36 Righteous Men
Steven Pressfield
36
RIGHTEOUS MEN
Steven Pressfield
FOR STERLING LORD
And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually . . . And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.
GENESIS 6:5–7, BEFORE THE FLOOD
If it don’t splatter, it don’t matter.
SAYING AMONG LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS
CONTENTS
Book One: Divsix
1. A Murder in Georgetown
2. Midtown Athletic Club
3. Acela Corridor
4. Crime Scene Reconstruction
5. The Brotherhood
6. Caesar’s Sanctuary
7. Canarsie
8. Little Hong Kong
Book Two: Lamed Vav
9. The Dakota
10. Chinatown
11. The Dorot Library
Book Three: The Rebbe
12. The Rebbe
13. Chase Mode
14. Intensive Care
Book Four: The Service
15. Emergency Service Unit
16. The Service
Book Five: A Turning Toward Evil
17. Impound Lot
18. That Which God Has Hidden
19. Seventy-Second Street Station
20. A Righteous Woman
21. Under the Steel
22. Inside a Migraine
Book Six: Armageddon
23. This is How the World Ends, Part One
24. The Dorot Library, Revisited
25. This is How the World Ends, Part Two
26. Paratroopers
27. Zombie Killers
28. Ein Gedi
29. Shit Happens in the Holy Land
Book Seven: End of Days
30. Megiddo
31. Gehenna
Book Eight: Cyprus
32. Earth’s Last Chance
BOOK ONE
DIVSIX
1
A MURDER IN GEORGETOWN
MRS. PERRY COULD HEAR the dog barking. She thought immediately, Something’s wrong.
Mrs. Perry [Madelyn R., 47] stepped out onto the rear landing of her townhouse. From there she could see the animal below in the adjoining courtyard of the townhouse belonging to Michael A. Justman. It was Dr. Justman’s dog [didn’t get name of animal]—a ninety-pound Rhodesian ridgeback, a special breed bred in Africa to hunt lions.
The dog, Mrs. Perry stated, was normally very well behaved. It was now, however, “acting completely crazy,” making “violent rushes” from the ground-level courtyard halfway up the flight of steps that ascended to the rear landing and back door of Dr. Justman’s townhouse, barking furiously, then running back down, still barking, then charging back up again.
A characteristic of Rhodesian ridgebacks, Mrs. Perry said she had learned earlier from Dr. Justman, is that they don’t bark, or only a little.
Mrs. Perry was now seriously alarmed. She called to her husband, Ernest V. Perry, 51, who was inside their townhouse. “I told him to come out right this second and bring his phone.”
Mrs. Perry descended the flight of steps into her own rear court. She could see the ridgeback dog up close now, on the far side of the common wall between her yard and Dr. Justman’s. The animal’s ears were lying flat and saliva was dripping “in long strings” from its jaws. Mrs. Perry noted neighbors appearing on other landings above the common court behind the row of townhouses. She recognized one friend, Ms. Luterinaitis [Alicia C., 67], whose residence was on the far side of Dr. Justman’s. Mrs. Perry shouted to Ms. Luterinaitis to call 911.
[I have all this, by the way, from the local PD incident report (Georgetown V-663-61724) and from the detectives’ written statements. I have verified its accuracy by reviewing the townhouse association’s security video, Dr. Justman’s personal in-home security video, and my own notes. I interviewed Mrs. Perry and her husband, and three neighbors, including Ms. Luterinaitis, the following day, 18 April 2034.]
Mrs. Perry had now advanced to a point halfway up the rear stairway of Dr. Justman’s townhouse. She called Dr. Justman’s name but received no response. Mrs. Perry heard a “terrible sound” and, straining to see into the kitchen of the townhouse [the rearmost room], thought she saw a body, which she assumed to be Dr. Justman’s, “flung through the air as if it had been kicked by a mule” and crash into the wall, against which were a Wolf stove and a double-door Sub-Zero refrigerator. Mrs. Perry could hear the body “collide violently” with these objects.
Suddenly, Mrs. Perry stated, the ridgeback dog bolted past her up Dr. Justman’s steps. The animal burst through the rear [kitchen] door, which apparently was partially ajar, and charged into the house. Mrs. Perry took one more step but, she stated, was too frightened to advance farther. She heard a man’s cry from inside the kitchen and another “smashing sound of flesh against flesh.” The ridgeback dog was now fully inside the house, barking even more furiously than before. At this point Mrs. Perry’s husband arrived from next door, joining Mrs. Perry on the stairwell, as did Ms. Luterinaitis from the townhouse on the opposite side. In a group the three climbed the final steps and peered through the open rear door into the kitchen.
Dr. Justman’s body lay at the base of the refrigerator. No other individual was present or visible from the witnesses’ vantage point. The ridgeback dog had advanced all the way into the living room now. This room was adjacent to and visible in its entirety from the kitchen. The dog was barking and making the same furious up-and-back rushes. None of the witnesses could see what the dog was rushing at. All three stated that they had an unobstructed view of the full length and breadth of the interior of the front room as well as of the foyer, but could see nothing in any of these but the dog.
Suddenly the animal stopped barking. A sound like the closing of the house’s front door was heard. Mr. Perry crossed the kitchen from the back door to where Dr. Justman lay motionless. “Are you all right?” he said, calling Dr. Justman’s name. He repeated this several times, then knelt and attempted to find a pulse. Dr. Justman lay still. His throat was “bruised and discolored” and his neck was twisted, Mr. Perry stated, at “an unnatural angle.”
The house had become deathly quiet. The neighbors stood in a group above Dr. Justman’s body. The ridgeback dog came back from the front room into the kitchen. The hair was standing straight up on its dorsal spine. The dog took two steps into the kitchen, then sank to the floor and collapsed in death. A necropsy [veterinary autopsy] performed the following morning determined that the animal’s heart had burst.
2
MIDTOWN ATHLETIC CLUB
MANNING [DETECTIVE JAMES T.] wrestles every morning for exercise. It’s part of his fitness routine. He enters the wrestling gym in the basement of the Midtown Athletic Club in Manhattan at five forty-five sharp. He has two friends, both former college wrestlers, as he was. They work out together.
Manning leaves his cell phone in a secure locker while he wrestles. He will not respond to any communication or text during that hour or the shower and towel-off time immediately after.
I have been present in the wrestling gym on several occasions when departmental emergencies have compelled me to collect Manning in person from the club. He never speaks. He doesn’t even grunt. He immerses himself completely in the competition and the exertion.
The Midtown Athletic Club [216 W. Sixty-Eighth Street] is the downscale cousin of the Metropolitan Athletic Club [East Side House, 236 Madison Avenue]. Until a few years ago, the Met AC accepted no blacks, Jews, Hispanics, or, God forbid,
Filipinos. The club has been sued repeatedly over the decades and only ameliorated its policy, when it did, grudgingly and belatedly. In contrast, the Midtown AC takes everybody.
Manning, if he had read these last sentences, would order me to strike them as “editorializing” and “unprofessional.” He would not, in truth, order me. He would simply give me a look.
My name is Detective Third Grade Covina Duwai. I am called “Dewey.” Third Grade means I’m a grunt. The ranks above me are Second Grade and First Grade. In pay I make more than a patrol officer but less than a sergeant. Manning’s rank is First Grade. He gets the salary of a lieutenant, though in his case he’s got so much seniority, being a twenty-seven-year veteran, the final tally would probably almost double that.
I am one of three women in Division Six of the NYPD’s Detective Bureau. DivSix is the special homicide investigative arm of the seven mid- and uptown Manhattan precincts as well as Precincts 12 and 13 in South Harlem. In 2027, responsibility for the investigation of all cases involving sensitive and high-profile homicides—terrorism, hate crimes, killings of police officers, politically motivated murder, etc.—was taken from the individual precincts and consolidated under Division Six. (Investigation of federal crimes committed in Manhattan is the responsibility of the FBI, reporting to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.) DivSix reports to the New York County District Attorney’s Office. The division’s responsibility, as with that of a conventional homicide bureau, is not only to investigate crimes and make arrests but also to prepare cases for prosecution by the district attorney.
I am twenty-eight years old, the youngest female in DivSix by nine years. My degree is a bachelor of science in criminal justice from St. John’s, plus three years as a patrol officer. I served in the Marine Corps for three years before that. I speak fluent Spanish and can get along in Portuguese and Tagalog. Like every other woman/minority in the division, I am presumed by the detectives hired before me to have slept my way into the job. That, or of being the beneficiary of the department’s antique and universally reviled affirmative action program. The second allegation may be partially true. There is no one in the division, however, who outworks or outhustles me. For this I receive, as expected, zero props and bupkis for credit. “Bupkis” is Yiddish for “nothing.”
DivSix’s reason for being is, as I said, the investigation of special-case and high-profile homicides. The division was set up because the department wanted to take potentially dangerous (for the department) cases out of the hands of precinct detectives, who could not be counted upon either to resolve the cases with sufficient dispatch (read: get convictions) or to comport themselves in a politically sensitive manner (read: keep the department out of the press), and to hold these sensitive cases in-house, under control of the Manhattan DA and the mayor.
To establish credibility for this new division, an “all-star team,” as the Daily News phrased it, of homicide investigators was assembled under the command of Lieutenant Francis T. “Frank” Gleason. Gleason had been the lead investigator in the mayor’s Anti-Terrorism Task Force from ’21 to ’27. He is regarded as a rising star not only in the department but in city and state politics as well. Gleason is a lawyer (NYU, ’14) and the husband of former Mayor D’Antoni’s daughter Miranda.
DivSix was given technical resources and advanced investigative tools that no single precinct could support. Each Third Grader like myself must complete a six-month course at the Academy Annex in College Point, Queens, learning to use these resources before he or she is cleared to join the division. Most of the senior detectives, in contrast, are traditional shoe-leather cops who either scorn or are intimidated by this new tech arsenal. The upshot for the young detectives is that, even though we are junior to all in experience and seniority, we play a disproportionately influential role in investigative work, empowered as we are by the new technology.
Manning finishes his shower at 6:57 on this date. He shaves and dresses in one of his three identical gray suits, then climbs the grimy, unlit stairway from the basement of the athletic club to the grill room on the ground floor. The club’s kitchen doesn’t open till seven but the cooks put out an urn of coffee and a spread of bagels, bialys, and Danishes. Manning takes his coffee black with four sugars. He snatches two Danishes—one cherry and one prune. He wraps the prune Danish in a double-folded paper napkin and slips it into the right-hand pocket of his suit jacket. The cherry Danish he eats as he crosses the lobby toward the front double doors.
At this time Manning turns on his phone and begins receiving messages and texts. He glances down now and reads:
TO: MANNING
FROM: DEWEY
RE: CASE 426-37S
Manning stops reading when, through the club’s glass front doors, he spots me waiting at the curb beside our unmarked unit, a ’34 Ford Crown Vic Electric AV (self-driver). I would not have been sent to collect him unless there had been another murder.
Manning pushes through the doors and starts down the steps.
“Where?” he says.
3
ACELA CORRIDOR
THE TERM ACELA CORRIDOR refers to the run of states, cities, and municipalities between Boston and Washington, D.C., that lie along the route of the high-speed train service, the Amtrak Acela. The term is often employed in the demographic sense as well, as in, “Presidential candidate X can count on votes in the Northeast suburbs and along the Acela Corridor.”
The Acela used to be a decent train. I remember riding it as a kid. It hit 150 per and was operated by its crews with care and pride.
“Christ Almighty!” says Manning now as a bottle bomb explodes against the armor grille outside our window. The flash of the gasoline wicking off barely makes a dent in the steel-slat deflector, but the gel charge leaves a gooey yellow mess across the armorglass. It splats like a thrown egg.
We’re not even to Baltimore and the train has already been fléchetted and firebombed four times. The army should clean out these nests of squatters and the dispossessed.
Manning is reading the third of the seven files I have prepared for him this a.m. I’ve been up since two-thirty working on this. Manning refuses to read reports off any kind of screen. He insists on paper. He sits across from me now in the facing seat. I’m riding backward. Two businessmen commuters, buried in their (paper) copies of the Times and the WSJ, fill out our four-seat packet.
My notes are in typescript, following the form that Manning insists upon.
VICTIM #2
Justman, Michael A. 57, married (separated), 2 children.
George Washington Univ., Pol. Sci. ’05; London School of Economics, Intl. Relations, ’07; Kennedy School, Harvard, Asian Studies, Ph.D., ’10.
Deputy Assistant Undersecretary for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment, 26 months.
State Dept., SLS Grade 2 (Senior Level Service = pay levels above GS-15) = $273,000/year.
Michael Justman, Ph.D., is the victim whose murder Manning and I are being sent now to investigate.
“What was the last project Justman was working on?” Manning asks me now. “What the hell does a deputy assistant undersecretary do anyway?”
I tell him I haven’t been able to get a definitive answer to either question. No one in the State Department will go on record, except to say that Justman’s last assignment was classified. His most recent overseas trip on official business, according to the Washington Post, was to Tbilisi, Georgia, with additional stops in Ingushetia and Azerbaijan.
“Russia?”
“Backyard. I’ll follow up.”
Manning absorbs this. “Victim Number One . . . Davis . . . was involved in what? The oil pipeline from—”
“Baku to Ceyhan. Georgia, Turkey, southern Caucasus.”
Nathan Davis is the first homicide victim in this file jacket, murdered in Manhattan nine days ago, killer’s MO identical to the Michael Justman homicide.
VICTIM #1
Davis, Nathan J. 47, married, 4 chi
ldren.
Born “Natan Orlovsky” in Russian Crimea.
NYU, Philosophy, Asian Studies, ’07; Duke Law, ’10.
CEO, The Davis Group, investment banker. Hedge fund. 17 years.
Davis Building, 63 Broad Street, NY, NY 10004.
Net worth $9.7 billion. 64th richest American. Philanthropist, conservationist. Founded “Street Smarts” educ. trust, sponsors 6 academies for poor kids in NE, budgets $670M/yr. Founded Aegis Maritime Wildlife Conservancy, budget $260M/yr.
Manning’s military service was as an infantry sergeant, E-5/0311, in Operation Iraqi Freedom, 2004–5. He served with 3/7 [Third Battalion, Seventh Marine Regiment] in Fallujah and Ramadi. His methodology for police work mirrors the Marine Corps’ protocol for operational orders, meaning that at the top of the page, above “objective,” comes “commander’s intent.”
Manning’s objective now is:
IDENTIFY ALL CDs BETWEEN VICTIMS 1 AND 2
His intent is different—and of a superior order:
ESTABLISH A MOTIVE. WHY WOULD KILLER
SPECIFICALLY SELECT VICTIM 1 AND VICTIM 2?
CD means common denominator. In Manning’s lexicon this connotes not just social, political, or religious links but any association, however remote, that could conceivably tie the two men together. “Did they know each other in college, the army, postgrad? Did they compete in sports? Did they sleep with the same woman (or man)? Were they sued by the same litigant? Did their wives know each other? Did their goldfish know each other? Are they brothers, for Christ’s sake?”
There are old-school detectives, and then there is Manning. He’s a troglodyte, a Neanderthal. I know next to nothing about his personal history, other than the fact that he came out of a twelve-month leave of absence following a family tragedy two weeks before I was assigned to work with him.
