"I finally tol' him I can't go on working for him without some payment. He give me that same dance about the contract coming in, and when I tol' him it was supposed to be in by now, he get mad. We go roun' and roun' about the same old stuff, but I do not back down this time. I was not going away empty-handed as I had every time before."
"So what did he do?"
"He fire me."
Jack had to smile. "He fired you! That took balls."
Jorge bared his teeth. "It is worse. He tell me I do inferior work. Me! Let me tell you, Mr. Jack, my work is de pri-mera!"
Jack believed him. He could see the fierce pride in his eyes. This was a man trying to build something; more than a business—a reputation… a life. Jack sensed his anger, and something else: hurt. He'd been betrayed by someone he'd trusted.
"Jorge," he said. "I think you're right. I think our friend Ramirez was planning to rip you off from the start. And I'll bet that even as we speak, he's hunting up a new office cleaning service."
"Yes. I will not be surprised. He would steal from a dying man. But what do I do now?"
"Well," Jack said, "you and your cousins can go break his legs."
Jorge smiled. "Yes. I have thought of that. We have even talked of killing him, but we are not that sort of people."
"The other thing is to do about $6,000 worth of damage to his property."
"Yes, but I would rather have the money. The sweet taste of revenge will not pay my bills. And I am trying to avoid trouble with the police. The truth is, Mr. Jack, I need money more than I need revenge. I just want what is mine. Will you help me?"
Jack leaned back, thinking. Jorge was the type of customer that kept Jack in the business. A guy with a genuine beef and nowhere else to turn. But right now, Jack had no idea what he could do for him.
"I will if I can. But I need to know more about Ramirez. Tell me all you know about him. Everything you've learned during all these months of working for him."
Slowly, as Jorge spoke, a plan took shape…
6
Alicia wasn't hungry, so she put off lunch. She liked this quiet time when no IV-therapy sessions were scheduled for the clinic and the day-care kids were having lunch; the staff and volunteers who weren't with the kids were out grabbing a quick bite. Usually she stayed in her office and caught up on her paperwork. But today she was restless.
And she didn't know why. It wasn't because of Hector—the little guy with the "mad buth cut" seemed to be responding to the antibiotic. She simply had to move.
She left her cluttered desk and took a stroll through the empty halls, lost in thought, wondering what to do next. Wait for Jack, or make another contact? She'd scraped up the name of someone else. Should she—?
She stopped. She'd heard a sound… almost like a whimper. She stood frozen, her body tingling as she listened.
And then she heard it again, fainter. And then a low voice, whispering… from somewhere around the corner…
Moving on tiptoe, and glad she was wearing sneakers, Alicia peeked around the corner and saw…
An empty hall.
She was beginning to think she'd imagined the noises when she heard the whisper again… coming from a hall closet just a few feet away. The door was cracked open, and the voice was definitely male…
"See? Didn't I tell you it wouldn't hurt? There now… doesn't that feel nice?"
Biting back a surge of bile that almost choked her, Alicia reached for the door. She watched her hand tremble like a leaf in a gale as it neared the knob. She forced it to grip it and pull.
And then she saw them, like a flash picture: a middle-aged white man—a volunteer she'd seen around recently but didn't know by name yet—blinking in the sudden light, his hand down the pants of a little black girl, no more than four years old—Kanessa Jackson.
And then the light exploded around her, as if her world suddenly became an overexposed video in which she heard her voice shouting, screaming, with glaring light everywhere as she spun into a wild 180-degree pan, stopping at a fire hose and chemical extinguisher recessed in the wall. Her hands pulling open the glass door, grabbing the canister and turning, swinging it at the man, watching him duck but not soon enough, catching him on the side of his head, watching him try to stumble in one direction as Kanessa ran in the other, following him, beating him on his head, his back, beating him down, and then bludgeoning him until—
"Alicia! Alicia, my God, you'll kill him!"
She felt hands grabbing her arms, restraining her, but she didn't want to stop. She wanted to kill him. She wanted him dead.
"Alicia, please!"
Raymond's voice. She stopped struggling. She looked down at the bloody man, cowering and whimpering beneath her. And suddenly she wanted to be sick. She stumbled back but did not release her grip on the fire extinguisher.
"Call 911!" she gasped.
"Why?" Raymond said. "What happened?"
She glanced at Raymond and saw the shock and concern in his eyes. He'd never seen her like this. Of course not. No one had. She'd never been like this. And it wasn't over. Blood lust still pounded in her ears like a war drum. Alicia didn't know who was more afraid—the creep on the floor, Raymond, or herself.
"Get the cops!" she said. "I want this perv out of here and locked up! Now!"
"Okay!" Raymond said, backing away, "but just be cool, okay, Alicia? Just be cool."
"And find Kanessa Jackson. Have one of the nurses check her over. Make sure she's all right."
As Raymond moved off, she turned back to the creep. The sick feeling waned as rage flared again.
"And you," she said through her teeth. It took all her restraint to keep from taking a few more swings at him. "You stay right where you are, or so help me God, I'll kill you."
7
After leaving Jorge—they'd come to an agreement on how they'd approach Ramirez and on Jack's split of the proceeds—Jack walked east, crossing Fifth Avenue into Murray Hill.
The area reminded him a little of his own neighborhood, with its brownstones and occasional trees. But Murray Hill was a lot older. Robert Murray's farm used to sit here back in revolutionary times. And when Jack's neighborhood was still "the country," this area here between Park and Fifth had been home to the highest of New York's high society.
Murray Hill seemed to be changing. Jack noticed a fair number of the stately old brownstones sporting discreet plaques engraved with Whatever, Inc. Through the windows he could see bustling offices belonging to architects, designers, and boutique ad agencies.
He found the address Alicia had given him and checked it out from the other side of the street. A three-story brick front nestled in with others of its type on Thirty-eighth Street, but even without the unsightly plywood sheets bolted over the windows, this building stood out. It had a yard.
Well, not a real yard, not even close to the small front yard of Jack's tiny family home back in Jersey. But the Clayton house was set back a couple of dozen extra feet from the sidewalk, and a few blades of pale grass sprouted in the hard-packed dirt behind the low wrought-iron fence.
He spotted an occupied gray Buick with a faded Clinton/Gore in '96 bumper sticker parked at the curb before it. Two shadowy forms slouched in the front seat. Must have been there awhile: The street outside the driver's window was littered with butts.
Jack kept moving, ambling to the corner, then crossing over and returning along the near side.
On this pass he spotted a walkway around the east side of the house, passing under a trellis that once might have sported roses; now only a gnarled tangle of dead brown branches remained.
He sneaked a glance inside the Buick as he passed. A pair of tough-looking slabs of beef, one bearded, one mustached, sat hunched in the front seat. The "private security" Alicia had mentioned, no doubt.
Jack finished his circuit of the street and stood at the west end of the block, looking back. He imagined the Clayton house in flames, saw those flames spreading, jumping from building to building…
He wondered if Alicia had thought about that. She might be crazy enough to try to destroy the place, but he didn't think she wanted to raze the entire block.
Maybe he ought to mention that possibility to her. He found a pay phone on the next corner and called the Center.
He recognized Tiffany's voice, but she told him things were "a bit confused" there at the moment. Could Dr. Clayton call him back?
He wondered about that and asked to speak to Ms. DiLauro, if she was there. She was.
"I didn't see it happen," Gia told him, "but I saw the guy as the EMTs took him out. He was a mess."
"A fire extinguisher, ay?" Jack said, smiling. "I like it. Sounds like the guy deserved every bit of it."
"What's wrong with people, Jack?" Gia said, and he heard a note of despair in her voice. "Are there any limits to the depths people will sink? Isn't there a floor where you say, I won't go below that?"
"If there is, I don't think it's been found yet." He shook his head, reluctantly remembering some of the slimeballs that had slithered through his life over the years. "Every time you think you've found that floor, Gia, I'm afraid you're going to learn it's some guy's ceiling."
Silence on the other end. Finally Jack said, "How's Alicia doing? She okay?"
"A little shaken up. I guess I would be too. Funny thing is, she's the last one I'd expect to do something like that—I mean, take on someone herself… beat them with a fire extinguisher. She always seems so laid back and in control."
Get her talking about her family sometime, Jack thought, but said nothing. He considered Julio's a secular confessional. Whatever was said there, stayed there.
But he'd sensed the pressure building inside Alicia. Sitting across from her in Julio's had been like chatting with a lump of C-4. She'd had disgruntled post office employee written all over her. But maybe this incident had been a good thing. Maybe she'd released enough steam so he could talk her out of torching her father's old house.
"Yeah," he said as noncommittally as he could. "I was thinking of stopping down there and having a word with her."
"Is this about that 'personal matter' she wanted to discuss with you?"
"Could be," he teased. He knew Gia was dying to know what her Dr. Clayton could want with Repairman Jack, but would never ask.
"Sure," Gia said. "Come on down. I mean, there's a police detective here right now, taking her statement. But I'm sure when he's through—"
"That's okay," Jack said quickly. "Maybe some other time."
She laughed. "I thought you'd say that."
Jack had to smile. "Very funny. Catch you later."
He hung up and walked back to the corner of Thirty-eighth for another look at the Clayton house and its cozy neighbors.
Nope. A fire here would definitely not be a good thing.
8
Kemel Muhallal rose from his evening prayers, carefully rolled up his prayer rug, and returned it to the closet. As he moved toward the front of the living room, his gaze was drawn to the catalog lying facedown on the coffee table. He averted his eyes. Not now. Not so soon after prayer.
Kemel stepped to the front window and stretched as he looked down on West Seventy-seventh Street, five stories below. It was always good to shed those restrictive Western clothes and get into a comfortable thobe. He shifted the narrow shoulders of his lean frame within the flowing white floor-length garment as he watched the traffic crawl along the street. Everything in this city seemed always to be in high gear—the way its people walked and talked, the frantic pace of its business, the headlong rush of its daily life… and yet its traffic progressed by inches.
He turned away from the window, and immediately his eyes, his shameless, rebellious eyes, fixed on the catalog. They drew him forward. He felt as if he were on a wire, being reeled toward the coffee table. Slowly, he lowered himself to the sofa and stared at the glossy back cover. It was addressed to this apartment, but not to him. As the landlord had explained, the previous tenant had left a forwarding address for first-class mail only. The rest of it continued to be delivered here.
"You don't want it," the man had told him, "just chuck it out."
Of course. How simple. But in order to "chuck it out," Kemel first had to sift through it, to make sure nothing was intended for him. So many catalogs in the course of a week. Did Americans buy everything by mail? Often he would flip through them, marvel at the variety of merchandise available via a simple phone call, then drop them in the trash.
Except this one. This catalog entranced him. He could not bring himself to "chuck it out" with the rest. He was weak, he knew, and he hated himself for that weakness. He cursed his hand for reaching out and flipping it over. He cursed his eyes for staring at the cover.
Victoria's Secret.
"Forgive my sin," he whispered as he opened it.
He felt a warm tingle in his groin as the now-familiar images swam before him. Such perfect female flesh, and so much of it exposed. He'd been told that America was a devil country, decadent beyond redemption, and surely this proved it.
Back home in Saudi Arabia there were no theaters or clubs. How could there be? Public entertainment is a sin. But this city especially abounded in public places of entertainment, much of it sex drenched. Pornography seemed to be for sale everywhere. The sidewalks were dotted with dens where one could buy pictures and films of people of any mix of genders having sex and engaging in nameless perversions. No act was off-limits. But those places were easy to avoid. They openly advertised their wares, and one did not cross their thresholds without knowing what lurked within.
But the magazines for sale on the newsstands and in the convenience stores were little better. Wholesome-looking publications offered cookie recipes along with twenty ways to a better sex life. And in the back racks lurked covers strewn with naked women in provocative poses, promising greater exposure within. But those too were easily avoided. One simply kept moving.
But this… this Victoria's Secret… it came free, delivered to one's door by the U.S. government.
Surely this was a nation on the brink of doom.
Gazing at the pages, Kemel had to wonder: Is this the way all American women dress under their street clothes? Is this the way their husbands see them?
He thought of his own wife, his Nahela, imagining her wearing such skimpy, frilly things under her abaaya … in his mind's eye he saw her lifting the hem of the billowing black cloak… and beneath she was clad only in these…
He glanced again at the catalog. Unfortunately, Nahela would not look as enticing as these women. She had been sixteen when they married, he eighteen. Now, after eight children—five glorious sons—and twenty years of sitting around the hareem and eating imported chocolates, she had grown large and saggy.
How he'd love to take Victoria's Secret with him when he returned… make it his secret. But did he dare try to smuggle it past customs?
His homeland, as custodian of Mecca and Medina, had a sacred duty to scrutinize and filter all items crossing its borders. And it took that duty seriously. It had to. The whole Moslem world was watching. Perhaps a member of the royal family, if he was discreet, might be able to slip aurat photos past the guards, but anyone else—never.
The list of aurat—forbidden items—included pork and alcohol, of course, but any depiction of a bare female arm or leg, or even a woman's hair, was forbidden as well. Which meant that Saudi customs officers confiscated virtually every Western magazine at the airports; for even magazines that might be devoted to cooking or housekeeping would carry advertisements that exhibited too much bare flesh. Kemel knew this Victoria's Secret would be considered outright pornography.
He jumped at the sound of the doorknob rattling. He heard a key in the lock. That could only be Nazer. Panic engulfed him for an instant. No one—most of all Khalid Nazer—must see this catalog. Victoria's Secret must remain just that—a secret.
He jammed it under the sofa and made a quick, frantic survey of the room as he hurried to t
he door. Was everything in order? He double-checked to assure himself that no trace of Victoria's Secret was visible.
The door opened, but the safety chain caught it.
"One moment," Kemel said, leaping to the door.
And a curse on Nazer for not having the courtesy to knock. Yes, Iswid Nahr, the organization that employed them, owned this apartment, but Kemel had been living here for months. Just because Nazer had a key didn't mean he should enter without knocking.
He pushed the door closed—wishing he could catch Nazer's fingers—and released the chain. Then he put on a pleasant face.
Be calm, he told himself. And above all, be confident.
After all, Khalid Nazer was his superior here. As long as Kemel remained in America, he would answer directly to Nazer. And Nazer liked to receive his progress reports in person.
Nazer waited on the threshold. He was as fat as Kemel was lean; where Kemel's beard was ragged and untrimmed—as it should be, according to the Prophet—Nazer's was neatly edged and clipped to a uniform length. Nazer's excuse was that an unkempt beard was a hindrance to his work here as a trade envoy attached to the U.N. Kemel suspected that Nazer simply wanted to appear more attractive to the infidel women he consorted with in the weeks and months he spent away from his wife.
Kemel did not like this man. His antipathy began with the man's lax attitude toward the faith, but from there his reasons were strictly personal. He would dislike Nazer's superior air even if he were a righteous believer.
As he pulled the door open, Kemel smiled and said, "Welcome."
He stood aside and allowed Nazer to huff his considerable bulk through the door, then followed him into the apartment.
"Well, Kemel," he said as soon as the door was closed. "I go away for a weekend recess, and when I return, I learn that the Clayton woman's lawyer is dead—murdered. How does such a thing happen?"
Kemel was taken aback by Nazer's abruptness. Usually they went through the routine of Kemel offering coffee and sweet cakes and Nazer refusing, as if such things could not possibly interest him.
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