ALI AZEEM: END OF FEBRUARY — BEGINNING OF MARCH 2015
“Gone? What do you mean, gone? Where could Epps have gone?”
It was late afternoon the next day, and Farhan glared at me from across
the kitchen table at the Southampton house. She wore an old red roll - necked
sweater, jeans, and her new, stylish asymmetrical haircut was mussed up;
she looked as though she had barely sl ept.
Outside, heavy flakes of snow were falling. The drive down from the
city had been a stop - and - go nightmare — and worse, my stomach was
growling. I hadn’t had dinner last night — my shawarma guy had closed by
the time I left for Epps’s apartment — and today I’d been busy running
around the city looking for him. All I had eaten was a blueberry muffin at
the New Yorker Diner.
“Hold up.” From the pantry, I retrieved a red wheel of some fragrant
European cheese and piled a plate with fancy water crackers. Only a glass
of red wine was missing, and I could have used that too, but clearly Farhan
was in no mood to wait — she was now tapping her feet impatiently.
“I went to Epps’s apartment last night. The address you sent me on the
Lower East Side — ”
“Who said he was gone? Where is he? For Christ’s sake, Ali, the meet
with JHK is supposed to go down two days from today.”
“Hey, let me finish...”
I spoke through mouthfuls of cheese and crackers, pausing to swill down
some of the extra - strong coffee Farhan had brewed, but she interrupted so
much that it was hard to get to the end of my tale.
Epps’s apartment building was located right by the approach to the
Williamsburg Bridge, in that no - man’s land where the urban fabric had
broken down and oddly shaped empty lots remained. It was an old redbrick
building, a survivor of the last century, though its ornate cornice had been
removed and capped with sheet metal, so that the entire edifice had a shornoff look.
I’d buzzed Epps’s apartment. When he didn’t answer, I tried all the
buzzers, an old New York standby, and when some old lady answered, I’d
mumbled, “Food delivery,” and she’d let me in. I climbed up to the sixth
floor, panting — how did Epps do this every day with his defective hips? —
and knocked on Epps’s apartment door.
There was no answer, but from de ep inside I heard the mewling of a cat
coming closer until the animal seemed to be brushing against the inside of
the door. A middle - aged, sharp - eyed Somali woman in a hijab had come up
the stairs and glared suspiciously at me. When I said, “As - salamu
alaykum,” she relaxed a little, and then I handed her my business card. She
saw my name and asked, “Are you Muslim? What are you doing here?” I
answered in the affirmative, and said that I — as in Tiger Corp, surely she
had heard of us? — had hired Epps for an investigative task, but that he
wasn’t answering our calls, and that I — by which I meant Tiger Corp — was
worried about him. When had she last seen him?
The Somali woman said that she lived next door to Epps, and that he left
every morning by ten a. m. — like clockwork — but she hadn’t seen him the
last few days. We both stood in silence — and then we heard the cat inside
Epp’s apartment, mewling and scratching, and the woman said uncertainly,
“Mr. Epps has left me a key — but for emergencies only. Do you think this is
an emergency?” When I agreed, she fetched the key, and I was very pleased
with the way things had turned out — but then we entered the apartment.
From what I’d observed of Epps at the New Yorker Diner, I expected
there to be piles of paper — newspapers, receipts, bills — everywhere.
Instead, the tiny living room — with its tartan couch, record player, and
1970 s acid jazz records — was painfully bare. No notebooks or investigative
materials were stacked on the scarred dining table. No newspapers were
splayed across the cheap glass coffee table. Everything was scrubbed and
neat; nothing was out of place.
An orange tabby emerged from behind the couch and rubbed against the
Somali woman’s feet. She seemed to know him, said, “Good boy, Horton,”
and found a bag of dry food to refill his bowl. I said that I better check
Epps’s bedroom, and the Somali woman gasped and said, “You don’t
think...” and I nodded solemnly and walked into the back room.
Most of it was taken up by a twin bed, made up with hospital corners,
the bedcover pulled skintight. Again, no sign of Epps, and no sign of Epps’s
notebooks. Maybe they were hidden, but when I looked inside the closet,
there were just rows of suits, many in the boxy style of the eighties, in
pastel greens, blues, and even pink. On a whim, I pushed them apart. A long
strip of paper had been glued to the rear of the closet and then torn down —
but scraps remained, and they looked oddly familiar.
“That’s it? That’s all you have to tell me?”
I sat in the freezing kitchen in Southampton, devouring the last of the
crackers and cheese, while Farhan glared at me.
“Hold up. I also went to the New Yorker Diner today — it’s practically
Epps’s office — and hung out there for a couple of hours. He didn’t show,
and the waitress said she hadn’t seen him for a few days. Also, something
was bothering me, so I went back to Epps’s apartment and chatted with the
Somali neighbor. This time I asked her if she’d been inside Epps’s
apartment before, and she said, ‘Yes, many times.’ She often helped him up
the stairs — he was in pain, and six flights were hard for him.
“I asked her point - blank if Epps’s apartment was always so neat, and she
said no, it was usually quite cluttered — maybe even a little dirty — but she
didn’t like to judge the old man. After all, he lived alone and had no help.
“And was the table covered with papers, I asked, specifically notebooks?
Long r eporter’s notebooks? The Somali woman said yes, Epps had such
notebooks, and also tall piles of old, yellowing newspapers. Once she had
offered to take them down to the recycling, but Epps had said those were
his archives, that he had a photographic memory and knew what was in
every pile.
“Then I asked the Somali lady how the apartment had gotten so clean,
and she shrugged and said she did not know — but a few nights ago she’d
heard voices in the apartment and assumed that Epps had visitors.
“Look, Farhan, I think — and this is just my opinion — Epps is an old guy;
he likes paper, okay? He’s never without his newspapers and his r eporter’s
notebooks — and all this stuff has mysteriously vanished from his apartment.
I looked in Epps’s closet again, the back of it, and realized why the
remaining scraps of paper looked so familiar — he had glued a map of
Jackson Heights back there. I recognized the pieces — and there were even
some markings in black pen, the locations of JHK’s victims.
“Here’s what I think, okay? Epps had a whole freaking evidence board
stuck to the back of his closet — hidden there because he didn’t want anyone
to find it. But they did. I think that someone cleaned out his apartment. And
maybe...”
Farhan leaned over the kitchen table and stared at me.
“The same person has done away with Epps.”
“Done away? What do you mean? How do you kill a man and make him
disappear from a sixth - floor walk - up?”
“Epps’s apartment has been professionally cleaned, emptied out. And the
old man is missing. According to the Somali woman, he’s usually either at
home or at his spot at the New Yorker Diner...” The self - congratulatory
feeling I’d had when recounting my successful sleuthing expedition was
r eplaced by a stab of fear. “So, listen. Maybe JHK figured out that Epps was
on his trail, followed him back to his apartment, and killed him. After which
JHK cleaned out the old man’s apartment. Okay, that’s just theoretical, but
Epps has vanished. That’s a fact. And without him to protect you, the
meeting at Grand Central Station is off. Here’s what I propose: You go to
the cops with the postcards. Tell them your story, and they’ll have to believe
you. A Khan heiress must have some weight with the NYPD, and — ”
“No!” Farhan slammed her fist down on the table so hard that coffee
slopped out of her cup. She glared at me, and her face twisted in hatred.
“Spoken like a man. Men always assume that other men will back them up.
Have you listened to anything I told you? First, I’ve been locked up in three
loony bins, okay, and the cops will instantly question my sanity. They will
definitely get in touch with Papa, and he will shut me down — again! This
time, he’ll have me locked away for good!”
Farhan was shouting now. She picked up her coffee cup — I thought that
she was going to throw it at me — but at the last second, she jerked her hand
away. The heavy porcelain cup flew across the room and smashed against
the wall, spewing thick, dark coffee.
She stormed out of the kitchen. Her footst eps faded away, but I remained
at the table, motionless, my heart pumping hard. My instinct was to get into
my car and race back to the city — before the snow cut off the roads and left
me stranded in Southampton with this crazy woman.
But I did not leave.
JHK had threatened to kill my wife if Farhan did not appear at the
meeting — and now I believed in the threat. If JHK could make a twohundred - and - thirty -
pound man disappear from his apartment, he could
definitely get to Maryam, who worked in a huge city hospital. And ... this
is hard to admit, but also, I stayed in Southampton because I was afraid of
what would happen if I abandoned Farhan; it was possible that she would
have taken her revenge and told Maryam all about our affair.
So, yes, I stayed.
I gathered up my courage and walked down the freezing corridor to the
living room. The fire was burning low there, and a chill had set into the
room. I called out for Farhan, but she was nowhere to be found. I climbed
upstairs, but the back bedroom held only her bright aluminum suitcase, now
lying open on the floor; a tangle of underwear and toiletries was strewn all
over the room.
For a moment I panicked. Then a flash of motion outside caught my eye:
Farhan was on the wide - planked front porch, smoking a cigarette. She only
had on her roll - necked sweater and would catch her death of cold. I pulled
on my parka and went outside to talk to her. She did not turn to face me but
spoke into the wind, and I had to strain to hear what she was saying.
“Okay ... Listen up ... So, here’s what we’re going to do. Are you
listening, Ali? No room to screw up, okay?”
I stood there while Farhan talked. Soon I was freezing, but I did not dare
to interrupt her.
The next day, following Farhan’s orders, I drove back to the city to check
out Grand Central Terminal. I entered through the 42 nd Street entrance and
walked into the vast marble - floored Beaux - Arts hall, to a circular
information booth topped with a four - faced brass clock. This is where JHK
wanted to meet Farhan, right in the midst of the five p. m. commuter rush.
She was to wear red lipstick and display herself for his pleasure.
It was a sunny afternoon, and beams of light streamed in through the
tall, round - arched windows. A group of tourists stopped to gape at the
barrel - vaulted ceiling far overhead, painted turquoise and covered with
gilded r epresentations of the zodiac. On the east and west sides, graceful,
open double staircases led up to the balcony level.
Jesus. This place was a nightmare.
I’d done some quick research. Grand Central was built in 1913 by the
Vanderbilts, and no expense had been spared: pink Tennessee marble floors,
glass and bronze chandeliers, gilt accents. If you looked carefully, you
could spot little sculpted oak leaves and acorns everywhere, the heraldic
symbol of the Vanderbilt dynasty. The pleasing aesthetics lulled you into
forgetting what the building actually was: a machine to move people in and
out of the city. Seven hundred and fifty thousand people a day, to be
precise: commuters, workers, tourists, lurkers. And that was the problem.
Initially, I thought that JHK had chosen Grand Central because Farhan
would feel secure meeting here, surrounded by thousands of commuters.
Boy, was I wrong.
The station was crowded now, at noon — and by five p. m., waves of
commuters would flood in from the subway, hurry across this hall, and head
to their trains. Standing by the information booth, I realized almost every
New Yorker wore a dark coat and a hat, and their faces were hidden behind
scarves. At rush hour, as offices let out, it would be incredibly easy to
merge into the endless throng of commuters.
If JHK wanted to st ep up and slash Farhan’s throat, he could.
And then he could disappear. JHK could use Grand Central as his rat
run.
Because there were a million ways out of here: connections to the
Metro - North Railroad, the LIRR, and the subway. Exits not just to 42 nd
Street but also to 45 th, 46 th, and 47 th Streets. Direct access into the
Graybar Building and the Hyatt Hotel. A bustling food court, ramps down
to the Oyster Bar, stairs to a cocktail lounge and an athletic club. That was
just the stuff visible to the naked eye; no doubt there were other hidden
staircases, ramps, and elevators.
No, this place was not safe at all. Far from it.
I could not allow Farhan to go through with her cockeyed plan. She was
frustrated and angry — but she would have to acknowledge that Grand
Central was far too dangerous. For once, I wouldn’t allow her to push me
around.
I drove back to Southampton. Farhan and I sat in silence in the freezing
kitchen and ate the Chinese food that I had brought. She had cleaned up the
coffee cup she’d thrown at the wall, but a faint brown stain remained, like a
warning of what was to come.
Finally, I broke the silence and said that it was madness to proceed with
the plan. How could we ensure her safety? She r eplied that JHK would not
dare to attack her: There were security cameras everywhere, cops, MTA
police.
I protested. “He’s luring you to a place you think you’ll be safe. But
believe me, it would be easy, at rush hour, to sidle up and stick a knife in
your side, then melt away into the crowd...”
Farhan just would not listen. She said that this was a golden opportunity,
one that would not come again. She explained to me how JHK’s methods
were changing, how he now wanted to toy with his victims to prolong his
pleasure. She told me how Epps had planned to watch over her and to spot
all the men behaving in odd ways.
“The main concourse at Grand Central is thirty - five thousand square
feet. I looked it up. Do you know how many people that is? At rush hour?”
Farhan sighed exasperatedly, as if dealing with a slow child, and
continued talking: The NYPD psychologist who built JHK’s profile
assumed that he killed immigrant women because they were easy victims.
The psychologist assumed that JHK was — like most serial killers — a white
man with a fetish. But Epps had disagreed. He felt that the killer was Indian
or part Indian. That he chose young Indian women because they reminded
him of his own mother. How many Indian men could there be lurking
around Grand Central at once?
I was exhausted from three days of driving back and forth. Worn down
by having to deal with Farhan. But still, I gave it one last shot.
“Where was Epps planning to hide? Up on one of the balconies, he’d
easily be spotted. And there’s no retail on the main concourse. It’s designed
for a maximum flow of people.”
“Ah.” Farhan smiled for the first time in days. “Epps thought of all that.
He has a friend at the MTA. A transit cop.”
“This is just getting crazier. So Epps was going to be wearing an MTA
uniform? Standing in the information booth? He wouldn’t be able to see
much. That’s a lousy plan.”
“No.” Her smile grew wider. “Nothing like that. You’re a camera guy,
right? What’s the most powerful tel ephoto lens out there? How good is the
magnification?”
I did not like the direction this was going. “Canon makes a twelvehundred - millimeter
lens. It’s used for wildlife, sports — but it’s heavy, needs
a tripod. Very conspicuous. And magnification — you could photograph a
person a mile away, but not in detail. It all d epends on the temperature:
Heat waves distort the air. And dust particles. And these lenses run about
twenty grand.”
“I don’t care how much it costs. Can you get one?”
“I know this guy at B&H Photo on Ninth Avenue. He can get me
anything. But listen...”
“Stop looking so worried. I’ll have this with me...” Farhan dug into her
handbag and pulled out a small snub - nosed pistol. “SIG Sauer P365.
Double - stack magazine. I’ve been practicing all day out in the garden, and
I’m pretty good.”
“No. Grand Central is going to be packed with people, and — ”
Farhan ignored my protests. She spelled out the plan for me in great
detail — and it was the worst plan that I had ever heard.
I could never say no to Farhan. That was my problem. I had an
accommodating personality. I wanted to help.
I told myself this, the next day — as I crouched, hundreds of feet up in
the air, looking down at the main concourse of Grand Central Terminal.
From up here, people were the size of my thumb, but I had an unobstructed
180 - degree view of the hall.
It turned out that the gigantic arched windows extending down the east
facade were actually two sets of windows, with narrow, glass - block
walkways set between them, allowing workers to cross quickly, high in the
air, from one side of the building to the other. Epps’s ex - NYPD buddy —
now with the MTA police — had led me up a narrow, winding staircase,
swiped an access card, and ushered me out onto the highest walkway.
Before he left, he winked at me. “Tell that old dog Epps that he owes Ed
Pizzolo a drink, yeah?”
I neglected to mention that Epps was missing, probably killed by JHK.
Instead, I set up the massive brand - new zoom lens and camera on a tripod.
Crouching down, I swung the lens into position, and there she was: Farhan,
ten minutes early, sauntering over to the information booth at the center of
the vast hall, clad in a flowing dark dress, wearing bright red lipstick, and
carrying a small, discreet socialite’s purse on a wrist strap. She positioned
herself under the four - sided brass clock and glanced up in my direction, and
I wished that I could give her some sort of reassurance, but she’d refused to
wear earphones. She did not want to scare JHK away.
“You’re crazy, but you’re brave,” I whispered. “Much braver than me.”
Now all we had to do was wait.
Ten minutes passed.
Down below, where Farhan stood, it must have been very loud: The
endless clatter of feet as commuters rushed across on the stone floors. The
booming announcements for trains. The chatter of people finding each other
under the clock.
Up here, by the turquoise - painted curve of the roof, the sound was
muffled, like the surf of a distant ocean. The glass windows on both sides of
me and the thick glass - block walkway under my feet trapped my own
noises and magnified them; I could hear myself sniffling, hear the speededup thudding
of my heart.
I snapped a series of test pictures — Farhan standing with her hands
crossed in front of her, the lethal purse dangling from her wrist — and then
swung the lens in a smooth arc, snapping many frames a second, recording
the flow of commuters across the hall. It was amazing, the detail I got with
this lens: A woman’s pearl necklace. Stubble on a man’s face. The bright
lettering on a kid’s candy bar.
I looked for brown faces, faces that resembled my own — but there
weren’t that many. A vaguely Arab - looking man in a camel hair overcoat
stood by the clock, a few feet from Farhan, staring down at his phone. I
snapped his portrait, but then he put his phone away and strode definitively
toward the Metro - North commuter lines.
Two gangly Indian teens in hoodies stood up on the balcony level,
looking down into the crowd, but we were looking for a lone man — and
besides, these two guys were eating hot dogs.
Twenty - five minutes later, I had a candidate.
A burly Sikh man in a Yankees sweatshirt entered from the 42 nd Street
side and made a circumspect loop of the hall’s perimeter. He ended up
standing by the information booth and stared openly at Farhan. A tall man,
broad - shouldered, powerfully built, with large hands.
I texted Farhan: ‘Watch out. Turban guy to your right.’
Farhan’s phone must have dinged. She read my text and then
surr eptitiously glanced around — but just then, a diminutive old lady in a
salwar kameez and a bulky cardigan walked up dragging a huge suitcase,
and the Sikh man jumped to take it from her. They hugged and walked
away, with the Sikh man still casting admiring glances at Farhan.
‘False alarm,’ I texted. ‘Stand down.’
Forty minutes passed.
The crowd ebbed and flowed. Farhan was the only person who remained
by the information booth. Everyone else was soon met: a hug, a pat on the
back, or a high five, and they moved off.
Peering through the viewfinder, I remained alert. At one point, I became
suspicious of a janitor in navy blue overalls, armed with a broom and longhandled
dustpan. He dawdled by Farhan and k ept returning to swe ep up
imaginary trash — but then a supervisor in a uniform came and told the man
off, and he moved away, grumbling to himself.
An hour passed.
Farhan stood down there, rocking a little on her high heels, her face
blank.
From up here, my eye glued to the viewfinder, I watched people loiter,
hug, kiss, move on. It was now dark outside, and the floodlights came on
right by me, lighting the curve of the roof, and the vast hall took on a
golden, mellow glow. Rush hour continued unabated, and I had many
brown faces to examine, but I felt my energy ebbing. I took a short break to
grab a square of dark chocolate from my backpack, and when I next
glanced through my viewfinder, Farhan had stiffened — and was staring
anxiously ahead.
I moved the lens to follow her gaze, and sure enough, a man had entered
the concourse and was heading directly at her: A tall man, straight - backed,
wearing a dark businessman’s overcoat, shiny black shoes, and a woolen
baseball cap with a long visor, obscuring his face.
This was not supposed to happen.
If this man attacked Farhan, it would take me at least ten minutes to get
down to the concourse — way too long to intervene. Why in heaven’s name
had I agreed to this idiotic plan?
The camera shutter went click - click - click as I snapped away like a
madman — but it was of no use. The man’s cap was pulled low, and his face
was in de ep shadow.
He was twenty feet away.
Ten.
Farhan scowled, bent her head, and scrabbled inside her purse. Of course
— the pistol.
The man must have seen Farhan’s reaction. He raised a hand in salute
and k ept walking.
His shadow fell upon Farhan, and her mouth dropped open in surprise.
She gazed up at him, clearly in shock, one hand buried de ep inside her
purse — and I tensed, waiting for the gun to emerge.
I imagined it jumping in Farhan’s hands, the crack - crack - crack of
gunshots. Already, in my mind’s eye, I could see the man fall, bleeding
heavily. Already, I could hear the screams, the echoing stampede as
thousands of people ran for the exits.