“He … he knows Riaz Diab, and Diab had me introduce him to Tachus.” Poor Tachus … gunned down like a dog. “He also came to my apartment shortly after the attack, asking if I’d seen anything that would help them track down the killers.”
“And?”
“I told them what I’d seen: two men in masks with machine guns killing everyone in sight. I had no more to offer. I still don’t.” He glanced down the stairs toward the refugee center. “Is he alone?”
“Yes. Why do you ask?”
“No reason.”
Kadir remembered the man hadn’t been alone that time when he’d visited his apartment. He’d been accompanied by a strange man in a white suit who had unsettled Kadir.
He looked at Mahmoud. “What did you tell him about Shalabi?”
“As little as possible: that he hasn’t come in yet today and nothing more. Same as I would under any circumstances. He has no need for an explanation.”
They went downstairs and found the man from Qatar waiting alone in the office of the refugee center.
“Kadir,” said the man in English. “I am glad to see you are well. Since Mister Shalabi is not available, I will speak to you.”
“What about?”
“I wish the return of my investment.”
The flat statement rattled Kadir. “I … I do not have it. I had nothing to do with—”
The man from Qatar raised his hand. “I know. The only way I can see to retrieve it is to lure the thieves from hiding. For this I will need the help of you and your friends and Mister Shalabi’s contacts.”
Mahmoud leaned forward. “Why should we help you?”
The man gave him a scathing look. “First off, the Qur’an says that when you accept something into your hands for safekeeping, you bear the responsibility of keeping it safe. When you fail to do that, you must make restitution.”
Kadir began to sweat. This man couldn’t expect him to come up with three million dollars!
He and Mahmoud both began talking at once but the man silenced them with a tolerant smile and another raised hand.
“Do not trouble yourself. I placed the funds in Tachus’s care, and Tachus was killed along with the others. But I expect you”—he pointed to Kadir—“and you”—then to Mahmoud—“as his friends to assist me. For my part, I will regain my stolen funds. For your part, you will bring retribution to those who killed Tachus and all with him—some of whom I’m sure were also your friends.”
“What sort of retribution?” Mahmoud said.
“That will be left to you. After my associates and I extract the whereabouts of the stolen funds, we will hand the killers over to you for final disposition.”
… my associates …
That could only mean the man in the white suit and others like him.
“If you have associates,” Kadir said, “why do you need us?”
“Because we need a leak.”
“I do not understand.”
“In order to trap them, we must lure them out, and we can’t lure them out unless our plans are leaked to them.”
“I still don’t—”
“Tachus’s plans were leaked and the leak came from your side.”
Mahmoud bristled. “How can you know that?”
“Because my side did not know where the transaction would take place. I left that entirely up to Tachus. So that leaves your side.”
Kadir remembered that night, all the bloody, punctured bodies strewn about …
He said, “The one who leaked the location might have been among the dead.”
“Possibly. But I sense these killers have numerous sources of information. If you have your people send out word that an auction will be held, the killers will hear about it and—we hope—make another attack. But this time we will be waiting for them.”
Kadir glanced at Mahmoud. Their eyes met, then Mahmoud shook his head.
“As much as Tachus’s blood and the blood of our friends cry out for vengeance,” he said in Arabic, “we cannot participate in this. We have higher concerns.”
He meant the imam’s worldwide jihad, of course.
Kadir nodded in agreement. “We cannot be turned from our holy course.”
The man from Qatar replied in Arabic. “I know your holy course, and I support and applaud it. But any cause, no matter how holy, requires funding. I will pay a bounty of one hundred thousand U.S. dollars on each of the heads of the killer thieves, to be used for your holy cause, should you aid us in their capture.”
Two hundred thousand dollars …
“That is very generous,” Mahmoud said, “but we are well funded. And even if we were to help, that is not a decision we could make.”
“I see.”
The man from Qatar stood there, looking very disappointed. Finally he sighed and pulled a wallet from within his thobe. He removed two cards and handed one each to Kadir and Mahmoud.
“Here is my number. If your leaders decide this is of benefit to the holy cause, call me.”
Saying no more, he walked out.
When he was gone, Kadir turned to Mahmoud. “That is a lot of money to turn down.”
Mahmoud shrugged. “Helping him would jeopardize jihad. Besides, with the refugee fund now at Sheikh Omar’s disposal, we have guaranteed worldwide jihad a steady flow of cash, with no risk at all.”
“But Tachus—”
“As much as my blood boils to avenge Tachus, we cannot risk it. What if this man’s plan backfires? What if we are killed? Or what if we are caught by the FBI and plans for jihad in America are exposed.” He shook his head. “No, no. Too risky. Jihad comes first.”
Kadir could not argue with that.
6
Jack needed new videos but was uneasy about getting cornered by DDPers in his usual local video store. He headed up Ninth Avenue to midtown where most of the shops specialized exclusively in XXX fare, but managed to find one that limited its porn to a curtained-off section in the rear.
He immediately recognized the tall guy in dreadlocks. How could he forget him? Nothing special about his dreads, his height, his milk chocolate skin, but the big, black, Aaron Neville–class mole in the center of his forehead was unforgettable.
“Hey,” Jack said. “Eighth Street Playhouse, right?”
The guy gave him a puzzled look. “Uh, yeah. I go there.”
“You must go there a lot, ’cause every time I’m there, so are you.”
He smiled. “Don’t recognize you, but you must like old movies.”
“Love ’em.”
The West Village theater was a revival house that became famous for running The Rocky Horror Picture Show every Friday night for fifteen years. Jack had never been a Rocky Horror fan, but he liked the older films the place brought back to the big screen.
“Well, you came to the right place.”
“Yours?”
He shook his head. “I wish. But they let me do some of the ordering, and I’ve stocked in a lot of oldies but goodies. What do you like?”
“Usually SF, horror, weird.”
“Got plenty of that.”
“But I’m in kind of a dark mood lately.”
His face lit. “Let me take you to the noir section.”
“You sell wine too?”
“No, just—” He paused midstep as he came out from behind the counter, then grinned. “You had me there for a moment. Good one.”
“I’m here all week.”
Jack wasn’t a wine drinker, but his uncle Stu, besides being a Scotch lover, used to extol the virtues of Oregon pinot noir until everyone’s eyes glazed over.
He led Jack down a narrow aisle. “I’ve started a little rating system here, so if you come in and I’m not around, you can still find the good stuff by looking for my tag on the back of the box.”
He pulled out a copy of The Wild Bunch.
“One of my faves,” Jack said.
“Well, sure. I mean, what’s not to like? But look here.” He flipped the box and poin
ted to a little Magic Marker circle with a black dot in the center. “That’s my tag—that’s the Milkdud seal of approval.”
“Milkdud?”
“Yeah. Me.”
Jack glanced at that big old mole looking down at him like a third eye and the light dawned: It did resemble a certain brand of chocolate-covered caramel.
“Oh. Got it.”
He shoved the tape back into its slot. “Let’s hit the noir bar.” Farther down the aisle he stopped at another section. “The classics are Double Indemnity—”
“Seen it.”
“The Killers.”
“Seen it.”
“Touch of Evil.”
“Seen it—didn’t care much for it.”
“That means you missed stuff and need to see it again.”
Jack shrugged. “Too many I haven’t seen once.”
“Good point. Okay, why don’t we set you a theme—say, 1950.”
“The year? That’s a theme?”
“Why not?” He began pulling tapes out of the rack—looked like he could have done it with his eyes closed. When he’d extracted three he handed them to Jack. “All released in 1950.”
Jack found himself holding Sunset Boulevard, All About Eve, and In a Lonely Place. He’d seen the first two, but had never heard of the third. It did have Bogart, though.
“Really? All made the same year?”
Milkdud shrugged. “Don’t know about made, but released the same year. Watch ’em back to back.”
Well, why not?
“Will do. But I’ve got a problem: No credit card.”
Milkdud thought about that. “It’s against store policy, but if I can’t trust a fellow regular at Eighth Street, who can I trust?”
They shook hands.
“I think this is going to be the start of a beautiful friendship,” Jack said.
7
Kadir found his sister waiting on the couch when he returned home.
“You should be asleep,” he said.
“I couldn’t sleep. I’m too worried.”
“What about?”
“About you.” Hadya held up the dark green twill work pants he’d worn to Sea Gate. “I went to the laundromat today and brought these along to clean.”
A dark splotch remained over the left knee area, but it was no longer red.
“Th-thank you.”
“But Kadir,” she said. “There is no hole in the fabric. How could you cut your knee enough to bleed that much without breaking through the cloth?”
Sudden fury bloomed within him. “How dare you question me in my own home. I bring you in, give you food and shelter, and you interrogate me?”
She stiffened and lowered her eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“You have no idea what is going on in the world! You have no idea what I am doing to change it.” He snatched his pants from her hands. “I have been doing God’s work and don’t you dare question me!”
She looked up at him, tears in her eyes. “Yes, Kadir. I am very sorry.”
Her tears doused his anger. Hadya was younger and Father had no doubt kept her sheltered. Lines were being drawn in the sand of the world and she had no idea where they were. She needed to be educated, and he knew just the man to do it.
He went to the shelf where he kept his Qur’an and took down his portable tape player. As he hit the rewind button, he turned to her.
“I want you to listen to Sheikh Omar. He is a wise and holy man who has opened my eyes and been a source of great inspiration.”
When the tape stopped rewinding, he handed her the player and the lightweight headphones that came with it.
“Listen and learn.”
She could not help but be moved by the imam’s words. Soon she would understand, soon she would join his following.
THURSDAY
1
“Well, what do you think?” Jack said, pointing through the window into the showroom.
He’d dragged Julio out to Jamaica before The Spot opened to see the Corvair. Julio seemed less than impressed.
“Looks like a white frog, meng.”
“It’s got a sweet ride.”
The test drive yesterday had been fun. He liked the way it handled. Despite the age of its engine, the car still had good pickup. He preferred front-wheel drive but the weight of the engine sitting over the rear wheels gave them extra traction. Best of all, with the top down he still had some of that motorcycle feel of riding in the open.
Julio shook his head. “But it’s white. Like vanilla.”
“I won’t ask you to drive it, or even ride in it.”
“Yeah, but you want me to own it.”
“Only on paper.”
“What if people find out?”
“No problem. It’ll all be legal.”
“That’s not what I mean. People find out I own a car like that, they’ll take away my Newyorican badge.”
“Your what?”
“You can’t be a PR and own a car like that. It ain’t allowed. They’ll send me back to San Juan for retraining.”
“Ha. Ha. Very funny. I’ve got the cash right here in my pocket. You gonna do this for me or not?”
“Course I’m gonna do it. But you just can’t tell nobody.”
“My lips are sealed.” Jack shook his head. “Newyorican badge. Sheesh.”
Laughing, they headed inside to do the deal.
2
“A pretty sweet deal,” Tommy Ten Thumbs said. “It’s given me some ideas.”
They’d been watching a couple of the yard’s workers feed the chassis of stripped cars—two, sometimes three at a time—into the crusher where they got pancaked.
The chassis came from various chop shops here and there around Brooklyn and the Bronx. Stolen cars were much more valuable in pieces—as someone once said, the whole was much less valuable than the sum of its parts. Once all those valuable parts had been stripped away, you couldn’t leave the naked chassis lying around. Something had to be done with them, because should the cops raid a chop shop, they were evidence against it.
That was where Vinny came in. The chassis arrived at night and by the next afternoon Vinny had reduced them to unrecognizable tangles of steel. He sold the tangles for scrap, which would eventually end up in foundries that melted it back into new steel, some of which would find its way into new car chassis.
Before he dropped out of high school, Vinny remembered a biology teacher going on and on about “the miraculous cycle of life”—how deer ate plants and wolves ate deer, and then when wolves died their bodies rotted to fertilize plants which deer came and ate, and on and on. Vinny figured he was part of the miraculous cycle of cars.
And besides, recycling was the new buzzword. Vinny was just pitching in and being a good citizen.
But now Tommy had “ideas.” He hadn’t asked what they were. He knew he’d hear about them sooner than he wanted. And sure enough …
“So I been thinking,” Tommy said, “we get to dip our beaks by disposing of the frames, right? But the real money’s in the parts. You know what I’m saying? Somebody else is eating all the meat and we’re getting the bones. That seem right to you?”
Vinny didn’t look at him—kept his gaze fixed on the crusher. “Seems perfect to me.”
“You mean you like them getting all the gravy?”
Now he turned to him. “Look. I bought this to have a legit business. So that if the tax man ever comes and asks me where I got the money to buy my house, I point to this place. It’s a cover, Tommy. Just like Tony C’s got his appliance store.”
“Yeah, but Tony’s big-time. You’re just small-time.”
“Ain’t always gonna be that way.”
Tommy’s eyes narrowed. “You planning on making a move?”
Whoa. What was this? Asking about a plot against Tony C? Tommy’s look said if something was in the works, he wanted in, but that could just be an act. Was Tony C suspicious? Again, the question: Was that why Tommy was here?
“A m
ove? On Tony? You fucking crazy? Don’t let me hear you say anything like that again, y’hear me? First off, I ain’t stupid. And second, I owe that guy everything. But I don’t plan on being Tony C’s collection boy and shuttle driver the rest of my life, either. You?”
“No fuckin’ way.”
No secret Tommy wanted his own crew. So did Vinny one day. With Gotti inside—calling the shots still, but inside was inside—things might shift around, loosen up. They might get their crews sooner than if the Chief was still outside.
“So I make myself useful here. People can clean some of their cash through my place, and they can dispose of stuff that might get them in trouble if they’re caught with it. I’m making extra out of sight, but more important, I’m making connections. And meanwhile I got a completely legit side to the business that makes real money.”
“But not a lot. And that’s where my idea comes in. I can get a couple of chop guys in here. We bring in cars and strip ’em ourselves. Parts are worth a fuckin’ fortune.”
Christ, this guy was stupid. Vinny tried to explain it in language he’d understand.
“Tommy, the shylocking we’re in is completely illegit, right?”
“Right.”
“The pony parlor and games we help Tony run are the same, right?”
“Right.”
“That means if the wrong people look into them, we can be in trouble, right?”
“Right.”
“And what do we do if somebody tries to connect us with that shit?”
“We back off and say, ‘Hey, no, that ain’t us.’”
“Right. But this salvage business here, it’s in my name, this is me. I can’t back off it. So if we put a chop shop here, and the heat comes down, I’m a goner. They’ll have me dead to rights and I’ll wind up in a cell in Rikers next to the Chief.”
Tommy laughed. “Never happen. You’re in Tony’s crew and Tony the Cannon’s too protected.”
“Nobody’s too protected.”
“Hey, you ain’t makin’ sense, Vinny. We got chop-shop leftovers comin’ in here. You can go down for them.”