Counterplay

by Robert K. Tanenbaum

  Zachary looked nervous as he entered the room, clutching an old cigar box in front of him as though to ward off an attack. “Don’t let this pack of jackals bother you,” Karp added, “most of them bark but don’t bite.”

  Zachary was seated with his box on the table in front of him. Guma stood beside him and said, “Why don’t you tell us a little about yourself. What you do. That sort of thing.”

  Zachary smiled. “I’m an Unemployed Vampire,” he said.

  “An unemployed vampire?” Guma replied. “You come out at night and suck people’s blood, but you’re out of a job?”

  Zachary laughed. “No, sorry,” he said. “It’s an old childish habit, but I like to see people’s reactions when I say that…. I really am an Unemployed Vampire, but that’s the name of my band. We play the club scene, mostly in SoHo and sometimes over in Brooklyn or Jersey. Head-banging, three-chord shit, played real loud…. You ought to come see us sometime.”

  “I’m more the blues sort of guy,” Guma said, “but maybe I will. Where do you live?”

  “Well, that’s sort of funny,” Zachary replied. “Spanish Harlem. Personally, I dig Latin music. In my secret life, I like to dance salsa. Just don’t tell my fans.”

  There was a minute of silence while Guma poured himself a glass of water. Quiet before the storm, Karp thought.

  “Okay, well, why don’t you tell us your story?” Guma suggested.

  “My story,” Zachary repeated, looking down at the box, his face suddenly haunted. “Yes, I have to admit that it seems more like a story than reality.” He cleared his throat. “My mom’s name was Teresa Aiello Stavros. I don’t really remember much about her, because I was five years old when she…disappeared. I know what she looked like because of photographs and sort of dreamy memories of her face smiling at me. But one thing I do remember distinctly was this blue dress she used to wear—it might have been sort of a housedress or nightgown because she wore it a lot. It was probably satin or silk because I remember how cool it felt against my face when she held me.”

  Stopping for a moment to gather himself, Zachary tried to clear his throat again as tears welled in his eyes. He wiped at the tears, which left a streak of makeup on the side of his face. “Sorry I’m being such a baby,” he said. “Anyway, I was about to say, one thing I am sure I remember is that she loved me. I felt it whenever she was near me and knew it was missing when she was gone. That’s why I know she didn’t walk out on me…us, if you include my old man, but that’s what he says. She walked out and abandoned us, like he cared.”

  Zachary opened the cigar box he clutched in his hands. “This is the only supposed contact I had with her after she disappeared,” he said, removing a small bundle. “A few Christmas and birthday cards. They never said much, all of them typed, just saying some shit like ‘someday you’ll understand. Love, Mom.’ Don’t even know why I kept them, except I guess I hoped that someday I’d see her again and I could show her these and ask her to explain. But they stopped coming after I was about ten or so—Emil said it was because she wanted to forget about me entirely. But now I think it’s because she was already dead…. I think these, these are fake.”

  Placing the bundle back inside the box, which he handed to Guma, Zachary continued. His father had waited for about five years and then married his mistress, the former Rockette dancer named Amarie Bliss. That was about the time the cards and letters stopped, as well as his introduction to boarding schools throughout the Northeast.

  “I’ve been kicked out by all the best,” Zachary said. “Fighting, drugs, suicide attempts. They say I’m quite the poster child for manic depression.”

  Zachary took another drink. “I hope I’m not boring you,” he said looking at Karp, who shook his head but didn’t say anything.

  “You’re very kind,” the young man said. “I think I’d be bored to tears by now. Anyway, about the third time I cut myself—here you can still see where I messed up my body art…” Zachary rolled his tattooed arm over to show where ugly pink scars ran through a blue, black, and white wave that formed a ying-yang symbol. He snorted derisively as he added, “The psychologists say that ‘cutting’ comes from anger and a lack of self-esteem…. My dad paid thousands of dollars for someone to tell him that.”

  Zachary turned his arm back over and sighed. “But then some friend of my dad’s suggested I go see this psychologist, Dr. Donald Craig. And for once, my dad did something that actually helped me. The short version is that Dr. Craig hypnotized me and when I came to, all these memories were swimming around in my head like fish in an aquarium. It took some time to sort them out—the stuff that was obviously imaginary from those that Dr. Craig said were ‘repressed memories,’ shit I’d submerged into my subconscious when I was a kid because I didn’t want to deal with it.”

  The young man bowed his head. “You okay to go on?” Guma asked. Zachary nodded.

  “Yes, I want to finish, then you guys can decide what to do about it,” he said. “If it’s nothing, fine, I understand and I’ll forget about it. Going up against my dad will be tough, even for the district attorney; he’s got a lot of powerful friends. And even if that doesn’t bother you, what have you got here: Emil Stavros, self-made millionaire immigrant, philanthropist, and political heavy-hitter versus his whacked-out, suicidal kid who suddenly remembered his mom’s murder after fourteen years. Believe me, I still have my own doubts.”

  “Why don’t you let us be the judge of that,” Guma, said. “Just tell us your story like you told it to me.”

  Zachary looked at Guma, then Karp and nodded. “Okay, I’ve come this far…. Here’s the deal: one of those repressed memories is the crystal-clear image of watching my dad with his hands around my mother’s neck. He’s screaming in her face as she tries to tear his hands off her throat. But he chokes her until she falls to the ground and didn’t move. I remember this was at night. They were on the back patio, and I was watching from inside the house—probably supposed to be in bed, but I got up for some reason. I remember seeing my dad stoop over her. I remember her lying there in that blue dress.”

  Zachary stopped and looked at Guma as though waiting to be challenged. Carefully selecting his words, Guma said, “First, I’m not saying I don’t believe you. No one in this room is; however, there are some big obstacles to pursuing this case, the biggest is that we’re going to have to prove it with evidence that we can get in front of a jury. For instance, we know for a fact that your mother disappeared fourteen years ago under what were at first considered suspicious circumstances. A concern right now in this room, however, is with the so-called science of forensic hypnotism. If we were to go forward with this case with the idea of pursuing a murder charge, there would be a significant legal hurdle just to get you on the witness stand.”

  Zachary took a drink of his water and nodded. “Yes, implanted memories,” he acknowledged. “To be honest, after I was hypnotized the first time, I had a hard time dealing with the whole idea. I mean, I want nothing to do with Emil, but he is my father and the idea that he killed my mom then pretended she’d left me was not something I really wanted to believe. So I looked for all sorts of reasons why this was a bunch of crap. At first I wrote it off as fortune-teller nonsense. But I also read a lot of the literature on repressed memory that’s out there, including some of the case law that’s available on the internet. I know it’s not always accurate and has been rejected by some courts, sometimes with good reason.”

  The agitated young man got up and walked over to the window and looked down on the street. “You know what I’d give to be any one of those people out there? Maybe I’d be more miserable. But I’d take a chance that maybe I’d be one of those with a happy life,” he said. “You know, my dad used to tell me that the reason my mother left was that she was selfish and had never really loved either of us. I was just a burden to her, so she ran off so that she could enjoy her life.”

  Zachary stopped speaking, his entire body slumping. “When Dr. Craig told me abo
ut these repressed memories, I wondered if I wanted them to be true so that I could stop dealing with the idea that she left me. She hadn’t left me at all, she’d been murdered. Maybe, I thought, I wanted it so bad, my subconscious had made it all up. Maybe the doctor accidentally implanted this memory by something he said. But all I can say is, to me, they’re real.”

  The young man seemed to have finished, but the attorneys in the room remained quiet to let him compose himself. At last Guma spoke. “If you can, tell us the rest, Zachary.”

  Slowly, Zachary turned to look at the ADAs sitting around the table, his pale cheeks wet with tears. “Yes…there are a couple of other things I remember distinctly from that night. The first is that when I was back in my bedroom, too scared to sleep, I heard two ‘pops.’ ”

  “Pops?” Guma asked.

  “Yeah, I’d say like gunshots, I guess, ‘pow, pow,’ except muffled—one right after the other. And I think…this isn’t quite as clear and who knows, maybe this is my subconscious mind working, but I can’t get it out of my head—”

  “What’s that?” Karp asked when the young man hesitated.

  “Well, my bedroom was right above the backyard where we used to have these beautiful rose gardens. What I can’t get out of my head, is the sound that night of someone digging.”

  Five minutes later, Zachary was gone from the room, but the ADAs were still quiet, lost in thought. “Well, what do you think?” Guma said. “I could wait and keep trying to find a way to search Stavros’s backyard. But that might not happen, and even if he killed her, she might not be buried there. Or I can try to get an indictment, throw the dice, see if I crap out.”

  No one else spoke. Then Kipman cleared his throat. Of all the ADAs there, chief of the appeals bureau “Hotspur”—so named because of a surprisingly quick temper—Kipman knew best the hurdles the case would have to overcome. “Even a conviction won’t end this, Ray,” he said. “But I say you roll the dice. If we can get him on the stand, that kid might just do it for you.”

  All the ADAs agreed. Several stopped to pat Guma on the back and wish him luck on their way out. Then only Guma, Murrow, and Karp were in the room.

  “If we go after Emil Stavros, you know all hell is going to break loose on the political front,” Murrow said miserably. He was running Karp’s campaign for district attorney and looked like someone had just told him that they’d booked the victory party on the Titanic.

  Karp understood where he was coming from. Part of him wanted to put off the move for an indictment until after the election. What are another few months after fourteen years? said the little voice in his head. But another side of him was recalling the image of a young man still grieving for a lost mother. “I know,” he said.

  “Want to put it on a back burner until after the election?” Guma asked.

  Murrow didn’t bother to look up from where he was doodling the word Doomed on his yellow legal pad. He knew his boss and knew what the answer would be.

  “Nah, if what Zachary says is true, Teresa Aiello Stavros has already waited fourteen years too long for justice,” Karp said. “Let’s take it to the grand jury and see what they have to say.”

  Guma grinned like a wolf contemplating which little pig to eat first. “That’s my guy,” he said. “Damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead.”

  “Yeah, well, I hope we don’t get blown out of the water on this one,” Murrow said.

  To which Karp added, “Let’s figure out a way to find her body, Ray. Also, check with forensics and see if they can make a match with her signature or any other handwriting we have that she allegedly signed off on during that period after she disappeared. Let’s hope it works, because right now this case is as thin as it gets.”

  6

  April

  SAMIRA AZZAM’S HEART WAS LIGHT AS SHE WALKED DOWN the breezeway connecting the mansion in Aspen, Colorado, to the “guest cottage” where he waited. It was a good day…the plan was in motion, martyrdom assured.

  She was sneeringly aware that the two bodyguards poised at the door ahead couldn’t take their eyes off her bouncing breasts and the promising swing of her hips wrapped as they were in tight blue jeans. She knew that fundamentalist Islamic men like the two at the door viewed women dressed like she was as whores—to be used, perhaps, but not respected. But these two also knew to keep their mouths shut as she drew close; Samira Azzam was a dangerous woman to insult.

  As a modern Palestinian woman, she believed that the traditional roles between Muslim men and women were outdated and would have to change someday. But not until the Zionists and their puppets, the Americans, had been cast out of Palestine, and one Islamic State, a caliphate, established to rule the world. In sha’ Allah, she murmured to herself…God willing. Not that she planned to be around for either the cultural revolution in the Muslim world or the final defeat of the enemy. She sought istish-haad, heroic martyrdom, and she’d been promised that the moment was near at hand.

  She was well aware of her effect on men and used it to full advantage as an al Qaeda field leader and assassin. Personally, she preferred women in bed—they were so much more civilized in their sexual desires than the gruntings and groanings of men. She especially despised it when men made their infantile inquiries as to whether they had “pleased” her. Depending on her mission, she might coo, “Oh yes, like no other,” and ply them for information. Or, her preference, she’d snarl “no” and kill them. Her current love, Ajmaani, a Chechen, was a strong woman like herself; tall, beautiful, and blond, the result of some holdover DNA from ancient Thracian incursions into the area. She’d also proven to be invaluable as a strategist, a Russian translator, and a guide who had led Azzam into and out of the sieges of the theater and the school. They’d sworn their eternal love for one another and promised to die in martyrdom by each other’s side so that they could enter paradise together. Their sexual appetite for each other had made them stronger, more impassioned for their work.

  Sex, however, weakened the men she dealt with. They were all molding clay in her hands, even those of her masters who had used her for their own pleasure without realizing that she was using them as well. She could manipulate any man, except for him, the man in the room beyond the guarded door. He never asked whether he had pleased her, he knew he had not, nor did he care. Sex was a brutal, savage way to please himself, anyone else be damned.

  Still, Azzam pretended to enjoy his attentions. His narcissism demanded it, and her al Qaeda masters seemed to consider him an important asset in the struggle and, therefore, she had been ordered to do whatever he wanted.

  Of course, he’d been more beneficial before being exposed by the Jew Karp and his rabble of family and friends…the targets. That al Qaeda’s ally Kane might otherwise have become the next mayor of New York had been so very Arabic in its irony. It was disappointing that it had not come to pass, but the man was still valuable. He had a network of arms dealers and banking institutions that had survived his fall. And, more importantly, he’d conceived the plan that would at once satisfy his requirements, as well as strike a blow that would make the infidels tremble.

  It had been up to her and Ajmaani to plan and carry out the operation to free Andrew Kane. Since then, she hadn’t given the murdered children or other victims a second thought, any more than she had the schoolchildren at Beslan. If ever she had been troubled by such embers of a dying conscience, it was long before and short-lived, giving way to the mantra, There are casualties in every war.

  The subterfuge with her “lover” Kane was not difficult. Even her name, Samira Azzam, was not her own. She had been born Nathalie Habibi, the child of Palestinians living on the West Bank. Her father had driven a taxi—an ancient, dilapidated Volkswagen van he kept running with scavenged parts, curses, and constant prayers to Allah—while her mother crossed to the Israeli side every day to work in a factory that made parts for irrigation machines. They didn’t own much, just their simple cinderblock home, a few changes of clothing, and family heirlooms,
like the old and somewhat tattered Quran that had been handed down for generations. But there’d been food on the table, as well as love and laughter, especially if the laughter came at the expense of the “damned Israelis” as the butt of some joke.

  However, her eldest brother, Jamal, had joined the Palestinian Liberation Organization, promising his worried parents that he was working for a “political solution” to create a Palestinian state and wouldn’t get involved in the violence. Ten years older, strong and handsome, he’d been his little sister’s hero, carrying her around on his shoulders whenever he came home, saying it was practice for the celebration on the day of liberation. But then there’d been the terrible night when a man from Arafat’s office arrived to tell the family that Jamal had been killed by Israeli soldiers near the border with Syria.

  The Israelis claimed that Jamal had been part of a team that had tried to ambush one of their patrols and had been killed in the fire-fight. The family was sure the Zionists were lying; Jamal had promised them that he was working for a peaceful resolution. Nevertheless, the next day the tanks with the blue Star of David on their turrets had roared into the Palestinian enclave accompanying a bulldozer. The family was allowed only ten minutes to pack up their meager belongings before their home was razed as punishment for Jamal.

  Suddenly, the family found themselves out on the streets—sometimes living in the van, other times with friends for a day or two. The situation grew worse when Nathalie’s mother was fired from her job by her Israeli employer because of her dead son’s activities. Humiliated that without his wife’s income, he was unable to support his family, her father loaded them into the van one night and left for a refugee camp just inside the Jordanian border. He was sure that the taxi business would be better and they would not have to live humiliated among their former neighbors.

  Nathalie was twelve years old when Jamal died and she went with her family—her father, mother, and younger brother, Ishmael—to live in the rat’s maze of the refugee camp. They were fortunate to get an apartment in one of the insect-and-rat infested cinder-block government housing projects—the four of them crowded into a single room with blankets strung up for privacy. But they were lucky; many others lived under whatever roof of wood or tin they could scrounge up.