The Hilltop

by Assaf Gavron

  Mickey’s skills improved as he neared the age of four—the ability to express himself, the scheming, his physical strength. He got into the habit of pushing his father away when he tried to forcibly dress him, yelled at him when he tried to ignore him. For days on end Gabi gave up trying to ready Mickey for preschool and simply remained with him at home. But then the preschool teacher called Anna and told her that Mickey hadn’t been coming. And Anna called Gabi to ask what was happening. And one week she remained in Tel Aviv and took Mickey to preschool, and of course everything went smoothly.

  * * *

  It’s inevitable, because that blond creature has learned in three and something years better than anyone else, better than Eyal in the dining hall and Alex from the groundskeeping team, better than the cooks in the army, better than any cheeky shit who’s ever dared to approach me askew and has been dealt with, how to push my buttons. How to draw out the monster. He knows how to draw it out, and he wants to see it, because when he kicks and screams after preschool and doesn’t allow me to carry him, he knows I’m left with no choice but to squeeze him, to pull his ear, to bite his shoulder until he lets out a yelp and calms down. He knows I have no choice, he wants to take me there. So here goes, if you want it so much, then take it, I don’t care who you are, and I don’t care about the norms. The norm for an animal like you is to shove it into a cage.

  * * *

  The preschool teachers informed Anna. And a nosy neighbor from upstairs recorded something on video. And bad luck left marks in various places on the small body, the remnants of pinches and dry blows, bruises, and swellings. Everything he got he had justly earned, that’s what Gabi wanted to say to Anna when she confronted him, and it’s all your fault, you left us alone, you pushed us into this, you’re the irresponsible one of the two of us! You, and your Sami, and your Afula, and your bullshit!

  The final morning from hell was rainy and cold—Tel Aviv hadn’t seen snow since 1954, but if there was a day out of all those that Gabi spent living in Tel Aviv that came close, it was that one. Strong winds swayed the palms along the avenues, the rain crashed down almost vertically, mixed with sudden bouts of hail.

  * * *

  No. No-no-no, Mickey. You’re not going to take your coat off now.

  Mickey, I said no. Are you crazy? On a day like today you . . . ?

  Mick-ey. Mickey! Put the coat on right now. Leave the boots. Have you seen the puddles . . . Mickey.

  Don’t you dare struggle! Ow! Hitting now? Yes? Okay. Here-we-go. This-is-how-you-put-on-a-coat, got it? Like this with the arms, like this to close the zipper. Like this.

  Excuse me? Madam, please don’t interfere in my . . . Get outta here. Go!

  Do you see what you’re causing? Shut up. Shut up. Baby. Cry baby. Know what? Cry. We’ll see if that helps you. Yes. Waaaaah-waaaaah-waah, baby!

  Don’t you dare take off your boots! I swear to you, Mickey. I. Here. Like this, like this, you understand, right? Ow! Cheeky-thing-you’ll-learn-it-doesn’t-pay-to-hit!

  Cry, cry, no problem. Here, you little shit, like so. We’ll see what your mother has to say. Here.

  I’m asking you, mister, to mind your own business . . .

  I don’t care if you’re a policeman! Because you’re a policeman, does that mean you’re allowed to interfere in my . . . Excuse me, piss off before I . . . So what if you’re a policeman? Does that mean you understand anything? I’m the one who’s been living with him for three and a half years. Shut it, Mickey, you little shit . . . Let go! Let go of me, I told you, I’m warning you. I said . . . Take-that-here-I’m-twisting-your-ear—yes—you-don’t-like-it, huh? Here. Shut-it-take-that-and-shut-it, ow! You’re biting? Now-you’ll-get-it-cheeky-motherfucker—Here! Take that! Take a kick in the mouth. Cheeky-biting-mouthing-off-shouting—kicks aren’t fun, are they? You see what kicks can do? Here’s another one! And take that, too!

  * * *

  That very winter, his wife was no longer his wife, and his son—no more his son. Under court order, she took him to one of the kibbutzim near Afula, Gabi wasn’t allowed to know which, he was banned from coming into contact with him or even calling. In court he adamantly rejected the definition “murderous blows,” expressed profound and teary remorse, successfully argued against the bus accident being criminal negligence, and was eventually convicted and sentenced only to community service and a suspended prison term.

  In the holding cells, bearded men in hats urged him to lay tefillin, shoved pamphlets with titles like “Why Suffer?” into his hands, and he had nothing to do except wait, and think, and get angry, and read those pamphlets—“Why Suffer?”—and again when he was released from detention they persuaded him to lay tefillin, and the feel of the black leather straps on his skin comforted him and continued to comfort him each time the rage within him rose to the surface. They were the only people who didn’t view him as an outcast, the only ones who offered him redemption and solace, who took an interest in his well-being, who found an answer to his questions. The only ones. Dad Yossi didn’t come to visit. Roni in New York didn’t call, and the few friends Gabi had at work and school vanished into thin air. So he went to one Torah class, and to several more, laid tefillin, and listened, and wondered—Why suffer?—and opened his eyes to the light: Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil for Thou art with me.

  The Light

  His brother, Roni, saw the light, too, in New York. Two thousand six was a good year for him. He enjoyed the work, Eliot Lieberman had been a little over-the-top with the cryptic warnings, but Roni’s days were indeed stressful: long hours in front of seven screens, almost without breaks during the New York trading hours, and half an eye squinting in their direction while trading was going on in the rest of the world, not to mention the dozens of e-mails from brokers and team members, to which he replied only after getting home, sometimes at midnight or one in the morning, after an evening out with colleagues. Those evenings weren’t for having fun, it was work; the never-ending effort to establish a social standing, glean gossip and tips, keep a finger on the pulse. Roni didn’t sleep much.

  Roni’s trump card was his Israeli connections. They were networked across the entire continent, not only in the world of finance but also in industry, the energy firms, and of course in tech. He established his ties quickly and diligently, made sure to cultivate them and secure information before it was published, and to convert that information into deals. He then went on to trade himself, too—and after he made a name for himself as a gutsy, quick-witted, and mostly profitable trader, a fair number of Israelis, from the Hummus Forum and others, entrusted him with their investment portfolios. For the bankers and techies who knew nothing about stocks but had money to invest, Roni was the right guy, he spoke the right language and yielded the right profits.

  Someone noted during one of the first seminars Roni attended at the Hummus Forum that a talent for winging it—a skill Israelis always prized—wasn’t held in high regard in the United States. There was no cutting corners with them, they said, everything was by the book. They respected everyone, everyone got an equal opportunity, and they expected everyone to play fairly by the rules. That was the reason, it was said, why the American economy was so prosperous and attracted the finest minds from around the world, including ours. Wheeling, dealing, and scheming Israeli-style may sometimes help, in the short term, but there was no substitute for fair play and orderly work. But as he gained experience, Roni’s opinion began to change. He learned that while perhaps many Americans don’t cut corners, the Indians and Koreans and Croats—and some Americans, too—did in fact cut a corner or two, and he came to observe that on more than one occasion those corner-cutters left the honest Americans lagging far behind.

  At one of the Hummus Forum gatherings, Idan Lowenhof asked Roni, “Remember Bronco?” Idan squeezed the shoulder of a short, pug-nosed guy. “Should I remember him?” responded Roni as he shook a firm hand. Bronco was part of Idan’s team in the comman
do unit, was wounded and left for the 8200 intelligence unit before Roni arrived. Nevertheless, two or three minutes of conversation was all it took for them to find enough common acquaintances to share some laughs. In the army Bronco was Yoni, but now he called himself Jonathan and worked in Silicon Valley, at an Israeli-owned company that provided location services. He regularly traveled the San Francisco–New York–Israel circuit, and would stop by the Hummus Forum once every few weeks. Once, after Roni and Bronco spent an evening drinking beer, Bronco said, “I have a craving for sushi.”

  Roni took him to Sushi Yasuda in Midtown, and after topping up the beer in their bellies with warm sake, they hopped into a cab to the Ulysses pub and chilled the sake with Guinness. They were in an advanced state of drunkenness when they began shooting pool. In the middle of the game, Bronco picked up a red ball and said, “You know this was once the tusk of an elephant?” Roni chuckled. “Once,” Bronco continued, “they used to make the balls out of wood.” Roni hit the white ball into a red one, which shot into one of the pockets.

  “You know where I saw wooden balls?” Roni paid no attention to the drunken jabbering, and Jonathan answered his own question. “At Googleplex. They have this amazing old-school table.”

  Roni, bent over the green table, raised his eyes. “What were you doing at Google?” he asked, his curiosity drawing him momentarily out of the fog of the Guinness.

  “Oops, I didn’t say a thing.” Jonathan Bronco giggled and mimed zipping his mouth shut. “My turn now?”

  That same night, despite his inebriation, Roni canvassed the Web and reviewed the data, and he came to an unequivocal conclusion: Google was set to purchase Bronco’s location services company. The following day he traded and invested accordingly. He spoke with the manager of his portfolio, Dale Savage, and received a onetime approval to exceed his trading budget. Announcement of the acquisition came the following week. To the Goldstein-Lieberman-Weiss clients, and to his Israeli friends, it was worth a lot of money.

  Over the next year Roni received a few more tips from Bronco and from others, some inadvertent and alcohol-based at Ulysses, some with greater intent. The gamble he took on Google’s negative fourth-quarter earnings report was based on a mixture of sharp wits, luck, and the balls of a bull. Bronco dropped something he had heard, Roni crossed it with reports he read and with a conversation he’d had with a classmate who worked at an investment bank in California. This time he didn’t request approval, and traded in sums that exceeded his ceiling. The bank and its clients earned $8.5 million from the short-position gamble on a drop in price that he took on the Google stock.

  One evening in January, Eliot Lieberman called him in for a talk. When he walked into the office, Dale Savage was there, too. Roni could feel his heart in his throat. Employees had been told that an announcement on the bonuses for the previous year was expected only in February, so he figured he’d been summoned on some other matter. They both appeared stern-faced. He was sure they were onto him, that they’d reviewed his portfolio and realized that he wouldn’t have achieved the successes he had achieved without inside information and without deviating from his trading budget. That the supervisory mechanisms entrusted with ensuring fair trading had picked up on his activities.

  “Sit,” Dale said, and ran a hand through his straight blond hair. Roni sat, ill at ease.

  “You’ve caught our attention, Roni,” Dale continued. Roni noticed out of the corner of his eye that Lieberman was nodding. “You had a nice year. Several impressive deals that earned us a decent sum.”

  “And more importantly,” Lieberman said, “you’ve shown you know how to manage risks; you don’t panic when the market goes crazy.”

  Here it comes, Roni thought, and lowered his head slightly, almost ready to raise his hands to defend himself.

  “Your bonus for two thousand six is two hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars. Just so you’re aware: it’s one of the biggest bonuses we’ve given to traders in their first year with the company. You deserve it.” Roni waited for the “but” that was about to come, but it didn’t come. “We’ve decided to increase your investment budget,” Dale Savage went on, “and to give you more freedom to be aggressive, in order for you to present us with an even better number next year. So go out there and own that desk, big man, pull the strings you pulled this year, work your fine network, go out and grab them by the balls!” By the time he got to the last sentence, Dale was shouting, and when he was done, he stood and began clapping. Lieberman joined in, although he remained seated. Roni didn’t know what to do, so he smiled and looked from one executive to the other.

  He continued to shine in 2007. Jonathan Bronco showed up at the Hummus Forum less and less, and Roni’s efforts to contact him were met with a somewhat chilly reception, but other opportunities arose. One, to Roni’s surprise, came via Meir Foriner. Foriner—the guy from Savyon he had studied with, and who had turned Roni off with his rich-boy blue-eyed arrogance and his groveling at the feet of the Americans. Foriner, like Tal Paritzky, Roni’s friend from Kfar Shmaryahu, was a regular at the Hummus Forum. As time went by, Roni got the feeling they wanted to cozy up to him, which wasn’t surprising—his success at Goldstein-Lieberman-Weiss and in managing the investment portfolios of a number of the forum members wasn’t a secret.

  “One more drink at Ulysses before calling it a night?” Foriner asked one evening.

  “Sure, why not?” Roni replied. They went to the Irish pub; Roni drank a Guinness, and Foriner a Ballantine’s on the rocks.

  Meir Foriner worked at a credit-rating agency on the West Coast. Roni was aware of the importance of such companies, which determine the risk levels or viability of an acquisition or investment in companies or countries. Most important, Roni knew, was that the rating agency people were in the picture during the lead-up to acquisitions and mergers, and knew which way the wind was blowing long before the public at large.

  What started out that evening as a veiled and alcohol-driven tip turned into a measured and consistent stream of valuable information. Foriner dropped blunt hints ahead of large acquisitions, taking care always to do so in person, in Hebrew and in code, unmediated by electronic communication, because all the phone calls, e-mails, and chats between traders and clients and brokers were recorded. Roni knew that after several such gifts thrown his way by Foriner, he’d come calling for payback: Foriner asked Roni to open a fictitious account for him, and in that account Roni managed investments to the tune of millions of dollars that came via a convoluted and complex transaction from a Swiss bank account.

  Foriner worked cautiously, maintaining a low profile for months until opportunity arose. One time he showed up at the Hummus Forum and with a whisper in Roni’s ear arranged a meeting that Saturday, at a barbecue restaurant in Williamsburg. The small piece of information he gave Roni at Fette Sau’s bar—the acquisition of an international hotel chain by a Texas-based holding company, a deal to be announced within days—had huge financial implications. Roni had to act with caution to ensure that he didn’t attract attention or leave behind any traces. But to realize the potential of the deal, he again broke through his investment budget ceiling by forging Dale Savage’s signature. The tightrope he was walking this time was thinner than ever.

  He chalked up another success. Another rung on the ladder. And after that success, smoke still rising from the skid marks it left on the trading room floor, he gazed upward and searched for the next rung on the ladder. He increased the sums, upped the risks. (Once he took a $300 million position instead of $30 million. If someone asked: The extra zero sneaked in by accident. He wasn’t asked.) Dale Savage and Jujhar Rawan-deep allowed him to continue, and even encouraged and fired him up and at a certain point demanded success from him and entrusted him with investment budgets in the hundreds of millions—he no longer had to add zeros at his own discretion. He knew that they were playing the game alongside him. Other brokers bought him drinks on their companies’ expense accounts, and so did his own
coworkers, and of course his Israeli clients, whose numbers grew, and who increased the sums they invested. Of that he was particularly proud, the trust they placed in him, his standing in the Hummus Forum, among the wielders of power and influence—a fleeting recollection of the wooden deck in Basel Street flashed through his mind for an instant. He ended the year with a bonus of close to $600,000. He paid back his school loans well before the four years he had allotted to himself were up, and moved into the penthouse in his building—a few more rungs on the ladder. He felt invincible.

  The Crash

  The bad omens, which had been evident in the market for quite some time, began making their mark. Two hedge funds folded. People lost jobs. Rumors were rampant about an approaching real-estate crisis and liquidity problems at banks and investment firms. All this served only to ramp up the pressure to succeed and the demand to bring in more profits. Falling markets and losses also had the potential to yield significant profits if you played your cards right.

  Idan Lowenhof approached Roni at one of the Hummus Forum gatherings. The two had drifted apart of late—both were too busy for socializing and rarely went to the forum. That evening, when Idan asked how he was doing, Roni felt a little uneasy. He was indebted to him—Idan had introduced him to this world, encouraged him, helped him with the application forms and admission interviews. Moreover, Idan symbolized for Roni the right kind of success story. He was infinitely likable and a straight shooter. Roni was certain that every single dollar of the millions Idan must have already earned was squeaky clean. Idan and Roni weren’t cut from the same cloth. Idan got to Wall Street and felt at home. He adopted the American accent, embedded himself in the culture, went with the locals to baseball games, mastered the rules. Roni refused. Way back when he was still a student and talking to the companies’ recruitment people about Doron Sheffer and Nadav Henefeld, he felt that his way in would be on his terms, not theirs.