Building permits. Connection to waste, water, gas, and power grids. Supplies. Labor. All are ingredients for a tasty clout pie.
If a developer wants to put up a new building in Jerusalem, he better have the patience of Job, or cut Marina a slice of pie. A big slice.
Marina’s slice includes points in the profits, units of the new condos, hiring the right crews for each job.
For certain jobs, the crew needs a special permit. It wouldn’t do if Ahmed-Go-Lucky, while working on the power grid, decides this is as good a time as any to blast the Jewish infidels back to the Dark Ages by crossing the green and blue wires.
So Ahmed and Igor and Karla are vetted by the police.
They clear the process. They get the permit. They’re on the crew. They put food on their table, and a few crumbs on Marina’s.
Sometimes Igor needs a little push, some grease to ease his going through the pipeline. Expunging an arrest for assault and battery, maybe? No problem. Marina knows a girl who knows a guy who sleeps with a girl who’s married to the right guy.
Anyone can buy and sell muscle. Marina’s edge is slipping through the system’s porous cracks.
Like now.
The laminated card Jasmine brought him yesterday allows Ezra Cohen to work on the renovation of this mansion in Talbiya, the upscale Jerusalem neighborhood.
He’s not a skilled construction worker. He’s never laid a brick in his life. He’s not a plumber. He’s not an electrician. He’s not even Ezra Cohen.
But he does know his green wires from the blue.