Murder in the North Tower

by Greg Smith

  “Sir, in my experience, in situations like this, the victim suffers very little. She would have lost consciousness immediately upon impact.”

  Aleks was inconsolable. His beautiful Jills was gone. Never to laugh again. Never to marry. Never to bear their child. Children. He was in agony. He pictured her lying face up on a gurney, ashy, pale. He groaned at the thought of seeing her like that. Yet, he had to see her again.

  “I’m afraid that ain’t gonna be possible,” an elderly policeman told him. “We can’t allow anyone in tuh see thuh bo-, uh… yuh can’t see ’er. She’s part uh a homicide investigation now. I’m sorry.

  “You have my condolences,” Dr. Cameron sympathized. “The paramedics really did an outstanding job.”

  Jill’s startling and brutal death devastated Aleks, was nearly equally as painful for Step. Each brother took a leave of absence from his job. Aleks from Stratton Oakmont. Stepan from Merrill Lynch. Neither would return to work for those employers.

  Aleks couldn’t endure the deep sorrow he felt over losing the woman he’d intended to make his wife. Step grieved deeply as well. For the woman he’d secretly adored since they’d first met. In the days and weeks after the murder, the boys wrapped themselves in a protective mantle of twinness. Subsisting almost as a single unit. Like a peanut with two kernels inside a single shell.

  Not even their parents couldn’t crack the barrier of the twin’s grief. They didn’t know what to say to their sons. Couldn’t find the words to express their sympathy. Their own sorrow. Eventually, they stopped trying. Withdrew into their own heartbroken solitude.

  Jill had no family. She’d grown up in a string of foster homes in Albany. Had walked away after graduating high school, never looked back.

  The Bagdasarians all somehow managed to survive the traditional rituals that accompany death. The wake. The funeral service. The burial. They attended each with numb emotional detachment. As though their minds prevented too much thinking to protect them from total emotional breakdown.

  Aleks was beyond reach. He felt as though he’d been broken, would never mend. He was despondent. Hopelessly lost. Zombie-like. He withdrew into a womb of selfness. Wouldn’t speak. Wouldn’t interact. He just wanted to go to sleep. Wake up to find it had all been just a bad dream.

  After the burial, he retreated to the Greenwich Village apartment, sat for days in an almost catatonic state. Smelling Jill’s clothes. Staring at her picture. Trying to relive every meaningful moment they’d spent together. Conjuring up memories of even the most inconsequential instances. Validating their significance as well. A morning wake-up kiss. A radiant welcome-home smile. Her laugh. Her voice. He called her cell phone over and over just to hear her voice.

  “Hi! It’s Jill. You’ve reach out, I can’t reach back unless you leave your name and number. Enjoy your day!”

  Click.

  “Hi! It’s Jill. You’ve reach out, I can’t reach back unless you leave your name and number. Enjoy your day!”

  Click.

  “Hi! It’s Jill. You’ve reach out, I can’t reach back unless you leave your name and number. Enjoy your day!”

  Click.

  The driver of the Ferrari F40 was identified as Sergei Muskolov, the son of alleged Russian gangster Viktor Muskolov, a.k.a. “The Omsk Boar.” The subsequent investigation was a farce. Botched by a corrupt NYPD precinct. Evidence disappeared. Witnesses for the prosecution were afraid to come forward. Witnesses for the defense could be bought for a breath of fresh air. Literally. Testimony on behalf of Sergei Muskolov allowing his witnesses to continue breathing.

  The judicial process dragged on for months. The case eventually thrown out of court by a judge with a history that was anything but pristine. The Bagdasarians were certain he’d been paid handsomely for his ruling. Sergei Muskolov walked away scot free.

  Aleks entertained a multitude of scenarios in which he avenged Jill’s death. Most involved running Sergei Muskolov down with his own Ferrari. Many involved kidnapping, torturing and, ultimately, executing the Russian punk.

  In reality, there was no street justice for Jill Walker. Karma didn’t step in, wave a magic wand of righteousness. Balance the scales. Justice retained her blindfold.

  Once the investigation had fizzled, Aleks was directionless, lost. He tried returning to Stratton Oakmont, but he’d lost his edge. As it turned out, the company, and its founder, Jordan Belfort, had come under increased scrutiny by the NASD.

  Step had put his life on hold. Had watched helplessly as his twin brother wallowed in anguish. He was now ready to begin exploring the job offers he’d been ignoring.

  Then Fate viciously struck again. This time delivering a one-two punch that left Aleks and Stepan orphans at the age of twenty-seven.

  • • • • •

  CHAPTER 34

 

  Tuesday, October 9: Day 28 post-9/11

  “You’re Alex?” a startled Nadia questioned.

  She knew the stranger wouldn’t remember having asked if Alex was safe three weeks earlier.

  “Yes,” the stranger answered innocuously. “Why?”

  “It’s just…nothing.”

  She set the food in front of the tall man. She had readings scheduled, was running late. She excused herself, told Alex she’d stop in later in the day.

  Once the dark-haired woman had left the room, Alex focused his attention on the television coverage of the terrorist attacks. The news was appalling. He tried to piece it all together. America attacked. The Twin Towers gone. Manhattan decimated. It was all very disturbing. Eventually he grew fatigued, closed his eyes for a few minutes of relief.

  ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜

  A middle-aged man was sitting at the table in a dated kitchen. The wallpaper tinted with nicotine and age. Cabinets two decades past their fashionable time. Antiquated appliances. It was the kitchen of their home. Somewhere in Brooklyn. The man wore a soiled white tank top, was smoking a cigarette, reading a foreign newspaper.

  Baba.

  A woman, wearing an apron, stood at the sink, her back to them. He knew it was Nene. Doing dishes. Taking the occasional detour to the oven. Stirring the omnipresent pot on the cooktop. Opening the oven door to check on a casserole, a roast, cookies. Or a pie.

  Unnoticed, he stood near Baba, stared at the blurry image on Baba’s hairy upper arm. He was no more than six or seven years old, was trying to picture what the tattoo was supposed to be. Something fierce, he knew. A fire-breathing dragon. Or a war eagle. He knew what a dragon was. Thought a war eagle was an eagle that had joined the army. Been given a bazooka.

  Baba realized the boy was there, put the paper down, stuffed his cigarette out in an ashtray.

  “You’re alone,” he said with surprise. “It is odd to see you without…”

  ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜ ˜

  The image drifted away as Alex stirred from his nap. He tried desperately to recall the last words Baba had said. Without what? Or without whom? His brother? His sister? A friend? Or maybe just without some favorite toy? A stuffed animal. A blanket.

  The memory of Nene and Baba was a pleasant distraction from the television news. He tried to relax, remember more. Was he an only child? Or, did he have a sibling? A brother? A sister? Both? More than one of each? Maybe he had a whole family of siblings. He wondered if Nene and Baba were still living. If they were worried about their missing son. If they were looking for him.

  He spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon in front of the television, alternating from total immersion in the news about 9/11 to occasional dream reveries. He had no more memories of Nene and Baba, dreamt instead of a struggle with a large shadowman. Of a dead blond woman, her stark blue eyes open, but lifeless.

  Sometime in the early afternoon, Nadia stopped between readings to see how Alex was doing. She found him in his usual position, sitting in the recliner, the television tuned to 9/11 coverage. He was asleep. Nadia took the opportunity to admire the man she still considered to be a gift. She found
him exceptionally handsome. His features sharp, angular. His beard amazingly perfect. Symmetrical and sleek. His hair was thick, dark, straight. It was getting long. His hands, resting on his thighs, as was his habit, were vascular. Masculine.

  He looked calm, relaxed. Peaceful.

  He awoke with a start, stared wide-eyed at a spot on the wall above the television. The blond woman’s dead blue eyes had vanished, but their afterimage haunted him. He knew he’d killed the woman. Of that there could be no doubt. He’d probably killed the shadowman as well. He dared not close his own eyes again for fear the blond’s vacant gaze would return.

  The faintest of sounds, the ghost whisper of a breath of movement, turned his attention to the doorway, where a gypsy woman stood, watching him. He thought she looked like the dark-haired woman he’d met earlier that morning. He couldn’t recall her name.

  “Why are you dressed like that? You look like a…a gypsy.”

  Nadia stepped into the room.

  “It’s just a costume, Alex. For my readings.”

  “Readings?”

  Nadia waved her arm like a snake, slowly passed her hands across her eyes. An amused smile tiptoed across her lips.

  “Madam Magda,” she said. “Psychic. At your service.”

  She finished with a courtesy. Alex didn’t believe in such things as psychics. An afterlife.

  “You’re that woman I met this morning. Nah…uh…”

  “Nadia.”

  He regarded her cynically.

  “If you’re a psychic, tell me who I am. What happened to me. How I got hurt.”

  “I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way,” Nadia said with a frown. “In Romania, my gift is called Cea Legatura. The Touch. I touch people. Objects. Sometimes I see things. Not always. I can’t control it.”

  Alex considered jumping up, grabbing the woman’s hands, testing her so-called “touch” gimmick. But it was ridiculous to think a woman dressed like a gypsy could touch him and tell him who he was, what had happened to him. He worried suddenly that the woman had already tried her touch thing on him. That she might know about the blond and the shadow man.

  “Have you tried it? On me?”

  “I haven’t gotten any readings from you, Alex. You’re a blank slate.”

  The woman seemed discouraged by her failure. Alex repeated her words to himself

  A blank slate.

  He didn’t like the sound of that. Though skeptical, he would have preferred to hear she’d seen something. Even a phony past conjured up by a fraudulent medium would be better than no past at all. Better than a blank slate. As long as it didn’t include that blond.

  “The slate’s not completely blank,” he told the gypsy woman, somewhat defiantly boastful. “I remembered my Nene and Baba. My parents. I remembered our kitchen. In our house. Somewhere in…Brooklyn.”

  Nadia was thrilled that her stranger was beginning to remember. She was anxious to hear more.

  “Those aren’t their names,” Alex continued, ruefully. “Nene means mama, Baba is papa in…uh…do you know what language that is? It’s not Romanian, is it?”

  “No. In Romania, mother is mama, father is tata. You’re speaking Albanian. That’s the one thing we know about you, Alex. You have an Albanian background.”

  Alex was surprised to hear he had any ethnic identity. More surprised that the woman would know about it. Maybe she was psychic after all.

  “Did your touch thing tell you that?”

  “Roll up your shirt sleeve,” Nadia instructed. “No, the other one,” she added when he’d begun unbuttoning the wrong sleeve.

  Alex stared at the black, two-headed eagle tattoo on his forearm. He’d noticed it that morning. While taking his shower.

  “It’s from the Albanian flag,” Nadia told him. “Griggor recognized it as soon as you showed it to him.”

  Alex had no memory of anyone named “Griggor.” No memory of showing the tattoo to him. Though Baba made another brief appearance in his mind’s storage locker. Wearing a ratty white tank top. As always. Smoking a cigarette. As always. Reading the newspaper. As always. This time, Alex recognized the smudge of tattoo ink on his father’s hairy upper arm. The gypsy woman’s voice broke his reverie.

  “I have to go to my next reading. I’ll check in on you afterward.”

  She left him alone again. With his hazy memories. With the television still tuned to news about the event that had changed America forever. The event Alex remembered nothing about. He watched throughout the rest of that afternoon, drifting off into the occasional dream state before awakening to watch more television. At some point, he emerged from the fog of one such dream memory, was staring vacantly at the television screen as a pre-9/11 image of the North and South Towers appeared. Tall. Intact. Imposing. Standing side by side.

  The Twin Towers.

  Like that, a piece fell into place.

  The Twin Towers. We’re the Twin Towers! Me and…me and…

  Binyak!

  His brother. His twin brother.

  Alex reveled in the recollection. He had a brother! An identical twin brother. The person Baba had been surprised to see him without.

  He wondered where Binyak was.

  Are you safe, Binyak? Are you looking for me?

  He experienced a chilling feeling that Binyak might not be safe. That he may have been harmed. Before he could dwell on the notion, a voice interfered with his thoughts.

  “Nadia tells me you are remembering your name today, hey?”

  Startled, Alex turned to see an old man standing in the room.

  “It is Alex, da?”

  The old man turned the television off.

  “Yes. That’s right…Griggor?”

  “Ah! You remember Griggor, hey?” The old man seemed pleased. “You are remembering some other things maybe, as well?”

  Alex hesitated. He wasn’t sure how much he wanted to share with the old man. Nothing about the possibility that he may have killed the blond and the shadowman. He was certain of that.

  “I remember my parents. Baba had a tattoo. Here.”

  He pointed to his upper arm.

  “Nene was always in the kitchen. Cooking. Baking.”

  “Baba? That is father, da?”

  “Yes. Baba is papa. Nene is mama. I also have a twin brother. Binyak.”

  Hmm. Twin brother, Griggor thought. Is interesting.

  “You are twin, hey? You remember this?”

  “I was watching the news. About the Twin Towers,” Alex explained with some animation. “And I remembered. Binyak and I were the Twin Towers on our high school basketball team!”

  He was obviously delighted by the recollection.

  “And we played volleyball, too,” he added, having just remembered that he and Binyak had excelled at both sports.

  “This twin brother, his name is Binyack, hey?”

  “Bin-yock. Not yack,” Aleks corrected.

  “So, Alex and Binyock. Binyock and Alex. Twin brothers,” Griggor reflected. “That is strange name. Binyock. Perhaps it is name of father, hey? Or bunicut. Grandpapa.”

  Alex didn’t like the old man’s tone. It seemed as though he didn’t believe Binyak was real. That he didn’t accept that Alex actually had a twin brother.

  “I dunno. Maybe.” He shrugged. “It is an odd name. I think it may have been kind of a pet name. Something just between the two of us.”

  “Maybe it is alias.”

  Alex wondered what the old man was implying.

  “An alias?”

  “Da. Other name. How do you say? Friendly name, hey?”

  “Nickname?”

  “Da! That is it. Nick’s name.”

  “That’s not the same as an alias,” Alex said.

  He knew the old man was pretending to ask innocently. That he was actually being crafty and skeptical.

  The old Romanian knew full well what the word “alias” meant. Always suspicious, he was considering the possibility that the stranger was conjuring up an
evil twin. Someone to blame for something he wished to hide. Griggor had purposely taunted the tall man, ever watchful for his reactions to the intentional hint that “Binyak” could be a pseudonym. There was also the possibility that the stranger’s head injury was playing with his mind. Creating false memories he believed to be true.

  “I think Binyak and I were very close. We spent a lot of time together. We even worked together.”

  Alex was both surprised and delighted by the new memory. This one the revelation that he had worked with his twin brother. His delight quickly turned sour as he recalled an argument.

  “Are you trying to sabotage us, Binyak?”

  They were in the office. He was waving a handful of spreadsheets in the air, plopped them angrily on his desktop. Binyak sat across from him, unusually timid.

  “You got greedy, Binyak! You’ve always been greedy!”

  He remembered being particularly angry with his brother over a business investment gone sour. He was puzzled, however, about why that would have warranted such an outburst of emotion. It wasn’t so unusual for business dealings to fail. It was part of doing business. There must have been something more to it.

  Griggor noticed the sudden change in the stranger’s mood.

  “Everything, it is okay with your twin brother memories? With Binyock?”

  Though the old man was intimidating, put Alex on edge, he answered him honestly.

  “I, uh…I don’t think we were on the best of terms recently. I think something caused a rift between us.”

  Must be woman, Griggor immediately thought. It is always women that separate men. Even brothers.

  “You say you work together. You and…Binyock. Maybe this…uh…this rift… That is quarrel, nu? It is maybe related to work then, hey?”

  Alex could see through the old guy. His was very adept at asking questions with that innocent tone. The whole time watching, waiting, ever-ready to spring his trap.

  “Yes, ‘rift’ means a disagreement. An argument,” he answered coldly. “I really don’t know what caused it. I think it may have been money.”

  Griggor decided to push his notion that the reason for the argument might have been a woman.