Prayers for the Assassin

by Robert Ferrigno

  “Have you ever researched late-twentieth-century pornography?”

  Sarah blinked herself alert. “No…I never considered it.”

  “Oh, you really should. Very interesting stuff. The whole culture is there.”

  “I’ve never seen anything about it in the professional literature. I’m sure it would be restricted. Is there some sort of archive?”

  “No, most of it’s in private hands.”

  “So, how do you…?” Sarah glanced again at the bulkhead door, a little uncomfortable with the conversation. “Of course. As you said, you’re a collector.”

  “You can see a whole shift during the late nineties. Tattoos everywhere, women as well as the men. Piercings…piercings in places it’s hard to imagine one volunteering for. Even their movie stars did it. Even their gods offered themselves up.” Darwin steepled his fingertips. “Fascinating, isn’t it? Return to the primitive, that’s what their social scientists termed it. I see it more as a hunger for slavery. They were so free, so unencumbered by morality, that they craved chains. And the sexual practices themselves—”

  “Were you…” Sarah’s smile was forced. “Were you following us all the way from Seattle? I’m just…I’m just trying to find out if we made any mistakes.”

  “Laudable,” said Darwin. “No, your mistakes were only human. I was waiting for you in Long Beach. Last known address of Fatima Abdullah. I thought I had missed you, then one of our roaming eyes called and said he had seen you two sitting in a coffee shop in Huntington Beach. You evidently weren’t in as much of a hurry to find her as we thought.”

  Sarah felt her cheeks coloring.

  “Something wild in the air in Southern California, don’t you think?” Darwin flexed his fingertips. “You didn’t even close your motel room windows. I was standing down below all night. Almost close enough to touch, and I could hear everything. Such sounds. The grunting and groaning. I wonder what your uncle would think if he heard them.” Darwin’s eyes hadn’t changed in the slightest. They remained cool and gray and distant. “Something has been bothering me. Maybe you can help. That third time…where exactly was Rakkim putting it? I couldn’t tell and it’s been bothering me ever since.”

  Sarah stared…and…finally…saw him.

  “I guess we’ll have to mark that down on the list of eternal mysteries.” Darwin seemed happier now. Satisfied, now that she knew. “It’s a problem, isn’t it? Deciding how you feel about me.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “I mean, in spite of those other things, I did save your life. Yours and Rakkim’s.”

  “It’s no problem.” Sarah was surprised at her calm. It was as if she had taken something from Darwin and used it to anchor herself. To protect herself from her terror. “I feel the same way about you as I do about any other hired killer.”

  “I prefer the term assassin.”

  “I’m sure you do.”

  “Why don’t you just call me Darwin and we’ll let it go at that?”

  “Darwin? Is that your real name?”

  “I know, I know. Named after a blasphemer. Don’t think that didn’t cause a world of trouble growing up. Ah, well, we all carry the burden of history, don’t we?”

  The engines shifted tone, higher pitched now as the plane banked steeply.

  “We won’t be landing in Seattle. I’m afraid that’s something else I lied to you about.” Darwin smiled. “Do you appreciate irony?”

  Sarah watched him.

  “Rakkim is AB negative. A rare blood type. There were only two pints available on such short notice.” Darwin leaned closer, and Sarah saw scuttling things in his eyes and wondered how she could have missed them. “I’m AB negative too. If the doctors needed more in-flight, they were going to give him a transfusion of my blood. Wouldn’t that have been something?”

  Sarah fought to keep herself from trembling. She didn’t succeed.

  “My blood.” Darwin rocked with laughter. “I bet you would have thought about that every time he fucked you up the ass.” He was howling now, head thrown back, teeth bared.

  CHAPTER 49

  Before noon prayers

  “Thanks again for meeting me, Director,” said Colarusso.

  “I wanted to talk with you anyway.” Redbeard didn’t take his eyes off the metallic fuselage rising from the waters of Puget Sound. The tail section of the downed 977 superjumbo jet jutted fifty feet into the air. The engines of the ferryboat throbbed, sending a vibration through the deck. The rest of the tourists were inside, watching the monument through the double-paned windows, but Redbeard and Colarusso stood outside in the elements, the cold wind whipping their clothes.

  Salt stung Colarusso’s nostrils. “My chief seems to think you and me are close because of you insisting I handle the murders at Marian Warriq’s house,” he said, uneasy hearing of Redbeard’s interest in him. “That’s how I drew this assignment.”

  “What was it the chief of police didn’t want to ask me himself?”

  “We’ve had all these dead bounty hunters turn up in the last few days,” said Colarusso. “All of them affiliated with the Black Robes.”

  “And Chief Edson thinks State Security is responsible?”

  “You got it.”

  “State Security is responsible.”

  “I see. Well…the chief is concerned things may escalate between you and Ibn Azziz, and it’s the police who are going to look bad. I mean, we’re supposed to keep the peace.”

  “Jerry Edson doesn’t care about the peace, he only cares about keeping his job. Which he shall, as long as his father remains head of the Senate Appropriations Committee.”

  Colarusso rubbed his forehead. “I can’t argue with you there, sir, but I have to work for the asshole. Could I maybe tell him that you deplore the violence and are going to do what you can to find out who is responsible?”

  “Headache, Detective?”

  “Off and on.”

  “I have them all the time. I wake up in the middle of the night lately…I think it’s raining because I hear thunder, and it’s my head. My housekeeper says I should go to a doctor, but once you start going to doctors, there’s no end to the tests.”

  “Why don’t we go inside?” said Colarusso, shivering. He had buttoned his topcoat unevenly and ignored it. “I’m freezing my ass off.”

  “I prefer it out here,” said Redbeard, comfortable somehow in a plain woolen robe. He pointed to the downed jumbo jet. “Were you living in Seattle when the plane hit?”

  “My wife and I were in Hawaii celebrating our fifth wedding anniversary. Seems like a long time ago.”

  “It was twenty-three years in March. Eleven hundred on board, most of them still right there.” Redbeard’s expression was unreadable. “We put out the story that it was hijacked by a Brazilian end-times cult, but, of course, that wasn’t true.”

  “Hijackers weren’t trying to ram the Capitol dome? Or that it wasn’t an end-times cult?”

  “I used to come out here all the time with Rakkim and Sarah,” said Redbeard, eyeing the wreckage. The metal was still shiny, at least from a distance.

  Colarusso didn’t ask any more questions about the hijacking. Redbeard was using a bait-and-switch tactic to knock him off-balance, offering secret information, withholding it at the last moment.

  “The first time Sarah saw the plane, she asked me why all the national monuments seemed to be celebrating death. Where were the monuments to scientific discoveries or poetry or medical breakthroughs? That’s what she wanted to know. She was seven at the time. Rakkim was twelve. You want to know what he said? He looked at the tail assembly jutting out of the water at almost a ninety-degree angle and told me the pilot had taken too steep a descent. He said it was impossible to maintain rudder control that way. Rakkim said the pilot should have come in low, almost horizontal, and then rammed the Capitol.” Redbeard shook his head. “Twelve years old.”

  Colarusso wondered if he dared to go back inside and leave Redbeard out here.
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  “I hear your son has been accepted into the Fedayeen?” said Redbeard.

  Colarusso nodded. Surprised.

  “Stings a little, doesn’t it?” said Redbeard. “I felt the same way when Rakkim was accepted. It’s a great honor, of course, but I’m sure you had other plans for him. Following you into the force, perhaps.”

  “There’s no future for a Catholic in the department. Catholic’s lucky to make detective.”

  “Still, I’m sure you had your dreams for Anthony Jr.” Redbeard looked past the tail assembly. “I had dreams for Rakkim. Dreams for Sarah too. Dreams for myself. Getting older…mostly it entails accepting the unacceptable.”

  “Ain’t that the God’s honest truth?” Colarusso caught himself. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to be so familiar.”

  “No offense taken, Detective. We’re just a couple of old men here, talking about things that might have been.”

  Colarusso kept quiet. He had been a cop too long to trust a powerful man going all soft and sentimental.

  “Rakkim is fortunate to have a friend like you,” said Redbeard. “It’s been quite some time since he’s confided in me.”

  Colarusso stifled a smile. When you think the worst of people, you’re rarely disappointed.

  “I sent Rakkim to find my niece. He succeeded. With all the men at my disposal, with all my experience and connections, he found her when I couldn’t.”

  “You trained him well. Must give you comfort.”

  “To hell with comfort, I want my niece. Where are they?”

  Colarusso leaned against the railing, watched the waves break against the fuselage of the jumbo jet. “I don’t know.”

  “I could threaten you, Detective. I could tell you that with a nod of my head, drugs would be found in your house. Or evidence that you had been colluding with Jews. There’s an infinite amount of ways to destroy a man’s life, and I know them all.” Redbeard stood with his feet wide. “I wouldn’t do that though. I have too much respect for you. If Rakkim considers you a friend, it’s because he knows you won’t yield to threats. I just have to look at you and I can see that.”

  “You going to kiss me before you fuck me, Redbeard?”

  Redbeard laughed, a hearty roar that ended with coughing. He bent forward until it stopped. Stood up, face flushed. “I wish I had a friend like you, Detective. A man in my position isn’t allowed that kind of luxury. He is allowed family though. I never had children, but I thought I had family.”

  “You got one. I heard Rakkim talk often enough to know that. You were as close to a daddy as he could stand.”

  “Yes…thank you for that.” Redbeard turned as the ferry finished its orbit of the downed jet, started back to port. “After Rakkim asked for you to lead the Warriq homicides, I’ve had you under surveillance. The only time you made an effort to elude a tail was last week. You ducked into the men’s department of Kingdom of Heaven and slipped away when my man thought you were in the changing room.”

  “I can’t afford that place on my salary anyway.”

  “Exactly what I told him. A lesson I’m certain he’s learned.” Redbeard smiled. “I didn’t particularly mind your disappearance. I assumed you were meeting with Rakkim. It was confirmation that he and Sarah were still in the area, which was always my expectation. The capital is familiar turf for them, with all the attendant human networks and hidey-holes. Even so, I had my men monitor any curious developments around the country. Odd occurrences. Rumors. Disappearances. I’ve resisted putting their security profiles into the system for fear of alerting others. I’m sure you understand.”

  “Yeah.” Colarusso pulled at his bulbous nose. It itched. “Once they’re in the system, it’s open season.”

  Redbeard wiped the edges of his mouth with a fingertip. “Late last night something odd came to my attention. Eight police officers were killed in the line of duty last night in Orange County, California. SWAT team members. Full gear. All dead. No arrests. The PD clamped down on the story. Then this morning, the official line is that it was an undercover drug sting gone bad.”

  “It happens.”

  “Six geared-up SWAT officers down? How often does that happen? Last night there was no one but cops dead at the scene, and this morning there’s a morgue full of the usual suspects.” Redbeard raked a hand through his beard. “I haven’t been able to get a look at autopsy reports on the officers, not yet, but when I do, I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts that they were killed with a knife, a well-trained knife.” Redbeard looked at Colarusso. “I don’t know where Rakkim and Sarah are, but someone does. Someone who means them harm.”

  Colarusso stared back at him.

  Redbeard turned away. “When we get back to shore, feel free to check what I’ve told you. I wouldn’t want you to feel foolish.”

  Colarusso watched Redbeard’s robe flap in the wind. Good interrogators blindsided you. They came at you from a direction you didn’t expect. Or they were polite when you were expecting bluster. The best ones didn’t even ask the big question. They simply laid out a situation and let you decide if you wanted to help. Redbeard was the best Colarusso had ever encountered. “They’re in Southern California. I don’t know where exactly, but I worked out a bounce itinerary that ended up at Bin Laden. I don’t know what they’re after. Rakkim wouldn’t tell me.”

  Redbeard kept his back to him. “I appreciate that, Anthony.”

  “I don’t know about this SWAT team…but there’s a Fedayeen assassin after him.” Colarusso shifted. “I think…I think this assassin showed up at my place last week. Not more than a day after they left town. He talked to my boy.”

  Redbeard turned. Walked over. Right beside him now. Concerned.

  “Nothing happened. Everyone’s okay.”

  “Then it wasn’t the assassin,” said Redbeard.

  “He showed up with some story about being from the mayor’s office. Anthony Jr. wouldn’t let him in. Said he got a bad feeling about the guy. Anthony Jr. said he practically pissed himself. You don’t know my boy, but that’s not the kind of thing he would normally admit to. I called the mayor’s office. They didn’t send anybody—”

  “Call your family and tell them to pack their things. I’ll send some men over—”

  “Already shipped them out. Made Anthony Jr. go with the wife and girls. Told him he had to protect them. He didn’t like it, but he went.”

  “What about you?”

  “Let him knock on my door again,” Colarusso growled, “I’ll blow his brains out. I’ll empty the fucking clip.” He shivered in the cold wind. “Don’t worry, Anthony Jr. didn’t tell him anything. He didn’t know anything to tell.”

  Redbeard shook his head. “He knows your boy was worried about visitors. A Fedayeen assassin can practically read minds.”

  Colarusso felt sick. “Rakkim needed some information and this woman in Personnel helped me. She hasn’t been at work in a few days and I’m worried. The girls in the office say she’s got all kind of sick days accrued, but she didn’t give notice.” He looked around. “I let myself into her apartment. Nothing out of place. Nothing that jumped out at me anyway.” The engine of the ferry shuddered and he fought for his footing. “I tried calling Rakkim…but he has his cell switched off. He thinks people can track him just from accessing a message.”

  “They can.”

  Colarusso licked his lips. “I didn’t know that.”

  “That headache of yours is back.”

  Colarusso rubbed his forehead. “Feels like a couple of guys cracking rocks inside me.”

  Redbeard had a sad smile. “I know just what you mean. Perhaps when you pass me the information you gave Rakkim, we can both get some relief.”

  CHAPTER 50

  After morning prayers

  The four men grabbed Angelina on the way out of the mosque. Big men who lifted her by the elbows and carried her quickly to a waiting black car. She cried out, her toes dragging across the parking lot. Others saw her. Heard her. Women she had prayed
alongside of for twenty years, but they all pretended not to see or hear. Except for Delia Mubarak, who called her name. Delia, who looked around for support, but was smacked by her husband, led away by the hand like a naughty child. The men hustled Angelina into the backseat of the car, one on either side of her. The other two got in front. Doors slammed, heavy as the gates to hell.

  “When Redbeard finds out what you’ve done, I wouldn’t be you for all the gold in Switzerland,” said Angelina.

  The men remained silent. Stared straight ahead.

  “So Ibn Azziz thought he needed four men to bring in a little old lady. You must be very proud to fetch for such a mighty lord.”

  The man to her right cursed her, but the driver ordered him quiet.

  Angelina fingered her prayer beads. They could stay silent all they wanted now, she had learned what she wanted. It had been Ibn Azziz who’d ordered her capture. She listened to the clicking of her prayer beads, fingers flying, comforted by the names of God.

  Rakkim slowly opened his eyes. It took an effort. Too much light coming in through the curtains. His eyes closed again, heavy-lidded. No. No.

  “Good job.” An old man sat beside the bed, legs crossed at the knee. Dapper old gent in a pale green three-piece suit. White hair. White beard, lightly perfumed. Light brown skin…the color of Rakkim’s own face. “Don’t doze off again. Stick around.”

  Rakkim struggled awake. The back of the bed moved silently to a more upright position.

  “Better?” said the old man. “I was getting bored watching you sleep.” He smiled. Such small teeth. “You looked like you were dreaming.”

  Rakkim licked his dry lips. Maybe this was a dream? He sipped cool water from the glass the old man held to his lips. “Where…am I?” His voice was as cracked as his lips.

  “Las Vegas.”