Whitefly

by Abdelilah Hamdouchi

Fouad laughed as if he’d heard a joke, but the detective immediately slapped him across the face. Fouad fell out of his seat, without making a sound. Laafrit pulled him up by his long hair and put him back on the chair.

  “Awake now?”

  Laafrit then moved behind him, making Fouad think the next blow could come at any moment.

  “I don’t have a gun!” Fouad yelled out, choked with tears and shaking his head.

  Laafrit stroked Fouad’s silky hair with feigned tenderness and then sat on the edge of the desk in front of him. He looked at Fouad for a while until the silence in the office became heavy and unnerving. The detective stood up again, opened a drawer, and took out the picture of the girl he’d found on Fouad.

  “Who’s this?”

  “A friend of mine.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Faouzia.”

  “Her family name?”

  “Bint el-Hussein.”

  “Where does she live?”

  “She used to live on Place Taureaux.”

  “Where’s she now?”

  “She emigrated to Italy.”

  “When?”

  “Two, three months ago.”

  “Before she left, you spent August with her in Martil, right?”

  Fouad trembled as he felt his swollen cheek.

  “I didn’t spend a month with her in Martil,” he said in a firm voice. “I visited her only once.”

  Laafrit leaned toward Fouad.

  “You visited her once? Who was she with then?”

  Fouad’s hesitation made Laafrit think he was lying. The detective grabbed him by the neck and pressed down hard.

  “Who was she with in Martil?”

  Laafrit let go. Fouad swallowed with difficulty, gasping for air.

  “With . . . with a boyfriend of hers.”

  “And who are you? Her pimp?” yelled Laafrit as a terrifying look flashed in his eyes.

  “I’m not her only boyfriend!” he said.

  Laafrit was convinced Fouad was feeding him half-truths. The detective lifted his arm menacingly, getting ready to slap him again. When he saw fear fill Fouad’s eyes, he hit the metal filing cabinet, which made a terrifying noise and mixed with Laafrit’s shouting.

  “Faouzia confessed to our men in Italy she saw a gun on you!” yelled Laafrit.

  Fouad was obviously confused, as if the reason for the interrogation wasn’t what he had anticipated. Laafrit noticed this but didn’t want to shift gears. He was sure Fouad was hiding a lot of things, but what interested Laafrit was the gun. The detective gave him a second to collect himself.

  “Faouzia told you I have a gun?” Fouad asked, startled.

  “She confessed she spent the summer vacation with you in Martil,” said Laafrit, lightening his aggressive tone. “And that she saw a gun on you.”

  “And where’d she spend the vacation with me in Martil?” said Fouad, laughing, as if he was making fun of himself. “I don’t have a tent there, let alone an apartment.”

  Laafrit sat down and relaxed in his chair. He put a lozenge in his mouth and glared at Fouad provocatively.

  “Go ahead, tell me your lies,” he said, the lozenge lightening the sharpness of his voice. “I’ll do everything in my power to put up with them and hear you out.”

  Fouad’s fear began to recede. He was bent on making sure he didn’t mix up his facts. He didn’t want to implicate himself by accidentally confessing to something totally unrelated.

  “If you want information about a gun,” he said in a confident voice, “I once saw one at Issa Karami’s place.”

  When Laafrit heard this, he tried to hide his excitement. He acted as if he didn’t trust a word Fouad told him.

  “Go on, go on,” he said, shaking his head disinterestedly.

  Fouad didn’t hold back. He spoke spontaneously as if purging himself of secrets that didn’t have anything to do with him.

  “Faouzia didn’t tell you anything. She called me two days ago from Italy. I’ve been with her for more than three years. The girl’s in love with me but that didn’t stop her from leaving without me. I didn’t care since I’m not going to marry her. To be honest, she’s a prostitute but she’s not professional or anything like that. She doesn’t go with any old bum off the street. She’s got her preferred customers and Issa Karami’s one of them. He’s a big-time drug dealer in Spain and even has a Spanish passport. When Issa comes to town, Faouzia abandons me and everyone else and takes up with him until he takes off.

  “The important thing is that Issa has an apartment in Martil, where he always spends August, together with Faouzia. But she used to miss me so much, she’d called me whenever she got the chance. Last August, she asked me to come to Martil. She told me she’d be alone. We met at the Garden Bar at eight. I found her there sitting alone, with a beer and a pack of Marlboros in front of her. When I tried to sit down, she got angry and told me to take a hike, acting like she didn’t even know me. I ignored her and sat down, but she said without looking at me that the waiter was watching her. Issa got a call for a quick trip to Tangier and he told her to wait for him at the bar until it closed. If he came back, great. If not, the waiter would take her home. She told me I had to wait around but not to get too close. If I saw Issa, I had to beat it. If he didn’t make it, I was supposed to follow her when the waiter took her home.

  “So that’s what happened. I sat far away and drank some beers. Issa didn’t show up, so after midnight I did what she told me. I left the bar and waited around outside so no one would see me. After a while, Faouzia left with the waiter and I followed them back to Issa’s.

  “You know Martil. The Paseo is packed till morning. The important thing’s that I followed them to a building opposite the Corniche. There the waiter said goodbye to Faouzia and took off. She went upstairs, and five minutes later she looked for me from the balcony and signaled that I should come up.

  “I won’t lie to you. I was so scared I almost died. When I got to the apartment, the door was unlocked. I pushed it open and went in. Faouzia ran over to lock it, and then hugged me. She was missing me and said she couldn’t wait any more. She calmed me down about Issa, saying he wouldn’t be back. I was still scared to death. I wandered around the apartment. It was on the second floor. I was thinking if Issa came back all of a sudden, I’d jump out the kitchen window.

  “Anyway, we had some drinks. You know, we spent the night talking about everything. Faouzia told me Issa went to Tangier to meet some friends coming in from Ireland. Then she got up, opened the closet, and took out his Spanish passport. We flipped through it and looked at the stamps from the countries he’s visited. I got tired and started falling asleep but Faouzia said I had to stay up till morning.

  “Some time passed and I thought she was in the bathroom, but she came out of the bedroom holding a gun. She pointed it at me and said: ‘Put ’em up!’ like in the movies. I didn’t pay her any attention, since I thought the gun was fake. It looked like a kid’s toy. But she told me it was real. And loaded. When she put it in my hands, I knew she wasn’t kidding. It was really heavy. I don’t have to tell you I was dying I was so scared. If God decided that Issa would come back and find me in his house like that, he’d have killed me with that gun in a second.

  “I told Faouzia to put it back where she found it but there she was, acting like a big shot, standing in front of the mirror and making sounds like she was shooting it. She was drunk and I had a headache so I took off before dawn.”

  Laafrit kept silent, looking at Fouad carefully. Fouad seemed less afraid than before and he was ready to keep talking.

  “That’s a tidy little story,” Laafrit said without shifting in his seat. “We’ll check it out, piece by piece. And if I find out you’ve wasted my time here with lies . . .”

  Fouad looked a bit more relaxed. He took his cap out of his pocket and put it on.

  “So, where does Issa Karami live?” asked the detective.

  “Can you give me a cigarette?�
�� asked Fouad timidly.

  Laafrit opened the drawer and took out Fouad’s pack of cigarettes, the piece of hash, and the knife.

  “There was more than a thousand dirhams in my pocket yesterday,” protested Fouad.

  Laafrit took the money out of the drawer, showed it to Fouad, and put it back.

  “This is evidence against you,” he said, pointing to the hash and the knife.

  Fouad lit a cigarette and took a series of quick drags.

  “Issa Karami lives in Spain,” he said, looking at his cigarette. “And he has the apartment I told you about in Martil. From what Faouzia told me, he’s from El Jebha.”

  “Doesn’t he have a place here in Tangier?”

  “I don’t know. When he’s in town, he stays with Faouzia at a hotel.”

  “Is Issa in Morocco now?”

  “I don’t know. He usually doesn’t come back this time of year.”

  Laafrit didn’t want to dig any deeper into Fouad’s life. The detective had a clear enough picture of him. Fouad was just a two-bit smuggler and part-time pimp. From the looks of him, Laafrit thought he might even be queer.

  The next step wasn’t clear to Laafrit. He was afraid of messing around and wasting time. But what was giving him some satisfaction was that he’d get hold of that gun soon. As long as he decided to believe Fouad, despite having no real reason to, he had to focus before rushing on to anything else. And what he wanted was to make his way step by step to the gun. Because of that, he knew he had to trace exactly how it got into the country and past the inspection and control points. All the smugglers, dealers, and crooks knew what it meant to smuggle a gun into Morocco.

  He paced around his office, feeling satisfied with his progress. If the gun had fulfilled its function of killing the still-unidentified victim, it must still be around somewhere, since the killer wouldn’t have just gotten rid of it by tossing it into the sea or dropping it down some sewer drain. That’s something that happens in Europe, where guns are sold the way they sell tins of sardines here. But if it really was Issa Karami who had managed to get the gun into the country, he wouldn’t be stupid enough to try to risk getting it out. Any fool knew how dangerous that’d be.

  Looking out the window toward the port, Laafrit followed a boat that appeared in the middle of the sea like a magnificent white bird. He suddenly turned toward Fouad.

  “Do you remember where Issa Karami’s apartment is in Martil?”

  “It’s in a three-story building on the Corniche,” said Fouad without the least hesitation.

  6

  THE FIAT REACHED TETOUAN, ABOUT ten kilometers from Martil, in less than an hour. Fouad sat in the back next to Inspector Abdellah, the forensics agent, while Laafrit sat in the front next to Inspector Allal, who was at the wheel. At first they talked about the case, but Laafrit was tired from the night before and wanted to take advantage of the drive to doze.

  Abdellah coughed a number of times, as if he were hesitating before doing something. Then he started humming, pretending that he was trying to hum just to himself, but the refrain “there is no God but God” filled his voice with such religious fervor it soon slipped through his lips audibly. But really, he was testing if Laafrit was in as deep a sleep as he appeared to be. Allal too started repeating the refrain, but the burning thirst reached its limit with Abdellah. He couldn’t restrain himself and gave free rein to his voice:

  The glance became clear, hadra became sublime,

  The good news came to the people of God.

  Those intoxicated by good tidings arose

  And made a great party, thanks be to God.

  The words mixed pleasingly in Laafrit’s head. What surprised him most was Abdellah’s touching voice, full of vibrato. He was reciting with an inner strength, savoring the words and pronouncing them loaded with emotion, revealing their essence as if he was bringing to them the vastness of life. His face was radiant with joy and when he turned to Fouad, who was sitting next to him, he urged him to repeat the refrain. That’s how the police car came into Tetouan, shaking with praises of the Prophet until it stopped in front of the main police station.

  In Tetouan, the case took a different direction. When Laafrit entered the station, he found the commissioner waiting for him. Despite his high rank, the commissioner pulled his tall frame out of his chair, greeted Laafrit, and told him he had requested permission from the DA to search the suspect’s apartment. He also said he had given instructions to the Martil police to offer assistance. The commissioner suggested he accompany them to Issa’s apartment, but Laafrit convinced him it was only a routine search as part of an investigation that was still in the initial stages.

  Before they took off for Martil, Laafrit spoke alone with Inspector Firqash, who he’d known for years. He gave him the name of Mohamed Benhammad—Nadia’s ex-husband, the deadbeat dad—and asked the inspector to arrest him and transfer him to Tangier.

  Martil was a small coastal city and most of its buildings were empty during the off-season, since the majority of them were owned by Moroccans working abroad. There was only one police station with ten men at the most and a single police van that needed repairs and probably didn’t even run.

  When the Fiat reached the station and the cops exchanged greetings, Laafrit asked the Martil detective about Issa Karami. He didn’t have the slightest idea who he was. The cops then all went together down to the Corniche. When they arrived at the start of the road, Fouad asked them to pull over so he could look for the building. Before they got out of the car, Abdellah took out his handcuffs and, in a voice that had no connection whatsoever to his gentle chanting on the way to Tetouan, told Fouad to spread his hands.

  From the description Fouad had given him, Laafrit recognized the building even before Fouad pointed it out. It had three stories with wide balconies overlooking the sea. Only a neglected sand-covered road separated it from the shore. The area was deserted except for a grocer and a small storefront full of phone booths. Surprised to see a crowd of cops, the two storeowners came out and stood in their doorways.

  “Call them over as witnesses for the search,” Laafrit told the Martil detective, eyeing the two men.

  Like the nearby buildings, this one was unoccupied. Sand lay on the stairs. There were double doors: a beautiful inner wooden door matching the modern facade of the building, and another door added to the outside. It was like a gate for a cage of ferocious animals: iron bars intersected with thick locks.

  “The residents only come here in the summer,” one of the Martil cops said, explaining the thick locks. “Otherwise the buildings are empty, and people worry about their things.”

  They took turns examining the locks. Laafrit thought they’d have to bring a welder and a carpenter to get through the front door. Leaving the group, he circled the building. Behind it was an abandoned square, which the building’s back windows overlooked. It seemed to Laafrit breaking a window would be easier than getting through the front door.

  They asked some construction workers at a nearby site for help, and in less than half an hour, Laafrit was leading the way up the stairs. He jumped into the kitchen and Allal, Abdellah, and Fouad, without the handcuffs, soon followed. The Martil cop and the two witnesses came in last.

  Laafrit was surprised when he flipped the light switch and the place lit up. The Martil cop understood Laafrit’s confusion.

  “The owner must’ve given his bank number to the electric company so they deduct the bill directly from his account,” the cop explained.

  Laafrit had trouble opening the kitchen door. He had to push hard until he finally got the latch open. When he turned on the rest of the lights, he saw the living room was decked out in the latest trends: fancy antiques, expensive wooden cupboards filled with china and crystal, and couches draped in white covers. Gold-framed pictures adorned the walls.

  The apartment was spacious. It had four bedrooms and Laafrit noticed while looking around that the whole place was furnished luxuriously, almost entirely wit
h foreign things. His general impression was that nothing was out of place. He decided it was pointless to look for the gun anywhere else besides the bedroom.

  In the bedroom, Laafrit opened the wardrobe and found it full of summer clothes: button-down shorts, T-shirts, towels, sports shoes, and hats. There were also boxes full of gifts. Laafrit figured Issa must have forgotten to give them out. There wasn’t much else in the room worth searching through, just a big bed, a dressing mirror, and two small bedside tables, each with a lamp on top.

  Should he start looking inside everything? Laafrit usually left the places he searched clean, and he didn’t want the others getting involved. He had a plan in his head. If Issa hadn’t taken any precautions with Faouzia and he left the gun out so she could play with it, that meant he was acting as if it was no big deal to have a gun in the house.

  After searching the drawers, Laafrit went back to the wardrobe and began looking through the clothes. All of a sudden the gun appeared, like a timid mouse. Laafrit looked over at the others and smiled. He took a white tissue out of his pocket, lifted the revolver by its barrel, and looked at it closely. Abdellah rushed over, surprised.

  “We got it, Laafrit,” he said in rapturous tones, gripping it. “Beretta nine-millimeter, same as the murder weapon.”

  *

  Back in Tangier, there was a huge uproar in the commissioner’s office. Laafrit got so many pats on his shoulder that his jacket hung down loosely. Everyone congratulated him with firm handshakes. Trying not to sound self-serving, Laafrit gave the commissioner a report on the steps he took to recover the gun. The commissioner let out a boisterous laugh and then lifted up a fax.

  “We got this right after you left for Martil,” he said exuberantly. “They identified one of the victims at Central. His name’s Driss el-Yamani, from Beni Mellal. We contacted the police down there and the victim’s brother’s on his way here to ID the body.”

  Laafrit sat up in his chair.

  “Which one is he?”

  “Number three. One of the drowned men, not the shooting victim.”

  Laafrit looked closely at the picture of el-Yamani’s body the commissioner handed him.