The Muffia Page 12

  “No. I did not know that.”

  “Jelicka told me that. She’s also the one who told me Israeli men have a terrible reputation.”

  “How would she know?”

  “She went to a kibbutz when she was twenty and got date-raped.”

  “You can get date-raped anywhere.”

  “Who said you couldn’t?”

  “Look,” I said, getting annoyed at how little progress we were making. “I don’t care about Israeli men’s reputations. As I’ve pointed out a couple of times, we weren’t having a relationship. It was purely physical. So whatever the elements were that went into making him the man he is, or was, don’t matter. He treated me like a goddess.”

  By this point I’d reined myself back from the abyss of tears and was trying to regroup. “So what should I do?”

  “First you need to find out more about this fiancé. And then next of kin and stuff like that. I’d start there.”

  “You wouldn’t call the cops.”

  “Not yet. It’s too impersonal. Do you know the friend’s—I mean the fiancé’s number?”

  “I could get it.”

  Quinn got up and started pacing the length of the solarium. “Have you looked in his pockets?”

  “No. I’m sort of afraid to. Aren’t you supposed to leave the scene as untouched as possible?” I asked rhetorically.

  “You’re right. Do you have any gloves?”

  “Gloves?” It should have been a clue.

  She gave me a dead serious expression. “CSI: Special Victims Unit: Agoura Hills.”

  I had to smile. “Under the sink.”

  She headed into the kitchen and returned with pink rubber up to her elbows. I knew exactly what she was onto now. As she picked Udi’s pants off the floor, she asked, “Can you think of anything else he might have told you about himself?”

  It was then that I truly realized that the only thing, or things, I knew about Udi were the things he’d told me, which amounted to almost nothing. He’d told me his name, his age, that he lived in Tel Aviv and what he did for a living. That’s it. And I had no way of knowing if what he’d told me had been the truth.

  As a practicing mediator and occasional lawyer, I pride myself on my ability to detect deception—something that doesn’t always follow—but I’d been so attracted to this guy that my radar for bullshit got turned off.

  “His name’s not Udi,” Quinn said.

  “What? Of course his name’s Udi.”

  “Maybe it’s a nickname but this El Al I.D. card says his name is Yehl—Yehlehc—I have no idea how you say this name.”

  “Let me see,” I demanded, extricating myself from the chenille and pulling myself up off the beanbag.

  “Yeah—you’re right. It’s different. But let’s call him Udi.”

  Quinn took a few steps toward Udi then turned back to me with a conspiratorial look on her face. “Did you ever see Weekend at Bernie’s?”

  As it happened, I had seen the movie, but I didn’t want to encourage a train of thought that could lead to any more bizarre behavior. “I realize you’re a talent agent for a lot of famous movie stars, but life is not a movie.”

  “No?” she countered. “Saving Private Ryan—life and movie, Sound of Music— life and movie.”

  “Pirates of the Caribbean?” I said. “Not life. And even though it was based on life, I don’t recall anything like this happening in The Sound of Music.”

  “People died,” she said, totally straight-faced. “Movies inspire life, just like life inspires movies. Remember Natural Born Killers?”

  “I hope killing is not the kind of behavior filmmakers want to inspire.”

  “You keep missing the point,” she insisted.

  “Well, what is the point?”

  “The point is, we don’t need to come forward right away to tell the police there’s a dead guy in your house.”

  “Isn’t that sort of prolonging the inevitable? Won’t I increase my trouble by waiting?”

  “If you didn’t have doubts of your own, you would have already called the police. Now you have to explain why you didn’t immediately call nine-one-one.”

  “There was no emergency. He was already dead.”

  “You don’t need to convince me,” Quinn said.

  “I can’t call the police.”

  “Ah, now we’re getting somewhere. Why can’t you call the police, Madelyn?”

  “Because I’m finally close to landing my dream job and I don’t want to jeopardize it.”

  “How would it be jeopardized?” she asked. “You didn’t kill him. He just died.”

  “Yeah, but this doesn’t look good. Plus Udi’s Israeli, and the job I’m up for is international. They’re not going to hire me if there’s anything like this on my record. I won't be viewed as unbiased when it comes to, say, mediating with the Israeli rowing team."

  "How many Israelis row sculls?"

  "The point is, some people will always wonder if I killed him.”

  That’s when the doorbell rang.

  Quinn looked at me. I was pretty sure it wasn’t Lila or the mother of her playdate. As far as I knew, they were on their way to the movies.

  “I have no idea.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  I wanted to crawl away. The whole thing was unbelievably awful. “I thought you were here to help me,” I said. “Muffs together through thick and thin.”

  “I am here to help you. You just don’t like what I’m offering in the way of help.”

  The doorbell rang again.

  “Should we answer it?”

  I had to think. It seemed obvious that whoever was at the door would know that someone was inside. “Tell them I’ll be out in a minute, and I’ll put his clothes on,” I said, springing to action.

  “So you like the Weekend at Bernie’s idea after all.”

  “It’s brilliant," I said. Weekend at Bernie's was a late-80s comedy featuring dead Uncle Bernie propped up and acting his part for the whole movie. "You’re a genius for thinking of it. Now go answer the door.”

  “What if it’s the cops?”

  “Why would it be the cops?”

  “Maybe someone heard you screaming but didn’t hear the ecstasy in your delivery.”

  “Go!”

  Quinn dashed away toward the front door and I tried to sit Udi up with great difficulty. He was far heavier than what I would have expected, given the agile way he moved around the bedroom, and he didn’t want to bend. Wasn’t it too soon for rigor mortis? Maybe I was just tired and sore from the work out I’d had getting out from under him.

  I settled on a position for him that looked more like lounging than actual sitting. At least he wasn’t lying flat. I put his sunglasses on him and even though he was dead, I kissed him once more, then covered him with the chenille throw. The overall impression was of peace and contentment.

  As an afterthought, I tried to open his mouth with my fingers, the idea being it might make him look like one of those guys whose mouth fell open while sleeping. But there was no budging it. His jaw was locked. Rigor mortis there, too. I wondered what rigor—discipline and work—had to do with mortis, which derived from the Latin word for death. Well, in this case, death was proving to be hard work—at least for me.

  Chapter 16

  “Madelyn? Madelyn, could you come out here, please.”

  It didn’t sound like the girl scouts had arrived selling their cookies. Quinn’s tone of voice was one I’d heard her use on the phone while reprimanding her errant movie stars, and she was using my whole name. This had to be serious.

  Glancing back at Udi who looked so peaceful, if in need of rolfing, I got a waft of sadness once again. I finally meet a guy I like and like having sex with and then he dies. Does anyone need this kind of luck?

  Heading into the front hallway I saw Quinn smiling a little too brightly, her eyes pressed open as wide as they would go, standing next to three guys dressed in black, who, taken together, ga
ve me the impression of the kind of sound system you see on stage for giant reunion concert tours for bands like Kiss or Deep Purple, with an enormous center unit flanked by two smaller, but still substantial boxes of indeterminate purpose.

  The center guy had a ginormous bald head with a few indentations here and there—a refrigerator-with-a-head kind of guy, but with even less animation. One of the side guys with red hair on his head and chin had a bit more of an expression. At least he was chewing gum, even if his eyes were fixed in a stare. The guy on the other side, who had dark hair, a sparkle in his eyes and a very Eurotrash-y, navy blue pin-stripe suit, seemed remarkably familiar. He looked a little like Nissim, the man who’d brought Udi to Berggren’s dinner party that fateful night. What was odd was that as I got closer I realized it was Nissim from Berggren’s dinner party.

  “Hello, Madelyn,” he said in a voice evocative of Udi’s but not nearly as sexy.

  “Hello,” I ventured. “Nissim? What are you doing here?”

  “Is Udi here?”

  “Udi? You mean the guy I met at Berggren’s?”

  He smiled. “Yes. Udi. Udi Hamoudi.”

  The refrigerator grunted then crossed his arms in front of his expansive chest.

  “What makes you ask?” I said.

  Quinn excused herself to “use the restroom” and headed back toward the solarium where I hoped she’d improve upon my attempt to turn Udi, or whoever he was, into Bernie.

  “I know he was planning on coming to LA to see you. That’s why he told me he couldn’t see me. He must have got on the flight last minute because he only called me before the plane left Tel Aviv.”

  “Ah,” I nodded my understanding then nodded again while I continued to search for a better response. “Ah,” I said again.

  “He’s here, yes?”

  The red-headed guy with a little too much facial hair said something to Nissim in Hebrew and he said something in return. The refrigerator grunted again and uncrossed his arms. Then all three of them looked at me. And I wished Quinn would come back.

  “Yes,” I said tentatively. “Is that a problem?”

  “Can you get him to come out here, please? I need to speak with him.”

  “Well, actually—the thing is—Quinn? Could you come out here?” Couldn’t Nissim have just called if he needed to talk to Udi? Had Udi given them my address?

  “What is it, Madelyn? Is there some reason to be concerned?”

  “No. No concern. It’s just Udi’s not feeling well,” I began. “I mean, you know what that flight is like and being a sky marshal and all, he doesn’t get to sleep. He’s got to stay vigilant, you know, for the possibility of in-flight altercations.”

  “Yes,” said Nissim, sounding unconvinced.

  Quinn reappeared and was able to see and hear the red-haired man say something to big fridge, then the two of them laughed. Nissim said something else to them in Hebrew and they stopped. Then Nissim leveled his gaze at me. “We really need to see him. It’s very important.”

  Quinn threw me a look that I couldn’t read, but it gave me courage. I realized it was my house we were all standing in and these guys, even if Nissim was a U.S. citizen, had no business making me feel vulnerable.

  “You know, I think you should come back,” I said confidently. “I don’t want to wake him, but if you tell me what you want him to know, I’ll let him know what you said. Or leave a message on his cell phone if you want.”

  “Say, why were you guys laughing just now?” Quinn asked.

  The three of them exchanged looks that I couldn’t read, then Nissim said, “Actually, Madelyn, these guys are with El Al and we really must see him.”

  “Why? He’s so tired, Nissim. He needs to rest.”

  “Yeah,” said Quinn. “He’s passed out. You couldn’t revive him if you tried.”

  I glared at her.

  “If your friend has seen him, perhaps you will permit us to do the same.”

  “Listen,” said Quinn. “I just came to get my makeup, which I’d left here and, well, you know how a girl needs her make up.”

  Nissim scrunched up his face. Clearly they didn’t believe her. I felt like the tension in the entryway was audible, bouncing off the plastered walls so loud it hurt my ears.

  “Let me speak to you for a moment, Madelyn,” Nissim said.

  “Why don’t you go into the solarium,” Quinn suggested. “He’s sleeping peacefully. See for yourself.”

  I looked at her.

  “Go on, Madelyn.”

  Something about her calling me by my proper name told me she felt confident that we could go back into the solarium and Nissim wouldn’t suspect anything.

  “Do you need something else?” I asked Quinn, trying to convey my concern.

  “Nope. I’ll wait out here with these guys while you two have a private chat.”

  “All right,” I said. “We don’t want to wake him up, though.”

  “Understood,” said Nissim.

  “You see,” I said, gesturing toward the daybed. “There he is, sleeping like a, well sleeping quieter than a baby. That saying is simply untrue.”

  “Yes. Babies are louder than that saying would suggest.” Nissim was staring at Udi while he said this, I suppose looking for signs of life. “Udi?”

  Nissim took a step closer to the couch and I remember hoping that Quinn had propped Udi securely enough so that he wouldn’t keel over if someone pushed him.

  “You said you wouldn’t wake him,” I said stepping between the dead and the living. “So I’ll just get him to call you when he wakes up.”

  “I didn’t say that.” Nissim walked over and took Udi’s wrist, pressing his finger to the vein. The jig was up. What did it matter? I knew I hadn’t killed him. That would be evident from any autopsy, I told myself.

  “As I thought,” Nissim said, taking Udi’s sunglasses off and opening his lids. He let them snap shut and my mind flashed on the other book I’d considered for tomorrow’s book club, The Opposite of Dead. Oh, how I wished Udi had been the opposite of dead at that moment. However, it was Nissim’s coldness, rather than Udi’s, that chilled the room. “You should have said something.”

  “But . . . but . . .” There are times you just can’t think what to say.

  “I will need to take him with me.”

  “You can’t just take him. Where are you going to take him? And what do you mean, ‘as you thought?’”

  “We’ve been monitoring him. There’s been no movement for over two hours.”

  “You’ve what?”

  “We’ve been monitoring him. He has a chip in his shoulder.”

  “A chip? Like a bone chip?”

  “A silicon chip. A tracking device.”

  “You mean like those things people put in their pets in case they’re stolen?”

  “You are an intelligent woman, Madelyn. I’m sure you have seen these Hollywood spy movies. Chips are implanted in people, too.”

  I cringed at the word implant. It reminded me of my own ruptured prosthetic breasts which I’d finally pulled out during a particularly difficult chapter in my marriage and which might have contributed to Lila’s father’s affair with a woman whose boobs didn’t present such challenges.

  “But he’s a sky marshal,” I said.

  Nissim pushed his chintzy jacket aside and rested his hands on his hips, facing me. “Yes, he was. We put chips in them.”

  What? Was he a cookie?

  “Really. You put chips in your sky marshals. Does Virgin?” I loved saying the name of this suggestively named airline. It made me believe that the tedium of modern commercial jet travel could still offer promises of the new and exciting.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “I just want to understand. You’re saying El Al makes its sky marshals get little global positioning chips installed in them.”

  “Not just the sky marshals, all the employees. Udi has a chip, I have a chip, so do my friends.”

  “And this is normal?�
��

  “Yes, this is normal. We live in the Middle East. You never know.”

  “You never know what?”

  “You just never know. That’s all.”

  By this point I was thinking that none of this was normal. Three guys showing up at my house, the burly associates that looked like appliances. Something wasn’t right, but I kept coming back to the fact that Udi and Nissim were friends and one of my closest friends thought Nissim was a good guy.

  “No, I guess you’re right. You never know what’s going to happen. One thing I do know,” I went on, “is that the older I get, the less I know about anything.”

  Nissim wasn't listening. He was sniffing the air. Then a wistful look came over his face.

  “We were, you know . . . at it, when he just sort of moaned and then collapsed,” I offered.

  “I suspected this could happen.”

  “You did? How?” How could Nissim have suspected this could happen?

  He turned away. “I’m sorry. I know he liked you a lot.”

  “Well . . .” I didn’t want to begin this line of discussion. I’d likely end up crying again. “What do you think killed him?”

  “I don’t know, perhaps some sort of heart defect. Usually the testing catches these kinds of things during the hiring process, but we will do an autopsy.”

  “An autopsy?”

  “We will need to take him with us, Madelyn,” he said.

  “No—” I stood protectively next to my dead lover who only a few hours ago had been the polar opposite of a corpse. Something about Nissim taking Udi seemed all wrong. “This should be reported,” I protested. It had become clear that I would have to risk losing the international mediation job.

  “I’m going to call the police.” I moved toward the phone again. Now I really wished I’d called earlier, before I let Quinn stop me.

  “Please do not call the police, Madelyn. Udi was an Israeli citizen and this is an internal matter—internal to the state of Israel and El Al Airlines. There is no need for your government to be involved.”

  “What if this whole thing comes back to haunt me in some way? I mean his fingerprints are here and he’s dead.”