The Ninth Step (9 page)

Jack came around the desk and saw a driver’s license up on the screen: a male, thirty-four years old, with black hair and a rather severe brown face. He peered closer; he hated to admit it, but even for a veteran detective it was often harder to identify suspects of other races. Blacks and Asians condemned it all the time, this “they all look alike” mentality, but he had seen scientific studies about the phenomenon, known as the
cross-race effect
: people of
all
races were usually better at identifying differences in facial features among members of their own group.

It certainly didn’t help when you were trying to work from two-day-old memories of a grainy little security video.

“The age and height seem right,” Richie said. “I think it could be our guy. Whaddaya think?”

Jack exhaled. “I don’t know. It
could
be …”

“This is interesting.” Richie tapped at his keyboard, then pointed at a new screen. “It says here that several passengers registered complaints about this hack. I looked into it: he’s been brought up on charges a couple of times.”

Jack frowned. “The perp’s fingerprints didn’t turn up on any criminal database.”

“I know—but these are just TLC hearings, not court cases.”

“What was he brought up on?”

Richie gave Jack a significant look. “It seems he has a bit of a nasty temper—and a tendency to pick fights. Oh—and he lives five blocks from our deli.”

THEY TOOK BACKUP WITH
them, two other detectives from the Seven-oh, tagging along in an unmarked Dodge Charger. First they stopped off at the hack’s home address and warily approached the front stoop. It was a small brick row house with garish chrome railings. No one answered the bell.

Next stop: the place of employment. The taxi office was on a small side street just off Coney Island Avenue, next to a shoe repair shop and a little Mexican bakery. Jack and his partner parked twenty yards down the street and got out of their car, while the other detectives remained in their vehicle at the far end of the block, keeping an eye on the incoming traffic.

The bakery had a picture window full of birthday cakes topped with plastic princesses and Power Rangers; as he walked by, Jack inhaled an inviting sweet scent tinged with cinnamon. Then came a high chain-link fence topped with one meager strand of barbed wire, enclosing an asphalt lot which held three yellow cabs, with spaces for maybe five or six more. Next to it stood a small open-doored garage and a freestanding little office. Jack knew that its modest appearance didn’t mean that the business was not worth much: every cab had to bear a licensing medallion, and each of those cost around four hundred grand.

A mechanic in oily overalls, a compact brown man whose biceps bulged beneath his cutoff shirtsleeves, stared out at the detectives from the shade inside the garage. They ignored him and proceeded into the office, a small, grubby room made smaller because it contained a Plexiglas-protected booth, inside of which sat the dispatcher, a plump man with a pockmarked face and heavy black eyebrows.

He looked up at them, took in their sports jackets and their confident demeanor. Jack, a relatively small man of Russian Jewish heritage, could often pass for a civilian, but Richie carried the meaty look of a law enforcement officer in his very genes.

“TLC?” the dispatcher said. He didn’t exactly look surprised, and Jack thought of his driver’s previous run-ins with the Taxi and Limo Commission.

Jack pulled out his badge. “NYPD. You own this business?”

The dispatcher nodded.

“We need to talk to you about one of your drivers.” Jack held up a computer printout of their suspect’s driver’s license.

“What is this about?”

“It’s a routine matter. We just need to ask him a couple of questions.”

The dispatcher frowned. “He’ll be done around eight.”

Jack held his ground. “We need him now. Would you please call him in?”

The dispatcher considered the request for a moment, then shrugged. His thought process was so obvious that it was almost visible: he could put up a fuss and risk getting hassled himself, or he could cooperate. And why not? The drivers worked freelance; if they got into trouble with the law, that was their problem.

The man reached out, pressed something, and spoke into his headset, rapidly, in Urdu. Jack hoped he wasn’t warning their suspect away.

The dispatcher looked up. “He just dropped a fare at the airport. He’ll be here in ten minutes.”

Jack smiled. It was at least a twenty-five or thirty-minute trip to the nearest airport, but the dispatcher bullshitted by sheer force of habit.

The two detectives sat down on bare metal folding chairs.

“I love what they’ve done with the place,” Richie muttered. The office was depressing: cigarette-burned wall-to-wall carpet, not a single picture or other decoration, just a little pile of well-thumbed foreign movie magazines. “You think our guy might be armed?” the detective wondered. “I know he doesn’t own a registered piece.”

Jack shrugged. “Maybe he’s got another can of beans.”

Richie snorted. “We should’a went out and bought some hot dogs. We could have ourselves a barbecue.” The detective sat back and clasped his hands across his ample stomach. His eyelids drooped. A true veteran: they were awaiting a possible murder suspect, but the man stayed calm.

Jack glanced at his watch. Restless, he resisted an urge to flip through one of the foreign magazines. He knew the backup would call if they spotted anyone approaching the office, but he kept his eyes fixed on the little front window.

Finally, his cell phone vibrated. He glanced at its little screen, nudged Richie, pulled out his gun, stood up, and moved to the side of the door.

A shadow moved past the window.

The door swung open, revealing the face of the driver in the photo. The Pakistani peered in at the two detectives. He started to turn but saw the others closing in behind. And then he bolted, not back toward the street but straight ahead, into the office, knocking Richie aside, darting around Jack like a football running back, yanking open a side door, and hurling himself through. The detectives exchanged startled looks, then rushed after him.

Out in the lot, their quarry careened about like an animal in a trap. The fence designed to keep thieves out proved quite suitable for keeping murder suspects in.

The mechanic stepped outside the garage, but when he saw four cops with guns drawn, he raised his hands and stopped still.

The suspect dashed around behind the parked taxis. He scrambled up on the hood of one, then hurled himself high onto the fence at the back of the lot. He scrabbled to the top but got caught in the barbed wire, where he was suspended, gasping and struggling.

Gotcha,
Jack said to himself. He turned back to the mechanic. “We’re gonna need to borrow some bolt cutters.” Once he got the tool, he turned to one of the other detectives from the Seven-oh house, a wiry young guy who looked like he spent a lot of time at the gym. Without a word, grinning, the DT took the cutters from Jack and started climbing.

A minute later the detectives had their suspect pressed, panting, against the hood of a taxi. One of the Seven-oh detectives cuffed him.

“Fahad Marashi,” Richie said to him, “you have the right to remain silent. Anything you say may be used against you in a court of law.”

“I
HAVE
APPLIED
,” THE
suspect said, bearing an expression of great anguish. “I have applied, and applied, and applied.”

“What are you talking about?” Jack said patiently.

He and Richie were standing in a drab little interview room over at the Seven-oh house.

“I don’t
want
to be illegal,” the driver said. “I wish to vote, pay taxes, all of this.”

“You want to pay taxes,” Richie said, grinning. “Well, that’s a great start for an honest interview!”

Jack had zero interest in their suspect’s citizenship status, but it seemed like it might make a useful bargaining chip. He sat down and clasped his hands together. “Monday. In the morning. What were you doing over at the S & R deli on Coney Island Avenue?”
Don’t ask the suspect
if
he was there; ask
why
he was there. Let the guy at least place himself at the scene.

But Fahad Marashi’s eyes widened. “Monday?
Monday
you are asking me about? I was in Charlottesville, Virginia! For my cousin’s wedding! He works at the university, in the mathematics program.”

Richie scratched his ear. “You have any proof of that? Witnesses? A bus ticket?”

Marashi brightened. “Witnesses, tickets, yes! And I can show you photos, on the Internet!”

“Why’d you run then, when you came into the taxi office just now?”

The man’s eyes widened. “Why did I run? Because you were chasing me!”

IT DIDN’T TAKE LONG
to confirm Marashi’s alibi. And then Jack and his partner stood outside the precinct house and watched the cabbie stride quickly, joyously away. They were on a homicide case and could not be bothered with immigration matters. What the hell, a hardworking guy—why bust his chops? The detectives took their setback philosophically. A lead didn’t pan out? Just part of the job.
Adios, amigo. Vaya con dios.

Jack shrugged. “Let’s do Plates at the Scene.” On a busy thoroughfare like Coney Island Avenue, at rush hour,
someone
must have seen their perpetrator walk out of the deli, likely with bloodstained clothes. As part of their routine that first day, the detectives had jotted down the license plate numbers of any cars parked outside. Now they would begin the tedious job of tracking down the drivers, asking if anyone had been near the scene at the time of the murder. Criminal investigations, even of homicides, were rarely glamorous; they tended to involve a lot of slogging along, poring through files, canvassing for witnesses, praying that some small, significant detail might pop out of the mundane mass. After almost two decades as a detective—with Homicide, with Robbery, with other units—Jack knew that full well, but still, by the end of the tour, he was nearly cross-eyed with the tedium of the task.

“You wanna grab a beer?” Richie asked, standing up and throwing his sports jacket over one shoulder.

Jack thought about going home to his empty apartment, about watching TV while eating cheap takeout food. “Sure,” he said. “Why not?”

THEY WENT OVER TO
Monsalvo’s, a little bunker of a place Jack sometimes visited on the edge of Midwood. It was far from any precinct house, so he didn’t have to listen to shop talk after work; he could just park himself on a stool like the resident old-timers and watch a ball game in peace.

Pat stood behind the stick, a ruddy-faced young man, son of Pat Senior, the night barkeep. The dim interior was lit by a couple of neon beer signs, a string of Christmas tree lights, and old TVs above each end of the bar; their light flickered in the big glassy eyeballs of a deer head mounted on the back wall. On a shelf above the register, some little statuettes—Jimmy Durante, W. C. Fields—stood patiently underneath a Spanish moss—like coating of dust.

“A couple of cold ones,” Jack called out, but Richie overruled him.

“Just a seltzer for me. With a squeeze a’ lime.”

Jack didn’t say anything—a man’s drinking habits were his business and his alone—but he couldn’t help cocking an eyebrow.

“I don’t drink,” Richie said. “It’s not an AA thing or anything. I just don’t go for the stuff.” He smiled ruefully and pointed at his face. “I know: the nose fools ya.”

Jack did his best to avoid comparing it to the veiny, bulbous schnoz on W. C. Fields.

“It’s not drinking,” Richie said. “It’s a skin condition. It’s called rosacea. Millions of people have it. And everybody assumes we love the sauce.”

“Well,
that
sounds like a drag,” Jack said.

Richie shrugged. “Hey—it ain’t fatal. But it is a bit of a curse. If it wasn’t for this, I would’a made commissioner by now.” He laughed at his own joke, causing a couple of old-timers at the far end of the bar to tear their gazes away from the TV. Pat delivered a pint of seltzer; Richie raised it and began to declaim:

Here’s to the camel, whose sexual desire

Is greater than anyone thinks.

One night in a moment of madness

It tried to make love to the Sphinx.

But the Sphinx’s posterior opening

Was clogged with the sands of the Nile,

Which accounts for the hump on the camel

And the Sphinx’s inscrutable smile.

The old-timers set down their beers and clapped.

Richie bowed. “Just ’cause I don’t drink doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy a good toast.”

Predictably, this set off old regular Tommy McKettrie, a wrinkled, long-retired bus driver sitting a few stools down. He stood gravely, adjusted an imaginary necktie, and raised his glass of whiskey. “Here’s to the bee that stung the bull, that started the bull to bucking. Here’s to Adam who ate the first apple, and started the whole world to—”

“Eating apples,” Pat stepped in, dryly fulfilling his role in the miniature ongoing drama that was Monsalvo’s.

Richie grinned. “I
like
this joint.”

Pat shrugged and wiped the bar with a wet rag. “We can’t
all
have good judgment.” One of the old-timers signaled and he went off down the bar.

“
So
,” Richie said to Jack. “If I remember correctly, I’ll only be graced with your presence for a little bit longer.”

Jack nodded. “I have a couple more days to work exclusively on this.” That was the way it worked: the Homicide Task Force detectives got assigned a certain number of days to work a fresh case with the local precinct detectives, and then they had to go back into the squad’s rotation, subject to catching fresh murders. “But I’ll still help out whenever I have time.” Jack took a sip of his beer and snorted. “Like I’ve already provided such invaluable assistance.”

Richie shrugged. “Some cases are easy; some ain’t. We don’t get to pick and choose.”