The Rabbit Factory (27 page)

He supported his family doing what he had to do. Driving a delivery van, night janitor in a hospital, and of course, waiting on tables. As many hours a day as he could spare, he wrote. They lived in a one-bedroom apartment. The boys took the bedroom; Penina and Yaakov slept in the living room. They had no money for life's little luxuries like dinners at fancy restaurants, family vacations, or sadly, life insurance. So when Yaakov was killed in the bus explosion four years ago, Penina didn't even have the money to bury him.

The government paid for the funeral. And as the widow of a terror victim they gave her a monthly income. It was enough to get by, but never get ahead. She and the boys lived hand to mouth. And then, Chaim Schlbtt changed all that. Chaim owned five restaurants, including the one where Penina worked as a hostess. He was fifteen years older than Penina, a large, beefy man, with thick bushy eyebrows and hairy knuckles. He was coarse, he was dull, and he was physically unappealing. Chaim Schlott was not a poet, but he was rich.

He ogled her body with all the subtlety of a pauper drooling outside a bakery shop window. I know I have beautiful legs, she thought, but that won't feed my children. So she spread her legs and undid her bra, and she let Chaim inside the bakery. In return he bought her jewelry. Expensive pieces which she sold and replaced with fakes. She pawned a pair of diamond stud earrings for $4,000 and replaced them with cubic zirconium. .

She sold a pearl necklace for $6,000 and substituted it for an imitation that cost only a few hundred.

He was very generous, and now he wanted to marry her.

Iler stomach knotted at the thought. She took another sip of her diet Coke, then reached into her purse, removed her wallet, and Hipped it open to their last family picture.

Yaakov was forever handsome, forever young. He was wearing white shorts and a faded blue polo shirt with the logo of a restaurant he had worked for long ago. He was six-foot lliree and had one arm around Penina's shoulder, and in his other arm he cradled the two-year-old Dov. Ari, who was only .six at the time, stood between his parents. The picture had been liiken on one of the rare Sundays that Yaakov didn't have to work. They had spent the afternoon in the park, and the camera had captured green trees, blue sky, and other happy picnickers In the background. Penina wondered how many of them were si ill as happy as they had been that Sunday.

"Yaakov," she said, in a whisper. She looked around to see

IIanyone was watching her, but everyone else was busy with I heir own lunch, their own families, their own lives.

She turned back to the photograph. "Yaakov, the boys and I could be happy with no money if you were here with us. But without you, I can't bear to see them living in poverty. Please forgive me for the things I must do."

A family of four entered the restaurant. The wife, a roly-poly ivdhead in too-tight khaki pants and a lime green T-shirt, pointed at the menu on the wall to let her husband know what (the wanted. The husband and kids got on line, while the woman made her way toward the ladies room in the rear.

"Judy!" the husband yelled after his wife. She stopped.

Her name is Judy, Penina thought, as she stood up from the table and headed toward the bathroom herself.

The husband tilted his hand to his mouth and tipped it back and forth. "What're ya drinkin?"

"Sprite," Judy called back. "Large." Then she continued on her way to the ladies room.

Penina got there first. Some of the rest rooms have dozens of toilets. But this one was tucked in an out-of-the-way corner, with only three stalls, two sinks, and a baby-changing table. Penina stepped into the first stall, locked the door, opened her purse, and removed a fresh Tampax and a small plastic pouch about the size of paperback book.

She quickly changed her Tampax. Then she unfolded the contents of the pouch and slipped them on. When she heard the chubby redhead enter the bathroom, Penina pressed the Start button on her stopwatch. The woman sat down in the third john, and soon Penina could hear the loud, steady stream of urine splashing into the toilet, followed by Judy's soft sigh of relief.

Penina flushed, went to one of the sinks and turned on the tap. Judy came out of her stall and stepped up to the other sink, oblivious to Penina, who was now wearing a pale blue jumpsuit of paper-thin Mylar over her clothes. Her shoes were covered with booties made of the same impenetrable material. A hood was pulled snugly to her face covering her hair and ears. Her hands, which she pretended to be washing, were encased in double-thick latex gloves.

The woman leaned over the sink, wet her hands, pushc-d the soap dispenser, and began lathering. Without hesitation, Penina plunged the dagger into Judy's carotid artery. Blood

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spurted like juice from a ripe grapefruit. Judy slumped over the sink and slid to the floor. Penina toppled her onto her back, removed the dagger, placed a Ziploc bag over the woman's left I wast, and drove the blade through her heart, pinning the plastic bag to her chest.

She checked her stopwatch. It had taken seventy-two sec >nds from the time Judy had entered until Penina had ended her life. The next ninety seconds were critical. Penina cracked open the bathroom door and hung a yellow-and-black Closed For Cleaning sign on the outer knob. Then she wedged the iloor shut with a rubber doorstop.

She stepped over the pool of blood and returned to the Malls. Quickly, carefully, she removed her blood-spattered t i nip-suit. She took a pair of scissors from her bag and began mtting the suit along the lines she had marked earlier. She took I lie first three pieces, dropped one in each toilet and flushed, lly the time the toilets had swallowed the evidence and recycled, she had finished cutting the rest of the jumpsuit. She pitched the bloody pieces into two of the toilets and flushed. The gloves and booties went in the last toilet. Six flushes, and rvery bloodstained fiber of her disposable assassin's outfit was Mowing through Lamaar's state-of-the-art, high-power waste icmoval system.

Penina knelt close to the body. "Forgive me, Judy," she Whispered. "I don't know who you are, only that you are some poor soul who was at the wrong place at the wrong time. You ' g.ive your life for my children. I promise to say the mourner's kuMish for you every day for a year."

The final toilet recycled at two minutes, forty seconds into the crime. Five seconds faster than when she had rehearsed it

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I with a second jumpsuit on Friday.

Penina tiptoed back to the door, avoiding the growing red puddle. She removed the wedge, opened the door, removed the Closed sign from the outside knob, and jammed the sign and the doorstop into her purse. She walked casually past her table, where a busboy was wiping it down. She did not look at the line where Judy's husband and children were now placing their order. Three minutes and fourteen seconds after it all began, Penina was outside heading toward the meeting with her two children.

A few minutes later Penina found Ari and Dov waiting on line for The Freedom Train. As Ari's guidebook had predicted, the line was relatively short. "Where were you?" Ari asked. "The train gets here in a few minutes. We were afraid you were going to miss it."

"Well, I didn't," she said. Then she took a tissue from her purse, wet it with her tongue and began wiping Dov's mouth. "It may be freeze-dried, but it's still chocolate." The boy squeezed his eyes shut, but held still for the cleaning.

The Freedom Train was the longest ride in the park. It circled the perimeter of most of the property, stopping at five stations along the way. Passengers could get on or off at will. Most people only took it two or three stops, to get from one end of Kimilyland to the other. That was Ari's plan. They were headed l< >r The Spirit of 76 on the opposite end of the park.

Penina heard the train whistle and looked at her stopwatch, I which was still marking time. Just under ten minutes. The loco1 motive was a beautiful replica of trains Penina had seen in the I American movies of the Old West. The passenger cars were

open, so people could get on and off quickly, as well as get an unobstructed view of the scenery.

About fifty people exited the train, and the line to board started moving. Ari and Dov ran to the front and sat in the first car directly behind the engineer, a robust, middle-aged black man, whose name tag said Samuel. Nic~ Jewish name, Penina thought, as she caught up with her sons and stepped aboard. And then came the sound she had been waiting for. Three musical chimes rang out from every speaker in the park. They were the signal that an announcement was about to be made on the Public Address system. "Buddy Longo, please report to Area 47," the voice said. "Buddy Longo, Area 47. Thank you."

Penina looked at her stopwatch. Thirteen minutes and twenty-seven seconds. She stopped the timer and reset it.

None of the park visitors paid attention to the announcement. But the employees all stopped when they heard the words 'Buddy Longo.' She could see in their faces they knew something was wrong. They just didn't know what. A dark-skinned woman in a conductor's uniform was in the cab behind Samuel. Her name tag said Valencia. "Buddy Longo," she said to the engineer. "Haven't had one of those in about two months," Samuel said.

"Where's Area 47?" Valencia asked.

Dov had set his bag of ice cream pellets on the seat next to him. Penina picked it up and pretended to read the label, so she wouldn't be noticed tuning in to the conversation between the engineer and the conductor. Samuel pulled a spiral-bound book of maps from his pocket and flipped through the pages. "Forty-Seven. The Space Shuttle

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The Rabbit Factory

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Restaurant."

"Kitchen fire, I bet," Valencia said.

"No way, kid. Buddy Longo is for the big stuff. Heart attack, probably."

"You ever have a Buddy Longo on the train?" Valencia asked.

"Nope," he said. "Seven years. Plenty of vomiting, a bunch of first-aid stuff, but no Buddy Longos."

A man in a RedKap uniform held up the line of passengers. "Freedom Train's all full up, folks," he said. "Next one's in eight minutes." Samuel turned around so he could see Dov and Ari in the I font car. "Which one of you young gentlemen wants to help Lie blow this train whistle?" The brothers jumped up, each yelling, "Me! Me! Me!"

"Take turns," Samuel said, handing Dov a long metal chain. The boy pulled it and the train whistle tooted loudly. He passed I he chain to Ari who yanked it hard. The whistle blew for a solid five seconds before Samuel gently removed it from his hand. The engine chugged and they started to move. "All aboard! All aboard the Freedom Train," Valencia bellowed. "Please remain seated and keep your hands and legs Inside the train at all times." Penina sat back in her seat and tried to come to grips with what she was feeling. She had killed before. When she was younger, she and Yaakov were operatives in the army. They had killed to survive. In Israel, even poets learned to kill. This, ,she reasoned, was no different. This too was about survival. Yes, thought Penina, I have just earned more money in one brief span of time than Yaakov earned in his entire life. Now my ,s< >ns will have what they need, and never again will I have to

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Marshall Karp

I see, smell, or touch Chaim Schlott.

She closed her eyes and felt the cool breeze on her brow. She breathed in deeply, anticipating the sweet smell of the poppies and wildflowers that bloomed along the tracks. Instead her nostrils filled with diesel fumes spewing from the locomotive. She smiled. This, she decided, was a message from Yaakov. "My darling," he said to her. "You and the boys have suffered long enough. Your own personal journey aboard The Freedom Train has finally begun."

When you're trying to solve the highest profile homicide in the Department, you don't get days off. It was Sunday. I was working. So were Terry and the rest of the Lamaar Task Force. Everyone showed up, except Matt Diamond, who called in to let us know that his wife Rae was in labor.

"How many centimeters dilated is she?" Terry asked. "Three," Diamond said.

"Can you come in and work till she's up to nine?" Biggs said, in his best official, by-the-book, police detective voice.

Diamond, who is new to our squad, panicked. He started to stumble through an explanation of why he couldn't possibly Irave his wife alone, when Biggs let him off the hook. "Just busting your balls, Diamond. Twisted cop-working-on-a-Sunday joke. Have a nice baby."

Terry hung up and threw his hands in the air. "First Falco and now Diamond. This maternity crap is dragging us down. Clicking horny cops can't keep their dicks in their pants." "I wondered why we couldn't solve this case," I said.

The Chief of the Los Angeles Police was working Sunday too. He showed up looking very natty in his Protestant golfwear, and gave me and Terry twenty minutes to debrief him. He was teeing off with the Mayor and wanted to be able to answer any and all questions. The Mayor, in turn, would be attending a black-tie dinner with the Governor that evening and also needed to be kept in the loop. All those powerful people working on our behalf, and so far we had squat.

Ziff the Sniff, my friend in Narcotics, was also working Sunday, and he called to say they had arrested a suspect in the Trachtenberg murder. Tino Santiago, a low-level drug runner who settled an old score with Dr. Trachtenberg by sticking an ice pick through his heart.

"Well, at least there's some good news today," I said.

"I don't think it's gonna wind up being such good news for the widow," Ziff said. "Santiago lawyered up, and he's willing to drop a dime on a couple of big rats in the drug sewer if we lower the homicide charge to something lighter."

"Like what?"

"He'd like it to be self-defense, but the D.A. will go for voluntary manslaughter."

"That sucks," I said.

"Tell it to the D.A.," Ziff said. "I already did. I told him hang Santiago; I'll figure out how to get the drug lords. I don't want to give up this homicide."

"I guess a homicide collar looks good on your record," I said.