The Crystal Circle: A Paranormal Romance Novel (17 page)

07/07/2013 – Twenty-second day of disappearance

The morning started very early with loud shouts, “Tom, Tom!” and searching. When Dave tired, he went downtown to get supplies for the restaurant. When he returned, he and Lynn dragged the bags to the refrigerators behind the trailer. Lynn opened the refrigerator and screamed. She kept screaming until Dave came running. There, in the freezer, between the frozen cutlets and peas, lay Tom, curled up and frozen.

Dave took him out and sat on the stairs, rubbing Tom’s fur to thaw him out, and wept. He wept as hard as he had when his mother died. Lynn sat in shock, also frozen, and her mind raced feverishly. It could be a prank, of course, one of the children, or some neighbor, but... the kids and the neighbors loved Dave. They wouldn’t want to hurt him like that. Only someone whose business was damaged due to the adverse campaign Dave was running in the camp, only one person... or maybe two.

While they sat there, the dead cat in their hands, there were shouts from some neighbors. “Police, police!”

Lynn rushed to put the four restaurant tables inside the trailer. Dave also came in and put Tom between the blankets. He was still burning with a childish hope that maybe the heat would bring him back to life. He digested the fact that a person, or persons, was behind that terrible act, and perhaps it had to do with the fact that he’d asked Lynn to inform Saul and Gidi that he had no intention of getting together with them for a meeting.

Dave heard loud noises outside. A large number of police officers, detectives from Eilat, were flooding into the camp, opening doors and interrogating people. They intentionally came after eight in the morning, when the children had already left for their kindergartens and schools. Some residents of the camp were in various stages of preparation to leave for work in the city or the sea, or lying around idly on the shore, but most of them were still in their homes.

The questions they were asked by the officers were very similar: “Have you seen a tall, big man around here, offering opportunities to invest in his bank and earn a lot of money? He’s wanted by the police.”

“Is there a Saul living or hanging around here? He’s with a friend and they’re raising money.”

Most people who were questioned knew Saul, of course. The detectives explained that this was a man who had squeezed and threatened the merchants in Eilat, who was dangerous to the public, but no one would admit that Saul lived in the camp. After all, Saul owed them all a lot of money. Each man had his own personal account, and they’d lose everything if the police took Saul in. Besides, Saul seemed decent, like a real banker or accountant, he spoke well, and he gave the impression of being something of an expert on the economy, really not the kind of bastard the cops would be after. They looked at the pictures the policemen showed them and shook their heads. Lynn saw the composite sketch and was not surprised, but her face was impassive when she told the police she didn’t know this person. When she looked at the faces of the rest of the missing persons on the policemen’s tablet -laughing children, women and men the public had lost hope of finding – she saw her own picture, laughing and joyful, as she’d looked when she came to Eilat.

I’ve been made,
she thought, but the officers looked at her and failed to link the short- haired, hat-wearing woman with glasses with the fair-haired, laughing woman who had disappeared in Tel Aviv. The man they were looking for was not there. They closed the tablet with a sigh, turning to the next trailer.

As Lynn turned away quickly, a small yellow note fell out of her pocket. Sam the cop bent over, reached for the note, and put it in his pocket without looking at it. It was a raid, and he was busy!

A few minutes later, Sam knocked on the door of Saul’s trailer. Gidi opened it, a bandana around his head, covering it down to his eyebrows, a cigarette in his mouth. The officer surveyed the interior of the trailer. An old air-conditioning technician sat there on the floor, tools in his hands, dismantling the air conditioner. He was wearing a baseball cap and overalls printed with ‘Mati & Meir, AC.’

“You live here?” the policeman asked Gidi, completely ignoring Saul, the technician. “Yeah. What do you want?”

Sam explained who he was looking for, and Gidi shook his head and said, “No” to all of his questions.

When the officers moved off, Saul said, “Gidi, things are getting a little hot around here.”

“We have to get out,” Gidi nodded.

“Tonight. By the morning, we’ll be ancient history,” said Saul quietly and returned to assembling the air conditioner he’d dismantled just a few minutes earlier.

Gidi began calling his friends in Eilat. While he put together the various parts of the air conditioner, Saul heard fragments of conversations: “… a vehicle for towing a caravan… fuel… yes, call me when...”

He felt he was letting go. He took a deep breath and looked at the sky.

“You don’t eat a healthy diet at all, Saul. Have you always been like that?” she’d asked. “You have a great soul!” she’d said. Interesting. Had he really always been like this?
Who are you, Saul?
He pondered. He sat down on the floor and took a deep breath, closing his eyes for a fraction of a second.

Suddenly, he saw a little boy, plump and rather pale, wearing baggy green pants and a horrible buttoned-up shirt that his Argentine mother insisted he wear. He was an object of mockery for the children of the fifth grade in Ramat-Gan, the target of constant abuse, and his disregard of it, his immersion in his studies, only fanned the flames against him. His parents had immigrated to Israel from Argentina when he was a very young child and nurtured him and his sister, Adriana, as if they were princes of the British royal family. Like other Argentinean families, they enjoyed barbeque ‘Asado’ evenings with steaks and chocolates from Bariloche. Wine had flowed freely. Raul particularly disliked David, the leader of the group who’d teased him, who would hide toads in his bag and place paper bags of water under his seat, ready to explode beneath his bottom when he sat down in his chair.

When he grew up and became taller and taller, his obesity vanished, but whenever he met with a David somewhere, his fists clenched, and he imagined his future revenge when he became a multimillionaire – hiring David and then firing him, or hiring all the children in his class, only to fire them afterward, so they would surely become unlucky and remain unemployed on account of his worldwide connections.

When he was twenty, and beautiful girls were all over him, he put his energies into conquering them with suave, sophisticated talk that charmed them. He planned his million-dollar future carefully and signed up to study economics at university. In his eyes, his wife, Orna, was to blame for his failing to become a millionaire at a young age, by trapping him in her net while they were still in college. Due to her lack of caution, she fell pregnant, which meant they had to marry while they were still in school.

“For us, there’s no such thing as abortions, Raul. No such thing as having children outside of marriage. In any case, we wanted to at some point... so let’s get married right away,” said Orna. They married and moved to Migdal Haemek, near Orna’s parents, and from then on, there was no escape, not with four children depending on his monthly paycheck. Orna Azoulay was from a family of North African decent and all the aunts and grandmothers saw their daughters’ purity as the main source of respect in the family lineage. A sinful girl was liable, God forbid, to cast a shadow over the entire Azoulay tribe for generations.

And so it was that Raul, formerly a fat and rejected kid, found himself the deputy director and, later, the director, of a small bank in a remote town; a man with a plethora of skills and a desire to conquer the world, with a magnificent dream, stuck in a miserable reality, high and dry.

Saul shook his head, drove away the fantasy story that had taken hold of his head for a moment, and finished reassembling the air-conditioner. It was time to pack up his stuff. His stay in Eilat was over. Too bad about Michal, who he knew was really named Lynn. He gave a moment’s thought to their conversation, just one moment. Sentimental female chatter it may have been, but, in that, she chose her fate: to remain in this place while he continued to the next destination.

That afternoon, after Dave held a proper burial for poor Tom, with pursed lips and a huge headache, he went to the police station and asked to speak to Superintendent Illouz.

As soon as he was shown into his office, he said, “Robert, you listen.”

Illouz stopped him with his hand, closed the door, and gestured toward the chair. Dave sat down and hurried on. “I think a year and a half has passed since I last sat here. You and I had a clear understanding that you wouldn’t go inside the camp. We’re keeping our part of the agreement, as you know - no parties, no shady business, and no drugs. People get on with their lives and aren’t pleased to see the police sniffing around. Why did you need to stage a raid all of a sudden?”

Illouz sighed and looked at Dave. “There’s organized crime in Eilat, a real mafia. We’re afraid that it’ll deteriorate into an underworld war - gunfights, explosions, and what not. A gang war. You have children there. Families. I don’t want children flying through the air. Not on my watch.”

“We’re looking into it ourselves,” said Dave. “I don’t think there’s anything like that. People are alright. They escape life a little. They like being on the fringes. Our people patrol every night. You know what? I promise you, the minute I see a stranger or anything suspicious... you’ll be my first call. Agreed?”

Robert looked at him, biting his upper lip. “There are criminal elements in your camp, Dave. Maybe you don’t know them. So, A - you’re playing with fire, and B - our agreement is void.”

“I hear you,” said Dave, disappointed with the outcome. He got up, shoving at his chair loudly, and left without saying goodbye in his peculiar gait, disguising his limp. On his way out, he noticed alternating images flashing up on the plasma screen at the entrance. Dave raised his head and stopped, thunderstruck. Under the headline “MISSING,” different faces were projected, and he thought he saw Lynn’s face, just as she’d looked on the day she came by his doorstep. He waited a little longer for the image to come round again, studying the pictures that came and went, and saw Saul there – paler and fatter in a white shirt and tie with hair. He looked so similar to Saul, but he wasn’t sure... and then he saw Lynn again, radiant and smiling under a pile of bright, curly hair and with her green eyes. Beneath her image was the name of the missing person: Michal Rafael.

He sat down in the corner and thought. Lynn was Michal. There was no doubt about it now. Both she and Saul were missing persons. What was the connection between them? Why did they both come to the Uprooted Camp? Obviously to escape the police. Was Lynn lying to him about her identity? It seemed to him that she was honest. Until then, his heart had always known the truth. Maybe she was just a supreme actress and an accomplished liar?

He straightened up, a decision coming to fruition in his heart: He decided to play the game. Even if she was missing and not wanted, even if she was aware of her identity or not, he wouldn’t give up on her.
Let the events happen as they were intended to… I’m not turning her in to the police.
In Eilat, everyone had something to hide. If Lynn, or Michal, whatever, chose to leave the past behind her, he respected that. He wanted her, wanted her as he’d never wanted any woman, and he had great patience. He hoped she would open up to him one day. In the meantime, he had to worry about saving her from the hands of that crook, Saul. Handing him over to the police meant giving up Michal as well, for she was, apparently, cooperating with him.

When Dave came out of the station house, lost in thought, he didn’t notice a man standing in the crowd outside, looking at him. He was wearing a baseball cap and shorts and looked like any other tourist. Once Dave disappeared around the corner, the man got out his phone and dialed.

“He was here at the police station,” he said. “Green light.”

After dinner, Dave went to have a beer with Maurice, and Lynn went down to the beach. Following a day of hard work, she decided to stretch herself by walking fast. When she reached the dock, she spotted dark figures moving around Dave’s boat. Lynn crouched down beside a pile of nets and watched. Two unfamiliar people fixed something to the bottom of Dave’s boat, and then clicked on what looked like a remote control in the hands of one of them. The red light on the remote flashed as did the LED on the package attached to the boat. The light went out immediately, and the two men, dressed in dark clothing and caps, moved away.

One of them muttered while walking despondently, “That’s for ratting on us to the police, you piece of shit!”

Lynn ran home to alert Dave, but he had yet to return. She decided to take an extra measure of caution. She walked around the outside of the trailer to make sure it was secure and saw a window open about halfway. Without going inside, she peered through the window, but couldn’t see anything. Then she saw that someone had thrown blankets and nets together to create a tall stack next to the refrigerator compound. She climbed to the top of the stack and could see straight into Dave’s room. With the window open, she could see his bed or rather the headboard.

She waited for Dave at a distance from the trailer. She identified him by his steps from afar and ran to meet him. “Don’t go home, Dave. I have to talk to you.” She pulled him in between other trailers, looked around nervously, and crouched down.