The door of the bedside cabinet had a handle the size and shape of a small mushroom. Dust powdered it. Apparently, the visitor had found what they were looking for and had no need to check the cabinet. I pulled open the door and found myself staring at a pack of condoms; a glass vial of perfume; a pair of fat, partially melted candles; a pack of cigarettes; a box of long matches; and a well-thumbed English paperback with a cover that suggested a risqué plot.
I riffled through the pages of the paperback. They crinkled and spewed a dry papery scent. The pages weren't yellowed though. This was the sort of book one read in the privacy of one's home, not on a park bench on a sunny day. It was a stark contrast to the books Moria had kept in her living room, and the only book in a language other than Hebrew.
The perfume had an alluring flowery scent. Nothing discreet or subtle about it. Sima Vaaknin sometimes wore the same perfume or one very similar. I picked up the pack of condoms—open and near depleted—and wondered whom Moria had worn the perfume for, for whom she had bought the condoms. Was it a single man or several? Was the person mentioned in her suicide note her lover? Or was he her client?
Thinking about this, and about Sima, brought back the memory of Gafni exiting her building, floating high on the cloud of his recent debauchery. Gritting my teeth, I slammed the cabinet door shut.
I stood unmoving in the middle of the bedroom and allowed the cold silence of the lifeless apartment to wrap around me like a shroud. Up until a few minutes ago, what little I'd known of Moria Gafni had been nothing but surface details. Now, a deeper and more vivid picture was forming.
She had led an active sex life. She had loved to dream and fantasize. She had been a dedicated nurse. She had healed children. She had devoted her life to doing good. Yet her suicide note hinted at a bad deed she had done, had been made to do, and that had led her to choose death. What could it have been? Was it whatever had caused the rift with her father? Or was it something more recent?
Hungry for answers, I let my gaze roam around the room—skating over the white walls, the closed window, the dresser with its silver-screen souvenirs and grateful letters, the closet with its orphaned clothes—and saw nothing that hinted at the solution to the mystery. Only when my eyes completed their circumnavigation and returned to the bedside cabinet did I pause and cock my head. A sudden suspicion that something wasn't right began niggling at me.
I opened the cabinet again, picked up the paperback, frowned at it. Again I thought how different it was to the other books in the apartment. But that wasn't the only thing that was off. The rest of the items in the cabinet—the condoms, the perfume, the candles, they were all a bit too much. Like a story told in excessive detail or the way a mannequin can look unnervingly fake precisely because it is too perfect. Some lies are like that. They're like a set piece: nothing out of place, everything exactly right. Too much so.
Then it struck me that a good way to look like you've got nothing to hide is to appear to be a person who is unabashed when most people would be. Like an unmarried woman who keeps condoms by her bed where they can easily be found. And also that the best place to hide something is right next to a display of openness so stark that it allays any suspicion of concealment.
A man searching this bedroom would open this cabinet and get an instant, clear picture of who Moria Gafni was—a promiscuous woman and proud of it. He would sneer, or let loose a derisive comment, or imagine how it would feel to be in her bed. But he would not look too closely at the cabinet, figuring he had already seen everything there was to see.
And maybe that was the intended effect. Maybe there was something more to be found, and right there.
With a spark of excitement, I examined each item in the cabinet in turn and found nothing new. I ran my hand over the surface, top, bottom, and sides. Just wood, a little grainy to the touch.
Then, when I had just about decided I was the victim of wishful thinking, my gaze latched onto the screws at the corners of the cabinet. I tugged on it, but it was bolted tight. Earlier, in one of the kitchen drawers, I'd seen a number of tools, including a screwdriver. I got it and loosened the screws so that the only thing keeping the cabinet from falling was my grip. I tossed the screwdriver on the bed and lowered the cabinet onto the floor.
Then I looked at the section of wall behind it and felt my jaw drop.
I saw a pistol. Black and menacing as a dense forest on a moonless night. Lying like a forgotten relic in a small cavity that had been excavated in the wall. Beside the gun lay two magazines. The bullets nestled within them glinted like the mischievous smile of a child whose secret had been exposed.
The manufacturer's name—COLT—was embossed on the grip in big letters. I knew the model. A Colt Auto Pocket, a .25 caliber. A small pistol meant to be carried in a pocket or a purse. No hammer, so nothing would snag when you pulled it out. The barrel was short, which would lower accuracy, but at close range, it could kill as effectively as any instrument of death, provided the shooter had a steady hand. Such as the hand of the woman who'd penned the suicide note?
For a moment, I stared dumbfounded at the weapon, trying to wrap my mind around it being in Moria Gafni's possession. What would a nurse be doing with a pistol? Why would she keep it hidden? And why, once she had determined to kill herself, did she elect to swallow an overdose of pills in lieu of blowing her brains out?
I was so engrossed with these questions that I failed to hear the apartment door squeak open, and only realized that I was no longer alone on the premises when heavy footfalls sounded from the living room. Pulse quickening, I moved fast and was at the doorway to the bedroom in time to see the man turn around from the bathroom, into which he had poked his head.
He was a big man, six feet tall and wide across the shoulders and chest. He had on workman's pants and a thick woolen shirt that stretched taut over his bulky torso. The hands protruding from the ends of his sleeves were hairy and knotty and balled into fists the size of cannonballs. He was swarthy and rough-faced and was giving me a scowl so fierce that his heavy eyebrows nearly collided above his bulging nose.
A burglar? I thought for a second, but then I noticed his boots. They were caked with mud. One mystery solved.
"You son of a bitch," he growled, slicing the distance between us, and I could tell he had just one thing on his mind. I would have stepped back from the bedroom doorway, but I didn't want him to see the hole in the wall and what was in it.
I wished I had the gun in my hand. I couldn't see how this would end peacefully without it. Even worse, being in the doorway meant my range of motion was limited; without being able to fully swing my arms, I couldn't throw a proper punch. The man suffered no such handicap. He pulled his right arm back and launched a sweeping roundhouse that might have taken my head clean off if it connected. Luckily, he wasn't quick, and I ducked under his swing. I could feel the air splitting as his fist sailed a couple of inches above my head.
Then came a solid thump followed by a loud howl of pain. The man stumbled backward, clutching his right hand in his left, his ugly face a mask of agony. A sideways glance showed me what had happened. A fist-sized crater marked the door jamb about the height of my head. Cracks spread from the crater like fissures in dry earth.
So much for my lamenting the fact that I was standing in a doorway. I couldn't have chosen a better position.
The man was breathing hard and moaning, but he wasn't out of commission yet. The bastard was actually flexing his fingers, testing them. He must have had steel for bones.
Before he could recover further, I went at him, giving him a quick one-two punch right in the middle of his big belly. My bruised knuckles screamed, but it was worse for the other guy. The blows knocked his breath out and dropped him to his knees. I shoved him hard, toppling him to the floor, his head thumping on the tiles. He sprawled there, dazed and wheezing, cheeks blotched by lack of oxygen.
I thought about kicking him for good measure but managed to hold myself back. Instead, I went into the bedroom and put the gun in my pocket. I considered shoving it in his face just to scare the daylights out of him, but then decided a softer approach might prove better. Stepping around his gasping form, I went to the kitchen and filled a glass with water. By the time I returned to the living room, he was on hands and knees, his forehead damp with sweat despite the cold, looking up at me with a mixture of fury and wariness.
"Drink this," I said, handing him the glass. And when he didn't move, "Go on. You could use some cooling down."
He took the glass and drained it in one quick gulp. His breathing was still accelerated, but not by all that much. He was a tough one, that was for sure. I put a hand on the gun, just in case.
"Are you going to behave, big guy?"
He glared at me, and his fingers tightened around the glass, like he was about to throw it in my face.
"Don't even think about it," I said. "Put the glass down, or I'll kick your teeth in."
He hesitated, and I could see the calculation in his eyes, trying to decide who'd be quicker, me or him. He came to the right decision and set the glass on the floor.
"What's your name?" I asked.
"Why should I tell you?" His tone was belligerent and sulky. He wasn't used to being bested in a physical fight, and he had a bad opinion of me to begin with.
I said, "It will take me no more than five minutes to find out, you know. One of your neighbors will tell me. You live on the second floor, right? Closest door to the stairs?"
His eyes grew wide. He was wondering how I knew where he lived, and what it meant.
I pointed at his muddied boots. "It wasn't that difficult to figure out. You left a trail of mud across the lobby and all the way to your door. A little inconsiderate, if you ask me."
"I didn't notice," he said, and I could hardly believe it, but he actually sounded embarrassed. This from a guy who tried to clock me before I could get a word in.
"How did you get in here?" I asked.
