Dead on Arrival

‘You don’t think he would have sold Zarif a gun?’ DeMarco said. ‘Why not? Because he was a Muslim?’

‘No, he wouldn’t have cared if Zarif was a Muslim. Donny would have sold a gun to a four-year-old if the four-year-old had the money. What I’m saying is, I’m surprised he was selling guns at the same time he was working for Pugh. Pugh’s into dope, not guns, and from what I’ve heard about Pugh, he wouldn’t like it if one of his guys was moonlighting.’

‘Huh,’ DeMarco said. ‘So that’s the whole story on Cray? Drugs and guns?’

‘No,’ King said, ‘drugs and guns are the only things he was convicted for. He’s probably got some kinda back story — been buggered by an uncle or starved by his foster parents — but whatever the reason, Donny was one mean son of a bitch. He pistol-whipped a neighbor practically to death because the guy told him to keep his dog chained up. He didn’t do time for that because the neighbor was afraid to testify. And he smacked a couple of his girlfriends around, bad enough to put one in the hospital for a week. Why in God’s name a woman would hook up with someone like him is a mystery to me. I also saw one note on his sheet that said he was suspected of killing another meth dealer when he worked for Pugh but, like I said, I don’t know anything about Pugh.’

‘Was Cray political at all?’ DeMarco said.

‘Political?’ King said.

‘You know, into radical causes, white-power stuff, anything like that?’

‘Not that I know of, but I think Pugh might be. I remember hearing something, but I can’t remember what.’

‘And to find out, I have to talk to somebody else over at the DEA,’ DeMarco said.

‘Yeah, Patsy Hall. She’s the expert on Pugh. She hates his guts.’

King said he’d get DeMarco in to see Hall if he wanted to talk to her, but it would have to be in a week or so because right now she was out of town.

DeMarco and King watched the rest of the fight, which the ref finally stopped when the Puerto Rican’s face resembled a plate of uncooked ground beef. As the cameras were showing a close-up of what used to be the Puerto Rican’s nose, DeMarco thought to himself that you’d have to hold a gun to his head to get him to climb into a ring with a professional boxer.

And then DeMarco was no longer seeing what was on the television screen. It was as if his brain had just changed lanes. You’d have to hold a gun to his head.

Goddammit. He wanted to be done with this thing with Reza Zarif, but now there was something else he needed to do. He was going to have to go to New York and talk to Youseff Khalid’s wife.

He told King it was time for him to leave because he had to go home and buy an airline ticket and pack for a trip, but King begged him to stay. King wasn’t yet ready to face his wife and three noisy kids. And it wasn’t hard to twist DeMarco’s arm. It wasn’t like he had that much to pack.

So he sat there with King and drank half a dozen more beers and tried to focus on three TV sets simultaneously, one showing another fight, one a hockey game in Toronto, and the third a golf tournament in San Diego. The shots of blue skies and palm trees in California reminded DeMarco of Key West, which in turn reminded him of Ellie.

The next morning DeMarco woke up late and with a terrible hangover. Beer always gave him one, so why did he drink it? The answer came from that great western philosopher John Wayne: Sometimes a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.

He caught a midafternoon shuttle up to New York and spent the night at his mother’s place in Queens. The following morning, as he’d consumed no beer and been fawned over and fed by his mom, he woke up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready to conquer the world.

He took a cab to an apartment building in the Astoria section of Queens, where his knock was answered by an enormous scowling black woman in a bright orange and yellow caftan.

‘Are you Mrs Khalid?’ DeMarco asked.

‘No,’ the woman said. ‘Who are you? A reporter? Police?’

The woman’s English was heavily accented but understandable; what her native tongue was DeMarco had no idea.

‘No, ma’am,’ he said, and showed her his ID and explained that he worked for the U.S. Congress.

The woman glanced at his identification and looked back at DeMarco’s face. She had a truly impressive scowl. He bet she scared the hell out of small children.

‘What do you want?’ she said.

‘Just to speak to Mrs Khalid. I want … I need to ask her a few questions.’

‘About what?’

‘Is she here?’ DeMarco said. This woman may have had him outweighed and intimidated, but she was starting to annoy him.

The woman stood there for a moment longer, like the immovable object she was, and finally stepped back so DeMarco could enter the apartment. Sitting on a couch inside the small apartment was another black woman. This woman was wearing a scarf on her head and a drab gray-colored robe that reached her knees. Beneath the robe she had on jeans. Sitting near the woman were three children, two girls and one boy, ranging in age from maybe two to eight. All the children had enormous luminous dark eyes.

The scowling woman who had opened the door said something in a foreign language that DeMarco couldn’t identify, and the children left the room without a murmur of protest. As the children were leaving, DeMarco looked for some sign that Mrs Khalid and her children had been recently abused. This was important, but he couldn’t see any marks or bruises or any other indicator that she or her kids had been hurt or restrained in any way. All he could see was that Mrs Khalid was scared to death.

‘The reason I’m here,’ DeMarco said, ‘is I’d like to know if you have any other explanation for why your husband did what he did. I mean, I know he lost his job and he was angry, but hijacking an airplane?’ Hell, he might as well spit it out. ‘Look, what I’m trying to say is: Did someone make Youseff hijack that plane?’

The big woman spoke. ‘Mrs Khalid doesn’t speak English,’ she said.

Oh, great.

‘Well, can you tell her what I said?’ DeMarco asked.

The big woman talked to Youseff’s wife for what seemed an unusually long time for a simple question, and Mrs Khalid’s response was equally long. As she spoke, DeMarco could hear the agony in her voice even if he couldn’t understand the words. Finally the big woman turned to DeMarco and said, ‘She doesn’t know.’

All that talk, and he gets a three-word response.

‘Then ask her if she or her children were used in any way to force her husband to hijack the plane.’ She should at least know that, DeMarco was thinking.

The woman looked at DeMarco for a moment as if he were crazy, then had another long conversation with Mrs Khalid. The women must have talked for at least three minutes, and by the time they were done Mrs Khalid was weeping.

‘She says no,’ the big woman said to DeMarco.

Jesus, this was hopeless. He had no idea what the two women were saying to each other — he didn’t even know what language they were speaking — and all he was getting was one-word answers. He told the big woman he didn’t have anything else to ask and rose to leave. As he was doing so, Mrs Khalid said something to him.

The big woman said to DeMarco, ‘She wants to know what will happen to her and her children. Will they be sent back to Africa?’

‘I’m sorry,’ DeMarco said, ‘but I have no idea.’ Then, because he knew his response had just added to the poor woman’s anguish, he added, ‘But I’m sure that if she wasn’t involved in any way with what her husband did she has nothing to fear.’

‘Bullshit,’ the big woman said. She pronounced the word perfectly.

After his short fruitless meeting with Mrs Khalid, DeMarco had five hours to kill before his flight back to D.C. so he decided to visit a man named Orin Blunt. Blunt was the air marshal who had shot Youseff Khalid in the head from a sitting position in the airplane.

The newspapers said there’d been no interaction between Blunt and Khalid before the shooting, but DeMarco still wanted to talk to him. He wanted to hear directly about the moments leading up to the hijacking and see if Blunt remembered anything Khalid had said that hadn’t been reported in the papers. The other thing was — and he