Midas Read online

  But none of that was what was really bothering him at the moment. He’d get over the price of the lunch. And he’d deal with whatever he decided to do about the woman, one way or the other. Something else was making the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.

  It was the guy at the front of the restaurant, the sweaty guy with the briefcase.

  He looked Middle Eastern. Maybe Indian. Jimmy was never too good with that kind of thing. People were people as far as he was concerned. He never paid too much attention to where they came from. The guy was walking past the hostess, going straight for a table just a few feet from Jimmy’s. He was carrying an expensive leather briefcase. Large. It looked like it was heavy.

  The guy found the table he was looking for. There were three men sitting there. One of them wore a pinstriped suit and tie, an outfit that was none too common out there, especially at lunchtime. The other two men were more in keeping with the community dress code. One wore khakis and a tennis sweater. The other had on pressed jeans and a starched, long-sleeved button-down blue shirt with a two-tone collar. The sweaty guy said something to Pressed Jeans, and put the briefcase down on the floor next to the man’s chair. Pressed Jeans nodded, didn’t look surprised or alarmed at the delivery. He didn’t tip the guy either. But the sweaty guy didn’t wait for a tip. The moment he released the briefcase, his back was turned and he’d taken two quick steps toward the door.

  Jimmy stood. He wasn’t sure why. Cop’s instinct. There was something funny about this guy. Something was up. So Jimmy took a step forward, didn’t even look at the woman at his table, didn’t see her disapproving frown. He was watching the sweaty guy, who suddenly stopped walking and looked down toward the pocket of his raincoat. The guy looked confused all of a sudden, like he couldn’t believe what was happening. Jimmy didn’t know what the hell was happening either. All he knew was that he heard a muffled ringing sound.

  The sound of a cell phone receiving a call.

  Bashar Shabaan froze in place. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.

  The phone was not supposed to ring. They were not supposed to call him. He was supposed to call them. This was very, very wrong.

  And then suddenly he understood. There was no question in his mind. It wasn’t wrong at all. It made perfect sense. It was exactly as planned.

  Exactly as they had planned.

  Bashar wanted to scream, but he didn’t. He wanted to run, but he didn’t do that either. Instead, Bashar stood still, completely still, and thought about his faith. He thought about Hamid and what he must have felt stepping onto that bus. And he prayed for his mother and father. He thought that when he first saw death, when he’d seen the soldiers kill that family, he was young. So very young. And now he was so very old.

  Twenty-nine years old.

  As old as he’d ever get, he thought.

  Then he closed his eyes and thought about how he’d never get his money.

  He’d never find out if he could bribe the devil.

  A real pity.

  Because he knew without a doubt he’d be meeting the old bastard any moment now.

  First came the noise.

  Jimmy Leggett heard that. It was so deafening, so loud that it seemed to have a physical force all its own. And then it got louder because soon there were screams and moans and crying and prayers.

  Then the blood came.

  Jimmy Leggett saw that. At least some of it. Mostly what he saw was his own blood, which spurted because something ripped into his chest, tearing him apart. That same something lifted him up and carried him backward so fast he felt like he was flying.

  There was a lot more blood than just Jimmy’s because the initial explosion also ripped many other bodies in half, mangling and crushing anything in its ferocious path. The impact shattered almost all the glass in the restaurant—the windows, the mirrors, the chandeliers—sending fragments and shards, some mere slivers, some the size of checkerboards, hurtling through the air; deadly, jagged projectiles slicing through skin and bone, splashing the white stucco and beige tiles of Harper’s Restaurant with gallons of blood, as if being hurled from hundreds of paint cans, blood that was thick and dark, dark red.

  And then just as quickly it was washed out and pink, because the sprinkler system burst into action and then a water main was severed, and the new mix of blood and water flooded across the restaurant floor like a river, streaming into the street through what was left of the front of the restaurant. It looked like a slaughterhouse being hosed down after the working day. Jimmy felt that because he was still alive then, his body broken and wet and dying.

  Other debris swept past Jimmy as he lay there: pieces of furniture, shoes, plates, silverware, vases, even jewelry, much of which was still attached to severed fingers and ears. And that’s when Jimmy Leggett smelled the death that surrounded him. The bloody rags that just moments before had been well-cared-for clothing but were now scattered everywhere: stuck to whatever walls remained, wrapped around table legs, flapping against unmoving bodies. The arms and legs that had been ripped from their sockets, that were dripping red and were piled up so thick they looked like stacks of firewood.

  And then Jimmy’s senses got fuzzy. He was barely aware of the ceiling plaster that was plummeting in chunks, dropping into the frenzied activity below and onto the deafened, terrified survivors, making them think that the sky itself was falling. He understood that there was new movement, but didn’t know it was the emergency medical workers and doctors who arrived within minutes after the blast went off and were doing their best to move anyone still breathing into waiting ambulances. He felt heat, great heat, but didn’t realize that volunteer firemen had arrived, too, and were waging battle with the fire that broke out when a gas main in the kitchen ruptured. By the time those customers at Harper’s who were not killed by the explosion had burned to death in the raging fire, Jimmy could see, hear, feel, and smell nothing at all.

  Jimmy Leggett’s last thoughts were about his wife. He saw her face, wanted to tell her not to be so sad. Mostly he wanted to say that he probably wouldn’t have slept with the weekend woman no matter how much the goddamn lunch had cost. Within seconds of his death, the streets had been cordoned off and no one was allowed within three blocks in any direction of the devastation. And within three hours after it had begun, the worst was over. The dead had been removed, the living were in Southampton Hospital. Where there had once been life, all that remained was a sudden quiet, an absence of movement, an eerie vision of things that remained untouched and unchanged. A photograph of Main Street in East Hampton that still hung on the restaurant wall, unscarred. A candle that stood unbroken in its candleholder. Mere feet from the center of the room, the point of the explosion, was a round table that stood absolutely intact—flowers still blooming in a small glass vase; the tablecloth neither torn nor sullied; knives, forks, and spoons sitting exactly as they’d been placed. There were two plates on the table. One held a half-eaten steak with a nearly untouched baked potato. It looked as if the diner would be returning from the bathroom momentarily to finish his or her meal. The other plate was filled with small, thin pieces of pasta. It also had a severed hand next to it, a fork still clutched in the fingers.

  The FBI showed up, taking over from the overwhelmed and shell-shocked local law enforcement, and the human tragedy was quickly turned into an impersonal crime scene. The TV cameras stayed, of course, positioning themselves as close as they were allowed, and settled in for a long siege. Print journalists churned out copy, spoke to witnesses, and searched for theories while TV reporters stood in front of the cameras and made an instant and unanimous proclamation, sending it out over the airwaves: a terrorist bombing.

  A message from America’s enemies to its citizens: No one is safe.

  Anywhere.

  Anymore.

  Ever.

  PART ONE

  1

  “We’d like people to take their seats, please.”

  Justin Westwood nodded at the us
her, who had leaned over in his direction to make the polite request, but he made no move to honor it. The usher waited, swiveling his neck back and forth, as if his shirt collar was too tight. Then he moved on to tell other, more obedient people to sit down so things could get started.

  Justin watched the mourners filing into the church. They were moving slowly; their tears and grief seemed to be weighing them down, preventing them from walking down the aisles at normal speed. In the three days since the explosion at Harper’s Restaurant, Justin Westwood had noticed a lot of people moving slowly. His sense was that the entire country was moving along in slow motion right now. People seemed to be in a state of shock after the explosion. There wasn’t the same kind of anger that was prevalent after the World Trade Center attack. This was different. There was something obscenely grand about that event, operatic in its horror, that made it all seem vaguely unreal to anyone outside of the city. September eleventh had heroes and villains and scope. This attack seemed small. It wasn’t just deadly, it was demeaning. It seemed to bring everyone down to the level of other countries, small countries. It made everyone feel vulnerable, which Justin knew was the worst feeling there was. So people moved slowly. They were in no rush to reach their destination, whatever it was, because that destination no longer seemed safe.

  Justin, on the other hand, wasn’t moving at all. He was standing toward the rear of the room, leaning against the wall, facing the last pew. He was in mourning, too, but that didn’t affect his speed or his ability to move. Justin had learned long ago to use his grief to keep himself separate from normal activity. To stay one step away from whatever pain was due to come next.

  He was standing, several feet from the rest of the crowd, because he didn’t know what he was supposed to do. He didn’t know how to act or what to say to the people passing by. He was being counted on to be strong but he was not feeling much strength. What he felt was what he’d so often felt in the past: numb. He had spent years seeking to reach just such a state, to avoid any unnecessary emotion. After everything that had happened the previous year, he thought he’d finally passed beyond that point, thought he had crossed back to the side of the living and the feeling, but now the numbness was back again. And he understood that it wasn’t Jimmy Leggett’s death that had brought it back. It was his funeral.

  Justin Westwood had sworn that he’d never go to another funeral. He didn’t believe in them. They did nothing for the dead, who were well beyond hearing or caring what was happening in a cramped little room filled with crying people. Funerals were for the living. They were to provide comfort and the hope of an afterlife; they were to ease the pain that came with loss. Funerals were to let people know that when their time came, they would not only be going to another place, a better place, there would be other people left behind to mourn them, to miss them, to grieve over their absence. To show them that they had been loved.

  Justin knew better.

  He did not have any faith in an afterlife. If there were such a thing, he was not willing to concede that it would be any better than what was here on earth. Justin thought that the world had been fucked over plenty. It didn’t give him confidence that those in charge could do any better elsewhere.

  He also wasn’t comforted by funereal rituals. Nor did he think he could fill a church with mourners. Justin had long ago come to grips with the fact that there would be few, if any, people to grieve him or miss him. He had not felt much love in his lifetime. There was no reason to think he’d get much of it after he died.

  Two people had truly loved him. That he knew. He’d missed one of their funerals. His eight-year-old daughter’s. He’d been in the hospital, shot up in the attack that killed her. He didn’t know she’d been buried until two weeks after she’d been put in the ground.

  He did go to his wife’s funeral. Alicia had not coped well with the loss of their daughter. Justin knew that she blamed him, an accusation that had quite a lot of merit to it. He shared her belief. But Justin did his best never to blame his wife for her own death. One year after Lili had been killed, Alicia took Justin’s pistol out of his closet, put it in her mouth, and pulled the trigger. He blamed himself for that one, too.

  It took him years after that to feel anything close to love. He thought it was happening about a year ago. With a woman in town, Deena, and her small daughter, Kendall. It turned out to be all sorts of things with Deena—friendship, passion, safety, compassion—but it wasn’t love. And on her part it was something else, too. It was fear. Fear of what was lurking inside him. Not the numbness. Fear of what was beneath the numbness.

  They had given it their best shot. Dated for several months. But after a few weeks, there were signs. He would go to touch her unexpectedly, come up behind her and kiss her on the neck or stroke her bare arm, and she would flinch. The motion hardly noticeable. But he noticed. He could feel her discomfort when he was around Kendall. He was crazy about the little girl, and in some ways, separating from her was the hardest part to deal with. But when he understood that Deena was tormenting herself over the relationship—he had, literally, saved her life; she did not want to add to the pain of his life—he made it easy on her. He sat her down, said that he understood that it wasn’t working, gave her an out. And she jumped at it. He was surprised just how quickly she did jump. But he told her that if she ever changed her mind, he’d wait around for a time. It was a pledge he knew he could keep, but he also knew it was a pledge that would never come into play. Deena’s heart might waver, but her mind was unchangeable.

  It was after Alicia’s burial that Justin had made an earlier pledge: never to go to another funeral service. But he couldn’t stay away from the church today. Jimmy had helped him when he most needed help. Jimmy had stood by him. They’d worked together for nearly seven years. And he still couldn’t quite believe that such a decent man had been killed in this random way. Like everyone else in the country, he was still stunned by the attack. And still waiting for some kind of explanation, something that would give it some kind of sense.

  He’d gotten a phone call minutes after the explosion from a sergeant at the Southampton station, the largest station in the area, telling him what had occurred and telling him that all East End cops should be on alert in case they were needed at the bomb site. Eventually they were told their presence wasn’t necessary. By that time they were all aware that Jimmy hadn’t returned from lunch.

  “Maybe he just can’t get back,” Gary Jenkins, a young cop, had said. “The streets are closed so maybe he’s just stuck over there.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” Justin had said. But somehow they all knew.

  At six o’clock, when Jimmy still hadn’t returned, Justin went to Duffy’s Tavern with Gary and a couple of the other guys and they watched the TV above the bar, stunned at the horror being shown and reported. The president addressed the nation, the vice president and the attorney general by his side, saying that evil had struck again but that, once again, it would be defeated. Justin wondered when the hell evil had ever been defeated, but he kept quiet. Nobody said anything about Jimmy, either. None of them wanted to be the one to jinx things. It turned out no jinx was needed. Justin got the call around midnight that night. It came from Jimmy’s son. The FBI had managed to tap into the restaurant’s computer records; they’d gotten the names of everyone who had a lunch reservation at Harper’s that day. Carolyn Helms was one of the women listed. She died in the blast. So did the person dining with her. Two of the cops at the station knew that she was Jimmy’s lunch date. Before Jimmy’s son hung up, he said that his mother would like Justin to speak at the service. Lying in bed at midnight, Justin had nodded at the son’s request, then realized that the man on the other end of the phone couldn’t see him, so he just said, “Sure,” because he didn’t know what else to say. And now here he was.

  The service was about to begin. Justin started to move down toward one of the front pews but he felt a hand pulling on his arm. It was Jimmy’s wife, Marjorie.

  “Why w
as he there, Jay? Why was he in that restaurant?”

  Her voice was loud. And shrill enough that it resonated throughout the room. Justin answered quietly, hoping she’d follow his lead. “I don’t know, Marge. I really don’t.”

  “I know what people think,” Marjorie said. “I know what everyone here is thinking.”

  “I’m not thinking anything, Marge.”

  “I want to know what happened, Jay. I want to know why this happened.”

  “I just know what it says in the papers.”

  “I don’t give a shit what it says in the papers. Or on television!” Her voice was very loud now, and shrill. Heads turned as she spoke. “I want to know what he was doing there. And I want to know why my husband is dead! I want you to find out for me! You owe me that. You owe him that!”

  She realized she was being too loud, understood that she was on the edge of hysteria. Marjorie Leggett released Jay’s arm. Her hands hung down by her sides now, as if she no longer knew what to do with them. “I’m sorry.” She spoke almost too softly this time. “I’m sorry.”

  “Okay.”

  “Thank you,” she said, a whisper now.

  “No,” Justin told her. “I don’t mean that it’s okay that you were yelling. It is okay that you’re yelling. It’s your husband’s funeral, you can do whatever the hell you want. I mean, okay, I’ll try to find out.”

  She nodded, too drained to smile. Too exhausted even to say thank you again. She patted him lightly on the arm, then went to sit down.