A Twist of the Knife

by Stephen Solomita

  “Fuck them bastards, Stanley,” Epstein said as soon as the cop returned. “There’s only one way I can see to solve these crimes. And I’m gonna give it to you on a platter. I never told ya this, but my sister married a Greek. Believe that? A fucking Greek.” He grinned broadly. “Disgrace of both families. For years, nobody mentioned their names on either side. Then they had babies and you know how Jewish women get. Can you keep a grandmother from her grandchild? So everybody made up.

  “That was twenty-five years ago. Now the bastard’s partners in a big diner on Metropolitan Avenue by 69th Street. That’s the last stop on the M line.”

  “Yeah, I know.” It was to Moodrow’s credit that he did not automatically disregard the random piece of information Epstein, drunk and remorseful, handed him. Instead, he did the prudent thing, performing the act of a slow, thorough clerk in an information warehouse. He went to his notes, remembering how carefully he’d traced the route of the M Train through Ridgewood. For him, the geography of most of Queens had been laid out, like a street map, in small, brightly covered notebooks: Queens Boulevard; Grand Avenue; Metropolitan Avenue; the M Train. The list went on and on.

  He’d ridden the M back and forth from Seneca Avenue to Metropolitan, interviewing every motorman he could find. He’d walked the streets at each stop, talking to shopowners. Nevertheless, by his own comments, he did not consider the area thoroughly canvassed. Too many uninterested people, too many stores where the owner wasn’t around. His entry under the Metropolitan Diner illustrated the problem. “Moron cunt at the cash register,” it read, “knows nothing.”

  “What’s your brother-in-law’s name?” Moodrow asked.

  “George Halulakis. If you can believe that.”

  “What shift does he cover?”

  “Days. Eight to eight.”

  Dutifully, laboriously, Moodrow copied the information into his notebook.

  Outside of Boston, the pizza business in New York has no parallel anywhere in the country. The telephone directory in Queens, for instance, lists 287 pizza parlors. For the most part they are narrow storefronts worked by a single Italian family. During the day they cater to street trade, especially school kids, selling pizza by the slice as well as Italian heroes and a few pasta dishes. At night, they sell whole pizzas, usually offering a delivery service to housewives too tired to cook. The quality is astonishingly good and visitors fortunate enough to become accustomed to this quality never return to Pizza Hut.

  The hours, however, are long and monotonous. Thick loaves of dough are laboriously turned on the wrist until thin enough to spread on a large pie pan. Then sauce and cheese are added and the concoction baked in a special oven for about fifteen minutes. The good chefs work close to the front windows, tossing the spinning dough high in the air to attract the attention of passersby. Moodrow, on the other hand, could not seem to manage even the simplest maneuver and each attempt, much to the amusement of Tony Calella, resulted in strings of dough hanging from his hands to the floor.

  “Hey, Salvatore,” Calella called. “Maybe youse oughta try Chinese.” Salvatore Calella, cousin from Baltimore, was the name and identity agreed upon by Moodrow and Calella. Curiously, although Moodrow was obviously neither Italian nor pizza chef, customers in the close-knit neighborhood of Bay Ridge took him for a fugitive, not a cop.

  So Moodrow’s day went slowly, uncomfortably, though it was far less boring than sitting outside. Leonora Higgins, who was in fact sitting outside—sitting in a brown Plymouth Reliant with TRAFFIC stenciled across the front doors—would have agreed completely, for in addition to the boredom, she had another more pressing problem. As any cop will tell you, no ordinary human being can pass twelve hours without urinating. Male cops carry bottles just for this purpose. Females, however, are at a terrible disadvantage. By noon, Leonora was uncomfortable. By 2, she was in pain and having flashbacks to her first day trailing Moodrow. But she understood that Moodrow would not be on a stakeout without good reason, that someone must have made an identification from those pictures. For all she knew, the deal might come to a head at any moment. A good cop never left the scene of a stakeout, but good cops worked in pairs and she was alone.

  Fortunately for Agent Higgins, the situation resolved itself late in the afternoon. Moodrow, assigned to tossing already cooked slices into the oven for reheating, was in a foul mood—his head ached so bad he was afraid to blow his nose. And Tony Calella, evening up for Moodrow’s discovery of his criminal past, stayed on his case, ridiculing him, much to the amusement of the patrons, at every opportunity.

  By 4 PM, Moodrow had had enough. He tapped Anthony Calella on the shoulder and muttered, “We better go in the kitchen and have a fuckin’ talk.”

  “Whatsa matter, Salvatore, youse ain’t happy in my employ?”

  Moodrow, mad as he could get, nonetheless whispered his response so that no one could overhear. “Check this out, wop. Not only have I had enough of your big mouth, but I’m right now only one inch away from pullin’ your fucking head off your shoulders. Think I’m kidding?”

  “No, no. Youse ain’t kiddin’, OK?” Calella, looking up into Moodrow’s eyes, caught a sudden glimpse of the insanity behind the cop’s calm exterior. The effect was chilling and might have had a permanent effect on their relationship. However, just at that moment, and most fortunately for Mr. Calella, a plump, dark, Puerto Rican girl who in no way resembled the wiry Theresa Aviles, walked through the door. “There she is, Sarge. I mean Salvatore. There’s the bitch.”

  Moodrow, after one glance, removed his long white apron and handed it to Calella. His anger dropped off with the apron and was replaced by darkest gloom. It was only then he realized how much he’d been hoping, despite his instincts. He turned on his heel without another word and headed home.

  Trailing several car lengths behind, a desperately squeezing Leonora Higgins, much to her credit, followed Moodrow’s Buick all the way to the Lower East Side before making a beeline to a coffee shop on 10th Street and Second Avenue. It was still early and she realized the stakeout had failed. Tomorrow, however, would be another day, a more active one, hopefully. At least Bradley had stopped bothering her, though she had no idea why.

  In contrast, Moodrow was resisting the aftereffects of the failure as best he could. Stubbornly, in spite of a parade of Ritas floating through his consciousness, he pulled his mind back to his fantasy. He had captured two members of the American Red Army and was about to interrogate them. Slowly, deliberately fixing each image, he ran through the possibilities.

  The dream got him into his apartment. Closing the door behind him, he was suddenly aware of the maps on the walls, the stacks of carefully labeled notebooks. He understood that he was buying time the way a falling man clutches at empty air on his way to Earth, but the alternative, to crash immediately, was too frightening. He went directly to the map and began to outline a campaign in central Queens, a campaign beginning on Woodhaven Boulevard at the Long Island Expressway and proceeding south through Ozone Park and Howard Beach to Far Rockaway. A campaign to fill tomorrow.

  21

  THE LAST WEEKEND OF April saw the onset of the coming summer’s first heat wave, as low pressure spread upward from the Carolinas to transform the isle of Manhattan into an enormous concrete greenhouse. Flags hung limply from their poles, mimicking the droopy bodies of New Yorkers who fumbled hastily with the winter coverings on their air conditioners. Auto repair shops running specials on cooling system tune-ups (specials which meant, in many cases, a fifty-percent price increase) were doing banner business all through the five boroughs. Only the homeless and the derelicts, free of winter’s perils for another nine months, felt much like celebrating and the various forms of city entertainment—movies, restaurants, concert halls—were virtually deserted.

  It was, however, perfect weather for the aims of the American Red Army, as a ridge of cold air, forcing itself above the warmer air below, pressed down on New York City. The smoke from the Con Edison stacks on the Eas
t River, instead of rising in a cloud, lay in straight lines, like the white contrails of a jet plane, below the tops of the skyscrapers. Driving slowly along Kent Avenue by the old Schaefer Brewery, with the East River and Manhattan within sight, both Muzzafer and Johnny Katanos were aware that the time was getting close. It was the same feeling they’d had before the explosion at Herald Square, only now they were much more confident. No law enforcement agency was willing even to hint that it was close to capturing the notorious American Red Army, and agency heads routinely cancelled press conferences and evaded reporters in order to avoid taking the blame for what all considered to be a collective failure.

  “Did you see the Times this morning?” Muzzafer asked, then went on without waiting for an answer. “The House Committee on Internal Subversion announced that we’re Puerto Rican Terrorists in the employ of Fidel Castro. They’ve linked us with cocaine and Mexican heroin. That’s how we get our money. According to Representative Buckingham of Alabama, we fly into New York, first class, do a project, then sneak back to the jungles of Brazil. Can you believe that?”

  “He’s gotta say something,” Johnny returned evenly. “And it wouldn’t surprise me if those Alabama rednecks ate it up. They probably live for that shit. Lay around in the fucking woods, drink home brew and talk about Puerto Ricans flying in from Brazil.” He slowed for a red light, then turned to face Muzzafer. “That’s the worst that can happen to a human being,” he said, seriously. “A life in the backwoods, stoned out of your mind. Start out sharp and then lose it, piece by fucking piece. Better not to have a life at all.”

  The light changed and Johnny threw the Toyota into first, then eased off the clutch. This was their final reconnaissance and both he and Muzzafer felt entirely at ease. “Take a look across the river. See the smoke from the 14th Street Con Ed station? That’s how you can tell which way the wind is blowing. What little wind there is.”

  The smoke, which seemed at first glance to lay motionless, was actually drifting south and east, slowly crossing the river.

  “You know where that puts the smoke from our fire?” Johnny asked playfully. “Have you been studying your geography?”

  Muzzafer smiled, a street map open on his lap. “Right down Lee Avenue into Williamsburg,” he answered. “Right into the neighborhood where we screwed up with Janey’s bomb. I admit I’d rather get Manhattan, but this isn’t going to be bad at all.”

  “It’s theme terrorism.” Johnny laughed silently. “We’re always screaming about the Jews and now we’ll give ’em a special treat. It’s so humid, the smoke won’t drift more than a half mile before it just lays on top of the houses. Killing whatever’s inside. Oil sludge burns dirty and the smoke it gives off’ll be black and stink of petroleum. When the people downwind start dropping, the whole borough’s gonna panic.”

  They drove down North 5th Street, as they had half a dozen times in the past two weeks. The street was deserted and Muzzafer nodded with satisfaction. “I wish it was tonight. If the weather doesn’t hold out until Tuesday, we may have to wait for weeks.”

  At a group meeting the previous night, Effie had announced the results of her search for an easily hijacked gasoline tanker. Muzzafer, accustomed to memorizing oral reports—of necessity, almost nothing he did could be written down—remembered her strong voice clearly: “There’s a large trucking operation on Berry Street. Petroleum Transporters. They’re independents who haul fuel oil and gasoline for the big oil companies. They load at the depots, then deliver to homes and gas stations. Truck number 412 fills up with gasoline at the Texaco terminal just off Kent Avenue, by the river, about 6 PM and delivers out to Long Island. After he finishes loading, the driver takes his rig to the Navy Diner, also on Kent Avenue and about eight blocks from the warehouse, where he has dinner. The truck is a diesel and he leaves it running at the curb while he eats. This is a common practice, because diesel engines are often hard to start. It would be no trouble to hijack either him or his truck. But there is a problem. The truck only works four nights a week. Tuesday through Friday. Most likely the guy picks up at some other terminal on Mondays or he works ten-hour shifts, but I haven’t seen his truck on a Monday yet.”

  Johnny made a left onto Flushing Avenue and they drove past the old Brooklyn Navy Yard into Fort Greene, a neighborhood of once magnificent brownstone mansions sandwiched between large housing projects. The area was virtually all black and the hot weather, in stark contrast to deserted, industrial Greenpoint, had brought the citizens out on the streets. “I have a confession to make,” Johnny said playfully. “You in a mood for a confession?”

  Muzzafer looked over, but Johnny continued before he had a chance to respond. “Last night, after the meeting, I couldn’t sleep and I went back to the warehouse for one last look.”

  “You’re not supposed to do these things on your own,” Muzzafer said, mildly. At this point he trusted Katanos’ instincts as much as his own training. “You’re supposed to follow orders.”

  “Just like you’re supposed to say that I’m supposed to follow orders?”

  “What if you were caught inside? Like a common burglar? It would be the end of the project. At the least.”

  Johnny shrugged. “I wanted to find out exactly what was in there. The other times I ran through it quick because you were always waiting to pick me up. Last night I was more careful. Man, it’s amazing what those fuckers did to that building. They got it filled with fifty-five gallon drums, all stacked on pallets. Thousands of them. Two to a pallet, five pallets high. Like an army in formation. The warehouse is two hundred by two hundred feet and there’s just enough room to move a forklift between walls of these pallets. I mean it’s hard to figure exactly, but a fifty-five gallon drum is only four feet high and the fucking building is really two gigantic open rooms. I have to believe they got about ten thousand drums in there and that, my friend, multiplies out to more than half a million gallons of fluid.” He paused a moment, cutting around a double-parked van. “Now here’s the kicker. There’s drums marked ‘Radioactive Waste’ against the back wall. I think they’re filled with something solid. At least, when I hit one with the side of my hand it didn’t make that sound that liquid makes. And I’m not sure how many there are because I couldn’t get behind them to see if they ran all the way to the wall, but I promise you this, they’re gonna remember us in Mecca. This whole goddamn borough’s gonna glow in the dark.”

  Grinning, Johnny slowed for a red light, turning to face his companion. “But for now, whattaya say we cut across the Manhattan Bridge and eat our way through Chinatown? I’m fucking starved.”

  The light changed to green and Johnny swung over toward Tillary Street and the Manhattan Bridge, waiting until Muzzafer relaxed before he spoke again. “Speaking of revolutionary aims, the other night, when you told Effie that she and Theresa could go inside and set the detonator, I took it to mean that you don’t expect them to come back out?”

  “We can’t leave them here,” Muzzafer said. “They won’t last two weeks without us.”

  “I never thought they would.”

  Muzzafer smiled and when he spoke, his voice was much softer. “What we’ve done together? It’s more then anyone who came before us. I don’t know how far we can take it and I don’t intend to stop until I find out.” He began to fold the map “Which leaves us with only one question: What do we do about Jane Mathews?”

  “Who?” Johnny asked, pulling onto the bridge.

  As children and young adults, we pass over so many crossroads, so many points of choice, that we tend to believe opportunities for change will continue to present themselves throughout our lives. Possibilities, once rejected, are not gone forever, but will reappear in new guise again and again. Later on, in middle age, we suddenly realize that dreams left behind cannot be reclaimed. Locked in by money (or the lack of it), by culture and family, by the hopefully slow degeneration of the human machine, most of us make a deal with life: We settle back into whatever circumstances come our way and
hope for a swift, painless death.

  Hassan Fakhr, on the other hand, was a child of turmoil; he’d never been trapped in the kind of rut awaiting those born into more stable cultures. And thus he longed for precisely that prison which so terrifies those in the grip of mid-life crisis. He’d weighed every possibility before contacting George Bradley and he understood that to be discovered before consummating the deal would land him in the same circumstance as Abou Farahad. Still, he would not simply walk into FBI headquarters and demand protection. Without a heavy cash payoff at the end of the road, he and his new identity would end up scrubbing pots in Peoria, a fate worse than crucifixion for the ebullient terrorist.

  But the risks were not great. The world of Arab terrorism, while state-sponsored, was loosely organized and lacked both sophisticated spying devices and the technicians to operate them. Meeting Bradley would seal the bargain, in any event. He know he would be identified and he knew the Americans were desperate enough to pay a large sum for the American Red Army. He would collect that sum, retire to a slow southern community and enjoy tranquility for the first time in his life.

  They met in a supermarket parking lot in Woodside, Queens, and began to spar. How much were the Americans willing to pay? What proof did Bradley have that he could deliver what he promised? Would the FBI guarantee admission to the witness protection program?

  “Do you think I don’t know that I will be identified? That you are, in spite of my warnings, photographing me at this very moment?” Hassan smiled his fattest fat, jolly smile.