Authors: Elmore Leonard
I've been living here two and a half years, spendin
g something like twenty thousand lira a month, thi s guy comes once or twice a year, you want to giv e my suite to some State Department flunkies? Fucking freeloaders?' I said, 'Mr. Fink, is this the worldrenowned King David Hotel or a Howard Johnson's Motor Lodge?' I had a Secret Servic e man in the room all the time Kissinger was here , but I stayed."
"I was in the lobby, over there by the desk,"
Davis said. "Everybody's standing at attention, al
l the officials and dignitaries. Kissinger came in wit h Rabin's military adjutant and some of his aides. H
e stood there looking around. Just for a moment i t was very quiet. And right then, in the silence, somebody let a fart."
"Come on--"
"That's my King David Hotel story."
"I bet I know who it was," Rosen said. "Yo
u come all the way to Jerusalem to tell me your Kin g David Hotel story?"
"No, I wanted to ask you something," Davi
s said. "How come you haven't run? Left the country?"
"I would, but I don't have my passport," Rose
n said.
"You lost it?"
"In a way. I know where it is, who's got it, bu
t I'm having a little trouble locating the person."
"Go to the embassy, tell them you lost it."
"If I have to. I'll wait and see."
Davis was silent.
"You came all the way here to ask me that? Yo
u could've phoned."
"I came to make a suggestion," Davis said.
"Something you might consider."
"Well, I'm certainly open to suggestions," Rose
n said. "About all I can see to do right now is get i n bed and pull the covers over my head."
"Did you call your lawyer?"
"We had a nice talk. I told him what happene
d and he said, 'See?' He said now they'd be comin g back and hitting on him for not letting them kno w I called. I said, Mel, tell them who you work for , maybe they'll understand. Mel was very upset. I s aid shit, Mel, leave the money in the hotel safe an d go home. Tell Shapira, the manager of the Pal, tha t I'll pick it up sometime. But he said no, he wa s gonna stick it out till I got the money. He said, but I w ouldn't be able to come near the hotel withou t them seeing me." Rosen nodded, looking at Davis.
"I know what you're gonna say and I couldn't hel
p thinking the same thing. He doesn't want it out o f his hands. He finds out I'm dead, the money's his.
He goes home and tells them he paid me the day before I was shot. Christ. I don't know--you want a drink?"
"Not right now, unless you want one," Davi
s said.
"No, I don't care."
"You say your lawyer's nervous. What if they g
o see him again?" Davis said. "Rashad and . . . whoever they are."
"He's going to tell them what he comes all th
e way to Israel to tell me in person and ends u p telling me over the phone," Rosen said. "I'm n o longer president of my fucking company. That'
s what he tells me. They voted me out, these cluck s on the board, guys I brought in. Let 'em buy a piec e of the business. Mel says after three years of carrying me, they voted me a final payment, the tw o hundred grand and that's it, for my stock, everything. I can't bring suit because I'm not there. Two hundred grand, the fucking company's writing a hundred million dollars worth of home mortgage s a year. . . ."
"That's what you're in, the mortgage business?"
"Mortgage broker," Rosen said. "We secur
e government-approved mortgages, usually on lowcost housing around Detroit, and sell them to outof-state banks at one, one and a quarter percent."
"I don't understand anything about that," Davi
s said. "I never owned a home."
"It's paperwork. You hire bookkeepers an
d lawyers like Mel, the sonofabitch. He's gonna tel l them--the guys you were shooting at--that he contacted me, yes, to tell me I'm out of the business, that's all. So he doesn't have anything more to d o with me."
"He explained a little to me about you testifyin
g against somebody in court," Davis said. "But I d idn't understand much of that either."
"Well, I was doing some business with a gu
y named Harry Manza. He was developing land, putting up these twenty-nine condominiums, you ever read American newspapers you've seen the ads , places with names like Apple Creek. There isn't a fucking apple tree in ten miles. Harry was also int o a lot of other things, the federal government tryin g to nail him for a long time--years."
"This guy," Davis said, "he was in the Mafia?"
"I don't know, that's a word. You remember A
l Rosen, you might've seen Harry Manza on TV
a bout the same time, the Kefauver Committee, investigating organized crime."
"I think so, but I don't recall the name Harr
y Manza."
"Well, I knew something about Harry and abou
t a guy that worked for him, Gene Valenzuela, wh o was one of the guys you were shooting at."
"You saw him in the car?"
"No, but Mel said it was Val came to see him.
He's here to do the job on account of I did a job o
n him. At that time, it was three and a half years ago , the Justice Department wanted to get me on a ver y minor fraud technicality, but it was the kind o f thing could ruin me, put me out of business. They'
d drop the indictment, they said, if I'd let them wir e me with a bug so they could listen to my luncheo n conversations with Harry. You know what that'
s like, fucking wires taped on you, battery in you r pocket? You're waiting for him to say, 'What's tha t sticking out of your shirt?' You say, 'Oh, it's m y new hearing aid.' We'd have lunch, I couldn't eve n finish a plate of cottage cheese. Also, they wante d me to tell a grand jury what I knew about Harr y and Val. They swore, the Justice Department, tha t the two guys would be put away practically forever." Rosen shrugged. "They never even came to trial."
"You were taking a chance," Davis said.
"Sure, I was taking a chance," Rosen said, "but I
w as highly motivated, I'll tell you. This guy, Harr y Manza, had been wanting to buy a piece of m y company. My associates said fine, because Harr y scared the shit out of them. I said no fucking wa y I'm letting him in, I'll go out of business first. It wa s only a matter of time, I'm convinced, he would'v e had me killed."
"How do you know?"
"Because I saw it happen. There was a movingand-storage company Harry wanted to buy into where the owner was killed in an explosion, in hi s warehouse. Harry played golf with the guy. He'
d say to me, 'See, a man tried to do it all himself instead of cutting the pie. It can kill him.' Things like that. But never any reference to it when I was wearing the bug."
"That's what the police wanted him for?"
"The Justice Department, yes, first-degree murder, no fooling around, man, and I was gonna be their star witness. But as I said, after talking to th e grand jury and all--Harry and Val knowing abou t it--they were never indicted. The only good thin g that came out of it, Harry had a stroke and is practically bedridden. Val, a little later, served a fe w months for bribery, getting an FHA appraiser laid , some very minor rap, and now Val's in Israel for th e shooting season."
"Gene Valenzuela, Kamal Rashad," Davis said.
"How many others?"
"One I'm sure of," Rosen said. "Val had somebody with him when he saw Mel, but it wasn't the colored guy."
"Your lawyer said your car was blown up."
"That's right. Killed a guy from the gas station."
"And you say this other one, in the warehouse
, was killed in an explosion."
"Yeah, it could be Val's got a dynamite ma
n with him," Rosen said. "Mel said he was a youn g guy."
"They learn young in the war," Davis said.
"I keep forgetting to ask you," Rosen said, "i
f you hit anybody."
Davis shook his head. "It wasn't what I had i
n mind. One thing surprised me a little. Nobody returned fire."
"They wouldn't have come without guns,"
Rosen said, "if that's what you're thinking."
"No, I guess by the time they figured out where I
w as, they had to get out," Davis said. "No w they've got to start looking for you again. I imagin e they'll go see your lawyer and ask him about it first.
There's Tali--maybe Tali should stay out of sigh
t for a while. What I'm saying is, they've got to tal k to somebody to find out your habits, where you'v e been living. . . . ."
"Go on," Rosen said.
". . . Where you're likely to be. Say they hir
e somebody to watch the airport. Or pay somebod y at TWA and El Al to let them know if you're leaving. They don't know you lost your passport."
"No."
"They might know about the money, though.
Your lawyer could tell them. So they could figure t
o use it as bait."
"Maybe. Shit, I don't know." Rosen paused.
"You said you had a suggestion."
"How about if you called up this guy Val something and told him to get fucked?" Davis said.
"That's your suggestion?"
"Call him up, see if you can reason with him."
"Reason with him about what? Talk him out o
f it? This isn't an emotional thing with him, it's a score. And scores you settle."
"Well, this idea I've been thinking about," Davi
s said, "you may not feel comfortable with it, but I b elieve it could work."
Rosen hesitated, running a few options throug
h his head, trying to anticipate the idea. "You'r e thinking, I can't reason with Val but maybe I coul d make a deal with him."
"Unh-unh."
"Pay him off."
"No, I was thinking you could kill him," Davi
s said. "Turn it around, hit him before he hits you."
THE WOMAN FROM Allentown, Pennsylvania, abou
t sixty, said, "Christ, don't Jews drink? I walked al l the way down Ben Yehuda to Frishman and bac k Dizengolf. If it was New York there'd have bee n two hundred bars."
She told Mel, sitting next to him in the Pal Hote
l bar, that she was on the "We Are Here!" tour wit h a seventy-three-year-old woman named Doroth y who didn't drink or smoke and was always bitching and sniffing and fanning the air to rid it of cigarette fumes. The woman from Allentown told Mel she had eight grandchildren, that her husband wa s a steelworker at Bethlehem, and that she had foun d out recently her grandmother was illegitimate--
h onest to Christ--and her grandmother's fathe r had been a Jew. It had shaken her up to find out sh e had Jewish blood, she said, and she was over her e to learn something about the Jewish faith and see i f she could buy any of it.
It was a change from sitting in the room. Th
e bartender, Itzak, would say, "Yes, please, Mr.
Bondy," pouring Scotch, and serve up plates o
f olives, peanuts, and soft potato chips. The woma n from Allentown, on her third VO and Coke, said i f Dorothy didn't quit complaining about her smoking in the room, she was going to tell her to go fuck herself. Mel said to her, "You know who the pian o player looks like? Sadat." He got a kick out o f that, imagining Sadat moonlighting, flying ove r from Cairo each evening to play cocktail piano i n Tel Aviv. The woman from Allentown said, "Who'
s Sadat?"
When he got upstairs, Mel let himself into 823.
The adjoining room was dark, Tali asleep in th
e single bed next to the phone. She straightened as h e reached the bed. He could see her face and a bar e arm in the light from 823.
"I thought you were asleep."
"I was for a little while."
"You want me to get in with you?"
"No, I don't."
"I could've had a winner I was talking to at th
e bar, gorgeous broad. I came back to you." No response. "The Marine didn't come?" No. "Nobody called?" No one. "You want to just, uh, foo l around a little? . . . Well, if you change your mind."
Mel went into 823, undressed, and got into bed.
Maybe they had whores available. He should'v
e checked at the bar. He was pretty sure Tali wa s sleeping naked; or maybe she had just her pantie s on, skimpy little briefs. He imagined the doo r creaking and seeing her naked body in the ligh t from the window, Tali saying softly, with her cut e accent, "Can I come in with you, please, Mr.
Bondy?"
The lamp was on when he opened his eyes. I
t wasn't Tali. It was the Marine, wearing a white cap , looking down at him.
"What the hell do you want?"
"Mr. Rosen's money. He sent me."
Mel squirmed up against the headboard, pullin
g the cover with him.