Past Moghrabi Theater, Allenby Street curled in a western trajectory, and I followed it to Ha-Knesset Square, where I verified the man was still on my tail as I pretended to check the road for vehicles before crossing it to the deserted beach.
Rows of abandoned beach chairs studded the soft sand, looking in the scant moonlight like skeletons of some extinct mammal. Waves crested and crashed on the sand with a roar, the sea choppy for summertime. The air smelled of salt and sand. There was a shed thirty feet ahead, and I made for it.
I sensed rather than heard him run toward me from behind. I whirled, whipping the Luger out of my pocket and leveling it at the man. The sight of the gun made him try to shift direction in mid-stride. His feet got tangled. He fought to remain upright, but failed and stumbled forward. He landed on hands and knees. His knife had wormed its way loose of his grip and lay there, sharp and shiny on a mound of sand.
"Get up," I told him.
He raised his head to look at me. His eyes were like two lumps of coal and his jaw was a slab of painted concrete at the bottom of his face.
He made a feeble attempt at innocence. "Hey, what's with the gun, mister? I—"
"Shut up," I told him. "Raise your hands and step away from the knife."
He twisted his lips but did as he was told. When he was ten feet away, I told him to halt. Keeping the gun aimed at his chest, I crouched down, grabbed his knife, and hurled it into the water.
"Now move. Toward that shed there."
The shed was made up of planks of wood hammered together. It listed a bit to the left. The door was unlocked, and inside, taking about a third of the space, were stacks of folded beach chairs and other stuff I couldn't identify in the gloom. Some enterprising soul had recently painted the interior, but the smell of fresh paint did not fully overwhelm that of damp, slightly rotting wood. A small window faced the sea, and moonlight filtered through it. There was no electricity, but on a peg by the door hung a kerosene lamp. I told the man to step inside and hug one wall. Then, flicking a match with one hand, I lighted the lamp, adjusting the flame low to decrease the chance of its light being spotted, and shut the door.
"Turn around," I said.
He did and once more I saw the face from the ten-year-old picture. Had he stalked Esther much as he stalked me? If I hadn't told Greta that I was heading for the beach, which he would know would be empty of witnesses, maybe he would have jumped me on the street, or perhaps broken into my apartment in the dead of night.
"What's your name?" I asked.
When he didn't answer, I raised the gun from his torso to his head. He half-smiled with his lips clamped. He had cunning eyes.
"Yossi Cohen," he said.
"Why did you kill Esther Kantor and her baby?"
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Ten years ago, on Lunz Street. You butchered a woman and a baby and disfigured them."
"You must have me mixed up with someone else," he said, and he did not appear to be scared by the gun in my hand, though, so far, he had obeyed me.
"You don't seem too upset to be blamed for a murder you say you know nothing about," I said.
He shrugged. "I don't get upset easy."
"How did you know where to find me?"
He shrugged again. "Mister, I was out walking on the beach, minding my own business, when you drew a gun on me."
"Walking with a knife," I remarked.
"Knife?" He smiled. His teeth seemed to glint in the lamplight. "Where's my knife? I don't have a knife."
"You followed me from a café on Allenby. You were going to kill me."
He shook his head languidly. "It's no crime to sit in a café, and I never killed nobody."
I frowned. The way he was speaking reminded me of past interrogations I had conducted as a policeman. I had no doubt he had experience in such matters. He talked like a cocky criminal who knows the cops have only so much on him and that, if he were to remain alert and in control, he might not spend a good deal of his near future in a cell. But we were not in a police station. Why wasn't he afraid of being at the wrong end of a gun?
"If you don't start talking," I told him, "I'll put a bullet in you."
He snorted. "No, you won't. You're a policeman. Or you were. It don't matter. Once a policeman, always a policeman. Take me to the station if you want. You won't shoot me."
The bastard had a smug smile on his face, and I could tell by his posture that he was readying himself to spring at me when the opportunity arose. Which was probably why he'd invited me to march him to the police station, thinking I'd have to get close to him to do so. Outside, the waves smacked into the beach with a steady rhythm. I counted off five such crashes and pulled the trigger simultaneously with the sixth.
