Marlene dropped Lucy off at the EVWS, where the twins were being made much of by the residents and staff, had a few words with the crippled, but by-God-back-on-the-job Mattie Duran, got laughed at by same because of the Hadassah operation, made some calls out of Mattie’s office, and had a few words with Tran about the weekend’s chores. (Easter was not normally a domestic-violence accelerator on the scale of Christmas or Thanksgiving, but families did get together then, and for some families this was not wise. Daddy might bring a fluffy ducky for the kiddies just to show he was still a good dad, and a couple of quarts of malt liquor for himself, and at the end of the afternoon the ducky might well be the only thing walking.) This accomplished, she drove up to Fifty-eighth and Fifth.
She found a growing mess. The organization had invited over two hundred of its hardworking youth leaders from around the country to come to New York, enjoy themselves, and hear uplifting speeches. Four charter buses had been engaged to ferry these people around the city, and bring them by headquarters for various events, one each day of the weekend. They had not, however, arranged with the police to suspend parking on Fifty-eighth Street, so that the buses had to disgorge while double-parked, thus completely blocking the traffic on Fifty-eighth Street, both of which are violations of the NYC traffic code, which fact was being pointed out to the bus drivers and the youth leaders by a cop (summons book in hand) when Marlene walked up, she having cleverly parked in a garage on Sixth.
Marlene dived in, spread charm, explained that in fact Osborne had arranged for the parking restriction, but the current emergency had prevented the police from tagging the block, and in general resolved the dispute to the satisfaction of everyone except the youth leader, a chubby person from Minneapolis, who did not like the idea that the buses would have to disgorge some unknown distance away, requiring several hundred out-of-towners to run the deadly gauntlet of a New York thoroughfare. Keeping her temper and a straight face with some difficulty, Marlene promised to provide security for these expeditionaries. The group dispersed; the buses stenched off to their barn.
The headquarters of the Women’s Zionist Organization of America is a six-story brown brick building with peculiar bricked-in arches on its front that give it the air of a converted fire station. At the security desk inside the tiled lobby, Marlene spoke with the head of the square-badge detail, a large, overweight ex-cop named Bogle, who did not conceal his reluctance to take Marlene or her authority seriously. Once again she kept her temper in check and brought the man sullenly through his security arrangements. They toured the building and its entrances, checked the fixed and mobile posts and the communications arrangements (Marlene asked for and was given, not without complaint, a radio tuned to this net). Leaving instructions to call if anything unusual happened, which she knew would be ignored for anything under a major asteroid impact, she sought out Amy Weinstein, got a rushed minute, flashed the face, scattered assurances, and made her exit. She was somewhat surprised that she had not lost her temper, or quit this wretched job, for which she gave credit to St. Ignatius of Loyola, whose spiritual exercises—undertaken by order of Father Dugan—she had put to good use in guarding against the sin of Wrath. The saint advised his followers to focus during the first week on some particularly troublesome sin and, when finding oneself falling into it during the day, to touch one’s breast in a particular way, to express sorrow. Marlene noted that the lapel of her raincoat already had a little dark spot where her thumb had ground against it. It was vastly harder than she had thought it would be, this continuous, rigorous inspection of conscience and motive, and she was astounded to learn that the absence of faith (as she thought) did not diminish in the least the power of the technique, which in the past had enabled Jesuits to smile as Hurons yanked out their fingernails.
When she arrived home with her brood, Posie was waiting. She swept the twins up in her arms and talked the most nauseating babytalk to them, which they ate up, and then there was supper to prepare and the boys to feed and get settled, so it was some time before Marlene could get her alone for a debriefing.
“I think I’m in love,” Posie said. “He’s so great!” “Ah, well, that’s terrific, Posie, but what about his sister?”
“Oh, he doesn’t know anything about that,” said Posie dismissively. “He thinks his friends got hold of her, though. The other Arabs.” She grinned again, clearly besotted. “Marlene, he’s so great—he, like, talks to me, and reads me poetry, except it’s in Arab and I can’t understand it, but it sounds great anyway, and God, he knows all kinds of stuff, about, you know, politics and how the Jews are doing bad stuff to them, the Arabs, and all.”
“Oh?” With a frozen smile.
“Yeah, I didn’t know any of this stuff—like the Jews are trying to take over the whole world and make everybody slaves?”
Marlene ground her thumb into her breastbone, and did not roll her eyes. “Posie, um, I don’t think you should believe everything Walid tells you about that.”
“No, but Marlene, it’s true! He showed me, it was in a book. I mean, like, they printed it.” She wrinkled her brow in unaccustomed thought. “I forget the name of it, though—something, something Zion …”
“The Protocols of the Elders of Zion?”
Posie’s face lit up. “Yeah! Did you read it too?”
Marlene placed her hand on Posie’s and said, as gently as she could, “Posie, no, I haven’t because that book is a forgery. It’s fake. Everybody knows that. Some Russians made it up a long time ago. It was one of the things the Nazis used.”
Blankness, the smile fading.
“You know who the Nazis were, don’t you?” Marlene asked carefully.
“Like skinheads?”
Marlene suppressed a sigh. She didn’t have time for this. She already had three actual children to raise without having to be responsible for this one, and so she said, rather more sharply than she had intended, “Right. Meanwhile, besides being God’s gift to women, Walid is something of a maniac on the subject of his sister, and if he gets to her, he’s going to kill her, which is going to put a major crimp in your romance. So—you said his friends have her. Does he know where his friends are?”
Posie’s face had now taken on the one other major expression in her repertoire besides beaming delight, which was mulish stubbornness. Marlene had observed this many times in the past, when Posie was attempting to protect men who habitually beat her senseless. There was probably no limit to how far she would go to protect someone who treated her well, and read her poetry and Nazi propaganda.
“No,” she said. “He doesn’t talk about that. Honestly, Marlene, I’d tell you if I knew where she was. I’m, like, I don’t want her to die.”
With that Marlene had to be content, for the present, although she was oppressed by the feeling that this was not one of her more brilliant plans.
Posie went off to tend her charges, while Marlene went to her office and looked at the city street map Tran had left on her desk. She examined it idly and folded it to the section that showed Hadassah headquarters. It was a large-scale map with public parking clearly marked. The buses would have a choice of places to park. She was wondering whether she should annoy Bogle with this, and make sure he coordinated with the bus company, when Lucy’s shriek broke in: “Mom! Come here! Daddy’s on TV.”
El Chivato was not used to writing, but he struggled on, his ballpoint carving ruts in the cheap pad. Had he been in Mexico, he would have called, even though he knew his mother would cry, and drive him crazy with her crying, but here, who knew how to make the phones work? In Mexico you called the operator and told her what to do, and in a few moments there came the connection. Or more often not, in which case one waited and tried again. Here, there were only recordings and incomprehensible instructions. He expected that he would be dead when she got the letter, which was entirely his fault, and he was writing to say that she should not blame herself, that her prayers were as efficacious as ever, but that he, Fernando, had sinned by not staying where he belonged, and by coming to this insane place, and by not returning when he should have. His lust for revenge had been too great, which his mother had warned him about; let God punish was what she always said, but did he listen? No, and therefore his luck had run out completely. He still could not believe that he had missed killing the Arab for a second time, he who had always succeeded on the first try. God was clearly angry with him.
He stopped writing and stared at the television. It was a defective set, and the people on it were orange and distorted. Or maybe it was him. Things were looking strange to him lately. He supposed it was that he was close to the world of the dead now, and he could see a little way into it. Picking up his pen once more, he commended himself to his sisters, gave an accounting of the money he had hidden and all monies due him from Don Vincente, the names of some reliable boys who would help her out should Don Vincente prove reluctant to pay, begged her pardon, solicited her prayers, and bade her farewell. He kissed the letter and placed it in an envelope.
He went to the bathroom and scrubbed the remains of the makeup off his face. He was staying in the Hotel Estes, a small pile of box-like rooms on the western borders of Times Square, most of whose tenants were working whores and transvestites. El Chivato fit right in. He regarded himself in the mirror dispassionately. The bloom was certainly off the rose. Deep circles had appeared beneath his eyes, and his cheekbones were staring from skin that looked like old parchment. His lips were cracked and crusted. He thought he looked ten to fifteen years older than he had when he arrived, and he thought that the police would be hard pressed to connect the sketched face they had with his present appearance.
He lay down on the lumpy bed and tried to focus on his next move. He had run out of addresses for the Arab, except one, the location of the target of their bomb. That was on Sunday. Lucky would be there to set it off by radio, the skinned man had been clear about that. So he would be there too.
Meanwhile, aside from that, he was at liberty. He watched a quiz show for a while, too exhausted to rise and switch channels. Then from within a fevered half doze he heard a familiar name. Immediately, he sharpened and watched what was happening. There were the Obregons, being escorted out of a building. There was a picture of another building, a hotel where, the announcer said, they were being kept. A sign hanging in front of it read TERMINAL HOTEL. Then a tall man appeared before a battery of microphones and said something about material witnesses and lawyers and investigations, which El Chivato ignored. But his plans had now changed, and so he paid attention to the name of the man when it appeared in white block letters along the bottom of the screen, and he wrote it down on his pad.
“Daddy, we saw you on television,” piped Lucy when Karp arrived home, tired and late.
“Yeah? How was I?”
“You looked like a television guy. I’m going to a sleep-over at Mary Ma’s house.”
A bustle at the doorway then, as Karp hung up his raincoat and kissed his daughter good-bye and his wife hello, and shot his usual suspicious look at Tran, who was taking his girl away, and patted the hound.
“Did I look like a TV guy?” asked Karp when they were alone, sitting in the kitchen.
“No, you looked like one of those fluff features when they get a new animal at the zoo, and the camera gets trained on the endangered species of bear from Uzbekistan, which always looks like it wants to be somewhere else. What was the point of it anyway? Moving the Mexicans from one place to another doesn’t seem like such a big deal.”
“Yeah, well, I guess I should’ve discussed it with you beforehand,” said Karp uncomfortably, “because it comes under the heading of maybe endangering the family. Jack didn’t want to do it, and neither did Clay, but we have to get this bastard without another half dozen or so people getting killed. Or more. So they went for it.”
“It’s a setup,” said Marlene.
“Yeah. The hotel we moved them to is city-owned, a tax-delinquent seizure, evacuated and full of cops. I’ll be down there all day tomorrow, with Clay. There’s supposed to be an unmarked outside here until we nail him.”
Marlene was silent, staring into space after he said this, and he asked hesitantly, “Are you angry about it? I mean, I don’t think there’s really much—”
“Oh, no, it’s not that. I was just thinking about role reversal. It’s usually me who pulls stuff like this.” She grinned at him. “As a matter of fact, I was thinking about how to tell you how I endangered the family, and this just makes it easier.”
Karp clenched his fists, screwed up his face, and bent over, as if in the throes of an appendicitis attack. “Okay, tell me.”
So she told him the heartwarming tale of Posie and Walid and their romance, and concluded with, “I was going to do my usual what-he-doesn’t-know-won’t-hurt-him deal on you, and I felt bad about it, but seeing as you beat me to it …”
“Yeah, we’re a pair now,” said Karp. “Somebody is going to rat us to Child Protection if we keep this up. So she didn’t get anything out of the Arab kid?”
“Besides poetry and anti-Jewish politics, no, although there’s still a chance that he’ll spill his guts at some future date. Posie has certainly bought his line; he shouldn’t be too suspicious of her. On the other hand, she might just join the enemy camp. I got the feeling she knew stuff she wasn’t telling.”
“A matched pair,” said Karp, “forty watts between the two of them.” He laughed ruefully. “My God, this is one for the books: it’s like Bullwinkle and Natasha. By the way, the first time she dresses the twins in little S.S. uniforms, she’s out of here.”
“It was worth a shot,” said Marlene weakly.
“Right, from a BB gun. Anyway, it might be best if you and the kids went to a hotel where the cops could keep an eye on you for a couple of days.”
“I don’t think so,” said Marlene immediately and in a tone that did not invite argument. “I have to work this weekend, and the kids are safer here with Tran and the dog than they would be in a hotel being watched by a couple of bored detectives. No, don’t give me that look. Cops are cops, not bodyguards. Tran and Sweetie would both take a bullet to protect the kids, which I don’t think you can say for the average cop. And I can take care of myself.”
Looking at the drugs in his hand, El Chivato tried to remember which was which. He had bought Percodan, D-amphetamine, and penicillin from the kid out on the Deuce last night: two kinds of tabs and a cap. He decided it did not much matter and took a pair of each. He was in the tiny bathroom at his hotel. The mirror still sent back only bad news; he looked like one of the sugar skulls that Mexican children eat on the Day of the Dead. On impulse he wet his hair and soaped it with the little cake provided. Then he took out his skinning knife and shaved his head. He grinned at himself.
The drugs would keep him going long enough to do what was necessary. Clearly, if he was going to die here, which he now fully expected, then it was essential that the Obregons and Lucky die before him. He believed that otherwise he would stay on earth after he died, haunting them, and not ascend to the place in Heaven secured for him by his mother’s goodness. He knew where Lucky would be on Sunday. The key to the Obregons was this fiscal on television, Karp. He had already looked up his address in the phone book, and he had gone by Friday night to take a look at it, a quick walk by the corner, a glance down the street. There was a car with two men in it parked across the street, and when he cruised by an hour later, they were still there. So he had come back to his hotel.
The two detectives posted outside the Karps’ loft were stiff and bored by seven-thirty, and so they did not pay much attention to the various people who passed in the early morning. None of them, in any case, matched the description of the man they were looking for: a young couple, black-clad, with spiked hair; an older white guy carrying a tool case; a woman carrying a large leather portfolio; a bald guy with a cane; a dark-skinned kid on a bicycle. This last alone was worth a second look, because they were ready for a young Latino male, but the kid zoomed by and around the corner of Howard Street. They decided he was not worth chasing. Later on the Saturday morning became busy, for in this section of the city industrial firms, galleries, and restaurants take advantage of the relative lull in traffic on that day to make deliveries of large items. Trucks began unloading and the foot traffic picked up. When their relief arrived at ten past eight, they mentioned the kid on the bike and nothing else.
Miller and Logan, the two detectives on the eight-to-four shift, settled down to what they both expected would be an uneventful eight hours. They were used to this; stake-out work is much like war—endless boredom punctuated at long intervals by moments of terror and violence. They thought the real action would take place down at the Terminal Hotel, if and when this Mexican scumbag showed up.
A Plymouth sedan arrived from the direction of Grand and stopped in front of the Karp loft. The two detectives tensed, and then relaxed when they saw a middle-aged black man emerge. They knew who he was. He spoke into the communication grille in the wall and then entered the elevator when it opened. Five minutes later, the same man emerged with Karp, and they drove away in the Plymouth.
Around half past eleven, the two detectives were discussing who should go for takeout and what the takeout should be when a motorcycle pulled up with a man and a child on it. The man pulled the bike up on the sidewalk, chained it to a standpipe, and waited in front of the elevator while the child—who revealed herself as a little girl when she took her helmet off—spoke into the grille. They too disappeared into the elevator. Two minutes later, the elevator door opened again and a young woman emerged. She had a nice, if hefty, body, which Miller commented upon as she walked rapidly up Crosby toward Grand.
“The baby-sitter,” said Logan.
“She can sit on me any day,” said Miller. “So … you want a meatball hero from Lucca’s?”
An alarm siren sounded somewhere down the street. The policemen paid it the same attention as everyone else did, which was none.
In the loft, Marlene poured coffee for Tran in the kitchen. The babies were set up with pots and utensils on the floor. The dog was locked in a closet as a punishment for tearing up a garbage bag. He had taken it like a man, but now he was whining and scratching the door. Lucy was in her room falling into a doze after her all-nighter with her pals. Marlene turned on the exhaust fan and lit her first cigarette of the day (limit four), and Tran lit his eighth. They smoked and drank coffee companionably for a while, talking in French to each other and to the boys, smiling when one of the boys responded with a Gallic diphthong. Zak crawled into Tran’s lap to try to eat his cigarettes or spill steaming coffee on both of them. Zik started to imitate his brother by climbing onto Marlene, and thus they were both encumbered and incapable of any dramatic action when El Chivato walked into the kitchen with Lucy, his arm around her neck, holding a pistol to her head.
They all stood around on the warehouse dock, looking natty in their suits, despite a night spent sleeping on pallets and tarps. They each had a turn in the bathroom and the use of the group’s razor, and all had emerged cleanshaven and smelling of the same aftershave lotion. Ibn-Salemeh had insisted on this; the police would be reluctant to bother a group of men who looked like corporate trainees on their way to learn about personnel policies. He was now distributing identification documents and plane tickets. Khalid looked at his and frowned.
“Effendi, these documents, this passport—they are in my own name.”
Ibn-Salemeh smiled at him and replied, “Yes, I know. It is a detail, but there is a small possibility that the documents will survive the blast.”
“What blast?” Ibn-Salemeh chuckled and looked around the little group, inviting them to join in the fun. “Why, the bomb, of course, the event we have been working toward these many weeks, especially you, Chouza, and we all appreciate it, so much so that we have decided to send you along with Walid, another brave martyr to our cause.”
Khalid felt Big Mahmoud’s large hand enclose his arm and felt Mahmoud’s large pistol press into the small of his back. He looked around and met only the sort of cold, somewhat disgusted glances that people direct toward dead animals.
“Did you imagine, Chouza Khalid, that I could not count,” said Ibn-Salemeh in his usual schoolmasterly tone, “that I was some kind of fool? That somehow I would not discover that you had murdered Bashar and Ahmed and stolen well over half the proceeds from our transaction with the Mexicans? And also disposed of the girl, without doubt to your own profit. Last night I sent Rifaat there to your house you thought I didn’t know about, and he finds no girl there. How much did you get for her?”
Khalid felt sweat break out on his face. “Nothing, effendi, I swear—she escaped. It was the Mexican who helped her, this boy the brothers hired. He also killed Bashar and Ahmed. And Jemil at the garage when we tried to trap him. He took rockets and Kalashnikovs from us. He is a devil, effendi. It was not my fault, I swear.”
Ibn-Salemeh was shaking his head and holding high an admonishing finger. “No, no,” he said, “now you insult me, Chouza, you insult me. You ask me to believe that some little Mexican bandit escaped from two experienced fedayin and then stole money from them. How was this done? And then he escaped from an ambush? Your problem is that you don’t watch enough television. Didn’t you understand that the discovery of Bashar’s corpse and the arrest of the Mexican brothers with their money and the details of the events in Brooklyn last Tuesday would be reported over and over again? And that I would be able from this to figure out what is really going on? American television, Chouza—it is an education in itself.”
Khalid had not understood. And there was nothing more to say. Even he could not untangle the net of truth and lies he had spun. He had skimmed money, true, but all the rest of it was actually due to the Mexican boy, yet even if he could have made Ibn-Salemeh believe it, he deserved death for incompetence alone; he would have done the same in Ibn-Salemeh’s place. His luck had gone, and the little glimmers of escape he had seen in the past weeks had been merely the glint of her crown as she danced out of sight, the pathetic hallucination of a doomed man. He hung his head. Ibn-Salemeh gestured, and Mahmoud and Hussein seized Khalid roughly and took his gun and his fat money belt, and bound him with gaffer’s tape, including a strip over his mouth, and wrapped him tightly in a tarpaulin lashed with more tape. They loaded him into the van, and they all set off.
The first thing Marlene said was, “Do nothing! Do you understand?” She said this in French, to Tran, who had already snaked his hand behind his back to get his gun. He relaxed and grunted assent. Marlene looked El Chivato in the eye and said, “You’re sick. You look like you have a fever.”
El Chivato was not expecting this. He was expecting fearful trembling, screams, pleading, not a concerned inquiry about his health. Also, where was the man?
“Where is Karp?” he demanded.
“He’s at the Terminal Hotel with several hundred police officers, waiting for you to show up,” said Marlene. “Why don’t you let go of Lucy? No one here is going to hurt you. Would you like a glass of water?”
This had to be a trap of some kind, thought El Chivato. He snapped his head in all directions, turned from side to side, dragging the girl with him. She made no resistance; another peculiar thing—usually they struggled. This girl seemed to be boneless, almost sagging against him, as if they were in a dance. Yes, a trap. It had been too easy to get in here. Into a building down the street with a crew of loaders, up to the roof, ignoring the alarm at the door, across several roofs to this building, down one flight of the fire escape and in through a conveniently open window.
The woman spoke again. “It’s not a trap, you know. We’re just a family relaxing on a weekend. My name is Marlene. This is Tran. This baby is Zik and that’s Zak. The girl you’re holding is Lucy. Won’t you let her go? There’s no need to point a gun at her.”
El Chivato felt the world move under him. This was wrong; she was trying to trick him, with that soft voice. He thought about his mother and his sisters, something he never did when he was working. His hand tightened on the pistol. He would shoot someone. That would stop the soft talking.
Marlene looked deep into her daughter’s eyes. She composed a message and sent it out through her eye. Don’t be afraid, the message said. If you die, you will go straight to Paradise and I will be right behind you. There is nothing to fear.
Lucy was, in fact, not afraid. She had experienced a moment of sharp terror when the man had grabbed her in the hallway on her way to the bathroom, but now she felt clear and tingly. It was a kind of dream, a different kind of reality than regular life. Her mother was doing something now, something important, and she knew that she should join in this. She said, “If you have a fever, you should drink plenty of liquids. Would you like me to get you a drink of water?”
She spoke Spanish in the accent of the border, an accent that El Chivato had heard all his life. He released her neck and looked down at her, astounded. She looked up at him, calmly and without fear, like Carmen, his smallest sister. He was thirsty, parched. He nodded and she went to the sink and filled a glass and brought it back. No one moved, not even the babies. He drank, draining the glass.
Marlene saw that he was not a pathological killer. She had known a substantial number of such killers in the past, and this boy was not like them. There was no smirking evil on his face. He got no twisted human pleasure from killing. He would, if asked, make no attempt to justify or rationalize himself, any more than a leopard does when it rends a gazelle. He was an animal. A wounded one. There was nothing in his eyes but animal blankness and a dull ferocity.
Marlene said, “If you shoot that gun here, the police outside will hear it and call more police and you will die here, whatever you do to us. What you should do is leave the children with Tran, and I will go with you and be your hostage and take you to where the Obregons are. You may not get in, you may be killed, we both may be killed, but there is closer than here.”
El Chivato thought about this for a moment. He turned his gaze onto the chino. This was a hard man, a very hard man, and he would not remain forever there like a statue. He could not stay here, and the woman was correct about shooting. It would do him no good. The drugs were boiling in his body now, and he felt better than he had in some time, although not entirely in his right mind. He said, “And the girl goes too.”
Down in the street, Miller had gone to get lunch. Logan saw the elevator door open, and saw Karp’s wife and daughter emerge, accompanied by a thin bald man in a long canvas coat. Where the hell did he come from? he wondered, and then realized that this was the guy. The three walked toward a yellow VW square-back parked up the street. Logan felt sick and frightened. He knew he was not going to get out of the car and stand up to this crazy bastard alone. He picked up his handset and called it in.
In a van parked at the corner of Ninth and Fifteenth, across from the Terminal Hotel, Clay Fulton took the call from Central. “Tell him to follow them and not to do anything. Repeat. Do not attempt to stop the car or interfere with the guy in any way! Keep this channel open and pass on any changes. Right. Right. K.”
“What’s happening?” asked Karp. He and everyone else in the cramped command vehicle looked at Fulton.
“He’s got Marlene and Lucy, and he seems to be heading north,” said Fulton. “Christ, Butch, I’m sorry.”
Karp felt his stomach vanish. “Your guys! How did he get by them?” he cried.
“I don’t know, man—the roof maybe. But he’s got to be coming here. Where else would he go?”
Walid’s first regular stop on his cake route was a deli on Canal, near Centre Street. A small order, and then he would pick Posie up at Broadway and Grand. Saturday was an easy day, because the Midtown places were mostly closed. Still, he had been instructed to drive the whole route, just as he did every day. It had something to do with the new radio. He got out of his seat, picked up the marked carton, and let himself out the back.
When he returned, he was surprised to find two men leaning against the truck, with a long, tarpaulin-wrapped bundle at their feet. They explained that in the bundle was a Zionist spy they had captured. Walid was to take him aboard the truck. Later, he would be informed where to deliver him for interrogation.
“By the radio?”
“Yes, the radio,” one of the men said, and they both smiled. He opened the door, and they loaded the roll into the truck.
Posie was waiting at the appointed place. She scampered in and gave Walid a long kiss and a giggle. He drove the truck away from the curb, none too steadily, she hanging about his neck and licking his ear. He made his next delivery, a restaurant in SoHo. As Walid parked, she wandered into the back of the truck, stole a sweet bun from a bag, saw the rolled tarp, felt a thrill of satisfaction. The honey! she thought. He’s brought something for us to lie on. Her nesting instincts aroused, she knelt by the roll and began to strip the tape away with her short, strong nails.
The bundle moved and mewed. Posie let out a yelp and jumped away.
“What are you doing?” Walid was staring in from the driver’s compartment, his face pale.
“Wally, there’s a guy in this tarp.”
“Yes, he is a Zionist spy. Now leave him alone and come up here.”
“Don’t you want to see what he looks like?” asked Posie. She pulled at a strip and a corner of the tarp fell away. The man’s face was red with strain as he tried to make himself understood through the tape across his mouth.
“Allah wa akbar!” cried Walid. “It is Khalid!”
“He’s a Zionist spy?” asked Posie, confused. “I thought he was in the good guys.”
Khalid was flopping like a gaffed wahoo and making strangled sounds. Walid tore the tape from his mouth. After one huge breath Khalid said in Arabic, “Untie me! We must get out of here immediately.”
Walid looked doubtful and wrung his hands. He looked at Posie, who said helpfully, “Ask him why they tied him up.”
Without waiting for translation, Khalid said forcefully, “Because of you, Walid. I could not let them sacrifice you, even for our cause. I am too soft-hearted for this work, and so they want to kill me, and—”
“What—what do you mean, ‘sacrifice’?” asked the youth.
“The bomb! That thing right there”—he gestured with his eyes and chin—“is a 250-kilogram Russian bomb. The route they told you to take carries you past a nest of Zionists they wish to destroy. When your truck reached it, they planned to push a button and bang! No more Zionists. Also, of course, no more Walid. When I objected that you were too noble a youth to lose in this way, they decided to make me share your fate. Now, if you please, dear Walid, untie me!”
Walid stared at him, pop-eyed. In truth, some months ago, had someone asked him to blow himself to pieces to advance the cause of Palestine, he might well have agreed. Now, however, he had met Posie, who seemed unimpressed when he raised the possibility of self-sacrifice. Easy work, good dope, and getting laid a lot was what Posie believed in. Walid had not been laid yet, but it had been as much as promised, and he very much did not wish to go to paradise before experiencing this aspect of life on earth.
“I can’t believe—” he began, but Posie broke in, saying, “Ah, come on, Wally—you been suckered. It happens to me all the time. Untie the dude and let’s get small before that goddamn thing goes off.”
Walid took out a knife and cut Khalid free. The first thing he did, still staggering from the strains of his confinement, was to look out the dim rear windows of the bread truck. As he expected, he spotted the gray van double-parked a half block down Broome Street.
“They are here,” said Khalid. “Quickly! Go out the front on the street side!”
“What! I can’t leave my truck,” cried Walid, vibrating with distress.
Khalid grabbed the front of Walid’s shirt and hissed, “Idiot! In two minutes someone back there will start wondering why you don’t drive on. Do you think they will hesitate to cut your throat? And hers?”
This, it turned out, was the deciding consideration. The three left by the curb-side door and walked quickly around the corner onto Wooster Street. It was a fine, warm spring day, and Wooster was full of tourists and SoHo residents. They passed through the crowd and slipped into a coffee shop, choosing a table in the back, near the service door. After twenty minutes of nervous waiting, it was clear that there was going to be no pursuit. Khalid relaxed slightly and considered his options.