[2017] It Happened at Two in the Morning

by Alan Hruska

  “Great timing.”

  “Yeah. Whole thing, great timing.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” she says.

  “Can’t sleep?”

  “You kidding? I don’t know what I’m doing, but sleep is not one of the things in my range right now.”

  “Okay.”

  They leave through the front door. Standing on the porch, she says, “I can’t believe this. He’s dead. I used to think he’d never die.”

  “Everyone dies.”

  “That’s really brilliant, thank you.”

  “Sorry.”

  “No,” she says. “Anything you say right now will really piss me off.”

  “I understand.”

  “No, you don’t. Shit. I don’t know what to do with myself.”

  Then she sits on the porch steps and cries.

  SIX

  Yasim Maktoum views Lower New York Bay lovingly from his bench in Battery Park. The weather is soft, the air salty, the passersby determined on whatever their course, as if freed by the sun to fly in light clothing. Across the water, at the far horizon, a ferry approaches, bringing or returning more passengers to this island. Come ahead! Yasim thinks. Why would you not? It’s the best place in the world!

  Yasim vastly prefers living and working in Manhattan, with a weekend house in Rye, to living and working in Dubai. He’s loyal to his emir and the Emirates, especially since his substantial income depends on their continuing prosperity. And he’s quite valuable to both—one might say indispensable—given his now-intimate knowledge of American banking and bankers. But he’s also lived here long enough, patronized enough restaurants, frequented enough clubs, soirees, theaters, etc., to consider himself a real New Yorker.

  His contentment is jarred by an older man sporting a tailored suit and a pointed beard, who strolls in from a path behind Yasim and wanders off to the railing, about thirty yards away. There, the man seems either lost in his own thoughts or fascinated by the tide lapping the seawall. He’s an olive-skinned man of middle height and middle age—and quite obviously of Middle Eastern heritage. After a while, in which the man shows no interest whatsoever in Yasim, he turns and makes his way directly toward him, across the geometric pavers of the promenade. “Rashid,” says Yasim, coolly, in greeting.

  “Yassy, my son,” says the older man, taking the seat alongside him.

  “I am not actually your son, nor do I bear to you either the resemblance, affinity, or disparity of years that would make such a relationship likely.”

  “So you’re not pleased to see me.”

  “I know why you’re here,” Yasim says.

  “We want you to come home.”

  “Yes, that’s what I said, I know.”

  “What is more,” Rashid says, “we think you should leave immediately.”

  Yasim looks out over the water.

  “You’ve been here too long,” Rashid says. “Just forty, but nearly half your life in this country.”

  “Don’t you people understand? No one suspects me.”

  “They will.”

  “Maybe,” Yasim says, his voice rising. “If I suddenly go racing off.”

  “True. That might hasten the suspicion. But then you will be safe.”

  “I’m irrelevant. The Emirates won’t be safe.”

  “Safe enough,” Rashid says. “From questioning.”

  “You mean safe from the questioning of me!”

  Rashid nods.

  “You think what?” Yasim says, his high voice already ridiculing what he’s about to say. “You think they’d torture me?”

  Rashid shrugs.

  “Idiot! They don’t torture people here.”

  He gets a look of disbelief.

  “Not for something like this,” Yasim amends. “This wasn’t a terrorist act.”

  “Depends on one’s interpretation, doesn’t it?”

  “There is no one, Rashid, no one in the entire UAE, as qualified to handle this situation as I.”

  “I don’t dispute that.”

  “Because I know the scene, I know the people!”

  “To be sure.”

  “Yet you would not only prevent me from handling it, you would compromise my position, the Emirates’s position, the position of the entire UAE, by throwing blame in a direction it doesn’t now go. I leave peremptorily, as you suggest, someone in law enforcement immediately says, ‘Aha!’”

  “You are not as sophisticated as you think.”

  “Oh?”

  “For example,” Rashid says, “you wanted to have this meeting in your office.”

  “You think they’re bugging my office. See, you know nothing. You’re influenced by the movies. To get a wire placed here, you have to go to court, show probable cause. It’s a difficult process which they don’t even bother with for someone like me. I’m totally above suspicion. I’m a notorious pro-American. They come to me for help, and I give it. Happily. Freely. Because it serves our cause for me to do so. And besides, I have our office swept every single day. Before I get in.”

  “I’ve no idea, Yassy, whether the Americans are bugging your office.”

  “So?”

  “I do, however, know that we are.”

  In a moment of hidden hysteria, Yasim tries to review every conversation he’s ever had in that office.

  “Easy, dear fellow,” says Rashid.

  “Why would you tell me this?”

  “Have you anything to fear?”

  “Words may be misinterpreted.”

  “Depends on who’s listening to the tapes.”

  “You?”

  “Who else?”

  “So I repeat,” Yasim says. “Why tell me now? And why lead me away to the park?”

  “You think I want this conversation listened in on?”

  Yasim was beginning to understand. “You want something from me.”

  Rashid laughs.

  “What? What is it? How may I be of service?”

  “You think you’re the only one, dear fellow, who prefers living in New York?”

  Sun’s low, road’s straight, landscape’s barren.

  “It’ll be dark soon,” Elena says.

  “We have another hour, at least.”

  “Then what do we do?”

  “You’re trudging,” Tom says. “We might get somewhere if you’d actually walk. And not spend so much time at these abandoned farms.”

  “I found food at the last one.”

  “Half a jar of peanut butter.”

  “Exactly,” she says. “And I can’t go faster in these shoes.”

  Abruptly, she sits on the side of the road. On both sides, farmland stretches, not entirely flat but totally uncultivated. He’s about to complain about their stopping here, when he sees her tears streaming.

  “What?” he says gently.

  “I was wearing running shoes. I changed for my dad. I promised him a talk at his club. It was already too late, but I changed anyway.”

  Tom can think of nothing to say.

  She says, “So what are we rushing for anyway?”

  “A farm that isn’t abandoned? A town, maybe?”

  “We’ll see a car first.”

  “One that’ll stop?”

  “Yeah,” she says. “What are they doing, driving past? What do we look like, murderers?”

  “Listen,” he says.

  They do. The sound’s faint, but it’s growing. Then they see it, materializing from the dusty haze of the road.

  “Oh, God,” he says.

  “What’s that, a cop car?”

  “I think so,” he says, peering hard.

  They watch it get closer.

  “Y’know,” he says, “just as well. Sooner we straighten this whole thing out….”

  The car arrives and stops. Seaversville PD marked all over it. A male and a female officer emerge with their car radio blaring. Tom and Elena can hear the report. It’s all about them.

  “So, you two lost?” The woman. She’s in ch
arge. Slight, snippy, a bit bulgy in the hips, and suspicious of them.

  “We’re the two your radio’s talking about,” Tom says.

  “Yeah, figured. Seymour,” she says to the other cop, a hairy behemoth whose cap rests on the protuberances of his eyebrows and whose belt bristles with cop paraphernalia.

  Seymour says, somewhat gutterally, “Hands on the top of the car, you guys.”

  “Hey, look you,” Elena says. “We need help, not abuse.”

  The lady cop draws her weapon. “Do what the man says.”

  “Jesus!” says Elena, slamming her hands on the car roof.

  Tom, following suit, says, “Isn’t this a little hasty? The gun-drawing bit? We really look to you like dangerous fugitives?”

  “According to the reports I’m getting, mister, you two just gunned down an innocent man.”

  SEVEN

  Mike and Dottie Skillan have long looked forward to this night, a celebration of their twentieth wedding anniversary. And Mike isn’t the sort of public official to let the demands of the office interfere with his personal plans. They’ve booked at Le Bernardin. After dinner there’s a room waiting for them at the Pierre. During dinner, they have Dottie’s favorite topic of conversation: Michael’s career.

  “Big opportunity, this,” she says.

  “For what?” he asks. “Self-destruction?” It’s an act; she knows it, and he knows she knows it.

  “To look wise but prosecutorial, sweetheart. Gubernatorial. Presidential!”

  He smiles. They are very well suited to each other. His physical ideal might run to small skinny women, but she is he in female form. And not only in a broad-faced, big-boned way. They have the same tastes, from colors to types of entertainment to variations of sex play, about which both of them are avid. They think the same things are funny. And most important of all, they have the same object in life: his elevation to high office. The one difference between them, and it’s not small, is that he’s far from sure he’s willing to do everything required to achieve such a goal, whereas she has neither doubts nor qualms on the subject.

  “Aren’t we getting a bit—”

  “Ahead of ourselves?” she says. “I think not. What’s needed, of course, is to stay ahead of events. To shape them. Which you are ideally situated to do.”

  “The girl may be innocent.”

  “Then don’t overcommit. The pose you should strike is as one who weighs both sides judiciously before coming down hard.”

  He laughs. “You should do PR.”

  “I do do PR, darling.”

  “And very well too.”

  “You do see the opportunity.”

  “To fuck up. I see that.”

  “How can you fuck up?” she says. “You don’t indict her unless you’re absolutely sure.”

  “Are you absolutely sure?”

  “Well, no one likes her,” Dottie points out.

  “That’s not the question.”

  “Pretty damn close. And look at the evidence. Already. The gun! The fact she bought it illegally! Her secret liaison with this lawyer who just happens to come along! Then they both flee. I mean, how much do you need, for crissakes? What are they fleeing from, if not their crime? And she stands to inherit billions!”

  “Which she would have done in any event,” Mike notes.

  “Some people are more impatient than others.”

  “Enough to kill a parent?” he says. “In the street?”

  “She obviously wanted to make it look like a robbery.”

  “Which is why no money appears to have been taken.”

  “You can’t know that,” she says.

  “There were hundreds of dollars in his wallet.”

  “He might have had thousands.”

  “If she were trying to make it look like a robbery, why would she leave anything?”

  “So as to make it not look so obvious that she was trying to make it look like a robbery.”

  He laughs indulgently at this.

  “Their relations were notoriously strained,” she adds.

  “Look, baby. Robbie Riles had strained relations with half the civilized world. Because he himself was barely civilized. He was a landlord to thousands, a moneylender to nations, and the owner of an international financial scandal sheet. More people hated him than Stalin.”

  “Including his daughter.”

  “Some evidence does point to her, which is why we’re picking her up. But there’s not quite enough yet for an indictment.”

  “Except by the press,” she says.

  “The press, of course, is happy to indict anyone.”

  “What more could you want?”

  “Fingerprints, for one.”

  “The gun was in her apartment!” she says.

  “And we’ll have the prints any minute.”

  “On the gun?”

  “There are prints on the gun. We need to match them to prints identifiable as hers.”

  His cell phone rings. “Yes?” he says, muffling the word with his hand cupped over his mouth and the phone. He listens. “Good,” he says. Then turns to his wife. “We have them, the prints. They match.”

  “Wow,” she says quietly.

  “It’s pretty strong.”

  “Maybe you should get back to the office.”

  “Joe can handle it,” he says.

  “Joe? Let Joe get in front of the cameras, instead of you?”

  “Then I’ll get the cameras up here?”

  “In front of Le Bernardin?” she says. “A five-star restaurant?”

  With wry amusement: “You want me to go back downtown? Tonight?”

  She stares at him as if to say, If you’re joking, I’m not laughing.

  He turns around. “Waiter! Check please.”

  EIGHT

  On the way to the Seaversville police station, Seymour, who is driving, and his superior officer, who is watching the fugitives in the back seat, consider their strategy for the evening.

  “We should call Hollister,” says Seymour.

  “Did that. He’s not exactly communicating at the moment.”

  “You mean he’s drunk?” Seymour says.

  “Draw your own conclusions.”

  “Well, it wasn’t me who talked to him, was it, Becky?”

  With alarm showing on her face, she resorts to a deep whisper. “Was it, who? You’re calling me by, what? In front of the—” She jerks her head back.

  “You used my name!” he whispers back.

  “That’s entirely different.”

  “Sorry, Sergeant.”

  “Keep your head in the game, Seymour. And consider what we’re gonna do with these prisoners.”

  “Do with ’em? Oh shit. We only have the one cell now.”

  “That’s the problem,” she says. “However—”

  “You gonna put ’em both in the same cell?” he whispers. “Man and woman?”

  “They look pretty cozy to me, actually.”

  “I don’t like it,” he says. “I wanna be on record, I don’t like it.”

  Her whisper is now sibilant. “What would you like, eh? What’s your alternative? We let one go?”

  “No. Course not.”

  “So?”

  “When they getting picked up?” Seymour asks.

  “In the morning. First thing.”

  “Okay,” says Seymour. “So we put the guy in the cell and guard her in the office. Handcuff her to a chair or something. Chairs are bolted to the floor.”

  “We’re not fucking handcuffing a woman to a chair. Not on my watch.”

  “What then?”

  “They killed together,” she says. “They’ve been running together. They’re both going in the fucking cell.”

  The car pulls up to a one-story cinderblock building in the middle of the one-street shopping area of the Pennsylvania town. Tom and Elena, both handcuffed, are taken from the car and led into the building. As they enter a small front office with three desks, a television left on is
blaring an impromptu news conference being given on the street at One Hogan Place by Deputy Chief New York District Attorney Joe Cunningham. Becky, Seymour, Elena, and Tom all stop in their tracks and listen.

  “The prints on the gun match hers,” says Cunningham. “That’s all I can tell you at the moment.”

  At least three reporters ask at once, “So you’ll indict?”

  “That’s District Attorney Skillan’s decision.”

  “And the guy, Weldon?” asks the beat writer for the News.

  “We’re waiting on Mr. Skillan.”

  “So where is he?”

  “Heading here as we speak.”

  “You’re here, he’s not?”

  “All right guys. I know what you want. Forget it.”

  The four in Seaversville watch Cunningham push through the crowd to get into the building.

  “Show’s over,” says Becky, and directs them into the cell room in back.

  Two cells, a solid wall divider, but one cell is gutted and missing a door.

  Elena glances at the reconstruction scene and says, “You putting us in the same cell?”

  “Just until the New York van gets here,” Becky replies. “You got a problem with that?”

  Tom jumps in, “No problem.”

  “You?” Becky asks Elena.

  Elena looks at Tom. “We’ll see.”

  They’re herded inside the cell, with Becky covering, her pistol drawn. The cell door is slammed and locked. Then Becky directs both to extend their arms through the bars for Seymour to remove their cuffs.

  “You can drink the water,” Becky says, heading out, Seymour trailing.

  “Other amenities?” Tom asks.

  “Sure,” says Seymour. “There’s a cot.”

  “What happens when we have to use the toilet?”

  Becky stops in the doorway, making Seymour halt too. “Look, you two. We know you’re … together, so to speak. So, best for everyone? You’re adults, work it out.” The two police officers leave.

  Tom and Elena look at each other. “This is ridiculous,” Elena says. “The sooner we get back to the city—”

  “Don’t think so,” says Tom. “I seriously doubt it’s going to be wonderful back in New York.”

  “Maybe not wonderful, but we’ll straighten it out. Throw on the lawyers. Common sense. No one’s gonna believe I shot my own father.”