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  “It’s not just here, either. Look at places like Newark, Pittsburgh, St. Louis. It’s the twenty-first century, and still there’s a lack of decent employment and no shortage of discrimination toward people of color.”

  “Where to now?” I said.

  “You’re getting warm. Make a left onto One Hundred and Forty-first, a left onto Bradhurst, and a right onto One Hundred and Forty-second,” the kidnapper said.

  At 142nd, a single, leaning brownstone stood on the corner of a mostly rubble-filled lot. I slowed, scanning its surrounding weeds. I spotted a diaper, a mattress, and a rusty shopping cart but, thankfully, no Chelsea.

  “Go to two-eight-six. That’s where she is, Mike. Time for me to go. Tell Mom I said hi,” he said and hung up.

  I rapidly scanned the buildings and screeched to a stop in front of the address. I jumped out of the car and stared up at the onion-shaped dome above the three-story building in front of me.

  “It’s a mosque,” I radioed our backup. “I repeat. We’re at two-eight-six One Hundred and Forty-second Street. It’s on the north side of the street. We can’t wait. We’re going in the front.”

  We opened a pair of elaborate doors and rushed into a large, shabby, definitely unchic lobby. It looked like the mosque had been converted from an old movie theater.

  “Hello?” I called as we entered an open area where the seats had once been. There were windows in its walls now, and the floor was covered in Oriental rugs. It must be the prayer room, I figured. The light-filled space was divided in half by a large lace screen, and one of the walls was covered in elaborate tile.

  A stocky black man wearing a bright green, red, and yellow kufi on his head appeared in a doorway at the other end of the room. He hurried over, shock and anger in his face.

  “Who are you? What are you doing here? You’re not allowed in here. Your shoes! You can’t wear shoes here in the mussalah. Are you crazy? Can’t you see this is a holy place?”

  I showed him my shield.

  “I’m with the police department. We’re looking for a girl who was—”

  That’s when the Muslim man grabbed me violently by the lapels of my suit jacket.

  “I don’t care who you are,” he cried, dragging me toward the door. “This is a sacrilege! Get out of here now! You have no right to do this!”

  As we were busy struggling, I remembered the Harlem mosque incident in the seventies in which an NYPD cop had been killed. A police community conflict was all we needed now in the middle of a kidnapping.

  A moment later, the muscular man suddenly fell to his side. Emily had tripped him somehow and now had her knee in his back as she ratcheted her cuffs onto his wrists. I helped her pull the hysterical man to his feet.

  “Sir,” Emily said. “Please calm yourself. We’re sorry about the shoe mistake. We were unaware and apologize. We are law enforcement officers looking for a kidnapped girl. We were told she was here. Please help us. A young girl’s life is at stake.”

  “I see,” he said. “I’m Yassin Ali, the imam here. I lost my temper. Of course, I’ll do anything to help.”

  Emily undid his cuffs, and he guided us back out into the foyer.

  “You say a girl is being held here?” he said, staring at us in disbelief. “But that’s impossible. There hasn’t been anyone here since morning prayer. What’s this girl’s name? Is she a member of the congregation?”

  I showed him Chelsea’s picture.

  “A white girl?” he said, perplexed. “No. There’s no way. There must be a mistake.”

  “Has anything out of the ordinary occurred today? Anything that might direct us to where this girl could be?” I said. “Any deliveries or—?”

  “No.” Then something flashed in his eyes.

  “Actually, yes. When I came in, I heard a loud noise from the side of the building, where my office is. There’s an alley between us and the construction site next door. I thought maybe one of the workers had dumped some debris again, but when I looked out, there was nothing.”

  “Please show us,” Emily said. “We don’t have a moment to waste.”

  Chapter 28

  THE SIDE ALLEY Yassin showed us was appalling. Water—from a busted sewage line, judging by its stench—cascaded down the brick wall of the building under construction next door. A faded blue tarp flapped from a hole on its third floor.

  You knew you were in a bad section of Manhattan when even the real-estate flippers had abandoned ship.

  The piles of debris in the dim alley looked like something out of a photography book about the Great Depression. I rushed ahead, wishing we’d brought a pair of wading boots as I slogged over garbage bags, old bricks, the rusted door of a car.

  I was coming back from the rear of the alley when I almost tripped over a fridge discarded on its back with the door still attached. By law, supers were supposed to remove the doors because of the notorious suffocation death-trap threat to curious kids.

  My breath caught as a thought suddenly occurred to me.

  I flipped up the fridge’s freezer door with the heel of my shoe.

  Something went loose in my chest as I stared down.

  I didn’t want to be seeing what I was seeing, yet I had to drag my eyes away. Then I reeled back to the alley’s fence behind me. With a shaking hand held over my mouth, I stood staring at the broken glass glittering in the rubble-strewn field beyond the alley. A train creaked and clattered in the distance. The wind played with a plastic bag.

  I went back only when Emily got to the spot. We stood beside the open fridge, solemn and silent like mourners beside a strange white casket.

  From inside, Chelsea Skinner stared back at us.

  Her neck must have been broken when she’d been crammed in, because her body was twisted, facing the ground. It looked like her legs had been broken as well in order to fit her inside.

  There was a bullet hole in the top of her head, and she had a cross made of ashes on her forehead.

  Emily placed her gloved hand on the dead girl’s cheek.

  “I’m going to catch the man who did this to you,” she promised the girl as she took out her phone.

  Chapter 29

  THE SUBWOOFER THUMPING of the low-flying PD chopper seemed to echo through my raging blood as I left Emily and threaded the narrow alley back to the sidewalk.

  I stared at the line of decrepit three- and four-story brick town houses across the street. The ground floors of many of the buildings bore the closed steel shutters of abandoned stores, but I could see curtains and blinds in many of the upstairs windows that faced the alley. Somebody must have seen something.

  A crowd had gathered around the just-arrived Emergency Service Unit truck, which was parked in front of the mosque. I could see Lieutenant Montana through the windshield, working the radio, calling for backup. Around the truck were many mosquegoers, men in kufis and some women wearing hijab head scarves. But others—local non-Muslim street folk looking for some stimulation—also seemed to be arriving by the minute.

  I took out a picture of Chelsea as I walked over to the throng of people. “This girl was found dead in the alley back there,” I announced, holding it up. “Did anyone see anything this morning?”

  “Oh, a white girl. That’s what all the fuss is about. Figures,” said a pudgy young woman, laughing between bites of her takeout.

  “Word,” said a large man in cornrows beside her. “Why you cops messing around this mosque for? These are God-fearin’ people. This is harassment. Religious and racial discrimination. We don’t know anything about any white girl!”

  From the way the large man stood, half turned, unconsciously shielding his right side, I would have bet my paycheck that he was carrying under his XXL Giants jersey. I wanted to bust him right there and then. Make the wiseass the recipient of the anger that was still reeling through me. l almost didn’t care that it would probably incite the rest of the gathering crowd.

  I exhaled a long breath and let it go as a couple of Twenty-f
ifth Precinct radio cars turned the corner a moment later.

  I was heading back toward the crime scene when I heard a window slam across the street. Behind the pane of dusty glass in one of the town houses’ second-story windows, a thin, middle-aged black woman stared down at me. She made extended, knowing eye contact with me and nodded before fading back further into her apartment.

  She wanted to talk, but not in front of the neighborhood. Please, let this be a lead, I prayed as I went to get Emily.

  I left a couple of uniforms to cordon off the alley and took Emily with me across the street. The town house’s inner door’s lock buzzed as we entered the foyer. As we reached the top of the narrow stairwell, a door cracked open down the hallway. The woman whom I’d seen in the window put her finger to her lips and motioned us silently inside.

  The apartment was immaculate. The furniture was arranged tastefully on polished hardwood floors, and there was a granite island in the stainless-steel kitchen. Through an open bathroom doorway, I spotted a nurse’s flowered uniform blouse hanging on the shower curtain rod.

  The woman introduced herself as Mrs. Price, and I showed her Chelsea’s picture as we stepped into the living room.

  “This girl’s body was found dumped across the street,” I said, keeping my voice down.

  The woman tsked loudly as she stared at the photo.

  “Another dead child,” she said in a lilting Caribbean accent. “I’d say dis world has gone damn crazy, but I don’t remember a time when it wasn’t.”

  “Is there some information you could share with us, Mrs. Price?” Emily prompted. “This probably happened right after the call-to-prayer speakers went off at five.”

  “Oh, I know dose damn speakers,” she said. “Dey shouldn’t be allowed to do dat. Religion or not, dat’s noise pollution. I called three-one-one a hundred times, but do you tink anytin happen? Tink again.”

  “Did you see anything?” Emily said.

  “No,” she said. “But you talk to dat Big Ice. He’s de local drug dealer.”

  “The loud guy with the cornrows?” I said.

  She pursed her lips as she nodded.

  “Big Devil, I say he is. Making dis block a livin hell for all de decent folks with jobs, tryin to raise families. Big Ice’s people are out all morning early on dat corner and stay out to all hours de next mornin. If anytin happened on dis block, dey seen it, sure. He tinks he so slick, runnin tings from dat clothes store round de corner while his runners and such do his biddin.”

  “What’s the name of the store?” I said.

  “Ener-G Boutique. Sells all dat hip-hop nonsense clothes. It’s right on de corner.”

  “You’re a good person, ma’am,” I said, putting the picture away. “Speaking up is a courageous thing.”

  “You tell dat beautiful young girl’s mother I’m sorry for her loss,” the thin woman said as we headed back to the door. “I raised three sons on dis block by de skin of my teeth. If dey were taken from me like dat, I don’t know what I’d do.”

  Chapter 30

  THE ENER-G BOUTIQUE was right where our witness said it would be. I thought it was going to be a fly-by-night front sort of place, but it actually seemed legit. In the window were name-brand clothes from the Wu-Tang Clan, Phat Farm, Sean John, G-Unit, FUBU. They apparently sold footwear, too, to judge from the neon Timberland and Nike signs on the plate-glass door.

  The clerk, plucking her eyebrows behind the counter, didn’t have a chance to say, “Can I help you?” by the time Emily and I, plus a couple of ESU SWAT cops, had crossed the store with our guns drawn. Big Ice was sitting on the shoe department’s try-on bench, slipping on a pair of Nike Dunks, when we approached him.

  “Yeah?” he said testily, looking up at us.

  There were two cell phones beside him and a plastic Ener-G bag under the bench. Inside the bag, a chrome-plated automatic was plainly visible.

  “I wouldn’t move if I were you,” I said as I knelt and lifted the bag. The gun was a Browning Hi Power 9-millimeter. “You have a license for this?” I said, showing it to him.

  “Oh, that ain’t my bag, Officer. Somebody else must have left it there. I just came in here to get me some new walkers.”

  There was a shoebox in the bag as well. I upended it onto the floor. A plastic bag holding a dozen tightly bound bundles of twenties bounced off the beige carpet.

  “Then I take it this money isn’t yours either. Or anything else I’m going to find when I tear this place apart.”

  “Oh, I get it,” Big Ice said, looking from me to each of the cops surrounding him. “You gonna try and pin that girl on me. Some white girl dies, so let’s blame the big black man. How original. This is bullshit.”

  Big Ice was right. What we were doing was not ordinary police procedure by any stretch. I didn’t care. I was past the point of doing this thing by the book. I didn’t have time to listen to a thousand “I didn’t see nothing”s. I was sick of looking at dead kids.

  “Toss me my cellie so I can speed-dial my lawyer,” Big Ice said, yawning casually. “I got that white boy on retainer. He’s going to blow your inadmissible illegal-ass search the fuck up.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But Clarence-goddamn-Darrow isn’t going to be able to get you back this shoebox full of twenties.”

  Big Ice suddenly looked at me as if I’d grown another head.

  “Oh,” he said, smiling. “You wanna play Deal or No Deal. Why didn’t you just say so instead of bullin’ in here, getting my lady all up in a dander? You come to the right place. What can I do for you?”

  “I know you or your people are out on that corner early,” I said. “That girl didn’t fall from the sky. She was dumped there. You help me with some information about it, I’m going to let you get back to your shoe shopping. Might even leave this bag where that poor soul left it.”

  “With the piece in it?” Big Ice said hopefully.

  “Nah, I’m going to have to turn this gun in to the lost and found,” I said.

  He took a loud breath as he considered. He finally nodded.

  “Okay. I could make some calls,” he said.

  I tossed him one of his phones.

  “What a guy,” I said.

  Chapter 31

  WE STOOD AROUND as Big Ice made phone calls and left messages.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, snapping his phone shut. “They know what’ll happen to ’em if they don’t call me back in less than ten minutes.”

  On the wall above a rack of Avirex leather jackets was a flat-screen TV tuned to the BET channel. Big Ice stood up laboriously, found the remote under the cash register, and changed it to CNBC. He stared at the screen intently as a bald white man in suspenders talked about IPOs.

  “Damn, you think I’m bad?” Big Ice said. “How ’bout you go after some of those private-equity joints. Those homies buy multinational companies with IOUs an’ shit. I should try that at Micky D’s. ‘Hey, how much is that Big Mac? Three bucks? Okay, I’ll take it, but instead of payin’ you right now, you can have the five Stacy be owin’ me whenever.’ They wouldn’t be lovin’ that shit, would they? But you times that scam by a couple of billion, you get a hospital named after you. Now how’s that work?”

  Emily rolled her eyes at him.

  “You in the market?” she said.

  Big turned and stared at her.

  “I look like someone who’s risk-averse to you, shorty? Course, I’m in. I be workin’ my S-an’-P portfolio all the time, re-up all those sweet dividends. You think them Knicks floor seats I got come cheap? You want, I could put you together with my broker,” he said with a wink.

  “Would you?” Emily said sarcastically as one of Big’s phones rang.

  “Listen good, Snap,” Big Ice said into it. “You out on the corner early this morning? Shut up and listen, fool. You didn’t see anybody over by the mosque real early, did you?”

  Big listened, nodding.

  “What’s up?” he said into his cell phone a few moment
s later. “What’s up is some white girl was found dead in the alley, chump, and I don’t want to get locked up.”

  He closed his phone.

  “Talk to us,” I said.

  “Snap said around five-thirty he saw a white guy get out of a beat-ass yellow van. Reason why he noticed was business is slow that early, and he thought the guy must be a desperate customer. I like to stay out a little earlier and later than everyone else, customers be appreciatin’ that kind of extra service.”

  “I’m sure they do,” I said impatiently. “Go on.”

  “Well, Snap said this thin, mousy-looking dude with glasses and gray hair, wearing coveralls and wheeling a refrigerator, got out of the van. He figured it was a guy making an early delivery to the construction site or something. White guy came back with just the hand truck, got back in the van, made a U-turn, and took off.”

  I knew not to ask him if Mr. Snap had taken down a plate number. It wasn’t much, but we had something finally.

  “That help you?” Big Ice said, smiling as he rubbed his dinner plate–size palms together.

  I dropped the plastic bag of drug money on the counter.

  “Don’t invest it all in one index,” Emily called back as we left.

  Chapter 32

  THE STREET CROWD seemed somewhat calmer when we arrived back at the mosque. Imam Yassin had come out on the sidewalk and was speaking to his flock in a soothing voice.

  I called back to the task force and passed on the information we’d gotten. I said the tip was anonymous to avoid further inconveniencing the NYPD’s newest friends, Big Ice and Snap.

  “Okay, I’ll type up the DD-five for you and get it to the appropriate people,” said Detective Kramer, the Major Case detective who’d been put in charge of the Intelligence Squad.

  I was getting paperwork done for me? I thought as I hung up. I was starting to like this task force stuff.

  I caught up to John Cleary, the Crime Scene Unit supervisor, who was walking toward the alley with a biohazard box.