POLICE BRUTALITY
A Novel by Phil Nova
An army ranger returns home to find that his pregnant wife has become a victim of police brutality.
WARNING: This book contains adult language and/or situations.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07DGJ66PG
A Novel by Phil Nova
An army ranger returns home to find that his pregnant wife has become a victim of police brutality.
WARNING: This book contains adult language and/or situations.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07DGJ66PG
FOUR KILOS
A novel by Phil Nova
Internal Affairs and the mob both suspect a pill-popping homicide detective of theft and murder.
WARNING: This book contains adult language and/or situations.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HDQKQG2
A novel by Phil Nova
Internal Affairs and the mob both suspect a pill-popping homicide detective of theft and murder.
WARNING: This book contains adult language and/or situations.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HDQKQG2
JIHAD ON 34TH STREET
A novel by Phil Nova
A Pakistani American construction worker suspected of being a terrorist flees a federal agent and tries to find the real terrorists before the feds find him.
Cover design by Mark Lagana
laganamark@sbcglobal.net
WARNING: This book contains adult language and/or situations.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00D9U3J7E
A novel by Phil Nova
A Pakistani American construction worker suspected of being a terrorist flees a federal agent and tries to find the real terrorists before the feds find him.
Cover design by Mark Lagana
laganamark@sbcglobal.net
WARNING: This book contains adult language and/or situations.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00D9U3J7E
FOUR KILOS
Chapter 1
Craig Hill, a six-foot tall carpenter with yellow skin and eyes from jaundice, stepped out of the green plastic portable potty where he had been vomiting for the past fifteen minutes. He wiped his mouth with a piece of toilet paper and noticed that the sound of construction had stopped and the first floor was empty. The other workers had already gone to lunch.
Just as he was about to emerge from behind a stack of sheetrock and metal studs, he heard yelling outside in the street, and then what sounded like a gunshot.
A pale white man in a pair of shorts and a Hawaiian shirt raced into the building with a pistol in one hand and a square black object in the other hand.
Craig stepped back, behind the stack of construction material, and watched.
At the front of the building, the man slipped the square object into a four-inch cavity between a half-finished sheetrock wall and an exterior block wall behind that.
Someone outside yelled, “Stop! Police!”
The man darted toward the back of the building.
Two cops bolted into the building with their guns drawn.
Craig stepped back a little farther. He heard a gunshot and wondered if a stray bullet could penetrate the stack of sheetrock and metal studs he was hiding behind.
Another gunshot echoed throughout the construction site, and then another.
The smell of gunpowder drifted toward Craig as he backed up until reaching an unpainted metal staircase. The gunshots continued like fireworks on the first floor while Craig made his way up the stairs to the second floor.
Sirens became louder outside.
He didn’t have the strength to run all the way up to the eighth floor, but he wanted to get a little higher than he was.
The gunfire stopped as quickly as it started.
While Craig stood on the staircase between the second and third floors, a herd of workers stampeded down the stairs. A few plumbers asked what was going on. Craig shrugged and followed them down.
Back on the first floor, Craig pushed his way through the crowd until he could see what had happened. The man with the Hawaiian shirt lay dead on the concrete floor with bullet holes in his torso and legs. One of the two cops that had chased him into the building lay dead on the floor while the other cop held his bleeding shoulder and gazed at his partner’s corpse.
A dozen more cops entered the building. They told the construction workers to go outside and stick around for questioning.
On his way out the front door with the other workers, Craig snuck a glance at the half-finished wall and wondered what was in there.
CHAPTER 2
Police barricades and patrol cars with flashing lights blocked the intersection and surrounding streets while uniformed cops kept curious pedestrians out of the way.
An unmarked gray police car pulled up and parked in the middle of the street.
Victor Cohen, a short, stout, half-Puerto Rican, half-Jewish, homicide detective with a thick black moustache and a cheap wrinkled suit stepped out of the car on the passenger side.
He slipped a stick of gum into his mouth while looking down the block at the five-story brick apartment buildings on both sides of the street and noticing that the gym he’d gone to as a teenager was now just an empty storefront covered with plywood and graffiti.
Detective Rosie Li, a short, thick, American born Chinese woman stepped out of the driver’s seat wearing a loose-fitting pants suit.
Victor and Rosie approached a group of NYPD crime scene investigators in the middle of the street examining a dead white man wearing shorts and a Hawaiian shirt. The man was face down with two bullet holes in his back. It looked as if he’d been running.
Victor asked a uniformed sergeant, “Where’s the other three?”
“Two of them are on the sidewalk.” The sergeant led Victor and Rosie across the street.
Behind a parked van, they found another crime scene unit examining another dead white man in shorts and a Hawaiian shirt and a dead Dominican man in street clothes with a bullet hole in his forehead.
Victor looked around at the upside-down coffee cups everywhere. The cups covered bullet shells and slugs, and there were quite a few of them. “This was like an old western shootout.”
Rosie said, “And no one saw anything?”
“Of course not,” said the sergeant. “That would be too easy.”
Victor looked down the block. On the corner of Avenue A stood an eight-story luxury apartment building under construction, The Howell Building.
An exterior hoist on tracks sat on the ground. At least forty construction workers waited outside the beige-brick building, under the sidewalk scaffold. Uniformed police officers questioned them one by one.
The sergeant said, “The other guy with the Hawaiian shirt ran into that building. Internal Affairs is in there now questioning the cop that survived.”
Victor said, “So the two beat cops were coming down Avenue A when they heard shots here on Sixth Street. A man with a gun and a Hawaiian shirt ran across the Avenue, into that building under construction, and the two cops chased him inside. And now one cop is dead.”
The sergeant answered, “That’s right.”
Rosie said, “We better get in there and check it out.”
Victor and Rosie proceeded up the block. The humidity increased while big drops of rain hit the ground and then instantly evaporated. The sun was still shining overhead.
Victor said, “New York is turning into Miami.”
Rosie said, “I hope not. That would mean more bugs.”
While crossing the Avenue, Victor noticed that new luxury apartment buildings and hipster coffee shops were popping up every week. It didn’t look like it did when he grew up here, in the days of heroin, crack, and ten dollar hookers.
Victor and Rosie showed their gold shields to the uniformed cops at the door and then entered The Howell Building.
The floor was bare concrete. Finished and unfinished sheetrock walls separated rooms while wires and pipes were still visible in the ceilings. The smell of gunpowder mixed with dust filled the hot, steamy air.
Despite the temporary lights hanging overhead, the first floor was dark because most of the newly installed windows were covered with plywood.
Victor had worked construction one summer in high school and he hated it. The money almost tempted him to stay, but he always knew he wanted to be a cop.
Smelling as if he’d poured a gallon of cologne on himself, Detective Carillo from Internal Affairs approached Victor and said, “If it isn’t the Jew-Rican.”
Victor had heard that nickname all through junior high and high school and somehow it had followed him to the force.
He reached his hand out to Detective Carillo, and while shaking it, Victor squeezed Carillo’s hand, hard. Victor hadn’t lifted weights in six months, but he still had a grip like a vice. He knew Carillo was in pain as he squirmed and tried to act like he wasn’t.
Rosie must have noticed what was going on because she reached her hand out to Carillo and said, “Hi. I’m Rosie Li.”
Victor released Carillo’s hand and walked away. He approached the sectioned off area at the back of the building and looked down at the dead cop and the dead Hawaiian shirt man. “Where’s the other one?”
Carillo said, “Getting patched up. Where you been?”
“We were on our way uptown when we got the call. You know how traffic is at this time.” Victor said, “So I guess you’re here because of the dead cop.”
“You’re getting’ smarter in your old age, Cohen.”
“At least they didn’t send Edmunds.”
Carillo said, “I’ll tell Abby you said hello.”
“Yeah, thanks.” Victor squatted down to get a better look at the dead man in the Hawaiian shirt.
CHAPTER 3
Work had stayed on hold while cops questioned workers and crime scene techs collected evidence. Most of the workers spoke among themselves, speculating as to what happened and wondering if they were still on the clock.
Late afternoon, when the dead bodies and the army of cops were finally gone, the workers wrapped up their tools wherever they were working and secured their areas before leaving for the night. Craig Hill felt just as tired as if he’d worked all day.
He followed the other carpenters down the stairs from the third floor to their shanty on the second floor, he didn’t have any tools he want to leave there, so he kept going, down the stairs to the first floor.
Steamfitters, electricians, tile setters, and others, made their way down the stairs from higher floors.
On the first floor, police lines blocked access to the back of the building.
Craig looked over at the half-finished wall at the front of the building. None of the cops had looked anywhere for anything other than bullet shells and stray slugs. He wondered if the cops even knew that the man in the Hawaiian shirt had hidden something. Whatever was in that wall was worth killing for, and worth dying for. He had to get it.
Still wearing his hardhat and work gloves, Craig slipped into the portable potty where he waited while most everyone else went home.
It took forever for everyone to leave. A few people trying to get into the portable potty knocked on the door. Craig had to tell them he was sick and make fake vomiting noises. He knew everyone was afraid of him, and he knew that would give him the privacy he needed to wait as long as he needed to.
Finally, when he was certain they were gone, he stepped out of the potty and hurried to the wall with the package in it. He stood against the wall holding his backpack and tried to stay out of sight while waiting for a chubby laborer sweeping the floor down the hall to turn the corner.
He knew he could probably wait until tomorrow, but it would drive him crazy all night. And, assuming it was something valuable inside that wall, he worried someone else might come looking and find it. He wanted to know what was in that package, and he wanted it now.
Just as the chubby laborer stepped out of sight, Craig bent over and slipped his long, skinny arm in between the sheetrock and the exterior bock wall.
He couldn’t get down far enough, and he couldn’t see what was in there. The package must have dropped all the way to the bottom.
Wondering how many more people were still working, and hoping for a little more time, Craig tried for a few more seconds in vain to force his arm farther down.
It was taking too long, and it wasn’t working. He looked around to make sure no one was coming around the corner and then he retrieved a long serrated sheetrock saw from his backpack, which he then pushed into the wall, hoping he was in the right place.
He remembered seeing an electrical box, but because he was far away and everything happened so fast, he couldn’t be sure about the exact measurement. It looked like it was probably about a foot away—he hoped that was right.
He quickly sawed through the sheetrock while constantly glancing both ways to be sure no one was coming. White dust accumulated on the floor below.
After cutting a six-inch line, he turned the saw and began cutting a large square hole. That’s when he realized a round hole would have been quicker, but he was trained to cut square holes, it was just habit.
He heard banging around the corner. Craig grabbed his saw and backpack and headed toward the door. The carpenter’s shanty was already locked and he didn’t have an excuse for still being there. He knew if anyone questioned him though, that he could always play the sick card. One look at his yellow eyes and skin and most people didn’t need to be convinced.
Just before reaching the front door, Craig peeked around the corner and didn’t see anyone. He looked back and still didn’t see anyone.
He thought it might be rats coming up from the basement for a party, now that most of the humans had gone.
Craig decided it was safe enough to continue what he’d started. He headed back to the wall and finished cutting the hole.
Before reaching in, he looked around again and didn’t see anyone.
He slipped his hand into the hole and felt around until his fingers brushed over something. It was square and hard and wrapped in plastic. He touched it, but couldn’t get a grip on it. At least he was close enough to get it.
Craig forced his hand and wrist down at an angle, breaking the sheetrock below the hole, just enough to reach in a little farther and the grab the package. He had to break the sheetrock a lot more to make the hole big enough to pull the package through, and at the same time, trying not to make any noise.
Finally, with the hole big enough, Craig grabbed the package and pulled it out of the wall. It weighed about ten pounds. Before he could look at what he was holding, he heard something fall in another room.
He grabbed the package and his backpack and hurried behind a finished wall into what was one day to become a kitchen, a long skinny room with capped pipes protruding from the unpainted walls and new cabinets on the floor waiting to be installed.
He stood against the wall and waited. After a few minutes, when he didn’t hear or see anyone, he decided to check out what he found. He moved away from the entrance to the back of the room.
Starting from the corner of the package, Craig carefully removed the black plastic covering. It felt like four bricks stacked on top of each other.
Under the outer layer, each brick was wrapped separately in clear plastic. It was yellowish white. He knew right away what it was—cocaine—a lot of cocaine.
Someone behind Craig said, “Nice.”
Craig spun around, his heart slamming against his rib cage.
Robby, a skinny laborer wearing dark safety glasses and a black skull and crossbones bandana on his head stood behind him. Everyone called him Robby the junkie because he was high on methadone half the time and high on heroin the rest of the time.
Robby said, “I knew I saw you take something out of that wall.”
Craig froze.
Robby stepped closer and said, “That’s a lot of coke, bro. Now the whole thing with the cops shooting up that guy makes sense.”
“That dope is fucking up your head. You’re imagining things. I bought this from someone.” He held it in his hand ready to put it into his backpack, but the backpack was still zipped up.
Robby laughed. “I just saw you take it out of the wall, bro. You didn’t even hear me following you until I dropped my broom. I want half or I’m going to the cops.”
Craig knew this coke might go for enough money to get his liver transplant and the hepatitis medicine he needed. He wasn’t going to give that up for some greedy little junkie. “Come on, Robby. You know I’m sick and I need a liver transplant. This could be my life.”
Robby scratched his skinny, tattoo-covered arm and said, “That’s not my problem, bro. I want half.”
Craig said, “I’ll give you a quarter of one of these bricks. Come on, Robby. That’s still worth a lot of money. Imagine how much dope you could buy.”
“I see four bricks there. Imagine how much dope I could buy if you give me half. I want two bricks or I’m going to the cops.”
Craig didn’t have much strength left, but he knew he still had a chance against this skinny little junkie. “Get the fuck outta here or I’ll kick your junkie ass.” Craig raised his fist.
Robby stepped back. “Have it your way, bro.” He took another step back. “I’m going to the cops.”
“Wait.” Craig couldn’t let him go to the cops, but he couldn’t give him half of what he found either. He lied. “Okay. I’ll give you two bricks.”
Robby smiled while stepping back into the room.
Craig glanced at the hard hat hanging from Robby’s belt and then he looked up at Robby’s face while stepping toward him. He was happy he couldn’t see Robby’s eyes through the dark safety glasses.
Craig pretended to separate the bricks while his heart pounded harder and harder. He snatched the utility knife from his belt and slashed Robby’s throat. Craig knew it wasn’t deep enough to kill him, but he hoped he wouldn’t be able scream and alert the other laborers.
Robby grasped his bleeding throat while gasping for air.
Craig placed the package onto a five-gallon bucket, unzipped his backpack, retrieved the dusty sheetrock saw from his backpack, and lunged toward Robby, sinking the metal blade into Robby’s stomach.
Robby hunched over onto Craig, blood spurting everywhere. He was so close, Craig could smell the sweat and body odor emanating from Robby’s clothes.
Craig stepped back and yanked the saw out of Robby, releasing more blood.
Robby grabbed his bleeding stomach and tried to yell, but he had no voice.
Craig grabbed Robby’s head, pulled it back, and stuck the sheetrock saw into Robby’s neck. Robby choked on his own blood while Craig sawed Robby’s throat open. The tool was meant for sheetrock—it was a lot harder cutting through flesh, even though he had a knife cut to follow.
Blood sprayed everywhere while Craig tried to keep Robby’s convulsing body steady and at the same time, pull the saw out of his neck.
Craig could smell the piss and shit exuding from the twitching corpse as he dragged it behind the row of new cabinets.
To read the entire novel,
Download it here:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HDQKQG2
Chapter 1
Craig Hill, a six-foot tall carpenter with yellow skin and eyes from jaundice, stepped out of the green plastic portable potty where he had been vomiting for the past fifteen minutes. He wiped his mouth with a piece of toilet paper and noticed that the sound of construction had stopped and the first floor was empty. The other workers had already gone to lunch.
Just as he was about to emerge from behind a stack of sheetrock and metal studs, he heard yelling outside in the street, and then what sounded like a gunshot.
A pale white man in a pair of shorts and a Hawaiian shirt raced into the building with a pistol in one hand and a square black object in the other hand.
Craig stepped back, behind the stack of construction material, and watched.
At the front of the building, the man slipped the square object into a four-inch cavity between a half-finished sheetrock wall and an exterior block wall behind that.
Someone outside yelled, “Stop! Police!”
The man darted toward the back of the building.
Two cops bolted into the building with their guns drawn.
Craig stepped back a little farther. He heard a gunshot and wondered if a stray bullet could penetrate the stack of sheetrock and metal studs he was hiding behind.
Another gunshot echoed throughout the construction site, and then another.
The smell of gunpowder drifted toward Craig as he backed up until reaching an unpainted metal staircase. The gunshots continued like fireworks on the first floor while Craig made his way up the stairs to the second floor.
Sirens became louder outside.
He didn’t have the strength to run all the way up to the eighth floor, but he wanted to get a little higher than he was.
The gunfire stopped as quickly as it started.
While Craig stood on the staircase between the second and third floors, a herd of workers stampeded down the stairs. A few plumbers asked what was going on. Craig shrugged and followed them down.
Back on the first floor, Craig pushed his way through the crowd until he could see what had happened. The man with the Hawaiian shirt lay dead on the concrete floor with bullet holes in his torso and legs. One of the two cops that had chased him into the building lay dead on the floor while the other cop held his bleeding shoulder and gazed at his partner’s corpse.
A dozen more cops entered the building. They told the construction workers to go outside and stick around for questioning.
On his way out the front door with the other workers, Craig snuck a glance at the half-finished wall and wondered what was in there.
CHAPTER 2
Police barricades and patrol cars with flashing lights blocked the intersection and surrounding streets while uniformed cops kept curious pedestrians out of the way.
An unmarked gray police car pulled up and parked in the middle of the street.
Victor Cohen, a short, stout, half-Puerto Rican, half-Jewish, homicide detective with a thick black moustache and a cheap wrinkled suit stepped out of the car on the passenger side.
He slipped a stick of gum into his mouth while looking down the block at the five-story brick apartment buildings on both sides of the street and noticing that the gym he’d gone to as a teenager was now just an empty storefront covered with plywood and graffiti.
Detective Rosie Li, a short, thick, American born Chinese woman stepped out of the driver’s seat wearing a loose-fitting pants suit.
Victor and Rosie approached a group of NYPD crime scene investigators in the middle of the street examining a dead white man wearing shorts and a Hawaiian shirt. The man was face down with two bullet holes in his back. It looked as if he’d been running.
Victor asked a uniformed sergeant, “Where’s the other three?”
“Two of them are on the sidewalk.” The sergeant led Victor and Rosie across the street.
Behind a parked van, they found another crime scene unit examining another dead white man in shorts and a Hawaiian shirt and a dead Dominican man in street clothes with a bullet hole in his forehead.
Victor looked around at the upside-down coffee cups everywhere. The cups covered bullet shells and slugs, and there were quite a few of them. “This was like an old western shootout.”
Rosie said, “And no one saw anything?”
“Of course not,” said the sergeant. “That would be too easy.”
Victor looked down the block. On the corner of Avenue A stood an eight-story luxury apartment building under construction, The Howell Building.
An exterior hoist on tracks sat on the ground. At least forty construction workers waited outside the beige-brick building, under the sidewalk scaffold. Uniformed police officers questioned them one by one.
The sergeant said, “The other guy with the Hawaiian shirt ran into that building. Internal Affairs is in there now questioning the cop that survived.”
Victor said, “So the two beat cops were coming down Avenue A when they heard shots here on Sixth Street. A man with a gun and a Hawaiian shirt ran across the Avenue, into that building under construction, and the two cops chased him inside. And now one cop is dead.”
The sergeant answered, “That’s right.”
Rosie said, “We better get in there and check it out.”
Victor and Rosie proceeded up the block. The humidity increased while big drops of rain hit the ground and then instantly evaporated. The sun was still shining overhead.
Victor said, “New York is turning into Miami.”
Rosie said, “I hope not. That would mean more bugs.”
While crossing the Avenue, Victor noticed that new luxury apartment buildings and hipster coffee shops were popping up every week. It didn’t look like it did when he grew up here, in the days of heroin, crack, and ten dollar hookers.
Victor and Rosie showed their gold shields to the uniformed cops at the door and then entered The Howell Building.
The floor was bare concrete. Finished and unfinished sheetrock walls separated rooms while wires and pipes were still visible in the ceilings. The smell of gunpowder mixed with dust filled the hot, steamy air.
Despite the temporary lights hanging overhead, the first floor was dark because most of the newly installed windows were covered with plywood.
Victor had worked construction one summer in high school and he hated it. The money almost tempted him to stay, but he always knew he wanted to be a cop.
Smelling as if he’d poured a gallon of cologne on himself, Detective Carillo from Internal Affairs approached Victor and said, “If it isn’t the Jew-Rican.”
Victor had heard that nickname all through junior high and high school and somehow it had followed him to the force.
He reached his hand out to Detective Carillo, and while shaking it, Victor squeezed Carillo’s hand, hard. Victor hadn’t lifted weights in six months, but he still had a grip like a vice. He knew Carillo was in pain as he squirmed and tried to act like he wasn’t.
Rosie must have noticed what was going on because she reached her hand out to Carillo and said, “Hi. I’m Rosie Li.”
Victor released Carillo’s hand and walked away. He approached the sectioned off area at the back of the building and looked down at the dead cop and the dead Hawaiian shirt man. “Where’s the other one?”
Carillo said, “Getting patched up. Where you been?”
“We were on our way uptown when we got the call. You know how traffic is at this time.” Victor said, “So I guess you’re here because of the dead cop.”
“You’re getting’ smarter in your old age, Cohen.”
“At least they didn’t send Edmunds.”
Carillo said, “I’ll tell Abby you said hello.”
“Yeah, thanks.” Victor squatted down to get a better look at the dead man in the Hawaiian shirt.
CHAPTER 3
Work had stayed on hold while cops questioned workers and crime scene techs collected evidence. Most of the workers spoke among themselves, speculating as to what happened and wondering if they were still on the clock.
Late afternoon, when the dead bodies and the army of cops were finally gone, the workers wrapped up their tools wherever they were working and secured their areas before leaving for the night. Craig Hill felt just as tired as if he’d worked all day.
He followed the other carpenters down the stairs from the third floor to their shanty on the second floor, he didn’t have any tools he want to leave there, so he kept going, down the stairs to the first floor.
Steamfitters, electricians, tile setters, and others, made their way down the stairs from higher floors.
On the first floor, police lines blocked access to the back of the building.
Craig looked over at the half-finished wall at the front of the building. None of the cops had looked anywhere for anything other than bullet shells and stray slugs. He wondered if the cops even knew that the man in the Hawaiian shirt had hidden something. Whatever was in that wall was worth killing for, and worth dying for. He had to get it.
Still wearing his hardhat and work gloves, Craig slipped into the portable potty where he waited while most everyone else went home.
It took forever for everyone to leave. A few people trying to get into the portable potty knocked on the door. Craig had to tell them he was sick and make fake vomiting noises. He knew everyone was afraid of him, and he knew that would give him the privacy he needed to wait as long as he needed to.
Finally, when he was certain they were gone, he stepped out of the potty and hurried to the wall with the package in it. He stood against the wall holding his backpack and tried to stay out of sight while waiting for a chubby laborer sweeping the floor down the hall to turn the corner.
He knew he could probably wait until tomorrow, but it would drive him crazy all night. And, assuming it was something valuable inside that wall, he worried someone else might come looking and find it. He wanted to know what was in that package, and he wanted it now.
Just as the chubby laborer stepped out of sight, Craig bent over and slipped his long, skinny arm in between the sheetrock and the exterior bock wall.
He couldn’t get down far enough, and he couldn’t see what was in there. The package must have dropped all the way to the bottom.
Wondering how many more people were still working, and hoping for a little more time, Craig tried for a few more seconds in vain to force his arm farther down.
It was taking too long, and it wasn’t working. He looked around to make sure no one was coming around the corner and then he retrieved a long serrated sheetrock saw from his backpack, which he then pushed into the wall, hoping he was in the right place.
He remembered seeing an electrical box, but because he was far away and everything happened so fast, he couldn’t be sure about the exact measurement. It looked like it was probably about a foot away—he hoped that was right.
He quickly sawed through the sheetrock while constantly glancing both ways to be sure no one was coming. White dust accumulated on the floor below.
After cutting a six-inch line, he turned the saw and began cutting a large square hole. That’s when he realized a round hole would have been quicker, but he was trained to cut square holes, it was just habit.
He heard banging around the corner. Craig grabbed his saw and backpack and headed toward the door. The carpenter’s shanty was already locked and he didn’t have an excuse for still being there. He knew if anyone questioned him though, that he could always play the sick card. One look at his yellow eyes and skin and most people didn’t need to be convinced.
Just before reaching the front door, Craig peeked around the corner and didn’t see anyone. He looked back and still didn’t see anyone.
He thought it might be rats coming up from the basement for a party, now that most of the humans had gone.
Craig decided it was safe enough to continue what he’d started. He headed back to the wall and finished cutting the hole.
Before reaching in, he looked around again and didn’t see anyone.
He slipped his hand into the hole and felt around until his fingers brushed over something. It was square and hard and wrapped in plastic. He touched it, but couldn’t get a grip on it. At least he was close enough to get it.
Craig forced his hand and wrist down at an angle, breaking the sheetrock below the hole, just enough to reach in a little farther and the grab the package. He had to break the sheetrock a lot more to make the hole big enough to pull the package through, and at the same time, trying not to make any noise.
Finally, with the hole big enough, Craig grabbed the package and pulled it out of the wall. It weighed about ten pounds. Before he could look at what he was holding, he heard something fall in another room.
He grabbed the package and his backpack and hurried behind a finished wall into what was one day to become a kitchen, a long skinny room with capped pipes protruding from the unpainted walls and new cabinets on the floor waiting to be installed.
He stood against the wall and waited. After a few minutes, when he didn’t hear or see anyone, he decided to check out what he found. He moved away from the entrance to the back of the room.
Starting from the corner of the package, Craig carefully removed the black plastic covering. It felt like four bricks stacked on top of each other.
Under the outer layer, each brick was wrapped separately in clear plastic. It was yellowish white. He knew right away what it was—cocaine—a lot of cocaine.
Someone behind Craig said, “Nice.”
Craig spun around, his heart slamming against his rib cage.
Robby, a skinny laborer wearing dark safety glasses and a black skull and crossbones bandana on his head stood behind him. Everyone called him Robby the junkie because he was high on methadone half the time and high on heroin the rest of the time.
Robby said, “I knew I saw you take something out of that wall.”
Craig froze.
Robby stepped closer and said, “That’s a lot of coke, bro. Now the whole thing with the cops shooting up that guy makes sense.”
“That dope is fucking up your head. You’re imagining things. I bought this from someone.” He held it in his hand ready to put it into his backpack, but the backpack was still zipped up.
Robby laughed. “I just saw you take it out of the wall, bro. You didn’t even hear me following you until I dropped my broom. I want half or I’m going to the cops.”
Craig knew this coke might go for enough money to get his liver transplant and the hepatitis medicine he needed. He wasn’t going to give that up for some greedy little junkie. “Come on, Robby. You know I’m sick and I need a liver transplant. This could be my life.”
Robby scratched his skinny, tattoo-covered arm and said, “That’s not my problem, bro. I want half.”
Craig said, “I’ll give you a quarter of one of these bricks. Come on, Robby. That’s still worth a lot of money. Imagine how much dope you could buy.”
“I see four bricks there. Imagine how much dope I could buy if you give me half. I want two bricks or I’m going to the cops.”
Craig didn’t have much strength left, but he knew he still had a chance against this skinny little junkie. “Get the fuck outta here or I’ll kick your junkie ass.” Craig raised his fist.
Robby stepped back. “Have it your way, bro.” He took another step back. “I’m going to the cops.”
“Wait.” Craig couldn’t let him go to the cops, but he couldn’t give him half of what he found either. He lied. “Okay. I’ll give you two bricks.”
Robby smiled while stepping back into the room.
Craig glanced at the hard hat hanging from Robby’s belt and then he looked up at Robby’s face while stepping toward him. He was happy he couldn’t see Robby’s eyes through the dark safety glasses.
Craig pretended to separate the bricks while his heart pounded harder and harder. He snatched the utility knife from his belt and slashed Robby’s throat. Craig knew it wasn’t deep enough to kill him, but he hoped he wouldn’t be able scream and alert the other laborers.
Robby grasped his bleeding throat while gasping for air.
Craig placed the package onto a five-gallon bucket, unzipped his backpack, retrieved the dusty sheetrock saw from his backpack, and lunged toward Robby, sinking the metal blade into Robby’s stomach.
Robby hunched over onto Craig, blood spurting everywhere. He was so close, Craig could smell the sweat and body odor emanating from Robby’s clothes.
Craig stepped back and yanked the saw out of Robby, releasing more blood.
Robby grabbed his bleeding stomach and tried to yell, but he had no voice.
Craig grabbed Robby’s head, pulled it back, and stuck the sheetrock saw into Robby’s neck. Robby choked on his own blood while Craig sawed Robby’s throat open. The tool was meant for sheetrock—it was a lot harder cutting through flesh, even though he had a knife cut to follow.
Blood sprayed everywhere while Craig tried to keep Robby’s convulsing body steady and at the same time, pull the saw out of his neck.
Craig could smell the piss and shit exuding from the twitching corpse as he dragged it behind the row of new cabinets.
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JIHAD ON 34TH STREET
CHAPTER 1—THURSDAY 3:28PM
Just as Mohammed stepped off the metal extension ladder and onto the noisy street, he realized he forgot his thermos and lunch container in a plastic bag tied to his scaffold.
Making sure to stay within the orange cones as cars whipped by next to him, Mohammed turned and saw Kenny, a tall black laborer with a stars and stripes hard hat, walking under the sidewalk enclosure among the crowd of pedestrians.
Preparing to take the ladder down, Kenny untied the rope that secured it to one of the blue metal pipes holding up the sidewalk bridge.
Mohammed spoke with a Pakistani accent, but his English was clear. “Kenny. Please, wait. I forgot something on my scaffold.”
“Everyone’s down already,” responded Kenny. “Can’t it wait ‘til tomorrow?”
“I will be only one minute. Please, my friend.”
Kenny sighed then said, “Okay, but hurry up.” He re-tied the rope to the pole.
Mohammed climbed the ladder to the top, then stepped over the blue plywood parapet wall and quickly crossed the wood-planked bridge that protected the people on the sidewalk below from falling construction debris.
He approached his scaffold, a metal platform with waist-high guardrails and safety netting enclosing it on three sides. Cables hanging from the roof stayed firmly locked into electric motors at each end of the platform while ropes secured the scaffold to the building.
Tied to the top guardrail, Mohammed’s plastic bag flapped around in the cool November wind. He untied it, then, just as he turned around to go back down, he heard voices. Someone speaking Pashto, a language he knew from Pakistan.
He stepped closer to the twenty-story beige office building and heard male voices talking about explosives and blowing something up. The voices became louder as he approached a window. They were talking about Jihad—Holy War—on American soil.
Kenny yelled from the sidewalk, “Hurry up, Mohammed!”
From the side, Mohammed peeked into the second floor through a partially open window. It was an empty office with three young men wearing building maintenance uniforms, blue shirts and blue pants. One man held a bulky black backpack. They appeared to be from either Afghanistan or Pakistan. They all had brown skin, thick black hair, and bushy black beards.
They looked like Mohammed.
The smallest man had a name patch on his shirt, but Mohammed couldn’t make out the name. They continued their conversation, and they used the word explosives more than once.
Kenny shook the ladder hard, rattling the whole bridge. “Mohammed! If you don’t come down, I’m gonna leave your ass up there!”
Mohammed hurried to the ladder and climbed down to the street with his plastic bag in hand. Traffic slowed and then stopped as the yellow light on the corner turned red.
“What took you, man?”
“I am sorry, my friend.”
Kenny shook his head then untied and pulled the ladder down before carrying it toward the building’s loading docks. The orange cones were already gone.
Mohammed headed the opposite way, toward the corner. The temperature plummeted as the sun disappeared behind a glass skyscraper across the street.
He usually used the bathroom in the basement to wash up before heading to the subway, but after what he had just heard, he forgot about the bathroom and just started walking.
About a block and a half away from the rolling newsflashes and giant LED screens of Times Square, Mohammed crossed Seventh Avenue with a herd of pedestrians. To his right, a wall of yellow taxis waited for the red light to turn green.
Car horns echoed throughout the valley of skyscrapers as Mohammed maneuvered his way through tourists and shoppers while going west toward Eighth Avenue.
He thought about what those three men said. Pashto was not his primary language, so there was always room for error. He also considered the fact that words can sound garbled from the other side of a window, not to mention traffic noise from the street below. He wondered if he just misunderstood what they said. They could have been talking about anything, maybe a terrorist attack that had already happened, or maybe even a movie they’d seen.
But what if they really were planning something?
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