Olivia turned the key in the lock and opened the door. “Would you like a glass of water?” she said. “It’s all I have. The fridge is empty and-”
Whatever the young woman intended to say next was cut short by the hand that went across her mouth and the feel of the wickedly sharp knife blade held against her throat. “Don’t scream, sooka, or I’ll cut your fucking head off,” Kadyrov whispered in her ear as he kicked the door shut behind them. “Now we’re gonna get busy.”
2
Sitting on the d train as it rattled North from Manhattan into the Bronx, Amy Lopez lifted her copy of the Post so that the young acne-scarred man with the peroxide-blond hair sitting across from her couldn’t see her face. He’d been staring at her since getting on the train at the 125th Street subway station, and she’d caught him glancing at her purse, which she had tucked closer against her hip. She read the headline that screamed from the front page.
DA’S WITNESS COLLAPSES ON WITNESS STAND AT IMAM’S TERROR TRIAL
She turned the page to read the report about the murder trial of a Harlem imam named Sharif Jabbar. It was one of those stories that had the city riveted to the various tabloids and the evening television news. A young woman had been decapitated in the basement of the al-Aqsa mosque in Harlem during some sort of frenzied buildup to a narrowly thwarted terrorist attack on the New York Stock Exchange the previous fall. And now, in April, the imam was being prosecuted for her murder.
According to the story, New York district attorney Roger “Butch” Karp, who was prosecuting the case, had called an unindicted co-conspirator, Dean Newbury, the senior partner of an old, established white-shoe Wall Street law firm, to the witness stand the day before. And while testifying against the imam, the old man had toppled over and died. The “official” word from a court spokesman was that Newbury had succumbed to “an apparent heart attack.”
However, the Post was reporting a more sinister possibility. According to a reliable source who was not authorized to speak on the record, Newbury had shown signs of having been poisoned. The source was quoted as saying, “He took a sip of water and kablooey, he’s on the ground frothing at the mouth and kicking around to beat the band. Then nothing. Nada. Dead as a doornail.”
Amy finished the story and turned the page, dipping the paper ever so slightly and just in time to catch the young man watching her before he quickly averted his eyes. She looked down at the paper and a chill ran up her spine. The previous night, April 10, a woman named Dolores Atkins had been murdered in an apartment off Anderson Avenue in the Bronx. The police weren’t saying much, but according to another officially anonymous source, she’d been raped and “cut up pretty bad” by her attacker.
“There were no apparent signs of a break-in,” an NYPD spokesman was quoted as saying. He’d declined to answer a question posed by the reporter, Ariadne Stupenagel, regarding the possibility that the murder was related to a double homicide that had occurred the previous July on the Upper West Side of Manhattan near Columbia University. The article had gone on to note similarities between Atkins’s death and the murders of the other two women-Beth Jenkins and her daughter Olivia Yancy. The cases remained open with no arrests made or imminent.
When the train reached her stop at the 161st Street station near Yankee Stadium, Amy stayed in her seat as if she intended to continue riding. Then at the last moment, she jumped up and stepped through the open door. Hurrying along the platform, she glanced back just as she reached the stairs leading down to River Avenue. She cursed; the stalker had been quick enough to beat the door and was following her.
She walked down the stairs as quickly as she could and started zigzagging through the late-afternoon crowd on the sidewalk. This time when she looked back, she didn’t see the young man and sighed with relief. She took him for a purse snatcher, and that would have made her a victim twice in two months. There wasn’t much money in her handbag, but replacing her driver’s license again, as well as having to put a stop on her checking and credit card accounts, would have been onerous.
Oh, and my engagement ring is in there, she thought. She’d gained a little weight with her last pregnancy with baby A.J. and the ring had been uncomfortable, so she took it off and put it in her wallet. I’d hate to lose that…
Amy’s last thought was interrupted by a violent tug on her arm. The young man suddenly materialized at her side and grabbed her purse. She tried to hang on as he took off running and screamed as she was pulled off her feet, losing her grip on the purse. “Help! Thief! Somebody help!” she cried as she scrambled to her feet.
A few bystanders yelled at the purse snatcher, and a couple of men gave momentary chase, but the thief knew his game and that the pursuit would not last long. He dodged between the traffic on River Avenue and kept running until he was on the west side of the soon-to-be-demolished old baseball stadium. He slowed to a walk and began rifling through the purse, oblivious to the looks he got from passersby. This was the Bronx; asking a tough- looking, acne-scarred young man what he was doing pulling out the contents of a woman’s purse could only mean trouble.
Only fifteen lousy bucks, he thought. He could probably get a little more for the credit cards and checkbook, though his victim was sure to report them stolen and close the accounts. He was well aware that sometimes victims didn’t act as fast as they should, and he might be able to make a few quick purchases posing as the husband of Amy Lopez. He’d eventually sell the cards to those who had ways of using them still-mostly knowing which businesses didn’t run them through electronic billing. He stared down at the driver’s license dismissively-it was worth only a couple of dollars.
He opened the coin purse of the wallet. Seventy-three cents and a ring with a small diamond. Less than a half carat, he thought. Maybe worth a few hundred brand-new. He looked at the inscription on the inside of the ring: Always, Al. The sentiment could stay, but he’d file the “Al” out of it. I might get thirty bucks, if I can find the right loser.
The thief found a buyer two hours later, standing with a dozen others in Mullayly Park near 166th Street and Jerome Avenue. He’d seen the Puerto Rican teenager around the neighborhood but had never talked to him. Skinny and awkward, with long, wavy dark hair and soulful brown eyes, which looked even larger behind the thick glasses he wore, the young man wasn’t like the others who hung out at that particular part of the park.
Mostly loud punks and their slutty girlfriends, the thief thought. His target was shy to the point where he couldn’t look anyone in the eye for more than a second, even if the conversation was friendly. And he constantly shifted from foot to foot when nervous, as if he wanted to run away.
I think somethin’s wrong with his brain, the thief thought, but he had to admit that the young man did seem to have one talent that got him tolerated by the others: he could repeat word-for-word seemingly every hip-hop recording ever made. Except for a slight Puerto Rican accent, he even sounded like the originals, although he had none of the attitude or hand gestures. I think his name is Felix, the thief thought as he watched the young man finish his improv rap and fall silent.
“Felix, my man, you look like an hombre who needs a ring for his girl,” he said, sidling up to his target. “I got just the thing.” The thief produced the ring. “It’s worth four hundred, but since we’re compadres, I’ll let you have it for a hundred.”
“I… I… I don’t have that much money,” Felix stammered, surprised that the acne-scarred man had spoken to him at all.
“Hell, Felix ain’t got no money, and he ain’t got no girlfriend,” said a large black youth standing close enough to hear the exchange, guffawing.
“I… I… I have a girlfriend,” Felix replied, looking down at his feet.
“Hell yeah, Raymond, haven’t you heard, Felix is the dude that knocked up your cousin Cherise,” a short Hispanic girl with too much makeup said. “Ain’t that right, Felix? You the daddy?” She laughed. The locals hanging out at the park teased Felix, an easy target, every chance they got.
“No… no no,” Felix replied, shaking his head swiftly from side to side and turning red as he shifted faster from one foot to the other.
The large black youth, Raymond, scowled. “That right, Felix? You im-preg-nate Cherise?” He moved over so that he was only a few inches away from Felix and towering over him, then turned his head to the side and winked
