Murder Under the Bridge

by Kate Raphael

  “Allo?” she heard from the phone, and realized she herself had now been quiet a disconcertingly long time. At least, she hoped it was disconcerting for him, and not simply annoying enough to make him hang up.

  “I’m here,” she said.

  “What do you know about Nadya?” he asked.

  That was more what she expected to hear. He wanted to know what she knew. But what should she say? Should she confront him directly with her knowledge of Nadya’s murder, or should she try to make him say it? She tried for a middle ground.

  “You’re the only one who really knows what happened to Nadya,” she said. “Why don’t you tell me?”

  “Look, whoever you are, I am going to tell Nir that you stole his phone.”

  “If I had stolen his phone, don’t you think he would have figured that out by now? You don’t know who I am. What are you going to say, ‘Someone I don’t know took your phone, I don’t know how or when or why?’ That’s going to be very convincing. It’ll probably get you another medal or two. And you won’t even have to murder any more people for it.”

  “Who do you think you are talking to?”

  “I know who I’m talking to. The Butcher of Jenin.”

  “Whore!” he spat out the Hebrew word, zonah. “Shut up! I’m going to have you arrested!”

  “Well, it might comfort you to know that I’m already arrested.”

  He hung up on her, leaving her wondering if it was a good idea to tell him that. In that case, obviously she was not with Malkah, or Nadya, or any other member of the Gelenter household, and moreover, it would probably make it easy for him to figure out who she was. On the other hand, she was not the one with anything to hide. She was trying to smoke him out, and if he decided to come after her, maybe she could set a trap for him—not that she had many resources to call on right now.

  “Mishehu rotzeh hachutza?” Diana’s voice called. Does anyone want to go outside?

  Chloe jumped up and put on her shoes. Half an hour wandering around a caged-in blacktop would not normally qualify as a major treat, but then, she wasn’t normally in prison. She glanced outside and saw that it was a double treat—the canteen truck was here. She made sure she had money in her pocket. Now she could buy chocolate and instant coffee and milk. Life was getting better by the second.

  When they came back inside, she made coffee with milk for everyone, and they had it with the cookies she had bought. It was like a little party.

  “Where’s Ursula?” she asked, suddenly noticing that the one person who had been kind to her all along wasn’t here to share her paltry largesse.

  On cue, Ursula appeared at her side. There was another woman with her, and they were speaking a language Chloe didn’t recognize. Uzbek, she assumed, though this woman looked nothing like either Ursula or Nadya. With bright copper hair, hazel eyes, and almond complexion, she could have been Irish or Hungarian. Uzbekistan must be as much a melting pot as the US, Chloe thought. She had barely heard of Uzbekistan before this. When she got out of here, she would have to look it up on Wikipedia.

  “This is Lydia,” Ursula told her. “She knows English.”

  “Are you new?” Chloe asked Lydia. Lydia shook her head, then patted her shining mane back into place, not that it needed it.

  “I sleep in the other building.” She pointed out the barred window, to another barracks barely visible across the courtyard.

  “She is not supposed to be here,” Ursula giggled in Hebrew.

  “After bachutz, when they call for Building 1, she whisper to me come,” Lydia explained. “She say, there is girl here, speak only English.”

  Chloe wondered why Lydia would take such a risk just to talk to her. “What will they do if they find you?” she asked idly.

  Lydia lifted one delectable shoulder. “Nothing. What can they do?”

  What, indeed? Chloe thought. Unlike sentenced prisoners, the inmates here had little to lose.

  “Why did you want to talk to me?” she wasn’t sure whether the question should be directed to Ursula or Lydia.

  “They want to know about you,” Lydia said, opening her hands toward the assembled women. “Why you are here?”

  What should she answer? I’m here because a military man thought I was trying to corrupt his daughter? Or, I’m here because a friend of mine confessed to a murder, and I’m trying to prove he didn’t do it? The latter route would be more likely to elicit useful information from them. She told Lydia a compressed version of Nadya’s story. It took her a long time to translate, but when she did, the others were spellbound.

  “Did you know this Nadya?” they asked each other.

  “I think… which one? What did she look like? No, that was another Nadya. No, no, I don’t know her.”

  “I know Dmitri,” Yelena announced.

  Now they were getting somewhere. Chloe mentally kissed Lydia’s feet.

  “What do you know about him?”

  “He sells women secrets about the men they work for. A friend of mine, her boss stole money from his company. Dmitri sold her a paper for five thousand shekels, and the man paid her ten thousand for it. She sent that money home to Georgia, so her mother can build them a big house on the Black Sea.”

  Chloe thought about whatever Nadya had taken from Gelenter’s office. Could that have been why Dmitri sent her to work there in the first place?

  “Where would a woman get five thousand shekels?” she wondered aloud.

  Lydia translated for the others. They were full of suggestions.

  “You can save,” Maria said.

  “Not if you don’t get paid,” Ursula interjected.

  They all nodded vigorously at that.

  “A Chinese girl in my building,” Lydia pointed. “She didn’t get paid for two years. Then when she asked for her money, her boss called the immigration. The police beat her so bad, she was in the hospital two weeks.”

  “Can’t she do anything?” Chloe asked.

  Lydia shrugged. “The human rights hotline, they say they will send a lawyer to take her story. But until now, no one comes.”

  “A Moldovan girl in Eilat,” Katya said, “She is pregnant. She call the hotline but they don’t answer the phone. She leave a message. Her boss hear her leave message and he take her down to a basement. He chain her to a bed and keep her there seven months, until the baby born.”

  Chloe stared at her. The others did not look shocked at all. They were nodding, like they had heard such things before.

  “But that’s a horrible story,” she burst out. “What happened to her then?”

  “He take the baby,” Katya said. “And sell it to another man from Moldova.”

  “He sold the baby?” Chloe couldn’t get her head around this. It occurred to her that if Nadya knew this story, or another like it, she must have been terrified when she found out she was pregnant. It seemed unlikely that Gelenter, evil as he was in his way, would chain her in a basement and sell her baby to a trafficker. But what did she really know about what he would do? Certainly he would not have wanted her bringing her baby into his house, especially if it looked like him. He had no way of knowing he wasn’t the father.

  “A lot of girls must get pregnant,” she speculated out loud. “Do most of them have the babies?”

  The others discussed it among themselves, in Russian. Then Lydia delivered the consensus.

  “No, most get rid of them.”

  She had heard that abortion was easy to get in Israel, at least for citizens. For illegal foreign workers, she didn’t know. “Is it easy to get rid of them?”

  “It is not hard,” Lydia said. “You go to a doctor and he takes six hundred dollars.”

  “But if you are more than three months, it is nine hundred,” Yelena added.

  That explained why Nadya needed to get money right away. It would also explain why she didn’t tell Fareed she was pregnant. Perhaps she really was in love with Fareed, Chloe thought. Maybe once she got rid of the unwanted pregnancy she meant to live
with him, eventually marry and start their own family, just as he hoped. It comforted her to believe that.

  She thanked Lydia for her translation and went back to sit on her bed and think about all they had told her. Dmitri had told Avi he got back whatever money Nadya stole from him. But somewhere she had gotten a thousand dollars to send home. Could she have held out on him in a previous blackmail scheme? Or had he meant for her to find him something to use against Gelenter or Wilensky, and she double-crossed him? Either way, he would have had a good motive for murder.

  She needed to talk to Wilensky some more and get him to tell her what the precious document was. She didn’t know how much credit was left on her phone. She couldn’t waste any on a long distance call. How could she get him to call her?

  She typed out a text message. “Did u know N gave someone copy of doc b4 u killed her?”

  She pressed send, and went back to the road map she had been making. With a felt pen she drew lines from Nadya to Gelenter, Wilensky, and Fareed and wrote “sex” and “pregnancy.” On the lines leading to Gelenter and Wilensky, she wrote “blackmail,” and on Dmitri’s, she added, “theft?” She drew a line to nowhere and wrote “abortion?” On the short line between Fareed and Radwan, she reluctantly wrote, “bombs.” Okay, so she had all the possible reasons for someone or someones to kill Nadya, but how did it help?

  “Efshar l’kanes?” She recognized Shaul’s boom, asking if it was okay to come in—not that he waited for an answer. He strode over to her bunk, jabbing his index finger at her.

  “Pack your things,” he ordered. “You’re leaving.”

  “Where am I going?”

  “I don’t have to tell you. Yalla. Kadima.” Come on, in two languages.

  “If you won’t tell me where you’re taking me, I won’t go.”

  His steely eyes flashed. “I’ll take you by force.”

  He would enjoy that, she thought. She got up, started to gather her few possessions.

  “You have five minutes,” he growled and left, triple locking the door behind him.

  She packed slowly. Several of the others were crying.

  “He will hurt you,” Yelena wailed from her bunk.

  Funny, Chloe thought, yesterday you weren’t even speaking to me. Now, the thought of someone hurting me makes you cry. Aloud she said, “No, I’ll be okay.”

  She hoped she was not lying.

  She contemplated the telephone. If she put it in her pocket, there was a good chance someone would search her and take it away. If she hid it among her things, maybe they wouldn’t find it, but would she be able to get to it when she needed it? She got an idea. With the tip of a pen, she made a small hole in her jacket pocket. It wasn’t jacket weather, but she would just have to schvitz a little. She typed out a text message, and without hitting send, pushed the phone through the little hole, and felt it settle in the hem just as the clacking of bolts announced it was time.

  “America. Yalla,” Shaul barked.

  Chloe went to each roommate and hugged and kissed her. Katya’s cheeks were wet as she covered Chloe’s face with kisses, yet they had barely said five words to each other. Ursula held her the longest, until Shaul began to grumble.

  “What’s your hurry?” Chloe asked him. Just to annoy him, she walked around once more, asking each woman to write her home country address and telephone number in her book. She wondered if she would ever write or call any of them.

  “Your flowers,” Ursula said, bringing them.

  Chloe smiled and reached for the flowers. Seeing them brought Tina’s face into her mind, made her relax a little. But then she thought, wherever she was headed, she probably would not be able to take flowers.

  “You keep them,” she said to Ursula, bending once more to kiss her sweet face.

  “Boi,” Shaul said, tugging on her arm. He led the way to a white van and ushered her into the back. David climbed in next to him and they took off at a roar. The two policemen played the radio and chatted with each other, ignoring her. Good. She slipped her hand into her jacket pocket and felt for the phone, keeping two fingers touching it. They were traveling south, but that didn’t tell her much. Nearly the whole country was south of them.

  After an hour or so, her worst fears were confirmed. Shaul merged into the lane marked in Hebrew and English “Ben Gurion Airport.” She wouldn’t wait to be absolutely sure. She cast a studious look to the men in the front seat. They seemed to be paying her no attention, but no doubt they could see her in the mirrors. If they heard her moving around, they would surely look to see what she was doing. She worked the phone into her hand and slowly, slowly eased it just out of the pocket, holding it in her palm and glancing down only quickly enough to find the address and hit the send key. So far, so good.

  Chapter 43

  Rania was putting Khaled to bed. She heard the distinctive peal of her mobile phone in the other room, but she ignored it. She was so happy to have her family back, she wasn’t going to interrupt their time together. She would call whoever it was when Khaled was asleep, if it was important. If not, she was looking forward to some private time with Bassam.

  “Another story,” Khaled pleaded.

  She didn’t bother resisting, because they both knew she would give in. “A short one.”

  “The Flying Duck.”

  “No, that’s a long one. The Little Red Train.”

  “I want to go on a train.”

  “We don’t have them in Palestine. A long time ago, we did, but no more. They have them in Jordan. Some day soon, maybe we can go there on a holiday.”

  She found the book, and he settled back into his pillow to listen. When he looked up at her like that, her heart felt in danger of bursting. She looked down at the book quickly, so she wouldn’t start to cry in his face. Her phone’s song began for the third time. Whoever it was, was persistent.

  “I’ll be right back,” she told Khaled.

  Book still in hand, she yanked the phone from the charger. Chloe.

  “What’s the matter?” she answered.

  “They’re taking me to the airport. We’re almost there. I have to hurry. If they see me on the phone, they’ll take it away.” Chloe was whispering.

  “You think they will try to put you on an airplane against your will?”

  “I’m sure of it.”

  “I don’t know what I can do to stop them,” Rania said.

  “Do whatever you can,” Chloe said. “I’m glad I met you.” She hung up before Rania could even say, “I’m glad I met you, too.” Maybe she was afraid I wouldn’t say it, Rania thought.

  What should she do? What could she do? Really, Chloe should have found someone better than her to turn to for help in a crisis. Rania dialed Avi’s number. He knew, he said. He sounded breathless. He had gotten a text message from Chloe. He had called Rachel, the lawyer, who was on the phone with the police at the airport, trying to stop her flight. He himself was already on his way to Ben Gurion.

  “On the train?”

  “No, I borrowed my parents’ car.”

  Why had Chloe texted him and called her? Because she believed he would act right away but figured Rania would have to be prodded? Or because she didn’t know if he would help, but trusted Rania to do something? Or maybe she didn’t believe Rania could help her, and just called to say goodbye.

  She didn’t dare leave Chloe’s fate in Avi’s hands, not with all the questions they had about him. She needed to think of a plan and fast. Maybe she could call Benny. She looked at the clock. Surely he would still be up.

  No. She was sick of asking Israelis for favors. If she called Benny, she would have to play some stupid word game for five or ten minutes before he would even say if he was or wasn’t going to help.

  “Pick me up on the road,” she told Avi.

  “No, it will take too long. It’s better I go by myself.”

  “I will meet you at Yarkon Junction in half an hour.” She hung up before he could say anything else.

  She
took a scarf from her closet and wrapped it tightly over her hair, tying it in front and then tucking the knot under the rim, as the settler women did. She rummaged among the hangers and came up with a long blue skirt and a white long-sleeved peasant blouse. She felt guiltily happy, wearing her old Bethlehem clothes out in public.

  Her hand stretched into the depths of the closet until it closed on something steel. She took out the pistol and looked at it. It had been Bassam’s father’s, and Bassam refused to give it up when the call came for all Palestinians to turn in their weapons. “Let the Israelis turn in their weapons first,” he had said.

  Rania was entitled to carry a gun because she was police, but she had never done so. Her job was about talking to people, not about guns. She didn’t even know how to shoot a pistol. She wondered if she could. If she were caught carrying a gun into Israel, she would go to prison. No question. Khaled would grow up without his mother.

  This is majnoon, said a voice in her head. She didn’t know what she imagined doing with the gun. She just knew that she was going to meet someone she couldn’t trust, who was connected with some dangerous people. Those people were trying to get rid of Chloe, and if Rania got in their way, they wouldn’t hesitate to get rid of her. They couldn’t put her on a plane. They could only shoot her. If they were going to shoot her, she would shoot them first, if she had the chance.

  They can get away with shooting you much more easily if you have a gun, her practical side objected. Shooting an armed Palestinian is no crime in Israel. She tucked the gun into the waistband of her skirt, well hidden by the loose blouse.

  Bassam was outside, smoking argila with his brothers. Should she tell him where she was going? He would never allow it. Well, it wasn’t his to allow or not. But she had no time to fight with him. Guiltily, she looked at the little train book, still sitting on the nightstand next to the telephone charger. She had completely forgotten about Khaled, waiting for her to return. She peeked into his room and found him conked out, his head flopped over. She pulled the quilt over him, though it was not chilly in the room. Probably he would throw the covers off. She kissed her fingers and laid them ever so softly against his cheek, afraid to wake him with a real kiss. She prayed this would not be the last kiss she would give her son. She switched off his light and went back to her room. She buttoned a jilbab over her clothes and covered the settler scarf with a hijab.