Tel Aviv Noir

by Etgar Keret

  “Meaning, what’s the police’s version?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I know you don’t know. That’s why I want you to go see Farkash, make eyes at her, remind her that I like her and she likes me, get her to talk.”

  “Dude, that’s not my style,” Preppy Boy announced.

  I sighed. “Then go to my apartment and get the list of people who participated in my last tour.”

  “That’s the kind of thing the firm’s secretary does.”

  “You’re afraid to go to Jaffa, worried someone’s going to steal your Breitling.”

  “I don’t understand how that list is going to help you,” he said, tickling his iPhone.

  “Forty-plus people who can testify to having been with me at the time of the murder. Trust me, that’s crucial evidence in a custody extension hearing.”

  “But the police would need to question them separately,” he said. Then I knew I was in bad shape: he wasn’t only shallow and inexperienced, he was a pessimist.

  “More power to them. Let them question them. And I want a gag order.”

  “There’s no point,” he said. He turned his iPhone screen to me. Through the bulletproof glass, I saw a picture of me being pushed into the police car on Izzy Schuster’s website.

  “He’s still grieving. He’s now in the anger phase. He’s taking it out on me. Eventually he’ll get to bargaining, then depression, and, finally, acceptance.”

  “They told me you speak like a social worker.”

  “I try to consider other people’s feelings. Do you find that pointless too?”

  “It’s completely unnecessary,” he said, and for the first time I caught a twinkle in his eye. “You’re a celebrity now.”

  * * *

  I walked between the mopeds driving freely on sidewalks and crossed Salame Street toward Bugsy Café off Washington Avenue. I silently wished the judge a long and happy life. The questioning of my tour participants led him to decide there was no reason to prolong my custody. He saved me a few nights in solitary—it’s forbidden to place an ex-cop with other arrestees.

  It was almost Sabbath, but the place was still full. Izzy Schuster sat on a barstool by the window. When I walked in, he glanced up from the Haaretz culture and literature supplement. I didn’t expect that. People stared at me. For a moment, I really did feel like a celebrity. He ordered me a double espresso with warm milk and club soda on the side. He knew where I liked to sit and what I liked to order and what time I was getting released. He really did know everything.

  “So who killed Mota?” I asked.

  “A man who’s well known in the fertilizer industry. Mota had blackmailed him for years.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “One of his former clients. The whole thing is documented, including photos. Want to see?”

  “No thanks. So that guy killed Mota himself?”

  “God forbid. It was only supposed to be a warning, but it got out of hand.”

  “And you knew that even before I was arrested.”

  “Oh, of course.” He smiled smugly.

  “So what was the arrest about?”

  “I was trying to send you a message, but you’ve been slow to catch on.”

  “That might be true. What was the message?”

  “That you’re to cease and desist with your tours, effective immediately.”

  I froze for a long moment before I was able to speak again. “What?”

  He didn’t answer, only watched me with his watery eyes. I suspected he was enjoying this, punishing me for something that wasn’t my fault. I should have left right then.

  “What’s wrong, not enough clients?” I tried hard to sound tough. “If you’re having problems, I’m happy to accommodate you and—”

  “You partnered up with me like some minor-league mafioso.” He leaned closer. “You simply informed me you were going to split everything with me. I’ve had enough of your audacity.”

  “Listen, people in the field are going to get screwed. They rely on us for their livelihood, for some warmth.”

  “They rely on no one,” he said. “And if you’re such a saint, get up and go, because anyone who cooperates with you is going to be removed.”

  “What do you mean, removed?”

  “Removed from my tour. What did you think I meant?”

  “I won’t budge,” I said and stood up. “Do what you want.”

  “No problem, smart-ass, you’ll have your own pigheadedness on your conscience.”

  “Section 428 of the criminal code calls this extortion under threat.”

  “They can call it Moses for all I care.” He sat back comfortably.

  “I see you’ve learned some things from writing about Israeli outlaws.”

  “Only the good stuff,” he said.

  * * *

  I thought of crossing Salame Street back to the precinct, going into Farkash’s office, and reporting what happened. But I guessed that before I even left her office, Izzy would tell the whole town how I ran to cry to Mommy. I dropped it. I wanted to walk, to think about how to handle his threats, but it was getting late. I hailed a cab. I checked my messages. There were no cancellations. There were so many voice mail bookings that I lost count. There was also a reminder from the Gideonof brothers, my shylocks. Big brother was back in town and I’d better make my payment on time. And there was a text from Shishko about that night. I was glad to hear from him and texted back.

  Meeting as usual. I’ll let you know when we’re close.

  Is Izzy cool with this?

  Totally. I met him.

  Seriously?

  He’s a little crazed but it’s all good.

  Okay. I’m sad about Mota.

  God save him.

  * * *

  The purple bus was at its usual spot at the edge of the parking lot, illuminated by the stadium’s limelights. There were two minibuses behind it, and about eighty people standing around. Almost twice as many as usual. I pulled my regular driver aside.

  “People couldn’t get ahold of you, so they called the transportation company,” he said. His eyes sparkled and his mustache jumped. “I took some initiative and ordered two more vehicles.”

  “That’s crazy. It means I can only speak to some of them on the way.”

  “So you’ll only speak to some of them on the way.”

  “I won’t be able to tell anecdotes between stops.”

  “Nobody knows that’s part of the program.”

  “This doesn’t look professional.”

  “I’m not like him,” he mocked.

  “What’s that?”

  “All year long I hear you complain about being compared to Schuster, wanting to be original. Here’s your chance.”

  I looked at the enormous crowd. My spirits were low. I felt that nothing good could come of this, that I was betraying a commitment, but I couldn’t say what commitment this was. And, as I said, it was late.

  * * *

  Toward the end of Nordau Boulevard was an old, squat juice stand. Shishko finished telling my participants about a jewelry store he’d robbed in the late ’70s and placed his hands against the wall, revealing his muscles beneath a formfitting Tel Aviv Marathon T-shirt. The audience was riveted. They were cooked to perfection. Earlier in the evening I realized that the effect was actually stronger with this many participants. I couldn’t figure out how they stayed so fascinated without Mota, or while riding in silence, without me telling stories between stops. But the facts spoke for themselves.

  Shishko hugged the concrete and leaped to the roof of the juice stand in two quick movements. His silhouette stood out against the clouds. The audience roared with amazement and I put the mic to my mouth and called out like a circus announcer: “Shishko the Spider! Sixty years old! Broke into thousands of homes and businesses, never caught in the act. The only robber in the world who trains Special Forces and elite military teams. Let’s give him a round of applause!”

  Cheers ech
oed from the Bauhaus buildings, both the crumbling and the renovated. I waited for Shishko to come down so that I could interview him about his childhood in boarding school, how he began stealing, and how he finally returned to the straight and narrow. He took a bow. I smiled. He didn’t normally bow. Then his sharp face became distorted, and he folded up and fell down on the roof, moaning. People stepped back with alarm, hands covering their mouths.

  Somebody called out, “I’m a medic!” A few others helped raise him up to the roof. The first guy took his shirt off and improvised a tourniquet around Shishko’s leg. Shishko was finished. No more training or running. My stomach turned over with fear and helplessness, but my head was clear. I got up on a bench and searched the roofs, windows, and balconies. I thought I’d recognize something. Nothing. I heard no shots, and a bullet could have come from anywhere, even a moving vehicle.

  Police cars pulled up and with them was Hila Farkash, exhausted. Shootings don’t fill cops with adrenaline. On the contrary: wounds mean more work than death. We watched the firefighters lowering Shisko, the Bulgarian Tarzan, a man’s man. Spent every day of his life at the beach, fell asleep every night with a cold glass of arak. I couldn’t go near him. I felt very guilty.

  “Your hair looks good like that,” Farkash said, in an effort to say something positive and unrelated.

  “I expected him to screw with me,” I replied with concern. “But I never thought it’d come to this.”

  “Who is he?” she asked, but I could tell by her voice she already knew.

  “Izzy Schuster is blackmailing me. He’s pressuring me to back off or else.”

  “He told me that’s what you’d say.”

  I looked at her with amazement. My driver came by to ask what was going on. I didn’t know what to say. I asked him to take everyone over to Dizengoff Street and wait for me there. He walked around and called everybody back on the bus. I returned to Farkash.

  “What did Izzy tell you I’d say?” I felt fear approaching, but not of Izzy’s cunning or the potential for violence. A fear of empty and meaningless days.

  “He called me and said you’d try to blame something heavy on him, and then you’d accuse him of extortion and threats.”

  “And you believe him?”

  She shrugged. Her eyes were prettier than I remembered. “Why don’t you cut it out?” she offered.

  “You’re suggesting I close up shop?”

  “I’m worried about you. He isn’t playing games.”

  “We’ll see,” I said. “Just promise me you won’t leak anything.”

  “Only if you promise to take care of yourself.”

  “If you promise to interrogate him—that’s a bare minimum.”

  “If you promise not to cut your hair,” she countered, touching my head as if she was blessing me.

  * * *

  The Gideonof brothers were waiting outside my building, pressing the finicky buzzer over and over. I hesitated before taking off my helmet. They looked calm, though.

  “You not home,” Little Gideonof said as I approached.

  “Not right now, no,” I responded.

  Big Gideonof—who was smaller and older—observed me with a protruding bottom lip and red blotches on his nose, cheeks, and forehead.

  “You got sunburned in Eilat,” I pointed out.

  “Huh?” he growled.

  “Your brother said you’d gone away.”

  “Yes, strong-strong sun.”

  “I have a part of the sum to pay you,” I said. “It’s up in my apartment.”

  They followed me into the stairwell which smelled of hreime and mafrum. When I began climbing they stopped with expressions of misery.

  “Seventh floor,” I said.

  “We wait here,” they said in unison.

  What a ruse, I thought. A broken elevator as protection from thugs. During the five minutes I spent in the apartment, I received four calls from people wanting to book a tour. They wanted to see blood, that was the only explanation. I asked them to call back in the morning. When I went downstairs, Big Gideonof counted the money, pocketed it, and that was that.

  “Okay?” I asked. “So goodbye for now.”

  “Bye-bye,” they answered, but stayed put.

  “Nothing to celebrate at the event hall tonight? A Bukharan song festival, maybe?”

  “Protecting you,” said Little Gideonof. “More important than songs.”

  “Huh?” I said suspiciously.

  “You our asset,” the big one explained. “Something happen to you, money is gone.”

  “What could happen to me?”

  “Shishko survive is a miracle. You need also be scared.”

  “We protecting you, no worry about anything.”

  “Okay,” I said. It worked for me, after all. “If you need anything, let me know.”

  I walked upstairs. I wanted very badly to go to sleep, but first I tried to salvage what was left of my life. I called the stripper, the ex-cop, to find out if she was on my side. She didn’t pick up. At this hour the club was packed and she was dancing on a pole and collecting bills, I told myself. I called Perla, the shopping mall pickpocket.

  “I’m not supposed to talk to you, bye,” she said.

  “Did Izzy threaten you?”

  “I’m not supposed to talk to you,” she repeated. “Love you, Ronny baby, bye.”

  “How much is he paying you? I’ll give you double.”

  “Money isn’t everything in life,” the pickpocket preached. Then she hung up.

  * * *

  On Saturday morning the streets around the Old Central Bus Station were deserted and derelict, like books thrown out of a scholar’s house. I saw her leaving the twenty-four-hour supermarket on Salomon Street with a can of Red Bull, a pack of Marlboro reds, and a small purse, raising a sleeved arm to hail a cab. It was hard to believe, but she looked even thinner than usual. I pulled my moped over next to her. Little Gideonof was behind me in his Mazda 5, perusing the pastries in a nearby bakery from a distance.

  “Where are you going?” I asked her after we hugged.

  “To the marina,” she said. “My friend is taking care of a yacht.”

  “Take a rain check, okay?”

  “Low profile is best right now.”

  “I’m starting something big, I have about a million bookings, I could pay you a lot more.”

  “Izzy doesn’t want me to talk to you.”

  “This has nothing to do with him. It’s all new people with new stories, but I could never find another gem like you.”

  “One of your gems almost die last night,” she said with a thin smile.

  “No one will harm you.” I pointed at Little Gideonof. “We’re being protected until we can regain our footing, until everybody remembers their lines. After that, if we have any problems, you can go back to him.”

  “I’m scared.”

  “I’m asking you. I’m begging you.”

  “I ask him about working for both of you. He loves me too.”

  “He doesn’t love you enough to let you go. And he doesn’t love you like I do. How many times did I visit you? How much money have I given you?”

  “I know, I know.”

  “Give me a chance,” I begged, my head hung, desperate. “Give me a chance.”

  In a moment of quiet I could hear an airplane descending toward Ben Gurion Airport, a car driving on HaRakevet Street, Dudu Aharon’s voice floating from Gideonof’s car, and her raging heart yearning for the drug.

  “Then don’t ask me to talk to people,” she said.

  “Because you hate it when they pity you.”

  “I hate it when they looking at my teeth.”

  “Just come by, say hello, I’ll say a few words, and that’s it.”

  “And don’t leave me to the end of the tour.”

  “No problem,” I said. “Starting tonight, you’re the first stop. Thank you, honey, thank you.”

  * * *

  All Saturday long I ran ar
ound, tying up loose ends, rehearsing, reserving buses. My driver made sure people on other buses would be able to hear me too. One hundred and fifty people. It was too many, but I couldn’t resist the temptation. At five thirty I reported to the parking lot. A television camera crew was there interviewing the drivers. When I came near, they turned the camera on me, illuminating me with a tiny spotlight.

  “A few questions about you and what’s going to happen tonight,” one reporter asked.

  “After the tour,” I promised.

  “People are expecting some action.”

  “I’ll be a lot more communicative at the end of the night.”

  Right then, as if they’d been waiting in line at a pay phone, the criminals I’d recruited the previous day began calling, one by one: a South Lebanon Army man who dealt drugs, a lawyer who smuggled prostitutes through Egypt, a robber who specialized in post offices, and all the others. Some of them had lame excuses. The others didn’t even explain why they were canceling on me. Rather, they expected my gratitude for letting me know.

  We drove for two minutes on LaGuardia Road, then turned onto Rosh Pina and over to Vilna Gaon Street, where I let everyone off the buses, trying—and failing—to make an alternate plan. I turned on a small police light I’d bought off a crooked cop. The blue flashes sent the Eritrean refugees running and put my audience in nervous focus. Gideonof’s Mazda protected me from afar. I began by speaking about the failure of governmental control in Southern Tel Aviv. Then I saw her, a waif floating toward me down Bnei Brak Street, just like we planned. When she was next to me I hugged her shoulder, and when she put her mouth to my ear, I could smell cinnamon gum.

  “Izzy Schuster bought your debt from the Gideonof brothers,” she whispered.

  “You don’t say,” I replied, trying to maintain a poker face.

  “They not guarding you. Big Gideonof beat Mota and shot Shishko.”

  My expression must have revealed something after all, because just then the two brothers got out of their car and lumbered over.

  “Everybody go home,” she said. “Now, Ronny, fast.”

  “I can’t. I have to give them something.”

  Her stoned eyes gaped for a moment with realization, with amazement, and then extinguished. Little Gideonof closed his fingers around her arm. It was so thin that he could have held onto two more of them. They exchanged a few words, mostly Russian curses. The audience watched with terrorized, compassionate silence. It looked staged. It looked great, actually. Classic. Then they dragged her, kicking at first, but not for long. A door in the wall opened and the three of them were swallowed inside.