Dead Bang (24 page)

“What do I tell them when they call?”

“Just play dumb,” said Matty. She glanced at her spread fingers, then snapped a paper towel off the roll. “If they send you out to look for the pendant, we'll have extra time to work the telephone call.”

“They've got to know their plan went to hell,” I said.

“Who's going to tell them?” asked Matty. “Not the guy who took one between the blinkers. The other guy won't be making telephone calls. We didn't get any press people out here. All they can know is that they haven't heard from their guys.”

“Don't you have some assets?” I asked. “Someone you can talk to down there—say in Dearborn or Detroit?”

“You want the good Muslims to save you from the bad Muslims?” asked Azzara, spooning coleslaw onto his plate.

He made the idea sound silly but that's exactly what I wanted. “You bet,” I said and pushed my plate away.

“It's not about Muslim religion,” said Azzara, waving a beef rib at me. “It's about Muslim politics. These political Muslim people generally do not fit well with, or even participate in, the mainstream American Muslim community.” He parked his rib on the plate, wiped his fingers, and reached for the barbecue sauce. “They do not make themselves obvious. They are marginal people, often criminals in their own countries. They bend their religion to serve their personal needs or political aspirations.”

I picked up my coffee, felt my stomach churn, and set it back down. “That's a little convenient, isn't it?” I asked. “I see American Muslim leaders on TV. They always say, ‘Yes, terror is evil, but,' and reel off some practiced excuse.”

“Exactly,” said Agent Azzara. He poured sauce on his ribs, screwed on the cap, and chopped the bottle at me. “In Arabic there is no word for ‘fundamentalist'“—he made one more chop—“and in Islam, no equivocation.” He rested his flat open palm on the top of the bottle. “The pillars of the faith are the pillars of faith. When you get to ‘Yes, but,' you are talking politics.” He shrugged. “In those matters, judgment is left to Allah.”

“I thought terrorists learned their politics in madrassas.”

Agent Azzara leaned toward me as if to impart a secret. “I went to school in Egypt until I was eleven,” he said, and tapped the table with his finger. “I learned that America was founded on the murder of the aboriginal peoples and built on the scarred backs of black slaves.”

“That's a very narrow view of history,” I said. “It ignores the fact that it was Muslim traders who sold blacks into slavery.”

“Yes, I mentioned history,” he said, a faint smile shimmering onto his face. “History, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.”

“The Sudan, a Muslim country, is the only place in the world where blacks are still held in bondage.”

“That's not history,” said Agent Azzara. “That's politics.”

The telephone rang.

Agent Azzara launched out of his chair. “Let it ring,” he said. He hustled over to his equipment, wiping his hands and face with a paper towel on the way. By the fourth ring, Agent Azzara had his headset on and pointed to me.

I picked up the telephone. “Hello.”

“This is Art Hardin speaking?”

“Yes.”

“Do you recognize my voice?”

“Sure,” I said. “You decide on Coke or Pepsi yet?”

“If you want to see your woman—”

“What are you talking about?”

“Your wife,” said Khan. “Do you want to see your wife again?”

My stomach made a roll, and I could feel sweat bead on my forehead. “My wife's at work.”

“Maybe not so,” said Khan. “Go out onto your porch.”

“Why?” I asked. “Is my wife on the porch?”

“You will find an envelope.”

“Okay,” I said. I set my mug down. The smell of the coffee made me ill. “It'll take a minute, I'm in the den.” I put the telephone on the counter, walked down the stairs, opened the front door, and watched for Azzara to summon me back.

Matty, looking over Azzara's shoulder, had her cell phone out and punched up a number. Finally, he nodded his head and beckoned with his hand. I walked back up the stairs and picked up the telephone.

“I have the envelope,” I said. “Just a second.” I put the telephone down again.

“There's a car in the drive,” said Ben. He hustled down the stairs and out the door without stopping for his shoes.

Agent Azzara looked at me and made a rolling motion with his hand. I picked up the telephone.

“This is my wife's pendant,” I said.

“Do you have a pencil, Mr. Hardin?”

I struggled to find the air to speak. “Where's my wife?”

“Write this down, Mr. Hardin. The Fairlane Motel, Telegraph Road, Dearborn Heights, Michigan. Do you have that?”

“Just a second.” I grabbed a pencil and wrote on the back of an envelope from the mail piled on the counter.

“Do you have that?”

I repeated the words from memory. What I'd written could not be read.

“We will kill your woman.”

“Let me talk to her,” I said.

“You will bring the money to this place I have given you, or we will kill your woman. You will be there by midnight, or we will slice your woman's head with a butcher's knife.”

“I will find you.” My heart hammered in my chest. Ben walked in the door carrying his mother's suitcase and wearing a smile big enough to eat his face.

“You will beg to die,” I said.

Wendy walked in the door, surveyed the crowd, spread her arms, and asked, “What now?”

“Midnight, Mr. Hardin.” Khan hung up.

“The call originated at the Fairlane Motel, Telegraph Road, Dearborn Heights, Room Ten,” Matty told her telephone.

Ben brushed by to take the suitcase to the bedroom, leaving a trail of muddy sock prints. I caught Wendy at the top of the stairs for a hug and a kiss.

“Yuck,” said Wendy. “You've been drinking beer.”

W
ENDY, HER FACE ASHEN
, fingered her butterfly pendant through the evidence bag. She said, “Karen wore this last night.”

“Karen Smith?” asked Matty.

“Yes,” said Wendy, her eyes glazed and her voice distant.

“What happened?” I asked.

Matty Svenson snapped out her cell phone and punched a number on the autodialer.

Wendy laid the bag on the table. “You know Karen,” she said. Wendy made quotation marks in the air with her fingers. “She ‘hooked up.' Some guy with an East Indian accent. She says she's having an international phase.”

“Karen Smith,” Matty said into her cell phone. “Her picture and prints are in the informant file. Hold on a second.” Matty dug an envelope from her purse and spread out the pictures she'd shown me in the parking lot at my office.

“That one,” said Wendy, pegging a picture with her finger.

Matty turned the picture over. “The man who abducted Karen Smith is Arul Khan. He'll be carrying ID that says he's Emir Ganu. … We're still at the Hardin residence.”

“I left her the room key,” said Wendy. “She said she had a ride. I expected her to call if it didn't work out, but I wanted to get back home because Daniel was home for spring break.”

“Where's Karen's luggage?” I asked.

“Still in the motel room when I left,” said Wendy. “I haven't seen her since last night.”

“Weren't you worried about her?” asked Matty.

“I've been worried about Karen since I met her,” said Wendy. “But I couldn't hang around Holland and wait for her latest tryst to burn itself out.”

“If I have to be in Dearborn Heights by midnight, I need to be on the way ten minutes ago,” I said.

Agent Azzara clamped his eyes on me and slid the headset off to dangle around his neck. “You have this money?”

“I have a suitcase and some telephone books,” I said.

“What money?” asked Wendy.

“The money Manny smuggled in Karen's suitcase,” I said.

“Manny got that,” said Wendy. “We left it in the house when we ran for our lives.”

Agent Azzara nodded and slipped the headset back in place. He said, “The FBI Hostage Rescue Team is taking down the door.”

• • •

Matty and Agent Azzara drifted outside to talk privately. When they returned, Matty said, “I hate to have to tell you this. Amed Khan said that Karen is dead. He said he dropped her body off the Bell Isle Bridge in Detroit.”

Wendy buried her face in her hands. “Oh, my God.”

I said, “He's lying.”

“They believe him in Detroit,” said Agent Azzara. He closed the lid on his equipment case and added, “They're arranging to drag the river. They want to recover her body before it washes into Lake St. Clair.”

Wendy turned and rested her forehead on my shoulder, her hands still on her face. “He's not the one who lured Karen away,” I said. “She could be shacked up somewhere and have no idea what's going on.”

“I doubt that,” said Matty. “They couldn't risk her making some casual telephone call.”

“I think the point was to get the money,” I said. “If they just wanted to kill her, they could've dropped her and left the body where it fell.”

“We're pulling out,” said Matty.

“By the way,” said Agent Azzara. “Do you have an answering service?”

Wendy pulled her hands from her face and slid her arms around me. “Wendy has an answering machine for Silk City Surveys,” I said.

“No,” said Azzara, and waved a hand. “Like a service that answers from another location. Not here in the house.”

“Nothing like that,” I said.

“You have a second drop on the line,” he said. “If you don't have a service, your telephone is tapped.”

“I've been wrestling with the state police over one of my cases,” I said. “Could be them. The detective's name is Archer Flynt. He works out of the attorney general's office.”

“Great,” said Azzara. He shook his head.

“We have one lead in the Detroit area,” I said. “The Arab woman who tried to run me off the road when Manny was after Karen on Twenty-eighth Street.”

“Probably nothing,” said Matty. “We can't investigate every woman who wears a head scarf. Maybe she just had her hair up.”

“She tried to run me into oncoming traffic,” I said.

“You said she was talking on the telephone,” said Matty.

“So you don't care if I look into her?” I asked.

Wendy, her eyes red and wet, said, “I'm going with you.”

“Waste of time,” said Matty, and walked down the steps with Agent Azzara. At the door she said, “You have my cell number.”

“Yes,” I said.

“There'll be two agents assigned here. They'll park in the yard and probably want to use your facilities.”

“Not a problem,” I said. “We'll keep the coffee on.”

“I wouldn't count on them for more than a couple days. You find anything in Detroit, you call me first,” said Matty.

• • •

Wendy wouldn't leave for Southfield until Daniel got home, which worked out well because we needed to use Daniel's car—both of ours were toasted. The Arab woman we needed to investigate had seen them both on Twenty-eighth Street the day she tried to run me off the road.

“How do we know the boys'll be safe?” asked Wendy.

“I told you to stay with them,” I said as I turned off the Beltline, west onto 1-196 toward Holland, Michigan.

“Shouldn't we be going straight to Southfield?” asked Wendy.

“I want to pick up Karen's luggage,” I said. “FBI may already have it. If not, they'll be after it in the morning.”

“What's so important about her luggage?”

“I want to see if there's money in it.”

“We should have brought the boys,” said Wendy. “They could have stayed with my mother in Garden City.”

“Manny blew himself up. Two of the four Khan brothers are accounted for, as is the father. I can't believe he was stupid enough to call me from his motel room and then wait there to get scooped up by the FBI.”

“Could be he hadn't lost his innocence to a lifetime of TV cop shows,” said Wendy.

“They should have watched Khan until he led them to Karen.”

“If you're right, and Karen doesn't know what's going on, Khan could have placed a call and had her killed,” said Wendy.

“I don't think the FBI wants Karen back as much as they want to have a long talk with Amed Khan.”

“I don't see going to Holland,” said Wendy. “Karen didn't have any money. I had to lend her money for the dancers.”

Thankful for the darkness, I tried for abject innocence. “What dancers, hon?”

Wendy dug into her purse, found a cigarette, and took her time lighting up. After a puff she exhaled, “Oh, you know damn good and well.”

I tried a saccharine “What?”

“I figured it out after we got there.” I could hear Wendy flicking her fingernails against her thumbnail one at a time. “There's no way Pacific Casualty was going to pass over you to give me a job using your equipment.”

“Have a good time?”

“It was a job,” said Wendy. “I got a half hour of tape the first night and a half hour the second. That's fifty-five more minutes than you can get the court to watch.”

“So you got paid to ogle nubile young men?”

“You're on thin ice, buster,” said Wendy.

“Yes, ma'am,” I said. “But did you have a good time?”

Wendy smacked my shoulder with her left hand. After a moment she said, “Yeah, I had a good time. I've never seen a room full of women act like that.”

“See anything new on the menu?”

“Yeah,” she said, her tone mean and snotty. She flicked ashes out the window.