Authors: Robert Knightly
Aslan’s eyes popped open when I said her name. He sat up and grinned at me. ‘What is Mynka?’
‘Mynka worked for Domestic Solutions.’
‘Of this company I know nothing.’
‘So, you weren’t there when she was butchered? You realize, of course, that we found traces of her blood in that bathroom.’ I stood suddenly. ‘Say, I’m ready for another cup of coffee. How about you?’
I watched Aslan’s eyes look up and away. He knew all about the blood, of course. Now he knew that we’d found it. Not a great spot for him. I unlocked the door of his cage to retrieve his mug. As I leaned in, his hands balled into fists. But he didn’t come at me, not when I took his mug, or when I replaced it a few minutes later.
‘So, where were you when Mynka was butchered?’ I asked. ‘If you weren’t at Domestic Solutions.’
Aslan thought it over, then his lips slid apart to form an expression vaguely resembling a smile, a smile that didn’t come within a light year of his eyes. ‘Yes, now I am remembering very well. At this exact moment, I was on rocket ship to moon.’
I didn’t respond and he simply continued on. ‘Womans. In America is all womans. This is why you are soft. Let womans tell you way to have your life.’
‘It’s different in Chechnya?’
‘In whole world, womans is nothing. Always on men they live. Father sells girl for bride money. Uses bride money to buy wife for his son. Woman with no man for protect her is better off dead.’
I pretended to consider this deep insight for a moment, then said, ‘I had a lieutenant once, name of Martha Golson, a real ball buster. All her detectives were men and she was convinced they were out to get her.’ I laughed. ‘And ya know what, Aslan? She was right.’
This was a complete lie, but my only goal, at that point, was to keep him talking.
‘When lieutenant say jump, you are saying, how high?’
‘Hey, the boss is the boss.’
Aslan tried to stand, only realizing, when the cuff on his wrist pulled tight, that standing wasn’t an option. ‘Never in life,’ he told me, ‘have I had woman for boss.’
‘What about your customers? Some of them must be women? And from time to time, one of them must have called to chew you out. Remember, the customer is always right.’
Aslan started to speak, then stopped abruptly. ‘I am knowing nothing of this.’
‘Nothing about Domestic Solutions?’
‘Nothing.’
‘C’mon, Aslan, don’t kid a kidder. I have witnesses who saw you empty the warehouse on Eagle Street. You’re the one who packed up the furniture, the filing cabinets and the clothes. You packed them into a van that got torched the next day. But like I said, that’s not what I’m here about. Barsakov is somebody else’s case. My only interest is in who killed Mynka, and that wasn’t you.’
Was I offering a deal? Had I brought him to Far Rockaway for that very purpose? Aslan had sold out his comrades to the hated Russians. Why would he hesitate to sell out one of his customers? But Aslan was smart enough to anticipate the only deal I had to offer, and that was not immunity for Barsakov’s murder, the only deal he was prepared to accept. Slowly, he raised his head to stare into my eyes. I stared back at him, at a pair of black holes that might have been looking forward or backward, or at nothing at all.
‘If go back to Russia,’ he said, ‘then I am sent to prison. Russian prison? This is very bad place. Better in soft New York prison. Here they are not putting you to death, even if you are killing a policeman.’ He hesitated long to produce a second smile, this one amused. ‘Next time we are meeting, I will be ready.’
And that was that. Aslan fell back on his cot and I was unable to rouse him. After a few minutes, I picked up the
Daily News
and began to read. My hope was that Aslan would re-think his position during the fifteen hours we’d remain together. If he didn’t, it was on to Father Stan.
Six hours later, with Theobold up and about, I approached Aslan’s cell. ‘I’m gonna take a little walk, stretch my legs. You wanna use the toilet, now would be the time.’
Aslan didn’t so much as blink and I took off, walking down a flight of stairs to emerge on Edgemere Avenue. The air, pushed by an onshore breeze, smelled of the Atlantic, only a block away. Behind me, the Ocean Bay Apartments, 1395 low-income units shoehorned into twenty-four buildings, dominated the landscape. I stared at the development, at the prison-block architecture, featureless, forlorn. In fact, it reminded me of Rensselaer Village, except that apartments in Rensselaer Village rented for five times as much.
I stood outside the door for a few minutes, then found a patch of shade. There really wasn’t anywhere to go. Gang dominated, this piece of Far Rockaway was the land of the 99-cent store, of decaying bodegas that survived on sales of loose cigarettes, lottery tickets and five dollar bags of reefer, of liquor stores where several inches of bulletproof plastic separated the owner – and his merchandise – from the customers. Our own little haven, with its wire cage, was above a laundromat that had a good inch of standing water on its concrete floor.
But I hadn’t come outside to savor the atmosphere. I wanted to call Adele and outside was the only private place to do it. Adele knew what I was up to with Aslan, knew that I’d take a shot at him before the day was done, and I was more or less obliged to report. Still, I don’t recall the conversation we had in any detail. A good piece of my brain was still upstairs with Aslan, reviewing our conversation, formulating tactics. I was rearranging the cards in my deck, but no matter how hard I shuffled, they were the same cards I’d already played. I told that to Adele, and she didn’t argue the point. My primary goal, she reminded me, was to keep Aslan out of circulation for the weekend. Breaking him was always the longest of long shots.
As it turned out, Aslan didn’t talk, not even to complain. He ate what we fed him and he used the bathroom when it was offered. But he did not talk. Toward the end, I found myself admiring his discipline. We couldn’t hold him forever and he knew it. I glanced at my watch. Hansen Linde would arrive soon. Without doubt, he’d take a shot at Aslan, as I’d done. But the only deal on Hansen’s table was deportation, a deal Aslan would never accept.
That left it up to the priest.
I was dog tired by the time I got home at one o’clock, too tired to eat or shower. Too tired, thankfully, to weigh gain and loss, or to contemplate failure. Nine hours later, when John Coltrane’s soprano sax announced an incoming call, I was already half awake. I thought it might be Adele getting ahead of the curve, but it was Sister Kassia.
‘Father Stan’s coming back early, at two o’clock,’ she said. ‘He wants to see you.’
Nothing ventured, nothing gained. That’s what I’d told Aslan. I felt my heart jump in my chest.
‘Can I assume he’s not dragging me out to Maspeth just to brush me off again?’
‘Harry, Father Stan doesn’t have a mean bone in his body.’
I took this as an affirmative response, though I didn’t know exactly what she meant.
‘Our deal,’ the nun continued, ‘I assume it remains in effect.’
‘Sure, Sister, if the women are still around. But six days is a long time. They might be anywhere by now.’
‘And that doesn’t bother you?’
‘Yeah, it does, but I plan to console myself with Mynka’s killer and Aslan Khalid.’
When I entered Blessed Virgin, Father Manicki was in the confessional. A wheelchair sat just outside, flanked by a man and woman, both middle-aged. When I approached, the woman asked, ‘Are you here to confess?’
‘No, I have to see Father Manicki about something else.’
The man laughed. ‘That’s my mother in there. Every coupla months she decides she’s dyin’ and she has to confess before it’s too late.’
‘Swear to God,’ the woman said, ‘the woman’s eighty-eight years old and she ain’t been outta this wheelchair in ten years. What could she possibly be confessing?’
I had no idea and I headed off to a pew at the rear of the church. But I was too restless to sit still. Within minutes, I found myself tracing Blessed Virgin’s outer walls. This wasn’t the first time I’d been in a Catholic church. Like every other New Yorker, I’d toured St Patrick’s cathedral on Fifth Avenue. But you could have put Blessed Virgin in one of St Patrick’s chapels, and while the stained glass and the statuary at the cathedral were exquisitely crafted, the artwork at Blessed Virgin was as humble as the church itself. Nevertheless, I found myself drawn to a series of small paintings arranged at intervals on both sides of the church.
The paintings depicted events in the final hours of Jesus’ life, and each bore a title in script on a small plaque below the frame: The Judgement; Jesus Carries His Cross; Jesus Falls for the First Time; Veronica Wipes the Face of Jesus; Jesus Falls for the Second Time.
That was as far as I got, a view of Jesus lying with his face in the dirt, his left arm extended and limp, his legs trailing in the dust. Helpless was the word that came to mind. Helpless and hopeless. That he could ever get up seemed a clear impossibility. Behind me, I heard a woman praying. Her voice was no more than a murmur, but I could understand the first few words of the prayer she kept repeating: Hail Mary, full of grace . . .
Father Manicki came up beside me a moment later. His blue eyes were streaked with red, the lids swollen above and below. The lines at the corners of his mouth seemed deeper. I remembered Sister Kassia describing the vows Father Stan had taken. Opening up went against all his instincts. Yet, here he was.
‘Father,’ I said, ‘do you remember a prize fighter named Joe Frazier?’
The priest nodded once. ‘Smokin’ Joe Frazier. He fought Muhammad Ali three times. What about him?’
‘Well, I saw him interviewed on television once, at a Golden Gloves tournament, and I remember he was asked if he had any advice he’d like to offer younger fighters. “Fire back,” was what he told the kids. “No matter how bad you’re hurt, get up and fire back.” ’
‘Is this another confession?’
I gestured to the painting. ‘If I was God, nobody would crown me with thorns, or whip me, or force me to carry my own cross.’
‘Not even if you could offer mankind the hope of redemption by submitting?’
‘Not even then.’
‘Maybe that’s because you’re only a man.’
‘And maybe it’s because I’ve spent most of my adult life protecting society from the unredeemed.’
Father Manicki led me out of the church and down the sidewalk, retracing the route I’d taken with Sister Kassia a few days before. He walked with his hands behind his back, leaning forward as though into a wind. But there was no wind that day, only a layer of haze and humidity that seemed to grow thicker, step by step.
‘You’re much more subtle than I gave you credit for,’ he said, his eyes fixed on the horizon, his voice hinting of a resentment he wasn’t supposed to feel.
‘How so?’
‘When you suggested that Mynka came to me for counseling, I failed to register the comment. Perhaps because you followed it with a very ugly accusation.’
I smiled. In the Fornes case, Father Towle had evaded the seal of the confessional by claiming that counseling, not absolution, had been the purpose of his encounter with Fornes. My lawyerly argument was that counseling and forgiveness were also separate events in Mynka’s encounter with Father Manicki.
Because I’d chosen them carefully, I could still remember my exact words: I’m thinking that she was confused, that she sought counseling from the only counselor available. That would be you, Father.
‘I showed you a photo of Mynka,’ I said, ‘with her belly ripped open, but I never told you why she was gutted.’
‘Actually,’ the priest was good enough to point out, ‘you led me to believe that she was mutilated by a psycho.’
‘Well, she wasn’t. Aslan sliced her because he wanted to be certain we couldn’t use her child to establish paternity through a DNA test. His objective was entirely rational.’
‘Why are you telling me this?’
‘Because the man has to be stopped.’
We trudged on, eventually circling the block. Only when we were within yards of the church did Father Manicki speak again.
‘The truth,’ he announced, ‘is that Mynka did come to me for counseling, exactly as you suggested. I’ve examined my own conscience and discussed the matter with my superiors. We’re all on the same page. Nevertheless . . .’ The priest hesitated, his mouth continuing to work. Then he took a deep breath and smiled. ‘Nevertheless, my superiors would prefer that my . . . my contribution . . . not be made public.’
I laughed out loud. ‘If I remember right, I already made that offer.’
There was nowhere to go now. We were standing by the church doors. I watched the priest straighten himself, then jam his hands into his pockets and suck on his lower lip. Finally, he said, ‘You were right. Mynka was being pressured to have an abortion, by Aslan and by the family she worked for, and she didn’t know what to do. But I did not, as you suggested, tell her that abortion is murder and that she was obligated to resist. I told her that if she ran away, we’d protect her and her unborn child.’
‘I know that, Father.’
‘Then why . . .’
‘It was just a ploy, a wedge, the kind of thing I do every day.’ I motioned for him to continue.
‘Well, she came into the confessional in early June. She didn’t tell me much. I don’t even know the name of the baby’s father. But she did tell me that she and the baby’s father were in love, and she also mentioned the name of the family, Portola. They live somewhere on the upper west side of Manhattan.’
I felt an onrush of powerful emotions at that moment, just as I had when the priest revealed Mynka’s name. Though I was careful to show nothing of what I felt – neither joy, nor triumph, nor even cold-blooded calculation – I doubt that I fooled the priest.
‘Anything else?’ I asked. ‘Anything at all?’
‘Only this. There’s a large refrigerator somewhere in the Portola home, large enough to step into. Mynka kept referring to it as “the cold room.” That was the threat, you see. If she didn’t work hard enough, if she wasn’t properly subservient, if she refused to abort her child, she would be confined in the cold room. Sometimes the baby’s father would intervene, but he wasn’t always present. Detective, the way she described it, the cold and the absolute darkness, it must have been hell.’