Near Enemy Read online

  Not like she is.

  Wipes Hannah again.

  Once.

  Twice.

  Discards.

  Fucking flimsy Kleenex.

  Hannah coughs, then smiles, and Persephone recalls how when Hannah was a newborn, still red-faced and fussy, every sound she made absolutely petrified Persephone. Every coo, burp, gurgle, cough, snort, and hiccup made her heart seize. Because Persephone was convinced every time Hannah made a noise that it was some sort of cry for help. Or a last breath.

  A death rattle.

  So she’d constantly stare at this alarming new creature, terrified. Unsure just how to keep her alive. Wondering, How do people do this? But over time, she figured out something that reassured her.

  Her baby wants to live.

  Her baby has no other job than to live.

  Her baby is basically a machine for staying alive.

  And so she determined, in that moment, to simply follow her baby’s example.

  To become a machine for staying alive.

  Makes her think of that old disco song, in fact. She looks down at Hannah. Tweaks her nose.

  Sings it to her.

  Ah, ah, ah, ah. Staying alive. Staying alive.

  Hannah giggles.

  Here we are, together, staying alive, Persephone thinks. Not much of a life, maybe. But we’re alive.

  Then says to Hannah, One last wipe.

  All done!

  Wipes her down with the last of the Kleenex, which she tugs from the now-empty box. Balls the soggy tissue and takes her best shot. Buzzer beater. For the win—

  Wad bounces weakly off the lip of the diaper genie and falls to the carpet.

  Crowd groans.

  Persephone frowns.

  Used to play a little basketball back in private school. Lost her shooting touch, apparently.

  Stoops to retrieve the fallen wad. Looks up to find Simon, leaning in the doorway, arms crossed, watching her.

  He gives her a slow-clap ovation.

  Nice shot.

  She gives him the finger.

  Simon smirks. He wears a white turtleneck, despite the summer heat. Always did look good in a turtleneck, she thinks.

  But she says nothing. So Simon breaks the ice.

  She’s a beautiful baby. Takes after her mother.

  Really? That’s the best you can do?

  He smiles.

  How so?

  I just remember you as being a bit more of a charmer. But, you know. I was young. Impressionable. Vulnerable.

  Maybe I’m rusty. Need to get back into practice. Just like you, with your jump shot.

  What do you want, Simon?

  He straightens up. Uncrosses his arms.

  How long are you planning on staying here?

  I was going to ask you the same thing.

  He inches into the room. Shuts the door softly behind him.

  I’ll stay here as long as you need me. To make sure you’re okay. You’re both okay.

  Persephone scoffs.

  I can take care of myself. Of both of us. I’ve proved that.

  Simon holds his hands up, as if in surrender.

  Hell, you’ll get no argument from me.

  And besides, I’ve got those cops outside, watching us. We’ll be okay. If you need to leave.

  I’m not leaving.

  Either way.

  I wouldn’t count on those cops.

  Why not?

  I generally counsel against counting on anyone. You need to know how to protect yourself. That’s why I taught you how to handle that bowie knife, way back when.

  And Persephone, despite herself, recalls those long summer afternoons, alone with Simon, out in the barn on her father’s estate. Sun slicing through the wood slats in bright dusty shards, through the overwhelming smell of hay and horses. Simon standing behind her in the heat, holding her arms, working them like the limbs of a marionette. Teaching her just how to kill a hay bale. Jab, feint, thrust. Stab, stab, good, again. Showing her where to aim the blade. Honing her knife technique. Then acting as her target. Pointing toward his midsection. Daring her. Go ahead, you won’t hurt me. You won’t even touch me. And it was true, she could never touch him, he was too nimble, too swift, always where you thought he wouldn’t be. Dodging, dancing, daily. Sweating together in the stifling shadows of the barn. Jab. Thrust. Again. Better. Thrust. Good. Again.

  Simon scratches at his bushy beard. Uncharacteristically unkempt. He looks, she thinks, standing here in this apartment in Hoboken, like some kind of mountain man, some haggard hermit returned from the wilderness.

  He asks her.

  You still have that knife?

  Persephone fastens Hannah’s diaper.

  Sure. Somewhere. What about you, Simon? What are your plans?

  I’m going back South. To take my church back.

  Your church?

  Our church.

  Nods to Hannah.

  Her church.

  Well, good luck.

  I could use some help.

  I’m sure you could.

  Persephone hoists Hannah. Hugs her baby to her hip. Hannah’s gotten so heavy now, and she’s only getting heavier. Truth be told, Persephone rarely thinks about their future. Because when she does, she can’t even begin to imagine what to think.

  Great to see you again, Simon. Feel free to swing back by in another year or so.

  I don’t want to go back alone.

  He edges closer. Clasps her elbows now. Firm, like how he used to.

  Come with me. I need you. That’s the only reason I came back here.

  She twists away. Breaks his hold.

  Careful, Simon. The last guy who got this close to me ended up on fire.

  He grins. Nods. Backs away with his palms up. Holds her gaze though.

  We should do this together, Grace. It’s ours. It belongs to us. To the three of us.

  You had your chance to stick around.

  But I’m here now.

  I don’t need you here now.

  Well, I’m here.

  That’s true. And as long as you’re here, why don’t you make yourself useful?

  Just name it.

  Run to the corner and get me some diaper wipes.

  Simon’s about to speak when he’s interrupted by a knock at the bedroom door.

  Persephone nods toward the door.

  You want to get that?

  Simon opens it.

  Mark, standing in the doorway. Jaw still wired shut. Mumbles something. Sounds like Mrmrmr.

  Simon shrugs, annoyed.

  What?

  Mrmrmr.

  Another shrug.

  Mark angles a handheld, a cheap one bought for just this purpose, and scrawls something on its screen with his fingertip. Holds the handheld up, like a flash card.

  SOMEONE AT THE DOOR.

  Simon says.

  So?

  Mark scrawls again.

  ANSWER IT?

  Simon scowls. Persephone brushes past Simon. Says to Mark.

  I’ll get it.

  Says to Simon.

  I think since the cabin, Mark’s a little door-shy.

  Simon stops her.

  No. I’ll get it. You two stay here.

  Simon doesn’t talk about his past much, not to Persephone, not to anyone, not about all those years he spent before Harrow found him and hired him. Rescued him, really. Rechristened him Simon the Magician. Harrow had faith in him, that much was true. Taught him life lessons. New ones. Better lessons, about how to have a better life. That’s what Harrow always promised him.

  But Harrow also understood that the old lessons, the ones Simon had already learned, as a kid and as a teen and in his twenties, on battlefields here and abroad, all those formal and informal lessons, so brutal and bloody—those lessons had their usefulness too.

  Once you’ve learned them. Can’t unlearn them.

  Harrow liked that. Counted on it.

  What Simon had already learned.

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nbsp; Harrow liked to have it at his disposal. Liked to have Simon on the end of a leash. Teaching other people lessons. That was Simon’s job.

  Simon still relishes the look on Harrow’s face, on that day back in the limn, at the moment when Harrow realized the leash had finally snapped.

  One of those lessons, the dirty ones, that Simon learned during his two tours overseas, before he was discharged for exhibiting a certain brand of overzealousness that could no longer be channeled constructively, was this: It’s better to kill someone who wants to shake your hand than it is to shake someone’s hand who wants to kill you.

  Important lesson.

  Simon’s put it into practice, more than once.

  Sounds harsh, yes, but then, survival’s harsh.

  Yet another lesson, Simon thinks.

  Then Simon answers the front door.

  Encounters two young men in matching gray coveralls.

  Simon wonders what the fuck they’re doing here. So he asks them.

  What the fuck are you doing here?

  Clean-cut men. Well built. Stand with their hands clasped behind their backs. Legs spread. Loose military stances. Both have a single word, Pushbroom, stitched in script on the breast of their uniforms.

  First man speaks.

  Sir, I wonder if we might have a moment of your time?

  Simon smiles.

  Perfect timing. Come on in.

  21.

  From the South Street Seaport, it doesn’t take long for me to cross the river and get to Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn. I head straight for the strip of the avenue that, before Times Square, was a thriving Arab neighborhood. Full of markets, scent shops, religious bookstores, you name it. You could hear the call to prayer on loudspeakers all day. Mosques filling up with the faithful.

  That’s all gone now. The mosques, the markets, the bookstores. Along with pretty much everything else.

  Atlantic Avenue is also where a half dozen men hatched the plot against Times Square. Five men in a backroom under a bare bulb, with a sixth man, arrested later, funneling funds from overseas. Who knows how exactly they planned it. I never sought out the stories afterward. Never cared too much about the who, what, and why of it.

  Especially the why.

  By then, I’d pretty much lost my faith in why.

  So I never learned the exact address of the building that housed the meeting that hatched the plot to explode a dirty bomb in Times Square.

  Didn’t care. Not about that, or much of anything else.

  And the mobs that visited Atlantic Avenue in the days after Times Square didn’t care too much about details either. Or exact addresses.

  Just burned out every storefront. Just to be sure.

  Local crowds gathered to cheer.

  Local cops gathered to watch.

  Didn’t lift a finger.

  Let mayhem rule.

  Then came in and mopped up afterward.

  Then, a few weeks later, after Bellarmine was hired, the cops unleashed some mayhem of their own.

  On the night of the Atlantic Avenue sweep.

  Cops came after midnight.

  Special ops. Special cops. The lethal kind, who never bothered to memorize Miranda rights.

  Clad in black. Move in tandem.

  Red laser dots dancing over locked doorways.

  Hand signals. Gloved hands. Give the go-ahead.

  Boots unleashed on doors. Doors caved in with a clatter. Suspects scrambling as they’re yanked from their beds, still tangled up in the sheets. Some half-dressed, some half-cursing, dragged into hallways under sweeping flashlight beams, wrists zipped up in plastic cuffs, then shoved down the staircase. Some more than shoved.

  A few unfortunate escape attempts shot down as they fought back. Or at least that’s how it got written up in the reports.

  Half the block rounded up. The other half getting the message.

  And who could be blamed if, in all the commotion, in an apartment or two, or in a shop or two, or in a mosque or two, the occasional candle got knocked over, or a jar of scented oil somehow shattered on the floor, starting an unfortunate fire?

  Burned half the block down?

  Who could be blamed?

  Bellarmine beamed at the next day’s press briefing.

  Framed by flags. A soundtrack of shutter clicks as he detailed the department’s greatest success yet.

  And no one protested, not really, not afterward, except those being rounded up and locked away, but it was hard to hear their objections over the sound of sirens and camera shutters and cheers.

  Post crowed the loudest, of course.

  ISLAM-DUNK! TOP COP TOPPLES TERROR MOSQUES.

  Maybe there were a few hand-wringing editorials in the more liberal-leaning papers, a few outraged callers to the public-radio shows, but for the most part, everyone else in the city just sat on their hands, at least those who weren’t busy applauding.

  Can’t say I sat home and cried about it either. What news of it trickled back to me.

  I wasn’t paying much attention to the news at that point.

  I was plenty busy. For one, I had a wife to bury.

  Just kidding.

  They’d already buried her for me.

  In any case, Atlantic Avenue emptied out.

  And all the immigrants who lived there disappeared.

  Between the cops and the sweeps and the roving gangs that came afterward, picking through the ruins, anyone who looked even vaguely Middle Eastern couldn’t move out fast enough. Some to Michigan. Some to elsewhere. Most to anywhere but here. Some headed back home, overseas, so I heard. Didn’t have any trouble getting on flights, just as long as the flights were one-way, and pointed away from New York.

  And for a while, you could skateboard down the center of Atlantic Avenue and you wouldn’t see a single person. Just plywood and graffiti. Old angry flyers stapled to telephone poles or blown by the wind and stuck under the melted tires of burned-out cars.

  THE MUSLIM MENACE.

  Hand-drawn. Hook-nosed. Scowling sheikhs with scimitars, looming over a New York skyline.

  So much for the melting pot. Melting pot had a meltdown.

  And the brownstone neighborhoods in the blocks nearby quickly emptied out. Too many nights of riots. Too many cars flipped over and torched. Too many visiting mobs with Molotov cocktails, tossed by masked men with indiscriminate aim.

  Love thy neighbor, until thy neighbor gets firebombed.

  Then fuck thy neighbor.

  And fuck this neighborhood.

  But now.

  Lo and behold.

  Signs of life.

  A headscarf.

  A hijab.

  Lone woman in a burqa, trailed by chattering kids.

  Two men in skullcaps and sandals arguing out front of a cleaned-up storefront.

  Cop car slowly creeps the wrong way down the street. A whoop-whoop tells the two men to keep it moving.

  They comply. Disappear behind a doorway.

  Cops move on.

  Still.

  Signs of life.

  These days, most storefronts on Atlantic are long since abandoned.

  Most storefronts.

  But not all.

  And not this one.

  It’s a brand-new scent-and-oils shop, the Grand Opening banner hanging proudly across the windowpane like a pageant contestant’s sash. Step inside and the store still smells of fresh paint, and the bright white walls are lined with shelves of glass bottles, arranged by shade—rows of yellow, green, and blue bottled oils, imported scents and rare essences, so the signs say. Boxes of incense sticks spill open along the walls, and slippers and skullcaps are stacked in wicker baskets, offered for sale. Beside them, paperback Qurans are piled up and offered for free.

  When I enter, I interrupt two clerks, wearing vests and long robes that graze the floor. The first one wears a skullcap and a healthy beard, while the other has a skullcap, a healthy beard, and a double-barreled shotgun slung on a strap over his shoulder.
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  Have to admit. Scene looks like a setup to a joke.

  A garbageman walks into a perfume shop—

  All of us stand silent. Waiting for the punch line.

  Then I grab a bottle of yellow scented oil with a knock-off name from a nearby shelf and inspect it. Ask the clerk how much.

  Before he can answer, a voice from the back corner of the shop instructs the clerk in some foreign tongue.

  Arab-sounding. Though it’s not like I’m an expert.

  Voice then says to me in English.

  Consider it a gift.

  The kid stands in the doorway at the back of the shop, half-draped in a beaded curtain. I only call him a kid because he looks so young, even younger in person than in Boonce’s photos, looks maybe fifteen, sixteen, tops. Short and slight. Rimless round glasses. Baggy tweed three-piece that hangs off bony shoulders. Ugly burn the size of a palm print flares across one cheek, wrapping down around his throat and disappearing under the open collar of his white dress shirt. Burn must affect his throat, since when he speaks his voice is soft and sounds like sandpaper. Salted with a slight English accent, the posh kind. And unlike the clerks, who are both heavily bearded, the kid’s cheeks are completely hairless. Not a whisker visible.

  Doorway behind him leads to a staircase.

  I ask the obvious.

  You Salem Shaban?

  I am. This is my shop. And who are you, if I may ask?

  My name is Spademan. Friend of Jonathan Lesser. Wondered if I might have a word.

  I’m afraid I haven’t seen Jonathan Lesser in years.

  Yeah, well, no one’s seen him in about a week.

  It’s just that I’m not sure I can help you, Mr Spademan.

  I won’t take up too much of your time.

  Shaban says something to the clerks in that other language. Then says to me.

  Certainly. Let’s retire to my office upstairs.

  He’s heading back through the beaded curtain when I ask him about his name, as an icebreaker, mostly.

  Salem? That means peace, right?

  He looks over his shoulder.

  Yes. Though in English it’s often spelled Salaam. However, I chose to spell my name in English with an E. You know, like the witch-hunt.

  Then he nods toward the staircase.

  Shall we?

  His office above the store looks like it’s out of some old movie. Huge wooden desk covered with a weathered leather deskpad, with a vintage pen-and-pencil set stuck like antennae in a small round paperweight. Wooden swivel chair, wooden blinds, tilted just-so. Cast thin bars of light, like a jail-cell window, across the surface of the desk. Everything’s antique, all older than Shaban by a century or so. Same goes for the large dusty globe that sits on a round wooden stand by the desk. I inspect it while Shaban takes his seat. The globe must be plenty old because so much of the world is left blank.