“Claiborne?” At the mention of the name, Flo tensed, stiffened like an animal shot through the spine.
“My other boy. They’re twins but not identical. Maybe same height, and that’s about it. Owen come out first, Claiborne come about a half hour later. Story of his life, Claiborne, a half hour later. Story of Owen’s, too, always first. All hell and pepper, Owen.”
Claiborne…From the drawer in the night table beside her bed, the old woman took out an envelope of photographs.
“Look at this,” she said. “Isn’t this something?”
A faded color snapshot of two boys about thirteen years old, in their red graduation caps and gowns, one with a smile as bright as sunlight, the other a small silly grin. Flo couldn’t link either boy with a mental image of mature men.
The photograph was cracked in the corners and well covered in fingerprints, the picture removed and replaced from the worn and wrinkled envelope thousands of proud and loving times. The old woman lingered over the photo, pointing out details to Flo and seeking her admiration.
“Claiborne, he got sad eyes. Like me, I guess, clear but sad. Owen had them hot double-barrel-shotgun eyes and lots of women like that, he found that out early, too. And he went right straight to work on them, like he did on his music. Never wasted a minute. But Claiborne, he takes life pretty much as it comes. You want some tea? You see a kettle and a pot in the kitchen in there, you just go in and boil up some water for tea. I could go for some more, and I’d get up and do it myself, but my knees kill me on days like this. Cold and wet. You find everything you need inside there…”
10:06 A.M.
Flo went into the kitchen, which looked out onto a backyard just as in her home.
Here the windows were barred, and the glass panes smudged with a daylong dusk.
A light above the stove illuminated a teakettle. While Flo waited for the water to boil, she stood at a window.
Claiborne…
Below the window, in the yard, were steps down to the cellar. A steel-rail fence with two rows of bars, upper and lower, enclosed the cellar entrance to prevent anyone from falling in. Her eyes surveyed the yard, more bare earth than grass, long neglected, and her focus came to rest on the cellar railing, as uncared for as the yard, the green paint chipped, exposed steel rusting, a bar missing from the upper row. The bars were about twenty inches in length, an inch or so in diameter, hexagonal in shape, and the missing bar left a gap with solder traces on the top and middle rails…
On her cell phone, Flo called detective Sergeant Marty Keane.
“I’m still at his mother’s,” she said, her voice nearly a whisper. “Come over now. I’ll wait till you get here. There’s evidence. And maybe more.”
Then she called the driver of her car, parked just down the street. “Pull up in front of the house and wait for Marty. Anyone comes to the door, stop him for questioning. He may be armed.”
And a third call, this to Frank Murphy.
“The killer is his brother or so it looks. And that guy with the picture this morning, the one who got the autograph—”
“Claiborne?”
“Right. That’s what I thought I heard. He pops up again, hold him.”
Flo carried a pot of tea into Mrs. Smith’s bedroom. “Your son Claiborne, what does he do?”
“Day labor, when he can get it. I help him out time to time, out of what Owen gives me. Help him out from the hush-up money.” She smiled sadly. “Ten thousand a month Owen puts in my account to live on, pay the rent here, food and stuff. If I ever speak out, if I ever even show up at their door, no more money. Yeah, that’s the deal. Some deal, don’t you think? And I give some to Claiborne every now and then. Sometimes he’s staying here, Claiborne, he’s got his own little room up front there. Sometimes he stays somewhere else, I don’t know where. I haven’t seen or heard from him since the bad news, and he got all broke up and just left, even though the boys went their own ways a long time ago. Before they were men, even.”
The old woman paused to blow on her hot tea, again and again, while Flo waited, impatiently, for Marty Keane to arrive.
Hovering around her detective’s image of the younger twin, Claiborne Smith, was a funereal halo of waste and failure, always threatening his brother Owen’s blinding success, and Flo felt sure it was the fear of catching it, that disease of failure more than anything else that long ago drove the older-by-thirty-minutes Owen into flight, and kept him there right into manhood.
“You looking for truth?” Mrs. Smith said. “I know somebody who never misses the truth. She’s a champ. Mother Gloria, her name, she got offices all over the city. Maybe you call her and you go see her. She reads the spirits. Too bad she don’t do house calls no more, not since she got so big. She sells lucky lottery numbers, too. She could find Owen’s spirit. But I can’t talk to him, I’m too scared. He became a man, and he didn’t even want to look at me, his own momma, forget talking.”
The tears returned to the old woman’s black-rimmed eyes, mascara streaking her rouged cheeks like war paint.
“Thanks, Mrs. Smith, thanks for the lead. I can’t tell you how glad I am I came to see you.”
Flo sipped her hot tea, praying for Marty Keane to arrive soon.
And she considered the afternoon with Cecil King. She’d requested four police cruisers, two stationed at each end of the public schools’ front entrances for Cecil King’s arrivals and exits.
But so far she’d received no reply from the local precincts.
10:10 A.M.
Claiborne Smith often considered exactly this:
What’ll life be like, when you’re a man?
Shit, he didn’t ever see himself sleeping in no sleaze hole squat, that’s for fucking sure, a condemned building on Atlantic Avenue, boarded-up piece of crap, traffic outside never stopping.
Anyway, least the place was free.
But of course when he was a boy, Claiborne Smith dreamed about the right answers to all kinds of questions like this.
Why are you here? Why are you on this motherfucking earth?
And he had his right answers. The best. To get married. Have kids. Be a success and work for them, work for your family.
And get rich, of course.
That’s why…
You want your ass out in that world. You want work. You want money. You want girls, you want women. You want to touch their underwear, stroke their soft skin, get held between their legs. In one great swoon, bury it all in a woman’s body.
Just all the normal things…
And so as a boy he dreamed. Shit, yes, he fantasized. He pictured an adult life of peace and security and a woman’s endless charms.
Picture her, that main woman, her name: Wife.
The apartment with a terrace over by Prospect Park. Like the new senator’s place but even better. And she’d be waiting for him with the drinks, her black hair, maybe blond, swept back, her laughter carefree, kids playing on the terrace—no, finishing up homework at their desks. You lift up the kids…and you kiss the kids and you kiss her deeply, your great love, your wife, secrets in your eyes. Summer weekends at your house on a beach, tossing a ball around, bodies like young gods. Bentley in the garage. No, two Bentleys, his and hers. Long nights together, loving so gently it lasts for hours…I love you, baby, we’ll always be happy. Christmas feasting, New Year’s partying, rejoicing. That dazzle of winter morning sunlight pouring in from the snow-covered terrace, and from the radio all the good old corny stuff…
…treetops glisten and children listen
To hear sleigh bells in the snow…
A world of happiness, babe, forever and ever. When you’re married, you and your dream, you’ll be deeply in love, passionately in love. Treasure this, remember this, so no matter what else happens and no matter what horrors have already happened…this is all yours.
The reddest rose of your life, Claiborne, your ecstasy married in the spring of hottest desire: Wife. The Dream…
…and this dream
sustained had Claiborne Smith.
For a long time, the fantasy had kept him going.
But no more.
By now, at this moment in his adult life, it was impossible for Claiborne Smith to go on pretending, bullshitting himself in the same way their momma was able to believe, convinced the present is always better than the past, and the future bound to be even more phenomenal.
Forget all that shit…
No more.
It’s all over.
And you’re fucked, Claiborne.
Or you were up until the other night.
That pussy, that asshole, your own fucking brother, that punk ass won’t be blocking you no more, going out stealing all your best stuff, claiming it’s his. No fucking way, that fish hound’s muff-diving, sushi-licking days are gone and done.
And now you got to make your own name, get out there and be a brand—Claiborne Smith—you slick-dicking mother, you just stand up and stand out.
Your new dream…be counted.
Be the man.
And this brother there now, the new senator, first one of us to make it from around here.
Cecil King.
And it’s about fucking time, so of course they want to kill him. Said so, right on TV, just a minute ago. Threats. Cops say threats. Bet your ass, can’t have no black motherfucker being no New York senator, no fucking way, so they’ll kill him, just like they killed Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
And Malcolm.
Same old shit, all over again, always always always.
At least, that’s what they’re thinking about doing this time, hearts and minds all set on snuffing out Cecil King.
Threats?
Fat fucking chance, that’s all they got now.
’Cause this time, there’s me…
There’s Claiborne Smith.
They don’t know me, not yet.
They don’t know dick shit about me. So they’re not counting on me in their threat plans. That’s why these scumbags won’t get Cecil King, not like they got the others.
This time, they’re gonna miss.
Because of Claiborne Smith…I’ll be right there. And I’ll stop them.
I know all about killing.
Just ask Ballz.
Ballz will tell you, if he could talk, the late Mr. Busta stretched out there in a morgue.
That’s right, I know all about the shit these fuckers are getting down to. They’re not human. And that’s why I’m the mother to stop them. Cold. Totally. Everyone will be grateful to Claiborne Smith.
Just…watch…me.
PS 107…The senator will be there and right off he’ll know he needs me.
Because I’m his main man.
Gratitude, they’re gonna rain their gratitude down on me.
10:17 A.M.
When homicide detective Sergeant Marty Keane and two forensics detectives arrived at Kitty Smith’s apartment in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Flo Ott introduced Keane to the confused old woman propped up in bed, then led her colleagues into the kitchen.
“There’s your steel bar,” she said, pointing at the empty spot in the fence around the cellar steps. “His room is in the front. But go easy on his mother, she has no idea.”
Flo returned to Kitty Smith’s bedside. “I got to get back to the office,” she told the old woman. “The other policemen have work to do in the backyard and the front room.”
“I don’t understand. What do they want here?”
“Your son Claiborne, Mrs. Smith, no one knows where he is, but he could be in danger.”
“Danger? Me too? What about me?”
“I don’t think so. But there’ll be a police car outside the house, so don’t you worry.”
“I’m worried about Claiborne.”
“So are we. That’s why we’re looking for him.”
“He shows up, I’ll tell him to call you, okay?”
“Thank you, Mrs. Smith. You do that, please.”
“Meanwhile, you ought to call Mother Gloria, you want to know anything.”
“Soon as I get a chance.”
10:19 A.M.
Flo Ott left Bedford-Stuyvesant and rode downtown to her office to file a report on the warranted search of Mrs. Smith’s apartment.
She also wrote out a form requesting a bench warrant for the arrest of Claiborne Smith, which a sitting magistrate granted at once.
Alleged offense: the first-degree murder of his brother, Owen Smith, a.k.a. Ballz Busta.
She filed an email copy of the request and the arrest warrant with District Attorney Jimmy Padino.
Before the suspect was in custody, announcements to media were forbidden.
11:48 A.M.
Flo Ott rode a mile through Brooklyn to Grand Army Plaza for lunch with Frank Murphy and Cecil King at the Montauk Club.
“Smith’s own brother,” she said, taking the seat between the senator-elect and Frank.
Cecil King shook his head sadly.
“Congratulations,” he said, but his face showed no pleasure in the news. “You know, I’m almost glad his trial won’t be on my watch. Brother killing brother, there’s no societal satisfaction in that kind of trial, not for anyone. Fratricide, matricide, patricide…your own kids even, infanticide, it’s all as old as it gets, and just as sad as any suicide. I’ve always felt, when you get right down to essentials, killing blood kin is almost the same thing as suicide, the killer would just as soon have taken his own life. And they often end up doing exactly that, especially when they kill their own kids. Might as well go and kill themselves then and they usually do. Where’s this poor miserable soul now?”
“My guess?” Flo said. “He’s out looking for you.”
“I’m no defense attorney.”
“We met him this morning. You signed a photograph for him. I’m almost certain it’s the same man. Claiborne Smith. We may not have seen the last of him. He’s profoundly unbalanced, severely delusional, a possible stalker. Or worse. He could be an unwitting cutout for the Double-A. The best way to get close enough to you.”
For a moment, they were enveloped in silence.
“Marty’s got an all-points out on him,” Flo said. “Forensics should have enough by this afternoon for a lot more than reasonable suspicion. The news that we’ve identified a suspect will leak by then.”
Frank Murphy leaned back in his chair. “Okay, he’s a killer. At least once, as far as we now got excellent reason to believe. His own brother. Jesus, he’s unhinged, that’s clear. An excellent unwitting stooge.”
“Maybe for the Double-A,” Cecil King said. “Or maybe not. He got as close to me this morning as you two are right now. And it was me who encouraged him, only me. So why didn’t he do it this morning?”
Again, silence descended.
Cecil King reached out and placed his hands on their arms. “From now on, it’s your call. As long as I can stick as close as possible to my commitments. For starters, I can’t back out on these schools this afternoon, not in the Slope or the church meeting there. I carried every E.D. in the Slope seventy percent or better. I owe them, the kids, their parents, everybody there.”
Flo would just as soon they went straight back to the King family’s apartment and stayed shuttered inside until New Year’s. But she couldn’t disagree with Cecil King’s assessment of his debt to the people of Park Slope. In her book, loyalty, no matter how high the costs, was among the highest virtues.
“Understand,” King said. “I won’t be riding in an open car. I won’t be stretching my legs in full view out on a balcony. My visit later to the church group, that’s totally unannounced, a surprise drop-in for them. And no more autographs for strangers, no way, I promise. It’ll all work out, I’m confident.”
Igor & Co.
12:40 P.M.
Igor Zanonovich burned all the notes and hand-drawn maps, flushing the ashes down the toilet in his Brighton Beach safe apartment.
He opened the bathroom window to let out the smell of fire.
The v
iew from here was remarkable: beach, boardwalk, Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. Zanonovich marveled at such splendid vistas wasted on a proletarian neighborhood. This would never happen at home, not now, not after all the new changes.
His Chechens were wiping the apartment clean, no prints, no half-eaten food, empty bottles dumped, bed linen and towels folded and packed to go.
It was almost like moving house. Except for every surface Cloroxed. Cops would have a hell of a time finding DNA traces.
This was infinitely more energizing than moving house. This was God’s work, even if the Chechens weren’t much more than paid hands. Professional, highly experienced, utterly reliable hands but hardly full members in the organization. The education, culture, traditions simply weren’t theirs. Not the Chechens’ fault, centuries of colonial status, doffing caps and forelock tugging, drinking to forget humiliations, a few hundred years of subservience like that exhausts any civilization.
So his Chechens took up the gun, for excellent pay and for Russia. At this, they proved themselves among the best.
When hit men excelled at their craft, they operated quietly and without incident, other than the kill. They held their whispered meetings in secret, executed jobs with precision and grace, and no one ever witnessed their escape. A clandestine world to which few had access, although this, unfortunately, didn’t stifle police ambitions in that direction.
1:06 P.M.
The Chechens locked up their safe apartment.
Their lease had three more months to run, but they had no plans to return.
Zanonovich and his driver, known to him only as Ben, exited the neighborhood first, cruising Brooklyn streets in a twelve-year-old black Mercedes, its engine meticulously restored in a rented garage on a dead-end street between Surf Avenue and the boardwalk.
They were killing time before their two o’clock rendezvous with the others on Fourteenth Street between Seventh and Eighth avenues. On a mid-afternoon in November, pretty much a lifeless block.
The three other Chechens—Ivan, Vlad, and Lenny—walked to the same rented garage, formerly a stable and more recently an illegal live-poultry market.
Each took a different route.
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