Fear City (38 page)

“
If
she was saving. Most prostitutes have a drug problem.”

He remembered Cristin's bankbook and the surprising balance.

“She'd socked away a considerable amount. Her biggest drug was Cuervo Gold, and only a couple of shooters now and then.”

“Still…”

“There's no ‘still,' Karina—not from you, not from me. It was
her
life,
her
body. We don't get to say what she does with either.”

Karina leaned back. “Listen to you. You sound like some of my more radical friends out in Berkeley. Is that why you disappeared?”

Uh-oh.

“What's that mean?”

“A few years ago my folks mentioned that people were buzzing about my old boyfriend dropping out of college and disappearing. Was it what happened to your mother?”

No, he wanted to say, it was what
I
did after. But he didn't want to get into that either.

“It was a lot of things. And please keep it to yourself that you saw me.”

“You're not in any legal trouble, are you?”

“Not that I know of. I simply dropped off the map and would like to stay that way.” He wanted to get off the subject of Jack. “Back to Cristin…”

Karina's lower lip trembled. “Yeah, Cristin. Say what you want about her ‘profession,' it's what killed her, isn't it.”

“No, a person or persons unknown killed her.”

“Who met her through her ‘profession,' right?”

“I suppose so.”

A tortuous path, but when he boiled it all down to its essence, if Roman Trejador hadn't been one of her regulars, she wouldn't have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

He felt he had to add, “But you could say the same about a stewardess who dies in a plane crash.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Were you two…?”

“Close? Yeah. A little.”

“How close?”

None of your business, he decided.

“We talked. We had the high school connection.”

She folded her arms. “I'm not even going to ask if you had sex. I knew Cristin.”

Jack let that slide. “How about you? Seeing anyone?”

She nodded. “Yeah. Sort of.”

“Male or female?”

He hadn't meant to say that. But he remembered Cristin mentioning a brief affair between the two of them and it slipped out.

She reddened. “What?”

“Never mind.”

“No, really. Why would you—?”

“Cristin told me about you two that first summer—the summer you said you were staying out west.”

Her blush deepened. “My God, you two must have been more than just a ‘little' close. Is there anything she
didn't
tell you?”

He shrugged, wishing he hadn't mentioned it. “She said you weren't really into it.”

She let out a long, shaky sigh. “We were just trying it out. You know, experimenting. Cristin was more into it—but she just liked sex, plain and simple. If she could get off on it, she was cool with it. I learned that it wasn't for me.” Her features bunched up and she sobbed. “I really loved her, Jack. Not that way, it turned out, but every other way. She was a good person, not a mean or hateful bone in her body. Why'd it have to be her?”

As tears streamed down her cheeks, he reached across the table and took her hand. She squeezed his like she was trying to break his fingers.

“I've been asking myself that question all week.”

The waitress appeared then, pad and pencil held at ready, and Jack realized he wasn't hungry. An unusual state for him.

He looked at Karina's blotchy face. “You hungry?”

Karina could only shake her head.

He apologized to the waitress and they went back outside. The snow had turned to rain and they got wet during a prolonged last hug.

Watching her drive away he felt like he'd just lived through a Dan Fogelberg song.

 

15

“What's good here?”

Hadya looked up and saw a vaguely familiar face smiling over the top of the display case. She tensed when she recognized the young man who had been watching the mosque.

She glanced around. Only two other customers, Muslim women buying treats for tonight's fast-breaking iftar. Jala was handling them.

“Hello,” she said softly. “Where have you been?”

“Unexpected events kept me busy elsewhere.”

“Have you learned anything?”

He shook his head. “Just got here. You?”

“Yes. I found an address where my brother and his friends go. Something…” What was the word? “Something not normal is happening there.”

“You mean strange?”

“Yes. Strange. Very strange.”

His mild brown eyes narrowed. “Strange is always interesting, even if it's just … strange. Where we talking about?”

She pulled a pencil from her pocket and wrote
Pamrapo Avenue
on a paper napkin.

“It is down Kennedy, almost to Bayonne,” she said, pointing as she slid the napkin across the top of the display case. “There is empty land with a path that…” Again the word eluded her. She made an arcing movement with her hand.

“Curves?” he said.

“Yes. It curves behind a house. They are in an old … place for cars.”

“Garage?”

“Yes. It is there but you cannot see it from the street. Kadir and his friends do not live there. Just work there.”

He smiled. “Where did you learn your English?”

Was he going to make fun of her?

“I teach myself.”

His eyebrows rose. “How long?”

“Two years now. I listen to tapes. I am not very good.”

“You kidding?” he said with a smile as he waved the napkin. “And you write it too. Considering we don't even have the same alphabet, you're amazing.”

She felt her face flush. When was the last time she had heard a compliment? About anything. She couldn't remember. She blinked back tears.

“Thank you.”

“I can only imagine what my Arabic would sound like after two years of self-study.” He tucked the napkin away. “I'll give the place a look.”

“Be careful.”

“Careful is becoming my middle name.” He stepped back from the display case and studied the contents. “Now … what's good here?”

She smiled. “Everything. What do you like? We have
kanafeh, halawa
,
baklava
…”

“It's not for me. For a friend.”

A girlfriend?

“Very well. What does
she
like?”

“It's a he and he's got a sweet tooth the size of Brooklyn.”

What?

“I don't under—”

“The sweeter the better.”

“Ah, then you want baklava—the one on the second shelf with the pistachios.”

“Heard of that.” He bent for a closer look at the glistening lumps of flaky dough. “That's the one with all the honey, right?”

“Full of honey.”

He straightened and smiled. “Sounds like a winner. Pack me up a pound.”

She placed a sheet of wax paper on the scale, weighed out a pound of the bias-cut pieces, then tied them all into a white pie box. She put an extra piece on some paper and handed it to the young man.

“This is for you.”

“Really? Thanks.”

He followed her to the cash register where he paid for the pound.

“What's your name?” he said.

She felt another flush coming. “Hadya. Yours?”

“Jack. I'll let you know what I find.”

“Don't let them see you.”

“If there's anyone there I'll go back tomorrow.”

He waved and walked out.

What a nice man. He wasn't for her, but still … she hoped he came back.

 

16

“Pamrapo … Pamrapo…” Jack muttered as he steered Ralph along Kennedy Boulevard, studying the street signs.

Weird name. Probably Indian—or Native American, as the PC police wanted them called. Jack wasn't much for political correctness, but “Native American” made sense and simplified the confusion: Indians were native to India and Native Americans were native to, well, America. Made sense.

Anyway, New Jerseyans loved to give their places Native American names. Like Hackensack, Hoboken, and Ho-Ho-Kus, and even Mahwah, where Burkes had his safe house. Pamrapo sounded like an anagram of Ramapo, another aboriginal name.

His stomach rumbled. He should have eaten when he had the chance at Olga's, even if he wasn't hungry at the time. But that hadn't been in the cards. He'd had time on the drive back from Jersey to think about his tête-à-tête with Karina. If nothing else, it had made it clear that whatever they'd once had as a couple was gone. He would always have a warm spot in his heart for his first love, but they were two different people now. Too much had happened to him. He was over her just as she was over him. No going back. No reason to.

He bit into the piece of baklava Hadya had given him.
Sweet
. Too sweet by half for him, but hunger demanded he gobble the rest. Oh, man. Abe was gonna
plotz
when he tasted this.

He stopped at a light and there it was: Pamrapo Avenue. But left or right? She hadn't said. He swung right and eased down the short block. Dark had fallen and the streetlights hadn't come on yet, but he drove all the way to its end without seeing any “empty land,” as Hadya had put it.

Cute girl. Cute face, at least, because that was all she left visible. Could be bald for all he could tell. Couldn't tell much about the rest of her either because she was swathed like a nun.

She was right to suspect her brother, but no way she could know about the Rabin visit and where and when they planned to set off their bomb unless he told her. Jack hadn't seen any reason to tell her that tomorrow was her brother's big day.

He crossed back over Kennedy. On the other side he found a vacant lot—he guessed that qualified as “empty land”—with a rutted path curving into the bushes, just as she'd described. He stayed on the street and rolled by for about a hundred yards, then killed the headlights as he turned around. He parked across the street and walked to the lot. He followed the ruts for a couple of dozen feet before he spotted the converted garage. Lights glowed from within and he recognized the Chevy Nova parked out front. Too risky to approach much closer.

He returned to Ralph and headed back toward Kennedy.

If they were building a bomb, that would be the place. But Burkes had said they'd need a truckload of explosive to do any real damage from outside the UN. No van in sight at the moment.

But if they planned to hit the UN tomorrow before noon, they'd load up the truck in the morning. Jack didn't know a damn thing about bombs, but if he saw anything like that going down, he'd call Burkes immediately and let him handle it from there.

He'd return early tomorrow—
real
early—for a look inside.

 

17

Hadya composed herself as she waited for Kadir to answer her knock. She still had her key from when she lived here—before he'd shaved her head—and could have used it to open his apartment door, but that would only provoke him, which was the last thing she wanted tonight.

Jack's visit to the bakery had given her an idea. He'd bought sweets for a friend and it occurred to her that she might use halawah and baklava as a fake peace offering to Kadir—fake because she could not find it within herself to forgive what he'd done to her. The Qur'an said that the best deed before Allah was to pardon a person who has wronged you. Perhaps someday she would be able to forgive Kadir, but the humiliation still burned. And if he planned to hurt innocent people, she had to stop him.

The door opened just wide enough to expose a brown eye. It widened in surprise and then the door opened enough to reveal Kadir's scraggly bearded face.

“Hadya?”

The air wafting from within the apartment carried a milder form of the acrid stench she'd smelled at the converted garage. It must have permeated Kadir's clothes.

She held up the bag of sweets. “I brought you halawah and baklava for your iftar.”

And now he frowned, his expression puzzled. “Why?”

“Because it is Ramadan and good deeds are twice blessed.”

He looked her up and down, his gaze lingering on her hijab.

“I am glad to see that you are dressed like a righteous Muslim woman. You learned your lesson well.”

Hadya went cold inside. She wanted to rake her nails across his smug face. Instead she pushed the bag toward him.

“Here. For you.”

“This is unexpected,” he said, taking it.

“May I come in?”

He shook his head. “I have guests. We are discussing important matters.”

She craned her neck to see around him and spotted three tense faces watching the door. She had no names for them but had seen them all with Kadir at one time or another.

“Oh … sorry.”

“Yes. Good night.”

He closed the door in her face.

Anger blazed, urging her to kick the door again and again until he opened it. She had braved this not-so-safe neighborhood on Kensington Avenue to bring him a gift of sweets, and now she faced a walk home of over a mile in the cold and dark. And what had he done? Taken it and snubbed her without so much as a thank-you.

But the flare died quickly. Venting her anger would accomplish nothing. Sadness and dismay took hold instead.

How terribly you've changed, my brother.

Kadir was a different person. All gentleness had fled. Had an evil spirit taken over his body? No, not a spirit, an influence. The influence of Sheikh Omar.

In her pocket she carried a short steel bar she'd taken from the oven area of the bakery. Early tomorrow morning, while Kadir and his friends were having their pre-fast meal, she would be at the garage, prying the front door open. And if she found what she didn't want to find, what she prayed she would not find, she would have to act. To save others and to save Kadir from himself, she would not hesitate to report her own brother to the police.