Ruth Anne Bloom?
I felt sweat on my face. Cold heat in my chest. Had this woman killed Blotnik? Would she kill me?
One thought rose up from the base of my brain.
Stall!
“Who are you?”
“I’m asking the questions.” The woman answered my English with English.
It wasn’t Ruth Anne Bloom. Bloom’s English was heavily accented.
I didn’t reply.
“Answer me. Or you’re in the frame for a lot of hurt.” Hard. But agitated. Unsure.
“Who I am doesn’t matter.”
“I’ll decide what matters.” Louder. A threat of violence.
“Dr. Blotnik’s dead.”
“And I’ll park some rounds in your ass just as quick.”
Cop talk? Was this woman on the job? Or one of the millions watching too much TV?
Before I could respond, she spoke again.
“Wait a minute. I know that accent. I know you.”
And I’d heardher voice. But when? Where? Had we crossed paths here? At the hotel? The museum? Police headquarters? I hadn’t met many women in Israel.
Sudden thought. The caller to Jake’s flat had talked of a woman pestering the Hevrat Kadisha.
A number of the “harassing” calls had been made by a woman.
Could this be the woman? Did she have her own agenda for Max? Had she stolen the shroud bones?
I had no idea as to motive. She spoke English, Hebrew, and Arabic. Was she Christian? Jewish? Muslim?
“Confiscating bones in the name of the Lord?” I threw out.
No response.
“Question is, which Lord?”
“Oh, please.”
Wet sniffing. The woman’s free hand darted to her face.
I wasn’t sure how to probe.
“I know about the Masada skeleton.”
“You don’t know jack.” Sniff. “On your feet.”
I rose.
“Reach and grab your skull.”
I rose and laced my fingers on top of my head. Senses buzzing, I tried a new line of questioning.
“Why kill Blotnik?”
“Collateral damage.”
Ferris? Why not?
“Why shoot Ferris?”
The woman stiffened. “I don’t have time for this.”
Sensing I’d struck a chord, I dug deeper.
“Two bullets to the brain. That’s cold.”
“Shut up!” The woman sniffed, cleared her throat.
“You should have seen what the cats did to him.”
“Stinking little bastards.”
When things fall into place, they often do so rapidly.
I can’t say what my senses took in. The cadence of her speech. The nasal drip. The blonde hair. The trilingualism. The fact that this woman knew me. Knew the cats.
Suddenly, disparate facts toggled.
The bad police dialogue.
ALaw amp; Orderrerun. Briscoe telling a suspect he didn’t know jack.
A woman hired Hersh Kaplan to kill Avram Ferris.
Kaplan said she sounded like a cokehead.
The sniffing. The throat-clearing.
“I have sinus problems.”
Kaplan was phoned from the Mirabel warehouse the week the boss was vacationing with Miriam.
“So someone phoned Kaplan’s home from Ferris’s warehouse while Ferris was in Florida. But Kaplan hadn’t phoned the warehouse, either from his home or his shop, making it unlikely that Purviance was calling Kaplan in response to a message he’d left for Ferris. So who the hell made the call? And why?”
Ferris was shot with a Jericho nine-millimeter semiautomatic. That gun was reported stolen by a man named Ozols. In Saint-Leonard.
“That’s ‘oak’ in Latvian. We’ve got an international arborist convention, right here in Saint-Leonard.”
Ozols. Oak. The Latvian name I’d seen in a lobby in Saint-Leonard.
The lobby of Courtney Purviance’s building.
“And here’s another interesting development. Courtney Purviance is in the wind.”
My subconscious blossomed into a full-color map.
Courtney Purviance had killed Avram Ferris. She hadn’t been abducted. She was standing in the doorway, pointing a gun at my chest.
Of course. Purviance knew the warehouse and its contents. Probably knew about Max. Travel to Israel was a regular part of her job. Flying here was routine.
But why kill Ferris? Blotnik?
Religious conviction? Greed? Some deranged personal vendetta?
Would she kill me with equal callousness?
I felt a rush of fear, then anger, then an almost trancelike calm. I would have to talk my way out. There was no getting past the gun.
“What happened, Courtney? Ferris didn’t cut you in for a big enough piece of the pie?”
The gun dipped, then the muzzle straightened.
“Or did you just want more?”
“Zip it.”
“Did you have to steal another gun?”
Again, Purviance tensed.
“Or is it easier to score a piece in Israel?”
“I’m warning you.”
“Poor old Mr. Ozols. That wasn’t a nice thing to do to a neighbor.”
“Why are you here? Why did you have to get involved in this?”
I could see Purviance’s finger stroking the trigger. She was nervous. I decided to bluff.
“I’m with the SQ.”
“Move.” The gun waggled me forward. “Easy.”
I took two steps. As I approached, Purviance backed off.
We sized each other up in the dim green glow.
“Yeah. You came to my house with that crime dick.”
“The cops are liking you for the Ferris hit.” I went with Purviance’s Hollywood cop talk.
“And you’re one of them.” Sarcastic.
“You’re a collar.”
“Really?” Sniff. “And there’s a whole squad waiting for your call or they’ll storm this museum.”
She’d read my bluff. Okay. I stayed with the station-house lingo, but tried a new tack.
“Ask me? You’re getting a bum rap. Ferris was hawking merchandise he shouldn’t have been. God be damned. History be damned. Bring on the bucks.”
Purviance wet her lips, but didn’t speak.
“You got wise, right? Told him not to wholesale those bones. At least not without cutting you in. He blew you off.”
