Outrage (11 page)

What he’d actually done was worse. “Slaughtered” was the word that reporter Ariadne Stupenagel had used, quoting her unnamed police sources. He liked the press coverage in all its macabre detail—it gave his “work” a sort of religious quality. The killing certainly released a lot of anger, so that after it was over, he was able to calmly clean himself up and then slip out of the apartment with no one the wiser.

Still, forcing women to take him into their apartments as opposed to talking his way in was a change in the way he liked to do things, and it made him uncomfortable. He recognized that he was taking a greater risk of being discovered.

Then there was the woman at Mullayly Park, which was yet another change and even more risk. Attacking her had been a spur-of-the-moment decision. He’d been out wandering the streets, wondering how he was going to score more meth when the last of his supply—one more hit—was gone. He wasn’t really even interested in raping or hurting her; the bushes in a park weren’t his style, at least not yet. Robbery had been the motivation, and it almost backfired.

Fortunately, the little Hispanic girl over in Bed-Stuy had taken care of both of his needs. The bloodlust was sated and he had enough cash to stay high for a week.

Time to party
, he thought as he reached the six-story public housing complex off Watson Avenue. The building was an ugly, unimaginative box built of dull red bricks, just one of many similar public housing complexes and tenements that dominated Soundview.

The security intercom and locking gate had long since been destroyed by vandals, so Kadyrov was able to just enter the building and make his way to the stairs leading to the third floor. He walked down the long dark hallway—most of the bulbs had been removed or never replaced—and put his hand in his pocket, clasping his new switchblade. For many years, the Bronx’s notorious Soundview section had been dubbed “the murder capital of New York” by the media; more than half the population of seventy-five thousand residents lived
below the poverty level, and crime was a way of life for many of them. The knife made him feel safer.

He walked to the apartment on the far end of the hallway and knocked on the door.
“Quien es?”
a gruff voice behind the door demanded. “Who’s there?”

“The police, open up,” Kadyrov said. He could feel the occupant looking at him through the peephole. “It’s Ahmed. Who the fuck do you think it is? I know you’re looking at me, you dumb fuck.”

The sound of bolts sliding and chains being unhooked came from the other side of the door. The door opened and a tall white man with a large protruding forehead rimmed by long stringy gray hair peered out. He was wearing a stained long-underwear top and frayed boxer shorts from which his long bony legs protruded like those of an ostrich.

“Watch your mouth, asshole, or next time I won’t open the door, and you can buy some of that rat poison they’re selling on the sidewalk,” the man growled. “You got cash? No money, no honey, son.”

Kadyrov held up the wad of bills he’d taken from his victim in Bed-Stuy. “Here’s your honey, muthafugga.”

The dealer glanced at the cash and then nodded. He turned and led the way into the one-bedroom apartment. He was carrying a big .357 Magnum revolver, which he now laid on the counter that separated the tiny kitchen from the living room.

The apartment was a filthy mess that smelled of mold, urine, and rotting food. The stained and threadbare carpeting was littered with trash and dirty clothes that looked like they’d been jettisoned on the spot and left to rot by their former occupants.
Dirty dishes, glasses, and porn magazines seemed to cover every usable space, and cockroaches roamed freely in and out of various food containers. The only art on the walls was a torn black-light poster of Elvis Presley.

The room was only nominally lighter than the hallway. The sole illumination was provided by a small window that was so dirty it might as well have been a gauze curtain. A heavyset woman with long gray hair sat in a sagging orange chair near the window, reading a magazine. She wore an old blue bathrobe over men’s pajama bottoms and didn’t even bother to look up when he came in.

“Hi, Lydia,” he said without expecting much of a response. He didn’t like her, and she didn’t like him. She looked over her magazine at him and grunted.

“What can I do you for?” the man asked as he sank down into a large overstuffed recliner that appeared to have been salvaged from some alley Dumpster.

Kadyrov noted the pump-action shotgun within easy reach of the chair. When it came to methamphetamines, whose users tended to be violent, dealers didn’t trust their customers any more than strangers on the streets.

Vinnie and Lydia Cassino were two of the only whites still living in the Soundview neighborhood, which was mostly populated by blacks, Puerto Ricans, and Dominicans. Most of the other whites had long since fled, but the Cassinos had been there since the 1970s and stubbornly refused to move—even when Vinnie went to prison in the 1980s and ’90s. They were both tough and known to carry, and if necessary use, guns. That along with Vinnie’s connection to a good cheap source of crank,
which the smaller dealers below him could cut with strychnine to increase profits, meant no one bothered them much.

Kadyrov sat down on the couch next to Vinnie’s chair and tossed his money on the coffee table in front of them. “Two hundred worth,” he said. “I should get a good deal too for that much cash.”

“Two hundred bucks is shit,” Vinnie said. “I’ll give you a deal when you’re buying an ounce at a time, not a couple of grams. If you and me didn’t go back a ways, I wouldn’t sell to you at all.”

By that he meant that he didn’t trust Kadyrov, who might just rat him out to the police if Vinnie cut off his supply of clean meth. And as a two-time loser, if he got busted again, they might put him away for life.

“Cheap bastard,” Kadyrov complained as he pulled out his drug “kit,” containing a spoon, a small container of water, and a syringe, from the belly pocket of his sweatshirt. “Just give me my shit.”

Vinnie Cassino leaned forward, scooped up the money, and counted it. Pocketing the cash, he opened a wooden box on the coffee table and pulled out two small plastic bags of white powder. “You know I don’t like tweakers shooting up in my pad.”

“Well, unless you want me doing it in the hallway in front of your door, you’ll break your fucking rule,” Kadyrov replied as he continued with his preparations. “I’m not going to make it any farther than that.”

The dealer didn’t say anything more as Kadyrov tied the surgical tubing around his upper arm, mixed some of the white powder with water in the spoon, filled the syringe, and plunged
it into a protruding vein. Ten seconds later, the younger man shook his head and smiled. “Now, that’s more like it.”

With his customer happy, Vinnie asked, “Who hit you?”

“No one.”

“Looks like you got in a fight and lost.” The dealer chuckled. “One of your ‘girlfriends’ fight back?”

“None of your business.”

Vinnie shrugged. “You’re right. And neither is this.” He tossed a section of newspaper that had been folded to display one article in particular on the table in front of Kadyrov. The headline jumped out in large bold type:

Kadyrov picked up the newspaper. He’d dropped out of school in the eighth grade and he’d never been much of a reader, so it took him a minute to get through the story. When he did, he laughed. Some loser named Felix Acevedo had been arrested for the murder of Dolores Atkins and the attack on the young woman in Mullayly Park. Apparently, he’d even confessed to the crimes. According to the story, the case was being reviewed by the Bronx DAO but charges were expected soon.

Looks like this might be my lucky day
, Kadyrov thought as he read further. Acevedo’s mother told the reporter that her son couldn’t have committed such terrible crimes.

Kadyrov shrugged and pushed the newspaper back at his host. Oddly, he was mildly irritated that this Felix Acevedo punk was taking the credit for his work. With meth cruising
through his brain, he was feeling all-powerful. Still, his paranoia cautioned him to be careful around Cassino. “So what’s this shit to me?” he sneered.

“I guess that lets you off the hook for the Bronx deal,” Vinnie said with a shrug. When Kadyrov didn’t reply, he added, “I guessed that might be you. Maybe he’ll confess to those two bitches in Manhattan, too, and you’ll really be in the clear.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kadyrov replied, though they both knew that he did.

Back in July, Kadyrov had gone to the Cassinos’ apartment looking to buy, and at that time he had plenty of money, too. The dealer even remembered what his customer was wearing, because instead of one of his usual short-sleeve button-down shirts, he had on a blue, long-sleeved silk shirt that wasn’t his style and was too big. “That’s a nice shirt,” he’d commented.

“Want it?” Kadyrov said, stripping down to his wife-beater undershirt.

Cassino figured that Kadyrov was changing his look more than being generous, but he liked the shirt and accepted the gift.

Kadyrov had also been wearing khaki pants, on which his wife noticed something. “What’s on your pants?” she’d asked.

Kadyrov frowned and looked down. “What are you talking about?”

“There around the bottom of the cuffs, and some spots on your legs,” Lydia said. “Looks like dried blood.”

“You’re crazy, it’s just some dirt,” Kadyrov answered, brushing
at the stains before turning the subject to buying meth. He’d left soon after but not before using the bathroom and, the Cassinos noted, trying to spot-clean the stains from his trousers.

However, a couple days later when he’d returned for more drugs, another newspaper article had drawn his attention. He’d just shot up and was feeling confidence flow through his body when he noticed the main front-page headline of the news tabloid lying on the coffee table:

“That’s me,” he’d boasted, stabbing the paper with his finger.

Vinnie looked at the paper and then back at Kadyrov and scoffed. “Bullshit. You ain’t got the stomach for that sort of work.”

Insulted, Kadyrov had said more than he intended. “Screw you, I don’t. I was just going to fuck her,” he said. “Then rob her. But I’d tied her up and cut her clothes off when the older bitch showed up. She came at me like a fucking pit bull so I stuck her. But she kept coming, so I stuck her again, like four or five times. Finally, she goes down for good and just sort of lies there twitching and shit. That’s when I remember the other bitch on the bed. I turn around and she’s looking at me all bug-eyed and shit. She’s crying and whimpering, and she won’t shut up, even when I tell her I’m going to cut her fucking head off. But she just kept going. So I used her good and killed her, too.”

Vinnie had looked at him with skepticism but his wife was
more convinced. “Jesus H. Christ, I think he means it, Vinnie!”

“Damn right,” Kadyrov bragged. “And after that, I was cold as ice. My shirt was covered with blood, so I took it off and washed up. Then I got another one from the bitch’s closet. That blue silk number I was wearing. Put my shirt in a bag and tossed it in a Dumpster in Harlem. Guess I didn’t get all the blood off my pants.”

“You’re one sick puppy,” Vinnie said to his customer.

“Just remember what I’m capable of,” Kadyrov replied. He was starting to regret saying so much. “Some little bird calls the cops on your business here and you’re going away forever. I go down, and you go down. Then ain’t nobody going to be around to protect your old lady.”

“Yeah, yeah, right, you don’t remember telling us about those other women last July,” Vinnie said. “You know, the one come at you like a pit bull so you had to stick her a few times. Then you fucked that other one and did her, too. You was bragging that you’re the Columbia U Slasher.”

“Fuck you. I never said nothing like that,” Kadyrov retorted.

“Yes, you did,” Lydia said, chiming in. “I was sitting right here. I also noticed those blood spots on your pants right after you done them gals.”

“So you did that woman in the Bronx, too?” Vinnie asked. “Or is this guy telling the truth?”

“Whether I did or didn’t, I think both of you should watch your fucking mouths,” Kadyrov said threateningly, standing up. “And remember, snitches end up in ditches. Or maybe a little
bird will start singing to the cops about what you do in this rat hole you call home.”

Vinnie held up his hands. “Hold on, son,” he said. “Ain’t nobody snitching on nobody else. What you do on your own is your own business. And I don’t stick my nose in another man’s business, so long as he don’t stick his nose in mine. Your money’s good here, and that’s all I care about. We cool?”

Kadyrov smiled. “Yeah, we’re cool. Outlaws got to stick together, right?”

“Right, son,” Vinnie replied. “And just to show you there’s no hard feelings, how about another bump on me?”

“Now you’re talking,” Kadyrov said. “Care to join me?”

Vinnie smiled and picked up his own kit from the end table next to his chair. “Don’t mind if I do.”

Ten minutes later, Kadyrov was gone. He’d done so much meth he was practically bouncing off the walls and talking about “some big deals” he was going to put together. “Then I’ll be buying ounces, and I better get a good deal or I’ll take my biz somewhere else,” he said, and left.

“That guy gives me the creeps, Vinnie,” Lydia said after the door closed. “I don’t care how much he was tweaking, what he did to those women was bad, real bad.”

“It ain’t our business, Mama,” Vinnie replied. “If we started cutting the killers and creeps from our so-called clientele, we’d have no one to sell to anymore.”

“Did you get that recorded?” Lydia asked.

Vinnie smiled and picked up the fake pack of cigarettes from
the coffee table that held a small digital recorder. “Right here,” he said.

After he saw the newspaper article about a suspect being arrested in the Atkins murder, he got an idea. He was pretty sure Kadyrov was the real killer, based on what he’d told them about the killings in Manhattan. He also knew that he’d be dropping by for drugs as soon as he could get the money together. “It wouldn’t hurt,” he’d told his wife, “to get a little something on him in case I ever need to pull an ace from my sleeve with the cops.”