Gods and Fathers (8 page)

Behind the wheel of her BMW SUV, seated high enough to see all the cars ahead of her, Debra al-Hassan ground her third Adderall of the day with her teeth, worked up some saliva in a mouth that was of late always too dry, and swallowed it as she drove through the Midtown Tunnel. She would need two Ambiens, at least, to fall asleep tonight, but she had no choice, she needed to be alert. She had been taking Prozac and Valium surreptitiously for over a year, but had never had to double down on them as she had lately with her new pills. She seemed always to be either in a leaden fog, drowsy and half asleep, or strung way too tight, her nerves screaming, her senses receiving and painfully amplifying the slightest whim of the world around her. No in-between. No real rest.

The tunnel’s lights shocked her at first with their intensity.
Calm down
, she told herself,
calm down
.
It’s just a tunnel, and not a long one.
Five cars ahead a nondescript blue Chevrolet with diplomatic license plates was gliding through the tunnel’s graceful curves at a steady fifty miles an hour.
Don’t get distracted. Don’t lose that car.

Basil was en route to Syria. She was supposed to be on her way to their beach house in East Hampton. Earlier this evening, around six o’clock, she had overheard Mustafa make what she thought were arrangements to be picked up in front of her Park Avenue co-op at eight. At seven-thirty, an overnight bag on her shoulder, wearing a Mets cap, her long brown hair in a pony tail, she had retrieved her car from the parking garage around the corner and found an illegal space in a loading zone a short distance from her building’s gilded entrance.

Exactly at eight Mustafa emerged and approached the blue Chevrolet, which had appeared virtually simultaneously. Instead of getting in, however, he handed something to the driver through the passenger window. She froze as her husband’s sphinx-like manservant backed away from the Chevy and gazed up and down Park Avenue before turning to go back into the building. He had not seen her. Her heart pounding, her mouth drier than ever, she decided to follow the Chevrolet.

Mustafa
, whose
yes madams
and
no madams
had been tinged with contempt these past six years, especially when Basil was not present, was the key. Adnan and Ali were his lap dogs. They would never have framed Michael on their own. With Basil away, her second Adderall doing its work, curled up in a blanket by the fire, pretending to be asleep or in her usual state of listlessness, she had been able to quietly track Mustafa with her half-closed eyes and fully open ears. At six he had taken a call on his cell phone while attending the fire.

When she emerged from the tunnel, relieved to have its glaring lights and suffocating, too-narrow confines behind her, the screen in her head that she could not control pulled itself down and technicolor, surround-sound scenes of her and Michael began immediately to play. This reel was one of the many that had begun playing the night she heard that her son had been charged with murder. The screen came down and the movies came on at random moments, maddeningly random moments, like now.

Mommy, where’s Daddy?

He left us, Michael.

Mommy, can I sleep with you tonight?

Yes, Michael. I’m lonely too, and afraid.

Michael, do you like Mommy’s new dress?

It’s beautiful, like you.

Who do you love more, Mom, me or Basil?

Who do you think?

He left us, Michael. He left us.

The reels varied in content, but the last scene was always the same. Home from Boston for the holiday break, just two months ago, Michael had announced that he and Mina
—how she hated that dimunitive, that lover’s nickname—
were getting married. No preliminaries, no warmth in his voice, on his way out of the Park Avenue apartment, his coat and scarf on.

“Where are you off to?”

“To see Mina. We’re celebrating.”

“Celebrating what?”

“We’re getting married.”

A simple fact. No big deal. Her heart in shock. She could feel it even now as she was forced to watch the scene play out for the hundredth time.

“You’re only twenty-two, Michael. Yasmine’s not even out of college yet.”

“She graduates in May. We’ll be married in June.”

“And her parents? Do they approve?”

“She hasn’t told them yet, but they’ll be happy for her.”

“What about school?”

“I’ll finish the semester.”

“Finish the semester?”

“Yes, it’s paid for. But then I’m going to work for Shell or PetroCanada. In Lebanon. Yasmine wants to return home.”

“Lebanon?”

“Yes. It won’t be forever.”

“You’ve spoken to Basil?”

“No, but he’s said many times that when I’m ready he would place me.”

“You know nothing about petro-chemistry or petro-engineering.”

“There are other career paths. Marketing, public relations. The master’s I’m getting is in communications. I can finish it there. B.U. has a relationship with the American University in Beirut. You seem distressed, Mother.”

“I’m not distressed, but I’m against this marriage. It can wait Michael.”

“No it can’t. You’ve been running my life for too long. I’m getting married in June. I hope you’ll be there.”

Cut to her bedroom:

He is not my son, Basil says. I will not interfere. Talk to his father.
It is for the two of you to guide him
.
If he asks me to find him work, I will, as I have promised.

How she had looked forward to the reception at the Lebanese consulate last fall. Her new Dior gown, a chance to wear her diamonds. Michael flying down from Boston. How handsome he looked in his tuxedo talking to the beautiful Yasmine Hayek, the center of much attention, her father, Pierre, the recently named Justice Minister in Lebanon, a women’s rights advocate, an international celebrity.
And what bitter fruit.

After his announcement, she could not corner Michael, who was either with Yasmine or Adnan and Ali for the rest of his semester break. Avoiding her. He’ll come to his senses, she had thought, when he returns to school, but she was wrong. On the last weekend in January, back in Boston only ten days, Michael hurried home to see Yasmine. It had been her idea to lock the penthouse, not Basil’s. Why let the newly betrothed—another word she hated—couple enjoy the luxury of Park Avenue? Have sex in any room they chose to? But her son had done something he hadn’t done in years; he had gone to his father’s in Westchester. And been arrested for raping and killing Yasmine. And now, the real killers, Adnan and Ali, were also dead.

Mustafa
, she thought, you
have
to be the key.

Her skin crawled and she felt slightly nauseous—the Adderall, taken on an empty stomach, had quickly kicked in—at the thought of her husband’s stocky, never-smiling servant padding, silently alert, like a panther, around her apartment, around her life, these past six years.

Debra followed the Chevrolet as it took the Glen Cove Road exit off the Long Island Expressway, staying discreetly behind as it turned into a maze-like neighborhood of narrow streets lined with small but solid, muscular looking brick homes. When it stopped in front of one of these, she drove past, turning left at the next corner. After a K turn in a dark driveway, her headlights off, she went back and parked under a street sign that said
Frost Pond Road
. As her eyes adjusted to the moonless night, she spotted a man in a long black coat emerge from the now darkened Chevrolet, which was parked at the curb in the middle of the block. She watched as he moved in a crouch toward a car in a nearby driveway and then disappeared. Into the car or under it, she could not be sure which. A few minutes passed, perhaps five or six at the most, before the man reappeared, noiselessly got back into the Chevrolet, started it and pulled away, his headlights off. Debra ducked as the car approached, but not before getting a quick glimpse of the man’s inverted-spade beard and something that looked like euphoria in his gleaming, black eyes.

Matt and Jade arrived early to the rooftop of the five story-parking garage that serviced downtown Glen Cove. They had seen a few cars parked on the lower levels as they wound their way up, but the top level was empty and silent, with piles of dirty snow pushed into the four corners. Matt backed his Ford SUV against a concrete wall, facing the up ramp. As he backed up, he caught a glimpse of Main Street, its storefronts dark, its street lights standing lonely in the winter cold.

“I’ll keep the car running, it’s cold out there,” Matt said, looking at his watch. “We’re right on time.”

“It’s a nice night, really,” Jade replied, “except for the cold of course.”

They scanned the empty rooftop and the lights of the small city of Glen Cove and its suburbs, sparkling in the clear night air. Above, a nearly full moon dominated a cloudless black sky.

“You’ve been quiet, Matt,” Jade said, breaking the silence.

Matt did not reply immediately. He
had
been quiet on the ride to Long Island. The downed security system, the Diaz murder, these things spoke loudly of reasonable doubt. And now a new development, the U.N. surveillance log. A good lawyer would find a way to use it. It was not unreasonable to start thinking that the indictment against Michael would be dismissed. Then what? Everett Stryker would be a hero. Basil al-Hassan would be a hero. And Michael would be as arrogant and as dismissive of him as ever, probably even more so. Where would that leave Matt?

“I have to ask you,” Matt said, finally. “Why… did you break up with me? I mean
really
why?”

“It took you a long time to ask that question.”

Matt had been looking at Jade’s hands this while, which were clad in red woolen gloves with soft leather palms and finger fronts. Now he looked up.

“I did ask. You said you couldn’t do it.”

“Which you accepted. As if you were relieved. ‘Are you sure?’ you said, and that was it.”

Matt said nothing, thinking of the implications of this statement.

“That hurt,” Jade said. “I figured it was my two divorces.”

“It wasn’t. I’m sorry.”

Jade looked down now, and took Matt’s hands in hers. The car was steadily idling, the windows beginning to fog, but there was something in the way Jade tilted her head that drove the world away, something that heightened his senses—to the scent of her, to the touch of her fingers lightly caressing his.

“It was Michael, he was part of it,” Jade said, looking up, her eyes finding Matt’s in the car’s darkened interior.

“Michael?”

“I thought you were punishing yourself. That you were enjoying it somehow.”

Matt watched Jade’s face as she said this, saw the stricken look in her eyes, and was struck himself by how hard a thing this must have been for her to say, five years ago, when she couldn’t, and now, when somehow she could. He knew she was right. He had become a beggar for his son’s love. Who wanted someone with no self-respect for a lover? A mate?

“Do you still feel the same way?” he asked.

“No,” Jade said. “I was too harsh. I’m afraid now that Antonio will go with his father. I’m scared to death, actually, and I’m ashamed of myself.”

“Ashamed of yourself?”

“Yes. For judging you so harshly.”

Jade squeezed Matt’s hands tightly, then took off one of her gloves to wipe at the tears that were beginning to well in her eyes. Taking her arm, Matt pulled her gently toward him.

“There’s something else,” Jade said. That stricken look was still in her eyes. She was still silently crying, tears running down her face.

“No, Jade,” Matt said, “It doesn’t matter.” He was about to kiss her tears away, when an explosion in the distance lit the night sky, the large
kaboom
reaching them a split second later.

“Jesus,” Jade said. “What was that?” Smoke was now trailing upwards from the tree line of a neighborhood that appeared to be about a half mile away. Matt looked at his watch again.

“He’s ten minutes late,” he said.

“Bobby?”

Matt did not answer. He still had his police scanner in his car, mounted on the dashboard. In his prior life he had been to dozens of crime scenes, to breathe the air, he used to say, where a murder had been done. He turned it on. After some intermittent crackling and static, they heard the staccato voices of first fire, and then police dispatches to an address on Frost Pond Road. Within only a minute or two, arrivals on the scene were relaying information to headquarters and to other responders.

“Did you hear them say
Frost Pond Road
?” Jade asked.

“Yes, and
car bomb
,” Matt replied.

“That’s where Bob Davila lives.”

“Shit,” was all Matt could say, shaking his head, hearing the multiple sirens converging on Frost Pond Road.

“Can we go over there?”

“We’ll never get close,” Matt answered. “Try calling Bobby.”

Jade found her cell phone in her shoulder bag, and, after scrolling quickly, pushed her send button. She held the phone to her ear for ten seconds or so before snapping it shut.

“Nothing,” she said. “No ringing, no message. Nothing.”

“I’ll try Clarke,” Matt said, bringing out his cell phone. “He lives nearby.” He pushed the speed dial button for Clarke Goode’s cell phone, hoping his old friend would pick up, but dreading what he would find out once he made a couple of calls of his own. As he put the phone to his ear, he looked down and saw that he was holding Jade’s hand in his.

“Matt, is that you?” Matt heard through his receiver.

“Clarke, yes,” Matt replied.

“This can’t be good.”

“It’s not. There was an explosion a few minutes ago on Frost Pond Road in Glen Cove. I heard it on my scanner. That’s the street Bob Davila lives on.”

Goode was silent for a second. Then he said, “I’ll call you back.”