Fear City

by F. Paul Wilson

  As the two hoods climbed in and roared away, Jack could only watch them go. The street before him was strewn with broken concrete waiting to tear out the undercarriage of any car trying to drive through.

  He looked up at the north tower. He didn’t know what carnage the bomb had wreaked inside—had to be considerable—but the tower appeared unfazed. Probably take a helluva lot more than a truck bomb to topple that baby.

  He turned at the sound of sirens. Half a dozen cars had backed up behind him. Looked like he was going to be stuck here awhile.

  9

  “Jesus Christ!” Tony said as he stared into the trunk. “I know you two wasn’t exactly buddies, but what the fuck you do to him?”

  Vinny had wheeled the Vic around to the back of Tony’s appliance store and brought him out to see Tommy. He would’ve left him on West Street but figured he’d catch the blame when Tommy showed up dead. That was why he’d brought him here.

  “Didn’t do nothin’,” Vinny said.

  “Well, somebody did somethin’! Looks like he’s been through a meat grinder!”

  “Well, you ain’t gonna believe this, but here goes.”

  He gave Tony a rundown of the events leading to the explosion. He was glad Aldo had been along so he could back up his story.

  When Vinny finished, Tony was scratching his jaw. “You mean that bomb in the Trade Tower that’s all over the news, it killed Tommy?”

  “Wrong place at the wrong time,” Vinny said, though he was thinking just the opposite.

  Good thing he’d moved his car off the ramp when he did. If he’d waited for Tommy to finish his games with the Arab, he and Aldo would’ve been heading for the morgue along with the other two.

  Tony pointed to Kadir’s mangled body. “Word is the bomb was an Arab deal. You think this cocksucker…?”

  Aldo was nodding. “Yeah. I hadn’t thought about it before, but yeah. I like him for it.”

  Vinny said, “We saw him drive a van into the garage and then come trotting out, heading for the street, like he was haulin’ his ass outta there.”

  “That wasn’t no pipe bomb,” Aldo added. “You shoulda seen the size of the chunks it blew down the ramp.”

  “Question is,” Vinny said, “what do we do with Tommy?”

  “First thing you do is unhook him from this raghead son of a bitch. Then you take him to his place over in Howard Beach—keys gotta be in his pockets somewhere—and you lay him on a couch or his bed. Call me when you’re done and I’ll put out the word to some of his family so they can ‘find’ him.”

  “Why don’t we just take him straight to Garibaldi’s?” Aldo said.

  Tony flashed him a you-asshole look. “’Cause a funeral home can’t just bury a guy. They need a death certificate and all that.”

  “Oh.”

  “And the raghead?” Vinny said.

  “Deep-six him so he’ll never be found. You’re good at that.”

  Vinny nodded. Easy enough.

  10

  Just as he had earlier this month, Mohammed Salameh stood on the dock of the Central Railroad Terminal and stared at the twin Trade Towers across the water. The last time he did this he had been with Abouhalima, Yousef, Kasi, and Kadir. Today he was alone.

  He’d hurried away from the UN along 44th Street as fast as he could without running, waiting for the sound of the blast. It hadn’t come by the time he reached Second Avenue, so he stopped at the corner and waited. The street ran downhill toward the UN complex from there. The Secretariat was obscured to the right, but he could glimpse the General Assembly building down at the end.

  He waited and waited for the boom, for the cloud of dust and smoke and debris, but it never came. He was tempted to go back and see what had gone wrong, but was afraid he’d be recognized as the man who abandoned a stolen car in the middle of First Avenue.

  He was also afraid that if Yousef had been delayed, the bomb would go off as soon as he peeked around the corner, obliterating him along with everyone else.

  After standing around for more than half an hour, he’d walked to West 33rd Street to catch a PATH train to Jersey City. At the station he heard that no trains were running to the World Trade Center because a section of track leading to the center had been damaged by an explosion. Exalted, he got off at the Grove Street stop and raced toward the waterfront. Long before he reached it he spotted the towers, both standing with no sign of damage. He continued all the way to the river, only to be greeted by the dismaying sight of two apparently healthy towers. Not even smoke!

  What had happened? No bomb had gone off by the targeted UN, but one had gone off somewhere in the old target, the World Trade Center. Whose bomb—Yousef’s or Kadir’s?

  He sighed and turned away. What was he to do now? Wait to be contacted, he guessed. Would they want to make more bombs? Only time would tell.

  Meanwhile he would return to the Ryder rental place and see if he could get back his deposit on the truck he had reported stolen.

  11

  Safe!

  Ramzi Yousef relaxed in his first-class seat as the Royal Jordanian jet lifted off the JFK runway. No one could bring him back now. Tomorrow morning he would land in Amman. Sadly, he would have no good news to tell.

  The day had been a disappointment all around. His own bomb had either failed to ignite or had been defused. He suspected it might be the latter. He had seen too many police around the UN Plaza. Somehow they had been on higher alert than usual.

  At least Kadir had come through, although that too was a disappointment. He had chosen Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s favored target but the bomb failed to topple it.

  Ramzi was composing what he would tell his mother’s brother. For some reason the news media were making no mention of the UN bomb. Perhaps because it embarrassed them. And perhaps, because it hadn’t exploded, they felt they could sweep it under the rug? They certainly could not hide the Trade Tower bomb.

  Ramzi too would keep silent about the UN bomb—that hadn’t been in his instructions.

  The only bright spot in this dour day, the only upbeat news he could offer his uncle, was that America was vulnerable. He and the others had bought the explosive ingredients and mixed them right under the noses of the police and the vaunted FBI. The only reason the towers remained standing now was because they were so well built. That didn’t mean they couldn’t be brought down. It meant only that their bomb hadn’t been big enough. If only they had parked both bombs in the basement … the Manhattan skyline would look very different right now.

  He knew Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would keep looking for ways to bring down those towers, and Ramzi would be close by his side, helping him.

  He looked out at the sparkling lights of the city below.

  We’ll be back.

  12

  Good thing Julio had walked him home—if a propped-up stumbling stagger qualified as walking.

  Long day.

  After the tower blast it had taken Jack an hour and a half to move off West Street. He was an eyewitness, after all, and the cops wanted to know what he’d seen. He told them about flames and smoke and flying debris, but left out mention of Vinny and Aldo and the pinwheeling bodies. The cops would want to know who they were and where they were and Jack didn’t want to get into that.

  When the opportunity presented itself, he’d tried to call Burkes but the phones weren’t working. The cops told him NYNEX had installed a major switching center in the basement of Tower One, so forget calling from anywhere downtown unless he had a mobile. He didn’t, so he took their advice and forgot about it.

  When they finally let him go, he knew he needed to be with a friend. That left him two choices. He chose the friend with beer. And if he’d stuck with beer, he would have been fine. But he’d started thinking of Cristin, and that prompted a shot of Cuervo Gold in her honor. Which led to another. And another. And …

  The hard stuff wasn’t his thing. He’d thought he was doing fine until he went to stand up from his table.


  Jack might—just might have made it home without Julio, but he never would have made it up the stairs.

  “Got there too late,” he mumbled as he reeled across his front room. “News says six people dead, hundreds hurt.”

  “That’s bad for them, meng, but it coulda been lots worse. Least the building’s okay. The bomb didn’t bring her down. That’s important, right?”

  “Who gives a rat’s ass about the building.”

  “Oh, I dunno. Maybe the couple thousand people in it.”

  “Oh, yeah. Them.”

  Jack hadn’t seen anything about the UN bomb on the news, so he hadn’t mentioned it to Julio. Maybe he’d saved some lives there, but some special lives were over.

  “I don’t care about any of them,” he said falling face-first onto his bed. “I want Cristin back. And Bonita and Rico.”

  “I know,” he heard Julio say from the doorway.

  “It’s not fair. I mean, they die and all those strangers live. That’s bullshit!”

  A voice somewhere in his head was telling him he sounded like a jerk, and he probably did, but he was six sheets to the wind so he was allowed.

  Goddamn, this hurt.

  SATURDAY

  1

  Jack awoke to the smell of coffee and a barrage of noise that sounded like a demolition derby.

  The room spun as he sat up. He waited for it to settle into place, then pushed himself to his feet. Another rush of vertigo had him swaying but he kept his balance and took very small stutter-steps into the front room. His head was throbbing from the inside but the noise around him intensified the discomfort to an almost unbearable degree.

  It seemed to be coming from the kitchen. He turned the corner and found Julio with the pot from the Mr. Coffee machine in his hand.

  He looked at Jack and grimaced. “You look all Dawn of the Dead, meng.”

  “Please don’t shout.”

  “I ain’t shouting.”

  Jack cringed as Julio rattled a plate.

  “And that other noise … must you?”

  “Just making some toast. Want some?”

  Julio was still shouting but the stomach lurch triggered by the thought of food was worse.

  “Coffee. Just coffee. You stayed?”

  “Never seen you like that. Worried you coulda died.”

  “Really? Were I feeling even remotely human right now I might be touched, but—”

  “You were gone, man. High-fiving everyone and—”

  “Who? Me? I do not high-five anyone. No way.”

  “Yeah, you were. And you had your arms around Lou and Barney and got all weepy telling them how much you loved them.”

  “Oh, Christ. Do not serve me tequila ever again.”

  Julio laughed. “Just pullin’ your chain.”

  “Really? I didn’t get all I-love-you-man?”

  “Nah. You just got quiet. Really quiet.”

  “Better than high-fives.”

  “Don’t know about that. Booze brings out the inner person. Take it from a guy who seen too many drunks. You can pretend you’re someone you ain’t until you down too many, then the real you comes out. People all ugly inside become ugly drunks. Nice folks become all lovey-dovey. You…” He shook his head. “You just got quiet. And you had this look.”

  “What look?”

  He shrugged. “I dunno. I couldn’t read it. But something about it told me I better get you out in the air and home.”

  “Well, thanks for that, but—” He jammed his palms over his ears. “What the hell is that noise? They pile driving outside or something?”

  “Hey, no. It’s quiet. It’s Saturday and it’s snowing.”

  Jack looked at the window and heard a pile-driver bang every time a drop of sleet hit the pane.

  “Can you make it stop?”

  Julio blinked. “What?”

  “Forget the coffee. I’m going back to bed.”

  2

  “Lookit this, will ya?” Aldo said as he thumbed through Tommy’s black book.

  They were sitting in Vinny’s office, sipping a little Sambuca to take off the chill of their recent boat trip. They’d sneaked Tommy’s broken body into his house and left it there—but not before removing whatever might point to anything illegal. That included his black book and his wallet. Then they’d crimped the raghead into an old Dodge. This morning they’d dumped the package offshore and returned through a snow squall.

  Vinny poured himself a little more Sambuca. “Whatcha got?”

  “Looks like our boy Tommy was holding out on Tony.”

  “Yeah? How so?”

  Not that Vinny was surprised.

  “Loans on his own. Buncha loans right under Tony’s nose in Brooklyn and Queens and even a few in Nassau.” He flipped pages. “Whole lotta gook names from Chinkytown and Little Saigon. He was one busy fuckhead.”

  That got Vinny to thinking. “How many those loans still alive?”

  “Most of them, looks like.” Aldo glanced up. “You thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?”

  “I’m thinking those loans shouldn’t get neglected just because Tommy’s dead.”

  “Yeah, I’m thinking that too. Somebody really should, whatchacall, service them. Know what I mean?”

  “I know exactly what you mean. I’m just thinking about Tony.”

  “Yeah. Me too.”

  “Sick man.”

  “Yeah. Not long for this world, like they say. You think it would be right to, whatchacall, burden him with this?”

  “Not right at all. Downright cruel, if you ask me. I mean, imagine the hurt of learning that the senior member of your crew had been doin’ you dirty for years. Years.”

  Aldo shook his head. “Break the poor old guy’s heart—and him with hardly any time left.”

  “I’m getting this feeling that it’s kinda like our duty to shield him from this.”

  “I am in total agreement, Vinny. Let him live out his final days in, whatchacall, ignorant bliss. We owe him that.”

  “We do.”

  “I’ll take the gooks. You can have the rest.”

  That seemed fair.

  “Deal.”

  They shook hands.

  “A little more Sambuca, Mister D’Amico?”

  “I do believe I will, Mister Donato.”

  They clinked glasses.

  “Salute!” said Aldo.

  “Cent’anni!” said Vinny.

  3

  By four o’clock Jack was ready to face the world. Julio was long gone by then. He swallowed four Advil and took a long shower. He couldn’t remember being that loaded since a certain keg party at college. He liked to drink but he hated being drunk. Drunk meant physically and mentally out of control and unable to do anything about it.

  Julio had mentioned drink bringing out the real you. But according to him all it brought out in Jack was “quiet” and a “look,” whatever that meant. As much as he was glad he hadn’t turned into the high-fiving, I-love-you-man dork Julio had joked about, that guy would have been better than the other Jack he knew lurked inside—the dark part of him that wrecked knees and busted skulls and threw people off bridges and drove arrows into brains via eyeballs. Good thing the tequila hadn’t set that guy free in Julio’s last night.

  Some people craved the oblivion of a rip-roaring bender, but Jack suspected it was not a good place for him.

  The snow had stopped and mostly melted by the time he stepped outside. He caught a cab down to Murray Hill, to the Celebrations brownstone on East 39th. With Saturday night looming, he figured Rebecca would be working.

  He was right. When he pressed the call button at the front door she answered.

  “It’s your uninvited guest from last Saturday night.”

  Without another word or a second’s hesitation, she buzzed him through. She waited for him in the doorway to her office at the end of the hall. She was wearing a tweedy business jacket and skirt, but looked like she hadn’t slept since he’d last seen her.

>   “It’s been a whole week,” she said when he was halfway down the hall. “Any word?”

  He nodded as he approached. “I’ll tell you inside.”

  “We have the building to ourselves.”

  “Still…”

  She stepped back and waved him into a paneled reception area, nicely furnished, indirect lighting.

  “Not what I expected,” he said. “You do real business here?”

  “This is where I interview the new girls,” she said quickly. “What about Cristin?”

  He started the story he’d constructed on the way down—half fact, half bull.

  “You know about the Trade Center bomb, of course. People connected to the bombers thought she might have overheard something.”

  “Oh, God! Is that why you were asking about Arab clients?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Roman Trejador was involved, wasn’t he.” It didn’t sound like a question.

  “How do you figure that?”

  “I heard on the news. Cristin dead, then her client from the night before she disappeared found dead of cyanide poisoning … how can they not be connected?”

  “They are. Trejador ordered it—at least that’s what one of his people told us.”

  Her hand flew to her mouth. “Dear God! He was one of her regulars. The cyanide—was it you?”

  He shook his head. “He took it before we had a chance to question him. That pretty much says it all.”

  Trejador … Tony … whoever he was, total son of a bitch.

  “Too quick,” she said through her teeth. “Too quick, damn it! After all those dates with her, how could he—?”

  “He didn’t do the actual deed. He had some of his people handle that.” He felt his throat constrict. “Turned out she was tortured and killed for something she knew nothing about.”

  Rebecca’s lips thinned to a thread. “Where are they?”

  “One’s dead.”

  She leaned forward. “How?”

  “Not pretty.”