Every Man a Menace

by Patrick Hoffman

  He weighed the pros and cons of calling her. There would be an electronic trail, the call’s time and location. He had called her last night, so he had already placed himself on that list. His hands sweated. He breathed in and out. What are the scenarios? An intruder could have broken in, killed her in the bed, and then taken her body away. It didn’t make sense, but nothing did. He could have killed her in the bed himself, in a blackout state, then called someone to collect the body—but there had been no calls from his phone. She could have hurt herself, somehow, packed up her bag, and walked out. But there was too much blood in the bed, and not enough anywhere else. He closed his eyes and tried to remember.

  There was something just out of reach. He could see her face, a knife. She was laughing. A knife, a ceramic knife.

  He stepped to the counter and opened a drawer. Six slots, five knives. Motherfucker.

  He thought back again. Before she’d jumped in his car, he had called her: she had a cell phone, he had a cell phone, they’d been together most of the night. The records would show them moving through Miami and returning to the apartment, both of their phones pinging cell phone towers as they went. He certainly wasn’t going to call the police now, not with a bed covered in blood and a missing woman they could tie him to. Fuck me, he thought.

  He’d clean the place, then. He’d say they had returned here, gotten into an argument, and she’d left. That was it. That was the last time he’d seen her. That was his story.

  But first he would call her. Why would a man who killed a woman try to call her? He opened his phone, breathed in deep, and hit her number. It went straight to voice mail: Hello, you have reached Vanya Rodriguez. Please leave me a message and I call you back soon, baby. Her voice, the joy in it, shocked him. The phone beeped, and he left a message: “Hey Vanya, what’s up, lady? Just making sure you made it home safe last night. Call me back, okay? Ciao!” He hung up.

  The Xanax kicked in. He drank another glass of water, then walked to the bathroom, turned the shower on, and got in. He scrubbed his hands, his arms, his legs, watching the blood turn pink on the tile.

  He dressed for the gym: sweatpants, a long-sleeve T-shirt, running shoes. He grabbed his phone from the kitchen—still no calls—walked to the door of the apartment, and realized two things at the same time: first, as soon as he stepped outside, he was going to appear on the hallway security camera, and second, the same camera would have recorded whatever happened out there last night.

  He stepped out and walked to the elevator. When the doors opened, he stepped in and hit 28, Isaak’s floor. The doors slid shut. A camera in the upper corner recorded him standing perfectly still. Ding. He stepped out and walked to Isaak’s door, aware of the camera in the hallway. He pressed the black buzzer.

  Almost instantly, the door swung open. Isaak—freshly rested, showered, shaven, and composed—started to speak and then stopped. Semion watched his face—his mouth, in particular—as it transformed from a friendly smile to something more concerned.

  “What the fuck?” Isaak said in English. “You look like fucking hell.”

  Semion walked into the apartment and started crying. He couldn’t help it. He went to the couch and sat down. A moment later Isaak was standing over him, one hand on his shoulder and asking what was wrong.

  Semion gathered himself. “Shit is really bad. Really fucked up. I don’t know what happened.”

  “Cousin, cousin,” said Isaak. “Listen to me, from the beginning—tell me what the hell is going on.”

  “The girl,” said Semion. “The Brazilian, Vanya. I saw her last night. I took her back to my place. We were fucked up. I passed out. When I woke up this morning, my bed …” He stopped talking for a moment, took a deep breath, and then continued. “My bed was covered in fucking blood. Everywhere, like a fucking—just blood, sheets, blanket, everything. And she was gone. Just gone. No sign of her.”

  “What did you do?” Isaak asked. The way he stressed the words made it sound like an accusation. Semion felt his heart speed up.

  “Nothing. That’s what I’m saying. I didn’t fucking do anything. She’s just gone, and my room—blood, like a fucking massacre.”

  “Where is she?”

  “I don’t fucking know!” said Semion. “Sorry, I don’t know. She’s gone. I didn’t do anything. She’s gone. That’s it.”

  Isaak sat down on a chair next to the couch. He looked genuinely disturbed.

  “Tell me everything you know about her,” Semion said.

  “Nothing. I told you. I met her at the club, one time. That’s it.”

  Semion closed his eyes. Why did I leave Israel? he thought. “Fucking shit.”

  “The building has cameras,” Isaak said, sitting up as though he’d hit on a solution.

  “Trust me. I know.”

  “We need to see the video.”

  The manager’s office was on the ground floor, behind the reception area. It was occupied during business hours by a self-important American who sat at his desk refreshing the Twitter feed on his phone. Before him, two monitors showed camera feeds from throughout the building. There were hundreds of cameras spread between the forty-six floors, the video overwritten every month. Both Semion and Isaak—careful men—had asked about the security when they purchased their units. They had been given a thorough tour, and a long explanation of the precautions building management put in place.

  “You’re right,” Semion said, nodding his head. “But fuck.”

  “It can be done,” Isaac said. “Fucking shit, when it rains it pours. Show me your place.”

  “You come in, you’re on the video.”

  “Brother,” said Isaak. “Brother, if you are in trouble, I’m with you. Fuck. Please. Come on.”

  They took the elevator up to the thirty-first floor. Neither of them spoke a word. Inside, Isaak looked around silently. He scanned the floor and the walls, then walked toward the bedroom. When he saw the bed, he flinched back.

  “Fuck! What the fuck?”

  Semion felt a wave of shame. I didn’t do anything, he thought.

  “It smells,” Isaak said, putting his hand near his nose.

  Semion pointed out the blood on the ceiling. The men walked through the apartment a few times; Semion decided not to tell his friend about the missing knife. He did mention that Vanya’s clothes and bag were gone, and that he’d checked his phone and confirmed no calls had been made last night. When Isaak asked, he admitted he’d called her that morning and left a message. He assured his friend that he had sounded calm.

  Isaak sat down on the sofa, stretched his legs out, and put his hands behind his head—the posture of a man lost in thought. He stayed silent for half a minute, and then, as though thinking aloud, he said, “No body. No blood leaving the apartment. If, and I say this not as an accusation, but simply in light of your lack of memory, if you didn’t do anything to this girl—” he raised his hand to keep Semion from interrupting. “Then you’re being set up. Someone will contact you. I hate to tell you, but I would guess the girl herself is involved.”

  Semion had been thinking the same thing. “That fucking bitch,” he said.

  They spent the rest of the morning cleaning up the mess. The blanket, the sheets, the pillow cases, and one stained pillow went into trash bags. The mattress itself, surprisingly, was spotless. They cleaned the walls and the floor after that. The ceiling would have to wait.

  “It’s two big men, black baseball caps. Can’t say race, but they look white. They walk to the door, knock, wait. Door opens, they go in. Fifty minutes later—big fucking bag, both of them carrying it. They walk to the elevator, and that’s it. They leave.”

  They were sitting in Isaak’s living room. Isaak had gone downstairs and paid the manager to leave him alone in the office for half an hour. A thousand dollars can buy you anything, he’d said before he went. The manager, after taking out the operating manual for the Toshiba X400 Video Surveillance System and setting it on the desk, had left him alone.


  “Even in the office, a camera,” said Isaak. “I told him I want to see my own door.”

  “Two men?” said Semion.

  “You can’t erase it from there,” said Isaak. “It’s backed up. But in thirty days, overwritten. So, we wait.”

  Semion found himself doubting that Isaak had actually seen the video. He stared at his friend for a moment and tried to come up with a reason why he would lie about it. You fucking bastard, he thought.

  Isaak, as though sensing Semion’s doubts, pulled his phone out. He fussed with it for a moment and then handed it over. Their fingers touched; Isaak’s hand was dry as a bone. The man has ice in his veins, Semion thought. He looked at the phone: it showed video Isaak had taken of the manager’s computer monitor. Two men walking down a hallway. They stopped at a door, knocked, and were let in. Semion couldn’t see their faces. The video was washed out, shaky. It ended after they went into Semion’s apartment.

  “That’s it?” he asked.

  “Next video,” Isaak said.

  Semion handed the phone back. Isaak found the next video and returned the phone to him.

  “Forty-nine minutes later,” Isaak said.

  The door was closed, then open. The two men exited with a heavy bag between them. They walked to the elevator and disappeared.

  “The body in the bag,” Isaak said.

  Semion took a deep breath. “So, we wait,” he said.

  The call came the next morning. Semion had been in a deep sleep; he woke to his phone vibrating. It took a moment to remember what was happening. The caller ID read: Unknown Caller.

  “Hello?” said Semion.

  “Listen, Jew,” said a voice. Semion cursed himself for not being ready to record the call. “We know you killed her.”

  The voice sounded artificially deep, like it was being played through a filter. It went on: “We know where you buried her. We know you left a knife in the grave.” It sounded like the man was reading from a script. “We know your fingerprints are on that knife. There are photographs of you in your own bed with the woman you murdered. The photos show the knife in your hand. The girl in this photo is fucking bloody and dead. Direct evidence. Do you hear me?”

  Semion sat all the way up. “Yes,” he said.

  “You need to produce two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in cash.”

  For a moment, Semion almost smiled. The amount seemed so small. He had been prepared to be asked for ten million. “I can’t come up with that,” he said.

  “You can. We will call you. No police. We’re watching.”

  The phone went silent. Semion thought the man had hung up, but when he looked at his phone, he saw the line was still active.

  “You may think you’re smart, but you’re not,” said the voice. Then the call ended.

  Semion sat there for a moment, forcing himself to be calm. He thought about sending Isaak a text message to memorialize the details, but decided it would be stupid to leave any digital tracks. He walked to his kitchen and found a pen and paper. Then he wrote: Jew, knife, photo, bed, deep voice, 250. He thought for a moment, then added: fingerprint, grave, produce, and not smart.

  The puniness of the demand buoyed his spirits. He realized he had, up until that moment on the phone, suspected Isaak was involved. Hearing that figure all but crossed him off the list. It had been absurd to suspect his friend. His mind shifted to the girl.

  He didn’t want to believe she was dead. The video of the men leaving his apartment carrying that bag between them didn’t prove anything. And as bloody as the bedroom had been, it didn’t mean it was her blood. It could be the blood of a pig, a cow, or a dog.

  His mind shifted back to Vanya. If she were alive, she was almost certainly on the side of the blackmailers. That was the worst part of it. The embarrassment flooded in then. My life will become lonelier and lonelier, and then I’ll die, he thought. It felt like a brief panic attack.

  He went down to Isaak’s apartment and told him about the call. His friend shook his head and smiled. “They don’t know what we do,” he said.

  “They think we’re club owners,” said Semion.

  “A quarter million dollars!”

  “Should we just pay?” Semion asked.

  “We have more than that in the safe at the club,” Isaak said.

  They sat there thinking for a moment, and then Isaak hit his forehead with his palm. It was the gesture of a man remembering something, but to Semion it seemed practiced.

  “Mr. Hong,” Isaak said. “He came by last night.”

  Semion’s blood pressure spiked. Mr. Hong! It hadn’t even been two weeks since his last contact. A visit this soon wasn’t just unusual; it was unprecedented. Not to mention the routine they’d established was that Semion—nobody else—talked to Mr. Hong directly. As far as Semion knew, Isaak had never spoken a word to the man. But now they were speaking?

  “What’d he want?” asked Semion.

  “He didn’t say. He wouldn’t tell me. Said he wanted to talk to you. I told him you’d come in tonight.”

  “Shit!” said Semion. “What could he want right now?”

  “I can tell him you’re sick,” said Isaak.

  Semion stared at his friend. What was going on here? It didn’t make sense to forget to mention a visit from Mr. Hong. Isaak should have called him immediately. He could have been there in fifteen minutes. He felt nauseous.

  Semion shrugged. “I’ll see him tonight,” he said.

  Back upstairs, he showered, shaved, and put on a black Caraceni suit from Milan. He examined himself in the mirror, thinking for the thousandth time that his was a face even a bespoke suit couldn’t fix. An ugly, sagging face, a face that appeared sad when he was happy, and wretched when he was sad. He pushed his hair back on his head. Am I becoming my father? he thought. Then he dotted his finger with cologne and pressed it to his neck. At least smell good.

  In his kitchen he made himself a vodka and orange juice. It was his first drink since Vanya’s disappearance; he was standing in the exact spot where she had been standing when she’d poured the one she’d made him. Loneliness spread through him. He sipped his screwdriver. His mind shuffled through a series of memories.

  I make us one more drink, she’d said.

  He remembered the awful taste in his mouth, the smell of her purse when he’d looked through it. Blood on the bed.

  Hey, bitch, she’d said to Isaak that first night at the club. Semion closed his eyes and tried to recall what Isaak had said in response. He’d been looking at his phone. He’d looked up and said, Oh, shit.

  Oh, shit, indeed.

  Ground Zero. It was early; the crowd inside seemed younger than normal. People nodded and smiled at Semion as he passed under the red lights, but he felt like they were sizing him up. The DJ was playing cloying house music. Let yourself be free-ee. Let yourself be free-ee. Let yourself be free-ee. It seemed like a cruel joke.

  He found Isaak in their normal spot, at a table in the far corner. Jimmy Congo sat next to him; next to the lawyer were a group of women talking with their hands cupped at their mouths. Semion didn’t recognize them. Isaak smiled, stood, and held his arms open for a hug. Semion stepped forward, and they exchanged an awkward, back-patting embrace. Humiliating, thought Semion. He felt like he was being greeted in mourning.

  “Look good,” Isaak whispered in his ear; it was unclear if he meant it as a compliment or a directive. Jimmy Congo flashed a fake smile and held his fist out for a bump. The women smiled up at Semion with batting eyelashes. It was going to be a long night.

  He turned his back to the wall and scanned the crowd. He realized he was looking for Vanya, and forced himself to stop. There were nearly two hundred people inside already. They stood clustered in groups and moved their shoulders to the music like apes; they surrounded the bar like ants. The lights made it all seem like a cheap nineties movie. Semion’s forehead broke out in a sweat.

  Isaak signaled to the bar for a drink, then leaned into Semion�
�s ear again. “He already came,” he said. “I told him to come back.”

  Isaak talking to Mr. Hong still didn’t sit well with Semion. “Did he say what he wanted?” he asked in Hebrew.

  Isaak shook his head. Then he shot his eyes downward, opened his palm, and revealed a tiny plastic bag of Molly. “Take it,” he said, raising his eyebrows. “You look like a fucking Arab.”

  Semion took the bag. When his drink came he dumped it in, swirled the powder around with a cocktail straw, and drank it. They’d taken so much Molly in the past few years that it felt like drinking a cup of coffee—just a pick-me-up. Semion welcomed the chance to take a break from his brooding. A night out of his head sounded good. If Isaak had pulled out a syringe filled with heroin, he would have unbuttoned his cuff and rolled up his sleeve.

  After finishing his drink, he looked at the girls and felt a wave of shyness. He stood next to the group for a few songs, his shoulders tense, his face tight like a mask. The music improved. He told Isaak to get the table a bottle of vodka, and his friend, happy to oblige, walked toward the bar. Semion found himself nodding his head in time to the beat. Boom-dat-boom-dat-boom-dat. He felt himself loosening up. His hands were clammy.

  “Don’t worry, big brother,” Isaak said when he came back. “Millions of fish in the sea.” He placed a hot hand on Semion’s shoulder and let it sit there.

  And then the drugs started working. The shift came fast and hard: Semion closed his eyes for a second, took a deep breath, and opened them to a new world. Isaak was watching him. Semion turned his head and looked at the girls. They seemed, suddenly, like individuals, like women with their own stories, not just the generic female shapes that had been sitting there when he’d come in. He wanted to talk to them. Hear about how they’d ended up here. They were from somewhere else, like him. For a moment the idea of Vanya pushed into his mind, but then it drifted away. He glanced at Jimmy Congo: the man was smiling, moving his head to the music. The apes and ants had transformed into a sophisticated group of beautiful people. Miami was the center of the earth. Everything made sense.