Simantov

by Asaf Ashery

  He caught up with Doron, who he knew was in charge of all this rustling mess. Doron was leaning on the car door, trying to keep his balance as he shed his disposable plastic overshoes.

  As soon as he noticed Biton, his expression soured.

  “Be careful, Doron, don’t fall into the plastic.”

  “Nonsense, it’s okay.”

  “Seriously, you could end up buried in polyethylene.”

  “Biton, what do you want from me?”

  “What’s the weirdest thing you found?”

  “You’ll have to gain forty pounds to impersonate Rosolio.”

  “Tell me anyway.”

  “When we have something, we’ll tell you.”

  Moscovitch shrugged. “The club is sealed up. We spoke to all her friends, and the mobile lab is going off duty.”

  “So?”

  “According to the new regulations for immediate processing, the head of the Investigation Team has to report to the ‘Soothsayer’.”

  The prospect of reporting to Mazzy Simantov’s unit on a night that was already shaping up to be particularly nasty was not something to look forward to. Mazzy was the last woman he wanted to see. Ever. That is, he wanted to see her, just not now.

  “Do me a favor; forget it.”

  “Biton, this is the Judge’s daughter. You can’t just ignore the procedure.”

  “His wife brought me in for results, not procedure.”

  “The ‘Soothsayer’ closes cases, often ones that would never be solved otherwise. As far as I’m concerned, New Age, old age, it’s all the same to me. I don’t care what you call it, as long as it works. What, this is all about the Simantov girl?”

  “Give me a break, Moscovitch. Simantov doesn’t bother me; it’s all those cards, crystals, chakras, and shanti…”

  “Watch your mouth. She also has that guy, Itzkovitch. He helped me crack a case once. What, you don’t like Kabbalah either?”

  “It’s not Kabbalah, it’s those who make money from it. It’s all bullshit that allows people to charge four hundred shekels for the privilege of sitting around and breathing in the stench of Indian incense.”

  Yariv was not objective about anything Mazzy Simantov did, but this time even he had to admit that it was personal.

  Since he had left her division, Yariv found ways to update himself, by checking in with Hedgehog, reading Goldfinger’s reports, indirectly questioning Doron from Crime Lab. Yariv and Mazzy used different methods.

  Mazzy had the right instincts and an uncanny ability to find fresh angles in data that she had examined a thousand times. He, on the other hand, would sink his teeth into a case and not quit until he solved it. They would go to stakeouts together, prepare flow charts and graphs, and dust for prints. It was all about the details. And then, after he left, she would go to work.

  One time she brought in an outside consultant, a reader of some sort, and it yielded results.

  And then again, and again, until eventually it looked as if she had forgotten what real police work was all about and wasted her time with her mother’s mumbo-jumbo. That’s when she got permission to form the new unit, the “Soothsayer.”

  Yariv tried to be supportive, he really tried, but she didn’t make things easy for him.

  In the years since their separation, Mazzy was promoted to head of the team, while he treaded water, which did not reflect well on him. But what really bothered him was not related to the professional aspect of their relationship.

  Mazzy was much more than his protégée.

  For a long time he told himself that it all started when he saw her outside at the shooting range and recognized her potential. But there was another moment that began inside.

  The detective in him had led him to return to the scene of a crime, a place where a costume party had just ended. In the chiaroscuro lighting of the bar, he saw her in a new light, sans work gear, in a red dress that accentuated her curved neck and perfect collarbone, cascading ripples of cloth that exposed a hint of bare thigh. Her motions aroused sinful, lascivious thoughts in him.

  But in spite of these feelings, there were no construction workers catcalling from the scaffolding of his inner world. The building was closed for repairs.

  He didn’t notice the dress (yes he did – confusing) and the imminent seduction. Another song, fast-paced to match the beating of his heart, was playing in his mind; drumbeats heralding a war in which, as they say, all is fair.

  In this self-conscious state, he could barely utter a coherent sentence the entire night. She didn’t even notice, or if she did, she hid it well.

  Tonight, Yariv had enough on his plate without having to confront Mazzy. But apparently there was no way to avoid a confrontation. His life was about to get complicated. Again.

  If someone had told Mazzy a few years ago that she would be sitting on the roof of the precinct, smoking a chillum with a subordinate, she would have laughed at the idea. Mazzy was not the kind of person to break the law in front of her assistants.

  But the precinct did not exactly embrace the Soothsayer unit, and did its best to marginalize its members. At first, there were the childish pranks, such as sprinkling pepper on Izzy’s herbal infusions, or sending one of the secretaries to Itzkovitch with with her blouse nearly unbuttoned, just to watch him blush and squirm under his black fedora; or telling tasteless jokes about Russian immigrants whenever Larissa walked into the room. Later, looks and whispers whenever the unit assembled, along with unconcealed disdain during departmental briefings. The last straw was a petition to evict the unit from their newly allocated workspace, which had once been a club and recreation room for policemen and office workers. This open animosity had the effect of turning the Soothsayer unit into a close-knit family that drew sustenance and encouragement from every attempt to discredit it or disprove its findings.

  At first Mazzy balked at the gradual deterioration of commander-subordinate relations, until she realized there was more than one way to run a unit: if it’s obvious to everyone involved that you’re in control, there’s no need to insist on ritual and formality. Except for the little, shared rituals that united them.

  Mazzy made a point of spending time with Larissa, her ‘cartomancer,’ trying to correct her grammatical mistakes in Hebrew. These sessions gave Larissa a chance to let off steam and make some scathing, disparaging remarks. In her perennial struggle to negotiate between the prevailing culture of “Don’t worry,” and “Leave it to me,” and her own professional integrity, Larissa had neglected to internalize the rules and regulations of the Hebrew language, as well as the principles of what passes for conventional Israeli behavior.

  As for Itzkovitch, whenever his busy schedule allowed it, the two would meet for a study session of Torah or Talmud, an activity that pleased him and intrigued her. For her part, Mazzy had her shared rituals with Izzy, who right now was passing the Italian marble cone to her, making sure the wetted Safi cloth attached to the mouthpiece didn’t slip. The stuff inside Izzy’s designer chillum didn’t have much kick; it only offered an agreeable buzz that left her floating on a pleasant cloud.

  There was something leisurely and expansive about Izzy. She did not strive to find favor; favors usually found her. She was ruddy and had beautiful eyes, with freckles covering her tanned skin. It was obvious that her weight was acquired by pleasurable means and found its way to her curved limbs, draped in an Indian sari that did not really conceal them. At this late afternoon hour, at the end of a workday, Izzy scrutinized Mazzy’s face through a cloud of smoke.

  “Yesterday, you were all red; today, I detect complex shades of water, aqua, a lot more blue, green, azure.”

  “Didn’t they teach you in Poona that it’s rude to read people’s auras without asking them first?”

  “And it’s all centered in the throat chakra. So it must be someone in the family, but it’s not clear who, and why you’re so mad at them. Who are you thinking of? Gaby? The way you often talk to him? Because there are traces of red
from yesterday, from Rachel. And it’s clear that she…”

  “You’re a whiz at multitasking. You can read my aura and waste my time simultaneously.”

  The colored beads and pebbles that comprised Izzy’s heavy African necklace and earrings jingled as she laughed. But underneath the usual banter and ribbing was real anxiety. Normally, one old, familiar source could account for it.

  “What’s she done now?” Izzy asked.

  “She’s driving me nuts.”

  “What is it this time?”

  “I arrived at the precinct on Seder night only to find out that Mandelbrot’s daughter had been located with the help of a ‘lead’ supplied by Rachel! She knew full well why I had to leave her house that night, and yet she complained that…”

  “Rachel hosted a Seder?”

  “I’m telling you, she now organizes special events so she can harass me before an audience.”

  Izzy passed her the chillum again, but no amount of inhalation could calm Mazzy down.

  “Sweetheart, what really bothers her is that you dared step out of her purple field. Rachel’s purple is dark, a fusion of her fiery red, which is her constant activity, and her vast knowledge, which is dark, ice blue. Don’t ask me to analyze this blue, because its darkness is so intense that I don’t want to know and she doesn’t want you to know.”

  Mazzy smiled enigmatically. She had never told Izzy the source of the black streaks in her aura. Mazzy had inherited them from her father – Israel – the black hole in her family universe. She never told Izzy about him, because they had not reached that point yet. Also because it frightened her, and because you could never mention color without Izzy turning it into an entire symposium.

  “Rachel is totally purple, deep purple. She’s queen of purple, empress. This is her force and her sphere of influence, it’s her idealism, everything. And here you come along and, instead of continuing this purple dynasty, you run away from her and turn indigo, almost blue. Like your little Noga, you are her indigo girl. This does not sit well with her. It’s too complex.”

  Izzy’s analysis made the vein in Mazzy’s forehead throb, as if she were exerting the force of an athlete pumping iron. Not because it wasn’t accurate: but because it was.

  “Et tu, Brute? You don’t need auras to tell you that my mother is a frustrated control freak. Since you peeked into my aura, without my permission, couldn’t you see something a little more serious there?”

  “Something a little more serious you don’t want to hear.”

  “I do, I do.”

  “You’ll say that it’s psychobabble and that I’d better focus on crystals.”

  “I promise not to.”

  “Has it ever occurred to you that the reason you joined the police, even before the establishment of the Soothsayer unit, was your mother?”

  “What’s the connection?”

  “Someone who, all her life, has tried to break out of her own home, ends up stopping others from trying to break in.”

  “You’re right, this is psychobabble. You’d better focus on crystals.”

  “You know what, okay, pick a stone,” Izzy said enticingly, waving a canvas bag full of colorful crystals and pebbles in front of Mazzy. Mazzy stretched out her hand and selected a smooth round stone resembling a drop of mercury. For a brief moment, she savored its coolness then handed it back.

  “Hematite,” Mazzy declared.

  “Great, you learned something!” Izzy eyed her proudly.

  “Well?” urged Mazzy.

  “Wait a second. Let me breathe. This is something new, spontaneous…”

  “Sensitive, nature loving, who loves long walks and the beach?”

  Izzy’s face made clear she did not appreciate the irony.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t give it back to me. Hematite could bolster your femininity, renew your aura of spontaneity, and build a defense against all the negativity you’ve been radiating this morning. It could infuse you with energy. We’re talking about someone new here, someone who’s not what he seems, even though you think you know him. Hematite may look pretty and silvery and smooth, but inside it’s red and rough. The “hema” in hematite means blood. And red, as you know, is connected directly to the sex chakras.”

  “Gaby is not someone new, and lately he has not really connected much.”

  “Who said it was Gaby?”

  “I haven’t heard the clippity-clop of the white horse and knight in shining armor coming this way.”

  “You can mock and dodge all you want, but this rock speaks directly to the Third Eye; it’s crucial for understanding the link between the astral and the corporeal. This new guy doesn’t really believe in what you’re doing.”

  “One could say this about eighty percent of the population and ninety percent of the men, including Gaby.”

  “But it’s not Gaby, it’s someone else, someone new. There’ll be a war, a battle. Bear in mind that pulverized hematite is incredibly powerful. They used to grind it and wear it as war paint. Spartan warriors used to wear a pendant with hematite under their shield. Wait and see, there will be war. At first you’ll win, then he will, then you again, but in any case, both of us should want me to be right.”

  “May one ask why?”

  “At least you’ll get a good fuck out of it.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Yariv Biton made his way to the precinct where he had started his career.

  Like the first apartment he rented with roommates, marking the departure from his parents’ home fifteen years earlier, the first precinct held a special place in his heart.

  For most policemen, the precinct was a stressful place peopled by work associates. Yariv experienced it differently. Work was where he felt most at peace with himself.

  It was not an ideal setting, but Yariv was not a man of routine. He needed the tension and adrenaline rush of investigations and the release that came with their conclusions. The precinct was also the place where he had had his last serious relationship, with a policewoman, with Mazzy.

  It was this nostalgic aspect that he tried hard to ignore now, or at least to avoid.

  He entered the familiar space, which hadn’t changed a bit, and was greeted by Sima, the duty officer, with her customary frostiness. Her nickname was Hedgehog. Hedgehog knew everything, but about her, only her name was known from the tag she sported on her meticulously ironed uniform. It was obvious why she was nicknamed Hedgehog. Her short spiky hairdo, generously fortified with gel, would have made Billy Idol proud.

  “Did anyone ever mistake you for a man, Sima?”

  “Why? Did anyone ever mistake you for one?”

  Yariv smiled broadly, but Sima’s poker face and her crown of thorns put an end to the inquiry.

  “What brings you here? Did you miss us?”

  “I wish I had time for sentiment. It’s business.”

  Sima was always once step ahead. She knew precisely why he had come, or at least his official reason for being there.

  “She’s in the office. Go in now, her schedule is full. She’s already had a session on the roof with Take It Izzy, and the Snobbish Russian is already on her way.”

  Yariv hadn’t been there since Mazzy’s promotion, but he wasn’t shy about prodding Sima for info.

  “Where did they stick her office?”

  “In the old clubroom. Goldfinger’s been trying to kick her out of there for two months now.”

  The name was actually Goldberg, but the nickname stuck from the way he beckoned people into his office.

  “How is he?”

  “Ask him yourself, if you can catch him around here.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Forget it. It’s too big for you.”

  Yariv decided not to delve into the deteriorating relations between Hedgehog and Goldfinger. He had more urgent business to attend to.

  Yariv made his way to the old clubroom and to an encounter he had been dreading for several years now. On second thoughts, what was the rush? Th
ere was always time for another cigarette.

  Passing desks laden with reams of paper, and screensavers that attested to the creativity of their owners, he was greeted by distantly familiar faces and either nods or a pat on the back, accompanied by “What’s up, Shithead?”

  Yariv made himself a cup of coffee. Not that he needed the caffeine; he was just playing for time.

  The coffee corner was still in the same place, but now sported an espresso machine with a golden plaque extolling the generosity of a Jewish American donor. There was another addition; a big sign with a crossed out cigarette that seemed to rebuke him and the smoke he was blowing.

  After rummaging through the cabinet, he found an inferior brand of coffee. When the dark liquid hissed at the air, he added sugar, stirred monotonously, and stared at the clubroom door. Picking up the coffee cup he had prepared for Mazzy, he gingerly made his way toward the old clubroom.

  On the door, a laminated sign proclaimed, “Soothsayer. In case of an emergency, contact Mazal Simantov.”

  Mazzy’s cellphone and pager numbers were written in curved, seductive script, as well as her home phone – the home with the husband, a function he could have filled had he not been so screwed up, and the little girl, a person he had neither the ability nor the will to compete with. Well, there was no turning back the clock.

  Without announcing himself, he entered using his elbow to turn the handle, then slammed the door behind him with his heel.

  He tried to spot any change in her since their last meeting, but the optical nerve refused to transmit data to his brain and, instead, sent it straight down to his heart.

  He smiled at Mazzy, trying to hide his vulnerability.

  “Tell me, did it hurt when you fell?”

  She didn’t even smile at their private joke. His attempt to break the ice must have caused her pain. It was nostalgic banter, like the clichéd “Is your dad a gardener? So how did he raise such a flower?” – even though he knew that she barely knew her father.

  Mazzy’s eyes contracted to a crack.

  He handed her a peace offering.

  “Two sugars, just the way you like it,” he said softly, putting the cup on her desk.