THE WRINGER

 

 

1

 

Munir stood on the curb, unzipped his fly, and tugged his penis free. He felt it shrivel in his hand at the cool caress of the breeze, as if shrinking from the sight of all these passing strangers.

At least he hoped they were strangers.

Please let no one who knows me pass by. Or, Allah forbid, a policeman.

He stretched his flabby, reluctant member and urged his bladder to empty. He’d drunk two quarts of Gatorade in the past two hours to be sure that it would be full to bursting, but he couldn’t go. His sphincters were clamped as tightly shut as his jaw.

Off to his left the light at the corner where 45th Street met Broadway turned red and the traffic slowed to a stop. A woman in a cab glanced at him through her window and started when she saw how he was exposing himself to her. Her lips tightened and she shook her head in disgust as she turned away. He could almost read her mind: A guy in a suit exposing himself on a Sunday afternoon in the theater district – New York’s going to Hell even faster than they say it is.

But it has become hell for me, Munir thought.

He closed his eyes to shut out the bright marquees and the line of cars idling before him, tried to block out the tapping, scuffing footsteps of the pedestrians on the sidewalk behind him as they hurried to the matinees, but a child’s voice broke through. “Look, Mommy. What’s that man–?”

“Don’t look, honey,” said a woman’s voice. “It’s just someone who’s sick.”

Tears were a pressure behind Munir’s sealed eyelids. He bit back a sob of humiliation and tried to imagine himself in a private place, in his own bathroom, standing over the toilet. He forced himself to relax, and soon it came. As the warm liquid streamed out of him, the waiting sob burst free, propelled equally by shame and relief.

He did not have to shut off the flow. When he opened his eyes and saw the glistening puddle before him on the asphalt, saw the drivers and passengers and passers-by staring, the stream dried up on its own.

I hope that is enough, he thought. Please let that be enough.

Averting his eyes, Munir zipped up and fled down the sidewalk, all but tripping over his own feet as they ran.

 

 

2

 

The phone was ringing when Munir got to his apartment. He hit the RECORD button on his answering machine as he snatched up the receiver and jammed it against his ear.

“Yes!”

Pretty disappointing, Mooo neeer,” said the now familiar electronically distorted voice. “Are all you Ay rabs such mosquito dicks?”

“I did as you asked! Just as you asked!”

“That wasn’t much of a pee, Mooo neeer.”

“It was all I could do! Please let them go now.”

He glanced down at the caller ID. A number had formed in the LCD window. A 212 area code, just like all the previous calls. But the seven digits following were a new combination, unlike any of the others. And when Munir called it back, he was sure it would be a public phone. Just like all the others.

“Are they all right? Let me speak to my wife.”

Munir didn’t know why he said that. He knew the caller couldn’t drag Barbara and Robby to a pay phone.

“She can’t come to the phone right now. She’s, uh… all tied up at the moment.”

Munir ground his teeth as the horse laugh brayed through the phone.

“Please. I must know if she’s all right.”

“You’ll have to take my word for it, Mooo neeer.”

“She may be dead.” Allah forbid! “You may have killed her and Robby already.”

“Hey. Ain’t I been sendin’ you pichers? Don’t you like my pretty pichers?”

“No!” Munir cried, fighting a wave of nausea. Those pictures – those horrible, sickening photos. “They aren’t enough. You could have taken all of them at once and then killed them.”

The voice on the other end lowered to a sinister, nasty, growling tone.

“You callin’ me a liar, you lousy, greasy, two bit Ay rab? Don’t you ever doubt a word I tell you. Don’t even think about doubtin’ me. Or I’ll show you who’s alive. I’ll prove your white bitch and mongrel brat are alive by sending you a new piece of them every so often. A little bit of each, every day, by Express Mail, so it’s nice and fresh. You keep on doubtin’ me, Mooo neeer, and pretty soon you’ll get your wife and kid back, all of them. But you’ll have to figure out which part goes where. Like the model kits say: Some assembly required.”

Munir bit back a scream as the caller brayed again.

“No no. Please don’t hurt them anymore. I’ll do anything you want. What do you want me to do?”

“There. That’s more like it. I’ll let your little faux pas pass this time. A lot more generous than you’d ever be – ain’t that right, Mooo neeer. And sure as shit more generous than your Ay rab buddies were when they killed my brother over there in Baghdad.”

“Yes. Yes, whatever you say. What else do you want me to do? Just tell me.”

“I ain’t decided yet, Mooo neeer. I’m gonna have to think on that one. But in the meantime, I’m gonna look kindly on you and bestow your request. Yessir, I’m gonna send you proof positive that your wife and kid are still alive.”

Munir’s stomach plummeted. “No! Please! I believe you! I believe!”

“I reckon you do, Mooo neeer. But believin’ just ain’t enough sometimes, is it? I mean, you believe in Allah, don’t you? Don’t you?”

“Yes. Yes, of course I believe in Allah.”

“And look at what you did on Friday. Just think back and meditate on what you did.”

Munir hung his head in shame and said nothing.

“So you can see where I’m comin’ from when I say believin’ ain’t enough. Cause if you believe, you can also have doubt. And I don’t want you havin’ no doubts, Mooo neeer. I don’t want you havin’ the slightest twinge of doubt about how important it is for you to do exactly what I tell you to. ‘Cause if you start thinking it really doesn’t matter to your bitch and little rat faced kid, that they’re probably dead already and you can tell me to shove it, that’s not gonna be good for them. So I’ve gonna have to prove to you just how alive and well they are.”

“No!” He was going to be sick. “Please don’t!”

“Just remember. You asked for proof.”

Munir’s voice edged toward a scream. “PLEASE!”

The line clicked and went dead.

Munir dropped the phone and buried his face in his hands. The caller was mad, crazy, brutally insane, and for some reason he hated Munir with a depth and breadth Munir found incomprehensible and profoundly horrifying. Whoever he was, he seemed capable of anything, and he had Munir’s wife and child hidden away somewhere in the city.

The helplessness overwhelmed Munir and he began to sob. He had allowed only a few to escape when he heard a pounding on his door.

“Hey. What’s going on in there? Munir, you okay?”

Munir stiffened as he recognized his neighbor’s voice. He straightened in his chair but said nothing. Charlie lived in the apartment next door. A retired city worker who had taken a shine to Barbara and Robby. A harmless busybody, Barbara called him. He couldn’t let Charlie know anything was wrong.

“Hey!” Charlie said, banging on the door again. “I know someone’s in there. You don’t open up I’m gonna assume something’s wrong and call the emergency squad. Don’t make a fool out of me.”

The last thing Munir needed was a bunch of EMTs swarming around his apartment. The police would be with them and who knew what the crazy man who held Barbara and Robby would do if he saw them. He cleared his throat.

“I’m all right, Charlie.”

“The hell you are,” Charlie said, rattling the doorknob. “You didn’t sound all right a moment ago when you screamed and you don’t sound all right now. Just open up so I can–”

The door swung open, revealing Charlie Akers – fat, balding, a cigar butt in his mouth, the Sunday comics in his hand, dressed in wrinkled blue pants, a T shirt, and suspenders – looking as shocked as Munir felt.

In his haste to answer the phone, Munir had forgotten to latch the door behind him. Quickly, he wiped his eyes and rose to close it.

“Jesus, Munir,” Charlie said. “You look like hell. What’s the matter?”

“Nothing, Charlie.”

“Hey, don’t shit me. I heard you. Sounded like someone was stepping on your soul. Anything I can do?”

“I’m okay. Really.”

“Yeah, right. You in trouble? You need money? Maybe I can help.”

Munir was touched by the offer. He hardly knew Charlie. If only he could help. But no one could help him.

“No. Nothing like that.”

“Is it Barbara and the kid? I ain’t seen them around for a few days. Something happen to–?” Munir realized it must have shown on his face. Charlie stepped inside and closed the door behind him. “Hey, what’s going on? Are they all right?”

“Please, Charlie. I can’t talk about it. And you mustn’t talk about it either. Just let it be. I’m handling it.”

“Is it a police thing? I got friends down the precinct house–”

“No! Not the police! Please don’t say anything to the police. I was warned” – in sickeningly graphic detail–”about going to the police.”

Charlie leaned back against the door and stared at him.

“Jesus… is this as bad as I think it is?”

Munir could do no more than nod.

Charlie jabbed a finger at him. “Wait here.”

He ducked out the door and was back in less than two minutes with a slip of paper in his hand.

“My brother gave me this a couple of years ago. Said if I was ever in a really bad spot and there was no one left to turn to, I should call this guy.”

“No one can help me.”

“My brother says this guy’s good people, but he said make sure it was my last resort because it was gonna cost me. And he said make sure the cops weren’t involved because this guy don’t like cops.”

No police… Munir reached for the slip of paper. And money? What did money matter where Barbara and Robby were concerned?

A telephone number was written on the slip. And below it, two words: Repairman Jack.

 

 

3

 

I’m running out of space, Jack thought as he stood in the front room of his apartment and looked for an empty spot to display his latest treasure.

His Sky King Magni Glow Writing Ring had just arrived from his connection in southeast Missouri. It contained a Mysterious Glo signaler (“Gives a strange green light! You can send blinker signals with it!”). The plastic ruby unfolded into three sections, revealing a Secret Compartment that contained a Flying Crown Brand (“For sealing messages!”); the middle section was a Detecto Scope Magnifying Glass (“For detecting fingerprints or decoding messages!”); and the outermost section was a Secret Stratospheric Pen (“Writes at any altitude, or under water, in red ink!”).

Neat. Incredibly neat. The neatest ring in Jack’s collection. Far more complex than his Buck Rogers Ring of Saturn, or his Shadow ring, or even his Kix Atomic Bomb Ring. It deserved auspicious display. But where? His front room was already jammed with neat stuff. Radio premiums, cereal give aways, comic strip tie ins – crassly commercial junk from a time before he was born. Why did he collect them? After years of accumulating his hoard, Jack still hadn’t found the answer. So he kept buying. And buying.

Old goodies and oddities littered every flat surface on the mismatched array of Victorian golden oak furniture crowding the room. Certificates proclaiming him an official member of The Shadow Society, the Doc Savage Club, the Nick Carter Club, Friends of the Phantom, the Green Hornet G J M Club, and other august organizations papered the walls.

Jack glanced at the Shmoo clock on the wall above the hutch. He had an appointment with a new customer in twenty minutes or so. No time to find a special spot for the Sky King Magni Glo Writing Ring, so he placed it next to his Captain Midnight radio decoder. He pulled a worn red windbreaker over his shirt and jeans and headed for the door.

 

 

4

 

Outside in the growing darkness, Jack hurried through the West Seventies, passing trendy boutiques and eateries that catered to the local yuppies and their affluent subgroup, dinks – double income, no kids. They types who were paying $9.50 for a side dish of the Upper West Side’s newest culinary rage – mashed potatoes.

The drinkers stood three deep around the bar at Julio’s. Two hundred dollar shirts and three hundred dollar sweaters were wedged next to grease monkey overalls. Julio’s had somehow managed to hang onto its old clientele despite the invasion of the Giorgio Armani and Donna Karen set. The yups and dinks had discovered Julio’s a while back. Thought it had “rugged charm,” found the bar food “authentic,” and loved its “unpretentious atmosphere.”

They drove Julio up the wall.

Julio was behind the bar, under the “Free Beer Tomorrow…” sign. Jack waved to let him know he was here. As Jack wandered the length of the bar he overheard a blond dink in a blue Ralph Lauren blazer, holding a mug of draft beer; he’d been here maybe once or twice before, and was pointing out Julio’s famous dead succulents and asparagus ferns hanging in the windows to a couple who were apparently newcomers.

“Aren’t they just fabulous?”

“Why doesn’t he just get fresh ones?” the woman beside him asked. She was sipping white wine from a smudged tumbler. She grimaced as she swallowed.

Julio made a point of stocking the sourest Chardonnay on the market.

“I think he’s making a statement,” the guy said.

“About what?”

“I haven’t the faintest. But don’t you just love them?”

Jack knew what the statement was: Callousless people go home – this is a working man’s bar. But they didn’t see it. Julio was purposely rude to them, and he’d instructed his help to follow his lead, but it didn’t work. The dinks thought it was a put on, part of the ambiance. They ate it up.

Jack stepped over the length of rope that closed off the back half of the seating area and dropped into his usual booth in the darkened rear. As Julio came out from behind the bar, the blond dink flagged him down.

“Can we get a table back there?”

“No,” Julio said.

The muscular little man brushed by him and nodded to Jack on his way to assuming the welcoming committee post by the front door.

Jack pulled an iPod from his jacket pocket and set up a pair of lightweight headsets while he mentally reviewed the two phone calls that had led to this meet. The first had been on the answering machine he kept in a deserted office on Tenth Avenue. He’d called it from a pay booth this morning and heard someone named Munir Habib explaining in a tight, barely accented voice that he needed help. Needed it bad. He explained how he’d got the number. He didn’t know what Jack could do for him but he was desperate. He gave his phone number and said he’d be waiting. “Please save my family!” he’d said.

Jack then made a couple of calls on his own. Mr. Habib’s provenance checked out so Jack had called him back. From the few details he’d allowed Habib to give over the phone, Jack had determined that the man was indeed a potential customer. He’d set up a meet in Julio’s.

A short, fortyish man stepped through Julio’s front door and looked around uncertainly. His light camel hair sport coat was badly wrinkled, like he’d slept on it. He had milk chocolate skin, a square face, and bright eyes as black as the stiff, straight hair on his head. Julio spoke to him, they exchanged a few words, then Julio smiled and shook his hand. He led him back toward Jack, patting him on the back, treating him like a relative. Close up, the guy looked halfway to zombie. Even if he weren’t, he wouldn’t have a clue that he’d just been expertly frisked. Julio indicated the seat opposite Jack and gave a quick O K behind his back as the newcomer seated himself.

When Julio got back to the bar, the blond guy in the blazer stopped him again.

“How come they get to sit over there and we don’t?”

Julio swung on him and got in his face. He was a good head shorter than the blond guy but he was thickly muscled and had that air of barely restrained violence. It wasn’t an act. Julio was feeling mean these days.

“You ask me one more time about those tables, man, and you outta here. You hear me? You out and you never come back!”

As Julio strutted away, the blond guy turned to his companions, grinning.

“I just love this place.”

Jack turned his attention to his own customer. He extended his hand.

“I’m Jack.”

“Munir Habib.” His palm was cold and sweaty. “Are you the one who…?”

“That’s me.”

A few beats of silence, then, “I was expecting…”

“You and everybody else.” They all arrived expecting someone bigger, someone darker, someone meaner looking. “But this is the guy you get. You’ve got the down payment on you?”

Munir glanced around furtively. “Yes. It is a lot to carry around in cash.”

“It’s safe here. Keep it for now. I haven’t decided yet whether we’ll be doing business. What’s the story?”

“As I told you on the phone, my wife and son have been kidnapped and are being held hostage.”

A kidnap. One of Jack’s rules was to avoid kidnappings. They were the latest crime fad in the city these days, usually over drugs. They attracted feds and Jack had less use for Feds than he had for local cops. But this Munir guy had sworn he hadn’t called the cops. Said he was too scared by the kidnapper’s threats. Jack didn’t know if he could believe him.

“Why call me instead of the cops?”

Munir reached inside his jacket and pulled out some Polaroids. His hand trembled as he passed them over.

“This is why.”

The first showed an attractive blond woman, thirty or so, dressed in a white blouse and a dark skirt, gagged and bound to a chair in front of a blank, unpainted wall. A red plastic funnel had been inserted through the gag into her mouth. A can of Drano lay propped in her lap.

Her eyes held Jack for a moment – pale blue and utterly terrified. Caution: Contains lye was block printed across the bottom of the photo.

Jack grimaced and looked at the second photo. At first he wasn’t sure what he was looking at, like one of those pictures you get when the camera accidentally goes off in your hand. A big meat cleaver took up most of the frame, but the rest was –

He repressed a gasp when he recognized the bare lower belly of a little boy, his hairless pubes, his little penis laid out on the chopping block, the cleaver next to it, ominously close.

Okay. He hadn’t called the cops.

Jack handed back the photos.

“How much do they want?”

“I don’t believe it is a ‘they.’ I think it is a ‘he.’ And he does not seem to want money. At least not yet.”

“He’s a psycho?”

“I think so. He seems to hate Arabs – all Arabs – and has picked on me.” Munir’s features suddenly constricted into a tight knot as his voice cracked. “Why me?”

Jack realized how close this guy was to tumbling over the edge. He didn’t want him to start blubbering here.

“Easy, guy,” he said softly. “Easy.”

Munir rubbed his hands over his face, and when next he looked at Jack, his features were blotchy but composed.

“Yes. I must remain calm. I must not lose control. For Barbara. And Robby.”

Jack had a nightmare flash of Gia and Vicky in the hands of some of the psychos he’d had to deal with and knew at that moment he was going to be working with Munir. The guy was okay.

“An Arab hater. One of Kahane’s old crew, maybe?”

“No. Not a Jew. At least not that I can tell. He keeps referring to a brother who was killed in the Trade Towers. I’ve told him that I’m an American citizen just like him. But he says I’m from Saudi Arabia, and Saudis brought down the Towers and an Arab’s an Arab as far as he’s concerned.”

“Start at the beginning,” Jack said. “Any hint that this was coming?”

“Nothing. Everything has been going normally.”

“How about someone from the old country.”

“I have no ‘old country.’ I’ve spent more of my life in America than in Saudi Arabia. My father was on long term assignment here with Saud Petroleum. I grew up in New York. I was in college here when he was transferred back. I spent two months in the land of my birth and realized that my homeland was here. I made my Hajj, then returned to New York. I finished school and became a citizen.”

“Still could be someone from over there behind it. I mean, your wife doesn’t look like she’s from that part of the world.”

“Barbara was born and raised in Westchester.”

“Couldn’t marrying someone like that drive one of these fundamentalists–”

“No. Absolutely not.” Munir’s face hardened. Absolute conviction steeled his voice. “An Arab would never do what this man has done to me.”

“Don’t be so sure.”

“He made me… he made me eat…” The rest of the sentence seemed to be lodged in Munir’s throat. “…pork. And made me drink alcohol with it. Pork!”

Jack almost laughed. Munir was most assuredly a Moslem. But still, what was the big deal? Jack could think of things a whole lot worse he could have been forced to do.

“What’d you have to do – eat a ham on rye?”

“No. Ribs. He told me to go to a certain restaurant on Forty seventh Street last Friday at noon and buy what he called ‘a rack of baby back ribs.’ Then he wanted me to stand outside on the sidewalk to eat them and wash them down with a bottle of beer.”

“Did you?”

Munir bowed his head. “Yes.”

Jack was tempted to ask if he liked the taste but stifled the question. Some folks took this stuff very seriously. He’d never been able to fathom how otherwise intelligent people allowed their dietary habits to be controlled by something written in book hundreds or thousands of years ago by someone who didn’t have indoor plumbing. But then he didn’t understand a lot of things about a lot of people. He freely admitted that. And what they ate or didn’t eat, for whatever reasons, was the least of those mysteries.

“So you ate pork and drank a beer to save your wife and child. Nobody’s going to call out the death squads for that. Or are they?”

“He made me choose between Allah and my family,” Munir said. “Forgive me, but I chose my family.”

“I doubt if Allah or any sane person would forgive you if you hadn’t.”

“But don’t you see? He made me do it at noon on Friday.”

“So?”

“That is when I should have been in my mosque, praying. It is one of the five duties. No follower of Islam would make a fellow believer do that. He is not an Arab, I tell you. You need only listen to the tape to know that.”

“Okay. We’ll get to the tape in a minute. Munir had told Jack that he’d been using his answering machine to record the nut’s calls since yesterday. “Okay. So he’s not an Arab. What about enemies? Got any?”

“No. We lead a quiet life. I run the auditing department at Saud Petrol. I have no enemies. Not many friends to speak of. We keep very much to ourselves.”

If that was true – and Jack had learned the hard way over the years never to take what the customer said at face value – then Munir was indeed the victim of a psycho. And Jack hated dealing with psychos. They didn’t follow the rules. They tended to have their own queer logic. Anything could happen. Anything.

“All right. Let’s start at the beginning. When did you first realize something was wrong?”

“When I came home from work Thursday night and found our apartment empty. I checked the answering machine and heard a distorted voice telling me that he had my wife and son and that they’d be fine if I did as I was told and didn’t go to the police. And if I had any thought of going to the police in spite of what he’d said, I should look on the dresser in our bedroom. The photographs were there.” Munir rubbed a hand across his eyes. “I sat up all night waiting for the phone to ring. He finally called me Friday morning.”

“And told you that you had to eat pork.”

Munir nodded. “He would tell me nothing about Barbara and Robby except that they were alive and well and were hoping I wouldn’t ‘screw up.’ I did as I was told, then hurried home and tried to vomit it up. He called and said I’d ‘done good.’ He said he’d call me again to tell me the next trick he was going to make me do. He said he was going to ‘put me through the wringer but good.’ “

“What was the next trick?”

“I was to steal a woman’s pocketbook in broad daylight, knock her down, and run with it. And I was not to get caught. He said the photos I had were ‘Before.’ If I was caught, he would send me ‘After.’“

“So you became a purse snatcher for a day. A successful one, I gather.”

Munir lowered his head. “I’m so ashamed… that poor woman.” His features hardened. “And then he sent the other photo.”

“Yeah? Let’s see it.”

Munir suddenly seemed flustered. “It’s – it’s at home.”

He was lying. Why?

“Bull. Let me see it.”

“No. I’d rather you didn’t–”

“I need to know everything if I’m going to help you.” Jack thrust out his hand. “Give.”

With obvious reluctance, Munir reached into his coat and passed across another still. Jack immediately understood his reluctance.

He saw the same blond woman from the first photo, only this time she was nude, tied spread eagle on a mattress, her dark pubic triangle toward the camera, her eyes bright with tears of humiliation; an equally naked dark haired boy crouched in terror next to her.

And I thought she was a natural blonde was written across the bottom.

Jack’s jaw began to ache from clenching it closed. He handed back the photo.

“And what about yesterday?”

“I had to urinate in the street before the Imperial Theater at a quarter to three in the afternoon.”

“Swell,” Jack said, shaking his head. “Sunday matinee time.”

“Correct. But I would do it all again if it would free Barbara and Robby.”

“You might have to do worse. In fact, I’m sure you’re going to have to do worse. I think this guy’s looking for your limit. He wants to see how far he can push you, wants to see how far you’ll go.”

“But where will it end?”

“Maybe with you killing somebody.”

“Him? Gladly! I–”

“No. Somebody else. A stranger. Or worse – somebody you know.”

Munir blanched. “No. Surely you can’t be…” His voice trailed off.

“Why not? He’s got you by the balls. That sort of power can make a well man sick and a sick man sicker.” He watched Munir’s face, the dismay tugging at his features as he stared at the tabletop. “What’ll you do?”

A pause while Munir returned from somewhere far away. “What?”

“When the time comes. When he says you’ve got to choose between the lives of your wife and son, and the life of someone else. What’ll you do?”

Munir didn’t flinch. “Do the killing, of course.”

“And the next innocent victim? And the one after that, and the one after that? When do you say enough, no more, finis?”

Munir flinched. “I… I don’t know.”

Tough question. Jack wondered how he’d answer if Gia and Vicky were captives. How many innocent people would die before he stopped? What was the magic number? Jack hoped he never had to find out. The Son of Sam might end up looking like a piker.

“Let’s hear that tape.”

Munir pulled a cassette out of side pocket and slid it across. Jack slipped it into the Walkman. Maybe listening to this creep would help him get a read on him.

He handed Munir one headset and slipped the other over his ears. He hit PLAY.

The voice on the tape was electronically distorted. Two possible reasons for that. One obviously to prevent voice print analysis. But he also could be worried that Munir would recognize his voice. Jack listened to the snarling Southern accent. He couldn’t tell through the electronic buzz if it was authentic or not, but no question about the sincerity of the raw hate snaking through the phone line. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the voice.

Something there… something about this guy… a picture was forming…

 

 

5

 

Munir found it difficult to focus on the tape. After all, he had listened to that hated voice over and over until he knew by heart every filthy word, every nuance of expression. Besides, he was uneasy here. He never frequented places where liquor was served. The drinking and laughter at the bar – they were alien to his way of life. So he studied this stranger across the table from him instead.

This man called Repairman Jack was most unimpressive. True, he was taller than Munir, perhaps five eleven, but with a slim, wiry physique. Nothing at all special about his appearance. Brown hair with a low hairline, and such mild brown eyes; had he not been seated alone back here, he would have been almost invisible. Munir had expected a heroic figure – if not physically prepossessing, at least sharp, swift, and viper deadly. This man had none of those qualities. How was he going to wrest Barbara and Robby from their tormentor’s grasp? It hardly seemed possible.

And yet, as he watched him listening to the tape with his eyes closed, stopping it here and there to rewind and hear again a sentence or phrase, he became aware of the man’s quiet confidence, of a hint of furnace hot intensity roaring beneath his ordinary surface. And Munir began to see that perhaps there was a purpose behind Jack’s manner of dress, his whole demeanor being slanted toward unobtrusiveness. He realized that this man could dog your steps all day and you would never notice him.

When the tape was done, the stranger took off his headphones, removed the cassette from the player, and stared at it.

“Something screwy here,” he said finally.

“What do you mean?”

“He hates you.”

“Yes, I know. He hates all Arabs. He’s said so, many times.”

“No. He hates you.”

“Of course. I’m an Arab.”

What was he getting at?

“Wake up, Munir. I’m telling you this guy knows you and he hates your guts. This whole deal has nothing to do with nine-eleven or Arabs or any of the bullshit he’s been handing you. This is personal, Munir. Very personal.”

No. It wasn’t possible. He had never met anyone, had never been even remotely acquainted with a person who would do this to him and his family.

“I do not believe it.” His voice sounded hoarse. “It cannot be.”

Jack leaned forward, his voice low. “Think about it. In the space of three days this guy has made you offend your God, offend other people, humiliate yourself, and who knows what next? There’s real nastiness here, Munir. Cold, calculated malice. Especially this business of making you eat pork and drink beer at noon on Friday when you’re supposed to be at the mosque. I didn’t know you had to pray on Fridays at noon, but he did. That tells me he knows more than a little about your religion – studying up on it, most likely. He’s not playing this by ear. He’s got a plan. He’s not putting you through this ‘wringer’ of his just for the hell of it.”

“What can he possibly gain from tormenting me?”

“Torment, hell. This guy’s out to destroy you. And as for gain, I’m guessing on revenge.”

“For what?” This was so maddening. “I fear you are getting off course with this idea that somehow I know this insane man.”

“Maybe. But something he said during your last conversation doesn’t sit right. He said he was being ‘a lot more generous than you’d ever be.’ That’s not a remark a stranger would make. And then he said ‘faux pas’ a little while after. He’s trying to sound like a redneck but I don’t know too many rednecks with faux pas in their vocabulary.”

“But that doesn’t necessarily mean he knows me personally.”

“You said you run a department in this oil company.”

“Yes. Saud Petrol. I’m head of Stateside operations division.”

“Which means you’ve got to hire and fire, I imagine.”

“Of course.”

“Look there. That’s where you’ll find this kook – in your personnel records. He’s the proverbial Disgruntled Employee. Or Former Employee. Or Almost Employee. Someone you fired, someone you didn’t hire, or someone you passed over for promotion. I’d go with the first – some people get very personal about being fired.”

Munir searched his past for any confrontations with members of his department. He could think of only one and that was so minor –

Jack was pushing the tape cassette across the table.

“Call the cops,” he said.

Fear wrapped thick fingers around Munir’s throat and squeezed. “No! He’ll find out! He’ll–”

“I can’t help you, pal. This isn’t my thing. You need more than I can give you. You need officialdom. You need a squad of paper shufflers doing background checks on the people past and present in your department. I’m small potatoes. No staff, no access to fingerprint files. You need all of that and more if you’re going to get your family through this. The FBI’s good at this stuff. They can stay out of sight, work in the background while you deal with this guy up front.”

“But–”

He rose and clapped a hand on Munir’s shoulder as he passed.

“Good luck.”

And then he was walking away… blending into the crowd around the bar… gone.

 

 

6

 

Charlie popped out his door down the hall just as Munir was unlocking his own.

“Thought that was you.” He held up a Federal Express envelope. “This came while you were out. I signed for it.”

Munir snatched it from him. His heart began to thud when he saw the name Trade Towers in the sender section of the address label.

“Thanks, Charlie,” he gasped and practically fell into his apartment.

“Hey, wait. Did you–?”

The door slammed on Charlie’s question as Munir’s fingers fumbled with the tab of the opening strip. Finally he got a grip on it and ripped it across the top. He looked inside. Empty except for shadows. No. It couldn’t be. He’d felt a bulge, a thickness within. He up ended it.

A photograph slipped out and fluttered to the floor.

Munir dropped to a squat and snatched it up. He groaned as he saw Barbara – naked, gagged, bound spread eagle on the bed as before, but alone this time. Something white was draped across her midsection. Munir looked closer.

A newspaper. A tabloid. The Post. The headline was the same he’d seen on the newsstands this morning. And Barbara was staring at the camera. No tears this time. Alert. Angry. Alive.

Munir wanted to cry. He pressed the photo against his chest and sobbed once, then looked at it again to make sure there was no trickery. No, it was real.

At the bottom was another one of the madman’s hateful inscriptions: She watched.

Barbara watched? Watched what? What did that mean?

Just then the phone rang. Munir leaped for it. He pressed the RECORD button on the answerphone as soon as he recognized the distorted voice.

Finished barfing yet, Mooo neeer?”

“I – I don’t know what you mean. But I thank you for this photo. I’m terribly relieved to know my wife is still alive. Thank you.”

He wanted to scream that he ached for the day when he could meet him face to face and flay him alive, but said nothing. Barbara and Robby could only be hurt by angering this madman.

“‘Thank you’?” The voice on the phone sounded baffled. “Whatta you mean, ‘thank you’? Didn’t you see the rest?”

Munir went cold all over. He tried to speak but words would not come. It felt as if something were stuck in his throat. Finally, he managed a few words.

“Rest? What rest?”

“I think you’d better take another look in that envelope, Mooo neeer. Take a real good look before you think about thankin’ me. I’ll call you back later.”

“No–!”

The line went dead.

Panic exploded within Munir as he hung up and rushed backed to the foyer.

Didn’t you see the rest?

What rest? Please, Allah, what did he mean? What was he saying?

He snatched up the stiff envelope. Yes, something still in it. A bulge at the bottom, wedged into the corner. He smacked the open end of the envelope against the floor.

Once. Twice.

Something tumbled out. Something in a small zip loc bag.

Short. Cylindrical. A pale, dusky pink. Bloody red at the ragged end.

Munir jammed the back of his wrist against his mouth. To hold back the screams. To hold back the vomit.

And the inscription on Barbara’s photograph came back to him.

She watched.

The phone began to ring.

 

 

7

 

“Take it easy, guy,” Jack said to the sobbing man slumped before him. “It’s going to be all right.”

Jack didn’t believe that, and he doubted Munir did either, but he didn’t know what else to say. Hard enough to deal with a sobbing woman. What do you say to a blubbering man?

He’d been on his way home from Gia’s over on Sutton Square when he stopped off at the St. Moritz to make one last call to his voice mail. He never used his apartment phone for that and did his best to randomize the times and locations of his calls. When he was on Central Park South he rarely passed up a chance to call in from the lobby of the Plaza or one of its high priced neighbors.

He heard Munir’s grief choked voice: “Please… I have no one else to call. He’s hurt Robby! He’s hurt my boy! Please help me, I beg you!”

Jack couldn’t say what was behind the impulse. He didn’t want to, but a moment later he found himself calling Munir back, coaxing an address out of the near hysterical man, and coming over here. He’d pulled on a pair of thin leather gloves before entering the Turtle Bay high rise where Munir’s apartment was located. He was sure this mess was going to end up in the hands of officialdom and he wished to leave behind nothing that belonged to him, especially his fingerprints.

Munir had been so glad to see him, so grateful to him for coming that Jack practically had to peel the man off of him.

He helped him to the kitchen and found a heavy meat cleaver lying on the table there. Several deep gouges, fresh ones, marred the tabletop. Jack finally got him calmed down.

“Where is it?”

“There.” He pointed to the upper section of the refrigerator. “I thought if maybe I kept it cold…”

Munir slumped forward on the table, face down, his forehead resting on the arms crossed before him. Jack opened the freezer compartment and pulled out the plastic bag.

It was a finger. A kid’s. The left pinkie. Cleanly chopped off. Probably with the cleaver in the photo of a more delicate portion of the kid’s anatomy he’d seen earlier this evening.

The son of a bitch.

And then the photograph of the boy’s mother. And the inscription.

Jack felt a surge of blackness from the abyss within him. He willed it back. He couldn’t get involved in this, couldn’t let it get personal. He turned to look back at the kitchen table and found Munir staring at him.

“Do you see?” Munir said, wiping the tears from his cheeks. “Do you see what he has done to my boy?”

Jack quickly stuffed the finger back into the freezer.

“Look, I’m really sorry about this but nothing’s changed. You still need more help than one guy can offer. You need the cops.”

Munir shook his head violently. “No! You haven’t heard his latest demand! The police can not help me with this! Only you can! Please, come listen.”

Jack followed him down a hall. He passed a room with an inflatable fighter jet hanging from the ceiling and a New York Giants banner tacked to the wall. In another room at the end of the hall he waited while Munir’s trembling fingers fumbled with the rewind controls. Finally he got it playing. Jack barely recognized Munir’s voice as he spewed his grief and rage at the caller. Then the other voice laughed.

VOICE: Well, well. I guess you got my little present.

MUNIR: You vile, filthy, perverted –

VOICE: Hey hey, Mooo neeer. Let’s not get too personal here. This ain’t between you’n me. This here’s a matter of international diplomacy.

MUNIR: How… (a choking sound) how could you?

VOICE: Easy, Mooo neeer. I just think about how your people blew my brother to bits and it becomes real easy. Might be a real good idea for you to keep that in mind from here on in.

MUNIR: Let them go and take me. I’ll be your prisoner. You can… you can cut me to pieces if you wish. But let them go, I beg you!

VOICE: (laughs) Cut you to pieces! Mooo neeer, you must be psychic or something. That’s what I’ve been thinking too! Ain’t that amazing?

MUNIR: You mean you’ll let them go?

VOICE: Someday – when you’re all the way through the wringer. But let’s not change the subject here. You in pieces – now that’s a thought. Only I’m not going to do it. You are.

MUNIR: What do you mean?

VOICE: Just what I said, Mooo neeer. I want a piece of you. One of your fingers. I’ll leave it to you to decide which one. But I want you to chop it off and have it ready to send to me by tomorrow morning.

MUNIR: Surely you can’t be serious!

VOICE: Oh, I’m serious, all right. Deadly serious. You can count on that.

MUNIR: But how? I can’t!

VOICE: You’d better find a way, Mooo neeer. Or the next package you get will be a bit bigger. It’ll be a whole hand. (laughs) Well, maybe not a whole hand. One of the fingers will already be missing.

MUNIR: No! Please! There must be –

VOICE: I’ll call in the mornin’ t’tell you how to deliver it. And don’t even think about goin’ to the cops. You do and the next package you get’ll be a lot bigger. Like a head. Chop chop, Mooo neeer.

He switched off the machine and turned to Jack.

“You see now why I need your help?”

“No. I’m telling you the police can do a better job of tracking this guy down.”

“But will the police help me cut off my finger?”

“Forget it!” Jack said, swallowing hard. “No way.”

“But I can’t do it myself. I’ve tried but I can’t make my hand hold still. I want to but I just can’t do it myself.” Munir looked him in the eyes. “Please. You’re my only hope. You must.”

“Don’t pull that on me.” Jack wanted out of here. Now. “Get this: Just because you need me doesn’t mean you own me. Just because I can doesn’t mean I must. And in this case I honestly doubt than I can. So keep all of your fingers and dial 9-1-1 to get some help.”

“No!” Anger overcame the fear and anguish in Munir’s face. “I will not risk their lives!”

He strode back to the kitchen and picked up the cleaver. Jack was suddenly on guard. The guy was nearing the end of his rope. No telling what he’d do.

“I wasn’t man enough to do it before,” he said, hefting the cleaver. “But I can see I’ll be getting no help from you or anyone else. So I’ll have to take care of this all by myself!”

Jack stood back and watched as Munir slammed his left palm down on the table top, splayed the fingers, and angled the hand around so the thumb was pointing somewhere past his left flank. Jack didn’t move to stop him. Munir was doing what he thought he had to do. He raised the cleaver above his head. It poised there a moment, wavering, like a cliff diver with second thoughts, then with a whimper of fear and dismay, Munir drove the cleaver into his hand.

Or rather into the table top where his hand had been.

Weeping, he collapsed into the chair then, and his sobs of anguish and self-loathing were terrible to hear.

“All right, goddammit,” Jack said. He knew this was going to be nothing but trouble, but he’d seen and heard all he could stand. He kicked the nearest wall. “I’ll do it.”

 

 

8

 

“Ready?”

Munir’s left hand was lashed to the tabletop. Munir himself was loaded up with every painkiller he’d had in the medicine cabinet – Tylenol, Advil, Bufferin, Anacin 3, Nuprin. Some of them were duplicates. Jack didn’t care. He wanted Munir’s pain center deadened as much as possible. He wished the guy drank. He’d have much preferred doing this to someone who was dead drunk. Or doped up. Jack could have scored a bunch of Dilaudids for him. But Munir had said no to both. No booze. No dope.

Tight ass.

Jack had never cut off anybody’s finger before. He wanted to do this right. The first time. No misses. Half an inch too far to the right and Munir would lose only a piece of his pinkie; half an inch too far to the left and he’d be missing the ring finger as well. So Jack had made himself a guide. He’d found a plastic cutting board, a quarter inch thick, and had notched one of its edges. Now he was holding the board upright with the notch clamped over the base of Munir’s pinkie; the rest of his hand was safe behind the board. All Jack had to do to sever the finger cleanly was chop down as hard as he could along the vertical surface.

That was all.

Easy.

Right.

“I am ready,” Munir said.

He was dripping with sweat. His dark eyes looked up at Jack, then he nodded, stuffed a dish rag in his mouth, and turned his head away.

Swell, Jack thought. I’m glad you’re ready. But am I?

Now or never.

He steadied the cutting board, raised the cleaver. He couldn’t do this.

Got to.

He took a deep breath, tightened his grip –

– and drove the cleaver into the wall.

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.

Hollander… he wished there’d been a photo in his personnel file. Jack was sure he was the bad guy here. If only he’d been able to get over to his apartment before now. Maybe he’d have found –

And then Jack spotted him. A tall bearded guy traveling westward along Eighth Street, weaving his way through the loitering horde. He was squeezed into a filthy, undersized Army fatigue jacket, the cuffs of at least three of the multiple shirts he wore under the coat protruding from the too short sleeves; the neck of a pint bottle of Mad Dog stuck up like a periscope from the frayed edge of one of the pockets; the torn knees of his green work pants revealed threadbare jeans beneath. Piercing blue eyes peered out from under a Navy watch cap.

The sicko? Maybe. Maybe not. One thing was sure: This guy wasn’t wandering; he had someplace to go.

And he was heading directly for the mailbox.

When he reached it he stopped and looked over his shoulder, back along the way he had come on Eighth, then grabbed the brown paper bag Munir had left there. He reached inside, pulled out the paper towel wrapped contents, and began to unwrap it.

Suddenly he let out a strangled cry and tossed the finger into the street. It rolled in an arc and came to rest in the debris matted against the curb. He glanced over his shoulder again and began a stumbling run in the other direction, across Eighth, toward Jack and away from Munir.

“Shit!” Jack said aloud, working the word into his one way conversation, making it an argument, all the while pretending not to notice the doings at the mailbox.

Something tricky was going down. But what? Had the sicko sent a patsy? Jack had known the guy was sly, but he’d thought the sicko would have wanted to see the finger up close and personal, just to be sure it was real.

Unless of course the sicko was the wino and he’d done just that a few seconds ago.

He was almost up to Jack’s phone booth now. The only option Jack saw was to follow him. Give him a good lead and –

He heard pounding footsteps. Munir was coming this way – running this way, sprinting across the pavement, teeth bared, eyes wild, reaching for the tall guy.

Jack repressed an alarmed impulse to get between the two of them. It wouldn’t do any good. Munir was out of control and had built up too much momentum. Besides, no use in tipping off his own part in this.

Munir grabbed the taller man by the elbow and spun him around.

“Where are they?” he screeched. His face was flushed; tiny bubbles of saliva collected at the corners of his mouth. “Tell me, you swine!”

Swine? Maybe that was a heavy duty insult from a Moslem but it was pabulum around here.

The tall guy jerked back, trying to shake Munir off. His open mouth revealed gapped rows of rotting teeth.

“Hey, man–!”

“Tell me or I’ll kill you!” Munir shouted, grabbing the man’s upper arms and shaking his lanky frame.

“Lemme go, man,” he said as his head snapped back and forth like a guy in a car that had just been rear ended. Munir was going to give him whiplash in a few seconds. “Don’t know whatcher talking about!”

“You do! You went right to the package. You’ve seen the finger – now tell me where they are!”

“Hey, look, man, I don’t know nothin’ ‘bout whatcher sayin’. Dude stopped me down the street and told me to go check out the bag on top the mailbox. Gave me five to do it. Told me to hold up whatever was inside it.”

“Who?” Munir said, releasing the guy and turning to look back down Eighth. “Where is he?”

“Gone now.”

Munir grabbed the guy again, this time by the front of his fatigue jacket.

“What did he look like?”

“I dunno. Just a guy. Whatta you want from me anyway, man? I didn’t do nothin’. And I don’t want nothin’ to do with no dead fingers. Now getcher hands offa me!”

Jack had heard enough.

“Let him go,” he told Munir, still pretending to talk into the phone.

Munir gave him a baffled look. “No. He can tell us–”

“He can’t tell us anything we need to know. Let him go and get back to your apartment. You’ve done enough damage already.”

Munir blanched and loosened his grip. The guy stumbled back a couple of steps, then turned and ran down Lafayette. Munir looked around and saw that every rheumy eye in the area was on him. He stared down at his hands – the free right and the bandaged left – as if they were traitors.

“You don’t think–?”

“Get home. He’ll be calling you. And so will I.”

Jack watched Munir move away toward the Bowery like a sleepwalker. He hung up the phone and leaned against the booth.

What a mess. The nut had pulled a fast one. Got some wino to make the pickup. But how could a guy that kinked be satisfied with seeing Munir’s finger from afar? He seemed the type to want to hold it in his grubby little hand.

But maybe he didn’t care. Because maybe it didn’t matter.

Jack pulled out the slip of paper on which he’d written Richard Hollander’s address. Time to pay Saud Petrol’s ex-employee a little visit.

 

 

14

 

Munir paced his apartment, going from room to room, cursing himself. Such a fool! Such an idiot! But he couldn’t help it. He’d lost control. When he’d seen that man walk up to the paper bag and reach inside it, all rationality had fled. The only thing left in his mind had been the sight of Robby’s little finger tumbling out of that envelope last night.

After that, everything was a blur.

The phone began to ring.

Oh, no! he thought. It’s him. Please, Allah, let him be satisfied. Grant him mercifulness.

He lifted the receiver and heard the voice.

“Quite a show you put on there, Mooo neeer.”

“Please. I was upset. You’ve seen my severed finger. Now will you let my family go?”

“Now just hold on there a minute, Mooo neeer. I saw a finger go flying through the air, but I don’t know for sure if it was your finger.”

Munir froze with the receiver jammed against his ear.

“Wha, what do you mean?”

“I mean, how do I know that was a real finger? How do I know it wasn’t one of those fake rubber things you buy in the five and dime?”

“It was real! I swear it! You saw how your man reacted!”

“He was just a wino, Mooo neeer. Scared of his own shadow. What’s he know?”

“Oh, please! You must believe me!”

“Well, I would, Mooo neeer. Really, I would. Except for the way you grabbed him afterward. Now it’s bad enough you went after him, but I’m willing to overlook that. I’m far more generous about forgiving mistakes than you are, Mooo neeer. But what bothers me is the way you grabbed him. You used both your hands the same.”

Munir felt his blood congealing, sludging though his arteries and veins.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I got trouble seeing a man who just chopped off one of his fingers doing that, Mooo neeer. I mean, you grabbed him like you had two good hands. And that bothers me, Mooo neeer. Sorely bothers me.”

“Please. I swear–”

“Swearing ain’t good enough, I’m afraid. Seeing is believing. And I believe I saw a man with two good hands out there this morning.”

“No. Really…”

“So I’m gonna have to send you another package, Mooo neeer.”

“Oh, no! Don’t–”

“Yep. A little memento from your wife.”

“Please, no.”

He told Munir what that memento would be, then he clicked off.

“No!”

Munir jammed his knuckles into his mouth and screamed into his fist.

“NOOOOO!”

 

 

15

 

Jack stood outside Richard Hollander’s door.

No sweat getting into the building. The address in the personnel file had led Jack to a rundown walk up in the West Eighties. He’d checked the mailboxes in the dingy vestibule and found R. Hollander still listed for 3B. A few quick strokes with the notched flexible plastic ruler Jack kept handy, and he was in.

He knocked – not quite pounding, but with enough urgency to bring even the most cautious resident to the peephole.

Three tries, no answer. Jack put his picks to work on the deadbolt. A Quickset. He was rusty. Took him almost a minute, and a minute was a long time when you were standing in an open hallway fiddling with someone’s lock – the closest a fully clothed man could come to feeling naked in public.

Finally the bolt snapped back. He drew his 9mm backup and entered in a crouch.

Quiet. Didn’t take long to check out the one bedroom apartment. Empty. He turned on the lights and did a thorough search.

Neat. The bed was made, the furniture dusted, clothes folded in the bureau drawers, no dirty dishes in the sink. Hollander either had a maid or he was a neatnik. People who could afford maids didn’t live in this building; that made him a neatnik. Not what Jack had expected from a guy who got fired because he couldn’t get the job done.

He checked the bookshelves. A few novels and short story collections – literary stuff, mostly – salted in among the business texts. And in the far right corner, three books on Islam with titles like Understanding Islam and An Introduction To Islam.

Not an indictment by itself. Hollander might have bought them for reference when he’d been hired by Saudi Petrol.

And he might have bought them after he was fired.

Jack was willing to bet on the latter. He had a gut feeling about this guy.

On the desk was a picture of a thin, pale, blond man with an older woman. Hollander and his mother maybe?

He went through the drawers and found a black ledger, a checkbook, and a pile of bills. Looked like he’d been dipping into his savings. He’d been paying only the minimum on his Master Card. A lot of late payment notices, and a couple of bad news letters from employment agencies. Luck wasn’t running his way, and maybe Mr. Richard Hollander was looking for someone to blame.

Folded between the back cover and the last page of the ledger was a receipt from the Brickell Real Estate Agency for a cash security deposit and first month’s rental on Loft #629. Dated last month. Made out to Sean McCabe.

Loft #629. Where the hell was that? And why did Richard Hollander have someone else’s cash receipt? Unless it wasn’t someone else’s. Had he rented loft #629 under a phony name? That would explain using cash. But why would a guy who was almost broke rent a loft?

Unless he was looking for a place to do something too risky to do in his own apartment.

Like holding hostages.

Jack copied down the Brickell agency’s phone number. He might need that later. Then he called Munir.

Hysteria on the phone. Sobbing, moaning, the guy was almost incoherent.

“Calm down, dammit! What exactly did he tell you?”

“He’s going to cut her… he’s going to cut her… he’s going to cut her…”

He sounded like a stuck record player. If Munir had been within reach Jack would have whacked him alongside the head to unstick him.

“Cut her what?”

“Cut her nipple off!”

“Oh, Jeez! Stay right there. I’ll call you right back.”

Jack retrieved the receipt for the loft and dialed the number of the realtor. As the phone began to ring, he realized he hadn’t figured out an angle to pry out the address. They wouldn’t give it to just anybody. But maybe a cop…

He hoped he was right as a pleasant female voice answered on the third ring. “Brickell Agency.”

Jack put a harsh, Brooklynese edge on his voice.

“Yeah. This is Lieutenant Adams of the Twelfth Precinct. Who’s in charge there?”

“I am.” Her voice had cooled. “Esther Brickell. This is my agency.”

“Good. Here’s the story. We’ve got a suspect in a mutilation murder but we don’t know his whereabouts. However, we did find a cash receipt among his effects. Your name was on it.”

“The Brickell Agency?”

“Big as life. Down payment of some sort on loft number six two nine. Sound familiar?”

“Not offhand. We’re computerized. We access all our rental accounts by number.”

“Fine. Then it’ll only take you a coupla seconds to get me the address of this place.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that. I have a strict policy of never giving out information about my clients. Especially over the phone. All my dealings with them are strictly confidential. I’m sure you can understand.”

Swell, Jack thought. She thinks she’s a priest or a reporter.

“What I understand,” he said, “is that I’ve got a crazy perp out there and you think you’ve got privileged information. Well, listen, sweetie, the First Amendment don’t include realtors. I need the address of your six two nine loft rented to” – he glanced at the name on the receipt – “Sean McCabe. Not later. Now. Capsice?”

“Sorry,” she said. “I can’t do that. Good day, lieutenant – if indeed you are a lieutenant.”

Shit! But Jack wasn’t giving up. He had to get this address.

“Oh, I’m a lieutenant, all right. And believe me, sweetie, you don’t come across with that address here and now, you’ve got trouble. You make me waste my time tracking down a judge to swear out a search warrant, make me come out to your dinky little office to get this one crummy address, I’m gonna do it up big. I’m gonna bring uniforms and blue and white units and we’re gonna do a thorough search. And I do mean a thorough. We’ll be there all day. And we’ll go through all your files. And while we’re at it you can explain to any prospective clients who walk in exactly what we’re doing and why – and hope they’ll believe you. And if we can’t find what we want in your computer we’ll confiscate it. And keep it for a while. And maybe you’ll get it back next Christmas. Maybe.”

“Just a minute,” she said.

Jack waited, hoping she hadn’t gone to another phone to call her lawyer and check on his empty threats, or call the Twelfth to check on a particularly obnoxious lieutenant named Adams.

“It’s on White Street,” she said suddenly in cold, clipped tones. “Eighteen twenty two. Two D.”

“Thank–”

She hung up on him. Fine. He had what he needed.

White Street. That was in TriBeCa – the trendy triangle below Canal Street. Lots of lofts down there. Straight down Lafayette from where he and Munir had played the mailbox game. He’d been on top of the guy an hour ago.

He punched in Munir’s number.

“Eighteen twenty two White,” he said without preamble. “Get down there now.”

No time for explanations. He hung up and ran for the door.

 

 

16

 

The building looked like a deserted factory. Probably was. Four stories with no windows on the first floor. Maybe an old sweat shop. A “NOW RENTING” sign next to the front door. The place looked empty. Had the Brickell lady stiffed him with the wrong address?

With his trusty plastic ruler ready in his gloved hand, Jack hopped out of the cab and ran for the door. It was steel, a leftover from the building’s factory days. An anti-jimmy plate had been welded over the latch area. Jack pocketed the plastic and inspected the lock: a heavy duty Schlage. A tough pick on a good day. Here on the sidewalk, with the clock ticking, in full view of the cars passing on the street, a very tough pick.

He ran along the front of the building and took the alley around to the back. Another door there, this one with a big red alarm warning posted front and center.

Two-D… that meant the second floor had been subdivided into at least four mini lofts. If Hollander was here at all, he’d be renting the cheapest. Usually the lower letters meant up front with a view of the street; further down the alphabet you got relegated to the rear with an alley view.

Jack stepped back and looked up. The second floor windows to his left were bare and empty. The ones on the right were completely draped with what looked like bedsheets.

And running right smack past the middle of those windows was a downspout. Jack tested the pipe. This wasn’t some flimsy aluminum tube that collapsed like a beer can; this was good old fashioned galvanized pipe. He pulled on the fittings. They wiggled in their sockets.

Not good, but he’d have to risk it.

He began to climb, shimmying up the pipe, vising it with his knees and elbows as he sought toeholds and fingerholds on the fittings. It shuddered, it groaned, and half way up it settled a couple of inches with a jolt, but it held. Moments later he was perched outside the shrouded second floor windows.

Now what?

Sometimes the direct approach was the best. He knocked on the nearest pane. It was two foot high, three foot wide, and filthy. After a few seconds, he knocked again.

Finally a corner of one of the sheets lifted hesitantly and a man stared out at him. Blond hair, wide blue eyes, pale face in need of a shave. The eyes got wider and the face faded a few shades paler when he saw Jack. He didn’t look exactly like the guy in the photo in Hollander’s apartment, but he could be. Easily.

Jack smiled and gave him a friendly wave. He raised his voice to be heard through the glass.

“Good morning. I’d like to have a word with Mrs. Habib, if you don’t mind.”

The corner of the sheet dropped and the guy disappeared. Which confirmed that he’d found Richard Hollander. Anybody else would have asked him what the hell he was doing out there and who the hell was Mrs. Habib?

So now Jack had to move quickly. If he had Hollander pegged right, he’d be tripping full tilt down the stairs for the street. Which was fine with Jack. But there was a small chance he’d take a second or two to do something gruesome or even fatal to the woman and the boy before he fled. Jack didn’t anticipate any physical resistance – a gutless creep who struck at another man through his wife and child was hardly the type for mano a mano confrontation.

Bracing his hands on the pipe, Jack planted one foot on the three inch window sill and aimed a kick at the bottom pane.

Suddenly the glass three panes above it exploded outward as a rusty steel L bar smashed through, narrowly missing Jack’s face and showering him with glass.

On the other hand, he thought, even the lowliest rat had been known to fight when cornered.

Jack swung back onto the pipe and around to the windows on the other side. The bar retreated through the holes it had punched in the sheet and the window. As Jack shifted his weight to the opposite sill, he realized that from inside he was silhouetted on the sheet. Too late. The bar came crashing through the pane level with Jack’s groin, catching him in the leg. He grunted with pain as the corner of the bar tore through his jeans and gouged the flesh across the front of his thigh. In a sudden burst of rage, he grabbed the bar and pulled.

The sheet came down and draped over Hollander. He fought it off with panicky swipes, letting go of the bar in the process. Jack pulled it the rest of the way through the window and dropped it into the alley below. Then he kicked the remaining glass out of the pane and swung inside.

Hollander was dashing for the door, something in his right hand.

Jack started after him, his mind registering strobe flash images as he moved: a big empty space, a card table, two chairs, three mattresses on the floor, the first empty, a boy tied to the second, a naked woman tied to the third, blood on her right breast.

Jack picked up speed and caught him as he reached the door. He ducked as Hollander spun and swung a meat cleaver at his head. Jack grabbed his wrist with his left hand and smashed his right fist into the pale face. The cleaver fell from his fingers as he dropped to his knees.

“I give up,” Hollander said, coughing and spitting blood. “It’s over.”

“No,” Jack said, hauling him to his feet. The darkness was welling up in him now, whispering, taking control. “It’s not.”

The wide blue eyes darted about in confusion. “What? Not what?”

“Over.”

Jack drove a left into his gut, then caught him with an uppercut as he doubled over, slamming him back against the door.

Hollander retched and groaned as he sank to the floor again.

“You can’t do this,” he moaned. “I’ve surrendered.”

“And you think that does it? You’ve played dirty for days and now that things aren’t going your way anymore, that’s it? Finsies? Uncle? Tilt? Game over? I don’t think so. I don’t think so.”

“No. You’ve got to read me my rights and take me in.”

“Oh, I get it,” Jack said. “You think I’m a cop.”

Hollander looked up at him in dazed confusion. He pursed his lips, beginning a question that died before it was asked.

“I’m not.” Jack grinned. “Mooo neeer sent me.”

He waited a few heartbeats as Hollander glanced over to where Munir’s naked wife and mutilated child were trussed up, watched the sick horror grow in his eyes. When it filled them, when Jack was sure he had tasting a crumb of what he’d been putting Munir through for days, he rammed the heel of his hand against the creep’s nose, slamming the back of his head against the door. He wanted to do it again, and again, keep on doing it until the gutless wonder’s skull was bone confetti, but he fought the urge, pulled back as Hollander’s eyes rolled up in his head and he collapsed the rest of the way to the floor.

He went first to the woman. She looked up at him with terrified eyes.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “Munir’s on his way. It’s all over.”

She closed her eyes and began to sob through her gag.

As Jack fumbled with the knots on her wrists, he checked out the fresh blood on her left breast. The nipple was still there. An inch long cut ran along its outer margin. A bloody straight razor lay on the mattress beside her.

If he’d tapped on that window a few minutes later…

As soon as her hands were free she sat up and tore the gag from her mouth. She looked at him with tear flooded eyes but seemed unable to speak. Sobbing, she went to work on her ankle bonds. Jack stepped over to where the fallen sheet lay crumpled on the floor and draped it over her.

“That man, that… beast,” she said. “He told us Munir didn’t care about us, that he wouldn’t cooperate, wouldn’t do anything he was told.”

Jack glanced over at Hollander’s unconscious form. Was there no limit?

“He lied to you. Munir’s been going crazy doing everything the guy told him.”

“Did he really cut off his…?”

“No. But he would have if I hadn’t stopped him.”

“Who are you?”

“Nobody.”

He went to the boy. The kid’s eyes were bleary. He looked flushed and his skin was hot. Fever. A wad of bloody gauze encased his left hand. Jack pulled the gag from his mouth.

“Where’s my dad?” he said hoarsely. Not Who are you? or What’s going on? Just worried about his dad. Jack wished for a son like that someday.

“On his way.”

He began untying the boy’s wrists. Soon he had help from Barbara. A moment later, mother and son were crying in each other’s arms. He found their clothing and handed it to them.

While they were dressing, Jack dragged Hollander over to Barbara’s mattress and stuffed her gag in his mouth. As he finished tying him down with her ropes, he heard someone pounding on the downstairs door. He ushered the woman and the boy out to the landing, then went down and found Munir frantic on the sidewalk.

“Where–?”

“Upstairs,” Jack said.

“Are they–?”

Jack nodded.

He stepped aside to allow Munir past, then waited outside awhile to give them all a chance to be alone together. Five minutes, then he limped back upstairs. It wasn’t over yet. The kid was sick, needed medical attention. But there wasn’t an ER in the city that wouldn’t be phoning in a child abuse complaint as soon as they saw Robby’s left hand. And that would start officialdom down a road that might lead them to Jack.

But Jack knew a doc who wouldn’t call anyone. Couldn’t. His license had been on permanent suspension for years.

 

 

17

 

Jack was sitting and waiting with Barbara and Munir. Doc Hargus had stitched up Barbara’s breast first because it was a fresh wound and fairly easy to repair. Robby, he’d said, was going to be another story.

“I still cannot understand it,” Munir said for what seemed like the hundredth time but was probably only the twentieth. “Richard Hollander… how could he do this to me? To anybody? I never hurt him.”

“You fired him,” Jack said. “He’s probably been loony tunes for years, on the verge of a breakdown, walking the line. Losing his job just pushed him over the edge.”

“But people lose their jobs every day. They don’t kidnap and torture–”

“He was ready to blow. You just happened to be the unlucky one. It was his first job. He had to blame somebody – anybody but himself – and get even for it. He chose you. Don’t look for logic. The guy’s crazy.”

“But the depth of his cruelty…”

“Maybe you could have been gentler with him when you fired him,” Barbara said. The words sent a chill through Jack, bringing back Munir’s plea from his first telephone call last night.

Please save my family!

Jack wondered if that was possible, if anyone could save Munir’s family now. It had begun to unravel as soon as Barbara and Robby were kidnapped. It still had been salvageable then, up to the point when the cleaver had cut through Robby’s finger. That was probably the deathblow. Even if nothing worse had happened from there on in, that missing finger would be a permanent reminder of the nightmare, and somehow it would be Munir’s fault.

If he’d already gone to the police, it would be because of that; since he hadn’t, it would be his fault for not going to the police. Munir would always blame himself; deep in her heart Barbara also would blame him. And later on, maybe years from now, Robby would blame him too.

Because there’d always be one too few fingers on Robby’s left hand, always be that scar along the margin of Barbara’s nipple, always the vagrant thought, sneaking through the night, that Munir hadn’t done all he could, that if he’d only been a little more cooperative, Robby still would have ten fingers.

Sure, they were together now, and they’d been hugging and crying and kissing, but later on Barbara would start asking questions: Couldn’t you have done more? Why didn’t you cut your finger off when he told you to?

Even now, Barbara was suggesting that Munir could have been gentler when he’d fired Hollander. The natural progression from that was to: Maybe if you had, none of this would have happened.

The individual members might still be alive, but Munir’s family was already dead. He just didn’t know it yet.

And that saddened Jack. It mean that Hollander had won.

Doc Hargus shuffled out of the back room. He had an aggressively wrinkled face and a Wilford Brimley mustache.

“He’s sleeping,” Doc said. “Probably sleep through the night.”

“But his hand,” Barbara said. “You couldn’t–?”

“No way that finger could be reattached, not even at the Mayo Clinic. Not after spending a night in a Federal Express envelope. I sewed up the stump good and tight. You may want to get a more cosmetic repair in a few years, but it’ll do for now. He’s loaded up with antibiotics and painkillers at the moment.”

“Thank you, doctor,” Munir said.

“And how about you?” Doc said to Barbara. “How’re you feeling?”

She cupped a hand over her breast. “Fine… I think.”

“Good. Your sutures can come out in five days. We’ll leave Robby’s in for about ten.”

“How can we ever repay you?” Munir said.

“In cash,” Doc said. “You’ll get my bill.”

As he shuffled back to where Robby was sleeping, Barbara pressed her head against her husband’s shoulder.

“Oh, Munir. I can’t believe it’s over.”

Jack watched them and knew he hadn’t completely earned his fee.

Save my family…

Not yet. Hollander hadn’t won yet.

“It’s not over,” Jack said.

They both turned to look at him.

“We’ve still got Richard Hollander tied up in that loft. What do we do with him?”

“I never want to see him again!” Barbara said.

“So we let him go?”

“No!” Munir spoke through his teeth. “I want him to hang! I want him to fry! He has to pay for what he did to Robby! To Barbara!”

“You really think he’ll pay if we turn him in? I mean, how much faith do you have in the courts?”

They looked at him. Their bleak stares told him they felt like everybody else: No faith. No faith at all.

“So your only other option is to go back there and deal with him yourself.”

Munir was nodding slowly, his mouth a tight line, his eyes angry slits. “Yes… I would like that.” He rose to his feet. “I will go back there. He has… things to answer for. I must be sure this will never happen again.”

Barbara was on her feet too, a feral glint in her eyes.

“I’m coming with you.”

“But Robby–”

“I’ll stay here,” Jack said. “He knows me now. If he wakes up, I’ll be here.”

They hesitated.

Save my family…

If the Habibs were going to make it they were going to have to face Hollander together and resolve all those as-yet-unasked questions by settling their scores with him. All their scores.

“Get going,” he said. “I never made it past Tenderfoot in the Boy Scouts. Who knows how long my knots will last?”

Jack watched them hurry out, hand in hand. Maybe this would fix their marriage, maybe it wouldn’t. All he knew for sure was that he was glad he wasn’t Richard Hollander tonight.

He got up and went looking for Doc Hargus. The doc was never without a stock of good beer in his fridge.