Against the Law

by Against the Law (epub)

  At first, Powell was frankly excited. The revelation of the Zahir group’s true makeup and purpose had troubled him, but he was prepared to accept a certain amount of troubling; he was, after all, in the CIA. They had a long history of making murky alliances with sordid parties in the hope of achieving sometimes dubious goals, always, of course with the country’s best interests in mind. That same history begged the question of how well this strategy usually turned out—in Cambodia for instance, or Iran or Cuba—but that, to Powell, was academic. Doing nothing while the world rushed into chaos and horror wasn’t an option. And maintaining some sort of James Bond–like, or even better, Superman-esque moral purity and detachment was, literally, a fairy tale. The only thing to do was play the dirty game as best as you could, and the very fact that they’d sent him here demonstrated that he, and they, had some of his superiors’ tacit approval. The CIA had been mixed up in the heroin trade at least since Vietnam. They’d armed and funded warlords and opium traders in these very same valleys back when the Soviets were their common enemy. If intervening in the dope trade now saved some American lives later, so be it. It was all part of the usual game.

  But this woman was not usual. Powell followed her downstairs to where a young, dark-skinned man, fine-featured and exquisitely muscled, in jeans and a white T-shirt, was standing beside a black Range Rover. He jumped to open the rear door, shut it after them, and drove.

  “I’m Mike Powell, by the way,” Powell said, as they moved through the evening traffic, extending a semi-ironic hand. “I wonder if you’d like to tell me where we’re going?”

  “Victoria,” she’d said, her eyes facing out the window, his hand ignored. “Though I prefer Vick or Vicky. We are en route to ask someone a question or two.”

  Powell smiled to himself. Here he was, riding in an expensive car through an exotic city, accompanying a strange woman to a mysterious rendezvous. This really was like a scene from a movie and he had to admit, to himself if never to anyone else, he was delighted. For the first time in a long time, he was excited to be a spy.

  They pulled up in front of a small, nondescript hotel, with a tiny, threadbare foyer rather than a proper lobby. The driver approached the old man behind the counter, speaking rapidly and drawing a wallet from his pocket. He waved some sort of credential, and then, after the cringing old man handed over a key, began to count out money, while Vicky, without further ado, took the key and proceeded quickly upstairs. Powell followed, starting to have more questions, but before he could formulate them, she stopped in front of a door, turned to him with a finger over her lips for silence, and handed him the key. Then she drew her gun.

  Powell had no gun. And this wasn’t the sort of meeting he’d been expecting. But there was no way to call a time-out now, so he carefully slid the key into the simple lock set in the doorknob, turned it, and stepped aside as he pushed it open. Victoria went in first.

  There was only one man in the room. A dark-skinned kid in western clothes, a hoodie, jeans, and sneakers, with closely buzzed hair and a neat goatee. Powell realized he’d been in the photos Toomey had shown him. Now he was wearing headphones and staring so intently into a laptop that he only noticed them when it was too late, eyes going wide in terror, and hands rising, as Victoria put her gun in his face.

  Powell had seen people tortured before. He’d even participated in beatings or waterboardings. He’d put people in hoods where they couldn’t see or hear, or kept them awake with blinding light or noise. He’d worked with creepy CIA interrogators and ruthless Mossad experts. He’d even seen plain old cops smack suspects around. But he’d never seen anything like Vicky, he’d never seen a true sadist go to work on a victim and take the kind of pleasure in pain that he saw that night. By the time she was done, the poor kid was praying for death, and when—after extracting all the information she could about his mission in Afghanistan, about Joe Brody and the Russian woman he knew only as Yelena and the bounty that New York gangsters had offered for the head of Zahir—she finally took his life, she did it with an expression he could only describe as joyful, smiling, eyes aglitter, as she brushed his head soothingly with one hand, telling him he was a good boy, and then releasing him from his broken body and from a world of pain by expertly slicing open his throat.

  Then she turned to Powell, as thrilled as if she’d just been on a funhouse ride: her pupils were dilated, her breathing rapid. Her fair skin was flushed and the pulse beat in her own throat. She ran her tongue over her parted lips. She was, he realized, aroused, sexually, and to his horror, he realized, so was he. He was also disgusted.

  “You didn’t have to do that,” he said. “He would have talked. He’s just a kid. You didn’t have to kill him.”

  She smiled. “Don’t worry. One more dead boy doesn’t add up to much in Afghanistan. There’s a war going on, remember?”

  “But he’s not Afghani, is he?” Powell argued. “He’s American. He’s from Brooklyn, for God’s sake.”

  “Well then,” Vicky said with a shrug, “he should have stayed home, shouldn’t he, where it’s safe? Now then . . .” She casually reached between his legs, feeling where, without his own consent or control, he responded to her touch. “Are you going to continue to bore me? Because if so, you can find a cab, and I’ll ask my handsome driver to escort me safely home.”

  That was when Powell understood that, like some character in an old folktale, he had met the devil and without even knowing it, had traded away his soul.

  Joe and Yelena were on the highway. When they came down from the hotel, they’d found their driver still out front, taking a smoke break after bundling up the torn fabric from his truck’s awning. “Kabul?” Joe asked him, gesturing to Yelena and himself. He pulled out another hundred. “The airport in Kabul? Beh fooroodgah?”

  The driver hesitated. It was more than four hundred fifty kilometers; it would take all night. And he already knew these foreigners were armed and in some kind of trouble. Then again, trouble was not unusual in Kandahar, nor were armed foreigners, and this one was holding out another hundred-dollar bill. He added yet another, two hundreds, making three for the night. The driver shrugged and pocketed them, then got his engine going while his passengers settled in the back, using the fabric to improvise cushions.

  And so, Joe and Yelena got to take in the view after all, riding through the desert at night, watching the ancient landscape pass, the moon rise and fall, staring up from their makeshift bed at the infinite stars, which had outshone all the names they’d been given and the countless prayers they’d heard, until, alive for one more day, both finally drifted into sleep, holding each other under the silence of heaven.

  PART II

  11

  PARKS WAS AMBIVALENT: DISGUSTED by what it must be like to live in Fusco’s body, but intrigued by his mind. Here he was, on his own time, spending the night in a van he cashed in a favor to unofficially borrow, working an off-the-books stakeout on a Brooklyn cop-spot, while Parks, admittedly, was home eating veggie burgers with his wife and kids. He might have been less impressed if he knew that Fusco was twice-divorced, that his kids didn’t speak to him, and that if he hadn’t been here, surrounded by soda bottles, candy wrappers, McDonald’s bags, and, good Lord, were those Funyuns, his night off would have been spent losing at blackjack, but still . . . he’d put in the work, followed his hunch, and now he’d called in his partner to show him what he’d found: an honest-to-God clue. Classic detective work that Parks had to respect. This was why, as he discreetly shut the van door, and crept into the spare seat, he was feeling proud to be partnered with Francis “Fartso” Fusco. Then he kicked over the piss bottle.

  “Oh Jesus fuck!” Parks called out as his foot, shod in an expensive soft leather boot that he was wearing with clean, new jeans and a button down shirt on his night off, kicked over a one-liter soda bottle that he realized, with horror, was full of urine and not very well sealed. Liquid gurgled out.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “You disgu
sting pig!” Parks jumped up, pointing.

  “Oh shit . . .” Fusco reached down and grabbed the bottle, moving it to a more stable spot. “Watch where you step.”

  “Watch where I step?” Parks was furious. “Watch where you empty your diseased bladder you gross animal.”

  “It’s a stakeout,” Fusco wheedled, in the same tone Parks’s kids used when they wanted to skip flossing on a camping trip.

  “Look, why the hell am I even here to witness this horror?” Parks asked, keeping well away.

  Fusco checked his watch. “Because the show’s about to start. Sit down and quit bitching.” He patted at the chair and Parks gingerly sat so that he could see out the rear windows, filled with one-way glass. “And if you’re thirsty,” Fusco added, “help yourself to some soda.”

  “Fuck you, Fartso.”

  Fusco chuckled, then reached for his camera as he saw something. “Okay, here it is. Look.”

  They were in a dusty, graffiti-covered old van, parked up the block from the projects, with a good view out the back of an entrance between two brick towers. Young lookouts steered customers around the corner and into one of the buildings while civilians came and went, minding their own business. A car approached, slowing as it reached the spot.

  “Black Mercedes?”

  “Exactly. It’s the re-up. But never mind the dope, watch the guys.” He put the camera to his face and began shooting. Parks watched as the Mercedes, black metal gleaming and chrome glaring in the streetlights, rolled to a stop at the corner. The driver, with slicked-back hair, a thick gold chain, and a lot of ink showing under his white sleeveless T-shirt, peered out his window, watching for cops. The front passenger, a big man dressed in a tracksuit, with a shaved head and also a lot of black, prison-style tattoos, stepped out as a young kid rushed up from the closest doorway. The big man grabbed a paper grocery bag and handed it to the kid, who immediately scurried back over the sidewalk and vanished into the projects. The big guy jumped back in and they rolled.

  “So kid, tell me what you see,” Fusco said, still snapping away, getting the plates, till the car turned the corner.

  “Nothing. A typical re-up. But we already know they’re selling dope here. Maybe if you followed them.”

  “Not in this. They’d spot us in five minutes. We need a real team to do that. But what else did your keen detective mind notice?” He showed him the screen of the digital camera and scrolled through pictures he’d just shot. “Or are you one of those jerk-off liberals who claims not to see skin color?”

  Now Parks grinned. “They’re white.”

  Fusco grinned back. “Exactly.”

  “White gangsters dropping off the stash at a Black cop spot, in the projects.”

  “Not something you see every day is it?”

  “Not something you see ever.”

  “So the plot thickens.”

  “No doubt, we got ourselves a bona fide mystery here.”

  “See,” Fusco said, patting his shoulder. “I knew you had a detective’s mind behind that pretty face.”

  “And I always knew you had some wisdom buried in all that fat and bad breath,” Parks answered, happily. “But now what? I mean, you had me at heroin. You really think this is going to make the boss fall in love with this case?”

  “Nope. I’m playing the long game here. But the next move is yours. That’s why I called you in.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  Fusco peered into the interior of the projects. “I need you to go in there and cop us a bag of this bomb dope everyone is talking about.”

  “Why me? Cause I’m Black?” Parks asked, incredulous.

  “Exactly,” Fusco said. “Look at me. I’m an old fat white guy who looks like a cop, as you never get tired of pointing out.”

  “And I’m dressed better than you, motherfucker. You think I look like a junkie?”

  Fusco shrugged. “You look like a pansy. But pansies get high too sometimes. I’m not prejudiced.”

  Parks shook his head. Then he noticed something. “Here we go. Give me that camera.” He took the camera and started shooting, as an emaciated white boy with stringy hair, dressed in rags, came loping along. “Now that’s what a junkie looks like.”

  The junkie passed the van and went up to the lookout, a Black teenager, who nodded him in, then waved and whistled to his cohorts.

  “Yeah okay, so what?” Fusco asked.

  “So you wanted dope, I’m getting you dope,” Parks said. “For free.” The junkie disappeared around a corner and emerged seconds later, a new spring in his step. “Let’s give him a block or two before we roust him.”

  Two blocks later, as the junkie turned a corner, Fusco pulled up sharply, and Parks jumped out, grabbing him up. They cuffed him, patted him down, took his dope and dragged him back to the station, where to his great relief, they told him they would turn him loose in exchange for surrendering his drugs and signing a statement about when and where he’d obtained them. He eagerly agreed. The dope was in a small wax paper envelope, taped shut and stamped with a crude design: an angel, wings outstretched as though in blessing or mid-flight.

  “Now what?” Parks asked as they finished the paperwork and added this newest piece of evidence to the growing file on the case they were definitely not supposed to be working.

  “Now,” Fusco said, with a belch as he guzzled a Diet Coke (I mean, really, Parks thought, Diet? Why bother?), “I call a guy I know at the FBI and ask a favor.”

  12

  DONNA WAS THINKING THAT maybe she kind of liked this guy. Sort of. Gary was handsome—dark wavy hair and deep brown eyes and more built up than most guys she dated, with the big shoulders and arms of a gym rat. Smart too. According to Ari, he made big bucks in finance but had grad degrees in math and computer technology rather than the usual MBA. The dinner was lovely. Donna couldn’t recall the last time she had such delicious wine, or drank so much of it, or laughed so much and felt so free, of work, stress, everything. He neither bragged about himself and his career nor made her feel weird about her own: why would a nice girl like her be wearing a gun and chasing villains? Did she have some kind of issue? Some unresolved, repressed anger she wasn’t in touch with? Not at all, she always wanted to say, my anger’s getting in touch right now. And it has a message for you: Fuck off.

  But Gary was different. He seemed genuinely interested, impressed, even fascinated by what she did, listening raptly as she talked about her training and experience. By the time they got to dessert, she even found herself revealing how she’d been the best shot in her class at Quantico and kept up at the range weekly, about her martial arts training, and about the course in disarming bombs she’d just done—though she fudged the part about failing it. Before she knew it, the panna cotta was gone and she’d been blabbing for twenty minutes. She felt embarrassed suddenly, rambling on like this, even bragging, but when she stopped herself she realized that Gary was not bored or staring in shock, he was smiling warmly and his narrowed eyes were gleaming, the pupils enlarged. He was totally engaged, even, she ventured, aroused. Interesting. The check appeared and he reached for it and she let him. She smiled at him, her sexy smile, the one with the parted lips and melting chocolate eyes, took a last sip of wine, and, as he put his card in the binder, reached out to give his wrist a quick squeeze.

  “Thank you,” she said, keeping eye contact, “for a wonderful evening.”

  “The first of many I hope,” he said; then, “It’s so nice out tonight. Shall we walk?”

  It was just as they were having their first kiss that the fight started.

  Gary had been right. It was indeed a nice night. The restaurant he’d chosen was in Tribeca, so they ended up walking by the river. They wandered along, side by side, first chatting, then in comfortable silence, as other folks drifted by on foot or wheels. The trees and grass seemed to filter and diffuse the city light and noise into something softer—the glare into moonlight, the yelling and honking into soft laughter and warm conversation.
The traffic on the West Side Highway became another river, whispering behind them as they leaned on the railing, shoulders touching, hers bare and smooth, and stared across the Hudson toward New Jersey. The river was never really still of course (she was an Uptown girl, from Washington Heights, and the river was in the background of all her memories, its smell wafting over the rooftops in the summer, the biting winds chapping her hands and face in the winter), but tonight it looked polished, gleaming, a black lacquered surface held taut over the currents that stirred beneath it, like a sleeping body under a black silk sheet. That was when she felt Gary cover her hand with his, and squeeze it, and she squeezed back, like a little message passing back and forth. She felt him move, turning to her profile and she turned to face him and there they were, eye to eye, holding hands, and they leaned together, as her eyes shut, and their mouths softly met. A perfect first kiss.

  “Fucking bitch!”

  Lips still touching, her eyes opened, and she saw Gary’s also open wide. The voice was coming from behind them.

  “Where the fuck do you think you’re going?”

  Some big loudmouth white guy, or red guy really—he had the telltale blush and sweat of an angry drunk—in a half-unbuttoned shirt and khakis, was yelling at a woman, also white and blonde. She was dressed to go out in a red dress and heels, but her hair was falling out of its ponytail and her makeup was streaked with tears.

  “I said, where the fuck do you think you’re going?” The guy was close to her now, no doubt breathing booze in her face. She turned away.

  “Home,” she said and started walking. The drunk reached out and grabbed her hand.

  “Do not,” he screamed now, “do not fucking walk away while I’m talking to you!”

  While this drama played out, Donna had silently flipped a mental switch and was back in work mode. She checked discreetly for her gun (ankle holster), badge (purse), and phone (back pocket), and got ready to intervene if necessary, already assessing how she would take down this big bag of guts. But her training also made her hesitate, be sure a crime was actually happening before she took action—since just being a loud drunken slob was technically still legal in New York State, unfortunately. A lot of the local economy depended on it. And that’s when she realized that Gary, the civilian she’d just been kissing, was already getting involved.