Fire in a Haystack: A Thrilling Novel (Legal Mystery Book Book 1) (3 page)

“What happened? Why you break door?” the chambermaid asked with a Russian accent.

“He’s not opening, and we’re late,” Ofer explained.

“Maybe man is not in room,” the fair lady offered her own solution.

Truly an illumination
, he thought as he looked at her chest, which proudly bore a small golden tag bearing her name, “Natalia.” “A lyre worthy to be played by King David himself,” Yoav would have probably said. He recalled the code words he and his best friend used to refer to a woman whom God has equipped handsomely.

He imagined how he himself must look to her—a man of medium height, head adorned with curls, with elongated features and pointy ears that slanted upwards as if they wanted to detach themselves from the rest of his face.

“Perhaps you could open the door for me? Please? He went to sleep very late last night. I’m sure he simply took an afternoon nap and forgot to wake up on time,” he said pleasantly.

“Can’t. Manager don’t allow,” Natalia answered decisively.

“What do you care? I’ll take full responsibility,” he said in a flattering tone. “You need to clean the room anyway. It’s already the end of the day and you haven’t cleaned it since morning,” he continued while pointing at the "Do not Disturb" sign that hung on the door.

Natalia shook her yellow head. Obviously, he was confronted here with a woman with an iron will. He examined her from head to toe. She was thin and attractive. A combination not to be taken for granted. If not for the task he needed to perform, she would have been worthy of some special attention.

“Come on, Natalia, I’ll just wake him up and leave,” Ofer tried the personal approach.

Her blue eyes and the gray bags beneath them did not even budge. The fact he had read her name off the tag on her chest didn’t make much of an impression either. She pushed her thick braid from the front until it rested on her back and persisted in her refusal.

He had no other choice. He was determined to pass his bar exam shorty and be the first intern ever to be hired by the law firm. He had already established a reputation as someone who always gets the job done, no matter how impossible it appeared to be. He was not about to ruin his hard-earned prestige because of a stubborn chambermaid who had survived a strict educational system somewhere beyond the iron curtain. Even though he knew this would hurt his pocket, he took out his wallet and fished out a brand new two-hundred shekel bill.
There goes a new pair of nice jeans
, Ofer thought.

“I’ll get fired unless I’ll get him to the office right now,” said Ofer to Natalia and waved the bill in front of her eyes.

She grabbed the bill with the swiftness of a gecko snatching a dormant fly with its tongue. He didn’t even manage to return the gaze of the bespectacled late Israeli president on the bill before it disappeared inside one of the chambermaid’s pockets.

“All right. But only for one minute,” she whispered.

She took a plastic card out of a different pocket and quickly opened the door.

Ofer stepped inside. The room was completely dark. He fumbled to find the light switch on the wall close to the door. He found and pressed it, but the light didn’t go on. Only after a few seconds did he remember that the light couldn’t be turned on without the magnetic key.

I should have thought of that after all the time I’ve spent in hotels like this
, he calmed himself down while calling aloud, “Rodety…Rodety…”

The man didn’t answer. Ofer walked carefully. Despite his caution, he stumbled against something and banged his knee. He screamed out loud but continued to painfully limp until he reached the end of the room and opened the curtains. The last beams of sunset, which announced the end of the day, penetrated the room. Natalia took the initiative and slid the magnetic card into its appropriate slot next to the door and the light was turned on.

The room looked like a gladiator arena. The bedspread was rolled up and tossed on the floor. A gray, hard-shelled suitcase, apparently the object he’d whacked with his knee, opened a hungry mouth and scattered its contents on the carpet. Empty pages were strewn across the floor, creating a white pathway leading from the center of the room to the bathroom.

At the foot of the bed, beside two ironed pink shirts, stood an orphaned empty bottle of Chivas Regal next to a large number of crushed packets and medicines of various colors whose names didn’t mean anything to him.

On the bed lay Jacob Rodety on his back. Completely naked. Actually, not completely naked. On his feet, he wore a pair of black socks. Around his neck was a tie, printed with images of dancing hippopotamuses holding umbrellas.

It’s the same tie he was wearing last night
, passed through Ofer’s head.              

Rodety’s body covered the entire width of the bed. His white belly sloped sideways and his belly button rose in defiance towards the light fixture on the ceiling. He didn’t possess any kangaroo pouches or anything else that could remind Ofer of the life-loving man who only yesterday drank enormous quantities of alcohol and nestled fondly against “Zionist breasts.”

Ofer carefully examined Rodety’s face. At its center, between the meaty nose and the upper lip, where the thick marmot whiskers used to dwell, a day’s worth of stubble appeared. The few hairs on his head, threaded with white, were disheveled.

Ofer went over to the bed and shook it forcefully. The naked body did not respond.

On the white abdomen and the white sheets stains of dried up liquid could be seen. A trail of hardened and lumpy yellowish liquid stretched from both sides of his mouth all the way to his chin. Ofer lifted the right hand of the body that lay before him. Then he touched Rodety’s neck and tried to check for a pulse. He lifted the eyelids and immediately closed them again when he saw a pair of watery blue eyes staring at him with chilling frigidity.

It’s a pity Yoav’s not here
, he thought.
A medical student would definitely know what to do in such a situation.

Natalia stood by his side, pale and motionless. Her hands were shoved deep inside her pockets and she bit her lower lip with a row of white teeth.

For the first time in his life, he was checking to see if a person was dead or alive. In this case, even a rookie such as he could have no doubt the body that lay on the bed was completely dead. Without a pulse, without air in its lungs and without a functioning brain. A carcass. A lump of pink, flaccid meat that lacked even the tiniest spark of life.

His foot bumped against a small object that lay on the carpet. He looked down and saw the spout of the silver flask peeking from beneath the bed. He needn’t have bothered to check, but he couldn’t help himself. The small flat flask, which only yesterday had given its owner so much pleasure, was completely dry and
empty.

The contents of the personal flask with all the medical qualities of the 18-year-old single malt Glenfiddich, apparently had run out. Rodety had had to drink himself to death by using another fine whiskey and various medicines, whatever their names were.

Ofer thought to himself that it had been slightly over ten years since he had identified the body of his father, may God rest his soul, on the day of his funeral. He felt as if it were only yesterday. The color was the same—the pink-grayish shade of chicken wings that were to be tossed in the soup pot after their skin had been
removed.

The man whose whiskers Ofer had sworn to pluck lay spread-eagled on the bed. Apparently, the man himself, or someone else, had fulfilled the oath for him
in full.

He had no time to ponder this revelation.

It’s a good thing I don’t need to do mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
Ofer sighed inwardly with relief.

Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a small cellular phone on the nearby nightstand. He quickly grabbed the phone with the edge of the sheet, so as not to leave any fingerprints, and flipped it open. The screen showed the draft of a message that was not yet sent.

Ofer whispered the words of the last message that was supposed to be sent from Rodety’s cellular phone—“The fire is burning.”

In his confusion about how to handle this discovery, Ofer fumbled with the phone and mistakenly pressed the “erase” button—the draft disappeared. For a moment, he was startled, but then he hurriedly returned the phone to its place. Luckily enough, he was at least able to memorize the number the message was supposed to be sent to.

Chapter 2

On the faded sign pointing towards the stairway leading to the cellar, the words “Environmental Action Association” were written in rounded black letters. The ancient, drab building was on the southern part of Ahad Ha’am Street in Tel Aviv, very close to the Shalom Tower.

To the eyes of those who passed the threshold on that night, thick with the humidity of early summer, a large, clean cellar was revealed. Its walls were bare, and fluorescent lights hung orphaned from the ceiling, blazing with white light.

Although it was late in the evening, the cellar was crowded. On rows of simple, white plastic chairs sat a group of people of various ages. They all maintained a polite, attentive silence.

Next to the wall, on which was hung a large whiteboard, stood attorney Gali Shviro, tall and slender. Her eyes sparkled, and a lock of black hair bounced on her forehead in perfect harmony with the movements of her body. She was dressed in a pair of worn, patched-up jeans and a gray blouse, which complimented her figure and was tucked in her pants above a gold-buckled belt.

She began to address the hushed audience with fervor.

“I would like to thank all of you for taking the time to come here today. For those of you who are not familiar with me, my name is Gali Shviro. I am a lawyer and the chairwoman of the Environmental Action Association. I’m certain the subject I’m going to talk about is as important to you as it is to me. I would like to go straight to the point. I have a document here that presents extremely worrisome statistics about the morbidity rate in the area surrounding the Yavne Industrial Center. Take a look at this graph, for instance…”

Gali hung a large white paper on the whiteboard, which demonstrated with a prominent red line the higher than average percentage of severe illnesses in the area surrounding the Yavne Industrial Center.

“This area is densely populated. The responsible party is mainly the Viromedical factory, which manufactures biological products. As you already know, the factory is about to be privatized. This represents an irrevocable opportunity to try and check what is really going on in this factory and if it truly causes so many severe phenomena in the area, especially among children. You are all familiar with various types of cancer, such as leukemia, as well as asthma, allergies, pneumonia and other illnesses. The data indicate a significant and highly disturbing variance in almost any type of medical issue when compared with other settlements in the area.”

The young attorney paused for a brief moment and examined the impression her words were making on the audience. She loved such moments of silence in front of a crowd of listeners, moments in which she was aware of the words that came out of her mouth, words that created a different world and changed the thoughts of her listeners and the way in which they perceived reality.

“The research we’ve conducted raises many question marks regarding many troubling subjects. We refuse to accept this disturbing situation. It could very well be that the Viromedical factory complex is filled with hazardous materials from top to bottom. Like a large planter, watered with bleach and other toxic materials for many years. Before the factory is privatized by the state, we have a right to receive all the information about what is going on behind its closed doors. This is our basic right as citizens.”

She spoke eloquently and with determination in spite of her youth. She was well aware of where the self-confidence that drove her towards the goal in such a focused way came from.

One summer, when she was fifteen, her life had abruptly changed. Her father’s printing house was about to go bankrupt because of faulty management. Instead of confronting his difficulties, her father simply left home. Gali was forced to leave the big city and her high school because her mother wasn’t able to support her and her sister.

She left behind not only the only home she’d ever known, but all her lifelong friends as well.

When they moved to the far-off city of Karmiel, to live next to her mother’s family, she became a wild, disobedient and authority-hating youth. No trace of that rebellious period remained, except for a small tattoo of a scorpion on her left shoulder which could tell many stories about her tumultuous younger years in the northern periphery. After her military service she had pulled herself together. A strong discipline and a relentless sense of ambition had brought her all the way to the university.

She worked two jobs, spent many sleepless nights, and with the aid of an endless supply of stubbornness and diligence she managed to graduate with honors. She despised the way in which her classmates pursued the large law firms. Financial prosperity did not interest her. She saw in her father’s house how money could create a false sense of happiness and then snatch it away and replace it with misery. She decided to go her own way.

Filled with faith in her talent and a strong sense of justice, she established without hesitation the Environmental Action Association and served as its chairwoman as soon as her internship period ended. From that moment on, she knew this would be the path she would take in life, a path that fitted her personality like a glove.

She still savored the sweet taste of her last legal victory. She had run into Joshua Fliegelman, the senior physics teacher who had always been abused by her high school classmates, by chance only a few months before. He was on the verge of becoming homeless when she accidentally bumped into him in central Tel Aviv. The money he earned was barely enough for him to pay for the small room he rented in the southern city apartment. Even so, the apartment was divided up like a dovecote, which he shared with four similarly impoverished men. 

He walked slowly and heavily across Rothschild Boulevard, wandering the city streets with a cart filled with empty bottles he recycled for a living.

She stared at his rusty white beard. His head was almost completely devoid of hair. But some faces, no matter how changed by time, one could never forget.

“Mr. Fliegelman?” she whispered.

He looked closely at her. His pupils examined her in an attempt to discover where she knew him from. The fact that someone called him by name certainly flattered him. “Yes, that’s me. Mr. Fliegelman. Joshua Fliegelman. And you are?” he asked.

“I’m Gali Shviro. You were my ninth grade physics teacher. Remember me, sir? Ten years have passed, if not more.”

“Yesh, shomething comes to mind when I look at you, your clash was…” said Fliegelman, squinting his eyes and trying to remember her.

“You used to call it ‘the crazy class.’ You fainted in our laboratory…with the mouse…they took you to the hospital…”

“Of courshe, of courshe I remember. Sho it’s you…how wonderful that you’ve recognized me.”

“What are you doing here?” She’d forgotten just how difficult it could be to understand Mr. Fliegelman, so she paid close attention as he spoke again.

“What am I doing? I became sick from teaching, or more precisely sick of the students. Sick of you. More precisely…Ever since that incident, I haven’t worked full time again. I spent some time in the hospital. My heart was weak. After a year of sick leave, I decided to ‘fully’ retire from my job as a teacher. It took me two more years to recuperate and regain my physical strength.”

Even though she had identified herself, she saw in his tired eyes that he did not recognize her personally but was filled with delight that someone actually remembered him and treated him like a human being again.

They sat on one of the benches lining the boulevard, and he told her his terrible story. How his health had gradually deteriorated since that fateful day on which he fainted in the classroom, how his family was torn apart, how he was fired from his last job without severance or benefits and how he wasn’t able to find a new job.

Even though she was a young and inexperienced lawyer, within three months she saw to it that his last employer paid him his salary and severance and also got him a decent job with decent pay in a security firm.

He worked as a night guard in one of the Yavne industrial area factories. She wasn’t about to tell the audience that he was her source, the man who suggested to her that she scour the trash cans in search of shredded printed materials from the complex she wanted to find out more about. It was there that she had found most of the information she now presented to her audience. A secret report that was presented to the factory’s management and was to be destroyed but luckily enough was only partially shredded.

“The implications are obvious,” she continued passionately with her claims. “A pollution right under all our noses, an invisible and highly dangerous enemy. Viromedical is just the tip of the iceberg. There are hidden complexes with such hazardous materials all over the country. Even in the Tel Aviv area. Right under the foundations of our homes, parking lots and cellars; right under the rooms in which our children play, our kindergartens and schools. And the worse part of it is that the authorities are well aware of it but shut their ears and mouth and nose, so as not to smell the cancerous stench.” Gali paused, content with the eloquence and poetic quality of her own speech.
It’s a pity Father can’t be here
, a thought passed through her mind.
I would love to see him sitting in the audience and bursting into applause while seeing how his small and ambitious girl dominates her crowd of listeners.
 

All the parties in the cellar listened to her with great concentration, drinking in with thirst the words of the energetic lawyer. An unshaved young man in a dark green T-shirt, his hair gathered in a ponytail, raised his hand and asked a question without waiting to be acknowledged. It was obvious that in this crowd anyone could speak his mind without asking for permission.

“So what do you suggest that we do, Gali? I mean, let’s get to the point. Chattering about it won’t get us anywhere.”

Gali answered him with the same straightforward, passionate tone in which she had delivered her speech, “Giora, I couldn’t agree with you more. I was just about to outline our course of action, after covering the facts and information that we now have. I suggest that we file an urgent request for a temporary injunction to prevent the privatization of the factory and a court order that will force the factory to fully reveal all the operations that take place inside its walls. I suggest that we fight against them in court and by using any other legal means, until all the information is made available to the public. I suggest that we create such a commotion that the state and the authorities will have no other choice but to address the situation and take care of the problem. We won’t have a better opportunity…”

“And when will the injunction request be filed? The tender is already underway; it was all over the news. What could we possibly do?” Giora continued to question her.

Gali flashed a secretive smile. “I’ve already taken all of that into consideration. I’m not going to delay and let them get away from this by using some procedural excuse.”

She held up a booklet from a small table in the corner of the cellar. “I already have everything written down. It’s all here. All you need to do is go over it and approve it. The injunction request will be presented to the court tomorrow morning, and if God is willing, and trust me, if He reads this report He’ll be very willing, by noontime, a judge will go over our request and give us the injunction that we want.”

A ceremonious silence ensued.
That girl certainly knows what she’s doing
, the collective thought passed through the minds of all who sat in the plastic white chairs.

But Giora did not let go. He rose from his seat and said, “Gali, it’s all good and well. Well done. You’ve thought about every angle and prepared a request which I’m sure is wonderful even without reading it. But to my knowledge, no court is going to provide such an injunction without us committing to pay for the possible damages to potential buyers participating in the tender. And as you well know,” he continued with a disappointed voice, “our cash box is so empty that its stomach is grumbling.”

He sat back, frustrated that he had to play the part of the spoilsport.

Gali Shviro gave him a sober gaze. Once more, a tiny smile sprouted in the corners of her mouth and her eyes closed a bit.

“Giora, have no fear, we’ve thought of that as well,” she said, deliberately using the plural, even though she had thought of the idea all by herself. “And this is why I would like to present to you to this evening’s guest.”

She raised her hand and pointed beyond the audience to a remote corner of the cellar, right next to the entrance. “Igor, come here. Don’t be shy,” she said out loud.

From the farthest seat of the last row, a man in his fifties rose. His hair was thick and strewn with silver, his forehead was elongated, and it was difficult to say whether his face wad tanned or flushed.

“Friends, I would like to introduce you to Igor Harsovsky. He is joining our just struggle. Igor, would you mind coming up here and telling us why you’ve decided to support us?”

The well-built man, elegantly dressed in black, well-tailored clothes, crossed the cellar and stood beside Gali, placing his hands on his hips.

“Good evening, everyone. My name is Igor. Igor Harsovsky,” he said with a Russian accent, flashing a half smile in which shyness and indifference were mixed. “I immigrated to Israel almost twelve years ago. I came from the Chernobyl area. I know what it’s like to live in a polluted environment. I’ve always been a businessman. I know well the field of industrial biology and the pollution that it creates. I’ve never forgotten where I came from nor what I’ve seen happening to the people who lived with me and next to my house. That’s why I’ve decided to donate a large amount of the money I’ve earned to fight such things.”