He handed Munir one headset and slipped the other over his ears. He hit PLAY.
The voice on the tape was electronically distorted. Two possible reasons for that. One obviously to prevent voice print analysis. But he also could be worried that Munir would recognize his voice. Jack listened to the snarling Southern accent. He couldn’t tell through the electronic buzz if it was authentic or not, but no question about the sincerity of the raw hate snaking through the phone line. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the voice.
Something there… something about this guy… a picture was forming…
5
Munir found it difficult to focus on the tape. After all, he had listened to that hated voice over and over until he knew by heart every filthy word, every nuance of expression. Besides, he was uneasy here. He never frequented places where liquor was served. The drinking and laughter at the bar – they were alien to his way of life. So he studied this stranger across the table from him instead.
This man called Repairman Jack was most unimpressive. True, he was taller than Munir, perhaps five eleven, but with a slim, wiry physique. Nothing at all special about his appearance. Brown hair with a low hairline, and such mild brown eyes; had he not been seated alone back here, he would have been almost invisible. Munir had expected a heroic figure – if not physically prepossessing, at least sharp, swift, and viper deadly. This man had none of those qualities. How was he going to wrest Barbara and Robby from their tormentor’s grasp? It hardly seemed possible.
And yet, as he watched him listening to the tape with his eyes closed, stopping it here and there to rewind and hear again a sentence or phrase, he became aware of the man’s quiet confidence, of a hint of furnace hot intensity roaring beneath his ordinary surface. And Munir began to see that perhaps there was a purpose behind Jack’s manner of dress, his whole demeanor being slanted toward unobtrusiveness. He realized that this man could dog your steps all day and you would never notice him.
When the tape was done, the stranger took off his headphones, removed the cassette from the player, and stared at it.
“Something screwy here,” he said finally.
“What do you mean?”
“He hates you.”
“Yes, I know. He hates all Arabs. He’s said so, many times.”
“No. He hates you.”
“Of course. I’m an Arab.”
What was he getting at?
“Wake up, Munir. I’m telling you this guy knows you and he hates your guts. This whole deal has nothing to do with nine-eleven or Arabs or any of the bullshit he’s been handing you. This is personal, Munir. Very personal.”
No. It wasn’t possible. He had never met anyone, had never been even remotely acquainted with a person who would do this to him and his family.
“I do not believe it.” His voice sounded hoarse. “It cannot be.”
Jack leaned forward, his voice low. “Think about it. In the space of three days this guy has made you offend your God, offend other people, humiliate yourself, and who knows what next? There’s real nastiness here, Munir. Cold, calculated malice. Especially this business of making you eat pork and drink beer at noon on Friday when you’re supposed to be at the mosque. I didn’t know you had to pray on Fridays at noon, but he did. That tells me he knows more than a little about your religion – studying up on it, most likely. He’s not playing this by ear. He’s got a plan. He’s not putting you through this ‘wringer’ of his just for the hell of it.”
“What can he possibly gain from tormenting me?”
“Torment, hell. This guy’s out to destroy you. And as for gain, I’m guessing on revenge.”
“For what?” This was so maddening. “I fear you are getting off course with this idea that somehow I know this insane man.”
“Maybe. But something he said during your last conversation doesn’t sit right. He said he was being ‘a lot more generous than you’d ever be.’ That’s not a remark a stranger would make. And then he said ‘faux pas’ a little while after. He’s trying to sound like a redneck but I don’t know too many rednecks with faux pas in their vocabulary.”
“But that doesn’t necessarily mean he knows me personally.”
“You said you run a department in this oil company.”
“Yes. Saud Petrol. I’m head of Stateside operations division.”
“Which means you’ve got to hire and fire, I imagine.”
“Of course.”
“Look there. That’s where you’ll find this kook – in your personnel records. He’s the proverbial Disgruntled Employee. Or Former Employee. Or Almost Employee. Someone you fired, someone you didn’t hire, or someone you passed over for promotion. I’d go with the first – some people get very personal about being fired.”
Munir searched his past for any confrontations with members of his department. He could think of only one and that was so minor –
Jack was pushing the tape cassette across the table.
“Call the cops,” he said.
Fear wrapped thick fingers around Munir’s throat and squeezed. “No! He’ll find out! He’ll–”
“I can’t help you, pal. This isn’t my thing. You need more than I can give you. You need officialdom. You need a squad of paper shufflers doing background checks on the people past and present in your department. I’m small potatoes. No staff, no access to fingerprint files. You need all of that and more if you’re going to get your family through this. The FBI’s good at this stuff. They can stay out of sight, work in the background while you deal with this guy up front.”
“But–”
He rose and clapped a hand on Munir’s shoulder as he passed.
“Good luck.”
And then he was walking away… blending into the crowd around the bar… gone.
6
Charlie popped out his door down the hall just as Munir was unlocking his own.
“Thought that was you.” He held up a Federal Express envelope. “This came while you were out. I signed for it.”
Munir snatched it from him. His heart began to thud when he saw the name Trade Towers in the sender section of the address label.
“Thanks, Charlie,” he gasped and practically fell into his apartment.
“Hey, wait. Did you–?”
The door slammed on Charlie’s question as Munir’s fingers fumbled with the tab of the opening strip. Finally he got a grip on it and ripped it across the top. He looked inside. Empty except for shadows. No. It couldn’t be. He’d felt a bulge, a thickness within. He up ended it.
A photograph slipped out and fluttered to the floor.
Munir dropped to a squat and snatched it up. He groaned as he saw Barbara – naked, gagged, bound spread eagle on the bed as before, but alone this time. Something white was draped across her midsection. Munir looked closer.
A newspaper. A tabloid. The Post. The headline was the same he’d seen on the newsstands this morning. And Barbara was staring at the camera. No tears this time. Alert. Angry. Alive.
Munir wanted to cry. He pressed the photo against his chest and sobbed once, then looked at it again to make sure there was no trickery. No, it was real.
At the bottom was another one of the madman’s hateful inscriptions: She watched.
Barbara watched? Watched what? What did that mean?
Just then the phone rang. Munir leaped for it. He pressed the RECORD button on the answerphone as soon as he recognized the distorted voice.
Finished barfing yet, Mooo neeer?”
“I – I don’t know what you mean. But I thank you for this photo. I’m terribly relieved to know my wife is still alive. Thank you.”
He wanted to scream that he ached for the day when he could meet him face to face and flay him alive, but said nothing. Barbara and Robby could only be hurt by angering this madman.
“‘Thank you’?” The voice on the phone sounded baffled. “Whatta you mean, ‘thank you’? Didn’t you see the rest?”
Munir went cold all over. H
e tried to speak but words would not come. It felt as if something were stuck in his throat. Finally, he managed a few words.
“Rest? What rest?”
“I think you’d better take another look in that envelope, Mooo neeer. Take a real good look before you think about thankin’ me. I’ll call you back later.”
“No–!”
The line went dead.
Panic exploded within Munir as he hung up and rushed backed to the foyer.
Didn’t you see the rest?
What rest? Please, Allah, what did he mean? What was he saying?
He snatched up the stiff envelope. Yes, something still in it. A bulge at the bottom, wedged into the corner. He smacked the open end of the envelope against the floor.
Once. Twice.
Something tumbled out. Something in a small zip loc bag.
Short. Cylindrical. A pale, dusky pink. Bloody red at the ragged end.
Munir jammed the back of his wrist against his mouth. To hold back the screams. To hold back the vomit.
And the inscription on Barbara’s photograph came back to him.
She watched.
The phone began to ring.
7
“Take it easy, guy,” Jack said to the sobbing man slumped before him. “It’s going to be all right.”
Jack didn’t believe that, and he doubted Munir did either, but he didn’t know what else to say. Hard enough to deal with a sobbing woman. What do you say to a blubbering man?
He’d been on his way home from Gia’s over on Sutton Square when he stopped off at the St. Moritz to make one last call to his voice mail. He never used his apartment phone for that and did his best to randomize the times and locations of his calls. When he was on Central Park South he rarely passed up a chance to call in from the lobby of the Plaza or one of its high priced neighbors.
He heard Munir’s grief choked voice: “Please… I have no one else to call. He’s hurt Robby! He’s hurt my boy! Please help me, I beg you!”
Jack couldn’t say what was behind the impulse. He didn’t want to, but a moment later he found himself calling Munir back, coaxing an address out of the near hysterical man, and coming over here. He’d pulled on a pair of thin leather gloves before entering the Turtle Bay high rise where Munir’s apartment was located. He was sure this mess was going to end up in the hands of officialdom and he wished to leave behind nothing that belonged to him, especially his fingerprints.
Munir had been so glad to see him, so grateful to him for coming that Jack practically had to peel the man off of him.
He helped him to the kitchen and found a heavy meat cleaver lying on the table there. Several deep gouges, fresh ones, marred the tabletop. Jack finally got him calmed down.
“Where is it?”
“There.” He pointed to the upper section of the refrigerator. “I thought if maybe I kept it cold…”
Munir slumped forward on the table, face down, his forehead resting on the arms crossed before him. Jack opened the freezer compartment and pulled out the plastic bag.
It was a finger. A kid’s. The left pinkie. Cleanly chopped off. Probably with the cleaver in the photo of a more delicate portion of the kid’s anatomy he’d seen earlier this evening.
The son of a bitch.
And then the photograph of the boy’s mother. And the inscription.
Jack felt a surge of blackness from the abyss within him. He willed it back. He couldn’t get involved in this, couldn’t let it get personal. He turned to look back at the kitchen table and found Munir staring at him.
“Do you see?” Munir said, wiping the tears from his cheeks. “Do you see what he has done to my boy?”
Jack quickly stuffed the finger back into the freezer.
“Look, I’m really sorry about this but nothing’s changed. You still need more help than one guy can offer. You need the cops.”
Munir shook his head violently. “No! You haven’t heard his latest demand! The police can not help me with this! Only you can! Please, come listen.”
Jack followed him down a hall. He passed a room with an inflatable fighter jet hanging from the ceiling and a New York Giants banner tacked to the wall. In another room at the end of the hall he waited while Munir’s trembling fingers fumbled with the rewind controls. Finally he got it playing. Jack barely recognized Munir’s voice as he spewed his grief and rage at the caller. Then the other voice laughed.
VOICE: Well, well. I guess you got my little present.
MUNIR: You vile, filthy, perverted –
VOICE: Hey hey, Mooo neeer. Let’s not get too personal here. This ain’t between you’n me. This here’s a matter of international diplomacy.
MUNIR: How… (a choking sound) how could you?
VOICE: Easy, Mooo neeer. I just think about how your people blew my brother to bits and it becomes real easy. Might be a real good idea for you to keep that in mind from here on in.
MUNIR: Let them go and take me. I’ll be your prisoner. You can… you can cut me to pieces if you wish. But let them go, I beg you!
VOICE: (laughs) Cut you to pieces! Mooo neeer, you must be psychic or something. That’s what I’ve been thinking too! Ain’t that amazing?
MUNIR: You mean you’ll let them go?
VOICE: Someday – when you’re all the way through the wringer. But let’s not change the subject here. You in pieces – now that’s a thought. Only I’m not going to do it. You are.
MUNIR: What do you mean?
VOICE: Just what I said, Mooo neeer. I want a piece of you. One of your fingers. I’ll leave it to you to decide which one. But I want you to chop it off and have it ready to send to me by tomorrow morning.
MUNIR: Surely you can’t be serious!
VOICE: Oh, I’m serious, all right. Deadly serious. You can count on that.
MUNIR: But how? I can’t!
VOICE: You’d better find a way, Mooo neeer. Or the next package you get will be a bit bigger. It’ll be a whole hand. (laughs) Well, maybe not a whole hand. One of the fingers will already be missing.
MUNIR: No! Please! There must be –
VOICE: I’ll call in the mornin’ t’tell you how to deliver it. And don’t even think about goin’ to the cops. You do and the next package you get’ll be a lot bigger. Like a head. Chop chop, Mooo neeer.
He switched off the machine and turned to Jack.
“You see now why I need your help?”
“No. I’m telling you the police can do a better job of tracking this guy down.”
“But will the police help me cut off my finger?”
“Forget it!” Jack said, swallowing hard. “No way.”
“But I can’t do it myself. I’ve tried but I can’t make my hand hold still. I want to but I just can’t do it myself.” Munir looked him in the eyes. “Please. You’re my only hope. You must.”
“Don’t pull that on me.” Jack wanted out of here. Now. “Get this: Just because you need me doesn’t mean you own me. Just because I can doesn’t mean I must. And in this case I honestly doubt than I can. So keep all of your fingers and dial 9-1-1 to get some help.”
“No!” Anger overcame the fear and anguish in Munir’s face. “I will not risk their lives!”
He strode back to the kitchen and picked up the cleaver. Jack was suddenly on guard. The guy was nearing the end of his rope. No telling what he’d do.
“I wasn’t man enough to do it before,” he said, hefting the cleaver. “But I can see I’ll be getting no help from you or anyone else. So I’ll have to take care of this all by myself!”
Jack stood back and watched as Munir slammed his left palm down on the table top, splayed the fingers, and angled the hand around so the thumb was pointing somewhere past his left flank. Jack didn’t move to stop him. Munir was doing what he thought he had to do. He raised the cleaver above his head. It poised there a moment, wavering, like a cliff diver with second thoughts, then with a whimper of fear and dismay, Munir drove the cleaver into his hand.
Or rathe
r into the table top where his hand had been.
Weeping, he collapsed into the chair then, and his sobs of anguish and self loathing were terrible to hear.
“All right, goddammit,” Jack said. He knew this was going to be nothing but trouble, but he’d seen and heard all he could stand. He kicked the nearest wall. “I’ll do it.”
8
“Ready?”
Munir’s left hand was lashed to the tabletop. Munir himself was loaded up with every painkiller he’d had in the medicine cabinet – Tylenol, Advil, Bufferin, Anacin 3, Nuprin. Some of them were duplicates. Jack didn’t care. He wanted Munir’s pain center deadened as much as possible. He wished the guy drank. He’d have much preferred doing this to someone who was dead drunk. Or doped up. Jack could have scored a bunch of Dilaudids for him. But Munir had said no to both. No booze. No dope.
Tight ass.
Jack had never cut off anybody’s finger before. He wanted to do this right. The first time. No misses. Half an inch too far to the right and Munir would lose only a piece of his pinkie; half an inch too far to the left and he’d be missing the ring finger as well. So Jack had made himself a guide. He’d found a plastic cutting board, a quarter inch thick, and had notched one of its edges. Now he was holding the board upright with the notch clamped over the base of Munir’s pinkie; the rest of his hand was safe behind the board. All Jack had to do to sever the finger cleanly was chop down as hard as he could along the vertical surface.
That was all.
Easy.
Right.
“I am ready,” Munir said.
He was dripping with sweat. His dark eyes looked up at Jack, then he nodded, stuffed a dish rag in his mouth, and turned his head away.
Swell, Jack thought. I’m glad you’re ready. But am I?
Now or never.
He steadied the cutting board, raised the cleaver. He couldn’t do this.
Got to.
He took a deep breath, tightened his grip –
– and drove the cleaver into the wall.
Quick Fixes: Tales of Repairman Jack Page 15