Mr. Mustafa later told him that he knew he’d been in the room. “Please follow my instructions from now on or we will have to find someone who can,” he said.
Noticing that Mustafa did not say they would find a new place, only a new host, Zakir took it for the threat it was intended to be. But he’d still managed to complain about the guns.
“They are for defensive purposes only,” Mr. Mustafa assured him. “In case the climate in this country should someday—encouraged by the Zionist murderers—turn against Muslims. Then you will be glad that we were prepared.”
At times there were no pilgrims staying in the back room. At others there were as many as a dozen men—some Arab, some African. They were always mysterious about their comings and goings, never together but always one at a time. It all made Zakir nervous, especially because there was a lot of activity again, as there had been before September 11, 2001.
One of the other conditions of his agreement with Mr. Mustafa was that he introduce him to the young men from the neighborhood who came to the mosque to pray. “I am recruiting missionaries from America to go to Muslim countries to see how their brothers and sisters are subjugated so that they can return to the United States and be a strong voice against Zionist propaganda,” he said.
Zakir didn’t really believe him, but he did like the three-thousand-dollar bonuses he received for every young man who signed up for Mustafa’s missionary program. The money went a long way toward assuaging his conscience. He’d recently pointed out the two tall young basketball players and told Mustafa how they’d been wronged by the white man’s judicial system. “They might make good…missionaries,” he’d said.
Tonight’s meeting was going to be fairly well attended. Besides the two basketball players, there were six other young men. Even if only four join Mustafa, he thought, that’s an easy twelve thousand dollars.
He had to admit that Mr. Mustafa was clever and didn’t start right in with a high-pressure sales pitch. Instead, he concentrated on talking about the plight of fellow Muslims and how the United States had been duped into helping the Jews establish their “One World Order, in which all true believers will be forced to kneel to their false God or die.” He asked why the richest, most powerful nation in the world continued to oppress people of color both at home and abroad. “Because it is in the interests of the white man and the Jews to subjugate brown-skinned people. After all, why be the master of no one?”
Zakir noticed that of the two basketball players, the one called Rashad seemed the most agreeable to Mustafa’s message. The other, Khalif, had stood in the back of the room with his arms crossed and a skeptical look on his face. He’d barely listened for five minutes before saying he needed to go home. He tried to get his friend to leave—“Come on, dawg, this joker’s full of shit”—but Rashad had stayed.
When Khalif stalked out by himself, Zakir caught the appraising look on Mustafa’s face as he watched the young man leave. But he’d turned his pockmarked face back to his audience and shook his head as though sorry to see Khalif go. “We must always be careful of those among us who are so desperate to be a part of the world of whites and Jews—though they would never allow it—that they would betray our holy cause.”
An hour after the meeting was over, Mustafa, an Iraqi whose real name before joining Al Qaeda was Anan Al-Sistani, left the mosque with one of his bodyguards. He didn’t stay at the mosque—he had a luxurious suite in midtown Manhattan from which he directed his operations—and didn’t like being there. Too exposed. But he needed recruits to pull off his “event” and the mosque was the best place to find them.
Outside on the sidewalk, he’d looked around with irritation for a second bodyguard who was supposed to be watching the front entrance in case the police or federal agents showed up.
“Where is that fool Jabal?” he muttered to the other bodyguard. “Go look in the alley and see if he is relieving himself.”
The bodyguard walked down the block to the entrance of the alley. The space between the buildings was pitch-black and he couldn’t see beyond a Dumpster ten feet from the entrance. “Jabal?” he said.
There was the sound of scurrying and something sent a bottle skittering in the dark, making the bodyguard jump and put his hand inside his coat for the comfort of his gun. Rats, he thought when his nerves calmed down, just rats.
“Jabal?” he said a little louder. But there were no more sounds. He considered exploring the alley for his colleague. But when he took a step into the blackness a chill seemed to freeze his muscles, and he could force himself to go no farther. He returned to his leader who was waiting impatiently.
“Well?” Al-Sistani demanded.
The bodyguard shrugged. “He wasn’t there. Perhaps he thought he’d been noticed by a passing police car and left to avoid being questioned.”
Al-Sistani thought about it. “Yes,” he concluded. “He wouldn’t want to draw attention to this place. He’ll meet up with us later.”
The two men left, walking past the alley where the bodyguard had heard the sounds. He’d been right about the rats. Dozens of them had smelled the blood and come running to feast on the headless body of the second bodyguard behind the Dumpster.
9
KINGS COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY KRISTINE BREMAN PEERED through the tinted window of her official limousine at the two black men leaning against the brick wall of a dark office building that occupied the corner of Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard and 121st Street. The bigger of the two—his girth so wide that his arms stuck out to the side like an immensely fat penguin—rocked forward from his angle of repose and waddled toward them, his broad face wrinkled into a menacing scowl.
A small, childlike voice began to chime in Breman’s head. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be here. Why am I here? If she had been behind the wheel, she might have stepped on the gas pedal and roared out of there like Mario Andretti at the Indy 500. But she had no choice except to get out of the car when her driver opened the door for her.
The whole mess had started that past spring when Hugh Louis called and asked for an appointment. As he pretty much told her black constituency how to vote, she had willingly granted him an audience. In fact, she’d sent out for a tray of snacks from the local deli and several bottles of root beer, which he was known to love.
After trading meaningless compliments and bromides, Louis popped the top on one of the root beers, washed down a canapé, and got down to business. He told her that a prison inmate named Enrique Villalobos would soon contact her and confess that he alone was responsible for the 1992 rape of a woman named Liz Tyler under the pier at Coney Island. Louis said he was representing the four men who’d been “falsely imprisoned” and that he intended to sue New York City as the employer of the police officers and detectives who had carried out this “abominable injustice,” as well as the Kings County District Attorney’s Office, which had “conspired” through the two women prosecutors who’d acted in concert with the police to deprive his clients of their constitutional rights. He also intended to sue the cops and the prosecutors as individuals, though obviously it was the government entities that had the deeper pockets. Louis paused to make sure she understood what he was saying.
Breman understood. She also knew that she was staring at him with her mouth hanging open but couldn’t quite bring herself to try a different expression. This is a nightmare, she thought. She barely remembered the Coney Island case—she’d still been working for the New York DA’s office in 1992 and had been too busy trying to stave off being released for incompetence to worry about some rape case in someone else’s jurisdiction. It was only by chance—in the form of partisan politics, a strong political machine, and a few favors called in and promised in return—that a half-dozen years later she’d won the election for the office of Kings County District Attorney, which was essentially Brooklyn.
The press is going to make my life miserable, she thought. Got to find a way out of this. She cleared her throat, smiled weak
ly at Louis, and said, “Yes, umm, go on.”
Sweating profusely already, Louis grunted and thought, Got the bitch right where I want her. Taking his time, he finished off the root beer and pounded his chest lightly before emitting a long belch. “Pardon me,” he said not very convincingly. “Anyway, as I was saying…”
Louis said he was convinced that he could prove a pattern of reckless misconduct on the part of the two prosecutors, as well as Breman’s predecessor in office. “A pattern I believe the jury, as well as the African-American community, will recognize was based on an institutionalized racism.”
At the mention of African-American community and racism, Breman sucked in her breath and held it. She wasn’t comfortable around black people; they always seemed to be looking at her as if they secretly blamed her for everything bad that had happened since the days of slavery. But without the black vote, Breman knew she was finished as the district attorney. Her future flashed before her eyes. If she was kicked out of office as the racist DA of Kings County, no firm would hire her. She’d have to hang her shingle out in front of some little strip mall office in Brooklyn and hope to pick up the odd criminal case, plus the cheapie divorces and DUI infractions.
She wouldn’t be able to count on her husband for support. The pencil-dicked asshole was a plastic surgeon who preferred screwing his nurses and patients to her. She’d been his ticket into party politics—he saw himself as potential governor material someday—but there’d be no reason to keep her around if she was a nobody.
The image faded and was replaced by the immensely fat Hugh Louis. Fortunately, the plastic smile had never left her face and she pointed out, “I wasn’t in office at that time. I—”
Louis held up a big sweaty hand. “I know, I know,” he said in his most “Hey, we’re all in this together” voice. “I’ve always liked you, Krissy. May I call you Krissy? Good. Yes, always liked you, thought you was fair and reasonable.”
This sounded like a good thing, so Breman brightened. In fact, she was so grateful that tears sprang to her eyes. “Well, you know, I try…” but her mouth snapped shut when Louis held up his hand again.
“Please, allow me to continue,” he said. “I would hate for you to suffer the consequences for your predecessor’s mistake. We might even have on our hands a Rodney King sort of backlash here….” He was gratified to see Breman blanch. “So because of my respect and fondness for you, and hating the thought of how this community could come apart at the seams, I thought I would speak to you first and see if maybe we could work out an arrangement. Something mutually beneficial to both of us, as well as our community.”
Breman was all ears. “Yes,” she said, nodding like a bobble-head doll in a car going down the railroad tracks. “I’m sure that’s true. Here, have another canapé and a root beer…shall I open it for you?”
Louis accepted the groveling with dignity, although inside he was smirking. “Thank you, thank you…excellent spiced meat. May I ask where you got it? Perhaps later you can call my secretary with the name of the deli.”
Smiling broadly, Louis said he thought he might be able to convince the African-American community that “these heinous transgressions against my clients” were the work of another regime and that she, Kristine Breman, was not responsible. “However, there is going to have to be a show of good faith from your office.” He paused for her reaction.
Breman shook herself as if she’d been daydreaming. “Yes, of course, good faith. Umm…such as?”
Louis pulled out a white hankerchief and mopped at his face before continuing. “Well, nothing more than what would be just and fair. The first is that you meet with Mr. Villalobos and when you find that his story is credible, you will order DNA testing to see if his is a match for the evidence found on the victim’s clothes.”
Breman, who’d been wondering just how much of her soul she was going to sell to the devil, perked up. “You think it will be a match?”
Louis nodded. “I know it will be a match,” he said. “But that’s not all.”
This is where the other shoe drops, Breman thought. “Yes?” she said, trying not to let her voice quaver.
“If what I say is true, then in the interest of justice I will immediately file a motion to vacate the convictions of my clients and seek their immediate release from prison…. And you will not oppose it,” he said, the jovial bonhomie gone from his fat face. “In fact, you will join with me in my motion.”
“Well,” Breman said, then paused as her mind frantically worked over the political implications, “it is irregular. But I suppose we could go through the normal procedures and put Mr. Villalobos on the stand, under oath, and hold a formal hearing. Then we could issue a joint statement…” She stopped talking because Louis was shaking his head.
“I don’t think that’s necessary,” he said. “I think you can meet with Mr. Villalobos, who with my assistance—just to make sure he doesn’t backtrack on the truth—will give you a statement. I think that with the DNA tests, you will have more than enough to do what I ask.”
Breman realized that while Louis said “ask,” it was a demand. He was telling her how to proceed or, as he’d said earlier, she’d face the consequences. She had no intention of facing anything of the sort, and so simply nodded her head.
Louis seemed to have caught her mood and misgivings. “Now, now, Krissy,” he said. “I know this might be a little irregular, but my clients have just spent the last ten years of their lives locked up where they did not belong. They went in as young men, teenagers really, and missed the best years of their young manhood, not to mention the pain and suffering they experienced in prison.
“The DNA will check out, have no fear. Your own assistant DAs—Robin Repass and Pam Russell—conceded in the original trial that there was an unidentified assailant…the only assailant whose DNA was found at the scene. Indeed, we contend, the only assailant there ever was. We have some concerns, however, about Mr. Villalobos’s change of heart—he is a vile and despicable man who has committed numerous rapes upon innocent women. He could change his mind again…if he thought he could get something out of it from the authorities. My clients have suffered enough. We don’t need to put them through a lengthy hearing process or raise their hopes that justice will at last be served, only to have Mr. Villalobos retract and dash those hopes again. I’m sure you understand.”
Breman surrendered. “Yes, of course. If all you say is true, it’s only right that this office act with all due haste to correct this miscarriage of justice.”
Sighing as though he’d been laboring long and hard in the cause of justice, Louis leaned forward and patted Breman on the knee of her pantsuit, leaving a damp spot. “Yes, all due haste. And mark my words, you will come out of this a hero in the African-American community, a veritable color-blind champion of the truth.”
Breman almost burst into tears. That was the nicest thing anybody had said to her in what had turned out to be a very long day. She’d never wanted a drink so badly in her life. A double shot of scotch poured over a cube of ice. “Well, then I’ll wait for Mr…. did you say Villalobos?…to call,” she said and started to rise as if to bring the meeting to a close. But Louis didn’t budge, so she sat back down.
“Uh, yes, but there is one other thing,” he said. “The people who perpetrated this crime against my clients need to pay for those lost years. I intend to wring every last cent out of them now and in the future.”
“Of course.” Breman was willing to say anything just to get the fat, sweating man out of her office. She’d decided she would need to take a shower before that drink. Just watching the sweat pour off the man made her feel nauseated.
“That will be easier if the police officers, detectives, and prosecutors responsible are not supported by their respective administrations,” Louis said. “I think it is in your best interest to put some distance between you and them so that any prospective jurors will understand where you stand in this matter.”
“What do yo
u want me to do?” Breman asked.
“I want you to put Repass and Russell on administrative leave pending an investigation into possible criminal malfeasance, as well as civil rights violations,” Louis said.
Breman blinked several times as Louis leaned over and grabbed the last of the root beers out of the little bucket of ice she’d arranged between them. She didn’t like Repass and Russell—a couple of hotshots who’d come in during her predecessor’s tenure to create the sex assault unit.
“Okay,” she’d said. “If the DNA checks out, we have an arrangement.” This time she stood up before Louis could add any more caveats. But he seemed well pleased with her response and rose with her. He’d stuck out his hand and she shook it, trying not to look sickened by the feel of his warm, wet grip.
“You won’t regret this,” he said.
And at first she hadn’t. As she’d been told, Villalobos had approached prison officials and reported that a “positive prison experience” had led him to become a born-again Christian. That in turn led him to confess to the Coney Island rape because his conscience would no longer allow him to stand by and see other men “suffer for my sins.”
When the news broke in the New York Times —a story written by a weaselly fish-faced reporter named Marvin Aloysius Harriman—Repass and Russell had immediately come to Breman and demanded that they be allowed to put Villalobos on the stand and take his “confession” under oath and be cross-examined. That was, after all, how such matters were supposed to be handled. But Breman had told them that she would personally handle this case and had asked that Villalobos be transported to the Kings County jail, where she conducted the interview with Louis the only other person present.
Fury (The Butch Karp and Marlene Ciampi Series Book 17) Page 13
