They all expected someone bigger, someone darker, someone meaner looking. Not the deliberately average- looking Joe before them.
'I'm sorry.'
'Yeah, well, this is the guy you get. Mind if I come in?'
Habib stuck his head out the door and cast furtive looks up and down the hall.
'Don't worry,' Jack said. 'No one's seen me. And I took the elevator up an extra two floors and walked down. But if you keep me standing out here, pretty soon-'
'Yes-yes. Come in. Please.'
Jack stepped inside and let Habib close the door behind him.
'You've got the down payment?'
He nodded. 'Yes. I was afraid I could not get so much cash on such short notice.'
'Keep it for now. I haven't decided yet whether we'll be doing business. What's the story? Russ thinks your wife and son have been kidnapped. Is that it?'
The man broke down and sobbed. 'Save my family. Please save my family.'
Jack's throat constricted. The pain in those words…
He tried to imagine how he'd feel if Gia and Vicky were being held for ransom. Couldn't.
'Take it easy. Let's sit down and you tell me about it.'
He led Jack past a small, cluttered kitchen, past a room with an inflatable fighter jet hanging from the ceiling and a New York Giants banner tacked to the wall-his son's, no doubt-ending in an office that had probably started out as a third bedroom but was crammed with computers and monitors.
'This where you and Russ play MMO games?' Jack said, trying to sound knowledgeable.
'What? Oh, yes.'
He sat at the desk, Jack pulled up a straight-backed chair.
'It's true: My wife and son have been kidnapped and are being held hostage.'
Jack noted that he didn't say 'ransom.'
Russ had sworn the guy hadn't called the cops. Said he was too scared by the kidnapper's threats. Jack believed Russ, but didn't know if he could believe Habib.
'Why not call the cops? I know it's SOP for kidnappers to tell you not to, but…'
Habib reached inside his jacket and pulled out some photos. His hand trembled as he passed them over.
'This is why.'
The first showed an attractive blond woman, thirty or so, dressed in a white blouse and a dark skirt, gagged and bound to a chair in front of a blank, unpainted wall. A red plastic funnel had been inserted through the gag into her mouth. A can of Drano lay propped in her lap. Her eyes held Jack for a moment-pale blue and utterly terrified. Caution: Contains lye was block printed across the bottom of the photo.
Jack grimaced and moved to the next. At first he wasn't sure what he was looking at, like one of those pictures you get when the camera accidentally goes off in your hand. A big meat cleaver took up most of the frame, but the rest was He bit the inside of his cheek when he recognized the bare lower belly of a little boy, his hairless pubes, his little penis laid out on the chopping block, the cleaver next to it, ominously close.
Okay. Habib hadn't called the cops.
Jack handed them back.
'How much do they want?'
'I don't believe it is a 'they.' I think it is a 'he.' And he does not seem to want money. At least not yet.'
'Psycho?'
'I think so. He seems to hate Arabs-all Arabs-and has picked on me.' Habib's features knotted as his voice cracked. 'Why me?'
Jack realized how close this guy was to tumbling over the edge. He didn't want him to start blubbering again.
'Easy,' he said softly. 'Easy.'
Habib rubbed his hands over his face, and when next he looked at Jack, his features were blotchy but composed.
'Yes. I must remain calm. I must not lose control. For Barbara. And Robby.'
Jack had another nightmare flash of Gia and Vicky in the hands of some of the psychos he'd had to deal with and knew at that moment he wanted to work with Habib. The guy was okay.
'An Arab hater. One of Kahane's old crew, maybe?'
'No. Not a Jew. At least not that I can tell. He keeps referring to a sister who was killed in the Twin Towers. I've told him that I'm an American citizen just like him. But he says I'm from Saudi Arabia, and Saudis brought down the Towers and an Arab's an Arab as far as he's concerned.'
Jack stiffened. The Towers again? Last summer he'd become embroiled in the intrigue and paranoia surrounding their fall. The consequences were still reverberating through his life.
'Start at the beginning,' he said. 'Any hint this was coming?'
'Nothing. Everything in our lives has been going normally.'
'How about someone from the old country?'
'I have no 'old country.' I've spent more of my life in America than in Saudi Arabia. My father was on long- term assignment here with Saud Petroleum. I grew up in New York. I was in college here when he was transferred back. I spent two months in the land of my birth and realized that my homeland was here. I made my hajj, then returned to New York. I finished school and became a citizen-much to the dismay of my father, I might add.'
'Still could be someone from over there behind it. I mean, your wife doesn't look like she's from that part of the world.'
'Barbara was born and raised in Westchester.'
That surprised Jack. 'Not Muslim? I'd have thought that would be against the Koran or something.'
'It's against the law for Muslim women to marry infidel men, but not the other way around. If there's a pre- nup that the infidel woman will convert to Islam, it's okay.'
'So she converted?'
He shook his head. 'No. She's an atheist. Thinks religion's silly.'
'Well, there you go. Sounds to me like your marrying someone like that drove one of these fundamentalist nutcases-'
'No. Positively not.' Habib's face hardened. Absolute conviction steeled his voice. 'A true Muslim would never do what this man has done to me.'
'Don't be so sure.'
'He made me… he made me eat…' The rest of the sentence seemed to be lodged in Habib's throat. '… pork. And made me drink alcohol with it. Pork!'
Jack shook his head. 'I take it you're still a believer then?'
He shrugged. 'I don't pray six times a day or go to mosque, but some cultural proscriptions are so ingrained…'
But still, what was the big deal? Jack could think of things a whole lot worse he could have been forced to do.
'What'd you have to do-eat a ham on rye?'
'No. Ribs. He told me to go to a certain restaurant on Forty-seventh Street this past Friday at noon and buy a rack of baby back ribs. Then he wanted me to stand outside on the sidewalk to eat them and wash them down with a bottle of beer.'
'Did you?'
Habib bowed his head. 'Yes.'
Jack was tempted to ask if he liked the taste but stifled the question. Some folks took this stuff very seriously. He'd never been able to fathom how otherwise intelligent people allowed their dietary habits to be controlled by something written in a book thousands of years ago by someone who didn't have indoor plumbing. But then he didn't understand a lot of things about a lot of people. He freely admitted that. And what they ate or didn't eat, for whatever reasons, was the least of those mysteries.
'So you ate pork and drank a beer to save your wife and child. Nobody's going to issue a fatwa for that. Or are