The Grave Above the Grave

by Bernie B. Kerik

  He put his head in his hands, and his whole body shook up and down.

  “In order for this to happen, you must cooperate fully. Do you understand?”

  He nodded. His eyes widened; she could see he was interested and engaged.

  “Is this something you’re willing to do?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Samadi, the man you and the others worked for, the guy in Detroit . . . who is he?”

  He looked up at her and stared directly into her eyes. “I don’t know this man as Samadi.” He paused. “I know him as Hashem; that’s all. I spoke to him by burners that we changed every three weeks.”

  Chernova took a deep breath. Fuck, she thought, another name. For the next 25 minutes, she queried him about the other accomplices, locations, vehicles, etc. . . . everything she already knew the answers to, all in an attempt to see if he was telling the truth. She was convinced he was.

  She looked at him and said, “Okay. I believe you’re being truthful, but I need more. I need to know how to find Samadi, or Hashem . . . How do I find him?”

  “We communicated through a Gmail account, a Gmail address. We never sent any emails through the account, but would draft a message and save it until the other party read it. The other party has the account and password information. They open the saved Gmail, read it, and then delete it. Then I would write an email on my end, to the same account, then save it without sending. No one detects it because nothing is ever sent.”

  Now Chernova burned her eyes into him. “Victor, we found that Gmail address in your computer, but it doesn’t appear to have been used. I need more or I can’t get you back to Egypt.”

  “If you subpoena Gmail/Google, ask them for the IP address that signed into the account. You’ll find mine, which you already have from my computer, and another one that belongs to Hashem in Detroit. That’s how you can find him. When you find his IP address, you’ll find the others that he was talking to as well. Most of us didn’t know each other. Everyone acted independently until a mission was ordered. The guys I was with, I didn’t meet until two weeks before the mission.”

  “Brilliant,” Chernova said softly. Then, going against the government’s policy of never telling your source what you know, she decided to give it a shot. “Listen, we believe something’s going to happen in New York City soon, and Samadi’s speaking to four to eight others. How do we find them?”

  “The IP addresses, if you can get them, but also, even if they’re using burners, on Fridays they’ll all be sent to a travel agency on Atlantic Avenue, at the corner of Smith, to pick up money. They’re given money orders.”

  “Are you sure?” Mila said, trying to reserve her excitement.

  “I’m positive. Video the surveillance there, and monitor the phones that come and go from there. You’ll get the guys talking to him.”

  Mila just stared at him, “Anything else?” she asked.

  “I can go back to Egypt, right?”

  “Yes, if this works out, you’ll go, I promise.”

  With that, she banged on the door and the team of officers came to let herself, Raymond, and Jones out of the cubicle, to be escorted down to the first floor. As they arrived at the first-floor lobby waiting for clearance to leave the building, Jones and Raymond congratulated Chernova on how she had handled Hamadi. Raymond held up his hand to give her a high five. She quietly leaned toward him so Jones could not hear, and said, “Well, now that you know my idea, I guess we’ll have to find another excuse for you to tie me down.” Before he could say anything, she brushed her hand across a dozen pair of handcuffs that were hanging in the office where they were being held for clearance. “These could be quite helpful,” she snapped, and immediately turned and walked away from him.

  Raymond said goodbye to Jones and Chernova and got into his Suburban. The two women walked over to FBI headquarters. Once there, Chernova went to work on her computer, and Jones assigned a team of agents to start subpoenaing Google.

  Raymond was back at Police Plaza. He called the mayor to brief him, returned about 20 calls to union heads, members of the City Council, and his executive staff, and signed off on a couple of dozen notifications that he was being sued—he averaged about 20 a day. He sat back in his chair, thinking of what a productive day he had, how helpful Hamadi was.

  He leaned back and closed his eyes. All he could see was Mila doing her thing with Hamadi.

  Something about this woman was getting to him.

  CHAPTER 25

  9:55 am, Tuesday, 5 December

  Looking a little concerned, Gallagher came out of his office and approached the commissioner’s desk. Raymond said, “What’s up?”

  “I just got a call from an attorney who wants to come see you about Sheilah. He refused to tell me what he wanted, but insisted he needed to see you privately and that you should have an attorney with you.”

  “Fuck, what’s this about?” Raymond said, feeling a knot in his stomach. “Get him back on the phone and tell him to come see me today at noon.”

  Gallagher said okay and then asked, “What do you want to do about a lawyer for yourself?”

  “I don’t need a fucking lawyer,” he laughed. “Let’s see what he wants.”

  Raymond sat back in the chair, and his mind was racing. What now?

  It was just before eleven when Raymond’s cell phone rang. It was Jones, with Chernova on an extension from another phone. “We have the subpoenas,” Chernova said, then added, “And we have what you want. It looks like the IP address belongs to the guy in Detroit. He is now using a new email address, but they’re definitely using the same method of sharing messages by not sending emails through the system. Very clever. We have also ID’d one principal phone we believe is Samadi’s and seven others that call him twice every day, once at 10 am and once at 5 pm.”

  “Do you have a location in Detroit for us?” Jones asked.

  “We don’t think he’s in Detroit anymore ,” Chrenova said, “but it seems now he’s in New York.”

  “Really? Where exactly? Do we know?”

  “We’ve been on the device several times,” Chrenova said. “However, he keeps the device shut off, and deactivates to a location device. The few times he’s turned the device on, it’s been from a different location. The last time a Starbucks in Downtown Manhattan, on Broadway, just across from Wall Street. That’s the same area where a few of the phones have been calling from.” Beads of sweat covered Raymond’s forehead, and sweat from his underarms stained his shirt with what looked like pairs of half-moons.

  Jones thanked Chernova and said she was calling an emergency meeting of the Joint Terrorism Task Force first thing in the morning. “Let’s get these guys.”

  “I’ll see you there,” Chernova said. Raymond assumed she was talking to the both of them.

  “I’ve got a 7 am with the mayor and an 11 am City Council hearing, but I’m free after that,” he said.

  Jones finished with, “We’ve got a team putting together additional affidavits for Title III intercepts, and we’re working with DOJ DC on the FISA for anything we find.”

  “Okay,” Raymond said. “I’ll call you guys after my meeting with the City Council,” and he hung up. Not 30 seconds later, his cell rang again. It had to be Chernova, because her caller ID number was the only one that ever showed up on his phone as all zeros.

  “Yes?” he said.

  “So, what are you doing for dinner?” she asked. Her voice was softer than it sounded during the official call. Raymond felt a sudden wave of warmth roll down the front of his body.

  “I planned on going home early, so I figured I’d have something there.”

  “You want to meet me in Manhattan somewhere?”

  First he thought of the Marcus, but couldn’t bring himself to go there. “Listen, pick a place downtown and I’ll just meet you there.”

>   “Great, there’s a small Italian place called Antonio’s, on 44th and 12th, around the corner from my apartment. I’ll see you there. About seven?”

  “Done. I’ll see you there.”

  Just as he hung up, Gallagher walked in to let him know that the lawyer was here to see him. Gallagher laughed and said, “I’m not sure what he wants, but his briefcase costs more than my fucking car.”

  “Just bring him in,” Raymond snapped.

  Gallagher escorted the attorney into the office, and Raymond got up and introduced himself.

  “Commissioner,” the attorney began, “I’m Paul Steene, and I work for Leonard White and Noble. I’m handling Sheilah Dannis’s estate. Do you have a lawyer here?”

  Raymond knew the firm, one of the biggest in the city, but was confused about what he would have to do with Sheilah’s estate and why he would have an attorney. “No, I wanted to find out what this is all about first.”

  “Commissioner, on the evening of Monday, October 23, Ms. Dannis came to our office and updated her trust and her will. The reason I’m here today is because a substantial portion of her considerable fortune concerns you directly. She left one third of her estate to the New York Fallen Officers Fund, one third to a 9/11 Victims Charity in the name of your wife Mary, and one third of her fortune to you personally. That’s about $33 million for you.

  Raymond was in a daze . . . Monday evening was the day of Jimmy’s funeral; it was after they spent the weekend together at the Marcus. What was she thinking, he wondered; she was killed just two days later. How could this be?

  “I’m not sure what to say,” Raymond said. “I’m a little confused.”

  “Commissioner, I wanted you to have a copy of her trust documents and will. You’ll want to sit down with an attorney and go through this, as there are obvious tax implications that you’ll need to deal with, but I thought you should know sooner than later.”

  With that, Steene excused himself and left the office, and Raymond just sat at the edge of his desk staring out the window. Gallagher walked back in after escorting the attorney to the elevator. “What just happened?” Raymond said softly under his breath.

  Later that evening, Raymond sat down alone in a booth at the back of Antonio’s, the restaurant that Mila recommended. The smell of garlic overwhelmed him, and as he looked around the place, he felt like he was in a scene from The Godfather, or in a real-life family restaurant on the outskirts of Rome. Sitting in the back, with his back facing the wall, was an old habit of his that he retained from his detective days; he never sat with his back toward the door. The seat’s red leather smelled like the interior of a used Mercedes.

  Antonio’s wasn’t completely empty. There were several people drinking at the bar, mostly men in pinstripe suits, alone, looking down at their drinks, and one or two well-dressed women, sitting by themselves, their dresses a little too short and their heels a little too high, sipping champagne and working their iPhones. The bartender brought them their drinks without asking, Raymond noticed, so he figured it was a work night for the ladies as well as for the bartender.

  The waitress came over and put a napkin down in front of him. “Can I bring you something?” Her voice sounded to him like a spoonful of sugar.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Scotch. Dewars. Neat. Soda back. Make it a double. The Scotch, not the soda.”

  “Double D soda back,” she sang, like it was a lyric to a song. He watched her glide back to the service end of the bar; he didn’t notice the tall, dark-haired woman coming over to him.

  “Anyone sitting here?” Chernova asked, as she put her palm on his shoulder, nodding to the empty part of the seat next to him. She was wearing a tight blue skirt and a white, tight-fitting tank top under a blue jacket.

  “You are,” he said smiling, waving with his hand for her to sit. She slid in beside him and nodded over to the waitress, who floated over and took her order of a glass a Prosecco. “One Pro,” the waitress said, smiling, before turning back and heading for the bar.

  After a brief stretch of silence, Chernova said, “So, what’s for dinner?” Before he could answer, her Prosecco came. She took a sip from her glass, leaving an impression on it of her red lips, like fingerprints. “Mmmm . . . good. Nice and cold.” She paused. “Well. I should tell you,” she said, “before we actually met, I followed you in the news. I did my research. You are quite the hero, aren’t you.”

  “If you say so,” Raymond said, taking a sip of his Dewars and chasing it with the cold club soda. “To me, the only good news is no news.” He shot back the rest of his double Dewars and the waitress promptly reappeared, like a magician’s assistant, with another one.

  “So, I have to tell you, I was interested to learn that your wife was killed on 9/11. Now I can see why you hate these fuckers so bad.”

  “Yeah, they killed my wife, my nephew, and my cops.”

  “Was it true that you and Dannis were an item? I heard rumors but wasn’t sure, because if you were, why the big secret? You would have been some power couple.”

  “That’s the way we wanted it. Being high profile in this town is bad enough, but then tie in any intimate juicy stuff and they’d be on us 24 hours a day, and we didn’t want that, not to mention that the cops, unions, and suspects would have constantly used our relationship as a conflict in just about anything the DA’s office was involved in. It was much easier without that perception.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Chernova said. “Horrible what happened to her.”

  Raymond looked at her, hard. She looked back just as hard.

  “So, what’s a guy like you do in your time off?” she asked.

  “I work, and in my off hours I work out, and I work. That’s about it,” he said, smiling and feeling a little embarrassed.

  “I guess you spent a lot of time with her?”

  “As much as we could, but we both had pretty demanding jobs, and our jobs always came first,” Raymond said, finishing off his second double. “Sheilah was . . . she was an amazing woman. I believe one day she could have been president of the United States.”

  “A shame,” Chernova said. “I was a big fan of hers.” She took another sip, having moved the glass a quarter-turn, leaving another set of red lipstick prints. “How are you doing now? I’m sure you’re totally stressed out.”

  Raymond said nothing. Chernova smiled. “You know what I think? I think you are in major need of some kind of release. I’ll bet you’re all pent up inside.”

  “You think so?” Raymond said, and managed a chuckle soaked in sarcasm—what was she getting at?

  Chernova came closer. He studied her face. She was a beauty, no doubt about that, he told himself. But this all seemed to be happening so fast—what was she up to?

  Without hesitation, she stared deep into his eyes, “So here’s what I think we should do. We should continue this conversation at my place, not far from here. We can order in, relax, and talk some more.” She scooted out of the seat before Raymond could respond, “Here’s the key to my lobby. Let yourself in,” she said as she headed for the door.

  Raymond wondered what the hell was happening. “Wait, where am I going?”

  “Take care of the drinks,” she yelled. “And check your text messages.”

  He looked down at his cell phone, and there was a text: “452 West 44th Street, Apartment 26B XO.”

  What the fuck, he thought to himself. Was this really happening? He reached into his suit pocket, pulled out his wallet, and called for the check.

  His cell phone rang. It was Chernova. He answered, “Yes?”

  “I like to be in total control, and just so you know in advance, this applies to everything. Can you take it?”

  He felt his inside take an Olympic leap. “What,” he stuttered, “. . . what if I say no?”

  “You won’t! You can’t. Get yourself to my apartment, Commissioner.�
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  Raymond laughed softly. “You’re a freak,” he said, as if he’d just solved an unusually difficult trinomial.

  “Congratulations! Now, don’t take too long.” With that, she hung up.

  He threw enough money on the table to cover the check and a generous tip for the waitress.

  Ten minutes later he arrived at 26B, and the door was cracked open. He walked into the living room, and the first thing he noticed was the view of the piers and the Jersey skyline on the other side of the Hudson River. Chernova came out of nowhere. “Sit,” she said to him, pointing to one of the room’s big chairs. He did. “Now, enjoy the show,” she said, as she stepped five feet in front of him and unbuttoned her jacket, letting it drop to the floor. She then began undoing her high-collar white ruffled shirt, opening it slowly, never taking her eyes off his until it, too, was gone. His mouth opened slightly, but not as wide as his eyes. Her naked arms and chest were completely covered in beautiful, sensual tattoos. He understood now why she was always so buttoned up. She wiggled out of her skirt. She had on black stockings, garter belt, and nothing else. She kept her high heels on.

  She turned around once, slowly, to reveal two full red lips tattooed on each cheek of her bottom. He could see the blue outline of more tattoos that traveled up each of her thighs, but at first, he couldn’t make out exactly what they were. Then he did. It was a rattle­snake whose head and fangs began below her belly button and wrapped around her body, its tail resting on her neck just out of sight when she wore her white shirts. There were a dozen more, smaller tats, covering her arms and legs in dark-red and -blue designs. He had never seen anything, or anyone, like her before.

  “Where did you get all those tattoos?” he managed to say.

  “From my husband.”

  “Oh.” Raymond wasn’t sure what that was all about.

  “He was very talented. Was. A real artist. Every time he put the needle into me, I would feel a surge. I couldn’t get enough of it, or him.”