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CHAPTER 29

The Lucky Star convenience store was smaller than Ariel had expected—maybe five meters by seven meters. It occupied a choice location in a corner space on the ground floor of what looked to be a very prosperous office building. Once he stepped inside, it was obvious that his California expectations didn’t match the reality of what he was looking at. No groceries, no household staples, no hardware, no fresh food other than a little bit of fruit. Just a big rack of candy and snack bars, a couple of big cases of cold drinks, a plain coffee and tea station, and a newspaper rack with Wall Street Journal and Jerusalem Post copies, with the top rack containing several paperback novels. Ariel’s eye got caught by the books—all science fiction—which included copies of the latest novels by David Weber, Eric Flint, and Larry Correia. Huh—he hadn’t seen the Correia book before. Must be brand-new. He made a note to himself to come back and pick one of those up.

Flanking the register were display boards with loads of small bits of technology. On one side were mobile chargers, various types of connector cords, headphones, and batteries. On the other was a rack of cheap mobiles, all of which had brand names he didn’t recognize.

Behind the register was an old Asian man whose face was so wrinkled his eyes seemed to be peering out from a couple of slits among all the folds of skin. The wall behind him was covered with all manner of things from chopsticks to oriental fans to little packages of teas and herbs. Incongruously present were a couple of boxes each of surgical masks and nitrile gloves on the counter below all that. A small monitor on the side wall was displaying an American baseball game, of all things.

“Are you Mr. Li?” Ariel asked in English.

The old man shrugged. “You see anyone else here?” His accent was minimal, which was surprising.

“Mordechai Zalman said I should ask you for a good cheap mobile.”

Li tilted his head a little, obviously evaluating Ariel. “Where do you know Mordechai from?”

“I work for him.”

The old man tilted his head slightly to the other side. “Can you prove that?”

Ariel tilted his own head a bit, and considered Mr. Li before responding. “Not that it’s any of your business, but…” He lifted the left lapel of his jacket and revealed the butt of his pistol in its holster.

Li straightened with a slight smile. “That’ll do. A good cheap mobile, you said.”

“Yeah.”

“Most places that would be a contradiction in terms, an oxymoron. However”—he held up a forefinger—“at The Lucky Star, you’re in luck.”

Ariel’s expression twisted. “Oog. Is that the best you can do?”

“Sorry.” Mr. Li didn’t look sorry at all. “Dad jokes are my specialty.”

Ariel shook his head, then stepped over to the mobile display rack. “Which one of these would you recommend?”

“None of that crap. Here.” Ariel turned at Mr. Li’s voice to see a black phone lying on the counter by the register. “Better phone. Made in India. Cheaper price, not loaded with crap Chinese operating system. And it’s charged.”

“How much?” Ariel pulled his wallet out.

Mr. Li’s fingers tapped the screen of his register as if he were chasing small insects. They stilled, and he looked up.

“Two hundred shekels.”

That was actually a bit less than the display prices for the “crap” phones. Ariel extracted a two-hundred-shekel note from his wallet and placed it on the counter. Mr. Li made it disappear so quickly that Ariel blinked, leaving a store card in its place. Ariel wondered if there had been some sleight of hand involved.

He picked up the phone, stripped off the packaging, turned it on, checked the charge, and put it in his front-left pants pocket. “So, why don’t you have more fancy foods and drinks in here? I’d think you’d make a killing with this location.”

“Not so,” the old man responded. He pointed over Ariel’s shoulder. “Good sushi place next door there.” He jerked a thumb to his right. “Good bakery and coffee shop next door there. No profit in it.” He shrugged. “I have a steady consistent patronage, and a few new faces like you every week. I don’t need to be greedy.”

“Ah,” Ariel said. He looked around the empty store. “Quiet tonight.”

The old man shrugged again. “Often is, often isn’t. Tonight it is.” He made the trash from the phone package disappear as easily as he had the shekels. At that moment, there was a sound of muted cheering from the monitor. Mr. Li looked over at it. “All right,” he enthused. “A home run!”

Ariel’s eyebrows rose. “You’re an American baseball fan?”

“Third generation Red Sox fan.”

“Boston? So you’re from the US?”

“Yep. Third generation, like I said.”

“So how did you get here? There’s got to be a story behind a Chinese man running a shop in Tel Aviv.”

The old man laughed, then shook his head. “Not really. Chemical engineer, me. BSc and MSc from Boston University, PhD from MIT. Forty-five years ago, after the BSc, I married a Boston Jewish girl. When her whole family made aliyah, I came along for the ride. Got a good job with Israel Chemicals Ltd, and settled down and settled in. Had three kids, and her brother and sister added seven more. They’re all smart—except for one of my sister-in-law’s boys—and most of them have got good jobs in different parts of Israeli society—my son’s in banking, for example—although my sister-in-law’s two youngest are still in uni or master’s programs.”

“So if you have a PhD in chemical engineering, why are you running a convenience store?”

Mr. Li’s face fell. “I retired nine years ago, but then my wife died of cancer the following year.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Ariel said.

Mr. Li shrugged. “Eh, life happens. After a year of sitting at home grieving, I wanted something to do. This was my favorite little stop, and when the owner mentioned to me that he was looking to sell it, I decided to buy it. So far, I’ve enjoyed it. I don’t sit at home anymore. I get to see my regular customers frequently and talk about what’s happening in their lives, I get to meet a lot of new and interesting people”—his smile reappeared and he nodded at Ariel—“and I occasionally get to help people. I’ve done well enough that I’ve bought four more independent stores. My niece runs them all, and does a good enough job that I can sit here, read my books, and talk to my friends. Except for when my idiot nephew, her brother, tries to help and usually messes something up. A good kid, but as clueless as they come. Eh, but he’s family.”

Mr. Li sounded so Jewish right then that Ariel had to laugh.

Ariel caught a glimpse of the clock on the wall behind Mr. Li. “Time to go,” he said. He raised his hand in farewell, but before he could say anything, Mr. Li cleared his throat.

“So, you work for Mordechai, right? You working now?”

“Yes.”

Mr. Li looked at him sidelong. “Mordechai talk about me?”

“A little.”

Mr. Li nodded. “Well?”

“I’m looking for a rapist that preys on uni girls.”

Mr. Li’s face turned to stone. “New or old?”

“Old, I think.”

“Him.” Mr. Li shook his head.

“How do you know anything about him?”

“Uni kids come in here and talk a lot. Not to me, to each other, but I hear it. I have a niece and two nephews still in school. They talk to me, tell Uncle Greg things they’d never tell their parents. This guy comes and goes. But when he’s here, he’s always cruising the clubs in this area. He never takes more than one in a season, and then he moves on somewhere else. But so far he’s always come back here. Nobody knows who he is, but they get a feel for when he’s around.”

Ariel’s face tightened as his anger began to rise. He throttled it down, somehow. He didn’t need to reveal himself here.

“Is this personal or professional for you?” Mr. Li asked.

“Both.”

“How will you find him? You know what he looks like?”

“I know what he smells like.”

The old man’s eyes narrowed, but then he nodded slowly. “Good hunting.”

* * *

Ariel walked in the front door to Shaka’s. The place was crowded and noisy. He looked around, then headed for the bar. Nick was working and saw him coming, and met him with a glass of sparkling water. “On the house, mate.”

“Thanks.” Ariel took a sip. “What happened after I left last night?”

“Oh, the crime scene blokes took photos, sampled and swabbed everything they could see, and tried for fingerprints. Not sure they had much luck with the last. They were here until 0500. We were late opening because we had to clean up the mess they left.” Nick grinned at that. “The inspector kept Klein under control, which is good. He’s got a local reputation of being aggressive in his work, and sometimes he gets aggressive all over people. I wasn’t happy to see him come in the door last night.”

“It’s a good thing he didn’t try that with my boss.”

“You mean it’s a good thing the inspector shut him down.” Nick’s grin got wider.

“True.” Ariel put his glass down and looked up at Nick. “Listen, you have security cameras back there, right?”

“Yeah, but something went south on them. They both quit working a few days ago.”

Ariel frowned. “That’s weird. So you don’t have any security video of the guy dragging Yael back there.”

“Nope.” Nick sobered. “Just a couple of brief images of a guy pointing a laser at the cameras right before they went down. That’s a real problem these days. The boys in Hong Kong figured out that if you amp up the power to a laser pointer you can burn out a security camera. Or someone’s eyes, for that matter. This is the second time our cameras have been burned out, and according to our security company, it’s happening frequently all over Tel Aviv. Anyway, that inspector woman asked about the cameras as well, so she would have taken any security videos if we’d had any.”

“Yeah, she would have, but damn!” Ariel frowned. “I really wanted to see those. That would have been some help.” He looked up at Nick. “You going to replace the cameras?”

“Oh, yeah. Insurance requires it. Fortunately, these days security cameras are usually pretty cheap. I’m going to talk to our security guy to see what high-resolution color cameras would cost this time around. I think the prices have been coming down.”

Ariel pushed his empty glass back across the bar. “Thanks for that.”

“Anything else you need?”

“One last question—did you ever figure out how he got into the closet? Did he pick the lock, did he get a key, was it left unlocked by mistake?”

Nick’s expression turned sour. “Cops had the same questions. We didn’t have any answers for them, either. But I fired a bartender a couple of nights before then for harassing sheilas, and it looks like he got away with his keys when he left. I’ve changed the locks today, needless to say. Cops are looking for him now.”

“What was his name?”

“Yakov Abragam. And yeah, that’s another Russian name, so the cops are trying to put that picture together as well.”

“Ah.” Ariel nodded. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“I take it you didn’t have any luck with the name either.” Nick raised one eyebrow.

Ariel didn’t deny he’d tried. No sense to, since he’d mentioned the name to them his first night there. “No. I was unpleasantly surprised to find out how many Gersh Davidoffs there actually are in Israel.”

“Heh.” Nick thumbed his nose. “Not quite a Murphy’s Law issue, but not far from it, either.”

“Too right.” Ariel straightened. “Time to get on with it.”

“On with what?”

Ariel gave him a tight-lipped smile. “Hunting.”


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Framed