A Possibility of Violence (4 page)

A few of her clothes still lay folded on the shelves in the bedroom. Most of them were no longer there, nor were the two large suitcases.

After midnight, following a last visit to the children's room, he got dressed for bed and turned out the light in his room, closed the shutters in their room, and left the window open only a crack because suddenly a wind was blowing. On Shalom's forehead a scab had formed over the deep scratch. Ezer was no longer on his back, in the frozen position in which he fell asleep. He lay on his stomach, his cheeks sunk into the pillow. He looked like a child again. The two of them resembled Jenny more than they resembled him, but also something of him, which couldn't exactly be described, was in their faces.

Ever since they were born Chaim asked himself what the boys would remember of him. Would they remember him like he remembered his father? He hoped that nothing would happen to him before Ezer reached the age when a father is etched into a son's memory, perhaps because his own father died when he was a boy, and perhaps because he was already over fifty years old when Ezer was born. He wanted him to remember a man of strength, but without fearing him. And until a few months ago he was sure that this was how he would be burned into his son's memory.

You did not have a “first dad,” I am the only dad you've ever had, he wanted to whisper in his ear, but did not.

 

CHAIM DIDN'T WAKE UP THAT NIGHT,
or if he did he didn't leave his room. The clock struck four and he hurried to get out of bed, and with the bit of light that filtered into the room from outside he checked that the thread was still in place. He turned on lights in the kitchen and the bathroom but left the living room in darkness so that the children wouldn't wake up. He found Shalom at the end of his bed, folded up like a snail. Ezer slept in the position he'd seen him in at night, curled up with the blanket up to his neck as if he were cold.

He got dressed in the dark bedroom and then shaved. Before he started working he closed the kitchen door. In three pans he fried up the regular omelettes and the vegetable omelettes with parsley and dill and placed them on the windowsill so that they'd cool down. The smell of the coffee that he'd made for himself blended with the smells of frying and morning. Afterward he set the slices of yellow cheese on the table and placed next to them the bowls he'd prepared in the evening. At five fifteen he carefully opened the door to the apartment, went out, and locked it behind him. For a moment he waited outside, in order to hear if one of the children woke up, then went down to the car. He hadn't found a solution for this problem, either, but in the meantime there was no choice. He explored the possibility of using a delivery man to bring the rolls, but there was an enormous difference in price. And at this time of morning the trip lasted less than ten minutes. Even though he wasn't at peace with locking the boys in the apartment, this was a better solution than leaving the door unlocked.

And this is what he did on the first morning without Jenny, as well.

He drove down Weitzman Street, turned left on Sokolov, and stopped in Struma Square. Even though it was light outside, the streets were empty. Luckily, most of the traffic lights flashed orange. All the stores in the square were closed, except for the Brothers' Bakery. He went inside the bakery's rear entrance and his nostrils immediately filled with the smell of dough. One of the brothers saw him and shouted, “The Sara order,” and a worker answered him, “Coming,” from an inner room.

A minute later he was back in the car.

Everyone slept, while his day was already under way. Chaim loved these moments in his work even more than he loved the hours of silence in the evening. The sidewalks silent with only doves and cats and street cleaners, not a word to be heard. He drove down Shenkar and Fichman and Barkat and finally turned onto Lavon Street and passed by the daycare.

In two hours he would bring Shalom here and try to avoid meeting with the teacher.

Since the incident the previous week they hadn't exchanged a word. He walked Shalom inside the daycare and avoided looking at her, hurried to Shalom's personal cubby and put his change of clothes inside. Quickly said good-bye to the boy. In any event, he shied away from the entrance to the daycare, and from meetings with the other, younger, parents, most of whom took him for the grandfather.

The insult from his conversation with the teacher still stung, not to mention what happened after it.

Jenny pushed him to arrange it, even though she knew he didn't want to. He barely managed to tell the teacher that the boy was scared to go to daycare and complained that the other children hit him. That his wife had been finding dark spots and other unrecognizable marks on his body, under his clothes. That he came home with a scratch on his forehead. It was morning, and the daycare was full of parents. The teacher challenged what he said. Refused to listen. Looked at him with contempt, and he was sure that it was because of his age and the way his children looked, and sure that she behaved differently with the other children and parents. She spoke better than he did, and he lost his confidence and didn't respond, even when she said his son was lying. “Here at our daycare we don't hit,” she said. Shalom got the scratch because he was being wild and fell on the wheelbarrow. If Shalom says that the children hit him, then he's lying, was how she finished. He saw that Shalom, who stood next to him, looked frightened, so he tried again, but she insisted that she didn't have time to hold this conversation in the morning in front of the children. She also certainly didn't want the other parents to hear. When he didn't relent, she shouted, “I told you I
do not wish to continue this conversation
, Mr. Sara. Here at our daycare there are no children who hit, and if your boy complains about being hit, maybe you need to look at yourself and your wife and ask why.” He couldn't control himself and interrupted, warning that he'd remove the boy from the daycare, and she smiled at him and said, “Go ahead, you think you're threatening me?” He had no doubt that Jenny was right, that the woman didn't want the child there. But there wasn't another daycare in the neighborhood, and this was also the only daycare they could afford. None of the parents spoke up or intervened, and it seemed to him that this was because they, too, preferred that his son disappear. He left the daycare, stricken with shame and loathing, directed mainly at himself, since despite the incident he had left Shalom there. Is that what his son would remember of him? The boy cried and he ignored his crying and left after bringing him to the Russian assistant. She bent down and wiped his face with the palms of her hands.

In the evening he told Jenny that the conversation had gone well. And this may have been the last time they spoke.

 

THE CHILDREN DIDN'T SENSE HIS ABSENCE
and didn't wake up when he opened the door, at five thirty.

He turned on the radio and found a station that wasn't playing music. The morning was gloomier due to the trip down Lavon Street and the memory of the incident at the daycare and the fear that arose in him when he saw the police cars the day before. He lowered the volume on the radio and tried to calm himself down again while he sliced the rolls and filled some with tuna salad and some with egg salad. On the rest he spread a layer of mayonnaise and stuck the omelettes inside. He put slices of tomato and cucumber in all of them before wrapping each one in butcher paper and putting it in a bag.

Shalom woke up at six thirty and came to the kitchen. Chaim sat him in a chair and the boy watched him while he packed up the last sandwiches and arranged them in tight rows in two cardboard boxes.

A few minutes passed before the boy truly woke from his sleep and asked, “I'm not going to daycare?” and Chaim said to him, “You're going. Ezer is going to school, too, and I'm going to work.” The boy didn't cry. And he didn't ask about Jenny this morning, either. The sleep did him good and he appeared at ease. He asked, “Why isn't daycare closed today?” And Chaim didn't know how to answer. He dressed him in his own bedroom and afterward the two of them went to the boys' room and Chaim opened the window and the shutters. Light flooded Ezer's upper bunk. His clothes were lying on the floor and Shalom pointed at them and said to his brother, “I can help you get dressed.” Ezer woke up slowly and silently, and Chaim urged him to hurry. It was already seven. Shalom followed his brother everywhere, even to the bathroom when he brushed his teeth.

 

THE CARDBOARD BOXES WERE ARRANGED IN
the living room on top of each other, and the kitchen was already clean when they sat down to eat breakfast. Ezer looked at his father with the same cautious glance, perhaps because he noticed that he was irritated. They ate a roll with cheese and cucumber. Suddenly he said, “Did you know that I woke up last night and went into your room?” Chaim was dumbfounded. The sewing thread was in its place in the morning, strung taut across the door frame.

“I think I was already working. Did you check in the kitchen?” he said, and Ezer answered, “No. You weren't home.”

Shalom fixed an inquisitive gaze on his father, and Chaim said, “I was home the whole time,” and then recalled the trip to the bakery. “Was it in the morning? Was it light outside?”

“No. It was dark. It was one time.”

Chaim continued eating. Did he wake up at night without his knowing? But the thread hadn't come loose . . . So where exactly did he go? Even though he didn't want to continue talking, he asked Ezer, “Were you scared when you didn't see me?” and Ezer answered, “No, my first dad was waiting for me in the living room.”

Chaim couldn't bear to hear this.

He rose from his spot, put the plate in the sink, and turned off the radio. He asked Shalom if he was done eating, but Ezer wouldn't let it go. “Do you remember what I told you last night?” he asked.

“What?”

“That I'd tell you today who lost the suitcase next to Shalom's daycare.”

Chaim turned on the faucet and started to wash the two dishes. Since yesterday he had tried hard not to think about the suitcase.

“Well, I can't tell you yet. I talked to him and he asked me not to tell.”

Chaim turned up the water. Shalom asked his brother, “Does your first dad know who lost the bag?” and Ezer smiled and said to his brother proudly, “I know, too. Because he told me. And he told me not to tell you, because it's top secret.”

Chaim removed Ezer's plate from the table without saying a word, even though the boy hadn't finished his sandwich and looked at him in amazement. He said, “The meal's over, we're leaving now. And I don't want you talking with Shalom about the first father and the suitcase. Enough, that's all.” He preferred to put off going to the daycare and took Ezer to school first, like the day before. Chaim and Shalom said good-bye to him at the entrance gate and waited next to the guard until they saw his large backpack get swallowed up in the doorway to the school. Shalom waved to his brother even after he turned and left, and then the two of them returned to Lavon Street. It was open to traffic, and there wasn't a trace of the commotion of the day before.

3

HE OFFICIALLY RETURNED TO WORK, AND
because of the shortage in manpower he worked alone.

On Monday he went to Lavon Street in the early-morning hours, in order to be at the scene at the time the suitcase was placed. At six forty-four the automobile traffic in the street was sparse and few pedestrians were in sight. A quiet street in a quiet residential neighborhood. The sun took its time coming up, and the morning was cloudy. A young woman walked her dog and smoked. A boy left for school. No one wore a dark tracksuit, nor a hood, nor limped.

His working hypothesis then was that the suitcase was placed next to the daycare, and for a reason, and that the investigation would have to be speedy because it was possible that the fake bomb was only a warning before a more severe attack. And Uzan was his sole suspect.

 

THE FIRST SURPRISE AT THE SCENE
was the liquor store.

The cop from the bomb squad arrived around seven thirty and pointed out the exact spot where the suitcase had been placed, based on the photos that were taken at the site. It was found on the side entrance path to the building at 6 Lavon Street, hidden amid the bushes. The path led to the rear courtyard—to the daycare—but to its right, about ten feet away, on the ground floor of 4 Lavon Street, was a liquor store. It was true that the side entrance path was separated from the store by a low stone wall, but, technically speaking, the suitcase was found closer to the store than to the daycare. Avraham was amazed that Saban hadn't said anything about this. He asked the sapper if the possibility had been considered that the bomb was placed in that spot because of its proximity to the store and the man shrugged his shoulders. “We didn't speak with the suitcase. They told us there's a suspicious object next to the daycare at 6 Lavon, so we dismantled a suspicious object next to the daycare at 6 Lavon. From there it's your job.”

In the pictures of the suitcase before the controlled explosion it was clear that even though it was buried behind the bushes, the bushes' thin branches didn't hide it all that well. If the neighbor hadn't seen the man place it there, it was fair to assume that someone else would have noticed it while walking on the path.

In the picture the suitcase looked old.

A small cloth suitcase, pink in color, made by Delonite, with a dull-green leather handle.

Before 8:00 a.m., parents began rolling strollers down the entrance path to the daycare, and Avraham entered after them. An older man walked in front of him, and for a moment it seemed to Avraham that he noticed a limp in his right leg, but it's possible that his steps were heavy because he was carrying a toddler in his arms. The teacher refused to speak with Avraham and asked that he return in the afternoon. “It's enough that the children were frightened yesterday. Do I really need the police here right now?” she said. He could have insisted, but he let it go. There was something harsh and aggressive in her that gave rise to a restlessness in him whose meaning he understood only later in the day.

He waited for the liquor store to open and in the meantime questioned the residents whom he found in their homes.

His questions repeated themselves:

“Do you know about a dispute between one of the tenants and the owner of the daycare?”

“Do you recall any recent events connected to the daycare that operates in the courtyard?”

“Were there any criminal or other types of events that you can give a report about?”

“Did you by any chance see who placed the suitcase yesterday morning?”

“Did you see in the days prior to the incident a suspicious man wandering around the area of the building?”

To these questions, which he composed the evening before at home, he added a question about the liquor store and events connected to it that may have occurred recently. The tenants answered in the negative, and at a certain point he switched the order of the questions. At the end of the questioning he presented a picture of Uzan. No one recognized him, except for one tenant, a housewife, a mother of four, who lived on the second floor. She claimed that she saw him in the area of the building several times in the past year and assumed that he was the father of one of the children in the daycare. But she hadn't seen him recently, certainly not the day before, when she woke up only after the suitcase had been blown up. He wrote her name in his notepad.

At ten thirty he returned to the liquor store and questioned the young shopgirl at length after she told him that the owner wouldn't arrive for another two hours. We open at ten, she said, and no one was in the store when the bomb was discovered. They heard about it afterward from one of the customers, and the owner couldn't be of use to the investigation because he never got to the store before noon. Paper plates were hanging in the display window upon which various sales were written out in marker in Hebrew and Cyrillic letters. For Rosh Hashanah, Avraham could have bought two bottles of Chilean red wine for thirty-five shekels and a bottle of Absolut vodka for fifty-five. The shopgirl didn't know if the owner had been threatened or blackmailed in the past. And she herself had not been a witness to any violence while she was on duty.

 

HE ATE LUNCH IN THE CAFETERIA
with Eliyahu Ma'alul, who interrogated him about his engagement to Marianka and her coming arrival.

“She's quitting the police there in order to come live with you here?” Ma'alul asked, and Avraham said, “Yep. That's the overall plan.”

Ma'alul whistled. “Major decision. And what'll she do here? Start learning Hebrew?”

“Not clear yet. We'll make plans when she comes.”

They didn't talk about Ofer Sharabi and the previous investigation. And Avraham didn't know if Ma'alul failed to mention the report that Ilana Lis wrote because he was unaware it had been written. The senior juvenile investigator looked at him with his moist, sunken eyes, which reminded Avraham of his father's eyes, and said, “You don't know how happy I am for you, Avi. You look like a new man, like I told you. And as soon as she lands in Israel I insist you two report for dinner at our place.”

The briefings with the intelligence coordinators didn't reveal anything and the cop from the detective squad who tailed Uzan had nothing of substance to report. Uzan didn't leave his apartment on 26 Hatzionut until eleven o'clock. Apparently he stayed there by himself. Drove a black Honda Civic he owned to visit his mother at Wolfson Hospital. Made no stops on his way there. He bought a newspaper and a soft drink at the store in the hospital and went up to the Oncology Unit. He carried a large bag that he brought from home, apparently with a change of clothes and bedding. He still hadn't left the hospital.

Avraham waited in his office at the station and debated whether or not to call Ilana Lis. Since his return they hadn't spoken, but now he had a good excuse to talk to her. He could find out what she knew about the extortion business and the protection racket in the alcohol industry. Instead of her he called Marianka. Her phone was on but she didn't answer.

He turned on the computer and from the screen a picture he took on the day they first met in Brussels, at sunrise, when she took him for a tour of the city streets, stared out at him. Back then he hadn't imagined that the city would be his home for three months. For three months over the summer he would wake up next to Marianka each morning, in the bedroom in her apartment that looked out on a small square in the middle of which was a blackened stone sculpture of a Belgian composer whose name he had never heard of. When he went to live with her in Brussels, Avraham wrote the address in his small notepad:
Alfred Bouvier Square, Building 6, Apartment 5 (green door, no bell)
.

 

HE RETURNED TO THE SCENE THAT
afternoon.

“You don't have anything else to investigate? I don't understand why you are questioning me,” the teacher asked him when he entered the daycare. “I told the police yesterday that this doesn't have anything to do with me. And I begged them not to come in the middle of the day because it scares the children and upsets the parents. The children were scared enough yesterday when they showed up and weren't able to come inside.” She was in the daycare alone. Wooden chairs were turned over on a short table in the middle of the room.

Her refusal to cooperate immediately caused his anger to spike, but only later in the conversation did Avraham understand why he also felt uneasy in her company. She asked his permission to tidy the place up while he presented his questions, and he implied that if she preferred, he could bring her to the station for questioning. The room's floor was clean but it was scattered with things and messy. They sat across from each other on two plastic chairs that she brought in from the courtyard. Next to one of the walls was a tall pile of thin mattresses that gave off a smell of urine. Through the rusty bars of a small, high window very little air or light penetrated. In the evening Avraham wrote in his notepad that Chava Cohen ran the daycare and had worked there for ten years, and had been a teacher for more than twenty. She was in her forties, short and stocky, the palms of her hands wide and strong, and her face tired. She hadn't gotten around to emptying the large black garbage can that stood in the corner of the room, crammed full of diapers.

He asked if she was involved in any disputes, and she raised her voice: “With who? I'm the owner of a nursery school, for God's sake. For a whole day I've had to explain that my daycare has nothing to do with this.”

“Maybe not the daycare, maybe
you
have something to do with it. Are you involved in any personal or business disputes?”

“Explain to me why you think this has something to do with me. Don't you understand that the more we talk the more it harms my business? Maybe this is connected to someone who lives in the building?”

Her answers reminded him of his unsatisfactory conversation with Uzan. He said, “I don't understand your objection to cooperating with me. We are concerned that the suitcase was maybe just a warning, and that if we don't act in time, whoever placed it will go from warnings to truly violent acts. We don't know how much time we have and we need cooperation from everyone who can be of assistance—” and she cut him off: “But I explained to you that I'm not involved. I can't help you at all.”

And then he understood.

Suddenly he was in the building on Histadrut Street again, in Hannah Sharabi's apartment, on the second day of the investigation into the disappearance of her son Ofer. He sat across from her in the kitchen and she served him black coffee. It was a Friday morning, his birthday, and he tried to get her to tell him about her son who was missing. Hannah Sharabi also said that she couldn't help him. That she didn't know a thing. In contrast to the woman who was sitting before him now, Hannah was quiet. Avraham barely managed to hear her voice when she spoke. Every now and then she sobbed. And he didn't hear that she was lying. That in fact she knew where her son was. Only three weeks later, after her husband admitted to killing their son, did she break down in the interrogation room.

The air in the daycare was heavy and dizzying.

Avraham steadied his breath, placed his notepad on the floor, and looked at the woman who sat before him. If he learned any lesson from his failure in the previous investigation, it was this: open your eyes and look. Don't believe a single word. Chava Cohen was older than Hannah Sharabi by a few years, stockier, and her hair was curly. And he still hadn't asked her for her name. He said quietly, “I insist that you answer my questions without any skirting around,” and she pressed an open hand to her forehead. “I'm trying. What's the question?”

“I asked if you're involved in any disputes.”

She said that she was not. He saw her hands gather up her hair and her gaze turn away from him as she answered.

“Tell me again your name,” he said, and she answered, “Chava.”

“Chava what?”

“Chava Cohen.”

“Do you know if there were any complaints from tenants in the building who might not like the fact that you're running a daycare here?”

“What are you talking about, complaints? The daycare has been here for ten years. And everything's licensed.”

“Again, you're not answering my question, and I'm losing patience. I didn't ask if you have a license but rather if any of the tenants in the building don't like the fact that a daycare operates here.” She didn't interrupt again, because she saw that something in him had hardened. “I tried to answer. As far as I know, no. Actually, I'm certain there aren't any.”

“Do you or have you ever had any disputes with the parents of the children in the daycare?”

“Not at all. I'm not in a dispute with a single one of my parents. There are no disputes at our daycare. You can go back ten years and check with all the parents in the neighborhood. Parents bring me their children, they beg me to keep spots open for their children who haven't even been born yet.”

From a cardboard folder Avraham removed the pictures of the suitcase and asked if she was familiar with it. Afterward he presented her with a picture of Uzan, again without results. “I'm asking you to take a good look at this picture,” he persisted. “You're certain that you don't know this man? That you haven't seen him around the daycare? He's not the father of a child in the daycare?”

Once more the answer was no.

“Did you receive any threats recently? Letters, perhaps? Phone messages?”

He looked at her and knew that she was lying.

On the wall across from him was a large drawing of a bouquet of flowers that had captured his attention since the beginning of the conversation. At the center of each flower was a picture of a child, around which colorful crepe-paper petals were glued. He couldn't see the faces of the children from where he sat. “What I'm asking you right now won't leave the confines of this room. I want to know if, to the best of your knowledge, the parents of one of the children in the daycare might be involved in any criminal activities.”