A Twist of the Knife

by Stephen Solomita

  Wistfully, she recalled a surveillance she and George Bradley had kept on a wealthy Arab businessman suspected of ties to the Palestinian cause. A small army of federal agents had placed bugs and homing devices in every room and car the man possessed. They could listen to him fart in the mornings, listen to him snore at night, listen to him huffing and blowing over the upstairs maid. They were invisible because they never left headquarters; now she had to find invisibility on the streets. She kept her eyes on the sidewalk, studying the people. There were black workers in many of the shops, but they were frozen in place and she had to be mobile. Then she heard someone yell and found the solution to her problems.

  A meter maid in her brown uniform was being chewed out by a motorist to whom she’d just given a ticket. She stood there, very small and very black, while a full-grown white male screamed his rage into her face. Curiously, it was Moodrow who intervened, telling the man to move on. His bulk accepted no argument and the man drove away quickly, ticket in hand, but Higgins had her idea. She realized that the same woman had been working this same section of Union Turnpike all morning, driving back and forth to examine the cars at the parking meters. Leonora had a good friend, a supervisor, in the Traffic Department. If she could get a car and a uniform and most importantly, permission to conduct an investigation, she could follow Moodrow with almost no chance of being observed. Only then, with the situation in hand, did she retrace her steps to her car, stopping just once, at a small printing shop where she flashed her ID at the owner. The man had a bumper sticker in his window which read, “If Guns Are Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Have Guns.” The signs were put out by the National Rifle Association, a very conservative political organization, and Leonora hoped her FBI status would impress Mr. Rassenberger.

  “How can I help you?” the man asked, his German origins quite evident. He was afraid that Higgins’ visit had something to do with immigration.

  “A cop stopped in here early this morning to talk to you.” Leonora was overjoyed at this turn to her fortunes. Sweating foreign nationals was an art well known to her.

  “Yes, I remember.”

  “He showed you something, some pictures, artist’s renderings most likely.”

  “Why don’t you go ask him?”

  Drawing herself up to her full height, she looked Herr Rassenberger right in the eye. “I want to see those pictures. I want copies of them.”

  “I must repeat myself.”

  Leonora spoke from her feet, from the burning pain between her toes and under her heels. “Are you a citizen, Mr. Rassenberger?”

  “In six months I will take the oath.” He spoke uneasily. He definitely didn’t like the idea of being bullied by a black female, but he came from a background of respect for authority. The whole thing was confusing him.

  “Mr. Rassenberger, I’m not going to tell you why I don’t want to ask Sergeant Moodrow directly. If you doubt that I’m FBI, get the number from the operator and call Queens Headquarters. They’ll verify my identity. I’m asking for your cooperation, but if I don’t get it, I’m going to see one of my friends over in Immigration and we’re going to find something very bad in your file, maybe something about your father being a Nazi. Or better yet, a commie. Wouldn’t that be ironic? I doubt that it would stick, but your citizenship might be held up for a couple of years. And don’t ever think about getting any family across.”

  Despite her discomfort and her fatigue, Leonora Higgins, drawings tucked under her arm, was filled with confidence. She couldn’t remember a time in the last six months when she’d felt this good. The same words kept running back and forth through her mind, a child’s sing-song chant—I’m a cop. I’m a cop. I’m a cop.

  19

  ELEVEN ON A RAINY night—Moodrow had been home for more than an hour. A bowl of wonton soup and two yellow squares of egg foo yung lay untouched on the kitchen table. Though he’d been sitting on a straight-backed wooden chair for nearly an hour, eyes fixed on his dinner, his mind was far away. He was tired; his days began before 6, usually at some bus stop in Queens talking to every driver on the route or making the circuit of the token sellers and motormen in the subway stations. By 10, the stores would open and he could begin canvassing them. The routine continued through the day until too few stores were left open to make further effort profitable. Then back to the East Village, looking for the blinking red light that indicated messages on his phone machine. Inevitably, up until then, they had been from friends, other cops, relatives, but this night he caught a break. “Yeah, hello. It’s aaaaa 6 PM … on Wednesday. My name’s Anthony Calella, 555-3841. I got a pizza place on Bay Parkway in Bensonhurst. On the border of Bay Ridge. Roma Pizza. Anyways, my cousin, Gina, showed me some drawins youse been showin’ her at her grocery in Ridgewood. Youse rememba?” Well I think I seen one of ’em. The Puerto Rican-lookin’ broad. Like, I’m pretty sure, ya know? Anyways, if youse would like ta come here, youse could call me up on my home phone which is the one I give ya, 555-3841.”

  Moodrow, his heart speeding up despite misgivings, dialed immediately.

  “Hello.” A male voice, thin and phlegmy, an obvious smoker.

  “This is Sergeant Moodrow. Police. I’m callin Tony Calella.”

  “Yeah. Speakin’.”

  “You phoned me,” Moodrow prompted. “You left a message on my machine.”

  “Right. Well, like I says, I seen that spic-lookin’ broad. A real piece of ass in them tight spic pants they wear. Comes in a coupla times a week for a slice and a Coke. Hey, I wouldn’t mind gettin’ a slice myself. Know what I mean?”

  “So you’re pretty sure?”

  “Looks just like the bitch.”

  “What hours you open?”

  “Eleven till ten at night. She usually comes in the afternoon. Probly works around here. Youse don’t see too many spic livin’ in Bay Ridge. Not too many at all. When it gets dark in Bay Ridge, the darkies go home. Know what I mean?”

  Moodrow assured him that he did understand. Bay Ridge and Bensonhurst had reputations as all-white neighborhoods determined to remain all-white. In a celebrated incident, a black subway motorman had been beaten to death for daring to enter a bagel shop at one in the morning. Could a dark-skinned Arab or a “Puerto Rican-looking” woman survive there? The chances that one member of the Army happened to work in Bay Ridge seemed unlikely. Still, the man was positive. Moodrow cursed inwardly. If this was an ordinary case, he would simply assign another detective to stake out the pizza parlor while he went about his business. Now he would have to do it himself. “Listen, I’d appreciate it if I could work inside your place. I don’t care if you’re making book or running numbers.”

  “Hey, wait a fuckin’ minute.” Tony protested his innocence. “I don’t do nothin’ like that.”

  “You telling me you never been in jail?” Moodrow followed a sudden intuition.

  “Five years ago I come outta there. Jeez, gimme a break. Who’s doin’ a favor fa who?”

  “You’re doing the favor,” Moodrow said quickly. “All I’m asking is to wait inside instead of on the street. The people I’m looking for don’t have anything to do with you.”

  “Did I say youse couldn’t come inside? Did I say fa even one second youse had ta stay out inna street?”

  So the deal was struck and Moodrow would interrupt his schedule to spend a few days in Brooklyn. He got the address, thanked the man and hung up. For a few seconds he stared at his food, his fingers resting on the white plastic fork that came with the dinner. Then the fantasy clicked into place, without being summoned—like a video tape machine programmed to begin playing at a certain hour.

  He had two of the terrorists, a female and a male, handcuffed, in a room. They asserted their rights vigorously, enthusiastically. Moodrow, expressionless, sat on a low couch and waited for them to realize that he wasn’t “the cops” or “the Feds” or even “the pigs.” It would take about twenty minutes of silence to destroy thoroughly all of their preconceived ideas of “cop
s” and getting busted. Then he would begin his interrogation.

  At 2 AM on a Tuesday morning, Abou Farahad left the home of his new girlfriend, Sarah Markowitz, and stopped for just a moment at the top of her stoop to consider the prior day’s activities. He began with his wife, Estella, and a furious argument with her two children huddled in a corner of the kitchen while he screamed her into submission. The Americans and the Israelis could provide him with citizenship and a new identity—Muhammad Massakan—but they could not erase his Arab belief in subservience as woman’s proper role. Coming to America, the first thing he had looked for, finances being no problem, was a wife—vacuum cleaners and dirty laundry were also beneath the efforts of men—and he found a Panamanian with a shaky green card and no hope of citizenship. Estella Ruiz was a hard worker, and did all the housework in addition to her teller’s duties at Citibank. Muhammad did not mind the children. He was accustomed to large families and cramped living space, but what he could not accept and what Estella could not control was a hot, Latin temperament. Whenever Muhammad had the urge to spend an expensive evening cruising for women at New York’s network of singles’ bars (as was his right according to his personal definition of marriage), she became enraged and had to be forced, sometimes physically, into submission. Muhammad figured she was getting off lucky. In his country, he would simply have taken another wife.

  So off he went, while his wife calculated the economics of being thirty-five and single with two children. He headed for a bar, The Three Kings, on Second Avenue and 80th Street. At first glance, it might seem that 2 PM is an unusual time for girl-hunting, but the hardened veterans of the singles’ scene would have to disagree. They, male or female, are not looking for relationships any stronger than those of two dogs stuck together on a street corner in the Bronx. At night, when the bars were crowded, Muhammad might have to go through a dozen approaches before finding a woman so desperately afraid she feared the end of loneliness more than loneliness itself. In the afternoon, however, all drinkers are serious.

  Of course, Muhammad wasn’t the only one who knew this, but he was sure his exotic good looks would give him an advantage in the eyes of the experienced New York woman. He was tall for an Arab and wiry-slender, with a strong nose and dark eyes. His skin was more yellow than brown, but not the pale ivory of the Chinese. It was closer to gold, almost burnished. His habit was to stand aloof at one end of the bar in his silk shirt and Italian flannel trousers until he perceived some definite encouragement from his target. He played the part of a Syrian businessman, a banker with plenty of dollars to invest in expensive foreplay. They ate it up—probably because they never gave two thoughts to anything beyond the evening’s pleasure. But if they should propose something more permanent, Muhammad would reveal his transience. Sorry, but he was leaving the States in two days.

  Proficiency of technique or not, when there is no action there is no action, and The Three Kings turned out to be a dud. He spent the better part of an hour gossiping with the bartender before hitting the streets, then hailed a cab and went over to the Metropolitan Museum of Art on 82nd and Fifth, arriving an hour and a half before closing time. His favorite play here was to cruise the Egyptian section, lecturing any young girl who cared to listen on the perfidy of the British colonialists who stole the highest art of the highest civilization ever to exist. Women were easy to approach in the museum, as if the hallowed halls of art erased the possibility of predation, but their very willingness made it impossible to cull out the amateurs, and Muhammad spent another wasted hour setting up Millicent Perkins, who suddenly discovered she had to meet the rest of her family at Henri Bendel’s for one last shopping session before returning to Iowa.

  By five o’clock, his ardor undiminished, Muhammad had made his way to the Bad Boy on Lexington Avenue. It was still too early for working singles, but there were some people around. The hunt for sex always made him restless, unable to sit quietly unless there was action. Fortunately, along with the stimulation of a White Russian, came Sarah Markowitz, short and tanned, sporting an obviously muscular body beneath a gray T-shirt and matching, tight sweatpants. She took the seat next to him, smiled a short, New York hostile smile and scanned his fingers for a wedding ring, a ring she hoped to find, a ring sure to make him leave in the morning. Though disappointed, she, as he’d hoped, considered him exotic enough to explore his potential for physical danger.

  “I am Syrian,” he began. “Muhammad Massakan.”

  “So?” Sarah sipped at her glass of red wine. In her experience, which was considerable, the over-violent tended to expose themselves right away if she came on tough.

  “You are Jewish?” Muhammad smiled his own New York tough smile.

  “Right. I’m Moshe Dayan’s granddaughter. And you’re Yasir Arafat with a nose job.”

  They laughed in spite of themselves, a laugh of recognition. It is New York’s most special game and it echoes in the faces of every fashion model. In order to be really attractive, the female composes her face as if attraction was the furthest thought from her mind while simultaneously thrusting her barely covered body at the nearest desirable male. Some women never abandon the pose, though Sarah, having made up her mind about Muhammad Massakan, was about ready to exchange it for another favorite, what she called “being in lust.”

  After a few moments of banter, she stood up, excused herself, and took off for the bathroom, figuring to give the Arab a good look at the merchandise. Her body was round and her torso short, yet there was plenty of muscle. She could feel his eyes on her buttocks, on the way her sweatpants rode up between the cheeks of her ass. If he was still there when she came back, the pact would be made. She hoped he was big. Though she needed an all-night session, she didn’t fear any lack of endurance; she would keep him aroused and in the morning she could go back to living her normal life.

  The intensity with which they came together astonished both of them. Of course, there had been the usual touchings and rubbings as they climbed the stairs to Sarah’s third-floor apartment. Sarah was cute in an almost English way, with a spray of freckles running across a small nose. Muhammad found her abdomen was as smooth and firm as he’d expected. But it wasn’t her physical beauty that turned him on so strongly; it was the way she went after him, using his pleasure to her purposes. He interpreted her ardor as worship of his own body, especially the way she used her tongue, like a bitch licking her pup, to arouse him again and again. Sarah, however, was in lust, a condition which came over her several times each month and, if attended to promptly, vanished after a single night of sex. The men coming into bars like the Bad Boy were expected to perform. They asserted their abilities just by being there, and, much to Sarah’s delight, Muhammad’s advertising did not turn out to be false. They fucked for nearly six hours before Sarah fell asleep, the Arab’s signal to leave.

  So who could fault Muhammad Massakan for pausing to bathe in his own pride? He stood atop the three steps leading to the street and sucked in the night air. Now he could return to Estella fulfilled. If she smelled another woman on him, so much the better. His performance had filled him with assurance, but even so he looked both ways as he came down the steps. Caution is an obligatory quality for anyone operating on New York City streets in the early morning hours.

  Standing next to the open door of a half-ton Chevy van parked at the curb, Johnny Katanos watched Muhammad’s performance curiously. The irony of the fall coming to Mr. Massakan did not escape him. The street was deserted, yet well-lighted by amber streetlamps. The bar on the corner of Amsterdam Avenue was still going and its neon flashed a welcome. Impulsively, Muhammad decided to have one final drink before returning home and he headed right past Johnny Katanos, making a simple mistake, common to many New Yorkers, which contributed strongly to the series of events leading to the taking of his life. The face by the van was white. If it had been black or Spanish, Muhammad might have crossed the street or walked closer to the buildings. As it was, he passed within six feet of a radiant Johnny
Katanos who was on him like a lizard on a cockroach. Muhammad heard the assault more than he actually saw it. Just the blur of a figure in dark clothes and a sudden, sickening crunch as the lead ball in the bottom of Johnny’s blackjack crashed into his skull.

  While he was unconscious, he dreamed of Sarah Markowitz, of the two of them rolling in sweat-soaked sheets on her bed, each trying to get on top. It was so wonderful; he thought it might go on forever, but then felt himself pulled away from her, realizing that the voice speaking to him wasn’t hers, wasn’t, in fact, even speaking English.

  “Welcome to your death, Jew-dog,” Muzzafer said in Arabic. “Wake up, betrayer of your people.” He shook Muhammad roughly. “Ahhhh, eyes open at last. Have the Jews taken good care of you in the years since we met? You seem well-fed, perhaps just a little soft around the middle.”

  “No, please,” Muhammad cried, suddenly more awake than he’d ever been in his life, despite the insistent pounding in his skull and the sticky feel of dried blood in his hair and on his neck.

  “This softness,” Muzzafer continued, “see what it has done to you? It has made you sell your friends so you can come to America and fuck Jews. Perhaps I can help you to get rid of it.” He held up a long carving knife for his captive to inspect.

  The sight of the blade made Muhammad try to sit bolt upright. It was only then that he realized his hands and ankles were cuffed behind his back. He was physically helpless.

  Smiling, Muzzafer brought the tip of the blade slicing down the length of his captive’s upper arm, causing the Arab to moan at the sight of the blood. Muhammad had a brief fantasy of screaming for help, but his mouth was stuffed with a rag before he could even finish it.

  “Do you know…” Muzzafer began again.

  “Speak English.” Johnny’s voice was husky with emotion. He was driving west toward the Henry Hudson Parkway and felt too far from the action as it was. If they spoke another language, he would be left out altogether.