They followed her through the kitchen and into a small living room where the detectives sat on an upholstered sofa that probably had been made in the mountains of North Carolina. The blue robe Shalah Aslam was wearing most likely had been purchased at the Gap. But here on the mantel was a clock shaped in the form of a mosque, and there were beaded curtains leading to another part of the apartment, and there were the aromas of strange foods from other parts of the building, and the sounds of strange languages wafting up from the street through the open windows. They could have been somewhere in downtown Dhakar.
“The children are still asleep,” Shalah explained. “Benazir is only six months old. The two other girls don’t catch their school bus until eight-fifteen. I usually wake them at seven.”
She had not yet cried. Her pale narrow face seemed entirely placid, her dark brown eyes vacant. The shock had registered, but the emotions hadn’t yet caught up.
“Khalid was worried that something like this might happen,” she said. “Ever since 9/11. That’s why he had those American flags in his taxi. To let passengers know he’s American. He got his citizenship five years ago. He’s American, same as you. We’re all Americans.”
They had not yet told her about the Star of David painted on her husband’s windshield.
“Seven Bangladesh people died in the towers, you know,” she said. “It is not as if we were not victims, too. Because we are Muslim, that does not make us terrorists. The terrorists on those planes were Saudi, you know. Not people from Bangladesh.”
“Mrs. Aslam, when you say he was worried, did he ever say specifically...?”
“Yes, because of what happened to some other drivers at Regal.”
“Regal?”
“That’s the company he works for. A Regal taxi was set on fire in Riverhead the very day the Americans went into Afghanistan. And another one parked in Calm’s Point was vandalized the week after we invaded Iraq. So he was afraid something might happen to him as well.”
“But he’d never received a specific death threat, had he? Or...”
“No.”
“...a threat of violence?”
“No, but the fear was always there. He has had rocks thrown at his taxi. He told me he was thinking of draping a small American flag over his hack license, to hide his picture and name. When passengers ask if he’s Arab, he tells them he’s from Bangladesh.”
She was still talking about him in the present tense. It still hadn’t sunk in.
“Most people don’t even know where Bangladesh is. Do you know where Bangladesh is?” she asked Meyer.
“No, ma’am, I don’t,” Meyer said.
“Do you?” she asked Carella.
“No,” Carella admitted.
“But they know to shoot my husband because he is from Bangladesh,” she said, and burst into tears.
The two detectives sat opposite her clumsily, saying nothing.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
She took a tiny, crochet-trimmed handkerchief from the pocket of the robe, dabbed at her eyes with it.
“Khalid was always so careful,” she said. “He never picked up anyone wearing a ski cap,” drying her cheeks now. “If he got sleepy, he parked in front of a twenty-four-hour gas station or a police precinct. He never picked up anyone who didn’t look right. He didn’t care what color a person was. If that person looked threatening, he wouldn’t pick him up. He hid his money in his shoes, or in an ashtray, or in the pouch on the driver-side door. He kept only a few dollars in his wallet. He was a very careful man.”
Meyer bit the bullet.
“Did your husband know any Jewish people?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “Why?”
“Mama?” a child’s voice asked.
A little girl in a white nightgown, six, seven years old, was standing in the doorway to one of the other rooms. Her dark eyes were big and round in a puzzled face Meyer had seen a thousand times on television these past several years. Straight black hair. A slight frown on the face now. Wondering who these strange men were in their living room at close to seven in the morning.
“Where’s Daddy?” she asked.
“Daddy’s working,” Shalah said, and lifted her daughter onto her lap. “Say hello to these nice men.”
“Hello,” the little girl said.
“This is Sabeen,” Shalah said. “Sabeen is in the first grade, aren’t you, Sabeen?”
“Uh-huh,” Sabeen said.
“Hello, Sabeen,” Meyer said.
“Hello,” she said again.
“Sweetie, go read one of your books for a while, okay?” Shalah said. “I have to finish here.”
“I have to go to school,” Sabeen said.
“I know, darling. I’ll just be a few minutes.”
Sabeen gave the detectives a long look, and then went out of the room, closing the door behind her.
“Did a Jew kill my husband?” Shalah asked.
“We don’t know that,” Carella said.
“Then why did you ask if he knew any Jews?”
“Because the possibility exists that this might have been a hate crime,” Meyer said.
“My husband was not a Palestinian,” Shalah said. “Why would a Jew wish to kill him?”
“We don’t know for a fact...”
“But you must at least suspect it was a Jew, isn’t that so? Otherwise, why would you ask such a question? Bangladesh is on the Bay of Bengal, next door to India. It is nowhere near Israel. So why would a Jew...?”
“Ma’am, a Star of David was painted on his windshield,” Meyer said.
The room went silent.
“Then it was a Jew,” she said, and clasped her hands in her lap.
She was silent for perhaps twenty seconds.
Then she said, “The rotten bastards.”
“I shouldn’t have told her,” Meyer said.
“Be all over the papers, anyway,” Carella said. “Probably make the front page of the afternoon tabloid.”
It was ten minutes past seven, and they were on their way across the bridge again, to where Regal Taxi had its garage on Abingdon and Hale. The traffic was even heavier than it had been on the way out. The day was warming up a little, but not much. This had been the worst damn winter Carella could ever remember. He’d been cold since October. And every time it seemed to be warming up a little, it either started snowing or raining or sleeting or some damn thing to dampen the spirits and crush all hope. Worst damn shitty winter ever.
“What?” Meyer said.
“Nothing.”
“You were frowning.”
Carella merely nodded.
“When do you think she’ll tell the kids?” Meyer asked.
“I think she made a mistake saying he was working. She’s got to tell them sooner or later.”
“Hard call to make.”
“Well, she’s not gonna send them to school today, is she?”
“I don’t know.”
“Be all over the papers,” Carella said again.
“I don’t know what I’d do in a similar situation.”
“When my father got killed, I told my kids that same day,” Carella said.
“They’re older,” Meyer said.
“Even so.”
He was silent for a moment.
“They really loved him,” he said.
Meyer figured he was talking about himself.
There are times in this city when it is impossible to catch a taxi. Stand on any street corner between three-fifteen and four o’clock and you can wave your hand at any passing blur of yellow, and — forget about it. That’s the forty-five minutes when every cabbie is racing back to the garage to turn in his trip sheet and make arrangements for tomorrow’s tour of duty. It was the same with cops. The so-called night shift started at four P.M. and ended at midnight. For the criminally inclined, the shift change was a good time for them to do their evil thing because that’s when all was confusion.