Just People

by Paul Usiskin

  By then Dov was on the Highway going south, buffeted by strong winds, cleaving through rain and snowmelt from the hills overflowing drainage channels, flooding the road surface. He needed someone with psychiatry connections and was so out of time, that even with his doubts about her, he called Irit. Psychology, psychiatry, they both had psych in them, no?

  Irit’s voice filled the car speakers. ‘Do you want my assessments of that meeting?’ Dov talked over her. ‘You want to do what?’ Irit yelped.

  He gave her a thumbnail sketch of Dimi. ‘I’ll want him moved to a nice quiet mental institution, under close observation. It’s the only bargaining chip I can think of that might get us essential information to break this case wide open.’

  ‘What information?’

  ‘This is a need-to-know Irit, and you don’t need to.’

  ‘So you expect me to use my influence, such as it is, to get a psychopathic prisoner out of the prison system where he’s been for fifteen years for murder? It’s like telling Hannibal Lector he’s free to go to the cinema and choose dinner.’

  ‘Funny. And hey don’t forget my years of dealing with psychopaths. Dimi Demidov is one, and we need what he can tell us now. Whoever you know, call them. Please.’

  ‘What can Demidov tell us?’

  ‘That’s the royal us, i.e. me. Do you know someone you can call or not? I’ve got twenty minutes and a hell of a lot of other stuff to do, so…’

  ‘OK, I know a District Psychiatrist.’

  ‘And he does...?’

  ‘He handles patient rights in local mental health. Do we have a budget? He’ll probably suggest a private place. And there’ll be a lot of security issues.’

  ‘Tell him to call me. I need a place he can organize quickly and tell him we’ll provide twenty-four hour surveillance wherever Demidov goes. Don’t forget that all our calls are being monitored as part of the new security procedures since my comms were hacked.’ He didn’t wait for her reaction, ended the call and redialed Aviel. Irit hadn’t said anything about Brenner’s death.

  ‘I’m still working on the corporations’ lists, amazingly blurred but at least I didn’t have to pay for the searches, the lists are held by The Israel Corporations Authority, under the Justice Ministry. Did you know that the search engine opens with: ‘This information may be missing, inaccurate or non-current’? On Hareven himself there’s nothing, no date of his aliyah,’ the word describing ‘going up’ for Jews immigrating to Israel, ‘where from, IDF service record…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Aviel repeated.

  ‘As in there’s no record of him?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘But I ... we need a complete history of this man. How can I question him without deep background?’

  ‘His past is an apparent singularity, lost in the blackest of informational black holes. Extraordinary. And before you ask, I crosschecked against Boris Kamien too. Blank.’

  ‘That’s impossible.’

  ‘Well there’re whole studies on black holes to suggest they exist, so it’s not impossible. What it says is he has lots to hide. Dov? Are you still there?’

  The silence lengthened, only the sounds of Dov’s tires on wet surfaces. Then Dov said, ‘Follow the money.’

  ‘An international search is time consuming it’s not im…’

  ‘How does he spend his money? There must be a paper trail, bank deposits and withdrawals, traceable credit card transactions, share dividends if his companies are stock market listed, transfers into and out of his company accounts? Get someone onto it, start with Brenner’s African venture and work back. Nu?’

  ‘Don’t put me under any more pressure. I haven’t got my thumb up my ass. By the way, we don’t need an Ofek pass over Maoz Yam, or a camera tied to a balloon. I’ve got IAF drones doing the fly-bys. It’s taking time. It’s a big area, and the weather’s...’

  ‘You coordinating the ground op preparations?’

  ‘Oh for fuck’s sake! Give me some breathing space! In the few seconds between calls I’ve been thinking about your white board summary.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I’ve dealt with criminals a long time. But kidnapping and murdering a family, taking kids off the street and shoving them into those spheres, disappearing a mother and her child, what kind of mind thinks that up?’

  ‘We have to be as creative as him.’

  ‘You mean down and dirty, fight fire with...’

  ‘It’s like that sometimes. This is one of them. Gotta go.’ The prison complex came into focus.

  The next call was from Irit’s colleague and it came as Dov drove into the prison parking lot. By the time he was walking to the interview room, he had the offer he wanted for Demidov metaphorically in his pocket..

  Dimitri ‘Dimi’ Demidov looked well, for a psychopath who’d been in prison for fifteen years. Of course he’d aged, and he’d opted for the bald look that Dov now detested, but he was in good trim, using the prison gym daily, he proudly boasted.

  He looked almost glad to see the man who’d shot him and put him in this place.

  ‘Good to see you Dov,’ as if they were old friends, ‘been too long.’

  ‘You look OK on it Dimi.’

  ‘Well yes, I’m fine, I get on with everyone here, though it can be quite boring, but I think you’ll find I’m a reformed character. They like me here. I’ve even begun a steady relationship, well you know what it’s like in a place like this, only men, so I’ve compromised.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘No, I don’t know what it’s like. But I know you. Steady relationship? You must have totted up at least as many of those as the years you’ve been inside. Do you ever think about about why you’re here?’

  ‘Dov, all these negative vibes.

  ‘Get over them.

  ‘The reason I’m here?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It was a mistake.’

  ‘Honestly? Whose?’

  ‘That girl.’ He meant the barista he’d dated who then went off with another man who he’d killed, even though he hadn’t dated her regularly. It was Dimi’s delusional jealousy in an already paranoid personality.

  ‘And the guy you butchered?’ Dov saw the body, its throat cut from ear to ear and a bloody gory mess between its legs.

  ‘Butchered?’

  ‘Yes, you murdered him, slashed his throat, then you cut off his genitals and kept them in your fridge.’

  Dimi giggled. ‘Did I?’

  ‘Anyone ever suggest you had a sex fetish Dimi?’

  ‘No. No one’s ever been that cruel to me.’

  My, my, Dimi, what would you score on the Psychopathy Check List?: Superficial charm, inflated sense of self worth, pathological liar, lack of guilt, failure to accept responsibility for your own actions, sexually promiscuous, potential sexual fetishist. Probably not regularly medicated as this is a state institution where budgets are constantly cut. How can I turn someone with that profile into a source of vital information?

  He left Dimi in the interview room. Threats wouldn’t work, so the carrot of a transfer to the private place had to. Yes it was grasping at straws, but if they led to finding Lana and Yakub, I’ll hug a whole bale.

  He needed a cigarette and after a yes-you-do no-you-don’t with himself, he went in search of a prison guard and after an unsubtle smokers of the world unite, he returned smoking. At the door, Irit called with the OK on Dimi’s transfer. The Minister had predictably hummed and hawed, then gave in.

  ‘Here it is. You tell me everything you know about Boris Kamien, everything, nothing held back. I can have you out of here and in a nice private place with trees and grass and good food and excellent exercise machines.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘When you tell me what you know.’
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  ‘About who?’

  ‘Don’t fuck about. We danced around like this back then and look where you are now. You said he was a cousin, in the Israeli branch of the Russian mafia. Now tell me everything you kept back.’

  ‘When I’m at the new place.’

  ‘They’re on their way to collect you, but I can tell them to turn right around and you won’t step a foot out of here. Don’t waste time with all that about how much they like you here etc. You’re delusional.’

  ‘This other place’s private?’

  ‘That’s what I said.’

  ‘Do they do chicken Kiev? I dream of it, the butter drenching the plate as you pierce the bread-crumbed breast and that smell of garlic,’ he quivered and his tongue licked his lips, ‘mmm and women, do they have any women there? I’m tired of these ass-holes.’

  ‘I’m out of here.’ Dov stood up, turned to show Demidov his holstered automatic. ‘The leg shot last time was to disable you. This time I don’t care. You work it out. You’re no use to me and,’ he paused for effect, ‘if I expedite you, you’ll be no loss, and it’ll save taxpayers’ money.’ Dimi watched him. ‘Tell me what you have, and you can go to the new place and find out whether Kievs’re on the menu and if there’re some compliant females.’

  Dimi began, smiling weirdly. ‘Boris’s father was a pimp. He was born to mafia stardom and built up a lucrative business pimping cunts to foreign bankers when they began arriving after Gorbachev said Uskorenie, acceleration, and the business got more profitable with Perestroika, restructuring, then Glasnost, openness, kicked off. Boris went into the business, made money and then made aliyah. He kept flitting back and forth from Tel Aviv to Perm.’

  ‘Did he run prostitutes here?’

  ‘I’d heard that he did.’

  ‘Who did you hear it from?’

  ‘Someone in the family.’

  ‘Someone? Come on Dimi, or forget the transfer.’

  ‘My mother.’

  ‘How does she know about Boris Kamien?’

  ‘My aunt, her sister, married Boris’ father. Mother didn’t talk to her after she’d married a Zhid. But then as years went by, you know, blood and water, so they were in touch again.’

  ‘Does that mean your aunt’s in Israel?’ Many Russians had been economic migrants, Dov knew, claiming all sorts of Jewish relations just to get out of Russia.

  ‘After what Boris did? She wouldn’t come here for all the money in the world.’

  ‘What did he do?’

  ‘He wanted her to run the business in Russia after his father died, you know, run the whores, and when she refused, he beat her up, almost killed her.’

  ‘Who told you all this?’

  ‘My mother.’

  ‘But you never met Boris, right?’

  ‘No, never. Every call girl I went with here could have been his. I was earning great money in those days, at the bank. I could have paid to know if they were part of his stable, but if he’d nearly killed my aunt, what would he do to me? I never asked. Never met him. Never tried.’

  ‘He never scared you Dimi, you just weren’t interested.’

  ‘OK, I was curious and I did ask. Once. The girl went white when I said Boris’s name. It ruined the sex with her. I had to pressure her, a little, you know how it is when you want to fuck and for some reason she’s not so keen.’

  ‘Pressure her a little? You beat her up.’

  Dimi stared at the ceiling, delighting in what his words conjured up. He said meekly, ‘I’m not a violent person Dov, why do you suggest I am? First you say I murdered someone, then that I have some kind of fetish, now this. I don’t know why you’re saying all that about me. Anyway, the family kind of disowned me after you…’

  ‘Is your aunt still alive? How can I contact her?’

  ‘You can write to my mother, if she’s still alive.’

  ‘Write? You must remember the phone number? Where does she live?’

  ‘Kiev. Here’s the number, don’t know if it’s still in service.’

  Dov put it into his iPad, as Dimi carried on. ‘Like I said, she hated her sister marrying a Zhid, especially a pimp, and she really didn’t like me coming to Israel. I told her the money was good and it was only for a three year posting, then I’d be promoted and go on to New York.’

  ‘And then you murdered the American student out of misplaced jealousy, some would call it paranoia, I’m calling it that, and here you are.’

  ‘Murdered? There you go again Dov, negative vibes. It was a mistake, I keep telling you, and anyway I’m leaving here right?’

  ‘Yes. But you make one mistake there, even the tiniest one, and you’ll be back here so fast …’

  ‘And pierogis with mushroom and mashed potato and a bowl of borscht? … It’s been years.’

  *

  His exchanges with Orli graduated to FaceTime, though he still texted frequently. Dov thought that the contact with her was better than any therapy. There seemed to be a mutual and reciprocal need, and their FaceTimes became more than once a day. It was always he who called and she who immediately responded, asking people in her office not to disturb her for ten minutes, which often went to twenty or thirty. She would say she was off to a meeting outside the Big Apple, in her car, and he could call her then. Sometimes she was on her way home and in the early evening light she looked beautiful, and he told her so. It became a refrain, commenting on her smile, her eyes, her hair if she’d recently been to the salon. She’d always blush, but always thanked him.

  He discovered she liked marzipan chocolate, so he sent her what he considered the best, from Germany. What did they discuss, these people sharing bereavement? The pain of loss of course, and their birthplace. Rightly or wrongly he sensed he was better at dealing with death and genuinely and sensitively tried to guide her through her trauma. She came from a right wing and orthodox background, though having lived in New York for twenty years, that orthodoxy had become more than tinged with a surprising liberalism. She voted Democrat. He never got what she voted for in Israel, and it was clear that on many issues their opinions diverged. Yet Orli announced one day, to his surprise that ‘Israel needs a reset.’ There was too much tension and frustration in the air, she thought. The daily discourse was drifting dangerously to the further right, and with it a tone of bullying, and intolerance. That didn’t stop at the other, the Palestinians of Israel, or those in the occupied West Bank and the surrounded Gaza Strip - she joked whenever he mentioned the O word, ‘What occupation?’ - but included fellow Israelis on the so-called left, which he constantly reminded her hardly existed as a political force any more, and to anyone else who wasn’t in the ruling party and who criticized the government, its leader and by implication the country. ‘It isn’t just in politics,’ she said. ‘In my last visit home, when we met, I could feel it in the air, on the street, people are rude and impatient. Why? What for?’

  Dov agreed with her assessment. His answer was that as the electorate went further right, they were less and less convinced of the certainty of the country’s direction. ‘Just beneath the surface is deep anxiety and paranoia. We may yet be the strongest regional military power, but as people, we’re afraid. Our leader knows how to tap into that. He exacerbates it and then declares ‘Follow me and I’ll take care of everything.’ Slowly and surely the people have bought into that message, but ask what they see in the morning when they look into the bathroom mirror, and you either get silence or verbal aggression, because that question touches a very raw nerve and it isn’t dulled by how well the economy is doing or how apparently effective we are at thwarting terror attacks.’

  Orli had smiled at the mirror question and nodded grimly at the reaction he described to it. In one late night FaceTime, she played him a mash-up version of Fly Me To The Moon. He listened and grinned at it. At the third replay he was confused. The new lyrics included ‘..
.I’m talking to you, across the water, across the sea...I keep you with me in my heart’. Why play it to him three times? He imagined sitting with her in her living room holding her hand. How would that feel? What was she saying with this song? Fate, the omniscient presence nodded once, but of course said nothing.

  Dov looked out through his balcony window and saw the moon shining on the flat sea. He grabbed his camera, shot the scene, and sent it to her. She wrote back, ‘Thank you Dov. How beautiful!’

  *

  When the door to his room was opened again, Yakub heard the sea, but this time it was a roar and he knew three things. That roar made the sea very near. There was an echoey sound to it, as if it was at the end of the passageway beyond the door. The little red light in the ceiling was just like the light on Mummy’s old video camera.

  His decision to rush past the woman and down the passageway came as he’d lain awake at night fighting his fear of the horrible unknowns around him and all he wanted was to run far away and find his Mummy and his Aba. The things he knew helped a little. He knew that they both loved him. He knew where his home was, in Yaffa. He knew where his Aba lived, in a tall building by the sea in Tel Aviv not far from home. Aba was some kind of policeman, not in a police car or in a uniform, somebody more important. He wanted to find someone to give Aba a message, because he also knew that Mummy had been taken away, so she probably wouldn’t be able to get any message and help him.

  Most of all he wanted to get away from this room, which had no windows, and toys and books that he didn’t like, they were for little kids, and a woman he hated because he knew from the way she hardly ever talked to him that she didn’t care about him at all. He wanted to be sure about the message, so in case he didn’t have time to talk to someone, he wrote in big letters in blue crayon on a page in one of the books he’d been left, a stupid book, not for someone as big as seven.

  The message in his best Hebrew read: ‘I am Yakub al-Batuf. I am locked up here near the sea in a tunnel. Please tell my Aba, DOV CHIZZIK to come and take me home.’ He did all this on the floor, with his back to the ceiling light, pretending to color in something in the book, as if a seven year old would do that, as he tore the page carefully out.