The Godless One (35 page)

"You think you're ready?"

"I'm dressed and shaved, as you
see."

Karen hesitated a moment, then reached
up and knocked off some of the dried mud from Ari's new coat.
"Seeing you like this makes me wonder..."

She was wondering how much Ari knew of
things he was supposed to be ignorant of. He simulated an ignorant
smile, which made him appear like an idiot who had fallen down the
stairs—several flights of stairs, in fact.

"Okay, we need to get
going before anyone sees us," she said, suppressing a desire to
hold onto him and keep him from falling as they went down the
sidewalk. "If anyone
does
see us, I'm just some girl you're dating and
you're too embarrassed to take me out in a Scion. And
if—"

"Deputy Karen, we have reached your
car. There is no longer any need for a cover story."

"Oh no, we'll need a cover story," she
said, unlocking her Civic. "You'll be going into a roomful of cops
of every stripe and acronym, and they'll know a man beaten up in a
fight when they see one."

"I'll tell them I fought to defend your
honor," said Ari as he closed his door. "And I lost."

"You got drunk and picked a fight in a
bar, and don't tell me it hasn't happened to you before." Karen
backed down the driveway.

"Never in all my life."

"Until now." She turned right on Forest
Hill. A car packed to the grill with young men and women howled
past them. The windows were rolled down and they were
shrieking:

"Colts! Colts! Colts!"

"They must have forgotten their coats,"
said Ari. "I wonder why they don't roll up their
windows?"

"Of all nights!" Karen
moaned.

"It will be getting dark,
soon."

"I guess by now you're wondering what
this is all about?" Karen sounded as though she was sucking a
half-blocked straw.

"I assume it's something of an official
nature."

"So around four today I
got a call on my personal cell phone," she said.
"
My
phone, and
very few people have that number."

"I'm sure you have many stallions in
your corral."

"Shut up and learn English. This call
comes from a tiny little toilet trap in tiny little Cumberland. You
remember, that's near where they found Carrington's
body."

"Your good friend," said Ari, wondering
if his theory that Karen had been one of his lovers was
correct.

"This girl tells me she's seen the same
van that she saw the night Carrington was murdered. She was hiking
with her father in the state forest—in this weather, can you
believe it?—and there it was, pretty as you please, off on a side
road. I was going to treat it like some kind of sick crank call,
but then she tells me she's already called Officer Mangioni of the
RPD, and that he was going out there with his partner to personally
check it out. I ask this girl, who said her name was Fatimah, what
Mangioni's phone number is, and when I get off with her I call him.
Sure enough, not only did he get a call from Fatimah, but he got it
at one this afternoon. It's an hour drive to Cumberland and he was
already on the scene. As a matter of fact, he and his partner were
still in their city cruiser, which must be a rule-breaker—but they
were after a cop killer, so I guess their commander was OK with it.
Now, you're not going to believe what happened next." She cocked an
eye at him. "At least, I hope you won't believe it. They found the
van. They punched in the license plate number, and guess what? It
belongs to Joe Rizzuto, a cousin of Vito Rizzuto."

Ari made a sound of baffled
ignorance.

"Vito was head of the Montreal Cosa
Nostra up until last year. He was extradited to the States, but
he’s still a big shot you wouldn’t want to mess around with.
They're into coke and heroin up to their necks. The license
actually belongs to a Jaguar, but the coincidence is too much to
brush off. Maybe those guys like to play three shells and a pea
with their plates. Now…if you'll remember, poor old
shot-in-the-head Carrington got himself mixed up with something
called the Kayak Express. They sold coke to those posh residents
who live on the river."

"You mean, posh like me," Ari observed.
And, unable to resist, gave a loud sniff.

"Yeah, and I hope that's a
cold. A
real
cold. The DEA could never find the Express's supplier. But
now I'll bet they have. Carrington screwed up when the Express shut
down, and paid the price." She slammed her palm on her steering
wheel. Ari concluded Abu Jasim had picked up this habit in North
America. When Baghdadis hit their steering wheel, they were trying
to convince the driver up ahead that he was a dolt.

"I
knew
he didn't kill himself.
I
knew
it! Tell
me, that story you gave me was pure bullshit. I mean, about
confronting him about killing Moria Riggins and him going off
and..."

"It's possible I came to the wrong
conclusion," said Ari after a pause. His real conclusion was that
Carrington had intended to kill him on that isolated fire road,
dump his body on Uday's property, and then make an anonymous call
to the local authorities. The reason was clear enough. Uday was
supplementing his income by selling drugs on the side. He had
corrupted Carrington (it certainly would not have been the first
time he corrupted a policeman), using him as the courier to the
Express. And when the Express blew up in his face, thanks to Ari,
he knew Uday would come chomping for his balls. A frame-up must
have seemed like the best and easiest solution, until it all
backfired on him.

"
Wrong
conclusion." Karen shook her
head mockingly as she turned onto Huguenot Road. "At least there
isn't much traffic tonight. Everyone's at home, getting ready for
the game."

"I didn't think the World Cup was
tonight."

"Don't interrupt. What happened next is
even more amazing. Mangioni told me that there was another car
parked next to the van. He punched the license number in and it
came up with an address for an Albert Lukas in Mineral. That's in
Virginia, by the way, as rinky-dink as Cumberland. Mangioni didn't
buy it—good man, it looks like. He popped the hood and got the VIN
number. It turns out the Grand Turismo belonged to Mustafa
Zewail."

"I'm speechless," said Ari.

"What?"

"Should I say, 'all agog'?"

"I'm going to kill you, one day," she
snarled. "So this all happens around two, but of course I don't
learn about it until a couple hours later. In the meantime,
Mangioni has called in some TAC guys from Richmond, and they've
called in some FBI guys because of the interstate angle, and
they've called in the ATF because Homeland wants us all to be
chummy, and next thing you know they've got a real
party."

"You think Mustafa was involved with a
drug ring?"

"No!" Then Karen caught herself. She
had put on a convincing act the day they drove out to Mustafa's
house, pretending she had never heard of the man. "I think Mustafa
found out something he shouldn't have when he interviewed Samir
Salman."

"Ah," said Ari.

"This is where you come in. I hope you
don't mind me dragging you out on Super Sunday. The game doesn't
mean anything to you, right?"

"I admit it's a bit of a mystery to me.
But I still don't understand why you want me to come with
you."

"They let loose some ninja boys in
helmets and black tights in the woods, and pretty soon they found a
Lexus across the road from the van and GT."

Garager
! He had neatly arranged things so that it was all but
inevitable that Karen would summon him to Cumberland. He had not
included his Scion in the plan. In his condition, it would have
been a difficult trip, though not impossible. Having Karen herself
chauffeur him was a bonus he had not anticipated. But he had placed
too much faith in American incompetence, examples of which he had
seen aplenty in Iraq. Nothing he had seen since arriving in this
country convinced him that they were any more efficient at home.
But with the discovery of Uday's escape hatch, his plan was reduced
to dust. At least Joe and his daughter would benefit from all of
this—unless someone put a stop to the operation. But what about
Ahmad? Had they discovered him hunkered haplessly in the woods? The
boy had made his misery so evident that Ari wondered if he would
turn himself in just to get a warm seat in a paddy
wagon.

"Next thing, some big shot from the
Federal courthouse in Richmond shows up and waves around a warrant
that he managed to get in record time. Mangioni will catch hell for
popping the hood on that GT, but the van and Lexus are by the book.
They field-tested for coke and found traces in all three
vehicles."

The van, yes. The other two came as a
pleasant surprise. He wondered why he had not thought to plant
drugs in them before. Well, he had no cocaine at hand, for one
thing....

"There's a path from the Lexus to a
house. One of the surveillance teams planted a parabolic dish
across the road and they've been eavesdropping for an hour. They've
got some recordings already—but it's all in Arabic! Or most of it,
at least. I got a call from Fred just before I picked you up. He
went ahead with a team from our office."

"Oh?" Ari asked innocently.

"Okay, all right, shit on you. I know
he spilled the beans on Mustafa and told you he was one of our
guys."

Did he also tell you about
my gun
? Ari wondered.

"So this is our 'bailiwick', too, as
you would put it. Fred said they had a vet back from Iraq with them
who swore he spoke Arabic, but when they put him on the recordings
all he could make out was an argument going on inside the house
about pistachio ice cream. That didn't sound
kosher...sorry..."

"No need to apologize. I love
kosher."

"Anyway, they're screaming out there
for a real translator. Fred told them he knew just the guy, a real
Arab who knows his stuff, honest, straightforward, a whole lot of
other lies. The Arab community is really spooked by this Mustafa
business. We don't want to bring in someone who might repeat
everything he sees and hears and spook them even more."

"I am grateful for your trust in me,"
said Ari.

"I didn't say anything about me. Fred
trusts you, although I don't know why. Looks to me like you scared
the dookie out of him at McDonald's. What is it about you and
McDonald's, anyway? Does it bring out your aggressive side? Is that
where you got into a fight?"

"Stairs are dangerous," said
Ari.

"Right.
And—
shit
!"

The Civic fishtailed briefly on a patch
of black ice. Karen just managed to recover before slamming into an
oncoming car.

"I am not in the mood to die, Deputy
Karen."

"You and me, but I can't slow
down."

Her phone rang. At the moment she most
needed to keep both hands on the wheel, she pulled it from her
clip. "Fred? Okay...good...but that means we're committed,
now...yeah, I know we'll miss it, but this is the best time to
catch them all in the house, while they're all watching TV. How are
the roads out there? They get better? Are you lying to me? I'll
kill you." She hung up. "They caught one of the perps after he left
the house. He was almost to Route 60 before they pulled him
over."

"Was he trying to escape?"

"No, he was going to Joe's Stop-N to
buy ice cream. But listen, even if the translator they have out
there is half good, I still want you in on this. I want to show you
what a crock of shit you were feeding me about Carrington. And
after what happened with Mustafa...I guess you deserve to be there.
You're all right with that? You weren't going to watch the game,
were you? Absorb some American culture?"

"I don't own a television."

"Oh man," said Karen in disbelief. "I
guess the government doesn't compensate you enough."

Ari peered out of the passenger window,
thinking of his night ride with Carrington, of Ahmad, of what they
were going to do now that there were police guarding the fire road.
It had been such a long shot, and now the odds were petering
out.

Karen got more calls from Fred. He said
they were holding their captive in a temporary command post in the
Cumberland Community Center and that their translator couldn't
understand the man's dialect. They needed Ari there as soon as
possible.

"Fuck you, Fred!" Karen shouted as she
more slid than drove down a long hill. "You said these roads were
decent!"

Ari did not know what the answer was,
but it obviously did not satisfy Karen, who closed the phone with
all the force in her thumb.

"I pray this doesn't turn into some
dipsquad operation," she fumed. "Everyone and their aunt is out
there. You think you have an ego, Ari? Just wait 'til we get there.
We've got a place oozing with Arabs and what we've got against them
is a bunch of airbags."