Robert Tanenbaum: Outrage

“Well, sure, if you don’t mind,” the young woman said with a smile. “I’m Olivia.”

“Very good to meet you,” Kadyrov said. “I am Stefan.”

They talked as they walked. He said he was a prelaw student at Columbia University, an irony that made him smile inwardly. She told him that her husband, Dale, taught English lit there. “He just made full professor,” she said proudly. “It means more money, so we’re going to be moving into a nicer apartment. I’m supposed to be packing now.”

They reached the entrance to her apartment building, a ten-story, 1950s-era edifice of dingy yellow brick with graffiti scrawls on the walls as high as the “artists” could reach. Olivia stopped and turned to Kadyrov with a smile and reached out for the bag he carried. “I can get it from here, Stefan, thank you so much.”

Kadyrov shifted the bag away from her outstretched hand. “Is no problem I take in for you, then I go,” he said with a grin. “Job is, how do you say, only half-finished. No?”

Olivia hesitated, but she looked again at his smiling face and shrugged. “Well, sure, that’s very nice of you.” She stepped in front of Kadyrov so he wouldn’t see the access number that she punched in. There was an electronic buzz and click and she smiled over her shoulder as she pulled the security gate open. “Come on up.”

Kadyrov smiled. He loved this period of stalking just before he pounced, when his prey still didn’t know that she was about to be savaged. Beautiful women, like so many pampered, stupid sheep, could be so oblivious to the fact that the wolf was walking among them dressed in a Brooks Brothers shirt, khaki pants, and loafers.

Olivia led the way to the elevator, which they took to the fifth floor, and then walked down the hall to a corner apartment. Kadyrov was pleased that there were no sounds from the closest neighbors’ apartments. He slipped his free hand into his pants pocket and grasped the handle of the switchblade.

Olivia turned the key in the lock and opened the door. “Would you like a glass of water?” she said. “It’s all I have. The fridge is empty and-”

Whatever the young woman intended to say next was cut short by the hand that went across her mouth and the feel of the wickedly sharp knife blade held against her throat. “Don’t scream, sooka, or I’ll cut your fucking head off,” Kadyrov whispered in her ear as he kicked the door shut behind them. “Now we’re gonna get busy.”

Sitting on the d train as it rattled North from Manhattan into the Bronx, Amy Lopez lifted her copy of the Post so that the young acne-scarred man with the peroxide-blond hair sitting across from her couldn’t see her face. He’d been staring at her since getting on the train at the 125th Street subway station, and she’d caught him glancing at her purse, which she had tucked closer against her hip. She read the headline that screamed from the front page.

DA’S WITNESS COLLAPSES ON WITNESS STAND AT IMAM’S TERROR TRIAL

She turned the page to read the report about the murder trial of a Harlem imam named Sharif Jabbar. It was one of those stories that had the city riveted to the various tabloids and the evening television news. A young woman had been decapitated in the basement of the al-Aqsa mosque in Harlem during some sort of frenzied buildup to a narrowly thwarted terrorist attack on the New York Stock Exchange the previous fall. And now, in April, the imam was being prosecuted for her murder.

According to the story, New York district attorney Roger “Butch” Karp, who was prosecuting the case, had called an unindicted co-conspirator, Dean Newbury, the senior partner of an old, established white-shoe Wall Street law firm, to the witness stand the day before. And while testifying against the imam, the old man had toppled over and died. The “official” word from a court spokesman was that Newbury had succumbed to “an apparent heart attack.”

However, the Post was reporting a more sinister possibility. According to a reliable source who was not authorized to speak on the record, Newbury had shown signs of having been poisoned. The source was quoted as saying, “He took a sip of water and kablooey, he’s on the ground frothing at the mouth and kicking around to beat the band. Then nothing. Nada. Dead as a doornail.”

Amy finished the story and turned the page, dipping the paper ever so slightly and just in time to catch the young man watching her before he quickly averted his eyes. She looked down at the paper and a chill ran up her spine. The previous night, April 10, a woman named Dolores Atkins had been murdered in an apartment off Anderson Avenue in the Bronx. The police weren’t saying much, but according to another officially anonymous source, she’d been raped and “cut up pretty bad” by her attacker.

“There were no apparent signs of a break-in,” an NYPD spokesman was quoted as saying. He’d declined to answer a question posed by the reporter, Ariadne Stupenagel, regarding the possibility that the murder was related to a double homicide that had occurred the previous July on the Upper West Side of Manhattan near Columbia University. The article had gone on to note similarities between Atkins’s death and the murders of the other two women-Beth Jenkins and her daughter Olivia Yancy. The cases remained open with no arrests made or imminent.

When the train reached her stop at the 161st Street station near Yankee Stadium, Amy stayed in her seat as if she intended to continue riding. Then at the last moment, she jumped up and stepped through the open door. Hurrying along the platform, she glanced back just as she reached the stairs leading down to River Avenue. She cursed; the stalker had been quick enough to beat the door and was following her.

She walked down the stairs as quickly as she could and started zigzagging through the late-afternoon crowd on the sidewalk. This time when she looked back, she didn’t see the young man and sighed with relief. She took him for a purse snatcher, and that would have made her a victim twice in two months. There wasn’t much money in her handbag, but replacing her driver’s license again, as well as having to put a stop on her checking and credit card accounts, would have been onerous.

Oh, and my engagement ring is in there, she thought. She’d gained a little weight with her last pregnancy with baby A.J. and the ring had been uncomfortable, so she took it off and put it in her wallet. I’d hate to lose that…

Amy’s last thought was interrupted by a violent tug on her arm. The young man suddenly materialized at her side and grabbed her purse. She tried to hang on as he took off running and screamed as she was pulled off her feet, losing her grip on the purse. “Help! Thief! Somebody help!” she cried as she scrambled to her feet.

A few bystanders yelled at the purse snatcher, and a couple of men gave momentary chase, but the thief knew his game and that the pursuit would not last long. He dodged between the traffic on River Avenue and kept running until he was on the west side of the soon-to-be-demolished old baseball stadium. He slowed to a walk and began rifling through the purse, oblivious to the looks he got from passersby. This was the Bronx; asking a tough-looking, acne-scarred young man what he was doing pulling out the contents of a woman’s purse could only mean trouble.

Only fifteen lousy bucks, he thought. He could probably get a little more for the credit cards and checkbook, though his victim was sure to report them stolen and close the accounts. He was well aware that sometimes victims didn’t act as fast as they should, and he might be able to make a few quick purchases posing as the husband of Amy Lopez. He’d eventually sell the cards to those who had ways of using them still-mostly knowing which businesses didn’t run them through electronic billing. He stared down at the driver’s license dismissively-it was worth only a couple of dollars.