The Sixth Station(30)

Luckily the G in G156 stood for “ground,” so at least I didn’t have to climb any stairwells.

Who’d rape a nun? Oh, right, Riverside, California, Chicago, and here in Harlem, when they left that nun carved up with twenty-seven crosses decades ago—case study Journalism 101. Don’t think about that now.…

A big brand-new shiny black Cadillac SUV—like the kind the mayor drove around in—was in the space.

This had to be wrong. It was like renting a Smart car and getting a Rolls by mistake.

I clicked the key-lock button for the hell of it and heard the door unlock. I jumped in as quickly as possible, heard it lock, and removed the habit, keeping on the wimple. The GPS lit up, and I punched in “Grinnell St., Rhinecliff, NY.” “No address found” was the answer.

Hoping I’d figure out all the electronics as I drove, I pulled out into the bright light of day, turned east onto 125th Street and from there over the Willis Avenue Bridge, onto the Deegan, past Yankee Stadium, and onto the Taconic Parkway.

Checking my rearview mirror, expecting a tail—the “German” maybe—I saw nothing. But, hey, I’d been on enough surveillances myself to know that meant nothing. A tail was never detectable unless an amateur was at the wheel or the professional driver wanted the tail to be seen.

Twenty minutes into the drive north I finally relaxed, fairly sure I was OK. I removed the wimple, hit “cruise control,” and let go and let God, as Sadowski might have said.

I hit the satellite button for Fox all-news radio to catch up on the morning’s events at the tribunal.

Whose voice did I hear but Dona’s! Radio? She was reporting live from the UN. Her firsthand, eyewitness reports yesterday on the tribunal must have made her “sourced” enough to take the lead for all of the Fox outlets. At least something good came out of this fiasco, I thought. I also felt a twinge of jealousy. She gets to lead and I get led out the door. And I’m the one he “chose”?

Her first words snapped me back to reality. “It’s been a wild, wild day so far at the trial of suspected terror mastermind Demiel ben Yusef. As of now, we do not have an answer as to why ben Yusef spoke as though his biological father were still alive. According to his lawyers, Demiel ben Yusef was either an orphan or raised by a single mother, who also is now dead. If you recall, in court yesterday ben Yusef had handed his attorney a slip of paper, written in Aramaic, which stated that he would only answer to his father.

“When court resumed this morning, Chief Judge Fatoumata Bagayoko addressed that by informing the defendant and his attorneys that since the man on trial has, on record, no living relatives, and we know that his father is dead these past thirty-three years, he must have been talking about the ‘Master of the Universe’ or ‘God.’ In that case, she went on, and I quote, ‘That means Mr. ben Yusef, that you will have to answer to this court, because that is the closest you are going to get to God. In this lifetime, at any rate.’ The remark caused even the assembled heads of state to snicker.

“However, not everyone was amused. A reporter from Aljazeera, Abdul-Basit Hassan, yelled out, ‘And not in the next lifetime, either, traitor of Allah!’ Again, for the second day, near rioting broke out as Hassan was grabbed kicking and screaming by UN security forces and escorted out to a loud chorus of boos by reporters in the press area.

“It is unclear at this time if the words written in Aramaic correspond to or are connected to those that he whispered to New York Standard reporter Alessandra Russo at the opening of yesterday’s tribunal, since she was only able to repeat them phonetically, which was how she wrote them in her column. If so, the implications are great, because, according to at least one linguistic expert at the United Nations with whom I spoke, it is possible that he was trying to give her some sort of coded message. Reporting live from the United Nations, this is Dona Grimm.”

Message, my ass. The whole brouhaha was over a clichéd phrase like that? Jesus! Holy crap!

Comfortable now with the fancy car, I clicked on the priest’s iPod icon on the dashboard, figuring I’d get Gregorian chants. I hit “favorites,” and Sadowski’s voice filled the car.

“Hello, Alessandra,” the recording began. “By now you know this is more than blind good luck.…”





11





“Good luck?” I shouted to the invisible Sadowski. “Bastard! You set me up, didn’t you?” as though this were a two-way.

What’s he up to? He was probably responsible for the effing break-in!

Sadowski’s voice continued; clearly the recording hadn’t heard me.