Spectrum (The Karen Vail Series) (6 page)

6

>ASTORIA, QUEENS

Wednesday, JANUARY 24, 1973

Basil and Livana turned off Ditmars Boulevard and headed up 31st Street, walking along the elevated subway platform. Basil wore a fur hat with earflaps pulled down low and a scarf covering his face to disguise himself. His public defender told him to avoid confrontations, as they would only create complications when the time came for him to press his case with a judge and, potentially, a jury. Given the neighborhood’s visceral reaction, Livana felt it was better for him to avoid being seen in public.

“What happened with Fedor?” Livana asked as they turned right at the corner. “The alarm company.”

“His foreman said no. Their customers would boycott the company. He said it wasn’t worth the risk.”

“But Fedor told him what really happened, right?”

“He knows Fedor, trusts him. Believing him is not the problem. It’s what the
neighborhood
believes happened, not what really happened.”

“I’m sorry.” Livana took her husband’s gloved hand. “Did you thank him for trying?”

“Of course.”

After passing a Laundromat, she tugged on his arm. “What about unemployment? Can’t we collect money from the government until you find something else?”

“Gus paid me cash, remember? He didn’t want to pay taxes, so I was off the books. I can’t file for unemployment.”

Livana shook her head. “You should never have agreed to that.”

“I didn’t have a choice. When we moved here, I needed a job. I know furs, Gus was a furrier. He said this is how he did it. Take it or leave it.”

Two men approached from the opposite direction, eyed Livana, and then studied Basil’s covered face as they approached. One shouldered Basil hard, nearly spinning him around.

Livana gave Basil a tug, righting him and admonishing him with a stern look not to even think about engaging them in an argument.

“Bastards.”

“This was a bad idea. Even if you wear that stuff, people see me and they know it’s you.”

“How can I look for job if I can’t even leave my house?” Basil asked.

Livana searched his eyes, conflicted at the illogic of trying to find work when he could not even show his face in public. She did not answer him because, frankly, there was no answer.

“Let’s go home,” she said quietly.

ON SUNDAY, THE FAMILIES put on their finest clothing and walked to St. Catherine’s Greek Orthodox Church several blocks away. It was cold but sunny, and they were going to the one place where they could feel safe: their house of worship, where differences were put aside and all was forgiven—even if only temporarily.

As they neared the building, the familiar tiled mosaic came into view: a representation of “The Feast of the Holy Theophany of Our Lord God and Savior Jesus Christ,” a scene that commemorated the baptism of Christ and the divine revelation of the Holy Trinity.

People were entering the chapel when two men spotted Basil half a block away. They headed toward them, their arms outstretched.

“Where do you think you’re going?” the brown-suited man asked.

Basil put his hands out and stopped Livana and the kids behind him. Fedor took Niklaus’s hand.

“We’re going to church,” Basil said.

“Not this one.”

“Says who?” Fedor asked. “You have no right to stop us from—”

“You’re not welcome here anymore,” the man said to Basil, not bothering to look at Fedor. “Go home. Or go worship somewhere else.”

“We’re members of this congregation,” Livana said. “And we’re taking our children inside.” She stepped forward, but the men blocked her path.

Basil started to object, but Livana grabbed his forearm. “No, Basil. People are watching. The last thing we need is another … altercation.”

“But this isn’t right. All we want to do is pray with—”

“I know,” she said. “But now’s not the time. It’s still too soon.”

“What’s the matter?” Cassandra asked.

“Nothing, Cassandramou,” Basil said, drawing her close.

Livana took Dmitri’s hand and turned to Fedor. “You and Nik go in. We’ll see you back at the house.”

“I don’t want to go,” Niklaus said.

“If you’re not going, we’re not going,” Fedor said, stepping forward and standing nose to nose with the man closest to him. “You guys are making a big mistake.”

“So are you. Choose your sides carefully.” They backed away in the direction they had come from.

Basil and Fedor exchanged a glance, then turned and headed home.

7

>ASTORIA, QUEENS

Thursday, February 15, 1973

Unable to find a higher paying job, Basil began delivering
Newsday
around the neighborhood. Every morning, the production truck dropped off stacks of newspapers, which he folded neatly and tightly so they would be easy to toss. He then took off on his rusted Schwinn bicycle with a sack slung over his back and a ski mask covering his face.

His delivery route brought in some money for groceries—and it did not require him to interact with anyone. He and Livana hoped that, over time, emotions would calm and he would be able to return to life as it was—or at least find decent work, provide for his family, and keep to himself.

In the ensuing weeks, Basil and Livana met with the public defender, who explained that they been assigned a date for a preliminary hearing to determine whether there was sufficient evidence to proceed. It would be, in essence, a minitrial.

The hearing moved swiftly, both lawyers sparring with one another as well as the judge. Finally Basil’s attorney requested a dismissal on the grounds that the prosecution had insufficient evidence to convince a jury that the defendant was guilty of assault.

Over the protestations of the prosecutor, the judge agreed and rapped his gavel, providing a sense of great relief to Basil and his family.

THE FOLLOWING MORNING, sporting a renewed spirit and a sense of relief he had not felt since the incident, Basil put aside his disguises and went out into the community to look for work. But he and Livana soon learned that having the case dismissed in criminal court did not register similarly in the court of public opinion.

When he walked into the house, Livana knew by the forward roll of his shoulders that his quest had not been successful.

She rose from the couch and met him at the door. She gave him a firm hug, and he wept on her shoulder. Tears flowed from her eyes as well. Basil was a tough-minded and proud person, and he had always faced adversity with a stubborn fixation on finding a way to get what they needed.

This was different. Being shunned by the community was unlike any other challenge he had ever faced, a kryptonite of sorts that struck to the very core of his weakness. After being abandoned as a child, he treasured the sense of belonging. Having it stripped from him, without a way to restore it, to apologize, to make amends, tore at him.

Livana knew all this. And yet she was clueless how to help him other than to offer support. It was insufficient, but she did not know what else to do.

A week later, Livana had just returned from picking up Dmitri and Cassandra at school. Basil had finished folding the last of the weekend ad inserts and stuffing them into his bicycle sack when the doorbell rang. He ran into the house through the backdoor, shouting, “I got it,” as he passed Dmitri, nearly knocking him into the refrigerator.

Basil had submitted a number of job applications on the outskirts of Astoria, hoping to have better luck farther from home. Last night he told Livana he was certain he would be receiving a call any day.

Was someone coming to the door offering Basil employment? Possible, but Livana doubted it. In fact, no one had even ventured to their house since the incident, so the hairs on the back of her neck now rose, as if her inner radar were sending off warning signals.

The man at the door was dressed in a suit and had a respectful demeanor, easing her fears.

“Good afternoon,” the man said. “Mr. and Mrs.—”

“Are you here about a job?” Basil asked.

He smiled wanly. “My name is Emil Tazor. I’m an attorney in town.” He paused, seeming to wait for Basil to make a connection.

Livana approached the door. This man was not an employer offering her husband a job—or even an interview. Her stomach contracted.

“I’m a friend of Gregor and Alysia Persephone,” Tazor said, “and I represent them in a civil lawsuit against you and your family.”

“No,” Basil said. “The judge dismissed the case against me.”

“That was criminal court. This is a civil action. The Persephones want you to pay their medical expenses.”

Basil reached back for the wall behind him and steadied himself. “But I lost my job. I—I deliver newspapers now.” He said it with disdain, as if embarrassed.

“I understand. But you have to take responsibility for your actions. You blinded Mr. Persephone, and he’s got bills for surgery and hospitalization, medical testing and specialists he had to see in the city. If it was up to me, I would be suing you for thirty-five years of lost wages and pain and suffering. But they only want their medical bills covered.”

Basil swallowed.

Livana looked at her husband, then at Tazor. “But it wasn’t—Basil didn’t start the fight. Why should we pay anything?”

Tazor kept his gaze on Basil. “The fact is, you swung a jagged bottle at my client’s eyes with the intent to harm him. And you did. You ruined his eyesight. He’ll never work a decent job the rest of his life, he’ll never see his children grow up.” His eyes flicked over to Dmitri and Cassandra, who were standing off to the side, watching the interplay between their parents and the attorney.

After a moment’s pause to allow the couple to absorb this, Tazor said, “I’m offering you an opportunity to come out of this relatively unscathed. Mr. Persephone’s medical bills have climbed over five thousand dollars—”

“Five thousand dollars,” Basil said. “We don’t have that kind of money.”

Tazor frowned. “If we sue you, it will cost you at least that much to hire a lawyer. You’ll end up losing the case.
And
your money.”

Basil stared at him, his eyes glazing slightly. “We don’t have five thousand dollars.”

Tazor looked him over, seemingly to assess the veracity of Basil’s declaration. “The court will need to verify this, review your bank statements.”

“I’ll show you whatever you want. We don’t have that much.”

The lawyer’s jaw muscles twitched. “How much do you have?”

“A little over four thousand. That’s our life savings. And after losing my job, we need ev—”

“That will have to suffice. But it’s your decision. Here’s my information,” Tazor said, reaching into his suit coat. He was out the door a second later, leaving Livana standing there looking at the attorney’s gold-embossed business card.

Basil sank to the floor, his voice barely above a whisper. “But it wasn’t my fault.”

BASIL STARED AT LIVANA. She shifted her eyes away, across the room, not wanting Basil to see the fear that she was sure showed on her face.

Basil cleared his throat and said, “I have to go to the bank.”

Livana gathered her apron in her hands and played with the material. “That will leave us without any money.”

“We’ll have enough for food. The newspapers.”

“So where will we live, huh? If we can’t pay our rent—”

“I don’t know, Liv!” He grasped strands of hair and massaged his scalp. “You think we shouldn’t pay?”

Tears streamed down Livana’s face. “We don’t have money for a lawyer. We can’t fight this.”

“We should just pay and be done,” Basil said. “Put it behind us.”

“Will the
neighborhood
put it behind them?”

“I don’t know.” He sighed and let his head drop back against the wall. “But I feel like it’s the best thing to do. It shows that we took responsibility, tried to make it right. That has to count for something.”

Dmitri climbed into his father’s lap; Cassandra stood in front of her mother until Livana spread her arms. Then she stepped forward and buried her face into Livana’s chest.

Basil closed his eyes. “I worked so hard to give us a safety net. Now it’s gone. Because of a stupid fight.”

“Go,” Livana said. “Before the bank closes. Then we’ll have to figure out where we’re going to live.”

8

>THE SOUTH BRONX

Thursday, July 6, 1995

“Fuck you, you bullshit me!” Jackson unholstered his Colt .45 pistol, as shiny as it was menacing, and shoved it up against Vail’s forehead.

“Now hang on,” Russo said. “Her sister really does work for INS. Give her the two hours, like you said you were gonna do.”

“Nah, man. She was talkin’ to SWAT. I heard her say SWAT!”

“No,” Vail said, holding her head, which was leaking blood from a jagged scalp wound. “Maggie said SWAB, not SWAT. With a ‘b.’ It’s an acronym: special ways to access borders. It’s a way INS agents take people across the border when they don’t want the newspapers and TV cameras to see. Special operations. That’s why I yelled at her. I think SWAB is too risky for you two.”

Jackson looked long and hard at Vail. “So if I call that number back they gonna answer the phone ‘INS,’ right?”

Vail looked at Russo, who maintained a poker face.

“No,” Vail said. “Not right. She works
for
INS, not
at
INS.”

McGrady raised his M16 to the base of her skull. “Yo be talkin’ shit.”

“I’m not.” Vail swallowed, trying to disguise her fear. “Maggie works on a task force to stop the smuggling of immigrants across the border. That’s why she works special operations. She’s out of the 13th Precinct. That’s who’ll answer the phone. I’m telling you the truth. Go ahead and call. You’ll see that what I’m telling you is right. They’ll answer ‘13th Precinct.’ Call ’em.”

Jackson looked at McGrady, who shrugged. A long moment later, Jackson said, “You best be tellin’ it the way it is, ’cause if I see a big old SWAT truck—with a goddamn
T
—pull up outside, I’m gonna unload on you.”

Our SWAT team’s part of ESU, but what does the truck actually say, SWAT or ESU?
She thought SWAT was more of a West Coast term, but she could not remember. Vail licked her lips. “I’m telling you the truth. I’m not worried.”

Bullshit, I’m worried as hell.

“WE SHOULD GO,” McGrady said. “We can’t take a chance. If she set us up, we deal with her later. But we gots no reason to stay here.”

Vail shared a look with Russo.
I can think of a reason.

“Let’s go,” Jackson said. “Up.” He yanked on the handcuffs and Russo groaned in pain. He stumbled to his feet and they shuffled out of the room into the hallway. “Out the back.”

Vail tried to position herself so that she could make eye contact with Russo because the moment the officers—or ESU—arrived, they would have to make a coordinated break, or their captors would certainly kill them. No matter how she parsed it, this was going to get ugly in a matter of seconds, and their chances of coming out of it alive were poor.

They proceeded down the hall, Jackson beside Vail and McGrady bringing up the rear, next to Russo. They moved in an organized fashion, almost rhythmically, as if marching to orders.

They passed a corridor that led off in a perpendicular direction, but the perps bypassed it and continued straight ahead.

They had gone thirty yards when two NYPD officers appeared at the end of the hall.

“Police, don’t move!”

Vail hit the ground, waiting for bullets to puncture her flesh. But Jackson was busy bringing up his machine gun, aimed at the cops, while McGrady locked his forearm across Russo’s neck and swung him around in front as a human shield.

Then both perps squeezed off a cacophony of automatic rounds, forcing the cops to retreat back around the corner.

“Take the rear, let’s move,” McGrady said, grabbing a handful of Vail’s blouse and nearly dragging her along as they ran, back toward the room they had left two minutes earlier.

But before they had gone a dozen yards, ESU officers filled the opposite end of the hall, moving in unison behind a large handheld ballistic tactical shield.

The men shifted position and started shooting again until McGrady’s M16 jammed. He cursed and tossed it aside, then pulled out the Colt and squeezed off a couple of rounds.

Vail had dropped to the ground once again, and covered her head with her hands.
Not gonna help much—but it makes me feel better.

The cops froze and inched backward as Jackson emptied his magazine. He paused, pushed Russo up against the wall, face first, and jammed his elbow into the back of the sergeant’s neck as he located his spare clip and shoved it into his machine gun.

“Keep moving,” Jackson said, repositioning Russo in front of him and pushing him forward.

“If you want out,” Russo said, “put down your weapons and I’ll call them off.”

McGrady swung the butt of his pistol into Russo’s kidney. “Shut up old man. Long as we gots you, nothin’ gonna happen to us.”

Probably true. Their demeanor, the way they handle their prisoners, these guys are definitely ex-military. Not the brightest bulbs, but disciplined.

“Drop your weapons,” the lead ESU officer yelled down the hallway.

Jackson squeezed off another burst of rounds in response. They were several yards from the perpendicular corridor.

Is that their plan?
Is there
a plan?

As they neared it, Vail figured that ESU probably had that exit covered too. What little she knew of tactical ops was that teams increased their chances of success by approaching a suspect from multiple angles.
And if I’m right about their military training, Jackson and McGrady have to know this, too.

Before it became an issue, Jackson’s magazine ran dry and McGrady couldn’t have had more than a few rounds left in his Colt.

The sudden silence was almost painful—and welcome. Until Jackson pulled a pear-shaped object from an external pocket on his camo pants. Vail knew what it was, or rather what it looked like: a hand grenade.

“Stay back,” Jackson shouted. He seemed to be hiding the bomb, but she shifted her weight and got a better look.
Yes indeed. That’s a grenade.

“We’re leaving with your man here,” McGrady said. “Don’t come after us or we’ll kill him. You hear me?”

One of the ESU officers, crouched behind the shield, yelled, “We hear you. We just want to talk. Let’s start with a clean slate. We’ll give you a clear path out, but you’ve got to work with us.”

“We ain’t gots to do nothin’. I told you. Stay back and your man here lives. Even stupid pigs can follow those orders.”

“Get down,” McGrady said, kicking Vail in the ribs and sending her to her knees. “Don’t get up till I tell you to.”

“Take her too,” Jackson said.

“Nah, man, we don’t need her. She just slow us down.”

Vail lowered her torso to the floor and waited for the gun to fire. She didn’t believe they would just let her go. She was a witness. Then again, there were now several other cops who could identify them, so killing her served no purpose.

Thank-you, God.

Jackson pulled the pin from the grenade and tossed it down the hallway. The tiny piece of metal tinkled slightly as it bounced—and then disappeared.

Crap.

Jackson backed away with Russo in tow.

“Release your hostage,” the officer said. “We’ll give you a way out, a car—”

“Soon as we free,” Jackson said, “soon as we free. Then we talk.”

They’re not gonna release him. He’s their ticket out of here. And once they get away, who knows where they’ll go—or what they’ll do
. Maybe even shoot him. Just like they did with Costello and Shaunessy—who have to be long dead by now.

As they backed away toward the opposite end of the hallway, keeping an eye on the ESU officers, Vail scooted left on her stomach. She stretched out her arm and palmed the spent M16 machine gun.

When Jackson and McGrady turned in the other direction, she got to her knees and hurled the weapon at them. It struck McGrady’s feet and he stumbled. Jackson turned, his face crumpled in anger, and brought his handgun toward her.

Two shots exploded in the hallway.

McGrady dropped to his knees, a bullet hole in his forehead. Another shot struck Jackson in the face and he went down as well.

Vail ran toward the grenade, which had dropped on the hard flooring and bounced knee-high. She snatched it up and in one motion tossed it backhanded down the nearby corridor.

It careened down the narrow hallway—one bounce, two bounces, three, four—and then exploded.

THE CONCUSSIVE FORCE shook the floor and knocked Vail to the ground. Shrapnel flew toward her, whizzing by her face, shattering glass, and sending small projectiles through the air. A piece of hot metal lodged in Vail’s thigh.

The burn eluded her for a second, and then the intense pain set in. ESU officers flew past her, kicking away the weapons from the reach of the downed men. Another two helped Russo to his feet.

Vail rolled to her side, tried to push herself erect, and then gave up. Finally a man clad in a tactical uniform helped her stand and led her down the hall before getting called away by his commanding officer to clear the adjacent rooms.

Outside, across the street, Vail saw an ambulance idling at the curb, its colored lights swirling.

“Vail!”

Her hearing was muffled, especially in her right ear, but she made out her name. She turned and saw Russo seated on the rig’s rear bumper. Vail limped over and winced as she lowered herself beside him. One paramedic was taking vitals while another tended to his bullet wound.

“Your sister really work for INS?” Russo asked.

Vail flinched again when she twisted her leg to check out her thigh. “Nope. Don’t have a sister.”

Russo chuckled. “You did good. I’m impressed. And I owe you.”

Vail did not know what to do with that, so she simply said, “Thanks, sir—I mean, Russo.”

“I’m serious. You showed me a lot in there. You’re gonna make a great cop. You can think on your feet, you can think outside the box. That’s an important trait we don’t see a lot of in rookies, especially not one on her second day on the job. You’ve got balls.”

Vail lifted her brow.

“You know what I mean.”

“I appreciate that.” Vail winced as a medic probed the foreign object in her thigh.

“I’d go through a door with you any day, Karen.”

“Go through a door?”

Russo winked. “Give yourself some time on the job. You’ll understand.”