, he could hear the phone ringing in his upstairs apartment. He didn’t rush to answer.
So he ignored the speaker playing the message on the answering machine as he came into the apartment, dropping his bag on the living room-turned-study floor, unbuttoning his shirt, kicking off his trousers, and unbuckling his belt as he headed to the bathroom.
When he came out of the shower, there was another voice, a second message. It was an American TV network “trying to reach Deputy Commander Cohen—for the second time.” Cohen didn’t respond. As soon as the man hung up, the phone began ringing again.
Cohen went to the machine, rubbing his hair with a towel, absentmindedly turning on the computer to collect his e-mail, as he picked up a pair of half-spectacles he had lately needed to read—because of the computer, he forlornly admitted to himself—and peered down at the answering machine. Through the little plastic window he could see the tape had come to its end. In the five years he had owned the machine, it had never done that before.
He looked at the phone for its fourth ring. At the end of the sixth, the machine would answer. He answered on the fifth.
“Hello?” he asked gingerly.
“Is this Avram Cohen?” a screechy-voiced woman asked.
“Who is this?”
“I think it’s too bad they didn’t get you,” the voice shrieked at him. “You should rot in hell, you Arab-lover.”
He hung up, unplugged the phone, and looked at the monitor screen.
Through the second phone line, the computer was connecting to his Internet provider. The two modems whistled at each other and within a minute, his mail client software was opening his mailbox.
“Downloading 1 of 173,” the message bar said.
Ordinarily, he received an average of five mail messages a day, all lists to which he subscribed, but only rarely participated.
Two were about food and recipes, one a historical discussion of the era of the Romans and the Jewish Wars; there were occasional digests that announced new recordings, and one in which Jews and Arabs tried at civility in a discussion of the future of Jerusalem.
He had early on signed up for several law enforcement discussion groups, but too much conspiracy theory and not enough intelligence showed up in them. He had retreated from them all.
But he had conducted brief exchanges with individuals on some of the lists, a question here, an answer there. And TMC had a Web site, where for a few weeks during the site’s construction—without his knowledge—Cohen’s email address had appeared. As soon as he found out about the TMC site, he asked that his e-mail address be removed, and he changed his username at his Internet service provider.
Once let loose, information is free, he knew. He clicked at the cancel button, but the program wanted to go on, so
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