Gods and Fathers

by Lepore, James

  “Who’s he?” McCann asked.

  “He was the president of Lebanon. Very popular, very anti-Syria.”

  “And the others?”

  “Members of parliament. All anti-Syria.”

  “Why our guys?” McCann asked.

  “Loh was an accident. He was supposed to stay in his car until backup arrived. It appears the killers knew this, through Mason. It was supposed to be easy for them to get in and out, especially with Mason causing a delay in our response. When Loh tried to stop them, they killed him.”

  “And Davila?”

  “He took something, I don’t know what, from my command post after the shooting in Locust Valley. Whatever it was he was killed for it.”

  “Mason again.”

  “Yes. He must have passed it on.”

  “What went down in Locust Valley?”

  “Two assassins working for Rahim were holed up there. We were watching the house.”

  “So Rahim is here in New York?” Goode asked.

  “Yes, he works for a man named Basil al-Hassan, a rich Syrian businessman.”

  “That’s Debra DeMarco’s husband,” McCann said.

  “Yes.”

  “And he’s legit?”

  “Legit?”

  “Not one of the bad guys.”

  “It seems so.”

  “So they’re both dead now, the killers?” Goode asked.

  “No, we let it out that the two men who lived in the house were killed, but one actually survived.”

  “Who? Where is he?” McCann asked.

  “He is a bomb maker, a Syrian named Adnan al-Farah. We have him in a safe house.”

  “Why do you need us?”

  “I need you to take custody of Farah. The Syrians have killed several witnesses so far. They will surely try to kill him as well.”

  “What about your people?”

  “I have not told them about Farah.”

  “Why not?”

  “I believe they are compromised.”

  “By whom?”

  “Your government. I believe the U.S. has promised Syria that it will get the UN to back off on pursuing them for the Hariri assassination.”

  “Why?”

  “Stupidity.”

  “So the FBI wouldn’t take him either.”

  “No.”

  “Speaking of the FBI,” said Goode. “Do you know an agent named Bill Crow? Is he connected with this?”

  Fuchs, despite himself, was taken aback, and he knew, unfortunately, that his surprise was revealed for a split second on his otherwise professionally non-expressive face.

  “We checked him out,” McCann said. “He’s not listed as an FBI agent.”

  “Where did you get his name?” Fuchs asked.

  “Out of a hat,” McCann answered.

  “From Bob Davila,” said Goode.

  “He’s a contract op, I think CIA, but I’m not sure,” Fuchs said. “He talked to Davila?”

  “It looks that way,” Goode replied. “Why? Is that good or bad?”

  “I don’t know,” the Dutchman replied.

  “You don’t know?” McCann said. “Whose side is the CIA on?”

  Fuchs did not answer. I don’t know, he said to himself, I thought ours.

  “Are you saying,” Goode asked, “that the U.S. government, the FBI, the CIA, whatever, would let the DeMarco kid go down for this?”

  “They would probably quietly intervene to make some kind of a deal.”

  “Loh and Davila were killed on Long Island,” Goode said, shaking his head, his brown, grizzled face grim. “Let’s say we want to help you. We don’t have jurisdiction.”

  “Farah and his dead partner, Ali Najjar, killed Yasmine Hayek. He has confessed to that as well. That killing occurred here in New York.”

  “Yes,” McCann said. “We already knew that. We were waiting for you to come clean. We have your surveillance log.”

  “I see,” Fuchs replied. “Is that what Davila stole? Our surveillance reports?”

  “Yes.”

  “It got him killed.”

  “Why did Haq want the girl dead?” McCann asked.

  “Her father is the Justice Minister in Lebanon. He’s openly anti-Syria.”

  The Dutchman watched as the two NYPD detectives shook their heads and looked at him like he had just emerged from the primordial slime covered in mud and shiny scales.

  “It’s the Mideast,” he said.

  “Did Mason know about Farah?” Goode asked.

  “Yes, I told him tonight. I’m sure he passed it on, probably to somebody at Lucky’s. I am anxious to see the CB pictures.”

  “How secure is Farah?” McCann asked.

  “He is in an untraceable location, guarded by four professionals.”

  “You left the DeMarco kid hanging out to dry for three weeks,” Goode said, “knowing he didn’t kill the girl. His father’s a good friend. He won’t be happy.”

  “You can give him a copy of Farah’s confession.”

  “And that’s supposed to make everything hunky-dory?” McCann said.

  “Hunky-dory?”

  “All square with you and DeMarco, even-steven.”

  “I see. Talk to your justice department. I believe they knew.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Yes, fuck. That word I understand.”

  “We want to be able to use your surveillance log,” said Goode.

  “Of course,” the Dutchman replied.

  “We can’t make this decision ourselves,” said Goode.

  “I understand. I will wait. Not long, I hope. Farah needs medical attention, and there is always the chance his location will be discovered.”

  “Give us twenty-four hours.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Chapter 30

  Manhattan,

  Tuesday, March 3, 2009,

  1:00AM

  “Are you awake?” Matt asked.

  Jade woke with a start, saw Matt, sitting in shadow on the edge of the couch, and placed the tips of her fingers to her eyes to rub the sleep from them.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “You are now, you mean.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry to wake you.”

  “I was praying, then the next thing I knew, you were sitting there.”

  Matt remained silent.

  “You’re sitting on one of the four corners,” Jade said.

  “The four corners?”

  “Four corners to my bed, four angels there aspread.”

  Silence again from Matt.

  Jade shook her head and lowered her eyes. “I say it every night,” she said. “Now I lay me down to sleep. It’s an old habit, from when I was a girl.”

  “Tell me the whole thing.”

  “Now I lay me down to sleep,

  I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

  Four corners to my bed,

  Four angels there aspread:

  Two to foot and two to head,

  And four to carry me when I’m dead.

  If any danger come to me,

  Sweet Jesus Christ deliver me.

  And if I die before I wake,

  I pray the Lord my soul to take.”

  Jade had dimmed the lamp on a nearby end table to its lowest setting and then settled down to wait for Matt. She decided to say her nightly prayer, not because she was ready to sleep, but because Lucky’s had creeped her out. The scrawny bartender, the darkness, the people going in and out of that back room. She had replaced me with Matt when she came to the If any danger part, saying the prayer like the mantra it was meant to be. Once, twice, three
times, the next thing she knew Matt was sitting there.

  Matt’s overcoat and scarf were still wrapped over his right arm. Turning sideways, he threw them across the room to an easy chair, then turned back to face Jade, who pulled her knees up to give him more room, pulling up the blanket she was using as well. The lamp’s pale yellow light did nothing to soften the wildness in Matt’s face. His beautiful dark eyes met hers for a second, and in them she saw something new. Something had happened.

  “What is it, Matt?” she said.

  “Michael says they want him to plead guilty to rape,” Matt said. “He’ll do five-to-ten, with only a hard five.”

  “Drop the murder charge?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who’s they?”

  “Stryker, Basil.”

  “Matt, that can’t be. He has a perfect consent defense. And what’s Healy thinking? Two shots to the head, two to the back of the neck. He’s willing to bury that? He’s lost his mind.”

  “There’s something else,” Matt said. “Michael and Yasmine made love, but she didn’t want to at first. He was angry. He pinned her on the couch.”

  “Did he rape her?”

  “No. He says no, and I believe him. He says she was kissing him at the end, that they were both crying. But he was there, Yasmine was breaking up with him, there are the emails. And only Michael’s DNA was found in Yasmine.”

  “Those bruises, Matt, I saw the pictures.”

  “I told him about the bruises.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He says he couldn’t have caused them.”

  “But he’s not taking the deal.”

  Matt remained silent.

  “What’s going on, Matt?”

  “Michael was at Lucky’s tonight because he wanted to confront Mustafa. He says Mustafa’s been drugging Debra, giving her double and triple doses of her medication. Tranquilizers mostly.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s not sure. He says she’s a mess, that it’s not just the drugs.”

  “Did he? Confront Mustafa?”

  “Yes. Mustafa said he’s recorded everything that’s gone on in that apartment for the past six years. All the rooms, video and audio. That was his answer.”

  Jade was silent. She clutched the old cardigan sweater she was wearing to her neck, thinking of the glimpse she had gotten of Mustafa as he came out of the back room of Lucky’s, something about the way he carried himself, with the confidence of a fanatic, a zealot, a superior being: I can do as I wish, I am higher than God, higher than Lucifer. I can videotape people in their private lives, and use it against them as I wish. She realized with an inner start that Antonio’s father, the man who had corrupted her when she was seventeen, did not hold a candle to the likes of Mustafa, that perhaps it had been self-pity that had ruined her life since then, and not her producer boyfriend; that he too must have his demons.

  She had been right to pray for Matt, for somebody besides herself for a change, herself and Antonio.

  “Do you want something?” she said. “Hot chocolate? A drink? You look like you could use a drink.” She was too shocked to mention, for the moment, Matt’s revelation of the constant secret videotaping of people’s private lives. Shocked by such a thing, and also by the revelation she had just had about how she had been looking at her life these many years.

  “No, I just need to sleep. If I can.”

  “Where’s Michael now?”

  “I dropped him off at Park Avenue.”

  Matt was looking down at his hands, which were laid out palm-down, one on each of his thighs, pressing against the fabric of the brown corduroy slacks he was wearing.

  “Matt.”

  “Yes.”

  “Videos?”

  “I think Michael sometimes slept with Debra.”

  Matt looked directly at her as he said this, as if not to was somehow to his mind cowardly. More silence. A river of pain to be crossed, for both of them, Jade thought, like the conversation she would have to have with Antonio when he got home. That would be a crossing. For both of them.

  “Did he tell you that?” Jade asked, finally.

  “No, but he did when he was a boy—sleep in her bed, I mean—for too long. I’ve wondered about it… He says he might take the deal.”

  “To keep these videos from coming out? Do you think there’s one of him and Debra?”

  “I think so. Why else would he do this plea bargain?”

  “To protect his mother.”

  “Yes.”

  “Who’s behind this?” Jade asked. “Who wants this murder covered up so bad?”

  “Mustafa works for Basil al-Hassan.”

  “Basil? Why? What’s his deal?”

  “I don’t know, but I’ll find out.”

  Jade held out her hand and Matt took it.

  “What about Antonio?” he said. “When does he come home?”

  “He has games tomorrow night and Thursday night. They fly home on Friday morning early.”

  “Have you decided?”

  “I have to let him go.”

  Matt’s response was to press her hand in his.

  “I’ll tell him first,” she said.

  Matt brought Jade’s hand to his lips, kissed it, and said, “Let’s get some sleep.”

  “What will you do?”

  “I’ll go see Debra tomorrow. She can stop this plea deal.”

  “Maybe Jack and Clarke got somewhere with Fuchs. Clarke called. He said to call him when you got in.”

  “They talked to Fuchs?”

  “He called when they were getting in their car.”

  “What did he say about me staying behind?”

  “They were worried, but they had to get downtown to see Fuchs.”

  “Did you go?”

  “No, they dropped me off. Jack has the surveillance report. Maybe he talked Fuchs into releasing it.”

  “Maybe,” Matt replied, “but I doubt it. There’s something I can’t fathom going on with Fuchs. His two suspects are dead. He knows they killed Yasmine, yet he won’t reveal what he knows. It’s been a month now.”

  “At least Michael talked to you. How was he?”

  “He was scared. Very frightened. He sees his choices as either going to jail for a crime he didn’t commit or revealing this dark secret about his mother. He can’t understand why Mustafa would be drugging Debra, though. He can’t go to Basil because Mustafa is Basil’s man. It could be Basil who’s drugging Debra, ordering it.”

  “His world is falling apart.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think Debra will help?” Jade said. “If it means…?”

  “I have to try. Michael won’t last six months in prison. He’ll be raped, turned into a girl. Debra will have to choose.”

  “Come to bed, Matt.”

  “I will,” Matt replied, reaching for his overcoat and fishing out his cell phone. “But first I’ll call Jack. I want to know what this guy Fuchs had to say about his surveillance log.”

  Chapter 31

  Manhattan,

  Tuesday, March 3, 2009,

  11:00AM

  “Sire,” said Mustafa, “I must ask your permission to return to Syria.”

  “Has something happened?”

  “My brother is dying. He has been sent home from hospital to die. His cancer cannot be treated.”

  Basil al-Hassan had had problems in Damascus. His superiors, and their superiors, could not quite believe that Yasmine Hayek had been killed by her boyfriend, Basil’s stepson. Nor could they believe that the U.S. had really accepted Michael DeMarco as Yasmine Hayek’s killer. Could we be so lucky? was their unasked question. Would they actually continue to help us in thwarting Monteverde? They
had sent al-Haq to threaten him, to let him know that they suspected him. Which could only mean that they had discovered his secret, that they knew of his young wife and child buried in the hills above Latakia, and that he had a motive for orchestrating Yasmine’s murder and the clever dodge of framing his own stepson. Now this.

  Basil turned away from his servant to look, for a moment, out of his study window down to Park Avenue at the silent dance of cars and buses and pedestrians that went on endlessly whether he noticed it or not. He would miss New York, he thought, if it came to that.

  “Do you know why I agreed to take you into my household, Mustafa?” Basil asked.

  “No, sire.”

  “Karantina. You survived the bombings in the war.”

  “Yes, sire.”

  “My wife and son did not.”

  “Your wife and son?”

  “I fought in Lebanon for four years. I met and married my first wife there.”

  “I did not know, sire.”

  “It was Pierre Hayek who led the attack on Karantina, a Muslim ghetto of no strategic value. He had secretly joined one of the Christian militias just the week before.”

  “Pierre Hayek?”

  “Yes. He befriended me, he told me he was Shia.”

  “Did he know…?”

  “No, Fatimah and Anwar were my secret. They were not Alewites you see, not even Syrian. Still, he killed them for no reason.”

  “No reason?”

  “To terrorize Muslims living in a Christian neighborhood,” Basil replied. “You were there, were you not?”

  “Yes, sire. I was.”

  “I did not know you had a brother.”

  “He emigrated to Syria with me in 1976.”

  “And where is he living now?”

  “Dera.”

  “The Assad family vouched for you. They told me of your bravery at Hama, of your loyalty to your adopted country.”

  “Thank you, sire.”

  “It is ironic, is it not, Mustafa?”

  “Sire?”

  “That Adnan and Ali have avenged my wife and child by killing Pierre’s daughter, that Allah has done this for me without my asking.”