by James Abel
“That’s me,” he said. “The friendly guy.”
“Oh my God! I’m sorry! I forgot because of the subway! I didn’t come here because of that. I came because Greg wants to have the locksmith break into your apartment!”
Tom Fargo stared into her face, stupefied, controlling the stupendous rage coursing inside him with the greatest effort. He could only hope that his face betrayed none of the fury. The emotion froze his intestines and dragged razor blades down his throat. He could not have heard right. He could not imagine his neighbor hiring a locksmith to break into his apartment. This could not be happening.
“Locksmith?”
“He called me an hour ago, angry. He said everyone in the building got the notice that there will be an exterminator in the building today, to spray against mosquitoes. He says everyone has to leave a key with the doorman but you didn’t, and the exterminator can only come today. So if you don’t open up Greg will have a locksmith do it, and you will have to pay the bill.”
“You forgot to tell me this until now?”
“I’m sorry. I was upset because of the subway!”
“He can’t do that,” Tom said.
“Greg said that in an emergency the co-op board can break into an apartment. You know, for a plumbing leak. Or police issue. It’s in the building bylaws.”
Did I lock the darkroom? Is there anything outside the darkroom that gives things away?
“The exterminator is in the building now?” he asked. “What is Greg’s number?”
She called her boyfriend, and Greg picked up instantly, furious. “This is exactly what pisses me off about renting units to outsiders, Cycle,” Greg complained loudly, over the line, as if other people listened in. He was being the building “Captain.” The co-op board leader. “You were given a copy of the bylaws when you moved in. You must have seen the notice under your door last night. You were supposed to leave a key with the doorman. The locksmith is here. This is a health issue. We need to get in! We’re out of time.”
“I’ll come home right now, open it up myself.”
Greg started lecturing, pompously. “Cycle, this is the difference between a responsible property owner and a temporary renter. You need to pay attention! And obey rules, which are clear.” Tom heard Greg, voice slightly fainter, say to someone else, “Eduardo, break in.”
“Understand the rules?” Tom repeated, thinking fast.
“That’s what I said.”
“Like laws about beating up women?”
“Eduardo! Hold up a second, okay?”
The silence on the other end became breathing; Tom saw Rebeca go crimson, and he heard footsteps over the line, as if Greg was walking away from whoever he had been performing for. Sure enough, when the voice came again it was softer.
“What did you say, Cycle?”
“You heard me. Rules? Let’s see what the police do with the rules when they hear about Rebeca.”
Tom Fargo was in an anguish of rage. If Greg busted into the darkroom, he’d see the insects, the breeding pans and equipment, the maps, the prayer mat. It would be over in minutes.
But then Greg said, “How fast can you get here?”
“Oh, I can take a cab. Fifteen minutes.”
Silence. Then Greg said, softly, and with hatred, “Eduardo will spray apartment 506 first. Hurry.”
Tom Fargo took Rebeca by the elbow and went outside and locked up. There was no way to wait for Singh now. On 6th Avenue, a few unmarked gypsy cabs were usually trolling, drivers charging five times the usual fare during the emergency. Bloodsuckers. As a black Chevy pulled to the curb Tom caught sight of Singh’s silvery delivery truck, R.R. SINGH & SONS, TRANSPORT SPECIALISTS, rounding the corner, heading for the shop, which they would find locked.
Rebeca was crying softly, humiliated.
He called Singh from the backseat of the car. No answer. Maybe he could have the boxes delivered to the co-op. He tried again. No answer. He tried five minutes later. Singh’s voice mail was full, a brand new recording said.
Unfortunately, we just got a call that our trucks are being recalled to the spray center, and will probably be there all day tomorrow. Your shipments will not be available for at least another day.
Which meant Tom was stuck here. Unbelievable!
He would have to live with a delay.
Handle this emergency. You can do this, Tom Fargo thought. Just keep your head.
All because of Joe Rush!
SIXTEEN
Eddie took each death even harder than the rest of us, probably because of what had happened to him in Brazil. We slowly took off our surgical masks. The nurses slumped, and one started crying. The dead girl on the bed was a fifteen-year-old high school track star who had been bitten at home in Riverdale, after leaving her bedroom window open. The insect that killed her was probably still free.
Eddie and I had been on shift at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital for the past seven hours.
“I told you Ray would screw us over,” Eddie grumped.
“He’s a good investigator.”
“He’ll be accessible anytime? Call him on the special number? We haven’t gotten through in days. That assistant of his is as helpful as an automated operator.”
“He gave us our own unit, Dos.”
“As a way of telling us to fuck off,” Eddie said, as we waved off reporters in the waiting room. The vultures were counting up each new death, ratcheting up fear. The whole world was waiting for the next attack. The FBI had no new clues, reporters claimed.
It was an hour before I would finally realize what I’d missed noticing in Brazil.
“Ray’s revenge,” Eddie said as we dressed to leave. “If we’re not at the hospital, he buries us in minutiae.”
I wanted the med work, but five days after we’d arrived in New York, Ray had sidetracked our investigation the rest of the time with public appearances and paperwork: tax forms for staffers; office requisition forms; reimbursement for expenses; signature required if a federal agency employs a minor, our intern Aya.
“You can still put yourself under another group,” Ray had told me when I actually reached him for fifty seconds, days ago.
“That won’t work.”
“Then when you finish at the hospital, the Mayor requested that you do a few more interviews. People listen to you. There have been attacks on Muslims. Calm ’em down.”
“A few interviews? They never stop,” Izabel grouched.
Izabel had been assigned a desk overlooking Broadway, but was rarely there; a ghost disappearing into the city, or keeping up with her police contacts in Brazil. Eddie had recovered swiftly. I was glad to have him back. Aya, pulled back to Washington by her mother, worked for me remotely from a cubicle at the FBI.
“I’m monitoring Customs reports coming in from Brazil, like you asked,” she’d told me. “There’s thousands of them. The agents here treat me like I’m eight years old. The interns are stuck in the basement. The other kids are doing stupid stuff. Getting coffee for agents.”
“Aya, did you ever see a movie where a cop acts dumb on purpose, to get information?”
“What does that have to do with this stupid place?”
“And this behavior works for the cop, right?”
“So?”
“So, if people treat you like a kid, play the kid. If they underestimate you, that’s a tool. Who cares if other interns have dumb jobs. Keep on those Brazilian shipments. You find things that even trained investigators miss.”
Silence. I could almost hear the slow smile spread on her face. Only God knew what she was imagining. Then the imaginary smile was gone as she dove into the next subject.
“That Brazilian policewoman was on the news with you.”
“Izabel is a member of our unit. Use her name.”
“Do you like her? The interns h
ere say she’s hot.”
“I like everyone we work with.”
“Really? You mean Ray Havlicek, too?”
“I like him. He and I just disagree sometimes.”
“Do you like that Brazilian woman better than Mom?”
“We’re not having this discussion. Your mother is engaged to Ray. I think you should accept it.”
“On ABC you held hands with that Brazilian woman.”
“That was during a funeral service for victims. Everyone there held hands. Good-bye, Aya.”
Thirty-one minutes before I realized what clue I’d missed on the island, we were in the back of an NYPD unmarked Chevy, being driven to my next talk. The city was too quiet. Spray trucks were not out anymore as pesticides were used up. National Guard troops protected a mosque. Restaurants were closed and parks empty. Many pet owners were not walking their dogs at dawn or dusk anymore, or they paid professional walkers seven times the usual rate.
“Joe, you’re a doctor,” Ray had soothed. “That’s what you do best. Give the talks. You really think I’d let you run around and mess up real investigators? You don’t know a subpoena from a suture. You sidelined yourself when you demanded your own private unit. You and your damn ego, Joe. Don’t blame me for that.”
• • •
“Izabel Santo has a hell of a figure,” Eddie said, as we headed across town on 96th, made a left on West End and a right on 88th. The Riverside Park area housed some of the Mayor’s wealthier supporters. Detective Jamal al-Azawi, our driver/liaison, was a tall, balding man who’d been told to provide any assistance. The NYPD was a good ally, happy to have us there.
“Izabel? Stop it, Eddie. I just went through this with Aya.”
“She’s an animal, Joe. Up at four A.M., works out two hours a day. Did you see those calf muscles? No wedding ring. No engagement ring. You ought to see the way she eyes you when you’re not looking. It’s been two years now for you, Uno. A man has physical needs.”
“Eating and sleeping.”
“Also, notice how she stopped pestering us for a gun?”
I sighed. “She has a gun, Eddie? How the hell did she get it?”
“She’s out half the time in the foreign neighborhoods. How the hell do you think she got it?”
He was right, I realized. If she’d stopped asking, she was armed. And who was I to stop her? She’d provided weapons to me in Brazil.
“Where is she today, Dos?”
“Brazilian neighborhoods again. Newark yesterday. Astoria today. Restaurants. Social clubs. Churches. Garages. We’re still trying to figure, what connects those three cities? New York, Philly, and Newark?”
“They’re close to one another. They’re linked by rail lines and multiple highways. I wonder if we’ve got one group moving around. Not several.”
“Izabel’s been trying to get her guys back in Brazil to track down that Indian, Cizinio, and ask more questions.”
I did not tell Eddie about the talk I’d had with Ray concerning Izabel, and accusations against her back home. I was protective of the person who’d saved Eddie and me.
“There’s some concern about Captain Santo,” Ray had said.
“Concern?”
“Look, I know she saved your ass down there. But she’s a problem for her own people. I checked. Turns out she was assigned to Rondônia after being sent away from the east. She may have been involved with the police death squads.”
I’d started. I’d heard a little about these, but Ray knew more. “Death squads?”
“Secret groups that operate in the favelas, the slums, taking out gang members, drug runners. Big scandal there. She’s under internal investigation, and so was the officer with her, Salazar, the one who got killed.”
But if Ray had sought to make me less sympathetic to Izabel, he’d accomplished the opposite. Because I had done exactly what she was accused of, a couple of years back. There was a man dead in Norway, and another in Russia, because I had murdered them. They kept me up at night sometimes, as a breeze coming through my window in Massachusetts, a silvery slit of moonlight that shouldn’t be there at 2 A.M. It’s nothing, I’d think. Natural. But deep inside I believed it was them, and I knew that I would hurt them again if I had another chance.
A good friend of mine, the dean of the National Cathedral in Washington, once asked me if I believed in God. When I said I did, she told me, “Well, if you believe in God, then you don’t have to play God. What a relief.”
“That’s an excuse for doing nothing,” I’d replied.
And so I’d told Ray, “I don’t care what she’s done. Izabel was with us when you were four thousand miles away.”
“Fair enough. But you’re responsible if she screws up. Can’t you give her busy work, keep her off somewhere?”
“Is that how you handle people you want frozen out? Give them shitty work?”
I had to hand it to Ray. He stuck to his principles. His voice went low and angry. “Joe, grow up. You’re not trained in handling crime scene work. You haven’t the slightest idea how easy it is to fuck things up so a perp goes free on a technicality that you never knew existed. You demand autonomy. Pride, Joe! You got your unit because of threats, but you’re damn right I keep you three away!”
My reaction upon hearing his accusations against Izabel was curious. Both Eddie and Aya had—in their own way—underlined her as a desirable woman, but it was Ray who put me over the line.
Death squads? Joe Rush, what’s the matter with you? You hear that and then you pay more attention to her?
But the answer was easy. I knew which side she served. I’d seen it up close.
I’d been a one-man death squad, too.
When she came back to the office that night I noticed—in a different way—how her rump swayed when she walked, how she seemed to move forward on her toes, with a kind of eagerness, head high, shoulders back, posture superb. Her perfume seemed more interesting, and the way her long, wild, frizzy hair framed her heart-shaped face and made her glow. I felt a surprising stirring—the kind that I thought was dead. I’d not slept with a woman since my fiancée was killed two years ago. I’d not dated anyone, or acted on any slightest interest, if I felt it. I’d turned away Aya’s mother. I did not want to be responsible for anyone else getting hurt because of me.
I did not want soft.
But that evening I was shocked that something in me had relaxed. I didn’t do anything about it. But I knew I felt it.
Go figure, I thought.
“I’ll keep an eye on her,” I told Ray. I hadn’t, though. Izabel would use her language skills here, and contacts back in Brazil, use them her own way.
• • •
Twenty minutes before I saw what I had missed in Brazil, the clue, I groaned inwardly, seeing the crowd waiting for Eddie and me outside a Riverside Drive apartment building. The co-op was one of those prewar edifices housing people powerful enough to arrange with city hall for a private speech. Trees lined 89th Street. So did well-kept brownstones and a couple of redbrick apartment buildings. Any pedestrians out were walking toward the corner building where Eddie and I would give our talk.
Another waste of time, I thought, wrongly.
There was an ABC News van outside, antenna up. We pushed our way through the throngs fanning onto the sidewalk and around parked cars. The doorman beamed at us. The lobby was done up in Elizabethan decor: dark wood paneling, marble floor, multi-bulb chandeliers above overstuffed furniture on which sat more elderly residents, clapping, or holding canes. Rows of metal folding chairs held middle-aged and younger people: lawyers, publishing, or Wall Street types, applauding the heroes of the Amazon as we made our way to a long folding table by the elevator. I shook hands with the president of the block association. He thanked us for taking time from fighting the scourge as my eyes rose above the crowd to the lobby decorations. It too
k a moment. I felt it coming.
And there it was.
I froze, my tired resentment turning to astonishment.
Eddie sensed it. “One?”
The co-op president was saying, “Colonel Rush and Major Nakamura will tell us how to better protect our loved ones. And give us a heads-up on the latest progress in tracking down those responsible for this heinous attack.”
“One, what are you staring at?”
Eddie followed my gaze to the wall decorations. It was all folk art. Early Appalachian style; handmade quilts and paintings showing maple farmers in Vermont making slashes in trees, like rubber tappers did in Brazil. Pouring the syrup into tin cups, as rubber tappers did with latex. In one cracked oil, a trio of Mohawk Indians smoked pipes as early colonists planted corn, and an ox stood by, its tail swatting insects away. Flies probably.
Maybe mosquitoes.
“Shit,” I said, my voice magnified by the microphone.
Eddie covered the mike with his palm. People in the audience laughed uneasily. The condo president stared.
“The artwork!” I said.
“And?”
“Cizinio said the guards were always buying art from the Karitianas. After the lab was set up, Indians were barred from the island but the guards kept buying art!”
“So?”
I looked at the ox’s tail in the painting, swatting flies. “You told me they were fanatics, praying ten times a day. Jihadists, Eddie! We saw what they did in Iraq. Churches? Tear ’em down. Statues? Use sledgehammers. And send the pictures over the Net. They destroy other cultures. They don’t collect souvenirs. They’re five thousand miles from home. So why buy vases? Cizinio said there was even a man there telling them which work to buy.”
The audience was getting restless. I held up a finger—wait a moment, please—and dug in my pocket, pulled out my cell phone, and pretended that I was receiving an important call. I walked away from the table and microphone. I moved my lips as if talking to the caller, clicked off, and returned to the table, where I announced, “Something just came up. We have to go.”
