Shorter pause. Then a yelp. "Twenty? You can't get twenty men around a Camaro. Well, belay that, maybe you could. But why would you want to?"
He began to experiment, tapping his cheek and moving his lantern jaw. Pause. "Oh, hell, poor little kid. She DOA? Well, at least there's definitely a crime, up 'til now I had serious doubts . . . For one thing, your alleged wreck and your alleged truck and your alleged twenty bad dudes are gone, right? And nobody's reported a theft of any green Camaro today."
Pause. "Look, I can roll when I get a report on the little girl, but you haven't convinced me there was any grand theft auto, much less two. Just some glass in the street, and what else is new? Whaddaya want from me, Damico?"
Listening again, he found the trick and happily tapped his cheek to a simple rhythm. Then sighing: "Okay, right. I will. Hey, my other phone's lit. Yeah—what? Uh, Mary Had A Little Lamb. Talent, huh? S'long."
He punched into the other line in time to take the call. "Dolby here . . . Can you rush it, Canfield? I'm about to go off shift." He started tapping again until his eyes glazed. "Hold it. Let me tell you: it's a green Zee Twenty-Eight, and the Volks ain't got any wheels at all." Pause "I'm psychic is how. Go on."
Dolby started scribbling. Now and then he grunted into the mouthpiece. At last he blew out a mighty breath. "What I think, Canfield, is we don't have enough forms in the Pee Dee. We only got an Unusual Occurrence Report, when we also need a Can You Top This report. Hey, are you sure it ain't some fucking movie crew that staged a wreck in that alley?" His jaw throbbed as he heard the next response. "No, I guess not—for sure they wouldn't leave it with a stiff in it. You sure it's a real live corpse?"
Dolby closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose. "No, Canfield, it's just been a very long Monday for a very short temper. And before you file a report, would you kindly tell me how the Camaro driver could've been dead as long as you say, when he was in another wreck half an hour ago with the same Volkswagen. . . . Never mind, I just know. But you got no lab experience, how come—" He closed his eyes again, very gently. "I see. Not just stiff, you mean cold stiff. How cold? Well shit, take his temperature, I guess . . . For all I care you can shove it up his—wait a minute. You said there was some ID on him?"
Dolby scribbled again. "Ahboudi; courier? Hold it. If the deader had Algerian diplomatic courier status it changes a few things; like, I can dump this in the lap of a Special Services officer, thank God."
Dolby took down more details, then laid down the receiver. After a few minutes he said to Someone beyond his ceiling light fixture: "Let me make You a little bet. I bet You my gold badge if there's a deep-frozen ayrab courier up front, Meyer Cohane's JDL boys are in back of it."
It was a wager even God could not have won.
The New York Police Department found its decision above Dolby, below the Mayor. In return for certain immediate information, the PD elected not to press charges against members of the Jewish Defense League who, all in fun, had removed two vehicles after the collision only to place them elsewhere. The driver of the Camaro, they insisted, had been dead when they arrived at the scene.
This was a luminous understatement inasmuch as Moh'med Ahboudi, an Algerian national with loose consular connections, had been missing from his duties for several weeks. He had been in a freezer for most of that time, after expiring in a brief contest for his freedom. Ahboudi's wounds were frontal skull fracture, broken knuckles, and a ruptured spleen, all of which might possibly be consistent with a very unusual automobile accident. But it also explained why Meyer Cohane, though a full-fledged Rabbi, was persona non grata in Israel. Police records of his enemies tended to be short and untidy.
In the spirit of good fellowship, the JDL fingered the man who had perforated the Camaro—oddly enough, with no bullet holes in the driver—because they had been tailing the gunman. They were virtually certain of his identity: the Iraqi, Hakim Arif.
The JDL was terribly sorry that it could offer no reason why Arif should also be followed by Moh'med Ahboudi, but there it was: Ahboudi was a sloppy tail and had paid the price. Finally, the JDL was sorry they could not lay hands on Arif.
This latter sorrow was genuine enough; after tailing Hakim from the bank in hopes of following him home, JDL men were contrite at their failure. They were even sorrier for young Sammy Greenspan, the original driver of the Camaro. Sammy had died instantly in Arif's ambush. The one bright spot was in the speed with which they managed, in one gruesome practical joke, to get Sammy's body away and to replace it with the cold remains of Moh'med Ahboudi. Now, if the NYPD was willing to take its simplest course, Algerian terrorists and the Iraqi terrorist would find a reason to loathe each other. It was richly Cohanesque. Sammy Greenspan would have loved it.
* * *
Chaim and Talith failed to hide their relief at the sight of the money, stacks of twenties and fifties, which Hakim revealed in due time. During supper their eyes kept wandering to the cash until Hakim wordlessly arose and dumped it all back into the briefcase. "Now we will have sweet coffee," he sighed, Talith rising to obey, "and contemplate sweeter revenges. Even today I struck a small blow; the late news may bear fruit." He was gratified to see curiosity in their silent responses.
Hakim did not expect to occupy the ABC lead story, but grew restive as national, then local news passed. Had his escape gone unnoticed, then? It had not, for, "There was an evident postscript, today, to the blundering attempt on the Statue of Liberty," said the anchorlady. "If anyone can make sense of it, perhaps Richard can. Richard?"
Her co-anchor gazed out at millions, his backdrop logo a leering idiot that was becoming familiar on several channels. The newsman dropped a piece of typescript as if it were defiled and related little more, factually, than the locale and the killing of Hakim's pursuer. He went on: "What places this below the usual level of crime in the Big Apple, according to one source, is that the gunman's description matches that of a Fat'ah charlie; and his victim was an Algerian Daoudist, from another terrorist group."
Mugging a faint blend of confusion and insouciance into the camera, he continued: "The best current guess is that the victim was trying to make friendly contact, and the gunman mistook him for someone who knew too much." A frosty smile. "Or perhaps that's a charlie's way of hailing a taxi."
Injected by his co-anchor lady: "About the little girl he grazed at point-blank range?"
"Maybe he thought she knew too much, too. And compared to these charlies, maybe she does. She's almost five years old."
Hakim employed vast restraint and continued his televiewing. At his side, Talith said, "But you told us—" until Hakim's hand sliced the air for silence.
The weather news endorsed the frigid gusts that scrabbled at the windows, and Hakim's mood was like the wind. He could not have missed the urchin—and his daring coup was against domestic security forces, he was certain.
Well, almost certain. Was it even remotely possible that the coxcomb Daoudists had intended—? On the other hand, government sources could have deliberately lied to the newsmen, with a release designed to confuse Fat'ah.
Talith ghosted to the kitchenette to prepare fresh sweet coffee which Hakim craved, and subsequently ignored, as he lounged before blank television screens. The art of disinformation was but recently borrowed by the Americans from the Middle East, but the west was learning. But if they know I know that Daoudists could not know where I am, his thought began, and balked with, where am I ?