The Muffia

by Nicholas, Ann Royal

  “Yes, it certainly was,” Lauren concurred.

  There were a few awkward seconds of silence during which they all seemed not to know exactly what to say, though I could feel their collective commiseration.

  “I’ve started a whole new series of paintings that you’re all going to go absolutely batty over,” Rachel said, apropos of nothing.

  Everyone seemed glad of the opportunity to move off the uncomfortable topic, however briefly; me most of all, even if I was having trouble expressing my enthusiasm. The past couple of days had been so emotionally and physically draining, I don’t think I could have mustered the energy to go batty over a diamond necklace. It was about that time, as people were talking about Rachel’s paintings—something about men missing body parts—that I realized Laetitia had thankfully not shown up with her sex toys. In retrospect, sex toys would have been over the top.

  “Listen,” I said, picking up my wine glass and tossing back the last bit of Viognier. “I’m really glad you all liked the book. I loved it, too. But at the moment I’m disturbed and distracted for all the wrong reasons. I thought having you Muffs here would be good to take my mind off things, to distract me, as it were. And it worked—for awhile. I love you all, but right now I need to throw away these empty food containers and send you all home.”

  Chapter 20

  The following morning, a Saturday, I was slightly hung over—a rarity for me. But it only takes a couple of glasses of wine to do me in and I’d had three. I vaguely remembered a text from Laetitia apologizing for not showing up. She said she’d been waylaid by a group of over-eager bachelors who had somehow managed to rupture a life-sized, blow-up sex doll she'd provided for a party earlier in the evening, and the minor explosion had resulted in injury to the soon-to-be groom. She didn’t mention what part of him had been injured, but she didn’t really have to.

  Lila was still at her sleepover so I could just lie in my bed like a blob until I felt like moving. Stipple’s purring at my head could have been a problem, but the sound almost blocked out my neighbor’s lawn mower and distant leaf blowers on that sunny morning.

  I was well into the double-reverse sleep syndrome—a condition characterized by the second or third time one wakes up after the normal hour of rising, making one woozy and wondering what day it is—when the phone rang. I picked it up, still not awake and not thinking clearly. It was Jelicka sounding like she’d had at least five cups of coffee. I’d need to concentrate and get up to speed quickly if I wanted to follow her rapid-fire delivery.

  “Thanks for a great evening,” she began. “The food was lovely, inspired and eclectic. And you know I liked the book.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “I’m so sorry about what happened with Udi. It’s just shocking is what it is, but it was a fascinating night all around.”

  “Yeah,” I sighed. “Fascinating. And now things are back to the dull status quo.”

  “Hardly,” she said. “I couldn’t sleep all night, I was so wound up.”

  “Not about this, I hope. Something happen with Roscoe?”

  “Roscoe? God, no. He’s with the secretary.”

  “Does the secretary have a name?”

  “Yeah. Old bag.”

  “Jelicka . . .”

  “I think I’m just going to let him divorce me. But listen, I don’t want to talk about him or the geriatric hussy. The reason I couldn’t sleep was because I couldn’t stop thinking about you and Udi.”

  “Oh, Jelicka, please don’t—I mean unless it takes your mind off Roscoe and whatshername. I really don’t want to talk about it.”

  “All right. But I have to tell you, he didn’t just die, Maddie. I think he was murdered.”

  This topic would do nothing to improve my hung-over mental state. I’d already considered the murder possibility myself when Nissim showed up so quickly to take Udi’s body. But I dismissed it as being ridiculous and against all sane interpretation of events, even if Viagra mixing with heart medication seemed too obvious—or, at the very least, predictable. But then I remembered the principle.

  “Have you ever heard of Occam’s razor?” I asked.

  “Whose razor?”

  “Occam’s. I can’t remember who he was exactly, but the principle of Occam’s razor says that the simplest, most obvious reason for anything is usually the right one. Murder isn’t the simplest answer."

  “Pshhht.”

  “Oh, come on, Jel. I was there. He was coming and going at the same time. Gasp, groan, whimper and sigh. Gone.”

  “You’re missing the point. Listen to me, he was a sky marshal, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, that’s a front.”

  “A front,” I repeated. I could tell I wasn’t awake enough to fully defend my point of view.

  “Not a front. Wrong word—a cover. I mean, he may actually be a sky marshal, but he’s only a sky marshal so that he can travel surreptitiously from one country to another to conduct his spy business.”

  Jelicka had once been an aspiring screenwriter and a reader for one of the studios, searching submissions for the next American Beauty, or possibly Shrek. She sounded like she was pitching me the plot of a movie.

  “So you believe he’s a sky marshal…but you secretly think he’s a spy?”

  “Not just any spy—Mossad. And he had to serve in the army. All Israelis have to.”

  “Mossad?” I vaguely recalled hearing the term but wasn’t completely clear on what it was. “Tell me what that is again?”

  “Mossad is the Israeli version of the CIA, Special Operations, Navy Seals and an elite assassination force rolled into one, only much more secretive and lethal. It also explains his being able to lift you up, throw you around and fuck you like he did.”

  “I don’t remember telling you the details.”

  “Quinn shared on the way home. I’m telling you, those guys go all over the world and assassinate people their government doesn’t like. Imagine if we could’ve done that with Osama or Saddam.”

  “Yeah, imagine.” I actually didn’t want to imagine, though I suppose she had a point. I just wasn’t sure what this had to do with his sexual proficiency.

  “We might have avoided this ridiculous war we’re in.” Jelicka’s escalating enthusiasm for her topic had her talking faster and faster. “First thing this morning I called a girl who was on the kibbutz with me twenty years ago who now lives in Tel Aviv and she told me that Mossad agents masquerade as all kinds of things—accountants, carpenters, fry cooks and El Al sky marshals. In fact, that’s one of the main, you know, fake personas. They travel as sky marshals to where their missions are and once they get there, they do their spy thing—follow people or kill ’em or whatever.”

  “Yeah, whatever. Jel, I don’t know,” I said with as cool a head as I could muster. “It’s a little far-fetched.”

  “All right, how ’bout this. You said the guys who took his body away kept saying a word that sounded like hassle or something like that, right?”

  “Right, so . . .”

  “So, it wasn’t hassle, but lechasel. It means to terminate in Hebrew.”

  Jelicka had the Hebrew pronunciation thing going on pretty well at the back of her throat—remnants of a long ago bat mitzvah. She sounded like Udi and Nissim—at least with that one word, which actually did sound familiar.

  “Really?” I asked, wiping my eyes and trying to focus.

  “Yes. Really. I wouldn’t lie about termination.”

  “Well, even if lechasel means terminate, I don’t know if that proves anything. I mean, I could have heard it wrong.”

  “No,” she said definitively, “I think you heard it right.”

  “And even if it was terminate, they were probably referring to something else. Udi was already dead.”

  “Because they terminated him!”

  She had to be on uppers.

  “And then there’s his name—Quinn told me on the way home last night that the I.D. in his pocket
did not say Udi anything, though she couldn’t remember what it did say. And, by the way, that name he gave you? Udi Hamoudi? It’s totally made up. Hamoudi in Hebrew means cute.”

  “He was cute—”

  “Maddie, you could be in danger. If he was Mossad, it makes perfect sense that he would give you a fake name for your protection. It also makes sense those three guys would come take his body. If Quinn hadn’t been there, they might have terminated you, too!”

  “Well, if anything happens to me, Vicki’s got the story on tape and you can take it to the authorities.”

  “I’m serious, now. They might think he told you something, or that he planted something in your house. They don’t want publicity. Look out the window right now."

  "Nobody there," I said.

  "Could just be a matter of time. See, they can’t afford to have anyone knowing the real reason he died. No. Something else is definitely going on. We just need to figure out what.”

  She made some valid points, but I still couldn’t go along with her. “Jel, we are not going to figure out anything. Even if what you think is true and he’s Mossad, it’s not our business. I barely knew Udi, or whatever his real name was. He and I just had this great physical connection and it was what it was, but I don’t want to make any trouble by making it more than it was. What if Udi had a family? Poking around and asking questions might cause more problems. And if you are right—not saying you are—then we should definitely not make waves. We should watch our asses. Spies is spies. They have guns and they’re dangerous. Best stay away.”

  “That’s why you need to figure out what happened before they figure out that you’ve figured out what happened,” Jelicka declared as if it was perfectly clear. “What if the guys who killed—let’s just call him Udi—what if those three guys who killed Udi—”

  “They didn’t kill—”

  “—did it because he’d infiltrated their plot to bring large amounts of radioactive polonium-two-ten into the country, like the stuff that killed that Russian spy in England, and put it in our water supply? Still want to lie in your bed and say nothing?”

  “Why would the Israelis want to contaminate our water supply? America is Israel’s friend.”

  “Ah-ha!” she said. "I already thought of that." I could feel her smugness through the phone. “See, Nissim and his buddies are extremists who want to derail the peace process.”

  I was stunned into speechlessness. “You need to go back to screenwriting ‘cuz this is good.”

  “If they had polonium-two-ten, you could already be contaminated,” she went on. “All it takes is, like, a dot of the stuff to—”

  “Jel—Jelicka!” I had to stop her, but she was like a ball of string rolling down hill, coming unraveled as she descended.

  “But you won’t feel it for a couple of weeks,” she said, continuing her roll. “And see, they knew Udi was onto them, and they figured out a way to kill him that wouldn’t look suspicious. They made it look like a heart attack, with poor little you to agree that’s what happened in case anyone asked questions. ‘Yes, officer, he died when we were having sex,’ you’d say, and they’d believe you. You’re a legitimate person. You have a respectable career and, up until a couple of weeks ago, you were pure as the driven snow that’s drifted, ever so slightly.”

  “Stop already.” I took a breath and attempted to regroup in order to infuse this out-of-control conversation with a little rational thought. “I met Nissim, one of the guys that came to get Udi, at my friend Berggren’s. You’ve met Berggren. At any rate, he was at the same dinner party where I met Udi and Berggren told me he’s a really good guy. Her dear friend and producing partner is engaged to him, so she would know,” I said calmly.

  “Yeah, well, not necessarily. What kind of name is Berggren?”

  “Swedish.” I wanted to go back to bed. “Listen,” I began again, “I need to lie here for awhile and be miserable. How ‘bout I agree to make a couple of calls to see if I can find out—sheesh, I'm not sure how to phrase it. But if all I get is more glowing reports of Nissim, I want you to drop this.”

  There was a silence. But then she agreed.

  “And please, don’t go blathering to the other Muffs.” Silence again. “Jelicka? Promise me. It’s just going to get people upset for no reason, thinking there’s a price on my head and that we could all be radioactive.”

  “All right, fine.”

  I hung up, not trusting that she would keep her mouth closed, but committed to keeping my end of the bargain. I’d call Berggren and tell her about Udi, which would, of course, shock her. Then I could ask her some questions about Nissim, possibly find out where he lived, or perhaps find out more about ZsaZsi, his fiancée. I could also call some sort of crime person. Who could that be? I used to know an FBI agent, the father of one of Lila’s friends, but I’d heard he’d gone to jail for child pornography.

  And then I remembered Cullen—my would-be Babeland babe. Would it be weird to call him? No weirder than anything else about our relationship. He was writing detective fiction. He’d probably done a lot of research and knew about procedures and CSI-type stuff. I could pitch the plot of my relationship with Udi as if it were fiction, adding a few of Jelicka’s embellishments, and see what he thought. What a great idea! I’ll find out as much as I can about Udi, then pitch the plot as fiction and see if Cullen thinks it could fly as a believable story. Yeah, that’s what I’ll do—later, when I feel a little more ambitious and ready to get out of bed.

  I glanced at the clock and decided I could sleep for another hour, when I noticed my purple Rabbit poking out from a drawer in the bedside table. My first reaction was to slam the drawer closed because using it had been the farthest thing from my mind. But it was quite possibly exactly what I needed.

  Chapter 21

  “Berggren Wolfe’s office,” intoned a deep male Scandinavian voice a few hours later, once I’d pulled myself together enough to call. I recognized the voice of the sexy Dane immediately.

  “Hello, Thor. Is she in? It’s Madelyn.”

  “Allo, Madelyn. Good to hear you. But sorry, yah, Berggren’s not in. She’s in New York. Do you have her new mobile?”

  Right—she’d told me she was going to New York. I hadn’t had a chance to respond when I heard another phone ringing at Berggren’s place and Thor’s honeyed tones were telling me to hold on.

  Berggren had gone to New York to rehearse a movie she hoped to produce that summer. What a dynamo. I live in awe of her. But finding scripts that actors want to do, then flying all over the place to make them happen while raising her daughters was a challenge I wasn’t up to.

  It wasn’t as if she did everything herself, though. She did have all those cute interns to help her, and at that moment she had Thor. Maybe if I’d had an intern like Thor I could have . . . No. With or without help, it still wasn’t my temperament to be the go-go go-getter Berggren was.

  While I was on hold waiting for Berggren’s new number, my own cell phone rang and it was Kiki. “You need to go somewhere and be tested,” she said.

  “For what?”

  “For radioactivity, of course. Jelicka told me all about it and I think it would be a good idea.”

  “Udi did not die of radiation poisoning.”

  “That may be true, but if his death is related to the theft of plutonium or uranium or whatever, then it’s possible he was exposed to it. And if he was exposed, then you were exposed, which means we were, too. Granted, it’s very low-level contamination, but if you’re positive, I, for one, would like to know.”

  Perhaps because Kiki was still in school, merely hoping to become a nurse practitioner, she was somewhat alarmist when it came to health concerns, but I would have thought being a nurse practitioner required a bit more sense. Then again, Kiki was less than halfway to earning her degree and you know what they say, “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.” And Kiki was positively frightening. Her overreaction could be related to whatever was going on in her perso
nal life but, so far, she hadn’t told any of us what that was. Regardless, I wasn’t going to accede to her wishes and agree to be tested for radiation poisoning just to settle her down.

  “I’m not going to the hospital to be tested for radioactivity, Kiki. That’s ridiculous. Besides, Alexander Litvinenko, the Russian spy who died in London—so sick, and in so much pain—came into contact with many, many people after he was exposed—none of whom developed any symptoms.”

  “Come on, I told Vicki I’d meet her there.”

  “On a Saturday?”

  “The cancer ward is always open.”

  “That’s good to know. But what if I am radioactive? I should not be around cancer patients,” I said.

  “Exactly the opposite. If you’re radioactive, you might zap the cancer out of those people.”

  Again—were these the words of a medical professional?

  “Madelyn,” she said in a different tone.

  “What?”

  “I’m kidding. I had you going, though, didn’t I?”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “It could endanger the lives of hundreds if not thousands if you walked into Cedars to be tested for radioactivity.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “Actually,” she said, “I just wanted to see if I could still act the hell out of a scene. And you bought it.”

  “You had me, Kiki. You’re a great actress. Is that what you want me to say?” I was a little annoyed.

  “Sorry if it upset you. It’s just that Jelicka is so riled up about this whole thing that I guess I got caught up in it, too.

  I supposed it was a harmless ruse she’d perpetrated—not that it didn’t contain serious undercurrents. “So why are you meeting Vicki at the hospital?”

  “She felt another lump.”

  “Oh, shit.”

  “I know. She didn't want to get into it last night. But I'm sure you noticed ”

  “Shit, shit, shit. I thought after they took out the first one and she had the radiation, she was cancer free. How can there be another lump already?”