The Ninth Step Read online

  Jack pulled out his own pad. “Let’s see what else the register guy might have to say.”

  Just as they reached the end of the aisle, the front door opened and a young uniform, the First Officer on the Scene, poked his head in. “Excuse me, detectives. A guy out here says he’s the owner. He’s pretty jazzed up.”

  Jack nodded. “Let him in.”

  In marched a short, imperious-looking Indian or Pakistani wearing a long linen shirt over pajama-like pants. He glanced toward the back of the store, then stared at the detectives. “What on earth is going on?”

  Jack stared back. “That’s what we’re trying to figure out.”

  The man peered down the aisle at the victim. His air of indignation deflated a bit. “This is terrible, terrible. Who is this man?”

  Jack shrugged. “We don’t know yet. Does the name Robert Brasciak mean anything to you?”

  The owner shook his head.

  “Would you mind taking a closer look at him?”

  The owner looked away, uneasy.

  “The sooner we can find out what happened here, the sooner your store can get back to normal.”

  The man followed the detectives down the aisle. From about six feet away, they stared down at the body. The victim lay faceup, with his eyes rolled back in his head. It was a hard-planed face, like that of a backstreet boxer, with an oddly small mouth, which hung open slackly, as if he was sleeping off a bad three-day drunk.

  “You recognize him?” Jack asked.

  The owner nodded gravely. “I think so. He comes in sometimes. A customer.”

  “Did you notice anything about him?”

  The owner frowned. “Not a friendly man.”

  Jack sensed that he was holding something back. “What? Anything you can tell us might help.”

  “I think … he does not like us. Pakistanis, I mean. He will buy our products, and he will give us his money, but he does not respect us.” He frowned down at the bloody floor. “This, ah, this mess here. Do the police clean this up? I don’t want my people to have to touch this.”

  Jack nodded in sympathy. “We can recommend a professional service. They specialize in these matters.”

  The owner unstiffened a little more. “So what happened? Have you spoken to Aban?” He nodded toward the front counter.

  “Your guy says he didn’t really see what went on. And he says you don’t have video surveillance.”

  The owner glanced at his employee, then lowered his voice. “Please, come with me.”

  Jack and his new partner exchanged puzzled looks, but they followed the man as he marched briskly down the left aisle, the one unpopulated by dead bodies, past a display of mops and cleaning supplies, through a back door, and into a dim hallway full of a sour foreign cooking smell. An open doorway on the right revealed a small storeroom packed with boxes and product-crammed shelves. The owner turned toward a closed door on the left. He pulled out a key, opened it, and gestured for the detectives to enter. They did, and found themselves in an even smaller room, not much bigger than a walk-in closet. An office. The owner marched over to a gray metal cabinet, pulled out another key, and yanked the door open triumphantly.

  Jack and his partner stared at a small TV perched on the top shelf. On its little black-and-white screen, Jack could see a grainy bird’s-eye view of one of the store’s narrow aisles, facing toward the window, with the edge of the front counter just visible on the left. One of the M.E.’s boys stood up, emerging into view.

  Next to the TV sat a VCR.

  “Sweet baby Jesus!” said Powker.

  The owner smiled, sheepish. “My employees don’t know. This way, I can see if they are behaving.”

  “Is there a tape in there?”

  “Yes indeed.”

  Jack grinned at his partner. “Maybe you just hit the lottery after all.” The case might be wrapped up before lunchtime.

  It took a few minutes of rewinding, watching customers pop in and out of the store like hyper little windup dolls, before they found the crucial scene.

  First, the empty aisle. Then someone strolled in the front door. The picture was lousy, but you could see that it was a young guy, maybe mid-thirties, with a dark complexion and shiny black hair. Pakistani also, or Indian. (Jack had no idea how to tell the difference.) The guy picked up a shopping basket from a stack by the door, then walked toward the camera, casual and calm. He stopped to pick out a few items from the shelves, then drifted past the camera and disappeared from view.

  Jack turned to the deli owner. “Do you recognize this man?”

  The deli owner shook his head. “I don’t believe so. Not a regular.”

  They returned their attention to the screen. Less than a minute later, the door opened and a big Caucasian walked in. The victim, alive. He ignored the clerk at the register, then ambled down the aisle toward the camera. He stopped to pick something off a shelf and stared down, reading the label.

  The first customer returned into view, facing away from the camera. He walked a few feet down the aisle, looking at the shelf on his right, then looked ahead and stopped. The vic didn’t look up. Maybe five seconds elapsed, Guy One just standing there, carrying his plastic shopping basket with his left hand, staring at the vic. Suddenly, he reached into the basket and lifted something out: it looked like the can of beans. He rushed forward. The vic just had time to look up, startled. Still holding the basket in his left hand, Guy One raised his right arm, then brought the can arcing viciously down against the victim’s head. Once, twice. With the second blow, a small spray of blood flew out. The vic staggered back against a shelf. One more blow and he went down.

  His killer stood there for a couple more seconds, staring, and then he stepped over the vic and rushed toward the door. As he came to the front counter, he dropped his shopping basket on the floor, and then he pushed through the door and disappeared out into a rectangle of bright sun. Once he was outside, he ran right: you could see him flicking past the posters in the window.

  Jack rewound the tape; in reverse, the spray of blood looked like it was getting sucked back into the victim’s head. He played the scene again. “You see that?” he said to his partner. “The vic didn’t say a word before he got hit.” He was thinking about what the owner had told them about the man disrespecting Pakistanis, but there was no evidence of that on the tape. “And I don’t think the perp said anything either, or else the vic would’ve looked up.”

  Powker shook his head. “Weird. They didn’t have time for any kind of argument, at least not inside the store. And if they’d been arguing outside, they wouldn’t have just strolled in and gone shopping.”

  “So the perp walks around from the other aisle, and bing, he runs into this Robert Brasciak. The question is, did he know him? If not, maybe we’re looking at an EDP.” Emotionally Disturbed Person. Jack scratched his cheek again. “If he did know him, he must’ve had a hell of a beef.”

  THEY HAD TO WAIT for the Crime Scene Unit to show up, take fingerprints, and check for other evidence. Jack found himself thinking about yesterday’s visitor again. “I’m gonna step outside for a little fresh air,” he told Powker. He stopped by the front door to pour himself a cup of watery coffee, then paid for it at the cash register, along with some money for his partner’s snack. He glanced down: the perp’s shopping basket was still there on the floor. A liter bottle of Coke. Three oranges. A stick of butter. A couple of eggplants. Some ice cream. Hopefully the items would have picked up some good fingerprints.

  Outside, the sidewalk had been blocked off with a reel of yellow crime scene tape. A couple of radio cars were parked at the curb, and their uniforms leaned against the hoods and shot the bull, awaiting instruction from the detectives. Their walkie-talkies squawked intermittently; the brakes on a city bus squealed as it pulled in toward the curb a few yards away.

  Jack took a deep breath of the spring air and looked back at the store. Several tiers of cheap floral bouquets graced the front of the little bodega. A sign ran abo
ve: BEER, SODA, CANDY, COFFEE, LOTTO, CIGARETTES. Reflexively, the detective sought out the pattern. When you thought about it, he mused, the place was a regular pit stop for minor vices, for people seeking some reliable little hit of pleasure during their daily grind. And who could blame them?

  He glanced down at his watch. The Crime Scene Unit could be delayed for a while, if their teams were busy with other cases. Sometimes the job seemed to be all about waiting.

  A big truck came lumbering along Coney Island Avenue, which was a drab commercial stretch of car washes, auto parts emporia, international phone card stores, and humble Middle Eastern food joints that fed the many brown-skinned local taxi and car service drivers. Their wives strolled by, wearing bright saris or somber head scarves, surrounded by lively children. The area was home to Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, and other Muslim immigrants.

  Jack stared off down the sunny thoroughfare, but in his mind’s eye he was seeing a little street in Red Hook, watching a police car come along several blocks down, waiting for it to arrive. But it never would, no matter how many years he waited. No matter how many times he replayed the scene, his brother would always drop to the sidewalk, holding his mortally wounded side. One little moment in time, one split second when the whole world turned upside down. Jack had spent a lifetime obsessing about that random encounter, wishing he could go back and fix it, wishing he could pull the harsh words back into his mouth.

  Only, the thing was, based on what the stranger had told him, it hadn’t been random at all. Maybe he had been carrying this burden of guilt for nothing.

  He sighed and turned; like it or not, he needed to go back inside and wrap up this silly bodega killing. Maybe the perp was nuts; maybe he had had some prior run-in with the vic. Perhaps the guy had been screwing his wife. Either way, it looked to be just another rinky-dink slaying, like a thousand others.

  Routine—until the van came screeching up and the men in the protective bodysuits jumped out.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THERE WERE FOUR OF them, and they looked like deep-sea divers as they piled out of the vehicle, which was not at all like a typical NYPD undercover van (dented and unwashed). No, this was a shiny black ride that might as well have had signs painted on it: PROPERTY OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. The men—they all looked like men, though it was hard to tell, considering their bulky, hooded suits—wore oxygen masks. Jack’s first thought was biohazard, but then he saw the yellow-and-black radiation symbols, which always reminded him of the fallout shelter sign in his elementary school cafeteria. The last man out carried a clicking device.

  The NYPD uniforms guarding the perimeter tried to question this odd crew, but they ducked right under the tape.

  Jack held up a hand. “Whoa! What the hell’s going on?”

  The man in front tugged at his mask; the rubber squeaked as he lifted it over his hooded head. An older guy with a bland, round face, wire-rimmed spectacles, rather stringy white hair combed over his balding pate. Grandfatherly. “You in charge here?”

  Jack nodded. “NYPD, Brooklyn South Homicide. Now, who are you?”

  The man pulled out an unfamiliar I.D. “Brent Charlson. Homeland Security.”

  Jack threw a skeptical glance back at the little deli. “You sure you got the right address?”

  The man didn’t bat an eye. “How long have you been inside there?”

  Jack was definitely starting to get the creeps. “What’s going on?”

  “I’m going to have to ask you to clear out any personnel from inside. Immediately.”

  A street person, a big man wearing a wool watch cap, soiled sweatpants, and scrunched-up leather slippers, came shuffling around the corner. He stopped short when he saw the crime scene tape and the frogmen. “Yo! What’s happ’nin’? Is this some of that anthraps?”

  A uniform waved him away.

  Jack watched the guy look back anxiously as he shuffled off. Any New Yorker who had lived through 9/11 and the subsequent anthrax mailings took the potential for terrorist activity very seriously. Even four years later, it didn’t take much to get you worrying: any siren, a sudden halt on a subway train, an unattended knapsack.

  He turned back to the Homeland Security agent. “So why are you guys here?”

  The man gestured for his colleagues to move toward the door. “Call your supervisor,” he said over his shoulder. And in they went.

  Jack didn’t like feds. Their Big Swinging Dick attitudes didn’t impress him one bit. They were definitely not team players. He remembered a double homicide in Bensonhurst, a Mob case, where a bunch of FBI agents had actually started hauling away the bodies before the NYPD had even gotten on the scene. And 9/11 had made it starkly clear how uncooperative the different governmental agencies could be, with the Feebs and the CIA withholding vital intelligence from each other. Things had supposedly gotten better since then, each agency pledging to pull together, but everybody still liked a good pissing match. And the three-letter guys—FBI, CIA, NSA, DHS—were the cockiest of all.

  Jack pulled out his cell and called Lieutenant Frank Cardulli, the head of his unit. “Hey boss, I’ve got a weird situation here at—”

  Cardulli cut him off. “I know. I got a call just a minute ago from downtown. They say we have to let these guys do their thing.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know.”

  A second later the door of the deli swung open; out came the owner and his clerk, followed by Richie Powker and the M.E.’s crew. Looking anxious, they moved out past the crime scene tape and a good few yards down the block.

  Ten minutes later, the boys in the bodysuits came back out. Their leader followed. “All clear.”

  “Was there a problem?” Jack asked. He couldn’t imagine why there would be any radiation inside a deli, but he knew that he didn’t want any on him.

  “We didn’t get a reading,” Charlson said. “Not this time.” He moved off toward the van.

  “Whoa,” Jack repeated. “You wanna tell us what this is all about?”

  The man shrugged. “I can understand that you guys don’t like anybody stepping on your toes, and I apologize for the inconvenience.” He took out a card and handed it over. “If you find out anything about the perpetrator, I’m going to need for you to call me right away. And if you get a bead on him, I’m gonna really emphasize this: don’t try to bring him in yourselves. There’s a definite radiation risk. Call me and we’ll take care of him.”

  Richie Powker made a face. “What’s all this about radiation? The guy killed the vic with a can of beans.”

  The Homeland Security agent shrugged. “I know this must seem confusing, and I’m sorry, but I’m simply not at liberty to talk about this. Thanks for letting us do our job here; we appreciate your cooperation.” He turned, strode away, and joined his colleagues in the van.

  Off they went.

  “‘Simply not at liberty,’” Richie mimicked, sourly. “I hate feds.”

  Jack went back into the deli. The first thing he noticed was that the can of beans was missing. It took him another minute to discover that the videotape was also gone.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  AS HE HANDED OVER the admission fee to the New York Aquarium, out by Coney Island, Nadim Hasni noticed that his hands were still shaking. He willed them to stop, without success, but luckily the girl behind the ticket window seemed lost in her own private daydream.

  Nadim moved into the cool interior of the entrance hall, grateful for the dim lighting and the near emptiness of the place. A weekday morning. On weekends the place was usually packed, full of tourists and New Yorkers out on family expeditions.

  Nadim’s nerves still jangled. It was a small miracle that he had managed to get here without being noticed or stopped, sitting on a public bus, in broad daylight, trembling. Well, it wasn’t exactly as if he were covered in blood, though he couldn’t help feeling as if he was. He thought of his windbreaker, how he had quickly stripped it off outside the deli, after he saw the red stains sp
lashed across the front. He had folded it up, strode several blocks, then stuffed it deep into a trash can. Americans did not do things like this, he thought, throwing clothes away in public trash receptacles. He had straightened up and looked around wildly, but no one paid him any mind.

  Now he walked farther into the aquarium’s dark interior, past a tank full of gliding manta rays. They circled through the cool blue depths. Why had he come here now? He didn’t know; he had simply seen the bus coming and gotten on, had sat there in a daze while it moved down Coney Island Avenue, all the way to the shore. He had gravitated like an automaton toward a familiar place, a place of comfort, where he could be inside, away from public view, in the dark.

  He wanted a cigarette, desperately, but knew he wouldn’t be allowed to smoke inside the aquarium. He also needed to relieve himself. He saw a sign for a men’s bathroom and went inside. A man was holding his little son up over a urinal.

  As Nadim zipped up his fly, he noticed—to his horror—that several flecks of dried blood still dotted the back of his right hand. He hurried over to the sink, turned to make sure the stranger was not watching, and scrubbed the blood away. It reconstituted under the water, bright red, like some terrible magic potion, then swirled away down the drain.

  He hurried out of the bathroom and made his way out into the aquarium’s center courtyard. After the dim interior, the morning sunlight blazed harsh overhead. With no particular destination in mind, he stumbled along a path between a series of outdoor pools: seals, walruses, penguins. … He groaned and punched himself in the thigh. What had he done? In one crazed, impulsive moment, he had ruined everything. He had spoiled the entire plan.

  Across the way, a roar of applause went up from the arena for the sea lion show. The noise grated on him, and the thought of all the spectators; he ducked through another door, waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, and descended a flight of steps, thankful for the quiet. A floor-to-ceiling picture window afforded a side view into the penguin tank. Aboveground the creatures looked comical as they waddled along, but underwater they were transformed into startlingly graceful little torpedoes. Nadim watched for a few minutes, kneading his hands together. Enny had loved the penguins. But her favorites had been the jellyfish, those diaphanous, glowing pink and orange umbrellas, pulsing open and closed as they floated through the depths. His daughter had loved to watch the creatures, and Nadim had loved to watch her little face as she looked on, bathed in the blue light of their subterranean tanks.