Fong spoke up first. “That’s not the way things work in a terrorism case.”
“That’s the way things work in South Chicago.”
Maloney addressed Fong in a library-level whisper. “Detective Gold is correct. This is now a homicide.”
“Terrorism is a federal crime. He’ll be prosecuted under federal law.”
“And state law. The State’s Attorney is prosecuting Hassan Al-Shahid under the Illinois death penalty statutes even though he’s also charged under the federal anti-terrorism laws. He’ll prosecute Ms. Ramirez’s killer under the same Illinois statutes.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“He’s my brother-in-law.”
Fong wasn’t giving up. “That still violates our protocol.”
The response came from an unanticipated source. Battle placed his large hands on the table and spoke to Fong in a hushed tone. “Detective Gold and Detective Liszewski uncovered the Al-Shahid terror plot while they were investigating the Udell Jones homicide. Detective Liszewski was killed in the line of duty after you negligently failed to notify us about your investigation of Hassan Al-Shahid.”
“We weren’t negligent,” Fong insisted.
“You weren’t wildly forthcoming, either.” Battle turned and spoke to the chief. “I respectfully request that you assign Detective Gold and me to lead this murder investigation.”
“Ms. Ramirez died in Area 1. I need to assign a team from Area 1.”
“I’m still assigned to Area 1. I’m only on loan to Area 2.”
Technically, it was true.
Maloney made the call. “You and Detective Gold will lead the homicide investigation. You will cooperate fully with the FBI.” He darted an icy look at Fong. “If your superiors have a problem, have them call me.”
“I will.” Without another word, Fong led his minions out of the library.
As soon as the door had closed, Maloney addressed Gold and Battle in the plain-spoken vernacular he’d learned in his grandfather’s bar. “Everybody tells me you’re two of my best detectives. This is your chance to prove it. I don’t care how many rules you break. I want this asshole off the street before anybody else dies.”
* * *
The young man emerged from the El, hurried across the platform, and jogged down the rickety stairs two at a time. He pulled his baseball cap over his eyes and kept his head down to avoid the video cameras. He ducked into a nearby alley and took out another throwaway cell. He looked around to make sure nobody was watching. He pressed Send, then he turned off the power and set it on the ground. He smashed it with a stomp. He put the remnants into a Dumpster behind a Mexican restaurant, then he made his way down the alley.
The stakes are going up.
* * *
Gold and Battle were about to leave the library when Simmons’s BlackBerry vibrated again. The assistant chief motioned them to stay put as he held the phone tightly against his ear.
“What is it?” Gold asked.
“He just set off a bomb at the Addison Street El station.”
Chapter 4
THE “FRIENDLY CONFINES”
Gold took a deep breath of the heavy air as he stared at the blackened carcass of a Chevy Blazer flipped onto its side beneath the charred El tracks a half-block from Wrigley Field. “ID on the victim?”
Detective Vic Wronski was a dead ringer for John Candy who spoke in a guttural rasp. “Ronnie Smith. Tended bar at Sluggers on Clark. Did voiceovers on the radio. Single. No kids. No family. Lived near Broadway and Irving Park.”
Gold watched evidence techs from Chicago PD and the FBI catalogue the remains of the Blazer. A coroner’s van had just departed with the body of a young man who had been riding his bike past the Blazer when the bomb had gone off. He had died instantly. Four others had suffered smoke-related injuries.
Gold looked up at the back of the iconic scoreboard of the oldest ballpark in the National League. Wrigley Field was erected in 1914 in a working-class neighborhood of three-story brownstone apartment buildings and shady elm trees about five miles north of the Loop. Originally known as Weeghman Park, it was built for long-forgotten Chicago Whales of the long-disbanded Federal League. The Cubs didn’t move in until 1916, and the signature Boston ivy wasn’t installed on the outfield walls until 1937. In the fifties, Jack Brickhouse dubbed it the “Friendly Confines,” a name that stuck. Gold always referred to it as the “Overpriced Confines.”
Gold felt the soft asphalt beneath his feet as he took a sip of bitter 7-Eleven coffee from a flimsy paper cup at ten o’clock on Monday morning. He and Battle were standing in the empty beer garden behind Murphy’s Bleachers, the raucous sports bar across the street from the ballpark. The area buzzed with a tense energy even though the Cubs game had been cancelled and the El was silent. Instead of the usual cavalcade of souvenir hawkers, peanut vendors, and ticket scalpers, the block surrounding the Addison Street station was encircled by police units and fire engines, and helicopters hovered overhead. The ever-present aroma of hot dogs, peanuts, and beer was overpowered by the stench of smoke. Ballpark employees and local residents mingled uneasily between the news vans on Sheffield Avenue where tour buses usually parked.
Gold pointed at the Blazer. “What do you know?”
Wronski scowled. “FBI said it was just like the Art Institute. Gasoline bomb in the trunk ignited the fuel tank. Detonator was a throwaway cell. Asshole named Fong had his people take it to their lab.”
Gold glanced up at the rooftop bleachers on the buildings down the block from Murphy’s. In the nineties, the neighborhood had turned into a yuppie hot spot when developers and dot-commers had rechristened it as “Wrigleyville.” They’d converted the six-flats across the street from the park into private “clubs” with overpriced hot dogs, designer microbrews, and expensive rooftop seats. No self-respecting Sox fan would pay good money to sit six hundred feet from home plate. “Anybody see anything?”
“No witnesses. We’re goin’ door to door. Surveillance cameras inside Murphy’s and at the ballpark aren’t pointed this way. I talked to the ticket taker, the security guard, and the guy who runs the newsstand at the station. Nobody saw nothin’.”
“Noticed anything suspicious around here lately?
“Nah. Neighborhood’s been pretty quiet since the yuppies moved in. We get drunks after night games, but our alderman likes us to keep the punks away from the ballpark. Scares the tourists. The news guy at the station takes bets on the Cubs and the ponies. The Outfit hits him up for street taxes, but that’s about it.”
The rackets had been extorting protection money—dubbed “street taxes”—from local bookies since the beginning of time. “How does your alderman feel about car bombs?”
“He’s against them.”
So am I. “ID on the car?”
“Reported stolen Thursday night. Registered in the name of the Shrine of Heaven Mosque on Polish Broadway.”
Gold nodded. Milwaukee Avenue—known as Polish Broadway—was the main thoroughfare through the world’s largest Polish community outside of Warsaw. Though many of the descendants of the original immigrant families had moved to the suburbs, you could still hear Polish spoken in the shops and restaurants. Gold looked at Wronski. “You live over in St. Hyacinth’s Parish?”
“Wellington and Pulaski.”
“Gordon Tech?”
“Of course.”
“You know anything about this mosque?”
“Opened about five years ago. Guy who runs it is named Ahmed Jafar. American as we are—born here on the North Side. Cubs fan. Father was an Iraqi doctor who came here when Saddam Hussein took over. Ended up driving a taxi. Now he owns the cab company. Ahmed graduated from Lane Tech. Played baseball at Circle Campus. Got a degree in social work. Drove a cab for his father for a few years.”
“He went from driving a cab to running a mosque?”
“It’s more of a community center. Most of the Muslims in the neighborhood aren’t rolling in dough, so Ahme
d tries to help them out. Seems like a decent guy. The mosque sponsors a Little League team. We keep an eye on him—for his own protection.”
“And yours.”
“You said that. I didn’t.”
“Anybody over there ever been suspected of terrorist ties?”
“I wouldn’t know. Check with the feds. They keep an eye on the mosque.”
I’m not surprised. Gold saw Fong emerge from Murphy’s. He did his best to invoke a reasonably friendly tone. “Hey George, you got anything on the detonator?”
Fong came closer so he wouldn’t be overheard by the reporters standing outside the yellow tape. “Another Motorola throwaway. Purchased for cash at a Best Buy in Glenview. Initiating phone was a throwaway bought at a K-Mart in Schaumberg. No security videos for the purchase of either phone. The carrier was Verizon.”
“We need Verizon to shut down access to all of its throwaways.”
“Done. We’re working on the other carriers.”
“Work faster. Got a location on the initiating phone?”
“It pinged a tower servicing the area south of the Loop and east of the Dan Ryan. We couldn’t get precise coordinates. If it’s the same guy, he’s on the move.”
Or we’re dealing with more than one person. “The Blazer belonged to the Shrine of Heaven Mosque. You know anything about it?”
“Yeah. Ahmed Jafar is one of the leaders of the Muslim community taking over Polish Town. Late twenties. Married. Two small kids. No criminal record. Works on outreach projects with the priests at St. Hyacinth’s. Won a couple of community service awards.”
“You seem to know a lot about him.”
“We keep tabs on every Muslim institution in the Chicago area.”
“Any potential terrorist connections?”
“A couple of years ago, we discovered he’d been in contact with people in Iraq who were arrested for setting off IEDs. As far as we can tell, there hasn’t been any communication since then.”
“Why hasn’t he talked to them more recently?”
“It may have something to do with the fact that they’re dead.”
“Any indication that he might be interested in engaging similar activities over here?”
“Not that we’ve been able to prove.”
“But?”
“Some of the members of the mosque have criminal records. Mostly little stuff—shoplifting and stealing cars.”
“Has Jafar been involved?”
“Not as far as we can tell.”
“Has he ever been under investigation?”
“Last year, we thought he was involved in a plot to import a shipment of assault rifles. We didn’t have enough evidence to charge him.”
“Did you talk to him about it?”
“Yes. He was fully cooperative.”
“Do you think he was guilty?”
“Hard to say. My people have already been over to see him. So far, we have no way to connect him to this bombing.”
“Except his Blazer blew up.”
“You think he blew up his own car?”
“I’m not ruling anything out. What else can you tell me about this guy?”
Fong adjusted his maroon neck tie. “Jafar likes to think of himself as the Muslim Obama. He started as a community organizer. He’s in tight with his alderman. He has political ambitions. After Nine-Eleven, he set up a website for the Muslims in Polish Town. After the war in Iraq started, he put together a database for people searching for relatives. He even got permission to travel to Baghdad. At first he ran everything out of his apartment. Then he rented a storefront across the street from the Logan Theater. A year ago, he raised enough money to buy the building. Now he’s trying to buy a bigger space on Diversey. People in the neighborhood aren’t happy about it.”
“Where’d he get the money?”
“He got a grant from the Chicago Islamic Council.”
Gold recognized the name. “They’ve been accused of diverting money to Hezbollah.”
“We’ve never found a shred of proof.” Fong cleared his throat. “We also recently discovered that Hassan Al-Shahid’s trust fund donated a hundred grand to the CIC.”
“When were you planning to mention this to us?”
“Now.”
“You promised full cooperation, Special Agent Fong.”
“I just found out about it myself, Detective Gold.”
Sure. “Jafar and Al-Shahid must know each other.”
“Jafar told us he’d met Al-Shahid once at a CIC board meeting. We have no evidence of any calls, e-mails, texts, or other direct communications between them.”
“Maybe they used throwaway cell phones.”
“We have no evidence that they did.”
“You have no evidence that they didn’t.”
“You think a smart guy with political ambitions and a drawer full of community service awards blew up a vehicle easily traceable to him in some half-baked scheme to get Al-Shahid out of jail?”
“A year ago, he was trying to buy Uzis. Maybe he’s moved on to explosives.”
“Maybe.”
Gold’s BlackBerry vibrated. The display indicated that he had a text from an unidentified source. He tried to send a reply, but it didn’t go through. Finally, he opened the text and showed it to Fong.
It read, “Are you going to take us seriously now, Detective Gold?”
Chapter 5
THE SHRINE OF HEAVEN
Supervisory Special Agent George Fong was having a bad day in the middle of a miserable month in what was rapidly becoming a horrible year. The most decorated agent in the history of the FBI’s Chicago office was sweating through his gray suit as he stood in the beer garden behind Murphy’s.
“Got a trace?” Gold asked.
“Working on it,” Fong said.
“Work faster.”
Fong didn’t let his frustration show. After graduating at the top of his class from Northwestern Law School twenty-four years earlier, the Chinatown native had turned down offers from the State’s Attorney and several downtown law firms to join the Bureau. He quickly established himself as the go-to guy on Chinatown’s gambling rackets and gangs, then he dismantled the Outfit’s stranglehold on the First Ward. After Nine-Eleven, he was tapped to form Chicago’s Joint Terrorism Task Force modeled on a similar unit in New York. A month earlier, he had been on the short list for a top job at Quantico. Then his wife had filed for divorce, his brother was diagnosed with colon cancer, and Paulie Liszewski had died in South Chicago. Now he lived by himself in a studio apartment near the United Center, his brother was undergoing chemotherapy, Liszewski’s widow was a single mother, and somebody was setting off bombs on the streets of Chicago.
Fong glanced at a red-faced young man with multiple tattoos who was screaming at a Chicago cop outside the crime scene tape. The kid was trying to get to work at a souvenir stand on Addison, and the cop wasn’t letting him through. Fong pressed his BlackBerry against his ear. “You gotta give me something,” he barked.
His subordinate answered in an even tone. “The text was initiated by a Motorola throwaway purchased for cash at a Target in Cal City on April fifteenth. Serviced by T-Mobile. Pinged a tower downtown. We’ve contacted the store to check security video.”
Fong passed along the information to Gold.
“We need T-Mobile to shut down their throwaways, too,” Gold said.
“Done. We’re still waiting to hear from the other carriers.”
“What’s the delay?”
“Lawyers.” Fong looked on as Gold and Battle started walking toward the Crown Vic. “Where are you going?”
“Polish Town,” Gold said.
* * *
A bearded young man opened the reinforced steel door just far enough to get a good look at Gold. “Peace be upon you,” he recited.
“And upon you,” Gold said.
He and Battle were huddled beneath a narrow overhang in a futile attempt to dodge the thunderstorm passing over the North Si
de at ten-thirty on Monday morning. The sidewalks were empty. Traffic was heavy on Milwaukee Avenue, where cops were now positioned at every major intersection. The Shrine of Heaven Mosque sat smack dab in the middle of a neighborhood of squat bungalows and three-story apartment buildings that the mapmakers still referred to as Avondale, but the natives stubbornly called Polish Town. It was housed in a one-story brick building wedged between a Polish bakery and a Puerto Rican grocery on the east side of Milwaukee Avenue, across the street from the stacked neon letters spelling out the name of the Logan Theater. The Shrine of Heaven would have been more aptly named the Shrine of Privacy. Its windows were bricked over, and the only evidence of its existence was a hand-lettered note taped above the doorbell. News vans were parked in front on Milwaukee Avenue. It was only a matter of time before the helicopters arrived.
“We’re closed,” the young man said. “Painting.”
Gold’s lungs filled with the sweet aroma of cheese babka from the bakery next door. He held up his badge. “I’m Detective Gold. This is Detective Battle. Do you work here?”
“Nope. Just the painter.”
“What’s your name?”
They were interrupted by the sound of a blaring horn as a postal truck screeched to a halt inches from a Milwaukee Avenue bus. The postal worker flipped off the driver as he drove around the bus.
“Michael Janikowski,” the young man said.
“Mind showing us an ID?”
“Sure.” He flashed his driver’s license. “Mind if I get back to work?”
“In a minute. We’re looking for Ahmed Jafar.”
“Lemme see if he’s here.” He shut the door.
When it re-opened a moment later, they were met by a gangly young man with pointed features and olive skin. He was wearing a painter’s cap with a Cubs’ logo. His beard was flecked with white droplets. He spoke in unaccented English. “I’m Ahmed Jafar. Peace be upon you.”
“And upon you,” Gold said. “We have news about your Blazer.”
The Terrorist Next Door Page 3