TIGO:
Wish we’da thought of it, Wigg.
WIGGY:
Butweain’t gettin no fifty-percent payback here in Diamondback, man! We payin the full an honorable price for the shit. And they takin the big profit they make up here an usin it for financin all they activities all over the world, you know what I’m sayin? Man, we payin ’em good money, an they usin it to start some revolution inAfrica someplace!
TIGO:
Who you mean bythey, man? Who’sthey?
WIGGY:
I don’tknow who they is. But I’ll bet you any amount of money it’s right there in that folder markedMothah. You fine the password to that folder, man, you on the way to trackin downzackly who these people are.
TIGO:
Why you so keen on knowin that, man?
WIGGY:
What’s the matter with you, Teeg, you some kind of fool? They fuckin us six ways from the middle! You close Nettie and you double-click on Diana, you know what you fine in that Diamondback file? You fine what the plan is forus, man. You see what theyreally doin up here, you see how this thing comes full circle.
TIGO:
What is it they doin, Wigg? I’m sorry, but I don’t see what …
WIGGY:
They buildin a community ofdope fiends, man. They keepin the nigger in his place so he can’t work, he can’t vote, he can’t do a fuckin thing but shoot H in his arm or sniff coke up his nose! They turnin us into fuckin slaves all over again.
TIGO:
Man, Wiggy. wiggy: Yeah, man, is right. That’s why I called that fat hump cop. They got to know what’s goin on here, Teeg. Somebody got to put a stop to it.
TIGO:
One thing I don’t get, Wigg.
WIGGY:
What’s that?
TIGO:
These dudes in I-ran? The ones gettin paidreal money for the fake stuff?
WIGGY:
Who gives a shit about them, man? You unnerstan what I’msayin here?
TIGO:
I was juss wonderin what theydo with that money, that’s all.
The shots exploding from the recorder startled both detectives. Ollie actually dropped the bag of potato chips. Screams erupted over the ugly stutter of automatic gunfire. A woman’s voice shouted, “The window!” There was the sound of glass breaking. Heavy breathing. More shots. Footsteps clanging on metal. The breathing harsher now. Yet more shots. More footsteps pounding. And then Carella’s own voice came from the machine.
CARELLA:
You know who did this to you? Who, Tigo? Can you tell me?
TIGO:
Mother.
CARELLA:
Yourmother shot …?
TIGO:
Nettie.
CARELLA:
Is that your mother’s name?
TIGO:
Diana.
CARELLA:
I don’t under …
There was more shooting.
Heavy breathing.
OLLIE:
That’s two, Steve.
“Who the fuck is Mother?” Ollie asked.
FROM WHERE SVI COHEN stood center stage, he could see the vast enclosing arms of Clarendon Hall, from the orchestra level soaring upward to the first and second tiers, and the dress circle, and the front and rear balconies. A giant of a man himself, he felt dwarfed by the golden sweep of the most prestigious concert hall in the United States. It was here that Jascha Heifetz, a seventeen-year-old Russian violinist, made his explosive American debut in 1917. It was here—not a decade later—that a ten-year-old prodigy named Yehudi Menuhin stunned the world of classical music with a violin style that combined the elegance of Kreisler, the sonority of Elman, and the technique of Heifetz himself. Here, too, on this very stage, the great Russian pianist Svetlana Dyalovich had made her American debut. Svi stood staring out at the red-carpeted space, overwhelmed.
“So how does it look to you?” Arthur Rankin asked, beaming.
Rankin was the Philharmonic’s conductor, a man in his sixties, a man who’d been playing violin since he was four years old and conducting since he was thirty, but in the presence of this thirty-seven-year-old genius from Tel Aviv, he was virtually awe-stricken.
“Wait till you hear the sound,” he said.
“I can imagine,” Svi said.
The orchestra was beginning to tune up.
Tonight’s program would start with “La Gazza Ladra”—the “Thieving Magpie” overture from Rossini’sThe Barber of Seville. They would then play Mozart’s no. 40 in G Minor to conclude the first half of the evening. There would be a twelve-minute intermission, and then Svi Cohen would take the stage. The orchestra had been rehearsing all of the pieces for the past week now, but this was the first time they would be playing the Mendelssohn E Minor with the Israeli violinist.
Rankin tapped his baton for silence.
“Gentlemen?” he said. “May I introduce our honored guest?”
THE PLAN was a simple one.
They had been trained to believe that all good plans were simple ones.
Part of the seed money had been spent for false identity papers created for them by a master forger who’d been trained in Bucharest and who now lived in a small town upstate, where he sold antiques as a sideline. Passports, green cards, driver’s licenses, social security cards, credit cards—all that anyone might need to move freely around the United States, or indeed around the world. From the stock of a Cadillac dealership in the state across the river, Nikmaddu—using the assumed name on his new driver’s license—had purchased outright a black DeVille sedan. The car would be used in the attack tonight, and then driven to Florida, where it would be disposed of before all four men parted company. Akbar, Mahmoud, and Jassim would board separate flights to Zurich, Paris, and Frankfurt, and would then disperse to the far corners of the Arab world. Nikmaddu would leave first for Chicago, and then San Francisco, and finally Los Angeles. The attack here in this city would have put only a small dent in the cash he’d carried from home. Activities elsewhere in the United States required money, too. Money was what made the world of terrorism—or, as he preferred to call it, liberation—go round. Money was both the engine and the fuel.
At seven-forty-five tonight Akbar, wearing a chauffeur’s uniform, would drive the Cadillac—
They called this luxurious car a Caddy, the Americans. They also used this word to describe the menial who carried a golfer’s clubs. A strange country.
He would drive the Caddy, then, to the front door of Clarendon Hall. Jassim, barbered and bathed and manicured and groomed, well-tailored in a black business suit, carrying a man’s handbag purchased at Gucci on Hall Avenue, would present his ticket and enter the hall. If he was asked to open the bag, which was highly unlikely, they would find in it only a package of cigarettes, a gold and enamel cigarette lighter also purchased at Gucci, a Coach leather wallet, and a paperback copy ofCatcher in the Rye. It was not until later that Jassim would re-enter the hall carrying the armed bomb.
“Where will you be during the first part of the concert?” Nikmaddu asked.
Akbar, who had assembled the bomb, and who would be responsible for arming it before Jassim went back in, said, “I’ll be parked just across the street.”