Listening In

Nancy Chapple

Word Count 1314

In the end, the German police couldn’t prove that Mika was laundering money. So they ceased the wiretap. But for three months, they recorded all calls he made or received on his cell phone. It was my job to translate his English to German.

Mika was a businessman with an Israeli passport who traveled frequently between Berlin and Los Angeles. Mika phoned Mustafa, a Qatari sheik for whom he’d shipped a Rolls Royce from London to LA, where it was pimped in buttery-soft leather upholstery and a hot pink exterior. Awaiting proof of ownership, US Customs had impounded the car.

“Everything you touch gets fucked up, ” Mustafa said petulantly,

“Hey, come on,” Mika answered. “I’ll call a lawyer I know in L.A. He’ll help you get it through customs.”

“My father says I’m not supposed to talk to you any more.”

“We’ve worked together for a long time. There’s gotta be a solution!”

From LA, Mika called Daniela, his Polish girlfriend in Berlin. She was 23. He told her he’d had a good day, and money would soon be rolling in. Rushing down a cold Berlin street, Daniela just said, “Mhhm.”

Changing tack, Mika asked: “And how was your day?”

“Fine,” Daniela said, in a small squeaky voice.

“Did you work?”

“Yes.”

“Were you at the university?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re still preparing your presentation?”

“Yeah, it’s a pretty complicated topic, you know!” Daniela bristled.

“OK, sure, I don’t know much about this university stuff,” said Mika. “I never went, you know.”

“I know,” she said, narrow-lipped.

“I missed you, Turtledove. Did you miss me?”

Berlin was silent.

“He often talks to his girlfriend,” I told the officer in charge.

“That’s less interesting. Just tell us the business stuff, not the personal life.”

But I was listening to each call. Business and personal life seemed so intertwined. Was that true for all of us?

Mika, 48, was short with a shiny bald head.

I was curious, and Google provided a couple of photos of him. But his name was not Mika. I don’t recall his real name. After all, this job took place some twelve or thirteen years ago.

Mika was kicking off a business selling handbags wholesale with a Turkish businessman. They called each other “Abu.” “Abu Two” did the legwork, running around the cold city, working his network.

From afar, Mika spurred him on. “Have you arranged the storefront at the Chinese market?”

“I’ve been there all morning, Abu. The container arrived last night.”

“We just need to get through these weeks. We’re just a little stretched for cash right now. Beautiful bags—they’ll sell really well! And the margin! But tell me: have you had any luck raising cash from your businessman friends?”

“Abu—you wouldn’t believe how many guys I went to see ... But everyone’s strapped. Somehow it’s the wrong time of month for a loan.”

Kicking off a business selling bags at a big markup—is that really so bad? This wiretap had to be approved by a judge … what did they actually suspect him of?

Mika’s 20-year old daughter Lily attended nursing school in California. He nudged: “It’s good money you can earn when you finish—eighteen, twenty bucks an hour! You’re definitely going back soon, aren’t you?”

“Dad, don’t say I’m going to be a nurse, it’s a nurse’s aide, you know?”

“Twenty dollars! Nothing to scoff at!”

“I don’t feel good. The doctor’s putting me on pills.” She named them.

“Oh shit, yeah. A friend of mine in Israel took that stuff for a long time. He’s doing pretty badly—wife, job, all gone to crap.”

The line went dead. Mika called her again.

“Why do you say stuff like that?” she whimpered.

“I’m just saying,” Mika’s voice was self-assured. “He’s been on it a long time. He’s never been able to shake it off.”

“I’m only going to take the pills for a few months. Until I’m well.”

It felt a bit off to be paid to capture that father-daughter conversation “for eternity.”

On each call with Daniela, Mika brought up New Year’s Eve: “We’ll do something together, right? After all, you’re my girlfriend!”

“Last New Year’s was complete crap. That’s not happening again.”

“So I’m flying all that way and you’re not even celebrating New Year’s with me?”

“You’re the one who chose when to visit.”

“And you won’t fly to Paris with me for a few days?”

“I’ve got too much to do here. I just want to spend the evening with my mother.”

“Until midnight, right? So I’ll pick you up at 12:30 and we can go to a club or something?”

Silence on Daniela’s end.

I heard him cajoling the women in his life, pushing them, bantering with them, just like he did with his “business partners.”

 On New Year’s Day, Mika called Mustafa. A woman picked up. “Can I talk to him?”

“Who are you?”

“This is Mika,” he said, “And who are you?” I heard him smiling.

“Mustafa’s in the shower. We got married last night.” A couple of women laughed uproariously.

“Oh really?” Mika laughed along.

The cops continued not to tell me what I was supposed to be looking for. Calls that they deemed—in fact, that I deemed—“less important,” they encouraged me to simply summarize, not transcribe word by word.

Mika rang up a lawyer friend in Florida: “I need your help!”

“What have you got yourself into this time?” she said, affection in her voice.

“I need you to file some papers for my bankruptcy. They don’t know all my property holdings—and they don’t need to. Can you backdate a couple documents, on law firm letterhead?”

“Honey, what’s up?”

“The Berlin police just hauled me in for questioning. They took me down four levels below ground. It reminded me of …”

“Wow, that must have been really ...”

“Those corridors, locking the double doors after we passed through them.”

“That must have really triggered …”

“Yeah, like fifteen years ago. For a measly bank transfer of 10,000 Euros!”

She sounded so affectionate. Was she just his lawyer, or did they have a love affair at some point?

Wait, why was I even pondering the question?

Lily drove to Las Vegas with a girlfriend. Bored after just a few hours, she wanted to head back to LA. She asked Mika over in Berlin to call her every hour to confirm she was on the right highway.

“Why can’t you call me when you need my help?”

“My phone battery’s low, you call me.” (Why, I wondered, should that make a difference?)

Evidently, Mika possessed a mental map of the highways between Las Vegas and Los Angeles. Five times, he set her straight.

Once she was home, Mika spoke directly: “In our family you can’t go with a schvartze. You know that.”

“I don’t see him anymore, I don’t answer his calls or anything!”

“Promise you will never see him again!”

Lily went on the defensive: “I had to lie to you guys for such a long time—that’s what made me sick!”

Mika imposed a time limit: “So you take two, three months off from nursing school, but then you’re going back.”

“Yes,” she said, meek again.

“And meantime you’ll look for some kinda job? I don’t want you just living off me.”

“Mhmm,” she said.

Mika was always trying to keep all the balls up in the air at once. Yet his girlfriend didn’t want him, his Mideastern client’s father warned about him. He wheedled a guy into setting up a business. His daughter felt pressured by him.

I couldn’t get him off my mind. If any of our calls were recorded, would we all sound like we were winging it through life? Wouldn’t it be weird to have someone looking at our every move so intensely?

I was glad I was never again asked to interpret a wiretap.