Matt Rees - The Fourth Assassin

“Killing?”

“I didn’t hear enough to know any more than that for certain. But I believe they planned to kill someone.”

Khamis Zeydan glowered at the Arabic signs above the shopfronts and the thick-set women bustling along the street, their round faces framed by cream polyester mendils . The rain was turning to a gelatinous gray sleet, and he spat on the slick sidewalk. “Little Palestine,” he muttered, shaking his head.

“That’s the cafe.” Omar Yussef pointed out the smoked-glass window and heavy brown drapes. In English and Arabic, the purple awning announced the Cafe al-Quds. In Arabic, it promised tea, coffee, fruit juices, pastries, and nargileh water pipes. “We have to make this girl Rania go to the police. We have to make her provide an alibi for my son.”

“ Make her do it? Who’re you, the chief of secret police?” Khamis Zeydan grinned bitterly.

“All right, then we have to-persuade her.” Omar Yussef heard the sinister edge to his words. He evaded Khamis Zeydan’s smile with a guilty flicker of his eyes. “Let’s get out of the cold.”

The air in the empty cafe was stale with lingering traces of apple-scented nargileh smoke. The control panel of the stereo behind the bar pulsed lurid pink and turquoise with the driving baladi rhythm of a famous song. Omar Yussef recognized the voice of a Lebanese singer a few years older than himself.

What happened to us, my love? she sang. The love of my country still wails: Take me, take me, take me home.

The music was loud, as though the staff didn’t expect customers and had turned up the volume to listen to the song while they worked in another room. Omar Yussef went behind the bar to a door that leaked a dim light into the cafe. He knocked against the cheap wooden frame.

The Lebanese star sang on: The breeze blew at us from where the river divided.

A young woman answered Omar Yussef’s knock in Arabic. Wiping her hands on a dishcloth, she came out of the kitchen, wearing tight jeans, a black T-shirt, and a short purple smock that dropped loosely from her breasts to her hips. Her black mendil was drawn around her face and folded under the collar of the T-shirt.

“Greetings, ustaz ,” she said. Her voice was quiet and husky, as though it had been worn out.

I’m afraid, O dear, to grow old in exile. .

“Greetings, my daughter,” Omar Yussef said. “I’m Abu Ramiz, the father of Ala Sirhan.”

. . and that my home would no longer recognize me.

She put her hand to her breastbone. “You’re with your family and as if in your own home, ustaz .”

Take me, take me, take me home.

“You’re Rania?”

Her eyes were deep and big, haughty and critical behind long lashes, but the whites were a blurred pink, tired and recently tearful. They closed slowly to indicate that Omar Yussef had been correct. A lick of hair so black that it seemed polished had escaped her headscarf. It stroked softly against her pale throat. She smiled briefly with her wide, shapeless mouth.

Take me, take me, take me home.

“I need to speak to you about Ala. He refuses to tell the police that he was with you when Nizar was killed.” Omar Yussef saw the big eyes wince at the name of the dead man. “The police may blame him for the killing unless he reveals your meeting. Won’t you go to the police station and confirm his alibi?”

The girl raised her eyebrows. “Excuse me, ustaz , but I only have your word that you’re Ala’s father.”

“Of course I’m his father. Try to imagine my face thirty years ago.” Omar Yussef removed his spectacles. “With more hair and better eyesight. I think you’ll see the resemblance.”

“Imagine he’d never developed a taste for whisky and blown his health on bad living.” Khamis Zeydan laughed, beating his hand on the bar to the four-four time of the song. “Come on, my daughter. We need to be serious here. If you don’t go to the police, the police will come to you.”

The girl pushed out her lips, affronted by the police chief’s bluntness.

“We’re asking you politely,” Khamis Zeydan said. “But do you think we’re going to let Ala go to jail just to save your blushes?”

“I can’t help you,” she said.

Khamis Zeydan looked at her hard. “You have no choice.” Omar Yussef saw a flicker of fear on her face. Then came an angry twitch of her long lips, and Rania blew out an exasperated breath. “A moment, ustaz, ” she said to Omar Yussef, and she went back into the kitchen.

Khamis Zeydan picked a green olive from a bowl on the bar and ate it with a nod of approval. “Reckon this place is a front?”

“What?”

He dropped the olive pit tinkling into a ceramic ashtray. “I know it’s still not yet noon, but they aren’t exactly fighting off the customers, are they?”

“A front for what?”

The girl returned with an older, shaven-headed man who wore a blue apron.

Take me, take me, take me-

He pushed the OFF button on the stereo, switched on the lights above the bar, and wiped his thick hands on the apron. He looked with narrowed eyes at Omar Yussef and rubbed the fleshy grooves that ran from his wide nose to the corners of his mouth. His lips were purple and pursed and disapproving, like a sybaritic pharaoh. When he turned to take in Khamis Zeydan, Omar Yussef saw that short black hairs grew in the fat fold where his scalp met the back of his neck, out of reach of his razor.

“Greetings, my dear sirs,” he said. “I’m Rania’s father, Marwan Hammiya. Please sit while we prepare coffee for you.” Marwan muttered to his daughter and invited his guests to the table nearest the bar.

On the wall above the table, an Ottoman sultan and his courtiers chased a stag through a clearing, and six tall Corinthian columns rose over the ruins of Jupiter’s Temple at Baalbek. Omar Yussef leaned forward to admire the prints before he sat.

“Forgive me,” Marwan said, running his thick, hairy fingers over the chips in the Formica, “but may I see your identification?”

Khamis Zeydan opened his mouth to protest, but Omar Yussef halted him with a hand on his knee. He took his passport from the inside pocket of his windbreaker and handed it to Marwan Hammiya. The cafe owner bowed his head as he returned it.

“I apologize, gentlemen. Please understand the suspicion. During the last few years, the FBI has sent many people into our neighborhood pretending to be someone else. They were very keen to prove all kinds of bad things about us Arabs.”

“If the FBI had half an hour with my friend here-” Omar Yussef waved at Khamis Zeydan “-they’d have plenty of evidence of the wickedness of the Arabs.”

Khamis Zeydan spat another olive pit into the ashtray. “Maybe you’d be warmer in an FBI hat,” he said.

Omar Yussef removed his NYPD cap, put it on the table, and straightened his hair.

“May it be displeasing to Allah.” Marwan smiled. “I had hoped to meet you in happier circumstances, ustaz. ”

Rania brought a tray of ajweh cookies, then returned to the bar. Her face was tight, but something trembled around her lips. She blew her nose, wiped her finger beneath her eyes, and set to making coffee. Omar Yussef nodded his approval as he bit through the cookie’s buttery shortcake and tasted the date paste within. “Excellent,” he said. “Not too sweet.”

“Rania knows exactly how much rose water to add to the filling.” Marwan pushed the tray toward Khamis Zeydan. “She learned the secret from her dear departed mother, may Allah have mercy upon her, before we left Lebanon.”