I was meeting Ravi Patel at a restaurant in Chelsea, near the store that had burned last year, so I hopped the subway. I hadn’t been underground all week and I missed it. I loved riding New York City subways. The London Underground was always made to seem romantic and sophisticated while our city’s subterranean transit almost always was portrayed as dirty and grimy at best, and flat out dangerous at worst. Wrong on both counts. NYC Transit was the great equalizer. No matter where you lived, how much rent you paid, how much money you earned, when you got on the subway you were the equal of everybody else on that train. And if your money bought you taxi or limousine rides, quite often people down below got where they were going a lot faster because there were no traffic jams in the subway tunnels. True, taxis for me often were faster than walking, which was my usual mode of locomotion, when I was moving about the Lower East Side. But if I was headed north, as I was now, the subway was my transportation of choice. Tonight, the F Train to 23rd Street. It was packed, standing room only, and not much of that, people heading home after work. The Wall Street crowd, identifiable by the starched shirt collars peeking out from beneath cashmere coats and scarves and the shiny wingtips, would disembark en masse at 34th Street or Rockefeller Center, then transfer to the Long Island Rail Road or to the shuttle that would take them to the Upper East Side trains. The assistants and secretaries and messengers to the cashmere coats would get off at 42nd Street and transfer to the trains heading Uptown to Harlem and the Bronx, or stay on the train and cross the East River into Queens. However, the F Train ride would be a completely different experience in two or three hours; Chelsea was a popular destination with movie theaters and legitimate theater and fitness clubs and health food stores and new restaurants that seemed to open every day and it was Friday night.
I was to meet Patel at one of new restaurants. I got off the train at 23rd and walked west. Like in my own neighborhood, both sidewalk and street were jammed, the pedestrians reaching the end of the block before the vehicles. The restaurant, Tandoori Oven, was in the middle of the block. When I reached it the door opened and Ravi Patel waved me in. It was a pretty place but it was not elegant. There were about fifteen tables—an equal number, it seemed, of fours and twos—and they all had pale pink tablecloths, contrasting napkins, and little vases with a single white flower. There were no diners yet, just the staff bustling about, making sure all was ready. Patel indicated that I should follow him and we walked through the restaurant, through the kitchen, down a cramped and musty-smelling storage room, and into an equally cramped and musty-smelling office. A round man wearing a turban and what I knew was an expensive suit sat behind a desk. When we entered, he removed his eyeglasses and stood up.
“I am Jawal Nehru. Thank you for coming. Please sit down.” He sounded like Winston Churchill. Come to think of it, he looked like Winston Churchill, only browner. I sat in one of the chairs in front of the desk; Patel took the other, and we both had to turn our knees sideways to keep from cracking our kneecaps on the desk front. Since it was clear that Mr. Nehru wasn’t one for small talk, I dispensed with it, too.
“Please tell me about the fire at your business, Mr. Nehru.”
His eyes flashed and the muscles in his jaw worked. “It was early the morning of September thirtieth. I remember the day so well because I had spent virtually the entire night before with my business manager and my wife finalizing our quarterly tax documents. We left the building at just before three a.m. The business manager lives in Queens and my wife and I persuaded him to come home with us.” Nehru’s voice had become fainter and weaker as he talked until it finally petered out altogether. I waited for him to continue. Then I looked to Patel for guidance.
“I believe this is the first time that Mr. Nehru has spoken of the event since it occurred,” Patel said and Nehru nodded. I waited.
“We took a hired car home.”
“Which is where, Mr. Nehru? And do you remember the name of the livery service?”
“Seventy-seventh and West End Avenue and the Star of India,” Nehru said, and waited for a moment to see if I had more questions. I signaled that he should continue, and he did, relating that he, his wife, and the business manager got home at approximately three-twenty. His wife prepared the guest room for the business manager and they all collapsed into sleep, unworried about the coming business day because the day manager would open the store as usual at eleven o’clock. “We had barely gotten to sleep when the telephone rang. It was the security company. There was a fire.”
It took the better part of half an hour but I finally got the rest of the story from Nehru. He still had not recovered from the loss, financially or emotionally, because the insurance company hadn’t settled his claim, and that was because two months before the fire, the Department of Homeland Security was advised that the Nehrus were terrorists. The investigation into that charge hadn’t been completed at the time of the fire, and had yet to be completed. “The only positive in this scenario is that the tax documents we’d worked so feverishly to complete that night we had taken with us to the accountant later that morning. Otherwise we would no doubt have had the IRS on our backs as well.” The anger in that statement was thick as molasses, but the sorrow was so deep that I doubted the man himself could see to the bottom of it.
“Do you have any idea at all, Mr. Nehru, who would want to cause you this kind of grief? Any hints, any rumors, any speculation?”
Nehru had started shaking his head when I started asking the question and he kept shaking it, more and more forcefully. “I have harmed no one, ever. I am an honest businessman, and a fair one. I am a good father and a most lenient grandfather and I was a good husband. Until all this happened.”
Nehru lost control again and turned again toward Patel, who leaned toward me and whispered that Mrs. Nehru had fled to India and refused ever to return to the U.S. “More than forty years she’d been a citizen of the United States,” Nehru said. “We came here together, young and full of hope, immediately upon graduation from university.”
“I’d like copies of any business papers you have left, Mr. Nehru, especially anything from the insurance company.”
For the first time since I arrived, Nehru’s round face lost its shroud of sadness. He reached into his pocket and brought out a fountain pen on a chain and dangled it before me. “My daughter is a computer genius. She designs software programs. My son builds computers. Between the two of them, I have every new high-tech toy before even the manufacturers. This . . .” and he dangled the pen on the chain, “is every document that ever existed pertaining to every aspect of my life—home and business. This is called a flash drive. It holds more memory, my daughter tells me, than I’ll ever need.”
He tossed the thing across the desk to me and I caught it, looked at it, and put it in my pocket. Yolanda, no doubt, would have loads of fun with it but I’d already forgotten what it was called. “I’ll get this back to you, Mr. Nehru.”
He dismissed my promise with a wave of his hand and I heard Yolanda inside my brain chanting her always back-up everything mantra and knew that if he gave me documents in a fountain pen, he had back-up files. “Do you think you can help me, Mr. Rodriquez?”
I took my time answering. “There seems to be a pattern here, Mr. Nehru, and ‘seems’ is the operative word. I have no proof. And even if I find proof, I have no assurance and I can give you no assurance that I can change anything for you.”
“But you are looking for proof.”
“Yes, sir, I am.”
“And from what Patel and others tell me about you, you wouldn’t be looking if you didn’t think you could find it.”
Here we go again, I thought. “What ‘others,’ Mr. Nehru?”
He tilted his head to the side and gave me an up-and-down look. “The Nigerian Embassy, for one.” I waited for numbers two and three, but obviously one was all I was being offered. I didn’t even bother to ask how an Indian Hindu import-export merchant would have any idea what the Nigerian Embassy was u
p to, and not so much because I didn’t expect he would tell me as because I really didn’t want to know. Things had gotten much too complicated. And dangerous. Arson was one thing—one ugly and dangerous thing. Terrorism was another hideous and dangerous thing and it was in a class all by itself. I didn’t mind whatever effort I had to expend to find out who burned these men’s businesses but I minded like hell being on Homeland Security’s radar screen.
A cell phone chirped and all three of us touched our pockets. It was Nehru’s. He flipped it open, listened, and stood up. “Kusala Bikshu is here.” Then he extended his hand to shake mine, which he hadn’t done when I arrived. He stepped away from the desk and started to open the door. I stopped him.
“Is this your restaurant, Mr. Nehru?”
“My wife’s brothers own it. They have been kind enough to employ me as manager while they tend to their other enterprises.” Then he opened the door and left the office. Patel and I followed, back through the funky store room, back through the kitchen which now was hot and bustling, and into the dining room, where almost every table was taken. At one table for two on the wall nearest the glass-walled partition that shielded the customers from the fire-breathing tandoori oven, sat a bald man in orange robes. He stood up as we approached, put his hands together, and bowed to us. He was introduced as Reverend Kusala Bikshu from the Village Buddhist Center.
“Mr. Rodriquez. I’m pleased to meet you. I’ve heard many good things.” And I guess my face assumed the here-we-go-again look because he told me that Patty Starrett was a member of his temple. Patty Starrett whose beautiful young daughter Pamela was a victim of the serial rapist. I had not known that Patty was a Buddhist. Now I did. Nehru led us all to a table and started ordering food from a waitress who suddenly appeared. I had to insist that I couldn’t eat and then had to explain that I had dinner plans.
“Ah, yes, Miss de Leon,” said Patel and I nodded. “You’re a very lucky man, Mr. Rodriquez. Miss Aguierre at work, Miss de Leon at home.” Nehru’s head whipped around and the Buddhist monk’s eyes widened and Ravi Patel, through a hearty chuckle, hastened to explain the circumstances of my good fortune and the men agreed that I was indeed fortunate to have two women in whom I could place trust and confidence. Then Mr. Nehru’s shoulders heaved.
“Don’t ever forget to express your gratitude to and for them, Mr. Rodriquez.”
The restaurant was crowded now, and the noise level excluded the possibility of meaningful conversation. I gave the monk my card and took his phone number and address and made an appointment to see him on Tuesday morning, and then I left. I all of a sudden had to get out of the Tandoori and into the cold night air. I felt overwhelmed, like there was too much to do and I had absolutely no idea how to do it, like I had taken money from people under false pretenses. Though I knew nothing about them as people, as individuals, I didn’t believe for half a second that any of the men I’d just walked away from were terrorists or that Patel or Nehru would destroy businesses in which they had invested considerable sweat equity, that Jawal Nehru would take any action that would cost him the presence of his wife. I knew quite a few people who lived their entire lives in danger of toppling off one edge or another, some of them practicing criminals, and I considered myself a good judge of character: I knew a slime ball when I saw one. But did I know a terrorist when I saw one? Was Sam Epstein a terrorist or merely a man so blinded by grief that he’d lost his sense of direction . . . or was he both?
I stopped walking so fast. Maybe if I slowed my pace, the thoughts in my head would follow suit. When I reached the corner an empty taxi was stopped at the light. My mind being in the state of upheaval that it was, I almost sprinted for it. Then I noticed the glowing green globe of the subway. That’s what I wanted, what I needed—a major reality check. Time in the great equalizer. I recalled the fear and anger that gripped the city following the destruction of the Towers, and again following the train bombings in Spain, and again following the bus and train bombings in London, and the questions we New Yorkers asked ourselves about the safety of our trains and busses. Some of us had walked or taken taxis for a while, and a few of us bought bicycles, but most of us resumed our routines and habits and secretly wished we could catch some fuckin’ terrorist in the act of setting a bomb in one of our trains. Yolanda’s Sandra summed up the New Yorker’s sentiment when she was asked late one night whether she really planned to ride the subway home to Brooklyn. Formerly a principal dancer with the Alvin Ailey Company, she’d retained her diva personality. She tossed her head and replied, “Since I’m not Jesus, I can’t walk across the East River so, yes, I’m riding the train home to Brooklyn.”
I heard my train screeching into the platform. I had my transit pass in hand when I reached the turnstile and I grabbed it out on the fly, and squeezed into the train car as the door was sliding shut. It was Friday night in NYC and the subway train was as packed now as it had been three hours earlier, but now the energy wasn’t about exhausted people hustling home at the end of the work week; this energy was about many of those same people seeking relief from the source of that exhaustion, and I was willing to bet that not a single one of them had given a single thought to terrorists when boarding this train, so I pushed the thought to the back of my brain. I couldn’t afford to push it completely out—and wouldn’t have succeeded if I had tried. Like it or not, at least for the short term, that was a new part of my reality.
Chapter Six
I was intentionally early for my meeting with Mike Kallen on Monday morning. I wanted to see the building and the neighborhood at a busy time, and six-thirty on Monday morning fit the bill. I’d taken the J train to Canal Street and transferred to the No. 6 train for the ride north, getting off at 28th Street. I had a long crosstown walk to First Avenue but it was time well spent as I got a ground-level sense of the neighborhood. Security for a residential building is as much about what goes on outside the building as inside. For example, in a block with considerable foot traffic and any level of crime but low, you don’t want a tenant to spend more than a couple of seconds getting into the front door, so a keypad or a quick turn key and a quick-close pneumatic door are basics. There was a lot of foot traffic on 28th Street, all the way east to First Avenue, where the vehicular traffic was dense and relatively swift. I turned left and slowed down to watch the people and the cars. Lots of women alone, which was a good sign, and the men were dressed for going to work, not for hanging out and doing nothing. The cars parked on the street were well-kept, there were virtually no out of state license plates, and most surprisingly, not a single windshield sported a parking ticket. A group of upstanding, law-abiding citizens.
When I reached the building in question, I walked past it to the corner, crossed the street, and studied it from a distance. It was a plain Jane—not unusually ugly but certainly no architectural gem. It was a ten-story elevator building sandwiched between similar structures. There were two groceries, a dry cleaner, a video store, a martial arts studio, and three restaurants in the two-block area. Unless Kallen’s building was a dump inside, the morning’s exercise would be a piece of cake; in and out, painless and hassle-free. I checked my watch, looked up again at the building, and Kallen was coming out of the front door. And I thought I was getting a jump on him. I waved at him, jogged across the street against the on-coming traffic, and met Kallen on the sidewalk in front of the building. Despite the temperature he wore a tight black T-shirt and even tighter black jeans and his chest and arm and back muscles bulged and rippled every time he moved. His hair was wet and he smelled like soap and deodorant and he looked bright and alert, which I hoped meant he wanted to get through this as fast as I did. He did, but for different reasons.
“Good morning, Phil.” Then, “Is it all right if I call you Phil?”
“Of course. And good morning to you.” We shook hands, both of us aware that we didn’t really like each other but equally aware that we had business to conduct and that a pleasant façade was better than no façade. “I
walked around a bit, checked out the block. This seems a secure area.”
He nodded. “I saw you, and yes, it is.”
“So,” I said, “shall we get started?” And I followed him up the steps, watched him unlock the door, watched the door close and lock itself, and took my tape recorder out of my pocket, ready to make observations, suggestions, and recommendations.
“I don’t expect this to take very long,” Kallen said, “and if you’ve got time, I’d appreciate it if you would spend a few minutes with me at the Avenue B building. We’ve acted on some of your suggestions and I’d like your frank reaction to what we’ve done.”
“We just sent the report on Friday.”
He gave me a smug look. “These are suggestions you made on your first visit. I remembered everything you said and got immediately started. To tell you the truth, I’m very proud of what we’ve done in such a short time, which is why I want you to see. I suppose I’m seeking your approval.”
I tried to picture Kallen in an approval-seeking mode and couldn’t, so as I followed him into the building I wondered instead why he’d obviously just had a shower. Did he live here? I called to memory the employee list from KLM and couldn’t recall seeing any information on Kallen. Maybe he didn’t consider himself an employee; after all, he was the guy in charge and I didn’t suppose it mattered what he called himself or where he lived. He was right about one thing, though: The security evaluation of this building didn’t take long. It was a well-maintained facility. Like the outside, it was nothing special inside, but it was clean and quiet, everything was in proper working order, the elevators had been recently inspected and the boiler serviced, the laundry and trash rooms looked and smelled clean. If I had a complaint—and I did but I didn’t voice it nor would I put it in writing in my report—it was the building manager. He was, according to Kallen, in his eighties and had been the building manager since its initial occupation more than forty years earlier. I had no bias against senior citizens; my problem with this octogenarian was that he could barely walk and he smelled like a brewery. If there were any kind of emergency—a fire or a tenant in some kind of distress—he would be useless, but it wasn’t a violation of the New York City housing code or any state law to have a useless building manager. Anyway, if Kallen did, in fact, live here, it wouldn’t matter who was listed as the manager.
A Murder Too Close Page 10