A Twist of the Knife

by Stephen Solomita

  “Sure, Sarge.” The grocer backed away, more amused than afraid. “I don’t wanna pry into ya business, but it don’t make a lotta sense.”

  “Hey, Georgie,” Gina broke in, her loud, coarse voice belying her petite body and pretty, little-girl features, “how come you gotta make trouble with a cop? You stupit or somethin’? Stop bustin’ balls.’

  “What kinda talk?” George Bellino demanded. “You got a big mouth on you, bitch? Why don’t ya try ta remember—this ain’t Palermo where your people come from. This is America. A-MER-I-CA. And I could say whatever I want.” Once again he stretched his muscles, letting his shirt fall open to reveal a tangle of gold chains.

  “Don’t pay no attention, officers,” Gina explained. “He’s stupit, but he works hard. I respect what ya said about personal.”

  “Wait a minute,” the grocer said, pulling his wife around to face him. “Whatta ya sayin’ I’m stupit for? I didn’t give youse no cause to be mouthin’ off at me. Hey,” he said to Moodrow and Drabek, “never work with no wife. It’s bad enough what ya gotta put up with at home, but all day is too freakin’ much. Look at the bitch. She’s bad-mouthin’ me over a bunch a dead niggers. Is that right?”

  “You put up with me?” Gina demanded, her breasts heaving with anger. “If it wasn’t fa me and my father you wouldn’t have nothin’. You could never get shit on your own.”

  “See this, cunt?” Bellino said, holding up a large, purple eggplant. “When we get home tonight I’m gonna shove it so far up your ass, it’s gonna come out the top of ya head.”

  Homosexuality is not a hotly debated issue in the Moslem world. It is considered an abomination (though it exists there as it does in the whole of the human world). Growing up among Arabs, Muzzafer was inculcated with the same values as all of his friends and neighbors and even though he had traveled widely, had, in his own estimation, thrown off the teachings of Muhammad and been subjected to a hundred attempted seductions due to his slender body and soft, feminine features, he had never accepted homosexuals. To him, they were extreme symbols of Western decadence. He presumed the new order would be free of male homosexuality, though women might continue to serve in the manner set forth by the Koran.

  Now Muzzafer sat on the passenger’s side of a small Toyota while another man, driving casually, used his right hand to caress the length of the Arab’s thigh, stopping just short of his groin, teasing with the tip of his finger, then stroking again. And Muzzafer, excited from his toes to his nose, had all he could do to keep from returning the caress. His mind was spinning, reeling from rejection to rejection. He would lose control of a situation that required absolute control. Things would be demanded of him, acts both painful and humiliating. His manhood would disappear; his life would be unbearable, though not, somehow, as unbearable as the idea of allowing this fire to go out. He felt his erection strong against his trousers, looked out of the corner of his eye to see Johnny equally erect. The car came to a halt at a red light. The Greek’s face came closer, lips brushing Muzzafer’s ear.

  “You ever been in a real jail? For criminals, not politics,” he began. “If you like read about jail in books and magazines, you get the opinion that sex in jail is rape. Like that’s the only sex available, but it happens a lot that two guys just go for each other and ain’t neither one of them pussies. They got cocks and the cocks get hard and a man can’t jerk off forever, so if you find a dude you like and you can stand putting your lips on his, what’s the harm? The hottest sex I ever had was five minutes in a broom closet. Twice a week when the routine ran us across each other and then five minutes in that closet. All hands and ass and come.”

  “I think I seen this one here.”

  The two cops were on Fresh Pond Road in the heart of Ridgewood, at Maxell’s Donut Shoppe. Millicent Rolfe, proprietor, was sifting through the pictures, pausing to hold up that of Effie Bloom. “I know this one. She came on to me. Imagine? I’m in the church, for Christ’s sake. And I do mean butch. Looked like she ate bowling balls.”

  “When was this?” Moodrow asked, excitement beginning to stir.

  “Last year some time. I haven’t seen her since then. Tell me something, Sergeant, wouldn’t it be easier to put the pictures on TV? Let everyone see ’em at once?”

  “Not important enough,” Moodrow replied, his interest falling away. After telling the lie so many times, he had it down pat. “If it wasn’t personal with me, nobody could care less.”

  “Sure,” Drabek said, “that’s the way it goes. My uncle was a cop way back before World War II, and he told me they really used to look hard back then. People didn’t kill each other so fast the new bodies piled up before the old ones got buried. Nowadays if ya don’t catch them with the gun in their hand, ya fill out the papers and forget about it. Same pension either way.”

  “Yeah, it’s a shame,” Millie said. “My first husband, God have mercy, was a cop. Right in this precinct. Never drew his gun the whole time he was on the force.”

  “Never?” Moodrow said, glancing at his watch. The day was nearly gone, but the wheels were moving. His biggest problem would occur if Epstein caught on. Unlike Higgins, he was sure Epstein would do something. For a moment, as Millicent’s voice rolled on, he considered the problem. Would his captain inform on him? Epstein was a good cop; he would have no choice. They would show the pictures on every television station and the American Red Army would quietly disappear into a Cuban or Russian or Syrian safe house. Even if they were caught, Moodrow knew he would be denied his revenge. The state would even protect them from attack by other prisoners.

  As Johnny Katanos and Muzzafer walked from the car to their home, Muzzafer experienced a sudden feeling of utter loss. If he was to fail in his mission at this late date, to abandon his training, it would negate his entire life—the early years in the refugee camps, the years of training, the dead martyrs. A complete memory of himself lecturing on the necessity of revolutionary discipline flashed crazily through his mind even as he watched the muscles of Johnny’s buttocks alternately tense and relax as they walked up the steps leading to the front door. What would become of the American Red Army and all his dreams? How would he maintain order? He felt as if he’d been smoking hashish for days. The door swam in his vision, but somehow he was not surprised when Jane Mathews, grinning, opened it. For a moment, he thought he was saved, but then, as Jane leaned forward to kiss Johnny full on the lips, whispering, “I’ve been waiting all day,” he knew it was not to be.

  “I’ve brought you a gift,” Johnny returned, raising Muzzafer’s hand to her lips.

  Moodrow, driving toward the Williamsburg Bridge and home, noted the clear conditions, the high winds having blown the smoke and pollution, as well as the rain, out into the Atlantic. Tomorrow would be one of those rare days when the skyline of New York, seen from the highest point on the Kosciuszko Bridge joining Brooklyn and Queens, would stand out against a brilliant blue sky, as sharp and crisp as the fear that held him in place after the explosion that killed Rita. He had a premonition of his future if he was unable to apprehend Muzzafer and his cohorts, but he shut it away by returning to the safety of the task he’d set for himself. The sense of being within a routine performed thousands of times, warmed him, cuddled him. He considered the streets left uncovered, especially Queens Boulevard with the subway running beneath its surface. Hundreds of dwellings, ranging from attached single-family homes to twenty-family apartment buildings had been constructed here over the last decade, as city dwellers exchanged the insane rents of Manhattan for the merely outrageous rents of Queens. Anything close to a subway line and not located in a neighborhood given over to violence and drugs, had become a target for redevelopment. Even Jackson Heights and Forest Hills, which in the 60s had begun to swing over to Spanish and black ghettos respectively, were being contested for by hordes of upwardly mobile young executives, male and female, looking for a base from which to begin their ascent. It would take days, but Moodrow did not yet feel pressed for time. The A
merican Red Army consisted of human beings who had to be fed and housed like anyone else. Clothing had to be purchased, taken to dry cleaners. Cars were washed, gassed and serviced. Newspapers were bought and containers of coffee, usually at the same place every day. Was it possible that none of the three he sought had established any regular patterns in their neighborhoods? Not likely. The Buick rolled smoothly over the bridge and, for once, the cop did not even think about alcohol as he made his way home.

  17

  LEONORA HIGGINS WOKE UP with a nagging backache, harbinger, she knew, of the onset of the active part of her menstrual cycle. She was a modern woman, modern enough not to see her period as a “curse,” yet not so modern as to consider it anything but a royal pain in the ass. Barely into her teens when she began to menstruate, what had bothered her most was the realization that she couldn’t get out of it. There were no months off. Like all children, she’d made many an end-run around the “rules,” at home and in school, but this monthly obligation defied remedy, emerging almost exactly on time, demanding immediate attention.

  At least the backache was no problem. A long, hot shower with the showerhead turned to “coarse” would untie the knots. She shrugged out of her nightgown and padded over to the bathroom, turned on the shower, paused to brush her teeth while she waited for the hot water to come up and jumped in. She stood motionless for the first few minutes, luxuriating in the sensation of hot water pounding her back, then began to soap her body, from bottom to top, working up a thick, rich lather as she hummed a tuneless tune.

  It was at this moment that the demons destined to rule this particular day first made themselves known to her. The hot water shut off suddenly. The showerhead unleashed a cascade as cold as any mountain stream, though not quite as cold as the scream Leonora gave out on her way from the shower to the tiles of the bathroom floor. She didn’t entirely realize her predicament at first. Reaching unconsciously for the towel, she ran one hand through her hair, withdrawing it immediately to stare at the white soap running between her fingers. Then she looked over at the icy water still pouring from the shower.

  “I don’t believe this shit,” she said softly, almost fascinated. “What am I supposed to do?” But there was only one thing to do. She switched the flow from shower to bath, knelt down on the little rug and leaned into it. It took three attempts and, after the second, wasn’t bad at all. Still she didn’t even consider finishing her shower. What in the world, she wondered, possessed people to jump into the Atlantic Ocean every winter?

  Fifteen minutes to put herself in shape before charging out the door. Park Slope, Brooklyn was a long way from her Queens Boulevard office and she had no car, having long ago discovered that the competition for parking presented her with the choice of paying fifty dollars per week for a garage or a hundred dollars for parking tickets. Unwilling to give up trendy Park Slope and nearby Prospect Park, she’d made the choice of most New Yorkers and opted for mass transit. This meant a two-block walk to the F train, followed by a very long ride on an already crowded subway through South Brooklyn, Chinatown and midtown Manhattan, before passing under the East River to Queens Boulevard and the offices of the FBI. All in all, on a good day, an hour and fifteen minutes. But, as everyone who’s ever been there knows, not all days are good days for New York City mass transit. Delays are more common than smooth rides, especially during the busy hours and sometimes these delays can be extensive. Sometimes, as on this particular day, the subways stop altogether, just short of the East River, at the Lexington Avenue station, because of a smoky fire in the tunnel leading to Queens.

  Having been in this position before, Leonora ran quickly through the various options, including the N Train, the 7 Train down at 42nd Street, bus and cab. All were bad. The 7 would leave her on Roosevelt Avenue, not Queens Boulevard, a long bus ride away from work. A cab would cost about eight dollars and she would have to fight the traffic out of the city. The buses, if they came at all, had the same problem with the traffic as the taxis and they had to make many, many stops. She would go home before she took a bus.

  That left the N Train. She would have to walk to 59th Street, six blocks, but it would carry her directly to her regular station, an ideal solution, except, as she strode up Lexington Avenue, there appeared an ocean of human beings all trudging from unmoving trains on 53rd to the promise on 59th. The N would be packed. Hell, the whole platform would be packed and it would make every local stop, another hour and a half of utter misery. It suddenly seemed too much and Leonora turned into a deli for a container of coffee and a chocolate donut.

  The donut lightened her disposition immediately and, taking this as an omen of improved fortunes, she decided to try to hail a cab, walking quickly over to Third Avenue. There were always plenty of cabs on Third in the early morning; they were dropping at the offices lining the avenue and heading back uptown. Lenora was not unaware of the cabbies’ reputation for refusing blacks; the papers wrote about it every other week. But she herself rarely had had a problem. Crisp and businesslike as she was in a dark-blue, double-breasted suit, the drivers would expect a midtown destination, perhaps one of the office buildings on Sixth Avenue. They would definitely not be afraid of her. The real problem would occur, she believed, when she asked the cabbie to go to Queens. Nobody wanted to go there, because there was no work and it was nearly impossible to get back.

  But the driver be damned. She had important business in the office and if she had to, she’d flash her badge and force the bastard. Determined, she stepped into the street with her arm raised and the first cab to come along made a sharp turn in front of a panel truck, forcing her back onto the curb.

  “I want to go to Queens Boulevard in Forest Hills,” she said, more timidly then she’d hoped.

  The driver stared at her through the open window, fighting a grin. “So?” he asked.

  “So you have to take me,” Leonora declared.

  “Inside or outside?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You wanna get in and let me drive you or do you want I should wish you to Forest Hills?”

  Leonora started to get in, already annoyed, but the cabbie reached out a hand to block her.

  “There’s just one thing,” he said.

  “Go ahead,” Leonora answered, anticipating some half-disguised racial slur. Perhaps he would ask for the money in advance.

  “You gotta dump the coffee. I don’t allow no eatin’ in my car. Sorry, lady.” His face remained carefully neutral, eyes blinking innocently.

  “I won’t open it until I get out.”

  “Sorry,” he repeated. “If it spills, I gotta clean. You don’t want I should have to stop everything and wipe the backseat, do ya? But I won’t complain if you wanna stay home.”

  Resigned to this small humiliation, a payback, she realized, for having to go to Queens at 8:30 in the morning, she tossed the untouched coffee into a wire trashbasket and got in. Much to her surprise, the backseat was clean, the floor recently vacuumed, the windows immaculate.

  The trip went quickly. Even the outbound 59th Street Bridge, usually jammed because of early morning lane reversals, moved smoothly and Queens Boulevard was virtually empty. Leonora arrived at her office a few minutes after nine o’clock, time enough to get another coffee while she considered the coming confrontation with George Bradley. A thorough review of the Chadwick murder file had pushed the name of Paco Baquili into her consciousness. A simple interview would probably indicate whether Chadwick’s murderers were crazed criminals or crazed terrorists, but it would take time and she needed Bradley’s permission.

  Upstairs, Bradley was in a decent mood for the first time in a month. He’d just gotten off the phone with his strongest source to date. He’d worked for two weeks to put this connection together, tearing through a half-dozen agencies to reach a Palestinian ex-terrorist deep in the Libyan U.N. Mission. The man had insisted that no one at the Libyan Embassy and probably no one in all of Libya knew the whereabouts of the Americ
an Red Army, and his insistence rang true. It seemed, to Bradley, that he spent whole days on the phone, contacting various spies and informants, pushing hard and getting nowhere. It had reached the point where the inspector was ready to settle for a weak rumor.

  But then, just as Bradley was about to hang up, the man, name unknown, took a quick turn and Bradley had his rumor at last. There was, the man whispered, just the possibility that if the leader of the Army was Aftab Muzzafer, as the inspector suspected, he might have had his features surgically altered in Libya and the doctor who performed the surgery may have taken some photos of Muzzafer and his band while they recovered and those photos might be available. For a price.

  The price was a definite problem. The man spoke about one million or perhaps two. He wasn’t sure. There were a number of people between him and the photos. He would inquire and call back. Two days? Three? He didn’t want to make false promises, but he would have to have money to get started. Part payment to grease the wheels.

  “We must meet face to face before any money can change hands. You will have to meet with us personally.” Bradley’s voice was deliberately harsh. His initial aim was to decrease the likelihood of a con job. The man would have to come into a situation where he would be covertly photographed and eventually identified. His identity, along with the story of how he’d betrayed the revolution, might be sold to those who take such matters very seriously. The meeting would be tantamount to defection and the man talking to him knew it.

  “Surely we must meet,” Hassan Fakhr answered softly. For his part, he knew he had his fish, but he whispered to make identification by voiceprint as difficult as possible. “However, there is no point just now. I must negotiate with my contacts and you must see if you can get the money. Muzzafer is a difficult man, capable of great violence. If it is him, I do not believe he expects to live.” Hassan congratulated himself on his forced “American” English. Who would guess that he’d eaten with his hands until he was twelve? “I think we should look at fifty thousand dollars to begin. If dollars are a problem, gold will be acceptable, at the London exchange rate.”