Transgressions

Merely Hate Ed McBain

A blue Star of David had been spray-painted on the windshield of the dead driver’s taxi.

“This is pretty unusual,” Monoghan said.

“The blue star?” Monroe asked.

“Well, that, too,” Monoghan agreed.

The two homicide detectives flanked Carella like a pair of book-ends. They were each wearing black suits, white shirts, and black ties, and they looked somewhat like morticians, which was not a far cry from their actual calling. In this city, detectives from Homicide Division were overseers of death, expected to serve in an advisory and supervisory capacity. The actual murder investigation was handled by the precinct that caught the squeal — in this case, the Eight-Seven.

“But I was referring to a cabbie getting killed,” Monoghan explained. “Since they started using them plastic partitions... what, four, five years ago?... yellow-cab homicides have gone down to practically zip.”

Except for tonight, Carella thought.

Tall and slender, standing in an easy slouch, Steve Carella looked like an athlete, which he wasn’t. The blue star bothered him. It bothered his partner, too. Meyer was hoping the blue star wasn’t the start of something. In this city — in this world — things started too fast and took too long to end.

“Trip sheet looks routine,” Monroe said, looking at the clipboard he’d recovered from the cab, glancing over the times and locations handwritten on the sheet. “Came on at midnight, last fare was dropped off at one-forty. When did you guys catch the squeal?”

Car four, in the Eight-Seven’s Adam Sector, had discovered the cab parked at the curb on Ainsley Avenue at two-thirty in the morning. The driver was slumped over the wheel, a bullet hole at the base of his skull. Blood was running down the back of his neck, into his collar. Blue paint was running down his windshield. The uniforms had phoned the detective squadroom some five minutes later.

“We got to the scene at a quarter to three,” Carella said.

“Here’s the ME, looks like,” Monoghan said.

Carl Blaney was getting out of a black sedan marked with the seal of the Medical Examiner’s Office. Blaney was the only person Carella knew who had violet eyes. Then again, he didn’t know Liz Taylor.

“What’s this I see?” he asked, indicating the clipboard in Monroe’s hand. “You been compromising the crime scene?”

“Told you,” Monoghan said knowingly.

“It was in plain sight,” Monroe explained.

“This the vie?” Blaney asked, striding over to the cab and looking in through the open window on the driver’s side. It was a mild night at the beginning of May. Spectators who’d gathered on the sidewalk beyond the yellow CRIME SCENE tapes were in their shirt sleeves. The detectives in sport jackets and ties, Blaney and the homicide dicks in suits and ties, all looked particularly formal, as if they’d come to the wrong street party.

“MCU been here yet?” Blaney asked.

“We’re waiting,” Carella said.

Blaney was referring to the Mobile Crime Unit, which was called the CSI in some cities. Before they sanctified the scene, not even the ME was supposed to touch anything. Monroe felt this was another personal jab, just because he’d lifted the goddamn clipboard from the front seat. But he’d never liked Blaney, so fuck him.

“Why don’t we tarry over a cup of coffee?” Blaney suggested, and without waiting for company, started walking toward an all-night diner across the street. This was a black neighborhood, and this stretch of turf was largely retail, with all of the shops closed at three-fifteen in the morning. The diner was the only place ablaze with illumination, although lights had come on in many of the tenements above the shuttered shops.

The sidewalk crowd parted to let Blaney through, as if he were a visiting dignitary come to restore order in Baghdad. Carella and Meyer ambled along after him. Monoghan and Monroe lingered near the taxi, where three or four blues stood around scratching their asses. Casually, Monroe tossed the clipboard through the open window and onto the front seat on the passenger side.

There were maybe half a dozen patrons in the diner when Blaney and the two detectives walked in. A man and a woman sitting in one of the booths were both black. The girl was wearing a purple silk dress and strappy high-heeled sandals. The man was wearing a beige linen suit with wide lapels. Carella and Meyer each figured them for a hooker and her pimp, which was profiling because for all they knew, the pair could have been a gainfully employed, happily married couple coming home from a late party. Everyone sitting on stools at the counter was black, too. So was the man behind it. They all knew this was the Law here, and the Law frequently spelled trouble in the hood, so they all fell silent when the three men took stools at the counter and ordered coffee.

“So how’s the world treating you these days?” Blaney asked the detectives.

“Fine,” Carella said briefly. He had come on at midnight, and it had already been a long night.

The counterman brought their coffees.

Bald and burly and blue-eyed, Meyer picked up his coffee cup, smiled across the counter, and asked, “How you doing?”

“Okay,” the counterman said warily.

“When did you come to work tonight?”

“Midnight.”

“Me, too,” Meyer said. “Were you here an hour or so ago?”

“I was here, yessir.”

“Did you see anything going down across the street?”

“Nossir.”

“Hear a shot?”

“Nossir.”

“See anyone approaching the cab there?”

“Nossir.”

“Or getting out of the cab?”

“I was busy in here,” the man said.

“What’s your name?” Meyer asked.

“Whut’s my name got to do with who got aced outside?”

“Nothing,” Meyer said. “I have to ask.”

“Deaven Brown,” the counterman said.

“We’ve got a detective named Arthur Brown up the Eight-Seven,” Meyer said, still smiling pleasantly.

“That right?” Brown said indifferently.

“Here’s Mobile,” Carella said, and all three men hastily downed their coffees and went outside again.

The chief tech was a Detective/First named Carlie...

“For Charles,” he explained.

...Epworth. He didn’t ask if anyone had touched anything, and Monroe didn’t volunteer the information either. The MCU team went over the vehicle and the pavement surrounding it, dusting for prints, vacuuming for fibers and hair. On the cab’s dashboard, there was a little black holder with three miniature American flags stuck in it like an open fan. In a plastic holder on the partition facing the back seat, there was the driver’s pink hack license. The name to the right of the photograph was Khalid Aslam. It was almost four A.M. when Epworth said it would be okay to examine the corpse.

Blaney was thorough and swift.

Pending a more thorough examination at the morgue, he proclaimed cause of death to be a gunshot wound to the head—

Big surprise, Monroe thought, but did not say.

— and told the assembled detectives that they would have his written report by the end of the day. Epworth promised likewise, and one of the MCU team drove the taxi off to the police garage where it would be sealed as evidence. An ambulance carried off the stiff. The blues took down the CRIME SCENE tapes, and told everybody to go home, nothing to see here anymore, folks.

Meyer and Carella still had four hours to go before their shift ended.

“Khalid Aslam, Khalid Aslam,” the man behind the computer said. “Must be a Muslim, don’t you think?”

The offices of the License Bureau at the Taxi and Limousine Commission occupied two large rooms on the eighth floor of the old brick building on Emory Street all the way downtown. At five in the morning, there were only two people on duty, one of them a woman at another computer across the room. Lacking population, the place seemed cavernous.

“Most of the drivers nowadays are Muslims,” the man said. His name was Lou Foderman, and he seemed to be close to retirement age, somewhere in his mid-sixties, Meyer guessed.

“Khalid Aslam, Khalid Aslam,” he said again, still searching. “The names these people have. You know how many licensed yellow-cab drivers we have in this city?” he asked, not turning from the computer screen. “Forty-two thousand,” he said, nodding. “Khalid Aslam, where are you hiding, Khalid Aslam? Ninety percent of them are immigrants, seventy percent from India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. You want to bet Mr. Aslam here is from one of those countries? How much you wanna bet?”

Carella looked up at the wall clock.

It was five minutes past five.

“Back when I was driving a cab,” Foderman said, “this was during the time of the Roman Empire, most of your cabbies were Jewish or Irish or Italian. We still got a couple of Jewish drivers around, but they’re mostly from Israel or Russia. Irish and Italian, forget about it. You get in a cab nowadays, the driver’s talking Farsi to some other guy on his cell phone, you think they’re planning a terrorist attack. I wouldn’t be surprised Mr. Aslam was talking on the phone to one of his pals, and the passenger shot him because he couldn’t take it anymore, you said he was shot, correct?”

“He was shot, yes,” Meyer said.

He looked up at the clock, too.

“Because he was babbling on the phone, I’ll bet,” Foderman said. “These camel jockeys think a taxi is a private phone booth, never mind the passenger. You ask them to please stop talking on the phone, they get insulted. We get more complaints here about drivers talking on the phone than anything else. Well, maybe playing the radio. They play their radios with all this string music from the Middle East, sitars, whatever they call them. Passengers are trying to have a decent conversation, the driver’s either playing the radio or talking on the phone. You tell him please lower the radio, he gives you a look could kill you on the spot. Some of them even wear turbans and carry little daggers in their boots, Sikhs, they call themselves. ‘All Singhs are Sikhs,’ ” Forderman quoted, “ ‘but not all Sikhs are Singhs,’ that’s an expression they have. Singhs is a family name. Or the other way around, I forget which. Maybe it’s ‘All Sikhs are Singhs,’ who knows? Khalid Aslam, here he is. What do you want to know about him?”

Like more than thousands of other Muslim cab drivers in this city, Khalid Aslam was born in Bangladesh. Twelve years ago, he came to America with his wife and one child. According to his updated computer file, he now had three children and lived with his family at 3712 Locust Avenue in Majesta, a neighborhood that once — like the city’s cab drivers — was almost exclusively Jewish, but which now was predominately Muslim.

Eastern Daylight Savings Time had gone into effect three weeks ago. This morning, the sun came up at six minutes to six. There was already heavy early-morning rush-hour traffic on the Majesta Bridge. Meyer was driving. Carella was riding shotgun.

“You detect a little bit of anti-Arab sentiment there?” Meyer asked.

“From Foderman, you mean?”

“Yeah. It bothers me to hear another Jew talk that way.”

“Well, it bothers me, too,” Carella said.

“Yeah, but you’re not Jewish.”

Someone behind them honked a horn.

“What’s with him?” Meyer asked.

Carella turned to look.

“Truck in a hurry,” he said.

“I have to tell you,” Meyer said, “that blue star on the windshield bothers me. Aslam being Muslim. A bullet in the back of his head, and a Star of David on the windshield, that bothers me.”

The truck driver honked again.

Meyer rolled down the window and threw him a finger. The truck driver honked again, a prolonged angry blast this time.

“Shall we give him a ticket?” Meyer asked jokingly.

“I think we should,” Carella said.

“Why not? Violation of Section Two Twenty-One, Chapter Two, Subchapter Four, Noise Control.”

“Maximum fine, eight hundred and seventy-five smackers,” Carella said, nodding, enjoying this.

“Teach him to honk at cops,” Meyer said.

The driver behind them kept honking his horn.

“So much hate in this city,” Meyer said softly. “So much hate.”

Shalah Aslam opened the door for them only after they had both held up their shields and ID cards to the three inches of space allowed by the night chain. She was wearing a blue woolen robe over a long white cotton nightgown. There was a puzzled look on her pale face. This was six-thirty in the morning, she had to know that two detectives on her doorstep at this hour meant something terrible had happened.

There was no diplomatic way to tell a woman that her husband had been murdered.

Standing in a hallway redolent of cooking smells, Carella told Shalah that someone had shot and killed her husband, and they would appreciate it if she could answer a few questions that might help them find whoever had done it. She asked them to come in. The apartment was very still. In contrast to the night before, the day had dawned far too cold for May. There was a bleak chill to the Aslam dwelling.

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.

Confusion was the order of the day at the Regal garage when Meyer and Carella got there at seven-thirty that morning. Cabs were rolling in, cabs were rolling out. Assistant managers were making arrangements for tomorrow’s short-terms, and dispatchers were sending newly gassed taxis on their way through the big open rolling doors. This was the busiest time of the day. Even busier than the pre-theater hours. Nobody had time for two flatfoots investigating a homicide.

Carella and Meyer waited.

Their own shift would end in — what was it now? — ten minutes, and they were bone-weary and drained of all energy, but they waited patiently because a man had been killed and Carella had been First Man Up when he answered the phone. It was twelve minutes after eight before the manager, a man named Dennis Ryan, could talk to them. Tall, and red-headed, and fortyish, harried-looking even though all of his cabs were on their way now, he kept nodding impatiently as they told him what had happened to Khalid Aslam.

“So where’s my cab?” he asked.

“Police garage on Courtney,” Meyer told him.

“When do I get it back? That cab is money on the hoof.”

“Yes, but a man was killed in it,” Carella said.

“When I saw Kal didn’t show up this morning...”

Kal, Carella thought. Yankee Doodle Dandy.

“...I figured he stopped to say one of his bullshit prayers.”

Both detectives looked at him.

“They’re supposed to pray five times a day, you know, can you beat it? Five times! Sunrise, early afternoon, late afternoon, sunset, and then before they go to bed. Five friggin times! And two optional ones if they’re really holy. Most of them recognize they have a job to do here, they don’t go flopping all over the sidewalk five times a day. Some of them pull over to a mosque on their way back in, for the late afternoon prayer. Some of them just do the one before they come to work, and the sunset one if they’re home in time, and then the one before they go to bed. I can tell you anything you need to know about these people, we got enough of them working here, believe me.”

“What kind of a worker was Aslam?” Carella asked.

“I guess he made a living.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning, it costs eighty-two bucks a shift to lease the cab. Say the driver averages a hundred above that in fares and tips. Gasoline costs him, say, fifteen, sixteen bucks? So he ends up taking home seventy-five, eighty bucks for an eight-hour shift. That ain’t bad, is it?”

“Comes to around twenty grand a year,” Meyer said.

“Twenty, twenty-five. That ain’t bad,” Ryan said again.

“Did he get along with the other drivers?” Carella asked.

“Oh, sure. These friggin Arabs are thick as thieves.”

“How about your non-Arab drivers? Did he get along with them?”

“What non-Arab drivers? Why? You think one of my drivers done him?”

“Did he ever have any trouble with one of the other drivers?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Ever hear him arguing with one of them?”

“Who the hell knows? They babble in Bangla, Urdu, Sindi, Farsi, who the hell knows what else? They all sound the same to me. And they always sound like they’re arguing. Even when they got smiles on their faces.”

“Have you got any Jewish drivers?” Meyer asked.

“Ancient history,” Ryan said. “I ain’t ever seen a Jewish driver at Regal.”

“How about anyone who might be sympathetic to the Jewish cause?”

“Which cause is that?” Ryan asked.

“Anyone who might have expressed pro-Israel sympathies?”

“Around here? You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Did you ever hear Aslam say anything against Israel? Or the Jewish people?”

“No. Why? Did a Jew kill him?”

“What time did he go to work last night?”

“The boneyard shift goes out around eleven-thirty, quarter to twelve, comes in around seven, seven-thirty — well, you saw. I guess he must’ve gone out as usual. Why? What time was he killed?”

“Around two, two-thirty.”

“Where?”

“Up on Ainsley and Twelfth.”

“Way up there, huh?” Ryan said. “You think a nigger did it?”

“We don’t know if who did it was white, purple, or black, was the word you meant, right?” Carella said, and looked Ryan dead in the eye.

And fuck you, too, Ryan thought, but said only, “Good luck catching him,” making it sound like a curse.

Meyer and Carella went back to the squadroom to type up their interim report on the case.

It was almost a quarter to nine when they finally went home.

The day shift had already been there for half an hour.

Detectives Arthur Brown and Bert Kling made a good salt-and-pepper pair.

Big and heavyset and the color of his surname, Brown looked somewhat angry even when he wasn’t. A scowl from him was usually enough to cause a perp to turn to Kling for sympathy and redemption. A few inches shorter than his partner — everybody was a few inches shorter than Brown — blond and hazel-eyed, Kling looked like a broad-shouldered farm boy who’d just come in off the fields after working since sunup. God Cop-Bad Cop had been invented for Kling and Brown.

It was Brown who took the call from Ballistics at 10:27 that Friday morning.

“You handling this cabbie kill?” the voice said.

Brown immediately recognized the caller as a brother.

“I’ve been briefed on it,” he said.

“This is Carlyle, Ballistics. We worked that evidence bullet the ME’s office sent over, you want to take this down for whoever’s running the case?”

“Shoot,” Brown said, and moved a pad into place.

“Nice clean bullet, no deformities, must’ve lodged in the brain matter, ME’s report didn’t say exactly where they’d recovered it. Not that it matters. First thing we did here, bro...”

He had recognized Brown’s voice as well.

“...was compare a rolled impression of the evidence bullet against our specimen cards. Once we got a first-sight match, we did a microscopic examination of the actual bullet against the best sample bullet in our file. Way we determine the make of an unknown firearm is by examining the grooves on the bullet and the right or left direction of twist — but you don’t want to hear all that shit, do you?”

Brown had heard it only ten thousand times before.

“Make a long story short,” Carlyle said, “what we got here is a bullet fired from a .38-caliber Colt revolver, which is why you didn’t find an ejected shell in the taxi, the gun being a revolver and all. Incidentally, there are probably a hundred thousand unregistered, illegal .38-caliber Colts in this city, so the odds against you finding it are probably eighty to one. End of story.”

“Thanks,” Brown said. “I’ll pass it on.”

“You see today’s paper?” Carlyle asked.

“No, not yet.”

“Case made the front page. Makes it sound like the Israeli army invaded Majesta with tanks, one lousy Arab. Is this true about a Jewish star on the windshield?”

“That’s what our guys found.”

“Gonna be trouble, bro,” Carlyle said.

He didn’t know the half of it.

While Carella and Meyer slept like hibernating grizzlies, Kling and Brown read their typed report, noted that the dead driver’s widow had told them the Aslams’ place of worship was called Majid Hazrati-Shabazz, and went out at eleven that morning to visit the mosque.

If either of them had expected glistening white minarets, arches, and domes, they were sorely disappointed. There were more than a hundred mosques in this city, but only a handful of them had been originally designed as such. The remainder had been converted to places of worship from private homes, warehouses, storefront buildings, and lofts. There were, in fact, only three requirements for any building that now called itself a mosque: that males and females be separated during prayer; that there be no images of animate objects inside the building; and that the quibla — the orientation of prayer in the direction of the Kabba in Mecca — be established.

A light rain began falling as they got out of the unmarked police sedan and began walking toward a yellow brick building that had once been a small supermarket on the corner of Lowell and Franks. Metal shutters were now in place where earlier there’d been plate glass display windows. Grafitti decorated the yellow brick and the green shutters. An ornately hand-lettered sign hung above the entrance doors, white on a black field, announcing the name of the mosque: Majid Hazrat-i-Shabazz. Men in flowing white garments and embroidered prayer caps, other men in dark business suits and pillbox hats milled about on the sidewalk with young men in team jackets, their baseball caps turned backward. Friday was the start of the Muslim sabbath, and now the faithful were being called to prayer.

On one side of the building, the detectives could see women entering through a separate door.

“My mother knows this Muslim lady up in Diamondback,” Brown said, “she goes to this mosque up there — lots of blacks are Muslims, you know...”

“I know,” Kling said.

“And where she goes to pray, they got no space for this separation stuff. So the men and women all pray together in the same open hall. But the women sit behind the men. So this fat ole sister gets there late one Friday, and the hall is already filled with men, and they tell her there’s no room for her. Man, she takes a fit! Starts yelling, ‘This is America, I’m as good a Muslim as any man here, so how come they’s only room for brothers to pray?’ Well, the imam — that’s the man in charge, he’s like the preacher — he quotes scripture and verse that says only men are required to come to Friday prayer, whereas women are not. So they have to let the men in first. It’s as simple as that. So she quotes right back at him that in Islam, women are spose to be highly respected and revered, so how come he’s dissing her this way? And she walked away from that mosque and never went back. From that time on, she prayed at home. That’s a true story,” Brown said.

“I believe it,” Kling said.

The imam’s address that Friday was about the dead cab driver. He spoke first in Arabic — which, of course, neither Kling nor Brown understood — and then he translated his words into English, perhaps for their benefit, perhaps in deference to the younger worshippers in the large drafty hall. The male worshippers knelt at the front of the hall. Behind a translucent, moveable screen, Brown and Kling could perceive a small number of veiled female worshippers.

The imam said he prayed that the strife in the Middle East was not now coming to this city that had known so much tragedy already. He said he prayed that an innocent and hard-working servant of Allah had not paid with his life for the acts of a faraway people bent only on destruction—

The detectives guessed he meant the Israelis.

— prayed that the signature star on the windshield of the murdered man’s taxi was not a promise of further violence to come.

“It is foolish to grieve for our losses,” he said, “since all is ordained by Allah. Only by working for the larger nation of Islam can we understand the true meaning of life.”

Men’s foreheads touched the cement floor.

Behind the screen, the women bowed their heads as well.

The imam’s name was Muhammad Adham Akbar.

“What we’re trying to find out,” Brown said, “is whether or not Mr. Aslam had any enemies that you know of.”

“Why do you even ask such a question?” Akbar said.

“He was a worshipper at your mosque,” Kling said. “We thought you might know.”

“Why would he have enemies here?”

“Men have enemies everywhere,” Brown said.

“Not in a house of prayer. If you want to know who Khalid’s enemy was, you need only look at his windshield.”

“Well, we have to investigate every possibility,” Kling said.

“The star on his windshield says it all,” Akbar said, and shrugged. “A Jew killed him. That would seem obvious to anyone.”

“Well, a Jew may have committed those murders,” Kling agreed. “But...”

“May,” the imam said, and nodded cynically.

“But until we catch him, we won’t know for sure, will we?” Kling said.

Akbar looked at him.

Then he said, “The slain man had no enemies that I know of.”

Just about when Carella and Meyer were each and separately waking up from eight hours of sleep, more or less, the city’s swarm of taxis rolled onto the streets for the four-to-midnight shift. And as the detectives sat down to late afternoon meals which for each of them were really hearty breakfasts, many of the city’s more privileged women were coming out into the streets to start looking for taxis to whisk them homeward. Here was a carefully coiffed woman who’d just enjoyed afternoon tea, chatting with another equally stylish woman as they strolled together out of a midtown hotel. And here was a woman who came out of a department store carrying a shopping bag in each hand, shifting one of the bags to the other hand, freeing it so she could hail a taxi. And here was a woman coming out of a Korean nail shop, wearing paper sandals to protect her freshly painted toenails. And another coming out of a deli, clutching a bag with baguettes showing, raising one hand to signal a cab. At a little before five, the streets were suddenly alive with the leisured women of this city, the most beautiful women in all the world, all of them ready to kill if another woman grabbed a taxi that had just been hailed.

This was a busy time for the city’s cabbies. Not ten minutes later, the office buildings would begin spilling out men and women who’d been working since nine this morning, coming out onto the pavements now and sucking in great breaths of welcome spring air. The rain had stopped, and the sidewalk and pavements glistened, and there was the strange aroma of freshness on the air. This had been one hell of a winter.

The hands went up again, typists’ hands, and file clerks’ hands, and the hands of lawyers and editors and agents and producers and exporters and thieves, yes, even thieves took taxis — though obvious criminal types were avoided by these cabbies steering their vehicles recklessly toward the curb in a relentless pursuit of passengers. These men had paid eighty-two dollars to lease their taxis. These men had paid fifteen, twenty bucks to gas their buggies and get them on the road. They were already a hundred bucks in the hole before they put foot to pedal. Time was money. And there were hungry mouths to feed. For the most part, these men were Muslims, these men were gentle strangers in a strange land.

But someone had killed one of them last night.

And he was not yet finished.

Salim Nazir and his widowed mother left Afghanistan in 1994, when it became apparent that the Taliban were about to take over the entire country. His father had been one of the mujahideen killed fighting the Russian occupation; Salim’s mother did not wish the wrath of “God’s Students” to fall upon their heads if and when a new regime came to power.

Salim was now twenty-seven years old, his mother fifty-five. Both had been American citizens for three years now, but neither approved of what America had done to their native land, the evil Taliban notwithstanding. For that matter they did not appreciate what America had done to Iraq in its search for imaginary weapons of mass destruction. (Salim called them “weapons of mass deception.”) In fact, Salim totally disapproved of the mess America had made in what once was his part of the world, but he rarely expressed these views out loud, except when he was among other Muslims who lived — as he and his mother did now — in a ghettolike section of Calm’s Point.

Salim knew what it was like to be an outsider in George W. Bush’s America, no matter how many speeches the president made about Islam being a peaceful religion. With all his heart, Salim knew this to be true, but he doubted very much that Mr. Bush believed what he was saying.

Just before sundown that Friday, Salim pulled his yellow taxi into the curb in front of a little shop on a busy street in Majesta. Here in Ikram Hassan’s store, devout Muslims could purchase whatever food and drink was considered halal — lawful or permitted for consumption as described in the Holy Koran.

The Koran decreed, “Eat of that over which the name of Allah hath been mentioned, if ye are believers in His revelations.” Among the acceptable foods were milk (from cows, sheep, camels, or goats), honey, fish, plants that were not intoxicant, fresh or naturally frozen vegetables, fresh or dried fruits, legumes (like peanuts, cashews, hazelnuts, and walnuts), and grains such as wheat, rice, barley, and oats.

Many animals, large and small, were considered halal as well, but they had to be slaughtered according to Islamic ritual. Ikram Hassan was about to slay a chicken just as his friend Salim came into the shop. He looked up when a small bell over his door sounded.

“Hey there, Salim,” he said in English.

There were two major languages in Afghanistan, both of them imported from Iran, but Pushto was the official language the two men had learned as boys growing up in Kandahar, and this was the language they spoke now.

Salim fidgeted and fussed as his friend hunched over the chicken; he did not want to be late for the sunset prayer. Using a very sharp knife, and making certain that he cut the main blood vessels without completely severing the throat, Ikram intoned “Bismillah Allah-u-Albar” and completed the ritual slaughter.

Each of the men then washed his hands to the wrists, and cleansed the mouth and the nostrils with water, and washed the face and the right arm and left arm to the elbow, and washed to the ankle first the right foot and then the left, and at last wiped the top of the head with wet hands, the three middle fingers of each hand joined together.

Salim consulted his watch yet another time.

Both men donned little pillbox hats.

Ikram locked the front door to his store, and together they walked to the mosque four blocks away.

The sun had already set.

It was ten minutes to seven.

Among other worshippers, Salim and Ikram stood facing Mecca, their hands raised to their ears, and they uttered the words, “Allahu Akbar” which meant “Allah is the greatest of all.” Then they placed the right hand just below the breast and recited in unison the prayer called istiftah.

“Surely I have turned myself, being upright holy to Him Who originated the heavens and the earth and I am not of the polytheists. Surely my prayer and my sacrifice and my life and my death are for Allah, the Lord of the worlds, no associate has He; and this I am commanded and I am one of those who submit. Glory to Thee, O Allah, and Thine is the praise, and blessed is Thy name, and exalted is Thy majesty, and there is none to be served besides Thee.”

A’udhu bi-llahi minash-shaitani-r-rajim.

“I seek the refuge of Allah from the accursed devil.”

Six hours later, Salim Nazir would be dead.

In this city, all the plays, concerts, and musicals let out around eleven, eleven-thirty, the cabarets around one, one-thirty. The night clubs wouldn’t break till all hours of the night. It was Salim’s habit during the brief early-morning lull to visit a Muslim friend who was a short-order cook at a deli on Culver Avenue, a mile and a half distant from all the midtown glitter. He went into the deli at one-thirty, enjoyed a cup of coffee and a chat with his friend, and left twenty minutes later. Crossing the street to where he’d parked his taxi, he got in behind the wheel, and was just about to start the engine when he realized someone was sitting in the dark in the back seat.

Startled, he was about to ask what the hell, when the man fired a bullet through the plastic divider and into his skull.

The two Midtown South detectives who responded to the call immediately knew this killing was related to the one that had taken place uptown the night before; a blue Star of David had been spray-painted on the windshield. Nonetheless, they called their lieutenant from the scene, and he informed them that this was a clear case of First Man Up, and advised them to wait right there while he contacted the Eight-Seven, which had caught the original squeal. The detectives were still at the scene when Carella and Meyer got there at twenty minutes to three.

Midtown South told Carella that both MCU and the ME had already been there and gone, the corpse and the vehicle carried off respectively to the morgue and the PD garage to be respectively dissected and impounded. They told the Eight-Seven dicks that they’d talked to the short-order cook in the deli across the street, who informed them that he was a friend of the dead man, and that he’d been in there for a cup of coffee shortly before he got killed. The vic’s name was Salim Nazir, and the cab company he worked for was called City Transport. They assumed the case was now the Eight-Seven’s and that Carella and Meyer would do all the paper shit and send them dupes. Carella assured them that they would.

“We told you about the blue star, right?” one of the Midtown dicks said.

“You told us,” Meyer said.

“Here’s the evidence bullet we recovered,” he said, and handed Meyer a sealed manila envelope. “Chain of Custody tag on it, you sign next. Looks like you maybe caught an epidemic.”

“Or maybe a copycat,” Carella said.

“Either way, good luck,” the other Midtown dick said.

Carella and Meyer crossed the street to the deli.

Like his good friend, Salim, the short-order cook was from Afghanistan, having arrived here in the city seven years ago. He offered at once to show the detectives his green card, which made each of them think he was probably an illegal with a counterfeit card, but they had bigger fish to fry and Ajmal Khan was possibly a man who could help them do just that.

Ajmal meant “good-looking” in his native tongue, a singularly contradictory description for the man who now told them he had heard a shot outside some five minutes after Salim finished his coffee. Dark eyes bulging with excitement, black mustache bristling, bulbous nose twitching like a rabbit’s, Ajmal reported that he had rushed out of the shop the instant he heard the shot, and had seen a man across the street getting out of Salim’s taxi on the driver’s side, and leaning over the windshield with a can of some sort in his hand. Ajmal didn’t know what he was doing at the time but he now understood the man was spray-painting a Jewish star on the windshield.

“Can you describe this man?” Carella asked.

“Is that what he was doing? Painting a Star of David on the windshield?”

“Apparently,” Meyer said.

“That’s bad,” Ajmal said.

The detectives agreed with him. That was bad. They did not believe this was a copycat. This was someone specifically targeting Muslim cab drivers. But they went through the routine anyway, asking the questions they always asked whenever someone was murdered: Did he have any enemies that you know of, did he mention any specific death threats, did he say he was being followed or harassed, was he in debt to anyone, was he using drugs?

Ajmal told them that his good friend Salim was loved and respected by everyone. This was what friends and relatives always said about the vie. He was a kind and gentle person. He had a wonderful sense of humor. He was thoughtful and generous. He was devout. Ajmal could not imagine why anyone would have done this to a marvelous person like his good friend Salim Nazir.

“He was always laughing and friendly, a very warm and outgoing man. Especially with the ladies,” Ajmal said.

“What do you mean?” Carella asked.

“He was quite a ladies’ man, Salim. It is written that men may have as many as four wives, but they must be treated equally in every way. That is to say, emotionally, sexually, and materially. If Salim had been a wealthy man, I am certain he would have enjoyed the company of many wives.”

“How many wives did he actually have?” Meyer asked.

“Well, none,” Ajmal said. “He was single. He lived with his mother.”

“Do you know where?”

“Oh yes. We were very good friends. I have been to his house many times.”

“Can you give us his address?”

“His phone number, too,” Ajmal said. “His mother’s name is Gulalai. It means ‘flower’ in my country.”

“You say he was quite a ladies’ man, is that right?” Carella asked.

“Well, yes. The ladies liked him.”

“More than one lady?” Carella said.

“Well, yes, more than one.”

“Did he ever mention any jealousy among these various ladies?”

“I don’t even know who they were. He was a discreet man.”

“No reason any of these ladies might have wanted to shoot him?” Carella said.

“Not that I know of.”

“But he did say he was seeing several women, is that it?”

“In conversation, yes.”

“He said he was in conversation with several women?”

“No, he said to me in conversation that he was enjoying the company of several women, yes. As I said, he was quite a ladies’ man.”

“But he didn’t mention the names of these women.”

“No, he did not. Besides, it was a man I saw getting out of his taxi. A very tall man.”

“Could it have been a very tall woman?”

“No, this was very definitely a man.”

“Can you describe him?”

“Tall. Wide shoulders. Wearing a black raincoat and a black hat.” Ajmal paused. “The kind rabbis wear,” he said.

Which brought them right back to that Star of David on the windshield.

Two windshields.

This was not good at all.

This was a mixed lower-class neighborhood — white, black, Hispanic. These people had troubles of their own, they didn’t much care about a couple of dead Arabs. Matter of fact, many of them had sons or husbands who’d fought in the Iraqi war. Lots of the people Carella and Meyer spoke to early that morning had an “Army of One,” was what it was called nowadays, who’d gone to war right here from the hood. Some of these young men had never come back home except in a box.

You never saw nobody dying on television. All them reporters embedded with the troops, all you saw was armor racing across the desert. You never saw somebody taking a sniper bullet between the eyes, blood spattering. You never saw an artillery attack with arms and legs flying in the air. You could see more people getting killed right here in the hood than you saw getting killed in the entire Iraqi war. It was an absolute miracle, all them embedded newspeople out there reporting, and not a single person getting killed for the cameras. Maybe none of them had a camera handy when somebody from the hood got killed. So who gave a damn around here about a few dead Arabs more or less?

One of the black women they interviewed explained that people were asleep, anyway, at two in the morning, wun’t that so? So why go axin a dumb question like did you hear a shot that time of night? A Hispanic man they interviewed told them there were always shots in the barrio; nobody ever paid attention no more. A white woman told them she’d got up to go pee around that time, and thought she heard something but figured it was a backfire.

At 4:30 A.M., Meyer and Carella spoke to a black man who’d been blinded in Iraq. He was in pajamas and a bathrobe, and he was wearing dark glasses. A white cane stood angled against his chair. He could remember President Bush making a little speech to a handful of veterans like himself at the hospital where he was recovering, his eyes still bandaged. He could remember Bush saying something folksy like, “I’ll bet those Iraqi soldiers weren’t happy to meet you fellas!” He could remember thinking, I wun’t so happy to meet them, either. I’m goan be blind the ress of my life, Mr. Pres’dunt, how you feel about that?

“I heerd a shot,” he told the detectives.

Travon Nelson was his name. He worked as a dishwasher in a restaurant all the way downtown. They stopped serving at eleven, he was usually out by a little before one, took the number 17 bus uptown, got home here around two. He had just got off the bus, and was walking toward his building, his white cane tapping the sidewalk ahead of him...

He had once thought he’d like to become a Major League ballplayer.

...when he heard the sharp crack of a small-arms weapon, and then heard a car door slamming, and then a hissing sound, he didn’t know what it was...

The spray paint, Meyer thought... and then a man yelling.

“Yelling at you?” Carella asked.

“No, sir. Must’ve been some girl.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Cause whut he yelled was ‘You whore!’ An’ then I think he must’ve hit her, cause she screamed an’ kepp right on screamin an’ screamin.”

“Then what?” Meyer asked.

“He run off. She run off, too. I heerd her heels clickin away. High heels. When you blind...”

His voice caught.

They could not see his eyes behind the dark glasses.

“...you compensate with yo’ other senses. They was the sound of the man’s shoes runnin off and then the click of the girl’s high heels.”

He was silent for a moment, remembering again what high heels on a sidewalk sounded like.

“Then evy’thin went still again,” he said.

Years of living in war-torn Afghanistan had left their mark on Gulalai Nazir’s wrinkled face and stooped posture; she looked more like a woman in her late sixties than the fifty-five-year-old mother of Salim. The detectives had called ahead first, and several grieving relatives were already in her apartment when they got there at six that Saturday morning. Gulalai — although now an American citizen — spoke very little English. Her nephew — a man who at the age of sixteen had fought with the mujahideen against the Russians — translated for the detectives.

Gulalai told them what they had already heard from the short-order cook.

Her son was loved and respected by everyone. He was a kind and gentle person. A loving son. He had a wonderful sense of humor. He was thoughtful and generous. He was devout. Gulalai could not imagine why anyone would have done this to him.

“Unless it was that Jew,” she said.

The nephew translated.

“Which Jew?” Carella asked at once.

“The one who killed that other Muslim cab driver uptown,” the nephew translated.

Gulalai wrung her hands and burst into uncontrollable sobbing. The other women began wailing with her.

The nephew took the detectives aside.

His name was Osman, he told them, which was Turkish in origin, but here in America everyone called him either Ozzie or Oz.

“Oz Kiraz,” he said, and extended his hand. His grip was firm and strong. He was a big man, possibly thirty-two, thirty-three years old, with curly black hair and an open face with sincere brown eyes. Carella could visualize him killing Russian soldiers with his bare hands. He would not have enjoyed being one of them.

“Do you think you’re going to get this guy?” he asked.

“We’re trying,” Carella said.

“Or is it going to be the same song and dance?”

“Which song and dance is that, sir?” Meyer said.

“Come on, this city is run by Jews. If a Jew killed my cousin, it’ll be totally ignored.”

“We’re trying to make sure that doesn’t happen,” Carella said.

“I’ll bet,” Oz said.

“You’d win,” Meyer said.

The call from Detective Carlyle in Ballistics came at a quarter to seven that Saturday morning.

“You the man I spoke to yesterday?” he asked.

“No, this is Carella.”

“You workin this Arab shit?”

“Yep.”

“It’s the same gun,” Carlyle said. “This doesn’t mean it was the same guy, it coulda been his cousin or his uncle or his brother pulled the trigger. But it was the same .38-caliber Colt that fired the bullet.”

“That it?”

“Ain’t that enough?”

“More than enough,” Carella said. “Thanks, pal.”

“Buy me a beer sometime,” Carlyle said, and hung up.

At 8:15 that morning, just as Carella and Meyer were briefing Brown and Kling on what had happened the night before, an attractive young black woman in her mid twenties walked into the squadroom. She introduced herself as Wandalyn Holmes, and told the detectives that she’d been heading home from baby-sitting her sister’s daughter last night — walking to the corner to catch the number 17 bus downtown, in fact — when she saw this taxi sitting at the curb, and a man dressed all in black spraying paint on the windshield.

“When he saw I was looking at him, he pointed a finger at me...”

“Pointed...?”

“Like this, yes,” Wandalyn said, and showed them how the man had pointed his finger. “And he yelled ‘You! Whore!’ and I screamed and he came running after me.”

“You whore?”

“No, two words. First ‘You!’ and then ‘Whore!’ ”

“Did you know this man?”

“Never saw him in my life.”

“But he pointed his finger at you and called you a whore.”

“Yes. And when I ran, he came after me and caught me by the back of the coat, you know what I’m saying? The collar of my coat? And pulled me over, right off my feet.”

“What time was this, Miss Holmes?” Carella asked.

“About two in the morning, a little after.”

“What happened then?”

“He kicked me. While I was laying on the ground. He seemed mad as hell. I thought at first he was gonna rape me. I kept screaming, though, and he ran off.”

“What’d you do then?” Brown asked.

“I got up and ran off, too. Over to my sister’s place. I was scared he might come back.”

“Did you get a good look at him?”

“Oh yes.”

“Tell us what he looked like,” Meyer said.

“Like I said, he was all in black. Black hat, black raincoat, black everything.”

“Was he himself black?” Kling asked.

“Oh no, he was a white man.”

“Did you see his face?”

“I did.”

“Describe him.”

“Dark eyes. Angry. Very angry eyes.”

“Beard? Mustache?”

“No.”

“Notice any scars or tattoos?”

“No.”

“Did he say anything to you?”

“Well, yes, I told you. He called me a whore.”

“After that.”

“No. Nothing. Just pulled me over backward, and started kicking me when I was down. I thought he was gonna rape me, I was scared to death.” Wandalyn paused a moment. The detectives caught the hesitation.

“Yes?” Carella said. “Something else?”

“I’m sorry I didn’t come here right away last night, but I was too scared,” Wandalyn said. “He was very angry. So angry. I was scared he might come after me if I told the police anything.”

“You’re here now,” Carella said. “And we thank you.”

“He won’t come after me, right?” Wandalyn asked.

“I’m sure he won’t,” Carella said. “It’s not you he’s angry with.”

Wandalyn nodded. But still looked skeptical.

“You’ll be okay, don’t worry,” Brown said, and led her to the gate in the slatted wooden railing that divided the squadroom from the corridor outside.

At his desk, Carella began typing up their Detective Division report. He was still typing when Brown came over and said, “You know what time it is?”

Carella nodded and kept typing.

It was 9:33 A.M. when he finally printed up the report and carried it over to Brown’s desk.

“Go home,” Brown advised, scowling.

They had worked important homicides before, and these had also necessitated throwing the schedule out the window. What was new this time around—

Well, no, there was also a murder that had almost started a race riot, this must’ve been two, three years back, they hadn’t got much sleep that time, either. This was similar, but different. This was two Muslim cabbies who’d been shot to death by someone, obviously a Jew, eager to take credit for both murders.

Meyer didn’t know whether he dreamt it, or whether it was a brilliant idea he’d had before he fell asleep at nine that morning. Dream or brilliant idea, the first thing he did when the alarm clock rang at three that afternoon was find a fat felt-tipped pen and a sheet of paper and draw a big blue Star of David on it.

He kept staring at the star and wondering if the department’s handwriting experts could tell them anything about the man or men who had spray-painted similar stars on the windshields of those two cabs.

He was almost eager to get to work.

Six hours of sleep wasn’t bad for what both detectives considered a transitional period, similar to the decompression a deep-sea diver experienced while coming up to the surface in stages. Actually, they were moving back from the midnight shift to the night shift, a passage that normally took place over a period of days, but which given the exigency of the situation occurred in the very same day. Remarkably, both men felt refreshed and — in Meyer’s case at least — raring to go.

“I had a great idea last night,” he told Carella. “Or maybe it was just a dream. Take a look at this,” he said, and showed Carella the Star of David he’d drawn.

“Okay,” Carella said.

“I’m right-handed,” Meyer said. “So what I did...”

“So am I,” Carella said.

“What I did,” Meyer said, “was start the first triangle here at the northernmost point of the star... there are six points, you know, and they mean something or other, I’m not really sure what. I am not your ideal Jew.”

“I never would have guessed.”

“But religious Jews know what the six points stand for.”

“So what’s your big idea?”

“Well, I was starting to tell you. I began the first triangle at the very top, and drew one side down to this point here,” he said, indicating the point on the bottom right...

“...and then I drew a line across to the left...”

“...and another line up to the northern point again, completing the first triangle.”

“Okay,” Carella said, and picked up a pen and drew a triangle in exactly the same way.

“Then I started the second triangle at the western point — the one here on the left — and drew a line over to the east here...”

“...and then down on an angle to the south...”

“...and back up again to... northwest, I guess it is... where I started.”

Carella did the same thing.

“That’s right,” he said. “That’s how you do it.”

“Yes, but we’re both right-handed.”

“So?”

“I think a left-handed person might do it differently.”

“Ah,” Carella said, nodding.

“So I think we should call Documents and get them to look at both those cabs. See if the same guy painted those two stars, and find out if he was right-handed or left-handed.”

“I think that’s brilliant,” Carella said.

“You don’t.”

“I do.”

“I can tell you don’t.”

“I’ll make the call myself,” Carella said.

He called downtown, asked for the Documents Section, and spoke to a detective named Jackson who agreed that there would be a distinct difference between left- and right-handed handwriting, even if the writing instrument — so to speak — was a spray can. Carella told him they were investigating a double homicide...

“Those Muslim cabbies, huh?”

...and asked if Documents could send someone down to the police garage to examine the spray-painting on the windshields of the two impounded taxis. Jackson said it would have to wait till tomorrow morning, they were a little short-handed today.

“While I have you,” Carella said, “can you switch me over to the lab?”

The lab technician he spoke to reported that the paint scrapings from the windshields of both cabs matched laboratory samples of a product called Redi-Spray, which was manufactured in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, distributed nationwide, and sold in virtually every hardware store and supermarket in this city. Carella thanked him and hung up.

He was telling Meyer what he’d just learned, when Rabbi Avi Cohen walked into the squadroom.

“I think I may be able to help you with the recent cab driver murders,” the rabbi said.

Carella offered him a chair alongside his desk.

“If I may,” the rabbi said, “I would like to go back to the beginning.”

Would you be a rabbi otherwise? Meyer thought.

“The beginning was last month,” the rabbi said, “just before Passover. Today is the sixteenth day of the Omer, which is one week and nine days from the second day of Passover, so this would have been before Passover. Around the tenth of April, a Thursday I seem to recall it was.”

As the rabbi remembers it...

This young man came to him seeking guidance and assistance. Was the rabbi familiar with a seventeen-year-old girl named Rebecca Schwartz, who was a member of the rabbi’s own congregation? Well, yes, of course, Rabbi Cohen knew the girl well. He had, in fact, officiated at her bat mitzvah five years ago. Was there some problem?

The problem was that the young man was in love with young Rebecca, but he was not of the Jewish faith — which, by the way, had been evident to the rabbi at once, the boy’s olive complexion, his dark brooding eyes. It seemed that Rebecca’s parents had forbidden her from seeing the boy ever again, and this was why he was here in the synagogue today, to ask the rabbi if he could speak to Mr. Schwartz and convince him to change his mind.

Well.

The rabbi explained that this was an Orthodox congregation and that anyway there was a solemn prohibition in Jewish religious law against a Jew marrying anyone but another Jew. He went on to explain that this ban against intermarriage was especially pertinent to our times, when statistics indicated that an alarming incidence of intermarriage threatened the very future of American Jewry.

“In short,” Rabbi Cohen said, “I told him I was terribly sorry, but I could never approach Samuel Schwartz with a view toward encouraging a relationship between his daughter and a boy of another faith. Do you know what he said to me?”

“What?” Carella asked.

“ ‘Thanks for nothing!’ He made it sound like a threat.”

Carella nodded. So did Meyer.

“And then the e-mails started,” the rabbi said. “Three of them all together. Each with the same message. ‘Death to all Jews.’ And just at sundown last night...”

“When was this?” Meyer asked. “The e-mails?”

“Last week. All of them last week.”

“What happened last night?” Carella asked.

“Someone threw a bottle of whiskey with a lighted wick through the open front door of the synagogue.”

The two detectives nodded again.

“And you think this boy... the one who’s in love with Rebecca...?”

“Yes,” the rabbi said.

“You think he might be the one responsible for the e-mails and the Molotov...”

“Yes. But not only that. I think he’s the one who killed those cab drivers.”

“I don’t understand,” Carella said. “Why would a Muslim want to kill other Mus...?”

“But he’s not Muslim. Did I say he was Muslim?”

“You said this was related to the...”

“Catholic. He’s a Catholic.”

The detectives looked at each other.

“Let me understand this,” Carella said. “You think this kid... how old is he, anyway?”

“Eighteen, I would guess. Nineteen.”

“You think he got angry because you wouldn’t go to Rebecca’s father on his behalf...”

“That’s right.”

“So he sent you three e-mails, and tried to fire-bomb your temple...”

“Exactly.”

“...and also killed two Muslim cab drivers?”

“Yes.”

“Why? The Muslims, I mean.”

“To get even.”

“With?”

“With me. And with Samuel Schwartz. And Rebecca. With the entire Jewish population of this city.”

“How would killing two...?”

“The magen David,” the rabbi said.

“The Star of David,” Meyer explained.

“Painted on the windshields,” the rabbi said. “To let people think a Jew was responsible. To enflame the Muslim community against Jews. To cause trouble between us. To cause more killing. That is why.”

The detectives let this sink in.

“Did this kid happen to give you a name?” Meyer asked.

Anthony Inverni told the detectives he didn’t wish to be called Tony.

“Makes me sound like a wop,” he said. “My grandparents were born here, my parents were born here, my sister and I were both born here, we’re Americans. You call me Tony, I’m automatically Italian. Well, the way I look at it, Italians are people who are born in Italy and live in Italy, not Americans who were born here and live here. And we’re not Italian-Americans, either, by the way, because Italian-Americans are people who came here from Italy and became American citizens. So don’t call me Tony, okay?”

He was nineteen years old, with curly black hair, and an olive complexion, and dark brown eyes. Sitting at sunset on the front steps of his building on Merchant Street, all the way downtown near Ramsey University, his arms hugging his knees, he could have been any Biblical Jew squatting outside a baked-mud dwelling in an ancient world. But Rabbi Cohen had spotted him for a goy first crack out of the box.

“Gee, who called you Tony?” Carella wanted to know.

“You were about to. I could feel it coming.”

Calling a suspect by his first name was an old cop trick, but actually Carella hadn’t been about to use it on the Inverni kid here. In fact, he agreed with him about all these proliferating hyphenated Americans in a nation that broadcast the words “United We Stand” as if they were a newly minted advertising slogan. But his father’s name had been Anthony. And his father had called himself Tony.

“What would you like us to call you?” he asked.

“Anthony. Anthony could be British. In fact, soon as I graduate, I’m gonna change my last name to Winters. Anthony Winters. I could be the prime minister of England, Anthony Winters. That’s what Inverni means anyway, in Italian. Winters.”

“Where do you go to school, Anthony?” Carella asked.

“Right here,” he said, nodding toward the towers in the near distance. “Ramsey U.”

“You studying to be a prime minister?” Meyer asked.

“A writer. Anthony Winters. How does that sound for a writer?”

“Very good,” Meyer said, trying the name, “Anthony Winters, excellent. We’ll look for your books.”

“Meanwhile,” Carella said, “tell us about your little run-in with Rabbi Cohen.”

“What run-in?”

“He seems to think he pissed you off.”

“Well, he did. I mean, why wouldn’t he go to Becky’s father and put in a good word for me? I’m a straight-A student, I’m on the dean’s list, am I some kind of pariah? You know what that means, ‘pariah’?”

Meyer figured this was a rhetorical question.

“I’m not even Catholic, no less pariah,” Anthony said, gathering steam. “I gave up the church the minute I tipped to what they were selling. I mean, am I supposed to believe a virgin gave birth? To the son of God, no less? That goes back to the ancient Greeks, doesn’t it? All their Gods messing in the affairs of humans? I mean, give me a break, man.”

“Just how pissed off were you?” Carella asked.

“Enough,” Anthony said. “But you should’ve seen Becky! When I told her what the rabbi said, she wanted to go right over there and kill him.”

“Then you’re still seeing her, is that it?”

“Of course I’m still seeing her! We’re gonna get married, what do you think? You think her bigoted father’s gonna stop us? You think Rabbi Cohen’s gonna stop us? We’re in love!”

Good for you, Meyer thought. And mazeltov. But did you kill those two cabbies, as the good rov seems to think?

“Are you on the internet?” he asked.

“Sure.”

“Do you send e-mails?”

“That’s the main way Becky and I communicate. I can’t phone her because her father hangs up the minute he hears my voice. Her mother’s a little better, she at least lets me talk to her.”

“Ever send an e-mail to Rabbi Cohen?”

“No. Why? An e-mail? Why would...?”

“Three of them, in fact.”

“No. What kind of e-mails?”

“ ‘Death to all Jews,’ ” Meyer quoted.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Anthony said. “I love a Jewish girl! I’m gonna marry a Jewish girl!”

“Were you anywhere near Rabbi Cohen’s synagogue last night?” Carella asked.

“No. Why?”

“You didn’t throw a fire-bomb into that synagogue last night, did you?”

“No, I did not!”

“Sundown last night? You didn’t...?”

“Not at sundown and not at any time! I was with Becky at sundown. We were walking in the park outside school at sundown. We were trying to figure out our next move.”

“You may love a Jewish girl,” Meyer said, “but how do you feel about Jews?”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“It means how do you feel about all these Jews who are trying to keep you from marrying this Jewish girl you love?”

“I did not throw a fucking fire-bomb...”

“Did you kill two Muslim cabbies...?”

“What!”

“...and paint Jewish stars on their windshields?”

“Holy shit, is that what this is about?”

“Did you?”

“Who said I did?” Anthony wanted to know. “Did the rabbi say I did such a thing?”

“Did you?”

“No. Why would...?”

“Because you were pissed off,” Meyer said. “And you wanted to get even. So you killed two Muslims and made it look like a Jew did it. So Muslims would start throwing fire-bombs into...”

“I don’t give a damn about Muslims or Jews or their fucking problems,” Anthony said. “All I care about is Becky. All I care about is marrying Becky. The rest is all bullshit. I did not send any e-mails to that jackass rabbi. I did not throw a fire-bomb into his dumb temple, which by the way won’t let women sit with men. I did not kill any Muslim cab drivers who go to stupid temples of their own, where their women aren’t allowed to sit with men, either. That’s a nice little plot you’ve cooked up there, and I’ll use it one day, when I’m Anthony Winters the best-selling writer. But right now, I’m still just Tony Inverni, right? And that’s the only thing that’s keeping me from marrying the girl I love, and that is a shame, gentlemen, that is a fucking crying shame. So if you’ll excuse me, I really don’t give a damn about your little problem, because Becky and I have a major problem of our own.”

He raised his right hand, touched it to his temple in a mock salute, and went back into his building.

At nine the next morning, Detective Wilbur Jackson of the Documents Section called to say they’d checked out the graffiti—

He called the Jewish stars graffiti.

— on the windshields of those two evidence cabs and they were now able to report that the handwriting was identical in both instances and that the writer was right-handed.

“Like ninety percent of the people in this city,” he added.

That night, the third Muslim cabbie was killed.

“Let’s hear it,” Lieutenant Byrnes said.

He was not feeling too terribly sanguine this Monday morning. He did not like this at all. First off, he did not like murder epidemics. And next, he did not like murder epidemics that could lead to full-scale riots. White-haired and scowling, eyes an icy-cold blue, he glowered across his desk as though the eight detectives gathered in his corner office had themselves committed the murders.

Hal Willis and Eileen Burke had been riding the midnight horse when the call came in about the third dead cabbie. At five-eight, Willis had barely cleared the minimum height requirement in effect before women were generously allowed to become police officers, at which time five-foot-two-eyes-of-blue became threatening when one was carrying a nine-millimeter Glock on her hip. That’s exactly what Eileen was carrying this morning. Not on her hip, but in a tote bag slung over her shoulder. At five-nine, she topped Willis by an inch. Red-headed and green-eyed, she provided Irish-setter contrast to his dark, curly-haired, brown-eyed, cocker-spaniel look. Byrnes was glaring at both of them. Willis deferred to the lady.

“His name is Ali Al-Barak,” Eileen said. “He’s a Saudi. Married with three...”

“That’s the most common Arabic name,” Andy Parker said. He was slumped in one of the chairs near the windows. Unshaven and unkempt, he looked as if he’d just come off a plant as a homeless wino. Actually, he’d come straight to the squadroom from home, where he’d dressed hastily, annoyed because he wasn’t supposed to come in until four, and now another fuckin Muslim had been aced.

“Al-Barak?” Brown asked.

“No, Ali,” Parker said. “More than five million men in the Arab world are named Ali.”

“How do you know that?” Kling asked.

“I know such things,” Parker said.

“And what’s it got to do with the goddamn price offish?” Byrnes asked.

“In case you run into a lot of Alis,” Parker explained, “you’ll know it ain’t a phenomenon, it’s just a fact.”

“Let me hear it,” Byrnes said sourly, and nodded to Eileen.

“Three children,” she said, picking up where she’d left off. “Lived in a Saudi neighborhood in Riverhead. No apparent connection to either of the two other vies. All three even worshipped at different mosques. Shot at the back of the head, same as the other two. Blue star on the windshield...”

“The other two were the same handwriting,” Meyer said.

“Right-handed writer,” Carella said.

“Anything from Ballistics yet?” Byrnes asked Eileen.

“Slug went to them, too soon to expect anything.”

“Two to one, it’ll be the same,” Richard Genero said.

He was the newest detective on the squad and rarely ventured comments at these clambakes. Taller than Willis — hell, everybody was taller than Willis — he nonetheless looked like a relative, what with the same dark hair and eyes. Once, in fact, a perp had asked them if they were brothers. Willis, offended, had answered, “I’ll give you brothers.”

“Which’ll mean the same guy killed all three,” Byrnes said.

Genero felt rewarded. He smiled in acknowledgment.

“Or the same gun, anyway,” Carella said.

“Widow been informed?”

“We went there directly from the scene,” Willis said.

“What’ve we got on the paint?”

“Brand name sold everywhere,” Meyer said.

“What’s with this Inverni kid?”

“He’s worth another visit.”

“Why?”

“He has a thing about religion.”

“What kind of thing?”

“He thinks it’s all bullshit.”

“Doesn’t everyone?” Parker said.

“I don’t,” Genero said.

“That doesn’t mean he’s going around killing Muslims,” Byrnes said. “But talk to him again. Find out where he was last night at... Hal? What time did the cabbie catch it?”

“Twenty past two.”

“Be nice if Inverni’s our man,” Brown said.

“Yes, that would be very nice.”

“In your dreams,” Parker said.

“You got a better idea?”

Parker thought this over.

“You’re such an expert on Arabian first names...”

“Arabic.”

“...I thought maybe you might have a better idea,” Byrnes said.

“How about we put undercovers in the cabs?”

“Brilliant,” Byrnes said. “You know any Muslim cops?”

“Come to think of it,” Parker said, and shrugged again.

“Where’d this last one take place?”

“Booker and Lowell. In Riverhead,” Eileen said. “Six blocks from the stadium.”

“He’s ranging all over the place.”

“Got to be random,” Brown said.

“Let’s scour the hood,” Kling suggested. “Must be somebody heard a shot at two in the morning.”

“Two-twenty,” Parker corrected.

“I’m going to triple-team this,” Byrnes said. “Anybody not on vacation or out sick, I want him on this case. I’m surprised the commissioner himself hasn’t called yet. Something like this...”

The phone on his desk rang.

“Let’s get this son of a bitch,” Byrnes said, and waved the detectives out of his office.

His phone was still ringing.

He rolled his eyes heavenward and picked up the receiver.

All over the city, busy citizens picked up the afternoon tabloid, and read its headline, and then turned to the story on page three. Unless the police were withholding vital information, they still did not have a single clue. This made people nervous. They did not want these stupid killings to escalate into the sort of situation that was a daily occurrence in Israel. They did not want retaliation to follow retaliation. They did not want hate begetting more hate.

But they were about to get it.

The first of what the police hoped would be the last of the bombings took place that very afternoon, the fifth day of May.

Parker — who knew such things — could have told the other detectives on the squad that the fifth of May was a date of vast importance in Mexican and Chicano communities, of which there were not a few in this sprawling city. Cinco de Mayo, as it was called in Spanish, celebrated the victory of the Mexican Army over the French in 1862. Hardly anyone today — except Parker maybe — knew that La Battala de Puebla had been fought and won by Mestizo and Zapotec Indians. Nowadays, many of the Spanish-speaking people in this city thought the date commemorated Mexican independence, which Parker could have told you was September 16, 1810, and not May 5, 1862. Some people suspected Parker was an idiot savant, but this was only half true. He merely read a lot.

On that splendid, sunny, fifth day of May, as the city’s Chicano population prepared for an evening of folklorico dancing and mariachi music and margaritas, and as the weary detectives of the Eight-Seven spread out into the three sections of the city that had so far been stricken with what even the staid morning newspaper labeled “The Muslim Murders,” a man carrying a narrow Gucci dispatch case walked into a movie theater that was playing a foreign film about a Japanese prostitute who aspires to become an internationally famous violinist, took a seat in the center of the theater’s twelfth row, watched the commercials for furniture stores and local restaurants and antique shops, and then watched the coming attractions, and finally, at 1:37 P.M. — just as the feature film was about to start — got up to go to the men’s room.

He left the Gucci dispatch case under the seat.

There was enough explosive material in that sleek leather case to blow up at least seven rows of seats in the orchestra. There was also a ticking clock set to trigger a spark at 3:48 P.M., just about when the Japanese prostitute would be accepted at Juilliard.

Spring break had ended not too long ago, and most of the students at Ramsey U still sported tans they’d picked up in Mexico or Florida. There was an air of bustling activity on the downtown campus as Meyer and Carella made their way through crowded corridors to the Registrar’s Office, where they hoped to acquire a program for Anthony Inverni. This turned out to be not as simple as they’d hoped. Each and separately they had to show first their shields and next their ID cards, and still had to invoke the sacred words “Homicide investigation,” before the yellow-haired lady with a bun would reveal the whereabouts of Anthony Inverni on this so-far eventless Cinco de Mayo.

The time was 1:45 P.M.

They found Inverni already seated in the front row of a class his program listed as “Shakespearean Morality.” He was chatting with a girl wearing a blue scarf around her head and covering her forehead. The detectives assumed she was Muslim, though this was probably profiling. They asked Inverni if he would mind stepping outside for a moment, and he said to the girl, “Excuse me, Halima,” which more or less confirmed their surmise, but which did little to reinforce the profile of a hate criminal.

“So what’s up?” he asked.

“Where were you at two this morning?” Meyer asked, going straight for the jugular.

“That, huh?”

“That,” Carella said.

“It’s all over the papers,” Inverni said. “But you’re still barking up the wrong tree.”

“So where were you?”

“With someone.”

“Who?”

“Someone.”

“The someone wouldn’t be Rebecca Schwartz, would it? Because as an alibi...”

“Are you kidding? You think old Sam would let her out of his sight at two in the morning?”

“Then who’s this ‘someone’ we’re talking about?”

“I’d rather not get her involved.”

“Oh? Really? We’ve got three dead cabbies here. You’d better start worrying about them and not about getting someone involved. Who is she? Who’s your alibi?”

Anthony turned to look over his shoulder, into the classroom. For a moment, the detectives thought he was going to name the girl with the blue scarf. Hanima, was it? Halifa? He turned back to them again. Lowering his voice, he said, “Judy Manzetti.”

“Was with you at two this morning?”

“Yes.”

His voice still a whisper. His eyes darting.

“Where?”

“My place.”

“Doing what?”

“Well... you know.”

“Spell it out.”

“We were in bed together.”

“Give us her address and phone number,” Carella said.

“Hey, come on. I told you I didn’t want to get her involved.”

“She’s already involved,” Carella said. His notebook was in his hand.

Inverni gave him her address and phone number.

“Is that it?” he asked. “Cause class is about to start.”

“I thought you planned to marry Becky,” Meyer said.

“Of course I’m marrying Becky!” Inverni said. “But meanwhile...” — and here he smiled conspiratorially — “...I’m fucking Judy.”

No, Meyer thought. It’s Becky who’s getting fucked.

The time was two P.M.

As if to confirm Parker’s fact-finding acumen, the two witnesses who’d heard the shot last night were both named Ali. They’d been coming home from a party at the time, and each of them had been a little drunk. They explained at once that this was not a habit of theirs. They fully understood that the imbibing of alcoholic beverages was strictly forbidden in the Koran.

“Haram,” the first Ali said, shaking his head. “Most definitely haram.”

“Oh yes, unacceptable,” the second Ali agreed, shaking his head as well. “Forbidden. Prohibited. In the Koran, it is written, ‘They ask thee concerning wine and gambling. In them is great sin, and some profit, for men; but the sin is greater than the profit.’ ”

“But our friend was celebrating his birthday,” the first Ali said, and smiled apologetically.

“It was a party,” the second Ali explained.

“Where?” Eileen asked.

The two Alis looked at each other.

At last, they admitted that the party had taken place at a club named Buffers, which Eileen and Willis both knew was a topless joint, but the Alis claimed that no one in their party had gone back to the club’s so-called private room but had instead merely enjoyed the young ladies dancing around their poles.

Eileen wondered whose poles?

The young ladies’ poles?

Or the poles of Ali and Company?

She guessed she maybe had a dirty mind.

At any rate, the two Alis were staggering out of Buffers at two o’clock in the morning when they spotted a yellow cab parked at the curb up the block. They were planning on taking the subway home, but one never argued with divine providence so they decided on the spot to take a taxi instead. As they tottered and swayed toward the idling cab — the first Ali raising his hand to hail it, the second Ali breaking into a trot toward it and almost tripping — they heard a single shot from inside the cab. They both stopped dead still in the middle of the pavement.

“A man jumped out,” the first Ali said now, his eyes wide with the excitement of recall.

“What’d he look like?” Eileen asked.

“A tall man,” the second Ali said. “Dressed all in black.”

“Black suit, black coat, black hat.”

“Was he bearded or clean-shaven?”

“No beard. No.”

“You’re sure it was a man?”

“Oh yes, positive,” the second Ali said.

“What’d he do after he got out of the cab?”

“Went to the windshield.”

“Sprayed the windshield.”

“You saw him spraying the windshield?”

“Yes.”

“Oh yes.”

“Then what?”

“He ran away.”

“Up the street.”

“Toward the subway.”

“There’s an entrance there.”

“For the subway.”

Which could have taken him anywhere in the city, Eileen thought.

“Thanks,” Willis said.

It was 2:15 P.M.

Parker and Genero were the two detectives who spoke once again to Ozzie Kiraz, the cousin of the second dead cabbie.

Kiraz was just leaving for work when they got there at a quarter past three that afternoon. He introduced them to his wife, a diminutive woman who seemed half his size, and who immediately went into the kitchen of their tiny apartment to prepare tea for the men. Fine-featured, dark-haired and dark-eyed, Badria Kiraz was a woman in her late twenties, Parker guessed. Exotic features aside, she looked very American to him, sporting lipstick and eye shadow, displaying a nice ass in beige tailored slacks, and good tits in a white cotton blouse.

Kiraz explained that he and his wife both worked night shifts at different places in different parts of the city. He worked at a pharmacy in Majesta, where he was manager of the store. Badria worked as a cashier in a supermarket in Calm’s Point. They both started work at four, and got off at midnight. Kiraz told them that in Afghanistan he’d once hoped to become a schoolteacher. That was before he started fighting the Russians. Now, here in America, he was the manager of a drugstore.

“Land of the free, right?” he said, and grinned.

Genero didn’t know if he was being a wise guy or not.

“So tell us a little more about your cousin,” he said.

“What would you like to know?”

“One of the men interviewed by our colleagues...”

Genero liked using the word “colleagues.” Made him sound like a university professor. He consulted his notebook, which made him feel even more professorial.

“Man named Ajmal, is that how you pronounce it?”

“Yes,” Kiraz said.

“Ajmal Khan, a short-order cook at a deli named Max’s in Midtown South. Do you know him?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Friend of your cousin’s,” Parker said.

He was eyeing Kiraz’s wife, who was carrying a tray in from the kitchen. She set it down on the low table in front of the sofa, smiled, and said, “We drink it sweet, but I didn’t add sugar. It’s there if you want it. Cream and lemon, too. Oz,” she said, “do you know what time it is?”

“I’m watching it, Badria, don’t worry. Maybe you should leave.”

“Would that be all right?” she asked the detectives.

“Yes, sure,” Genero said, and both detectives rose politely. Kiraz kissed his wife on the cheek. She smiled again and left the room. They heard the front door to the apartment closing. The men sat again. Through the open windows, they could heard the loudspeakered cry of the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer.

“The third prayer of the day,” Kiraz explained. “The Salat al-’Asr,” and added almost regretfully, “I never pray anymore. It’s too difficult here in America. If you want to be American, you follow American ways, am I right? You do what Americans do.”

“Oh sure,” Parker agreed, even though he’d never had any problem following American ways or doing what Americans do.

“Anyway,” Genero said, squeezing a little lemon into one of the tea glasses, and then picking it up, “this guy at the deli told our colleagues your cousin was dating quite a few girls...”

“That’s news to me,” Kiraz said.

“Well, that’s what we wanted to talk to you about,” Parker said. “We thought you might be able to help us with their names.”

“The names of these girls,” Genero said.

“Because this guy in the deli didn’t know who they might be,” Parker said.

“I don’t know, either,” Kiraz said, and looked at his watch.

Parker looked at his watch, too.

It was twenty minutes past three.

“Ever talk to you about any of these girls?” Genero asked.

“Never. We were not that close, you know. He was single, I’m married. We have our own friends, Badria and I. This is America. There are different customs, different ways. When you live here, you do what Americans do, right?”

He grinned again.

Again, Genero didn’t know if he was getting smart with them.

“You wouldn’t know if any of these girls were Jewish, would you?” Parker asked.

“Because of the blue star, you mean?”

“Well... yes.”

“I would sincerely doubt that my cousin was dating any Jewish girls.”

“Because sometimes...”

“Oh sure,” Kiraz said. “Sometimes things aren’t as simple as they appear. You’re thinking this wasn’t a simple hate crime. You’re thinking this wasn’t a mere matter of a Jew killing a Muslim simply because he was a Muslim. You’re looking for complications. Was Salim involved with a Jewish girl? Did the Jewish girl’s father or brother become enraged by the very thought of such a relationship? Was Salim killed as a warning to any other Muslim with interfaith aspirations? Is that why the Jewish star was painted on the windshield? Stay away! Keep off!”

“Well, we weren’t thinking exactly that,” Parker said, “but, yes, that’s a possibility.”

“But you’re forgetting the other two Muslims, aren’t you?” Kiraz said, and smiled in what Genero felt was a superior manner, fuckin guy thought he was Chief of Detectives here.

“No, we’re not forgetting them,” Parker said. “We’re just trying to consider all the possibilities.”

“A mistake,” Kiraz said. “I sometimes talk to this doctor who comes into the pharmacy. He tells me, ‘Oz, if it has stripes like a zebra, don’t look for a horse.’ Because people come in asking me what I’ve got for this or that ailment, you know? Who knows why?” he said, and shrugged, but he seemed pleased by his position of importance in the workplace. “I’m only the manager of the store, I’m not a pharmacist, but they ask me,” he said, and shrugged again. “What’s good for a headache, or a cough, or the sniffles, or this or that? They ask me all the time. And I remember what my friend the doctor told me,” he said, and smiled, seemingly pleased by this, too, the fact that his friend was a doctor. “If it has the symptoms of a common cold, don’t go looking for SARS. Period.” He opened his hands to them, palms up, explaining the utter simplicity of it all. “Stop looking for zebras,” he said, and smiled again. “Just find the fucking Jew who shot my cousin in the head, hmm?”

The time was 3:27 P.M.

In the movies these days, it was not unusual for a working girl to become a princess overnight, like the chambermaid who not only gets the hero onscreen but in real life as well, talk about Cinderella stories! In other movies of this stripe, you saw common working class girls who aspired to become college students. Or soccer players. It was a popular theme nowadays. America was the land of opportunity. So was Japan, apparently, although Ruriko — the prostitute in the film all these people were waiting on line to see — was a “working girl” in the truest sense, and she didn’t even want to become a princess, just a concert violinist. She was about to become just that in about three minutes.

The two girls standing on line outside the theater box office also happened to be true working girls, which was why they were here to catch the four o’clock screening of the Japanese film. They had each separately seen Pretty Woman, another Working Girl Becomes Princess film, and did not for a moment believe that Julia Roberts had ever blown anybody for fifty bucks, but maybe it would be different with this Japanese actress, whatever her name was. Maybe this time, they’d believe that these One in a Million fairy tales could really happen to girls who actually did this sort of thing for a living.

The two girls, Heidi and Roseanne, looked and dressed just like any secretary who’d got out of work early today...

It was now 3:46 P.M.

...and even sounded somewhat like girls with junior college educations. As the line inched closer to the box office, they began talking about what Heidi was going to do to celebrate her birthday tonight. Heidi was nineteen years old today. She’d been hooking for two years now. The closest she’d got to becoming a princess was when one of her old-fart regulars asked her to come to London with him on a weekend trip. He rescinded the offer when he learned she was expecting her period, worse luck.

“You doing anything special tonight?” Roseanne asked.

“Jimmy’s taking me out to dinner,” Heidi said.

Jimmy was a cop she dated. He knew what profession she was in.

“That’s nice.”

“Yeah.”

In about fifteen seconds, it would be 3:48 P.M.

“I still can’t get over it,” Roseanne said.

“What’s that, hon?”

“The coincidence!” Roseanne said, amazed. “Does your birthday always fall on Cinco de Mayo?”

A couple sitting in the seats just behind the one under which the Gucci dispatch case had been left were seriously necking when the bomb exploded.

The boy had his hand under the girl’s skirt, and she had her hand inside his unzippered fly, their fitful manual activity covered by the raincoat he had thrown over both their laps. Neither of them really gave a damn about whether or not Ruriko passed muster with the judges at Juilliard, or went back instead to a life of hopeless despair in the slums of Yokohama. All that mattered to them was achieving mutual orgasm here in the flickering darkness of the theater while the soulful strains of Aram Khacaturian’s Spartacus flowed from Ruriko’s violin under the expert coaxing of her talented fingers.

When the bomb exploded, they both thought for the tiniest tick of an instant that they’d died and gone to heaven.

Fortunately for the Eight-Seven, the movie-theater bombing occurred in the Two-One downtown. Since there was no immediate connection between this new outburst of violence and the Muslim Murders, nobody from the Two-One called uptown in an attempt to unload the case there. Instead, because this was an obvious act of terrorism, they called the Joint Terrorist Task Force at One Federal Square further downtown, and dumped the entire matter into their laps. This did not, however, stop the talking heads on television from linking the movie bombing to the murders of the three cabbies.

The liberal TV commentators noisily insisted that the total mess we’d made in Iraq was directly responsible for this new wave of violence here in the United States. The conservative commentators wagged their heads in tolerant understanding of their colleagues’ supreme ignorance, and then sagely suggested that if the police in this city would only learn how to handle the problems manifest in a gloriously diverse population, there wouldn’t be any civic violence at all.

It took no more than an hour and a half before all of the cable channels were demanding immediate arrests in what was now perceived as a single case. On the six-thirty network news broadcasts, the movie-theater bombing was the headline story, and without fail the bombing was linked to the cab-driver killings, the blue Star of David on the windshields televised over and over again as the unifying leitmotif.

Ali Al-Barak, the third Muslim victim, had worked for a company that called itself simply Cabco. Its garage was located in the shadow of the Calm’s Point Bridge, not too distant from the market under the massive stone supporting pillars on the Isola side of the bridge. The market was closed and shuttered when Meyer and Carella drove past it at a quarter to seven that evening. They had trouble finding Cabco’s garage and drove around the block several times, getting entangled in bridge traffic. At one point, Carella suggested that they hit the hammer, but Meyer felt use of the siren might be excessive.

They finally located the garage tucked between two massive apartment buildings. It could have been the underground garage for either of them, but a discreet sign identified it as Cabco. They drove down the ramp, found the dispatcher’s office, identified themselves, and explained why they were there.

“Yeah,” the dispatcher said, and nodded. His name was Hazhir Demirkol. He explained that like Al-Barak, he too was a Muslim, though not a Saudi. “I’m a Kurd,” he told them. “I came to this country ten years ago.”

“What can you tell us about Al-Barak?” Meyer asked.

“I knew someone would kill him sooner or later,” Demirkol said. “The way he was shooting up his mouth all the time.”

Shooting off, Carella thought, but didn’t correct him.

“In what way?” he asked.

“He kept complaining that Israel was responsible for all the trouble in the Arab world. If there was no Israel, there would have been no Iraqi war. There would be no terrorism. There would be no 9/11. Well, he’s a Saudi, you know. His countrymen were the ones who bombed the World Trade Center! But he was being foolish. It doesn’t matter how you feel about Jews. I feel the same way. But in this city, I have learned to keep my thoughts to myself.”

“Why’s that?” Meyer asked.

Demirkol turned to him, looked him over. One eyebrow arched. Sudden recognition crossed his face. This man was a Jew. This detective was a Jew.

“It doesn’t matter why,” he said. “Look what happened to Ali. That is why.”

“You think a Jew killed him, is that it?”

“No, an angel from Paradise painted that blue star on his windshield.”

“Who might’ve heard him when he was airing all these complaints?” Carella asked.

“Who knows? Ali talked freely, too freely, you ask me. This is a democracy, no? Like the one America brought to Iraq, no?” Demirkol asked sarcastically. “He talked everywhere. He talked here in the garage with his friends, he talked to his passengers, I’m sure he talked at the mosque, too, when he went to prayer. Freedom of speech, correct? Even if it gets you killed.”

“You think he expressed his views to the wrong person, is that it?” Meyer asked. “The wrong Jew.”

“The same Jew who killed the other drivers,” Demirkol said, and nodded emphatically, looking Meyer dead in the eye, challenging him.

“This mosque you mentioned,” Carella said. “Would you know...?”

“Majid At-Abu,” Demirkol said at once. “Close by here,” he said, and gestured vaguely uptown.

Now this was a mosque.

This was what one conjured when the very word was uttered. This was straight out of Arabian Nights, minarets and domes, blue tile and gold leaf. This was the real McCoy.

Opulent and imposing, Majid At-Abu was not as “close by” as Demirkol had suggested, it was in fact a good mile and a half uptown. When the detectives got there at a little past eight that night, the faithful were already gathered inside for the sunset prayer. The sky beyond the mosque’s single glittering dome was streaked with the last red-purple streaks of a dying sun. The minaret from which the muezzin called worshippers to prayer stood tall and stately to the right of the arched entrance doors. Meyer and Carella stood on the sidewalk outside, listening to the prayers intoned within, waiting for an opportune time to enter.

Across the street, some Arabic-looking boys in T-shirts and jeans were cracking themselves up. Meyer wondered what they were saying. Carella wondered why they weren’t inside praying.

“Ivan Sikimiavuçlyor!” one of the kids shouted, and the others all burst out laughing.

“How about Alexandr Siksallandr?” one of the other kids suggested, and again they all laughed.

“Or Madame Döllemer,” another boy said.

More laughter. Carella was surprised they didn’t all fall to the sidewalk clutching their bellies. It took both of the detectives a moment to realize that these were names the boys were bandying about. They had no idea that in Turkish “Ivan Sikimiavuçlyor” meant “Ivan Holding My Cock,” or that “Alexandr Siksallandr” meant “Alexander Who Swings a Cock,” or that poor “Madame Döllemer” was just a lady “Sucking Sperm.” Like the dirty names Meyer and Carella had attached to fictitious book titles when they themselves were kids...

The Open Robe by Seymour Hare.

The Russian Revenge by Ivana Kutchakokoff.

The Chinese Curse by Wan Hong Lo.

Hawaiian Paradise by A’wana Leia Oo’aa.

...these Arab teenagers growing up here in America were now making puns on their parents’ native tongue.

“Fenasi Kerim!” one of the boys shouted finally and triumphantly, and whereas neither of the detectives knew that this invented name meant “I Fuck You Bad,” the boys’ ensuing exuberant laughter caused them to laugh as well.

The sunset prayer had ended.

They took off their shoes and placed them outside in the foyer — alongside the loafers and sandals and jogging shoes and boots and laced brogans parked there like autos in a used-car lot — and went inside to find the imam.

“I never heard Ali Al-Barak utter a single threatening word about the Jewish people, or the Jewish state, or any Jew in particular,” Mohammad Talal Awad said.

They were standing in the vast open hall of the mosque proper, a white space the size of a ballroom, with arched windows and tiled floors and an overhead clerestory through which the detectives could see the beginnings of a starry night. The imam was wearing white baggy trousers and a flowing white tunic and a little while pillbox hat. He had a long black beard, a narrow nose and eyes almost black, and he directed his every word to Meyer.

“Nor is there anything in the Koran that directs Muslims to kill anyone,” he said. “Not Jews, not anyone. There is nothing there. Search the Koran. You will find not a word about murdering in the name of Allah.”

“We understand Al-Barak made remarks some people might have found inflammatory,” Carella said.

“Political observations. They had nothing to do with Islam. He was young, he was brash, perhaps he was foolish to express his opinions so openly. But this is America, and one may speak freely, isn’t that so? Isn’t that what democracy is all about?”

Here we go again, Meyer thought.

“But if you think Ali’s murder had anything to do with the bombing downtown...”

Oh? Carella thought.

“...you are mistaken. Ali was a pious young man who lived with another man his own age, recently arrived from Saudi Arabia. In their native land, they were both students. Here, one drove a taxi and the other bags groceries in a supermarket. If you think Ali’s friend, in revenge for his murder, bombed that theater downtown...”

Oh? Carella thought again.

“...you are very sadly mistaken.”

“We’re not investigating that bombing,” Meyer said. “We’re investigating Ali’s murder. And the murder of two other Muslim cab drivers. If you can think of anyone who might possibly...”

“I know no Jews,” the imam said.

You know one now, Meyer thought.

“This friend he lived with,” Carella said. “What’s his name, and where can we find him?”

The music coming from behind the door to the third-floor apartment was very definitely rap. The singers were very definitely black, and the lyrics were in English. But the words weren’t telling young kids to do dope or knock women around or even up. As they listened at the wood, the lyrics the detectives heard spoke of intentions alone not being sufficient to bring reward...

When help is needed, prayer to Allah is the answer... Allah alone can assist in...

Meyer knocked on the door.

“Yes?” a voice yelled.

“Police,” Carella said.

The music continued to blare.

“Hello?” Carella said. “Mind if we ask you some questions?”

No answer.

“Hello?” he said again.

He looked at Meyer.

Meyer shrugged. Over the blare of the music, he yelled, “Hello in there!”

Still no answer.

“This is the police!” he yelled. “Would you mind coming to the door, please?”

The door opened a crack, held by a night chain.

They saw part of a narrow face. Part of a mustache. Part of a mouth. A single brown eye.

“Mr. Rajab?”

“Yes?”

Wariness in the voice and in the single eye they could see.

“Mind if we come in? Few questions we’d like to ask you.”

“What about?”

“You a friend of Ali Al-Barak?”

“Yes?”

“Do you know he was murdered last...?”

The door slammed shut.

They heard the sudden click of a bolt turning.

Carella backed off across the hall. His gun was already in his right hand, his knee coming up for a jackknife kick. The sole of his shoe collided with the door, just below the lock. The lock held.

“The yard!” he yelled, and Meyer flew off down the stairs.

Carella kicked at the lock again. This time, it sprang. He followed the splintered door into the room. The black rap group was still singing praise to Allah. The window across the room was open, a curtain fluttering in the mild evening breeze. He ran across the room, followed his gun hand out the window and onto a fire escape. He could hear footsteps clattering down the iron rungs to the second floor.

“Stop!” he yelled. “Police!”

Nobody stopped.

He came out onto the fire escape, took a quick look below, and started down.

From below, he heard Meyer racketing into the backyard. They had Rajab sandwiched.

“Hold it right there!” Meyer yelled.

Carella came down to the first-floor fire escape, out of breath, and handcuffed Rajab’s hands behind his back.

They listened in total amazement as Ishak Rajab told them all about how he had plotted instant revenge for the murder of his friend and roommate, Ali Al-Barak. They listened as he told them how he had constructed the suitcase bomb...

He called the Gucci dispatch case a suitcase.

...and then had carefully chosen a movie theater showing so-called art films because he knew Jews pretended to culture, and there would most likely be many Jews in the audience. Jews had to be taught that Arabs could not wantonly be killed without reprisal.

“Ali was killed by a Jew,” Rajab said. “And so it was fitting and just that Jews be killed in return.”

Meyer called the JTTF at Fed Square and told them they’d accidentally lucked into catching the guy who did their movie-theater bombing.

Ungrateful humps didn’t even say thanks.

It was almost ten o’clock when he and Carella left the squadroom for home. As they passed the swing room downstairs, they looked in through the open door to where a uniformed cop was half-dozing on one of the couches, watching television. One of cable’s most vociferous talking heads was demanding to know when a terrorist was not a terrorist.

“Here’s the story,” he said, and glared out of the screen. “A green-card Saudi-Arabian named Ishak Rajab was arrested and charged with the wanton slaying of sixteen movie patrons and the wounding of twelve others. Our own police and the Joint Terrorist Task Force are to be highly commended for their swift actions in this case. It is now to be hoped that a trial and conviction will be equally swift.

“However...

“Rajab’s attorneys are already indicating they’ll be entering a plea of insanity. Their reasoning seems to be that a man who deliberately leaves a bomb in a public place is not a terrorist — have you got that? Not a terrorist! Then what is he, huh, guys? Well, according to his attorneys, he was merely a man blinded by rage and seeking retaliation. The rationale for Rajab’s behavior would seem to be his close friendship with Ali Al-Barak, the third victim in the wave of taxi-driver slayings that have swept the city since last Friday: Rajab was Al-Barak’s roommate.

“Well, neither I nor any right-minded citizen would condone the senseless murder of Muslim cab drivers. That goes without saying. But to invoke a surely inappropriate Biblical — Biblical, mind you — ‘eye for an eye’ defense by labeling premeditated mass murder ‘insanity’ is in itself insanity. A terrorist is a terrorist, and this was an act of terrorism, pure and simple. Anything less than the death penalty would be gross injustice in the case of Ishak Rajab. That’s my opinion, now let’s hear yours. You can e-mail me at...”

The detectives walked out of the building and into the night.

In four hours, another Muslim cabbie would be killed.

The police knew at once that this wasn’t their man.

To begin with, none of the other victims had been robbed.

This one was.

All of the other victims had been shot only once, at the base of the skull.

This one was shot three times through the open driver-side window of his cab, two of the bullets entering his face at the left temple and just below the cheek, the third passing through his neck and lodging in the opposite door panel.

Shell casings were found on the street outside the cab, indicating that the murder weapon had been an automatic, and not the revolver that had been used in the previous three murders. Ballistics confirmed this. The bullets and casings were consistent with samples fired from a Colt .45 automatic.

Moreover, two witnesses had seen a man leaning into the cab window moments before they heard shots, and he was definitely not a tall white man dressed entirely in black.

There were only two similarities in all four murders. The drivers were all Muslims, and a blue star had been spray-painted onto each of their windshields.

But the Star of David had six points, and this new one had only five, and it was turned on end like the inverted pentagram used by devil-worshippers.

They hoped to hell yet another religion wasn’t intruding its beliefs into this case.

But they knew for sure this wasn’t their man.

This was a copycat.

So read the headline in the Metro Section of the city’s staid morning newspaper. The story under it was largely put together from details supplied in a Police Department press release. The flak that had gone out from the Public Relations Office on the previous three murders had significantly withheld any information about the killer himself or his MO. None of the reporters — print, radio, or television — had been informed that the killer had been dressed in black from head to toe, or that he’d fired just a single shot into his separate victims’ heads. They were hoping the killer himself — if ever they caught him — would reveal this information, thereby incriminating himself.

But this time around, because the police knew this was a copycat, the PR release was a bit more generous, stating that the cabbie had been shot three times, that he’d been robbed of his night’s receipts, and that his assailant, as described by two eyewitnesses, was a black man in his early twenties, about five feet seven inches tall, weighing some hundred and sixty pounds and wearing blue jeans, white sneakers, a brown leather jacket, and a black ski cap pulled low on his forehead.

The man who’d murdered the previous three cabbies must have laughed himself silly.

Especially when another bombing took place that Tuesday afternoon.

The city’s Joint Terrorist Task Force was an odd mix of elite city detectives, FBI Special Agents, Homeland Security people, and a handful of CIA spooks. Special Agent in Charge Brian Hooper and a team of four other Task Force officers arrived at The Merrie Coffee Bean at three that afternoon, not half an hour after a suicide bomber had killed himself and a dozen patrons sitting at tables on the sidewalk outside. Seven wounded people had already been carried by ambulance to the closest hospital, Abingdon Memorial, on the river at Condon Street.

The coffee shop was a shambles.

Wrought iron tables and chairs had been twisted into surreal and smoldering bits of modern sculpture. Glass shards lay all over the sidewalk and inside the shop gutted and flooded by the Fire Department.

A dazed and dazzled waitress, wide-eyed and smoke-smudged but remarkably unharmed otherwise, told Hooper that she was at the cappuccino machine picking up an order when she heard someone yelling outside. She thought at first it was one of the customers, sometimes they got into arguments over choice tables. She turned from the counter to look outside, and saw this slight man running toward the door of the shop, yelling at the top of his lungs...

“What was he yelling, miss, do you remember?” Hooper asked.

Hooper was polite and soft-spoken, wearing a blue suit, a white shirt, a blue tie, and polished black shoes. Two detectives from the Five-Oh had also responded. Casually, dressed in sport jackets, slacks, and shirts open at the throat, they looked like bums in contrast. They stood by trying to look interested and significant while Hooper conducted the questioning.

“Something about Jews,” the waitress said. “He had a foreign accent, you know, so it was hard to understand him to begin with. And this was like a rant, so that made it even more difficult. Besides, it all happened so fast. He was running from the open sidewalk down this, like, space we have between the tables? Like an aisle that leads to the front of the shop? And he was yelling Jews-this, Jews-that, and waving his arms in the air like some kind of nut? Then all at once there was this terrific explosion, it almost knocked me off my feet, and I was all the way inside the shop, near the cap machine. And I saw... there was like sunshine outside, you know? Like shining through the windows? And all of a sudden I saw all body parts flying in the air in the sunshine. Like in silhouette. All these people getting blown apart. It was, like, awesome.”

Hooper and his men went picking through the rubble.

The two detectives from the Five-Oh were thinking this was very bad shit here.

If I’ve already realized what I hoped to accomplish, why press my luck, as they say? The thing has escalated beyond my wildest expectations. So leave it well enough alone, he told himself.

But that idiot last night has surely complicated matters. The police aren’t fools, they’ll recognize at once that last night’s murder couldn’t possibly be linked to the other three. So perhaps another one was in order, after all. To nail it to the wall. Four would round it off, wouldn’t it?

To the Navajo Indians — well, Native Americans, as they say — the number four was sacred. Four different times of day, four sacred mountains, four sacred plants, four different directions. East was symbolic of Positive Thinking. South was for Planning. West for Life itself. North for Hope and Strength. They believed all this, the Navajo people. Religions were so peculiar. The things people believed. The things he himself had once believed, long ago, so very long ago.

Of course the number four wasn’t truly sacred, that was just something the Navajos believed. The way Christians believed that the number 666 was the mark of the beast, who was the Antichrist and who — well, of course, what else? — had to be Jewish, right? There were even people who believed that the Internet acronym “www” for “World Wide Web” really transliterated into the Hebrew letter “vav” repeated three times, vav, vav, vav, the numerical equivalent of 666, the mark of the beast. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is six hundred threescore and six, Revelations 13. Oh yes, I’ve read the Bible, thank you, and the Koran, and the teachings of Buddha, and they’re all total bullshit, as they say. But there are people who believe in a matrix, too, and not all of them are in padded rooms wearing straitjackets.

So, yes, I think there should be another one tonight, a tip of the hat, as they say, to the Navajo’s sacred number four, and that will be the end of it. The last one. The same signature mark of the beast, the six-pointed star of the Antichrist. Then let them go searching the synagogues for me. Let them try to find the murdering Jew. After tonight, I will be finished!

Tonight, he thought.

Yes.

Abbas Miandad was a Muslim cab driver, and no fool.

Four Muslim cabbies had already been killed since Friday night, and he didn’t want to be number five. He did not own a pistol — carrying a pistol would be exceedingly stupid in a city already so en-flamed against people of the Islamic faith — nor did he own a dagger or a sword, but his wife’s kitchen was well stocked with utensils and before he set out on his midnight shift he took a huge bread knife from the rack...

“Where are you going with that?” his wife asked.

She was watching television.

They were reporting that there’d been a suicide bombing that afternoon. They were saying the bomber had not been identified as yet.

“Never mind,” he told her, and wrapped a dishtowel around the knife and packed it in a small tote bag that had BARNES & NOBLE lettered on it.

He had unwrapped the knife the moment he drove out of the garage. At three that Wednesday morning, it was still in the pouch on the driver’s side of the cab. He had locked the cab when he stopped for a coffee break. Now, he walked up the street to where he’d parked the cab near the corner, and saw a man dressed all in black, bending to look into the back seat. He walked to him swiftly.

“Help you, sir?” he asked.

The man straightened up.

“I thought you might be napping in there,” he said, and smiled.

“No, sir,” he said. “Did you need a taxi?”

“Is this your cab?”

“It is.”

“Can you take me to Majesta?” he said.

“Where are you going, sir?”

“The Boulevard and a Hundred Twelfth.”

“Raleigh Boulevard?”

“Yes.”

Abbas knew the neighborhood. It was residential and safe, even at this hour. He would not drive anyone to neighborhoods that he knew to be dangerous. He would not pick up black men, even if they were accompanied by women. Nowadays, he would not pick up anyone who looked Jewish. If you asked him how he knew whether a person was Jewish or not, he would tell you he just knew. This man dressed all in black did not look Jewish.

“Let me open it,” he said, and took his keys from the right-hand pocket of his trousers. He turned the key in the door lock and was opening the door when, from the corner of his eye, he caught a glint of metal. Without turning, he reached for the bread knife tucked into the door’s pouch.

He was too late.

The man in black fired two shots directly into his face, killing him at once.

Then he ran off into the night.

“Changed his MO,” Byrnes said. “The others were shot from the back seat, single bullet to the base of the skull...”

“Not the one Tuesday night,” Parker said.

“Tuesday was a copycat,” Genero said.

“Maybe this one was, too,” Willis suggested.

“Not if Ballistics comes back with a match,” Meyer said.

The detectives fell silent.

They were each and separately hoping this newest murder would not trigger another suicide bombing someplace. The Task Force downtown still hadn’t been able to get a positive ID from the smoldering remains of the Merrie Coffee Bean bomber.

“Anybody see anything?” Byrnes asked.

“Patrons in the diner heard shots, but didn’t see the shooter.”

“Didn’t see him painting that blue star again?”

“I think they were afraid to go outside,” Carella said. “Nobody wants to get shot, Pete.”

“Gee, no kidding?” Byrnes said sourly.

“Also, the cab was parked all the way up the street, near the corner, some six cars back from the diner, on the same side of the street. The killer had to be standing on the passenger side...”

“Where he could see the driver’s hack license...” Eileen said.

“Arab name on it,” Kling said.

“Bingo, he had his victim.”

“Point is,” Carella said, “standing where he was, the people in the diner couldn’t have seen him.”

“Or just didn’t want to see him.”

“Well, sure.”

“Cause they could’ve seen him while he was painting the star,” Parker said.

“That’s right,” Byrnes said. “He had to’ve come around to the windshield.”

“They could’ve at least seen his back.”

“Tell us whether he was short, tall, what he was wearing...”

“But they didn’t.”

“Talk to them again.”

“We talked them deaf, dumb, and blind,” Meyer said.

“Talk to them again” Byrnes said. “And talk to anybody who was in those coffee shops, diners, delis, whatever, at the scenes of the other murders. These cabbies stop for coffee breaks, two, three in the morning, they go back to their cabs and get shot. That’s no coincidence. Our man knows their habits. And he’s a night-crawler. What’s with the Inverni kid? Did his alibi stand up?”

“Yeah, he was in bed with her,” Carella said.

“In bed with who?” Parker asked, interested.

“Judy Manzetti. It checked out.”

“Okay, so talk to everybody else again,” Byrnes said. “See who might’ve been lurking about, hanging around, casing these various sites before the murders were committed.”

“We did talk to everybody again,” Genero said.

“Talk to them again again!”

“They all say the same thing,” Meyer said. “It was a Jew who killed those drivers, all we have to do is look for a goddamn Jew.”

“You’re too fucking sensitive,” Parker said.

“I’m telling you what we’re getting. Anybody we talk to thinks it’s an open-and-shut case. All we have to do is round up every Jew in the city...”

“Take forever,” Parker said.

“What does that mean?”

“It means there are millions of Jews in this city.”

“And what does that mean?”

“It means you’re too fucking sensitive.”

“Knock it off,” Byrnes said.

“Anyway, Meyer’s right,” Genero said. “That’s what we got, too. You know that, Andy.”

“What do I know?” Parker said, glaring at Meyer.

“They keep telling us all we have to do is find the Jew who shot those guys in the head.”

“Who told you that?” Carella said at once.

Genero looked startled.

“Who told you they got shot in the head?”

“Well... they all did.”

“No,” Parker said. “It was just the cousin, whatever the fuck his name was.”

“What cousin?”

“The second vie. His cousin.”

“Salim Nazir? His cousin?”

“Yeah, Ozzie something.”

“Osman,” Carella said. “Osman Kiraz.”

“That’s the one.”

“And he said these cabbies were shot in the head?”

“Said his cousin was.”

“Told us to stop looking for zebras.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Byrnes asked.

“Told us to just find the Jew who shot his cousin in the head.”

“The fucking Jew,” Parker said.

Meyer looked at him.

“Were his exact words,” Parker said, and shrugged.

“How did he know?” Carella asked.

“Go get him,” Byrnes said.

Ozzie Kariz was asleep when they knocked on his door at nine-fifteen that Wednesday morning. Bleary-eyed and unshaven, he came to the door in pajamas over which he had thrown a shaggy blue robe, and explained that he worked at the pharmacy until midnight each night and did not get home until one, one-thirty, so he normally slept late each morning.

“May we come in?” Carella asked.

“Yes, sure,” Kariz said, “but we’ll have to be quiet, please. My wife is still asleep.”

They went into a small kitchen and sat at a wooden table painted green.

“So what’s up?” Kariz asked.

“Few more questions we’d like to ask you.”

“Again?” Kariz said. “I told those other two... what were their names?”

“Genero and Parker.”

“I told them I didn’t know any of my cousin’s girlfriends. Or even their names.”

“This doesn’t have anything to do with his girlfriends,” Carella said.

“Oh? Something new then? Is there some new development?”

“Yes. Another cab driver was killed last night.”

“Oh?”

“You didn’t know that.”

“No.”

“It’s already on television.”

“I’ve been asleep.”

“Of course.”

“Was he a Muslim?”

“Yes.”

“And was there another...?”

“Yes, another Jewish star on the windshield.”

“This is bad,” Kiraz said. “These killings, the bombings...”

“Mr. Kiraz,” Meyer said, “can you tell us where you were at three o’clock this morning?”

“Is that when it happened?”

“Yes, that’s exactly when it happened.”

“Where?”

“You tell us,” Carella said.

Kiraz looked at them.

“What is this?” he asked.

“How’d you know your cousin was shot in the head?” Meyer asked.

“Was he?”

“That’s what you told Genero and Parker. You told them a Jew shot your cousin in the head. How did you...?”

“And did a Jew also shoot this man last night?” Kiraz asked. “In the head?”

“Twice in the face,” Carella said.

“I asked you a question,” Meyer said. “How’d you know...?”

“I saw his body.”

“You saw your cousin’s...”

“I went with my aunt to pick up Salim’s corpse at the morgue. After the people there were finished with him.”

“When was this?” Meyer asked.

“The day after he was killed.”

“That would’ve been...”

“Whenever. I accompanied my aunt to the morgue, and an ambulance took us to the mosque where they bathed the body according to Islamic law... they have rules, you know. Religious Muslims. They have many rules.”

“I take it you’re not religious.”

“I’m American now,” Kiraz said. “I don’t believe in the old ways anymore.”

“Then what were you doing in a mosque, washing your cousin’s...?”

“My aunt asked me to come. You saw her. You saw how distraught she was. I went as a family duty.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in the old ways anymore,” Carella said.

“I don’t believe in any of the religious bullshit,” Kiraz said. “I went with her to help her. She’s an old woman. She’s alone now that her only son was killed. I went to help her.”

“So you washed the body...”

“No, the imam washed the body.”

“But you were there when he washed the body.”

“I was there. He washed it three times. That’s because it’s written that when the daughter of Muhammad died, he instructed his followers to wash her three times, or more than that if necessary. Five times, seven, whatever. But always an odd number of times. Never an even number. That’s what I mean about all the religious bullshit. Like having to wrap the body in three white sheets. That’s because when Muhammad died, he himself was wrapped in three white sheets. From Yemen. That’s what’s written. So God forbid you should wrap a Muslim corpse in four sheets! Oh no! It has to be three. But you have to use four ropes to tie the sheets, not three, it has to be four. And the ropes each have to be seven feet long. Not three, or four, but seven! Do you see what I mean? All mumbo-jumbo bullshit.”

“So you’re saying you saw your cousin’s body...”

“Yes.”

“...while he was being washed.”

“Yes.”

“And that’s how you knew he was shot in the head.”

“Yes. I saw the bullet wound at the base of his skull. Anyway, where else would he have been shot? If his murderer was sitting behind him in the taxi...”

“How do you know that?”

“What?”

“How do you know his murderer was inside the taxi?”

“Well, if Salim was shot at the back of the head, his murderer had to be sitting...”

“Oz?”

She was standing in the doorway to the kitchen, a diminutive woman with large brown eyes, her long ebony hair trailing down the back of the yellow silk robe she wore over a long white nightgown.

“Badria, good morning,” Kiraz said. “My wife, gentlemen. I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your names.”

“Detective Carella.”

“Detective Meyer.”

“How do you do?” Badria said. “Have you offered them coffee?” she asked her husband.

“I’m sorry, no.”

“Gentlemen? Some coffee?”

“None for me, thanks,” Carella said.

Meyer shook his head.

“Oz? Would you like some coffee?”

“Please,” he said. There was a faint amused smile on his face now. “As an illustration,” he said, “witness my wife.”

The detectives didn’t know what he was talking about.

“The wearing of silk is expressly forbidden in Islamic law,” he said. “‘Do not wear silk, for one who wears it in the world will not wear it in the Hereafter.’ That’s what’s written. You’re not allowed to wear yellow clothing, either, because ‘these are the clothes usually worn by nonbelievers,’ quote unquote. But here’s my beautiful wife wearing a yellow silk robe, oh shame unto her,” Kiraz said, and suddenly began laughing.

Badria did not laugh with him.

Her back to the detectives, she stood before a four-burner stove, preparing her husband’s coffee in a small brass pot with a tin lining.

“ ‘A man was wearing clothes dyed in saffron,’ ” Kiraz said, apparently quoting again, his laughter trailing, his face becoming serious again. “ ‘And finding that Muhammad disapproved of them, he promised to wash them. But the Prophet said, Burn them!’ ” That’s written, too. So tell me, Badria. Should we burn your pretty yellow silk robe? What do you think, Badria?”

Badria said nothing.

The aroma of strong Turkish coffee filled the small kitchen.

“You haven’t answered our very first question,” Meyer said.

“And what was that? I’m afraid I’ve forgotten it.”

“Where were you at three o’clock this morning?”

“I was here,” Kiraz said. “Asleep. In bed with my beautiful wife. Isn’t that so, Badria?”

Standing at the stove in her yellow silk robe, Badria said nothing.

“Badria? Tell the gentlemen where I was at three o’clock this morning.”

She did not turn from the stove.

Her back still to them, her voice very low, Badria Kiraz said, “I don’t know where you were, Oz.”

The aroma of the coffee was overpowering now.

“But you weren’t here in bed with me,” she said.

Nellie Brand left the District Attorney’s Office at eleven that Wednesday morning and was uptown at the Eight-Seven by a little before noon. She had cancelled an important lunch date, and even before the detectives filled her in, she warned them that this better be real meat here.

Osman Kiraz had already been read his rights and had insisted on an attorney before he answered any questions. Nellie wasn’t familiar with the man he chose. Gulbuddin Amin was wearing a dark-brown business suit, with a tie and vest. Nellie was wearing a suit, too. Hers was a Versace, and it was a deep shade of green that complimented her blue eyes and sand-colored hair. Amin had a tidy little mustache and he wore eyeglasses. His English was impeccable, with a faint Middle-Eastern accent. Nellie guessed he might originally have come from Afghanistan, as had his client. She guessed he was somewhere in his mid fifties. She herself was thirty-two.

The police clerk’s fingers were poised over the stenotab machine. Nellie was about to begin the questioning when Amin said, “I hope this was not a frivolous arrest, Mrs. Brand.”

“No, counselor...”

“...because that would be a serious mistake in a city already fraught with Jewish-Arab tensions.”

“I would not use the word frivolous to describe this arrest,” Nellie said.

“In any case, I’ve already advised my client to remain silent.”

“Then we have nothing more to do here,” Nellie said, briskly dusting the palm of one hand against the other. “Easy come, easy go. Take him away, boys, he’s all yours.”

“Why are you afraid of her?” Kiraz asked his lawyer.

Amin responded in what Nellie assumed was Arabic.

“Let’s stick to English, shall we?” she said. “What’d you just say, counselor?”

“My comment was privileged.”

“Not while your man’s under oath, it isn’t.”

Amin sighed heavily.

“I told him I’m afraid of no woman.”

“Bravo!” Nellie said, applauding, and then looked Kiraz dead in the eye. “How about you?” she asked. “Are you afraid of me?”

“Of course not!”

“So would you like to answer some questions?”

“I have nothing to hide.”

“Yes or no? It’s your call. I haven’t got all day here.”

“I would like to answer her questions,” Kiraz told his lawyer.

Amin said something else in Arabic.

“Let us in on it,” Nellie said.

“I told him it’s his own funeral,” Amin said.

Q: Mr. Kiraz, would you like to tell us where you were at three this morning?

A: I was at home in bed with my wife.

Q: You wife seems to think otherwise.

A: My wife is mistaken.

Q: Well, she’ll be subpoenaed before the grand jury, you know, and she’ll have to tell them under oath whether you were in bed with her or somewhere else.

A: I was home. She was in bed with me.

Q: You yourself are under oath right this minute, you realize that, don’t you?

A: I realize it.

Q: You swore on the Koran, did you not? You placed your left hand on the Koran and raised your right hand...

A: I know what I did.

Q: Or does that mean anything to you?

Q: Mr. Kiraz?

Q: Mr. Kiraz, does that mean anything to you? Placing your hand on the Islamic holy book...

A: I heard you.

Q: May I have your answer, please?

A: My word is my bond. It doesn’t matter whether I swore on the Koran or not.

Q: Well, good, I’m happy to hear that. So tell me, Mr. Kiraz, where were you on these other dates at around two in the morning? Friday, May second... Saturday, May third... and Monday, May fifth. All at around two in the morning, where were you, Mr. Kiraz?

A: Home asleep. I work late. I get home around one, one-fifteen. I go directly to bed.

Q: Do you know what those dates signify?

A: I have no idea.

Q: You don’t read the papers, is that it?

A: I read the papers. But those dates...

Q: Or watch television? You don’t watch television?

A: I work from four to midnight. I rarely watch television.

Q: Then you don’t know about these Muslim cab drivers who were shot and killed, is that it?

A: I know about them. Is that what those dates are? Is that when they were killed?

Q: How about Saturday, May third? Does that date hold any particular significance for you?

A: Not any more than the other dates.

Q: Do you know who was killed on that date?

A: No.

Q: Your cousin. Salil Nazir.

A: Yes.

Q: Yes what?

A: Yes. Now I recall that was the date.

Q: Because the detectives spoke to you that morning, isn’t that so? In your aunt’s apartment? Gulalai Nazir, right? Your aunt? You spoke to the detectives at six that morning, didn’t you?

A: I don’t remember the exact time, but yes, I spoke to them.

Q: And told them a Jew had killed your cousin, isn’t that so?

A: Yes. Because of the blue star.

Q: Oh, is that why?

A: Yes.

Q: And you spoke to Detective Genero and Parker, did you not, after a third Muslim cab driver was killed? This would have been on Monday, May fifth, at around three in the afternoon, when you spoke to them. And at that time you said, correct me if I’m wrong, you said, “Just find the fucking Jew who shot my cousin in the head,” is that correct?

A: Yes, I said that. And I’ve already explained how I knew he was shot in the head. I was there when the imam washed him. I saw the bullet wound...

Q: Did you know any of these other cab drivers?

A: No.

Q: Khalid Aslam...

A: No.

Q: Ali Al-Barak?

A: No.

Q: Or the one who was killed last night, Abbas Miandad, did you know any of these drivers?

A: I told you no.

Q: So the only one you knew was your cousin, Salim Nazir.

A: Of course I knew my cousin.

Q: And you also knew he was shot in the head.

A: Yes. I told you...

Q: Like all the other drivers.

A: I don’t know how the other drivers were killed. I didn’t see the other drivers.

Q: But you saw your cousin while he was being washed, is that correct?

A: That is correct.

Q: Would you remember the name of the imam who washed him?

A: No, I’m sorry.

Q: Would it have been Ahmed Nur Kabir?

A: It could have. I had never seen him before.

Q: If I told you his name was Ahmed Nur Kabir, and that the name of the mosque where your cousin’s body was prepared for burial is Masjid Al-Barbrak, would you accept that?

A: If you say that’s where...

Q: Yes, I say so.

A: Then, of course, I would accept it.

Q: Would it surprise you to learn that the detectives here — Detectives Carella and Meyer — spoke to the imam at Masjid Al-Barbrak?

A: I would have no way of knowing whether or not they...

Q: Will you accept my word that they spoke to him?

A: I would accept it.

Q: They spoke to him and he told them he was alone when he washed your cousin’s body, alone when he wrapped the body in its shrouds. There was no one in the room with him. He was alone, Mr. Kiraz.

A: I don’t accept that. I was with him.

Q: He says you were waiting outside with your aunt. He says he was alone with the corpse.

A: He’s mistaken.

Q: If he was, in fact, alone with your cousin’s body...?

A: I told you he’s mistaken.

Q: You think he’s lying?

A: I don’t know what...

Q: You think a holy man would lie?

A: Holy man! Please!

Q: If he was alone with the body, how do you explain seeing a bullet wound at the back of your cousin’s head?

Q: Mr. Kiraz?

Q: Mr. Kiraz, how did you know your cousin was shot in the head? None of the newspaper or television reports...

Q: Mr. Kiraz? Would you answer my question, please?

Q: Mr. Kiraz?

A: Any man would have done the same thing.

Q: What would any man...?

A: She is not one of his whores! She is my wife!

I knew, of course, that Salim was seeing a lot of women. That’s okay, he was young, he was good-looking, the Koran says a man can take as many as four wives, so long as he can support them emotionally and financially. Salim wasn’t even married, so there’s nothing wrong with dating a lot of girls, four, five, a dozen, who cares? This is America, Salim was American, we’re all Americans, right? You watch television, the bachelor has to choose from fifteen girls, isn’t that so? This is America. So there was nothing wrong with Salim dating all these girls.

But not my wife.

Not Badria.

I don’t know when it started with her. I don’t know when it started between them. I know one night I called the supermarket where she works. This was around ten o’clock one night, I was at the pharmacy. I manage a pharmacy, you know. People ask me all sorts of questions about what they should do for various ailments. I’m not a pharmacist, but they ask me questions. I know a lot of doctors. Also, I read a lot. I have time during the day, I don’t start work till four in the afternoon. So I read a lot. I wanted to be a teacher, you know.

They told me she had gone home early.

I said, Gone home? Why?

I was alarmed.

Was Badria sick?

The person I spoke to said my wife had a headache. So she went home.

I didn’t know what to think.

I immediately called the house. There was no answer. Now I became really worried. Was she seriously ill? Why wasn’t she answering the phone? Had she fainted? So I went home, too. I’m the manager, I can go home if I like. This is America. A manager can go home if he likes. I told my assistant I thought my wife might be sick.

I was just approaching my building when I saw them. This was now close to eleven o’clock that night. It was dark, I didn’t recognize them at first. I thought it was just a young couple. Another young couple. Only that. Coming up the street together. Arm in arm. Heads close. She turned to kiss him. Lifted her head to his. Offered him her lips. It was Badria. My wife. Kissing Salim. My cousin.

Well, they knew each other, of course. They had met at parties, they had met at family gatherings, this was my cousin! “Beware of getting into houses and meeting women,” the Prophet said. “But what about the husband’s brother?” someone asked, and the Prophet replied, “The husband’s brother is like death.” He often talked in riddles, the Prophet, it’s all such bullshit. The Prophet believed that the influence of an evil eye is fact. Fact, mind you. The evil eye. The Prophet believed that he himself had once been put under a spell by a Jew and his daughters. The Prophet believed that the fever associated with plague was due to the intense heat of Hell. The Prophet once said, “Filling the belly of a person with pus is better than stuffing his brain with poetry.” Can you believe that? I read poetry! I read a lot. The Prophet believed that if you had a bad dream, you should spit three times on your left side. That’s what Jews do when they want to take the curse off something, you know, they spit on their fingers, ptui, ptui, ptui. I’ve seen elderly Jews doing that on the street. It’s the same thing, am I right? It’s all bullshit, all of it. Jesus turning water into wine, Jesus raising the dead! I mean, come on! Raising the dead? Moses parting the Red Sea? I’d love to see that one!

It all goes back to the time of the dinosaurs, when men huddled in caves in fear of thunder and lightning. It all goes back to Godfearing men arguing violently about which son of Abraham was the true descendant of the one true God, and whether or not Jesus was, in fact, the Messiah. As if a one true God, if there is a God at all, doesn’t know who the hell he himself is! All of them killing each other! Well, it’s no different today, is it? It’s all about killing each other in the name of God, isn’t it?

In the White House, we’ve got a born-again Christian who doesn’t even realize he’s fighting a holy war. An angry dry-drunk, as they say, full of hate, thirsting for white wine, and killing Arabs wherever he can find them. And in the sand out there, on their baggy-pantsed knees, we’ve got a zillion Muslim fanatics, full of hate, bowing to Mecca and vowing to drive the infidel from the Holy Land. Killing each other. All of them killing each other in the name of a one true God.

In my homeland, in my village, the tribal elders would have appointed a council to rape my wife as punishment for her transgression. And then the villagers would have stoned her to death.

But this is America.

I’m an American.

I knew I had to kill Salim, yes, that is what an American male would do, protect his wife, protect the sanctity of his home, kill the intruder. But I also knew I had to get away with it, as they say, I had to kill the violator and still be free to enjoy the pleasures of my wife, my position, I’m the manager of a pharmacy!

I bought the spray paint, two cans, at a hardware store near the pharmacy. I thought that was a good idea, the Star of David. Such symbolism! The six points of the star symbolizing God’s rule over the universe in all six directions, north, south, east, west, up and down. Such bullshit! I didn’t kill Salim until the second night, to make it seem as if he wasn’t the true target, this was merely hate, these were hate crimes. I should have left it at three. Three would have been convincing enough, weren’t you convinced after three? Especially with the bombings that followed? Weren’t you convinced? But I had to go for four. Insurance. The Navajos think four is a sacred number, you know. Again, it has to do with religion, with the four directions. They’re all related, these religions. Jews, Christians, Muslims, they’re all related. And they’re all the same bullshit.

Salim shouldn’t have gone after my wife.

He had enough whores already.

My wife is not a whore.

I did the right thing.

I did the American thing.

They came out through the back door of the station house — a Catholic who hadn’t been to church since he was twelve, and a Jew who put up a tree each and every Christmas — and walked to where they’d parked their cars early this morning. It was a lovely bright afternoon. They both turned their faces up to the sun and lingered a moment. They seemed almost reluctant to go home. It was often that way after they cracked a tough one. They wanted to savor it a bit.

“I’ve got a question,” Meyer said.

“Mm?”

“Do you think I’m too sensitive?”

“No. You’re not sensitive at all.”

“You mean that?”

“I mean it.”

“You’ll make me cry.”

“I just changed my mind.”

Meyer burst out laughing.

“I’ll tell you one thing,” he said. “I’m sure glad this didn’t turn out to be what it looked like at first. I’m glad it wasn’t hate.”

“Maybe it was,” Carella said.

They got into their separate cars and drove toward the open gate in the cyclone fence, one car behind the other. Carella honked “Shave-and-a-hair-cut,” and Meyer honked back “Two-bits!” As Carella made his turn, he waved so long. Meyer tooted the horn again.

Both men were smiling.

From the publication of her first book of short stories, By the North Gate, in 1963, Joyce Carol Oates has been the most prolific of major American writers, turning out novels, short stories, reviews, essays, and plays in an unceasing flow as remarkable for its quality as its volume. Writers who are extremely prolific often risk not being taken as seriously as they should — if one can write it that fast, how good can it be? Oates, however, has largely escaped that trap, and even her increasing identification with crime fiction, at a time when the field has attracted a number of other mainstream literary figures, has not lessened her reputation as a formidable author in the least. Many of Oates’s works contain at least some elements of crime and mystery, from the National Book Award winner them, through the Chappaquiddick fictionalization Black Water and the Jeffrey Dahmer-inspired serial-killer novel Zombie, to her controversial 738-page fictionalized biography of Marilyn Monroe, Blonde. The element of detection becomes explicit with the investigations of amateur sleuth Xavier Kilgarvan in the novel The Mysteries of Winterthurn, which, the author explains in an afterword to the 1985 paperback edition, “is the third in a quintet of experimental novels that deal, in genre form, with nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America.” Why would a literary writer like Oates choose to work in such “deliberately confining structures”? Because “the formal discipline of’genre’... forces us inevitably to a radical re-visioning of the world and the craft of fiction.” Oates, who numbers among her honors in a related genre the Bram Stoker Award of the Horror Writers of America, did not establish an explicit crime-fiction identity until Lives of the Twins appeared under the pseudonym Rosamund Smith. Initially intended to be a secret, the identity of Smith was revealed almost immediately, and later novels were bylined Joyce Carol Oates (large print) writing as Rosamund Smith (smaller print). Her recent novels include The Falls, I’ll Take You There, and Rape: A Love Story.