Fear City (36 page)

“No-no! Here is better.”

Yousef stepped closer and put a hand on his shoulder. “Brother, if all this urea nitrate explodes, or the nitroglycerin explodes, the presence of compressed hydrogen will not matter. We will be martyrs in Heaven with our houris before the canisters explode.”

If Yousef thought that would comfort him, he was wrong. Kadir's expression must have reflected his horror, for Yousef burst out laughing.

One more day, Kadir thought. One more day and we will be heroes and I will never have to see Ramzi Yousef again.

 

9

“Park this tank,” Tommy barked from the backseat as they eased toward the end of West 53rd. “Things are going good. Those two fucking ragheads better not try to rain on my parade.”

He'd hardly said a word all morning. Fine with Vinny. Seemed royally pissed at something. Like he was gonna explode any minute.

Vinny parked his Crown Vic by a fire hydrant across the street from the taxi depot where they'd first met with the Arabs.

Much as he hated to agree with Tommy on anything, collections today had gone pretty smooth so far. Course, they'd been mostly Tommy C's old accounts, paying their vig on time as usual. Now came the first of Tommy's new loans: ten Gs at twelve points a week to the two ragheads. The vig was due at noon. That meant the car would be twelve hundred bucks heavier in a few minutes.

If
the ragheads paid up.

Tommy was unfolding a sheet of paper. “Okay. I got their names right here: Kadir Allawi and Mahmoud Abou … Abou … Abouhalima. Jesus fucking Christ! You're in America, get fucking American names, will ya? Anyway, these two mooks are due here in…” He looked at his watch. “No, they should be here now. It's noon. They're supposed to be waiting outside with the money. Where the fuck are they?”

“It's cold,” Vinny said. “Maybe they're waiting inside.”

“Oh, and they expect me to come in and get them?”

Vinny shrugged. “I dunno. I ain't no mind reader.”

“Well, I ain't goin' to them. They gotta come to me.”

“Fine,” Vinny said, and turned off the engine.

“Ay, whatta you doin'?”

“Could be a long wait, Tommy. I ain't wasting all my gas.”

“Fuck!” He slammed the back of the front seat. “Go in and send them out here.”

Here we go, Vinny thought. Giving orders again. Hadn't Tommy figured out yet that things was different now?

“Lemme see now,” Vinny said. “My memory ain't so good, so maybe you can help me out here. Who did Tony send out to make the collections? I don't recall it being me.”

“You're supposed to back me up, Vinny.”

“Which puts me behind you, not in front of you. They give you any trouble, I'll be on 'em. But backup don't mean gofer.”

Silence from the backseat, then, “Shit!”

Tommy lurched out of the rear door and slammed it behind him. Vinny smiled as he watched him stalk across the street, his suit jacket flapping in the wind. Tommy yanked open the door and stepped into the depot office.

Five minutes later he was back outside, and his expression as he approached the car said things hadn't gone well inside.

“Motherfucker!” he shouted as he dropped into the rear seat.

He repeated the word half a dozen times, each accompanied by a punch against the seat.

“I take it they ain't there,” Vinny said.

“Neither one of them! Neither one!”

Vinny could've said,
I told you so,
but what good would it do with this asshole? He'd just deny it. Those two Arabs looked like deadbeats from the get-go, but Tommy always thought he had all the answers.

“What about the tall one, the guy with the red hair? He still driving for them?”

“Yeah, but the dispatcher says the fucker called out sick yesterday and today too, and he don't think he'll be in tomorrow either. Some kinda flu.”

“Well, it
is
flu season.”

“Bullshit!”

“You don't buy that?”

“Fuck no.”

“This dispatcher have an address for him?”

“Yeah. Back in Brooklyn.”

“So maybe we go over and, like, administer to the sick. If you know what I mean.”

“Don't want to go back to fuckin' Brooklyn. Least not yet.”

“What about the little one? What's his name—Kadir?”

“Guy doesn't know him. But hey—we can hop over to Jersey City and maybe find him on the job.”

“And if we don't?”

“I'll have a little talk with his boss. Get his address. Besides, I want to take another look at that cigarette operation anyway.”

Vinny knew they were heading for a dead end, but he started up the Vic anyway.

“Let's go.”

 

10

Jack had planned to drive down to Tabernacle while La Chirurgienne was having her way with Roman Trejador, figuring he'd hear all about what she'd been able to wring from him when he got back. Well, that wasn't going to happen, so he took his time driving.

Damn. Still so many unanswered questions.

Tabernacle lay ninety or so miles from the city, but the trip involved only two roads: the New Jersey Turnpike to exit 7, and route 206 straight to Tabernacle. Not having to concentrate on twists and turns and intersections left his mind free to ponder other things.

Like Tony … or Roman Trejador. He'd always be Tony to Jack. What bothered him was that he'd really liked the guy. Trusted him. And all the time he'd been playing a role. Even playing dead since 1990. Why, Jack would never know. He had mourned his supposed death, even partly blamed himself for it. Now he wished to hell he
had
been killed. Cristin would still be alive.

What bothered him even more was the look on Trejador's face when Jack had tossed him the ama-gi key fob. The shock and revulsion had been real.

Okay, so maybe he'd simply ordered Cristin's death, not her torture and disfigurement. But he'd still ordered her death.

And yet his protestations of innocence on that count had sounded sincere …

Jack shook it off. Tony/Trejador had been a superb actor. But his acting days were over. Now he was just dead meat, cooling in his luxury suite until a member of the hotel staff found him. Still, one hell of a more dignified end than he'd allowed Cristin.

Enough. Tabernacle was on the horizon.

The town was little more than a cluster of buildings at a crossroads on a plain at the edge of the Pine Barrens, but it had a town hall, a church, and a cemetery—more than Jack's hometown of Johnson, just a few miles farther down 206.

He drove past the eye-catching cemetery entrance—two square little peak-roofed buildings joined roof to roof by a graceful arch—but behind that was little more than a headstone-studded pancake of winter-brown grass surrounded by a split-rail fence. Jack saw a group of maybe three dozen people clustered left of center. He'd called the United Methodist Church to learn when the service was scheduled, so those had to be Cristin's people.

He made a left on Chatsworth Road, drove along the cemetery's south flank, then found a spot with a view of the funeral party. He'd never met Cristin's folks, and doubted he would have recognized them if he had, what with the way everyone was bundled up against the freezing wind.

He got out and leaned against Ralph to watch. He didn't join the group because he might run into someone he knew. He'd vanished from this life and wanted to stay vanished. But if they were braving the cold, he would too.

 

11

“Now I'm pissed!” Tommy shouted as he burst into the office.

Just fifteen minutes ago Kadir Allawi's boss had given him what he'd said was the little fucker's address. He looked surprised to see Tommy back.

“What is wrong?” said the Egyptian, leaping to his feet behind his desk.

Tommy had learned his name was Diab.

“That address you gave me is bullshit! He ain't there!”

“Maybe he is out!”

“I mean, bullshit in that he don't live there no more. You gave me a bogus address!”

“These young men, they move all the time. That was the last address he give me!”

“Izzat so?”

Maybe he was covering for him, maybe not. One way to find out for sure. He reached across the desk and grabbed Diab's wrist.

“He has not been in all week! For almost two weeks! I do not know where he is!”

“We'll see about that.”

He pulled the cuffs from his pocket. Diab's eyes bulged and he began yammering in Arabese as Tommy snapped one cuff around the Egyptian's wrist, and the other around his own.

“Guess what? Guess who ain't goin' nowhere till I find the little shit who owes me twelve C's in interest.”

“I do not know!” Diab wailed as he jittered around and tried to pull his hand free of the cuff. “I have told you all I know!”

In their old routine, Vinny would be standing by with a Taser to quiet him down, but the fat fuck was sitting out in the car. So Tommy hauled off and punched Diab in the face. The guy would have fallen on his ass if Tommy hadn't yanked him back over the desk.

“Where is he?”

Diab's nose dripped blood and he seemed half stunned.

“I do not know!”

“Yeah? Well, maybe one of the other camel jockeys you got workin' for you does.”

He dragged Diab through the door into the garage where half a dozen skullcapped bastards worked at their stamping machines. Tommy drew his .38 and fired a shot into the rear wall.

“Now that I got your attention, I'm looking for Kadir Allawi. Any of you know where he is?”

Four shook their heads, two looked like deer in headlights.

“They don't all speak English,” Diab said.

“Well, translate then.”

Diab babbled something and now all six were shaking their heads. Trouble was, the Egyptian could have told them all to shake their heads like they didn't know nothing and Tommy wouldn't know any different.

Tommy got in Diab's face. “Okay, this is how it's gonna go down. You're gonna ask them again, and if they all say they don't know nothin' again, I'm gonna shoot up one of your stamping machines. And if they still don't know nothin', I'm gonna shoot up another. And then another and another till you're outta business. Got it?”

“But they do not even know Kadir! He keeps to himself. He has no friends here. All his friends are down at the Al-Salam Mosque!”

“Well, I ain't goin' to no mosque, so you tell 'em what I just said. I get Kadir's address or they're outta jobs.”

Tommy was hoping one of them would come across because the last thing he wanted to do was bust up those machines. With his detailing business kaput, this looked like a good substitute. An excellent substitute, in fact. Two ways it could go: Take over here, or get a couple of boys, come in some night, and help himself to the stampers. Take them back to Brooklyn, where he'd set himself up in the ciggie biz.

Diab yammered again and once more his workers shook their ragheads.

“Awright,” he said, raising the pistol. “You asked for it.”

He looked for a place on the nearest stamper he could hit without damaging nothing. He—

The back of his head exploded in pain. He dropped the gun but not before it went off, missing the machine completely. He was halfway into a turn to see what hit him when something crunched into his shoulder. He whirled to see a little camel humper holding a two-by-four. As Tommy reached for him someone jumped on his back and began punching the side of his face. Then another. He dropped to his knees, dragging Diab with him as the workers started kicking him.

Shit!

“Vinny! Yo, Vin
naaay!
”

Suddenly the little brown bastards were losing their grip on him and flying through the air. One slammed against a wall, another landed on a stamping machine, knocking it over. Tommy looked up and saw a human mountain tossing the Arabs around like they was stuffed animals.

Vinny.

Tommy didn't know how he got in here so fast, but he was glad to see a white face, even if it belonged to Vinny Donato.

“What the fuck, Tommy!” he was saying, red-faced as he pulled Tommy to his feet. “What the fuck!”

“Good to see you too!”

“Unlock those cuffs. We're outta here!”

No, he had to find that little shit, Kadir.

“But—”

“Now. Cops coming.”

Tommy found the key in his coat pocket and unlocked Diab's cuff. Then the big guy was propelling him through the office and back outside to the car.

“Are you crazy?” Vinny said as they slammed their respective doors. “Are you outta your fucking mind?”

Tommy began unlocking the cuff from around his own wrist but he was so pissed he couldn't get the key into its hole. This was the last straw—the last fucking straw. This fat fuck messes up his business, then he embarrasses him in front of a bunch of ragheads.

“You're asking me if
I'm
crazy? You're really asking me that when you just made me look bad in there.”

“I
what
?” Vinny said as he shoved the car in gear and roared down the street. “I made
you
look bad? As I recall you were down on your knees getting the shit kicked outta you when I arrived.”

“I coulda handled it—I woulda handled it if you hadn't barged in.”

“Really? Who was calling my name? The Egyptian guy you were cuffed to? Funny, it sounded like you.”

“Listen—”

“No,
you
listen. No way I woulda heard you from outside.”

What was he saying?

“Then how—?”

“I'm sitting in the car and I hear something that sounds like a shot but I can't be sure. I look around and see a couple of people on the street looking toward the garage. So I roll my window down and listen. Then I hear something I
know
is a shot, and it's coming from inside. So I head for the garage, and as I step into the office I hear you calling my name. You know the rest.”