Hill of Secrets: An Israeli Jewish mystery novel (12 page)

"It'll be hard for me, but I'll learn to live with it," I lied. The thought killed me.

"Would you accept me with a child from another woman?" Yinon had raised the idea numerous times that he might have a child with a different woman and go on living with me, but the idea always had to do with the fact that the child would be outside of the marriage, meaning we'd stay together and he'd raise a child with another woman.

"You mean you'd start a family and then leave your new wife for me?"

"Something like that."

"I find it hard to believe that you'd do that." Yinon was too good of a man.

"But would you take me?"

"I don’t know." Honestly, it wasn't a bad idea. That way, Yinon could have kids without me having to be a mother. "Does it seem reasonable to you to deceive a woman like that?"

Yinon looked down. He wasn't the sort of person to do such an evil thing to anyone.

"I want you back."

I knew I had to be strong. In the past, I’d been very close to cracking. Yinon almost convinced me to get pregnant for him, but with the last of my will, I managed to stay loyal to my wishes.

I wanted him to stay overnight, he seemed so miserable and broken, but I knew that if he stayed, it would let him believe that there was still a chance.

Sunday,
5.24.2009

On the first morning of the new week, after a Shabbat that was meant to be relaxing, but ended in frustration and heartbreak, I went to the Leumi Bank branch in Petach Tikva. On the way I called Riki and asked her to check with the Department of Health if Ariel Danilowitz had a prescription for Ritalin.

At nine o’ clock, I entered the office of the manager of the branch where Hanni and Meir ran most of their accounts. Arie Shani was a man of about sixty, stout, balding, with a well kempt comb-over. His shirt was neatly ironed and he straightened his tie from time to time. His office was packed with files and piles of papers. I stared at the piles and wondered to myself if he was really taking care of all this paperwork or if it was only serving as some sort of scenery.

"Did you handle Meir and Hanni Danilowitz's account?" I asked after sitting down.

"No, I don't handle cases for specific customers, nor private homeowners, but I'm familiar with the couple."

"Are you familiar with all of the bank's customers?"

"No, not
all
of them, but I try to know as many of them as I can."

"So how did you know the Danilowitz couple?"

"Meir Danilowitz's parents are very old and respected customers of the bank."

"I understand." I looked through the notes I jotted down for myself. "I looked through Meir and Hanni's bank account. I understand they had another account in the Discount Bank."

"Right. Meir worked for Discount Bank, so it was better for him to open the account his paycheck went to there. Even so, each month he transferred money from the Discount account to us, since most of the activity took place here."

"I see the couple had quite a few loans and a credit card overdraft."

"True."

"I thought there was a new law preventing overdrafts on credit cards."

"Right. Customers who make any sort of withdrawal that leads to overdraft receive a reminder on the phone from the branch that the withdrawal will not be approved unless they immediately transfer money into their account."

"According to my records they were tens of thousands of shekels over their credit limit… how could that be?"

Arie sifted through his papers for a long while. "According to my records, on May 15
th
there was a charge on a Visa bill, which led to an overdraft. May 15
th
was a Friday, so on May 17
th
, Sunday, Meir was contacted about the overdraft.

"The Danilowitz family was murdered the next day."

Arie stared at me with a gloomy gaze. "You don't think the bank clerk pushed Meir to such a desperate act?"

The couple had loans of over two million shekels altogether. It was hard to believe that an overdraft of 10,000 shekels would push a man to kill his entire family and commit suicide, but the fact that such a phone call took place less than a day before the act was curious and intriguing.

"It's hard for me to believe," I calmed Arie down. "You said Meir had an account at Discount Bank and here as well. Why did he need two bank accounts?"

"As I told you, he received benefits as an employee of Discount Bank, so it was worth his while to open his paycheck account at Discount."

"Then why did he have an account at Leumi? To my understanding, this was the main account, from which credit card bills, mortgage payments and loans were taken. Wouldn't it have been more worth his while to transfer everything to the Discount Bank, where he received employee benefits?"

Arie smiled. "First of all, the account at Leumi Bank is older." He stroked his tie again and went on to gently stroke his round belly. "Secondly, this is the branch that handles the accounts of Meir's parents, Sarah and Natan Danilowitz."

"And what does that have to do with it?" I had no inkling where my parents ran their accounts.

"Natan and Sarah Danilowitz are very wealthy people." I stared at him and he emphasized again, "Very, very wealthy."

I began to understand the connection, as well as the loans which were not proportionate to the couple’s ability to repay them.

"I understand the couple had a mortgage loan of 1,400,000 shekels overall and other short term loans of almost 600,000 shekels, in addition to a completely exhausted credit limit."

"True."

"As far as I know, Hanni didn't work and Meir's salary came down to about 10,000 shekels a month."

"Right."

"What collateral did you have to grant the couple so many loans?"

"Against the mortgage, we have the property itself."

"That's clear, but what about the other credit limits?"

Arie cleared his throat. "That's exactly where the family connection comes in."

"Meaning, if I understand you correctly, an average family with Hanni and Meir's earning ability would not have been able to receive loans of such scale."

"Probably not. In Meir and Hanni's case, we knew Meir had solid backing so we took the risk."

"Were his parents guarantors on the loans?"

"On one loan, yes. On the others, no."

"So what's going to happen about the Danilowitz family's debt now?"

"We get the money received from the sale of the apartment and turn to the guarantors about the additional loan."

"So the bank doesn't get hurt."

"You say that like it's a bad thing. First of all, there's a likely chance that we won't be able to recover all of the debt. The guarantee was only given on one loan from three years ago, and most of the loan was paid off. Secondly, the more lost debts the bank has, the less stable the banking system will become. As a result of this, there would be an increase in interest rates and commissions, so this conservatism of the banks in Israel is good for the country. The proof of that is that all over the world, banks are closing down every day, but in Israel the banks are stronger than ever."

I'm not a financial genius and I didn't want to argue with him, and some of what he was saying did make sense to me, but to my understanding the rates were already very high.

"So, despite all of this conservatism, you gave Meir and Hanni loans without any guarantee from Meir's parents. How exactly did that happen?"

Arie cleared his throat again. "Meir and Hanni never managed to make ends meet each month, even when his salary was twice as high. In the past, I would call Meir's mother a lot and she would just transfer money to the account. At some point, I guess Meir asked her to stop and they decided to cover their overdraft with the big loan from three years ago, that also paid for renovation of some of their home furniture.

Then, we also received the guarantee signature from Meir's parents. After this Meir also asked for more loans to cover their overdraft and also renewed the mortgage loan to receive further financing and asked us again not to turn to his parents. I’ve known that family for twenty years and I didn't panic. I knew that if there was real hardship, they would help their son, who I sensed was embarrassed by his situation."

"So Meir's parents didn't know the extent of his debt?"

"Apart from the debt they signed off on, they had no idea, at least not from the bank, but I have a feeling they knew there were serious money problems."

"Why do you think so?"

"In the last nine months, Meir occasionally deposited money in the account—money that, I believe, wasn't related to his salary."

"Why do you think that?"

"Because the money that was deposited into the Discount account, he transferred through the bank to Leumi, and in recent months he also began depositing cash in round sums."

"Isn't that something that arouses suspicion?"

"It depends on the sums."

"And what sums are we talking about?"

"A few thousand every few weeks."

"So you assumed it was money that he got from his parents?"

"That's what usually happened."

"Then why wouldn't the parents transfer money or write a check?"

"I don't involve myself in the family's business, but it's not a rarity. The reason for it is pretty common. In many cases, one of the parents wants to hide the fact that they’re continuing to support adult children from the other parent. A check, or a bank transfer, is something that could be traced. Cash isn't."

*

When I got to the station, Riki filled me in on the fact that, according to the Ministry of Health's records, Ariel Danilowitz was not taking Ritalin. I guessed Batya's eye wasn't quite as good as she thought.

"Amos said you need to go see him - he has something for you," she added.

I hurried to Amos's lab, hoping he discovered something interesting on the Danilowitz family's computer.

Amos Bar-Nir's area was the most spacious and messy room in the station. Computers and cables were strewn in piles all over the room, but I guessed Amos had his own method of organizing inventory since he always knew how to find what he was looking for in the mess he took great care to maintain.

Amos was sort of a domesticated flower child. He was forty years old, married and a father of five. He wasn't a police office, but a civilian who worked for the police, so the dress and appearance codes that the unit’s officers were obligated to maintain didn't apply to him. He had long, curly hair and glasses on a string. He always dressed sloppily and in the summer he always wore Jesus sandals, an item of clothing that does not exist in the police lexicon. I'm far from being a fashion icon, but even I was shocked and appalled by his outfits.

That day, he’d opted for a relatively restrained look, though I discovered that the sandals were out of storage and Amos had returned to airing his toes.

Amos was a doctor in computer sciences and legend says that he received his doctorate before he was twenty-five. Another legend says that when the commander of the unit called him in to explain to him that there's no way he could leave his office every day at four-thirty, Amos forwarded him three concrete job offers he’d received that month, offering him salaries three and four times higher than the salary he got from Israel Police. From that day on, no one said anything to Amos about his work hours.

I first ran into him in the summer, a short time after I joined the police force, on a fun day that was organized for police officers and their families. Yinon and I brought along Ohad and Elad, my younger sister, Ayala's, two boys. We met Amos, his wife and three of their five kids. It was evident that his family is his life. That meaning was etched in my memory, since I rarely meet a couple whose relationship with their children is so harmonious and natural. Harmony of the kind that is very hard to fake.

It was obvious to me that when people take to the street, especially with their kids, there's a considerable element of phoniness there. The Danilowitz family showed, at least to the outside world, a facade of happy family life. But in the Bar-Nir's case, it wasn't fake. They were too easygoing and not trying too hard for it to look like something artificial. All of them, from the baby to Amos and his wife were dressed like a blind stylist threw random clothes that he found in a recycling bin on them.

Their baby son was cradled in a carrier that Amos wrapped around his wide body. Amos's wife was a thin, beautiful woman. She had kind, blue eyes, the kind you’d pour out your heart to. Two additional children, a boy of about three, completely dipped in chocolate ice cream and a girl of about five, who inherited her mother's kind eyes, held their mother's hands. The eldest daughter and the second son, thirteen and eleven, had opted to enjoy the day with kids their age rather than walk around with their parents.

This scene of a humble and happy couple was etched in my memory, and Amos's habit of leaving work early was clear to me; the priorities in his life were clear. He had an interesting and challenging work place. But he didn't allow his work to engulf him.

Because of this, I was not surprised that almost a week had passed since the day the Danilowitz family's computer was given to him.

Amos apologized for the delay. It turned out that, in addition to all of this, he was away last Thursday because of his younger brother's wedding. He stood by one of the lab tables in his room, leaning one hand on the Danilowitz family computer.

"There weren't too many interesting things here," he said while gently stroking the computer's disk drive. "The computer was used mainly for web surfing. A lot of children’s and adult's web games, recipe searches, quite a bit of online shopping sites and also a bit of porn." Amos smiled.

"Anything unusual?" I tried to make my question sound serious, but I struggled against Amos's mischievous smile.

"Not at all, the usual stuff, young models and quite a few lesbian movies. If I had to guess, and assuming the late Mrs. Danilowitz was not otherwise inclined, most, if not all, of the porn searches were by Mr. Danilowitz."

"But nothing out of the ordinary."

"No."

"Then what do you have?"