Munir jumped, turned, pulled the dishrag from his mouth.
“What? Why–?”
“This isn’t going to work.” Jack let the plastic cutting board drop and began to pace the kitchen. “Got to be another way. He’s got us on the run. We’re playing this whole thing by his rules.”
“There aren’t any others.”
“Yeah, there are.”
Jack continued pacing. One thing he’d learned over the years was not to let the other guy deal all the cards. Let him think he had control of the deck while you changed the order.
Munir wriggled his fingers. “Please. I cannot risk angering this madman.”
Jack swung to face him. An idea was taking shape.
“You want me in on this?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Then we do it my way. All of it.” He began working at the knots that bound Munir’s arm to the table. “And the first thing we do is untie you. Then we make some phone calls.”
9
Munir understood none of this. He sat in a daze, sipping milk to ease a stomach that quaked from fear and burned from too many pills. Jack was on the phone, but his words made no sense.
“Yeah, Pete. It’s me. Jack… Right. That Jack. Look, I need a piece of your wares… small piece. Easy thing… Right. I’ll get that to you in an hour or two. Thing is, I need it by morning. Can you deliver?… Great. Be by later. By the way – how much?… Make that two and you got a deal… All right. See you.”
Then he hung up, consulted a small address book, and dialed another number.
“Hey, Teddy. It’s me. Jack… Yeah, I know, but this can’t wait till morning. How about opening up your store for me? I need about ten minutes inside… That’s no help to me, Teddy. I need to get in now. Now… Okay. Meet you there in twenty.”
Jack hung up and took the glass from Munir’s hands. Munir found himself taken by the upper arm and pulled toward the door.
“Can you get us into your office?”
Munir nodded. “I’ll need my ID card and keys, but yes, they’ll let me in.”
“Get them. There a back way out of here?”
Munir took him down the elevator to the parking garage and out the rear door. From there they caught a late cruising gypsy cab down to a hardware store on Bleecker Street. The lights inside were on but the sign in the window said CLOSED. Jack told the cabby to wait and knocked on the door. A painfully thin man with no hair whatsoever, not even eyebrows, opened the door.
“You coulda broke in, Jack,” he said. “I wouldna minded. I need my rest, y’know.”
“I know, Teddy” Jack said. “But I need the lights on for this and I couldn’t risk attracting that kind of attention.”
Munir followed Jack to the paint department at the rear of the store. They stopped at the display of color cards. Jack pulled a group from the brown section and turned to him.
“Give me your hand.”
Baffled, he watched as Jack placed one of the color cards against the back of Munir’s hand, then tossed it away. And again. One after another until –
“Here we go. Perfect match.”
“We’re buying paint?”
“No. We’re buying flesh – specifically, flesh with Golden Mocha number 169 skin. Let’s go.”
And then they were moving again, waving good bye to Teddy, and getting back into the cab.
To the East Side now, up First Avenue to Thirty first Street. Jack ran inside with the color card, then came out and jumped back into the cab empty handed.
“Okay. Next stop is your office.”
“My office? Why?”
“Because we’ve got a few hours to kill and we might as well use them to look up everyone you fired in the past year.”
Munir thought this was futile but he had given himself into Jack’s hands. He had to trust him. And as exhausted as he was, sleep was out of the question.
He gave the driver the address of the Saud Petrol offices.
10
“This guy looks promising,” Jack said, handing him a file. “Remember him?”
Until tonight, Munir never had realized how many people he hired and fired – “down-sized” was the current euphemism – in the course of a year. He was amazed.
He opened the file. Richard Hollander. The name didn’t catch until he read the man’s performance report.
“Not him. Anyone but him.”
“Yeah? Why not?”
“Because he was so…” As Munir searched for the right word, he pulled out all he remembered about Hollander, and it wasn’t much. The man hadn’t been with the company long, and had been pretty much a nonentity during his stay. Then he found the word he was looking for. “Ineffectual.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes. He never got anything done. Every assignment, every report was either late or incomplete. He had a wonderful academic record – good grades from an Ivy League school, that sort of thing – but he proved incapable of putting any of his learning into practice. That was why he was let go.”
“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.
“If something goes wrong because of this, because of my calling on you to help me, I… I will never forgive myself.”
“Don’t think like that,” Jack said. “It gets you nothing. And you’ve got to face it: No matter what you do – cut off one finger, two fingers, your left leg, kill somebody, blow up Manhattan – it’s never going to be enough. He’s going to keep escalating until you’re dead. You’ve got to stop him now, before it goes any further. Understand?”
Munir nodded. “But I’m so afraid. Poor Robby… his terrible pain, his fear. And Barbara…”
“Exactly. And if you don’t want that to go on indefinitely, you’ve got to take the offensive. Now. So let’s get back to your place and see how he wants to take delivery on your finger.”
12
Back in the apartment, Jack bandaged Munir’s hand in thick layers of gauze to make to look injured. While they waited for the phone to ring, he disappeared into the bathroom with the finger to wash it.
“We want this to be as convincing as possible,” he said. “You don’t strike me as the type to have dirty fingernails.”
When the call finally came, Munir ground his teeth at the sound of the hated voice.
Jack was beside him, gripping his arm, steadying him as he listened through an earphone he had plugged into the answering machine. He had told Munir what to say, and had coached him on how to say it, how to sound.
“Well, Mooo neeer. You got that finger for me?”
“Yes,” he said in the choked voice he had rehearsed. “I have it.”
The caller paused, as if the caller was surprised by the response.
“You did it? You really did it?
“Yes. You gave me no choice.”
Well, I’ll be damned. Hey, how come your voice sounds so funny?”
“Codeine. For the pain.”
“Yeah. I’ll bet that smarts. But that’s okay. Pain’s good for you. And just think: Your kid got through it without codeine.”
Jack’s grip on his arm tightened as Munir stiffened and began to rise. Jack pulled him back to a sitting position.
“Please don’t hurt Robby anymore,” Munir said, and this time he did not have to feign a choking voice. “I did what you asked me. Now let them go.”
“Not so fast, Mooo neeer. How do I know you really cut that finger off? You wouldn’t be bullshitting me now, would you?”
“Oh, please. I would not lie about something as important as this.”
Yet I am lying, he thought. Forgive me, my son, if this goes wrong.
“Well, we’ll just have to see about that, won’t we? Here’s what you do: Put your offering in a brown paper lunch bag and head downtown. Go to the mailbox on the corner where Lafayette, Astor, and Eighth come together. Leave the bag on top of the mailbox, then walk half a block down and stand in front of the Astor Place Theater. Got it?”
“Yes. Yes, I think so.”
“Of course you do. Even a bonehead like you should be able to handle those instructions.”
“But when should I do this?”
“Ten a.m.”
“This morning?” He glanced at his watch. “But it is almost 9:30!”
“Aaaay! And he can tell time too
! What an intellect! Yeah, that’s right, Mooo neeer. And don’t be late or I’ll have to think you’re lying to me. And we know what’ll happen then, don’t we.”
“But what if–?”
“See you soon, Mooo neeer.”
The line went dead. His heart pounding, Munir fumbled the receiver back onto its cradle and turned to Jack.
“We must hurry! We have no time to waste!”
Jack nodded. “This guy’s no dummy. He’s not giving us a chance to set anything up.”
“I’ll need the… finger,” Munir said. Even now, long after the shock of learning it was real, the thought of touching it made him queasy. “Could you please put it in the brown bag for me?”
Jack nodded. Munir led him to the kitchen and gave him a brown lunch bag. Jack dropped the finger inside and handed the sack back to him.
“You’ve got to arrive alone, so you go first,” Jack said. “I’ll follow a few minutes from now. If you don’t see me around, don’t worry. I’ll be there. And whatever you do, follow his instructions – nothing else. Understand? Nothing else. I’ll do the ad libbing. Now get moving.”
Munir fairly ran for the street, praying to Allah that it wouldn’t take too long to find a taxi.
13
Somehow Jack’s cab made it down to the East Village before Munir’s. He had a bad moment when he couldn’t find him. Then a cab screeched to a halt and Munir jumped out. Jack watched as he hurried to the mailbox and placed the brown paper bag atop it. Jack retreated to a phone booth on the uptown corner and pretended to make a call while Munir strode down to the Astor Place Theater and stopped before a Blue Man Group poster.
As Jack began an animated conversation with the dial tone, he scanned the area. Midmorning in the East Village. Members of the neighborhood’s homeless brigade seemed to be the only people about, either shuffling aimlessly along, as if dazed by the bright morning sun, or huddled on the sidewalks like discarded rag piles. The nut could be among them. Easy to hide within layers of grime and ratty clothes. But not so easy to hide a purpose in life. Jack hunted for someone who looked like he had somewhere to go.