Asylum City: A Novel

by Liad Shoham

  “Make it snappy,” Yochai said, getting out of his chair. “I’ve got a meeting with the Chief. But I want a report. How did it go at the scene? I promised the Chief it would all be tied up in a pretty bow today.”

  Anat kept silent. She was eager to explain, but she didn’t want to have to do it in shorthand when she didn’t have his full attention.

  “Speak up. We’ll have to walk and talk,” Yochai said, leaving the office.

  Anat followed after him. “It was a disaster. The suspect didn’t open his mouth. Yaron tried to get him to open up, but he pressed too hard, started putting words in his mouth. The African just clammed up even tighter. I had to stop the recording before the whole case fell apart.”

  “You did what?” Yochai spluttered, stopping in his tracks and staring at her. Startled by his vehemence, Anat took a step backward. They were standing at the door to the squad room, which was buzzing with cops.

  “Let’s talk later,” she said softly. The last thing she wanted was a public scene.

  “No! We’ll do it now!” Yochai was nearly screaming. “I want to hear it now!”

  “What choice did I have? Yaron . . . ,” Anat began.

  “What is it with you, honey?” Yochai cut in. “Did you lose the plot? Is it that time of the month?”

  Stunned, Anat could only stare back at him, speechless. Out of the corner of her eye she could see the cops in the squad room watching. She felt her face go red.

  “What do you think we do here? Play with ourselves? You had a suspect who confessed of his own free will, nobody coerced him, and you . . . you . . . you fucked it all up. You just shit on everything. Do you even understand what you did?” he raged, waving a finger in front of her face.

  Anat’s legs were shaking. Obviously, she hadn’t expected Yochai to be pleased by the way things played out. She herself was deeply disappointed at their failure to get Gabriel to reenact the crime. But she hadn’t anticipated being yelled at in front of everyone, being publicly humiliated.

  “And for what? For who?”

  “Calm down, Yochai. Let’s talk calmly,” Anat whispered, her face burning. “There are problems with the case that have nothing to do with the reenactment. We have to rethink everything. I don’t think Gabriel did it.” No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t keep her voice steady. She’d never seen Yochai like this. And she’d never felt so demeaned. It shouldn’t surprise her. Racism and sexism always went hand in hand.

  “So why did he confess?” Yochai shouted, his face red. “Explain it to me!”

  Anat cleared her throat and forced herself to get the words out. “There are a lot of reasons why people confess. You know that as well as I do,” she said. All eyes in the room were turned to her. She knew all these cops. She worked with them. How could she go on working with them after this?

  “Listen up, baby,” Yochai cut in again. The vein in his forehead looked about to burst. “I’ve been on the job for over thirty years. I don’t need some young filly with a law degree, a little girl who probably became a cop just to annoy her parents, to teach me anything. You had a textbook confession. The guy comes of his own free will, sits himself down in front of you, and without you saying anything or pressuring him in any way, he says, ‘I killed her.’ So explain it to me, goddammit, what’s your problem?”

  Yochai turned and started walking away. Anat hurried after him. At least they wouldn’t have an audience anymore.

  “Why? Can you tell me why?” he demanded, stopping suddenly and turning around. “I could understand if the guy had a team of hot-shot lawyers looking to trip us up. But all we’ve got is a confession, and there’s not a shred of evidence to refute it. And in front of the press, too? You’re unbelievable, that’s all I can say, unbelievable.”

  “I didn’t let the reporter inside,” Anat hastened to explain.

  “Thank God for that.” But the information didn’t seem to appease him in the slightest.

  Anat took a deep breath. “I suggest we continue this conversation later,” she said in a quiet voice. “We have to consider how to proceed from here.” She didn’t see any point in running down the corridor behind him while he went on chewing her out.

  “That’s the first sensible thing I’ve heard out of your mouth,” he said acerbically as he turned and walked away.

  Chapter 42

  YARIV bit into the pita bread, savoring the taste of the crisp falafel balls inside. The bright sun and clear blue sky added to his light mood.

  It turned out he’d been worried about his meeting with Aloni in his office for no reason. His boss had called him in to inform him that he was raising his job status to “permanent.” Of course, he made the announcement with a sour face and undisguised distaste. It was obvious that the order had come down from up above, from as high as you can get.

  “Let me give you some advice, Ninio,” Aloni said before dismissing him. “Politicians can’t be trusted. They come and go. As a state attorney, your loyalty should be only to the law, not to anything or anyone else.”

  Yariv looked at him impassively. What did Aloni know? He belonged to a different generation. He still didn’t get that the world had changed, that it didn’t play by the same rules anymore.

  As soon as he got back to his office, Yariv called to thank Regev.

  “You’ve got a great future ahead of you, Ninio,” his patron said. Yariv lapped up every word. And to think that only a few days ago he’d been walking around in a daze because of that business with Michal, trying desperately to figure out if he killed her or not. He almost went to the police. Lucky he didn’t.

  He still couldn’t remember anything about that night, but it didn’t matter anymore. He didn’t do it. That Eritrean did. Yariv was ecstatic when he heard about the confession.

  He leaned back in his chair, feeling contented. He thought about Inbar, the way she smelled, how soft her skin was. They hadn’t had sex in a long time. He was sick of jerking off in front of some porn site on the computer. He needed to fuck her. Maybe tonight. They’d both feel better afterward.

  Tomorrow he had to argue against another petition filed by another illegal. Another sob story. Another time he’d say, “However much we might regret it, the law requires deportation.” Another case he’d undoubtedly win.

  The change in his status came at just the right moment. It gave him immunity, enabled him to make demands. The first would be a transfer out of the illegal alien division. He was sick of it. The problem was how to convince Regev. He had to find someone with white skin for Regev to turn his sights on. There were plenty to choose from. He remembered how enraged the politician was when Michal and her cohorts demonstrated across the street from his house. He said they were lynching him in the press, ruining his reputation. Michal in particular made his blood boil. She’d organized the demonstration and stayed behind long after the others had left, even came back a few times on her own. Another target like her would be just the right thing for Regev.

  Yariv switched on his computer. The latest news flashed on the screen. His heart skipped a beat when he saw the headline: “No Reenactment of Michal Poleg’s Murder.” He bit down hard on his lip, drawing blood.

  Chapter 43

  ANAT was furious. How could Yochai speak to her like that? He wouldn’t dare use that tone with her if she were a man. In an instant he’d destroyed everything she’d worked so hard to achieve. He’d humiliated her in front of everybody.

  She was also furious with herself. She didn’t regret pulling the plug on the reenactment. It was the right decision. She was well aware that a lot of cops would disagree. Plenty of them would do the same as Yaron: ignore what they considered senseless regulations in order to bring a criminal to justice. But Anat didn’t believe in bending the rules. In her opinion, you had to follow procedure, even if it wasn’t perfect and you didn’t always like where it led you. As she saw it, the regulations were in place for a reason; without them, the whole system would collapse.

  So she
wasn’t kicking herself for her decision, but for how she behaved afterward. She knew Yochai would be upset. She should have handled him better, should have prepared for the meeting. Yaron warned her, but she didn’t listen; she was in too much of a hurry to talk to the boss. What was the rush?

  Anat was furious with herself for crumbling, for not standing her ground. Yochai was right: Gabriel confessed of his own free will. She couldn’t ignore that. People didn’t generally incriminate themselves without reason, certainly not when they were looking at life in prison. But Gabriel seemed too eager to put his head in the noose. And he didn’t have a clue about how Michal was murdered. He was happy to go along with any version of the crime he was offered. He even nodded when she asked him if he strangled her. How could she accept his confession and declare the case closed when there were so many unanswered questions? A confession might be considered the “king of evidence,” but royalty wasn’t what it used to be.

  She needed to learn from this experience. The next time she walked into Yochai’s office, she wouldn’t whine about other cops getting in her way. She’d present him with concrete facts, new avenues of investigation.

  To do that, she had to start over from the beginning, interrogate everyone who had a beef with Michal, “leave no stone unturned,” as TV cops liked to say. For instance, Shmuel Gonen said he heard shouting outside her apartment on the night of the murder. She didn’t give that enough attention, didn’t ask any questions. At the time, she just assumed it was the African they were looking for.

  She could still fix her mistakes. Every investigation hit a rough patch from time to time. That’s all this was, a hiccup. The only thing that mattered was the final outcome. She just had to believe in herself. She could do it. She knew she was a good cop.

  Anat turned to the computer. Mindless computer games always calmed her nerves. She’d play for a few minutes and then reassess the situation, she thought, moving the mouse to bring the screen back to life.

  A headline came up on the screen. Her heart stopped as she scrolled down. “The police have announced that a second attempt to get the suspect to reenact the crime will be carried out in the coming days by the head of the Special Investigations Unit, Chief Inspector David Carmon, who is returning from a seminar in Austria,” she read. Anat bit down hard on her lip until it hurt.

  Chapter 44

  GABRIEL was waiting. The tall policeman had shoved him back into the interrogation room and left him there. No one had come in since. Had they forgotten about him? After what happened in Michal’s apartment, maybe they figured out that he didn’t kill her. He froze when they took him back there. He could feel her presence. He expected her to come out of the other room any minute with a smile on her face. The picture he drew of her was gone. Who took it? He remembered the day he did it. “I went to the hairdresser’s specially, so make me look pretty,” she said, laughing. The way she was always bustling around, he didn’t think she’d be able to sit still for more than five minutes. But she surprised him and posed for two hours straight without moving.

  Back in her house, the good memories mixed with the bad one from the last time he’d been there. It was hard for him to talk, and anyway he didn’t know how to answer the questions they asked him. And he couldn’t bring himself to say it out loud, to say that he killed her. He knew he had to do it, but he couldn’t. He liked her and he looked up to her too much.

  When the policewoman went and stood in the exact place where he’d seen Michal’s body, he had to fight to hold back the tears. She even looked a little like Michal—the same height, the same kind face. He had to remind himself that she wasn’t on his side. And he didn’t want to cry in front of her.

  Gabriel knew he had to be strong. He had to make them believe him. Otherwise, the Israeli wouldn’t pay Arami, and Arami wouldn’t be able to pay Liddie’s ransom. If Michal were here, she’d tell him to do it.

  He looked at the door. He didn’t notice if the tall policeman locked it when he left. He could try to escape and look for another, a better, way to save Liddie. He stood up, sliding his shackled feet slowly across the floor. But even if the door wasn’t locked, how far could he get chained up like this? And where would he go if he got away?

  Gabriel took a deep breath before pressing down on the handle. If the door opened, it would be a sign from God.

  The door swung open abruptly, hitting Gabriel in the head. He fell backward.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” the tall policeman asked, towering over him. Before Gabriel could respond, he was grabbed by the shirt, heaved into the air, and thrown down on the table. He tried to sit up, but the policeman was too quick. With his large hand, he pressed him to the table.

  “Trying to escape, you motherfucking asshole?”

  Gabriel shook his head. His back hurt.

  The policeman pulled him up and slammed him into a chair.

  “Listen up,” he shouted, sticking his face in Gabriel’s. “The commander is coming, and you’re going to tell him exactly what you did. You tell him how you asked Michal Poleg for money and she didn’t want to give it to you so you got mad. You took a beer bottle and hit her on the back of the head. She fell and broke the table. When you saw she was dead, you ran. Nobody saw you. The next morning you remembered the bottle and you were afraid we’d find your fingerprints on it. You went back for it and Michal’s neighbor saw you, so you ran again. You threw the bottle in a Dumpster.”

  Gabriel listened in silence. God had sent him a sign. It wasn’t the sign he was expecting, but that didn’t matter. “God moves in mysterious ways,” his father always said. He’d been given a second chance to describe how he killed Michal. If he got it right, the Israeli would pay Arami and Liddie would be safe.

  “Got it?” the tall policeman asked, his tone threatening.

  Gabriel nodded.

  “Repeat what I said. I want to hear you say it.”

  Gabriel repeated the story, not missing any details. He could feel the blood spilling from his lower lip as he spoke.

  The tall policeman patted him on the back. “Well done. Maybe you’re not such an asshole after all,” he said, before leaving again.

  Alone, Gabriel brought his hand to his face, gently wiping away the blood.

  The door opened and the tall policeman came back in with another officer. He was short, dumpy, and bald.

  The tall one moved closer to Gabriel, making him flinch. But this time he didn’t put a hand on him, merely straightened the table and arranged the chairs around it.

  The short one stood and watched, licking his lip.

  Chapter 45

  LIDDIE lay, bound and blindfolded, on the floor of the car. A few minutes ago, Ahmed had suddenly burst into the room and tied her hands behind her back. “Move it, cunt,” he’d snarled, grabbing her and dragging her roughly out the door.

  Nothing changed after the call to Gabriel. She continued to lie on the mattress in her cell, the thin sheet wrapped around her. From time to time, the door opened and Ahmed tossed some food on the floor. Except for that, she was all alone. Her cough was getting worse. She called out to Gabriel in the dark, begging him to rescue her. And she prayed. She knew that if he didn’t come soon, she would die in this room.

  She didn’t ask where they were taking her. She remembered only too well the last time she was moved without warning. That was in Sinai. Rafik got rid of her when he discovered she was pregnant. “Yalla, get out of here. The Jews can have you,” he’d grumbled, taking her to the border and ordering her to start running.

  She was fired on by Egyptian soldiers, but she kept running. This was her chance to escape—from Rafik, from the daily violations of her body, from the beatings she took from her captor and his cohorts, from the constant abuse. She knew about Israel from church. It was the land of milk and honey, the Holy Land, the place where Christ was born. She ran for the border as fast as she could. She had to get away from Rafik and reach the Promised Land. Liddie had no idea where Gabriel was,
but she believed with all her heart that he was already there, waiting for her.

  She was picked up by Israeli soldiers who took her to the detention camp along with the other refugees who snuck across the border. For the first time since she’d left home, she was given a hot meal, a real bed to sleep in, and a chance to shower. A doctor examined her. Then they questioned her, wanting to know where she came from, why she left, how she got here, why she chose to come to Israel. Two weeks later they handed her a bus ticket to Tel Aviv and the address of a shelter for women in her condition.

  That’s where she met Dahlia, her guardian angel. She also met a lot of other girls like her, all of them carrying a baby they didn’t want. Some arrived too late to do anything about it. She was one of the lucky ones. Dahlia arranged for an abortion, but she had to lie about how far along she was. She heard from the other girls that the Israelis wouldn’t do it if she’d been pregnant for more than a few weeks.

  Dahlia comforted her, telling her time and again that she had nothing to be ashamed of. What Rafik did wasn’t her fault. Almost all the African refugees ran into someone like Rafik on the way to Israel.

  Dahlia promised that everything would be fine now, and Liddie was starting to believe her. She didn’t know that Rafik had sold her to a pimp in Israel, to Ahmed. He was just waiting for the Israeli doctors to get rid of the baby. As soon as she was fit for work, Ahmed snatched her from the shelter. Rafik had lied when he pointed her in the direction of the border. He wasn’t letting her go, he was delivering her to her new owner.

  Now Ahmed was fed up with her, too. She was no use to him sick. Where were they taking her? She knew Gabriel would do what he could to help her. But the ransom Ahmed was demanding was too high. How would her brother get that kind of money?