16 Detectives Quintero and Radnovich went out to the tire shop shortly after checking in. ”With all the time we’re spending here,” Tom said, “you should get a wheel rotation.” “Unless I get a job rotation first,” Claudia said. Safet was there to greet them. “My brother don’t work Friday,” he said in response to their inquiry. “Good Muslim boy,” he added with a smile. “Can I answer questions?” “No thanks,” Tom said. “This time we just need Omar. Do you know where he is?” “Maybe mosque,” Safet said. As he and Claudia were walking back to the car, Tom remembered what Imam Becker had told him and Orsini about Omar no longer coming to his mosque, and he repeated the information to Claudia. “Maybe Alida really did see him at the other mosque,” Claudia said. “Wanna take a ride to Brooklyn?” “We can’t just barge into a mosque...” “No, but we can go in discreetly. I’ve done it before. I’ve got a scarf to put on my head, just in case, and we’ll just take our shoes off, or boots, as the case may be.” “That’s a pretty fundamentalist mosque,” Tom said, “from what I understand. A scarf may not be enough.” “Abaya? Burqa? Chador? Hijab? Niqab? Being respectful doesn’t mean being co-opted. If necessary I’ll flash my badge.” But they were lucky in not needing to enter the mosque. As they drove near they saw a group of a dozen or so young mean standing on the sidewalk, looking as though they were waiting for someone. None were talking to one another. Tom saw the Begović brothers and, at some distance from them, Omar Murova. At the moment they drove past him Tom lowered his window and said, softly but firmly, “Omar, would you please get into the car.” Omar looked around him, perhaps thinking whether he should run, but thought better of it and, as Tom reached behind him to open the rear passenger door, stepped into the car and shut the door behind him. “What’s this about, Detectives?” he asked. “We have to take you back to the Bronx for some more questioning,” Tom said. “May I know what it’s about?” “Like I told you,” Claudia said curtly, “ we ask the questions. You can go on saying your prayers, or whatever.” She turned on her flashers and siren and sped onto the Interborough Parkway, then the Grand Central. Sam was stacking blocks when Megan Kenner’s home phone rang. It was Frank Lutz, the main producer of her movies, to tell her that the studio was issuing a selection of them in a new format called DVD, and that he could drop a few copies off at her house some time that morning. Megan didn’t own a DVD player, but she remembered Tom Radnovich telling her, as the conversation confirming their date was winding down, that he had recently bought one. This had come when they were talking about leisure pursuits, just after an exchange of home phone numbers and addresses. “That would be great,” she said to Frank. She would send one to Tom! Let him be introduced to May Green! “And you’ll meet my son Sam,” she added. During her working days it was not unusual for Frank to visit her at home. Whatever the business of the visit might be, they would invariably go to bed together. Now she needed Frank to know that this would not be happening. Whether or not she was ready for sex with Frank, she was, at the moment, far too uncomfortable for sex with anyone, but she did not feel like talking about her condition to a man, and Sam was a good shield. Ten minutes after she had said See you soon to Frank, her cell phone rang. “You were right about the woodwork,” Betty said. “I got a call even before sending that e-mail.” “Let me guess. Cary Seligman?” “Yes! How did you know?” “I could see that he was into you. I’m sure Claudia saw it too.” “Why didn’t I see it?” “See what I mean?” The two women laughed together. “Touché,” Betty said. True to her bilingual identity, she said it as an anglophone would. “Let me tell you something else,” Megan said. “It’s something we found out while you were in the park with Sam, and we decided not to tell you, but it’s okay now. It’s about Paul.” “Not good, from the sound of it.” “You’re right. A week ago, just before the probate hearing, he sent a fax to the court, asking them for a continuance, on your behalf, mind you, because of a suspicion of fraud.” “Fraud? He suspected you of fraud?” “Something like that.” “On my behalf?” “Well, he himself had no standing in the matter. But in any case the judge dismissed it.” “And you didn’t tell me because...” “Well, Paul is your husband.” “On paper.” “Now, maybe, but four days ago...” “You’re right.” “So, what did Cary have to tell you?” “That he really likes me, and he happens to be in Plattsburgh on business today, so would I like to go there to see him tomorrow...” “To spend the weekend?” “He didn’t say so outright, but I’m going to assume that. In fact I wouldn’t have minded going to see him this evening. He called me yesterday morning, and I had just dreamt about him! Not erotically, but I was going to ask him for some legal advice, and then I forgot what it was about!” Betty giggled in her usual way. “Since you’ve mentioned Cary Seligman,” Megan said after an idea suddenly entered her mind, “it made me think of something. You know, Daniel made out a will when he was very young, when no one would have thought that it was necessary.” “So?” “I’m thinking that I should make one out too. Not for property, that isn’t necessary, but for guardianship of Sam. Just in case. One never knows. Would you be willing?” “Of course, Megan. I’d be... well, of course not happy, But I’d be honored, and proud. I love Sam, you know.” “I know. And he loves you too. Are you still Elizabeth Zoe, legally?” “Yes. Elisabeth with an S and Zoé with an acute accent. When I called myself Zoë I used a dieresis, but I never changed it legally.” “Thank you, Betty.” The doorbell rang. It was probably Frank. “I’ve got to hang up,” Megan said. “Someone’s here.” They were in the interrogation room at the 40th Precinct, Detectives Quintero and Radnovich facing Omar Murova. “We understand that you had contact with Daniel Wilner shortly before he was killed,” Claudia began. “What? Me? Never! Who told you that?” Omar replied with an intensity that to Tom seemed spurious. Claudia smiled instead of saying, once more, that the detectives would be asking the questions. “Whoever told you that is lying,” Omar added. “Didn’t someone tell you that they had seen him with Lejla?” Claudia asked. Omar now seemed trapped between lying and the truth and opted for half-truths. “Maybe,” he said, “somebody told me they saw Lejla with someone.” “Maybe?” Tom asked. “Well, someone did, and I asked Lejla about it and she said it was nothing, just somebody she talked with, and I believed her. I trusted her, then.” “Then, but not later?” Tom asked. “I guess so.” Omar tried to smile. “She didn’t tell you who it was?” Claudia asked. “She said it was a journalist that covered conflicts in the Balkans, Bosnia, Kosova...” “And you didn’t know that was Daniel Wilner?” Claudia went on. Omar seemed to be struggling to keep his story straight. “Maybe she said the name, but it didn’t... it meant nothing to me,” “She didn’t give you his number to call?” “Maybe she did. But I didn’t call. Like I said, I trusted her. I loved her.” “When did you start going to the Brooklyn mosque?” Tom asked suddenly. The change of subject caught Omar off guard. Claudia seemed relieved by her partner’s taking over the questioning. “Uh... maybe three, four months ago.” “Are you friends with Lejla’s brothers?” “Well, yes, we are friends now.” “Since when?” “When I started going out with Lejla... No, not started, but a little later.” “Are you sure?” Claudia asked. “Maybe later. Maybe after I broke up with Lejla.” The subject was worth pursuing, Tom thought, but the questioning was interrupted by a knock on the door, followed by its being opened just enough for Rick DePalma’s head to pierce through. “Detective Radnovich,” the lieutenant said, “would you come out here please?” “Sure,” Tom said, confident that Claudia would continue the interrogation to good effect. As he came out of the interrogation room Tom saw Pete Orsini, who began to move toward him as soon as the door was shut tight. “What’s the idea of picking up Omar Murova in front of everybody?” Orsini asked angrily. “We need to ask him some questions in a case that he may be implicated in,” Tom said calmly. “Is there a problem, Detective?” “A problem? We’ve told you that we’ve joined with the Seven-Eight in Brooklyn in investigating the mosque...” “So?” “Omar Murova is one of our informants there. But now that the others have seen him picked up by police he’s useless.” “And you haven’t told me that because?” “You backed out of the Begović case.” “For your information, Detective, Lejla Begović is involved in the Daniel Wilner case. Not what happened to her, but what happened to him, back in October. She and Wilner met. We found out two days ago.” “From who?” “Hard evidence. Photos that Wilner took of her, and something he wrote, implying that Alida Lovrin knew about it, and she confirmed it.” “And you haven’t told us?” “You’d think,” DePalma interjected, “that we were dealing with competing agencies, like the CIA and the FBI, instead of two NYPD precincts in the same fucking borough. We’ll just have to learn to communicate better.” Grateful for the interruption, Tom decided not to answer Orsini’s question but to counterattack with one of his own. “What makes you think Omar Murova is a reliable informant?” “We don’t know yet,” Orsini said. “Today was his first day, and he’s supposed to come to me for debriefing.” “Let me tell you, Pete, he’s been less than truthful with us. It’s always maybe this or maybe that, trying to tell us what he thinks we want to hear, correcting himself. You’re better off without him. How did you ever decide to use him as an informant, knowing that he’s one of the Gremnik Boys?” “It was Brooklyn’s decision, and we saw no reason to question it, now that the Murovas are off the hook regarding Lejla.” “Not if Omar goes to the same mosque as her brothers.” “Brooklyn is looking at that mosque way beyond Lejla. They suspect terrorism.” At that moment Omar came out of the interrogation room, followed by Claudia, who flashed Tom a subtle smile of satisfaction.” “Hi, Omar,” Orsini said. “I need you to come with me.” “Okay, Detective Orsini.” After their departure, and once Lieutenant DePalma was back in his office, Claudia’s smile became complete. “So how did you do?” Tom asked her. “It didn’t bother him to be alone with a woman?” “It didn’t seem to. I guess I’m too old for him.” She laughed. “No, seriously, I really believe that the Muslim bit is just a cover for his feelings of inadequacy. A way of being different from Safet. Maybe that explains why he was willing to rat on his fellows at the mosque. Anyway, I got some more information.” “Such as?” “I asked him who it was who had told him about Lejla and someone. Guess who it was.” “Vlora?” “Guess again. He said it was a girl who knew about him and Lejla, and sounded American.” “Well, not Vlora.” Tom thought about who else might have known her, but couldn’t come up with anyone except Alida, and that was impossible. “Not Alida?” he said. “Yes, Alida,” Claudia said, “at least Omar is pretty sure that it was her.” “Why would she have done that?” “That’s what I’m going to find out ASAP. But then I changed the subject and asked him what he knew about Rexhep Shkodra. And I pronounced the last syllable clearly, like in Spanish. ‘You mean Shkodran,’ he said, ‘with N.’ ‘Really?’ I said, ‘is that a different name?’ ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘different like Meyer and Myers.’ So I asked if he had just come from Canada. ‘What Canada,’ he said. ‘From Kosova, he is a colonel in the KLA.’ Omar has no problem with saying KLA, by the way,” Claudia interjected with another smile. “I think that all the other times that we mentioned the name to him it was followed by another word starting with M or N, so he thought we were saying Shkodran.” “So Betty’s ‘Dick’ is off the hook. No wonder there was no record of Rexhep Shkodra coming over from Canada. We’d better tell Betty about it.” “And I am going to call Alida,” Claudia said as she pressed the keys on her cell phone. Evidently Alida answered. “Hi, Alida, this is Detective Claudia Quintero. I want to thank you for that information about that mosque in Brooklyn. We did in fact find him there, and we picked him up to talk to him.” Alida said something brief. “One thing he told us is that he thinks that it was you who called him about seeing Lejla with another guy. Was it?” This time Alida’s reply was extended, and Claudia gave Tom a knowing glance, with another half-smile. “You weren’t lying,” she said, “but you knowingly withheld information, and that can be just as bad.” There was more talk, probably defensive, by Alida, with Claudia listening with a bemused expression. “Really? You thought you were doing her a favor? You assumed that he would just drop her? It didn’t work, did it?” Alida was brief again. “I know you’re young, Alida, but don’t tell me you don’t know what a jealous guy is capable of.” Claudia held the phone away from her ear, letting Tom hear Alida’s sobbing utterances of I am sorry. “I’m sorry too,” Claudia said after bringing the phone back to her cheek, “but I’m afraid you’ll have to find yourself another phone to cry on.” With that she clicked off firmly. “That was harsh,” Tom said. “I’m sure she’d be happy to have you comfort her. In Serbocroatian, maybe! You’re her type, remember?” Tom chose to ignore Claudia’s cynicism. “So let me get this straight,” he said. “Alida told Omar on Lejla because she wanted to break them up?” “That’s what she says. She didn’t think Omar was good for Lejla. She may have been right, but that’s another matter. It was a stupid thing to do.” “Well,” Tom said, “it was beyond stupid of Lejla to tell Omar who it was, and give him his phone number.” “Omar says he didn’t call.” “I don’t believe him. Do you?” “I don’t know,” Claudia said. “Poor little Omar, with a macho brother like Safet, who has him under his control. His only escape is to pretend to be a good Muslim.” “Do you think Omar confides in Safet?” “I doubt it. I’m sure Safet loves Omar and tries to protect him, but he only knows how to do it in his way, making Omar work for him, join his gang...” “And then he brags about fucking the girl that Omar couldn’t get it up with. By the way, that must have been when Delmar Franklin saw them walking to campus, if it really was only one time, as Safet said.” “Del who?” “An ex-suspect in the Lejla Begović case that Orsini and I interviewed.” Frank Lutz, to Megan’s surprise, had been altogether gentlemanlike. Maybe a little too much so. She wouldn’t have minded a hint on his part that, under different circumstances, he would have liked some action. Action, with a heavy emphasis on the first syllable, was Frank’s usual word for sex; he had complimented her by saying that her action off-screen was as good as on-screen. But there was no mention of action during this visit, not even with reference to what was on the DVD, of which he gave her five copies. He only told her that it was the first in a projected series and contained her first three movies: Trouble at QCI; Babel, ON; and Miss May. Sales would be over the Internet, he said, and he gave her the password to the studio’s site so that she could see how it worked. Even Frank’s good-bye had been marked only with a friendly hug and a kiss on the cheek. Could it have been the presence of Sam, who had been quietly playing the whole time that Frank was there? Or did Frank no longer find her desirable? Megan, being Megan, needed to feel desirable to men, even if she was, as at this time, not available. Well, Tom Radnovich found her desirable. And Tom wasn’t just a man, but a hot one. Yes, she told herself with an inward smile, she was saving herself for Tom. She remembered how her second cousin Amy had been saving herself for Daniel – it had been a running joke at North Am – and continuing to do so after Daniel had moved to New York, but because of some missed connections with Daniel she finally lost it to a nerdy guy named Andy Bronson. When Megan, who from the beginning of her career had collaborated on scripts, proposed the character of Tommy Anderson in Trouble at QCI, she had modeled him on Andy. Now she wondered if her potential get-together with Tom would be subject to frustration similar to Amy’s with Daniel. Of course not, she told herself; Daniel had never been really interested in Amy, while Tom was definitely interested in her. She picked the middle DVD from the stack that Frank had put on her coffee table and looked at the cover. It showed three stills, one from each of the movies, each featuring an almost-naked May Green in a lascivious position with a partner shown in the background. She would have liked Tom to see the pictures – they would certainly inflame his imagination – but she knew that if she were to send it by mail to the States, she would have to take it out, given American postal regulations. Once the disk was safely in a padded envelope, she addressed it, and then thought about what she needed to get at Richview Square. Nothing that wouldn’t fit in the basket of Sam’s stroller, she decided – she had done her grocery shopping just two days before. Maxi pads, certainly, which she would get at the drugstore where she would mail the DVD. Some more padded envelopes, in case she could think of anyone else that she would mail it to. How about Betty? Why not? She was now a single woman who would be engaging in recreational sex (Daniel had once told her that his soccer buddies from Western Canada called it rec sex), and she could learn a thing or two from May Green. The late May Green, she corrected herself. “Sam!” she called. “Let’s go to the Square!” “To the square!” Sam echoed. A month earlier he would have said, simply, “Square!” Richview Square wasn’t really a square, the way Nathan Phillips Square downtown was (more or less) a square. It was just a little shopping mall. But people in the neighborhood called it the Square. Someday soon Sam would learn the standard meaning of square, and she would have to explain the matter to him. Something strange was going on among the young people from the Balkans, Claudia thought as she began her homeward drive. Was it a residue from the ethnic hatreds about which she had read in Balkan Ghosts? Was it the disorientation of finding themselves in New York? In any case, the behavior of Lejla and her brothers, of Omar and Safet, of Alida... It was bizarre beyond normal psychology. Tom Radnovich had made it his business to understand these things. But he was hampered by being a Serb, with that atavistic sense of superiority that the Serbs, along with the Greeks, felt toward the other Balkan peoples. And the Serbs managed to compound this feeling with a collective paranoia that led them to imagine their nation as the perennial victim. Strangely enough, Western Europeans, especially the British and the French, had until recently indulged the Serbs’ and the Greeks’ sense of themselves. But while letting the Greeks forbid the Macedonians from naming their country Macedonia was silly, letting Milošević and Karadžić get away with what they did in Bosnia – what was the name of that place, Sebre-something? – was criminal complicity. National megalomania was something that Claudia found especially grating because her own people, Colombians, were the world’s most self-critical nation, with Canadians maybe coming in second. Every Colombian she knew or knew of, from her family to Gabriel García Márquez, had a love-hate affair with Colombia. While Balkan people murdered people of other ethnic groups, Colombians murdered one another. As they had her father, who had been an investigating judge, a juez de instrucción. Who had killed him? The ELN, the FARC, the M-19? The army, the police? In 1970, when Claudia was five, it could have been any of them, or none of them. Her father’s colleagues, who should have investigated the murder, had been afraid to do so, fearing for their own lives, as had her mother, who, already pregnant with Martha, promptly brought them to New York. As she eased into the E-ZPass lanes of the Triborough Bridge, it occurred to her that her mind was bridging between politics and psychology. Could that be a thesis? She had left Hofstra with a bachelor’s degree because she had been unable to choose among the specialized programs in psychology that were available in graduate school. Political psychology would have appealed to her – her minor had been political science – but there had been no such program at Hofstra, nor at any other university in the Greater New York area. When she had begun school in Queens, she had thought that she would grow up to be an investigating judge like her father, and solve murders like his. But she soon found out that there was no such thing as an investigating judge in America (she found out much later, in 1991, that the position had been abolished in Colombia as well), and that it was detectives who solved crimes. So, after graduation, she applied to the Police Academy with the intention of becoming a detective. But before receiving her acceptance she had received a marriage proposal from her boyfriend Doug Holtz, who had just landed a well-paying job on Wall Street (he came from a wealthy and well-connected family in Michigan), and her acceptance of that proposal delayed her career by three years. Three years as the bored young housewife Claudia Holtz. But her acceptance to the Police Academy, as Claudia Quintero, had not lapsed, and she took it up as soon as she left Doug. She had now been on the force for nine years, four as a detective, and she still found the work rewarding. But by this time, perhaps, there might be some university that would let her work on such a doctorate while continuing her career. She had read somewhere that Stony Brook had now a program in political psychology. That wouldn’t be too bad – it would be an hour’s drive from her house, and she could do it a couple of times a week. If it all worked out, then in a few years she would be Doctor Claudia Quintero. In Colombia, of course, she was already called doctora – any university graduate was given the title there. At the curving approach to the merge with the BQE traffic slowed, as it usually did. And her mind veered in a different direction. She thought of her sister Martha, married – but on the brink of divorce – and living in Denmark, and the fact that she had been born after her father had been killed – just like Betty Wilner. She realized that Martha’s and Betty’s common fate had given her an immediate empathy with Betty. She missed her sister; they had managed to get close despite the six years between them, especially after their mother’s marriage to Pedro. She thought, once she was finally on the off-ramp, that she might have become friends with Betty if they lived in the same city. Betty was at her desk, in command of her computer, jumping from file to file in the MW/Life folder. Each file seemed to constitute a chapter in the projected biography, and contained links to files in MW/Articles, corresponding to the time spans in which the articles were written. For an e-book this was a perfect arrangement. If the book were to be published in print, something else would have to be done. But what? Include the articles in the referring chapters? Put them at the end? Have a separate volume? Suddenly, after a knock and without waiting for a reply, Mireille came into her room. “I was just talking to Megan,” she said. “I’m worried about her.” She sat down on the spare chair. “What’s the matter?” Betty said, rotating her rolling desk chair to face her mother. “Well, she just called to chat, but then it came out that all of her sudden her period is very painful and with lots of blood, which had never happened to her before. By itself it’s no big deal, but given Megan’s history...” “You mean...” “Yes. Let me tell you something about your father. His first wife, you know, was an actress. Not in the same line as Megan, of course, but here is what he told me about why he left her. After twenty years together, fourteen of them married, she told him that she had been having sex with all her leading men, all through her career, going back to when she was just beginning at the age of sixteen. And about five years before their breakup she began to bleed from her cervix. It was a kind of condition that is common in very promiscuous women, for example prostitutes, but her doctor didn’t know about her habit, so the condition continued until she told him, several months later. This doctor happened to be located in the district of Hamburg where the brothels were, so he knew how to treat the condition.” “I think that Brigitte may have told Daniel about this, because there seems to be a veiled reference to it in his biography of papa.” “Really?” Mireille said with no overt curiosity. What was the matter with her? Did she want to deny Miki’s life before 1970, except what he might have told her about it? But Betty didn’t want to dwell on the matter, and brought the conversation back to Megan. “But Megan hasn’t been promiscuous in over two years!” she said. “The onset of this condition is often delayed. It happens, for example, with women who had many partners when they were teenagers and then settle down with one man. The virus – for it is a virus, called HPV, at least a particular variety of it – may be dormant, and then wakes up when the woman is about thirty. Your father, by the way, had himself tested after he left Brigitte. He was negative,” Mireille concluded with a smile.” “But Megan isn’t thirty yet!” “She is twenty-seven, that is well within the range, especially since she started very young. I am not saying that this is what Megan has. She is seeing her gynecologist on Monday, and I am sure that she will get all the necessary tests.” “What you just told me, maman, explains something. Megan called me this morning, and out of the blue she asked me if I wanted to be Sam’s guardian in case something happened to her. Well, it wasn’t quite out of the blue. We were talking about Cary Seligman...” “Who?” “Audrey’s brother. Remember Audrey from my birthday party?” “Oh, the redheaded girl, Harvey’s girlfriend! And, I suppose, once upon a time Daniel’s.” “Yes. Cary was Daniel’s lawyer. At least he drew up the will. He’s also a redhead, by the way.” Something about Betty’s tone made her mother look at her intently, and Betty felt herself blushing. Mireille smiled. “Yes, maman, I’m attracted to him. We met last Monday, and I felt it then, but then I still thought I was in love with Paul. But word that I’d left Paul got to him very quickly, from Harvey through Audrey, so he called me yesterday. He’s in Plattsburgh for the weekend. Actually he’s there today, on business, and he invited me to join him there tomorrow. And I’m going.” “How?” “There’s a bus at nine.” “I’ll drive you to the station,” Mireille said. “I’m happy for you.” “Merci, maman.” Betty rolled her chair very close to her mother and put her arms around her. Mireille kissed her on the cheek, and Betty thought that she felt a tear from her mother’s eye. Tom Radnovich’s workout, that evening, did not have its usual calming effect. He began to perspire well before his muscles had warmed up, no doubt from the anxiety that he felt about the upcoming weekend. He and Claudia were under orders to finish up the Wilner case, or to drop it, and they had to be available to work other cases as they came up. He took a yoga break after thirty minutes, rather than the customary forty-five, and turned on his cell phone to check for messages. There was voice mail from Yasmina Sliwa. Sunday evening would be very nice, her voice said. She was spending the weekend with her family in New Jersey, but she would be back Sunday afternoon, and he could call her as soon as he was free. That was a relief. When he had weekend duty, he liked having a date on the Sunday evening that followed it. And after a weekend like this one he would need it physically. He began to imagine Yasmina hovering above him as he slowly lowered himself into the reclining-hero posture. In the course of their date two evenings earlier, she had struck him as an independent woman who was unlikely to become clinging. She was thirty-two, the eldest of three, but while her brother and sister were already married with – so far – one child each, she was more interested in advancing her career in banking. She was the assistant manager of her branch – something that was not obvious when he and Claudia appeared there – and had been told that she was on a fast track for a manager’s position, should a vacancy come up. What had slowed her advancement was her desire to stay on the Upper West Side; she had been spoiled by being able to walk to work. But since there were ten Citibank branches within a mile of her present one, her chances were not too bad. He relaxed when he felt his butt touch the mat. The posture was one that he had been unable to do for more than a year after a torn meniscus and the arthroscopic surgery that repaired it, but now it was as easy as ever.