by Blake Banner
“Wow.”
“There were no cabs, so I got the subway and buses, and I bought the groceries on the way. Stone?”
I smiled and said, “Yes. Welcome back.”
I am not the huggy type, but that night I made an exception.
NINETEEN
I woke up at seven AM, after just four hours sleep. I had a headache that made me groan. I sat up, and after a moment, the room caught up with me. Then, the sounds and smells of Dehan cooking breakfast in the kitchen reached me. I smiled and staggered to the shower.
When I got down, she put a cup of coffee on the breakfast bar for me and said, “This is just kind of a random reaching, clutching at straws if you will, but just assuming for a moment that you’re right…” She paused and pointed at me with a spatula. “And I think you are, if Jacob was hanging with the Sureños, or some other Latino gang, and that somehow caused his death, the one and only thing that links him with his father’s death…”
I was nodding before she got to the end. “Is El Chato, I know. Good morning. I was thinking that in the shower.” I sipped the coffee. It was good. Then, I went over to the frying pan and inhaled the fumes from the bacon. “Man! That is good. But connection is putting it very strongly. The connection is that El Chato is Latino and was a member of the Sureños.”
“No.” She shook her head and started spilling bacon onto two plates with toast and fried mushrooms. “There is more.” She broke four eggs into a pan. “There is also the fact that he was there, lurking in the garden, right by Humberto’s hideout, within days of Simon’s murder.” She wagged the spatula at me again. “There is the fact that he is probably Humberto’s Diavolo Incarnato.”
“You have a point.”
“Ha! I ain’t just a pretty Jewish girl with no prospects of ever getting married or having kids.”
“I would have to agree with that assessment.” I drank more coffee as she began to slide the eggs out of the pan and onto the toast. I tried to visualize it. “So how does it work?”
She brought the plates over to the table. “You haven’t set the table? Get the knives and forks, would you? And the salt. Oh, and the pepper. I have no idea how it works. El Chato is not married, and as far as I am aware, he has no kids. Not acknowledged, anyhow. He’s got to be fifteen or sixteen years older than Jacob, so I don’t see them hanging out together, either.”
I sank back in my chair and stared at her. She stared back. “What?”
I nodded. “That’s it. That’s the connection. It’s good to have you back, Dehan. I was going crazy last night, going ’round in circles. But you just put your finger on it.”
She smiled and focused on her food. “I did, huh? Like I said, not just a pretty face. Feel like sharing?”
“Nope.” Suddenly, I was starving and I attacked my plate with zest. “Humor me. I just need to confirm a couple of things. Then, if I am right, I’ll share.”
She raised an eyebrow, but said nothing, and we ate in comfortable silence.
The rain had stopped overnight and the sky, looking freshly scrubbed, was glowing in luminous blue patches through huge white bundles of whipped cloud. I hit the ignition and pulled away.
“Is that why you said you didn’t want me to pick you up, because you had made up your mind to come over?”
She angled herself in the seat to face me. “I guess. You want to know what I think?”
“Always.”
“The big pain in the ass in this case is fitting all the bits together. Humberto, Paul, Brazil, Simon, Jacob, El Chato, the Church…”
“And there is more to come.”
“Cool. So here is how I am beginning to see it...”
I turned onto Morris Park Avenue. The blacktop looked like washed steel, reflecting the early morning sky.
“Paul and Sylvie were, maybe still are, lovers.” She wagged a finger at me. “And I think the whole damn case hinges on that. Elizabeth said it. He’s a rake. But like I said before, I think Sylvie knew how to play him, hooked him, and kept him.”
“Okay.”
“Now, we know that Simon does not approve of sex. Sex is for procreation and the greater glory of God. His big thing, if you’ll forgive the pun, is work. So he works all the hours that God sends, plus overtime, including Sundays. Meantime, Sylvie is starting to get lonesome and pulpit Paul is just across the garden, waiting to give her sweet consolation.”
“You are beginning to sound a little lurid.”
“Shut up. The inevitable happens and they start having an affair. At first they keep it together, but it starts to get out of hand, and on the Sunday in question, she is left alone, yet again, with little Mary, and Paul comes over. She already told us that she forgot to turn the lights on and get things ready for Simon that evening when he returned. Why? Because they were both tangled in blissful, post-coital bliss.
“Simon comes in, calling for her. They panic. Paul tries to escape but Simon catches them both on the stairs. Now!” She held up a hand as I turned onto Bronxdale. “Here is the interesting part where we never went before. These are both men of God, right? You, big bad John Stone, come home and find your chick in bed with another man, you’d probably throw them both out the window. But not these guys. These guys guilt trip each other instead. Simon, as the victim, has the moral high ground and invokes God and rails against them both, especially Sylvie, calling down fire, brimstone and damnation on her head…” She paused, smiling. “But El Chato is watching all of this. Paul flees and El Chato steps in and kills Simon.”
I frowned and scratched my head. “What does El Chato gain by killing Simon?”
She spread her hands. “He burgles the house! That’s why he was there in the first place, right? But while he was casing the joint, he took a fancy to Sylvie. He as much as told us that. So he kills Simon, takes whatever he wants, tells her that if she talks, Paul will most probably go down for the murder, and he, El Chato, will be back to punish her. So she feigns amnesia, he goes out the back, and, here is the smart part, he wipes the knife, puts it in a sandwich bag, and gives it to Humberto. That way, when Humberto takes it out of the bag, it will have his, Humberto’s, prints on it. It implicates Humberto and, possibly, Paul. What did Humberto tell us? That the Diavolo Incarnato had killed Simon.”
“Huh…” I made a ‘you might have something there’ face. “Okay, so now connect it with Jacob.”
She was quiet while I turned onto Bruckner Boulevard. Then, she said, “Here is where it gets a bit creative, but I believe Jacob was Paul’s son, and knew it.”
“Wow!”
“Yeah. It is a bit of a reach, I know. But think of the timing. Then there’s his character—wild, rejecting authority, you got to admit, he sounds like a young Paul. Maybe he went too far. Maybe he told Sylvie and Paul that he was going to blow the whistle on them. We know what that would have meant for Paul. I think Paul persuaded Sylvie to get Mary out of the house that afternoon, while he had a chat with Jacob. They had a row and he pushed him down the stairs.”
“The knife?”
“The cops looked for a missing kitchen knife at the Martin’s house and didn’t find one. I’m willing to bet there is, or was, one missing from Paul’s kitchen. How Humberto got it is less clear. Paul gave it to him? He hid it in the garden and Humberto found it…” She shrugged.
“Paul kills his own son.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time a parent killed their own child.”
“That is one hell of a theory, Dehan. How do we prove it?”
She sighed. “That’s tricky. Let’s see what the fingerprints and blood tell us from the knives. We also need to compare Jacob’s DNA with Paul’s. If we can get a hit on either or both of those, maybe we can force a confession from one of them.”
I pulled into the lot on Fteley Avenue outside the station and killed the engine. We sat in silence for a while, turning over her theory. She shrugged. “It’s the closest we’ve got to a complete theory so far.”
I nodded. It was.
I didn’t get the call till that afternoon.
“Stone.”
“Good morning, Stone. Frank here, your friendly ME.” I put it on speaker as Dehan sat down. “I have some results for you. The bowie knife. The blood caked in the hilt, as expected, was a match with Simon Martin’s. This was the knife used to kill him. Prints. There are none on the knife, but there are several on the bag. Many of them match the samples taken from Humberto, but there are others that do not.”
I frowned. “Could somebody be stupid enough to wipe their prints from the weapon, put the weapon in a bag and leave their prints on the bag?”
I almost heard him shrug down the phone. “That’s your department, John, but I suppose if they didn’t expect the bag to be kept, it’s possible.”
“Did you run them through IAFIS?”
“Naturally. No hits.”
“Hell.”
“Indeed, it must be. Now you’ll have to do some detecting instead of relying on me to do your work for you. The kitchen knife. Again, as expected, the blood was Jacob’s. There are prints on it, Humberto’s, but here is the odd thing. They are only fingerprints.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, on the handle of a knife that has been used to stab somebody, you expect to find palm prints as well as fingerprints. But on this kitchen knife, all I can find are fingerprints, as though it had been handled with great care, and never actually gripped.”
“Huh. Okay, thank you, Frank.”
“Welcome. You have a good one.”
Dehan was smiling. “Like I said, he was given the knives, for his treasure collection.”
“He sure was.”
TWENTY
It was five o’clock and there was a damp wind blowing in off the Atlantic, whipping Dehan’s hair across her face. She squinted through it as she reached behind her head to tie up her hair. Beyond her, I could see the railway lines.
“You going to tell me why we’re here?”
I pulled my jacket out of the back of the car and put it on, then reached in my pocket and pulled out a blank envelope I’d picked up at the precinct.
“Just humor me,” I said. She followed me across the road and I rang on Ahmed’s bell. There was no boisterous shouting this time. The door opened and Ahmed, dressed in jeans and a hoodie this time, tried to hide his frown behind a smile.
“Detective Stone, I am honoured to see you again…” He looked past me at Dehan. His eyes glazed for a moment. “And this is your partner.”
I returned his smile. “This is Detective Dehan, can we come in? It won’t take more than a couple of minutes.”
“I was just going out. But I always have time to help the police. Come in.”
He showed us into the small living room where I had spoken to him before and he gestured me to a chair. I went to take off my jacket but fumbled with the envelope, like it was obstructing the sleeve. I held it out to Ahmed. “Do you mind?” He took it and I removed the jacket. “This weather, you never know if you’re going to be warm or cold. Right?”
I held out my hand. He gave me back the envelope and I folded it and put it in my pocket. I sat. Dehan sat on the sofa and he sat opposite me, by the window.
“Detective, how can I help you?”
I made a small gesture of helplessness. “I am trying to understand the circumstances that led to Simon Martin’s death.”
He made a face of sadness and nodded. “Allah is merciful.”
“So here is the thing. It is clear to us that his death, and Jacob’s death sixteen years later, are in some way connected. So I was wondering two things, Ahmed, first, did you know Jacob at all? And second, how long did you continue working at the Martin’s house after Simon was killed?”
“Very tragic deaths. I stop working at the church and at Sylvie’s house when Simon was killed.”
“Oh? Why was that?”
“Because, Allah is merciful, Mullah Al-Abas, from our mosque, advise me I should not work in Christian church. This is not correct in our religion. Sorry.”
“And that happened the next day?”
He smiled and put his head on one side, placing his hands together as though in prayer. “I give her a couple of days for her grief, and meanwhile I talk to Mullah Al-Abas about what has happen. And he say to me, don’t go back there no more. It is not right for a Muslim to work in a Christian church. So is coincidence, but not coincidence.”
“Okay. So how about Jacob? Did you know him?”
“We see in the street, an’ I say ‘Hello’ and she say, ‘Oh, his name is Jacob!’ ‘Oh, is Jewish name!’” He glanced at Dehan. “She say, ‘No, no, is Bible name.’ So, is many years, and often we see in the street, ‘Hello!’ ‘Hello!’ Stopping, chatting, talk to Jacob. I see him grow into young man. Good boy. Strong. Like his father.”
“Would you say that over time you and Jacob became friends, Ahmed?”
He beamed. “Yes. We become good friends. He come and visit me lots. I am like brother for him. We are good friends.”
“Did his mother know that you were friends and that he was visiting you?”
He did that thing Mediterraneans do, where he pulled down the corners of his mouth and shrugged and spread his hands all at the same time. “I don’t know. I never visit them. I don’t see Sylvie. She is at home, in church, always. But Jacob come and visit me.”
I nodded and thought for a moment. “Ahmed, did you convert Jacob to Islam?”
“Yeah. He convert to the true faith. There is but one God, and Mohamed is his prophet. Allah is merciful. I take him to see Mullah Al-Abas many times, and we are talking and Jacob is learning the true way. He is good boy.”
“How old was he when this happened?”
He puffed up his cheeks and blew out, looking up at the ceiling. “I see him one day, he should be at school, but he is at the mall. I say to him, ‘Hey, Jacob. Why you are no at school?’ Ah! He say, ‘School is stupid. I don’t need school. I don’t need God! I don’t need nothin’!’ I say, ‘Woh!’” He held up his hands, laughing. “You don’ need nothing? I ask him this. I say, ‘You need food, you need drink, you need air to breathe,’” He gestured at his mouth and his nose, in case we didn’t know what breathing was. “‘You need light to see. Who you think give you these things? Huh?’” He laughed, creasing up his face like he had asked a really funny question. “‘God! Eh? God give you these things. So, you sure you don’t need God?’”
“How old would he have been when this happened, Ahmed?”
“So, maybe twelve. Young man.”
“And after that he used to come to you regularly?”
“Yeah, couple times a week. We go to the mosque, talk to Mullah Al-Abas. Is very lucky for him I am meet him that day in the mall, huh?”
“Did his mother know that he had converted to Islam?”
Again he shook his head, spreading his hands. “I don’t know, Detective Stone. I offer the boy the path of God, but what happen in his home, I don’t know.”
“Did you ever return to the Martins’ home after Simon’s death?”
“No, never. Is not right for me to go to that woman’s home. She is not a good woman. She is a whore.”
“A whore? Why do you say that?”
He shrugged and made a face of disgust. “She is no marry again. She is probably fucking Paul. Maybe other men…”
“You have any evidence of other men in her life?”
He shrugged. “Nah… People talk.”
“You know she has suffered from amnesia for all these years?”
“I hear something.”
“What do you think she would remember if her memory came back?”
He frowned. “I don’t know… How I can know?”
“Because I’m thinking of bringing in a hypnotist to regress her, and then we will have a full account of what happened that night. And perhaps what happened to Jacob, too.”
He shrugged again. “I don’t know.”
I knew it was on
ly a matter of time before Dehan opened her mouth, and now she did.
“Ahmed, let me ask you something. What is the penalty if a young man leaves the Islamic religion? What would be the penalty if Jacob decided to convert back to Christianity?”
He didn’t answer her. He did a strange thing. He gave me a smile like he was asking me to be reasonable, with his head on one side, spreading his hands. “In Sharia, he must be executed. Mohamed has said that nothing, nothing, is so hateful in the eye of God, as an infidel. So if a man turns away from Islam, the only penalty is death. But Detective Stone, please, have some respect for my home.” He gestured at Dehan without looking at her. “Don’t bring filthy, Jewish whore into my house, to ask me questions. Please leave now. Get out my house.”
I smiled at him. “Thanks, Ahmed. That’s what I suspected.” I stood. “But you know, she’s not the only Jew in your house.” He got to his feet and said something in Arabic that sounded obscene. I raised an eyebrow at him. “Yeah, I’m Jewish, too. So you’d better watch your tongue, pal.”
He made a guttural sound that was maybe going to be a word, but I cut him short. “What? You going to spit at me?” I laughed. “You ain’t got the balls.”
The result was predictable and covered most of my face. I assured him he had not seen the last of me and he screamed that he was going to report me to my superiors. Dehan and I withdrew to the car. There, I pulled an evidence bag from my pocket and, using the blade from my Swiss army knife, carefully removed the saliva from my face and put it in the bag, while Dehan watched me with narrowed eyes.
“What the hell was that all about, Stone?”
“Probably nothing. I am just covering my bases. What I need now is somewhere I can wash my face.”
I started the engine and headed up toward Rhineland Avenue.
“Since when are you Jewish?”
“I decided to convert last night when you told me about your uncle Ben, so we can marry and have fifteen kids.”
She laughed noisily for a while. “You’d have to give up bacon.”