After dropping Farhan at the house out in Southampton this morning, I
drove back to Manhattan through the gray sprawl of Long Island, the towns
like beads in an endless rosary of dullness — Tuckahoe, Shinnecock Hills,
East Quogue, Westhampton, Mastic, Shirley, Brookhaven.
For months, I’d been wanting to know the truth about the Khan family —
and now I did. The Bible said, “The truth will set you free,” but did I feel
free? The reality of what Farhan had told me was overwhelming and I did
not have the strength to acknowledge it. I’ll deal with it later, I told myself,
when I’m not so tired. Let me get through the day first.
I drove directly to the Tiger Corp offices on Fifth Avenue, downed three
cups of coffee, shaved in the executive washroom, and broke out a fresh
button - down shirt. It was a big day: We were finally launching the EB - 5
scheme. Kyle had done all the hard work, coordinating the legal and
financial logistics, and Hamza had reached out to his client list. We already
had Omani royalty on board. Plus a Malaysian palm oil king, two Chinese
pharmaceutical billionaires, and an Iranian guano exporter. They all wanted
American green cards, as a refuge, just in case their own governments
turned nasty.
And others followed: Azerbaijanis, Uzbeks, Syrians, Qataris; in a few
hours, we had raised thirty - five million dollars. At first Abbas was
disbelieving, then exultant. He’d always complained about the banks and
pension funds that financed his projects: “too blinkered,” “too
conservative,” “run by bean counters.” Now, thanks to me, we had turned
on a faucet of money.
In classic Abbas fashion, he took Kyle and me out to a celebratory lunch
at a legendary steak house in the Meatpacking District, a low - ceilinged
place with wood paneling and oval mirrors, like eating inside a sailing ship.
“Best damn meat in the city,” Abbas said. “Do you know my doctor has
forbidden me from eating beef? Says it’s too high in cholesterol and
saturated fats. Wants me to run on vegetables. Ridiculous.”
I asked Abbas if anything was wrong, and he waved away my concerns.
“Fit as a fiddle. Too conservative, these medicos. A little red meat never
hurt anyone.”
Clearly, Abbas had been to this steak house before, because the maître d’
greeted him by name and showed us to the best table in the house. Abbas
ordered for us, three - hundred - and - fifty - dollar wagyu steaks with “all the
trimmings.” I have never been a fan of euphemisms — the term rare has
always horrified me — but Abbas insisted that this was the only way to
consume wagyu.
“Here’s to a job well done.”
Abbas raised a cut - glass tumbler of Japanese whisky in a toast, and Kyle
and I followed suit. We sipped at the whisky but Abbas swirled it around his
mouth like wine.
“Eighteen - year - old single malt Yamazaki. Fruit, oak, and smoky notes.
Aged in three different kinds of casks.” He smacked his lips and continued,
“Why would you want to give up this? All of this?”
He waved at the restaurant, redolent with the rich, caramelized aroma of
cooking beef, mixed with the tart odor of alcohol. I was not sure what he
meant — but then I realized he was talking about Coco, who had finally
worn him down and entered the Zen Cliffs monastery to be ordained as a
novice monk. She would be in there for a full year, cut off from the outside
world.
“I will never understand that bloody woman.” Abbas took a delicate sip
of the Japanese whisky. “She can have anything in the world, and this is
what she chooses. Completely unreasonable. Masochistic, even. And do you
know what she wants me to do? Donate three million to the monastery — for
r epairs. Apparently, the roof is leaking, and the monks are lousy at
fundraising. Ha. I told her I wouldn’t give her a cent...”
Abbas continued railing against Coco. Kyle and I made appropriate
noises of agreement, though it seemed clear to everyone — exc ept Abbas, of
course — that Coco’s obsession with the monastic life was clearly driven by
the urge to counter Abbas and his multifarious appetites. The man was all
appetite. Food, booze, women. The instant he completed one real estate
project, he was on to the next: bigger, higher, better.
I remembered a long lecture that Coco had given me at one of the family
lunches. She’d described the Buddhist wheel of life: Gods were at the top,
of course, and the hell realm was at the bottom. In between were domains
for demigods, humans, and beasts — and then there were the “hungry
ghosts,” dissatisfied, tormented beings with enormous swollen bellies who
were condemned to consume more and more but could never sate their
desires.
That afternoon, watching Abbas, the image of the hungry ghost would
not leave my mind.
Our plates arrived, containing two small, thick coins of meat, served
with a tangle of sautéed vegetables. Abbas sliced happily into his steak —
bright pink inside — and showed us how the marbling fat had just begun to
melt: “Best beef in the world. A5 grade. Worth every cent.”
That day Abbas was dressed like a British lord: double - vented navy blue
blazer, tweed slacks, and a tan pair of bespoke George Cleverley brogues.
The tailoring sent out a subtle, coded message of good breeding — and here
Abbas was, grunting softly as he chewed the near - raw meat, his teeth
stained with bright red blood.
The man was the epitome of the hungry ghost.
I remembered what Farhan had told me the night before, but as I sat in
the steak house with Abbas and Kyle, I pushed away my knowledge.
Acc epting what she had said would irretrievably shatter my world.
Then something pushed me over the edge. We were discussing the flood
of money we were about to receive, and Kyle brought up, in a joking way,
that one of our investors was a Burmese general who had been active in the
persecution of the Rohingya and was clearly laundering his money. For a
moment there was silence, and then Abbas chuckled and said, “If the State
D epartment sees fit to give this blighter a green card, who are we to argue?
Money is money, right?”
Kyle nodded vigorously, and Abbas glanced at me to gauge my reaction.
I will never forget that moment: Abbas’s quick, sharp eyes; his
bloodstained teeth; his cavalier look — in order to protect his silk tie from
staining, he had thrown it over his shoulder.
Hungry ghost, consuming all in his path.
A wave of nausea rose in the back of my throat. I pulled the thick linen
napkin from my lap and said that I’d been up all night pr eparing for this
morning’s meeting — which was a lie, since I had only rearranged Kyle’s
Power Point slides — and that I was going home to get some rest. “De epest,
most sincere apologies,” I said.
“Ah, too bad, Ali.” Abbas reached over and forked my steak into his
plate. “No point in wasting this.” He waved his serrated steak knife at me.
“Hold up. I was going to give you the good news after the meal, but ... I’m
bumping you upstairs. Senior manager. C - suite role. I know, you don’t have
a head for numbers — or so you say. That’s why you’re taking Kyle with
you. He’ll ke ep the numbers straight. Won’t you, Kyle?”
Kyle was most definitely working for me now. That day he was also
dressed in a blue blazer, and Abbas and Kyle — with their thick silk ties,
dark eyes, their matching, rapid motions as they cut meat — looked like two
peas in a pod. Kyle worshipped Abbas and desperately wanted to be
promoted — but he had just unceremoniously been passed over. It was
blatantly unfair: Me, senior manager? Kyle deserved the promotion, not me.
I caught a glimpse of Kyle’s face — his eyes had narrowed to venomous
slits — but he managed to mumble congratulations through a mouthful of
steak. Abbas was playing a strange game: pushing me forward and taunting
Kyle, almost as if he wanted us to turn on each other. Perverse.
I called a car to take me uptown, but I didn’t go home — I didn’t want to
be alone at the Apthorp, with its gallery of rotting meat — and so I returned
to Tiger Corp. For a long time, I stood by the windows in my office,
looking out at the city, but soon I became overcome by fatigue.
I kicked off my shoes and lay down on the leather couch. The short
winter day was ending and there was the sense of things coming to a head.
No more delays. I had to confront everything that Farhan had told me.
“You need to know the history of my heart,” Farhan had said to me last
night at the Apthorp. “Here, feel it.”
We had just had sex. Farhan took my hand and placed it over her naked
chest. I could feel the thudding of her heart, and even I — no doctor — could
tell that something was off; there were erratic pauses, and then it jerked
back to life.
“All my problems started after my abortion,” she said, “in Switzerland.”
In the bleached, colorless hush of the sanatorium outside Geneva, the
fear had come at her like a fist, squeezing her heart, making it race. When it
got bad, she’d clutch her chest to try to slow it down.
Her heart, hammering in her chest. Who would have thought that the
sound of her own heart could drive her insane?
The arrhythmia grew worse after she learned what Abbas had done to
Hutch. She was a sixteen - year - old at war with her own body: Endless nights
without sle ep, and she just wanted it all to stop. That was why she’d gone
into Barey Mian’s room, looking for the pistol she knew he carried in a
hidden holster, and found instead a knife in his dresser drawer: slim, long,
almost surgical. She took a de ep breath, placed the cold, sharp tip of the
knife over the commotion in her chest, and the blade slipped into her flesh
like butter ...
Farhan said that after her suicide attempt, she was shipped off to a
sanatorium overlooking the Hudson. Maybe the cut into her chest had
helped — because her heart finally settled into a steady rhythm. She declined
plastic surgery for the scar, got out of the sanatorium, went back to
Brearley, and now she had an aura: the girl who tried to kill herself. Cool.
Like Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf, Anne Sexton. She began to run with an
arty crowd. Some drugs, mostly weed. Anything harder made her heart
flutter.
Her grades were not good enough for college. Abbas made a big donation
for a new student center, and she was admitted into Barnard College.
Her heart beat out a steady rhythm.
She cut her hair short. She wore paint - spattered dungarees, majored in
studio art. To her surprise, girls complimented her on the jewelry she
designed: wild, chunky necklaces and ornate chandelier earrings. She
apprenticed for a bunch of jewelry designers and ended up doing a summer
internship at Tiffany; she hated the stuffy atmosphere, loved the design
work. Quiet, sacred almost.
Her heart was as steady as a metronome. She was fine.
Right after college, she was forced into marriage with Zafar Dewjee, the
bad boy from Dubai. She lasted four months. The divorce was quick, and
Farhan returned to New York.
She was twenty - one years old, and her heart was busted. Literally. Some
days it was so bad that she lay in bed clutching her chest.
The doctors said that nothing could be done; it was all in her head. She
went to many shrinks: The ones who spoke in riddles, like Zen gurus. The
jumpy ones with bitten nails. The ones who believed in hypnotherapy.
Antid epressants helped a little with the heart flutters, pills with names
like villains in superhero comics — Celexa, Zoloft, Prozac, Lexapro, Effexor
— but they made her fat and woozy. Weed was better. Sex helped the most.
Not the actual act — that was often a disappointment — but the aftermath,
when she was drained, her heart settled into a groove, and she could sle ep.
It was not hard to find men. There were hookup websites on the internet —
and if that didn’t work, there were always the bars. Her favorite place was
Bar Ashoka in Jackson Heights. She met South Asian boys there, boys who
treated her like a princess.
One night she grew sloppy. She never went home with a boy — always to
a nearby motel — but she was very drunk, and this boy was insistent: wiry,
muscular, big head of curly hair, brown skin but not exactly Indian, a
strange accent. She went back to his basement apartment, very neat and
oddly empty, but during sex ... during sex, he ...
Here, Farhan’s eyes filled with tears, and she paused for a long moment
before resuming her tale.
She told me that during sex, the boy had seen her scar, become furious,
and thrown her out. She’d run away from his apartment and vowed to be
more careful. After the shock wore off, she remembered flashes of his
apartment: Walls covered with cutouts of Indian women. An odd pile of
cleaning supplies in the corner.
What did she make of these details?
It was hard to think clearly. Her arrhythmia was worse than ever. She
was up most nights, and her brain was fogged and ragged from lack of
sle
Ep One insomniac night, when her heart was particularly bad, Farhan
wandered into the lobby bar of a Midtown Manhattan hotel. A safe, touristy
spot: faded floral carpet, bad lighting. The local news played on television,
and she heard the names for the first time:
Shabana Shah
Ritu Patel
Anu Ganguly
Three dead girls. Their pictures were up on the television, split screen.
All women in their twenties. One a checkout girl at Patel Brothers. The
second a nanny. The third had just started community college: bright - eyed,
pretty, destined for arranged marriages. Each had secretly answered a
romantic ad in the Jackson Heights Post and ended up dead. One found at
the back of a used - car lot, the other in a dumpster in an alley, the third in an
abandoned building.
Three dead girls now. Apparently, there were conventions for naming
serial killers — just as there were conventions for naming hurricanes —
because the murderer had a moniker already: The Jackson Heights Killer,
JHK.
The media soon whipped up a frenzy. Headlines, profiles, interviews. Ind epth articles
about the hidden lives of young immigrant Indian women in
New York: Caught between arranged marriages and the siren call of
American - style romance. Impulses that got them killed.
The mayor went on television and pledged more resources. Television
cameras caught a man selling T - shirts outside: They said JACKSON HEIGHTS:
THE MELTING POT OF AMERICA, exc ept the graphic showed a cauldron with
human arms and legs sticking out. The vendor was doing a brisk business.
Then the Post leaked some scintillating new information: The victims
had not been mutilated, but their ribs had been cracked open, and their
hearts were missing. The killer was clearly skilled at his gruesome surgeries
— was he a doctor? A surgeon?
The press tried to rebrand him “Doctor Death.” They tried to call him
the “Lonely Hearts Killer,” but it was too late.
“JHK” had stuck.
At night, Farhan lay propped up on a pile of pillows — pressing a palm onto
the ridged scar over her heart — and remembered the weirdo she’d met in
Jackson Heights. The curly - haired boy. What had the freak said right after
he saw her scar and exploded? “Spoiled! All spoiled! No good!”
Farhan started thinking: Maybe I was supposed to be his first victim.
Maybe he was practicing, getting started. If so, her scar made her
undesirable, saved her. If the skin over her left breast had been pristine, he
would have strangled her.
All the pieces fit together, made sense. Her heart skipped a beat.
A confirmed serial killer, and she’d seen his face. She knew where he
lived, but would the police take her seriously? Surely there were hundreds
— no, thousands — of calls every day. Still: That Black NYPD detective on
television. Eyes bright with rage, criticizing his own d epartment for taking
so long to connect the crimes.
Surely he’d listen to her.
She decided to go out to Sher Khan House and talk to her mother. Coco
would be horrified at her sexual history — but surely her mother would help
her, right? Farhan drove out there on a sweltering - hot day, but it turned out
that Coco had left to spend a week with an Indian holy woman in New
Mexico and was unreachable.
Only Maryam was home, lying by the pool at the back of the house. At
thirteen, already interested in the vagaries of the human mind, absorbed in a
thick textbook titled Abnormal Psychology.
Farhan sank onto a chaise lounge next to Maryam. Perhaps, if she
articulated her fears, they would lose their dark power. Ever since Farhan’s
suicide attempt — ever since her loss of status and Maryam’s advancement
to the role of favorite daughter — the sisters had barely communicated.
Farhan took a chance. She swore her little sister to secrecy and spoke,
stumbling at first. Maryam listened, eyes wide, and Farhan felt a surge of
pathetic affection; she had misjudged this earnest, sweet kid.
Farhan sat down next to her little sister. “What the hell should I do?” she
blurted out. “I can hardly think.”
Maryam had read all the newspapers. She said there was a tip line set up
for JHK. She called it, was put on hold, listened to a screechy violin
concerto. Finally, she reached a detective. “Please speak to my older sister.
She thinks she has seen the killer, can identify him.”
Farhan’s scar convinced the policeman on the phone. He asked her to
come in right away for an interview with the lead detective. Farhan drove
herself to One Police Plaza in downtown Manhattan. It was very hot inside,
and the Black detective appeared, wearing a mustard - yellow sports coat,
and apologized for the faulty air - conditioning. He escorted Farhan to a
windowless room and wanted to know all about the scar: “How did you get
it? What did the man say when he saw it?”
Farhan started with her suicide attempt, but before she got very far, there
was a commotion outside. A uniformed policeman — gold bars on his
shoulders, a captain — entered the room, stopped the interview and
beckoned Epps outside.
Farhan heard Epps say, “Voluntary interview, that’s all.” Heard him say,
“Unstable? She seems fine to me,” and the captain said something sharp in
return.
When Epps finally returned, his face was dark, and he said that the
interview was terminated. Another man was hovering behind him: bald,
baggy dark suit, a criminal lawyer from Greenberg Mazotti, retained by her
father, Abbas Khan.
The lawyer spirited Farhan away, and she followed, bewildered, down
the long corridors, back into the summer heat.
She was perspiring heavily, dehydrated, and her heartbeat was jagged.
Abbas was waiting for her in the air - conditioned back seat of his black
Lincoln Town Car. She climbed inside and he screamed at her, “What the
bloody hell are you playing at?” She said, “Papa, I have to go back in
there,” and he slapped her across the face. Flecks of spittle flew from his
mouth: “Just when I’m trying to close the biggest deal of my life, you come
up with this? You think I will have any financiers left when this shit hits the
papers? The Black detective in there leaks everything to the press — he’s
always grandstanding!”
She tried to speak, but Abbas was livid. “You are trying to ruin my
name! My name — that is all I have! You are male volent, disturbed,
promiscuous — you will say anything, do anything, to get attention!”
Farhan pleaded to go back and talk to Epps. If she didn’t, more girls
would die. Abbas ignored her and told the chauffeur to take them to the
Upper West Side. An elderly Eastern European doctor at a private clinic
certified that Farhan was a paranoid schizophrenic and had her admitted.
She was heavily sedated, and her heartbeat took on a slow, graven
rhythm.
Farhan told me all this last night at the Apthorp. It was very late, and I
could not see her face; her cool naked body was pressed against mine, and
her words filled the darkness.
She whispered urgently to me: “If Maryam hadn’t panicked and called
Papa, I would have told Epps everything, and he would have caught the
killer. But I was locked away, and JHK murdered five more girls ... and
now he’s back. The real killer. All those postcards? He’s sending them, I’m
sure of it.”
Farhan said: “JHK wants to meet me. Otherwise he’ll go after Maryam.
That’s why I sent her away, to Florida, to save her. I hate her, but still, she is
my sister, isn’t she?”
She leaned closer and her voice was harsh: “You think Maryam is a
sweet, good girl, right — and I’m the crazy one? Now you know the truth.
All this happened because Maryam betrayed me. She promised me that she
wouldn’t tell Papa, but then she made one phone call — and five girls died
because of her. You hear me? Five!”
I remained silent, and Farhan’s voice became insistent. “Don’t you see?
It was all Maryam’s fault!” She reached for me again, and I could see the
desire in her eyes. I did not want to anger her, so I said that I was
overwhelmed. She had told me so much, and I needed to process it.
“Process away,” she said and laughed bitterly.
Farhan fell asle ep, or at least she dozed, for I did not hear another sound
from the bedroom. I stood in the darkened living room and tried to
understand the implications of everything that Farhan had said, but it was
too much.
I stared out into the courtyard. Even that late, a few lights blazed in
windows, the usual insomniacs: The ones who’d drunk too much coffee.
The ones in pain. The ones who’d woken from nightmares — and couldn’t
get back to sle ep.
Now, twenty - four hours after Farhan poured out her story, I lay on the
couch in my office at Tiger Corp.
Darkness had fallen. Outside, in the corridor, the cleaners had arrived,
and trash cans were being emptied. It was way past dinnertime, my stomach
growled with hunger, and I thought of ducking out to my shawarma guy —
but I could not move.
My phone rang, and it was Farhan, calling from Southampton. I silenced
the call and continued to lie in the dark. It rang again and again until it
finally went to voicemail.
There was no more time. I had to decide where my loyalties lay.
All this while I’d been avoiding the obvious math: When Farhan had
encountered JHK, she was twenty - one. Which made Maryam thirteen. On
the day that Farhan traveled to Sher Khan House to ask her mother for help
and found Maryam lying by the pool, she had encountered a child. A selfassured,
precocious child, but nonetheless a child.
I tried to imagine that muggy summer day. Thirteen - year - old Maryam
lounging by the pool when Farhan appeared out of the blue with her bizarre
tale. Maryam must have done her best to help her elder sister — but then,
after Farhan rushed into the city to talk to Epps, Maryam was left alone.
Maryam, thirteen, by the pool. Gangly half child, half woman. A hot day,
but she must have felt chilled after the terrible story she had heard.
Maryam, skin goose - pimpled, sitting upright, hugging her knees. The pool
empty, rippling with a tracery of sunlight. The forest beyond, dark,
impenetrable, full of wildlife — deer, coyote, red foxes. At night, they
emerged and lapped at the pool water.
Did Maryam look up and feel as though the forest was advancing toward
her? Did her mind fill with vivid images of those three dead girls: Their
bright, happy faces were all over television, contrasting with the grim
footage of the cops hauling out their remains in bulky black body bags.
I’m sure that Maryam wanted to honor her promise to Farhan — but it
was probably too much. Ever since she was a child, her father had been
godlike. Abbas could fix anything.
I imagined Maryam’s fear rising, becoming unbearable — and then
everything happening in a rush: dialing Abbas’s number, the assistant
putting her through, and Abbas — immaculately dressed, his tie in a
signature Windsor knot — interrupting a meeting to talk to Maryam. Back in
those days, Abbas was always in the middle of a meeting — with lawyers,
architects, contractors, planning boards, the city council — because he was
just about to get the Columbus Circle project, the biggest deal of his life.
Abbas would have been preoccupied at first — but then, hearing Maryam’s
panicked, jumbled words, he’d have focused and said, in his clipped British
accent, Hold up. Farhan has done what? Where has she gone?
After Maryam spilled out her tale, Abbas would have reassured her that
he’d take care of everything. That she should not worry. Maryam must have
gone back out to the pool and believed her father.
Later, she must have been very confused when she heard that Farhan
was in a private sanatorium. She must have watched the nightly television
news and seen five more bright young faces added to the tally of dead girls
— but how could she question her father? Maryam was thirteen, remember.
How could she have confronted all - powerful Abbas? She would have k ept
all her doubts tightly bottled up and continued to behave like Abbas’s
favored daughter.
De ep down, Maryam must have acc epted the blame that Farhan laid on
her: If she hadn’t made that call to Abbas, those five girls would have lived.
Maryam must have believed this — and when Farhan called from Tokyo,
saying that JHK was back, Maryam had rushed to her sister’s aid. This time
Maryam had been loyal and k ept her promise; she had never said a word to
anyone — not even me.
I had been wrong about everything: Maryam’s aloofness, which I read as
her chilly nature, her introversion. Hadn’t she come alive after Farhan
moved to Tokyo? We were just becoming a couple when Farhan intruded
and s eparated us — again. And last night, I’d been so quick to sle ep with
Farhan and discard nearly five months of genuine intimacy with Maryam.
Lying in my office, I thought of Maryam’s warm hand on my cheek, right
before she left for Florida, and her parting words: “I wish I could tell you,
Ali, but I can’t.... I do love you, Ali.”
Now Maryam was far away in Miami. And I was, yet again, entangled
with Farhan. Okay, I would help her — JHK was threatening Maryam, and I
had to protect her — but I would not allow her to manipulate me anymore.
Just then my cell phone rang. Farhan again. This time I answered it.
“Where are you? I need you up at the house. Epps was supposed to
come out here this evening. Go over the plan. He didn’t show. He’s not
answering his phone, won’t respond to texts. Something is wrong.”
I said that I was still at work, that I was in the middle of a crunch. That I
could — perhaps — drive out tomorrow. “Epps is an old man,” I added. “He
probably just forgot.”
Farhan must have sensed my reluctance because her tone became more
insistent. “Epps lives on the Lower East Side. I want you to go over there,
make sure he’s okay.”
“What, now? It’s late ... It’s past ten.”
“I get texts from him at one, two in the morning. Look, this is important,
okay? The meeting with JHK is in three days.”
There was no winning. I told Farhan to text me the address. I’d stop by
my shawarma guy and get something to eat before driving over to the
Lower East Side — but I really wasn’t looking forward to seeing Epps’s
wrinkled, frowning face.
That old man treated me like I was a complete idiot.