F Train Read online

  “Fantastic. Like when we were kids, Marty. You don’t see fish like this much nowadays. The ocean was really something back then. Full of these fat fuckers. Not like now.”

  They were on Church Avenue between Thirty-fifth Street and Dahill Road, a neighborhood commercial quarter owned, patronized, and lived in by immigrants from the rest of the world.

  Across the bustling avenue on the corner of Story Street was Moussari Hardware, the store locked and dark. A sign on the iron-shuttered door announced in Urdu and English: “Temporary Closing—Family Mourning.”

  They entered the Jamal Fish Market, the small shop redolent of sea and ice.

  A man in a bloodied white apron, a brown knitted cap on his dark head, all smiles.

  “Can I help you, sirs?”

  “You got great fish,” Frank said. “Terrific store. But we just want to talk with you. About Mr. Hakim Jamal.” He displayed his police shield. “This is Detective Keane. Me, I’m Detective Murphy.”

  “Thank you, sirs. We’re all documented immigrants in this family. We all have Green Cards. Our children are born here, sirs—”

  “That’s not the question.”

  “My brother was documented, too.”

  “We’re sorry about your brother.”

  “Thank you, sirs.”

  “Your name?”

  “Ali Muhammed Jamal.”

  “The other night, do you know why your brother was out that late? With Mr. Panesh Moussari, right?”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Moussari. He owned the hardware store. You can see it right over there across the street.”

  “And do you know where they were that night?”

  “We do good business, sirs, we work hard.” Ali Muhammed Jamal nodded and wiped his hands on his apron. “We make good money, not millions, but nice. It’s a living. We have families where we come from and we send them money. That’s what they were doing.”

  “In the middle of the night?”

  “Yes, sir. We work all day and half the night like now. Middle of the night here is middle of the day in Karachi.”

  “And?”

  “They carried the money to the remittance banker downtown. He calls his partner in Karachi. He tells him how much to give our relative in Karachi. Right there, same time, our relative is with the banker in Karachi. It’s all very simple, sirs, very honest. And very fast. Not like Chase Bank, no sir, they take forever, they charge more, sometimes they lose our records. Yes, sir. Remittance is the best bank. And that’s where they were that night. They go one, maybe during holidays even two times a week. Or they used to. Now I’ll go. It’s all legal, sirs. A good system. Much better than Chase Bank.”

  “They weren’t afraid? Carrying around so much cash like that?”

  “Going downtown, yes. That’s why they went together. They took car service. Coming home, no. Their pockets were empty, of course.”

  “Of course. Where downtown?”

  “Sir?”

  “Where’s the bank downtown?”

  Ali Muhammed Jamal glanced around his shop, nervously, Frank noted, as if hoping all these fantastic fish on ice, although fresh, were by this point quite deaf.

  “Over behind the Marriott hotel, sirs, two blocks, there’s a mosque. The newspaper store next to the mosque, it’s in there.”

  “That’s the bank?”

  “Yes, sirs. They’re very honest. And my family is very honest. We all pay all our taxes. Please, we want no more troubles. My brother left a widow with three children. This store must support them, and my wife and children, too, and our children’s grandparents in Karachi. Please, sirs, we make no trouble. No one here is political. We only work.”

  Ali Muhammed Jamal’s worldly concerns, Frank concluded, were packed into the bosom of his family. The detectives thanked him for his time and again extended their condolences.

  “I’m always here, sirs. Please, when you catch him? God willing? Please, sirs, you tell me. I want to know the swine’s name, may he suffer in hell.”

  Back out on Church Avenue, Frank said, “Nice people, probably harmless. They won’t take up our time. But check out that bank, can’t believe everything he said. Otherwise, I think we’re done here. I’m calling Flo. She can meet us for a bite on Smith.”

  “Give her a break from all the bullshit she’s reading.”

  They looked over at the darkened hardware store belonging to the undocumented immigrant, Panesh Moussari.

  “We need a warrant to get in there,” Frank said, sounding regretful.

  7 P.M.

  Smith Street, snow again.

  Icy sidewalks, blasting winds.

  Temperature in the teens.

  The front window of the Lemon Grass restaurant—Asian fusion—was misted over, the room filled with a dinner crowd. Flo Ott and her colleagues sat at a table by the window.

  Frank Murphy regarded the shadowy arctic scene on Smith Street. “Just the way it was outside on that night. The North Pole.”

  Flo produced the day’s late edition of the New York Post. “It could be worse. Check out our snow job meister.”

  She opened the paper and held up page five. A four-column photo: Howard Gerald, PhD, with the mayor and the mackerel-eyed police commissioner, a picture taken months before at the Ancient Order of Hibernians’ annual Waldorf-Astoria dinner with the cardinal and the Society of the Friendly Sons of Saint Patrick. A friendly shot and great publicity for the doctor, the accompanying piece a comfortably short read for Post fans. Headline: EXPERT RULES OUT SUICIDE KILLINGS.

  “No,” Flo said, “not in his professional opinion. Howard Gerald, PhD, doesn’t think it was a suicide terrorist. Says the commissioner assured him none of the victims are suspects—although the commissioner never told us that. Gerald is making it up as he goes along, and I hope he gets his ass canned. Maybe this has an upside, gets him and the mayor out of our hair.”

  “It’s down-to-earth,” Frank said. “And so much more accessible, the Post. I’m so glad they’ve told us everything now, so we can sit here all night and eat dumplings.”

  “Didn’t mean to ruin your appetite,” Flo said.

  “Impossible.”

  “In that case,” said Flo, “you’ll be delighted to know the lab still has the Russian’s body. Bea Liebowitz hasn’t claimed it. Not even after we saw her.”

  “Families. You can never tell, can you? Nobody misses the poor stiff. Laying in an icebox there.”

  “He wasn’t all that poor, Frank. The lab had a few more things to tell us.”

  “Such as?”

  “He had a mouth cost a small fortune, Sidney did. Gold crowns, Hollywood caps, bridges. All the best.”

  “Lucky he didn’t get the gold knocked out in Dannemora.”

  “He had protection from his Bastards,” said Flo, glancing out at the snow for a moment. “From here we go to the Marriott, Frank, and check out the Bastards. One of the bartenders, Bucky Skelly, did twenty years with squad cars and always in Brooklyn. Retired a year now.”

  Frank said, “Anything else on Sid the money mouth?”

  “His blood—the lab says he was on Ecstasy. And Viagra.”

  “Guy left nothing to chance. No wonder he carried eleven condoms.”

  “The way I see it,” said Flo, “the Bastards, whatever line of work they’re in—if they’ve got any brains, and I think they do—for them, there’s no margin covering for a mass murderer. My guess is they’re all strictly business. And if the Bastards were out to pay back Sidney R. Davidov—pay back anything they felt he had coming to him—there are simpler, less attention-grabbing methods available to them. Unless, of course, they want to send a message. And none of our sources out on the street have said a word about that. Nobody has heard anything. But we’ll check the lounge. And one more thing, the lab is sure he had sex that night.”

  Frank laughed. “Go on, Flo. They wouldn’t kid us about something like that, would they?”

  “They’re technicians. They take nothing for grant
ed, no wild guesses.”

  “Okay, the Marriott. Maybe lover boy had a steady girlfriend. Someone with a story for us. But more likely a one-off, only a hooker. A wild guess, of course. What do I know about tomcatting around?”

  “Tell you what, Frank, if I was taking wild guesses? I’d say Bea Liebowitz had a good reason. And even Reilly’s wife, she had a good reason, too. You got a pair of mighty pissed-off wives there, even if obviously not our mass killer kind.”

  “Soap opera, Flo. You’ve been watching daytime TV?”

  “No way. I’m a fan of that blonde on the NBC morning news, whatever her name is.”

  “Easy view, easy listen. No pretensions, I like her, too. I’m your completely uncomplicated average consumer. Except when it comes to food, of course. You got to try some of these spring onion and crabmeat cakes, Flo, with the little seaweed patties here. To die for, and no pun intended.”

  “You know, Frank, now you really sound more like Martha Stewart.”

  “Another ex-con. Please, Flo, spare me.”

  “Krish taped a morning chat show for me. Hizzonner da mare declared today, and I quote, ‘We’ve got our best and brightest minds investigating this outrage, working around the clock to catch the psychopaths. We’re putting these killers out of action. Forever.’ End quote.”

  Marty smiled. “Never changes a word, that guy. Must be the tenth time on TV he’s said exactly that.”

  Flo nodded at the truth of it all; she couldn’t argue with realities. “Excluding leads on no one, here’s the situation so far,” said Flo. “Lone madman driven by God knows what, but with a talent for making a big splash, will remain in the mayor’s files, until Hizzoner needs a rabbit out of the hat for his next campaign. Meanwhile, what we’ve probably got is a scheming son of bitch—or maybe a whole tribe of them—who’ve got the time and they can do their planning right down to the weather. For us, the working basis going for our hypotheses so far is…seven bodies, three pairs and a single, gas, a bucket, an executioner. Anything suicidal? Not a hint. Our guy must have strong reasons, strong for him, anyway.”

  “But,” Frank said. “Big but. No reason for wiping out people with no connection to each other. So he’s after a pair. Or one in a pair. Or the loner.”

  “Right,” said Flo. “He hits his target. Or targets. And the others are collateral damage, regrettable, but necessary. In fact, maybe even not so regrettable, because the extras only make our job that much tougher.”

  “You’re right,” Marty said. “These crab cakes are delicious.” He helped himself to seconds. “Got to take my kids here, they’d love this.”

  “And don’t forget more seaweed,” said Frank. “It makes all the difference.”

  Flo added more seaweed. “The careful planning here. The executioner has been following his target. He knows he—or she—will be on the subway. And he even knows when. He can’t do all that alone. He’s got to have helpers. And there have to be ways they link up.”

  Frank nodded. “They’re on their cells. Encrypted. Throwaways.”

  “They get on the F downtown, maybe Borough Hall, maybe before. Maybe even together, but I guess probably not. They get on separately and for now I’ll go with two of them. They didn’t get on after Borough Hall, there’s nothing on the station tapes after that. They step off at Smith and Ninth right into the snowstorm. Fade to white. Is the canal down there already frozen?”

  “Not yet. We just saw it an hour ago.”

  “Chemicals and the bottles that held chemicals,” Flo said. “They could’ve thrown those into the canal, whatever they had left.”

  Frank waved his chopsticks. “Used to be the Gowanus was nothing but chemicals. Drop a match in it and blew-eee. More than a few bodies, too. But no fish.”

  Flo leaned back in her chair. “For me, at least now, it boils down to an unavoidable question. Why Reilly? Why would someone want to kill a Bureau special agent? Unforgiving vengeance is all the killers are asking for, if the Bureau ever takes over.”

  “Right,” said Frank. “Instead of only ordinary schleppers like us.”

  They let the remark seep in. They knew that solving this case was also about their sense of self-worth. Pursuing the most brutal perpetrators was a fuel driving them forward. They weren’t working for anyone’s ideological or religious agenda. They found their own places in the world far from politicians and media and financial ambition. And this was still the best place for them to be, regardless.

  “How about the Russian?” Marty said. “He could have ticked some people off. Besides his wife. Maybe when he was locked up in Dannemora.”

  Frank finished off a shrimp dumpling. “And then maybe they have the Bastards to deal with. Could be as bad as the Bureau, those guys, even worse.”

  “Definitely worse,” said Flo. “We’re not excluding the Russians.”

  “And those post office guys?” Frank said.

  Flo put her chopsticks down. “Ordinary Joes, nothing really unusual about either of them. So far. Sangiamo, the fat guy, married, two kids in New Utrecht High. And his mother’s always lived with them. He used to own a pizza joint in Bensonhurst, then went bust, maybe eating too much of his own stuff. Worked years paying off the sharks for all his loans. Known as ‘a big bag of bullshit’ at GPO, but basically an ineffective, harmless guy. Always his momma’s boy. The black guy, Samuel Charters, works with Sangiamo. Married, a kid at Brooklyn College, another in Brooklyn Law. He had some big insurance policies, so his wife is cleaning up. He played the market every spare minute he had, his nose was in the stock tables. Basically, a plugger. His wife, Annie, leads the choir at the Second Baptist Church of the Heavenly Host in Bed-Stuy, where she grew up. Ordinary Joes, both these guys.”

  Frank shook his head. “Except they worked at the PO. And we know how crazy some of them can be.”

  “Postal killers,” Flo said. “Exactly that, just crazy. They flip out. They’re hardly ever careful planners. And they’re always loners. The mayor’s kind of guy, his magic rabbit plucked out of a hat.”

  Frank nodded. “The solitary wacko he’s so fond of. So we’re back to John James Reilly.”

  Flo said, “What we know so far—and no thanks to the Bureau—is he covered some foreign delegations at the UN Which means, he could tail. He could read mountains of transcripts and translations and spot what was valuable. Analyze the few treasures he found under tons of useless information. And he could follow it up. He could talk, he was gifted. Even better, he could win confidence and get others to talk. Because he knew when to stay silent. A good listener. He was ambitious. He must have run some big risks. So we’re back with the Bureau, dependent on whatever they’re willing to tell us.”

  “Who gets the honor?” Frank said.

  Marty looked at Flo. “You?”

  “I should. And I will. But we don’t hold our breath betting on the Bureau. They got the president on their side and there’s no telling what he’s up to or what he’ll do next. Always ready to interfere, his kind, anytime there’s an opportunity to play tough and strut. And when, inevitably, the chief screws up, he can blame the Bureau. Or blame New York City. Always somebody they can destroy. The Bureau’s got to be thinking this. The president can turn the F train massacre completely political, out of nowhere, out of thin air, just make it all up. My guess? The Bureau people want to distance themselves from their late colleague. Further, the better. John James Reilly, renegade special agent, rebels like him, they’re always trouble, too ambitious, cocky daredevils out of control. Like that Deep Throat guy way back when. He was Bureau, too, and a big shot high up. Total loose cannon. Anyway, that’s my take. But it’s no excuse. No matter what, don’t worry, I go to the Bureau.”

  Silence. They stared out at the arctic wastes enveloping Smith Street.

  “Pretty godawful out there,” Flo said.

  Marty leaned over and wiped the window. “Below zero, what the paper predicts, with the windchill factor.”

  Gingerly, Frank started a l
ast cup of hot jasmine tea. “Another gravedigger’s ass.”

  More silence. And the weight of the frozen city pressing in on them. Deaths on subways, in the streets, killings in the earliest hours, sufferings endured, families devastated, women tortured by betrayal, and the city pushed on relentlessly, wrapped in swirling snow, wintry gusts pounding into the expectations of three homicide detectives finishing their tea in the Lemon Grass restaurant, Smith Street, Brooklyn.

  8:40 P.M.

  Flo Ott wasn’t a regular patron of Brooklyn bars, but here she was in another gin joint.

  She found bars anywhere to be generally sad places, one of the few pontifications from Howard Gerald, PhD, with which she concurred.

  But homicide investigations sometimes led her—and her bar crawl native guide, Frank Murphy of the rock-sized fists—through strings of saloons just as unavoidably as victims’ bodies stopped off on coroners’ autopsy tables before ending their journeys in graves. Throughout Flo’s pursuit of truth, bars and murders were too often natural complements.

  The cocktail bar in the downtown Brooklyn Marriott was large and did a good business. As in most hotel bars, prices at the Marriott were on the high side, but not as stiff as in Manhattan.

  Bucky Skelly, one of several bartenders, had been working there since his retirement from the NYPD Brooklyn a year before.

  A crowd of customers clustered at one end of the bar near the restaurant. The opposite end next to the lounge was quiet, only one customer. Skelly was changing glasses for the man and pouring him a double vodka and lime on the rocks as Flo Ott and Frank Murphy sidled up onto nearby stools.

  Skelly was expecting them. For Flo, he built a fresh lemon-and-lime tonic topped with mint, and for Frank he poured a bottle of Harpoon ale. “To your health.” He tapped the bar with his knuckles, indicating these were on the house. Skelly was a large, darkly Celtic-looking man with an unsmilingly severe block-of-beef face and a Marine Corps burr of gray hair. “Take your time here,” he said. “I got a whole shift ahead of me.” Although he was talking to Flo and Frank, both detectives had the impression his words were also meant for the other customer at their end of the bar, the man sitting with his elbows on the polished teak, holding his glass with both hands in front of his face, peering into it with an anxious look like a fortune-teller seeing something dim but undeniably dreadful in a clouded crystal ball.