Matt Rees - The Fourth Assassin

Omar Yussef’s glasses fogged when he left the cafe. He pulled his NYPD cap over his ears. “What’s so special about 1998?” he asked.

Khamis Zeydan lifted the collar of his trench coat and cupped his hand around his cigarette. “That was the year the Lebanese government amnestied a thousand convicted drug traffickers. Marwan’s from the Bekaa, the center of Lebanese narcotics production.”

“You’re saying Marwan was a drug trafficker?”

“He knew what I was suggesting, and he didn’t like it. It was a shot in the dark, but I think I nailed him.” Khamis Zeydan exhaled, and the smoke came to Omar Yussef damp on the cold air.

“Why would he leave Lebanon if he had been amnestied?”

“He might’ve had no choice. He could’ve been on the wrong side of the local bad guys.”

“Gangsters?”

“Worse, maybe. Hizballah, Islamic Jihad. Perhaps he came here to get away from them.”

“He’d have had to lie about his drug conviction on his immigration forms. Otherwise the Americans would’ve denied him a visa-amnesty or no amnesty.” Omar Yussef crossed the road and walked close to the buildings, sheltering from the light sleet under the storefront awnings. “If Nizar found out about that deception, Marwan could’ve killed him to protect himself from blackmail.”

“If Marwan murdered Nizar, it might just as easily have been to protect the reputation of his daughter,” Khamis Zeydan said. “It was all the fellow could do not to call her a whore to her face.”

“Just because she followed her heart.” Omar Yussef shook his head. He wondered who was most pitiable: the girl who had lost the man she loved, or the boy who tried to protect her though she had rejected him. “Poor Ala.”

A police patrol car glided slowly down the empty street, squelching through the rivulets of sleet. Khamis Zeydan pointed at the police department logo on Omar Yussef’s stocking cap and gave a thumbs-up. The officer in the passenger seat touched the peak of his cap, and the car rolled on.

In his Iraqi dialect, the young man who gave them directions to the police precinct house cautioned that it was ten blocks away. Omar Yussef stared through the rain and clenched his fists. He was filled with apprehension about the likely treatment of an Arab in the Brooklyn Detention Complex, and every delay in passing on the information about Ala’s alibi extended his son’s incarceration there. The immensity of the city frustrated him, even as its rain mocked his inadequate clothing and its justice system imprisoned his innocent son.

“It’s a long walk, ustaz ,” the young man said, looking Omar Yussef up and down.

“You don’t think I’m healthy enough to walk so far?” Omar Yussef shoved his chin forward and edged his voice with aggression. The Iraqi flinched. All these things I’m having to deal with have made me angry , Omar Yussef thought, and this boy might just be the one to catch it. He turned to Khamis Zeydan. “I must look particularly frail today. Nobody thinks I can make it to my destination.”

“Cool it,” Khamis Zeydan said.

“What do I have to be calm about?” Omar Yussef shoved Khamis Zeydan’s shoulder with the flat of his hand. “Am I the only one who wants my son to get out of jail?”

“You’re being ridiculous. This weather has frozen your brain. You need a decent coat so you can warm up and start thinking straight.”

“May Allah curse this rain.” Omar Yussef stamped in a puddle. The cold water flooded his loafer and chilled his toes.

The young Iraqi stroked his thin mustache and flicked away the rainwater gathering there. “I wasn’t referring to your health, uncle. It’s just that the weather is so bad. Maybe you should take a bus.”

“I’ll freeze standing at a bus stop.”

“The buses are frequent. You won’t have to wait long. But if you insist, walk straight up the avenue. You’ll find yourself underneath a raised highway on big concrete supports. Follow the street beside it and you’ll reach the precinct house. May Allah give you his aid.”

“May Allah turn you into a monkey.”

Khamis Zeydan sniggered at his friend’s ill humor and gave the young man a consoling pat on the shoulder. “Beg the pardon of Allah,” he said to Omar Yussef.

As he stumbled along the roadside, Omar Yussef felt ashamed to have yelled at the youth. The longer he spent in this alien city, the further he veered from reactions he would normally expect of himself. Every circumstance seemed set against him, and he had nothing secure to fall back on, so cut off was he from the things he knew.

“You really ought to buy a better coat,” Khamis Zeydan said, “and that woolen cap isn’t much good in this wet weather.”

“We don’t have time. We have to get Ala out of jail.”

“Did you bring your magic carpet to break him out?”

“We’ll tell the detective about Rania. She’ll give him the alibi.”

“Don’t be so sure the girl will play along.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that Nizar was fucking the daughter-”

“Don’t be so crude.”

“-of a man who may have been in jail in Lebanon for a drug offense and who now runs a cafe with no apparent customers. The third roommate is still unaccounted for, too: remember that. It may not be as simple as it seems.”

Sleet crackled against the shoulders of Omar Yussef’s windbreaker with a sound like a fusillade. He felt his spine stiffening. After another block, he stopped and gave Khamis Zeydan a mournful look.

The police chief smiled. “Ready to make a new fashion statement?”

They went into a store that announced itself as “The Chic Bazaar.” Khamis Zeydan approached a short Arab man with a belly like a watermelon, a receding forehead, and a thin gray mustache. “My friend isn’t equipped for the New York winter,” Khamis Zeydan said. “What can you do for him?”

“Quickly,” Omar Yussef said. “We’re in a rush.”

The man simpered and rubbed his hands. He pulled a long black quilted coat from a rack and held it open for Omar Yussef. The schoolteacher removed his windbreaker and handed it dripping to Khamis Zeydan. His tweed jacket was damp and musty, like a sheep in need of shearing, so he removed it too. The walk had made him sweat, and a trace of steam rose from within the jacket.

When the storekeeper dropped the big coat onto Omar Yussef’s shoulders and flipped the hood onto his head, he was surprised by its light weight. The zipper buzzed up to the end of his nose.

“It’s perfect, ustaz ,” the storekeeper said, turning Omar Yussef toward a full-length mirror.

All his life, he had worn the finest clothes, European styles that made him feel as though he were a Parisian or a Milanese, not an inhabitant of a Bethlehem refugee camp. Now he was forced to dress himself in the outlandish garments of another kind of ghetto. “I feel ridiculous,” he said.

Khamis Zeydan pulled the zipper down a few inches. “We didn’t hear what you said. It was too muffled.”

Omar Yussef looked in the mirror. The coat came to his knees, and his hands were lost in the enormous sleeves. He had to admit that he already felt warm. If I do up the zipper and wear the hood, no one will even know it’s me in this coat , he thought. I’ll look like any New Yorker wrapped up against the elements.

When they left the shop, they saw a bulky man in a wide-brimmed hat hurrying along the other side of the road, his arms flailing as he tried to propel himself faster. He noticed Omar Yussef and crossed the street.

“Is it you, ustaz ?” Marwan Hammiya came close to Omar Yussef. “May Allah grant you grace, my dear sir.”