Simantov

by Asaf Ashery

  “I don’t sense anything. I never do. Maybe that’s what bugs you. Can I go now?”

  “They don’t need you to do office work.”

  “But they’re stuck with me, poor souls.”

  “And the other way round.”

  “You mean; I should go work for the other police force? The one that doesn’t exist?”

  “I mean; you should decide what’s best for you. I don’t care about them.”

  “Is this why you’re playing devil’s advocate?”

  “Someone has to.”

  “I’ll deal with Hagar Abizu, but if I want another advocate to disappear, I’ll let you know.”

  “Mazzy, this is too big for you. You should realize it yourself.”

  “That’s very convincing coming from you.”

  As she watched her daughter gather her flock and shepherd them toward the door, Rachel wondered when Mazzy had become so resentful of her. She stopped briefly by her mother before exiting.

  “You’re staying here?”

  “Do you care?”

  “I’d rather you didn’t stay here alone.”

  “I’ll manage. Don’t worry about me.”

  “It’s not you I’m worried about.”

  Her team members headed to their cars; only Larissa, with a diva’s impatience before a premiere, waited for the Simantov women to end their chat so that Mazzy could drive her away from the boring event she had been obliged to attend.

  Mazzy kissed her mother on her cheek, which left Rachel wondering: an apology? Or just a familial façade they had to assume in public?

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  After a twenty-minute drive and one uncalled-for use of the police siren, Mazzy got home, planning to shower, change and report to the precinct to work on the case whose preliminary details she had just read in the car. She was familiar with the non-profit organization where Hagar Abizu worked and with the repeated threats its lawyers had been receiving.

  Except for the fair hair of Hagar’s interlocutor, there was no evidence to support Yariv’s hypothesis that the cases were linked. Mazzy hoped that it was not a poor excuse to drag her to the office. She knew Yariv was operating on a gut feeling here; she just wasn’t sure she could feel it.

  On the other hand, as Goldfinger would remind her every time she handed in the Soothsayer monthly report, she was not merely a woman in a responsible position who had to justify the trust put in her; she was also a detective working for a unit that she herself had put together and whose work methods were a mystery to everyone else. The only relevant test was the final result.

  Mazzy was greeted with the pounding of a chef’s knife hitting a chopping block and the aroma of fresh salad. Gaby welcomed her with a peck on the cheek, careful not to touch her with his hands. He was wearing mesh gloves that hung in the kitchen as a constant reminder of his line of work. What bugged Mazzy was not that he wore them to chop vegetables, but that he never washed them afterwards.

  “Should I work faster? You’re a bit early.”

  “I’m going out again. I just came home to change.”

  “But I’m fixing…” he said in a petulant, hurt voice.

  “Is she sleeping?”

  “Like a baby. Which is logical.”

  “Any report from Aurora?”

  “Nothing major. She ate chocolate pudding.”

  She dropped her bag on the chair, pulled out her weapon and slipped it into the gun safe.

  Gaby came from behind and hugged her close to his chest.

  “I’m working only morning shifts this week.”

  “I don’t know my schedule yet.”

  “I was hoping we could go out sometime this week. I was going to make a reservation.”

  “Sounds great.”

  “Well, I haven’t been around much lately, and we haven’t gone out for a long time…”

  “We’ll see later in the week. I need a shower.”

  “Salad and omelet are not the right menu for a woman who works so hard.”

  “Who decided this menu?”

  “Me. I prepared dinner for you.”

  “For us, not for me.”

  Mazzy knew it was not easy for him, but the proud expression he wore on the rare occasions when he did the dishes, prepared a meal, or folded laundry drove her up the wall. Gaby thought he was doing her a huge, romantic favor and failed to see why this only increased her anger. Mommy’s Little Prince did not excel at household chores. Several times this week alone she had to repair his gestures. But it was a good feeling, she had to admit, to come home to a meal and a bathed child. It was time somebody did something just for her.

  The amorous looks he sent her were not unpleasant either. It’s nice when your husband makes an effort to please you. This was how it should be; this was what she deserved. The change Gaby had undergone in the past two weeks was finally bearing fruit, but right now she could not pick it, even though his stubbly cheeks – cultivated to the right length so as not to scratch – were sweetly rubbing against hers.

  “I do appreciate it, I really do, but I have no time, sweetie. I’ll get something from the vending machine or we’ll order from the office, but thanks anyway…”

  “We could have something delivered here, open a bottle of wine, take a bath.”

  Mazzy had to curb the urge to indulge; a bath was certainly an excellent reason to stay home.

  “I barely have time for a shower.”

  “Tell them there was an emergency at home. Something you had to do.”

  “Like what?”

  “Me.”

  This was the closest Gaby could come to dirty talk, and Mazzy assumed the line had been rehearsed to perfection. She was sorry to disappoint him, but she had no choice.

  “I’m not really here. What you see is an illusion. I’m already on my way to work.”

  In the shower she turned on the hot water and shut off the outside world. A cloud of steam caressed her and, as she stood there languorously, she watched her reflection in the mirror gradually disappear. Examining the misty aura that was her image, she tried to delve into the real essence of her personality, the true self underneath the defensive shell. As she soaped up, she thought she heard footsteps in the outer room.

  “Gaby?”

  No response came through the steam-covered walls. Mazzy concluded that she was imagining things and had probably seen too many movies. Nobody would ever pull the shower curtain and threaten to slash her throat with a carving knife. They would simply shoot her through the glass. There was something strangely calming in modern barbarity. Mazzy returned to the hot stream, setting aside her introspection to focus on the facts that lay before her, which is what her work consisted of.

  The first case: a fourteen year-old girl. She was a judge’s daughter, but there was neither a ransom note nor any demand regarding past or future verdicts.

  She was too old to fall prey to pedophiles, and too spoiled to be deeply involved in crime.

  The second case: a woman deeply involved in crime with a long list of enemies but, in her case, too, no demands from the kidnappers. It didn’t stand to reason that a robber would pick a tightly secured building that would take careful planning both to enter and escape. Connected or not, there was clearly somebody serious behind these abductions. She must be missing something here.

  Then again, maybe these were two separate cases of someone skilled in not leaving clues behind. Perhaps it was someone with a previous record, someone familiar with police MOs, and procedures. A less plausible but more disturbing explanation could be that the culprit was a psycho working alone. Someone hard to track because he had no record. Now that he had started the rampage, the escalation was inevitable: from girl to woman, from a nightclub to a secured building.

  The time lapse between the two incidents was also a cause for concern. The critical forty-eight hours had elapsed. Presumably, Estie is no longer alive; perhaps Hagar Abizu had joined her in what might be the first case of a serial killer in Israel.
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  But she must not think in these terms.

  She mustn’t think of the girls and women at all. Not in that way. They also needed to check connections to the security guards: those from the dumpster and the one from the “Saving Grace” building. Maybe it was a coincidence, maybe it was someone who hated women AND security guards. Maybe someone who didn’t like the idea that women were protected, who wanted his victims to live in fear, who preferred a personal struggle with no outside professional involvement.

  What annoyed Mazzy was the fact that all those options were part of Yariv’s work, and not really part of her job. Maybe Rachel was right after all. Perhaps she had adopted the mentality of the system, gotten mired in its conception. She needed to rid herself of it all, let her imagination and suspicions take over until she reached the most absurd conclusion that only the paranormal could yield.

  Mazzy tried to obliterate the image of Yariv that had taken hold of her. He was invading her home, her shower, her brain.

  The shower door opened behind her, and a gust of cold air brought her back to reality. A man’s hand touched her shoulder, his fingers sliding down to get a better grip and triggering an order to be fired from her brain to her arm. The elbowed assailant struck the floor and she turned to face him ready for fight or flight.

  “Gaby?!”

  “Are you nuts? What’s the matter with you?” Her husband picked up his wounded ego from the tiled floor, examining the back of his head, ribs, and collarbone to make sure nothing was broken. Mazzy hovered above him, solicitously.

  “Are you all right?”

  Another joint examination yielded that what was mostly hurt was Gaby’s self-respect.

  “I am, but I think you’re a little touched in the head.”

  “Sorry. I was in another place, and suddenly you came and…”

  “So your first thought is to whack me?”

  “I wasn’t thinking anything…”

  “What’s going on with you?”

  “With me?”

  “Oh, right. What was I thinking? To take a shower in my own house. With my wife. What’s wrong with me?”

  “But I told you I wasn’t really here. That I had to leave.”

  “I thought you meant that while she’s asleep…like the other day at lunchtime…”

  “That we do it?”

  That was the term they had agreed upon. His “make love” was too cloyingly romantic and juvenile to her ears, while to him her “fuck” was just plain embarrassing.

  “No, then?”

  Mazzy emitted a growl of frustration. She had to restrain herself from reacting more physically.

  “What do you think? That picking up Noga twice and making a salad would so wow me that I’d fuck you in the shower and forget about going to work, just because you happen to have some time on your hands? I can’t even…”

  “Goddamnit, Mazzy. I’m really trying here. I also have people at work who don’t understand my situation. OK, maybe I wasn’t so great before, but even when I make an effort, you complain.”

  Mazzy was suddenly tired of having to explain. “This isn’t a game,” she said, “I need to know that you’re capable of doing things for me, for us, not because you feel like it or because you want something, but because we’re partners and it’s important to you. Because you care about us.”

  Gaby looked like a hurt child.

  Mazzy switched to a softer, quieter tone.

  “When I go to work… I can’t think of such things. Certainly not now. Right now I need to know that Noga is taken care of, that I’m not going to come home to a sink full of dishes, that you did the laundry without being told, and that for once you watered the plants. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “Did you even look around the house, or are you on automatic pilot? The house is clean, I gave Noga a bath and put her to bed, dinner is ready. What’s wrong now?”

  Silence swirled in the steamy room, like the fog of war.

  Mazzy finished her frantic toweling. Gaby put his hands on her shoulders and drew his face to hers in a final attempt at reconciliation. She rebuffed him.

  “You are driving me crazy,” he said.

  She wasn’t sure if this was a final advance or a statement of fact.

  “Not intentional.”

  “I only meant…”

  “Never mind. We’ll talk when I get back.”

  She stopped to check on Noga, then gathered her gun. This time, on her way to the precinct, she did not activate the siren or drive fast. She needed a few more minutes to regroup. No way was she going to let Yariv in on any of this. She was going to work.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Despite the commotion surrounding him, Azazel tried to keep his eyes on the horizon.

  An emissary was about to arrive, and he was a meticulous, scrupulous angel. He had spread his wings and was poised to swoop in on his prey. Kasdaya and Pnemua were busy snipping and dyeing; they complained that Barakiel was constantly moving. The latter, however, had heftier grievances.

  “Why do I have to be the one?”

  “Because you know the score. You know how humans move. You’ll look natural,” replied Armaros.

  “Stuff and nonsense! We’re all the same to them. They only look at the outside.”

  “That’s precisely why we need to go through with this.”

  “Yes, but why ME?”

  Armaros was fed up with Barakiel’s peevishness. He’d had it up to the top of his fair hair. He left his position at the desk, cluttered with fashion and style magazines, and made his way to the center of the room.

  The Italian marble floor was covered with a plastic sheet; in the middle sat Barakiel, who looked like an ornery pooch at the dog parlour. Pnemua was holding a small brush and, with light motions, applying dab after dab of dye from a bowl held by Kasdaya.

  Armaros stepped on the rustling plastic, staring intently at Barakiel.

  “You’re just getting a haircut and a dye, so stop whining, or I’ll inflict some real bodily harm that will make you look truly human. Hair grows back.”

  “You know how long it took me to grow this?”

  “How long? You’re a fine one to complain about time. We each do our share. I’m sure Sahariel also has more interesting things to do than study texts about Scandinavian princes.”

  “Sahariel already knows these texts.”

  “This is why we picked him. Just as we picked you because of your affair with the lawyer.”

  “That was years ago, and it wasn’t exactly a success story. Maybe I’m not as good at it as you think.”

  “Relax. You’re just a backup.”

  Sahariel, coming in from an adjacent room, threw Barakiel a censorious look. He didn’t have to be present in the room to read his twin’s mood.

  “Barakiel, you’re not going to whine about your Abizu again, are you?”

  “No.”

  “Fine. It’s not a pretty sight when you fall apart because of some daughter of Lilith.”

  Barakiel lowered his eyes. Kasdaya lifted his chin so he could get on with the dyeing. As far as Barakiel was concerned, his love affair with Hagar had been short and painful.

  Whatever he had learned about the mating customs of humans proved irrelevant to a relationship with a daughter of Lilith. The traditional roles he had memorized were of no use when it came to Hagar. He only angered her with his antiquated manners. And the fact that the whole affair ended in a disciplinary measure did not make it any easier.

  The sound of whooshing wings came from the window, cutting short the walk down memory lane. Azazel looked magnificent in his flight.

  The Naphil flapped his wings, slicing through the air, diving like a harpoon thrust into water; his strong palms stretched downward, his legs stuck together to minimize friction and his eyes blazed at the target: a weary pigeon with a ring around its leg. When he caught it, he made a perfect yawing maneuver in front of the open window, executing as stunning an entrance as his departure had been.<
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  Shamhazai was waiting for him, ignoring the flamboyant aerodynamics.

  “What’s in the note?”

  Azazel unraveled the paper from the carrier pigeon’s ring and smoothed out the tiny square.

  “Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils, for wherein is he to be accounted of?”

  All eyes turned to Sahariel; he did not let them down.

  “What does it mean?”

  “It means they are coming. The Nephilim from overseas. Adriel is summoning his crazy cohorts and is on his way.”

  A uniform white-toothed smile spread throughout the room, illuminating it with the glow of hope. They all glowed with it, even the shorn one.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Mazzy was sitting in her office, waiting for Larissa and trying to figure out what it was that had so baffled her, so gnawed at her, other than the obvious doubts. The common denominator of the cases was the lack of a ransom demand or ultimatum, and an apparently blond guy.

  None of this information came from her unit, everything flowed from Yariv as head of the investigation team. Part of the problem was that the process of deduction was based on inconclusive data, so the question she was about to pose to Larissa would be vague.

  Even though the art of card reading is by nature intuitive, one needs to pose a question that will direct the reader and give her a well-defined area for investigation.

  The other part of the problem was the dramatis personae. To wit, Yariv himself. She tried to accept the forced cooperation between them as professionally as she could, but to no avail. It only made her preoccupation with him and with herself more aggravating.

  Mazzy hoped that Larissa’s contribution would take the investigation to a higher level, providing data and answers she could present to Yariv, and which would allow her to become a more integral part of the investigation.

  But Larissa wasn’t there and, in her absence, it was Yariv who preoccupied her thoughts. But she was determined to chase him from all corners of her mind.

  As the daughter of Rachel, Mazzy didn’t think much of women who insisted on marrying the guy they happened to be with, but that principle held only until she met Gaby and decided that he would be hers. Not because she wanted to keep him, but because she wanted him as a partner. It was then that she first asked Rachel about her brief marriage to her father, the mysterious figure whom she had never met.