Murder in the North Tower

by Greg Smith

  Nadia’s didn’t serve breakfast to the public. Opened only for lunch and dinner. Nadia, however, realized the injured wanderer must be hungry. And she’d never known Griggor to pass up a free meal. She’d gone into her kitchen to prepare something for the two men, emerging occasionally to glance at the television for the latest update.

  She made clatites (clah • TEE • tehs). Romanian pancakes. Light and thin, they were similar to French crepes, could be filled with jam, fruit or anything sweet and savory. Then, rolled and sprinkled with confectionery sugar. Nadia filled the morning’s batch with peach preserves.

  To the surprise of both Romanians, the wanderer ate every crepe Nadia served him, opting for the glass of milk over the cup of coffee she placed in front of him. He didn’t speak. Didn’t make any facial expressions as he ate. He simply sat, stared out the window, chewed robotically.

  Once both men had eaten, Nadia cleared the table, finished the dishes, joined Griggor in front of the television.

  “Both Towers…gone,” the old man remarked. “Just like that, hey?”

  He held a fist to his lips, blew into it, opened his hand quickly as he moved it away from his mouth in imitation of an explosion.

  The local news was showing thousands of commuters streaming out of Lower Manhattan. Many crossing the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges. Others traveling through Manhattan’s neighborhoods to points north. All heading homeward.

  Both Nadia and Griggor kept peeking from the television to Nadia’s front windows. Which kept a watchful eye on Bleecker Street. As though on time delay, the first cluster of evacuees passed by the restaurant several minutes after the Romanians had viewed the news report. These initial stragglers were commuters who’d been evacuated before the Towers collapsed. They walked in the middle of the deserted street. Moving away from downtown. They were uninjured, at worst a bit frazzled. Most were on cell phones. Speaking in hushed tones. Attempting to connect with loved ones.

  By eleven o’clock, the “dust mummies” began trickling by. These individuals had been close to the World Trade Center when the Towers collapsed. Had been covered in grey dust. They looked like walking statues. Or zombies. Some were slightly injured. Bruised, bloody. Some were disoriented. Many were in shock. All walked in silence.

  As many of their neighboring store owners did, Nadia and Griggor stood outside, offering bottled water to those passing by. Some drank the water. Many used it to rinse their eyes, their faces. It didn’t take long to run through Nadia’s supply. Griggor then began filling pitchers and glasses with tap water. Keeping a ready reserve for the next dust mummy or group of dust mummies that ambled along.

  At one point, he noticed Nadia helping a woman who’d been staggering along, arms outstretched, like a blind zombie. She sat the woman down, flushed her eyes out. As the water washed the dust away, Nadia saw with some trepidation that the “blind” woman was black. The grey dust had masked the color of her skin. The usually intolerant and bigoted Romanian woman was able to set her prejudice aside, recognize that race had no meaning on this day. Color was inconsequential. Everything – and everyone – was grey.

  Nadia and Griggor worked for hours. They did what they could for those with minor injuries. Cleaned and bandaged cuts. Iced bruises. Provided water long into the evening.

  Eventually, only a straggler or two ventured by. Finally, no one.

  Early in the day, Nadia had asked Griggor to move the wanderer upstairs to her apartment. Where she thought he’d be more comfortable. Griggor had settled the tall man into a chair in front of the television in her front room. Nadia checked on him several times throughout the day. Found him in the same position each time. Seated in front of the television, his hands resting on his long thighs, his gaze fixed on the screen. He appeared to be totally engaged in the news coverage of the day’s events.

  Late in the evening, she found him asleep on the floor. Curled up in a fetal position. She gently roused him, led him to her guest bedroom. She spoke to him as though he were coherent. Though he didn’t respond.

  “You’ll stay here tonight, of course. It’s the only sensible thing,” she rambled. “It’s late. Where else would you go? You have no money. No ID. Anyway, the city’s shut down.”

  The wanderer gave her no resistance. He was docile, compliant.

  “You can sleep here,” Nadia instructed, leading him to the bed, where he sat.

  She unbuttoned and removed his shirt. He wore a tank top beneath it. Nadia saw the tattoo on the inside of one forearm. A black, two-headed eagle. She dismissed it for the moment, removed his shoes, unbuckled his belt, undid his trousers, slid them off. She had a fleeting recollection of helping Leo undress during one of his drunken bouts many, many years ago.

  She folded the wanderer’s trousers, was hanging them over the back of a chair when a key slipped out of one pocket, fell to the carpet. She picked it up, examined it closely. It looked like the key to a door. Though she couldn’t be certain. On one side, the words “Made in USA” were etched above a series of letters and numbers. She flipped the key over, felt a sudden queasy rush in her chest at what she read.

  “World Trade Center. Do Not Duplicate.”

  An eerie sense of unease flooded over her.

  First the tattoo. Now this key.

  She squeezed the key tightly in one hand, closed her eyes, hoped for a vision. When nothing came, she held the key to her forehead. Still nothing. Though she’d touched him several times throughout the day and evening, she’d received no reading from the stranger either.

  She quickly slipped the key into her own pocket, eased the wanderer gently down onto the bed, covered him.

  “You’ll feel better in the morning,” she said. “Good night.”

  The wanderer lay straight and still. Stared at the ceiling. He soon fell asleep, dreamt of unfamiliar faces and nameless places.

  • • • • •

  PART II

  THREE YEARS EARLIER

  CHAPTER 9

 

  Aleks Bagdasarian (Bag • duh • sair • ē • un) clinked his glass of champagne against that of his twin brother Stepan’s, held it high above his head.

  “Two brothers dared to dream,” Aleks began, smiling as he eyed the crowd. “That dream has become a reality. To the success of A/S/B Financial!”

  “Hear, hear!” Step shouted as the crowd joined in.

  The brothers were true identicals. Both exceptionally tall. Nearly six-and-a-half feet. Slender. Good-looking. Their only difference being Aleks’s preference for facial hair. Which seemed to change as often as New York City’s weather. For this occasion, he sported a thin, jaw-line beard and goatee.

  “To many, many years of financial success,” Step toasted.

  “To many, many dollars of financial success,” Aleks amended, eliciting laughter from the small crowd.

  Just as important as those in attendance that day were the three people who could not be there. The couple who had shaped the Bagdasarian boys’ lives more than anyone else. And the woman both brothers had fallen in love with. Three empty chairs were arranged in the front of the room in honor of those three.

  Their parents.

  And Jills.

  Aleks grew suddenly serious as he acknowledged them.

  “I’m sure I’ll get emotional now. But, today would not have been possible without three people who can’t be here to celebrate with us.”

  He paused, the tears welling up. Step gently placed an arm on his brother’s shoulder. Aleks continued, pausing as needed to pull himself together before going on.

  “We owe everything we have to our parents. Armend and Mirlinda Bagdasarian. More than just putting food on our table, clothes on our backs, a roof over our heads, they were perfect parents. We never witnessed an argument between them. Never heard a cross word exchanged. They did nothing but love and respect each other…and us. They supported everything Step and I ever got involved in. Sports. School. This. Our dream.”

  He sw
ept an arm to encompass the entire room.

  “They aren’t here today in body, but they are certainly here in spirit.”

  Aleks suddenly choked up. Step took over, held a glass of champagne in the air for another toast.

  “To our parents. Nene. Baba. We love you. We miss you. Thanks for everything.”

  “Hear, hear,” the crowd chanted.

  Aleks took a deep breath, composed himself, finally summoned the ability to go on.

  “That third chair is for someone truly special. My Jills.”

  Tears streamed down his cheeks as he spoke.

  “Most of you know her story. All too well.”

  Even after seven years, Jill’s death tore fresh wounds in his heart, shredded his emotions. He put his head back, took a deep breath, somehow mustered the control to continue.

  “Oh, boy. I knew this would be tough. No apologies though.”

  He swept the back of one hand across his face, wiping away tears.

  “I just wanted to acknowledge Jills. To recognize that she ever was. That she mattered. That she isn’t forgotten.”

  He stopped, unable to speak without sobbing. Step grasped his brother’s shoulder with one hand, placed the other behind Aleks’s head. Aleks did the same to him and the twin brother’s touched their foreheads together.

  The crowd grew uncomfortably silent. A petite, perky blond woman appeared suddenly between the twin brothers, separating them, looped her arms through one arm of each. She held a flute of champagne in one hand, never lost a drop of the sparkly liquid as she waved the glass about.

  “To Jill’s memory,” the blond toasted, though she’d never known Aleks’s fiancée.

  She was Step’s wife, Connie. Blond, bubbly and beautiful. Connie was always the life of the party. She grasped Aleks’s hand, raised it as high as she could into the air.

  “To my handsome husband!” she exclaimed.

  The brother Connie had claimed was her husband looked at the audience with contrived chagrin.

  “Uh, I’m Aleks,” he sheepishly informed the blond.

  Connie gazed at him with exaggerated shocked, touched her hand to her mouth in mock embarrassment. She dramatically flung Aleks’s arm aside, reached for Step’s hand, raised it.

  “To my handsome husband!” she repeated, this time completing the toast by downing her drink.

  Tossing the empty glass aside, she grabbed Aleks’s hand, raised it upward again.

  “And his equally handsome brother!” she shouted, standing between the twins, now holding a hand of each. “I don’t know which one is cuter,” she teased with an exaggerated wink to the audience. “I love you both.”

  She released their arms, grasped Step’s face by the cheeks with both hands, pulled him toward her to kiss him on the forehead, then did the same to Aleks. Laughing loudly, she grabbed another glass of champagne from a passing server, tossed it down like a shot of liquor.

  “Let’s get this party started!”

  The energetic blond raised her hands over her head, whipped her hips from side to side as she sashayed off.

  • • • • •

  PART III

  AFTER THE FALL

  CHAPTER 10

 

  Wednesday, September 12: Day 1 post-9/11

  The jogger awoke, sat upright. took a moment to remember he’d slept in St. Joe’s church the night before. He checked his watch, was surprised to see it was nearly ten.

  The pews were already filled. Every votive on the altar already lit. People were coming and going, yet the church remained uncannily silent. The only sound the occasional soft echo of someone bumping against a wooden pew as they knelt.

  The tall man’s usual morning routine was simple. Wake. Stretch. Brush his teeth. Go for a quick jog. Then shave, shower, dress. Head to the office. Sometimes, he went to the gym first. Sometimes, he woke up in the office. There was a shower there. A toothbrush. A razor. Extra clothes. Extra cash. Anything he needed.

  Today was different. Today, the office was gone. And everything with it. On this morning, he didn’t even have a toothbrush.

  Memories of the prior days’ horrific events began to flood in. The planes. The Towers. The attacks.

  Binyak.

  The jogger cradled his head in his hands.

  What now? What do I do?

  He had no phone. No contact information. Even if he could borrow a phone, he wasn’t sure he could remember phone numbers. Who would he call anyway?

  He needed a change of clothes, couldn’t continue to wear his workout garb. He also needed to get to the Trade Center site. He needed to be near Binyak.

  Out on the street, looking down Broadway, he could see the column of smoke rising from the spot the Twin Towers had once ruled. Their absence was eerily disconcerting. They’d been a familiar sight from many vantage points in Lower Manhattan for as long as he could remember. The dominant features of a view with which he was intimately familiar. A view he’d seen every day on his way to the A/S/B Financial office in the North Tower.

  Now, they simply weren’t there.

  As he walked the streets of The Village, he saw tributes to the dead and missing everywhere. Candles, American flags, flowers, ribbons, posters. They adorned windows, mesh fences, iron gates, front stoops. Messages to the missing. To the rescue workers. To New York City. To the rest of America. To the world.

  He’d occasionally pass a group of people huddled around the picture of a loved one. A lit candle standing sentinel. The groups prayed softly. In whispers. Already Washington Square Park was besieged by mourners holding such silent candlelight rituals. Smaller groups had maintained the vigils throughout the night.

  He headed to a re-sale clothing store he’d frequented while a college student. He purchased two pairs of jeans, some t-shirts, a heavy, fleece-lined flannel that was more jacket than shirt. He changed in a dressing room, left his jogging outfit on the seat. He ventured back to the Bleecker Street Bar for lunch, a news update.

  A local channel was reporting on the thousands of volunteers already descending on Manhattan to assist with the rescue and recovery effort. Construction projects throughout the rest of the city had ground to a halt as workers walked off those jobs to offer their assistance. Ironworkers, welders and steel workers from across America were arriving to help, as well. Along with Red Cross and Salvation Army volunteers, National guardsmen and others. All volunteers were being directed to Javits Convention Center to register with authorities.

  The jogger desperately wanted to get to the WTC site. The place the media had dubbed “Ground Zero.” He felt a strong urge to be close to where Binyak was. To Binyak’s spirit. He couldn’t bring himself to think about the details of what had become of his brother’s body. Or Connie’s. It was easier to just think of them as gone.

  It was an eerie sentiment. Foreign. Unfamiliar. The thought of Binyak no longer being among the living. No longer existing. The jogger had never really believed in anything after death. He’d always thought the end of life was like turning off a light. A flick of the switch, and it was over. One simply ceased to exist.

  According to the media, ten thousand switches had been flicked off the day before. Initial reports had been as high as thirty thousand. Binyak and Connie had been among them. Here one instant, reduced to a statistic the next. Now merely a name on a list of the thousands missing. The jogger considered that he might also be listed. Among the missing. Perhaps even presumed dead. One of the countless victims. He wondered how they were being counted. Who did the tallying. How, and where, they got their information.

  For now, the idea of being nonexistent – declared missing, or even dead – had a certain appeal to it. He didn’t have to face questions about Binyak. About how he had survived while his brother hadn’t. Or about the missing Connie. He was certain he’d fold under questioning. His guilt would be obvious. Easily detectable. Even to the most innocuous of questions.

  More importantly, being presumed dea
d meant he wouldn’t have to worry about the Russian any longer.

  Ilya. That fucking creep.

  He decided he wouldn’t share his – or Binyak’s – identity with any authorities just yet. He could always change his mind later. Report Binyak missing. Claim trauma, PTSD, or even temporary amnesia to explain away any delay in reporting. Meanwhile, he needed to be where Binyak was. He needed to be doing something.

  He needed to get to Ground Zero.

  He left the Bleecker, took Crosby to Houston, cut over to Broadway and headed north. The streets were devoid of activity. He approached Canal, which had been closed to traffic. There were no cars. No taxis. No honking horns. In the distance, the billowing pillar of rising smoke was a constant reminder of the acts that had taken place just twenty-four hours earlier.

  The air was heavy with a noxious stench. He was astonished by the increase in temperature as he headed farther downtown. Already, it was at least ten degrees warmer than where he’d started in The Village. The absence of civilian activity was unsettling. He was also astounded by the amount of dust and debris on the streets. The ash that was everywhere. Inches deep in doorways. On windowsills. Along the curbs. It covered everything. Like a blanket of snow after a winter storm. Only this blanket held no promise of spring. This blanket was the color of Death. It was Death’s shroud.

  And it was ghastly disturbing.

  He saw only an occasional emergency or construction vehicle moving along the heavily littered streets. Police barricades had been set up to deter traffic and sightseers. Construction workers were sealing the perimeter off with fencing. The authorities had established “Frozen Zones.” High security areas that were off-limits to pedestrian and vehicular traffic. Only official personnel were allowed past the barricades. Damaged vehicles were being dragged out of these zones. Left on side streets like giant crushed beer cans that had been burnt in a backyard bonfire.