The Ninth Step (6 page)

“Nadim? Is that you? Where the hell are you?”

Rafik-kahn, his boss. In a foul mood, as usual. Nadim pictured him ensconced in his Plexiglas-walled booth, sitting fat and lordly behind his desk like a rajah on the back of an elephant.

“Saabir dropped the car off half an hour ago,” the man continued in angry Urdu. “Not you nor I, Nadim, neither one of us is making a rupee while it’s just sitting at the curb.”

Nadim pressed his free hand against his forehead. “I … I’m not feeling well. I think I ate something very bad for my stomach.”

“Again with the sickness? I’m not running a convalescent home. How many times have you called in sick in just the last month?”

Nadim rubbed his eyes. How could he explain all these absences? If his boss knew what was really up with him, he’d be fired on the spot. “Tomorrow night,” was all he said. “I’ll drive a double tomorrow. I promise.”

“Bah,” his boss spat. “If I could put your promises in the bank, I could buy the Mohatta Palace. I’m warning you, Nadim: if you don’t come in tomorrow night, don’t bother coming back at all.”

Nadim hung up. He really did feel sick to his stomach now. Life was turned upside down. He should have finished his shift in the car this morning, bought a few things in the deli, picked up a copy of the
Sada-e-Pakistan
paper at the local newsstand, come home to make himself some dinner, had a good smoke and a read, then pulled down the shades and gone to bed. But his usual deli had been closed for some mysterious reason, so he had gone to an unfamiliar one a couple of blocks away, and so had been set in motion this terrible deviation from his hard-earned quiet, anonymous path. He hadn’t slept, had barely been able to keep down any food.

After passing a couple of hours in the aquarium this morning—
killing time
was the idiom, if he remembered correctly from his courses in English as a Second Language—he had wandered over onto Brighton Beach Avenue, in the neighborhood of the Russians. He had trudged aimlessly back and forth along their short main avenue, listening to their foreign tongue. They were aliens here in America too, though they were no longer looked at as public enemies. No, since the towers had fallen, that role had shifted toward men who looked like
him
.

He had walked until he could walk no longer, then drifted over to the beach and sat on a bench staring out at the ocean, wishing he had never come to this land of false promises, false dreams. The day passed slowly, so very slowly, but the sun did move overhead, and the afternoon shadows lengthened on the sand. Nadim contemplated returning to his apartment, but who knew what might be waiting for him? He wanted desperately to be back among his own people, to listen to Urdu rather than gruff Russian, but he couldn’t risk arrest. He would never go back into captivity; that was one promise he had made to himself, one promise he would be sure to keep.

In the evening, he stayed in the café as long as he could, buying a cup of soup or a glass of tea now and then to keep the proprietor happy and avoid drawing attention to himself, but he knew he couldn’t stay all night. He looked at the clock on the wall: just about now, he thought, he should have been driving someone to the airport or to some Manhattan rendezvous, should have been flowing along the dark streets of the city, safe in his driver’s seat, in control of his destiny.

And now—glancing at the clock a half-hour later—he should have been stopping for a
karahi
and some
saag
at Tabeer’s café on Coney Island Avenue, making idle conversation with Fayaz and Shafiq and some of the other drivers. Then back out on the streets, tracing the glowing pathways of the city, as they had been laid out beneath him that night twelve years ago when he had first arrived in this country, swooping low over Brooklyn in a huge airplane.

He emerged from the café bleary-eyed. A big poster on the side of a bus stop jumped out at him, a reminder of the city’s severe vigilance after 9/11:
IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING
. He hurried past, eyes down, avoiding the passersby. He thought of calling one of his fellow drivers, of asking for rescue or at least a couch on which to spend the night, but he would not risk implicating anyone else in his troubles. Agents of the government were everywhere.

He stopped in at a corner deli and bought a pack of cigarettes, even though the damned things were so expensive and it occurred to him that he ought to be saving his money now. He lit up, breathing the smoke deep into his lungs; it helped ease his anxiety.

He trudged back to the boardwalk. The night was fairly warm and people were still out, strolling along the weathered wooden walkway, chatting amiably, without any cares in the world. This place was too busy; Nadim walked west, toward Coney Island, until he found an unpopulated stretch of the walkway. Reeling with exhaustion, he found a bench facing the sea, lay down, and curled up. He couldn’t risk staying out in the open like this for long, but maybe he could at least take a short nap.

He lay there as the night grew colder, chilled by ocean breezes, sleeping as if drugged, wracked by his recurring nightmares. His Enny came back to him, as she often did, that sweet little wraith, pressing her hand to her chest and coughing, coughing, imploring him,
Help me, Abbu. Please help me.
Then the dreams turned violent. One ended with Nadim covered in blood, and he jolted awake, shocked to find the sky brightening slowly with the dawn, then jolted again by the sight of a stocky policeman standing at the foot of his bench. The officer tapped Nadim’s foot with a nightstick.

Never,
he thought. I will kill this man—or myself—before I allow them to cage me away again. He tensed, prepared to launch himself up off the bench.

But the policeman just yawned. “Can’t sleep here, buddy. Gotta move on.” And then the man actually, miraculously, sauntered off toward the rising sun.

“L
ET’S GO,” RICHIE POWKER
said. “There’s no one home.”

“One more try.” Jack pressed the doorbell again, then waited a few seconds. Finally, he turned away; he was walking down off the stoop into the bright morning sunshine when he heard a sound behind the door.

The house was ramshackle, leaning to the left, with a threadbare little front yard and crumbling shingles on the roof. The old woman who opened the door was not in much better shape. Her hair poked out of her head like dry straw and her face was scrunched into what looked like a permanent scowl. “Whaddaya want?” she said.

Jack called up to her. “Is this Robert Brasciak’s residence?”

“Who wants to know?”

He pulled his badge out of the pocket of his sport coat. “We’re with the New York Police Department. About Brasciak.”

“There’s no one here by that name.”

“That’s funny,” Jack said. He pointed toward a little pile of mail resting on the front porch. “There’s a couple of letters and bills for him. Are you a relative, or his landlady?”

The woman scowled. “I was his landlady, but he doesn’t live here anymore. He moved away last year.”

Jack didn’t believe her. “We’d just like to take a quick look at his apartment.”

The woman crossed her arms. “I ain’t stupid. I watch the TV. You need a warrant.”

“You’re right. We
would
need a warrant. If he was alive.”

The woman took a step back. “What are you talkin’ about?”

“I’m sorry to break the news: he was found dead yesterday morning.”

The woman’s right hand flew up to her cheek. “But he owes me two months’ rent!”

Jack didn’t bother to comment. In his time with Brooklyn South Homicide, he had witnessed just about every possible reaction to the news of a murder.

“What happened?” the woman asked.

“We’re investigating what looks like a homicide.”

She pressed a hand to her chest. “Who did it?”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out.” Jack and his partner trooped in past her, into a front hall that was decorated with flowered wallpaper more faded than the owner’s house-dress. “Which way, ma’am?”

Grudgingly, she pointed to a doorway. They followed her down a dimly lit, narrow stairway to another closed door. She reached into the pocket of her housedress and took out a key ring. As she turned the key, she looked back at them with a puzzled expression.

“What is it?” Jack asked.

“The door was unlocked. He never leaves it that way.”

Jack flashed on the image of the feds piling out of their van. “Has anyone else come by asking about Robert?”

The landlady shook her head. Jack frowned. Maybe the feds had dropped by without bothering to ring the bell. This landlady seemed like a tough watchdog, but these locks were old and not very effective; it would have been a simple matter to slip in while she was out. He started thinking about radiation: What if there was something nasty beaming little rays behind this door? In that case, he hoped the feds
had
paid a visit.

She turned the knob and pushed the door open. The reason for her wariness soon became obvious: the basement apartment was devoid of windows.

“Nice illegal rental,” Richie noted dryly.

“You’re not gonna turn me in, are ya?”

Jack saw a big chunk of her income disappearing in her panicked eyes, and he adopted a reassuring tone. “We’re not here to make any problems for you—as long as you tell us the truth.” He and his partner wandered through the apartment while they asked her more questions. They didn’t stumble across any atomic bombs in the making, which was certainly a relief.

“Any idea why someone would have it in for your tenant?”

“He kept to himself. I don’t know nothin’ about his personal life.”

“You ever hear any fights or arguments going on down here?”

“He never had company, not that I know of.” She stared at Jack. “Was it a nigger that killed him? Robert could never tolerate the niggers.”

Jack frowned at the casual slur; the last thing he needed right now was a reminder of his own teenage stupidity. “It seems like it might have been a Pakistani or an Indian.” He watched carefully for her reaction.

Her eyebrows went up. “Well,
that’s
a surprise. Those people seem pretty quiet. Family types.”

Jack turned back to his survey of the apartment. He wished he could tell if Brasciak might have had a little company post-mortem, but even if the feds had tossed the place, they could hardly have left it in more of a mess. It was a real bachelor dump, with empty beer cans scattered around, overflowing ashtrays, clothes strewn about. It looked as if it hadn’t been renovated since the seventies or eighties: the wallpaper was silvery, and there was a wall-sized photo mural of Manhattan at night in the little living room, which offered just enough space for a beat-up leather couch, a big-screen TV (employee discount?), an elaborate video game controller, and a weight bench and some dumbbells. The gray wall-to-wall carpeting smelled funky, like spilled beer and mildew. A poster on the wall bore a picture of a Hispanic-looking hoodlum holding a white woman in an arm lock. Crosshairs were superimposed over the man’s face, and Jack realized that it was a shooting gallery target.

“Did Brasciak have family?” Richie asked.

“Not that I know of.”

“How about girlfriends?”

“I don’t think so.” The landlady’s nose wrinkled as she gestured at a pile of lurid porn magazines on the coffee table, along with a spread of well-thumbed copies of
Soldiers of Fortune
and
Small Arms Review
and a bunch of candy wrappers.

“Did he have problems with any neighbors?”

She shook her head. “He didn’t go outside much.”

Jack wandered into the kitchen. The refrigerator was nearly empty, except for some beer and big cans of bodybuilder’s muscle powder. He passed through a back doorway: the bedroom was more like a walk-in closet, just big enough for a mattress on the floor, which smelled of sweat and foot odor.

As Jack returned to the living room, a phone rang upstairs and the landlady trundled off to answer it.

“What do you think?” Jack asked his partner.

Richie shook his head. “You know what this reminds me of? When I was a kid, I used to dream about being grown up. I thought it would mean that I could eat candy bars and watch TV all day, and no one could stop me.”

The detective picked up one of the porn magazines, flipped through it, then tossed it back onto the coffee table. “This must be a pretty weird part of working in Homicide: you look through everything in people’s houses. Like, they go off to work, never expecting that they’re not gonna come home, and all their stuff is just layin’ there. My mom always used to tell me that thing about making sure I went out with clean underwear, in case I got hit by a car and had to go to the hospital.” He frowned. “Man, I wonder what the crap in
my
house would say about
me
.” He shrugged. “I guess I don’t have any big secrets lying around, though.” Richie sighed and sat on the edge of the couch. “I keep thinkin’ about those feds. They certainly didn’t leave us a lot to work with.”

Jack shrugged. “It could be worse. A
lot
worse. We sometimes get dump jobs, a decapitated body in a Dumpster, or out in a marsh off the Belt Parkway. Sometimes we can’t even get fingerprints. Look at the bright side here: we know the vic, and we’ve got a big jump on identifying the perp.”

Richie wrinkled his bulbous nose. “There are tens of thousands of Pakistani or Indian men in this city.”

“Yeah, but we know our killer is not black or white or Hispanic or Chinese. We can cross about eight million potential perps off the list.” He headed for the front door. “We may be looking for a needle in a haystack, but at least we know what the needle looks like.”

Richie chuckled. “You must be a glass-half-full kind of guy.”

Jack smiled. “A glass half-full of needles.”

IN HOPES OF RECOGNIZING
their suspect, the two detectives spent the rest of the morning staring at computer databases: any files that cross-referenced zip code and country of origin, and provided photos. They found no matches for their mysterious Pakistani or Indian in 11218 or 11230. Searching citywide—not to mention the rest of the state and nearby New Jersey and Connecticut—might take days, so they decided to leave the computers alone and follow an old but trustworthy motto:
Get Off Your Ass and Knock On Doors.