by Rachel Brune
“Right, man.” Eddie figured that agreeing with Alan was the best course of action.
Alan was calm for a few more minutes.
“Damn it!” The explosion accompanied Alan’s fist driving through the screen the TV. Sparks flew, and Eddie scrambled to unplug the set and damp out any embers that might catch in the rat-hole furnishings.
“Shit man, that’s our only set.”
“Fucking steal another one.”
Alan subsided. Eddie relaxed. He wrapped the cord around the set and dumped it in the trash can.
“And by the way,” Alan said, his voice deceptively calm. “I heard what Dodger said to that storekeeper at that last place.”
“Hey man, that’s just Dodger’s idea of a lame joke…” Eddie trailed off.
“I go out of my way,” said Alan, not listening. “I go way out of my way to pick these places at random, to find places where we won’t be traced, and your boy decides to leave a little bread crumb trail for some eager-beaver detective to sniff out?”
“Listen, they call these places stop-and-robs for a reason,” said Eddie. “Nobody’s going to give a shit if Mr. Kim lost a couple hundred bucks. Trust me.”
Alan laughed. The laugh trailed off. Eddie backed away toward the door.
“Next time I hear him say or do something that stupid,” said Alan, “I’ll kill him.”
Silence.
“All right, man,” said Eddie. “I’ll tell him.”
The door banged open. Dodger entered with a smoke in one hand and a six-pack in the other.
“Shit, man,” said Dodger. “Who wasted the TV?”
* * *
Cops were like unto sharks, reflected Scott. The minute a guy started bleeding, they swarmed in great, feeding masses. He didn’t know how the news of his reportorial shadow had spread, but spread it had until he was hard-pressed to remain seated at the lunch counter where he and Mark were eating.
Eating on the reporter’s ticket, Scott ordered a cheeseburger deluxe. Mark ordered a tuna fish sandwich on whole grain bread, then wondered why the counter worker looked at him strangely. Still, he got his sandwich on bread that was at least brown, if not necessarily whole grain.
“That’s a lot of tuna fish,” said Scott.
“Yeah, they pack it in here,” said Mark. He tried to fit his mouth around the entire sandwich, and lost half of it back onto his plate.
“Hey, Scott, long time no see!” A tall black man put his tray down at the table next to Mabry and his companion.
“Everett. How’s it going? I hear they got you working robbery.”
“It’s a living,” said Everett Marshall. “You know, fighting crime, catching bad guys.”
“Sounds great.”
“Yeah, I hear you’re over at the J-tif, working some desk.”
“Please.” Scott grimaced. “I’m a valued liaison to the Joint Terrorism Task Force, reviewing analysis on potential terrorist actions in New York City.”
“So like I said, working some desk.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Scott shook his head.
“So this is April O’Neil?” Everett took a bite of pastrami on rye.
“The name’s Mark. Mark Granger.” Mark extended his hand. Everett ignored it, and he withdrew. He realized he had a clump of tuna stuck to his hand and quickly wiped it off on a napkin.
“Right,” said Everett. “So, how you like hanging around cops, April?”
“Jesus.” Mark put down his sandwich. “Yeah, it’s great.”
“Okay, shut up and eat your sandwich, O’Neill.” Everett wiped his hands and mouth. “Listen, Scott, I got an interesting little story for you.”
“Shoot.”
“Okay, so we get a call last night from this Korean guy. Dispatch takes it, can barely understand what the hell the man’s saying.”
“Right.”
“Guy owns a deli down in the Village. Sells fruits and flowers and shit. So, around eleven o’ clock, these three guys come in. Ski masks, sawed-offs, the whole nine yards.”
“Clean the place out?”
“Yeah, real professionals, head straight for the register, clean it out and head out the door.”
“What’s so interesting about that?”
“Okay, so as these guys are leaving, the last guy pokes his head back in the store, and lets loose with something that sounds like Salaam Aleikum, jihad!”
“Hello, holy war?”
“That’s what the clerk said. Or at least, as close as he could get. Like I said, English was not his first language. Forget about Arabic.”
“Yeesh.”
“So yeah, I figured you would get a kick out of that. Some guy declaring jihad on Korean delis.”
Scott shook his head sadly. “What is this city coming to?”
Everett laughed and stole his pickle. “Yeah, man.”
Mark looked up. “Has that particular M.O. occurred at any other establishments within the city?”
Everett and Scott stared at him.
“M.O.?” Everett laughed. “Scott, you gotta keep April here in check. Maybe take her out someplace nice and she’ll stop pestering you.”
“Drop it, Marshall.”
“Hey man, don’t worry about it.” Everett crumpled the last of his napkin and wiped the area around his plate. He picked it up and stood up. “I’ll leave you two alone. Bye, now!”
Scott looked down at his own plate. Most of his food still remained. He suddenly didn’t feel like laughing. Or eating.
“Are you going to finish your fries?” Mark asked.
“Help yourself.” Scott pushed the plate toward him. He threw down a few bills and stood up.
“Hey—where are you going?”
“Outside.”
Mark grabbed his plate and Scott’s, eating French fries as he followed him out the door, pausing to finish a few more before dumping the plates in the trash. He pulled on his jacket as he followed Scott out and down the street.
“Where are you going? Are you going back to the office?”
“No, Granger, I’m not going back to the office.”
“Are you following a lead?”
Scott walked quickly, and Mark found himself trotting to keep up. “A lead? What sort of lead would I be following?” He wanted to leave the reporter on the sidewalk, but Mark stuck to him like…an unwanted reporter.
“From the e-mail I gave you.”
“Yeah, that. There’s nothing there.”
“What do you mean, there’s nothing there?” Mark was breathing heavily already. “Hey, hey—could we slow down?” Scott didn’t answer or slow his pace. “Okay, I mean, this shows up in my inbox, it seems legit, but you can’t find anything?”
“No. There’s nothing there,” said Scott. “I checked it out in our database, we even Googled it, but there’s nothing.”
“Google?” said Mark, slapping his forehead. “Of course, why didn’t I think of that?” He dropped the sarcasm. “Of course there’s nothing there. That’s why I came to you.”
“And I’m telling you, we’ve got nothing. No prior mentions of any Jeysh fi Amrik, no hits on the name attached to the e-mail, which is probably a fake anyway, nothing.”
“Well, what about that robbery your friend was telling you about? Are you going to pursue that lead?”
“Somebody knocking over a Korean deli and shouting a few words is not a lead, my friend. That is a funny story to tell over lunch.”
“Well, what are you going to do?” Mark jogged a few steps and planted himself in front of Scott, who stopped short to avoid plowing into him.
“I am going to take a walk and think about the shitty turn my life has taken lately,” said Scott. “Then, I’m going to go back to my desk and process some more meaningless information that is so old it is no longer of any intelligence value whatsoever. There, now go away and write a story about that.”
Scott sat at his half of a desk. Gina had noticed that about twenty minutes had passed without a single movement
from her desk mate. She hadn’t lost patience yet, but his contempt for and reluctance to do a job she had been working for the past six months was beginning to grate on her nerves.
“Scott?” she asked. “Mabry? You with me?”
Behind his blank expression, Scott was traveling down a road. The rising sun was huge behind a string of power lines. In the early morning, women suffered the freezing chill, up to their ankles in ponds along the side of the road. Dressed in their all-concealing black robes, the women and a few children were raking salt into piles, white against the brackish pond. The clear sky, already hued a deep blue, stretched overhead.
Scott shook himself back to the present.
“Yeah, sorry Gina,” he said. “I sort of spaced out there.” He tried to grin, but it fell flat and he gave up. He looked down at the file.
“No worries,” she said. MacAllister had told her Scott was still readjusting, would probably need some time. “I’m going to get some coffee. Want some?”
“No thanks,” he said. “I appreciate it, but I’ve been having some trouble sleeping. Don’t want to put caffeine into the system too late, you know?”
“Yeah, okay,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”
She left and Mabry went back to his computer. He wasn’t sure why, but he had started a TEW on Mark Granger’s e-mail. He included the printouts from his searches for the name of the sender—Ali al Malik—and the fruitless searches for something resembling the “Holy Army in America.” Ali al Malik was a pseudonym. As best as Scott determined, it had been adapted from the name of a Sunni Islamic scholar from India. No surprise there, extremist pseudonyms tended to be reminiscent of great figures from Islam’s past. No surprise, but not very helpful, either.
Scott made a decision, picked up the phone, and placed a call.
“Marshall here.”
“Hey, it’s Scott.”
“Yeah, man, what can I do for you? Your girlfriend get over her complex?”
“Yeah, listen Marshall, I got a quick question for you.”
“Okay man, shoot.”
“Right. You know you were telling me about that deli? The Korean guy got robbed, some guy shouts some Arabic?”
“Yeah. What about it?”
“Did you run it through the M.O. files?”
“Huh. No.” Everett paused. Scott heard the clicking of his keyboard over the phone before the detective came back on the line. “You think you got something, or is this a fishing expedition?”
“Yes.” Scott waited.
“Okay, man, give me a minute.” There was rustling and bumping. Everett came back on the line again. “Hey listen, give me a couple minutes. I’ll call you right back.”
Gina watched Scott hang up the phone. She had come back halfway through the conversation and now she leaned over, pitched her voice low. “You’re working a source?”
Scott settled back. “Not sure yet.”
“Listen, if you’ve got something, give it up. This is not where info starts. This is where intel comes to die.”
Scott shook his head. “I don’t even know if it’s anything. Just something bothering me.”
“Well, if it turns out to be something, send it up.” Gina gestured around. “They call us the analysts, but really we’re the ass-coverers.”
“The what?”
“You heard me. We’re the ones who will write the neat reports covering everyone’s ass if something actually happens.”
“I thought we were doing threat warning estimates. Shouldn’t we be tracking this stuff?”
Gina laughed. “Nope. That’s for smarter people at higher pay grades. Trust me, don’t go off on your own on this one. Give it up to higher, and when it comes back down, you can write your report.”
“I don’t even know what I’ve got,” said Scott. “It’s probably nothing.”
“If it’s nothing, why are you so excited?”
The phone rang, interrupting the inquisition. “Mabry.”
“Yeah, Scott, listen, you’ve got something here.”
“Yeah?”
“I made a few phone calls,” said Marshall. His voice sounded gravelly, and he coughed to clear it. “There’s nothing in the paperwork, but I talked to one or two other Robbery guys.”
“What are they saying?”
“Seems they’ve got funny stories to tell as well. At least two other twenty-four-hour delis have been knocked over by two, three men in masks. Both times, one guy pokes his head back in and shouts something about jihad.”
“They sure about that?”
“Yeah, first clerk remembered it specifically because he was Muslim, and he was angry that someone was making fun of his heritage.”
“Huh.”
“Yeah, go figure.” Everett lowered his voice. “Second time, the clerk noticed it because he was a paranoid son of a bitch, and that’s all he wanted to talk about to the responding officer.”
“Huh.”
“That’s what I thought,” said Everett. “But anyway, thanks for the tip.”
“You’re welcome.” Scott suffered a moment of disappointment. “So you'll be going after these guys?”
“Yeah, now that we’ve put one and one and one together, we’ll set something up.”
“Cool. Good luck.”
“Hey, Mabry, don’t sound so disappointed. Sometimes a criminal is just a criminal.”
“Yeah, all right, take care.”
Scott hung up the phone. Gina looked at him. “What’d he say?”
Scott shook his head. “Sounds like just a bunch of assholes knocking off Korean delis. And one hajji deli.”
Gina frowned at him. Scott realized that the ethnic slur had rolled too easily off his tongue. He was back in the U.S. where words like that mattered.
“Sorry.” Scott closed up the file, placed it on the stack that lived on his desk. “Listen, I got a migraine that just won’t quit. I’m going to call it a day.”
“Fine.” Gina’s goodwill had mostly evaporated. “Have a good night.”
Scott grabbed his jacket. The gym was calling, but the three beers in his refrigerator were even louder.
Chapter Eight
Mark tried to backtrack when he spotted Jefferson Taggert going through the files on his computer, but the veteran producer had eyes in the back of his head—or at least eyes keen enough to spot Mark’s reflection in the viewscreen.
“Granger! Get your ass over here.”
Mark’s cameraman slunk away as the reporter turned on his heel and walked slowly to his desk.
“Yes?” Mark became aware that he was hunched defensively and forced himself to straighten up and look his boss in the face.
“I thought I told you to lay off this damn terrorist non-story?”
“Yes,” said Mark.
“So, why am I getting phone calls from some FBI task force confirming your credentials?” Taggert pulled up a file and angled the laptop so Mark could see. “What is this bullshit?”
Mark shrugged. “I’m doing a story on that cop who shot at those kids the other night.”
“Oh yeah?” said Taggert. “Tell me about that.”
Mark pulled out his notebook and began flipping through. He flipped through as long as he could pretend to be looking for something, then shut it and looked up.
“Okay, the cop is a member of an FBI joint terrorism task force. He’s an NYPD officer who investigates gangs, and he’s an Army Reservist who just got back from a deployment in March.”
“So?”
“So, he’s the one who beat the crap out of me on the plane.”
“Huh.”
“He’s a war hero.”
“Granger, I don’t give a fuck.” Taggert shook his head, stood up, and folded his arms. “War heroes are a dime a dozen these days.”
“Okay, he’s a war hero with a serious case of post-traumatic stress. He’s been busted down to work as an analyst, the task force doesn’t trust him on the street. The only reason they are allowing me
to talk to him is so that they can pawn him off on someone who will keep him out of trouble.”
“So why are you still pursuing the story?”
“Because, I know this guy.” Mark selected his words carefully, pushing the angle. “He’s the ultimate tough guy who is headed on a downward spiral and everyone can see it except for him. He’s going to implode, and doesn’t even know it.”
“And you’re going to be there to film the burning debris?”
“Yeah, something like that.”
Taggert smiled. “Hm. I like it. Brings a fucking tear to my eye.”
Mark sighed inwardly.
“You got two days.” Taggert slapped him on the back. “I don’t see explosions, you don’t see your next paycheck.”
Mark started breathing again. Taggert sauntered off to his office, whistling a jaunty tune.
Gina was still pissed when Scott showed up the next morning, wearing sunglasses to hide the dark circles that come from insomnia combined with a beer hangover. Silently, he put down the Dunkin Donuts box in the center of their desk and opened the top. From his other hand, he transferred a tray with two cups of coffee and set them down next to the doughnuts. He pulled sugar and cream packets out of his jacket pocket and held them out her.
Gina leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. She raised an eyebrow.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Sorry for?” she asked.
“I’m sorry for being an asshole,” he said. “Mac’s right, I’m getting over some stuff, but that doesn’t mean I should take it out on you. I won’t lie and pretend I’m happy I got stuck here, but like I said, that’s not your problem.” He grinned at her. “So … coffee?”
She shrugged and reached for the cream.
“No sugar, thanks.”
“Aw, honey, you don’t have to call me sugar.”
“Shut up, hero.”
Scott grimaced. “I wish people would quit calling me that.”
“But you’d look so cute as an action figure.” Gina picked out a plain, glazed doughnut and ate it with her coffee.
“Shit.” Scott chose a doughnut dark in color with no frosting.
“Holy crap, is that a wholegrain doughnut?” asked Gina.