Fear City (14 page)

“Why here?” Kadir said, looking at the blank concrete wall facing them.

“I have reviewed diagrams and they show that this is the southeast corner of the north tower, where it is closest to the south tower.” He pointed through the windshield. “When the explosion blows out this wall and the girders behind it, the tower will tilt toward the weakened point. All it takes is the slightest tilt, no more than a few degrees, to exert enormous leverage on the already damaged beams. They will crumple further, increasing the tilt. Each tower is more than a quarter of a mile high. With a damaged base, the tilt will pass the point of no return at somewhere between three and five degrees. And then the tower can do nothing else but fall. And because the damage occurred at this spot, it will fall to the southeast, directly into its sister tower, bringing her down too.”

Kadir suppressed the giggle that bubbled into his throat as he pictured the event: one colossal domino tipping, toppling into another, the two going down in a stupendous, roaring blast of smoke and flame and flying debris. A deafening, mind-numbing disaster.

He had dreamed of this for years. Now it would come true.

“You are sure of this?”

Ayyad had a degree in engineering—but in chemical engineering. How well did he know structural engineering?

“With Allah's guidance, it will happen. We are fashioning a very powerful bomb. The concrete floor of each level of the garage is eleven inches thick. The bomb will blow out levels above and below, but most of its force will be directed against that wall. This tower will fall, I am sure of it. The only thing I cannot predict with the utmost surety is whether it will make enough of a direct hit on the south tower to bring that down too. A little variation this way, a little variation that way in angle of fall and it may only damage it.”

Even so. To bring down one tower and damage the other … Kadir could be satisfied with that.

Ayyad put the car into reverse.

“Remember this spot. Anywhere near the center of this wall. If there's no empty spot, park behind the cars. If anybody notices and complains, no matter. There will not be enough time for anyone to move it.”

Kadir doubted he could forget if he tried.

 

7

Abe's eyebrows rose almost to where his hairline would have been had it not receded to the top of his head. “I should know about call girls and escorts?”

“I'm not sure if that's a yes or a no.”

“That's a no, a
nein
, a
nyet
.”

“And you never heard of Celebrations before I mentioned it?”

“No, nein, nyet. Why do you think I would keep it from you?”

“To spare my feelings?”

“Spare, shmare. If you didn't know already, you were going to find out sooner or later. For me, sooner is better. I would have told you.”

Jack had no choice but to believe him because Abe had never steered him wrong.

“Why didn't I see it?”

“You were too close maybe?”

“Maybe. But you were right when you questioned why she'd never invited me to one of her ‘events.' Now I have the answer: There weren't any. Why didn't I suspect?”

He remembered the day he'd followed her from FIT to her apartment, and hung outside all day until he watched her get into a limo with a well-heeled, middle-aged couple.
A couple.

Abe said, “Maybe love really is blind.”

“Wasn't love.”

“What was it then?”

“Like. Very heavy like.” He pounded a fist on the counter. “Now I see why she kept our lives so separate—easier to maintain the lies.”

“So now to someone else she's lying.”

The words struck Jack like a low blow. A lump swelled in his throat.

“Aw, Abe. She won't be lying to anyone. Ever.”

Abe stared at him for a long moment. “The Ditmars Dahlia?”

Jack could only nod.

Abe came around the counter and put a hand on Jack's shoulder. “I'm so sorry. That must have been terrible for you.”

It took everything Jack had to keep from losing it and bawling like a baby. Anger saved him. Anger at himself. He'd returned from the morgue a ball of grief around a core of rage. But the rage had no target until he'd heard the truth about Celebrations. It leaped at Cristin for lying to him, because he found anger easier. He'd always been more comfortable with anger than grief.

And that anger had numbed the pain of her death … but for only so long.

“You would have loved her, Abe,” he said when his throat unlocked. “So full of life, enjoying every moment and yet planning for the future. I want to find whoever did this, Abe.”

“I will help you.”

“And after I find them I want to take a long time killing them.”

“That I will leave to you.”

 

8

Jack sat alone at his table in Julio's and sipped a Rock.

Lou and Barney had offered to buy him a beer when he walked in but he'd taken a rain check. If Julio's were
The Muppet Show
, those two would be Statler and Waldorf, and he wasn't in the mood for them. Or anyone, for that matter.

Julio had never met Cristin and so Jack hadn't told him that she was the Ditmars Dahlia. The news hadn't broken yet. Most likely the cops were verifying the tip and bringing in the Otts to take a look at the remains. Poor people. Bad enough to lose a daughter, but to lose her like that, to know what she suffered before she died …

“Mind if I join you?”

Jack looked up. Bertel. Just the man he didn't need right now. But he sat down before Jack could answer.

“This isn't a good time, Dane.”

“Not a good time for me, either.”

Jack wanted to punch him. The guy had no idea.

Bertel slapped the table. “Damn Mohammedans. They're up to no good. I know it just as sure as I know you're sitting there across from me. They're up to something and I can't keep a close enough eye on them to find out and still run my business. Sometimes I have to be down south to oversee things.”

“And you want me to spell you. We've been through this.”

Last time Bertel was here he'd tried to enlist Jack by saying the guy who'd driven the decoy truck with Reggie was involved.

“Yeah, we have, and I know you don't want to get involved, Jack. I know you don't want to risk exposure. But this is your home, and a man defends his home.”

“I just rent here.”

“You
live
here, dammit. That makes it your home. There's an old movie called
Ride the High Country
that's—”

“Peckinpah.”

“You know it?”

“Sure.”

“Well, it's got a line in it about entering your house justified.”

“Joel McCrea—‘All I want to do is enter my house justified.'”

“Jesus, how many times have you seen that goddamn movie?”

“A few.”

Truth was Jack had lost count.

“You understand what that means—the ‘justified' part?”

“I can guess.”

“It means acting with honor, doing the right thing. It means spending your day in such a way that at the end of it you can go home—enter your house—with your head high, without guilt or regret. Well, this city is your house, and if you can't find it in yourself to defend it when it's threatened, then you can't enter your house justified—you can't walk these streets justified.”

Jack stared at him a moment, then, “Speech over?”

“Yeah, I guess so.” Bertel leaned back. He looked tired and old, but not defeated. More like disgusted—with Jack, with the whole world.

“What'd they do, freeze you a couple hundred years ago and then thaw you out?”

“You're saying I'm old-fashioned?”

“Old-fashioned? Old-fashioned barely touches it. You're Paleolithic, you're Triassic, completely out of sync with the modern world. A walking, talking anachronism.”

“Well, then, so be it. I am what I am. Fuck you all.”

Arrows … Cristin … Reggie … Arabs … sex slaves …

Shit.

The silence lengthened between them until Jack shrugged. “Okay.”

“
Okay?
Okay, what?”

“Okay, where is this place and when do we start?”

 

9

Tommy Ten Thumbs Totaro hung up his phone and leaned back. It had been a short conversation with Aldo. So short that his pre-call hit still burned his nostrils and the back of his throat a bit.

Something had been bugging him. Not just how a bunch of rampaging moulies had fucked up his detailing gig, but the timing of it. Everything goes to hell and practically the next day Tony's got him on the carpet for slacking on the loans. That had a bad smell to it.

What Tony didn't know was that Tommy hadn't been slacking on loans—just Tony's loans. Tommy had been investing his profits in his own shylock game. Tommy had been scared that was what the meeting was about.

But this other thing … he'd called around and found that at least a dozen lots had been hit in Brooklyn and Queens that night. A bunch of kids couldn't get around like that unless they had cars, or unless someone was driving them.

So maybe some Harlem type was trying to move in, but so far Tommy hadn't heard a thing about it. And that got him to thinking: What if someone was trying to get him out of the detailing business so he'd pay more attention to someone else's loan business?

Only two guys Tony would go to: Vinny and Aldo. Tommy couldn't talk to Vinny about it, but Aldo …

Aldo had said he didn't know nothin' about it, and hadn't heard anything about it except what Tommy had told him.

He didn't know if Aldo was involved or not, but he knew he was lying about how much he knew.

This whole thing stank to hell of Vinny Donuts. He had connections with the dealers in Bed-Stuy, especially after he'd delivered that bunch of Air Jordans back in December.

Time to get out on the streets and do a little research. He couldn't let this slide. If Vinny and Tony were behind this, it required a response—a
big
response.

 

10

Jack located Rebecca Olesen's Lexus SUV in the Pleasantville train station parking lot, then found a spot for his Corvair with a clear view of it, and waited. Not many cars in the lot on a Saturday night, so he had plenty of parking choices.

As he watched and waited, he thought about Cristin, and about Bertel too. The guy had been confused but delighted by Jack's agreeing to join The Great Mohammedan Watch. Jack didn't tell him why.

The truth was that he had no leads on who killed Cristin, and he had a feeling the police didn't either—besides the
DAMATO
scratched into her skin. He couldn't very well hunt down and brace a U.S. senator. He'd leave that to the cops. For Jack, the arrow wounds pointed to Reggie only because he was the only one Jack knew who was into archery. With the gazillion people owning bows and arrows, the chance that it was Reggie was less than slim. But Jack had no place else to go.

Except to Rebecca Olesen.

Which was why he'd turned down Bertel's offer to treat him to a steak at Ben Benson's and taken the gamble to come here instead. If Celebrations was an escort service, then he assumed Saturday night would be busy, keeping Rebecca in the office until late. And what do you know, the Lexus sat here waiting for her.

All right, how to play this? Jump in and carjack her? No. Too many ways that could go wrong. Best to follow her home, learn where she lived, and ad-lib from there.

A train pulled in from the south, stopped, then moved on. Rebecca Olesen and three males entered the parking lot and fanned out, each to a different car. Jack watched her approach her Lexus, looking like a typical middle-aged, middle-class hausfrau. No way would anyone guess she ran a call girl service. Meet the new Mayflower Madame.

He followed her on a twisty-turny path into a
Leave It to Beaver
middle-class neighborhood where she pulled into the driveway of a white, two-story colonial. The garage door was sliding up as Jack cruised past.

He parked Ralph near a hedgerow between two houses a couple of lots down. A black van was parked across the street, so he guessed they didn't have an ordinance against street parking. He pulled his Glock from the holster under the front seat and stuck it in his jacket pocket. He had no intention of pulling the trigger but it might come in handy for intimidation. He hopped out, eased the Corvair's door shut, and trotted back to her yard. Good thing the weather was staying cold. Not likely anyone was going to be out for a stroll.

He made directly for the side of the house, ready to turn and bolt if any motion-sensitive floodlights came on. But the yard remained dark. Praying she had no dog, he began peeking in the lit windows, looking for kids, a husband, a live-in maid.

The first window looked in on a dark room. Light from the hall limned a desk, a computer, a printer—some kind of home office. He pushed up on the window but it wouldn't budge. Locked.

The next were paired and looked in on a large kitchen where he spotted her opening a bottle of white wine. That was encouraging. If a husband or boyfriend was about, wouldn't he be doing that for her? He saw the keypad for an alarm system on the door to the garage. The indicator light glowed green. Looked like she'd turned it off upon coming in but hadn't turned it back on.

Keeping to the deep shadows at the very rear of the backyard, he moved around to the garage side of the house, then crept to the shrubbery in front. A peek revealed the living room, lit but empty.

He returned to the side of the garage to decide his next move. He needed a way in, but how? Knock on the door? She'd know him from their meeting yesterday. No way she'd open for him. Probably go straight to the phone to call the cops. Had to be sneaky about this.