Fanatics (14 page)

…treetops glisten and children listen

To hear sleigh bells in the snow…

A world of happiness, babe, forever and ever. When you're married, you and your dream, you'll be deeply in love, passionately in love. Treasure this, remember this, so no matter what else happens and no matter what horrors have already happened…this is all yours.

The reddest rose of your life, Claiborne, your ecstasy married in the spring of hottest desire:
Wife
. The Dream…

…and this dream sustained had Claiborne Smith.

For a long time, the fantasy had kept him going.

But no more.

By now, at this moment in his adult life, it was impossible for Claiborne Smith to go on pretending, bullshitting himself in the same way their momma was able to believe, convinced the present is always better than the past, and the future bound to be even more phenomenal.

Forget all that shit…

No more.

It's all over.

And you're fucked, Claiborne.

Or you were up until the other night.

That pussy, that asshole, your own fucking brother, that punk ass won't be blocking you no more, going out stealing all your best stuff, claiming it's his. No fucking way, that fish hound's muff-diving, sushi-licking days are gone and done.

And now you got to make your own name, get out there and be a brand—Claiborne Smith—you slick-dicking mother, you just stand up and stand out.

Your new dream…
be counted.

Be the man.

And this brother there now, the new senator, first one of us to make it from around here.

Cecil King.

And it's about fucking time, so of course they want to kill him. Said so, right on TV, just a minute ago. Threats. Cops say threats. Bet your ass, can't have no black motherfucker being no New York senator, no fucking way, so they'll kill him, just like they killed Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

And Malcolm.

Same old shit, all over again, always always always.

At least, that's what they're
thinking
about doing this time, hearts and minds all set on snuffing out Cecil King.

Threats?

Fat fucking chance, that's all they got now.

'Cause
this time, there's me…

There's Claiborne Smith.

They don't know me, not yet.

They don't know dick shit about me. So they're not counting on me in their threat plans. That's why these scumbags won't get Cecil King, not like they got the others.

This time, they're gonna miss.

Because of Claiborne Smith…
I'll be right there. And I'll stop them.

I know all about killing.

Just ask Ballz.

Ballz will tell you, if he could talk, the late Mr. Busta stretched out there in a morgue.

That's right, I know all about the shit these fuckers are getting down to. They're not human. And that's why I'm the mother to stop them. Cold. Totally. Everyone will be grateful to Claiborne Smith.

Just…watch…me
.

PS 107…The senator will be there and right off he'll know he needs me.

Because I'm his main man.

Gratitude, they're gonna rain their gratitude down on me.

10:17 A.M.

When homicide detective Sergeant Marty Keane and two forensics detectives arrived at Kitty Smith's apartment in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Flo Ott introduced Keane to the confused old woman propped up in bed, then led her colleagues into the kitchen.

“There's your steel bar,” she said, pointing at the empty spot in the fence around the cellar steps. “His room is in the front. But go easy on his mother, she has no idea.”

Flo returned to Kitty Smith's bedside. “I got to get back to the office,” she told the old woman. “The other policemen have work to do in the backyard and the front room.”

“I don't understand. What do they want here?”

“Your son Claiborne, Mrs. Smith, no one knows where he is, but he could be in danger.”

“Danger? Me too? What about me?”

“I don't think so. But there'll be a police car outside the house, so don't you worry.”

“I'm worried about Claiborne.”

“So are we. That's why we're looking for him.”

“He shows up, I'll tell him to call you, okay?”

“Thank you, Mrs. Smith. You do that, please.”

“Meanwhile, you ought to call Mother Gloria, you want to know anything.”

“Soon as I get a chance.”

10:19 A.M.

Flo Ott left Bedford-Stuyvesant and rode downtown to her office to file a report on the warranted search of Mrs. Smith's apartment.

She also wrote out a form requesting a bench warrant for the arrest of Claiborne Smith, which a sitting magistrate granted at once.

Alleged offense: the first-degree murder of his brother, Owen Smith, a.k.a. Ballz Busta.

She filed an email copy of the request and the arrest warrant with District Attorney Jimmy Padino.

Before the suspect was in custody, announcements to media were forbidden.

11:48 A.M.

Flo Ott rode a mile through Brooklyn to Grand Army Plaza for lunch with Frank Murphy and Cecil King at the Montauk Club.

“Smith's own brother,” she said, taking the seat between the senator-elect and Frank.

Cecil King shook his head sadly.

“Congratulations,” he said, but his face showed no pleasure in the news. “You know, I'm almost glad his trial won't be on my watch. Brother killing brother, there's no societal satisfaction in that kind of trial, not for anyone. Fratricide, matricide, patricide…your own kids even, infanticide, it's all as old as it gets, and just as sad as any suicide. I've always felt, when you get right down to essentials, killing blood kin is almost the same thing as suicide, the killer would just as soon have taken his own life. And they often end up doing exactly that, especially when they kill their own kids. Might as well go and kill themselves then and they usually do. Where's this poor miserable soul now?”

“My guess?” Flo said. “He's out looking for you.”

“I'm no defense attorney.”

“We met him this morning. You signed a photograph for him. I'm almost certain it's the same man. Claiborne Smith. We may not have seen the last of him. He's profoundly unbalanced, severely delusional, a possible stalker. Or worse. He could be an unwitting cutout for the Double-A. The best way to get close enough to you.”

For a moment, they were enveloped in silence.

“Marty's got an all-points out on him,” Flo said. “Forensics should have enough by this afternoon for a lot more than reasonable suspicion. The news that we've identified a suspect will leak by then.”

Frank Murphy leaned back in his chair. “Okay, he's a killer. At least once, as far as we now got excellent reason to believe. His own brother. Jesus, he's unhinged, that's clear. An excellent unwitting stooge.”

“Maybe for the Double-A,” Cecil King said. “Or maybe not. He got as close to me this morning as you two are right now. And it was me who encouraged him, only me. So why didn't he do it this morning?”

Again, silence descended.

Cecil King reached out and placed his hands on their arms. “From now on, it's your call. As long as I can stick as close as possible to my commitments. For starters, I can't back out on these schools this afternoon, not in the Slope or the church meeting there. I carried every E.D. in the Slope seventy percent or better. I owe them, the kids, their parents, everybody there.”

Flo would just as soon they went straight back to the King family's apartment and stayed shuttered inside until New Year's. But she couldn't disagree with Cecil King's assessment of his debt to the people of Park Slope. In her book, loyalty, no matter how high the costs, was among the highest virtues.

“Understand,” King said. “I won't be riding in an open car. I won't be stretching my legs in full view out on a balcony. My visit later to the church group, that's totally unannounced, a surprise drop-in for them. And no more autographs for strangers, no way, I promise. It'll all work out, I'm confident.”

12:40 P.M.

Igor Zanonovich burned all the notes and hand-drawn maps, flushing the ashes down the toilet in his Brighton Beach safe apartment.

He opened the bathroom window to let out the smell of fire.

The view from here was remarkable: beach, boardwalk, Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. Zanonovich marveled at such splendid vistas wasted on a proletarian neighborhood. This would never happen at home, not now, not after all the new changes.

His Chechens were wiping the apartment clean, no prints, no half-eaten food, empty bottles dumped, bed linen and towels folded and packed to go.

It was almost like moving house. Except for every surface Cloroxed. Cops would have a hell of a time finding DNA traces.

This was infinitely more energizing than moving house. This was God's work, even if the Chechens weren't much more than paid hands. Professional, highly experienced, utterly reliable hands but hardly full members in the organization. The education, culture, traditions simply weren't theirs. Not the Chechens' fault, centuries of colonial status, doffing caps and forelock tugging, drinking to forget humiliations, a few hundred years of subservience like that exhausts any civilization.

So his Chechens took up the gun, for excellent pay and for Russia. At this, they proved themselves among the best.

When hit men excelled at their craft, they operated quietly and without incident, other than the kill. They held their whispered meetings in secret, executed jobs with precision and grace, and no one ever witnessed their escape. A clandestine world to which few had access, although this, unfortunately, didn't stifle police ambitions in that direction.

1:06 P.M.

The Chechens locked up their safe apartment.

Their lease had three more months to run, but they had no plans to return.

Zanonovich and his driver, known to him only as Ben, exited the neighborhood first, cruising Brooklyn streets in a twelve-year-old black Mercedes, its engine meticulously restored in a rented garage on a dead-end street between Surf Avenue and the boardwalk.

They were killing time before their two o'clock rendezvous with the others on Fourteenth Street between Seventh and Eighth avenues. On a mid-afternoon in November, pretty much a lifeless block.

The three other Chechens—Ivan, Vlad, and Lenny—walked to the same rented garage, formerly a stable and more recently an illegal live-poultry market.

Each took a different route.

Each carried a gym bag.

Vlad's bag contained the mortar firing tube and two rounds.

Ivan would drive the dark green van with a roll-back sunroof, the vehicle bought for this mission months before by someone he'd never met, the van left in the garage for his expert use only.

Lenny would spot for the shooter and give the order to fire as soon as the target stepped into range.

Separately that morning they'd walked the streets surrounding the school and knew exactly what route they'd take immediately after firing the round.

They rode these streets only once now.

And then they circled Prospect Park, marking time before the rendezvous.

1:42 P.M.

Check this school, it's like a huge fucking mansion…

Nothing like the public dump in Bed-Stuy, that place was a shit hole. Bars on windows. Razor wire topping off the school yard fence. Steel-plate doors. Like a fucking prison.

His mother was so right never to send her sons there.

Claiborne Smith circled the block, walking past PS 107 several times.

He knew this neighborhood, the site was so close to the Ansonia Court condos, hardly a cunt's hair between up here and down there to the cobblestone yard, where dickhead got what was coming to him.

And now it was just about as quiet around this neighborhood as it was then in the middle of the night.

Only comfortable people lived here. Parents out working, no homeless drifters sleeping on sidewalks, no panhandlers, no pushers. Kids all in school.

Anything unusual here, he'd spot it. He learned these streets, going up and down every block; he knew this place cold.

One thing did look bad this time…no cops. A big man on his way and not a single blue uniform in sight. But then maybe that figured.

They wanted Cecil King dead, so they weren't going to protect him, were they?

No fucking way, dog.

That's Claiborne Smith's job…
I will win everyone's gratitude. This is now my purpose in life. The senator, he'll get me the justice I need. No more stealing from Claiborne, I'll be protected.

He circled the block twice before walking up the front steps of PS 107 and entering the building.

1:44 P.M.

Patrolmen William Patrick Magee and Antonio Francesco Dente pulled up at the front entrance of PS 107.

They were not pleased.

They had planned on taking an hour's nap after lunch, polishing off their take-out yellowfin tuna sushi with the tempura vegetable mix while parked in their favorite midday spot right behind the parks department maintenance center up in Prospect Park, in that half-hidden vale where the greenhouses once stood.

Their regular afternoon hideaway, where all the parkies knew them and left them in peace.

“Senator coon shows up,” patrolman Dente said. “Then we wait a car's length behind them. Two lengths in back when they leave. And then down to the Methodist church on Seventh Avenue. That's it.”

“Jesus, that raw tuna, Tony, it's giving me gas now. He don't show on time, I'm going in the school and using the toilet.”

“Open the window. And you got to eat the wasabi, that's what counteracts the gas.”

“What wasabi?”

“That green horseradish stuff.”

“Makes my eyes water. Can't see where the fuck I'm driving.”

“We're not going anywhere for at least another half hour. Lookit, there's some left here. Hold your breath and swallow, it'll stop the gas.”

“You sure?”

“Of course I'm sure.”

“Yeah, right, you Wops know all about Jap food.”

Patrolman Magee held his breath and swallowed a large dollop of the green horseradish.

“Jesus Christ, my nose, my eyes, I can't see for shit.”

“Blow your nose, Billy, this stuff clears up your sinuses.”

“You said it was for gas.”

1:46 P.M
.

While patrolman Billy Magee was blowing his nose, Claiborne Smith stood by the window in the office of Marie Toner, the clerk at PS 107.

Her room was just off the vestibule.

Ms. Toner was a large woman, freckled, auburn-haired, blessed with a broad, friendly smile and a helpful air.

“There are my partners,” Claiborne said to her, nodding at the police cruiser stationed out front near the foot of the main entry steps.

“How long have you been doing this?” she said.

“Way back. I started doing advance protection for the senator on his first campaign for district attorney. Wherever he goes? The next stop, I'm his number-one man in the door. I watch the door. And I watch out for him coming and going.”

“These threats on his life must make your job even tougher.”

“Toughest ever.”

“That's a lot of trust he puts in you.”

“Totally. It's all about total trust, absolutely. Between me and the senator. I'm his man.”

1:49 P.M.

Igor Zanonovich was feeling high on the inevitable tension before a hit, that hormonal fuel pumping every artist on the brink of public performance.

He felt relieved to get away from the safe apartment in Brighton Beach. The place was one room short for five people, claustrophobic, especially with the television going most of the time.

For their last job in America, Zanonovich wore his favorite jacket, a Harris Tweed number, heather-toned windowpane pattern, smart looking, even distinguished.

No one would ever dream this tall man of aristocratic bearing, with his more-than-passing resemblance to Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, was carrying under his highland hunter's jacket a Colt Trooper MK 111 .357 magnum and four hand grenades attached to his belt, three on his right side, one on his left. It took more than patrician looks and a haughty bearing to murder so many on two continents so successfully.

If he was forced to use any of his weaponry, the mission would be a failure, but it might win them a few minutes' lead, and spare them arrest and exposure.

Three of Zanonovich's grenades were standard US Army issue, packed with plastic-coated barbed shafts primed for wide diffusion—flechettes—people disablers, not property destroyers.

The fourth grenade was a reserve fitted with a thread coupling and drag ignition for his personal use.

On himself.

Should all hope evaporate.

Zanonovich was feeling satisfied as they drove up from the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and straight ahead on Prospect Avenue back into Park Slope, confident that violence, other than a single perfectly aimed mortar round, could be avoided.

The weather was better than they expected, the temperature a few degrees above freezing, a southwesterly breeze, and partly sunny.

Visibility and road surface conditions seemed excellent everywhere.

Plans could proceed without any last-minute revision.

1:51 P.M.

Zanonovich and the Chechens arrived at Fourteenth Street, continued for a block along Eighth Avenue past a solitary police car with two patrolmen parked by the front entrance to Public School 107.

“That's it,” Zanonovich said to his driver. “Confirmed. Cops are here. So he's coming. We're blessed.”

His driver, Ben, a taciturn type, shrugged. He seemed to take good fortune for granted, the luck of the entitled chosen. They turned left at the corner and, for the next two minutes, drove slowly around the neighboring block, observant, silent, satisfied with the situation—no other police in evidence, only one cruiser, two patrolmen—before heading up to their position for the hit.

1:53 P.M.

Oh no,
not those two idiots…

When Flo saw who the patrolmen were, she didn't dare repeat her thoughts to Cecil King or Frank Murphy.

From the front window on the passenger side of Senator-elect Cecil King's car, she peered at Magee and Dente in the police vehicle parked by the front entrance of Public School 107.

Jerks.

The same pair of dummies who'd arrested her tenant for armed robbery, a felony crime for which the innocent Annie Agron bore no guilt, a charge of ludicrous proportions hatched in the addled imaginations of a couple of incompetent cops, fired up by the paranoid fantasies of an infirm, elderly woman, charges dismissed the second time around on rearraignment.

The police cruiser preceding Cecil King's car pulled up to the curb about fifteen feet on the far side of the school's front steps.

The senator-elect's car stopped alongside patrolmen Magee and Dente's vehicle. Flo motioned to them to reverse and give Cecil King's car about fifteen feet of space behind the cruiser.

The driver, Magee, didn't seem to understand.

Flo jerked her thumb back in an unmistakable motion, and patrolman Magee buried his face in a handkerchief.

“What's going on?” Frank Murphy said.

“The driver looks like he's having an allergy attack.”

Frank lowered his window and shouted, “Move the car back.”

Patrolman Dente exited the vehicle and patrolman Magee did the same.

Frank Murphy shook his head. “Hell they gonna do, push it?”

The patrolmen were switching seats.

Cecil King waited patiently. “There's no rush,” he said. “We're not late. Give them all the time they need.”

They needed only a few seconds to reverse their car.

1:54 P.M
.

“It's the senator,” Claiborne Smith said. “That's my man out there. Right on the button.”

“This is so exciting.” School clerk Marie Toner was genuinely elated. “It's the first time we've had a senator here. Maybe he could get us the budget for a new library. They closed the old one years ago.”

“I got to run, thanks for everything. Got to watch on my man.”

My man…

Way to go, dog, this it, he's mine now. Just lay it all out for him, he'll understand.

And I'll thank him again for his autograph.

He'll remember Claiborne Smith.

Claiborne opened the front door of PS 107 and stood at the top of the entrance steps, a broad smile on his face.

Fuck, yeah, he remembers me, look at that, they all do…They're grateful.

1:55 P.M.

“Christ, it's him!”

Flo shouted at their driver, “Go, go, go! Down, Senator, get down!”

As Claiborne Smith began descending the front steps, Frank Murphy pushed Cecil King to the floor of the car and threw his body over him.

Their car accelerated.

1:55:03 P.M
.

“Black guy's on the steps,” Lenny said, and jabbed Vlad's right leg.

Vlad poked his head up out of the green van's open sunroof, raised the mortar tube, and from immediately below the corner of Fourteenth Street he fired diagonally across Eighth Avenue.

Barely a second later, the front steps of Public School 107 erupted in a geyser of flame, brownstone, glass, twisted iron fencing…

…and the body parts of Claiborne Smith.

His severed head smashed into the front windshield of patrolmen Magee and Dente's squad car as chunks of brownstone pelted the back end of Cecil King's vehicle and the roof of the lead police cruiser, both speeding away from the blast.

The school clerk's office window exploded inward, spraying her room with glass shards.

But Marie Toner was out in the vestibule, lying on the floor where she'd fainted.

The school's fire-alarm bells were ringing.

Ringing.

Ringing…

1:55:12 P.M.

Bozye moy, vot blin!

Zanonovich swore as the Mercedes sped up Fourteenth Street towards Prospect Park West, the green van moving directly behind them unhindered.

My God, this sucks
…

“Hvala bogu,”
the driver, Ben, said. “Work's over, Paul, thank God.”

“Faster, pussycat!” Lenny was laughing back in the van. “Kill, kill!”

The Mercedes led the green van to the rented garage nearby and parked around the corner. Seconds later, all five men were in the Mercedes and heading toward the Belt Parkway and Sheepshead Bay.

“Great day for fishing,” Ivan said, and smiled.

Mission accomplished.

Or so they thought.

1:55:17 P.M.

“Jesus, Tony! I can't see shit! Fuck happened?”

The shattered windshield of patrolmen Magee and Dente's squad car bent inward under the weight of a dark object impaled on the splintered glass directly in front of Officer Dente's face.

“Everything blew up,” Dente said. “Busted windshield, we're fucked here.”

He opened the door and slid out behind it in a crouch, his service weapon drawn.

“Magee, they're all gone. It's just us.”

“Fuck hit us?”

Officer Dente rose cautiously and examined the dark, round object in the windshield.

“His head. It's a fucking black guy's head.”

“Jesus, no, they got him? I'm calling in. Just
us
?”

Dente didn't reply.

He stood transfixed by the severed head spiked on a vertebra bone in the windshield, the dead man's mouth twisted, drooling blood and bits of tongue, eyes frozen open and staring heavenward, as if in wonder at a sunny sky on a November day in New York.

1:55:30 P.M.

“Same guy? You're sure?”

Cecil King sounded amazed. He and his police protectors were still alive.

“Same guy,” said Flo. “Same guy who killed his brother just blew himself up trying to kill you. And us. Claiborne Smith.”

As they sped toward the King family apartment, Flo called in an all-services disaster alert.

Police and fire department emergency vehicles and hospital ambulances began converging at once on Public School 107.

The mayor raced out of his office and left city hall in a helicopter.

“How'd the Double-A find him?” Flo said. “They don't work like this. We've got no record they use cutouts and dupes.”

“They're Aryans,” Cecil King said. He raised his hands and pounded his knees, punishing himself for missing details, for not seeing obvious explanations. “That's what they call themselves. Aryans. They needed a black man to get close to me. And they found a black man, some stooge, a pathological killer who doesn't know or care—”

“Then why didn't he do it this morning? He was right on top of us.” Flo's question went unanswered.

After a few seconds of silence, Cecil said, “Listen, I still got that church group that's coming up this afternoon.”