The Ninth Step

by Gabriel Cohen

  He looked at the uniforms. “You ever get people down there?”

  The patrolwoman shrugged. “Some homeless. They find ways to peel back a corner of the fence or clip a few links.”

  Out of the corner of his eye Jack spotted the two feds, who had almost completed their own scan of the amusement park and were moving this way. He figured that if they spotted Hasni up in the crowds, they might not dare to shoot, but under the walkway would be another story. “How can we get down there fast?”

  “The easiest way is through Shoot the Freak.”

  “Let’s go,” Jack said to Richie. “If you find him,” he warned the uniforms, “don’t let him put his hands anywhere near his knapsack.”

  OVER AT THE CRAZY boardwalk amusement, the barker made the two detectives before they even opened their mouths. “I got a license,” he growled, covering his mic with a beefy hand.

  “This has nothing to do with you,” Jack said. “We just need to get down below.”

  The barker was happy to send the cops on their way. “Climb over the railing there—there’s a ladder on the side.” He asked his customers to hold their fire as the detectives clambered down.

  As they entered the space beneath the boardwalk, it took a few seconds for their eyes to adjust from sun to gloom. The hubbub of the resort above quickly faded away.

  The dim alley, walled with sand on the other side, was densely littered with plastic bags, swatches of towels, and other debris. Massive wooden crossbeams, raised by thick columns planted in the sand, supported the walkway above. Tiny strips of sunlight came down through the boards and striped the sand, which was densely packed underfoot. The place offended Jack’s sense of hygiene, but at least it didn’t smell so bad; beyond a certain briny tang, most of the trash was so old that it had long ago lost its odor.

  “You wanna split up?” Richie asked. “You head west and I’ll go east?”

  Up above, the two uniforms had similarly divided, covering the boardwalk.

  “Works for me,” Jack replied. He watched his colleague plod off down the dim corridor, and then Jack turned the other way. The air down here was damp, with a ghostly chill.

  The visibility was poor, as mounds of sand rose up occasionally, and the forest of columns would offer Jack’s suspect lots of potential cover. He pulled his service revolver out of its holster and walked carefully on for twenty yards, listening to the thump of feet on the wood overhead and the muffled sounds of the amusement parks.

  At his hip, his phone vibrated. He ignored it. Twenty yards on, it buzzed again. He picked it up and checked the source of the call. Ray Hillhouse.

  Holding his gun with one hand, he flipped the phone open and pressed it to his ear. “What’s up?” he said, keeping his voice as low as possible.

  “You’re not gonna like this,” the FBI man replied. “I asked around: there’s no word here about any investigation into a dirty-bomb plot. And the JTTF has never heard of it either.”

  Jack stopped in his tracks. “Are you sure?” He was stunned, but he reminded himself that he needed to keep moving. Ahead, the gray sand rose up in a sloping mound. At its peak, he’d only have a few feet of clearance.

  “I’m sure,” Hillhouse said. “I know a top guy at Homeland Security and he also swears he’s never heard of this case.”

  Jack felt dizzy, as if the sand had shifted beneath his feet. For days now, he had been wondering if Nadim Hasni was really part of a terrorist cell. But did the cell even exist? “Did he say anything about Charlson?”

  “He says the guy creeps him out. Charlson was a security contractor back in the first Gulf War, and there were rumors that he was involved in some kind of bad scene that got hushed up. I also checked out—”

  “Hold on a sec,” Jack whispered. He had reached the top of the mound; on the other side, it sloped back down, revealing a cluttered little vista. About forty yards ahead in the dim alley, someone had set up a small blue camping tent on the sand. Scattered around it, he noticed other objects: a plastic lounge chair, a pile of plastic milk crates, and … he squinted to see better … a fiberglass shark, lying on its side, perhaps salvaged from some old concession stand or amusement ride. Ahead, the tent flap was closed. Jack was trying to imagine if Nadim Hasni might have gotten hold of such makeshift lodging when he saw something stir on the sand just twenty yards away, to the right. A prone human body. Young, male, with brown skin. A knapsack lay on the sand next to him.

  “Jack?” Hillhouse said.

  He hung up, stuffed his cell phone in his pocket, and gripped his revolver with both hands. He was just beginning to descend the slope when he spotted another figure in the shadows, stepping around the side of the tent.

  A mild, grandfatherly, very reasonable-looking man.

  Brent Charlson was also holding up a gun. He noticed Jack just as he caught sight of their mutual prey.

  Jack accidentally stepped on an empty soda bottle and it crunched beneath his feet.

  Nadim Hasni whirled to look at him.

  “Put your hands up!” Jack said. “Don’t move!”

  Nadim complied.

  Charlson spoke. “Good job, Leightner.”

  Nadim kept his hands up, but as he turned to see the federal agent, he visibly recoiled. He started to scramble backward, leaving his knapsack behind.

  “Don’t move!” Jack repeated, pointing his gun.

  Nadim stopped.

  “You found him,” Charlson said. “I can take it from here.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Charlson’s voice stayed eerily flat. “You don’t think so what?” Strips of light glinted against his spectacles.

  All of a sudden, Jack thought about the bomb underneath his car.

  “You can go now,” the fed told him.

  Jack reached back with one hand and pulled a pair of handcuffs from his belt. He kept his voice calm and steady as he spoke to his suspect. “Nadim, I want you to stay very still, all right? You’re going to be okay.”

  “I’ll take him into custody,” Charlson said to Jack. “Why don’t you go get your partner?”

  “No!” Hasni cried out. “I do not go with this man. Never again!”

  A sudden zipping noise. A grimy head poked out of the tent. “What the hell’s all this racket? I’m tryin’ to get some sl—” .

  “Gun!” Charlson shouted. “He’s got a gun!”

  Jack turned back to see a flash from the fed’s pistol, accompanied by a sharp report.

  Still holding up his empty hands, Nadim slammed backward onto the sand.

  Charlson spun around and pointed his pistol at Jack.

  But Jack Leightner had his own gun up and at the ready. And he did something that he had never done in all his years with the NYPD: he fired his service weapon in an attempt to kill a man. As instructed on the departmental firing range, he aimed for central body mass. And hit it.

  Charlson jerked backward and then looked down in disbelief at the red spot on his immaculate white shirt. And then he toppled back and splayed out, immobile, glasses askew across his pale white face.

  Jack rushed over and felt the man’s neck for a pulse. He couldn’t find it but didn’t have time to ponder the complete and utter strangeness of the moment—he had just killed another human being—because he had someone else to check on. He hurried across the odd little encampment to the body of his long-sought suspect, also sprawled out amid the trash.

  NADIM HASNI GURGLED FOR breath. He pressed his hand to his chest and then held it up before his eyes: it was slick with his blood. His head fell back and he moaned as he felt his life draining away, down into the cool sand.

  Now he would never take part in the plan. Malik and Aarif and the others would buy the two Taxi & Limousine medallions. They would never again have to shift-lease their cars from other owners. But Nadim would never know what it felt like to be his own boss.

  His eyelids slid shut.

  “Abbu?”

  He heard his daughter’s high, sweet
voice in the darkness. And then he saw some shifting pink and orange points of light. As he moved closer, he saw that they were huge transparent umbrellas, glowing jellyfish, pulsing through an endless black sea.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  THE CALL CAME A week later, as Jack sat at his desk in the Homicide squad room typing up a report on his latest investigation.

  After an endless series of debriefings with NYPD brass and with freaked-out bureaucrats from Homeland Security and the Department of Justice, not to mention a mandatory post-shooting session with a police therapist, he was finally back to his normal rounds, the daily influx of sad, dumb, run-of-the-mill killings: the drug dealers popping each other in battles over turf, the spouses reaching the end of the line in their marital wars, the robberies gone bad, and the teen gangstas vying to impress some curvy little homegirl.

  Jack’s first new case, thankfully, had been an easy grounder to the infield. (It involved no terrorists, federal agents, or Mafia kingpins.) At a house party in East Flatbush, one Ronnie Parris, twenty-two years old, had shot and killed one Brione Terrell, nineteen, in a scuffle over a Tommy Hilfiger jacket, in front of seventeen witnesses. Excess of testosterone, shortage of good judgment, overavailability of firearms: open-and-shut case.

  Jack paused in his typing and considered getting up and going into the supply room for his third cup of coffee. He listened to the usual comforting clatter of detectives banging away at their keyboards, taking phone calls, ribbing each other about their personal lives.

  His phone rang.

  As soon as the brief conversation was over, he called Richie Powker, and then he went out and jumped into his car.

  TWENTY MINUTES LATER, HE and his former partner were standing in a hallway of the Kings County Medical Center. Through a big window, he looked into a Critical Care room and saw a thicket of IV stands, tubes, and life-support machines. A couple of hovering nurses blocked his view of the bed.

  The attending physician stepped out into the hallway, removed his face mask, and gave the NYPD detectives an update. “He’s finally able to talk, but don’t stay long. He’s very weak and we’re still not sure he’s going to make it.”

  As Jack entered the room and saw the haggard, brown-skinned young patient, he remembered his own days lying—perhaps in this same bed—after he had been shot during a late-night ambush. He felt a rush of empathy but tamped it down; he was here to find out why the man had committed a homicide.

  He and his partner tugged chairs closer to the bedside, pulled out notebooks, and began their interview.

  Nadim Hasni was very wary, but when it became evident that they were genuinely interested in his story—and actually seemed to believe him—the words spilled out. He struggled for breath but managed to tell them all about his arrest and incarceration back in 2001.

  Jack glanced out the window and saw a couple of men in business suits bustle down the corridor, probably bureaucrats from Homeland Security. He could see them arguing with the doctor, and they tried to get his own attention, but he ignored them. The connection between Hasni, Brasciak, and Charlson had finally been uncovered; of course it led back to the detention center in the days after 9/11. In the wake of Charlson’s death, a couple of scared witnesses had finally stepped forward to describe the dark things they had seen inside that hulking, windowless building. The feds were spinning it as a tale of a couple of rogue guards gone astray, but reporters had begun gathering information about the broad abuses that had taken place—and about the system that had actively encouraged the bullies to run free.

  Everybody wanted a piece of Nadim Hasni now, but this time the feds would have to wait their turn.

  Richie interrupted the young man. “You’re positive that the voices in the other cell belonged to Charlson and Brasciak?”

  “I am positive,” Hasni said, almost weeping with relief; finally, he could tell what had really happened. He resumed his story. The detectives had a hard time keeping up their usual stoic front as he reached the part about his daughter’s death. Mercifully, then, some opiate drip kicked in; the man’s eyelids closed and he was fast asleep.

  Jack and Richie sat in silence for a minute, contemplating the suspect they had desperately tracked across two boroughs, their supposed terrorist.

  “Poor bastard,” Richie murmured.

  Jack nodded. If Hasni managed to pull through, he would face homicide charges for the attack in the deli. But maybe he could plead temporary insanity. That could send him to a psych ward, but at least he might finally get some professional help to ease his anguished mind.

  AFTER WORK, JACK STOPPED in to Monsalvo’s for a beer. The place was quiet—just a couple of old-timers chatting companionably at the far end of the bar. Jack took a seat and stared up at the dusty deer head mounted on the wall. With its big sad eyeballs, it seemed to be staring back.

  He sat there, sipping his beer, still musing about Nadim Hasni. He pictured the actual contents of the man’s deadly knapsack: two pairs of socks, some underwear, a couple of dirty T-shirts, and a half-eaten box of Oreo cookies. Simple things owned by a simple man, caught up in forces way beyond his control. The guy’s entire life had been ravaged. Who could possibly make that up to him?

  Jack thought about the stranger who had showed up on his doorstep one recent Sunday morning, and he recalled the man’s crumpled piece of paper. What had it said? Something about taking stock of one’s life, and something about a Ninth Step: making amends.

  And then he was thinking not of his recent cases at all but of his father, of the many times he’d had to practically carry the man home from bars like this one, of the rages and the shouting. But he also remembered the time his father had helped him and Petey build a raft made of scraps of wood “recovered” from a construction site; they had actually managed to float it in a little waterfront cove. And his father holding him up in the Red Hook pool, then crowing to his friends when his son managed to dog-paddle a few feet on his own. His father, lifting three semiconscious men out of the hold of a burning, explosives-packed ship. Jack shook his head. He’d spent the past few days chasing a phantom threat to his beloved city, while all his life he had been completely ignorant about his own father’s role in saving the entire New York area from a very real and much greater cataclysm.

  A 45 dropped into place in the jukebox: Bobby Darin, “Beyond the Sea.”

  Jack sat there listening to the old tune, and he thought of Michelle. Most of his life, he had carried a heavy grudge against his old man; now he was carrying one against his former love. He pondered his visit to the little Buddhist nun and what she had told him about forgiveness. Yes, Michelle had cheated on him, but maybe she had just acted out of her own fear, her own insecurities. Maybe she was just another fallible human being. Who didn’t make mistakes?

  He ducked his head and stared down into his glass. He knew now who he really needed to forgive: a fifteen-year-old boy who had said something stupid in an offhand moment. He hadn’t said it in order to cause any trouble for his brother. He had just been a kid, and the slurs had hopped out of his mouth like little wild sparrows. Petey was dead. No one could change the past, could make it right. But almost forty years had gone by. It would never be time to forget. But it was time to set his burden down.

  And perhaps it was time to make some other changes, to find out what broken things might be repaired. He knew just where to start. He got up, strode across the bar’s faded linoleum floor, settled into the old phone booth, and shut the accordion door. Then he took out his cell phone and tapped in a number.

  “Jack?” Michelle answered before he even said a word.

  He blinked, wondering if his ex had somehow known he was about to call. And then, old-timer that he was, he remembered: there was no magic to it. Just caller ID.

  “Is that really you?” she said. He could have been wrong, but he thought she sounded pleased.

  For some silly reason, Jack thought about the homeless guy who’d earned three bucks off him in midtown M
anhattan. “I’ll tell you where you got your shoes,” the man had said. “You got ’em on your own two feet.”

  And so he did.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  A CRIME WRITER FRIEND insists that he never researches his novels. “They’re fiction,” he says. “The important thing is to tell a good story. Who cares if the details are accurate?”

  I’ve never been able to share that blithe approach. In part, that’s because I derive too much pleasure from the process of research, of going out and talking to real people, treading real settings, investigating real events. It’s also because I learned a lot about writing from working as a freelance journalist, and I know that I can pick up details from real life that are so rich, odd, and intriguing that I could probably never make them up.

  That’s certainly the case with The Ninth Step. It’s a work of fiction and I hope it’s a good story, but—more than any of my other books—this one is based on a number of the most amazing true stories I’ve come across in two and a half decades of professional writing.

  A few years ago, while working on a waterfront feature for The New York Times, I took a boat tour of little-known spots in New York Harbor. A four-sentence note in the accompanying leaflet mentioned the site of the near-explosion of a munitions ship called the El Estero back in 1943. I was captivated by this historical tidbit, which I had never heard of. My subsequent research culminated in a long and very pleasant interview with an eighty-eight-year-old man named Seymour Wittek. He had been a Coast Guardsman during that incredible event, and he was one of the volunteers who rushed to the burning ship, and he told me the tale which I have put into the mouth of my fictional character Frank Raucci.