"I owe you one for this, Reuben."
"I'll add it to your favors tab."
"Do that. As for helping me with the investigation, I need you to take a look at Maryam Jamalka's arrest." I told him about the arrest that took place at Club Adom, how Akiva and Lydia said it had been unusual, and gave him the dates of the arrest and Maryam's release from jail.
"What am I looking for?" Reuben asked.
"I don't know. But something happened during that time that changed her life. I need to know what it was. If I come up with a specific question, I'll let you know."
"Okay. I'll start sniffing around. But I'll need to do it carefully. If Rosen catches wind of it…"
Then Reuben would be suspended, if not fired, and wouldn't be able to help me any further.
"Then be careful. One more thing: get in touch with Talmon and tell him that as long as he sticks to what I told Rosen, he's in the clear."
"You hope," Reuben said.
"I hope. It's the best I can do."
"You can do better. You can catch this guy."
"I'll do my best, Reuben."
I ended the call and made my way home, feeling buoyed. Rosen had thought he could make me back off by issuing threats against me, Greta, and Reuben. But it appeared that the people closest to me were not the sort to bend or buckle easily. Neither was I. Apparently Rosen did not know or appreciate my history. I had been through much worse than anything he could throw at me. His threats did not move or scare me. And now that I knew I had the go-ahead from both Greta and Reuben, I felt unstoppable. I was going to catch this killer, and if I ruffled Inspector Rosen's feathers, or those of his superiors, in the process, so be it.
I got home around four and sat at my table with my Western. It was a short book, and I got through it by six. In the end the good guy shot the bad man down and rode off in search of other adventures. That was how many of these books ended—some sort of showdown between good and evil, with good prevailing. It was unrealistic, and I often wondered why I liked reading these stories. Maybe I was hoping life could become that way. Because it sure wasn't that way now.
At nine o'clock I went out to find Charlie Buzaglo. And I had my knife and gun with me.
16
I didn't expect him to be there. I thought I'd have to visit a whole batch of nightclubs in Jaffa in order to find him. But Charlie Buzaglo was sitting at the same club where I'd last met him, the one I went to first just to eliminate it from the mental list of places that I had prepared.
He was seated alongside the same pretty young woman he had been with then. He was wearing a cream-colored shirt and had the top three buttons open. She had on a black dress that rode halfway up her crossed legs. He had a hand on her thigh. She had both hands on the tabletop. I went straight to his table and planted myself in a chair.
"Tell her to give us some privacy," I said.
He squinted his eyes at me, lifted his drink, and took a slow, measured sip. "We're in the middle of a conversation, and you're not wanted here."
"We are going to talk about Maryam Jamalka. Remember her? One of your prostitutes. Well, she's dead." I turned to the girl. "Do you want to end up dead, too? Because that's what happens to women who hang around Charlie too long."
Her doe eyes got even wider, and she started to ask Buzaglo something, but he raised a hand to quiet her. She paused for a beat, then started talking again. He turned his rat eyes on her and said, "I told you to shut your mouth, so keep it shut. Now go to the bar. Get a drink. And don't talk to anyone else this time. Got it?"
Her eyes sparkled wetly and her lower lip trembled, but she kept silent. She grabbed her purse and left the table. She didn't go to the bar but headed straight to the bathroom, where no one could see her cry, and where she could redo her face.
Buzaglo wasn't smiling this time as he watched her leave. And he wasn't smiling when he turned his eyes back to me.
"Two broken ribs," he said.
"You were lucky. I could have broken all of them and busted your knees as well. How is your friend, by the way?"
"The useless moron has a limp, but he'll be all right. He's lucky I was in a charitable mood, or he wouldn't be walking around at all. And neither would you, Adam. You must be the stupidest man in Israel to come here again. Or did you think that you could ambush me a second time?"
"If you want to go outside and face me one on one, like honorable men do, I won't need to."
"I like it here just fine," Buzaglo said. "Or at least I did before you showed up."
"Answer some questions and I'll be on my way."
"About Maryam?"
"Yes. About Maryam."
He seemed to mull it over, and I expected him to refuse to answer any of my questions. But he surprised me by saying, "Maryam. Now that was a sweet girl. Very popular with men. Made good money for me, she did. It's too bad that she's dead."
His mouth had dropped open a bit, and his eyes appeared to protrude from their sockets more than they usually did. He looked more like a rat than ever before.
"You don't seem surprised by her death."
He shrugged. "It makes sense."
"What does that mean?" I asked.
"I haven't seen her for weeks. I figured something might have happened."
"She could have run out on you."
"No one runs out on me."
"Except Mordecai Ohayon," I said, referencing the man Buzaglo had wanted me to give into his hands, the one I allowed to escape.
"You will pay dearly for that, Adam. And for my ribs."
I ignored his threat. "You also don't seem surprised to see me here."
"No. I thought you might show up."
"The hotel manager. The Jaffa Star. He told you I was asking around."
He wagged a finger at me. "You should stop hurting people, Adam. It makes them hate you. He says you nearly broke his fingers. He also swore he didn't mention my name. But I figured you'd find me all the same. Who gave you my name?"
"An upstanding citizen," I said. "How did you become Maryam's pimp?"
"I first had her as a customer. She was beautiful. Lovely skin and great eyes. Good body." His eyes turned toward the bar, where the young woman now sat with a drink, eyes downcast. "Revital is also beautiful, but not like Maryam, and not as easy to manipulate. Maryam was easy. The moment I saw her, I could sense how vulnerable she was. Some of them are like that. They want to be loved. All she needed to hear was that I loved her, and she would do anything for me."
"Why did you move her out of her apartment?"
"In order to control her. That apartment was part of her life before she met me. I wanted her to be close to me, in a place where I could control her fully. I moved her to an apartment house in Jaffa. Not nice like her previous apartment. Just one room and the neighbors can get noisy, but she didn't complain. I got the impression she'd lived in worse places in her life."
I gazed at the girl at the bar. She was now watching the band play. Was she also hungry enough for love to be manipulated and controlled by a low-life like Charlie Buzaglo? My stomach felt queasy. If I had known Charlie Buzaglo was a pimp, I never would have done a job for him.
I looked at him. He was looking right back at me, his face placid, but there was just a hint of a smile on his thin lips. He was enjoying this; he found it amusing to answer my questions. I had expected this to be more of a struggle, perhaps with him denying even knowing anyone named Maryam Jamalka, and me using the knowledge I'd gotten so far to squeeze the answers from him. But he was answering me freely and openly. And I didn't know why.
"Give me the address where she lived," I said.