Tenzin Pemo shrugged. “It might help you. We tend to think of forgiveness as something we do for someone else. But you’re the one who’s been carrying around the burden of what happened between the two of you. Wouldn’t it feel good to set it down?”
“What about you?” Jack said. “Did you forgive your husband? I mean, that was pretty awful, what he did.”
“I forgave him,” she said simply. “He was just a human being, not thinking very carefully about what he was doing. And things ended up for the better, anyhow. We had a not very interesting marriage, and I had a not very interesting life, and now I do. I get to meet all sorts of intriguing people, including even the occasional homicide detective. I was a big fan of Agatha Christie, you know.”
Jack smiled. He couldn’t really see the nun as a big reader of mystery novels. But then, he hadn’t seen her as a former wife either.
A couple of blond teens on skateboards came click-clacking into the park, swooping in and out of the circles of light cast by its streetlamps. Jack watched them round the bend of a hill. Finally, still looking away from the nun, he said in a small, tight voice, “I’m not really sure I want to forgive her.”
“Do you think that forgiveness means that you would have to excuse what she did? That you’d be giving up your right to say that it was wrong? Because it doesn’t, you know. It just means that you acknowledge that she’s a human being, and you can forgive her for her mistakes. Maybe you could let go of a bit of your anger about what happened.”
He thought about that. Because he was still angry. Sometimes, anyhow. When he wasn’t just sad or mooning over what he and Michelle had had together.
“It’s a funny thing, anger,” the nun said. “Someone once said that it’s like a poison we drink, believing it will cause someone else to suffer.”
They had walked all the way around the little park and were almost back out on the street.
Jack stopped. “Well—do you think I should try calling her? I mean, do you think that would be a mistake?”
Tenzin Pemo shrugged. “What do you have to lose?”
More pain, if she blows me off again.
He pulled his car keys from his pocket. “I’ll think about it.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
HE SPENT HALF THE night rolling around thinking about it. He woke up without any better idea of what to do. Now he had a whole second day to keep chasing the thought, like a lab rat on a treadmill. He took a long shower and let the water drum down on his stubborn noggin. It occurred to him that he was probably just thinking about Michelle as a substitute for worrying about more pressing matters, but it seemed like the more he tried to let her go, the more the idea of making the call obsessed him.
By early afternoon, he was pacing his apartment like a mangy lion at the zoo. He went out and got into his car. Where to? He considered for a minute, then turned the key in the ignition.
HE CIRCLED NADIM HASNI’S block twice, searching for surveillance vehicles. There wasn’t a single van on the block. The second time he went slow enough so that he could see into every parked car. Nothing. Unless Brent Charlson and his crew had found some empty apartment nearby, he couldn’t see how they might be operating a stakeout.
He parked twenty yards up the block and then walked over to the house. There was the sign on the lawn: DR. TEKCHAND PARKASH, ADOLESCENT GYNECOLOGY. Yikes. Jack walked up onto the stoop. Only two doorbells: one for the doctor’s office, and one that just said T.P. He walked back to the sidewalk, then looked up the driveway.
Another entrance. He pinched his lower lip, musing. Officially speaking, he would need a warrant to enter. If he didn’t have the warrant, he might still be able to get inside, but any evidence he found could be compromised in court. But he assumed that Charlson and his crew had already gone over the place. So it wasn’t evidence that he wanted, so much as a simple clue to Hasni’s whereabouts. He pondered what to do; he wasn’t a bureaucratic stickler, but once you started playing around with the law, you found yourself on a slippery slope.
And then, from fifteen yards away, something caught his eye. He glanced around to see if any neighbors might be watching, then hurried up the drive.
There, on the wall of the house just next to the door: a missing chunk of brick. And there: a furrow across several other bricks. He had seen a lot of crime scenes in his day, and many such traces. A couple of bullets had passed this way.
He looked sharply around, then walked back down the driveway and peered at the edges of the little lawn, hoping to find a shell casing or two. Nothing.
He went back to his car and sat there, musing. Someone had fired a gun in Nadim Hasni’s driveway. At Hasni? Or had Hasni shot at someone else?
He felt a gray weight of suspicion rise in his chest. Maybe Brent Charlson and his men had decided to take justice into their own hands. Rather than letting the court system have a chance to free their terrorist, why not just take him out? Such things were not unheard of. Covert missions. Black ops. There were certainly people in the upper reaches of the government who would argue that in the War on Terror any means of eradicating terrorist threats were justified.
He was startled by a sudden rap on his window. He looked out at a stern, crew-cut young man with a soldier’s stiff bearing. One of Charlson’s guys; Jack recognized him from the recent hunt in Jackson Heights.
He rolled down his window.
“Mr. Leightner?” the man said. He held up a cell phone. “My boss would like a word.”
BRENT CHARLSON’S VOICE. THE irate grandfather. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m looking for our suspect.”
“The house is under surveillance, Leightner. We’ve got it covered.”
“We need to work together on—”
“We don’t need to do anything, detective. You need to butt out of this case and let us handle it.”
“Are you trying to say that the NYPD is not competent to handle our share of this case?” Make him spell it out, the arrogant bastard.
“I’m not trying to say anything: I let you do the talking. And so you have, with that ridiculous baked bean bullshit, and the way you screwed up a simple surveillance the other day in the very first minutes.”
Jack’s face burned; he looked out the windshield and was glad to see that Charlson’s man was staring manfully off into the distance.
“Yeah,” he responded. “Like you guys are doing such an excellent job of tracking this suspect. Aren’t you forgetting something? I’m the one who found him.”
“All right, kudos then. Good for you: you found him. Now for chrissakes, give it a rest! I don’t pop up in the middle of your cases and try to run the show.”
“You could’ve at least told me about the ballistics traces in the driveway.”
“What? What the hell are you talking about now?”
“I was just there; I saw them. Is Hasni gone? Did you guys take him out?”
“Have you completely lost your mind? Look—I don’t know what you’re going on about, but I’ll have my guys check it out. In the meantime, you need to just butt the hell out of my case.”
“It’s not just your case. We’ve got a murder that happened in the middle of south Brooklyn, and that makes it an NYPD matter.”
“So what—you close one piddling little homicide but screw up an entire national terrorism investigation? Is that what you want? Now what do I need to do? Go to your bosses and tell them you’re interfering? Make them yank your goddamn chain?”
Jack scowled. “Yeah, why don’t you try that? In the meantime, I’m gonna keep doing my job. That’s what I get paid for. And after I find Hasni and we talk to him about our homicide for a day or two, maybe I’ll give you a call.” He hung up, then reached the phone out the window and dropped it on the grass. He started his car and zoomed away, leaving Charlson’s man staring after him.
Two blocks away, he came to a red light. He slammed his hand on the dashboard in frustration. Little fed prick. No
body talks to an NYPD detective like that. Nobody.
By the time he reached home, he had managed to calm down. It was stupid and pointless: two grown men, both on the same team, squabbling over jurisdiction like dogs over a bone, while a team of terrorists were getting ready to move against their city. Someone needs to be the grown-up here, he thought. He was going to have to stop letting the fed get under his skin. Nadim Hasni might have a real weapon now. Someone was going to have to find him very soon. As to who actually made the collar, and who got the credit, that didn’t matter one damn bit.
HE WAS PARKING THE car when his cell phone trilled. He glanced down at the caller ID: Larry Cosenza.
“Christ, what did you do?” the funeral-home owner said.
For a second Jack was discombobulated: How on earth could Larry know that he’d just tangled with a Homeland Security agent? Then he remembered the scene in Carroll Gardens two nights back.
“I guess word travels fast,” he said.
“What, do you think Raucci told me directly? Is that what you think, that I’m in cahoots with these guys?”
“Whoa,” Jack said. “I know how things work in the neighborhood. Somebody was looking out their window or sitting on their front porch. And they told someone, who told someone.”
“That’s right. So now the word is out that there’s a rogue cop on the loose, going around threatening old men. Is that what you want?”
Jack leaned back in his seat and sighed. At this point, he just wanted to go upstairs and watch soap operas all afternoon with Mr. Gardner. Or maybe scrub his bathroom tiles. He could hardly remember two less relaxing days off.
“What did I tell you?” Larry continued. “I’d love nothing better than to be able to say that the days of these wiseguys are over around here, but you read the papers. Hell, you’re a cop—you know what still goes on. Don’t go pushing these guys around unless you’ve got a rock-solid case! I would hate to see something happen to you.”
Jack was about to sputter, to ask if Cosenza was making some kind of veiled threat, but he had the wisdom to shut up. His old friend wasn’t the problem. Larry just lived in the neighborhood. He made a living for his family. For a fee, he’d put anyone in the ground, be they wiseguy or cop.
Jack was tired. He just wanted to go inside and lie down. “You’re right,” he said. “I’ll take it easy. And Larry?”
“What?”
“Thanks for the advice.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
THE WALRUS SWAM FORWARD until its great mustached face was just a few inches from Nadim’s own. It hung there, in the bright blue depths, weightless in the water, buoyant as a huge ungainly angel, though its face was mournful, with the sadness of all trapped animals. They had a moment together, the human and the beast, staring into each other’s eyes, and then the gray boulder swirled off toward the other side of its tank.
Nadim shivered, though it was actually rather warm in the aquarium’s dark viewing room. He took out his wallet and squinted at its contents: only twenty-seven dollars left. He had been crazy, spending money on the admission fee; who knew how long he might have to make the rest last? He couldn’t go back to his apartment, couldn’t return to Jackson Heights. If he tried to pick up shifts from some new car service, the owner would want references, and then what would his old boss say? Yes, Nadim was an excellent driver but unreliable. And then there’s the little matter of the police coming around and asking why he killed a man …
Despite its briny, rather rank smell, Nadim could normally find a certain measure of peace in the aquarium, staring into the tanks at the seals and manta rays gliding through their worlds. And pausing, of course, to watch the jellyfish, those pulsing, shimmering umbrellas of light. But now he shoved his trembling hands into his pockets. He remembered how he used to feel when he drank too many cups of coffee to make it through a long driving shift. This was like that, but triple—as if he couldn’t stand being inside his own skin. He watched the walrus swimming round and round in a circle, in its underwater cage, where the scenery never varied, where nothing new and good could ever happen to it. He wondered if it wondered how its natural free life had shrunk down to this.
Blue shadows rippled across the walls. Nadim’s thoughts turned, as they always did here, to his daughter. To Enny’s face, round, bespectacled, beaming with pride as she helped him wash the town car on a Sunday afternoon. She would lecture him if they didn’t get every square inch sparkling clean. He remembered one time when he had interrupted her instructions by spraying her with the hose. He had expected her to giggle, but she had broken into tears. His heart ached for her: she didn’t seem to know how to play, to be a young girl, to have spontaneous fun. Maybe it was because of her utterly humorless, falsely pious mother and grandfather, or the way the other children teased her—maybe Nadim had unintentionally echoed their unkindness. He wished he could apologize, could hold her close.
He thought of his daughter and of the soapy car, and that got him considering the future of the plan. Maybe he couldn’t contribute his fair share of the necessary money, but he could still offer his skill. They would need drivers, that was certain. He had not counted on such a direct role, not the way he’d laid it out in his mind, but that was when things were simpler, when he wasn’t on the run. But maybe, if he could just stay out of trouble for a few weeks, things would calm down again, and he could rejoin the others and help make the plan happen. He could do his part.
A mother wandered into the dark room with two small children in tow, and again Nadim’s thoughts returned to his daughter. To Enny’s face shining in the light of her bedside lamp, as he read her favorite story. What was it that Heer had cried out when her beloved Ranjha was taken? “Oh, Lord, destroy this town and these cruel people so that justice may be done!”
And the evildoers paid for their wrongs as they writhed in the flames.
Perhaps his wife had been right after all.
Perhaps it truly was the will of Allah.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
DESPITE ALL OF HIS worries and whirling thoughts—or perhaps because they had just plumb tired him out—Jack enjoyed a night of deep, restful sleep. Before heading out for work the next morning, he remembered that he had forgotten to deliver a message to his landlord.
The old man was upstairs having breakfast, made for him by his home aide, a pleasant Jamaican woman.
“You want some eggs?” Mr. G asked when Jack popped his head in.
“Thanks, but I’m off to work. How are you doing, Thea?”
The aide smiled. “Just fine, Mr. Jack. Thanks for asking.”
Jack turned back to his landlord. “I just wanted to tell you that I checked on Mrs. Kornfeld yesterday. She’s fine; the lights were off the other night because she was down in Cape May visiting her niece.”
Mr. G stared up through his Coke-bottle-thick glasses. “That’s good to know. We old folks gotta look out for each other.” He dug a fork unsteadily into his plate of eggs.
“You sleep okay?” Jack asked.
Mr. G nodded. “Not too good. I guess we’re birds of a feather, huh?”
Jack gave him a quizzical look. “What do you mean?”
Mr. G shrugged. “I was lookin’ out the window. I seen you down there, workin’ on your car so late.”
Jack frowned. Had the old man been dreaming? Or maybe he hadn’t been wearing his glasses?
“I was wonderin’ why you couldn’t fix it in the A.M.,” Mr. G added. “I thought that was kinda funny, why you were out workin’ under it in the middle a’ the night.”
Jack stared at the old man. His blood went cold.
THE BOMB SQUAD CREW cordoned off the block at both ends, evacuated all the neighbors, and then sent a little robot rolling under the undercarriage of Jack’s car. After it sent them a closed-circuit video report, they were able to jack up the vehicle and take care of business.
When they were done, the sergeant in charge, a slim man with a professional mechanic’s aura of quiet
confidence, came over to speak to Jack, where he was standing on the other side of the unit’s armored truck.
“I’ll tell ya,” the man said, shaking his head: “You are one lucky cop. The second the ignition went on, your ride would have been history.”
Jack frowned; his ride would hardly have been the only thing that became history. “Did you get any prints or anything?”
The sergeant shook his head. “This was a pro job.”
Jack lowered his voice. “Did you recognize the M.O.? I have reason to believe that this could be a Mob thing.”
“We’ll look into it. It’s not often we get to see a Mob package in one piece.”
Jack turned. Beyond the yellow tape, he saw Mr. Gardner and Thea, and Mrs. Kornfeld in a faded bathrobe, and a group of other neighbors standing around, looking anxiously on. Jack imagined the fierce whirlwind that had almost just incinerated him, and which would probably have blown out the windows of their quiet homes. Such a peaceful neighborhood, so sheltered.
Not anymore.
“I’M GONNA NEED SOME very direct answers here. No pussyfooting around.”
Jack nodded somberly at Lieutenant Frank Cardulli. He wasn’t thrilled to be on the hot seat but was immensely grateful that Sergeant Tanney was out working a fresh double murder in East New York. The thought of having to deal with his immediate supervisor today was more than he could bear.
“Did you make any direct threats against this Raucci character?”
Jack strained to recall his beer-soaked recent night in Carroll Gardens. “I don’t think so.” Cardulli’s thick eyebrows rose. “No, sir, definitely not. I just mentioned that there’s no statute of limitations on murder. That was just pointing out the law, right?”
The lieutenant didn’t even begin to look relieved. “Were there any witnesses?”
Jack sighed. “Yeah. Another mobster. John Carpsio Junior.”
“Wasn’t that the guy who tipped you off about that case a couple years back?”
Jack nodded.
“And what was he doing there?”
The Ninth Step Page 16