“I’ve noticed, Rossetti, but if Sam decides to step down that will be his decision, understand?”
Johnny did understand, but what he didn’t understand was Joe’s sudden anger, at least not at first. Then, he took Joe’s meaning and looked offended.
“No, no Joe, I didn’t mean anything like that. I’d die for that old man.”
Joe relaxed and clapped Johnny on the shoulder.
“Yeah, I hear you, but there are some who might make a play, you know?”
“I do, but I’m not one of them, and besides, Sam will choose you to run things, if and when it comes to that.”
Joe smiled.
“I was just thinking the same thing about you.”
Johnny grinned back at him.
“Come down to my club soon; we’ll have a few drinks and talk.”
“I’ll do that, but where are you rushing off to, can’t you stay a little longer?”
“I’d love to, but I have to go pick up my kid sister. She’s coming home from college.”
“Gina’s in college? The last time I saw that kid she was playing jump rope.”
“She’s a freshman, and has a fresh mouth too.”
The door swung open and a middle-aged woman with a pretty face and graying hair stared out at them.
“Joe, come on in, and you too Johnny, can’t you stay a little longer?”
Johnny pointed to his watch.
“I really have to go, Gina’s plane will be coming in soon, and tell Sammy I said hello.”
Joe watched Johnny walk off towards a dark sedan and then he entered the house.
Sam’s daughter, Pia Giacconi, kissed him on the cheek.
“Merry Christmas, Joey.”
“You too, honey, and did I hear Johnny right, is Sammy coming home for Christmas?”
“He should be here any time now. Mario went to pick him up in the limo.”
“Good, I miss that kid, and what about Sam, where is he?”
Pia’s face clouded over with worry.
“Daddy is in his office.”
Joe took Pia by the hand. She had been like a big sister to him, when he used to work alongside her in the candy store her father once owned.
“He’s getting worse, isn’t he?”
Pia nodded and then wiped away a tear.
“He thought that I was Mom this morning. He asked me if I fed Sparky and put water in his dish. Joey, that dog has been dead for thirty years.”
Joe walked over to a sofa and sat down hard.
“Is he aware that he’s been... forgetful?”
Pia sat beside Joe.
“Daddy knows that there’s something wrong. He’s going to see a doctor after the holidays.”
“Good, but he can’t be seen like that out on the streets, not all confused like that, if word got out the Russians might make a move.”
“Talk to him, Joey. Daddy will take your advice.”
Joe stood, while releasing a great sigh. He then kissed Pia on the forehead and headed towards Sam’s home office.
As he walked up the stairs, he tried to figure out a way to tell Sam that it might be time to step down. He would have rather faced a loaded gun with his hands tied behind his back.
Joe knocked on the door, heard Sam tell him to enter, and after taking a deep breath, he opened the door.
“Hello Sam, and Merry Christmas.”
CHAPTER 6 – Old flame, new fire
In the weeks leading up to Christmas Eve, Sharad had never been happier in his life.
He was back in America, had a good job, and had fallen in love. Although, it might be more accurate to say that Sharad had fallen in love again.
Jennifer Gates had been his girlfriend when they were both fifteen, but the two had been separated by thousands of miles while Sharad lived in the Middle East. His grandfather had a satellite phone but allowed no one else to use it, nor was Sharad permitted to correspond by mail, and he never left the compound without an escort.
The first opportunity to contact Jennifer came while Sharad was living in Paris, and he and Jennifer Gates hadn’t seen each other in years.
Four years is practically a lifetime when you’re nineteen and Sharad assumed that Jennifer had moved on and found another boyfriend, possibly several in the time that he had been gone.
They had been just kids at fifteen and what they shared was puppy love, but Sharad had never forgotten the golden-haired beauty. Upon his return to America, he took the subway to Brooklyn, New York, and walked through his old neighborhood on a Saturday afternoon.
It all looked exactly the same and yet somehow different, and although he remembered some of the faces he saw, such as the woman who owned the small neighborhood market and the man that worked the newsstand, he saw none of his old friends.
When he stopped by the apartment building he used to live in, he found it occupied by all new tenants. The building was the one thing that had changed drastically, as it had been refurbished and upgraded.
The lobby, which had been a dank and dimly lit space where tenants picked up their mail and parked baby carriages, had become a bright, marble-floored entryway that even had a doorman.
The doorman was an Arab with a thick accent, and he was delighted that Sharad could speak his language.
He told Sharad that the building had been sold two years earlier, and that the new owners had quadrupled the rent after the renovation, which had been an extensive one.
When Sharad had moved away, the ten-story building had four full-sized apartments on each floor. The four full-sized apartments had become two luxury apartments, and the windows had been made larger, while small balconies had been added, and the exterior of the building freshened with faux brickwork.
The place was far nicer in every respect but one, Jennifer no longer lived there. Her family had moved away either before or after the renovation.
When the sense of nostalgia morphed into melancholy, Sharad headed towards the subway to take the train to Manhattan.
As he was about to walk down the steps to the station, Sharad saw two girls walking up towards him. One of them was staring at him with her mouth agape and he realized that it was Jennifer.
“Sharad!”
Jennifer ran to him and hugged him, then she stepped back to take him in. While Jennifer was staring at him in wonder, he was looking at her the same way. The cute girl he had loved had turned into a beautiful woman.
“Why didn’t you ever call me, Sharad, or at least write me after you moved?”
“I couldn’t Jenny; things are different over there... very different.”
The other girl cleared her throat and it was only then that Sharad realized that he knew her. She was Jennifer’s younger sister.
She had been a skinny fourteen-year-old tomboy when Sharad had moved away. That tomboy had become almost a mirror image of her older sister, but her blond hair was a shade darker.
“Carly! Oh my, look at you; you’re nearly as beautiful as Jenny.”
“Hi, Sharad,” Carly said, and then she reached over and took the shopping bag that Jennifer held in her hand. “I’ll take this home, Jenny, and that way you can catch up with Sharad.”
As she passed by him, Carly whispered in his ear.
“Break her heart again and I’ll gut you.”
Jennifer looked at her sister with suspicion.
“What did you just say to him?”
“Nothing, see you later, and remember it’s your night to cook dinner.”
Jennifer looked down at her watch and then up at her sister.
“Carly, would you mind—”
“I’ll cook, but then you’ve got to take the next three nights.”
“Thanks, and tell Daddy I won’t be too late, you know how he worries.”
“Fine, goodbye Sharad, maybe I’ll see you again, or maybe not.”
Sharad watched Carly walk off towards their old apartment building.
“Where do you live, Jenny?”
“Across
the street from the old building, we had to move when they renovated. It was too pricy to stay, also... my mom died around that same time.”
Sharad reached out and caressed Jennifer’s cheek.
“Oh baby, I’m so sorry to hear that.”
“Baby?” Jennifer said, and Sharad shrugged.
“It just feels natural to call you that, even after all this time. I’m sorry.”
She smiled at him, and then she took his hand and stared into his eyes.
“Why are you back here? I mean here in the neighborhood.”
“I came looking for you. I never forgot you, Jenny.”
When Jennifer leaned forward and kissed him softly on the lips. It filled Sharad with joy.
***
The leader of Sharad’s sleeper cell was a light-skinned Saudi named Khalid Al Mohammed, who was going by the improbable name of John Smith. Smith had somehow secured a job for Sharad with the New York City Sanitation Department.
Sharad was employed as a janitor at the Manhattan facility, and to his surprise, Jennifer’s sister Carly worked there as a security guard. Sharad didn’t mention that fact to Smith. How could he when he wasn’t supposed to date and certainly not a white American girl. The fact that she was also a Muslim would have been ignored.
In Smith’s world, Muslim or not, you were a fanatic or you were nothing, and women were viewed as servants.
Smith had given Sharad instructions to just keep his head down and do his job until further notice.
That “further notice” came three days before Thanksgiving, when Smith told Sharad that he needed him to sneak two men inside the building. Sharad did so on Thanksgiving Day, when the building was manned by only a few people.
Sharad was grateful that Carly had the day off in case anything went wrong, and he was to have Thanksgiving dinner with her and Jennifer once he got off work.
Sharad snuck the men inside through a door that he knew had a broken camera pointed at it. The men carried large black satchels that made Sharad curious, but he didn’t fear that they would cause any trouble.
He couldn’t imagine what harm it could do to let the men in; the sanitation department handled trash and snow removal. How could those activities be used to spread terror?
If garbage pick-ups and snow removal were somehow stopped throughout the city, it would cause a disruption, yes, but terror?
He began to understand how wrong he had been when, upon request, he led the men to the area where they stored the salt used to melt the snow. The “salt” was actually a chemical compound called calcium chloride. There was also a huge container of liquid calcium chloride that was used for pre-wetting rock salt, so that it might melt the snow at a lower temperature.
Neither of the men Sharad had let inside the building spoke fluent English, but they were dressed in suits and overcoats and had badges identifying them as members of the New York City Sanitation Police.
When Sharad had learned that the sanitation department had its own cops he thought it funny, but the men and women who filled those positions were serious and dedicated, and Sharad had even been befriended by one of them named Mike O’Leary.
O’Leary was young, and openly gay. Sharad knew that the man had a thing for him that went beyond friendship. However, O’Leary kept his desire in check and he and Sharad would often talk over coffee in the breakroom about the TV shows they both liked.
It was nice to have a friend who wasn’t a fanatic, but Sharad never met with O’Leary outside of work. He was taking a big enough risk by seeing Jennifer. If Smith had known that he was friends with a cop, the man might jump to the wrong conclusion.
***
Sharad had no idea what Smith could be planning, but saw no harm in continuing to play the fanatic.
If he refused to help or tipped off O’Leary, Sharad assumed that he would either be murdered or shipped back home to his grandfather in disgrace.
The latter was a more likely outcome, as Sharad’s grandfather was revered, as were Sharad’s martyred uncles.
He knew that he had been given far more freedom and leeway than the men he had trained with, because his loyalty and devotion were assumed to be without question. Smith had even enlisted him to act as a spy.
Sharad had followed one of the other men who was suspected of going against the tenets and of fornicating with an American woman.
The charge seemed to be true, as Sharad had seen the man, a short Syrian named Habib, inside a bar with a chubby white woman.
While the woman used the bathroom, Sharad approached Habib, told him that he was being watched, and was assured by the man that he would stop seeing the girl. On that same night, Sharad was intimate with Jennifer and told her that he loved her.
He’d be damned if he was going to condemn a man for doing something he was guilty of himself, and what harm was there in loving someone who was different from you?
While Sharad agreed that injustices of the past needed to be addressed, he just didn’t have the heart of a fanatic.
Sharad was shaken from his thoughts when the men with him each opened the large satchels they carried and removed red fuel containers.
His immediate thought was that they were going to set the building ablaze, but the men had other plans for the gallons of clear liquid they carried.
They went about pouring the fluid from the fuel containers into the vat of liquid calcium chloride, and as they did so, Sharad watched in mute wonder, as he tried to imagine what evil the men had just performed.
Whatever it was, it seemed harmless on its surface, and minutes after finishing, the men left the building.
***
Sharad spent Thanksgiving at Jennifer’s apartment with her family.
Jennifer’s father was a professor at a local college who taught history and Arab studies. When Sharad was a boy, Professor Winston Gates would come by his parents’ apartment at least once a week and talk about current events and the Middle East.
Professor Gates had advised Sharad’s mother to return to her native country after Sharad’s father died, and Sharad’s mother had been homesick, and so they left.
Sharad often thought that the professor had been in favor of the move as a way to break up his budding relationship with Jennifer. Professor Gates had never said a harsh word to Sharad, but Sharad never felt as if the man liked him. Perhaps he just didn’t think that anyone was good enough for his daughters.
At seventy-one and with a full head of white hair, Gates looked more like Jennifer’s grandfather than her father, as the scholar had married late in life. And yet, the older man was vital and seemed to have a zest for life, as well as a thirst for knowledge.
“Sharad, you and I must have a talk about your time in your homeland,” Professor Gates said over Thanksgiving dinner. “I would love to hear your take on modern life there.”
Sharad had chuckled.
“There is no modern life there, Professor, not compared to here.”
The professor appeared taken aback by that comment.
“Really Sharad, I would have thought that you would have gained an appreciation for your culture. Your country has a wealth of history.”
“Can we not talk about politics or religion, Daddy,” Jennifer said. “I’m just glad that Sharad is back home.”
“Until he runs off again,” Carly said.
“I didn’t run off, Carly. I was fifteen and I moved away with my mom. It’s not like I wanted to leave Jenny behind. I was just a kid and I had no choice.”
“Um-hmm,” Carly said, and went back to eating.
Sharad looked over at Jennifer and saw her smiling at him. He smiled back. He didn’t care what Jennifer’s father and sister thought of him; all he wanted was to be with her.
***
Sharad had spent the days since Thanksgiving wondering what would happen when it snowed and the modified liquid calcium chloride was put to use. The worry and trepidation built inside him like a tumor and he knew he couldn’t assume that the added subs
tance was harmless, in fact, it was likely the contrary.
But there had been no snow, not even a single flake. Then, the talk of an approaching snowstorm came, one that was predicted to arrive during the evening hours of Christmas Eve. Whenever the storm arrived, Sharad knew that the contaminated calcium chloride would be in play.
Meanwhile, he wanted nothing more than to spend his life with Jennifer and make her happy. Sharad’s two lives were in conflict and one of them would have to end.
Although he had the day off, Sharad went into work on the morning of Christmas Eve, where he slipped an anonymous note into the locker of sanitation department police officer, Michael O’Leary.
As he left the building, for the first time in years, Sharad said one of the Christian prayers his father had taught him when he was a boy. He followed it with a prayer of peace from his own Muslim faith and hoped that things would work out all right.
CHAPTER 7 – The truth comes out
Tanner followed Wexler as Wexler followed the girl and her mother.
The child molester seemed fixated on the young Hispanic girl and Tanner guessed that Wexler would try to grab the child if he got the chance.
Tanner had rented a car in case he needed one. It was parked just blocks from Wexler’s apartment, but so far the pudgy man had either walked or ridden the subway.
Following the child led them to a five-story apartment house in Queens, New York. Once there, Wexler stayed back until the woman and her child had disappeared inside. Figuring that he would be tailing the man for at least part of the day, Tanner had brought a pair of small, but powerful binoculars with him, and he used them to watch Wexler as the man entered the building’s lobby.
Wexler had grabbed an outer door as a tenant had left the building, but the inside door, which was made of tempered glass, was still locked. In between the two doors was a row of mailboxes. Tanner watched Wexler run a hand along the slots until he reached the one marked Ramos, which must have been the surname of the little girl, Isidora.
Wexler stood staring at the inner door as if beyond it lay the secret to eternal life. After placing the palm of his gloved hand against the door’s glass and whispering to himself, Wexler left the building and walked back towards the subway.
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