CHICAGO
My wife called,” said Paul Davidson as John Vaughan slid back into the Bronco and handed a Styrofoam cup of coffee over to him.
“Yeah?” replied the Organized Crime officer, pulling the passenger door shut. “What’d she say?”
“She says she’s naming you in the divorce decree as well.”
“Me? I only kept you out one night.”
“Yeah, but today is punta Sunday.”
“What the hell is punta Sunday?” asked Vaughan, vaguely recognizing the Spanish-sounding word.
“Today’s the day, we, you know,” said Davidson awkwardly.
“Are you serious? You only have sex with your wife on Sundays?”
“And my birthday.”
Vaughan started laughing.
“Go ahead and laugh,” said Davidson, “but this is going to affect you too.”
“Me?” he repeated. “How the hell could this possibly affect me?”
“You’ll see. Trust me.”
Vaughan rolled his eyes and peeled the lid off his coffee. Examining the logs from the dispatch computer in Nasiri’s cab, he had discovered a pattern. The Pakistani driver picked up fares in a certain part of the city at regular times of the day. As that area was nowhere near his apartment, there had to be another reason Nasiri favored it.
On a hunch, Vaughan cross-referenced the pickups with Muslim prayer times and his hunch paid off. Nasiri was picking up fares after he had gone to pray. The only problem was that there were no official mosques within the entire eight-block radius they were looking at. The keyword, though, was official.
With one phone call, Davidson was able to learn that there were unofficial, makeshift mosques and prayer rooms all across the city. Normally they were hiding right in plain sight. People just didn’t know what to look for, such as an abundance of taxicabs in front, papered-over windows, Arabic writing, or the word Masjid written somewhere on the facade.
Once Vaughan and Davidson found out, it took them several hours, but they finally located what they believed to be Mohammed Nasiri’s mosque.
Unlike American places of worship, Vaughan knew that it wasn’t unusual for mosques, especially those frequented by fundamentalists, to be used to plot attacks, store weapons, and give sanctuary to terrorists.
“Anything else happen while I was gone?” he asked.
Davidson pretended to consult his notebook. “Muammar Gaddafi dropped bin Laden and Zawahiri off for Sunday school, Jimmy Hoffa pulled up with a stack of union ballots in Arabic, and Amelia Earhart has been circling overhead with this really cool banner that says Islam is the bomb.”
Vaughan shook his head. “Hey, don’t take it out on me. My wife’s not happy either and I’m sure it goes double for my kids. I normally cook pancakes on Sunday.”
“How old are they?”
“My wife would tell you her age is none of your business, but the kids are five and seven. How about you? Do you have children?”
“No. Just two extremely high-strung miniature Dobermans who piss the carpet if I shut the refrigerator too loud.”
“I hate tiny dogs.”
“Do you mind?” asked Davidson, his head pulled back. “You’re talking about my kids here.”
“Sorry.”
“Forget about it. I don’t like tiny dogs either. Can you picture what I look like walking those little apartment rats when the wife is under the weather?”
Vaughan chuckled.
“How about you?” continued Davidson. “Do you have any animals?”
“We’ve got a lab mix.”
“Mixed with what?”
“Pit bull.”
“Now that’s a man’s dog.”
“That’s what Mrs. Vaughan tells me,” he said as he opened up a bag and offered Davidson a doughnut. “Sorry. They didn’t have any turkey or tofu sausage.”
“I’ll let my wife know to add you to the wrongful death suit as well,” he said, reaching into the bag. “Which one has the Crestor sprinkles?”
Vaughan was about to laud the health benefits of doughnuts when his eye caught movement across the street. “I don’t believe it.”
“Me neither. They’re all glazed. There’s not a single chocolate one in the whole bag. Who goes for doughnuts and doesn’t bring back at least one chocolate?”
“I’m not talking doughnuts. Check out the guy who just got out of that car across the street.”
Davidson looked up as a fat man with a long gray beard and dark sunglasses was helped out of a car by two younger men. He looked to be in his late sixties and was dressed in traditional Muslim clothing with a length of fabric wrapped around his prayer cap.
“Look at his hands,” said Vaughan.
“Holy hand job, Batman. Where’d he get those back-scratchers?” exclaimed Davidson as he saw the man’s two stainless steel hooks.
“Probably not from baking cupcakes.”
“You can say that again. Don’t they cut off hands for stealing over there?”
“The Saudis do, and sometimes the Taliban. It’s definitely an Islamic thing, but I’ve got a feeling this guy’s a different story,” said Vaughan.
“Lose a hand and you end up becoming an instructor. Isn’t that what you said?”
Vaughan nodded.
“Judging by this guy’s qualifications, he must be teaching a Ph.D. course.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” said the Organized Crime officer as he put the lid back on his coffee cup.
“Maybe we should hand this over to the Joint Terrorism Task Force now.”
“And tell them what? While looking for our hit-and-run cabbie we saw a man with hooks for hands? Everything from Nasiri’s apartment is poisonous tree.”
Davidson knew he was right. “But if what we think is going on, actually is going on, we can’t just sit around and do nothing.”
“I agree. We need to do something, but the last thing we can afford to do is to be spotted. If that happens, everyone will scatter and this thing will go deeper underground. We’ve got one thread we’re hanging on by and if we lose it, there’s no telling how badly this will end.”
The Public Vehicles officer shook his head. “I wonder if this was why 9/11 didn’t get stopped.”
“We’re not going to let another 9/11 happen. I don’t care what we have to do. But the one thing we can’t do is continue to sit here in your Bronco. We need a better surveillance vehicle.”
“The PI company I moonlight for has one,” said Davidson as he pulled out his cell phone.
“Why didn’t you say anything before?”
“Because I don’t like using it.”
“Why not?”
“It has a certain feature that’s a real pain in the ass.”
“It gets hot and stuffy and begins to stink like every other surveillance vehicle?” asked Vaughan.
“No, not at all. This thing is wall-to-wall luxury. It’s like riding in a limo.”
“So then what’s the problem?”
Davidson turned on the ignition and put the Bronco in gear. “You’ll see.”