by Andy Straka
“Why don’t we see if she’ll walk with us,” I said.
“What if she tries to bolt again?”
“With the bird tethered to her glove, I don’t think she’s about to. But if she does, you can go for the girl while I manage the owl.”
“Right,” he said without enthusiasm.
“Why don’t you call the lieutenant and see what we can do about getting an Arabic-speaking translator.”
He nodded and pulled out a cell phone. Punched in a number and began speaking softly with Marbush about the situation.
Meanwhile Nicole, with a combination of hand signals and soothing language, was attempting to communicate with the girl about coming along with us. The girl still seemed frightened. Maybe a little less so, but I was worried we might have trouble coaxing her to do as we asked.
We could always move to secure her by force. Cuff her and take control of the bird. But all of us sensed that would not be the right thing to do in this situation. It would only serve to alienate a potential cooperating witness who might help us unravel all that happened in the past few days.
I looked at the girl’s free hand, ebony skin poking out from the sleeve of her sweatshirt. Where had she acquired the skills to handle a bird of prey in such a manner? What was she doing with the bird here and why now? Hunting?
I noticed a small falconer’s bag slung around her shoulder and hanging from her waist. It was meant to contain bait food for the owl and was large enough to hold a bagged quarry. If she wasn’t hunting, she sure was doing a good job pretending to be a hunter. She turned and looked at me examining her while Nicole went on talking.
The young falconer’s expression told me she’d seen many kills before, that she knew how to handle herself, how to skin and take the meat from caught game.
“Come on. It’ll be okay. Let’s go,” Nicole said.
I motioned for the girl to follow. She did as we asked.
At least she seemed compliant enough. We began walking slowly out of the construction area. Whatever happened now, I thought, at least we could solve the mystery of the falconer in the park. I had the feeling it was bound to be a strange and complicated story.
This young girl didn’t seem like she could be responsible for threatening Darla or for the shootings. Had Watisi hired someone else? Cato Raines? My thoughts veered back and forth between the girl in the park and all the people we had talked to so far.
Halacini had pulled the rental car around the curve out of sight of the patrol vehicles. We spotted it as we emerged from the trees and began moving in that direction. The girl was walked calmly along. Her bird, apparently accustomed to being around other people, perched on her glove just as calmly.
We had almost reached the car when I saw the flash of yellow from behind some bushes, the familiar red ball cap, the world weary-eyes.
Like everyone else, though, I was too slow to react. Sammy Yel Bak surfaced from his hiding spot, the Kalashnikov rifle he was pointing at us as steady in his youthful hands as if he’d fired and killed with it many times before.
* * * * *
The world seemed to stop for a moment. No one moved except Halacini, who leapt out of the car, his hand moving toward his sidearm. But when he saw the barrel of the AK-47 swing in his direction, he stopped and put his hands in the air.
“Everybody else, do that too,” Sammy said.
We all complied. I glanced at Nicole, whose eyes had grown huge. My first thought was terrorist, even though the kid seemed so young. My second thought, watching him react to the girl with the owl, was that a lot more was going on here than met the eye.
“Who the hell are you?” Brodsky asked the gunman.
“I’ve seen him on the street around here a couple of times. I talked to him yesterday. Gave him a photo and told him we were looking for the person with the owl.”
“Now shut up,” the young man said. “Everybody just shut up.”
He motioned with the barrel of his gun to the girl with the owl. Obviously familiar with her rescuer, she moved out from between us and stepped with the bird to his side.
“That’s a pretty dangerous toy you’ve got there, my friend. You sure you know how to fire it?” Brodsky was asking. He might’ve been bluffing, but I sensed he was genuinely testing the waters with this guy. Not a bad idea under the circumstances.
But Sammy was more than up for the challenge. The young man pulled one hand off the assault rifle keeping the other on the trigger and the barrel trained on us. His free hand was almost a blur as he whipped it behind his back, pulled a spare ammunition clip from his belt, reached back around to pop the clip out of the rifle and slam the fresh one into its place before any of us had a chance to do anything about it. Then he twirled the first ammunition clip in his fingers and neatly replaced it in his belt.
“Jesus,” Brodsky said under his breath.
“I guess that answers that question,” I said. “Where’d you learn how to do that, Sammy?”
“Not to worry, man,” the boy said. “Not to worry.”
I looked at him differently now than when I’d been talking to him on the street. The leanness in his frame, the tough sinewy muscles in his arms and legs. Sammy Yel Bak was more than just some other tough hanging around the neighborhood. He’d killed and seen his share of killing. Probably in some scorching desert city or steaming guerilla insurgency somewhere.
Without a family or someone else to fall back on, it would only be a matter of time until the gangbangers or the pimps or someone worse managed to recruit him for his talents, if they hadn’t already.
Or maybe not. Some fierce anger burned behind his eyes, leading me to see beyond the hatred toward the hint of something noble.
“Look,” I said. “We mean you or the girl no harm.”
He held up us hand. “No talking.” His eyes darted back and forth, settling on Nicole. “You.” He motioned with the barrel of the gun. “You come too.”
“Wait a minute,” I said, trying to keep the panic that was threatening to rise from within me in check. “This is getting out of hand. These are police officers you’re threatening. You don’t want to get in any deeper than you are already.”
But the young gunman was undeterred. “You, you come,” he repeated, looking at Nicole and threatening her with the rifle.
“I better go, Dad. We better do what he says.” Nicole’s voice was measured, resolute. I looked at my daughter.
“No way. No way,” I said. It was one of the times in life your brain takes a backseat to instinct. I stepped between the barrel and Nicole. Sammy Yel Bak leapt quickly to intercept me.
This is it, I thought. This is how it ends for me.
But he jabbed me hard in the ribs with the thing without puling the trigger. I might’ve tried to jujitsu the gun from his grasp, but he was too fast and too smart for that. The officers started to move too, but his barrel was back on them in a heartbeat. Pain shot through my torso, bending me over, and for a moment I thought he might’ve put a round in me after all; until I realized there’d been no sound.
“Kid, you don’t even begin to know all the trouble you’re setting yourself up for,” Brodsky said, his hands back in the air.
For a moment, I felt like a cop again. Sammy Yel Bak stepped back at the sound of the uniformed officer’s voice. Was he calculating the impact of Brodsky’s words? Or something else?
“It’s okay, Dad.” Nicole’s voice came from behind me now. “I’ll go with them. It’ll be all right. I can take care of myself.”
“That’s not the point,” I said. I straightened again and lifted my eyes to Sammy Yel Bak’s. “No. Let me do it. Take me instead.”
But Yel Bak was adamant. He shook his head and pointed toward Nicole. “Come. You, come.”
She did as he instructed, letting her lips touch my cheek as she brushed by me. “I’m okay, Daddy,” she whispered. “I’m going to be okay.”
And then all three of them were in the rental car, moving rapidly away while w
e watched. Helpless. Brodsky was shouting something into his walkie-talkie. Nicole was at the wheel, only the back of her dark hair visible. The other two sat in back; Yel Bak, with the barrel of the Kalashnikov pointed at my daughter’s ear; the eerie foreign-speaking girl sitting next to him, her owl propped at her side, its head turning almost completely around to look at us, its glowing eyes like amber circles playing tricks with the light.
27
Everyone was talking at once. No one, as far as I was concerned, seemed to be making any sense.
The clock on the wall read past ten a.m. Nicole had already been missing for more than nine hours. In a small conference room down the hall from Marbush’s office, the lieutenant and I, along with a Captain Statinger, whom I vaguely remembered from my time on the force years before, and a representative from the mayor’s office—a whispery, middle-aged woman with perm-controlled hair named Beverly Applegate—all sat around a table arguing about the young people with the owl and the AK-47 in the park.
Brodsky’s entreaties on the radio had set into motion an immediate NYPD full-court press, of course. An all out sweep of the area had yielded the stolen rental car, ten blocks away off of Columbus Avenue in the East Eighties, but that was all we had so far.
The car was in impound being checked for fingerprints and other evidence. Dominic Watisi was in a room down the hall with his attorney, being questioned by detectives regarding the dorms we’d seen at his estate and any possible links he might have to the young people in the park.
On our way into the building earlier, I noticed Barry Lagrange and a gaggle of other news types had set up a minor encampment outside the precinct house They were no doubt enjoying the shade trees the park had to offer.
“I just don’t understand why you’re doing a whole ground search of the entire park,” Beverly Applegate from the mayor’s office was saying. “You’ve got a helicopter and men and dogs everywhere. You’re going to frighten the tourists to death.”
Captain Statinger, an austere-looking man nearing retirement, shot right back. “Look, Beverly, we’ve got two murders, a former officer wounded, and now a woman kidnapped. The officers have stated this bird girl was speaking Arabic and the young man was apparently well trained in handling the assault rifle he was carrying. For all we know these events might even be terrorism related. That enough for you?”
“But I thought you already had the shooter from the other night.”
“We thought we did,” Marbush said. “Now it looks more likely this kid with the girl may have been the triggerman.”
The political woman backed down. “I suppose you’re right.”
“What’s happening with Watisi?” I asked.
The captain cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, Frank. We’re talking to him down the hall, but he’s stonewalling. And he’s got a damn good attorney. Other than your story about this rare book, the buildings you say you saw on his private property, and Dr. Lonigan’s unsubstantiated allegations, we still don’t have anything solid to go on.”
“What about illegal immigrants?” Marbush said. “These kids who have Frank’s daughter appear to be in that category. Could one of Watisi’s companies have something to do with this? Maybe they’re hiring illegals under the table.”
The captain shrugged. “The guy’s in the real estate business and he owns a development company. He’s not running a sweatshop down in the garment district as far as we’ve been able to tell.”
“The sweatshops we’re in the process of rooting out,” Applegate intoned, no doubt spewing the party line from the mayor’s office, although everyone in the room knew it was like trying to stop spammers on the internet.
“Los Miembros are trafficking in prostitutes,” I said. “Some of them are probably illegals.”
“It’s a possibility,” Statinger said. “But how would the gang be connected to Watisi? We’ll need time to check all this out.”
“Time is what I don’t have.”
They ignored me.
“Maybe we should think about contacting the immigration service,” Marbush said.
“Absolutely not,” Applegate said.
“You know the city’s policy. It’s not the job of the NYPD to police immigration matters. You’re investigating a crime, pure and simple. It’s an abduction. The alleged perpetrator’s immigration status should have nothing to do with the matter.”
“But?“ I tried to interject.
“We should be talking to the mayor … .”
“The state attorney general … .”
“The governer’s office … .”
They all went on like that for another couple of minutes. A discussion about sanctuary rules and executive orders and legal precedent, segueing into blah, blah, blah. So many memories, so many meetings over the years, especially while Jake and I were slowly ground through the legal machine. Finally, I couldn’t take it any longer.
Bham!
The thick table shuddered a little beneath my hand. “Look,” I said.
Maybe I’d slammed my palm down a little too loudly. Everyone had stopped and was staring at me.
“I don’t care if these people are from the moon. We’re talking about my daughter here.”
“Frank,” Marbush said softly. “We’re all sorry about your daughter. Do you have anything additional to offer?”
I looked around the table at the assembled group. “Yes, as a matter of fact, I do. I think you should close down the whole park, immediately. Monitor all access going in or out—foot traffic too.”
“Are you kidding?” Applegate said.
Captain Statinger said, “You know how much manpower that would tie up, Pavlicek?”
“Something keeps drawing these people back to the park. That’s where the girl with the bird’s been sighted several times now. And I’ve personally seen the kid with the gun there. I think it’s our best shot at catching them and getting Nicole back.”
“Don’t get me wrong. I understand how you feel. Your daughter was working with you on the job and if it was any of our kids …”
“But it isn’t, is it?” I said.
The room fell into an uncomfortable silence. They weren’t going to move on my recommendation. Not that I’d expected them to.
“I’m done here,” I said, pushing up from the table and heading toward the exit.
“Don’t go doing something stupid,” the captain said, “The last thing we need right now is a vigilante parent.”
His words bounced off my back like rubber daggers as I headed through the door.
* * * * *
Down the corridor, Sergeant Fitzhugh, carrying a thick manila folder, was helping two officers escort a trio of teenagers, white, angry and grunge-looking, toward another interview room down the corridor.
“Hey, Frank.”
He stopped and waved the others on. The officers and the teens continued down the corridor.
“How’s it going in there?” Fitzhugh asked.
I shook my head.
“I heard about your daughter. Anything I can do?”
“Yeah, thanks. Put the word out at roll call for everyone working the park to be extra vigilant. They even see somebody looking cross-eyed, they need to check it out.”
“You got it. I’m handing out the photos of your daughter you gave us too. You think these turkeys that took off with her have gone to ground?”
“I don’t know what they’re up to. But I’ve got a feeling it’s not what any of us are expecting.”
“What makes you say that?”
“The kid with the Kalashnikov. Something in his face. He’s fought someplace, I’m sure of it. Got to be overseas.”
“So he isn’t going to hesitate to kill. Makes him one dangerous little hombre, you ask me.”
“Yeah, but it was more than that.”
“What do you mean?”
“I got the feeling he was only trying to protect the girl with the owl.”
He scratched his chin. “That would make hi
m the extra shooter when Barnes was hit.”
“Exactly.”
“Okay. But what’s the bird girl’s story?”
“Unfortunately, we lost our best chance to find out.”
“What are you going to do now?”
“I’m going to meet a plane at LaGuardia,” I said.
28
After a phone call explaining my situation to a sympathetic representative, the car rental company agreed to provide me with a new vehicle. A pale Chevy compact this time, but by now I didn’t care. I was just happy to be on the move, away from the precinct and everything that was going on down there.
I fell into a steady stream of cars crossing the Queensboro Bridge, took Queens Boulevard to the BQE, and headed up the Grand Central Parkway toward LaGuardia. Back across the river, the midmorning sun bathed the cityscape in gold. Another day in the great metropolis of smoke and commerce.
New York was never static. It was a constant stream of humanity flowing in and out, from anywhere and everywhere, like an ocean or a mountain forest after a fire, forever renewing itself from the ruins. That was something the 9/11 terrorists hadn’t counted on. Was it happening again in the prefab woods of Central Park after dark? Nicole was finding out.
I found a space in the garage across from the terminals and walked across to meet the plane. Nothing else mattered right now until I got her back.
Jake Toronto’s flight was on time, a little early in fact. I caught up with him at the counter in baggage claim where he was discussing the need to have a thorough inspection of his checked-through weaponry with an anxious looking airline agent and a TSA Security Officer.
Jake looked stronger and definitely more ready for action than when he’d showed up back on my doorstep ten days before. His time overseas had taken a toll on him—that much was clear—but his eyes still blazed with the same certainty that caused others to take notice and step aside.
I walked up and bear hugged him, clapping him on the back.
“About time you got here,” he said. “Would you please explain to these people who I am and what I am not.”
