A Soft Barren Aftershock

by F. Paul Wilson

  “Okay, Munir,” Jack said. “Put your hand on the table.

  Munir complied, placing his left hand palm down, wondering what this was about.

  “Now let’s see the merchandise,” Jack said to the stranger.

  The thin man pulled a small, oblong package from his pocket. It appeared to be wrapped in brown paper hand towels. He unrolled the towels and placed the object next to Munir’s hand.

  A finger. Not Robby’s. Different. Adult size.

  Munir pulled his hand back onto his lap and stared.

  “Come on, Munir,” Jack said. “We’ve got to do a color check.”

  Munir slipped his hand back onto the table next to the grisly object, regarding it obliquely. So real looking.

  “It’s too long and that’s only a fair color match,” Jack said.

  “It’s close enough,” the stranger said. “Pretty damn good on such short notice, I’d say.”

  “I suppose you’re right.” Jack handed him an envelope. “Here you go.”

  The goateed stranger took the envelope and stuffed it inside his shirt without opening it, then left without saying good bye.

  Munir stared at the finger. The dried blood on the stump end, the detail over the knuckles and around the fingernail—even down to the dirt under the nail—was incredible. It almost looked real.

  “This won’t work,” he said. “I don’t care how real this looks, when he finds out it’s a fake—”

  “Fake?” Jack said, stirring sugar into his coffee. “Who said it’s a fake?”

  Munir snatched his hand away and pushed himself back. He wanted to sink into the vinyl covering of the booth seat, wanted to pass through to the other side and run from this man and the loathsome object on the table between them. He fixed his eyes on the seat beside him and managed to force a few words past his rising gorge.

  “Please . . . take . . . that . . . away.”

  He heard the soft crinkle and scrape of paper being folded and dragged across the table top, then Jack’s voice:

  “Okay, Cinderella. You can look now. It’s gone.”

  Munir kept his eyes averted. What had he got himself into? In order to save his family from one ruthless madman he was forced to deal with another. What sort of world was this?

  He felt a sob build in his throat. Until last week, he couldn’t remember crying once since his boyhood. For the past few days it seemed he wanted to cry all the time. Or scream. Or both.

  He saw Jack’s hand pushing a cup of coffee into his field of vision.

  “Here. Drink this. Lots of it. You’re going to need to stay alert.”

  An insane hope rose in Munir.

  “Do you think . . . do you think the man on the phone did the same thing? With Robby’s finger? Maybe he went to a morgue and . . .”

  Jack shook his head slowly, as if the movement pained him. For an instant he saw past the wall around Jack. Saw pity there.

  “Don’t torture yourself,” Jack said.

  Yes, Munir thought. The madman on the phone was already doing too good a job of that.

  “It’s not going to work,” Munir said, fighting the blackness of despair. “He’s going to realize he’s been tricked and then he’s going to take it out on my boy.”

  “No matter what you do, he’s going to find an excuse to do something nasty to your boy. Or your wife. That’s the whole idea behind this gig—make you suffer. But his latest wrinkle with the fingers gives us a chance to find out who he is and where he’s holed up.”

  “How?”

  “He wants your finger. How’s he going to get it? He can’t very well give us an address to mail it to. So there’s going to have to be a drop—someplace where we leave it and he picks it up. And that’s where we nab him and make him tell us where he’s got your family stashed.”

  “What if he refuses to tell us?”

  Jack’s voice was soft, his nod almost imperceptible. Munir shuddered at what he saw flashing through Jack’s eyes in that instant.

  “Oh . . . he’ll tell us.”

  “He thinks I won’t do it,” Munir said, looking at his fingers—all ten of them. “He thinks I’m a coward because he thinks all Arabs are cowards. He’s said so. And he was right. I couldn’t do it.”

  “Hell,” Jack said, “I couldn’t do it either, and it wasn’t even my hand. But I’m sure you’d have done it eventually if I hadn’t come up with an alternative.”

  Would I have done it? Munir thought. Could I have done it?

  Maybe he’d have done it just to demonstrate his courage to the madman on the phone. Over the years Munir had seen the Western world’s image of the Arab male distorted beyond recognition by terrorism: the Arab bombed school buses and beheaded helpless hostages; Arab manhood aimed its weapons from behind the skirts unarmed civilian women and children.

  “If something goes wrong because of this, because of my calling on you to help me, I . . . I will never forgive myself.”

  “Don’t think like that,” Jack said. “It gets you nothing. And you’ve got to face it: No matter what you do—cut off one finger, two fingers, your left leg, kill somebody, blow up Manhattan—it’s never going to be enough. He’s going to keep escalating until you’re dead. You’ve got to stop him now, before it goes any further. Understand?”

  Munir nodded. “But I’m so afraid. Poor Robby . . . his terrible pain, his fear. And Barbara . . .”

  “Exactly. And if you don’t want that to go on indefinitely, you’ve got to take the offensive. Now. So let’s get back to your place and see how he wants to take delivery on your finger.”

  12

  Back in the apartment, Jack bandaged Munir’s hand in thick layers of gauze to make to look injured. While they waited for the phone to ring, he disappeared into the bathroom with the finger to wash it.

  “We want this to be as convincing as possible,” he said. “You don’t strike me as the type to have dirty fingernails.”

  When the call finally came, Munir ground his teeth at the sound of the hated voice.

  Jack was beside him, gripping his arm, steadying him as he listened through an earphone he had plugged into the answering machine. He had told Munir what to say, and had coached him on how to say it, how to sound.

  “Well, Mooo-neeer. You got that finger for me?”

  “Yes,” he said in the choked voice he had rehearsed. “I have it.”

  The caller paused, as if the caller was surprised by the response.

  “You did it? You really did it?

  “Yes. You gave me no choice.”

  Well, I’ll be damned. Hey, how come your voice sounds so funny?”

  “Codeine. For the pain.”

  “Yeah. I’ll bet that smarts. But that’s okay. Pain’s good for you. And just think: Your kid got through it without codeine.”

  Jack’s grip on his arm tightened as Munir stiffened and began to rise. Jack pulled him back to a sitting position.

  “Please don’t hurt Robby anymore,” Munir said, and this time he did not have to feign a choking voice. “I did what you asked me. Now let them go.”

  “Not so fast, Mooo-neeer. How do I know you really cut that finger off? You wouldn’t be bullshitting me now, would you?”

  “Oh, please. I would not lie about something as important as this.”

  Yet I am lying, he thought. Forgive me, my son, if this goes wrong.

  “Well, we’ll just have to see about that, won’t we? Here’s what you do: Put your offering in a brown paper lunch bag and head downtown. Go to the mailbox on the corner where Lafayette, Astor, and Eighth come together. Leave the bag on top of the mailbox, then walk half a block down and stand in front of the Astor Place Theater. Got it?”

  “Yes. Yes, I think so.”

  “Of course you do. Even a bonehead like you should be able to handle those instructions.”

  “But when should I do this?”

  “Ten a.m.”

  “This morning?” He glanced at his watch. “But it is almost 9:30!�
��

  “Aaaay! And he can tell time too! What an intellect! Yeah, that’s right, Mooo-neeer. And don’t be late or I’ll have to think you’re lying to me. And we know what’ll happen then, don’t we.”

  “But what if–?”

  “See you soon, Mooo-neeer.”

  The line went dead. His heart pounding, Munir fumbled the receiver back onto its cradle and turned to Jack.

  “We must hurry! We have no time to waste!”

  Jack nodded. “This guy’s no dummy. He’s not giving us a chance to set anything up.”

  “I’ll need the . . . finger,” Munir said. Even now, long after the shock of learning it was real, the thought of touching it made him queasy. “Could you please put it in the brown bag for me?”

  Jack nodded. Munir led him to the kitchen and gave him a brown lunch bag. Jack dropped the finger inside and handed the sack back to him.

  “You’ve got to arrive alone, so you go first,” Jack said. “I’ll follow a few minutes from now. If you don’t see me around, don’t worry. I’ll be there. And whatever you do, follow his instructions—nothing else. Understand? Nothing else. I’ll do the ad-libbing. Now get moving.”

  Munir fairly ran for the street, praying to Allah that it wouldn’t take too long to find a taxi.

  13

  Somehow Jack’s cab made it down to the East Village before Munir’s. He had a bad moment when he couldn’t find him. Then a cab screeched to a halt and Munir jumped out. Jack watched as he hurried to the mailbox and placed the brown paper bag atop it. Jack retreated to a phone booth on the uptown corner and pretended to make a call while Munir strode down to the Astor Place Theater and stopped before a Blue Man Group poster.

  As Jack began an animated conversation with the dial tone, he scanned the area. Midmorning in the East Village. Members of the neighborhood’s homeless brigade seemed to be the only people about, either shuffling aimlessly along, as if dazed by the bright morning sun, or huddled on the sidewalks like discarded rag piles. The nut could be among them. Easy to hide within layers of grime and ratty clothes. But not so easy to hide a purpose in life. Jack hunted for someone who looked like he had somewhere to go.

  Hollander . . . he wished there’d been a photo in his personnel file. Jack was sure he was the bad guy here. If only he’d been able to get over to his apartment before now. Maybe he’d have found –

  And then Jack spotted him. A tall bearded guy traveling westward along Eighth Street, weaving his way through the loitering horde. He was squeezed into a filthy, undersized Army fatigue jacket, the cuffs of at least three of the multiple shirts he wore under the coat protruding from the too-short sleeves; the neck of a pint bottle of Mad Dog stuck up like a periscope from the frayed edge of one of the pockets; the torn knees of his green work pants revealed threadbare jeans beneath. Piercing blue eyes peered out from under a Navy watch cap.

  The sicko? Maybe. Maybe not. One thing was sure: This guy wasn’t wandering; he had someplace to go.

  And he was heading directly for the mailbox.

  When he reached it he stopped and looked over his shoulder, back along the way he had come on Eighth, then grabbed the brown paper bag Munir had left there. He reached inside, pulled out the paper towel-wrapped contents, and began to unwrap it.

  Suddenly he let out a strangled cry and tossed the finger into the street. It rolled in an arc and came to rest in the debris matted against the curb. He glanced over his shoulder again and began a stumbling run in the other direction, across Eighth, toward Jack and away from Munir.

  “Shit!” Jack said aloud, working the word into his one-way conversation, making it an argument, all the while pretending not to notice the doings at the mailbox.

  Something tricky was going down. But what? Had the sicko sent a patsy? Jack had known the guy was sly, but he’d thought the sicko would have wanted to see the finger up close and personal, just to be sure it was real.

  Unless of course the sicko was the wino and he’d done just that a few seconds ago.

  He was almost up to Jack’s phone booth now. The only option Jack saw was to follow him. Give him a good lead and –

  He heard pounding footsteps. Munir was coming this way—running this way, sprinting across the pavement, teeth bared, eyes wild, reaching for the tall guy.

  Jack repressed an alarmed impulse to get between the two of them. It wouldn’t do any good. Munir was out of control and had built up too much momentum. Besides, no use in tipping off his own part in this.

  Munir grabbed the taller man by the elbow and spun him around.

  “Where are they?” he screeched. His face was flushed; tiny bubbles of saliva collected at the corners of his mouth. “Tell me, you swine!”

  Swine? Maybe that was a heavy-duty insult from a Moslem but it was pabulum around here.

  The tall guy jerked back, trying to shake Munir off. His open mouth revealed gapped rows of rotting teeth.

  “Hey, man–!”

  “Tell me or I’ll kill you!” Munir shouted, grabbing the man’s upper arms and shaking his lanky frame.

  “Lemme go, man,” he said as his head snapped back and forth like a guy in a car that had just been rear-ended. Munir was going to give him whiplash in a few seconds. “Don’t know whatcher talking about!”

  “You do! You went right to the package. You’ve seen the finger—now tell me where they are!”

  “Hey, look, man, I don’t know nothin’ ‘bout whatcher sayin’. Dude stopped me down the street and told me to go check out the bag on top the mailbox. Gave me five to do it. Told me to hold up whatever was inside it.”

  “Who?” Munir said, releasing the guy and turning to look back down Eighth. “Where is he?”

  “Gone now.”

  Munir grabbed the guy again, this time by the front of his fatigue jacket.

  “What did he look like?”

  “I dunno. Just a guy. Whatta you want from me anyway, man? I didn’t do nothin’. And I don’t want nothin’ to do with no dead fingers. Now getcher hands offa me!”

  Jack had heard enough.

  “Let him go,” he told Munir, still pretending to talk into the phone.

  Munir gave him a baffled look. “No. He can tell us—”

  “He can’t tell us anything we need to know. Let him go and get back to your apartment. You’ve done enough damage already.”

  Munir blanched and loosened his grip. The guy stumbled back a couple of steps, then turned and ran down Lafayette. Munir looked around and saw that every rheumy eye in the area was on him. He stared down at his hands—the free right and the bandaged left—as if they were traitors.

  “You don’t think–?”

  “Get home. He’ll be calling you. And so will I.”

  Jack watched Munir move away toward the Bowery like a sleepwalker. He hung up the phone and leaned against the booth.

  What a mess. The nut had pulled a fast one. Got some wino to make the pickup. But how could a guy that kinked be satisfied with seeing Munir’s finger from afar? He seemed the type to want to hold it in his grubby little hand.

  But maybe he didn’t care. Because maybe it didn’t matter.

  Jack pulled out the slip of paper on which he’d written Richard Hollander’s address. Time to pay Saud Petrol’s ex-employee a little visit.

  14

  Munir paced his apartment, going from room to room, cursing himself. Such a fool! Such an idiot! But he couldn’t help it. He’d lost control. When he’d seen that man walk up to the paper bag and reach inside it, all rationality had fled. The only thing left in his mind had been the sight of Robby’s little finger tumbling out of that envelope last night.

  After that, everything was a blur.

  The phone began to ring.

  Oh, no! he thought. It’s him. Please, Allah, let him be satisfied. Grant him mercifulness.

  He lifted the receiver and heard the voice.

  “Quite a show you put on there, Mooo-neeer.”

  “Please. I was upset. You’ve
seen my severed finger. Now will you let my family go?”

  “Now just hold on there a minute, Mooo-neeer. I saw a finger go flying through the air, but I don’t know for sure if it was your finger.”

  Munir froze with the receiver jammed against his ear.

  “Wha-what do you mean?”

  “I mean, how do I know that was a real finger? How do I know it wasn’t one of those fake rubber things you buy in the five-and-dime?”

  “It was real! I swear it! You saw how your man reacted!”

  “He was just a wino, Mooo-neeer. Scared of his own shadow. What’s he know?”

  “Oh, please! You must believe me!”

  “Well, I would, Mooo-neeer. Really, I would. Except for the way you grabbed him afterward. Now it’s bad enough you went after him, but I’m willing to overlook that. I’m far more generous about forgiving mistakes than you are, Mooo-neeer. But what bothers me is the way you grabbed him. You used both your hands the same.”

  Munir felt his blood congealing, sludging though his arteries and veins.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I got trouble seeing a man who just chopped off one of his fingers doing that, Mooo-neeer. I mean, you grabbed him like you had two good hands. And that bothers me, Mooo-neeer. Sorely bothers me.”

  “Please. I swear—”

  “Swearing ain’t good enough, I’m afraid. Seeing is believing. And I believe I saw a man with two good hands out there this morning.”

  “No. Really . . .”

  “So I’m gonna have to send you another package, Mooo-neeer.”

  “Oh, no! Don’t—”

  “Yep. A little memento from your wife.”

  “Please, no.”

  He told Munir what that memento would be, then he clicked off.

  “No!”

  Munir jammed his knuckles into his mouth and screamed into his fist.

  “NOOOOO!”

  15

  Jack stood outside Richard Hollander’s door.

  No sweat getting into the building. The address in the personnel file had led Jack to a rundown walk-up in the West Eighties. He’d checked the mailboxes in the dingy vestibule and found R. Hollander still listed for 3B. A few quick strokes with the notched flexible plastic ruler Jack kept handy, and he was in.