Fear City (34 page)

Jack burst out laughing. “You're kidding, right?”

“I should be kidding about your career? Your future? This is what you need to bring people with troubles to your door—or at least to your table in that bar. Just add whatever phone number you want and you're all set.”

“How about I add yours?”

“What do I know from fixing problems? I have your number. I'll—”

“Don't even think about it, Abe.”

Abe took the sheet and began folding it. “This will be my gift to you.”

Jack couldn't tell if he was kidding or not. “Abe…”

“For a year I'll run it. Let's see … the
Village Voice
, the
Daily News
, the
Post
,
Newsday
,
New York
magazine…”

“If I didn't have to run…” He began rewrapping his untasted second McMuffin. “I'd—”

“Run? You're going to take that and run? You shouldn't run and eat. Bad for your digestion.”

Jack had to smile. “Always thinking of me.”

“I look out for people. It's an affliction. The city over I'm known as ‘Caring Abe,' a man who lives only for others.”

Jack pushed the McMuffin across the counter.

“Okay, watch this for me. If I'm not back in two minutes, eat it.”

“
Eat
it? But this will be my third. I should consume three of these sausage-egg-cheese concoctions?”

“I'm sure you can handle it,” Jack said as he headed for the door.

Abe loosed an exploited sigh. “Only because I care. Only because I live for others.”

 

2

Aimal Kasi shifted nervously from foot to foot as he waited on line to board the Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt. He kept expecting a platoon of airport security guards to arrive and carry him off, but no one took any notice of him. Life at Baltimore-Washington International Airport was business as usual. Just another work day.

He showed his boarding pass and was passed through without a second glance. As he hurried down the ramp, he again gave praise to Allah for shielding him. At Frankfurt he would transfer to a Pakistan Airlines flight to Quetta, his home town.

Aimal would return with a message for his Muslim brothers: America was ripe for jihad. Americans were vulnerable. With Allah watching over you, you could kill them and walk away with no one stopping you.

All
ā
hu Akbar!

 

3

With the plaid wool scarf around her head, her shapeless coat, and sunglasses, Hadya knew she cut an eccentric figure in the dawn light. Thinking she'd need her energy, today's suhoor had been more substantial than usual, augmenting the aging bread with two eggs she had hard-boiled and peeled last night. Sunrise had come at 6:37 this morning so she had eaten early and bused here to the corner of Pamrapo Avenue and Kennedy Boulevard.

She expected Kadir and his friend with the Chevy Nova to appear soon because Ramadan would force them to rise early to eat. And sure enough, shortly before seven o'clock she saw the Chevy approaching. She turned away as it neared and watched from the corner of her eye as it turned onto Pamrapo. Halfway down the block it turned into a drive.

She frowned. There didn't seem to be a house there. Keeping her eyes on the spot where the car disappeared, she waited for the light, then crossed Kennedy's four lanes of traffic. She walked a few hundred feet down Pamrapo until she could see the driveway. It appeared to be a vacant lot. But it couldn't be. There had to be a house back there.

Fearful of approaching any closer, she returned to the bus stop to wait for them to leave. If necessary she would call in sick to the bakery. Today she
would
learn what Kadir was up to.

 

4

Even though the four of them had one of the Lexington Hotel's elevator cars to themselves, Burkes kept his voice just above a whisper.

“I can't find anyone who's heard even a rumor of Rabin visiting.”

Rob and Gerald wore suits and ties, Jack his blazer, Burkes wore a nylon jogging suit. They shared the car with a huge rolling suitcase.

“That means it's top-top secret?” Jack said.

Burkes snorted. “That means La Chirurgienne's pain-enhancing potion fried some of the Arab's circuits. I made some very, very discreet inquiries and the responses I got were pure shock. Looked at me like I was jaked.”

“That doesn't mean the bomb's not real. It could be why Bertel was killed.”

“I'm aware of that, lad, and I've put out word that I've heard something. I've not rung a full alarm—I need to maintain some credibility if nothing happens—but I've let it be known that there's a rumor floating 'round that some Middle Easterners with a grudge against Boutros-Ghali might take explosive action in the very near future.”

“‘Explosive action'?”

Burkes shrugged. “They got the message: extra patrols around the perimeter of the UN complex starting today. But we worry about that later. Right now…”

“Yeah.” Jack straightened his blazer. “Now.”

“You sure you can handle this?”

“Very.”

Which was a lie. He'd been holding the tension at bay, but now it all came flooding through. In the next few minutes he was going to invade a hotel room in midtown Manhattan, confront and subdue at gunpoint the man who'd ordered Cristin's death, and then, with the help of Rob and Gerald, spirit him away.

Am I crazy?

Yeah, probably. But this needed doing and he wanted—no,
needed
to be the one to do it.

“Do we know anything more about this guy other than he was one of Cristin's regulars?”

Burkes shook his head. “Not much. Did a quick background on him last night. The good thing about him is his name. Not too many Roman Trejadors about, so he was easy to find. The bad thing is there wasn't much to find. He was born in Spain forty-nine years ago but is now a naturalized American citizen. He has no permanent address. He works for an offshore holding company and likes to live in hotel suites. We don't know what he does for the company. We don't even know what the company does. We do know he draws a generous six-figure salary and pays his taxes—although if he's audited, he might have trouble justifying his hotel bills as business expenses.”

Jack was impressed. “Pretty good for a ‘quick' background check.”

“You think so? Actually, it's pretty thin. But not as thin as what we could dig up on you.”

Jack's stomach clenched. “You backgrounded
me
?”

“You're surprised? You think we'd bloody well allow you to tag along with us without checking you out?”

“Tag along with
you
? You're tagging along with
me
!”

Gerald laughed. “I love this kid.”

Jack was more than fed up with the “laddie” and “kid” shit by now, but this wasn't the time or place to address it. He had another matter front and center—a question he was almost afraid to ask.

“What did you find?”

“Next to nothing,” Burkes said. “Trejador's got a lot of blank spaces in his life, but yours is one big fecking void. It's like God created you from nothing and set you down here. If you were older, I'd say you were a field agent for some intelligence agency, but even they create false histories for their people. You don't have
any
history, true
or
false.”

That was a relief.

“Can we keep it that way?”

Burkes shook his head. “I don't like mysteries. They keep me awake at night.”

Jack wished him a lifetime of insomnia as the elevator
ding
ed for the twenty-sixth floor.

Burkes said, “Weapon ready?”

“Yep.”

They couldn't supply a suppressor for his Glock so they'd given him a suppressed SIG-Sauer. They told him it was a P226 chambered for S&W .40 caliber. Jack took their word for it. It presently rested in the small of his back, hidden by the blazer.

“Just remember: Use it as a last resort, but if you've got to use it, go for the kill shot and get out. Either he leaves with us or he leaves in a body bag. No loose ends.”

“Got it.”

To Rob: “Syringe loaded?”

“All the way.”

The plan was simple: Jack would get the drop on Trejador, then let Gerald and Rob into the room. They'd shoot him up with some super sedative they had and cart him off in the suitcase.

“I still don't like him going in alone,” Gerald said. “No offense, Jack, but it's asking for trouble.”

“Maybe it is,” Burkes said, “maybe it isn't. But I gave him my word, so let's make it work.”

“It'll work,” Jack said.

Jack slipped on a pair of driving gloves as the elevator stopped on the twenty-sixth floor. Rob took hold of the suitcase handle and the three of them stepped out into an empty hallway.

“Meet you downstairs,” Burkes said as the doors slid closed between them.

Rob and Gerald had already reconnoitered the floor and led Jack straight to a room door—number 2612. Gerald had what looked like a credit card wired to a black box about the size of a walkie-talkie. He stuck it into the slot of the door's electronic lock. Lights blinked on the box, then stayed lit. Gerald removed the card and a green light lit on the lock.

Taking a breath, Jack slowly depressed the lever and drew the SIG as he entered. He stepped into a large sitting room where a dark-haired man of about fifty sat at a table. He wore some sort of ugly silk smoking jacket as he read the
Times
and munched on a piece of toast.

The door slammed behind Jack.

The man looked up.

Jack nearly dropped the pistol when he recognized him.

“Jesus Christ—Tony?”

 

5

At last. After an hour and a half in the numbing cold, Hadya saw the Chevy pull out of a driveway and roar toward her. Again she averted her face but took careful note of who was in the car. Kadir and the same unknown friend again.

As soon as they had turned onto Kennedy to head north—back to that Space Station place again, she was sure—Hadya was dashing across the street. She hurried down Pamrapo to the place where she'd seen the car turn. And it did indeed look like a vacant lot, complete with rotting abandoned cars. But a path—two ruts, really—curved through it. After looking back up the street to make sure the Chevy wasn't making a sudden, unexpected return, she followed the ruts. They ended at a ramshackle two-story building.

A dog barked from somewhere inside. She saw a white face appear at a second-floor window, then turn away. She'd been seen. She hadn't wanted anyone to see her. What if the man said something to Kadir?

Nothing she could do about that. But at least she could be sure now that Kadir and his friends were using the ground floor.

Praying to Allah that no one was inside, she crept up to the front door—no porch, no storm door, just a door in the wall. Before trying that, she decided it might be safer to take a peek through one of the windows. But that proved useless. She dared not wipe away the outside grime—that would leave a sure sign that someone had been here. Lights glowed within, but even if she wiped the glass clean, she'd gain no information; the inner surface seemed coated with a glaze of some sort.

She tried the door handle. It turned but the door would not open. It rattled a little on its hinges but refused to budge inward. The reason was right in front of her: a shiny new dead bolt.

She leaned against the door to see if she could catch a glimpse of the interior, but snapped her head back as a sharp chemical odor wafting between the door and the jamb stung her nostrils and made her eyes water.

What were they making in there? Poison gas?

She looked around for something she could use to pry a wider space when she heard a car engine behind her. Without pausing to look, she dashed around the far edge of the building and crouched with her back against the side wall, panting not from exertion, but from fear. She had already suffered the force of Kadir's wrath for simply baring her head in public. What would he do if he caught her spying on him?

She heard doors open and slam, voices muttering. She recognized the language as Arabic but could catch only an occasional word. She couldn't be sure but thought she recognized Kadir's voice.

What was she going to do? What if one of them came around the side of the building for some reason? She had to move.

Frantic, she looked around. The building backed up to a wall of trees and bushes. She could make out some sort of paved area, maybe a parking lot, through the naked branches. If she could slip through there …

As she began moving toward the rear, she heard a metallic clang from out front, almost bell-like. And then another. What
were
they doing?

Cursing her curiosity, she inched toward the front edge of the wall. More clangs. Taking a deep breath, she chanced a quick peek around the edge and instantly pulled back.

Metal cylinders … they were carrying red metal cylinders from a car—not the Chevy—into the building. She'd seen part of a word on one.

HYDRO …

She knew enough English to work the bakery counter and for simple conversation, but this word was beyond her vocabulary.

As she hurried toward the brush at the rear of the building, she vowed to look it up as soon as possible.

 

6

Lonnie … Roman shot to his feet and gaped at him.

He'd hoped that if Lonnie appeared, the shock of recognition would provide an opening. But Roman himself had been too shocked by his sudden arrival to act. Already he could see him tightening his grip on the pistol.

“Lonnie! How did you—?”

The intruder tried to speak but failed on his first attempt. Then he found his voice.