Fury

18

Tuesday, December 21

"Say, if it ain't Zak The Hack and G-dawg. You boys up for a little balling?" Khalif Mohammed arced a fifteen-foot jumper at the basket-nothing but net-then picked up his ball and walked over to the twins, who'd just arrived at the courts.

Exchanging high fives and homeboy handshakes, Giancarlo looked up at the tall, young black man. "We heard the good news from our dad. You guys don't have to worry about prison anymore."

"Yeah." Mohammed smiled. "Now I can get on with it."

Zak furrowed his dark eyebrows. "Aren't you mad? Like Rashad? I'd be mad if someone lied about something I'd done and I had to go to prison."

"And got kicked out of college and lost my scholarship," Giancarlo added.

Mohammed reflected for a moment. Sometimes these kids seemed a lot older to him than twelve-year-olds. Maybe old souls, he thought. "I won't kid you," he said. "I've been plenty mad over this. When I was lying on my bed in that prison staring up at a steel ceiling, listening to all the crazy bullshit you hear at night on a cell-block, I wanted to kill somebody. Kill that woman who lied. Kill the prosecutor. Kill just anybody to take the anger out of me."

As he spoke, the boys were surprised to see that he had tears in his eyes. "But I placed myself in the hands of Allah and said 'His will be done,' and then I wasn't so mad anymore. I believe that Allah has it all planned out and that I just had to accept it, and try to be a better man than the people who wronged me. It helped me realize that I lost that part of my life, but I didn't lose my life…and for a young black man coming from my neighborhood that's saying something. I still got my health, I got my faith, and I can still play ball."

He dribbled rapid-fire, then once between his legs and back in front of the twins and laughed. "You two Jethros think you can hang with Black Magic?"

The twins laughed back and tried to get the ball, which he kept easily out of their reach. Zak pulled up and asked, "Where's Rashad?"

The question broke Mohammed's concentration, which allowed Giancarlo to steal the ball and take off for the basket. Mohammed bit his lip and looked down the street. "He'll be along here in just a minute. To be honest, he and I haven't been hangin' quite as tight lately."

"Are you guys still friends?" Giancarlo asked, dribbling back after missing a layup.

"Sure. Sure. He's just been spending a lot of time with some people I don't particularly care for…but we're brothers, have been since we were both in diapers, and always will be."

"What are you going to do now?" Zak asked. "With your life, I mean."

Mohammed shrugged his broad shoulders. "Not entirely sure. There's still some legal things to clear up, but I want to go back to school. Maybe find someplace where I can still play ball and get my degree."

A nondescript sedan pulled up to the curb in front of the gate and Rashad Salaam got out of the passenger side. He scowled when he saw the twins, leaned back into the car, and said something to the driver, who sped away. Salaam entered the gate and pointed at Zak and Giancarlo. "Shit, K, why are you talking to them little muthafuckas?"

"Watch your mouth, Rashad," Mohammed replied. "They're just kids. They had nothing to do with what happened to us. You might remember, our lawyer said it was their daddy who signed the papers to drop the charges."

"Well, ain't that nice since we didn't do the crime, but we already did the time. You might remember that it was their daddy whose bitch brought the charges against us in the first place," Salaam replied. "And their daddy's bitch who put us in prison even when she knew that other ho had lied."

"It still wasn't the kids' fault. It's over, brother, time to move on."

Salaam turned and spit at the fence. "It ain't never going to be over. Our lives are ruined; all part of the white man's master plan to keep the brothers, especially Muslim brothers, down. Nits make lice, man. Those two may be innocent little kids now, but they'll grow up to be just like their daddy and all the rest of the white muthafuckas-especially Jews like these two here and their daddy-that live off the sweat and blood of brown people all over the world. Unless we put a stop to it."

Mohammed scoffed. "We put a stop to it? You've been hanging out too much with the Arab brothers at the mosque, man. Everything's a Jewish conspiracy to them with Americans just following along like dumb sheep. They never bother to ask Arab leaders where'd all that oil money go besides them fancy palaces and fine cars. How come 'we' ain't helping all them Palestinians in the refugee camps with that oil money?"

"Man, you starting to sound like The Man," Salaam said. "Or maybe you just his nigger."

Mohammed dropped the ball and started to walk toward his friend. "Who you calling a nigger, niggah?"

Giancarlo tugged on Mohammed's arm. "That's okay. Zak and I will just go shoot on the other court." He turned and started to walk away.

"No, you hold on G-man." Mohammed looked back at his friend. "Come on, Rashad. I'm going to shoot hoops with these kids. Let's play a little hoop."

"Hell, no," Salaam said and turned to leave the way he'd come.

"See you tonight?" Mohammed called after his friend, who just kept walking without turning to indicate he'd heard.

Mohammed watched him go, and the twins could see he was hurt. But then he stopped watching and dribbled toward the basket, pulling up to shoot a ten-foot brick that bounced off the rim. Retrieving the ball, he looked back at the twins. "Hey, we going to play or what?"

After an hour, a dark Lincoln town car pulled up at the curb and the boys' father got out from the rear seat. He waved them over. The twins high-fived Mohammed and sauntered off the court to show that they were going, but on their own terms.

"Hi, Dad," they said. Then bending over to look at the driver, they added, "Hi, Clay."

Zak pointed back at the court. "That's Khalif Mohammed, one of the basketball players who went to prison."

Karp glanced over at the young man who stood with his ball tucked under his arm. "I know," he said. "I remember seeing him in a couple of games. He sure knows how to play ball."

"Want to meet him?"

"Maybe some other day," Karp replied. He didn't want to get into how Mohammed and his codefendant might very well sue the city because of Rachman's foul-up and that it wasn't appropriate to make contact with him now. "Let's go grab some hot dogs at Nathan's; I've got to meet someone near there briefly." Surprised but delighted, the boys hopped in the car for the ride across the Brooklyn Bridge.

The Karp family males debarked from the car at the corner of Stillwell and Surf Avenues, looking up at the Nathan's Famous Frankfurters sign like pilgrims at a shrine. They ordered two dogs each, three orders of fries, and three sodas, which cost in the neighborhood of twenty-five bucks. Then the twins listened patiently as their dad groused-as he did every time they went to Nathan's-about how things had changed since he used to come there as a boy. "Back then, my mom would give me a dollar bill, which would get me three dogs, fries, and a soda, and I'd still have change left over. Back then, they cooked them on a grill outside during the summer and you could smell them sizzling and popping with just a trace of garlic as soon as you got off the Stillwell Avenue subway station. Back then…"

As soon as they'd wolfed their dogs and washed the remains down with their soft drinks, the twins clamored to go to the boardwalk at the end of Stillwell. "Can we go over to the water?" Zak asked.

Karp looked at his watch. "Sure, just stay in sight," he said.

The twins jumped out of their shoes and were scampering across the sand before he could come up with any other rules. Karp watched them go, then turned to look down the boardwalk toward Brighton Beach. His eyes were drawn to the amusement park and the Ferris wheel.

After a moment Karp turned his eyes from the Ferris wheel and looked in the opposite direction. Two hundred yards away was the pier, a dark, forbidding structure. He'd never thought of it that way when he was a boy and liked to go stand out on the end and watch the fishermen. But it had been tainted by what Jayshon Sykes and his gang had done to Liz Tyler in its shadows. Part of the reason he'd asked the boys if they wanted to visit Nathan's was so that he could fix in his mind the scene of the crime as he prepared for trial.

There was, however, another reason for the trip to Coney Island. That reason, he saw as he looked back toward Brighton Beach, was walking slowly down the boardwalk toward him.

Karp was surprised at how old the man seemed. He walked bent over with a cane and seemed frail. When he was a boy and would sometimes see the man at his grandfather's house, he'd seemed huge. The man would pick him up and hold him level with his eyes. "Have you been a good boy?" he would always ask, his English heavily accented.

When Butch nodded his head, the man would put him back down. Then he'd reach in his pocket and pull out a piece of saltwater taffy wrapped in wax paper. The man-whom he called Uncle, although the relationship was never quite clear back then-never remained long after they arrived. When Butch got older, he sensed that his father wasn't comfortable around him, and the two men treated each other with a sort of stiff politeness.

Over the years, Karp had seen the man only rarely. He'd sent him an announcement when he married Marlene, and two weeks later a wedding gift had arrived-an expensive set of Russian nesting dolls, ornately trimmed in gold leaf-but his wife had never met him. There were good reasons for this-reasons that explained his father's coolness-but Karp was delighted to see the man now.

"Uncle," he said, smiling as he walked up to the old man and hugged him, aware of the large younger man who hovered discreetly in the background.

"Good to see you, nephew," the old man responded. "It has been too long."

After giving the old man a brief rundown of the family's health and happiness, pointing out the twins who were chasing each other at the water's edge, he asked the old man why he'd called and asked for this meeting.

"Well, I know you are running for the office of district attorney," the old man began, "and I just wanted to express my concern that if some person in the newspapers or television should make some connection between you, me, and my family's…enterprises…it might not be a good thing."

Karp patted the old man on his shoulder. "They never have before," he replied. "I don't know why they would now. And if they do, I can tell them the truth. We are family but distant, unfortunately, and I really don't know anything about these enterprises. Nor do I want to…as we've always said, 'That's in Brooklyn.'"

The old man laughed. "Good, good. Yes, I have kept our family matters out of Manhattan-at least since you returned from law school and began to make a nuisance of yourself to my good friends the Italians and other 'businessmen,' not to mention the other foul and evil men you have dealt with."

"And I appreciate that," Karp said and smiled in return.

The old man looked out toward the twins, who'd noticed their father talking to someone and had started to walk toward them. "They are fine-looking boys," he said. "They've had a…shall we say, exciting life so far. And Lucy, she is well?"

"Yes, she's doing great," Karp replied. "She's in New York at the moment."

"I've heard. Seeing a cowboy, I believe."

"How did you…," Karp started to say, but stopped himself. He knew there was no threat to his family from this man, and how he gathered his information was his own business.

The old man's face grew serious. "Before the boys arrive, I want to get to the main reason I asked you to meet me. My sources tell me that your wife has agreed to help the women who prosecuted those pigs who raped that woman over there," the old man said, nodding toward the pier.

Karp saw no point in lying, although he was not going to volunteer any information about his own involvement. "Yes, she's working for the city attorney defending the case."

"Ah, yes. She is a tough one, and would have made a good addition to the 'family business' if her husband was not such a…what is the word I want…ah, a Goody Two-shoes," he said laughing again.

Karp laughed, too, and waited for the other shoe to drop.

"Anyway, I have some information that might help her."

"What's that?"

"Tell her that she should find the man who was in the prison cell with this lying bastard, Villalobos. Tell her that the man's name is Igor…Igor Kaminsky."

Karp couldn't keep the surprise off his face. "Kaminsky?"

"Yes, and I can see that it is a name you have heard," the old man replied. "Good, then perhaps this information is old news."

"Can you tell me any more about him or where to find him?" Karp asked. "Is he still in prison?"

The old man shook his head. "No, he is free. But I cannot tell you more than this. I am already breaking a confidence. Anyway, your boys arrive."

The twins ran up and stopped a few yards shy. "Giancarlo and Isaac, this is…an old friend of your great-grandfather," Karp said.

"Where do you live?" Zak asked.

"Brighton Beach," the old man said, pointing back over his shoulder. "Have you been good boys?"

The twins nodded their heads. "Most of the time," Giancarlo added for honesty's sake.

The old man looked at Karp with his hand in his pocket and a twinkle in his eye. "May I?" he asked, pulling two wax-wrapped pieces of saltwater taffy from his pocket.

Karp nodded although he couldn't speak because of the lump in his throat. The old man handed the candy to the twins, who barely had time to say thanks before popping the taffy into their mouths.

"You're welcome," he said. "Now, we say good-bye. But do me this favor."

"What?" the twins asked.

"Grow up to be good men like your father."