“Any reaction? You know, shouting, yelling, threats?”
“No.” Munir remembered giving Hollander his notice. The man had merely nodded and begun emptying his desk. He hadn’t even asked for an explanation. “He knew he’d been screwing up. I think he was expecting it. Besides, he had no southern accent. It’s not him.”
Munir passed the folder back but instead of putting it away, Jack opened it and glanced through it again.
“I wouldn’t be too sure about that. Accents can be faked. And if I was going to pick the type who’d go nuts for revenge, this guy would be it. Look: He’s unmarried, lives alone–”
“Where does it say he lives alone?”
“It doesn’t. But his emergency contact is his mother in Massachusetts. If he had a lover or even a roomie he’d list them, wouldn’t you think? ‘No moderating influences,’ as the head docs like to say. And look at his favorite sports: swimming and jogging. This guy’s a loner from the git go.”
“That does not make him a psychopath. I imagine you are a loner, too, and you…”
The words dribbled away as Munir’s mind followed the thought to its conclusion.
Jack grinned. “Right, Munir. Think about that.”
He reached for the phone and punched in a number. After a moment he spoke in a deep, authoritative voice: “Please pick up. This is an emergency. Please pick up.” A moment later he hung up and began writing on a note pad. “I’m going to take down this guy’s address for future reference. It’s almost four a.m. and Mr. Hollander isn’t home. His answering machine is on, but even if he’s screening his calls, I think he’d have responded to my little emergency message, don’t you?”
Munir nodded. “Most certainly. But what if he doesn’t live there anymore?”
“Always a possibility.” Jack glanced at his watch. “But right now I’ve got to go pick up a package. You sit tight and stay by the phone here. I’ll call you when I’ve got it.”
Before Munir could protest, Jack was gone, leaving him alone in his office, staring at the gallery family photos arrayed on his desk. He began to sob.
11
The phone startled Munir out of a light doze. Confusion jerked him upright. What was he doing in his office? He should be home…
Then he remembered.
Jack was on the line: “Meet me downstairs.”
Out on the street, in the pale, predawn light, two figures awaited him. One was Jack, the other a stranger – a painfully thin man of Munir’s height with shoulder length hair and a goatee. Jack made no introductions. Instead he led them around a corner to a small deli. He stared through the open window at the lights inside.
“This looks bright enough,” Jack said.
Inside he ordered two coffees and two cheese Danish and carried them to the rearmost booth in the narrow, deserted store. Jack and the stranger slid into one side of the booth, Munir the other, facing them. Still no introductions.
“Okay, Munir,” Jack said. “Put your hand on the table.
Munir complied, placing his left hand palm down, wondering what this was about.
“Now let’s see the merchandise,” Jack said to the stranger.
The thin man pulled a small, oblong package from his pocket. It appeared to be wrapped in brown paper hand towels. He unrolled the towels and placed the object next to Munir’s hand.
A finger. Not Robby’s. Different. Adult size.
Munir pulled his hand back onto his lap and stared.
“Come on, Munir,” Jack said. “We’ve got to do a color check.”
Munir slipped his hand back onto the table next to the grisly object, regarding it obliquely. So real looking.
“It’s too long and that’s only a fair color match,” Jack said.
“It’s close enough,” the stranger said. “Pretty damn good on such short notice, I’d say.”
“I suppose you’re right.” Jack handed him an envelope. “Here you go.”
The goateed stranger took the envelope and stuffed it inside his shirt without opening it, then left without saying good bye.
Munir stared at the finger. The dried blood on the stump end, the detail over the knuckles and around the fingernail – even down to the dirt under the nail – was incredible. It almost looked real.
“This won’t work,” he said. “I don’t care how real this looks, when he finds out it’s a fake–”
“Fake?” Jack said, stirring sugar into his coffee. “Who said it’s a fake?”
Munir snatched his hand away and pushed himself back. He wanted to sink into the vinyl covering of the booth seat, wanted to pass through to the other side and run from this man and the loathsome object on the table between them. He fixed his eyes on the seat beside him and managed to force a few words past his rising gorge.
“Please… take… that… away.”
He heard the soft crinkle and scrape of paper being folded and dragged across the table top, then Jack’s voice:
“Okay, Cinderella. You can look now. It’s gone.”
Munir kept his eyes averted. What had he got himself into? In order to save his family from one ruthless madman he was forced to deal with another. What sort of world was this?
He felt a sob build in his throat. Until last week, he couldn’t remember crying once since his boyhood. For the past few days it seemed he wanted to cry all the time. Or scream. Or both.
He saw Jack’s hand pushing a cup of coffee into his field of vision.
“Here. Drink this. Lots of it. You’re going to need to stay alert.”
An insane hope rose in Munir.
“Do you think… do you think the man on the phone did the same thing? With Robby’s finger? Maybe he went to a morgue and…”
Jack shook his head slowly, as if the movement pained him. For an instant he saw past the wall around Jack. Saw pity there.
“Don’t torture yourself,” Jack said.
Yes, Munir thought. The madman on the phone was already doing too good a job of that.
“It’s not going to work,” Munir said, fighting the blackness of despair. “He’s going to realize he’s been tricked and then he’s going to take it out on my boy.”
“No matter what you do, he’s going to find an excuse to do something nasty to your boy. Or your wife. That’s the whole idea behind this gig – make you suffer. But his latest wrinkle with the fingers gives us a chance to find out who he is and where he’s holed up.”
“How?”
“He wants your finger. How’s he going to get it? He can’t very well give us an address to mail it to. So there’s going to have to be a drop – someplace where we leave it and he picks it up. And that’s where we nab him and make him tell us where he’s got your family stashed.”
“What if he refuses to tell us?”
Jack’s voice was soft, his nod almost imperceptible. Munir shuddered at what he saw flashing through Jack’s eyes in that instant.
“Oh… he’ll tell us.”
“He thinks I won’t do it,” Munir said, looking at his fingers – all ten of them. “He thinks I’m a coward because he thinks all Arabs are cowards. He’s said so. And he was right. I couldn’t do it.”
“Hell,” Jack said, “I couldn’t do it either, and it wasn’t even my hand. But I’m sure you’d have done it eventually if I hadn’t come up with an alternative.”
Would I have done it? Munir thought. Could I have done it?
Maybe he’d have done it just to demonstrate his courage to the madman on the phone. Over the years Munir had seen the Western world’s image of the Arab male distorted beyond recognition by terrorism: the Arab bombed school buses and beheaded helpless hostages; Arab manhood aimed its weapons from behind the skirts unarmed civilian women and children.