Fire in a Haystack: A Thrilling Novel

by Erez Aharoni

  “Well, and did you see Zionist breasts together?” he continued to take interest.

  “Yes. A little bit—I mean a little bit of time and a little bit of breasts. And I’m not so sure they were Zionist. I went home after about half an hour; he stayed there by himself,” answered Ofer.

  “What did he do later?” Alush changed the direction of the investigation.

  “I don’t know.” Ofer was glad a truthful answer was now the best option.

  “Do you go to the Paradise Club on a regular basis?”

  “Of course not. I was only there once before, at a bachelor party.”

  “So you and Rodety had a relationship outside of work,” said Alush.

  “You can’t call that a relationship. Don’t put words in my mouth. This was just something I was forced to do for work. I didn’t stay there. I went home after a little more than thirty minutes.” Once again, he felt his flushed cheeks were about to fume. He prayed that they wouldn’t ask him what he was doing in every single one of the thirty minutes he spent in the Paradise Club.

  “That’s not enough. The details you’ve provided us with are very vague. As someone who’s supposed to be on the side of the law pretty soon, you’re not really good at being precise.” Dadon was getting angry.

  “You’re making a big deal out of nothing. I can’t believe you’re wasting your time on this.”

  Alush joined in. “Mr. Angel, please don’t be a smart-ass. Your whole story is very unclear. A man was found dead in a hotel. You gave us a very weird version of a very simple matter. The chambermaid who supposedly opened the door for you has disappeared from the face of the earth. It looks like she wasn’t even there. Now it turns out that you weren’t in a real hurry to tell us about the interesting choice of entertainment you shared with the man who’s now a body. I don’t like it when my fish just happen to get off the hook. You get it, Angel?”

  Ofer nodded to indicate he did.

  “You are going into custody tonight. We’ll decide what to do with you tomorrow. Either we’ll continue with the investigation or we’ll take you to the polygraph. Perhaps we’ll take you straight to the judge.”

  Dadon added, “You can use the night to remember exactly, and I mean exactly, what you did and didn’t do. And try not to come up with a different version, because we’re going to check it out and if you’ve misled us in any way, you’re going to smell Lysol for a long time. Maybe even drink a bit as well.”

  “You’re arresting me? I thought you were only detaining me for interrogation. Why are you arresting me?” Ofer raised his voice. “I want to call my office. That’s the law, you know.”

  “You can call a lawyer tomorrow morning, unless there’s someone that answers the phones in your office in the middle of the night.”

  Ofer assessed the situation quickly. There was no one at the office and he didn’t have Geller’s home number.

  “All right. I’ll call in the morning. If you insist on getting hit with a complaint about your conduct, then go ahead. But just so you know, and don’t say I didn’t warn you several times—you’re making a gross error,” he said.

  “Judging by your taste in entertainment, looks like being gross is more your territory than ours,” chuckled Dadon.

  “Come on, up on your feet, you’re coming with us to the Abu Kabir Prison,” said Alush, whistling the final S loudly to bring the discussion to an end.

  Chapter 5

  It was almost eleven o’clock at night when the voice of a female police officer came out the patrol car’s radio. “An unknown shooter has infiltrated the basement of 19 Ahad Ha’am, Tel Aviv and fired at the occupants. At least one person is badly wounded and a few more people suffered minor injuries…”

  Alush listened with a frozen expression. It seemed as though a slight weariness came over him, but he quickly shook it off. It was obvious he was eager to get rid of Angel and hurry to the new crime scene.

  Ofer felt as if he were an actor in a bad movie. The kind of movie one left in the middle without any regrets. Not for the cost of the ticket or the popcorn left behind on the seat. Although he rarely drove through this area, he recognized the Abu Kabir Prison right away. He had always seen the high walls and barbed wire fenced from a distance and had never visited inside. He would not have imagined his first visit would be as a prisoner.

  Alush handed him over at the entrance to a prison guard who wore a wrinkled uniform and said, “Moshon, the kid is in your hands from now till morning. Do me a favor and see to it that no one lays a finger on him. If anything’s broken, you’ll have to pay for it.” Then Alush turned to Ofer, gave him a consoling pat on the shoulder, as if he were there because of a cruel act of fate and not because of the policeman’s decision, and said, “Mr. Angel, I’ll see you in the morning. Sweet dreams. Unfortunately, I need to go and take care of a few more perverts. There’s no shortage of scumbags in this city.” He then quickly walked back towards his vehicle.

  The clumsy prison guard, whose eyes were ashen and whose face was covered with stubble, took Ofer’s fingerprints and saliva sample with a series of monotonous movements. He collected all of Ofer’s belongings—the wallet, the keys, the cell phone and a few coins— threw them all in a cloth bag that was once white and then filled out with painfully slow deliberation the registration form.

  Within minutes, the cell door was locked behind him. The cell was as warm as a sauna. The sharp tang of sweat and urine hung in the air. Ofer felt terrible. Just a few hours ago, he was enjoying the comforts of the Dan Panorama Hotel lobby, now he was trapped in this gutter, one level beneath the lowest level of hell.

  There was a radio close to the guard’s station next to his cell. He heard the announcer reading the midnight news, “The body of a foreign citizen was found in a Tel Aviv hotel. The police have imposed a media blackout on the investigation…”

  Ofer was shocked at how quickly news of the murder had spread. Why the media blackout? What had he gotten himself into?

  He took a look beneath his armpits and saw that large sweat stains were spreading on his shirt.

  The radio announcer now reported another criminal event at the heart of Tel Aviv, “An unknown person fired shots in a cellar on Ahad Ha’am Street in Tel Aviv…” He wasn’t excited anymore. He knew about that particular bit of news even before the announcer.

  He might have been under extreme pressure, but he was still in control. He recalled that the smells he’d had to endure during boot camp in his military service days weren’t much better. He took a deep breath and tried to look at the bright side. Tomorrow morning, I’ll get out and tell all my friends what the Abu Kabir Prison looks like from the inside, he said to himself.

  But he wasn’t able to continue his preoccupation with sweat stains and inventing stories to tell his friends for long.

  An overgrown man, dressed in short pants and an undershirt, screamed ceaselessly in a Georgian accent, “Ijou will feed the son of a bitch with shit. Then Ijou will slit his own wrists.”

  He shouted the same sentence over and over, louder and louder, while pacing across the cell and next to the bars. His flip flops banged on the floor with each step as though they were applauding his own curses.

  Ofer counted at least seven people in the crowded cell, including Ijou. Officer Dadon delivered on his promise, he thought. Some lay on the beds while others sat on them. All of them without exception completely ignored the Georgian’s threats. It didn’t seem as if they cared what he was going to do with his own wrists or who he was about to feed shit.

  Ijou continued to walk back and forth close to the bars, not ceasing his shouting even for a moment. Ofer hunched in the corner. Abruptly, Ijou stopped pacing and approached him. Ofer tried to curl up into himself to reduce his existence and dimensions to a bare minimum.

  The Georgian held a large plastic plate that was filled with an unidentifiable, thick cooked food. In his other hand, he held an opaque salt shaker, filled with a red spice, which he sprinkled on
his food to flavor it. He towered above Ofer and gave him a long stare.

  “You last to come, so you first to taste,” he said.

  Ijou was about the size of a grizzly bear. A mountain of muscles bulged from his threadbare undershirt, and from it emerged orangutan-like arms. One of them had a tattoo the size of a real anchor.

  There was nothing Ofer could do. As a matter of fact, he didn’t have a lot of experience in handling such situations. In the neighborhood where he grew up he was one of the kids who were always beaten up. He could remember one time when he was the one to do the beating, but it was Zehava Gilboa he beat, a smaller girl who had borrowed his bicycle without permission. Not exactly an experience he could call upon in such a situation.

  Even so, Ofer refused, knowing that once Ijou gave him the first spoonful, he wouldn’t stop feeding him and maybe not only through the mouth. Who knew, there was a chance the others would join the party as well.

  Ijou was not used to being refused. He was insulted by Ofer’s reaction. Ofer should have recognized that Ijou was not the kind of man you should insult. The Georgian placed the plate and the salt shaker on a metal cabinet next to the wall, grabbed Ofer’s neck, lifted him from the bed with ease and began to shake his head wildly.

  Ofer tried to resist and his resistance only served to upset Ijou even further. He pounded Ofer’s chest and abdomen with his fists. Left, right, left. As if the four of them, Ofer, Ijou and Ijou’s fists, were marching together in a military parade.

  Ofer raised his hands instinctively to protect his face and to try and thwart the grizzly bear’s plan to feed him the brown concoction. His body ached all over. His chest was about to burst. He couldn’t feel his shoulders, and eating from the thick mixture in the dish now seemed beyond his capabilities. He tried to defend himself with his hands and elbows but could not prevent the barrage of fists that gradually intensified. He retreated until he felt the metal cabinet against his back then he stretched back his hand, held the salt shaker, opened it with a swift deliberate motion and threw the red spice into his assailant’s eyes.

  The paprika that filled Ijou’s eyes produced a wild scream from his throat. He continued to wave his fists as if they were the wings of a butterfly. His eyes were closed and tear filled, and he couldn’t see anything. Ofer tried to get away from the fists with measured movements, his hands raised to protect his face, but even so, he remained within their reach.

  All of a sudden, he felt something solid separating him and the wild orangutan. He lowered his hands from his face to see where his rescue came from.

  A dark-skinned, muscular guy stood between them. “Relax,” he told Ijou. “Take it easy right now, or I’ll slice you up and send your pieces to your family’s village in Georgia,” he continued and detailed to the large bear why he’d better calm down.

  Miraculously, the Georgian retreated. As if his electricity had been unplugged all at once. He sat on one of the vacant benches at the end of the room and wiped his face, which was distorted from pain, and his stinging eyes.

  “I’m Morris, Morris Dahan,” the muscular savior introduced himself and flashed a wide smile at Ofer. A tooth was missing on the upper right side of his mouth. He wore a tight black shirt that proudly emphasized the Star of David gold chain he wore on his chest. Judging by the pointy manicured fingernail on his pinky, one could deduce he wasn’t a laborer.

  “I’m Ofer. Ofer Angel. Pleased to meet you,” said Ofer and shook his hand. For the second time that day, he felt his fingers were about to snap.

  I wonder what he’ll want from me in return, he tried to guess. And at the same time, he attempted to calculate who was more dangerous—the brown bear or the savior with the missing tooth.

  “What happened to that Ijou?” asked Ofer and sat on one of the available beds with shivering knees.

  “You’ve insulted him. He wanted to treat you to some of his food. You should have tasted it. It’s not half bad. He’s got a heart of gold, but he can get a little crazy sometimes. When that happens, you just need to blow some cold air on him and then the wind puts out the fire. But you managed to surprise him with the paprika. Not too bad...”

  “How did you manage to calm him down so quickly?” asked Ofer. He wanted to both buy himself some time and show some appreciation.

  “Morris Dahan. Morris Dahan has lived a life of crime since he was nine years old,” he described himself in the third person, “and a criminal life can make you sharper than a knife.”

  For a moment, Ofer thought he should come up with a clever reply of his own, but he was afraid his rhyming capabilities weren’t up to Morris’ obviously high standards. He considered asking Morris if he was an animal trainer but thought that might be a vulgar and invasive question and therefore preferred to keep silent.

  A few more seconds of tense silence passed before Morris turned to him again, “Tell me, genius, what are you doing here in the Abu Kabir hotel?”

  Something in Morris’ brown eyes and flattened nose made Ofer feel that he could trust the guy, and he answered without hesitation. He told him he was an intern at a law firm, how he found the body of the kangaroo from London who came at the invite of Yitzhak Brick. Morris knew who Yitzhak Brick was. How could he not? The man’s name appeared daily in all the headlines of the financial newspapers. He explained to Morris that the chambermaid implicated him and that he hid a little information about the strip club and that was why he was brought straight to Abu Kabir in Officer Alush’s patrol car.

  “Paradise, eh? Not a bad place, but there are better. I’ll give you some recommendations. So, you’re a murder suspect?” Morris chuckled. “Couldn’t tell by looking at you, a shark in sardine’s clothing, eh?”

  That was a question Ofer didn’t know how to address. “And you, why are you here?” Ofer tried his best to appear friendly.

  “Me? They’re trying to frame me with something. I sat with a friend in my car. In a gas station. An undercover cop stopped us for a routine inspection. I invited the cop to join us for a drink. ‘I’ll show you a good time at my expense,’ I told him. He decided to build his career on my back, arrested us and searched us. He found a tool box in the trunk of the car. Because I already did time for robbery, he decided I was on my way to a break-in. So now I’m charged with bribery and robbery. But I’m completely out of it, I have my remand tomorrow.”

  “What’s a remand?” asked Ofer.

  “Are you sure you’re a lawyer?” asked Morris.

  He didn’t have the chance to explain the difference between an intern and a lawyer before Morris continued. “A remand is a hearing about whether or not a prisoner should remain in custody until the end of all proceedings. Which means until there’s a trial. Got it?”

  “Got it. And what are you going to say?”

  “I don’t know yet,” said Morris. “I fired my lawyer because he wanted to squeeze ten grand out of me. Just for the remand. I hope his ass will roast in hell. Tell me, how much does your firm charge for something like that?” Morris decided to do a little market survey.

  “We don’t really take such cases, we deal mostly with commercial cases,” answered Ofer. And without Morris asking him to, he continued and suggested, “But listen, you need to claim there is no ‘presumption of dangerousness’ in your case.”

  Morris toughened his face. It was dangerous to tell people like Morris they weren’t presumed to be dangerous.

  “It means that there’s no danger you will commit the same offense again, get it? What are the chances a cop will agree to be bribed?” he hurried to explain.

  Morris squinted his eyebrows again; this time there was a plea for further explanations on his face.

  “The moment the judge is convinced there’s no danger you will repeat the offense, which is absolutely the situation in your case, he can rule, because of reasonable doubt, that you don’t need to remain in custody until the end of the proceedings. I just studied this ruling. The State of Israel vs. Zagoury. All you need to do tom
orrow is tell the judge that because there is no presumption of dangerousness, based on the recent Zagoury legal precedent, it’s possible for you to tell him so and you should be released.”

  Morris gave him a suspicious look. “Are you sure?” he asked.

  “Yes, I’m sure. I’ll bet my head on this one.”

  “Keep your head on your shoulders, Mr. Lawyer,” said Morris. “If you’re right, I think you’ll be able to make some good use of it in the future.” After giving it a bit more thought he added, “But if you’re wrong, you may find it rolling on the floor, got it?”

  “What about your friend?” Ofer quickly changed the subject.

  “That’s my friend,” said Morris and pointed at Ijou, who had turned into a quiet little house kitten after finishing his meal. “I’m both his babysitter and his father. I’m not his mother as well only because I can’t cook for him like she does. He shouted earlier what he was going to do to the cop who arrested us.”

  “Ijou is his real name? That’s not a Georgian name.”

  “Ijou is really Bijou, but he switched the B with an I. that’s what he wants to be called, and as you’ve probably noticed, it’s not always a good idea to argue with him.”

  Ofer was so tired that a great yawn tore his mouth open.

  Morris smiled. “Go to sleep, your eminence. And don’t worry, as long as I’m here no one’s going to lay a finger on you, no matter what intimidating stories they told you during the interrogation. When Morris is with you in the cell, you’ll wake up in the same mint condition you went to sleep in.”

  “Are you sure?” Now it was Ofer’s turn to be doubtful as he counted in his head, one by one, the seven detainees in the cell and imagined what each and every one might do to him.

  Without waiting for an answer, he closed his eyes and lay on the bench. Ofer fell asleep even before his head touched the concrete surface. For some reason, he had a feeling the word of a person who lived a life of crime since he was nine years old could be trusted.