I laughed. “You really think that, don’t you? I’m not why they hate us. They hate us no matter what. They always will. Why else would they lie, hide, infiltrate our cities? Pretend to be just like any other immigrants even though they’re really planning to kill as many of us as they can? Innocents!”
“Come on—”
“Ask him.” I stepped past Graham, knelt beside the clerk, grabbed his hair and forced him to turn his head to the sheriff. “Just ask him. You’re trying to protect him, but I bet he still hates you as much as he does me.”
Umar said, “Want to bet?”
I let go, wiped my hand on my pants. “You know what? One thing that might take the wind out of your sails?”
Looked like he wanted to tear my throat out with his teeth. He kept quiet.
I said, “Everything you believe is a sham.”
*
I didn’t feel justified. I didn’t feel ashamed. I felt numb, that was all. Didn’t need a goddamn lecture from my boss in the middle of it all either. He wasn’t the one trying to save himself from a life in prison. I had to remind myself that he was trying to save his kids, though, and I was the reason they were in danger. I didn’t know if doing what we were doing would help clear my name or not, but it felt like a better way to try than kneeling down before Rome and his type.
Later that evening, back in the hotel room, Drew eased up behind me as I stood at the window, crossed her arms. I was a little more at ease, having crushed and snorted a couple of the pain pills Drew had rounded up for me before we left home. Half-bottle of Vicodin from her aunt, leftover from back surgery. Hard to believe anyone would leave half a bottle. She must have a nice life.
Graham was in the bathroom. He’d told her the story of our day, including the video store debacle.
“He’s not really mad at you, you know. More like at himself,” she whispered.
“You weren’t there.” I wasn’t in the mood for diplomacy. A few shadows passed by on the curtains. I tensed up, then took a deep breath as they continued on down the walkway.
Drew said, “He reacted the way he knows he should. But you’ve got no filter, so it’s all the same to you. Didn’t even stop to think. You’re all instinct.”
“I thought instincts were supposed to protect us, like in animals.”
The toilet flushed and she gave my shoulder a quick squeeze before retreating to her bed. “There’s always survival of the fittest, too. You’ve got nine lives.”
“I’ve used up six, at least.”
Shadows passed outside the window a second time. Then the three men they belonged to. Maybe Drew was right about my instincts. I knew we were in trouble. I knew then that following through on our plan after the video shop had been the wrong choice, a miserable failure.
I said to Drew, “Get under your mattress. And grab my gun.”
TWENTY-THREE
What happened after the video store was that we took the clerk and Aziz to the car and got the hell out of there with the videotape that had captured the whole mess. I kept the pressure on Umar in the backseat, choking him on-and-off until he started to crack, Aziz begging him to keep his mouth shut.
“What, like you did?” He lunged at Aziz. “The same way you didn’t tell them about me? You are the lowest! A traitor!”
I tapped his broken nose and he fell back in a coughing fit. Graham was driving, scanning for a nice secluded place. There had been witnesses, after all. The plan sucked, the way we pulled it off sucked, what we hoped to accomplish sucked.
We finally pulled into the parking lot of a packed megastore and I laid it out to Umar. “Aziz might not be in the loop, but I’ll bet he knows more people like you, one step up. And maybe those people won’t be as committed as you.”
“I have nothing to say.”
I tapped Graham on the shoulder. “Let’s go, boss. Time to baptize him.”
Umar said, “What?”
“Find a little pond or ditch, let my friend here consecrate you to Jesus Christ, and then I’ll drown you. My friend’s a Lutheran lay minister. He’s qualified. God answers his prayers.”
“Lies.”
“You think this is worth dying for, right? That there’s virgins waiting for you and all the pleasures you’ve denied yourself down here? What if it’s all true, right to the letter, and we have the power to take it away with our little ritual?”
“It doesn’t work that way. I have to accept it. You can’t force me.”
I shrugged. “Fine. At least it’ll be fun for us. And we’ll take pictures. And we’ll mail them to your leaders and your family. How do you think they’ll react?”
“I’ll fight you. I won’t let you.”
“Yeah, you will.” I took out a sandwich bag filled with the crushed up Vicodin I’d been snorting when needed. “Hold him down.”
“What are you doing?”
“Just a little bit of chemical persuasion. You won’t feel a thing. Literally.”
Graham opened his door, stepped out, closed it. Stretched his arms, making a show of it. Then we watched his torso slide past the windows, stop at the back door. Nothing for a long moment, Umar breathing too hard.
By the time Graham had reached for the handle, the clerk was whispering to me, “I’ll tell you where to go. Don’t get my family involved, please. They have nothing to do with this.”
“They have as much to do with this as three murdered college students from Minnesota.”
“Please, I beg you.”
I pretended to think about it. The decision was already made, of course. We weren’t evil, weren’t even close. I was capable, but respected Graham too much to seal the deal.
“We need a name, an address, and a guarantee we’ll get in and out alive.”
Umar took a long hard look at the baggie in my hand, then Graham’s imposing frame outside. Then, “Yeah, I’ll tell you.”
*
We drove to Ann Arbor, the manicured college town that was the exact opposite of everything we hated about Detroit—it was everything we hated about the suburbs. Cookie-cutter homes too damn big for their lots. It was nice, really. Clean, beautiful, like a Disney park or a country club. Maybe that was why it got to me. It was all a little too manufactured, all slick surfaces and pleasantries.
If we were going there, it meant the terrorists had the exact same reaction. It was a good place to blend in because no one expected bad people to do bad things there. It was full of smug types who didn’t realize how smug they came off. Low-key materialism, taken for granted. Then a cell moves in and acts like they’re international students, but who are actively plotting attacks that take years to perfect. These guys weren’t the smartest, we guessed. The offshoot plan to take the wilds of Minnesota was a terrible move, and the violence inflicted by the Malaysians certainly didn’t help keep them invisible. To make this short: we had no idea what to expect. A respected cleric with a perfect beard, or a young hothead with a chip on his shoulder? Maybe a handful of young hotheads?
We pulled up to the curb of a two-story McMansion with a three-tiered roof. Light brick façade gave way to beige vinyl siding. In the driveway, a Camry and a Tahoe. Funny—they tried to fit in by hitting both extremes. All around, lawns in transition from winter brown into yellow and green. Just a typical, upper middle-class neighborhood in Ann Arbor. Umar told us that there were usually fifteen men here, so I slapped him and told Graham to find us a pool. The clerk then said, “No no no no no” and adjusted it to five. He was one of them. Three of them were students with jobs. The other two hung around to head up operations. That sounded more like it, but I only believed half of what these guys said.
We marched Aziz and Umar through the yard to the front door. They looked defiant but powerless. If they only knew how we felt. No confidence at all. Total sham. All we knew is that we wanted to get out alive, go home, return to normal.
The clerk knocked. A few moments later, someone shouted in Arabic. The clerk looked at Aziz, who nodded and answered. It
hadn’t occurred to me that Umar might not know Arabic. I thought all Muslims did. But we’d already seen that they had Arabs, Malaysians, and Pakistanis in the same cell. So they communicated in English.
A voice came through the door. “That’s right?”
“Yeah,” Umar said. “Salesmen.”
A few minutes later, the door opened. A young, strong Arab-looking man. Short hair, no beard, in khakis and a red-striped shirt. Half of him was hidden by the door. Smart move. He looked us over. We stared him down.
“Why are you here?”
“We’re here to see whoever’s in charge.”
“Why?”
“We need to ask him something.”
The man nodded. “I’ll need to make sure you’re not armed.”
“Oh, we’re armed.” And just like that, I shot Umar. Pointblank against his shoulder. The blood cascaded across the threshold, onto the door and the tile in the foyer. I shoved the screaming clerk aside and blocked the door with my foot, my gun an inch away from the greeter’s face. Graham was snapping at me, harsh whispers that I didn’t pay attention to. I hadn’t told him I was going to shoot anyone. It was the stupidest thing I’d ever done. None of the bullshit I’d pulled down South compared. I was a target. I was endangering the sheriff’s life. But it had to be done.
“You get him down here and no one else gets shot. Drop your gun right now. I want to hear it hit the floor.”
After a long pause of us listening to Umar bitch about his shoulder, I heard the clatter. The greeter backed up, hands empty and high. I wondered what he must be thinking.
He said, “Will you come in?”
“Why, so you can pin us into a corner?”
He held out his palms towards us. “No, I give my word. Safe. Everybody is nice.”
I looked back at Graham. He could barely look me in the eye, realizing just how low I could go. But he gave me a sharp nod, then rustled Umar to his feet. We stepped into the foyer, waited as the door closed behind us.
Our greeter took the clerk by the elbow, asked, “I take him? Make him better?”
I waved him off. “He stays here until we’re done. Bring a towel.”
The greeter went into the back of the house, leaving us alone in the foyer. He was gone before we could think better about it. Graham and I looked at each other.
He said, “Wanna follow him?”
“One of us should.”
We stood still.
I said, “Okay. Next time, we should do that differently.”
Graham took post at the foot of the staircase while I kept an eye on the hallway to the great room. Manufactured class—a mass-market chandelier and fake marble tile, framed prints of famous impressionist paintings that must have come with the house. It was strange, looking at a Manet while Umar yipped in pain. Nothing in the house was distinctive to the occupants, which was the point. There was nothing to notice. Most people wouldn’t think of the absence as a warning sign.
Graham said, “It’s a nice house.”
“Too soulless for me.”
“Really? I don’t get that.”
“All these new houses, all the same. They’ve got no character anymore. Your choice of three styles, two colors, that’s it.”
“Home is what you make it.”
I shrugged, wasn’t listening. We only spoke to fill the silence. I said, “Yeah, it is.”
Sounds from the back of the house, echoing Arabian. Nothing to stop these guys from coming around the corners with guns blazing, drop us just like that, with the only concern being clean-up. I glanced at Graham, could tell our thoughts were synched up. We lifted our guns and waited. We wouldn’t shoot first, wouldn’t be able to dodge the bullets, but we’d damn well do something to make our country proud before we shuffled off.
Instead of a grand warrior, the guy who came around the corner with our greeter looked more like a yuppie. Polo shirt and Gap jeans, Adidas sneakers. Hair was nice and short. No beard. The greeter was carrying the towel for Umar. They saw the guns and raised their hands like this was a John Wayne western.
“Please, no need for that, okay? You’re safe, okay? My word.” He patted his hand against his chest. “Please.”
We didn’t lower the guns. We didn’t waver. The clerk had shut up, paying attention to the confrontation. Aziz had flattened himself against the wall.
I said, “I’m Deputy Lafitte. This is Sheriff Swoboda. We’re here on behalf of Yellow Medicine County, Minnesota, and Paul Asimov.”
His hands were still open, careful, and slow. He couldn’t speak without gesturing. “And how is Paul?”
“You know goddamn well…” I took three big steps towards him as Graham yelled at me. My gun nearly touching his nose. He didn’t flinch, didn’t stop grinning. He had our number, and that was the worst feeling of all. Even worse than what I had to say next. “You’re in charge here? You’re the leader?”
He raised his eyebrows. “Allah is the leader. I simply follow the path he lays out for me. I am good with strategy, plans. I can visualize. They ask me to make plans, so I make plans.”
“Who are you?”
The grin widened. His face was elastic. “I am a servant of the One True God.”
I nodded. He believed every word he said and was amused at us for doubting. Nothing we could do would shake him. I couldn’t admire that no matter how hard I tried, not in any religion or political system, not in love or war. The truth is only as real as what you see in front of you, and here it is: truth wavers. The only constant is change. Even in faith—people want what they want and believe they can have it in spite of what their faith tells them. So they either justify what they want or change their faith to fit it in.
Just like Mr. Servant of God here, following the path. And if one of his followers decided one day next week that Allah was telling him that the plans had changed and the cell needed new leadership, I wondered how confident he would be then. How willing to let Allah lead the way, even if that meant losing his status.
It was never about religion. It was about being selfish, which was the most powerful and convincing faith of them all. What we desire for ourselves. What makes us feel good inside.
The only difference between these clowns, Homeland Security, Graham’s church congregation, my ex-father-in-law’s bible thumping and myself was that I had no trouble admitting it.
I wanted to blow the cell leader’s brains out. But then the greeter would take over. If I blew the greeter’s brains out, I’d have to face another one vowing revenge within a week. Tit for tat. Neverending. Same as the Israelis and the Palestinians, the Catholics and the Protestants, the Commies and the Capitalists.
I said what I had come to say. “We would like to ask you for a favor.”
The elastic loosened, lips drooping somewhat. “You ask us?”
“Are you listening?”
He exchanged a few mumbled phrases with the greeter before blinking several times, face more serious than before, arms crossed on his chest. Then he said, “I’m listening.”
“You came out to Yellow Medicine County because Paul told you I could help. That I would pave the way for your fundraising through crystal meth.”
A slight nod. “That’s close enough, yes.”
“He made a mistake. I don’t want to help you. Your people caused too much trouble. We can’t afford a war, neither of us. You would eventually lose, and in some ways so would we.”
“How do you mean?”
“Whatever your plans are, blowing up post offices or poisoning the water, all that terrorist shit, someone’s going to find out if they haven’t already. But what you did out in our woods, that wasn’t helping you at all. We don’t want to be part of the battlefield, don’t want to lose any more kids like those your people butchered.”
The grin started to climb again, so I smacked his cheek with the gun barrel. His eyes went dark and narrow, hand pressing hard against the cut. The greeter grabbed my wrist.
I was shouting at the
leader, who was bent over, wiping the blood from his face, sliding his hand against the wall rather than ruin his clothes. “I said, are you fucking listening?”
The greeter was going for something in his belt—knife, gun, no clue—but Graham was there in no time flat to bean him on the back of the head. He spiraled down, unconscious.
The leader had squatted, bloody hand on the wall to steady himself. I crouched eye level with him, waited until he lifted his chin.
I said, “It all comes down to this. Leave us alone. That’s all we ask. We can’t take you on, and we’re not going to let the government ruin our lives over you pussies. Just stay away. Pull your people out. Don’t come back. You want to sink a ferry or make a couple hundred people sick, go for it. You won’t get far anyway. But stay the holy hell out of Minnesota.”
He didn’t respond at first. He breathed at me, wiping his face once the blood began to drip onto the tile. Then, “You will die for this.”
“I’ll retire to Florida and eat too much fried seafood. That’s how I’ll die.”
“Your family, your friends—”
“Like you haven’t tried already? What was Ian? Or Paul? Are you really stupid enough to threaten me when I’m giving you a free pass?”
“You insult us.”
“Dish it out, but can’t take it. Is that what type of bully you are?” I looked up at Graham. “Jesus, no wonder we can’t win. We’re dealing with seventh graders.”
“Yes,” the leader said. “You can’t win.”
“This was a bad idea,” Graham said.
I nodded. It was.
A truce. Just ask the fuckers for a truce and hope they realized how serious we were about it.
I whispered to the cell leader, “Come on, man. Roll this over in your head. We’ve made our point. We shot your guy. Maybe he lives, maybe not. That’s a fighting chance. More than you gave the people you beheaded. Now we’re willing to leave you alone if you’ll agree to stay off our turf. Can you be reasonable for once in your life?” I tapped his forehead lightly with, “Just? One? Time?”
He stared at the ground. Shaking. More hate than fear. I stayed there, inches away. He could’ve torn my throat out or head butted me, but he didn’t. The shaking subsided and he said, “Okay, yes. We give you what you want.”
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