For the first time in a long time, there was someone he considered killing. Actually, a whole group of people. Agents. Publishers. Journalists. Especially journalists. Particularly Benny Lassman.

Not accidentally, many felt the same about him. Except, perhaps, Benny Lassman. Cohen blamed himself, of course. He never should have given the manuscript to Lassman.

When he began, the writing was an experiment, just a way of learning how a computer worked, specifically the word processor that came with the machine.

It began as an exercise. He wrote a few paragraphs, which became a few more pages, and then, as his fingers learned to fly faster over the keyboard and he began to hear his own voice telling the story, it became cathartic, almost visceral, the release of something long denied. So, by the time he reached the telling of his years in Jerusalem as chief of criminal investigations, he decided that he was trying to write a book. If it was indeed a book – of that he wasn't sure.

Over the years he had met several of Jerusalem's most famous authors, under circumstances that included returning stolen property to a long-time contender for the Nobel Prize, breaking up fist-fights between a pair of best-selling authors in a rivalry that went back all the way to the different underground's they joined as teenagers during the British Mandate in Palestine, and once, under orders, letting a magazine writer spend a week as Cohen's shadow for a profile of the top detective in Jerusalem.

None of them really trusted Cohen – he was, after all a policeman, who observed too much. “Nice, nice,” they all said, each in their own way, when he took the manuscript around to ask their opinion. “But it needs work.” And none volunteered to help.

The poet was impressed with so many words; the historian said it was anecdotal, though it did show the connection between Cohen's life and the larger forces of the times he saw. The novelist suggested there were copy editors who could help him with the grammar, “and add some color, some spice.”

It’s true that Cohen's Hebrew was far from literary. He never finished his seventh year of formal schooling, and that was in Germany before World War II. English was the language his mother chose to speak to him instead of the French she was given by her mother. She even made sure he had an English nanny brought to Berlin from London by his father.

His Hebrew therefore was accented, like most Israelis, though he had a tendency to mix gender in the plural. His vocabulary was made of a peculiar combination of the street and the bureaucratic jargon required by any large organization, more specifically, a police department’s. Yet he had always been praised for clear, concise reports.

Nonetheless, by the time he called Lassman he decided that if Benny didn't offer help, he'd shelve the whole thing. Of all the journalists in Jerusalem in Cohen's day, Benny Lassman was the one he came closest to trusting, certainly the one whose reports best understood Cohen's work as CID chief. Now Lassman was writing books, himself. His book on the effects of the intifada on the Israeli military won him more foreign acclaim than local, but that was the politics of envy. Cohen liked Lassman's book because it was more honest than the newspapers.

Lassman was surprised by the call from Cohen, who famously kept to himself, especially after the inheritance that overnight made him wealthier than what he thought any person needed. But when Cohen explained what he wanted, Lassman was both flattered and curious. No problem, he promised.

He didn't say that if he liked it, he'd translate a few chapters and send them to his agent, Tina Andrews. Cohen didn't ask for that. But that's what happened.

Originally, even after Lassman said Cohen had indeed written a book, all Cohen wanted was for it to be considered for the police academy's bibliography for new cadets.

“Look, Avram,” Lassman had said. “You can afford to print it yourself. We both know that. Let's say that national headquarters agrees to hand it out to cadets. So, every year, maybe another thousand or two would-be cops will read it. And you know that unless they make it compulsory, less than a hundred a year. Tina, on the other hand, can help you find publishers all over the world. Thousands of readers, maybe tens of thousands. And if we’re lucky, hundreds of thousands.” Already then, Lassman and Cohen had agreed that Lassman would get a cut. “You have a message here. And Tina’s talking about a lot of money...”

“I did not write it for the money,” said Cohen. He didn't need to remind Lassman that money was the last thing Cohen needed.

“Obviously,” said Lassman. “But it's good. Too good for you to print it yourself. You know that they call that? Vanity press. And I can say a lot of things about you, but you are not vain...” Lassman grinned but Cohen didn’t smile back.

“Besides, the book's out there now. Tina's showing it around. And she knows much more about this business than either of us. You really should listen to her.”

So, Cohen, suddenly an amateur, having listened to Lassman and accepted his translation and editing, thus found himself listening to Lassman's agent and Tina Andrews took “Twentieth Century Cop” – Lassman's title – to auction.

She called late one summer night to tell Cohen that TMC Publications, a media giant that bought and sold books, movies, records, TV shows, and multi-media CD-ROMs, was offering a quarter of a million dollars for the North American rights.

“I've got Carey McCloskey on the other line. What should I tell him?”

“Who?”

“He's the editor at TMC.”

“Will he help make the book better?” Cohen wanted to know.

“Of course,” she promised. “But maybe I can do better. I'm still waiting to hear from ...”

Cohen interrupted. “Will he help make the book better?” he repeated.

“He's very ambitious. And young. He'll work around the clock for the book if he thinks it can be big. And he does.”

“If he'll help make the book better, that's all I care about,” Cohen said.

“Then we have a deal. Great.”

A few minutes later, they were all back on the phone together in a conference call.

It began with a young man's voice saying, “I loved it. Loved it. Despite everything, your struggle with your own conscience even in the face of pure evil, comes through as authentic.”

“I am not really a writer,” said Cohen.

“Well, I understand that you did get some help from ...” McCloskey paused, not remembering the name. Cohen meanwhile was having a difficult time with the pronunciation of McCloskey in his mind.

“Benny Lassman,” said Tina.

“Right,” said the editor. “Lassman. Yes, well, it needs work. More color, perhaps, fix the rhythm with some careful cuts, and I think,” the editor paused for effect, “we'll have a big book.”

At the time, Cohen thought the editor meant a physically oversized coffee table type book, and was worried that meant pictures.

He did not like to be photographed, and kept no personal albums of photos. Of course, the veteran wire services working Jerusalem and local newspaper archives had his picture. But other than the mug shots, “killer photos” in local slang, which appeared on his various identity cards, he owned only two photographs that he cherished.

There was the black and white wedding picture from 1968, when his hair was still black and his equally young bride's face still optimistic. Four months later, she was dead. He still visited her grave once a year. But every time he opened his desk-top drawer, he saw that photo.

The other showed him with Ahuva Meyerson, the woman in his life since she was in her first week as the youngest judge in Israel, a legal prodigy who gave up an academic career for the bench. Nearly twenty years his junior, both felt the attraction from that first time they set eyes on each other, and within a few weeks, he found plenty of reasons to go by the courthouse to observe a proceeding or testify in a case, to guarantee they’d meet again, and again.

They kept the relationship secret for nearly ten years, and even after he retired his will, they kept it discreet. By the time the gossip columnists figured out what was going on, when on rare but significant occasions, Cohen and Ahuva appeared together in public, Cohen was rich and Ahuva was deputy president of the Tel Aviv District Court, on her way to the Supreme Court.

The picture of him and Ahuva was recent, taken on a trip to a tiny Greek island where they spent a month that summer, the first vacation Cohen ever enjoyed.

The Greek housekeeper who took care of the little house they rented, took the picture of them on the patio. The happy couple, against the blue backgrounds of sky and sea, stood smiling in the wooden frame on his desk.

So Cohen protested, “no, no pictures,” when McCloskey explained, but Tina interjected, and told Cohen that whenever possible, autobiographies should include photographs.

They were the experts, and though he had always made his own judgments, he relied on experts whenever he could. He didn’t volunteer the idea of searching news archives. The book was his life, but as far as he was concerned it wasn't about him, it was about life as he understood it.

“We’ll need some publicity shots,” said McCloskey, “and maybe send a crew over to shoot a video we can flog to local stations that don't have the money for their own crews to interview you, and... then when you're here, we'll have some more taken...”

“Can't the book speak for me?” Cohen asked already in that first conversation with the New York editor. For that was what he believed a book did, especially an autobiography, a memoir, written to pass on a lesson. If the book worked, it was self-explanatory, he figured.

“Why interviews? And why do I have to go to America? Why can't the book speak for me?” he repeated. He did not like to travel, to be taken out of his routines.

“Avram?” asked McCloskey, “I can call you Avram?” he quickly added. Despite the combination of the phone speaker and long distance disembodying the voice, McCloskey's voice suddenly seemed cooler, just a notch or two, but enough for the old detective's trained ear to catch the patronization in the tone.

“Cohen is okay,” he said.

“To make your book famous, we have to make you famous, Avram.”

“That's the way it works,” Tina confirmed.

“The way things work,” McCloskey repeated.

So, perhaps Cohen's mistake was right then, when he didn't say to them all “Stop!” He wasn't interested in fame, he wasn't interested in money, he wasn't interested period. Writing the book revealed a lot to himself, printing it on his own to give to friends and yes, maybe even students, could have been enough. But tempted by the editor’s flattery, out of hubris perhaps, Cohen decided to hear Carey's appreciation of the book, and out of naivete perhaps asked, “Please, tell me how I can make my book better,”

Carey, of course, interpreted that as the go-ahead for whatever would be necessary. “Here's how it works,” the editor dug in. “In a few weeks I'm going to send you back the manuscript with my comments and corrections. You go over it and fix what you can. If you have any questions, feel free to call me.”

He gave Cohen an office number in New York. “If I'm not here, just leave a message on the machine, and I'll get back to you within a couple of hours, latest.”

Thus it began. The Americans used Lassman, who had done the translation and editing before sending it to Tina, as a gofer into the archives. Lassman’s ten percent grew to twelve and a half, so he didn't mind searching for photos of the retired detective. He found more than forty, mostly in newspaper archives, going all the way back to the passport-sized official police portrait taken when Cohen was appointed to deputy CID chief. But the Americans wanted more.

Reluctantly, Cohen found himself in the studio of a Jerusalem photographer he once used as a witness in a drug case. But the portraits were not good enough for Carey.

A New York photographer so famous even Cohen had heard of her, was dispatched to Jerusalem She insisted on spending from morning to night with the old detective, wanting him to take her around the city to favorite haunts and scenes of crimes he wrote about in the book. Cohen put his foot down at that. In tiny Jerusalem word traveled fast and Cohen preferred that at least until it was published, the book remain a secret. The last thing he needed was word going out that he was getting his portrait taken. It would set the gossip mill grinding away at him. “Just in case,” Cohen told Carey, who called furious at Cohen’s lack of cooperation, “I want to keep the book secret until it’s out.”

“In case of what?”

“Who knows? Maybe you will change your mind.”

“Nonsense,” said the editor. “I've got sales excited about this project. No way this is going to coitus interruptus.”

“I'd just prefer it remain secret until it's done,” Cohen said. “Printed. In my hand.”

And Carey's enthusiasm for the project cooled another five degrees. The problem everyone involved in its publishing had to overcome when it came to Cohen's book was the simple fact that he wasn’t in it for the money. He would cooperate with Carey to improve the writing, the story, the telling, the explanation – for that’s how Cohen sometimes saw it, as an explanation of the choices he had made. But Cohen was uninterested in the marketing. “You do what you have to do,” he told Tina, “and I’ll do what I can.”

When Tina began pitching the book to German publishers, she suggested – with Lassman stuck in the middle, understanding Cohen's sensitivities, appreciating the PR value of Tina's idea – that Cohen might want to look up his birthplace in Berlin, or even travel to Munich for a memorial visit to Dachau, and add a chapter.

Cohen didn't get mad. He just said softly, “It's as if you didn't even read my book,” and from then on, Tina was much more careful about what she suggested to him, while Cohen realized that Lassman, for all his work as a translator and editor and intermediary between Cohen's semi-hermitage in Jerusalem's German Colony and the strange and different world Tina and Carey and the photographer represented, maybe Lassman, too, didn't really understand.

Tina tried not to worry. “The fact TMC paid two-fifty made it a lot easier to bring the Germans on-board. And with them, we can get the Japanese and the English and probably the French...”

And Cohen, who had been floating on the flattery from the day Lassman called excitedly to say that Tina Andrews loved the chapters he sent, finally began to realize that he was in over his head.