“I said, ‘You know what he’s learning, Tom? He’s learning when it’s his turn to fight, he’ll find someone smaller. You’re teaching him how to be a bully, for God’s sake.’ I saw Ben turning into his father. I knew we had to get out.”
“What did you do?” Sofia asks.
“I signed over the business to Tom so he wouldn’t fight me on custody of Ben and left. Tom drove the business into the ground. He lost everything, blamed it all on me. Meanwhile I got my life back, started another business, dating a nice guy. Tom started threatening him, and we broke up. He stalked me, demanded money, beat me a few times. He drives a mini-camper, sleeps in it. He’s always moving. The police can’t seem to find him, but he can always find me. He’s out there.”
Paula holds her one-year-old son, Byron, in her lap. She speaks softly in a lilting Jamaican accent, as not to wake the child.
“My husband’s a lawyer. The first time he hit me, I told him if he ever did it again I would . . . He said, ‘Yeah, what? What? What are you going to do, leave? You want to see Byron? I’m a lawyer; you won’t have a chance.’
“I said, ‘If you hit me again, I will get scissors and cut off your dick in your sleep, I will put rat poison in your coffee, and I will tell my brothers you beat me and they will come after you.’”
We all nod. This seems like a reasonable solution.
“That night he raped me. He knew I was just talking. I knew his plan. He would divorce me, make me an unfit mother, get custody of Byron, and think of a thousand ways to fuck up—excuse me, ruin my life. He could do that. So I took Byron and came here. I’m figuring out my next move, but in the meantime . . .” She looks at Phyllis. “I’m safe.”
Haneen speaks next. And I get the story. Of all the women in the shelter, I think she is in the most danger. There is no misogyny, sadism, sexual jealousy, or alcohol-fueled rage, just a perverted notion of honor for which women are murdered. Haneen’s Pakistani father and brother are sworn to kill her, and Haneen’s mother isn’t on her side.
Haneen was five years old when her family came to America from Karachi. On her fourteenth birthday, her father promised her in marriage to a distant cousin. She was never informed of this. Haneen went on to become a thoroughly Americanized student at Astoria High School, then Queens College, where she majored in Middle Eastern languages with a minor in economics. In the summer of her junior year, she interned at Chase and met another intern, Teddy Wang, an econ/math/software triple major from Stanford. Because Haneen had a working knowledge of Urdu, Arabic, and Punjab, she was promised a job with the Chase private banking team specializing in Middle Eastern clients.
Chase was counting the days until Teddy graduated; when he did, he would start at two hundred thousand dollars a year, with million-dollar bonuses within five years. Haneen would earn about the same, minus the bonuses.
When Haneen told her parents she and Teddy were planning to marry after graduation, her father informed her that for all practical purposes she was already married. Haneen protested, refused, and said there was nothing they could do about it. She was a US citizen and she was going to marry Teddy. There were laws against what they were proposing. “He got a knife from the kitchen, placed it at my throat, and told me there was a higher law. He would kill me rather than dishonor and shame our family. My brother was sent to Teddy and told him I didn’t want to see him again, and not to call me. So what were my choices? Obey, go to Pakistan, marry someone I had never met? Go to the police? Have my father and brother arrested? What happens to my mother, my two younger sisters, my young brother if they go to jail? I came here. Teddy and I made a plan. I’m working on a new identity, Teddy will get a banking job in Singapore, and I’ll join him. We just want to move as far away as possible and hope and pray they never find me.”
Phyllis says, “Anybody else want to say something?”
She means me. Phyllis smiles. “Okay. Same time next week.”
I want a cigarette. Something for me. I’m exhausted from the stories the women tell; I have been a homicide detective for five years and there isn’t much I haven’t seen in what people do to each other, but here I’m in an epicenter of crimes waiting to happen. Every one of the women have been beaten, and that’s terrible, but the fact is that they are still in danger, they know who waits for them to emerge from the shelter and the risks they take in merely stepping outside. I go outside to the children’s swing set, plonk down, kick my heels in the sand, and start to move, slowly. I put a cigarette in my mouth, search for a light. I don’t have one. Fuck. I am too lazy to go back in the house and find my lighter. A flame flashes. Sofia holds a lit match.
“Thanks.”
“You are welcome.”
She mounts a seat next to me, lights her own, and we swing gently back and forth.
“I feel uneasy talking in group,” Sofia says.
“I understand. I’m not ready, either.”
“It’s a long story.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“I feel I can tell you. The others, I am not sure they would even believe me.”
“Does Phyllis?” I ask.
“She does. I was a teacher in Ljubljana. Chemistry. I also played flute and gave lessons on the side. I met an American boy. He was on an exchange program teaching English, and he wanted flute lessons. He found me, we played together, and—how romantic—we fell in love. He wanted me to come back to the US and marry him. I think I was the fantasy, but when I became the reality, he couldn’t handle it—we broke up. I was alone and vulnerable in New York. What do they say, no support system? I ran into a guy I used to know in Ljubljana—we played in the same youth orchestra. Now he was living in Manhattan, doing business.”
“What kind?”
“I didn’t ask, never found out. Just business. He had an extra room, put me up, introduced me to his friends, bought me clothes. I was broke. He said I was beautiful, smart, and sexy. I spoke three languages, which made me perfect company for him and his friends. We partied, helicoptered to the Hamptons, and flew on private planes to the Caribbean, Las Vegas, and Aspen. The men on the plane got older and richer, and I realized I was part of the package. By the time I wanted out, I was who I was. Politely, an escort. Less politely, a whore. I was owned. I knew what was in store for me if I wanted out. My visa expired, I had no money of my own, and they had my passport.
“On one of the trips, I met a psychiatrist who worked for a security company that provided protection for some of the people on the plane, and also celebrities and movie stars. His job was to evaluate letters from fans—the crazy ones, who sent anything from death threats to marriage proposals. You’d be surprised how many letters these people get, and how many of them put their return address on the letter or sign their names. Put that together with the postmark and you can identify a lot of them. They were stalkers, crazies, paranoids, and extortionists. After he read the letters, he would write reports that began with “Take this person seriously” or not. I was a full-time escort by then. He didn’t care. He liked my company; what I did on my own time was my business. We started out slow, and he took me to museums, art galleries, it was a friendship, though I kept waiting for it to change.
“One night he took me to a party—a surprise birthday for one of his clients, a New York City hedge fund guy. I was the surprise. He was married, but he went crazy for me and must have made a deal with the Russians. I became his full-time mistress. He was powerful and rich, and I don’t even want to mention his name. He was also crazy. I was his escape, his other life. He was into voyeurism, made me have sex with his friends and took videos on his cell phone so he could watch them whenever he wanted. He was in them, too. One night I copied them from his phone, told him I had them and if he didn’t let me go, I would post them. He said if I did, he would have me killed. I realized he would have me killed no matter what I did. I knew too much. One of the girls I knew told me about this place.”
That night, after the rest of the women have gone up
stairs, I read in the living room. I like to stay upstairs in the house until I feel tired enough to go down to my basement bed and fall asleep. Phyllis comes in and sits next to me on the couch.
“You seem to have settled in.”
“It’s a big adjustment.”
“At some point, we need to know more about you, despite your obvious wounds.”
“I’m not ready.”
“What we really need to know is what kind of danger you are in. It’s a matter of risk assessment. It impacts on the shelter and the people in it.”
“Who makes that assessment?”
“You do. I can help. I have a lot of experience. I’ve been wrong sometimes. It’s hard to live with.”
“Okay. My husband? When he gets bad, yeah, I think he could kill me.”
“You said he’s a cop, right?”
“Yes.”
“Then he could.”
“You want to know all about me?”
“Yes.”
I tell Phyllis I’m not ready to tell my story.
“We could help,” she says.
Chapter 26
I want to know more about Haneen. On my way to HQ, I stop at Astoria High School, where I look at old yearbooks. Haneen’s last name is Lakhani. Her yearbook profile says her nickname is “Nee Nee,” she will be going to Queens College, made Honor Society, played on the girls’ volleyball team, was a member of the French Club, Chess Club, and Peer Tutoring, and wrote for the student newspaper. Back at headquarters, I log into the INS secure site, where I learn her father, Amar Lakhani, was naturalized in 1999. He has been a steady employee of Mammoth Security Services, moving around to banks, museums, department stores—I will check to see if he is licensed to carry a gun. I scan Amar’s citizenship application, apartment lease, driver’s license, and telephone records. Haneen’s mother is Rameesha. She has two younger daughters: Rida, aged nine, and Tamsila, aged eleven. The older brother, Isar, is twenty-two and works for an air conditioner repair company in Manhattan. The younger brother, Azfar, fourteen, is a sophomore at the MDQ Academy, an Islamic school. From the New York Police Department/NSA database on all Mideast immigrants in New York City (compiled after 9/11), I learn the Lakhani males worship at the Masjid El-Ber mosque in Long Island City. I know everything about them. They are a law-abiding, hardworking, typical New York immigrant family. I need some advice. I find Detective Akram Danai in the coffee shop on the first floor.
“I need a favor. Can you help me with a Muslim family situation?”
Detective Danai laughs. “It’s my specialty.”
I hand him my notes on the Lakhani family. He takes his time, reading carefully.
“Very interesting. May I ask why you are showing me this?”
“The oldest daughter is being threatened into an arranged marriage in Pakistan.”
“That’s pretty rare these days. It’s more of a problem in the UK. Can you define threatened?”
“As in death.”
“The rest of the family?”
“The older son is on board, the mother is passive at best, the other kids are too young to count.”
“The father may have a big debt back in Pakistan. This might be how he’s repaying it.”
“With his daughter?”
“It’s a win-win: he marries off a daughter and settles the debt. Since he has also given his word to this man, he knows if the marriage doesn’t happen it will bring dishonor to the family name. He’s not a bad guy, he’s just locked into a system, and he doesn’t know any other.”
“Yes, he does. It’s called Queens County, New York State. He put a knife to her throat; he’ll kill her if he finds her. His idiot son will help.”
“I know the imam of his mosque. He won’t countenance this. Do you want me to talk to him?”
“Yes.”
“Where’s the daughter?”
“Hiding.”
“I can get Dr. Kahn to talk to him, the most he can do is threaten to expel him from the mosque.”
“Is that meaningful?”
“Maybe.”
“Thanks.”
I have done my good deed for the day. I drop in on Lieutenant Hagen and give her a report of life at Artemis. “It’s like an Airbnb for battered women. Everybody who’s in it is a victim. There are children who have seen their mothers beaten . . .”
Lieutenant Hagen holds up her hand, stopping me. “I’ve been doing this for thirty years, Nina. You’re not telling me anything I haven’t seen. I want you to get back and find out if these people had anything to do with your cold cases.” She pauses for effect. “And the murder of Ronald Steevers.”
After dinner at the shelter, I am on wash-up detail with Sofia. Phyllis went to Ikea for new towels and came back with two bags of frozen meatballs. She heated them up in a thick commercial tomato sauce with frozen peas. They weren’t bad.
Phyllis tells Sofia she will take over the cleanup. Sofia quickly hands Phyllis her yellow rubber gloves and goes out to the back porch, where she will smoke and bite her nails. We load the dishwasher, I swab the counter with the sponge, and Phyllis starts the machine and says, “I would like to talk to you in my office, if you don’t mind.”
It is my first time in Phyllis’s office. In this house’s prior life, it was most likely the breakfast nook. Now it barely has room for a battered couch loaded with pillows against the wall. The shelter dog, Bobo, has taken up most of the space on the couch. She sees me and beats her tail against a pillow in greeting but is too lazy or comfortable to get up. There is no desk. I like that. Two straight-backed wooden chairs with thick cushions face a coffee table. There is a vase of yellow lilies. On one wall, there are four framed prints of the same thatched cottage, one for each season. The cottage is set in a slightly mysterious Victorian forest at the end of a country lane. Bulbous rosebushes and fecund apple trees line the lane. Smoke rises out of the cottage chimney, soft light glows through the windows. It is home idealized, surely inhabited by kind, welcoming people. In a bar, it would make drunks weep. Somewhat to my surprise, I find it pleasing.
“Have a seat,” Phyllis says.
I obey. Tea is not offered. Phyllis sits opposite me, holds up her iPad, where there is a photo of me in an elevator in the Queens Center mall that I remember was taken by a Tenacious Dame.
“It’s time to come clean, dear. I know you’re a cop. What I don’t know is what you’re doing here.”
Busted. But I’m still ahead of her.
Chapter 27
Phyllis knows I’m a cop; she has that part right. The rest of her information is wrong. Lieutenant Hagen is an expert at placing people in undercover situations.
“I have a graduate degree from the FBI in undercover. I could put a cop in your family and have you believe he’s a long-lost relative.”
She knew Phyllis would copy my license plate. Tracing a license plate isn’t hard. Phyllis would then have my identity. Or think she did. The license plates were false. They would lead her to me, but it wouldn’t be me. It would be a made-up person. It’s my history that matters: it has to be convincing. Here’s how I got mine.
When my doctor fiancé and I separated, I wanted a bar in Manhattan where I would not run into any of my off-duty colleagues from my Long Island precinct. Not that I didn’t like them, I just wanted to meet people with whom I could start fresh, or if I wanted, be anonymous, or pose as someone else: a student, a lawyer, a techie, anyone but a policewoman. I had read about the White Horse Tavern in Greenwich Village; one visit and it became my nights-off drinking headquarters. The White Horse is a famous literary watering hole, having served Dylan Thomas, Brendan Behan, Jack Kerouac, and later, generations of novelists, journalists, and aspiring writers. At the bar I met and fell under the spell of a semifamous novelist, James X, who won me over with his wit, erudition, and interest in my current bullshit identity as a salesperson at the Museum of Modern Art gift shop, and sealed the deal with a promise of bagels and lox with the Sunday Times crossword in bed
the next morning. There was sex—I remember it as something we did, but it happened so we could have earnest conversations afterward. He was a real writer, my first, so I asked the obvious: I asked him what was the most important thing to know if you wanted to be a writer.
He said, “There are two. In fiction, your life comes in handy, so write about it. And if your life isn’t interesting, steal someone else’s.”
What applies to writers of fiction also applies to cops who go undercover. It’s what Lieutenant Hagen said to me when I told her I wanted to go into the women’s shelter.
“You’ll need a story, a convincing one. You need to pretend to be a cop married to a nasty, abusive cop. I know one. Use hers.”
The story of my fake past belonged to Marlene Davis, formerly with the Merrick, Long Island, police force.
We met in a McDonald’s near LaGuardia at four in the afternoon. Slow time, not many customers—Marlene was easy to pick out: a middle-aged, grim woman in a police uniform, sitting in a chair with her back to the wall. As she talked, she kept her eyes focused on the doors, not on me. Her paranoia was infectious, and it didn’t take long for me to want a seat against the wall, too. She sipped a black coffee and skipped the small talk.
“Lily said you wanted a story for undercover work.”
“A cop married to a cop.”
Marlene took a deep breath. “That’s me. I have twenty minutes.”
I nodded.
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