“I’m not even going to ask why you called out of the blue and offered to buy me lunch,” he said, shaking my hand. He was long and lean—he looked like the marathoner he was—and he wore his hair close-cropped and he wore tiny gold-rimmed eyeglasses and, depending on his dress, he looked like a college professor or a college student. Today was student day. “I’m just glad to see you, Phil.”
“Same back at you, Bill,” I said, sliding into the booth across from him. “It’s been way too long. And out of the blue isn’t so bad if you’re getting a free meal out of the deal. Especially at your favorite veggie pit stop.”
“So true, so true. So, how’ve you been, Phil? How’s business and how’s the lovely Yolanda Maria? And if you see that Sandra Gillespie wench anytime soon, tell her it’s rude to not return phone calls from old and dear friends.”
Bill was a motor-mouth. I never had to worry about holding up my end of a conversation when I was with Bill because he could, would, and did hold up both ends quite ably. “If we’d had lunch yesterday I could have delivered your message to Sandra, because I saw her last night. Yo is wonderful, and business is good but it could always be better.” I had to stop and catch a breath. “In fact, it would have been improved if I’d gotten the Patel fire investigation.”
Bill was a dark-skinned Black man but I watched him first blanch, then redden. “How’d you know I had that?” He’d whispered the question as if he feared being overheard.
“I didn’t know, I guessed. And relax, dude. Resume inhaling and exhaling. I was just razzing you a bit. I’m not being serious.”
But Bill was major-league serious. He actually looked around the restaurant, then leaned across the table and, still whispering, said, “I wanted to use you. I would have used you but they told me not to. They said I couldn’t.”
“What ‘they’ told you not to? What are you talking about, Bill?”
“Homeland Security, man. They’re all over this thing. Giving me major pain in the ass, too. I wanted to call and ask you what you did to piss them off so bad but they tap peoples’ phones and shit and I don’t need the aggravation, you know?”
Oh, yeah, I knew. “Tall skinny blond guy with crooked teeth?” I described the Fed I’d gone toe-to-toe with the morning after the Taste of India fire, and Bill, looking, if possible, even more disturbed and worried than before, nodded. “I didn’t do anything but refuse to kiss his ass,” I said.
“They don’t do failure to kiss ass so well, Phil. In fact, they don’t like that at all.” Bill looked around again, as if expecting Fed faces with crewcuts to pop out of the wall sconces.
“How did he know to jerk my chain? I only had a few words with the guy but I never told him my name,” I asked, and Bill explained how, the morning following the fire, the Fed—his name, I learned, was Petersen—showed up at the insurance office, asked to see the claims adjuster for the fire, and requested Bill’s cooperation, which Bill took to mean cooperate or else.
“I thought it was a little unusual but I didn’t get worried until he opened your folder, took one look at your ID photo, and started blowing smoke out of both ears and both nostrils. I thought he was going to explode.”
“Did he tell you why he wanted to be involved?”
Bill shook his head. “They never tell you anything—they don’t have to—and they never share information. They just demand in the strictest secrecy.” Bill’s worry had changed to disgust. A couple of days of Federal agents in your face will do that to the mildest of men, and Bill Calloway was a mild-mannered man.
“Then let me tell you a few things, Bill, starting with the fact that some idiot has taken to calling Homeland Security and claiming that certain people are terrorists. People like Hindus and Muslims and Sikhs and Buddhist monks. People whose dress readily sets them apart, but whose dress is a reflection of their religious beliefs, not their political ones.”
“And Ravi Patel...?”
“Was served up to Homeland Security on a dirty platter. But that’s not the good part, Bill. Try to wrap your mind around a victim of the World Trade Center disaster being a terrorist.”
Bill had picked up his water glass and was ready to drink. On hearing my words, his action halted, glass in mid-air, mouth open to meet the glass. He looked like a tank fish anticipating feeding time, and if there were any room for humor in this situation I’d have laughed at him. But there wasn’t. “How is Patel a Trade Center victim, Phil?”
“Taste of India Too. It was a little café on the ground level of Tower One. It was owned by Ravi’s cousin, the son of his father’s brother. Ravi and his cousin were as close as brothers and their only children as close as brother and sister. That entire family perished, including the daughter who normally would have been at school but on this day, of all days, she’d gone to the restaurant to help out that morning because one of the regular staff had a baby the previous night.”
Bill looked sick. Like most New Yorkers, even these five years later, his hearing some aspect of that event not previously known impacted him like those first moments and hours and days and weeks. “You think Homeland Security knows about this?”
“Damn right, they know!” But as soon as I said the words, I knew I might be wrong. What the Federal investigative agencies didn’t know at any given moment could topple another few skyscrapers. Not only were they notoriously secretive, they were that way even with each other; secretive and proprietary. If one agency knew something, the last thing it would do would be to share that knowledge or information with another of the agencies for fear the other agency would get the credit. Not get the bad guys, but get the credit. Add to this stupidity the fact that the Department of Homeland Security didn’t exist at the time of the September 11th attacks, and yes, it was entirely impossible that Petersen of Homeland Security didn’t know that half of Ravi Patel’s family was obliterated in that disaster. It was also possible that he knew and didn’t care; he had a bone between his teeth and he wasn’t about to let it go. “It doesn’t really matter what they know, Bill. The only thing that matters is that you conduct the kind of solid investigation that I know you will. And if you do that, I believe you’ll find that while arson almost certainly was the reason for the Taste of India fire, you’ll also find that the Patels had nothing to do with it. These people are victims, Bill. Again.”
The sick look slowly drained out of Bill, taking all his energy along for ride; his shoulders sagged and he slumped down in his seat. “So are we all, Phil. I let some jerk I’d never seen before convince me not to hire you, a man who saved my life!”
“Don’t beat yourself up, Bill. You know as well as I do that if you’d refused him he’d have gone over your head and spread a lot of crap about national security, then you’d have your boss’s bad breath on the back of your neck as well as Petersen’s. At least this way you get to run your own investigation in your own way.”
“How and why are you so sure the Patels are clean?”
It was step carefully time. “I’ve got two clients with interests related to this case, Bill, and what I know, like I told you, is that certain people whose race and religion mark them as different have been reported to the government as terrorist threats. There may have been other fires . . .” I hadn’t had that thought until this very moment and I didn’t know where it came from but I’d bet the mortgage that it was true and I’d most definitely be looking into the possibility because all of a sudden pieces were connecting and forming a picture. “. . . other fires with these same people as the targets.” I stopped talking. I either was digging a very deep hole into which I’d have to jump if I was wrong, or I’d stumbled upon a truth that didn’t bode well at all for one of my clients. “I would tell you more if I could, Bill.” But, I finished the thought in my head, I don’t know any more. I don’t even really know what I just told you, but it makes more sense than anything I’ve thought so far. Then I did a Yolanda and changed the subject. “So, are we gonna eat or do I get to escape this lunch with having bou
ght two glasses of water and a free basket of blue corn chips and salsa? Yolanda will be so pleased.”
Bill quickly picked up his menu.
It was a quick walk from the restaurant to Epstein’s Cleaners, burdened though I was by the hefty receipt for lunch at the vegetarian restaurant. Trendy vegetables are expensive and marathoners have very healthy appetites and they apparently need to eat lots of trendy vegetables to fully nourish themselves. Bill and I parted on good terms; better than good, actually. He didn’t say it in so many words but I knew he’d expedite the Patel investigation and that he wouldn’t allow anything but the facts to influence his decision. At the end of the day, that’s all I could ask of him, or of anybody, for that matter.
There was a line at the counter when I entered the cleaners and Vivian was at the register. She saw me and motioned with her head that I should go through to the back. I took off my coat and she shifted to the side so that I could get behind her and into the back room. It was every bit as steamy, hot, and smelly as before. I hurried myself to the back of the room and up the narrow staircase to the box. The door opened before I could knock, and Dave waved me in. Ellie was on the stool in the corner and they both looked a few degrees past miserable.
“Tell me you’ve got something to tell me,” Dave said.
I didn’t react to his attempt at humor, and that told him a lot about what I had to tell him. “There may have been more fires. I’m still checking. And there’s reason to believe that the people who are burned out are first reported to Homeland Security as terrorist suspects.” Both Dave and Ellie were momentarily speechless, then Dave’s mind went to work. Before he could get too far, I said, “Did Sasha ever tell you how she and Frankie Patel met?”
“At school, wasn’t it?” Ellie said.
“Not the way you mean,” I said.
“How many ways are there?” Dave demanded, not pleasantly. This whole thing was taking a toll on the old man, and he was showing the wear and tear.
I decided I could afford to overlook the unpleasantness. “The school they both attend has a high percentage of students directly affected by the Twin Towers collapse. Affected in that they lost family—”
Dave cut me off. “Last time I looked, Frankie Patel’s mother was alive and well and cooking dinner for her family. Sasha’s mother is not.”
“Neither is Frankie Patel’s aunt, uncle, and cousin, who was like a sister to him.” And in the heavy moment that followed, there was absolute silence in the soundproof room. Dave’s shoulders sagged, just as Bill’s had done in the restaurant such a short time ago, and all the anger drained out of him, leaving just the hurt and the sadness and the sorrow and the fear. “I came to tell you that I think it’s highly unlikely that you’ve given shelter to an arsonist, and that I think I’ll have some word about Sam on Monday.”
“Monday! This is Friday! How can you know something about Patel so soon and not know anything about my Sammy?”
“Because the insurance adjuster would talk to me, off the record, but the people who may know something about Sammy, won’t.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because they don’t talk to Spics and niggers, Dave, that’s why.” And as soon as I said the words I regretted it, wished I could take them back, because it was too much for the old man. He began breathing heavily and tears leaked from his eyes.
“When did things get so bad? How did this happen?” Ellie had her arms around him and she looked at me, as if waiting for an answer.
“You mean when did the Irish and Italians start hating Blacks and Puerto Ricans?” I knew I should shut up but I was too scrambled inside for common sense and common decency to have any chance of keeping my mouth from speaking what I was thinking and feeling. I knew Dave Epstein was scrambled inside, too, which is why he would say something so asinine. The man was a Jew who’d lost half his family to another bunch of cowards, and maybe having that happen twice in one lifetime is too much. I didn’t know how much was too much for another person, but I did know that I was tired of people blaming the current resurgence of racism on the cowards that destroyed the World Trade Center and their masters. I also knew that logic and grief didn’t cohabit; I couldn’t talk sense to a man who was on the verge of losing a good part of what was left of his family. “I’ll be in touch if I hear anything about Sam before Monday,” I said, and left two generations of the Epstein family in the soundproof box to try and bring some comfort and consolation to each other.
I left the cleaners, turned left, and rang the bell on the next door over. It was answered almost immediately by Ravi Patel who buzzed me in when he heard my name. As I climbed the stairs and entered the temporary home of the Patel family, I marveled again at the lack of heat and chemical odor. I’d have expected the spoils of the business below to penetrate and permeate the upstairs living space, but I suppose that the Epstein family had, long ago, figured out a way to keep the smell of work from following them home. I declined Patel’s invitation to come in, remove my coat, sit down, and have something eat or drink. I told him what I could of my conversation with Bill Calloway and tried to curb his excitement. I wanted him to understand that I was making no promises, and he said he understood. He just wanted me to know how good it felt to know that there was hope and that he could, with honesty in his eyes, face his wife and son and express that hope. Then I asked him if he was aware of any other fires having destroyed Hindu-owned businesses. If he found the question odd or upsetting it didn’t show. What did show was the considerable thought he gave the question.
“Noooo . . .” he said slowly, shaking his head. “Of course the Hindu community in New York is very large and we don’t all know each other, but no, I don’t think—wait! Yes! It was some months ago but yes, there was a store that sold fabrics and rugs and jewelry. An import and export business, it was. On Seventh Avenue, in Chelsea.” He was pleased to have remembered and so was I.
“Do you know the people, or know anyone who knows them? I’d like to talk to them. As soon as possible.”
“I suppose I can find out something.”
I gave him my card. “As soon as possible, Mr. Patel, please. Call me as soon as you know something,” I said, and almost ran from him, leaving him staring, surprised, after me. I had to run because as soon as he mentioned the fire almost a year ago, I knew what it was that put me on to the fire thing in the restaurant with Bill Calloway: About a year ago the Middle-Eastern café two doors from my gym was torched. Everybody knew it was arson and while nobody was ever arrested and charged, suspicion hung over the owners, two Lebanese who, because of their proximity to the gym, became body builders, which is how I came to know them.
I did something I disliked intensely, something I criticized others for doing whenever I saw it: I called Yolanda on the cell phone while I was walking down the street. I thought walking down the street and talking on the telephone was almost as stupid as driving and talking on the telephone—almost because you couldn’t kill anybody while walking and talking. As I punched the numbers I hoped nobody was looking at me and thinking I was an absolute asshole. “Yo!” I said when she answered. “Do a search, going back at least a year, for fires in the businesses of . . . of . . .” Who? People who wore something other than jeans and sneakers to work. “Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, and whoever else dresses like them. I’m on my way in.” I snapped the phone shut and began a slow jog toward the office, just as pellets of ice and flakes of snow began a slow drift down from the heavy, dark clouds that had hovered all day. I found myself wishing that it would just go on and snow, just dump the ten or twelve wet, mushy inches that are typical of March snows and get it over with. Then spring could happen.
As soon as I saw the package on my desk when I rushed into the office I knew that momentarily I’d be crashing back to earth from the high I’d experienced, thinking I’d tumbled on to something important and relevant about the fires. As soon as I saw Yo’s face I knew I was right. “You get any hits on the fires?”
“Not yet, but the package on your desk is from KLM. They want you begin the security evaluations Monday.”
“Whoopee.”
“Let’s see a little more appreciation, if you don’t mind, for the job that’s going to pay our bills for the next year.”
I produced a sickly grin and did some half-assed jumping jacks. “How’s that? Now, any hits on the fires?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact.” She gave me several printed-out pages from her internet searches then demanded to know what was going on in my head. I filled her in and watched her process it all. No wonder she liked computers so much; her brain worked just like one, moving all the bits and bytes around until they found a logical place to fit. “In its own warped way, it makes sense, Phil.”
I took the papers to my desk, turned on the lamp, and started to read. I knew that I’d need to go to the big wall map of the city that hung in the back of the room and stick pins in the locations of the fires, but one thing was instantly clear: My hypothesis had all the fires occurring in the southern part of Manhattan, below Chelsea. The fires literally were all over the map. Of course, it would require a lot more checking to determine for certain that the targets of all the fires fit the category I had in mind, but this was a start. I scanned the list and found what I thought was the import-export business that Ravi Patel had mentioned and marked it with a yellow highlighter. Then I put the sheaf of papers in my desk drawer and put the Patels, the Epsteins, and the fires out of my mind and turned my attention to the package from KLM Properties and Mike Kallen. Most of my attention anyway, for it was Friday afternoon and my weekend could officially begin in another couple of hours. If nothing strange or bizarre happened, that would mean two whole days spent with Connie deLeon. Given that prospect I didn’t mind that Mike Kallen wanted to meet me at seven o’clock Monday morning at an apartment building on East 29th Street and First Avenue.
A Murder Too Close Page 8