“Why are you so afraid?” said Decker.
“Afraid?” The Yemeni laughed. “Why should I be afraid? The fact that you are speaking to me, right now, at this very moment, has already marked me for death. And if I am already dead, why should I be afraid? I have nothing to lose.” He shook his head. “No, my friend. It is you who should be fearful. You are not dead. Not yet.” Then he turned and looked away, and added in an off-hand kind of way, “What are you going to do now? Arrest me? Is that your plan?”
Decker remained impassive.
“Go ahead. Arrest me then. I will tell you nothing.”
Decker shook his head. “No, I don’t want to arrest you.”
Akbar looked even more confused. Then he began to smile. “I did not think so. A fool could see that it would be a fruitless exercise.” He grinned. “And you are clearly not a fool.”
“I’m going to arrest him,” said Decker, pointing at the Alpha wolf.
Akbar looked horrified. “Zahid Tafari! But why? What has he done?”
“Oh, I’m sure he’s done something or other, somewhere along the way. First, I think I’ll check with Immigration. Just in case. Then I’ll see if the IRS can audit his returns — say for the last three years. Then—”
“What do you want to know?” said Akbar, looking down. It was as if all the air had been suddenly let out of him. “There is a reason why you cannot find this young Sudanese named Salim Moussa.” He looked up, frowning petulantly. “For one, he is not Sudanese. His parents are, or were, but Moussa was born right here. In New York. Or, more precisely,” he said, “in a town called Yonkers.”
It turned out later, much to everyone’s surprise, that Akbar was telling the truth. Salim Moussa had indeed been born in Yonkers to parents of Sudanese descent, had gone to local elementary schools, to the local junior high school and for two years to Yonkers High School before dropping out his junior year. Apparently, he got picked on a lot while in school. His parents were poor. His dad was a bricklayer, his mother a K-Mart cashier. He did a few odd jobs after high school, worked construction for a while during the summer months, cleaned pools and tended gardens — that sort of thing. He fell into a crew of second-story men but he never got into trouble himself. Then, just after his twenty-first birthday, when he was still living at home, he went into the city and got a job at the Imperial Taxi Company in Queens. A month later, he moved into a small apartment near Randall’s Island. He kept mostly to himself. He was a quiet neighbor. He was practically invisible until, one afternoon, something happened.
He was taking a fare along First Avenue up to York and Seventy-second when this red town car, a Caddie, swept out and clipped him in the rear. His cab hooked over to the left. He struggled to straighten her out, slammed on the breaks, and pulled over, shaking. His fare, a young businessman in a charcoal suit, jumped out and dashed across the avenue into another cab. The town car that had clipped him hobbled over to the side. The impact had torn the Cadillac’s bumper loose and it screeched across the macadam, showering sparks. A man climbed out of the Cadillac and looked down at the damage. He was huge, and white — a Russian, it turned out, from Brighton Beach — with a bullet-shaped head, close-cropped blond hair, a lantern jaw and washed-out light blue eyes. He wore a beautifully tailored sharkskin suit, jet-black. He said something indiscernible. He scratched the bristle on his chin. Then he approached Moussa, stepped up and slammed his palms into his chest. Moussa flew backwards onto the hood of his cab, the wind knocked out of him. He had been thrown off by the opulence of the suit. He started to protest when the palms smashed into him again. He tried to step away but the Russian towered over him. He held him down.
“You. Monkey man,” he said. “You are going to fix my bumper.” The Russian brought his fist back as if to strike him, but it never happened. A hand materialized from nowhere and wrapped itself around his wrist. Another man stepped up, a black man. A second cab had pulled up by the accident. Moussa recognized him. His name was Ahmed, an Imperial Taxi driver. A Sudanese, like his parents. Ahmed bent the fingers, hand and wrist of the Russian back along his arm, back and inward across the mighty shoulder, until he crumpled to his knees. “You’re breaking my wrist,” the giant Russian screamed. He tried to punch Ahmed with his other hand but the Sudanese stepped gingerly away.
“Get into your car,” Ahmed said to Salim Moussa. “Now.”
Moussa didn’t argue. He jumped back into his yellow cab, started her up, and peeled out along First Avenue. In less than fifteen minutes, he had made it back across the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge to Queens.
Ahmed, it turned out, was a devout Muslim. According to Akbar, Salim Moussa and Ahmed became fast friends after that incident. Moussa started to take Arabic courses at the same mosque in Queens where bin Basra and Singh were later arrested. He learned self-defense and how to pray. He became a completely different person.
In 1999, Salim Moussa got his wish and traveled to the Sudan, his parents’ birthplace, and then to Russia and a host of Newly Independent States. He returned to the United States on July 12, 2001, only a month or so before the attack on the World Trade Towers. But unlike Akbar and so many others, he had never been interviewed after 9/11. He was, after all, an American.
Akbar finished his story. He looked at Decker and said, “Is that what you wanted to hear? Is that what you were looking for?”
“Just one more thing.”
“Yes?”
“Where could I find this Ahmed now? Salim Moussa’s friend?”
“In Woodlawn Cemetery. It is unfortunate, but he was killed during a robbery about a week ago. It happens. It is one of the unpleasant unpredictabilities of the job.”
The agents headed back across the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge into Manhattan. They drove in Kazinski’s SUV south on the FDR, and made their way to Greenwich Village. The owners of East Village Jukebox — a pair of gay men from Long Island named Gerald and Ted — claimed that they couldn’t remember much about Salim Moussa, except that he came and went at odd hours, as he pleased. But he was a good worker and never complained, honest and sober. He seemed painfully shy about his English, being a Sudanese. Moussa never initiated conversations and kept his political and religious views to himself. He was certainly a religious man; he prayed five times a day, and went to Mosque each Friday.
Williams asked the owners if they wouldn’t mind showing him all the work orders processed over the last few months while Moussa was employed there, and they were more than happy to oblige. They still remembered 9/11. That event, and the recession which soon followed, had decimated their business. Jukeboxes were discretionary items, after all. “You don’t suddenly get a feeling in your stomach at 3:00 AM to run out and pick up a couple of jukeboxes,” Gerald said. “No,” said Ted. “You don’t do that.” After about fifteen minutes, the owners finally returned, their arms laden with files. “Knock yourselves out,” they said in unison and left the room.
“Now why,” Williams wondered aloud, “would a boy who grew up in Yonkers be shy about his English?”
“Maybe he’s ashamed of being an American,” Kazinski said.
The agents spent the next few hours pouring over the work orders — mostly independent restaurants and bars, a few chains such as Hallahan’s and Rock ‘n Roll Planet, as well as some private residences. There were dozens and dozens of them. But, except for some shoddy bookkeeping, nothing seemed amiss.
At one point, Decker got up to take a break. His eyes were strained from the close reading. He was getting a headache. He made his way to the rear of the dealership. The place was packed with jukeboxes. Many were standard CD/DVD players, clean-lined and contemporary. A few were classic vinyl Wurlitzers, or spanking new Rock-Olas with patented SyberSonic sound, colorful plastic accents and bright multi-colored lights. Some contained water, busy with columns of bubbles or tropical fish, while others looked more like giant standing lava lamps. Decker proceeded past another office into a narrow corridor. There was a bathroom to his left. He ignored it. The corridor led to a set of stairs by a payphone. He started down, heading toward the basement.