Dead Bang (28 page)

“I wanted to see if Karen had Manny's money in her suitcase.”

“Well?”

“Nope,” I said. “Why'd they grab Karen instead of Wendy?”

“Karen was driving Wendy's car. They thought she was your wife.”

“Was that Karen in the trunk of the car?” I took a cautious sip of my coffee.

“If it was Karen, you wouldn't be calling me from a house on Hubbard Avenue, in Garden City, Michigan.”

“Okay, I peeked.”

“Art, you know better than that,” said Matty. “Now I have to have a statement from you.”

“So, who was the man in the trunk with the rope necktie and tire iron tie clasp?”

“Ahmad Saada,” said Matty. “Came here from Egypt on a tourist visa eight years ago. We searched his flat on Cherry Street and came up with a diary. It's in Arabic, but so far it looks like Manny did detonate himself on top of the Waters Building.”

“I'm not so sure about that anymore.”

“Psychic impression?” asked Matty. “Or one of those famous PI hunches?”

I stood and walked out into the kitchen so I could get an ice cube for my coffee, but the telephone cord wouldn't reach the refrigerator. “My PI hunch was that Manny was dead. Hang on a second.” I set the telephone on the stove and opened the freezer section. The ice tray had frozen to a pot roast.

“Art! Art! Dammit, Art,” Matty complained in a small and distant voice.

I picked up the phone. “I'm here.”

“What about Manny?”

I said, “Yeah, you know that Southfield address I gave you?”

“What about it?”

“Just a second.” I parked the phone on the stove again, reached into the refrigerator, and hammered the ice tray with my fist. No joy. I pulled open the kitchen junk drawer and found a screwdriver. The ice tray surrendered, and I picked up the telephone. “Matty?”

“Yeah, I'm here,” said Matty, sounding vacant. She let a moment of silence pass. I twisted the tray to loosen the ice cubes and Matty snarled, “What about the Southfield address?”

I juggled the ice cube tray to spare my fingers. “They put the trash at the curb last night.”

“Nice that they're tidy. I don't suppose you stole it?”

“Traded it for some trash from down the street. I found the big red bow that Manny tied on the suitcase full of money.”

“Manny is Mahmoud Ibn Saud,” said Matty. “He's the real deal. Afghanistan, al-Qaeda, mujahideen, the whole nine yards.”

“How long have you known that?” I walked my ice cube back to the dinette and dropped it in my coffee.

“It was in the diary,” said Matty. “But not the cover name he's using here.”

“Try Rashid Erekat,” I said. “Rashid just got two brand-new credit cards, a Visa and a Mastercard. The paperwork was in the trash with the big red bow.”

“Spell it,” said Matty.

I did, and she hung up. I sipped my coffee.

“You left the ice tray out again,” said Wendy from the kitchen.

“Sorry,” I said.

“You will be when you want another ice cube,” said Wendy. She walked in from the kitchen wearing her bathrobe and carrying a cup of tea. “I want to help Mom wallpaper the bathroom before we head back to Belding.” Translation: “Mom and I will pick the paper we want you to hang.” Wendy took the chair across the table.

“So,” said Wendy, stirring milk from a carton into her tea, “anything in the trash?” I told her what I found. She said, “See, told ya, Manny had the money.”

“These guys are good.”

“Keystone Cops,” said Wendy.

“Matty just told me Manny is some hotshot al-Qaeda type,” I said. “Think about it. He produced a van full of men ready to shoot up the city of Wyoming in less than an hour. I couldn't do that. They came to get the money. They got the money. They got away. And when Manny was done, he was gone with the money, and everybody thought he was dead. That's not dumb. That's diabolical.”

“Khan tried to mug you with a toy gun,” said Wendy, tapping out a cigarette.

“Manny used Khan the same way he used Karen. Khan had no idea what he was walking into, but he tightened up his game and came back the next day. The dead man you found in his trunk was murdered slowly and face to face. Khan wanted Karen, and he got her.”

“So that leaves Manny,” said Wendy. She lit up her smoke and pulled the ashtray to her side of the table. “How do we find him? If that Mayada woman sees us again, she's gone.”

“Mayada will tell us, but in her own way,” I said. “They like to play
the game. I haven't seen any surveillance, and they've been on our cars and our house like they had a printed program. Somebody put a tap on our telephone. If it's not Archer Flynt, that leaves Manny or his playmates.”

“That would explain how they knew to look for Karen and me in Holland,” said Wendy. “I don't see how that helps us.”

“We give them a game.”

Wendy made a squint and a tilt of her head.

“This is going to cost,” I said.

“Karen is a friend,” said Wendy.

I took a drink of my coffee and said, “Several thousand dollars.”

Wendy closed her eyes, dropped her chin to her chest, and muttered, “I'm going to kill her.”

• • •

Wendy typed the letter: “Dear Sales Tax License Holder,” followed by three paragraphs about distributing plastic children's toys. The signature line read “Al A. Hakbar.” I signed it with an illegible flourish in felt marker.

Behind an import store, I climbed into the dumpster and emerged with a FedEx carton that had originated in Frankfurt, Germany. At an office stationary store with a self-help printing department, I scanned the routing label into the computer, changed the addressee to Rashid Erekat at the Southfield address, and printed a fresh label complete with sticky backing.

We tried three bookstores hoping for a Middle Eastern English-language daily newspaper but had to settle for a two-month-old copy of the
London Times.
From there we drove to the Southfield Public Library and recopied our letter until it faded to barely legible. I found a slick magazine entitled
Saudi Aramaco
and made a photocopy of the cover.

With my felt marker, I circled the date and volume number on our copy of the magazine cover. I took a tear sheet from the British newspaper, numbered the columns across the top, and circled a dozen words at random in the text. Back in the car, I folded it in quarters, and Wendy stashed it in the FedEx box with our letter and the photocopy of the magazine cover.

On Southfield Road near 1-696, we visited a shop that had been helpful in the past. Their merchandise included teddy bear cameras used to videotape nannies, telephone recording devices, and microphones used to monitor a nursery. We purchased a child's watch that included a GPS
locator. With its wide plastic band and large liquid-crystal face, it looked like a video game at first glance. We bought the “cosmic purple” model and got it cheaper than I expected—less than two hundred dollars.

We found a dollar store in the Farmer Jack shopping center north of Twelve Mile Road. We bought a bag full of plastic toy boats, airplanes, cars, animals, and the like. Wendy used my felt marker to number any of the toys that included the color red. Hopefully, that would keep them scratching their heads and take the onus off the purple watch.

The watch went into the FedEx box first, and we piled in the toys enough to fill the carton. So far, pretty cheap, but the laptop computer with a cell phone modem cost more than the car Ben wanted to buy.

“C'mon,” said Wendy. “I've been telling you to buy a computer. So has Marg. You can take it as a tax deduction.” The salesman slashed my Gold Card through the reader, and I could see my profit-and-loss statement bleeding red ink. Thankfully, Wendy already had an online address and an account. As I drove, Wendy fired up the laptop and punched the access code for the watchmaker's locator website, which took longer than I liked, but Wendy finally announced, “According to this we are at the corner of Catalpa and Stuart.”

“Works,” I said. “Silk City Surveys could buy it.”

Wendy smiled. “I already have a computer.”

“Not like this,” I said as I turned onto Stuart. “You can take this anywhere.”

“I generally work out of the house,” said Wendy, still happy with herself.

We rolled by Mayada's house. The black Lincoln Navigator filled the driveway. “Doggone it!” I said.

“You don't have to get mean about it.”

“Not you, doll,” I said. “Mayada's home. We need to leave the package.”

“She keeps her blinds drawn and her curtains closed,” said Wendy. She took her cell phone out of her purse. “I'll get her on the phone while you leave the package at the door.”

“She sees either one of us, this project is in the toilet.” I looked in my mirror. The neighbor I'd interviewed was backing out of his drive. We circled the block. I left the package at his door.

When I got back to the car, Wendy said, “Hope they weren't on their way to Florida.”

“We'll give them an hour. Let's go get a bite.”

“No Coney Islands,” said Wendy.

“No,” I said. “There's a place I want to check out—haven't been there since I was a teenager.”

On Greenfield, south of Twelve Mile Road, I turned left into the drive for Sweet Lorain's Cafe—“Parking In The Rear.” “I used to bring dates here,” I said.

“Do tell,” said Wendy. “You didn't bring me.”

“When I was in high school,” I said. “In those days, the sign read ‘The Raven Gallery.' They had coffee, surreal paintings, and folk singers. I saw Josh White Junior here, and The Rovers when they were The Irish Rovers and still a pig-and-whistle band. I didn't know you then.” I eased into a parking slot, leaned over, and gave Wendy a kiss. “I wish I had.”

Wendy brought the laptop. “Who are The Rovers?”

“The song about the unicorn—wouldn't get on the ark because it wanted to splash and play in the rain.”

“I remember that,” said Wendy as I held the door for her. “I liked that song. They were here?”

“Yep,” I said. A two-story atrium with a ring of balcony tables made up the seating area. “Looks different now. The stage is gone.”

Wendy loved the menu—French cuisine, all too clever for me. She had what looked like a grilled ham and cheese served with a fried egg on top. I had the burger.

For dessert, Wendy ordered the cherry cheesecake. I ordered the apple pie and headed for the restroom. Wendy flipped open the laptop. When I got back to the table, I found Wendy savaging the cheesecake with her fork.

“That good?” I asked.

“The package has moved to Southfield Road north of Twelve Mile.”

“The Coney Island,” I said and beckoned the waiter for the bill.

“Something wrong with the pie, sir?” asked the waiter, a tall thin fellow with too much oil in his hair.

“Suddenly, I'm kind of full,” I said. “Gimme a bow-wow bag and a plastic fork.”

• • •

We found the black Lincoln Navigator parked in the American Patriot Coney Island lot. I parked kitty-corner in the parking lot of the gas station that now pumped donuts. Wendy turned on the radio, found a local talk station, and we settled in to watch.

The first caller said that since the population of Hamtramck was one-third Muslim, the local mosque should be allowed to broadcast the call
to prayer five times a day over a loudspeaker. He said the call to prayer calmed nerves and was far less intrusive than the clanging of local church bells. The second caller got cut off, the station broke for news, and a white Cadillac Escalade pulled into the parking lot of the Coney Island.

“West Michigan's talk TV icon Mark Behler, a staunch anti-gun rights activist, has been turned down for a permit to purchase a firearm due to a previous felony conviction,” said the announcer. “Chet Harkness, Behler's producer, states that Behler made the application as part of research for a show segment. Mark Behler told reporters from
The Grand Rapids Press
that he was testing the licensing system. He would not comment on the felony conviction, which reporters had learned involved the delivery of a controlled substance.”

“Oh, my God,” I said.

“I told you he was a weasel,” said Wendy.

“No, look at the guy who just climbed out of the Escalade. The one with the unibrow.”

“Who?”

“White shirt with sleeves down to his wrists and black slacks,” I said.

“You're right,” said Wendy. “He was with Manny at Karen's house.”

“And on the road by our house,” I said.

“Isn't Manny, though,” said Wendy.

“Maybe he'll lead us to Manny.”

Mr. Unibrow walked behind the restaurant to where the restrooms were located. When he returned, he had the FedEx carton. He climbed into the Escalade, threw the package on the seat, and headed south on Southfield Road. I waited for him to pass before I pulled the car into reverse and let out the clutch.

“Don't crowd him,” said Wendy. “We've got the locator.”

“As long as he doesn't find it.”

“So far, he's not looking,” said Wendy.

He started looking in the parking lot of Hudson's Northland shopping center, north of Eight Mile Road on the west side of Greenfield, parked within sight of a police mini-station. We watched as he examined the page from the
London Times.
That's when my cell phone started buzzing in my pocket.

“Hardin,” I said.

“Special Agent Svenson,” said Matty. “Where are you?”

“Surveillance.”

“We got a hit on the Rashid Erekat name you gave me. Are you still in the Detroit area?”

“Northland Shopping Center.”

“Who are you watching?”