The Alien Abduction Affair
By Larry Lefkowitz
Omar Tibi shook the dice in his hands and let them fall upon the shesh-besh board. Business was slow. Playing against himself was less satisfying than playing against an opponent, but he had learned over the years to be satisfied with what he could get. Maybe because of his line of work.
Tibi was a private investigator. His willing ear, his natural curiosity, his quick brain and no less quick mouth, would seem to guarantee success in his chosen profession. Yet he was a detective less for the money than for the escape from routine it afforded. At least theoretically – he discovered soon that it was no less routine than an office job, routine stake-outs on behalf of husbands hoping he would catch their wives with their lovers, or wives hoping he would catch their husbands. Worse than the routine clients were the clientless days marked by his upped consumption of Turkish coffee.
His office was in a building situated on a small street in Haifa. A room and a half on the fifth floor at the back. The half room was almost filled with two dark green filing cabinets. In the office proper were a desk and two easy chairs, in case he had the good fortune to have two clients at the same time. There were two little tables smack against the right arm of each chair for convenience in writing checks, though most of his clients paid in cash. Perhaps they were prompted by the sign on the wall bearing the Arabic proverb: “Time is made of gold.”
A knock on the door indicated that he had a client. "It's open," Tibi said, stamping his ‘interested look’ on his features.
She wore a spiffy grey leather suit matched incongruously with a scarlet scarf worn around her shoulders. What surprised him was the fact that she wasn’t panting, despite her not young age. He puffed for a good half-minute after the climb, and he did it every day.
Her skin was the color of burnished brass. Maybe she was some kind of health freak or maybe she had been locked in the Tel Aviv bus station for a week. Yet it was her eyes which held him. There was something arresting about those sharp and penetrating eyes. A few centuries earlier because of such eyes she would have been burned as a witch or elevated to a prophetess.
She stared at him for a good twenty seconds with those orbs, which did not flap the largely unflappable Tibi who, as a detective, had seen a lot.
While she appraised him, Tibi used the opportunity to do the same with regard to his client. She stood on a pair of very high-heeled shoes which in color almost matched her scarf. Streaks of silver coursed among the yellow hair covering her larger-than-normal head. On her elegant but faintly prehensile-looking fingers she wore numerous rings; she looked like a tourist who had just returned from her first visit to the Arab bazaar. One ring displayed a brilliantly scintillating blue stone of such purity and radiance that it twinkled like a star against the duller color of the metal. It had an almost hypnotic effect, but not such as to render Tibi incapable of bringing to bear his deductive skills: this client had money. Money and character. The second part of his appraisal he amended at her first words.
“My husband has been seized by aliens.”
Somewhere far off someone was working with a pneumatic drill. Somebody was perpetually tearing up Haifa’s streets. On Tibi’s desk, a limp cigarette smoldered in a "Hapoel Haifa" ashtray filled with the remains of even limper cigarettes. Ragged grey flakes of ash dotted the brown surface of the desk and papers that were spread upon it. Half the papers were there to impress clients. A window eight or nine inches open let in, in addition to the noises of the city, a current of air faintly scented with ammonia from one of Haifa’s polluting factories. Or maybe the ozone layer’s burst thought Tibi, who was given to cynical thinking, the result of his profession.
Before turning to the implications of the sentence that the woman had just uttered, Tibi noted that she spoke Hebrew which was a bit off; some kind of accent was present, but he could not place it. It wasn’t an Arabic accent.
Tibi rocked back on his chair. Too bad she didn’t choose a Jewish detective, he mused. But maybe she was afraid to, or maybe she thought Arabic politeness would be more receptive to her, ah, problem. He rejected the temptation to utter, Inshallah – ‘if Allah wills it’ and hope she would look for another investigator. “Have you gone to the police?”
“I have, young man,” she said immediately. “They have not been particularly helpful. They suggested I contact Missing Persons.”
“Missing Persons? They did not suspect – (he almost said “foul play”, sometimes Sherlock Holmes intervened in his cases when not wanted) – a crime?”
“They found nothing amiss.”
“And you are not satisfied?”
“I am here.”
So you are, and so am I, and so are we, thought Tibi, quoting somebody he could not place. Fingering the deep cleft of his narrow, prominent chin, he was thinking how best to get rid of her when she opened a leather purse which reminded him of the kind Scotsmen wore over kilts and took out ten two-hundred-shekel bills, which she placed, one by one, in a pile on his desk. “You are the one man in the world who can help me. I beg of you, Mr. Tibi, do what you can. Will you help me?”
“I will, madam,” said Tibi earnestly, trying not to gaze at the red bills lying so enticingly and so close, red as a Persian carpet, red as the shirts of Hapoel Haifa Football Club, red as the first of May banner in those years before capitalism took over. He suddenly remembered that the red flower the Jews called “the blood of the Maccabees” the Arabs called “the breasts of the virgin.” He thought it best to refrain from enlightening the woman who stood before him of the latter fact.
He held his hand palm up in a gesture for her to sit, which she did.
“Er, when did you last see your late – your husband?”
“Three days ago. Or more precisely, three nights. That was when they took him.”
“They?”
“The aliens. Or the alien. I only saw one, but there may have been more waiting outside.”
An outside job, Tibi reflected, but decided not to lay this humor on the woman. She did not seem an appreciator of humor, even in less trying circumstances.
Tibi glanced from the almost inhumanly clear grey eyes of the woman to the money. Ah, well, two thousand shekels is not to be sneezed at, he thought.
“Forgive me, but how did you know that your husband’s kidnappers were aliens?”
“If you saw a grey creature approximately a meter in height with a large head and small body standing before you, what would you conclude?”
Rumpelstiltskin mused Tibi, or Ben-Gurion, but what he said was, “I get your point. And this fact you reported to the police?”
Of course. They dismissed it.”
“The police are sometimes doubting Thomases.”
“Are you, Mister Tibi?”
She asked this in a tone which put Tibi on the defensive. He was actually hurt by her tone.
“Let us say, Mrs. . . .”
“Berman.”
“Mrs. Berman. I have learned mid the vicissitudes of life – because of the vicissitudes of life – to be open-minded. Did anyone else see this . . . creature?”
“Oh yes.”
“Ah, a witness.” He leaned forward to reach for a pen and a pad of paper.”
“My husband.”
“The missing same.”
“Yes.”
He put the pad and pencil back on the desk.
“Anyone else?” Tibi asked, hopefully, if doubtfully.
“No one else, Mr. Tibi. But I have other proof.”
“Go on.”
“I stabbed him.”
“Stabbed him! Who?”
“Not my husband. We were – are – dear to each other. The alien.”
“You stabbed him.”
“So I have already said. In self-defense. Or that of my husband.”
Any court would clear her – surely self-defense is permitted if the attacked is a woman and the attacker is an alien, even if only four feet tall.
“And what did you stab him with?” Tibi felt himself interested, if
doubtful of this increasingly singular tale.
“A letter opener. A Spanish one that I – we – purchased in Turkey. Anatolia, I believe it was.”
“You killed him – it.”
“Unfortunately, not. At once I felt myself turning numb – the creature’s doing, and lost consciousness. When I regained it, the creature, and more importantly, my husband, were gone.”
“And you told this to the police, too?”
“I did.”
Tibi sighed. “And what was their reaction?”
“They did not believe me.”
Tibi had been observing Mrs. Berman carefully, her face and her body language, but they revealed nothing. Now he was on his feet, pacing back and forth as much as his cubicle/office allowed. Inside his head thoughts stuck together like humus clumps in a falafel ball.
“May I see the knife?”
“The letter opener.”
“Sorry, I was thinking function. The letter opener.”
“Certainly. You are looking for bloodstains.”
“Yes . . . if the creature has blood.”
“Oh, it must. Or an equivalent,” she said, looking at him as if he were made of glass, as if she was looking through him. He felt as if he didn’t exist. Or if he existed, it was as a worm that a bird has just sighted.
“Or an equivalent,” mumbled Tibi. “After you, Mrs. Berman.” The aroma of the woman’s perfume wafted after her. A discrete perfume, different. It seemed almost to emanate from her body. Her shoes made a light, airy rustling sound on the floor as she walked, like a falafel bag blowing along a concrete sidewalk.
As soon as her back was turned, he scooped up the money, surprised by its crispness and newness as if just printed, crammed the bills into his wallet, and feeling as if he had just sullied the “shining bagel” which he pictured above his head when identifying himself with Simon Templar, “The Saint”, followed her out, on his way to Ibraham’s restaurant in sore need of a spicy musakhan to clear his head - pausing only to lock the door and gaze, as he did so often of late for reassurance, at the gilded letters on the glass:
Omar Tibi
Private Investigator
That afternoon, as he was about to leave the office to pay a visit to Mrs. Berman, the intended visitee suddenly appeared. “He’s back,” she announced.
Husband or alien, wondered Tibi in the interval which followed, before he asked, “Who is back?”
“My husband.”
“Alive?”
“Yes, if considerably shaken by his experience. He is resting at home. But otherwise, almost his old self.”
Tibi made a great effort not to reveal his relief. Now he could get out of this daffy case. Probably husband Berman had been engaged in a few days gambling in a casino on Cyrpus. Well, it will cost him, or his wife, the two thousand shekels.
“All’s well that ends well, Mrs. Berman,” chortled Berman. “It has been a privilege doing business with you.”
“Not so fast, Mr. Tibi, there are a few loose ends to unravel. Tomorrow at two in the afternoon will be comfortable for your visit? It will be worth your while.”
This last was an offer he could not refuse. And why refuse? If the Bermans wanted to pay him to listen to their summation, that was their affair. “Two will be fine. My best to Mr. Berman.”
Mr. Berman turned out to be a grey-haired man of approximately sixty, older than his wife and deferential to her. Like Hercule Poirot, he was short and his head was vaguely shaped like an egg. Upon it sat hair so thin it appeared to have been sifted through gauze. He could have used a pair of elevator-shoes, if they still made them. He probably wore spats with his pajamas, Tibi speculated. He was sitting in an easy chair in the living room looking, well, like a man who had just been kidnapped and released by an alien. Bemused relief seemed written on Mr. Berman’s features. His face was almost battleship grey in color, while his lips and the corners of his nostrils were tinged with a lighter shade of grey. He had the most evasive, infernal-looking pair of eyes that Tibi had ever seen lodged in a human head – if the head was human and not that of an Alien Emeritus. Despite Tibi’s attempts to forestall his getting out of the chair on their introduction, he stood up, shakenly, and approached Tibi with a cat-on-the-mantlepiece walk; his head wobbled with the effort. A weak handshake ensued; Tibi held back on the famous Tibi grip out of deference.
Mr. Grayson’s thumbs attracted Tibi’s attention. Each was curiously shaped, thin and narrow like an extra finger, with no curve in the first joint. Tibi glanced quickly at Mrs. Berman’s hands, folded in her lap as she sat in the other easy chair. They were covered with gloves. He wondered if this was the reason for the gloves. He tried to remember her hands from her first visit to his office. Then her rings had grabbed his attention, especially the one with the stone. Had that been its purpose? She fixed him with a stare that would have transformed a bowl of omba to permafrost, as if she could read his mind. It was almost a pleasure to turn to the male of the species.
“How are you, Mr. Berman?”
“Me. Not bad. Especially considering what I have been through.”
“And what have you been through?”
Mrs. Berman threw Tibi a sharp look. He attributed it to his query possibly evincing a certain doubt with respect to her version of events.
“Hell, Mr. Tibi. Hell – metaphorically speaking, of course. Being taken against your will to an alien ship to be scrutinized under a microscope – metaphorically speaking, is not a pleasant experience.”
So Tibi knew two things about Mr. Berman. One, he believed he had been kidnapped by an alien and then released. Two, he had a penchant for metaphorical speaking. Mr. Sherlock Holmes probably could have deduced a lot more from Mr. Berman’s appearance and behavior, but investigatory techniques, and temperaments, had changed. Tibi asked himself one question only: Was Mr. Berman lying or hallucinating?
“Sit down, Mr. Berman, and tell me about it – if Mrs. Berman agrees.”
Bayanboff wanted to catch her off guard. Maybe husband Berman would reveal something wife Berman did not want him to. Tibi didn’t know why he suspected Mrs. Berman of something, but he did. Maybe it was because she who had come to him with the story in the first place. Maybe because she seemed so sharp. And “tougher than stone,” according to the Arabic proverb. He no longer regarded her as a leather fashion model past her prime. Only her story (and apparently, that of her husband) was worthy of the Habima theater. But how to explain the bloodstain on the letter opener she had shown him, if it was a bloodstain?
“Yes, Chaim,” Mrs. Berman addressed her husband. “Recount to Mr. Tibi what happened.”
So husband Berman’s first name was Chaim. Tibi had a prejudice against the name Chaim; he once had a teacher named Chaim who criticized him for indifferent reciting when his turn came to recite. Now it was Chaim's turn to recite.
Mr. Berman’s eyes shifted as he tried to recall. Eyes of a dead grey color, like half-frozen water in a face of blotched grey dough. This guy was in sore need of a few days' sun on the beach somewhere, thought Tibi. Then again maybe the result would have been worse – like the Golem of Prague with a face-lift. Berman had his lip between his teeth and was worrying it like a puppy with the fringe of a rug.
“I was lying in bed just before going to sleep. Mrs. Berman was reading in bed next to me. I was almost asleep when I heard something. I opened my eyes and saw Mrs. Berman sitting up in bed, bracing herself with her two arms. She was looking in the direction of the window. Her face bore an expression of wonder. I turned to look at whatever had caused it. I saw a midget. A midget with an enhanced cranium. And skin the color of – I believe the formulation to be -- ‘battleship grey’. My first thought was: what is he doing here? It was immediately followed by a second. How did he get in? Before I could address him, my wife had picked up a letter opener from the table alongside the bed and lunged at the little man. My wife must have grasped before I did that the man was in fact an alien creature, possibly bent on harm. I am slower of action than my wife and still did not realize what was happening. Then I noticed her grow rigid and slump to the floor. At almost the same instant I felt myself paralyzed and I, too, lost consciousness, or almost so.”
Tibi noticed that Mr. Berman spoke slowly. He emphasized each word. The space between words was wider than normal. But there was a curious lack of emotion in what he said. “Only dimly was I aware of being transported somehow to a place -- I assume now their craft -- and subsequently undergoing examination. Apparently, they were measuring me and obtaining physiological data. I do not remember very much but I suppose that was their intention.”
The pulse in the lean, grey throat throbbed visibly and yet so slowly that it seemed hardly a pulse at all. The edges of the folded handkerchief in his breast pocket looked sharp enough to slice bread – or a neck. The neatness of his attire was such that Tibi believed a speck of dust would have caused him more pain than a bullet wound.
Through the window the golden light of the afternoon light entered, lighting up the room and giving an eerie golden cast to the faces of the Bermans. Tibi was silent. There were all kinds of being silent. He had learned the ropes of how to be silent. Or so he had thought until he came up against the Bermans. They did not seem intimidated by his silence.
“You have done very well, dear,” said Mrs. Berman when he had finished. She walked over and padded his hand.
“Thank you dear,” he smiled up at her. To Tibi the smile looked more like a grimace.
Tibi had listened carefully to Mr. Berman’s recitation for its content, also for its form. The latter was relevant to the question of whether he had been coached like a witness before testifying in court, by Mrs. Berman instead of a lawyer. Mrs. Berman appeared relieved at his telling, or did Tibi only imagine this? He swiveled on the sofa to face her. “And you noticed your husband’s return when he plopped down beside you in bed – or was so plopped by the alien?”
“Plopped? You do resort to quaint speech at times, Mr. Tibi.” Her look, however, indicated that she was more disturbed by his skepticism than by his phraseology. “Not ‘plopped’, as you so vividly put it,” she continued. “I was having a snack in the kitchen last night and when I returned, he was in bed.”
Tibi skipped the temptation to ask Mrs. Berman what the ‘snack’ consisted of. “Just like that?”
“Precisely like that.”
When Mrs. Berman was disturbed, she had a deliberate, rhythmical way of speaking which reminded Tibi of his great aunt. When she was making a point, she would repeatedly tap the tabletop with her glass for emphasis.
“What time was it?”
“Approximately nine o’clock.”
Their time or ours? Tibi refrained from asking. He paced slowly around the room for a few minutes before stopping and addressing them. “So you are both agreed on the events surrounding . . . the abduction.”
Both opened their mouths at the same instant in affirmation, as if by telepathy. It didn’t take the mathematical genius of a Professor Moriarity to put two and two together: they were of one mind, whatever was really going on here. Their agreement as to the events struck Tibi as having been uttered by two parrots.
Strange birds, he thought. What he said was, ”Very good. Well, I must be going.”
In his haste to mull over the situation in the more normal ambiance of his office, Tibi forgot even the promise of additional lucre Mrs. Berman had made the day before. Mrs. Berman had not. She handed him a bunch of bills. Another two though. Another brace of crisp, new notes to fill the void in his wallet. “A thousand would have been enough,” he said, taking the money.
“Not at all, Mr. Tibi,” she replied. "You have our thanks." She extended her gloved hand. He took it. She had a grip like an iceman’s tongs. He sensed he would never fully understand why this woman had come to him in the first place. The Alien Abduction Affair, as he dubbed the case, would remain a mystery. Yet he doubted that Philip Marlowe or even Sherlock Holmes could have succeeded any more in unraveling it than he did.
As he emerged from the Berman’s residence, a drop warm as a baby’s kiss fell on his head. A raindrop, his first thought. He squinted skywards. The sky was cloudless. A bird dropping, his second thought. “Maybe the Maltese Falcon,” he muttered, not particularly happy with this omen. He had had enough of birds for one day.
*
The stories, poetry, and humor of Larry Lefkowitz have been widely published. His story collection Enigmatic Tales is published by Fomite Press.