The Ninth Step (26 page)

“I already checked with the Bureau of Prisons. They don’t have a record of either guy being inside at that time.”

Jack nodded. “I know. But it seems unlikely that two strangers left town at the same times, or got sick simultaneously, or something. And it seems like a very big coincidence that this happened right after Nine-eleven. So what else could have happened?”

Richie’s face scrunched in thought.

“I was looking at the paper this morning,” Jack continued. “I was reading about these ‘black sites’ where guys who got suspected of terrorism were flown to other countries. Or were held in secret detention.”

Richie frowned. “I could see that with Hasni. But what about Brasciak?”

“I don’t know.” Jack frowned. “I think maybe I should give a call to a friend of mine in the FBI.”

Richie’s bushy eyebrows went up. “You’ve got a friend who’s a Feeb?”

“Yeah, we worked together on a case out at Governors Island a while back.” Agent Ray Hillhouse was a big African-American man. Like Jack—a Jew in the NYPD—he was a minority in his outfit; with that in common, maybe that’s why they’d been able to skip the usual chest thumping and noncooperation.

Richie frowned. “What about what Charlson said, how we aren’t supposed to discuss this with anyone?”

If his landlord had not uttered a lucky warning, Jack knew that he would be in a thousand bloody pieces right now. “To hell with Charlson.” He glanced around: there were a couple of other detectives in the room. “I’m gonna go outside and call my guy. I’ll be right back.”

The day was unsettled, warm and humid, a harbinger of the coming miserable New York summer. Jack watched a gaggle of young uniforms walk down the street—they all looked like they were about sixteen.

“How the hell have you been?” It was good to hear Ray Hillhouse’s booming voice through the little phone. Jack pictured the man: heavyset, bespectacled, sporting an FBI wind-breaker.

“Aside from the fact that I almost just got blown to bits, not too bad.” He explained about the recent incident, then said, “Listen, have you got a couple of minutes? I need to talk to you about something, in complete and total confidence.” Keeping his voice low and an eye on his surroundings, Jack laid out the whole saga of Nadim Hasni and Robert Brasciak. “So can you poke around?” he concluded. “But keep it really quiet?”

“No problem,” his friend replied. “You know I don’t specialize in counterterrorism, but I’ll be glad to ask around. And lucky for you, I’m having a slow day around here—you’re saving me from some really boring background checks. Why didn’t you call before?”

Jack frowned. “Charlson made a huge deal about how I wasn’t supposed to discuss this with anyone, so as not to compromise his investigation. But if my life is at stake …”

“Say no more—I’m on it. I’ll call you back as soon as I find anything.”

When Jack returned to the squad room, Richie was eager to move. “So where do you wanna go with this today?”

Jack scratched his cheek. “I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about Hasni’s apartment. I’d love to get a look inside, but the feds are probably keeping an eye on it.” He mused for a moment, then grinned. “But maybe we can take care of that.”

“I ALMOST FEEL GUILTY
about this,” he said, half an hour later.

“You feel bad?” Richie said. “After the way that fed has treated us?”

“I said
almost
.”

Jack had called Charlson and told him that they had spotted Nadim Hasni again—back on Seventy-fourth Street in Jackson Heights. Then the two NYPD detectives sat in their car at the end of Hasni’s block. A few seconds later a couple of crew-cut bozos hustled out of a house just down the way from the Pakistani’s apartment, jumped into a car, and went racing off.

Three minutes later Jack and Richie were standing outside their suspect’s front door. Luckily for the detectives, the landlord upstairs—the gynecologist—had handed over the keys without demanding to see a warrant. He had been more concerned about how he was going to collect the next month’s rent.

Richie got his first look at the bullet traces. He scratched the back of his neck. “This doesn’t play right to me. If Hasni was out here and he saw one of Charlson’s guys breaking in, why would he shoot? You’d think he’d just hightail it the hell out of here.”

Jack nodded. “I wondered the same thing. Maybe it was the feds who did the shooting. Maybe they like playing vigilante.” He turned the key and gave his partner a wry look. “I’m glad we didn’t have to break in. My lock-picking skills are rusty.”

In they went.

Another lonely, low-ceilinged basement pad. This one was quite different from Brasciak’s: it was dedicated, not to a bachelor’s crude pleasures, but to the memory of one rather homely but sweet-looking little girl. Jack examined the snapshots on the fridge: the dead daughter blowing out birthday candles, standing in front of a seal pool at an aquarium, riding a bicycle, eating an ice cream cone on the Coney Island boardwalk. There were other photos of her scattered throughout the apartment, and drawings and paintings
by
her—she seemed to have a special fondness for fish and other aquatic creatures.

As Jack rummaged around, he couldn’t help feeling a bit of sympathy for Nadim Hasni. Yeah, the guy had committed murder, but he also seemed to be a pretty loving dad. There were different ways of dealing with the death of a child: some people went through a period of mourning, then put the snapshots and photo albums away. Hasni, though, clearly wanted to keep his daughter’s memory alive. The apartment was practically a shrine. And it had a strange frozen-in-time feel. Judging by the deli’s surveillance video, Nadim Hasni had not set out to commit a homicide the other morning. He had gone out to work or to shop, leaving things in his place in a typical bachelor’s jumble: dishes in the sink, open newspapers on the kitchen table, clothes scattered by the foot of the bed …

Jack’s cell phone vibrated and he almost jumped. He looked down at the little blue screen: Brent Charlson.

The fed sounded breathless. “Where did you say you saw him?”

“I told you,” Jack replied. “The corner of Seventy-fourth Street and Thirty-seventh Ave.”

“Where are you guys now?”

“Driving around, looking for him.”

The fed didn’t say anything; he just growled and hung up.

Moving quickly, the detectives tromped from room to room, scanning opened mail, looking for a calendar or address book, checking for any possible indication of where their suspect might have gone to ground. It was highly doubtful that he would come back here, or return to Jackson Heights, or go back to his place of employment. And where was he sleeping?

No calendar or address book—maybe Charlson had taken them. The detectives kept on pawing through Hasni’s belongings; they wouldn’t have much time until the feds came back. It was not what they might have expected from the home of a fanatical terrorist. There wasn’t a single picture of Osama bin Laden or anyone else who looked like a radical leader. There wasn’t any religious imagery at all. Jack tried to remember: Was that a Muslim thing, that you weren’t supposed to have pictures of God or his prophet? Either way, he realized that he hadn’t even seen a copy of the Koran.

He sorted through a heap of stuff on a dresser in the bedroom: some coins (all U.S.), an electric bill, a couple of movie stubs (for Pakistani or Indian-sounding flicks), a receipt for a visit to the New York Aquarium. He held the latter up and gave it a good look. He had noticed several snapshots of the girl at an aquarium, and now he recognized it as the city’s own. He went back into the kitchen. On the little dining table, buried under some bills and junk mail, he dug down for something he had glanced at ten minutes before.
There:
another aquarium receipt. Both were date stamped.

Jack called to his partner. Richie came in and he showed him what he’d found. “That’s weird,” Richie said. “Check this out.” Jack followed his partner into the living room, where the detective rustled through a pile of papers on a side table and came up with another receipt.

Jack scanned it, then looked at his partner. “All these dates are fairly recent. You can tell from the snapshots that he liked going there with his daughter. But why would he still be going there now that she’s gone? I mean, I could see him visiting once, maybe with a friend’s family or something. But three recent trips?”

Richie squinted. “Maybe it’s where he meets the other terrorists. Maybe they’re planning something out there.”

Jack considered that possibility. Coney Island was already open for the season. Each weekend, thousands of New Yorkers thronged the boardwalk and the beach. The place was known as America’s Playground.

If the terrorists wanted to slaughter a lot of people and make a big political statement, it was hard to imagine a more effective setting.

He glanced at his watch: the aquarium was probably closed for the day. But tomorrow he and his partner would definitely pay it a visit.

N
ADIM SAT IN HIS
hiding place under the boardwalk, finishing some french fries he had snuck out to purchase at Nathan’s Famous hot dog stand. The hot greasy starch filled his stomach, which was good, because he was rapidly running out of cash.

He considered emerging back up into the sunlight. His cell phone battery had died and he needed to go up and find a pay phone, to assure Malik and Aarif and others that he was still totally committed to the plan—after all their preparation together, it would be terrible if they moved on it and left him out. But he thought of the police roaming around, and the men who had shot at him, and the effort it took to run, and he sank back onto the damp, smelly sand, drifting toward the hope of sleep. As usual, before he reached that oblivion, memories of his imprisonment arose, a salty, suffocating tide.

AFTER WHAT MIGHT HAVE
been ten days in detention, or perhaps two weeks, during what might have been midday or the middle of the night, the door of his cell swung open and someone came in. He had pretended to be asleep on his bunk, but the intruder was not fooled; he dragged Nadim onto the floor, pushed him facedown, yanked his arms back, cuffed his wrists, and put on the ankle restraints. It was the guard they called Barshak.

The man stepped out and returned with a chair, which he placed in the middle of the cell. “Guess what, Hajji? You got a new visitor today. Now, you’re gonna behave, or I’m gonna come back in here and play some football with your testicles.”

Nadim lay limp. He had been forced to surrender all power over his own life, and this loss had taken its toll: he was lethargic and sad all the time, and he was fast losing weight inside his prison garb.

Now Barshak lifted him up by the armpits and slung him back onto his bunk. After the guard swaggered out, a new man entered the little cell, sat down, and placed something on the floor.

Nadim blinked, trying to see him clearly under the bright lights, but his vision had been suffering under the constant barrage of white. The stranger was surrounded by a golden nimbus.

As if reading his mind, the man began to speak. “Hello, Nadim. You may be wondering who I am. I’m going to tell you: I’m an angel.” The man’s voice had a flatness, a calm, even tone that might—under other circumstances—have felt reassuring. But Nadim just shivered; he had woken a number of times trembling with fever, and he wondered if he might be dreaming now.

“I’m an interesting angel,” the man continued, “because you get to choose what kind I am. I can be your angel of mercy. I know you have a wife and a little daughter. I bet you’d like to see them again, and soon. I have the power to make that happen.
You
have the power to make it happen. You work with me, and I’ll get you out of here.

“But if you don’t do your part”—as the man shifted closer, the scraping of his chair on the floor set Nadim’s teeth on edge—“I’ll be the angel of your worst nightmare. Do you understand?” The man wore eyeglasses; they glinted in the harsh light.

Nadim nodded dully. He was starting to get a headache. Since the second day here, he had been interrogated several times a week, in the room with the doctor’s examining table, with several men present, and a video camera. He hoped this might be the man who finally believed his story.

“There is a man in the other house,” he said. “An old man. He does not like me. He has a dog. One time—”

The bright light overhead disappeared from the visitor’s eyeglasses as he bent down to pick up the thing he had put on the floor: a manila folder. He lifted a paper out, held it up, and shook his head. “I’ve heard this silly story, Nadim. You keep this up and you’re going to stay inside here for the rest of your life. Am I making myself clear?”

“I know America,” Nadim ventured. “There is laws. I would like a lawyer.”

The visitor stared at him. “Times changed a few weeks ago. You people changed them, with what you did downtown. So I’m making the laws now, and if you don’t tell me who you’re working with, I’m going to bury you alive. You’ll never see your wife and daughter again.”

Nadim was on the verge of tears. “I tell the truth. I tell you everything.”

The man contemplated him for a moment. “I’m going to give you one last chance. Who are the other men in your group?”

Nadim remained silent.

The man bent down and carefully placed the paper back in his file. He stood up, brushed his hands together, then moved to the door. He called out, then came back and sat again.

Barshak and one of his fellow bullies crowded into the cell. The other man carried a big black canvas bag. They shut the door behind them. Barshak knelt down and unzipped the bag.

“Now, Nadim,” his angel said, “we’re going to make you wish you had never been born.”

T
HE NEXT DAY JACK
called Ray Hillhouse again; he wanted to add a few more details about the Hasni case, and he gave the FBI man the rest of the lowdown as he drove south toward the shore with Richie Powker.

He hung up as he parked on Surf Avenue. Next to the aquarium, the old Cyclone roller-coaster was sending its cars full of screaming thrill seekers ripping and roaring around its bends. The wooden structure rattled as if at any second it might fly apart. Jack remembered riding it once with Michelle; she had talked him into it, his only time since he was a kid. He recalled that first hill, which made you think,
Gee, this isn’t so high
—and then all of a sudden you were in absolute freefall, terrified for your life.