“Hey, man. Where you been?”
“Around. Maybe they let you sign out and play federale. Not me. Homicide is a real job. Remember those days? People keep killing each other. You know how it is.”
“Yeah, well, you didn’t miss much,” I said.
“Not what I heard, bro.”
“Yeah, well, it all made sense, until it didn’t. The casket was unexpected, and the timing was perfect. I didn’t think we could let it go.”
“No question about that. You did the right thing. The fucked-up part is no one else thought to check it out. That scares the hell out of me. Fucking feds.” Deuce was loving it, and he made me feel better in the bargain.
“I just happened to be there. They would have stopped the SUV at the gate,” I said.
“Bullshit,” Deuce countered, more emphatically than necessary.
“Don’t get worked up. They know their jobs as well as we do ours. We don’t exactly have a zero-defects police force.” Deuce made a few faces and fidgeted a bit. We had worn the topic out.
“You going to be here for a while?”
“Yeah,” Deuce answered. “Till the last flight. You?”
I gave him my Virgin speech, and he seemed to agree with the logic. I asked if he would give us a ride home, but he said he was going to stay through the schedule.
“I don’t get it,” I said. “You just agreed that the Virgin flight is the only one that made sense, and then you say you’ll hang around after it clears. What’s that about?”
“I have a bad feeling that we are missing something.”
“Deuce,” I said loudly, “we are missing everything. Where have you been?”
“No, not just the threat. The whole package doesn’t make sense to me. Maybe if I hang around, I can make some sense of the parts.”
“Like what?” I asked.
“Ah . . . I’m not ready to say. Not yet.”
“Jesus, man, you can tell me. I just had a hunch and screwed up air traffic in half the country for nothing. I won’t laugh at you.”
“Nah. Not yet.”
I wasn’t curious enough to press the issue, and I needed alone time for thinking. I don’t really mean alone—it’s impossible to be alone at JFK—just away from people I knew and situations with the potential to stir up conversation. I was all talked out. I knew I wasn’t quite myself, and wandering alone was good therapy. It had always been that way with me. I was never able to follow my train of thought interrupted by civil conversation. It was a minor disability, but it probably made me seem either dumb or aloof. Some switch in my head couldn’t be thrown tightly enough to shut out the noise of conversation for me to follow an idea through to the end.
Despite the best intentions of the developers, Terminal 4 is terminally boring. It’s the nature of the beast. Airports are about convenience and conveyance. Anything that serves thousands of occasional travelers in a hurry cannot serve the needs of the constant occupant. At Terminal 4, the Transit Authority partnered with the operators of Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam to build and operate the steel-and-glass behemoth, in a deal financed by Lehman Brothers. If that trifecta doesn’t sound exactly promising, imagine spending all day there. I couldn’t look at another Euro-luxury alcove peddling junk they couldn’t sell in the city. Magazine covers began to look alike. Fast food smelled like it tasted. Amazingly, I wasn’t hungry at all. Maybe the whole list lumped into a diagnosis I wouldn’t like to hear, but I was a little down.
I zoned out and began a time line in my head. I imagined a chalkboard within reach, and I could add and erase like a math teacher. I might even have been waving my hands and talking to myself. As I made the turn around the central seating area, I thought I saw a familiar face in the passing crowd, but it was difficult to separate from what was playing on the screen in my head. A man in a hat, a baseball cap. I followed the back of his head for some seconds but couldn’t crank up the proper synapse. Either he didn’t want to acknowledge me, or he hadn’t known me, or maybe he didn’t see me. Traffic on my side of the seating was sparse, and I must have stood out as the only man strolling along without luggage, sporting a plastic ID around his neck, and clearly in his own world. Whatever had clicked disappeared equally quickly as I lost sight of the man in the hat.
The moment was ruined, and I couldn’t get back to my chalkboard. I did another lap in vain and couldn’t recover the mood. I was drawn back deeply enough into the real world to notice the Häagen-Dazs stand a few steps to my right. True to my normal state, I bought a lethal-looking coffee bar with chocolate praline coating. I got very little change back from a $10 bill, and I made up for the outrageous price by loading up on napkins. I scanned the area and sat in the closest, relatively clean seat with no immediate neighbors. The process of opening the ice cream bar consumed my attention, and the first bite was fabulous. Actually, the second was equally enjoyable until a large section of chocolate coating took flight, evaded my patchwork quilt of napkins, and landed square and flat on the front of my gray pants.
“God damn it.”
“God damn what? Baby made a mess?” I hadn’t noticed Alison, who was standing in front of me, laughing.
“Shit.” I took another very aggressive bite—the damage had been done—and handed the ice cream stick to Alison.
“Have a ball. I need to clean up.” I did a poor job of prying the large chocolate flake off my pants, smearing the melting edges into the fabric. Alison held the stick daintily, her right pinky finger extended like she was drinking tea. She started nibbling away at the remaining ice cream while I went off to the men’s room across the hall. I folded over one of the crude paper towels from the washroom roll, soaked it with water, pumped a shot of hand soap in the middle, and did the best I could on the chocolate stain. Then I headed over to the rank of urinals. My father was always heading off to the men’s facility—that’s what he called it—saying, “A smart man never passes up the men’s facility; you never know when the next opportunity will come.” I was becoming my father. I rearranged myself and zipped up, and saw the enormous wet spot covering the front of my left upper pant leg. I considered undressing and holding my wet pants up to the hot-air hand-dryer, but that was way too geeky to contemplate, and I decided to bite the bullet and face the stares. As it turned out, no one cared.
53
And then the lightbulb flashed. “Alison,” I said. “I think I saw Rodriguez out on the concourse. At least it was some guy that looked a lot like him. He was wearing a dark blue baseball cap, and I couldn’t be quite sure. I just didn’t expect to see him here and didn’t make the connection in time.”
“I didn’t see him. Why would Rodriguez be here?” Alison asked.
I didn’t have a good answer for that. In fact, I had no answer, so I let it slide. Alison looked around, doing a complete three-sixty.
“Maybe it wasn’t him,” I said. “I’m not sure.”
“I would wager that is the case. And he surely would have seen you as well and had something to say. Forget Mr. Rodriguez. The man is a bad memory.”
“Amen,” I said. But I wasn’t convinced.
We walked slowly back through the concourse, both of us keeping a sharp eye out. We walked through the disorganized mess of drivers and relatives outside the automatic doors separating it from the insulated world of customs. From there into the Homeland station. There was very little going on and nearly an hour before the next arrival. Deuce was nowhere in sight, and the agents in the room were more concerned with eating than watching the screens. In truth, there was nothing happening. I had an attack of heavy eyelids and needed to nod off for a few minutes. Sometimes the only alternative to sleep is a sudden jolt of adrenaline. When the roadside grass and trees meld into a blur of green, nothing will prevent sleep. And the first rumble of a tire on the shoulder jolts you to full alert, and the adrenaline cures any further sleepiness. Or you could stop driving, pull over, and fall asleep. I was there. I pulled out one of the uncomfortable metal chairs around the tab
le, kind of slid down into it, and was snoring before I could readjust my feet. I was unconscious for better than ten minutes when Alison kicked my shoes.
“Let’s do it. The 009 is coming in early.”
“Oh . . . thank you. Man, I fell off.”
“Indeed you did. Rise and shine.”
I stood, stretched my arms overhead. With a little bit of difficulty, I touched my toes three times, readjusted my jacket, and smoothed down my hair. I must have been pretty disheveled, but my pants were almost dry.
Most of the base group moved to the screens and watched the 747-400 dock gracefully at gate 6 in concourse A, and then came the stampede to the arrivals hall. In the end the passengers would still wait for their bags. Philos had had two men pulled off the arriving baggage crew to give his people extra time to mingle and examine the irate passengers, and there was no reason to rush. In reality, there never was. We followed their progress on the screens as they snaked through the corridors, down the stairs, and into the hall.
“Let’s go and see them,” I said. Alison agreed without speaking. The remainder of the Homeland and ICE people had gone off to their assigned posts, and we wandered onto the floor of the hall. We were on site for fewer than three minutes, and both lines were already beginning to take shape. I was as focused as I could be, knowing that this was an exercise in futility. They would not be risking interrogation and search. They were going to go around us.
“There’s nothing here for us. Let’s go onto the plane.”
“Why?” Alison asked.
I had no explanation and no patience. I just knew I should go there. “Stay if you want to. I’m going onto the plane.” Alison hesitated and then reluctantly followed me out of the hall, reversing the steps taken by the disembarking passengers. Initially, we were swimming upstream as the stragglers, three and four abreast, were working their way to the arrivals hall.
“Excuse me, pardon us. Sorry.” The last significant cluster was older people walking slowly alongside as their companions in wheelchairs were pushed by attendants.
“Stop,” I said. Holding up my identity card in my left hand and making the universal sign for stop with my right. A single chair had passed us, occupied by a bent older woman with wisps of unnaturally black hair protruding from the sides of a baseball cap. There was an eight- or nine-year-old girl at her side. I followed their progress with my eyes. When they continued past us not stopping, Alison made a move to go after them, but I restrained her. Watching and waiting did not seem much of a risk to take, especially since I really didn’t know what had clicked for that brief moment.
We focused on the remaining chair-bound passengers and their attendants. There were five in all. They did not question our authority, and we did not interrogate them. In fact, we didn’t speak to them at all. Just systematically took stock of what we were dealing with. With one exception, the passengers were Anglo and appeared infirm. The exception was a man in his forties, bearing a long leg cast on the extended-left-leg platform of the chair. From the look of it, the cast was relatively new. It was clean and white and free of graffiti. He wore an unpolished black shoe on his right foot, black pants, a long black coat, and wide-brimmed black felt hat. His beard was untrimmed and barely speckled with gray. White fringe, which I took to be religious apparatus, was visible at his waist. He eyed us warily and made a halfhearted attempt at a smile. The attendant behind the chair was young. No more than twenty-five, dark, and maybe Indian or Pakistani. I didn’t like the way this looked. Alison made her way behind the wheelchair attendant while I dismissed the others. Orthodox apparatus was a not-infrequent ruse in Israeli suicide attacks, and it wouldn’t get a free pass here.
We waited until the others were out of earshot, and I approached the man in the chair. “Good evening, sir,” I said. “I am with the special Homeland Security Task Force. I would like to ask you some questions. May I see your passport?”
The man made a quick motion with his right hand into his black suit coat. I reached forward and grabbed his arm before he could withdraw it. The attendant made a move toward us, and Alison closed in from behind, spun him around, and pushed him, face-forward, into the long, gray wall decorated with WELCOME TO AMERICA. She quickly had his arm twisted unnaturally toward his scapula, and he yelped in pain. He was effectively neutralized, and she turned her head around so she could watch the action.
“Take your hand out of your jacket very slowly,” I said, working my way behind the wheelchair. The bearded man did as he was told. He withdrew an empty right hand from within his jacket and raised both arms over his head in the position of a supplicant. I ran my hands over his upper body and hips, then reached into his left inside coat pocket and removed a United States passport. Working it open with my fingers, I matched the picture to the bearded face of Richard Alan Sheinbaum. Entry stamps were confined to the U. S., The Netherlands, Israel, and the UK.
I circled the chair and returned the passport.
“When did you injure your leg, Mr. Sheinbaum?”
“Yesterday, no, now two days ago. A little fracture and a cast, so I can’t walk. Stupid, very stupid, but the doctors in London are very nice. And it’s all free. We should take a lesson from them.”
“What is your business, Mr. Sheinbaum?”
The fact that Sheinbaum didn’t have an accent kept throwing me. Somehow I continued to confuse fundamentalist and foreign. These were fundamentalists, my co-religionist fundamentalists, and I was only slightly more comfortable with him than any of the other religious extremists.
“I am a diamond dealer. You can see from the passport, and these.” He began to reach into his waistband and I tensed again. He sensed my reaction.
“May I?” he asked. And without waiting for an answer, he brought out a small velvet sack with a snap closure. He held it out to me. I took it in my right hand. “Open it.” I did. “Shake them out.” I did. Half a dozen beautifully cut, lively, sparkling diamonds tumbled into my hand.
“Wow. Beautiful.” Alison craned her neck to see what was going on, without releasing the pressure on her captive. I replaced the stones, handed the bag to Sheinbaum, finished patting him down, apologized for stopping him, and did the same to Alison’s captive.
“Hey, man, I know what’s going on. Just doing your job. Me, too.” He was smiling at us and massaging his shoulder.
“Let’s get going,” Sheinbaum called out to him, and they began to make their way down the long corridor. We had spent fewer than five minutes in the exchange with Sheinbaum, but that was all it took for the corridor to clear of passengers. Airline staffers were standing on the Jetway near the aircraft door. The flight crew was long gone. In fact, two of the flight attendants, probably the last two, passed as we were questioning Sheinbaum. They never broke stride. See no evil, and get to town. A three-man cleaning crew pushed past us, dragging trash bags and supplies, wearing headphones, and paying no attention to us, nor, apparently, to anything but their music. We followed them to the aircraft door where we were stopped by airline ground crew. I showed my identification, as did Alison, but the woman, a slip of a person with a stunningly working-class British accent, would not let us pass.
“Sorry, guv, this plane is out of service. Crew only.”
Explaining our mission to deaf ears got us nowhere.
Alison took over. “Listen up, you dumb tart, I order you out of our path,” she growled, and pulled a nine-millimeter Beretta automatic from behind her back.
“Put that away,” I ordered. I was thinking “Where the hell did you get that?” but didn’t say it. I read the nameplate on the woman’s uniform. When I looked up at her face, there were tears in her eyes, but she was not yet audibly crying. “Sorry about this, Peggy. Please call your supervisor and advise him that two Homeland Security Task Force agents request permission to board the aircraft.”
“Her,” Peggy snapped, trying to regain self-importance. I was ready to tear her goddamned head off.
“Just call her. I am losing
my patience.”
“Step back please, sir.”
We did. And she keyed her radio. I turned my back to her and faced Alison. “Why didn’t you tell me you had a gun?” I was angry. It wasn’t simply carryover, I was furious with Alison for deceiving me yet again. “And how did you get the damned thing in here?”
“Wendell, relax. I am acting in my capacity as an anti-terrorist agent. This is what we do. I am trained and competent.”
“Bullshit. Put it away and keep it away. You’re not anything but a visitor here, and you got in on my ticket. Do not try to tell me you have a carry permit here, and I don’t fucking want to know how you got it through security. It gives me a bad feeling.” I hadn’t noticed that Peggy had stepped aside to allow our entry. Her radio began to crackle again, and she “Rogered” something I couldn’t hear.
I left Alison standing where she was and entered the cabin. I turned left into the first-class section. It was empty except for the cleaner, picking up trash from between the seats. He had already filled half the black plastic bag he was dragging back from row one. I made a quick visual check to be sure the area was empty and checked the lavatories, which had not yet been serviced. Then I headed to the spiral stairway to the small upper deck, where I did the same. Empty. Downstairs again, to the enormous main cabin. There were 393 seats in business and economy. Empty of passengers, it looked like a thousand. At the far end Alison was checking the lavatories, leaving the doors open behind her. The cleaning people were systematically working to the back from the galley amidships. I looked to Alison. “Nothing,” she said.
“Let’s go,” I said and turned around and headed for the door. Several other ground employees were outside the door with bags of supplies that looked like in-flight magazines and paper products. They were in no rush to enter. Peggy was gone.
Wendell Black, MD Page 28