Hill of Secrets: An Israeli Jewish mystery novel (16 page)

"Well…what did he say? How did he feel?"

"Horrible. He was very uncomfortable. We're a very caring, tight knit family and this disengagement was hard for all of us. On more than one occasion, he tried to sneak the kids over to our house and we stopped him. Children are too innocent, they would have told Hanni and all hell would have broken loose. He was pained for the children - they missed us and didn't understand why they didn't visit us anymore."

"So, you hadn't aided Meir and Hanni financially for a year-and-a-half."

"Right."

"Are you one hundred percent sure that Sarah also stuck to this and didn't sneak them money?"

"One hundred percent—we have joint bank accounts and I know about every shekel that is withdrawn."

"So how did they manage in the last year and a half? Did they start being more calculated?"

"I doubt it."

"Why do you think so? You haven't been as close to them as you were."

"We weren't completely disconnected. Although Hanni went on not working and Meir was still working at the bank, they didn't exactly live modestly. Last August for example, they flew to Holland with Ariel and Galit. When Noa was born they threw her a lavish
brita
[naming celebration]. Simply raising a baby entails a lot of expenses."

"So maybe Hanni's parents helped them?"

"I imagine they did, though Hanni's parents didn't have the same means as ours—they're both pensioners."

"So do you believe their money worries could lead Meir to get up one morning, kill them all and commit suicide?"

"I really have no idea. Maybe he really was badly in debt… that sounds like madness to me. I raised and educated that boy. I didn't educate him to be a murderer. I didn't educate him to any sort of violence. I understand all of the evidence is against my child, and I'm trying to cope with reality, but it's difficult for me. I'll admit, I can't stop thinking the killer could have been someone from outside the family. Maybe he got in trouble with the gray market and someone took his revenge?"

Since we’d been through the financial information we had, we had no doubt that there was no criminal factor involved. I planned to recheck the financial details so I decided there was no harm in letting this miserable man go on dreaming.

"If you’d known he was in such an extreme state, would you have given him money?"

"Is there any doubt in your mind? I’d give everything in my possession for all of them to be back."

"And do you think he knew that?"

"I really don't know.  I hope he knew that, after all, we’re his parents and if there were very serious problems—a matter of life and death—we were still here for him, despite all of the past problems."

I wondered. Maybe this wasn't financial hardship. True, the parents cut off their support, but children of wealthy parents know that bottom line, when you reach the point of no return, mom and dad are there for them.

"Are we done?"

"One more question: did you know Meir had a postbox?"

"The kind they have at the post office?"

"Right."

"No, I didn't know."

"Can you think what would cause him to open one of those post boxes?"

"Maybe he’d started working independently?"

"You don't know if he became self-employed?"

"As I told you, our contact wasn't very steady."

"According to the information I have, he wasn't self-employed. Do you see any reason for him to open a post box?"

Natan shook his head. “No, I really don't," he said.

*

When I got in the car I called Riki.

"Riki?"

"Hadas?" she asked in her friendly voice.

"Yes, do me a favor; I don't have a phone number on me and I'm already on my way home."

"What do you need?"

"Can you call Mrs. Aviva Levin?"

"Hanni Levin's mother?"

"That's right - to schedule another interrogation with me at the station."

"When?"

"As soon as possible."

It was time for Mrs. Levin to stop hiding things. It was so important to her to be interviewed a few days ago, yet she didn't say one word to me about the estrangement between her daughter and her in-laws.

Tuesday, 5.26.2009

"I'm really sorry, there's nothing here." Amos passed me the bag of evidence holding the three memory sticks and the cell phone that Shachar later found in Meir's desk.

"Are you certain?"

Amos seemed a bit insulted by my question. "There’s no such thing as certain. If you format a digital appliance there's always a chance that we'll never manage to restore the data that was erased, but with a pretty high level of certainty I can tell you that there was nothing here but family pictures and work data."

"And what about the cell phone?"

"There was almost nothing there, but bear in mind it's a new phone."

"You mean it's very advanced?"

Amos laughed. "I mean, it was taken out of the box about three months ago. Meir's old phone was lost. There’s almost nothing on the new one."

I smiled awkwardly and returned to my office. A short conversation with Shachar revealed his investigation failed to reveal anything new. Meir was a devoted worker and a pretty discreet guy. His co-workers hardly knew anything about his private life, as he didn't talk a lot about personal matters. All the accounts Meir was involved with were completely Kosher, without any financial problems or suspicion of criminal activity. He hadn't finished interviewing everyone he wanted to and looking through all of the necessary material, but he estimated that his investigation wouldn't reap many rewards.

The conversation with Meir's parents still echoed in my mind. There was a deep and serious rift in the family. Meir and Hanni were used to enjoying the support of Meir's parents and when it stopped, it lit the fuse of the bomb that exploded last week.

Meir and Hanni fanatically guarded their private life. No one knew that their financial situation was so bad, including Hanni's parents; no one knew their son needed therapy. There was something very rotten in Meir and Hanni's home, but instead of dealing with the problem, they kept sweeping everything under the rug. The most important thing was that no one should know.

The radio in my room was on. The sequence of songs was replaced by a short commercial break. A credit card company was offering a loan to anyone who wanted it, with no security, for any purpose. Practically America. How easily the banks gave credit… no wonder so many households were in debt. If someone was giving it away, we'd take it. An overdraft had become a status symbol. No one wanted to be left behind.

We all treated our financial issues as if they were the country's nuclear secrets. On one hand, everybody was curious to know how much money their friends were making and on the other hand, they fanatically safeguarded the secrecy of their own private financial information. People could tell their friends their deepest secrets, but not reveal their salary.

It reminded me of Tali, the wife of Yinon's friend. She was an accountant in a medium sized high-tech company. She enjoyed a right that few get to enjoy. She knew how much other people were paid because she took care of the payroll. She claimed she'd rather not know. Everybody was dying to know how much their friends were making, but really there was no joy in such knowledge, which can only cause bitterness.

She claimed it took years for those preparing the paychecks, especially if they were also doing their own, to stop comparing themselves to others. A salary is a very, very simplistic but efficient tool with which to rate people. If you're in demand you'll get x and if you're less in demand you'll get less than x. The problem is that, in reality, it often occurs that quality people get paid less than those who are less qualified. She claims that, just as everyone thinks, those who know to demand more also get more, and sometimes there's no relation between how high the salary is and how efficient the worker is.

I knew that for the Danilowitz family it was a very sensitive issue. I decided to thoroughly check Hanni and Meir's bank accounts. The bank manager and Meir's parents told me that in the past there’d been constant support coming from Natan and Sarah, but the bank manager said round sums were still being deposited in the account. It was clear to me that Meir was blackmailing someone. But who? Over what? And, no less importantly, for how much?

I spread out the bank statements and started rummaging through the numbers.

Throughout the entire period I checked, the Danilowitz family lived on their overdraft and a cycle of loans. In October 2007 there was the loan taken out to pay for Hanni's car, the loan that put an end to the support from Meir's parents and began Hanni's lock out. Up to that month there were quite a few cash deposits from Meir's parents' account.

From the month the car was purchased, the cash deposits from Natan and Sarah's account stopped. On August 12
th
2008, a deposit was made of 15,000 shekels in cash to the account. It was the first deposit of a round sum since September 2007. Meir received this sum from someone other than his parents.

Who?

The cash deposits continued and apart from the first deposit, a few more deposits were made to the account with an overall sum of 145,000 thousand shekels, all of them deposited in round sums.

These were clearly not gray market amounts. From the gray market you take one big sum, not numerous, relatively small ones. Despite its stigma, money from the gray market isn't exchanged in cash envelopes, but in a regular bank transfer.

I stared at the negative balance of the account which almost never reached zero. How does a bank allow people to live like this? I think every adult person, of sound mind and body is responsible for his own actions, but still, it's hard to ignore the fact that the bank enabled Meir and Hanni to get credit which they couldn't pay back. A bank is a store for money. Just like I couldn't walk into a supermarket, load a cart full of goods and leave, so a bank could not allow people to take credit if there's no way of paying it back.

On the day of their death, Meir and Hanni had loans and overdrafts totaling almost 2,150,000 shekels.

How could a family of five get into this kind of debt? The bank sheets showed me general earning and spending. I knew a great deal of the spending was actually paying off loans, but the family's monthly consumption was very high, disproportionate to the couple's earning ability. The credit card company prepared a report for me dividing the expenses by category of business.

The fact that the couple was up to their neck in loans didn't stop them (apparently Hanni) from buying clothes for thousands of shekels each month. I thought to myself that that was my
annual
clothes budget. There were many expenses on restaurants and cafés. Twice a year there were vacation expenses in Israel or abroad (including the family trip to Holland in August 2008), substantial payments to toy and gift stores and, of course, electricity bills, tax payments, and grocery shopping.

After hours of surveying and analyzing the bank accounts, I felt like my brain was about to explode. I tried to understand how I’d managed to sit in an office for all those years and go through exhausting purchasing agreements and couldn't believe I was able to.

I went out to get something to eat and when I returned, Riki told me that Meirav, Meir's sister called the station and asked when she needed to come in. Her parents probably told her that I wanted to speak to her as well. I called her and, to my surprise, she agreed to come to the station immediately.

Less than an hour later she was sitting across from me in the interrogation room.

From the first second I saw her, I knew I liked her. She reminded me of my sister Shira. Not in appearance—Shira was a short, chubby girl, dressed in "comfortable" clothes, as she liked to describe them. Meirav was tall, good-looking and immaculately dressed. They both have an inner charm that works great on me. Just like my sister, Meirav also seemed like an easygoing, direct person. They both had kind eyes, a calming smile and dimples that graced their cheeks whenever they smiled. I wanted her to invite me to her kitchen for schnitzels and mashed potatoes.

Meirav told me that always loved physical activity, so when she finished her year of service she decided to study an unusual profession for girls from religious households—physical education and personal training at Wingate College. After she got married and had two boys she decided to change courses, enrolled for a Master's in Business Management and was now the manager and part-owner of a chain of fitness centers.

"Meir was almost like a son to me," she smiled longingly, a tear sparkling in the corner of her eye. "I was eight when he was born, and from that moment I was crazy about him. He was an amazingly beautiful boy. It was torture not to hug and kiss him."

"Was he a spoiled child?"

"He was coddled, but he wasn't spoiled. He was always considerate towards my parents, never thought he deserved any special treatment. He served in a combat unit and was an officer—it's not exactly what a spoiled person does."

"Was he a violent child?"

"The complete opposite; he was very kind and gentle. The only thing that comes to mind is that sometimes he’d store anger and tensions inside and show nothing and then suddenly explode, with no warning and with no proportion to the specific event."

"Do you remember one of these occasions?"

She thought about it for a few seconds. "I can't think of something from recent years. I remember one occasion when he was in tenth or eleventh grade. He was a guide in Bnei Akivah. There was an organizational Shabbat—it's a Shabbat
when an age group is raised a level and there are shows and torch processions," she explained to me without knowing that I had taken part in countless organizational Shabbats.

"In short, most of the other guides blew it off and all of the load fell on him. He took everything on himself. In the end, it was a great event for the kids, all of the guides were happy and only Meir was exhausted. He had a big math test at the time and he failed it. A month later he had to redo the test.

“It happened to fall on Chanuka and the other guide went on a vacation abroad with his parents. He didn't say anything to Meir and again, all of the load fell on him. When the branch coordinator told him that he had to be in charge of the activity on Shabbat because there were no other guides, he almost broke a chair in his rage. At that moment, there were young kids in the branch who witnessed Meir's outburst of rage and I understood some parents demanded Meir be expelled from the branch."

"Did that happen?"

"No, everything calmed down."

"Did your parents tell you there was a rift between them and Meir?"

"Of course. It was the main topic of our conversations in the last year."

"Tell me a little bit about this rift."

"Since Meir and Hanni got married, my parents helped them out. Financially, I mean. Don't get me wrong, it’s really not something that unusual or special. In our circles it's very common, especially because we marry very young and there's still no real income. They helped my sister and myself out too, but as they say: there’s no such thing as a free lunch, and at some point everybody gets on their feet and gets by without help from their parents. They occasionally give something, but it's not really support, but more of a gift.

“With Meir and Hanni, it wasn't like that. The support never stopped. This also wasn't a rarity; I hear about quite a few adult children who are supported by their parents, but it's certainly not accepted in every household. My parents are very wealthy people and maybe in wealthy families it's more acceptable, but my parents, in principle, thought it unhealthy and educationally wrong to support adult, educated people."

"And yet, they did."

"They really had no choice. I don't know all the details. I don't think they gave them a permanent, monthly stipend, like other parents do, but transferred them money by demand."

"Right," I observed.

"Don't get me wrong, I'm all for parents supporting their children. Any kind of support. There's something very Israeli or Jewish about it. I don't think there's this amount of family involvement in their adult children's lives in other western countries. In the United States the relationship between family members—even immediate family—can come down to as little as a greeting card on holidays, but I think Hanni thought she was marrying an open bank account. She saw and heard around her, or thought she saw and heard, that wealthy people financially support their adult offspring and thought that's what they should do for her."

"How do you know that's what she thought?"

"Out of everyone in our family, I think I had the least bad relationship with her. Honestly, it didn't come from me - she sought me out. I don't know if she was really interested in me, or just felt the need to compare herself to me."

"Go on."

"It started with their wedding. When they got married, she really involved me with the preparations, like my opinion mattered to her. She said I was like the sister she never had."

"But Meir has another sister - she didn't connect with her?"

"There was no great love there. My sister, Michal, is a very quiet and humble woman; I'm more bubbly and extroverted, like Hanni. Hanni also didn't like the fact that David, Michal's husband, works for my father's company in a job she thought Meir should have. Soon after the wedding, she was already pregnant and Ariel was born less than a year after they were married. In this matter she also really valued my opinion.