The Hit

by Michal Hartstein

  His criminal background and the fact that he had not served in the army made it difficult for Koby to find a permanent rewarding job. Within a short time, he was sucked once again into the underworld and joined the Zuckerman gang. Ephraim Zuckerman loved Koby. He realized quickly that Koby was loyal and had a good heart. He also realized that Koby did not have a brutal character, so he refrained from sending him on violent missions. Still, he knew that he could count on Koby to take the secrets he had seen and heard to his grave.

  After Oren Hadida betrayed Ephraim Zuckerman and fled to South America, the gang was dismantled. Ephraim Zuckerman collapsed and died during his trial. Many gang members were sentenced to long terms in jail. Koby also served another two years because a handgun that had been used in a murder committed by another gang member had been found in his backyard.

  Over the years, the gang members forged new loyalties and found other gangs, but not Koby. He desperately missed Ephraim Zuckerman and thought that if he joined a new gang, he would be disloyal to his beloved mentor. He was also very hurt by Hadida's betrayal and found it hard to regain his trust in people. He didn’t leave the crime world, but started to provide his services as a seasoned criminal to anyone: he became a freelancer of the underworld. He was known to many criminals, as well as to the police. Many, even among the ranks of the police, held him in high regard because of his near mystical relationship with the late Ephraim Zuckerman.

  A year-and-a-half before his body was found in the Zelda snack bar, Koby had become one of the central, most productive informants I had ever managed to recruit. Over the years, Koby had learned to be extremely careful, but he was caught in a warehouse where stolen goods were found, purely by accident. A couple conducting an after-hours affair late at night in a nearby building noticed suspicious movements in the warehouse and called the police. Until the cops arrived on the scene and discovered the warehouse's contents, nobody in the Israeli Police Department had known about its existence. That night, I was on duty, and when Koby was brought to the police station, I was asked to interrogate him.

  When I entered the room, Koby was sitting, head down. His caution and meticulousness had kept him out of the interrogation room for many years. I knew he was a seasoned interrogee, and that my chances of drawing any information out of him – someone who had been known for years as one of the most loyal of gang members – was nil.

  I read him the details of the case as summarized by the patrolmen. Koby barely raised his eyes. I tried to make him talk, but he was simply silent. After half an hour, he opened his mouth and asked for a glass of water. I went to the hallway and brought him a glass of water. When I gave him the glass he finally raised his eyes and, from that moment, did not take his eyes off me.

  He broke his silence again and asked, "Aren't you the one who caught that pedophile from Givat Shmuel?

  I did not know what to answer. I had never spoken to a suspect about another investigation.

  "Nu… the religious, fat one…" He tried to refresh my memory of the big case I had cracked several weeks earlier.

  "Yes, that was me," I answered impatiently. "How’s that related to what I asked you?"

  His eyes kept drilling right into mine. Now I noticed they were moist. My irritated look changed into a compassionate one. A flow of tears began to roll down Koby's face.

  "Do you want more water?" I asked carefully.

  "Please..." he sniffed.

  I returned to the interrogation room with a new glass of water and a box of tissues. Koby wiped his nose and drank slowly.

  "I’m an admirer of yours," he said when he had finished drinking. "Really, really an admirer."

  "Thank you," I said. I knew that even among criminals, sex offenses against children were considered immoral and disgusting, but I suspected he was complimenting me because he had known one of the victims of the pedophile I had caught. Perhaps it had been even a relative. I knew that Koby's family was religious and resided in Pardes Katz, a neighborhood next to Givat Shmuel.

  "What those children went through…" he said and lowered his gaze. His speech halted until he managed to say in a whisper, "I also went through it."

  This was unexpected. "When?" I asked.

  "When I was a young kid, maybe nine or ten."

  "Who was it?"

  "It was the principal of the school I went to," he said and pursed his lips. His chin started to tremble. I was afraid he was about to burst into tears again.

  "Are you alright?" I asked with concern.

  He nodded and regained his composure. "It was a Haredi school for boys in Bnei Brak. My parents weren’t very religious, but they thought I’d get a better education over there." He smiled a sad smile. "I was a mischievous kid. It was hard for me to sit on my ass, and almost every week I was sent to the principal, who was also a well-known and respected rabbi in Bnei Brak. He raped me dozens of times." Koby could not now hold back his tears. "Dozens!" he repeated almost in a shout. He took a tissue from the box and wiped his tears. "He told me I must be punished, and if I told anyone about his punishments, God would punish me."

  "So you never complained about him?"

  "No."

  "You didn’t tell anybody?"

  "I told Ephraim Zuckerman, God rest his soul."

  "How did he react?" I was curious.

  "He didn’t say anything after I told him, just sat there silently. I thought he was in shock. I can only tell you that, less than a month later, that rabbi was killed in a strange car accident."

  I could not hide my smile.

  "Ephraim Zuckerman was like a father to me. I have a father and I love him, but he’s weak. He never knew how to stand up for himself. I didn’t even consider telling him what the principal did to me. I didn’t believe he’d do anything. I admit I told Ephraim because I hoped he’d do something, and, indeed, he did. I knew he wouldn’t tell anybody about my shameful secret, and he knew he could count on me a million percent." Koby looked at me through reddish eyes. I was, in fact, the first person to whom he revealed the nature of his intimate relationship with Ephraim.

  "I’m a criminal," Koby continued with his monologue. "It's all I know how to do. How would my life have turned out if I hadn’t suffered… what I did? Do you know how much of my life I’ve wasted in jail?" he asked and did not wait for an answer. "A total of six years and ten months. During that time, I read hundreds, if not thousands, of books of all kinds: thrillers, espionage, reference books, I even managed to read a cookbook. I don't have much education, but, believe me, I’m more educated than many people with a degree. If I hadn’t suffered what I went through, maybe I wouldn’t have got pulled into this world of crime. I’m not particularly proud of it, but I had no other choice."

  I looked at him with empathy, but found it hard to identify with what he just said. He realized that I was not entirely with him.

  "I know what you're thinking. That I'm a crybaby and didn’t try hard enough, but you don't know what I've gone through, how many times I’ve tried to rehabilitate myself - but no one’s gonna trust someone who’s fallen into crime. Did you know I was married and have a fifteen-year-old daughter?"

  I looked at his file, which was open before me. The personal details showed: Divorced plus 1.

  "Do you know I haven’t spoken to my daughter in two years?" Again, he posed a question without waiting for an answer. "I divorced her mother when my little girl was three. I loved her mother deeply. She’s an amazing woman. She agreed to accept me in spite of my past, but she said if I ever went back to crime, she’d leave. We were married four years. It was only in the first year that I really stayed away from crime. When my daughter was born, I couldn’t look my wife in the eye. I wanted to give everything to her and to my daughter, but with the odd jobs - all I could get - I couldn’t give them anything. When my daughter was three, I was arrested for some nonsense and sentenced to one year. Since then, I haven’t spoken to the love of my life without some lawyers in the room. She allowed me to see my daugh
ter only under the supervision of social workers, until she reached thirteen. Since then, the girl herself has refused to see me."

  He stopped talking and stared at the desk. A small tear dropped from his eye and dropped onto the veneer of the desk. After few seconds, he clenched his fist and hit the desk angrily. I knew the other cop on call was observing us and signaled him that everything was fine. "He destroyed my life!" he shouted. "That son of a bitch destroyed my life!" He looked straight at me again. His eyes were red and full of anger. "Not a day goes by I don't think about it. If that dog hadn’t done to me what he did, I wouldn’t have turned bad. I could’ve had a different life today! Maybe I’d have studied something…. maybe I’d have had a good profession, and be living with my wife and my daughter. I feel like I’m living someone else’s life, and I'm sick of it…"

  I did not open my mouth. At this stage, I felt that any interference, even the smallest, could destroy everything. I realized that the man was ripe and ready to cross the lines. He was not the first, nor would he be the last, to blame others for his life of crime. The circumstances of his life were, indeed, terrible, but the choices he made were his. This was my opinion, but, of course, I refrained from expressing it aloud.

  "Ever since Daphna, my daughter, made it clear she didn’t want any contact with me, my life’s been meaningless. I just keep going, without any interest or will to move forward. Up to that moment, I’d had a dream - to get rich so I could pamper my little Daphna - but she made it clear to me she wasn’t interested in getting any dirty money from me." He spat out the word "dirty" as if it was, in fact, dirty.

  He became quieter then, as if he was choosing his words carefully. I reminded myself that the man was used to interrogations. "I'm not saying I'm glad you caught me. Nobody likes to fail. But here, I’ve failed. You caught me red-handed. If you want, I’ll confess here and now whatever you want me to. In any case, I don’t have any more energy for hiding and running away. I don't mind sitting in jail for the rest of my life. Nothing interests me anymore. I just want my daughter not to be ashamed of her father… it’s important to me that you understand that."

  "What are you telling me, in fact?" I tried to get him focused.

  "You understand very well what I want to say." He took a deep breath. "I’m ready to be a police informer, but on condition that you’re my operator. You did for those kids what nobody did for me. I want to work with you."

  Over the next few days, Alon watched Koby's interrogation over and over, as if it was an Oscar-winning movie. He would not cease gushing over me and my colossal achievement. Koby was one of the most prominent CIs our unit had recruited recently. Most of the informers were young felons who had gotten into trouble and wanted to avoid jail time. Koby was a veteran, well-connected criminal who was not afraid of jail at all. His motive was a genuine wish to cross the lines and help the police. Koby's line-crossing was Alon's wet dream, and the fact that I was his official operator strengthened my position in the unit.

  Koby was a prolific source of information. While he was not very close to any central figure in the underworld, he knew everybody and everybody knew him. He helped us to map the crime families, their multiple connections and their rivalries. Some of this information was already known, but Koby's testimony confirmed with certainty some assumptions we had been forced to make. The most valuable information provided by Koby was associated with the Golan family. For years, Alon had unsuccessfully tried to lay his hands on the brothers David and Ami Golan. The rumors about their shady business had spread all over the district, but they always managed to dodge any interrogation. Koby was laundering money for them, but we did not have enough evidence to indict them for more serious offenses. Alon wanted to get to the core of their illegal businesses, and would not be satisfied with mere money laundering.

  Over the last few months we had a breakthrough in the investigation. Ami Golan, the younger brother and the brains of the outfit, started sharing information about drug deals and trafficking in women with Koby. He transferred money to Koby and hinted that the source of the funds was protection money from businesses in Holon. We were very careful when we worked with Koby. We knew that if we were too greedy, Koby's cover would be blown. He was too important to the unit, and sometimes we had to forego arrests and raids in order to avoid getting him in trouble.

  Now, as Koby's body lay before me, still and bloody, I realized that, apparently, we had not been careful enough. Someone from Koby's previous world had decided to settle accounts with him.

  CHAPTER 3

  It was difficult to look at Koby's lifeless body. We had grown very close during the months we had worked together, and I had learned to like him. He had a sophisticated sense of humor and we had soon accumulated our own private jokes, so that it was sufficient for one of us to mention one word in order for both of us to start laughing. He liked the good life - he loved to try out a new restaurant, and often urged me to try the places he had visited. To the best of my memory, he had never told me about the Zelda snack bar. I raised my eyes and looked up at the wall in front of me. The daily menu offered sweet potato quiche and pasta with pesto sauce, a rather banal menu, not like the gourmet dishes Koby liked to try out. I diverted my eyes to the other body lying near the table, under the counter.

  "Has the second victim been identified?" I asked Alon.

  He looked at a document in his hand. "Shirley Navon, aged 29, from Hod Hasharon, according to her national ID card. She hasn’t yet been positively identified, and none of the employees here knew her personally. I assume she is, indeed, Shirley Navon, but we’ll have to wait for the body to be identified by a relative in order to be a hundred percent sure."

  "Does she have any connection to Koby?" I asked.

  "Probably not. According to the employees' testimonies, she was about to pick up this order," he pointed to a brown paper bag lying on the counter.

  I went over to the bag and peeked at the white note attached to it: “Shirley – sweet potato quiche and chicken salad.” Shirley had been about to pick up her lunch, and maybe a co-worker’s lunch, too.

  "So she was just a bystander in the wrong place at the wrong time?"

  "Unfortunately, this is probably the case," Alon said angrily.

  At that moment, two guys with a stretcher walked in.

  "Can we now?" one of them asked Alon. It seemed he had been keeping them away until I’d studied the scene.

  "Start with the woman," he instructed them. They covered Shirley's body carefully, picked it up, loaded it on the stretcher, and carried her over to their van, which was parked nearby.

  "Two policemen are on their way at this very moment to the address on the ID card," Alon updated me. "It’s probably Shirley's parents’ address."

  "Poor things," I whispered.

  "Never mind that they kill each other, but to slaughter innocent people like that, this is crossing the line!"

  "Don’t forget that Koby was one of us, really," I reminded him.

  "That's true," he said and looked gloomily at the body lying on the floor.

  Tuesday, June 14, 2011

  “Less than twenty-four hours after the murderous hit that led to the death of criminal Koby Ozri and bystander Shirley Navon, right in the center of Tel-Aviv, the police have begun an extensive round of arrests among the crime families in the Central District. So far, over twenty persons have been arrested, including the brothers David and Ami Golan, Yaakov Sela and Erez Hasson. In a press conference held by the Inspector General, Police Commissioner Dotan Arbel, he declared a policy of zero tolerance toward crime organizations that do not flinch from hurting the innocent. An unofficial source in the police confirmed to our reporter that the criminal, Koby Ozri, was an active police informer, and that the possibility that his cover had been blown was being investigated. Moshe Navon, Shirley’s father, said in reaction to the round of arrests and the words of the Inspector General: "Nothing will bring Shirley back, and it’s regrettable that it took her death to lead
to such a round of arrests. Such dangerous criminals should be behinds bars, not walking around freely on our streets…”

  Alon, the "unofficial source," lowered the volume and looked straight at me. "Who’ve we managed to interrogate since this morning?"

  "I interrogated Rami Shomron and Yaron Levi," I said.

  "Who are they?"

  "Yaakov Sela's pawns."

  "Who else?"

  "Shachar’s interrogating Michael Schwartz right now."

  "The one from the Golan brothers’ gang?"

  "Correct. When do you want us to proceed to the bosses?"

  "Only in the afternoon. Tomorrow morning, even. Let them stew a little in their own juice. They already imagine things that Koby told us. So let them fantasize about what we got out of others in the interrogations."

  "Okay."

  "What about Tom Sela?"

  "He was on his way back from abroad when we issued the warrant for his arrest. According to the information we received, he boarded the plane two hours after we issued the warrant. He’s expected to be on the ground in the next few minutes.