The Hit Read online

  The Hit

  MICHAL HARTSTEIN

  Copyright © 2018 Michal Hartstein

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 9781730713606

  DEDICATION

  This book is dedicated to loved ones who died prematurely:

  Prof. Ami Vansover, R.I.P.

  And Idit Moskowitz R.I.P.

  CONTENTS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  DEAR READERS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would like to thank my beloved aunt, Sara Vansover, for her great support.

  Many thanks to my Hebrew editor, Rassel Dickshtein, to my English translator, Michal Fram Cohen, Ph.D, to my English editor, Julie Phelps, and to Adv. Hagit Nahmani-Weiss.

  Special thanks to Prue Thorner for reading the last edition and offering her wise words of advice.

  CHAPTER 1

  Monday, June 13, 2011

  The sharp knife skillfully approached the infant's exposed skin. Though I was a touch away from him, I could not save him. This time, I was determined not to avert my gaze, but the moment the knife reached the baby's foreskin, I closed my eyes.

  My little brother's first-born son became a Jew.

  "And his name in Israel will be –" announced the mohel, and Evyatar bent down and whispered the chosen name in his ear, "Daniel, son of Evyatar and Efrat Levinger."

  I searched with my eyes for Efrat. She was leaning on her mother near the entrance to the hall. Like most mothers, she, could not bear to watch her son's circumcision ceremony. I could only imagine how a young mother feels when her week-old son undergoes a surgical procedure without anesthesia. I knew that, along with other parenting experiences, I would be spared this.

  The ceremony ended and the cluster of guests began to disperse among the tables. I approached Evyatar and Efrat and hugged them warmly. Efrat was weeping inconsolably. I could not figure out if it was out of excitement or anxiety. The mohel gave them some brief instructions and guidelines for treatment, and they took little Daniel away to a side room. I looked at the packed hall. Shira waved at me from a distance. I realized that, to get to her, I would have to pass through scores of relatives and friends eyeing me. At best, I would get the pitiful looks reserved for spinsters - or divorcees, to be exact. Thirty-four-year-old seniors. Worst case – I would be compelled to talk with someone who would insist on giving me a personal blessing, wishing me marriage and fertility. I was already confident that, this time, the guests would be satisfied with eyeing me with compassion, but just before I managed to sit down next to Shira in front of the succulent salmon dish I had ordered, a short, chubby guy stopped me.

  "Hadas?!" he half-asked. I smiled in embarrassment. The guy looked familiar, but I could not remember from where.

  He came to my rescue. "Dudi Shpigler. We were together in the Youth Movement troop."

  "Dudi," I said. I nodded and smiled an pale smile. I did not know what I was supposed to say or do. "What are you doing here?" I asked finally. After all, he was here at my family event.

  "I'm Danit's husband," he said. I continued to look at him with a glassy gaze, and he hurried to explain. "Formerly Danit Kraus." He pointed out a skinny girl who was sitting next to Ilan, Evyatar's best friend from high school. She was doubled up laughing. Apparently, Ilan was telling her another of his jokes. "Danit's a childhood friend of Evyatar."

  "Ah…" I said and stared longingly at my salmon platter. "I didn't know you'd married Danit." Truthfully, I did not know Danit at all. "I assume you, too, deserve a Mazal Tov."

  "For what?" he wondered.

  "For getting married."

  He burst out laughing. "I remember you always were funny." Remarkably, I did not remember one single occasion when I had joked with my buddies in the Youth Movement. "Sharp as a razor!" he chuckled. "Danit and I have been married for seven years already!" He explained the joke to me.

  I smiled. "Sorry, I still didn't know you married Danit."

  I tried to sound like someone who had some idea of the lives of those around her. "I don't remember you attending Evyatar and Efrat's wedding."

  "That's true… Danit had only just given birth to our third daughter."

  I looked at Danit, stunned. If I had it right, she was Evyatar's classmate… twenty-eight years old, already a mother of three - and so skinny!

  "How nice," I said, because I had nothing smart to say. In fact, I thought it was anything but nice that a young woman of only twenty-eight had buried herself in an ocean of diapers, milk substitutes and pacifiers, instead of seeing the world and developing herself, but I realized that it was not the right time or place - and not my business.

  "I heard you got divorced," he said without blinking.

  "Who told you that?" I challenged him.

  "Yuval Eidelman. He told me he'd met you near his kids' school." I recalled my weird encounter with Yuval about a year-and-a-half earlier, when I was investigating the Danilowitz family murder and suicide.

  "So I was the topic of your conversation?" In my wildest dreams, I would never have guessed that my former friends from the Youth Movement - if it was at all possible to call our common past a "friendship" - were discussing me in their social circles.

  "You were definitely the topic of conversation at that time when you cracked that terrible case with Meir Danilowitz. Well done, by the way."

  "Thank you."

  "You know we held a memorial soirée for Hanni?"

  "Yes, I heard about it."

  In fact, I had been invited to the event the friends had organized in Hanni's memory, but I managed to get out of it with some excuse.

  "Too bad you didn't come. It was very emotional, and there was also a lot of praise for you - for cracking the case." That was exactly the reason I had elected not to attend. "So you're still divorced?" His bluntness amazed me.

  "Yes," I almost whispered.

  "I'm asking because I've a good friend at work who's also divorced, though it's fairly recent. But it was a long separation." I realized what he was driving at and stole a desperate look at Shira, who reciprocated with an understanding look. I hoped she would find a way to rescue me quickly.

  Dudi continued. "I know it's a little strange that I'm trying to get the two of you together like this, but I think it could really work out."

  Based on what? I thought to myself. In spite of our common past, we had never exchanged more than two sentences. In fact, we were now conducting our longest ever conversation.

  "He's also ex-religious, like you."

  Now I understood. Like many others, Dudi thought that ex-religious folks needed a support group. I glanced again in Shira's direction. I realized she was preoccupied with wiping little Eran's face, which was all smeared with ketchup. "Though he already has one kid with his ex-wife, I'm sure he'll want more." Dudi was doing everything to sell me the merchandise.

  "So I'm really not for him," I said brightly, and just before I burst into my stock speech on parenthood, Shira finally came to my rescue.

  "Your phone's ringing," she said and handed me my ancient cell phone. When the ceremony had started, she had sat down in the back, so
I asked her to watch over my phone.

  Dudi looked at me, stunned. This was not because I had such an ancient cell phone, but because of the ease with which I had just rejected the dream man he was offering me. "You'll have to forgive me. I must get this," I said without looking at the phone. As far as I was concerned, even a call from a ceiling fan salesman was more urgent than the conversation with Dudi Shpigler. The phone stopped ringing. Dudi's face indicated that he was happy to get a renewed opportunity, but my phone display revealed, to my alarm, ten unanswered calls from Alon, and five more calls from him with abundant exclamation marks. I felt the blood flowing straight to my feet. Dudi and Shira immediately noticed the change in my expression.

  Dudi asked, "Is everything alright?"

  "Come, sit down!" Shira tried to drag me to the chair.

  I looked at my salmon in despair. I knew I would not be enjoying it. "Everything's alright," I said in a voice full of confidence, "but something must have happened, because my commander's left me a million messages."

  "So you're leaving?" Shira asked sadly.

  "I don't know," I said, though I guessed I was needed elsewhere. Alon had the tendency to categorize almost anything as "urgent," but I assumed he would not call me out of a family function unless it concerned an unusual incident.

  I exited the hall into a quiet courtyard and dialed Alon's number.

  "Oh! It's about time!" Alon answered in less than a second.

  "I'm at my nephew's bris."

  "Has he been made a Jew yet?"

  "Yes," I said, and could not help smiling. Alon always knew how to get to the point.

  "Then get yourself down to Lincoln Street in Tel-Aviv at the speed of light."

  "May I ask what happened?"

  "Call me from the car."

  I returned to the hall. Shira looked at me full of reproach as I retrieved my purse and grabbed a bread roll from the center of the table.

  "So all the cops in Tel-Aviv are on vacation, then?" she commented acerbically.

  "Very funny."

  "Not really."

  "Believe me, if it was up to me, I wouldn't leave, but I don't work in an ordinary job, for better or worse."

  "Alright, alright," she said. "I suggest you get out as quickly as possible, before mom, notices you leaving so early."

  She was right. Unfortunately, it was too late. The moment I turned to leave, I saw our mom walking toward us. She was looking straight at me.

  "You're leaving?" she asked without the reproachful tone I always expected to hear from her in that situation. I was confused. I was expecting a chastising lecture. I nodded soundlessly.

  "I heard what happened in Tel-Aviv," she told me like a confidante. "I understand you've been called in."

  "What happened?" asked Shira and saved me. I still had no idea what it was about.

  "There's been a terrorist attack!" my mom announced.

  "What? Where?" Shira asked in panic and immediately went to check her cell phone. Mom said that it was in Tel-Aviv and looked at me knowingly. "There's nothing to see," she told Shira. "It hasn't gone public yet."

  Shira asked her how she knew about it.

  "Efrat's father's office is in Rubinstein House, right next to the location of the attack." I remembered that Rubinstein House was on Lincoln Street. "One of the employees called and said there’d been some explosions and the entire street's full of police."

  "I must go," I said and kissed my mom on the cheek. "Mazal Tov. Pass it on to Evyatar and Efrat."

  "Yes, of course, of course." My mother looked at me, full of admiration. I loved it. With time, she had learned to accept my work and sometimes, like at that moment, I even had a feeling that she was actually proud of me.

  "Don't let us delay you," she added and waved me away.

  I ran to the car and immediately called Alon.

  "How much time, Levinger? How much time…" he gasped. "What was unclear about you getting here at the speed of light?"

  "I challenge you to get away from any event of my family in under a minute."

  "Are you on the way?"

  "Yes. Can you update me with some details? I understand there's been a terrorist attack."

  "Attack? Why an attack? Who told you there was an attack?"

  "Some guests at the bris are connected to people working in a building nearby."

  I heard Alon's voice change as he grinned. "Major Rumor didn't check the rumor as he should this time."

  "Then there was no attack? People said they heard explosions."

  "This is what happens when civilians spread rumors. Shots, not explosions."

  "It could still be a terrorist attack -"

  "You know the chance of an armed Palestinian getting to the center of Tel-Aviv is zero."

  "Then it's a criminal case."

  "Most probably. I don't want to talk too much on the phone. When you arrive, you'll see for yourself."

  When I approached the Ma'ariv Bridge, I had to turn on the siren. The scene of the incident had created a bottleneck of scores of cars in an area usually jammed to begin with. The drivers looked at me accusingly as if I was in a hurry to buy a falafel and was passing them for no reason. When I approached the scene, a uniformed policeman signaled to me where to park the vehicle. I grabbed my bullet-proof vest from the back seat and hurried to the address Alon had given me. I could already see him barking at a rookie who had failed to mark the crime scene properly. When he noticed me, he left the poor guy alone and moved on to yell at me.

  "Miss Levinger, do you have any idea how long I've been waiting for you here?" Alon flared, not expecting an answer. "Anyone'd think you'd had to hitchhike from the moon. It was just a drive from Kfar Ha-Maccabiah… ten minutes at this time of day."

  Even if the road had been empty, it would have taken twenty minutes. "Traffic jams," I muttered without contesting his faulty time perception.

  "Traffic jams?" he said and smiled cynically. I knew he was anything except amused. "How many times do I have to tell you to turn on the siren?"

  "I turned it on -"

  "I bet you didn't have it on the whole way!" He was right. "But now you're finally here, thank God, we can start."

  "Why did you wait for me at all?" Why I was so important?

  "You'll understand right away," he said and headed for the crime scene. "Today, around twelve-thirty - lunchtime - a man armed with a handgun stood in front of a snack bar called Zelda and shot at it. The front window of the snack bar was entirely shattered, two individuals were killed and three more were wounded and taken to the hospital in moderate to severe condition." He signaled me with his hand to enter the snack bar.

  "And the shooter?"

  "He escaped from the scene on a motorcycle."

  It was a small snack bar, crowded at the time of the shooting, which explained the multitude of injuries. One of the waitresses was sitting at a table inside, crying incessantly, while a policeman was trying in vain to question her. The central counter, close to the shattered windowpane, was covered entirely with splinters of glass and splattered blood. There was an uneaten dish on the counter, and, underneath it, a young woman was lying in a pool of blood. We edged past an aluminum rod that, not long ago, had formed part of the frame of the front window, and advanced further into the snack bar. It was small and had four small tables. Two tables were empty. On the furthest table was a half-eaten breakfast. Chairs were scattered across the floor. Whoever had been sitting on them had either fallen off or run for his life. By the table attached to the counter, the body of the second fatality was spread out. Based on the position of the body, I assumed he had been sitting when the shooting started; he had jumped up in surprise, and had immediately been shot, falling next to the table.

  Alon approached the table and stood next to the body. He signaled to me to approach him.

  "Does he look familiar to you?" he asked and pointed at the body.

  I knelt down. The dead man lay on his stomach, his head turned sideways, his open ey
es looking at me with a hollow stare. Thin flow of blood from his gaping mouth had accumulated in a red puddle around his face.

  It took me a few seconds to realize that I knew the guy.

  It was Koby Ozri, my principal informer.

  CHAPTER 2

  Koby Ozri came from a large traditional family from Pardes Katz. His parents, burdened by providing for their eight children, did not notice when their fifth child was drawn into the world of crime. By the time Koby met Oren Hadida, he had never worn a piece of clothing that had not been previously worn by one of his siblings or his older cousins, and he had never played with a new toy.

  Oren Hadida was the right-hand man of Ephraim Zuckerman, the head of the notorious Zuckerman gang. Oren was a ruthless, unscrupulous criminal who flinched at nothing to gain what he wanted. He did time for drug and fraud felonies, and it was rumored that he had liquidated at least ten people with his own hands, two of them actually inside the jailhouse, whilst serving time. Prior to fleeing to South America and joining a brutal drug cartel, he had managed to incriminate his boss, Ephraim Zuckerman, and had instigated the dismantling of one of the best-known veteran gangs in the Tel-Aviv District. Oren's special talent was recruiting new soldiers to the gang's ranks. He knew how to track down the appropriate persons - appropriate being reckless young men and boys suffering physical or mental deprivation.

  Koby Ozri was sixteen and one of the easiest to recruit. A new bike and a short visit to a prestigious clothing store bought his trust. At first, Koby had served as a courier, and later as a lookout while other gang members emptied out houses and shops of their valuables. His parents noticed his new clothes and the gifts he showered on his brothers and sisters, but liked to believe their son had earned his money honestly. They kept comparing Koby to a relative from Jerusalem who had grown up penniless, but had accumulated a fortune; he had started trading in the Mahane Yehuda Market at age fifteen, and twenty years later he owned a nationwide supermarket chain. The harsh reality reached their doorstep several weeks before Koby was scheduled to be drafted into the IDF, when he was arrested and indicted for property felonies. Since he was over eighteen, he was charged and sentenced as an adult. And so, while his friends enlisted with various army units, Koby served time with seasoned criminals. When he was released and tried to reform his ways, the army refused to take him. He was compelled to avoid eye contact whenever he met old friends who were often dressed in uniform and decorated with insignia, on home leave from the army base.