Ed McBain - Another Part of the City

The Arab had a head made of granite.

“Ow!” Ruiz yelled, pulling back his hand, but the Arab fell like a fucking stone, anyway, and Ruiz turned toward the one he’d thrown against the wall, who was now off the wall and ready to run again.

Ruiz leveled his gun.

“Don’t make me shoot you just before Christmas,” he said.

The three Arabs — if they were Arabs — spoke in what the detectives guessed was Arabic or something. Ruiz was the one who said Arabs spoke Arabic. If they were Arabs. The detectives didn’t know what they were because none of them would answer any questions, either in English or Arabic, if that was the language they were speaking. It was Lieutenant Farmer who broke the deadlock.

“What are we fuckin’ around here for?” he said. “Book ’em for murder.”

The three Arabs looked at one another.

“Who’d you send to watch the Phelps building?” Farmer asked Reardon.

“The Pope.”

“Alone? He’ll be saying his fuckin’ beads, ‘steada payin’ attention.”

“Samuels is with him.”

“Okay, get these scumbags outa here, take ’em over to Headquarters, make it Murder One.” He looked at the three Arabs as if just discovering them in his squadroom. “Unless you feel like tellin’ us what you were doin’ on Sutton Place,” he said.

“We have friends in that building there,” the cleanshaven one said. He addressed his answer to Reardon, as though Reardon — who had knocked him ass over teacups — was the one he belonged to.

“What friends?” Reardon said.

“A friend.”

“Named Joseph Phelps?”

“We do not know a Joseph Phelps.”

“Do you know a Ralph D’Annunzio?”

No answer.

“Do you know- a Peter Dodge?”

No answer.

“We’ve got a positive make on the car you were driving,” Farmer said. “It was spotted outside the Luna Mare last Monday night. What were you doing there?”

“We do not know this restaurant,” the Arab said.

“Who said it was a restaurant?” Hoffman said.

“Get on the phone,” Farmer said to Ruiz. “I want Sadie picked up and brought here.”

“We’ve got a witness who saw you go in that restaurant with guns,” Hoffman said. Ruiz was already dialing. “You want to tell us all about it, or you want to make it tough for us?”

“Sarge,” Ruiz said into the phone, “can you get one of the blues to pick up Sadie the bag lady?”

“You make it tough for us,” Gianelli said, shrugging philosophically, “we’ll make it tough for you.”

“We want her up here right away,” Ruiz said into the phone. And then, for the benefit of the Arabs, “We’ve got the three goons who killed D’Annunzio.”

He put the phone back on the cradle.

“They’ll bring her up here as soon as they find her,” he told Farmer.

“So what do you say?” Farmer asked the cleanshaven Arab, and to his great surprise, one of the mustached ones answered.

“It was not our idea to...” he started to say, but then the second mustached guy yelled something at him in Arabic, if it was Arabic, probably a warning to keep his fucking Arab mouth shut, and the two guys with the mustaches shouted at each other in whatever language it was — it certainly wasn’t English — until Reardon yelled for them both to shut up. The squadroom went silent again.

“What’s your name?” he asked the Arab who’d been about to say something when the other one shut him up.

“Anwar Biswas,” the Arab said.

“What were you about to say before your pal interrupted you, Anwar?”

The other one with the mustache shouted something in the foreign language again, and Anwar shouted “No, Zahir, I will not be silent!” and then turned to Reardon. “It was not our idea to do this,” he said.

“It was for our country,” the cleanshaven one said suddenly.

“What’s your name?” Reardon asked.

“Fazal Omara.”

“And you say you did this for your country?” Farmer said.

“For our leader,” Fazal said.

“What leader?” Hoffman said.

“Prince Ahmad Mo...”

The third Arab erupted again, verbally and physically. He popped out of his chair spewing a torrent of Arabic or whatever, and simultaneously grabbing for Fazal’s throat, his intention undoubtedly being to throttle him, which Hoffman discouraged by kneeing him in the balls.

“Sit down,” Hoffman said. “You got anything to say, say it in English. Otherwise shut the fuck up and let your pals here explain the situation. You think you got that? Or would you like another nut-shot?”

“Your heads will be cut off,” the Arab said, glaring at his compatriots, his hands clutched between his legs.

“If that’s all you got to say. don’t say anything at all,” Hoffman warned.

“You are both fools,” he said to the other two.

“Then you remain silent if you wish,” Fazal said. “This is the police here! You are the fool, Zahir.”

“Let’s hear it,” Farmer said.

Another silence.

Reardon thought for a moment they’d lost it.

Then Fazal said. “A messenger from our prince was killed last Sunday.”

“Where?” Reardon said at once.

“At the airport,” Fazal said. “Coming off the plane from Washington.”

“What was his name, this messenger?”

“Amin Abbas.”

“Get on the phone,” Farmer said to Gianelli. “How do you spell that?” he asked Fazal.

“A-M-I-N,” Fazal said. “A-B-B-A-S.”

“Have you got that?” Farmer said. “Amin Abbas, run an airlines check.”

“Who killed him?” Reardon said.

“Enemies within our government,” Anwar said.

“Who?” Reardon said. “Give me names.”

“I have no individual names. It was a group called Order of the Holy Crusade.”

“What were you doing at the airport?” Hoffman asked.

“We were there to meet him,” Fazal said.

“We saw him fall...” Anwar said.

Zahir was shaking his head. And massaging his groin.

“Detective Gianelli, Fifth Squad,” Gianelli said into the phone. “Run this through your computer for me, will you?”

“So many policemen,” Fazal said.

“We could not get to him.”

“Guy named Amin Abbas.” Gianelli said. “Where he was coming from, where he was headed, the complete ticketing. I’ll wait.”

“We followed the ambulance...”

“First to one hospital, then to another...”

“And finally took possession of his body.”

“Why’d you want his body?” Farmer asked.

“He was carrying the timetable,” Fazal said.

“What timetable?” Reardon asked.

“He should have had it in his possession. But it was gone. There was nothing in his pockets.”

“What timetable?” Reardon asked again.

Zahir erupted in Arabic again. This time he didn’t come up off the bench. He simply said the words softly and menacingly, a short warning meant to silence his pals once and for all. He accompanied this with a stare designed to turn their blood to shit. Neither the words nor the stare worked.

“A timetable that fell into the wrong hands,” Fazal said.

“Whose hands?” Reardon asked at once.

“A man named Peter Dodge.” Fazal said.

“Marvelous, tell them everything,” Zahir suddenly said in English.

“Shut up,” Hoffman said. “What about Dodge?”

“I just told you,” Fazal said. “He got possession of the timetable.”

“What damn timetable?” Reardon said.

“An important timetable,” Anwar said.

“For what?” Farmer asked.

“I don’t know,” Fazal said. “We were only told to get it back.”