Read An Accidental Murder: An Avram Cohen Mystery for Free Online Page B

Cohen finally interrupted. “I am not religious, Mr. Kaplan, and as I told you before at the elevator, as far as I can tell, neither are you. Which is why I am not interested in arguing with you, sir. At least not on this issue. I can say I am surprised that a man like you, traveling the world, making movies, able to write stories that interest hundreds of millions of people, is nonetheless more interested in finding excuses in the past than solutions for the future.”
    He spoke as politely as possible, making sure to control his temper.
    “Bravo!” Tina exclaimed.
    “You’re right, Carey,” the little fat man suddenly squealed, “he sounds just like Kissinger.” “Sounds like a dreamer to me,” Kaplan said.
    Cohen hated being discussed in the third person in his presence. It came with the uniform, but it was never the uniform that Cohen loved about being a cop. He scowled at the little fat man, who, conscious of it or not, backed up a step away from Cohen’s expression.
    “Please, Bernie,” Mccloskey said in an annoyed tone, and surprised everyone by keeping his eyes on Cohen.
    “I’m trying to understand what they’re arguing about.” He looked at Cohen. “It’s not just politics, is it?” “No,” said Cohen. “It’s not.”

5.
    Yes, Cohen knew how to fight, but if he had to point his finger at the single reason for his survival in a world he regarded with much suspicion, it was that he had learned to dodge and hide, as well as hunt, and if need be, to kill.
    Was he afraid? He didn’t know anymore. Of what? Death?
    His heart was still strong, despite the incident, as his doctor called it. He cut back his smoking and felt the difference.
    He drank and it made him feel either more alive or sleepy, and he knew how much he required for each need.
    He did not take any pills stronger than an over-the counter codeine-laced aspirin. He generally ate only food he or a cook he knew prepared. His eyes were not as good as they used to be, forcing him to carry a pair of half-rim spectacles for reading fine print. Alcohol was his own painkiller, and he had plenty to kill. Writing the book had also been a painkiller of sorts, looking into his memories, looking into his soul. Publishing was the mistake. The book was supposed to carry on his fight. Writing it had convinced him he was past fighting.
    Carey was right: Cohen was afraid. He was afraid of the trap he had laid for himself. Once his fingers learned their way around the keyboard, the first draft poured out of him. He had never told the story before, not from start to finish, and by doing so it cleared passages clogged by guilt, wiped clear windows clouded by shame. There were moments he had found himself crying as he typed. He wrote to reveal his thoughts, but the writing had freed his emotions.
    He wrote Twentieth-Century Cop by accident. Trying to learn one thing, he learned another, so what had begun as one story turned into two. It wasn’t a religious book, of course. But because so much of it was about what it meant to be a Jew in Nazi Germany, and then later a cop in modern Jerusalem—a city of flesh and blood that could be spilled in the name of religion—his book was a text that spoke to longings both political and spiritual.
    For some Jewish reviewers much more moderate than Kaplan, perhaps, but no less jealous about their idea of Jewish survival, Cohen’s book was indeed only one step shy of heresy, controversial precisely because it differentiated between the idea of a united Jerusalem and the reality of its internal divisions. While the politicians in Israel said they’d never let Jerusalem be divided, he described in anecdotes and stories how the division ran deeper than ever because of political obsessions that regarded the symbol of Jerusalem as more important than the safety of its people, no matter what their religion.
    Nobody could question Cohen’s defense of the Jewish people, nor his work on behalf of the safety of