Reckless Endangerment (18 page)

“It’s legal. They’re down as employees.”

“It’s a scam and you know it. I talked to the lawyer.”

She gaped, shocked. “A
lawyer
? I thought I was the lawyer in this outfit.”

“Osborne’s lawyer,” said Harry, and he had the grace to color slightly. “He said that wouldn’t stand up worth a shit, anything bad was to happen. We could get sued, we could face charges. That’s just what
you’re
doing, and then you’re still in there with that woman …”

She knew what woman he meant. “Look, Harry, don’t hock me about Mattie, all right? She’s cool.”

“She’s a felon, Marlene. She blew a guy’s head off when he was sleeping, for chrissake!”

“She was sixteen, Harry, and the guy’d been raping her since she was eleven.”

“Everybody’s got a sad story, Marlene. The fact is, she pulls all kinds of shit out of that operation of hers. And then there’s …” Here he reverted to the old Harry’s telegraphic language and flicked his gaze back in the general direction of the area behind the offices proper, which included a small kitchen, a toilet, and a set of cubicles for emergency shelter, in one of which lived Tran Vinh Din.

“Tran,” she said. “His name’s Tran, Harry.”

“Him. No green card, he’s an illegal,
and
he’s got an illegal piece on him. You’re paying him out of petty cash, which is a violation all in itself.”

“He saved Lucy’s life, Harry. Your goddaughter, remember?”

“I know that, Marlene. Did I say
can
him? But you got to straighten out his paper, and you got to make sure he’s under control.”

Marlene puffed her Marlboro so hard it shone like a taillight and then jammed it hard into an ashtray. “Jesus, Harry! Okay, I’m sorry—but I didn’t know we were running General fucking
Motors
! Since when did you get so bent out of shape about the bureaucratic details?”

Harry’s expression remained as calm as a pallbearer’s. “Don’t get cute, Marlene. You know it’s not that, just like it’s not the money either. What it is, is, I’m too old to go to jail, and I don’t want to get into a situation where I either got to rat you out or do time. I want to avoid that, Marlene, and it’s definitely going to happen unless we stop this happy horseshit and start being a real business. Now, we go in with Osborne, they handle all the paper, the billing, payroll, referrals, bonding, insurance; we need to transport clients, they got cars and professional drivers. They have houses, apartments, we ever need to stash somebody.”

“And so what do
we
do? Sit around and crack wise and drink scotch out the file drawer?”

“We do what we do, Marlene. We get out protection orders, we investigate, and we bodyguard, same like now but legit, and without all the chicken shit.”

“And why is Osborne being such a sweetheart here? What’s in it for them?”

Harry raised his chin a half inch in her direction.

“Me? I thought I was the
fuck-up
.”

The thinnest possible smile stretched Harry’s mouth. “They don’t know that. And you’re a star. There’s a whole market opening in short-term protection of women, and there’s the whole lady-celebrity business we got. We’ll be in their publicity and like that. That’s why.”

Marlene blew out some air and slumped in her chair, digging her hands deep into her pockets. “Ah, shit, Harry, I don’t know … it’s not exactly what I had in mind when I thought this up. I mean, I could go work for a
law
firm if I didn’t want to, like, freelance. I could wear nice clothes and mingle with a higher grade of scumbags. Can I think about it? Do I have to decide right now this minute?”

“Uh-uh. But not next year either. And, Marlene? The stuff I talked about? Lose it, okay? I mean it.”

“I know you mean it, Harry,” she said, staring back into his black hard eyes. “I said I’ll think about it.”

Evander Wilson, known as Train on the street, was the man stabbed and killed by Fatyma Daoud, and he was duly processed as a homicide by the Midtown South homicide unit. Mimi Aleppo and Jorge Fines caught the case in the usual rotation, and the first thing they did, after they learned the identity of the victim, was to go talk to the victim’s employer, the pimp Jerol Kingman. Kingman was happy to help the police. Train had been a good man, and Kingman knew who had killed him. He described Fatyma, whom he characterized as a “little P.R. bitch,” and explained what it was that Fatyma had been doing on the Deuce to ruin business and to upset the smooth flow of necessary vice. Kingman knew these were homicide cops, and had no interest whatever in the moral aspects of his business, so he spoke freely. He said he had sent Train to go find the bitch and explain why she could no longer rip off the Johns.

“Just a talk?” This was Aleppo, a woman in her mid-twenties with a round olive face, large dark eyes, and coarse black hair cut short.

“Yeah, just a talk,” responded Kingman. “That’s why I sent Train. He real gentle. He never even packed a blade, you know? No piece, neither.”

“Oh, yeah, gentle,” said Fines. “Is that why he had ten arrests for assault?” Fines had a round olive face too, and black hair only a little shorter than his partner’s. They resembled each other, in fact, and they both thought that the brass putting them together as partners was intentional. They were both the same height too, five-five, and had both entered the police department at the same time, Aleppo under an affirmative action program fostering the recruitment and promotion of women, and Fines under the terms of a consent decree removing the height requirement for police officers. This twin recruitment order was known uncharitably in the NYPD as runts ‘n’ cunts, and its beneficiaries were not popular.

“And no convictions,” said Kingman. “Train’s problem is he be so
big,
and he got this scowly face. Every time they’s trouble, the cops pick up the first big nigger they see on the street.”

“How sad,” said Aleppo. “Where can we find this Puerto Rican girl?”

Kingman gave them an address on Forty-third and added, “She staying with another ho, name Cindy, skinny little blondie bitch.”

“Okay, Kingman,” said Fines. “We’ll check it out.”

“I hope you shoot the both of them,” said the pimp sulkily. “Motherfucking bitch gut a man just for talking.”

They did check it out, but no sign of either the P.R. girl or her friend could they find. The case therefore died a natural death; there is just so much energy in the police, and they are reluctant to spend it overmuch on the murder of an assistant pimp with a violence sheet on him. Aleppo was typing up what she expected to be the final DD-5 on the case when she became aware of a figure standing over her desk. Jim Raney was looking with interest at the large plastic evidence bag on her desk.

“What’s this?” he asked, picking it up and examining it more closely.

“That? That’s the murder weapon in Wilson. Hell of a knife, huh?”

“Yeah.” He moved it in the bag and studied the long, curved blade. “What does it say here? Do you know?”

“Say? What do you mean, ‘say’?” She peered at the blade, still gleaming where the steel showed around the brown-red stains. “I thought that was just decoration,” she said. “Does it matter?”

“I don’t know,” said Raney. “There are a lot of Arabic inscriptions floating around recently, connected to murders.”

Aleppo knew what he meant. “You mean the Shilkes thing? But this vic wasn’t a Jew. It was a black pimp. The word we got, it was a P.R. whore, and this pimp sent his homey out to rough her up and she took him out.”

“You got the girl?”

“No, not yet, but …”

“Then how do you know she’s a P.R.? She could be an Arab.”

Aleppo was about to say, “So what, it’s a pimp killing, it’s got zero to do with any Arab-Jew business.” The thought had already formed in her mind when she stopped herself to think, and considered that she was at the low end of the pecking order and likely to remain there, picking up only the shit cases, and here was one of the more famous detectives in the house taking an interest in one of their cases, and so what she actually said was, “Yeah, it could be. You think we should check out the inscription,” and she said it in a way where “we” did not mean her and Fines.

Raney picked this up, of course, and picked up the dagger too, and said, “Let’s go. I know a guy for this.”

The guy was in, as people whom Lucky Jim wanted to see very often were, and he stared at the weapon with horrified fascination.

“I am not an expert, but I would put this in the late eighteenth century,” said Dr. Adouri. “Probably made in Damascus. On the blade it says, ‘Neither slay anyone whom God hath forbidden you to slay, unless for a just cause.’ It’s from the Koran, Sura XVII, the Night Journey.”

“A good thought,” said Raney. “Who would own a dagger like that?”

“Oh, any Arab with some land or status, I think. The workmanship is, as you see, first-class, and it’s custom-made, of course, for a particular family. These things are passed on from father to eldest son for generations.”

“Not something you’d expect to find in a hock shop?” Raney asked.

“Not if it’s genuine. And I think this is. I can’t imagine any Arab man who owned this pawning it, unless he was actually starving.”

Aleppo asked, “Doctor, how did you know it was custom-made for a family?”

The two men looked at her, and she felt her face warm.

“Yeah, how, Doc?” said Raney.

“The pommel here.” He pointed at the silver boss on the end of the hilt. “This carving is actually a kind of monogram. The nature of the Arabic script makes it ideal for such uses. For example, in the Alhambra in Spain, there are mosaics in the fountain court where—”

“What does it say, Doc?” Raney interrupted.

“Oh. Just ‘May God protect the family of David.’ ”

“David? I thought David was a Jewish name,” said Raney.

A thin smile from the scholar. “Well, we are cousins, you know. Abraham, Ibrahim. David and Daoud.”

Raney felt sweat break out on his forehead. In a voice louder than necessary, he demanded, “Are you saying that this knife belongs to a family named Daoud?”

The professor nodded. “That’s a good assumption, Detective,” he replied and then observed with some surprise the rapid and unceremonious exit of Detective Raney, with the other officer swept up in his wake.

They were halfway to Brooklyn before Detective Aleppo comprehended the reason for their haste.

“Just because of the name?” she asked.

“It’s connected. Got to be. Guy’s involved with the Shilkes thing, a stabbing, and then his name turns up on an antique knife in another stabbing. I don’t believe in that much coincidence.”

“Why? Daoud is a common Arabic name. I have cousins named Daoud.”

He looked at her sharply. “You’re Arab?”

“Not really, but my grandfather was Lebanese.”

“Huh.” He thought for a moment. “It doesn’t matter. Manson’s a common name too, but if Charles was loose and you found a bloody knife with that name on it, you’d check it out.”

Hassan Daoud was no actor, nor was his son, Walid, which was clear from the moment Raney slapped the big knife down on the floured worktable behind the bakery shop. Hassan’s eyes widened, and a slight noise issued from his opened mouth, a gasp, or perhaps it was a prayer, or a curse, while Walid actually made a physical movement to reclaim the blade. Still, even after that they tried, fatuously, to deny ever having seen the thing before. Then the silly lies: it was stolen. By whom? Didn’t know—a thief. Did you report it missing? No—of no value, a cheap thing, didn’t want to bother the police. After a good deal of this, Raney noticed two things: one, he hadn’t seen the young girl who had tended the counter the last time he had been in the bakery, and, two, Mimi Aleppo was not in sight. He thought briefly of dragging the two men down to the precinct for a long, uncomfortable talk, but decided against it when the other detective came out from behind a bead curtain and gave him a look.

“What?” he said when they were back in the unmarked Cavalier.

“I talked to the wife,” Aleppo said. “There’s a daughter, Fatyma, age fourteen, left home about two weeks ago. She took the blade. He had her chained to a radiator.”

“Why, what’d she do?”

“Wore makeup and listened to rock music was what I gathered, hence a whore, hence to be married off to some old guy on the other side. I got a snapshot of the girl, but she made me promise to keep her away from the old man and little Walid.”

“She’s worried about her.”

“Not at all. The girl’s dead for all practical purposes—to the family, I mean. She just doesn’t want the husband or sonny boy to actually kill her and have to go to jail for it. She’s got three little kids to feed. Unusual thing here—the Palestinians are the most educated and sophisticated people in the Middle East, taken as a group—next to the Lebanese, of course—but Hassan is pure country, real old-fashioned. Comes from a family that was some kind of big deal in the old days, very proud. In those circles, a girl goes bad, there’s only one thing to do.”

Raney snorted. “Fucking jerks!”

“Yes,” said Aleppo, “but on the other hand, they don’t get drunk and beat each other to a pulp in saloons, and run corrupt political machines, like some other ethnic groups I could mention. We should try to find that girl.”

After the police left, Hassan snatched up a rolling pin and hit Walid on the back with it several times, and then threw it against the wall. His wife had retreated to the apartment above the bakery, where she sat on her bed, with her younger children huddled around her, until the storm subsided. After hitting Walid, Hassan sat down and put his face in his hands. He stayed like this for some time, rocking back and forth in his misery. Walid watched him carefully. When he judged the time was right he said, “Father, I will kill her myself.”

Hassan looked up at his son. His eyes were red-rimmed, and this, combined with the white flour on his tan face, gave him a demonic appearance.

“Yes,” he said, his voice a croak, “you will. But how will you find the whore? In this city?”

“There is a man,” said Walid, “of whom Ali spoke, before the Jews killed him, may God send them to hell, a man who has power and many men who follow him. I don’t know his real name, but Ali told me he was to be found at a café called the Palms. We should go there and find him, and ask.”