He knew he had an exceptional ability to remember what he had read and heard. He could listen to a piece of music once or twice and hear it note for note in his head for a very long time afterwards. His friends back home called his memory a gift from God. One of his brothers had complained about this unfair advantage in school, when he’d invariably come home with poorer grades and notes about behavior from his teachers. Now Father Moody called it a photographic memory, like a camera, and noted that Elias must be full of useful information.
Father Moody made a note of Elias Haddad’s photographic memory in his files, and wrote that the boy would be a gold mine, a treasure trove of the kind of information his handlers desired. But after weeks of prodding and prying, he came to the dismaying conclusion that Elias knew nothing worth writing down. Usually, the men shipped out of the country were more politically connected, or at least politically astute. None of the information promised by his Syriac compatriot in Aleppo seemed forthcoming. Something had gone wrong.
Elias was grateful. Even if Father Moody wasn’t the friendliest man, his help was invaluable. Life on Chicago’s north side was fascinating, even though he’d almost been run down in the streets several times and he found it was too easy to be separated from his money. A cup of coffee was exorbitantly priced, not to mention weak and tasteless. He was enthralled by the revealing styles and colorful clothes women wore. He was almost overwhelemed by the posters and billboards. In Aleppo, most ancient buildings and new were built of stone or painted in muted tones as if they were extensions of the rocky landscape. In contrast, everything in America was big and bright. The pace alone often made
Elias feel like he was standing still.
In the first weeks after his arrival, Father Moody would invite Elias in to his office after dinner, always asking questions in his high-nasally voice, phrasing them in different ways as he grew more and more frustrated with Elias’s answers. The priest would pace around the room, forefinger and thumb rubbing his nostrils, grunting with displeasure with each “I’m sorry, but I don’t know” Elias offered. Or he would sit and rub his rounded belly with both hands, twirling a rosary, or swinging his leg like it might come unhinged at the knee, and pose the same questions about government officials, leaders of different religious groups, members of different political factions. “I’m sorry, but I do not know,” Elias said again and again.
Finally, one evening, Father Moody slammed a fist on his desk. “Did you think you were sent over to me for your good health?”
“What do you mean, good health?”
“Your father and I, we had a deal. My job is to gather information about the home country.”
“Information? For what purpose?”
“For many purposes.” The priest paused and shook his head at the useless young man. “Example: I write a chapter about Syria for an American encyclopedia company.”
Elias couldn’t even pronounce the word.
“What is this type of company?”
“They make large books with information about many things in the world. It is like a dictionary, but about important people, places, and events. Things you apparently know nothing about.”
The strain between the priest and the boy became overbearing. Moody needed to focus his efforts on others. He needed to unload Elias and replace him with someone who could provide information his handlers expected. Chicago was heavily unionized and it was difficult for immigrants who knew little English to break through in the factories, but since Elias liked automobiles so much, Father Moody looked into getting him a job as a cab driver.
Taxi drivers occupied a unique place in Chicago. They weren’t unionized, nor were they city employees. They were independent contractors. Father Moody tapped his network of contacts, but no one wanted to hire a boy fresh off the boat. “It will take him forever to learn the city,” they’d say even as Father Moody talked up Elias’s photographic memory. Even Moody’s handlers couldn’t help. If Elias Haddad wasn’t useful, they couldn’t be bothered.
The nearest location he could get Elias on was in Joliet. Fine, Elias said, whatever would make his father’s friend happy was okay with him. He wanted to work, wanted to earn his own money so maybe he could go to college. Besides, his fascination with the hustle and bustle of Chicago was wearing off.
Father Moody found Elias a small flat near the cab company’s headquarters in downtown Joliet, so he could walk to work if need be. He would be close enough Moody could keep tabs on him, yet far enough he wouldn’t get in the way of cultivating more resourceful young men from the home country.
Elias felt guilty that he was so glad to be away from Father Moody. He liked his freedom, and spent time in the public library, studying street maps of Joliet and learning more about America. But he was often lonely. He missed his family and the courtyard full of cousins that appeared each week after church services. Then, several weeks into his new job, he dropped off a fare near a store that sold electronic gadgets of every type—cameras, tape recorders, even telescopes and binoculars—and had promptly parked, gone inside, and purchased a small transistor radio. After that, he listened to the classical radio station with an announcer who spoke low and serious in between the music selections, but also listened to baseball games, pop radio stations, and the news. His radio kept him company. And it didn’t ask him any questions he couldn’t answer.
41
July, 2012
Holly’s Halfway House Gallery was almost ready. Construction had moved swiftly after Penndel enlisted a buddy he’d met in the VA hospital, a retired Seabee, who then enlisted a few more of his buddies. “The difficult we do now, the impossible takes a little longer,” the guys had claimed, and Holly learned that the ad hoc naval construction battalion lived up to its name. With the backing of the Veranda Law Firm credit card, the place was built out in no time.
They’d acquired three used freight shipping containers, like the ones stacked up at ports around the world, and connected them together to form a T. One was oriented perpendicular to the other two to serve as the entrance, the other two placed side by side horizontally, as the main display rooms. Used insulation panels were then hung on the metal walls and finished with thin wallboard.
Portable generators provided electricity for now. They cut walls and doors and windows with blowtorches, then re-welded the sides of the container together. Besides the containers, which came in on a flat bed truck, the crew managed to move everything they needed with either a small Bobcat front loader, or one of the guys’ trucks.
It wasn’t equipped with state-of-the-art humidity and climate control, but they weren’t planning on hanging Picassos or Renoirs. Hell, they didn’t even have running water, although they did have a porta potty out back. Contemplating how to spruce up the entry way, Holly stood, hands on hips, staring at the front door,
“Ma’am?”
“Holly turned to see a couple of men standing at the edge of the museum property.
“Yes? What can I do for you?”
One of the men stepped forward and held out his hand. Holly took it and gave it a firm shake. “We were told not to bother you folks,” the man said, looking behind her at the museum. “We understand your land is under private jurisdiction, but curiosity got the best of us.”
His accent reminded her of Smitty in Cairo and made her like him immediately. “It’s a little museum; an art gallery.”
“Art gallery? This ain’t exactly an ideal location, is it?”
Both men gave her the once-over, stopping on her breasts, like virtually every man she’d ever met.
“Well, maybe if we build it, they will come,” she said, low, as if divulging a secret.
“Who will come?”
Obviously her joke had fallen flat. “People who want to see our museum.”
“Good luck with that.”
“We’re going to apply for one of the signs you see off the interstate, you know, historical markers, landmarks, cultural sites, that sort of thing.” Her comm
ent didn’t change the man’s puzzled look.
The other man, broad-shouldered and square-jawed, spoke up. “You folks are probably dealing with a lot less red tape than we are. Hell, you’ll probably get your sign before we open our doors. Lots of red tape building a retirement home for jihadis.”
“Retirement home,” Holly said with a confused look. “Is that what you’re calling it?”
“Those folks aint goin’ nowhere fast, that’s for sure. Probably spend their dyin’ days right here in Saluki.”
She shivered at the thought of dying behind bars.
The square-jawed man nodded toward her. “You oughtta be wearing a hard hat, little lady, protect that pretty head of yours.”
“And you oughtta attend the opening of our museum. We’re featuring regional artists working in their craft today,” she said with a laugh. “This museum is for living artists, not famous dead ones.” Holly said. She’d said it so often that John told her she should inscribe that above the entrance. “Maybe we’ll even see if we can arrange to do a prison art show. So those retired jihadis of yours can experience a little culture. Maybe even do a painting class.” She’d been tossing that idea around, but that was the first time she’d said it aloud. She liked the sound of it.
“I don’t know,” the first man said. “Doubt you’ve got big enough scissors to cut through the red tape to make that happen.”
“We’ll see.” Holly said. She’d made this project come to life and, for the first time in her life felt like, with a little help from her friends, she could accomplish anything.
42
October, 2012
Holly woke early, toasted two slices of bread, buttered them, slathered on some strawberry jam, and shoved them into her mouth, checking the contents of her purse on the way out the door. She examined herself in the rearview mirror, breathed deep enough for air to penetrate to the tips of her toes, and drove the few blocks to the town square, parking in the lot behind John’s office. His car wasn’t there yet, but she knew he wouldn’t be far behind.
It was probably silly to drive when she could walk the distance in ten minutes, but having her car close by gave her a sense of security. Like she could jump in and escape if she needed to. And from her parking space she could just see the bench where the man usually sat. It was still empty. After their initial encounter four years ago, she’d noticed him several times, but had avoided him like the plague. He gave her the creeps.
Vernon Meracle. That’s the name Stuart Eisenstat had given John. Was he really Father Moody? Right here in Saluki? Stuart said he was, but Holly needed her own proof. She needed to see him, compare him to the man she’d once known. Slouched down in her seat, her face partially concealed by a baseball cap, she waited for him to show. She tried to think through her next actions, step by step, how to approach him without startling him, how to position herself to take the photo with enough good light that his features were easily identifiable. Should she first say something to him, about their earlier encounter, pretend to take a photo of something behind him? Or ambush him, get the photo, and run?
John had wanted to take the photo for her, but if there was any chance the man was connected to her father’s disappearance like Stuart said, she wanted to be the one to take it. She needed to satisfy herself.
John hadn’t even wanted to tell her about Meracle/Moody, hadn’t wanted to raise her hopes that she’d finally find out something about her father’s disapparance. But she could tell something had been bothering him for weeks. The closer she came to finishing the Halfway House and the more she talked of trying to get some programs started for the prisoners when the detention center opened, the weirder he’d become.
Then finally, he spilled the news. He’d had Stuart digging into her father’s disappearance ever since he figured out she was the poor girl who’d pinned her hopes on an eager senatorial aide. “I wasn’t able to find out a damn thing back then,” he’d said, “but Stuart’s got a whole different level of connections.” God, it was such a crazy world. She couldn’t believe it when she found out John’s friend was the same guy who’d shown up at her bar in Cairo. And now he thought this old man on a park bench watching the Islamic Information Center was her father’s Father Moody.
Unbelievable.
She gripped the steering wheel. If it was true, she didn’t know what she’d do. She picked the camera up again. It was Kathy’s. John had loaned her his wife’s digital camera. “It’s the highest resolution digital out there,” he’d said. “Just point and click.” Or point and pull. Her pistol was tucked in her purse, loaded, the safety on.
It was already past 8:00 a.m. The man was nowhere to be seen. Stupidly, she realized he probably didn’t sit on the same bench every time. She got out of her car, and for no good reason, shut the car door quietly. The only thing that gave any sense of reality to this moment was recalling similar scenes from television or movies. And those weren’t real.
She rounded the corner and walked toward the park. And then she saw him, sitting with legs crossed, a cigarette between his lips. Each step she took reminded her she probably didn’t look nearly as nonchalant as she wanted to appear. Every crack in the pavement, every weed growing out of them, caught her attention. Her anxiety heightened as she got closer. Even though she wasn’t doing anything illegal, her heart beat as if the sirens were already singing and red and blue lights were strobing around her.
About twenty yards away, she stopped within his view, leaned back and pretended to be framing a shot of an old tree. Then she looked around and pretended to be surprised to see the man.
“Well, hey there,” she said, cheerfully, as if she had just recognized him. “I remember you.”
The man countered her greeting with a grunt. “What brings you back? You a shutterbug now?”
“Just interested in the view. The fading colors of fall. Those last few leaves hanging on for dear life, you know? Just another day in paradise before they drop for good.”
Holly wanted to believe the man was turning the phrase over in his mind. She couldn’t be sure, but she thought she detected the moment when familiarity hit home. She pounced. “My father used to say, ‘Another day in paradise’ all the time.”
“Is that right?” The man’s brows furrowed and he uncrossed his legs and sat forward.
“He loved the fall colors. Elias Haddad. He’s been missing since ’73. You ever had someone go missing like that?”
She could sense his muscles tense, the emotions move across his face like ripples. “You best make a quick retreat out of here,” he growled. “I don’t think there’s room for two on this bench today.”
“Last I checked, it was a public park.” She positioned her five-foot frame in front of him and held the camera as if setting up a shot of the courthouse behind him. “Besides, I’m just an amateur photographer out to catch that elusive perfect picture. Maybe today’s the day I finally get what I’m looking for.”
The man started to rise. He didn’t look agile, but his legs were much longer than Holly’s.
“Don’t make life difficult for yourself. Get the hell out of here.” His body began to uncoil and move toward her. Then suddenly he was looming over her, hand outstretched toward the camera. He batted it to the ground as she yelped and took a step back.
He bent to pick it up, and Holly stuck her hand into her purse. When he looked back up, he was staring into the barrel of a gun. With her arm braced snug against her side, she motioned for him to sit back down. He didn’t move.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she said. “If you run, I’ll scream that you assaulted me. I’m on the town council now. I know the police chief, and my friend is an attorney. Neither one of them will take kindly to having a town official attacked right here near the county courthouse.”
The man slowly sank back onto the bench.
With both her gaze and her gun trained on him, she bent at the knees and picked up the camera. “Make a move and you’ll not only fuck up my pictures,
” she said, “but you’ll end up getting a different sort of picture taken down at the emergency room. And then at the police station. And mug shots never turn out well.” She wrinkled her nose in distaste as she positioned the camera with her left hand, looked through the lens, and hit the shutter button. She may have snapped three times. She may have snapped thirty. She was too nervous to count.
“Okay, I think we’re done here,” she said, keeping her voice as conversational as possible. “My mom was a cop, you know. And I’ve had this little friend,” she waved the gun slightly, “since I was in high school. Been going to a shooting range for years. The moral of this personal story is that you are not to move a muscle until I am out of this park. If I see you move, you’ll need to be tended to by one of Saluki’s first responders.” She pointed over his shoulders. “Police station is just a few blocks away. But I’m sure you know that.”
Her hands were shaking when she strode in the back door of John’s office and started talking. Before she was done, he shot out of his chair. “YOU DID WHAT? For God’s sake, Holly, you can’t pull a gun on someone in the middle of the city park! What if he reports you?”
“He’s not going to report me.” She handed over the camera and told him word for word what was said. John connected the camera to his laptop and downloaded the images. He picked two of the best, printed them, and then attached the the jpegs to an email to Penndel. Penndel said he had a friend who could flow them through facial recognition software that could project what a person might look like in thirty years—or what he looked like thirty years before. Stuart insisted all this wasn’t necessary, that he already had enough confirmation Meracle and Moody were one and the same. But Holly needed more than Stuart’s word.
The Moment Before Page 30