The Godless One (16 page)

"Mr. Cosmos?" he shouted into the
phone.

"I'm still here. Are those horns? Are
you all right? You aren't insured with Allstate, are
you?"

"Was the Sentra repaired?"

"No, the name and contact information
that the other party gave Mr. Zewail wasn't valid."

"Contact information?"

"Yes, when Mr. Zewail was rear-ended,
he exchanged addresses and phone numbers with someone named Frank
Drebin. But when we tried to contact him..."

Ari listened hard for a moment before
realizing the signal had dropped out again. He was swearing at the
phone when a sluggish pickup truck belonging to a plumbing company
casually pulled onto Semmes, the driver assuming the Scion was far
enough down the road to give him plenty of leeway. There was
another car on Ari's left, leaving him no room to swerve. He hit
his brakes.

"Mr. Nasser? Are those squealing brakes
that I hear? I'm going to hang up—"

"No!" Ari yelled, flinging up his right
palm at the people honking at him. They thought he was waving.
Maybe he was mentally challenged. Anyone could get a license these
days. The pickup moved slowly forward, with Ari stuck behind him.
To his intense irritation, the truck stopped at a yellow light on
Route 1 a full ten seconds sooner than necessary.

"Do you have a pressing engagement?"
Benjy Cosmos asked.

"Very pressing," Ari said. He was not
strictly lying. He always felt pressed for time whenever he was
driving.

"Don't you think this conversation can
wait?" the agent asked.

"I am trapped at an infernal traffic
light." Ari paused. "And my signal seems better. Did you say the
driver who hit Mustafa gave an erroneous address?"

"Could be," said Cosmos. "More likely
it was bogus. It happens all the time. I told Mr. Zewail he can
still go through with his claim, but he'll have to pay the $1,000
deductible."

Already
paid
, Ari thought, figuring in the two
cars missing from Mustafa's garage. The killers had brushed off the
$10,000 cash, but vehicles apparently belonged in a different
category: the legitimate booty of war.

"He did not agree to the terms?" Ari
asked.

"He hasn't taken his car to the body
shop we recommended," Cosmos answered.

"Did he give you details about the
accident?" Ari asked. "Were the police called?"

"There was no need. Mr. Zewail was
coming back from a visit to the state prison on Route 6 when he was
hit. Mr. Drebin was very polite...as most con men are. He gave his
address and Mr. Zewail gave him his. That's not exactly SOP.
Usually they just exchange insurance information."

"'SOP', I understand," said Ari as he
fantasized shooting out the tardy traffic light. "Where was the
damage to the Sentra?"

"Right rear taillight and bumper. Not
much, but these days ‘not much’ translates into a big
deal."

"Indeed," said Ari.

"Now I'm wondering if that was such a
good idea, Mr. Zewail giving this Frank character his address. You
might tell him he should consider changing the locks on his
house."

"I will certainly pass that suggestion
on to him," Ari said. "Thank you, Mr. Cosmos. You have been very
helpful."

Now he knew how the killers had gotten
Mustafa’s address.

"You're welcome. Who did you say you
had your insurance coverage with?"

"Alas, I am driving a government
vehicle."

"I understand," said Benjy Cosmos, not
entirely displeased.

The light turned green and Ari closed
his phone.

Beyond the fact that he had been bored,
there was no reason for Ari to have investigated the murder of the
Riggins family when he first arrived in Richmond. That two little
boys had been snuffed out by the arbitrary forces of darkness
should not have unsettled him. He had spent all of his life in a
land where the moral scale was permanently rigged. In the end,
though, their deaths, and an overdose of curiosity, had pushed him
into action.

There were no children involved in the
Zewail murders, but even so he did not think Karen’s reference to
the Lone Ranger was relevant. It was Ari’s instinct for
self-preservation that was at work here, activated the moment Samir
Salman recognized him.

He had seen nothing of the hate letters
Mustafa allegedly received. The fact that Mustafa mentioned them to
Samir Salman should have been evidence enough that they existed.
Yet it made no sense for the Egyptian to tell this to an Arab he
was supposed to get information from. Wouldn’t he be scaring Samir
away from revealing anything at all? The threats had come after the
first interview, which suggested to Ari that Samir’s contact did
not know about Mustafa before then. Samir Salman had told Ari that
the threats came from one of Mustafa’s neighbors, yet the
theoretical xenophobic redneck would have known about Mustafa’s
presence the same day the movers showed up on Gayton Road. Mustafa
must have guessed that the letters came as a result of the prison
interviews. On the other hand, he and Samir Salman might have
concocted the story between them, as a way of explaining away the
abrupt lack of progress. A fictional redneck was easier to
manipulate than an exotic car dealer—or the man who had hired the
dealer to steal the Lamborghini.

Five minutes later, Ari found the
office of Brown and Stern.

The architect's office presented a
bright yellow brick exterior that ran between a long alley and
Granby Street. The windows were set low, so that pedestrians could
look straight down into the cubicles and see the employees busy at
their desks. Or perhaps not so busy. Ari saw a paper airplane fly
over one of the partitions. Going down a short flight of steps, he
entered.

The reception desk looked permanently
abandoned, with no phones or calendars to greet visitors with a
commercial veneer. The steady murmur of voices was interrupted by
laughter. On top of the partitions were odd little gadgets, posted
next to which were intricate diagrams of the original inspirations.
They were everywhere, making the place glitter with what he
presumed was imitation gold and silver. Suddenly, a half dozen
young men and women bearing large cups rose and converged at a
crouch on the cubicle in the center of the long room. A shout
erupted as they dumped what appeared to be confetti on the
occupant. The assailants vanished, giggling, into their respective
workspaces. The victim jumped up and shook his fist.

"I'll get you!" he yelled, laughing. It
was Ramesh, from the picture in Mustafa’s office. He was turning in
every direction, making sure to encompass every coworker in his cry
of vengeance. When he rotated Ari's way, his fist was still lifted.
He lowered his hand and stooped his head slightly with a cough of
embarrassment. "Oh, sir. Is there anything we can do for
you?"

"Actually, it was you I came to see,"
said Ari. "You're Ramesh Balasubramium?"

"Yes?" he said, his smile shading into
the tentative.

From their cheerful behavior, Ari did
not think anyone here had gotten the news about Mustafa. He had
checked on the internet before leaving his house this morning, and
the only news was of a pair of suspicious deaths in the far West
End. Ari found the understatement amusing, but understood that more
details would be released and the city would shudder under a
barrage of lurid headlines. Richmond had become blasé about its
high homicide rate (for a Western city), but a beheading would
unquestionably catch everyone's attention. The police would have
seen the same picture Ari had and would soon be showing up to
question Ramesh and his peers. Ari saw nothing wrong with a
slightly premature release of the news, but he did not want a crowd
of appalled architects closing in on him as he talked to Ramesh.
None of the others Ari had seen before they disappeared into their
cubicles was Indian. Ari decided to take a gamble.

"
Namaste
," he said, touching his
fingers together in the traditional
a
ñ
jali
mudrā
.

Ramesh returned the gesture, but
followed it with an apologetic shrug. "I'm not..."

"Ah," Ari said.
"
Naan ungalukku solla sila vishayangal
ulladhu
."

Ramesh made an eccentric backward
cocking motion with his head while releasing a staccato laugh of
surprise. "You speak Tamil?"

"
Konjam
," was Ari's ingratiating
response.

To Ari's mild dismay, he was attracting
more attention than he had intended to. Curious eyes were propped
on the partitions.

"Ooh, Ramey, what have you done!" a
girl intoned in an ominous voice. This was followed by chuckles
from the other spaces.

"Nothing!" Ramesh exclaimed...but he
maintained his smile.

Ari nodded agreeably at the intelligent
faces poking out of the warren. He had experienced a similar
awkward moment at the oriental food market on Broad Street—just
minutes before putting town three hapless gunmen who didn't have a
clue, and now never would. He gave Ramesh's face a quick study. He
had read somewhere that Indians were among the happiest people on
earth. Why this was so mystified the reporter, since India suffered
as much or more as any other country from poverty, class divisions,
terrorism, natural and man-made disasters, religious strife and a
host of other ills. Had a survey been done of typical Indians in
the street, the reaction would have probably resulted in a
universal "Happy? Are you out of your mind?"—the same result one
would have gotten in almost every other country. And yet, whatever
the cause, Ari tended to agree, and Ramesh ran true to form. He was
open and pleasant with Ari who, by virtue of having dealt with so
many corpses, was about as untouchable as anyone could get. But of
course, Ramesh did not know anything about Ari's past. Mesmerized
by this apparent Arab who could speak the language of southern
India, the engine of his smile revved smoothly.

"
Naam iruvarum thaniyaaga peasa oru arai ulladha? Bayapada
ondrum illai. Sila sinna vishayangalai unnudan vivadhikka
virumbugiren
."

While asking Ramesh if there was a room
where they could talk in private, Ari's expression was superbly
innocuous, like whipped cream on cyanide.

"
Nichchayamaga, pinnadi oru sandhippu arai
ulladhu
. But please…allow me one
moment..." Ramesh sat at his computer to brush off confetti from
his head and shirt. Ari perused a brochure lying on the reception
desk.

"Can I keep this?" Ari asked as Ramesh
approached.

"We have hundreds of them," Ramesh
said, which Ari took as a 'yes'. Ramesh directed him down a hall
that ran behind the vacated desk. Inside a large room, the
cherrywood veneer of a conference table was so reflective that
speakers could at least watch themselves talk if no one else was
paying attention. Ramesh insisted that Ari be seated first. Ari
obliged.

"You're all architects here?" Ari asked
once his host sat. Having pretty much exhausted his supply of
Tamil, he switched back to English.

Before Ramesh could answer, a tiny
ringing came from his shirt pocket. "Oh please, one moment…" He
took out a smart phone. "Param? What was that? Tendlya scored
another century? Is anyone surprised? Listen, I have a potential
customer. Yes, they have us working on a Saturday. I have to go."
He turned off the phone and returned it to his shirt pocket,
grinning in embarrassment. "Sorry…"

"Not at all."

"We only have two architects. We are
really all-purpose designers. Mr. Brown and Ms. Stern started out
twenty years ago making jewelry, very nice pieces of silver and
real gold. The business took off like blazes and they expanded into
different fields, designing sculptures, specialty lighting,
furniture. It’s in the brochure there." Ramesh nodded at the glossy
prospectus Ari had taken from the front desk and which was now
lying under his hand.

"And what do
you
design?" Ari asked,
showing keen interest.

"Computer graphics based on Brown and
Stern designs. It’s a little job, not like my brother’s, but I’m
pleased until…"

"You can go on to bigger and better,"
Ari nodded understandingly.

"Oooo! don’t say it!"
Ramesh laughed. "But this
is
America!"

"What does your brother do…if you don’t
mind my asking."

"Deloitte and Touche,"
Ramesh sighed. "Very, very big. They hire out to different
companies and government entities for various projects. Right now
he’s in Harrisburg working on IT security for the state of
Pennsylvania. They know how to treat employees there! Big screens
so they can watch the complete Ranji season and I-League games. And
they have one of the best restaurants, with
everything
! Bengali, Goan, Punjabi,
Rajasthani..." Ramesh kissed his fingers.

"A lot of Indians work there?" Ari
asked.