Queens Noir

by Robert Knightly

  She tapped on the door again. Mohammed appeared, glaring at Frankie. "Let her in, my friend. That is what you are here for." Before Frankie could protest, Mohammed opened the door and ushered the woman in. "Hello, my friend," he said to her, taking her hand between both of his. "We have fine selection today. Check it out."

  The woman smiled at him. Frankie noticed she had good white teeth. No gold. The alarm bells clanged in the back of his skull. He looked for Mohammed and spotted him bent over a clothing rack in the back, making a deal with a heavyset lady in a purple pantsuit.

  Frankie tucked his hand in the crook of Mohammed's elbow and pulled the man upright. "I am making deal," Mohammed spit at him. "You go back to door."

  Frankie pulled the man roughly out of the crowd. "I need to talk to you," he hissed. "There's something about that woman that's not right." He indicated the newest arrival by lifting his chin in her direction.

  Mohammed glanced her way. "She is good customer. She has shopped here many times before. You go back to door." He shook Frankie off and lost himself among the shoppers.

  Frankie stood there for a moment, unused to people ignoring him. He headed back to the door, thinking to let Tia Alba know what was going on. She was a businesswoman, yes, but she was also smart. She obviously ran the show, and she would be able to straighten out Ali Baba.

  He whipped out his cell phone, ready to ring her upstairs. Before he could press the button, however, the door flew open. "Police! Put your hands up!" A sea of blue uniforms fanned out, screaming the order a second time in Spanish. "Policia! Manos arriba!"

  As one, the female shoppers let out a high-pitched wail. No doubt they were all illegals worried about being sent back to their countries on a bus. Frankie could have told them not to worry about it. They'd be out of Central Booking and on their way back to their Queens apartments before the cops finished the paperwork for the bust. The women were crying and screaming. All except one. The petite brunette in the flowered vest had whipped out her gun and was herding the others back against the wall.

  He knew it! No one in her right mind would be wearing an extra layer in this heat-unless she needed the vest to conceal her shoulder holster. The vest, plus the fact that she had good teeth, were the clues he'd picked up on subconsciously. He'd known she didn't fit in with the rest of the women. Fat lot of good it had done him.

  He felt a gun pressing in the small of his back. A man yelled, "Hands up!" into his ear.

  "I'm a cop!" he shot back, and reached for his shield.

  "I know who you are," the voice said. Hands reached for his gun and slid it out of his holster. He felt the sweat slide down his sides. Now he was naked.

  "I'm a cop!" he said again. The same hands spun him around.

  "I know who you are," the man repeated.

  Frankie's eyes flew open. "Captain Goatfucker!" He winced at his own stupidity. "Er-ah-I mean, Captain Williams. How the hell are you?"

  "Better than you, Frankie, m'boy," the captain said as he snapped the cuffs around Frankie's wrists. "Better than you."

  "Hey, Williams, whadaya doing here? It's me, Frankie. From the Fearsome Foursome, remember? I'm on your side. One of the good guys." He tried a weak grin.

  "Oh no, Frankie. You done crossed over to the other side a long time ago." Williams shook his head. "My Organized Retail Crime Task Force has been watchin' you, m'boy. We got videotapes, still photos, receipts with your fingerprints on 'em-you name it, we got it. Your ass is fried." He made a kissing noise. "You can kiss that pension goodbye."

  Frankie felt dizzy. "But-but my kids. My wife ..."

  "Tsk, tsk. You should have thought about your family while you were committing fraud."

  Frankie wanted to throw up. The cops were hustling the wailing women out the door. He was gratified to see Mohammed trussed up like a chicken in ankle cuffs and handcuffsthe guy should have known better than to fight a cop, Frankie thought. Meanwhile, he was standing there with his hands behind his back like some two-bit perp. "Come on, Williams. We can work this out. You're a cop, I'm a cop ..."

  "Oh no, that's where you're wrong, Frankie. You're no cop. Not no more. Least, not when we get through with you. I'd say you were the next candidate for protective custody." He squinted at Frankie. "'Less you wanna go straight into population and spend your days playin' Drop the Soap with the Bloods and Crips." He grinned sorrowfully.

  Frankie scrambled frantically for the magic words that would get him out of this mess. "No, hey, look, you came in here to make a bust, I'm a cop, I'm helping you out ..." he tried.

  Williams shook his head. His voice became businesslike. "No good. You're caught, Hernandez. Game over."

  "Williams, please. For old times' sake?" Frankie was disgusted with himself for pleading, but he was out of options.

  Williams gave Frankie a pitiful glance. "I'll tell you what I can do. For old times' sake." Frankie looked at him eagerly. "I'll let you ride in the back of the RMP instead of the van with the rest of the perps."

  Williams handed Frankie over to the small female officer with the vest. "Guzman, bring this one in. Let 'im ride in the back of your car."

  Officer Guzman wrinkled her nose as though smelling something rotting. But all she said was, "Yes, sir."

  As she shoved him out the door, Frankie turned back and yelled, "Fuck you, Goatfucker! Chinga to madre!"

  Guzman clucked her tongue at him. "That's no way to talk. Captain Williams would never do that to his mother. He's a very religious man, you know."

  "I want my delegate!" Frankie snarled. "Call the PBA and tell them to get my delegate down here pronto."

  "Don't worry," Guzman said. "We'll make the call once we get to the precinct." She lowered her voice confidentially. "Although the way I hear it, the delegate's not gonna be able to do much for you. Your wife's already down there, singing like a canary." She glanced sideways at him. "Course, if you wanna tell me about it, I can maybe work out a little something for you."

  Frankie wanted to cry and scream and throw up, all at the same time. How could she think he'd fall for that trick? He'd used it often enough himself-get a perp to talk by pretending his confederate was giving him up. But what if it was true? What if Maria was selling him down the river even while he was being hustled into the backseat of the RMP? He wouldn't put it past her. The blood of generations of corrupt Mexican politicians ran through her veins. She had probably learned how to sell out her partner while other kids were playing hopscotch.

  Within ten minutes, Frankie was being hustled toward an interrogation room in the 115th Precinct. Jackson Heights was just a stone's throw from Woodside, so it didn't take long. As he passed one of the other interrogation rooms, he glanced inside and saw his wife sitting at a table, chatting with a bunch of detectives. Her jacket was draped over her shoulders in defense against the air-conditioning, and she warmed her hands around a steaming paper cup of coffee.

  "Maria, you bitch!" he screamed as he passed the window.

  Guzman shoved him into the next room and plunked him into a hard chair. "You wanna tell me about it?" she asked, pulling out a notebook.

  "You bet," Frankie said. "It was all her idea."

  Guzman held up her hand. "You sure you don't want to wait for your delegate before you talk to me? You don't want me to Mirandize you?"

  "Hell no!" Frankie replied. He missed the small smile that curled up at the corner of Guzman's mouth for a fleeting moment.

  "Okay, then," she said. "Go ahead. I'm listening."

  Officer Guzman opened the door to the neighboring interrogation room. "Thanks for coming down and waiting, Maria," she said. "I'm sorry. It doesn't look too good for Frankie. He's confessed to a lot of crimes, and he didn't wait for his delegate before he talked."

  Maria shook her head. "My father told me not to marry him, but I thought I knew better. What am I going to tell the kids?"

  Guzman patted her hand. "I know it looks tough now, but you'll make it through. Can you take your children to your parents
' house tonight? It's only a matter of time before the press comes knocking on your door."

  "That's a good idea, thanks. Does Frankie want to see me now?"

  "I don't think that would be for the best. You can see him once he's booked."

  Maria stood up. "Well. Thanks for everything."

  "You're welcome. And it will all work out. You'll see."

  You bet it will, Maria thought.

  As she slid behind the wheel of her car, she mentally ran through the contents of her home office. She had packed up the laptop, scanner, and printer and stashed them in the trunk of her car as soon as Roberta Guzman called. She'd had a mental escape plan in place since the day she and Frankie had gotten involved in what she thought of as "refunding for profit."

  Her family and Roberta's had been close for at least two generations, but the two women hadn't seen each other very often since Roberta went on the job. She had let Maria know that she would have to take a step back because she was going to play it straight. (Roberta's family had treated her like the proverbial black sheep-What's wrong with the girl that she isn't open to taking bribes? How could we have gone so wrong?)

  Maria only pretended to understand her friend's choices. She heard about Roberta's successes in the department through her parents and aunts and uncles, but like her relatives, she always puzzled over why her longtime friend would work harder than she had to.

  Well, no matter. She'd held Roberta's marker from when they were teenagers. Maria held the key to a moment of youthful indiscretion on Roberta's part, and Roberta owed her for keeping her mouth shut. She knew she'd collect on it someday, but she'd always hoped it would be for something bigger than this harmless little scam.

  She fingered the tickets in her handbag. Tomorrow morning at 6 a.m., she and the kids were taking off for a long-overdue vacation to visit relatives in Mexico. Depending on what happened with Frankie, she might just stay there.

  NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

  August 30, 2006

  Jackson Heights, N.Y.-Roberta Guzman, an NYPD spokeswoman, revealed today that Francisco Hernandez, the police officer who was arrested last month on multiple counts of fraud and was to be prosecuted under the Federal RICO (Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations) statute for conspiring with al-Qaeda terrorists to resell stolen merchandise as part of a fundraising scheme, has committed suicide while in protective custody at the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center. "Mr. Hernandez appears to have wound a bedsheet around the top bunk in his cell and used it to strangle himself," Guzman reported at a press conference late yesterday afternoon.

  Other members of the alleged fraud ring include Alba Terremoto, Pedro Volcan, and Mohammed al-Yakub, who is also suspected of having links to al-Qaeda and is charged with funneling profits from illegally sold merchandise into terrorist activities.

  JIHAD SUCKS; OR, THE

  CONVERSION OF THE JEWS

  BY JILLIAN ABBOTT

  Richmond Hill

  amzi Saleh wondered how this nation had become the most powerful in the world. The despicable little urchins who turned up to harass him at Richmond Hill High, where he taught math to ninth graders, were indifferent to his lessons. They cheated him of his time on earth.

  It was with no little pleasure that he contemplated being an instrument of their demise, those cocksure boys and strutting girls. Now that winter had set in and the sidewalks were treacherous with ice, he was spared the exposed flesh that assaulted him every warm day. What sort of parents let their daughters out wearing less than what would pass for acceptable underwear at home? And the boys were little better. He found their lack of modesty and wayward attitudes blasphemous.

  Ramzi pulled the collar of his overcoat tight against a biting wind. Above him, the 7 train rattled by, its brakes screeching as it pulled into the Roosevelt Avenue station. Beneath his feet the sidewalk trembled. Two levels underground, a subway train, maybe the E he'd just gotten off, was pulling up or leaving.

  He knew no one here, at least not in person. He kept walking, and soon caught a whiff of fennel as he approached his destination: the pawn seller on 74th Street. It seemed that Satan himself had a hand in his being here. How else could he explain the impulse that had propelled him to the E train? He told himself that he was going to pray, but when he got to Sutphin Boulevard, instead of leaving the station and making his way along Jamaica Avenue toward Azis's mosque tucked away on 146th Street, he'd raced onto the E, which brought him straight here to Roosevelt Avenue, Jackson Heights.

  This neighborhood meant peril. At how many points along the way could he have abandoned his quest and gone to Azis's, or even home to Liberty Avenue? But now his destination was Little India. He stopped outside the paan shop. Why not? He'd resisted for as long as he could, but the first time he'd slid the paan inside his cheek to an explosion of flavor, he'd known he was lost.

  He was supposed to avoid his countrymen and spend his time among the gora. Not that Richmond Hill was Infidel Central. But many of the Asians there were West Indians who had lived in the Caribbean for generations before coming to America. The neighborhood was mixed, not exclusive, and while the roti shops had few rivals, the paan could not compete. He should take it home. He should eat it unobserved in his recliner, but he couldn't.

  At times it seemed to Ramzi that America offered nothing but temptation. Could a man be wise, let alone moral, living among such sirens? Was his sophisticated Jackson Heights palate evidence that the Great Satan had corrupted him? Perhaps he should buy two paan? One for now, and one he could put in the fridge for after dinner.

  As he pressed toward the paan seller, his worst fear was realized: He recognized a man ahead of him in the line. They had been at camp together in Afghanistan. The fellow licked his lips and inched closer to the booth as if mesmerized by the vendor's red-gummed grin and nimble fingers as he smeared red kathha and chuna on a fresh betel leaf. The veins in Ramzi's neck throbbed. Even if the fellow recognized him, they would not acknowledge each other.

  His breath quickened. Their time at camp was long ago, and he wondered if this man was part of the same mission? He knew little about his task other than that he was to assimilate and wait. On that glorious day of victory, when, with the rest of the world, he'd watched the Twin Towers fall, he'd hoped his time among the infidels would end. But it was not to be.

  The man from camp took his paan, looked around with the sly delight of a thief, and, using his thumb, thrust it inside his cheek and disappeared into the throng.

  The pawn seller remembered Ramzi. "Meetha pawn, no coconut," he said, his eyes bright with the pride of a man who knows his customers.

  Despite his inward panic at being known, Ramzi smiled and nodded. "How do you do it?" he asked. "Every time, your paan is delicious."

  "It is all in the balance of chuna and kathha," the pawn seller said, rolling his head from side to side as he smeared a leaf with his special masala.

  The proportion of betel nut to lime paste was crucial to a good paan, but Ramzi came to this fellow for his perfect masala-no one around mixed the spices and chutneys quite like he did. Now he behaved as if Ramzi was one of his regulars. Was that good or bad? To leave one or two footprints might be for the best. Ramzi imagined the Queens Chronicle story following his mission ... They'd quote this man. A paan seller on 74th Street described Ramzi Saleh as a polite man, quiet and predictable. "He loved my meetha paan, but it was always, `Hold the coconut."' Ramzi smiled to himself. Not a bad epitaph.

  He stuffed the folded packet inside his cheek and turned toward the street to watch the bustle of rush-hour traffic nudge by. The heady smells of curry leaves, cardamom, and incense wafted from the many restaurants and swirled around him. In his time at Richmond Hill High, he had not met one child-well, there was one-who was grateful for the education his cover required him to provide. His teaching was scrupulously average, he knew. His biggest challenge: to remain invisible.

  He had a talent for teaching. He had been plucked from the rubble of an eart
hquake, all his parents' properties ruined, and had been educated by the charity of the Great Satan itself. But it had promised and not delivered. Before the earthquake his family had been among the wealthiest in the village; afterwards they had nothing. When the American aid workers left, he was no longer hungry and ignorant, he was hungry and educated.

  When the mujahideen entered his village in western Pakistan as they fled the Russians, he had seen fear in the village elders' eyes. He had vowed to teach all who wished to learn, so that no Pakistani would ever again know ignorance and hunger, but he was still hungry himself, as were all his pupils. He craved to be the cause of that fear he saw in his elders-he saw the respect it inspired. From the day he joined the jihad, he lost the knowledge of hunger. That was nearly twenty years ago.

  Saliva stimulated by the paan built in his mouth and he spat a stream of red liquid onto the sidewalk. Behind him a door opened and Hindi music spilled out to compete with the sounds of traffic. Ramzi's nose twitched at the blasphemy. Bloody Hindus with their Devil's music, idolatry, and fuzzy logic. There is no God but Allah. Praise be to Allah. And yet lounging in the street, chewing paan, and feeling contemptuously superior to Hindus brought a deep comfort and satisfaction to Ramzi. Oddly, it was like going home-his real home, not the squat little one-bedroom, eat-in-kitchen apartment on 115th Street off Liberty Avenue. There were Hindus in Richmond Hill, but not nearly so many. He lingered to drink in the sights of brazen, sari-clad Hindu whores, their faces fully exposed to him, and to the world.

  Allah is merciful. He led Ramzi to Azis. Azis had helped him find the righteous path. At the training camp he had learned the art of destruction. The American education taught him that he would always be less than they were. When the time came he would play his part.

  The earthquake had taken everything from his parents and denied him his future as a landowner. But this loss left him free for jihad. In due course, the Americans would lose their livelihoods. Husbands would lose wives, though Ramzi wondered if that would cause them pain. He doubted it. In this godforsaken nation, whores were elevated and virtuous women despised. A young girl in salwar-kameez skipped by clutching her mother's hand. Something about her brought back the image of his laughing sister the day before the kitchen collapsed on her, and a sharp pain stabbed at his chest as if someone had slammed a knife into his heart. Soon their sisters would be taken away: a mass of bloody, twisted bodies and tangled limbs all that remained.