Whitefly

by Abdelilah Hamdouchi

  At ten o’clock Sunday night, the phone rang. Laafrit picked up after the first ring.

  “Good evening,” said Luis in Arabic. “Seems you were waiting by the phone for my call.”

  “Didn’t we agree on this time?” Laafrit asked, in Arabic as well, playing along with Luis’s desire to speak the language.

  “You robbed me of my weekend, my friend,” said Luis.

  “What’d you find out?” Laafrit asked as his heart began to pound.

  “Mohamed Bensallam—I’ve confirmed his identity. He really did have residence papers and Carlos was the one who got them for him. Like I told you before, my father hunts with Carlos so he got to know Bensallam. Whenever my father met him, they chatted in Arabic.”

  “How does Carlos explain Bensallam’s disappearance?”

  “I put my father on it but Carlos didn’t tell him anything more than that he fired Bensallam. He refused to say why.”

  “Did your father tell him we discovered Bensallam’s body here in Tangier?”

  “No, I told him to keep it secret. My father thought it was strange Carlos fired Bensallam so suddenly. Only a few days before, he saw the two of them eating dinner together at a restaurant and laughing like old friends. My father was surprised to see them all buddy-buddy, since he knew Carlos is such a racist. Carlos hates immigrants and exploits them shamefully on his farm.”

  Laafrit remembered what they found in Bensallam’s stomach after the autopsy.

  “If they were eating salad, paella, and chocolate flan with lots of red wine, then that was Mohamed Bensallam’s last supper,” said Laafrit.

  Luis laughed but he stopped suddenly.

  “Did you analyze his stomach contents?” he asked.

  “Yeah, but the others only had mixed vegetables and bread.”

  Luis was silent for a moment. Laafrit took the opportunity to ask him about something else.

  “Does Carlos own some kind of boat?”

  “Carlos has a bunch of fishing boats,” responded Luis. “But they’re all dry docked now because your country hasn’t renewed its fishing agreement with ours. Carlos is a big investor in both land and sea,” he said in jest.

  “About how old is he?”

  “So I’ve become your top informant?” asked Luis, laughing. “Carlos is the same age as my father, about sixty-five. He has three sons and two daughters. One of his daughters is married to the most famous lawyer in Madrid and the other lives in Israel. As for his sons, they live in Almería and they all work for him. The youngest is twenty and the oldest is my age.”

  “I know it’s on your dime,” said Laafrit, “so I’m sorry to keep you on the phone. Did you find anything out about the other three?”

  “The others,” said Luis in a taut voice, “they’re the ones who took up my whole weekend. I don’t know why your young people keep risking their lives to come here to live in a trash dump. A few kilometers from Almería, near the fields, there are hundreds of Moroccans who made it to paradise and now live in squats and cardboard boxes without water, electricity, or plumbing. They drink river water, burn candles for light, and crap outside. They spend their days working in the fields and come back at night to their shit holes. I spent all day Sunday there wandering around, asking about those four who disappeared. I kept getting the same response: that they left for Madrid.”

  “Did you tell them you’re a cop?”

  “No. You know I’m doing this outside my jurisdiction. I wanted to keep it secret. Besides, if anyone knew I was sticking my nose in illegal immigration, I’d get some unwanted attention from the farm owners. Even some friends in the force would start getting curious.”

  “The situation’s that serious?” asked Laafrit, astonished.

  “That’s another story,” said Luis. “In short, the big farm owners here buy the silence of the cops so they’ll turn a blind eye on illegal immigrants. That’s why it’s easy for these farm owners to hire illegals at the lowest possible rate and make them work long hours in medieval conditions.”

  “By the way,” said Laafrit, “I forgot to tell you about a guy who was friends with them and from the same city. I got his name when I questioned the victims’ families. Jaouad Benmousa. Maybe he’s still there in that camp.”

  Luis wrote the name down.

  “Tell me, what kind of gun was used to kill Bensallam?”

  “A Beretta nine-millimeter.”

  “What’re you doing to catch Issa Karami?”

  “Central’s dealing with that now. They’re coordinating with Interpol.”

  “And what about the shooting victim?”

  “Mohamed Bensallam,” said Laafrit. “There’s still something I don’t get about him. When he came back to Morocco the last time, he stayed in Beni Mellal for only one day and then went to the Doukkala region. He didn’t tell anyone where he was going or why.”

  “I read an article in El País about a disease that struck your tomato crops in that area,” said Luis.

  “Our papers have been talking about it every day.”

  “Don’t forget this is on my tab,” said Luis.

  “Sorry,” said Laafrit. “Look for Jaouad Benmousa. Maybe he can help us with this. Next time, I’ll be the one who calls you. Thanks again.”

  “If I get anything new,” said Luis before hanging up, “it’ll be me calling.”

  10

  IT TOOK A LOT TO convince the commissioner it was necessary for Laafrit to travel all the way to Beni Mellal. As far as the commissioner was concerned, it was enough to have a detective there finish up the investigation, since most of the elements of the case had been cracked. The commissioner thought all the important details would be revealed once they arrested the killer.

  Nonetheless, Laafrit insisted, so he left Tangier at eight o’clock Tuesday morning, driving south on the main highway. He got to Casablanca at eleven and after a half-hour break, he set out toward Beni Mellal. At exactly two in the afternoon, he was in the middle of the city.

  Laafrit had never been to Beni Mellal before. All he knew about it was that the city was famous for the Ouzoud waterfalls. He had lunch in a cheap restaurant and then took a drive around the city. Compared to Tangier, this place seemed like a different world, with donkey carts sharing the road with cars. But as soon as Laafrit got out toward the outskirts of the city, he couldn’t resist stopping and wandering around. It overlooked incredibly beautiful scenery, with green fields extending like an ocean as far as the eye could see.

  At three in the afternoon, Laafrit headed to the police station, where he met Commissioner Bouchta. From his accent, Laafrit knew the man was from the north, despite all the sounds and words he’d picked up from working in the interior. Instead of “fum,” the word for “mouth,” he said “dqum” as he told Laafrit how the face of one of the victims’ mothers became partially paralyzed from grief. The commissioner also told Laafrit about the solemn funeral for the four young men that almost turned into a big protest. He hinted in a roundabout way it hadn’t been necessary for Laafrit to come—conducting a routine investigation didn’t warrant a six-hundred-kilometer trip. A detective from Beni Mellal could have handled it.

  When the commissioner finally set Laafrit free, he was surprised to find Detective Said Lamoursi, an old colleague from Tangier. The two men embraced warmly.

  “What’re you doing here in Beni Mellal? Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?” asked Said.

  “Maybe you just ignored the email I sent so you wouldn’t have to host me,” Laafrit joked.

  “Shame on you, my friend,” said Said disapprovingly.

  “I’m here because of the dead harraga,” said Laafrit. “Can you show me where Mohamed Bensallam’s family lives?”

  “Mohamed Bensallam. If I remember correctly, he’s the one who was shot dead?”

  “Yeah. I want to talk with his wife.”

  “Is that all you want with her?” asked Said with a wink.

  “I’ve already talked with his father in Ta
ngier,” said Laa-frit, ignoring Said’s comment.

  Once outside, Laafrit insisted they take his car. Laafrit drove as Said gave him directions.

  “How long ago did you start working here?” asked Laafrit.

  “This has been my city since the day I left Tangier.”

  “I didn’t know you were a Mellali,” said Laafrit.

  The car came to a complete stop in a street jam-packed with pedestrians. A groom’s huge marriage offering was on its way to his bride. An ox pulled a cart carrying clothes, sugar cakes, a bag of wheat, and boxes of olives, dates, sweets, and henna. Behind the cart was a group of musicians taking up the entire road, with women dancing and trilling. Laafrit laughed as he looked at the women dancing in the middle of the street.

  “Is this all that happens in Beni Mellal?” asked Laafrit in jest.

  “What do you think?” asked Said, smiling. “You’re not in Tangier any more, my friend.”

  “Only in Beni Mellal,” said Laafrit. “Say, since you’re from here, do you know anything about Bensallam?”

  “He doesn’t have a criminal record.”

  “That I know,” said Laafrit. “What are people saying?”

  Said didn’t answer. The road finally emptied out and the Fiat moved slowly as Laafrit tried to avoid the potholes. Said told Laafrit to turn onto a road, and they drove up to a two-story house.

  They got out of the car and walked up to the front door. After Said rang the bell, a woman dressed in white came to greet them. She had the face of a teenager and couldn’t have been more than twenty. Said smiled at her as if they already knew each other.

  “This is Amina, the wife of the deceased,” said Said. “And this is a detective from Tangier. He’s here to ask you some questions.”

  “May God bestow patience on you,” said Laafrit, feigning as much grief as he could.

  He noticed through the open door the house was full of people and he could hear weeping. The family must still be holding vigil and receiving guests.

  “Come in,” said Amina. “I’ll take you to the room where the men are sitting.”

  “Please,” said Laafrit, “I came all the way from Tangier just to ask you some questions. If there isn’t a suitable place here for us to talk, you could come with us to the station. I won’t take up much of your time.”

  Hesitation appeared on Amina’s face. She turned into the house.

  “Isn’t there an empty room where we could talk?” asked Laafrit. “We’d like to spare you the trouble of coming with us downtown.”

  “We could go upstairs,” she said nervously.

  She went inside and opened a door on the right.

  “Please,” she said, clearly uncomfortable. “I’ll tell the others and then join you.”

  Laafrit glanced around the house. It looked like a little tomb. The ceiling was decorated with plaster engravings and the walls had ornate tiles surrounded by marble borders. The bare floor was inlaid with mosaics. The doors were made of beautiful hand-carved wood. Laafrit guessed the house had four bedrooms in addition to the big living room.

  “How much is a house like this here in Beni Mellal?” he asked, turning to Said.

  “A lot . . . maybe sixty, seventy thousand for the whole thing,” he said, looking around.

  Laafrit heard a bunch of people walk upstairs. He turned around and saw Amina with a group of people behind her.

  “I don’t want any gossip,” he whispered to Said. “Keep the others downstairs. Do your best to console them.”

  Laafrit followed Amina into the room, looking at her closely. He sat down opposite her.

  “As you know, I’m the detective charged with investigating your husband’s murder. At the moment, we have a suspect whose name is Issa Karami. Have you heard that name before?”

  Amina looked confused and put a pillow on her knees. She gripped it and shook her head.

  “When did you meet your husband?”

  She blushed.

  “We were neighbors in the area around the mosque. After he went to Spain, his mother would visit us a lot and she’d tell me: ‘Grow up quickly so you can be my son’s wife.’ When he got his Spanish papers, he proposed and last summer we got married.”

  “During the past year,” said Laafrit, “he came back to Morocco four times, right?”

  “Yes, four times.”

  “Did he stay with you here in Beni Mellal or go somewhere else?”

  “He stayed with his family. We were still engaged.”

  “Do you know any close friends of his?”

  She appeared to pause to think, but didn’t respond.

  “Did he have a lot of friends?”

  “I don’t know. Once we got engaged, we’d spend the whole day together. At night, we’d each sleep at home with our families.”

  “And after your marriage?”

  “After we got married, we lived together for only . . . only a month. After that, he went back to work.”

  “Where did you spend that month together?”

  “In El Jadida. We rented a beach house there.”

  “Just the two of you?”

  “My husband’s family and my younger sister came with us.”

  “Did your husband spend the entire month there with you?”

  Amina seemed confused. Laafrit noticed she kept twisting her wedding ring around her finger.

  “He was gone for two or three days and then came back.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “He didn’t tell me.”

  “Did you press him?”

  Amina let out a deep sigh.

  “Yes, I did, because we got into fights about these trips.”

  “Did you have any doubts about him?”

  Amina looked away from Laafrit and lowered her head.

  “He swore he was faithful, but on his last trip here he told me he hadn’t come from Spain to see me. He came back for something else.”

  “What was it?” asked Laafrit, his eyes widening.

  “He’s dead now,” said Amina, on the verge of tears. “We shouldn’t speak ill of the dead.”

  “We ask for compassion and forgiveness for him,” said Laafrit. “But we have to know the truth. You said he came home for some other reason. What was it?”

  “The last time he was here,” Amina said, as tears ran from her eyes, “he didn’t stay with me for a single night. He didn’t touch me. He arrived in the morning and left after lunch. He disappeared for a week and when he came back, he stayed with me for less than an hour and then left again for Spain.”

  “Where did he go for that week?”

  “I . . . I suspect he had a relationship with another woman.”

  “Do you know who this woman is?”

  “When we were in El Jadida, I caught him more than once with a woman named Hanan. He told me she was a friend from college but I suspect he had an affair with her.”

  “Does this Hanan live in El Jadida?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know her address?”

  “No.”

  Laafrit felt he’d plunged her deeper than he should have into an old sea of turbulent emotions.

  “Okay,” he said. “Did you ever ask your husband where he got the money to buy this house?”

  “Why would I ask him something like that?” she asked, confused. “Everyone who works abroad buys a house.”

  Laafrit smiled and felt an urge for a lozenge.

  “Did he come back the last time by car?”

  “A Mercedes 190.”

  “Didn’t you press him to know where he went?”

  “He said he had some work and wouldn’t say a word more. He was evading talking about it.”

  “When he came back, didn’t you ask him again?”

  “He only stayed with me for an hour. He was in a rush and he said he had to get back to Almería that day.”

  “Was he afraid of something?”

  “He was in a rush. His mind was elsewhere.”

  �
��Would he call you from Almería?”

  “About once a month.”

  “And when he was here in Morocco that week, did he call you?”

  “He called a few hours before he got here.”

  “Didn’t you ask him where he was calling from?”

  “Yes. He said he was in Oualidia but I knew he was lying. He was probably with that woman in El Jadida.”

  All of a sudden, Laafrit stopped talking. He tried to come up with more questions for the woman but nothing worthwhile came to mind. He then thought the intimacy of the bedroom usually leads men to reveal some secrets, or at least to allude to them. But the situation was different in this case. The reason might be that Bensallem hadn’t lived with his wife for that long.

  “Fine,” he said with a kind of resignation. “Did your husband leave any personal things here? Papers, clothes, anything else?”

  Amina didn’t seem to understand at first.

  “He left some clothes he didn’t use any more,” she said after a pause. “He has his own drawer in our wardrobe where he put old photos from when he was in college and some letters.”

  Laafrit gave her a smile.

  “Would you mind if I had a look at them?”

  Without responding, she put the pillow aside and got up. Laafrit followed her into the bedroom. Amina pulled the wardrobe doors open. Most of the clothes were Amina’s except for a shelf with men’s shirts, socks, and underwear. Laafrit felt silly standing there next to Amina in front of her open wardrobe.

  She looked down at a single locked drawer.

  “The key was always with him,” she said. “Sorry.”

  Laafrit looked at the lock. It would be easy to break.

  “Do you mind?” he asked, gripping the drawer.

  She shook her head, and Laafrit yanked the drawer open. Just as Amina had said, Laafrit found a photo album inside. He flipped through it quickly. He also found an expensive wristwatch, a few old letters, Bensallam’s old college ID, and some other knickknacks.

  What caught Laafrit’s attention was a plastic box. When he opened it, he found a number of small vials like those sold in pharmacies, especially for injections. The vials were sealed shut and contained a dark liquid. There were no names or labels on them. Laafrit held one up to Amina.