Reckless Endangerment (47 page)

Miller and Logan, the two detectives on the eight-to-four shift, settled down to what they both expected would be an uneventful eight hours. They were used to this; stake-out work is much like war—endless boredom punctuated at long intervals by moments of terror and violence. They thought the real action would take place down at the Terminal Hotel, if and when this Mexican scumbag showed up.

A Plymouth sedan arrived from the direction of Grand and stopped in front of the Karp loft. The two detectives tensed, and then relaxed when they saw a middle-aged black man emerge. They knew who he was. He spoke into the communication grille in the wall and then entered the elevator when it opened. Five minutes later, the same man emerged with Karp, and they drove away in the Plymouth.

Around half past eleven, the two detectives were discussing who should go for takeout and what the takeout should be when a motorcycle pulled up with a man and a child on it. The man pulled the bike up on the sidewalk, chained it to a standpipe, and waited in front of the elevator while the child—who revealed herself as a little girl when she took her helmet off—spoke into the grille. They too disappeared into the elevator. Two minutes later, the elevator door opened again and a young woman emerged. She had a nice, if hefty, body, which Miller commented upon as she walked rapidly up Crosby toward Grand.

“The baby-sitter,” said Logan.

“She can sit on me any day,” said Miller. “So … you want a meatball hero from Lucca’s?”

An alarm siren sounded somewhere down the street. The policemen paid it the same attention as everyone else did, which was none.

In the loft, Marlene poured coffee for Tran in the kitchen. The babies were set up with pots and utensils on the floor. The dog was locked in a closet as a punishment for tearing up a garbage bag. He had taken it like a man, but now he was whining and scratching the door. Lucy was in her room falling into a doze after her all-nighter with her pals. Marlene turned on the exhaust fan and lit her first cigarette of the day (limit four), and Tran lit his eighth. They smoked and drank coffee companionably for a while, talking in French to each other and to the boys, smiling when one of the boys responded with a Gallic diphthong. Zak crawled into Tran’s lap to try to eat his cigarettes or spill steaming coffee on both of them. Zik started to imitate his brother by climbing onto Marlene, and thus they were both encumbered and incapable of any dramatic action when El Chivato walked into the kitchen with Lucy, his arm around her neck, holding a pistol to her head.

They all stood around on the warehouse dock, looking natty in their suits, despite a night spent sleeping on pallets and tarps. They each had a turn in the bathroom and the use of the group’s razor, and all had emerged cleanshaven and smelling of the same aftershave lotion. Ibn-Salemeh had insisted on this; the police would be reluctant to bother a group of men who looked like corporate trainees on their way to learn about personnel policies. He was now distributing identification documents and plane tickets. Khalid looked at his and frowned.

“Effendi, these documents, this passport—they are in my own name.”

Ibn-Salemeh smiled at him and replied, “Yes, I know. It is a detail, but there is a small possibility that the documents will survive the blast.”

“What blast?” Ibn-Salemeh chuckled and looked around the little group, inviting them to join in the fun. “Why, the
bomb,
of course, the event we have been working toward these many weeks, especially you, Chouza, and we all appreciate it, so much so that we have decided to send you along with Walid, another brave martyr to our cause.”

Khalid felt Big Mahmoud’s large hand enclose his arm and felt Mahmoud’s large pistol press into the small of his back. He looked around and met only the sort of cold, somewhat disgusted glances that people direct toward dead animals.

“Did you imagine, Chouza Khalid, that I could not
count,
” said Ibn-Salemeh in his usual schoolmasterly tone, “that I was some kind of fool? That somehow I would not discover that you had murdered Bashar and Ahmed and stolen well over half the proceeds from our transaction with the Mexicans? And also disposed of the girl, without doubt to your own profit. Last night I sent Rifaat there to your house you thought I didn’t know about, and he finds no girl there. How much did you get for her?”

Khalid felt sweat break out on his face. “Nothing, effendi, I swear—she escaped. It was the Mexican who helped her, this boy the brothers hired. He also killed Bashar and Ahmed. And Jemil at the garage when we tried to trap him. He took rockets and Kalashnikovs from us. He is a devil, effendi. It was not my fault, I swear.”

Ibn-Salemeh was shaking his head and holding high an admonishing finger. “No, no,” he said, “now you insult me, Chouza, you insult me. You ask me to believe that some little Mexican bandit escaped from two experienced
fedayin
and then stole money from them. How was this done? And then he escaped from an ambush? Your problem is that you don’t watch enough television. Didn’t you understand that the discovery of Bashar’s corpse and the arrest of the Mexican brothers with their money and the details of the events in Brooklyn last Tuesday would be reported over and over again? And that I would be able from this to figure out what is really going on? American television, Chouza—it is an education in itself.”

Khalid had not understood. And there was nothing more to say. Even he could not untangle the net of truth and lies he had spun. He had skimmed money, true, but all the rest of it was actually due to the Mexican boy, yet even if he could have made Ibn-Salemeh believe it, he deserved death for incompetence alone; he would have done the same in Ibn-Salemeh’s place. His luck had gone, and the little glimmers of escape he had seen in the past weeks had been merely the glint of her crown as she danced out of sight, the pathetic hallucination of a doomed man. He hung his head. Ibn-Salemeh gestured, and Mahmoud and Hussein seized Khalid roughly and took his gun and his fat money belt, and bound him with gaffer’s tape, including a strip over his mouth, and wrapped him tightly in a tarpaulin lashed with more tape. They loaded him into the van, and they all set off.

The first thing Marlene said was, “Do nothing! Do you understand?” She said this in French, to Tran, who had already snaked his hand behind his back to get his gun. He relaxed and grunted assent. Marlene looked El Chivato in the eye and said, “You’re sick. You look like you have a fever.”

El Chivato was not expecting this. He was expecting fearful trembling, screams, pleading, not a concerned inquiry about his health. Also, where was the man?

“Where is Karp?” he demanded.

“He’s at the Terminal Hotel with several hundred police officers, waiting for you to show up,” said Marlene. “Why don’t you let go of Lucy? No one here is going to hurt you. Would you like a glass of water?”

This had to be a trap of some kind, thought El Chivato. He snapped his head in all directions, turned from side to side, dragging the girl with him. She made no resistance; another peculiar thing—usually they struggled. This girl seemed to be boneless, almost sagging against him, as if they were in a dance. Yes, a trap. It had been too easy to get in here. Into a building down the street with a crew of loaders, up to the roof, ignoring the alarm at the door, across several roofs to this building, down one flight of the fire escape and in through a conveniently open window.

The woman spoke again. “It’s not a trap, you know. We’re just a family relaxing on a weekend. My name is Marlene. This is Tran. This baby is Zik and that’s Zak. The girl you’re holding is Lucy. Won’t you let her go? There’s no need to point a gun at her.”

El Chivato felt the world move under him. This was wrong; she was trying to trick him, with that soft voice. He thought about his mother and his sisters, something he never did when he was working. His hand tightened on the pistol. He would shoot someone. That would stop the soft talking.

Marlene looked deep into her daughter’s eyes. She composed a message and sent it out through her eye. Don’t be afraid, the message said. If you die, you will go straight to Paradise and I will be right behind you. There is nothing to fear.

Lucy was, in fact, not afraid. She had experienced a moment of sharp terror when the man had grabbed her in the hallway on her way to the bathroom, but now she felt clear and tingly. It was a kind of dream, a different kind of reality than regular life. Her mother was doing something now, something important, and she knew that she should join in this. She said, “If you have a fever, you should drink plenty of liquids. Would you like me to get you a drink of water?”

She spoke Spanish in the accent of the border, an accent that El Chivato had heard all his life. He released her neck and looked down at her, astounded. She looked up at him, calmly and without fear, like Carmen, his smallest sister. He was thirsty, parched. He nodded and she went to the sink and filled a glass and brought it back. No one moved, not even the babies. He drank, draining the glass.

Marlene saw that he was not a pathological killer. She had known a substantial number of such killers in the past, and this boy was not like them. There was no smirking evil on his face. He got no twisted human pleasure from killing. He would, if asked, make no attempt to justify or rationalize himself, any more than a leopard does when it rends a gazelle. He was an animal. A wounded one. There was nothing in his eyes but animal blankness and a dull ferocity.

Marlene said, “If you shoot that gun here, the police outside will hear it and call more police and you will die here, whatever you do to us. What you should do is leave the children with Tran, and I will go with you and be your hostage and take you to where the Obregons are. You may not get in, you may be killed, we both may be killed, but there is closer than here.”

El Chivato thought about this for a moment. He turned his gaze onto the
chino.
This was a hard man, a very hard man, and he would not remain forever there like a statue. He could not stay here, and the woman was correct about shooting. It would do him no good. The drugs were boiling in his body now, and he felt better than he had in some time, although not entirely in his right mind. He said, “And the girl goes too.”

Down in the street, Miller had gone to get lunch. Logan saw the elevator door open, and saw Karp’s wife and daughter emerge, accompanied by a thin bald man in a long canvas coat. Where the hell did he come from? he wondered, and then realized that this was the guy. The three walked toward a yellow VW square-back parked up the street. Logan felt sick and frightened. He knew he was not going to get out of the car and stand up to this crazy bastard alone. He picked up his handset and called it in.

In a van parked at the corner of Ninth and Fifteenth, across from the Terminal Hotel, Clay Fulton took the call from Central. “Tell him to follow them and not to do anything. Repeat. Do not attempt to stop the car or interfere with the guy in any way! Keep this channel open and pass on any changes. Right. Right. K.”

“What’s happening?” asked Karp. He and everyone else in the cramped command vehicle looked at Fulton.

“He’s got Marlene and Lucy, and he seems to be heading north,” said Fulton. “Christ, Butch, I’m sorry.”

Karp felt his stomach vanish. “Your guys! How did he get by them?” he cried.

“I don’t know, man—the roof maybe. But he’s got to be coming here. Where else would he go?”

Walid’s first regular stop on his cake route was a deli on Canal, near Centre Street. A small order, and then he would pick Posie up at Broadway and Grand. Saturday was an easy day, because the Midtown places were mostly closed. Still, he had been instructed to drive the whole route, just as he did every day. It had something to do with the new radio. He got out of his seat, picked up the marked carton, and let himself out the back.

When he returned, he was surprised to find two men leaning against the truck, with a long, tarpaulin-wrapped bundle at their feet. They explained that in the bundle was a Zionist spy they had captured. Walid was to take him aboard the truck. Later, he would be informed where to deliver him for interrogation.

“By the radio?”

“Yes, the radio,” one of the men said, and they both smiled. He opened the door, and they loaded the roll into the truck.

Posie was waiting at the appointed place. She scampered in and gave Walid a long kiss and a giggle. He drove the truck away from the curb, none too steadily, she hanging about his neck and licking his ear. He made his next delivery, a restaurant in SoHo. As Walid parked, she wandered into the back of the truck, stole a sweet bun from a bag, saw the rolled tarp, felt a thrill of satisfaction. The honey! she thought. He’s brought something for us to lie on. Her nesting instincts aroused, she knelt by the roll and began to strip the tape away with her short, strong nails.

The bundle moved and mewed. Posie let out a yelp and jumped away.

“What are you doing?” Walid was staring in from the driver’s compartment, his face pale.

“Wally, there’s a guy in this tarp.”

“Yes, he is a Zionist spy. Now leave him alone and come up here.”

“Don’t you want to see what he looks like?” asked Posie. She pulled at a strip and a corner of the tarp fell away. The man’s face was red with strain as he tried to make himself understood through the tape across his mouth.

“
Allah wa akbar!
” cried Walid. “It is Khalid!”

“He’s a Zionist spy?” asked Posie, confused. “I thought he was in the good guys.”

Khalid was flopping like a gaffed wahoo and making strangled sounds. Walid tore the tape from his mouth. After one huge breath Khalid said in Arabic, “Untie me! We must get out of here immediately.”

Walid looked doubtful and wrung his hands. He looked at Posie, who said helpfully, “Ask him why they tied him up.”

Without waiting for translation, Khalid said forcefully, “Because of
you,
Walid. I could not let them sacrifice you, even for our cause. I am too soft-hearted for this work, and so they want to kill me, and—”

“What—what do you mean, ‘sacrifice’?” asked the youth.