The Hit

by Michal Hartstein

  I knew what he was thinking. He wanted this fetus to be in my belly. I also started to shed tears. I felt sorry for him, I felt sorry for myself and I cursed the impossible situation we had run into.

  I got up and went over to him. He did not recoil from me. I sat down right next to him, almost on his knees, and hugged him affectionately. He returned the hug. We sat like that, hugging each other and weeping.

  "I love you so much," he whispered suddenly in my ear and began to kiss me.

  I broke away from him. "No… Yinon…" I muttered feebly, but he did not give up and clung to me again. I stood up.

  "I don't want us to do something you'll regret later. You’re about to start a family," I said and returned to sit on the opposite sofa.

  He looked at me miserably.

  "I want you to know…" he said and bit his lip, "you should know… I’m really happy to become a father."

  "I’ve no doubt about it," I said gently.

  "And Orit’s a good girl."

  "And that's why it's best you go home now."

  "You're right," he said and got up.

  I accompanied him to the door. "Let's keep in touch," I told him before he left.

  "Are you sure about that? Will that be good - for us, I mean?"

  "I don't know. But not being in touch isn’t very good for us either, so just keep me updated on what's happening."

  "Fine."

  "Let me know when Orit gives birth."

  "Fine."

  "By the way, what are you having?"

  "A boy."

  "Best of luck."

  "Amen," he said and went down the stairs, almost running.

  CHAPTER 13

  Friday, June 24, 2011

  The meeting with Yinon was beneficial for me. The feeling of discomfort which had burdened me since finding out that he was in a new relationship and about to become a father disappeared as if it had never been. I knew that, in spite of everything, he was still mine and we had not stopped loving each other. It was frustrating and flattering at the same time. He wanted to be a father – so let him be a father. I could not know what the future had in store for us. I only knew that I could not let Yinon leave Orit while she was in the advanced stage of pregnancy.

  I went down to the neighborhood café for a light breakfast. The tables were full, and the street was packed with people enjoying the sunny Friday morning. I definitely wanted to enjoy a relaxed and pleasant weekend as well, but I wanted even more to get a phone call telling me that Nagusto had been found. The top brass was eagerly awaiting results. There were those who already doubted the testimony of Itzik Levayev, but every ounce of my intuition told me that Itzik had not lied and had not made an error.

  On the way home, I stopped at a deli and bought few sweet snacks for Shabbat. I told myself that, according to Murphy’s Law, if I bought a lot of snacks for myself, I would not have the time to enjoy them, because Nagusto would be found and I would have to leave everything.

  By noon, it became clear that Murphy had been right again.

  I was lying in bed, sleepy, covered with the weekend papers and cheesecake crumbs, when the longed-for phone call woke me up. One of the teams had identified Nagusto almost positively. That team had homed in on a fairly popular Eritrean restaurant and was alerted when a man arrived on a motorcycle identical to that from the shooting at Zelda's.

  The rider joined a group of young guys sitting in the restaurant and joined in their conversation. One of the cops took his picture with his cell phone and sent it to me. It was rather a good picture. I forwarded the picture to the officer on call at the police station so he could show it to Itzik Levayev. After fifteen minutes, we had confirmation.

  We had found Nagusto.

  I instructed the team to do nothing more than follow the man. It was not enough to catch him; I wanted to take him at home in order to find the gun with which he had executed the hit.

  I shook off the papers and the crumbs and went out to the site. On the way, I got an update: Nagusto had left the restaurant, ridden his motorcycle for several hundred meters, and entered an old apartment building.

  I asked the team to wait for me before entering the building. I wanted to supervise things myself. On my way there, I was informed that it was probably not Nagusto's home. Too many men were entering the building and leaving it. Nagusto, it turned out, was visiting a brothel to relieve his urges. After half an hour, he left again.

  By that time, I had joined the surveillance team and finally got to see the man up close. He was an impressive man, tall and robust. His facial features were chiseled in straight lines, as if they were cast in a mold. I identified the tattoo Itzik had described. In my opinion, the tattoo marred his handsome face, but I figured Nagusto had wanted to add a tough or mysterious touch to his personality.

  Nagusto climbed on his motorbike and drove to a mini-market on Har Zion Avenue. He entered the store and left several minutes later loaded with bags of snacks and alcoholic drinks. His next stop was a rundown public park, where a few young guys were waiting for him and welcomed him with joyful cries.

  I passed the next few hours along with the team, staring at Nagusto and his friends. They were drinking, shouting, and fooling around until two a.m. The bunch finally dispersed and Nagusto got on his motorcycle, speeding away on almost empty roads. I had instructed Shachar to take advantage of Nagusto's visit to the brothel and attach a surveillance device to his motorcycle, so that following him would not turn into a chase that would lead us away from his home.

  Now we could allow ourselves to follow him at a greater distance, while still actually knowing where he was at each moment. The surveillance device led us south, to one of the streets in a southern neighborhood of Yaffo, bordering with Holon. The Central Station area was like the Champs Élysées in comparison with this street. The row of single story houses was almost derelict. Most of them were composed of ramshackle patches of amateurish, piratical construction. Some of the dwellings were actually just converted shipping containers. The street was silent and dark, and only the small house where Nagusto's motorcycle was parked had any lights on. We peeked through one of the windows and saw our target lying on the sofa, playing on a PlayStation. The team comprised three more cops besides Shachar and me. We surrounded the house and prepared to break in.

  I knocked on the door. I heard the volume of the television game lower and Nagusto approaching the door.

  "Who is it?" he asked in fluent Hebrew.

  "Police!" said Shachar in a decisive tone.

  "Just a moment," he said. "I need to get dressed."

  We knew that he was dressed and that the only thing he wanted to put on now was a gun. "We know you're dressed," said Shachar. "If you don't open up right now we’ll break in."

  "Alright, alright," he said and opened the door.

  "Hands up!" ordered Shachar in Hebrew.

  "Hands up!" I added in English when Nagusto did not obey immediately. I realized quickly that using English was unnecessary. Nagusto was perfectly fluent in Hebrew.

  Nagusto's home was an old, crumbling structure. The paint was peeling from the walls and water leaks had left their mark on the ceiling. The floor was covered with stained, old tiles, most of them broken. In the center of the house was a living room. At one end of the living room, I saw an improvised kitchenette, and at the other end I saw two doors, one leading to a bathroom with a shower and the other to a tiny bedroom. The kitchenette was equipped with an old sink, a filthy stove, a noisy refrigerator and cabinets without doors. Against this wretchedness, a new, prestigious leather sofa, a gigantic television screen and state-of-the-art speaker system stood out. I did not recognize all the devices attached to the television screen, but I understood they were expensive game consoles. On the glass table between the sofa and the television were scattered boxes of games and porno movies.

  Nagusto raised his hands and was led by a third cop toward one of the walls to be searched and handcuffed.

  "I have a
visitor visa," he kept muttering.

  "We’re not Immigration," I told him. "Do you have a passport? Documents?"

  Nagusto led us to the bedroom, which was also dilapidated and dingy. Nagusto's passport was in the closet. The old closet was jam packed with brand-name jeans and shirts, some of which still had their tags on. I opened the drawer Nagusto pointed at and found a treasure trove of scores of watches, rings and necklaces. Underneath all of that was the passport.

  "Nagusto Gorgodsa," I read aloud from the passport. Now I knew that “Nagusto” was not a nickname. I looked at the documents tucked into the passport. Nagusto did, indeed, have a legal visitor visa. He was twenty-three and had arrived in Israel six years earlier, after crossing the Sinai Peninsula on foot. He had the status of a war refugee. Very few Eritreans had managed to get such a status, which granted him a free and secure stay in Israel. From the document attached to the visitor visa, I learned that Nagusto had been orphaned at age eight, and that several years later he had joined his uncles on the long journey from Eritrea to Israel.

  "I told you I was legal," he repeated. His Hebrew was perfect, with a barely an accent.

  "And I told you we’re not from Immigration," I said and led him back to the living room.

  An additional police vehicle arrived on the scene, and Nagusto was handcuffed inside it. One cop remained in the vehicle to watch him, four cops secured the house and Shachar and I searched the house thoroughly.

  Shachar likes to search the ordinary places. It always works. Under the sofa cushions, he found brass knuckles and a combat knife.

  I went to search the bedroom. I decided to adhere to Shachar's search technique and examined the self-evident places first.

  I lifted the pillows on the bed. I could not see anything underneath. I reached under the heavy mattress and moved my hand slowly. Just before I finished moving my hand around the bed frame, a second before thinking how things were never simple, I felt a metal object. I braced my arms and lifted the mattress carefully.

  I saw a gun.

  "Shachar!" I cried out joyfully. “I’ve found a gun! Come and give me a hand."

  Shachar came over running and took the weight of the mattress. The moment I took out the gun and examined it, it my excitement was replaced with disappointment. It was a Glock with a short caliber. Our suspect had used a longer, 9 mm caliber.

  "We’ll just have to keep searching," said Shachar regretfully.

  I agreed and looked wearily in the direction of the closet packed with clothes. There was no choice. I would have to take over that wardrobe, which, to the best of my memory, was the only one I had ever seen that was even messier than mine.

  My booty, after forty minutes, consisted of two envelopes containing tens of thousands of Shekels, a steel knuckleduster and two combat knives.

  Shachar finished up in the living room, the kitchen and the bathroom space. He found two more knives. The sought-after gun was not found.

  Shachar sat down on the sofa and sighed. I sat down next to him and joined in the moaning.

  "What a letdown!" Shachar said wearily.

  "Entirely. If the gun isn’t here, the chance of us finding it’s close to zero,"

  "Shall I call in the dog squad?"

  "Sure, let them search the surroundings; perhaps he buried it somewhere nearby."

  "I hope so."

  "Shall we go?"

  "Let's go."

  But we did not leave. We were too tired. In front of us, on the television screen, the screensaver for some computer game was bouncing from one corner to another. Shachar's gaze was hypnotized by the floating logo. Suddenly he got up, took one of the remotes and started pressing buttons. Various menus appeared on the screen. Shachar was crazy for computer games. Though I had no idea if the equipment in this house was worth a lot, I understood from the sparkle in Shachar's eyes that Nagusto was a connoisseur in the field.

  "Shachar, this isn’t the time -" I began wearily.

  "Wait a minute. There’s something strange here."

  Shachar switched the television input over to satellite.

  "Bingo!" he jumped up and reached for the converter.

  "I don’t understand. What have you found?"

  "I knew there were too many boxes here," he said and extracted one from the shelf under the television screen. "I knew it!" he screamed gleefully and explained. "When the box can be extracted that easily, without having to disconnect any wires, it’s easy to tell that it's just a box, that it's not connected to anything."

  "I don't understand," I stared at him blankly. This specific technological field was a riddle to me.

  "Never mind," he said and laid the phony electronic box on the table.

  "Do you need a screwdriver?"

  "I don't know… I don’t think so." He pulled out a small Swiss pocket knife and opened the top of the box easily.

  Inside the box was a Glock model 17C with a long, 9 mm caliber.

  CHAPTER 14

  Sunday, June 26, 2011

  "Am I allowed to know where you are?" my mother barked into my ear.

  "At home." I played dumb. I knew very well what she was driving at. "That is, I’m already on my way out… in a couple of minutes."

  "Where were you all Saturday?"

  "Asleep."

  "You slept for twenty-four hours non-stop?"

  "No -" I tried to answer, but she had already pressed on.

  "And even if you did, when you finally got up, didn’t see you all the messages I sent you? And the missed calls? Didn’t you think it was worthwhile contacting your poor mother, who might be worried about you?"

  In fact, I had not looked at my cell phone at all. "It’s now barely seven a.m., Mom. I was thinking of calling you later," I lied.

  "Let’s say I believe you," she sighed. "The important thing is that all’s well with you."

  "Yes, all’s well with me," I answered, and felt eleven years old again.

  "Then can you explain to me why we didn’t see you on Friday for dinner, or on Saturday for lunch, and why you couldn’t call when Shabbat was over?"

  "I told you I wasn't sure I could come because I was in the middle of an ongoing investigation and I might have to work over the weekend. And that’s exactly what happened. I worked Friday straight through Saturday morning. When I came home, I was so tired I fell asleep until just now. I woke up about an hour-and-a-half ago, showered, ate, walked Tsumi, and now I intend to go to work."

  "Anyone would think you’re the only policewoman in the Israel Police force."

  "Believe me, I’m not the only one working like that." It was partially true. There were other cops, like Shachar, who were hooked, like me, but there were quite a few cops who had rightfully earned the police their bad reputation. Simple investigations dragged along because of laziness and lack of motivation. There was an excessive use of bureaucracy to create the false impression of hard work. Rather than investigate and examine the facts, cops utilized excessive and unnecessary authoritarianism. Alon had somehow managed to find people like Shachar and me, who loved their profession, and, indeed, wanted to be cops. We did not care which one of us was working more shifts or fewer shifts, and we didn’t bother analyzing our pay slips. We regarded our work as our calling.

  "Well, my sweet, you know I’m very proud of you. I’m simply worried. You don’t work at a regular job -"

  "And I also don’t have a regular mother," I added and she laughed.

  "All mothers are like me," she continued to laugh. "If you were a mother, you’d know what I’m talking about."

  I knew she no longer said it as a reproach, so I did not bother to answer, particularly because, in my line of work, I had encountered more than one mother who did not live up to the standards set up by my mother.

  I arrived at the police station. The atmosphere was relatively sleepy. The week had just started. Nagusto had been transferred to the Detention Center at Abu Kabir and the gun sent to the lab for examination. I expected to receive quite
a few answers that day. I turned on my computer. To my great surprise, an email from the lab was waiting for me. What great service!

  The gun that Shachar had found in the phony converter was definitely the gun used at the Zelda Café. Furthermore, the bullets that remained in the cartridge were of the same manufacturing series as the ones that had been fired in the incident. It was strong, solid evidence. We had found the murderer.

  I called Abu Kabir and asked them to send over the detainee for interrogation. An hour later, I was sitting facing him in the interrogation room. He was wearing the detention outfit the jailers gave to those who do not have an extra set of clothes. There are very few people who look good in this kind of outfit, but Nagusto was one of them. I had the feeling that he was the type of man who would look like a million dollars wearing a jute sack.

  "Good morning," I smiled at him and straightened the binder laid in front of me. "I don’t know if I had a chance to introduce myself properly. My name is Hadas Levinger and I’m an investigator in the Israel Police."

  He looked at me without blinking.

  "When we arrested you, we explained the reason for your detention. But I’ll ask you anyway; do you know why you’ve been detained?

  He continued to look at me with a hollow gaze.

  "Nagusto, is anything unclear?"

  "Me not speak Hebrew," he answered in broken English.

  "Nagusto," I shifted to a far less pleasant tone, "if this is the game you want to play, no problem. I’ll waste another half a day finding a Tigrinian interpreter, and then we’ll sit here with an interpreter who’ll translate for you what you understand just as well. What a shame. I don’t like such games. I know that you speak Hebrew and that you understand every word that comes out of my mouth. Since I detest playing games that much, I’ll tell you that we found the gun you hid in the television converter."

  "Is it illegal to keep a weapon for self-defense?" he answered in flawless Hebrew. "You’ve seen where I live. There’s plenty of crime there."

  "It’s definitely illegal if you don’t have a permit to keep a weapon. And as far as I know, you don’t have such a permit."