Love the Stranger

Book 2: A Queens Mystery

by Michael Sears

Genres: General Fiction; City Life; Mystery; Private Investigators

Synopsis

Ted Molloy, a Queens attorney with a troublesome penchant for noble causes, investigates the murder of a corrupt immigration lawyer in the sharply observed follow-up to the 2022 Nero Award winner Tower of Babel.

Ted Molloy has hit his stride with a foreclosure investment scheme that brings him into contact with a cast of shady characters across New York’s most diverse borough, from Hollis to Howard Beach. On the side, he helps his activist girlfriend, Kenzie, with her work to halt construction on “the Spike”—a corporate-backed development project in Corona that would displace the largely immigrant communities surrounding it.

Stop the Spike is heating up: Kenzie spends most of her waking hours fending off smear campaigns and touring community spaces in Queens to spread the word, which she can do thanks to Mohammed, Ted and Kenzie’s close friend, a recent Yemeni immigrant and most expedient cab driver. But when Kenzie learns that Mohammed’s immigration lawyer may be taking advantage of him financially, she decides to snoop around at the law offices—and comes face to face with a dead body and a shadowy figure, fleeing the scene. Now Kenzie is the sole witness to a potential murder. Can Ted and his team get to the bottom of the murder so they can stop the Spike once and for all?

Explore every shady corner of Queens in this keen mystery, the second installment of award-winning author Michael Sears’s critically acclaimed series.

Release date: December 3, 2024

Publisher: Soho Crime

Print pages: 352

Sample

Prologue
When Ted Molloy was a boy, he had been told that there were over a hundred languages spoken in Astoria. At the time, Greek may have led the list, as the next Mediterranean wave replaced the early Italians. Today first place was no doubt a hipster version of English, as gentrification had captured one block after another, building by building. People with a little bit of money, who loved living in a diverse community, moved in and their friends followed. A generation later, bearded men with man buns pushed fifteen-hundred-dollar baby strollers past a store offering religious goods for Hasidim, Greek Orthodox, Coptic Christians, and followers of Brazilian Spiritism—among others. Newcomers ambled through local markets that offered goat meat and camel milk, mangosteen and breadfruit, cases of Limca and Guaraná, and now such additions as gluten-free pasta, vegan cheese, and local rooftop-harvested honeys.
     Queens was not a melting pot. It was a kaleidoscope of colors, classes, and ethnicities. Home to dreamers, strivers, con men, and crooks. A haven for many, Ted Molloy being one.
 
 
1
Haidir was on his knees in aisle 7 unpacking a box of Swad Coriander Chutney when Eber Lopez careened around the corner and tripped over him. Eber tucked and rolled and came up on all fours. Jars spewed across the floor, spinning and clattering.
     “ICE, asshole,” Eber said in a harsh whisper. He scrambled forward, got his footing, and bolted for the back of the store.
     Haidir reacted without thinking.
     He and his mother had refugee status. And she had won her citizenship two years ago. His stepfather told him repeatedly that if he stayed out of trouble, he would soon be a citizen, too. “You keep your face clean, and you will walk tall, like a man. You will not be afraid of the police, the migra. You run? They will chase you. That’s what they do.”
     But Haidir was fourteen and like many of his contemporaries, he had been arrested multiple times. Twice for shoplifting, though when he was searched at the precinct with his mother present, nothing was found. The storekeeper regularly called the police whenever three or more kids were in the shop at the same time. Once for public intoxication, though the brown bag he carried held nothing but a mandarin Jarritos, and though the lying arresting officer swore he smelled vodka in the bottle, the ADA had sent Haidir home. And once for jaywalking. Jaywalking. In New York City. Another free ride to the station. They hadn’t bothered calling his mother that time, they simply brought him in the back door, and let him out the front.
     It was a game. A cruel game, designed to introduce young people of all colors—though black, brown, and tan seemed to be predominant—to the hierarchy of the street. The police were cold, brusque, and both rigid and capricious—but they weren’t terrifying. There was a predictability to their actions—a perverse logic. You went with the flow and as long as you weren’t carrying a weapon or drugs—and Haidir would never have held either—you were released the same day. The police operated under the fiction that as long as no jail time resulted, an arrest was an inconvenience, nothing more, especially for juvies.
     ICE, on the other hand, took people and they never came back. Like that waiter everybody talked about. Twenty-four years he worked at that diner. He had two teenage children. They arrested him and put him on a plane. He never even got to say goodbye. Everyone feared la migra.
     Pulse pounding in his ears, Haidir ran.
     Ahead of Haidir, Eber skidded around a pyramid of Hellmann’s Mayonnaise—Real, Homestyle, 1/2 the Fat, and Avocado Oil—that the two of them had stacked the previous day. Feet churning, he barely missed a slow-moving shopping cart guided by a grim-faced Chinese woman, and finally burst through the double swinging doors between the fresh fish display and the prepackaged meat section.
     The woman saw Haidir coming and braced herself for contact.
     “Aeeyah! Migra!” Shouts behind him spurred him on. He grabbed the cart and swung it out of his way and darted for the doors. Another brown-skinned man from the produce department slipped through in front of him.
     Haidir followed. The warehouse area in the back of the Walmart-sized Manny Singh’s Fruit & Produce held a meat locker, a freezer room, a kitchen, and rows of shelves stacked to the twelve-foot ceiling. And Manny’s office.
     The walls around the outside of the office reached a full twelve feet, but inside there was a drop-panel ceiling eight feet off the ground. Beyond the ceiling, there was a four-foot-high space—four feet wide and six feet long—that, in a pinch, could hold a half dozen crouching men or women. Everyone who worked for Manny knew it was there, though Haidir had never seen it before. He’d never been through an ICE raid before.
     He ducked in the office door and took a quick look back. No one was behind him. He closed the door quietly and began to climb the staggered pallets of canned soda toward a gap in the ceiling where a panel had been removed.
     “Get the light, ese,” a voice hissed.
     He dashed back to the door, flicked the switch, and felt his way back to the pyramid of carbonation. A soft light came from overhead. One of the men there had his cell phone aimed down, providing enough illumination for Haidir to make his way up.
     “Rápido,” the voice ordered.
     Haidir knew better. The plastic wrapping was slick. One slip and he could fall, knocking cans to the floor to roll and clatter, giving them all away.
     He made it to the top tier, reached into the recess over his head, and felt his arms grabbed and hoisted. For a brief moment he had a view of his surroundings—four men balanced on the rafters of the dropped ceiling. Then the light went out. Someone replaced the panel, and they all hunkered in silence.
     Haidir slowed his breathing and tried to make himself comfortable straddling the two-by-sixes. He strained to hear anything beyond the walls of their hideaway.
     A minute crawled by.
     “What are you doing here, niño?” a husky Latino voice whispered.
     Haidir didn’t answer. He didn’t recognize the voice. Now that he was here in the sanctuary, he was asking himself that same question. He had run out of fear, not because he had a plan, or believed he needed one.
     “You think the police care about you?” The man sneered.
     “Sssst,” Eber warned. “Silencio, pendejo.”
     In the absence of sight, Haidir’s other senses worked harder. He could smell the man who had been dissing him, recognizing him as one of the countermen from the fish department. He felt the coarse asbestos dust—fallen from the fire retardant overhead—under his hands. And he heard the movement of men filing through the aisles of the warehouse.
     “Clear,” one voice called.
     “Clear,” another answered.
     Haidir heard the click and clink of metal on metal, a sound he would always associate with police. And he heard his heart pounding at double speed, a sound so loud he could not believe it didn’t carry—an audible magnet for the police to uncover them all in that dark claustrophobic space. His teeth threatened to chatter; he squeezed his face into a painful grimace.
     And he felt the urge to piss.
     “Oh, Allah,” he prayed silently. “I beg you for the blessing of Afiyah. Do not let me be caught. And do not let me piss in my pants in front of these men.” He briefly worried the last thought might be blasphemous, but all-knowing, all-forgiving Allah would understand.
     Below, the office door opened, banging against the wall. The sound threatened to release Haidir’s bladder on the spot. He gripped his crotch and the spasm passed.
     The light in the office came on, casting thin shafts up through a field of cracks and gaps in the ceiling panels. Haidir could see his fellow refugees. Ali, who worked on the loading dock, a recent immigrant from Somalia—tall and thin. Jorge from produce—a Colombian who spoke English but mumbled so badly he couldn’t be understood in any language. The fish man—Jorge’s cousin. And Eber. All four looked as frightened as he was.
     “Clear,” a deep voice called.
     Other voices approached. He heard Mr. Singh. Sri Singh. And two other men. One had the gruff, belligerent voice of a policeman. He spoke over the other two.
     “Look, Mr. Singh, we know he works here, all right? Be a good citizen and take a look at the picture.” The words were polite, but the tone was condescending.
     “I have looked.” Haidir heard Singh bring the two policemen into his office. “As you can see there is no one here. Are we done?”
     “You’re not trying. We want to see your employee books. This guy uses multiple aliases.”
     “I do not believe the firm’s books are covered by your warrant.”
     The third man spoke. A softer voice. Respectful. Firm but apologetic. “I can assure you they are.”
     “I want to hear that from my lawyer,” Singh said.
     The bigger voice rode over him. “Why do you want to make trouble for yourself? Failing to obey a lawful order is a crime. We can arrest you.”
     “It is a misdemeanor, is it not? I am calling my lawyer now. You may have a seat while we wait.”
     Haidir’s bladder did not want to wait. Neither did he. None of them did. The longer this stretched out, the more likely something would give them away. Someone would get a cramp and have to move. Or pee.
     Only Eber looked unperturbed. His face was an unreadable, impenetrable rock.
     The second officer spoke again. He projected reason rather than might. “Hold up. You recognize the picture, Mr. Singh. I can see it in your face. You may know this man as Angelo Castillo, or Eber Lopez, or Emo Mendez. Or another name entirely. Let me tell you about him. He is wanted in El Salvador for kidnapping and sexual assault on a minor. In Texas he killed a man. I’m not interested in shaking down a few random illegals—all of us came from somewhere, didn’t we? But this is a bad guy.”
     Silence.
     Crammed together in that ill-lit, dusty space, Haidir could not help but feel the burning tension emanating from Eber Lopez. He’d been named.
     Eber turned his head in a slow arc, daring each one of them to call out or to make any threatening movements. No one took him up.
     He was a killer. Haidir could see it in his eyes. He could smell it in the man’s perspiration. He could hear it in every hoarse breath he took.
     “I’m calling my lawyer,” Singh said. “I’ll leave it on speaker.”
     The tension in the loft abated in tiny increments. Eber no longer looked like a demon; he was one more frightened pilgrim faking bravado in the face of overwhelming odds. Maybe he wasn’t the same Eber Lopez; it was not an uncommon name. Maybe he wasn’t the man they sought. The murderer. The raper of children.
     Haidir stared at Eber. He was sure the man was all that and worse.
     The outgoing ring of the phone reached them. On the fourth ring a no-nonsense female voice announced, “Rogers and Fuchs. Hold, please.”
     The hearty cop cleared his throat—loudly—but it was the soft-voiced one who spoke. “This isn’t really necessary, Mr. Singh. We’ll go. Let me remind you—and I’m sure your lawyer will make it clear—that harboring a fugitive is also a crime. You have a good day now.”
     Singh had called them on their threats. And won.
     The female voice came back on the speaker. “Rogers and Fuchs. How may I direct your call?”
     “We’re going,” the cop said.
     Haidir’s heart surged with pride for the strength and wisdom of the Sikh man below him. It was like watching Riyad Mahrez do his “La spéciale” when he played for the Algerian football team.
     “I am sorry for taking your time,” Singh said to the voice on the phone. “Goodbye, officers.”
     In the loft, anxiety levels plummeted. The immediate threat was over. Haidir was not going to be arrested, nor would he have to explain to his stepfather why he ignored his instructions not to run. The police only wanted one man and would have paid no mind to a beardless teenager. He felt foolish. Drained. Exhausted. His nose itched from the dust. He was nauseated from the fear and adrenaline, and the sour smell of five frightened men cooped up in an airless cave. And he still needed to piss.
     The door closed behind the cops and every man up there—and one almost-a-man—let out a collective pent-up breath. Some smiled in relief. Eber did not.