Transgressions

by Ed McBain

  “Shall we give him a ticket?” Meyer asked jokingly.

  “I think we should,” Carella said.

  “Why not? Violation of Section Two Twenty-One, Chapter Two, Subchapter Four, Noise Control.”

  “Maximum fine, eight hundred and seventy-five smackers,” Carella said, nodding, enjoying this.

  “Teach him to honk at cops,” Meyer said.

  The driver behind them kept honking his horn.

  “So much hate in this city,” Meyer said softly. “So much hate.”

  Shalah Aslam opened the door for them only after they had both held up their shields and ID cards to the three inches of space allowed by the night chain. She was wearing a blue woolen robe over a long white cotton nightgown. There was a puzzled look on her pale face. This was six-thirty in the morning, she had to know that two detectives on her doorstep at this hour meant something terrible had happened.

  There was no diplomatic way to tell a woman that her husband had been murdered.

  Standing in a hallway redolent of cooking smells, Carella told Shalah that someone had shot and killed her husband, and they would appreciate it if she could answer a few questions that might help them find whoever had done it. She asked them to come in. The apartment was very still. In contrast to the night before, the day had dawned far too cold for May. There was a bleak chill to the Aslam dwelling.

  They followed her through the kitchen and into a small living room where the detectives sat on an upholstered sofa that probably had been made in the mountains of North Carolina. The blue robe Shalah Aslam was wearing most likely had been purchased at the Gap. But here on the mantel was a clock shaped in the form of a mosque, and there were beaded curtains leading to another part of the apartment, and there were the aromas of strange foods from other parts of the building, and the sounds of strange languages wafting up from the street through the open windows. They could have been somewhere in downtown Dhakar.

  “The children are still asleep,” Shalah explained. “Benazir is only six months old. The two other girls don’t catch their school bus until eight-fifteen. I usually wake them at seven.”

  She had not yet cried. Her pale narrow face seemed entirely placid, her dark brown eyes vacant. The shock had registered, but the emotions hadn’t yet caught up.

  “Khalid was worried that something like this might happen,” she said. “Ever since 9/11. That’s why he had those American flags in his taxi. To let passengers know he’s American. He got his citizenship five years ago. He’s American, same as you. We’re all Americans.”

  They had not yet told her about the Star of David painted on her husband’s windshield.

  “Seven Bangladesh people died in the towers, you know,” she said. “It is not as if we were not victims, too. Because we are Muslim, that does not make us terrorists. The terrorists on those planes were Saudi, you know. Not people from Bangladesh.”

  “Mrs. Aslam, when you say he was worried, did he ever say specifically . . .?”

  “Yes, because of what happened to some other drivers at Regal.”

  “Regal?”

  “That’s the company he works for. A Regal taxi was set on fire in Riverhead the very day the Americans went into Afghanistan. And another one parked in Calm’s Point was vandalized the week after we invaded Iraq. So he was afraid something might happen to him as well.”

  “But he’d never received a specific death threat, had he? Or . . .”

  “No.”

  “. . . a threat of violence?”

  “No, but the fear was always there. He has had rocks thrown at his taxi. He told me he was thinking of draping a small American flag over his hack license, to hide his picture and name. When passengers ask if he’s Arab, he tells them he’s from Bangladesh.”

  She was still talking about him in the present tense. It still hadn’t sunk in.

  “Most people don’t even know where Bangladesh is. Do you know where Bangladesh is?” she asked Meyer.

  “No, ma’am, I don’t,” Meyer said.

  “Do you?” she asked Carella.

  “No,” Carella admitted.

  “But they know to shoot my husband because he is from Bangladesh,” she said, and burst into tears.

  The two detectives sat opposite her clumsily, saying nothing.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  She took a tiny, crochet-trimmed handkerchief from the pocket of the robe, dabbed at her eyes with it.

  “Khalid was always so careful,” she said. “He never picked up anyone wearing a ski cap,” drying her cheeks now. “If he got sleepy, he parked in front of a twenty-four-hour gas station or a police precinct. He never picked up anyone who didn’t look right. He didn’t care what color a person was. If that person looked threatening, he wouldn’t pick him up. He hid his money in his shoes, or in an ashtray, or in the pouch on the driver-side door. He kept only a few dollars in his wallet. He was a very careful man.”

  Meyer bit the bullet.

  “Did your husband know any Jewish people?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. “Why?”

  “Mama?” a child’s voice asked.

  A little girl in a white nightgown, six, seven years old, was standing in the doorway to one of the other rooms. Her dark eyes were big and round in a puzzled face Meyer had seen a thousand times on television these past several years. Straight black hair. A slight frown on the face now. Wondering who these strange men were in their living room at close to seven in the morning.

  “Where’s Daddy?” she asked.

  “Daddy’s working,” Shalah said, and lifted her daughter onto her lap. “Say hello to these nice men.”

  “Hello,” the little girl said.

  “This is Sabeen,” Shalah said. “Sabeen is in the first grade, aren’t you, Sabeen?”

  “Uh-huh,” Sabeen said.

  “Hello, Sabeen,” Meyer said.

  “Hello,” she said again.

  “Sweetie, go read one of your books for a while, okay?” Shalah said. “I have to finish here.”

  “I have to go to school,” Sabeen said.

  “I know, darling. I’ll just be a few minutes.”

  Sabeen gave the detectives a long look, and then went out of the room, closing the door behind her.

  “Did a Jew kill my husband?” Shalah asked.

  “We don’t know that,” Carella said.

  “Then why did you ask if he knew any Jews?”

  “Because the possibility exists that this might have been a hate crime,” Meyer said.

  “My husband was not a Palestinian,” Shalah said. “Why would a Jew wish to kill him?”

  “We don’t know for a fact . . .”

  “But you must at least suspect it was a Jew, isn’t that so? Otherwise, why would you ask such a question? Bangladesh is on the Bay of Bengal, next door to India. It is nowhere near Israel. So why would a Jew . . .?”

  “Ma’am, a Star of David was painted on his windshield,” Meyer said.

  The room went silent.

  “Then it was a Jew,” she said, and clasped her hands in her lap.

  She was silent for perhaps twenty seconds.

  Then she said, “The rotten bastards.”

  “I shouldn’t have told her,” Meyer said.

  “Be all over the papers, anyway,” Carella said. “Probably make the front page of the afternoon tabloid.”

  It was ten minutes past seven, and they were on their way across the bridge again, to where Regal Taxi had its garage on Abingdon and Hale. The traffic was even heavier than it had been on the way out. The day was warming up a little, but not much. This had been the worst damn winter Carella could ever remember. He’d been cold since October. And every time it seemed to be warming up a little, it either started snowing or raining or sleeting or some damn thing to dampen the spirits and crush all hope. Worst damn shitty winter ever.

  “What?” Meyer said.

  “Nothing.”

  “You were frowning.”

  Carella m
erely nodded.

  “When do you think she’ll tell the kids?” Meyer asked.

  “I think she made a mistake saying he was working. She’s got to tell them sooner or later.”

  “Hard call to make.”

  “Well, she’s not gonna send them to school today, is she?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Be all over the papers,” Carella said again.

  “I don’t know what I’d do in a similar situation.”

  “When my father got killed, I told my kids that same day,” Carella said.

  “They’re older,” Meyer said.

  “Even so.”

  He was silent for a moment.

  “They really loved him,” he said.

  Meyer figured he was talking about himself.

  There are times in this city when it is impossible to catch a taxi. Stand on any street corner between three-fifteen and four o’clock and you can wave your hand at any passing blur of yellow, and—forget about it. That’s the forty-five minutes when every cabbie is racing back to the garage to turn in his trip sheet and make arrangements for tomorrow’s tour of duty. It was the same with cops. The so-called night shift started at four P.M. and ended at midnight. For the criminally inclined, the shift change was a good time for them to do their evil thing because that’s when all was confusion.

  Confusion was the order of the day at the Regal garage when Meyer and Carella got there at seven-thirty that morning. Cabs were rolling in, cabs were rolling out. Assistant managers were making arrangements for tomorrow’s short-terms, and dispatchers were sending newly gassed taxis on their way through the big open rolling doors. This was the busiest time of the day. Even busier than the pre-theater hours. Nobody had time for two flatfoots investigating a homicide.

  Carella and Meyer waited.

  Their own shift would end in—what was it now?—ten minutes, and they were bone-weary and drained of all energy, but they waited patiently because a man had been killed and Carella had been First Man Up when he answered the phone. It was twelve minutes after eight before the manager, a man named Dennis Ryan, could talk to them. Tall, and red-headed, and fortyish, harried-looking even though all of his cabs were on their way now, he kept nodding impatiently as they told him what had happened to Khalid Aslam.

  “So where’s my cab?” he asked.

  “Police garage on Courtney,” Meyer told him.

  “When do I get it back? That cab is money on the hoof.”

  “Yes, but a man was killed in it,” Carella said.

  “When I saw Kal didn’t show up this morning . . .”

  Kal, Carella thought. Yankee Doodle Dandy.

  “. . . I figured he stopped to say one of his bullshit prayers.”

  Both detectives looked at him.

  “They’re supposed to pray five times a day, you know, can you beat it? Five times! Sunrise, early afternoon, late afternoon, sunset, and then before they go to bed. Five friggin times! And two optional ones if they’re really holy. Most of them recognize they have a job to do here, they don’t go flopping all over the sidewalk five times a day. Some of them pull over to a mosque on their way back in, for the late afternoon prayer. Some of them just do the one before they come to work, and the sunset one if they’re home in time, and then the one before they go to bed. I can tell you anything you need to know about these people, we got enough of them working here, believe me.”

  “What kind of a worker was Aslam?” Carella asked.

  “I guess he made a living.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning, it costs eighty-two bucks a shift to lease the cab. Say the driver averages a hundred above that in fares and tips. Gasoline costs him, say, fifteen, sixteen bucks? So he ends up taking home seventy-five, eighty bucks for an eight-hour shift. That ain’t bad, is it?”

  “Comes to around twenty grand a year,” Meyer said.

  “Twenty, twenty-five. That ain’t bad,” Ryan said again.

  “Did he get along with the other drivers?” Carella asked.

  “Oh, sure. These friggin Arabs are thick as thieves.”

  “How about your non-Arab drivers? Did he get along with them?”

  “What non-Arab drivers? Why? You think one of my drivers done him?”

  “Did he ever have any trouble with one of the other drivers?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Ever hear him arguing with one of them?”

  “Who the hell knows? They babble in Bangla, Urdu, Sindi, Farsi, who the hell knows what else? They all sound the same to me. And they always sound like they’re arguing. Even when they got smiles on their faces.”

  “Have you got any Jewish drivers?” Meyer asked.

  “Ancient history,” Ryan said. “I ain’t ever seen a Jewish driver at Regal.”

  “How about anyone who might be sympathetic to the Jewish cause?”

  “Which cause is that?” Ryan asked.

  “Anyone who might have expressed pro-Israel sympathies?”

  “Around here? You’ve got to be kidding.”

  “Did you ever hear Aslam say anything against Israel? Or the Jewish people?”

  “No. Why? Did a Jew kill him?”

  “What time did he go to work last night?”

  “The boneyard shift goes out around eleven-thirty, quarter to twelve, comes in around seven, seven-thirty—well, you saw. I guess he must’ve gone out as usual. Why? What time was he killed?”

  “Around two, two-thirty.”

  “Where?”

  “Up on Ainsley and Twelfth.”

  “Way up there, huh?” Ryan said. “You think a nigger did it?”

  “We don’t know if who did it was white, purple, or black, was the word you meant, right?” Carella said, and looked Ryan dead in the eye.

  And fuck you, too, Ryan thought, but said only, “Good luck catching him,” making it sound like a curse.

  Meyer and Carella went back to the squadroom to type up their interim report on the case.

  It was almost a quarter to nine when they finally went home.

  The day shift had already been there for half an hour.

  Detectives Arthur Brown and Bert Kling made a good salt-and-pepper pair.

  Big and heavyset and the color of his surname, Brown looked somewhat angry even when he wasn’t. A scowl from him was usually enough to cause a perp to turn to Kling for sympathy and redemption. A few inches shorter than his partner—everybody was a few inches shorter than Brown—blond and hazel-eyed, Kling looked like a broad-shouldered farm boy who’d just come in off the fields after working since sunup. God Cop-Bad Cop had been invented for Kling and Brown.

  It was Brown who took the call from Ballistics at 10:27 that Friday morning.

  “You handling this cabbie kill?” the voice said.

  Brown immediately recognized the caller as a brother.

  “I’ve been briefed on it,” he said.

  “This is Carlyle, Ballistics. We worked that evidence bullet the ME’s office sent over, you want to take this down for whoever’s running the case?”

  “Shoot,” Brown said, and moved a pad into place.

  “Nice clean bullet, no deformities, must’ve lodged in the brain matter, ME’s report didn’t say exactly where they’d recovered it. Not that it matters. First thing we did here, bro . . .”

  He had recognized Brown’s voice as well.

  “. . . was compare a rolled impression of the evidence bullet against our specimen cards. Once we got a first-sight match, we did a microscopic examination of the actual bullet against the best sample bullet in our file. Way we determine the make of an unknown firearm is by examining the grooves on the bullet and the right or left direction of twist—but you don’t want to hear all that shit, do you?”

  Brown had heard it only ten thousand times before.

  “Make a long story short,” Carlyle said, “what we got here is a bullet fired from a .38-caliber Colt revolver, which is why you didn’t find an ejected shell in the ta
xi, the gun being a revolver and all. Incidentally, there are probably a hundred thousand unregistered, illegal .38-caliber Colts in this city, so the odds against you finding it are probably eighty to one. End of story.”

  “Thanks,” Brown said. “I’ll pass it on.”

  “You see today’s paper?” Carlyle asked.

  “No, not yet.”

  “Case made the front page. Makes it sound like the Israeli army invaded Majesta with tanks, one lousy Arab. Is this true about a Jewish star on the windshield?”

  “That’s what our guys found.”

  “Gonna be trouble, bro,” Carlyle said.

  He didn’t know the half of it.

  While Carella and Meyer slept like hibernating grizzlies, Kling and Brown read their typed report, noted that the dead driver’s widow had told them the Aslams’ place of worship was called Majid Hazrati-Shabazz, and went out at eleven that morning to visit the mosque.

  If either of them had expected glistening white minarets, arches, and domes, they were sorely disappointed. There were more than a hundred mosques in this city, but only a handful of them had been originally designed as such. The remainder had been converted to places of worship from private homes, warehouses, storefront buildings, and lofts. There were, in fact, only three requirements for any building that now called itself a mosque: that males and females be separated during prayer; that there be no images of animate objects inside the building; and that the quibla—the orientation of prayer in the direction of the Kabba in Mecca—be established.

  A light rain began falling as they got out of the unmarked police sedan and began walking toward a yellow brick building that had once been a small supermarket on the corner of Lowell and Franks. Metal shutters were now in place where earlier there’d been plate glass display windows. Grafitti decorated the yellow brick and the green shutters. An ornately hand-lettered sign hung above the entrance doors, white on a black field, announcing the name of the mosque: Majid Hazrat-i-Shabazz. Men in flowing white garments and embroidered prayer caps, other men in dark business suits and pillbox hats milled about on the sidewalk with young men in team jackets, their baseball caps turned backward. Friday was the start of the Muslim sabbath, and now the faithful were being called to prayer.