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CHAPTER 18

Three nights later Ariel pulled his overcoat collar up around his neck. It was after 2:00 a.m., and the streets were empty but for the community patrol car that had pulled up to the curb about thirty feet up the street from where he lurked in a very shadowed doorway corner. It was cold, which he acknowledged in a corner of his mind but didn’t react to. He wasn’t as affected by weather extremes as he was when he was younger—one of many things the conversion had done to or for him. Thankfully it wasn’t raining. That could have made the evening’s plans a bit more uncertain.

He stepped out of the doorway, hunched his shoulders and bent forward, taking short, slow steps to mimic the shuffle of an older man. Also fortunately, the evening winds had died down, so that the homburg hat he was wearing stayed in place. His head was apparently in between standard hat sizes, so this one was a bit of a loose fit.

The last three days had been busy, almost frenetic. They had locked their Israeli pistols in a discreet locker on the plane before debarking, since they didn’t plan on using them in the US and didn’t want to have to explain them. Mordechai had even insisted that he leave the glass knife on the plane.

Disarming had surprisingly made Ariel somewhat nervous. He had gotten more used to carrying the pistol than he’d realized.

After clearing customs, they had left the airport and gone to a small, quiet hotel not far away. It didn’t have the large sign of one of the major hotel chains, but the parking lot was reasonably full, and their rooms were bordering on luxurious, so it was evidently a well-thought-of place. Certainly it was quiet.

They had reviewed the files again, with the latest up-to-the-minute updates. They had pored over maps and photos. They had even gone out and driven the streets both in late afternoon and at night several times to make sure they had a feel for the territory and the likely traffic for their targeted time. Ariel had been guided by Mordechai’s preparations, and felt ready.

Ariel heard the car doors slam behind him. He felt his lips peel back and his fangs emerge. He had chosen the pair of Khamis and Sajid, and he was looking forward to meeting them face to face.

“Hey! Old man!” one of them called out in heavily accented English.

“You! Jew! Stop!”

Ariel stopped, listening to the steps that came hurrying up behind him.

“Turn around, old man.”

Ariel turned slowly, and faced the two men. He could see them clearly with his night vision, but he doubted they saw him well at all since they were blocking the headlight beams from their car. One was grinning, one was frowning.

“You lost, old man?” That was the grinner, Khamis.

Sajid, the frowning one, snarled, “You’re not supposed to be here. This is our street, not supposed to be polluted by the feet of Jews. Get out.”

Ariel didn’t move.

“Didn’t you hear me? Get out!” The snarl was a shout now.

There was a whisp sound as they both jerked their nightsticks high. Ariel caught the nightsticks in mid-stroke and ripped them out of their hands, dropping them behind him. Before the two men could recover, Ariel’s hands were locked on their throats, fingers grasping their larynxes, squeezing hard enough to cause serious pain and panic as they felt their breath being choked off.

“Hello, boys,” he said. “You don’t know me, but I’m a friend of Jonathan Goldberg. Surely you remember him—the young man you basically beat to death several months ago? Well, you may have thought you were going to get away with that one. I’m here to tell you that you’re not.”

He tightened the grip of his hands a bit, and was rewarded to see them start to choke and their eyes widen to their limits. He ignored the blows they made with their fists as he spread his arms a little and forced them apart enough that the car lights lit his face up. He smiled broadly to show his fangs.

“No, sorry, I hate to tell you this, but Jews are not demons. A few of us, however, are vampires.” He tilted his head a little as their blows became even more frantic, and squeezed a bit harder. “I’m here to tell you that justice deferred is not justice denied, and it just caught up with you.”

Sajid tore at Ariel’s hand on his throat. “You…can’t…”

“I can’t? Oh, but I can. You will be standing before Allah in a few moments. I hope you’re ready to meet him.” Ariel drew them closer to himself, ignoring their struggles, and stared them in the eyes. “I’m afraid your prophet will be very disappointed in you. Try not to let it ruin your day.” He let them struggle a while longer as he stared at them, then clenched his hands, feeling their larynxes and tracheas crunch between his fingers. He released them and they dropped to the sidewalk, where they struggled, trying to gasp for air that could no longer flow. The struggles weakened, and grew feebler, until they stopped, and both bodies sagged into motionless death.

“Never again,” Ariel whispered. He dragged the corpses over against the edge of the building.

He looked up and down the street. The neighborhood had been seriously battered during the Covid year. Most of the small businesses had closed and their windows were boarded up. From what they had seen during their evening drives, a lot of the second- and third-floor residents had also left. Between the cold weather and the patrols, there weren’t many of the homeless around, either.

There hadn’t been many lights on, but there had been some. A couple more of them came on now, and he could see outlines against the shades moving toward the windows. He stepped over to the driver’s side door, where he sat down long enough to shut off the engine and turn off the headlights. He allowed the door to close enough that it barely latched, then he stepped over to a pool of shadow and became motionless. He could see the blinds in the windows being pulled to one side enough for someone to peer out. After a long moment, the blinds swung back to their normal places and the lights went out again. Ariel shrugged. Curiosity got more people into trouble than it did cats, according to Rabbi Mendel.

He eased back over to the car and opened the door long enough to sit and put the transmission in neutral. The street was flat enough it wouldn’t roll. He reached up and ripped the dashcam out of its mount and tossed it in the back seat, trailing broken wires behind it.

Ariel exited the car, closing the driver’s door. He reached up to grasp the end of the light bar. Unlike many true police cars, it was not an integral part of the car, having just been clamped into the rain channels, so when he applied his strength it popped loose with a small crunch sound. He then walked around and did the same thing on the passenger side, pulling the wires loose as he did so. Opening the rear passenger door, he placed it inside the compartment. Then he picked up the two nightsticks and tossed them into the car. The last thing he did was pull a cheap cell phone out of his pocket and speed-dial the only number in its directory.

The call connected on its third ring, but there was no answer. Ariel simply said, “Done,” ended the call, turned the phone off, and tossed it in the car as well.

It only took three minutes for the first vehicle to appear. A battered Ford Econoline with a logo on the side for Overholser Farms pulled up in front of the patrol car. Two burly guys got out, opened the side door, picked up each body in turn and placed them in the van with little sound, then closed the door and left. No words were spoken. Ariel thought there were other dark lumps in the van, but he didn’t look closely.

The van had barely turned the corner out of sight when the tow truck pulled up. Its logo said Hurricane Towing. It was one of the platform-style car-hauling trucks rather than a true tow truck. Ariel didn’t care.

The guys who got out of this truck were at least as large as the two guys in the farm truck.

“Keys?” said the driver in a quiet soprano voice, which shocked Ariel a bit. He peered closer at the figure, and realized it was a woman.

“In the ignition,” he said softly. “It’s in neutral.”

They didn’t say anything more, just moved quickly to get things done. First, the passenger in the truck unfolded what looked to be a bag or cloth or something on top of the car, and in a matter of moments the two of them had it stretched and fitted to cover the body of the car. Ariel realized it was a fabric car cover, but what really caught his attention was that this one had been printed or painted to look like a Ford Taurus. It probably wouldn’t have provided much cover in daylight, but at night it readily disguised and covered up the Chevrolet patrol car.

The next part of the operation was not at all noiseless. The driver lowered the back end of the platform and the passenger hooked up the towing chains to the car. Only one light came on this time. Ariel returned to his pool of shadow.

Four minutes later the car was on the platform, the platform was raised back up into travel position, and the chains had the car locked to the platform. The driver and her assistant were back in the truck and it was moving. It turned the other direction at the corner, and was gone.

Ariel sighed, turned, and walked back south. Five blocks into the Jewish neighborhood, he walked up to a waiting Audi sedan, opened the front passenger door, and got in the car. He looked over at Mordechai, sitting at the wheel. “Done,” he said.

“Done,” Mordechai replied. He put the car in gear, and put it in motion.

Once they were well on their way back to the hotel, Ariel asked a question he’d been thinking about for some time. “Umm, just who were those people?”

“Which people?”

Ariel looked over at Mordechai and saw the corner of his lip curling up a little in the light from the dashboard. “Who are Overholser Farms and Hurricane Towing, and why were they willing to help us?”

“Ah, those people.” Ariel didn’t say anything, and Mordechai’s smile grew a little larger for a moment, then faded away. “First of all, they are fictitious. It’s amazing how cheap magnetic signs for the sides of trucks are.”

“So Overholser Farms and Hurricane Towing don’t exist?”

Mordechai shook his head. “Not in New York, either the city or the state.” He guided the car around a corner.

“But the people were real.”

Mordechai nodded. “Have you ever heard the saying, ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend’?”

“Yes.”

“Do you believe it?”

Ariel looked at Mordechai with a puzzled expression. “What?”

“Do you believe it? Do you think it’s true?”

“Well…” He hesitated for a moment. “I guess so. It makes sense.”

“To use one of your pithy Americanisms, bullshit. The only thing you can count on about your enemy’s enemy is that he is your enemy’s enemy. The fact that you share a common enemy does not make you friends or allies at all. Think back to your school days—wasn’t there at least one kid in your classes that everyone hated—or at least disliked?”

“Yeah.” Ariel dragged that word out.

“Did that automatically make you best friends with everyone else in your classes?”

“No. But what does that have to do with…”

“Bear with me. I’m getting there. Having said that, the fact that your enemy has other enemies may be useful to you. You may not be friends. You may not be able to form a full alliance with them. But,” Mordechai emphasized the word, “you may from time to time be able to cooperate with each other on a mutual project that will disadvantage your common enemy.”

Ariel thought about that. “All right, I can see that.”

“You should be able to understand that this particular immigrant community, arrogant and obstreperous as they are, has managed to offend, inconvenience, irritate, and to use another Americanism, ‘piss off’ several other cultural communities in the city. Some of those communities, like our own, have some members who are a bit less than observant of every fine detail of the laws of the land.”

Ariel’s eyebrows raised. “So Overholser Farms…”

“Under another name belongs to an Irish clan that raises pigs.”

It took a moment for the implications to sink in, then Ariel’s stomach lurched. “If pork wasn’t trayf before…” He swallowed hard, and again.

“Indeed. There are stories…”

“I don’t want to hear them.” It took a few more moments for his stomach to quiet down enough to continue. “And the tow trucks?”

“Italians, and the car-crusher yard that the cars are being taken to is owned by a Polish family that runs it twenty-four hours a day. In about another hour or so, those cars will be crushed and compressed into a couple of anonymous cubes of scrap metal and by tomorrow morning will be loaded on a ship on its way to Japan.”

“And we will leave…”

“Never having been seen by anyone in the community, after having seen to it that no one will ever see the drivers of those vehicles again.”

“Disappeared.”

“Completely. Totally. Without a trace that they will be able to locate.”

Ariel settled back into his seat. Justice…with a bit of mystery. He decided he liked that.


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Framed