Retirement. To his exquisite little villa near Naples with no difficult steps to climb. It had been a long time coming.
He had started as a cabin boy on the freighter
Ali Bey.
At 16, his bulk already made climbing the companionways a chore. When the
Ali Bey
came to New York in 1938, Muzi took one look at the city and immediately jumped ship. Fluent in four languages and quick with figures, he soon found employment on the Brooklyn waterfront as a warehouse checker for a Turk named Jabal Bezir, a man of almost Satanic cunning who cleaned up in the black market during World War II.
Bezir was greatly impressed with Muzi, for he could never catch him stealing. By 1947 Muzi was keeping books for Bezir, and as time passed the old man relied on him more and more.
The old Turk's mind remained clear and active, but increasingly he lapsed into the Turkish of his childhood, dictating his correspondence in that language and leaving the translation to Muzi. Bezir made a great show of reading the translations, but if there were several letters, he sometimes was unaware of which one was in his hand. This puzzled Muzi. The old man's eyesight was good. He was far from senile. He was fluent in English. With a few judicious tests, Muzi confirmed that Bezir could no longer read. A visit to the public library told Muzi a great deal about aphasia. The old man had it all right. Muzi thought about this development for a long time. Then he began to make modest currency speculations on the foreign exchanges, taking advantage of the Turk's credit without his knowledge or consent.
The postwar currency fluctuations were good for Muzi. Almost the only exception was one awful three-day period, when a cartel of speculators red-dogged Muscat military scrip with Muzi holding 10,000 certificates at 27 to the pound sterling and the Turk snoring peacefully upstairs. That cost him $3,000 U.S. out of his own pocket, but by then he could afford it.
Meanwhile he had delighted Bezir by devising a hollow docking hawser for the importation of hashish. When the Turk died, distant relatives appeared to seize his business and ruin it. Muzi was left with $65,000 he had made in currency speculation and some excellent smuggling connections. That was all he needed to become a dealer in anything and everything that would turn a dollar, with the exception of hard narcotics. The astronomical profit potential of heroin tempted him, but Muzi saw past the fast buck. He did not want to be branded for the rest of his life. He did not want to have to sleep in a safe at night. He did not want the risks, and he did not like the people who dealt in heroin. Hashish was another matter entirely.
By 1972, the Jihaz al-Rasd section of Al Fatah was heavily engaged in the hashish trade. Many of the half-kilo sacks Muzi bought in Lebanon were decorated with their trademark---a feda'i holding a submachine gun. It was through his hashish connections that Muzi had delivered the letter for the American, and it was through them that he had been approached about smuggling in the plastic.
In recent months, Muzi had been extricating himself from the hash trade and systematically closing out his other interests in the Middle East. He wanted to do it gradually and leave no one on the hook. He wanted to make no enemies who might interfere with a peaceful retirement and an endless succession of dinners
al fresco
on his terrace overlooking the Bay of Naples. Now this business of the
Leticia
threatened everything. Perhaps the guerrillas were unsure of him because he was pulling out of the Middle East. Larmoso, too, must have gotten wind of his liquidations and been uneasy, ready for a chance to go into business for himself. Whatever Larmoso had done, he had spooked the Arabs badly.
Muzi knew he could manage all right in Italy. He had to take one sizable chance here in New York, and then he was home free. Lying on his motel bed, waiting to make his move, his stomach rumbling, Muzi pretended he was dining at Lutèce.
__________
Kabakov sat on a coil of garden hose, shivering. A cold draft whistled through the tool shed atop the warehouse and there was frost on the walls, but the shed offered concealment and a good view of Muzi's house across the street. The sleepy man watching out the side window of the shack unwrapped a chocolate bar and began to gnaw it, the cold chocolate breaking off with little popping sounds. He and the other two members of the tactical incursion team had driven up from Washington in a rented van after they received Kabakov's call.
The hard five-hour drive on the turnpike had been necessary because the team's luggage would have aroused a great deal of interest under an airport fluoroscope---submachine guns, snipers' rifles, grenades. Another member of the team was on a roof down the block on the opposite side of the street. The third was with Moshevsky at Muzi's office.
The sleepy Israeli offered Kabakov some of the chocolate. Kabakov shook his head and continued to watch the house through his binoculars, peering through the crack in the partially opened shed door. Kabakov wondered if he had been right in not telling Corley and the other American authorities about Muzi and the Madonna. He snorted through his nose. Of course he was right. At best, the Americans might have let him talk to Muzi in some precinct anteroom with a lawyer present. This way he would speak to Muzi under
more favorable circumstances---if the Arabs hadn't killed him already.
Muzi lived on a pleasant, tree-lined street in the Cobble Hill section of Brooklyn. His building, a brownstone, contained four apartments. His was the largest apartment on the ground floor. The only entrance was in the front and Kabakov felt sure that he would use it, if he came. Muzi was far too fat to go in a window, judging from the enormous clothes in his closet.
Kabakov hoped to complete his business very quickly, if Muzi gave him a good lead on the explosives. He would tell Corley when it was over. He looked at his watch through red rimmed eyes: 7:30 A.M. If Muzi did not come during the day, he would have to set up alternating watches so that his men could sleep. Kabakov told himself again and again that Muzi would come. The importer's passports---three of them in various names---were in Kabakov's breast pocket. He had found them in a quick search of Muzi's bedroom. He would have preferred to wait in the apartment, but he knew that Muzi's time of greatest danger would be on the street and he wanted to be in a position to cover him.
Once again he scanned the windows across the street. In one apartment building to the left a window shade went up. Kabakov tensed. A woman stood at the window in her slip. As she turned away, he could see a child behind her, sitting at a kitchen table.
A few early commuters were on the sidewalk now, still pale with sleep and hurrying to the bus stop on Pacific Street, a block away. Kabakov flicked open the passports and studied Muzi's fat face for the fiftieth time. His legs were cramping and he rose to stretch them. The walkie-talkie beside him crackled.
"Jerry Dimples, front door your position a man with keys."
"Roger Dimples," Kabakov said into the microphone. With any luck it was the relief for the watchman who had snored the night away on the ground floor of the warehouse. A moment later the radio spat again, and the Israeli on the rooftop down the street confirmed that the night watchman was leaving the building. The watchman crossed the street into Kabakov's field of vision and walked to the bus stop.
Kabakov turned back to watch the windows, and when he looked at the bus stop again, the big green city bus was there, discharging a clutch of cleaning ladies. They began to waddle along the block, sturdy, middle-aged women with shopping bags. Many of them had Slavic features similar to Kabakov's own. They looked much like the neighbors he had had as a small child. He followed them with his field glasses. The group grew smaller as the women, one by one, dropped out at the buildings where they worked. They were passing Muzi's house now, and a fat one from the center of the group turned up the walk toward the entrance, umbrella under one arm and a shopping bag in each hand. Kabakov focused his glasses on her. Something peculiar---the shoes. They were large Cordovans and one of the bulging calves above them bore a fresh razor cut.
"Dimples Jerry," Kabakov said into his walkie-talkie. "I think the fat woman is Muzi. I'm going in. Cover the street."
Kabakov put his rifle aside and picked up a sledgehammer from the corner of the shed. "Cover the street," he repeated to the man beside him. Then he was pounding down the stairwell, not caring if the day watchman heard him. A quick look outside, a dash across the street, carrying the hammer at port arms.
The building entrance was unlocked. He stood outside Muzi's door, straining to hear. Then he swung the hammer sideways with all his strength, dead center on the lock.
The door smashed open, carrying part of the door facing with it, and Kabakov was inside before the splinters hit the floor, leveling a large pistol at the fat man in the dress.
Muzi stood in the doorway to his bedroom, his hands full of papers. His jowls quivered, and he had a sick, dull look in his eyes as he watched Kabakov. "I swear I didn't---"
"Turn around, hands on the wall." Kabakov searched Muzi carefully, removing a small automatic pistol from his purse. Then he closed the scarred door and leaned a chair against it.
Muzi had composed himself with the speed of thought. "Do you mind if I remove this wig? It itches, you know."
"No. Sit down." Kabakov spoke into the radio. "Dimples Jerry. Get Moshevsky. Tell him to bring the truck." He took the passports from his pocket. "Muzi, do you want to live?"
"A rhetorical question, no doubt. May I ask who you are? You have neither displayed a warrant nor killed me. Those are the only two credentials I would recognize immediately."
Kabakov passed Muzi his identification. The fat man's expression did not change, but inside his head the wet implements of scheming were pumping hard, for he saw a chance that he might live. Muzi folded his hands across his apron and waited.
"They've already paid you, haven't they?"
Muzi hesitated. Kabakov's pistol bucked, silencer hissing, and a bullet slammed through the chair back beside Muzi's neck.
"Muzi, if you do not help me, you are a dead man. They will not let you live. If you stay here, you will go to prison. It should be obvious to you that I am your only hope. I will make this proposal once. Tell me everything and I will put you on an airplane at Kennedy Airport. I and my men are the only ones who can get you on a plane alive."
"I recognize your name, Major Kabakov. I know what you do and I think it rather unlikely that you would leave me alive."
"Do you keep your word in business?"
"Frequently."
"So do I. You have their money already, or a lot of it, I expect. Tell me and go spend it."
"In Iceland?"
"That's your problem."
"All right," Muzi said heavily. "I'll tell you. But I want to fly out tonight."
"If the information checks out, agreed."
"I don't know where the plastic is, that's the truth. I was approached twice, once here and once from Beirut." Muzi mopped his face with his apron, relief spreading through his body like brandy. "Do you mind if I get a Perrier? This talking is thirsty work."
"You know the house is surrounded."
"Believe me, Major, I do not want to run."
Only a serving counter separated the kitchen area from the living room. Kabakov could watch him all the time. He nodded.
"First there was the American," Muzi said at the refrigator.
"The
American?"
Muzi opened the refrigerator door and he saw the device for an instant before the explosion blew him piecemeal through the kitchen wall. The room heaved, Kabakov turning in the air, blood flying from his nose, falling, shattered furniture rattling around him. Blackness. A ringing silence and then the crackle of flames.
The first alarm went in at 8:05. The fire dispatcher called it "a four-brick, 75 by 125, fully involved, Engine 224, Ladder 118 and Emergency Service responding."
Police teleprinters rattled in the stationhouses, printing this message:
SLIP 12 0820 HRS 76 PRECINCT REPORTS SUSPICIOUS EXPLOSION AND FIRE 382 VINCENT ST. TWO DOAS TO KINGS COUNTY HOSP OPR 24
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
The paper feed clanked twice, the carriage returned, then this message:
SLIP 13 0820 HRS CQN SLIP 12 ONE DOA ONE INJURED AUTH LONG ISLAND COLLEGE HOSP OPR 24
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
Reporters from the
Daily News, The New York Times,
and AP were waiting in the corridor of Long Island College Hospital when the fire marshal came out of the room red-faced and angry. Beside him were Sam Corley and a deputy chief. The fire marshal cleared his throat.
"I think it was a gas explosion in the kitchen," the fire marshal said, looking away from the cameras. "We're checking it out."
"ID's?"
"Only on the dead guy." He consulted the slip of paper in his hand. "Benjamin Muzi, or maybe you say it 'Muzzy.' Community relations will give it to you." He brushed past the reporters and stalked out. The back of his neck was very red.