The Godless One (25 page)

Before Ben or Karen could intercede,
Sid reached Ari and spun him around. "Didn't I tell you not to
contaminate my truck!"

"Oh, have you just taken
it to the bucket wash?" said Ari amiably, but thought,
He doesn't care that I'm armed
. Either Sid was crazy or someone else was pointing a gun at
Ari that very moment. Or both. Then he noticed Mutt and Jeff only
feet away from him, panting in anticipation.
Ah
....

"Come here.
Here
! See that license
plate?"

Ari studied the rear plate with a
puzzled air. H8-RABS. "You ate some rabs? I'm sorry, what are
those? Oh, does it mean 'crabs'? We have excellent crabs
in—"

"You stupid—" Sid's sentence was
interrupted when he was spun around in turn.

"All right, you dummy, you want to have
it out? Have it with me! I wanted to punch out your lights the day
you acted like a fool at my house, in front of my Egyptian
guests...Arab, if you like! But Becky talked me out of
it."

"She isn't here now," Sid hissed. "You
want me, you got me."

They were face to face, glaring at each
other like only former friends could. Mutt and Jeff whined in
confusion, unable to decide if either of the people they liked
should be attacked.

"You've gone out of your mind, Sid!"
Ben cried out. "If I have to beat sense into your noggin, so be
it."

Ari wished Ben could swear better, or
swear at all. Even boys in the playground had ornate four-letter
vocabularies. Which was not to say that Ben didn't sound fierce.
While the men and dogs were preoccupied, Ari began sauntering over
to the garage.

"What have we started?" Karen asked as
he passed her.

"Just a tussle," Ari shrugged, then
jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "Go break it up."

After the gloom of the clearing Ari's
eyes took a moment to adjust to the bright halogen lamps in the
garage. A glance back showed him Ben and Sid were still sweating on
each other while Karen was shouting something about arresting them
both. He lifted the lid of the olive-colored metal can and was
immediately assailed by a fetid stench. Dog feces! He let the lid
drop and roamed his eyes across a shelf next to the door. He went
over and looked inside a large coffee can. There was a pistol
inside. He thought of the way Sid had kept eyeing the olive-colored
can and shook his head.

I was falling for
it
.

He took the gun out of the can and slid
it into his coat pocket. Then he turned his eyes to the blue Nissan
Sentra resting atop of a lowered ramp lift. The license plates had
been removed. He ran his hand near the right taillight, but masking
tape prevented him from feeling anything but the most telltale
welds. The taillight itself was intact. He leaned down and looked
at the bumper. Poking the edge of the tape, he searched for any
seam missed by the spray gun. At the right rear door handle he
discovered a narrow sliver of red. Candy red.

There was a fierce shout from Karen
outside. Ari stepped back to the bay door. Ben was on the ground,
Karen kneeling next to him. Sid was coming across the clearing.
When he saw Ari in the garage, he pointed and yelled:
"Go!"

Mutt and Jeff bounded forward silently,
their fangs bared. Ari took Sid’s pistol out and aimed it at them.
"If they continue in my direction I will shoot them with this
marvelous Sigma .40 that I found in your coffee can."

"We’ll drop them!" came a second
warning, this time from Karen, who had swiveled around and was
crouching with her gun raised. Ari hoped she was not really
planning to pull the trigger. He had complete confidence that he
would hit what he aimed at, but Karen’s marksmanship was an open
question. Any bullet that zinged past the dogs might hit the man
she was protecting.

"Stop!" Sid commanded. The obedient
German shepherds tried to stop on a dime, but slid forward in the
snow and collided, momentarily falling into a heap.

"You all right over there?" Karen
called out.

"I am blessed a thousand times," Ari
answered. He wasn't lying, or exaggerating. Karen gave him a
curious look and then holstered her gun and turned back to
Ben.

"Please come over here, my alienated
friend." Ari crooked a finger at Sid. "I have some confidential
matters to discuss with you."

"You don't know anything and I don't
know anything, so there's nothing to discuss."

"Then we shall ask...what was it you
called the Deputy Marshal?" Ari gave a theatrical shudder. "It
doesn't bear repeating. I'm sure she'll be interested in finding
out why Mustafa Zewail's Sentra is in your garage."

Sid looked puzzled. "Then why not bring
her over here now?"

"I believe I mentioned that I have a
personal issue to discuss."

Sid's perplexity intensified. "Are
you..."

"Am I what?"

"Whose side are you on?"

"Always the perennial mystery," Ari
shrugged. When Sid still did not move, Ari continued. "Are you one
of those integrated...integral...are you one of those soldiers so
filled with integrity that they industriously ply their dremer
tools on their weapons? Have you lubed this with molybdenum
disulfide? Have you replaced the pigtale spring? I forget…is the
Sigma single or double set? In any event, I’m sure it has a much
lighter pull. Two and a half pounds? One…? Let’s see…" Aiming at
Sid, he gave the pistol a stern shake.

"OK!" Sid told his dogs to sit.
Unwilling to wet their haunches on the snowy slush, they performed
a half-crouch. His eyes on the gun, Sid walked slowly to the garage
door. "So?"

"Who was the man with the gimpy leg in
Mustafa’s house?"

"Fuck this. Go ahead,
shoot."

"I have a very good idea who that man
is. Have you ever smelled a pig farm? There’s an unmistakable
stench in the air. It will hardly be to your advantage if I contact
your pig employer and tell them how you went back to steal
Mustafa's cars. He did not want the crime to seem like a banal
robbery. He was posting a message. He wanted my fellow refugees to
understand that he could not be bribed away from his goal, unlike
everyone else around him. You and one of your companions were upset
at leaving the $10,000 on the kitchen counter. You knew the Zewail
cars were still in the open garage. You could hotwire them…or
perhaps you lifted the keys without your employer's knowledge while
you were in the house. So you went back a few hours later and stole
the cars, turning something uniquely horrifying into common
thievery."

"I don’t know what you’re talking
about. A customer dropped this car off for some body work and a
paint job, that’s all."

"And I’m a monkey’s ancestor. That was
a very sloppy job you did on Mustafa. Obviously, you didn’t spend
enough time in Iraq."

"You’re not really Italian," Sid
commented, his sneer bracketed by blue paint parentheses. He
glanced down at Ari’s steady hand. "If you’re going to shoot,
shoot."

"Don’t rush me," Ari said in a peevish
tone.

"I think you need a serious fucking of
yourself, asshole."

"Yes, the asshole is where
one fucks one’s self," Ari nodded, as though in agreement with a
fellow student in an English Language class. He flit his eyes
across the clearing. Karen had helped Ben into a sitting position.
"Maybe I’ll be rushed, after all. Now about that day in Mosul, July
22, 2003, I believe, when Task Force 20 moved in to slaughter the
Husseins while the 101
^st
secured the perimeter…"

Sid went rigid, his eyes like
stones.

"That must have been one
spectacular bribe," Ari continued. "An elite group like the
101
^st
…they don’t recruit traitors as a rule."

Sid bristled but did not otherwise
react.

"How many soldiers did the Pig bribe?
He robbed the Iraqi treasury blind. A little change would buy his
escape. Not everyone here benefits from your grand economy. You
would be coming back to…" Ari pointed at the rusty hulk of the
trailer. "But I’m sure you can afford more than a shiny pickup
truck, now. I assume your portion of the bribe is tucked away
somewhere safe, and that you are biding your time. How many others
were there? You don’t want to talk? Excellent! I’m a terrible
listener. I prefer to do all the talking. Let’s see…bin Laden paid
the Afghan militia to open the door out of Tora Bora. He was a…’fat
cat’. I think the Pig has even deeper pockets. It must have cost a
fortune to buy his way out of Mosul. But one lone soldier wouldn’t
be enough. Once he was beyond the roadblocks, he would have
needed…oh, a few more key individuals, at least. How many would
that be?"

"More than you can handle," answered
Sid abruptly.

"The piglet speaks!" Ari saw Ben
stagger to his feet with Karen’s assistance. "We shall not discuss
this with them," he said, nodding at the two.

Sid, genuinely curious, said,
"Why?"

"Because the Pig belongs to me. Tell
him I will cut out his tongue and feed it to the real pigs. I will
cut off his arms so that he will have to pick his nose with his
toes. I will cut off his legs so that he will have only his pecker
stand on. And then I’ll take care of that, too. Oh, and tell him I
keyed his Lamborghini."

Sid’s smirk grew broader. "Right. And
should I tell the Pig who it is who’s threatening him like
this?"

Ari considered his answer for a moment.
"Tell the Ace of Hearts this message is from the Joker."

"Will he understand?"

"Maybe not. But he knows I’m out and
about. If he hasn’t told you that already, he will, soon." Ari
looked at Mutt and Jeff. "And next time he visits, beware for your
dogs. He goes into heat around German shepherds. I’m going to keep
this, by the way." He toggled the gun in his hand. "I’m a
collector."

He joined Karen and Ben in the middle
of the clearing. Ben was doubled over, still gasping.

"Sucker punched and then an uppercut,"
said Karen, glaring over Ben at Sid. "I think I’ll arrest
him."

"I suggest leaving well enough alone,"
said Ari. "I don’t think Ben would want to press charges, anyway."
He gave Ben a pat. "You should have broken his jaw while he was
talking."

"That’s not…my way."

"I don’t think you’re in any condition
to drive," said Ari. "Are your keys in the truck?"

Ben grunted, nodding. "But I prefer
that the deputy drive…"

Nonplussed, Ari leaned forward, as if
he had not heard correctly. What he saw in the man’s eyes, behind
the fluctuating dials of physical and emotional pain, was profound
distrust.

He thinks I tricked him
into this predicament
, Ari thought.
And he’s right
.

Ben tried to offer a crumb of
consolation. "I think she knows these backroads better." Then he
turned towards the garage. "I’ll be back, Sid!" A half-shout was
all his sore gut allowed him. "I won’t be sucker-punched
twice!"

Suffering through a series of helpful
suggestions from the smirking deputy, Ari struggled into the narrow
passenger space at the back of the Datsun’s cab. Had it not been so
cold, he would have sat in the truck bed.

"Hey!" Karen protested when his knees
hit the back of her seat, bouncing her against the steering wheel.
As she pulled around the trees in the parking circle, she noted
Sid, unmoving, backdropped by the halogen worklights in the
garage.

"He looks like the cat that swallowed
the canary," she said as she struggled with the unfamiliar gear
shift. "What did you say to him?"

"Nothing of great importance," said
Ari. "But now the ball is in his gutter."

"I think you mean the ball is in his
court."

"That, too," said the uncomfortable
passenger.

CHAPTER NINE

Digital Image No.
57...58...59...60....

There were no more images of the summer
executions in Mosul. He was certain now that this was no
coincidence. Whoever had inserted Digital Image No. 56 had counted
much on Ari's integrity, not to mention his ability to cull an
individual's identity from the mayhem.

Having fallen off the wagon the night
before, he had difficulty focusing. He wasn't taking the situation
seriously, and fully comprehended the death wish in his
behavior.

He checked the time. It was almost 10
AM. Abu Jasim would already be on the road. Traffic in the
Northeast Corridor was notoriously variable, especially on Mondays.
It would take between twelve and fourteen hours for him to get to
Richmond. If he was stopped at Customs and his van stripped down,
Abu Jasim would not be arriving at all. The guns would be
discovered and Ari’s Saddam Hussein lookalike friend would land in
jail. Ari had once tried to convince him to use the ‘Samir Salman
route’ through Vermont, but Abu Jasim protested that this would add
half a day to his journey.

"I have a passport. Why can’t I claim
the privileges of a Canadian citizen?"