by Greg Smith
A small black circle in his left temple indicated where the nine millimeter bullet had entered Leo’s skull. Ending his life. His career as a drug dealer. His marriage to Nadia. She wouldn’t get the news of Leo’s death for another two days. After vagrants found the slain pusher in his car.
The three weeks Nadia stayed alone in their apartment after Leo’s death would be three weeks too long.
It was a Friday afternoon when the three black junkies followed her home from the grocery store, forced their way into the apartment, robbed and raped her. She showed up at Magda’s door. Physically, emotionally and spiritually broken.
Magda accepted Nadia back with open arms. An open heart. An understanding mind. She nursed her granddaughter back to health. Patiently waited for her to return to being the girl Magda had once known. But there was no returning to normal for Nadia.
It was Griggor who avenged Nadia’s rape. Griggor who, two months after the assault, cut the unwanted fetus from Nadia’s womb. The Romanian girl would sooner have died than bear the fruit of that repulsive union.
• • • • •
CHAPTER 12
Friday, September 14: Day 3 post-9/11
After being stitched, fed and put to bed, the stranger Nadia had taken in slept for three days. She checked on him frequently, occasionally placed a cool, damp washcloth on his forehead. She made certain he had a full glass of water nearby in case he woke up thirsty. Griggor stopped in each day. Gave his patient, who remained curled up beneath covers, a cursory look.
During those three days, Nadia’s Village neighborhood was a ghost town. As was most of Lower Manhattan. The borough was closed to traffic south of 14th Street. Only authorized vehicles, emergency vehicles and construction equipment could get into the Red Zone. Pedestrians needed proof of residency to get through the checkpoints.
Manhattan was, essentially, shut down.
Nadia had no customers, saw no reason to open her restaurant. It was an anxious time for the Romanian woman. She worried about the loss of business. Fretted over when her customers would return. Wondered when she could open her doors again. On the other hand, requests for Madam Magda’s services had surged immediately after the 9/11 disaster. The psychic entity Nadia had inherited from her bunica along with the restaurant was in high-demand.
In Romania, Magda Tchaikova had used the persona of Madam Magda to capture tourist dollars. Once in America, she’d quickly discovered that New Yorkers were as prone to seeking a spiritual counselor as they were a reputable therapist. It didn’t require psychic powers to realize Madam Magda could provide a modest income to supplement Magda’s restaurant business. Word of mouth provided a stable of regular customers. A simple sign, hung in the window next to the front door, drew a steady stream of passerby business. When her bunica grew too senile to conduct readings, Nadia assumed the role of Madam Magda.
Prior to 9/11, she would have considered a half a dozen readings a week a busy schedule. Those appointments were primarily regular customers who relied on Madam Magda for the direction, guidance, counsel and confidence they needed to make decisions affecting their relationships, their careers, their day-to-day functionality. After 9/11, demand from Madam Magda’s regulars increased dramatically. Nadia received a deluge of requests for new business, as well.
Her slumbering stranger required little attention. Her restaurant business was dead. Nadia had plenty of time to devote to her readings. Madam Magda performed four or five readings each day that first week post-9/11. Could easily have scheduled twice as many.
On Friday night, three days after the attacks, Nadia and Griggor were sitting in a booth in the otherwise empty restaurant. Nadia had completed her last reading earlier that evening. She and Grigger had just finished dinner. They were drinking tuica, a potent homemade Romanian brandy. The television was on, the events of 9/11 playing out over and over again.
Griggor was absorbed in the news coverage. Nadia was sipping her tuica. Careful not to consume too much. Knowing it could cloud her judgement. Just enough of the brandy, and her senses would be heightened. She would be sharp. Too much, and she would become muddled.
Both Romanians were deep in thought.
Nadia couldn’t shake her strong conviction that the tall stranger had been sent to her for a purpose. She didn’t believe in coincidences, subscribed to an “everything happens for a reason” philosophy. She was confident the stranger had been sent to her as a harbinger of some sort. A messenger. However, the fact that she’d received no readings when she’d touched either the tall man himself, or the key from his pocket, puzzled her.
What good is a sign if you can’t read it? she reasoned.
The key indicated the wanderer had some connection to the World Trade Center. It was possible he’d worked there, she speculated. He could be an engineer of some sort. A supervisor perhaps. An administrator. More likely, he’d worked in an office in one of the Towers. Though he hadn’t been in the Towers when they were hit. Nor had he been an evacuee. He’d shown up well before the first plane even crashed into the North Tower.
Nadia closed her eyes to think better. Immediately, the image of the two-headed eagle came to mind. The stranger’s tattoo. She felt as though she’d seen it before, should recognize it.
Could be a gang symbol. Could be left over from adolescence. Or…
Her next thought sent a shiver of uneasiness through her. That the tattoo could be a badge of membership in some radical group. Many military men had tattoos to prove their allegiance to one organization or another. The tall stranger could be a terrorist. Or work for them. Maybe he worked at the Trade Center but for the terrorists. He’d been found out, wounded in a struggle.
The dark-haired woman sighed. She could make no sense of it.
Damn tuica!
“What time does our wanderer appear on Tuesday, hey?” Griggor asked suddenly, diverting Nadia from her thoughts.
“Before seven,” she responded, somewhat grudgingly.
The old Romanian raised an eyebrow.
“Hmm. You are not confused, hey? It was very agitat that day.”
Nadia was immediately perturbed. Griggor was a constant questioner, while she was naturally reluctant to talk. They made an incompatible duo.
“Griggor,” she said firmly. “I’m a creature of habit. You know that. I wake up at six. Every day. I wash, brush my teeth, dress, go downstairs. I put the coffee on. I defrost the meat. I unlock the door. I sweep the front. By seven o’clock at the latest, I’m sweeping the front. Picking up the trash from the vagabonzii. I’ve done this every day. For twenty-seven years now.”
Griggor was well aware of Nadia’s habitual tendencies.
“Da. Da,” he affirmed.
“Tuesday morning was no different,” Nadia continued. “I swept. I cleaned up. It was a nice morning. I looked up. I saw a tall man walking down the street. Right in the middle. He was well-dressed. I could see he was no vagabonzii. He had blood running down the side of his face. I called out to him. He didn’t hear me. Nobody else was paying any attention. I sat him down. I cleaned his cut. Then, I called you.”
Griggor knew Nadia was accurate about the time. Still, something didn’t make sense. Suspicious by nature, he couldn’t help exploring the idea that the stranger may have had something to do with the attacks on the Twin Towers. He considered that the tall man could be an ally of the terrorists. An inside man possibly. Perhaps he’d been found out. There’d been a fight. He’d been wounded, had somehow managed to escape. The old man found this notion particularly interesting. And alarming. If it had any merit, the stranger could be a danger to them. He posed his theory aloud.
“Nadia, what if your stranger is in on attacks, hey? What if he helps teroristi? Works with them. Sabotaging Towers. What if he is one of them, hey?”
He nodded his head as though that gave credence to his supposition. Alarmed that Griggor had arrived at the same possibility she’d just considered.
/>
“He wasn’t dressed for that,” she said. “He was nicely dressed. He was even wearing a suit coat.”
“Oh? And how does teroristi dress? Hey? Please. Tell me this.”
Nadia found both Griggor’s line of questioning and his patronizing tone annoying.
“He’s not a terrorist, Griggor! You have no reason to say that!”
The old man remained calm.
“You do not know this, hey?”
“Nor do you know!” Nadia responded, her anger growing. “He was here before the planes hit. Before the Towers collapsed. We watched it on television. Together. While you stitched him up.”
“Da, da! Exactly! He is not hurt in collapse. He is hurt before. Maybe he is inside man. Maybe he plants explosives inside Towers, hey? Or he works with others planting explosives. Maybe somebodies, they find them. There is scuffle. Maybe others are killed. Your stranger, he is wounded, hey? He somehow gets away.”
The more he explored the possibility that the stranger was a terrorist, the more committed Griggor became to his supposition. Nadia, however, refused to accept any of the old man’s suspicions. She was convinced the stranger was a messenger. A gift. That he had a purpose.
“Maybe it was he who saw something he wasn’t supposed to see,” she asserted. “Maybe it was he who found someone planting explosives. Maybe he fought them. Maybe he’s a hero, Griggor!”
“Humph. He is no erou, hey? Towers, they are gone. Poof.”
Griggor made a fist, opened it wide as he spoke.
“He does not stop anythings. No one does.”
Griggor was truly concerned for Nadia’s safety. The Romanian woman was like a daughter to him.
“He could be dangerous,” he warned. “He does not belong here, Nadia. Not here.”
He stabbed a finger into the table for emphasis.
Nadia didn’t like anyone telling her what she could, or couldn’t, do in her own restaurant. Not even Griggor. Though she normally valued his advice, she wasn’t about to give up her gift because of the old man’s suspicious inclinations.
“This is my restaurant, Griggor. Mine. I decide who stays. And who goes.”
Griggor knew Nadia had a temper, realized her anger had overtaken her reason. She’d decided in favor of her tall hero. Was about to send the old man on his way. He made a final appeal to rational thought.
“Nadia. This man, he may not be danger by himself. But, if he works with others…somebodies, they maybe look for him, hey?”
Nadia glared at him with smug satisfaction. She’d found a flaw in the old man’s logic.
“If what you say is true, there’s no one to look for him. You said they’re dead. He escaped. So who’s looking for him? If they’re dead, who’s looking?”
Griggor quickly thought to fill the hole Nadia had poked in his theory.
“Others. Not all teroristi are in Towers. Or planes. Hey? There are others. They work behind doors that are closed. They would want to find him, hey? Tie up ends that are loose.”
He wasn’t very convincing.
“Others wouldn’t know he’s alive. They’d think he died when the Towers collapsed. No one escaped.”
Nadia had grown confident with her reasoning.
“If your stranger gets out, somebodies else, they maybe get out as well.”
Griggor had lost conviction in his argument. Nadia sensed it.
“If this. If that. You have a bucketful of ifs, Griggor. Nothing more.”
She folded her arms across her chest.
“There’s no proof of any explosives, anyway. The television says those are just conspiracy theories. That it didn’t happen that way. The Towers collapsed because of a flaw in the metal. All the terrorists were on the planes. They’re all dead.”
Griggor’s terrorist theory had grown weak. He abandoned it, tried a different approach.
“Even if he is mugged, as you say, he could have family. Wife. Children. Surely somebodies, they look for him, hey?”
“He isn’t married,” Nadia said with less certainty. “He…he has no ring.”
“Could be divorced…separat… Or…maybe he does not wear ring, hey? Many men do not, you know. You cannot just keep him, Nadia, like…like stray dog.”
Nadia stood with her hands defiantly on her hips.
“He’s a gift, Griggor. A gift from God. He may even be an angel.”
Griggor scoffed.
““Inger? This is what you think, hey? This stranger is no inger. How do you believe this? He is not heaven-sent. He is man, hey? He could be husband. Tata (father). Brother. He most certainly is somebodies’ son. But he is no inger, Nadia. And he is no erou.”
Nadia would not be dissuaded by the overly suspicious and wary Griggor.
“What would you have me do? Throw him back on the street? Why? Because he got hurt? Mugged by negri? Because you have doubts? Suspicions? This isn’t Romania, Griggor. You aren’t Securitate here!”
Nadia’s mention of Griggor’s past stung. The old man had spent years trying to erase the memories of his time in Romania’s secret police. Though piqued, he remained civil.
“Nu, I am not police,” he muttered humbly. “Multumesc (thank you). For reminder.”
Mention of the police gave Griggor a thought he wouldn’t normally have considered. He didn’t hold the NYPD in high regard. Most of the New York policemen he knew were corrupt. However, the police might present a valid option for dealing with the tall man.
“Maybe police, they can help, hey? We could maybe drop stranger at some precinct house. Let police to take him to hospital.”
Nadia sneered.
“Police!”
She spat the word.
“Did the police help me when those negri raped me? Did they help when my Leo was shot dead in his car?”
“Nadia! Nadia!” Griggor exclaimed. “This is nothing to do with what happens to you – or Leo – many, many years ago, hey? This is everything to do with this stranger. Here. Today. This man you know nothing about. This stranger who maybe has somethings to do with nine one and one.”
Griggor knew Nadia’s history, understood what she’d been through. But, taking in a stranger to replace a boy who had died more than twenty years ago was ludicrous.
“Since when does Grigore Alexandru go to the police?” Nadia asked sarcastically. “You’re friends now? Good pals, hey?”
She glowered at the old Romanian.
“No police, Griggor. We wait. We wait until the stranger wakes up. And we see what he can tell us then.”
Griggor knew Nadia was resolute, would not yield. He decided it was best to end their discussion for the time being. He rose to leave, collected his hat and coat. He stopped to kiss Nadia on the forehead. He never left angry, no matter the seriousness of any words they’d exchanged.
“May your god keep you safe then, hey?” he muttered. “From his…gift.”
Nadia didn’t respond. Unlike Griggor, she often continued to seethe after they’d had a disagreement.
“Let us hope your inger does not murder you while you sleep, hey?” the old man added before going.
At midnight, the Red Zone was moved south to Canal Street. There was little traffic that weekend. And no customers for Nadia’s.
• • • • •
CHAPTER 13
Seeing the three black youths gagged and bound to chairs in the dimly lit basement of an abandoned Bowery building, Grigore Alexandru couldn’t help but think back to his days as a state doctor assigned to Gherla Prison in the Transylvania region of Romania. When he was known as Dr. Dragos Vasilyev.
He could still envision the body of his beloved Tatiana swinging from the ceiling of her cell. Could still see Gheorghe Mitu, her sadistic, abusive tormentor, emerge from the shadows, light his cigarette. Could still hear Mitu’s deep voice.
“She hanged herself, good doctor, because you cut my son from her womb.”
The images came back in a flash. Rushi
ng Mitu. The much larger guard pummeling him to the ground. Regaining consciousness to find himself bound to a chair in Warden Zlotnik’s office. The corrupt warden demanding he sign the death certificate stating Tatiana’s death was “an unfortunate suicide.”
“Tatiana,” Griggor whispered, sighing despondently, his eyes misting with the memories.
The black boys began to stir. As their senses returned, they looked about with wild, fearful eyes. They were in a dark room, lit only by the single shadeless lamp around which their chairs were arranged. They struggled against their bindings. Couldn’t move.
Griggor’s mind flashed back and forth between the reality of the three black rapists bound to chairs in the basement of the Bowery tenement and the memory of Gheorghe Mitu and his three comrades held captive in the dank tunnels beneath Gherla Prison.
˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜
While the three guards were gagged, bound with their arms behind them, Dragos had prepared Mitu differently. The large man was wearing a straitjacket that had been specially altered. His left arm was wrapped across his body and tied at his right side as with a normal straitjacket. But, his right arm was bound in an upward position. Across his chest. A gun had been taped in his hand, the barrel resting under his chin.
Additionally, a hole had been cut in the middle of the seat of Mitu’s chair so that it resembled a toilet seat. The large man was pantless, his genitals exposed, dangling into the opening. His scrotum had been surgically incised. One of his testicles hung by the vas deferens a few inches above the ground.
The other had already been eaten by rats.
˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜
Griggor had prepared each of the three black boys in similar fashion to Gheorge Mitu. With the exception of the gun. They were all bound in straitjackets. With both arms crossed. The straps stretched across their backs in the usual manner. They were all sitting on toilet-like seats. Their scrotums cut open, their testicles dangling.
˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜
Groggy at first, Mitu slowly recovered his senses. He was unaware of his condition, felt no pain. As the mild anesthetic Dragos had used began to wear off, however, the large man experienced the beginnings of an ache in his groin.