The drinkers stood three deep around the bar at Julio’s. Two hundred dollar shirts and three hundred dollar sweaters were wedged next to grease monkey overalls. Julio’s had somehow managed to hang onto its old clientele despite the invasion of the Giorgio Armani and Donna Karen set. The yups and dinks had discovered Julio’s a while back. Thought it had “rugged charm,” found the bar food “authentic,” and loved its “unpretentious atmosphere.”
They drove Julio up the wall.
Julio was behind the bar, under the “Free Beer Tomorrow…” sign. Jack waved to let him know he was here. As Jack wandered the length of the bar he overheard a blond dink in a blue Ralph Lauren blazer, holding a mug of draft beer; he’d been here maybe once or twice before, and was pointing out Julio’s famous dead succulents and asparagus ferns hanging in the windows to a couple who were apparently newcomers.
“Aren’t they just fabulous?”
“Why doesn’t he just get fresh ones?” the woman beside him asked. She was sipping white wine from a smudged tumbler. She grimaced as she swallowed.
Julio made a point of stocking the sourest Chardonnay on the market.
“I think he’s making a statement,” the guy said.
“About what?”
“I haven’t the faintest. But don’t you just love them?”
Jack knew what the statement was: Callousless people go home – this is a working man’s bar. But they didn’t see it. Julio was purposely rude to them, and he’d instructed his help to follow his lead, but it didn’t work. The dinks thought it was a put on, part of the ambiance. They ate it up.
Jack stepped over the length of rope that closed off the back half of the seating area and dropped into his usual booth in the darkened rear. As Julio came out from behind the bar, the blond dink flagged him down.
“Can we get a table back there?”
“No,” Julio said.
The muscular little man brushed by him and nodded to Jack on his way to assuming the welcoming committee post by the front door.
Jack pulled an iPod from his jacket pocket and set up a pair of lightweight headsets while he mentally reviewed the two phone calls that had led to this meet. The first had been on the answering machine he kept in a deserted office on Tenth Avenue. He’d called it from a pay booth this morning and heard someone named Munir Habib explaining in a tight, barely accented voice that he needed help. Needed it bad. He explained how he’d got the number. He didn’t know what Jack could do for him but he was desperate. He gave his phone number and said he’d be waiting. “Please save my family!” he’d said.
Jack then made a couple of calls on his own. Mr. Habib’s provenance checked out so Jack had called him back. From the few details he’d allowed Habib to give over the phone, Jack had determined that the man was indeed a potential customer. He’d set up a meet in Julio’s.
A short, fortyish man stepped through Julio’s front door and looked around uncertainly. His light camel hair sport coat was badly wrinkled, like he’d slept on it. He had milk chocolate skin, a square face, and bright eyes as black as the stiff, straight hair on his head. Julio spoke to him, they exchanged a few words, then Julio smiled and shook his hand. He led him back toward Jack, patting him on the back, treating him like a relative. Close up, the guy looked halfway to zombie. Even if he weren’t, he wouldn’t have a clue that he’d just been expertly frisked. Julio indicated the seat opposite Jack and gave a quick O K behind his back as the newcomer seated himself.
When Julio got back to the bar, the blond guy in the blazer stopped him again.
“How come they get to sit over there and we don’t?”
Julio swung on him and got in his face. He was a good head shorter than the blond guy but he was thickly muscled and had that air of barely restrained violence. It wasn’t an act. Julio was feeling mean these days.
“You ask me one more time about those tables, man, and you outta here. You hear me? You out and you never come back!”
As Julio strutted away, the blond guy turned to his companions, grinning.
“I just love this place.”
Jack turned his attention to his own customer. He extended his hand.
“I’m Jack.”
“Munir Habib.” His palm was cold and sweaty. “Are you the one who…?”
“That’s me.”
A few beats of silence, then, “I was expecting…”
“You and everybody else.” They all arrived expecting someone bigger, someone darker, someone meaner looking. “But this is the guy you get. You’ve got the down payment on you?”
Munir glanced around furtively. “Yes. It is a lot to carry around in cash.”
“It’s safe here. Keep it for now. I haven’t decided yet whether we’ll be doing business. What’s the story?”
“As I told you on the phone, my wife and son have been kidnapped and are being held hostage.”
A kidnap. One of Jack’s rules was to avoid kidnappings. They were the latest crime fad in the city these days, usually over drugs. They attracted feds and Jack had less use for Feds than he had for local cops. But this Munir guy had sworn he hadn’t called the cops. Said he was too scared by the kidnapper’s threats. Jack didn’t know if he could believe him.
“Why call me instead of the cops?”
Munir reached inside his jacket and pulled out some Polaroids. His hand trembled as he passed them over.
“This is why.”
The first showed an attractive blond woman, thirty or so, dressed in a white blouse and a dark skirt, gagged and bound to a chair in front of a blank, unpainted wall. A red plastic funnel had been inserted through the gag into her mouth. A can of Drano lay propped in her lap. Her eyes held Jack for a moment – pale blue and utterly terrified. Caution: Contains lye was block printed across the bottom of the photo.
Jack grimaced and looked at the second photo. At first he wasn’t sure what he was looking at, like one of those pictures you get when the camera accidentally goes off in your hand. A big meat cleaver took up most of the frame, but the rest was –
He repressed a gasp when he recognized the bare lower belly of a little boy, his hairless pubes, his little penis laid out on the chopping block, the cleaver next to it, ominously close.
Okay. He hadn’t called the cops.
Jack handed back the photos.
“How much do they want?”
“I don’t believe it is a ‘they.’ I think it is a ‘he.’ And he does not seem to want money. At least not yet.”
“He’s a psycho?”
“I think so. He seems to hate Arabs – all Arabs – and has picked on me.” Munir’s features suddenly constricted into a tight knot as his voice cracked. “Why me?”
Jack realized how close this guy was to tumbling over the edge. He didn’t want him to start blubbering here.
“Easy, guy,” he said softly. “Easy.”
Munir rubbed his hands over his face, and when next he looked at Jack, his features were blotchy but composed.
“Yes. I must remain calm. I must not lose control. For Barbara. And Robby.”
Jack had a nightmare flash of Gia and Vicky in the hands of some of the psychos he’d had to deal with and knew at that moment he was going to be working with Munir. The guy was okay.
“An Arab hater. One of Kahane’s old crew, maybe?”
“No. Not a Jew. At least not that I can tell. He keeps referring to a brother who was killed in the Trade Towers. I’ve told him that I’m an American citizen just like him. But he says I’m from Saudi Arabia, and Saudis brought down the Towers and an Arab’s an Arab as far as he’s concerned.”