A Walk Among the Tombstones (8 page)

"You think it was their truck?"

"Most likely. I think they painted a phony company name and address on the doors, and once they completed the snatch they painted the old name out and a new name in. By now I wouldn't be surprised if the whole body's repainted some color other than blue."

"What about the license plate?"

"It had probably been switched for the occasion, but it hardly matters because nobody got the plate number. One witness thought the three of them had just knocked over the food market, that they were robbers, but all he wanted to do was get inside the store and make sure everybody was all right. Another man thought something funny was going on and he did take a look at the plate, but all he remembered was that it had a nine in it."

"That's helpful."

"Very. The men were dressed alike, dark pants and matching work shirts, matching blue windbreakers.

They looked to be in uniform, and, between that and the commercial vehicle they were driving, they appeared legitimate. I learned years ago that you can walk in almost anywhere if you're carrying a clipboard because it looks as though you're doing your job.

They had that edge going for them. Two different people told me they thought they were watching two undercover guys from the INS taking an illegal alien off the street. That's one reason nobody interfered, that and the fact that it was over and done with before anyone had time to react."

"Pretty slick," he said.

"The uniform dress did something else, too. It made them invisible, because all people saw was their clothing, and all they remember was that both of them looked the same. Did I mention that they had caps on, too? The witnesses described the caps and the jackets, things they put on for the job and got rid of afterward."

"So we don't really have anything."

"That's not really true," I said. "We don't have anything that leads directly to them, but we've got something. We know what they did and how they did it, that they're resourceful, that they planned their approach. How do you figure they picked you?"

He shrugged. "They knew I was a trafficker. That was mentioned.

That makes you a good target. They know you've got money and they know you're not going to call the police."

"What else did they know about you?"

"My ethnic background. The one guy, the first one, he called me some names."

"I think you mentioned that."

"Raghead, sand nigger. That's a nice one, huh? Sand nigger. He left out camel jockey, that's one I used to hear from the Italian kids at St.

Ignatius. 'Hey, Khoury, ya fuckin' camel jockey!' Only camel I ever saw was on a cigarette pack."

"You think being an Arab made you a target?"

"It never occurred to me. There's a certain amount of prejudice, no question about it, but I'm not usually that conscious of it. Francine's people are Palestinian, did I mention that?"

"Yes."

"They have it tougher. I know Palestinians who say they're Lebanese or Syrian just to avoid hassles.

'Oh, you're Palestinian, you must be a terrorist.' That kind of ignorant remark, and there are people who have bigoted ideas about Arabs in general." He rolled his eyes. "My father, for instance."

"Your father?"

"I wouldn't say he was anti-Arab, but he had this whole theory that we weren't actually Arabs. Our family's Christian, see."

"I wondered what you were doing at St. Ignatius."

"There were times I wondered myself. No, we were Maronite Christians, and according to my old man we were Phoenicians. You ever hear of the Phoenicians?"

"Back in biblical times, weren't they? Traders and explorers, something like that?"

"You got it. Great sailors, they sailed all around Africa, they colonized Spain, they probably reached Britain. They founded Carthage in North Africa, and there were a lot of Carthaginian coins dug up in England. They were the first people to discover Polaris, that's the North Star, I mean to discover that it was always in the same spot and could be used for navigation. They developed an alphabet that served as the basis for the Greek alphabet." He broke off, slightly embarrassed. "My old man talked about them all the time. I guess some of it must have soaked in."

"It looks like it."

"He wasn't a lunatic on the subject, but he knew a lot about it.

That's where my name comes from. The Phoenicians called themselves the Kena'ani, or Canaanites. My name should be pronounced Keh-nahn, but everyone's always said Kee-nan."

" 'Ken Curry' is the message I got yesterday."

"Yeah, that's typical. I've ordered things on the phone and they turn up addressed to Keane & Curry, it sounds like a couple of Irish lawyers.

Anyway, according to my father the Phoenicians were a completely different people from the Arabs. They were the Canaanites, they were already a people at the time of Abraham. Whereas the Arabs were descended from Abraham."

"I thought the Jews were descendants of Abraham."

"Right, through Isaac, who was the legitimate son of Abraham and Sarah. Meanwhile the Arabs were the sons of Ishmael, who was the son Abraham fathered with Hagar. Jesus, here's something I haven't thought of in a long time. When I was a kid my father had this mild feud with this grocer around the block on Dean Street, and he used to refer to him as 'that Ishmaelite bastard.' God, what a character he was."

"Is he still living?"

"No, he died three years ago. He was diabetic, and over the years it weakened his heart. When I'm down on myself I tell myself he died of a broken heart because of how his sons turned out. He was hoping for an architect and a doctor and instead he got a drunk and a dope dealer. But that's not what killed him. His diet killed him. He was diabetic and he was fifty pounds overweight. Me and Petey could have turned out to be Jonas Salk and Frank Lloyd Wright and it wouldn't have done him any good."

AROUND six Kenan made the first of a series of phone calls after the two of us had worked out an approach. He dialed a number, waited for a tone, then punched in his own number and hung up. "Now we wait," he said, but we didn't have to wait very long. In less than five minutes the phone rang.

He said, "Hey, Phil, how's it going? Great. Here's the deal. I don't know if you ever met my wife. The thing is, we had this kidnap threat, I had to send her out of the country. I don't know what it's about but I think it has to do with the business, you follow me? So what I'm doing, I've got a guy checking it out for me, like a professional. And I wanted, you know, to pass the word, because the sense I got is these people are serious about this and my impression is they're stone killers. Right.

Yeah, that's the thing, man, we sit here and we're easy marks, we got plenty of cash and we can't holler for the law, and that makes us the perfect target for home invasions and every goddam thing... Right. So all I'm saying is be careful, you know, and keep an eye and an ear open.

And pass the word around, you know, to whoever you think ought to hear it. And if any shit comes down, man, call me, you understand?

Right."

He hung up and turned to me. "I don't know," he said. "I think all I did was convince him I'm getting paranoid in my old age. 'Why'd you send her out of the country, man? Why not just buy a dog, hire a bodyguard?' Because she's dead, you dumb fuck, but I didn't want to tell him that. If the word gets around it's got to mean problems. Shit."

"What's the matter?"

"What do I tell Francine's family? Every time the phone rings I'm afraid it's one of her cousins. Her parents are separated and her mother moved back to Jordan, but her father's still in the old neighborhood and she's got relatives all over Brooklyn. What do I tell them?"

"I don't know."

"I'll have to fill them in sooner or later. Time being, I'll say she went on a cruise, something like that. You know what they'll figure?"

"Marital problems."

"That's it. We're just back from Negril, so why's she going on a cruise? Must be trouble between the

Khourys. Well, they can think whatever they want. Truth of the matter is we never had a cross word, we never had a bad day. Jesus." He picked up the phone, punched in a number, keyed in his own number at the tone. He hung up and drummed the tabletop impatiently, and when the phone rang he picked it up and said, "Hey, man, how's it going? Oh, yeah? No shit. Hey, here's the deal...."

I went to the eight-thirty meeting at St. Paul's. On the way over it had crossed my mind that I might run into Pete Khoury there, but he didn't show up. Afterward I helped fold chairs, then joined a group of people for coffee at the Flame. I didn't stay there long, though, because by eleven I was at Poogan's Pub on West Seventy-second Street, one of the two places where Danny Boy Bell could generally be found between the hours of 9:00 p.m. and 4:00 a.m. The rest of the time you couldn't count on finding him anywhere.

His other place is a jazz club called Mother Goose on Amsterdam.

Poogan's was closer, so I tried it first. Danny Boy was at his usual table in back, deep in conversation with a dark-skinned black man with a pointed chin and a button nose. He was wearing wraparound sunglasses with mirrored lenses and a powder-blue suit with more in the shoulders than God or Gold's Gym could have put there. A little cocoa-brown straw hat perched on top of his head, adorned with a flamingo-pink hatband.

I had a Coke at the bar and waited while he finished his business with Danny Boy. After five minutes or so he uncoiled himself from his chair, clapped Danny Boy on the shoulder, laughed heartily, and headed for the street. I turned around to get my change from the bar, and when I turned back again his place had been taken by a balding white man with a brushy mustache and a belly straining at his shirtfront. I hadn't recognized the first fellow, other then generically, but I knew this man.

His name was Selig Wolf and he owned a couple of parking lots and took bets on sporting events. I had arrested him once ages ago on an assault charge, but the complainant had decided not to press it.

When Wolf left I took my second Coke with me and sat down.

"Busy evening," I said.

"I know," Danny Boy said. "Pick a number and wait, it's getting as bad as Zabar's. It's good to see you, Matthew. I saw you before but I had to suffer through the hour of the Wolf. You must know Selig."

"Sure, but I didn't know the other fellow. He's head of fundraising for the United Negro College Fund, right?"

"A mind is a terrible thing to waste," he said solemnly. "To think you would waste yours judging by appearances. The gentleman was wearing a sartorial classic, Matthew, known as the zoot suit. That's a zoot suit, you know, with a drape shape and a reet pleat. My father had one in his closet, a souvenir of his flaming youth. Every now and then he would take it out and threaten to wear it, and my mother would roll her eyes."

"Good for her."

"His name is Nicholson James," Danny Boy said. "It should have been James Nicholson, but the names were reversed on some official document early on and he decided it had more style that way. You might say it goes with his retro fashion statement. Mr. James is a pimp."

"Go figure. I never would have guessed."

Danny Boy poured himself some vodka. His own fashion statement was one of quiet elegance, a tailored dark suit and tie, a boldly patterned red-and-black vest. He is a very short, slightly built albino African-American-- it would be way off the mark to call him black, since he's anything but. He spends his nights in saloons, and he's partial to dim lighting and low noise levels. He's as rigid as Dracula about not venturing out in daylight, and rarely answers the phone or the door during those hours. Every night, though, he's in Poogan's or Mother Goose, listening to people and telling them things.

"Elaine's not with you," he said.

"Not tonight."

"Give her my love."

"I will," I said. "I brought you something, Danny Boy."

"Oh?"

I palmed him a pair of hundreds. He looked at the money without flashing it, then glanced at me with his eyebrows elevated.

"I have a prosperous client," I said. "He wants me to take cabs."

"Did you want me to call you one?"

"No, but I thought I ought to spread a little of his dough around.

All you have to spread is the word."

"What word is that?"

I ran through the official story without mentioning Kenan Khoury's name. Danny Boy listened, frowning occasionally in concentration.

When I finished he took out a cigarette, looked at it for a moment, then put it back in the pack.

"A question arises," he said.

"Go."

"Your client's wife is out of the country, and presumably safe from those who would harm her. So he assumes they'll direct their attention at someone else."

"Right."

"Well, why should he care? I love the idea of a public-spirited dope dealer, like all those marijuana growers in Oregon who make huge anonymous cash donations to Earth First and the eco-saboteurs.

Well, when I was growing up I liked Robin Hood, as far as that goes. But what difference does it make to your man if the bad guys snatch somebody else's sweetie? They get the ransom and that just leaves

one of his competitors in a negative cash-flow situation, that's all.

Or they screw up and that's the end of them. As long as his own wife's out of the picture--"

"Jesus, it was a perfectly good story until I told it to you, Danny Boy."

"Sorry."

"His wife didn't make it out of the country. They snatched her and they killed her."

"He tried to stonewall? Wouldn't pay the ransom?"

"He paid four hundred large. They killed her anyway." His eyes widened. "Your ears only," I added.

"The death isn't being reported, so that part of it shouldn't get out on the street."