Matt Rees - The Fourth Assassin

He reached the sidewalk on the other side of the street and blew out a furious breath. Its tall buildings like the precipitous walls of a canyon, the avenue extended uptown and downtown, gaping into nothingness at each end as though it gave out onto the limits of the earth. Everything in New York seemed alien and outrageous to him. Before he took the subway to Brooklyn, he decided, he needed to reassure himself that there was a place where his relationships were uncomplicated and loving. He went back to the hotel and rode the elevator to his floor, assaulted by a raucous cartoon playing on a video screen above the door. In his room, he sat on the edge of the bed and dialed his wife.

“Omar, why didn’t you call me?” Maryam said. “I left you a message yesterday.”

Omar Yussef glanced at a flashing red light on the phone. Now I know what that means, he thought. “I didn’t receive the message, my darling, but I’m so very happy to hear your voice.”

“I’ve been worried.”

He was about to ask how things were at home when Maryam spoke again, with an excited quaver: “But tell me, how’s my dear son?”

Omar Yussef touched his fingers to his brow. I’m an idiot, he thought. I didn’t prepare a reply to this question. All I considered was my own loneliness. I shouldn’t even have called her. “Thanks be to Allah, he’s well, my darling. I visited him in Brooklyn, and I expect to see him again soon.”

“What’s his news, may Allah bless him?”

“It’s snowing here, Maryam. Sometimes very heavy snow. I’m up high in my hotel and looking down on the snow as it settles on the street.”

Maryam giggled. “Looking down on the snow. You must be in a skyscraper. But I asked about Ala’s news.”

“Abu Adel is here, too, with the president.”

“Don’t let him take our Ala to a bar, and make sure Abu Adel eats correctly. He has to take care of his diabetes. What have you been eating, Omar?”

He sighed, relieved that he had diverted her from their son. “I had Lebanese food. It wasn’t so bad.”

“How did you find a Lebanese restaurant in New York?”

I went with the man who put our boy in jail, he thought. “An acquaintance of Ala’s took me. How’re the kids?”

“Miral and Dahoud are downstairs with Nadia. She’s helping them with their homework.”

He smiled fondly at the mention of his granddaughter and the two children he had adopted after the death of their parents during the intifada. When he returned to Bethlehem, he would give Nadia the NYPD cap. She loved detective stories, and she would be excited by the gift. He felt less foolish for buying it now. “I have a present for Nadia,” he said.

“I should hope so, but don’t forget to buy something for Miral and Dahoud, too, and for Ramiz’s other two. I know she’s your favorite, but you have to be fair.”

“You’re my favorite. Shall I find something to bring back for you, my darling?”

“Just a husband hungry for his wife’s cooking after eating American fast food for a week. Did you give Ala the present I sent with you?”

Omar Yussef coughed. “Not yet. Later today, if Allah wills it. I’m sure I shall see him.”

“If Allah wills it. Give him my love, and tell him I want to speak to him and to see him soon.”

When Omar Yussef hung up, he let his wife’s soothing voice linger in his head. But the comforting words faded, and he heard her speaking the name of their son like a guilty mantra, Ala, Ala, Ala , rebuking him for his deception. The message light on the phone seemed to blink out the boy’s name, an alarming semaphore. He took off his spectacles and rubbed his eyes.

The phone trilled. Startled, Omar Yussef stared at it a moment. He picked up. “Maryam?”

“ Ustaz Abu Ramiz? May merciful Allah bless you, O ustaz . This is Nahid Hantash. How’re you?”

“Thanks be to Allah, O Nahid.”

The PLO gang leader ran through a series of blessings and good wishes. He’s been a long time in America, where they always get right to the point, Omar Yussef thought, but when he speaks Arabic he’s as formal and courtly as the mukhtar of a village back in Palestine. “May Allah bring you peace,” Omar Yussef said.

“Have you heard from Sergeant Hamza Abayat today?” Nahid asked.

Down to business, Omar Yussef thought. “No.”

“He didn’t call you?” Nahid chuckled. “I thought perhaps he wouldn’t.”

“What has happened? Is it something to do with my son?”

“It’s connected to our discussion yesterday.”

“Nahid, please. Spit it out.”

“You could say the Cafe al-Quds is under new ownership. Marwan Hammiya is dead.”

Trees reached up from the road to hedge the elevated section of the subway, their bare silvery branches stark against the flat white sky, like a diagram of a bronchitic lung in a medical textbook. Through the trees, Omar Yussef stared out at the apartment buildings on the avenues and their rooftop water towers decorated with bulbous graffiti. The colorful characters seemed to puff out their chests, posturing like the writers who made them declarations of individuality. The houses on the side streets, their yellow planks layered like baklava, were shrunken and shunted close, parodies of spacious American suburbia. In the distance, the towers of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, stern and monstrous, rose over the low Brooklyn skyline.

Back underground, Omar Yussef checked his watch impatiently as he reached his station. He needed to get to Hamza, to tell him what Marwan had said when he stood in the street weeping-about the danger “they” posed. It had proved real enough for Marwan, and the poor man had warned that Ala might be next.

From the train, he rushed toward Fifth Avenue. Around the Cafe al-Quds, blue police barriers blocked the sidewalk. He approached an officer who was slapping his hands against his ribs to keep warm while he stood guard.

“Is Sergeant Abayat here?” Omar Yussef asked. “I need to see him.”

“Who’re you, sir?” the officer said. Beneath his peaked police cap, he wore a close-fitting black felt headband designed to cover his ears. It came low over his brow and gave him the look of a medieval Crusader.

“My name is Sirhan. I’m involved in the case of this man who is now dead.” He flicked his fingers toward the cafe. “May Allah have mercy upon him.”

The officer muttered into the radio clipped to his collar. A voice crackled a response, and the policeman shoved the wooden barrier aside with his foot to let Omar Yussef pass.

Inside the cafe, he recognized the agitated crime-scene technicians he had seen at Ala’s apartment. Hamza Abayat leaned against the bar with his back to the door. The female lieutenant emerged from under the bar and spotted Omar Yussef. The big Arab detective turned and frowned.

Omar Yussef made his way between the tables. The lights, which had been dimmed when he visited Marwan Hammiya the day before, were bright on the busy technicians. He remembered Khamis Zeydan’s suspicion that the Cafe al-Quds was a front with few real clients. Murder has turned it into a bustling cafe, he thought.

“Hamza, why didn’t you call me?” he said.

“Are you a detective on the case?” Hamza rolled his neck, and Omar Yussef heard a vertebra click as the big muscles moved. “I know that you like to play the sleuth back in Bethlehem, but what makes you think I’d need your help here?”

“I was in this cafe yesterday talking to Marwan. He even followed me along the street to plead with me. Maybe he told me something that might be useful to you.”