The Fourth Assassin: An Omar Yussef Mystery

by Matt Beynon Rees

  With a nod, Khamis Zeydan folded his hands in his lap. “And you’re the Hamza Abayat whose relatives run riot all over my town like a bunch of gangsters.”

  “Your town? I heard you arrived in Bethlehem only a decade ago when the Old Man brought you from exile in Tunis.”

  “It’s my town so long as I’m police chief.”

  “Abu Adel, this is not the place.” Omar Yussef touched his friend’s knee.

  Hamza gazed at the gray sky beyond the window. “Police work is never easy. We all have different challenges—and failures.”

  That’s how a real policeman reacts, measured and considerate, Omar Yussef thought. My friend is the Bethlehem police chief, but at heart he’s still a guerrilla, surviving on his passion and bursting with indignation.

  Khamis Zeydan pulled out his cigarettes. Hamza wagged his finger toward a sticker on the wall that read No smoking—it’s the law. Khamis Zeydan put the pack away. “You donkey’s ass,” he whispered.

  Hamza cleared his throat. “I just got off the phone with a Haitian lady who says her neighbors are practicing voodoo against her. She claims they placed white powder on her doorstep as a threat. I’ll have to send a patrolman around to tell the neighbors not to put powder on the lady’s doorstep.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Khamis Zeydan snorted.

  “Sometimes a true threat can seem ridiculous, Abu Adel. Slander rolls off Americans like the rain off Abu Ramiz’s fine new coat, but for us Arabs it’s as hurtful as the blow of a Yemeni knife.”

  “If the gunmen in Bethlehem limited themselves to white powders and voodoo spells, I’d consider myself lucky,” Khamis Zeydan said.

  “You think it’s easier to be a cop in Brooklyn than Bethlehem? We found a human fetus in a gutter last week.”

  “Did you find the owner? I mean, the mother?” Omar Yussef said.

  “We followed a trail of blood to an apartment along the street. A Puerto Rican girl had miscarried on the sidewalk and left the baby there.”

  “Poor woman.”

  “She was only a girl. Newspapers didn’t write stories about her the way they cover the mayhem in Bethlehem.” Hamza leaned an elbow on the papers spread over his desk. “But I saw the girl’s shame when she opened the door to us. Her case is no less important to me than a war in my hometown.”

  Khamis Zeydan rubbed his chin. “May Allah’s curse fall on these times,” he murmured.

  “Let us rely on Allah,” Hamza said.

  They fell silent. Omar Yussef sat forward and, as he moved, the susurration of his quilted coat brought the two men out of their reverie.

  “Hamza, we have an alibi for my son,” Omar Yussef said.

  “May it be pleasing to Allah.”

  “When Nizar was killed, Ala was with Rania Hammiya.”

  The detective lifted his eyebrow. “Marwan’s daughter?”

  Omar Yussef nodded. “Rania had an agreement with Ala that they would become engaged. But then she fell for Nizar. Ala realized this. He went to her to cancel their agreement.”

  “And just at the very moment he was doing this, someone happened to kill his rival?”

  Omar Yussef extended a shaky finger toward the detective. “Skepticism is all very well, but your investigations have uncovered nothing. I’m giving you a lead which eliminates one of your suspects. I seem to have obtained more from my son with a few kind words than you were able to get out of him with an entire night of bullying.”

  Hamza rolled his tongue inside his cheek. His face was blank. “Provided the alibi is true.”

  “You’ll find Rania at the Café al-Quds. Take her statement and release my boy.”

  Hamza took the squash ball from his pocket and worked his forearms. “So if Ala didn’t kill Nizar—”

  “You never seriously thought he did it, surely?”

  “—who could be our killer?”

  Khamis Zeydan spoke quietly. “You still have one other roommate to consider.”

  “Rashid?”

  “Has he turned up?” Khamis Zeydan asked.

  Hamza closed his eyes and clicked his tongue. No.

  “Someone’s been following us,” Omar Yussef said. “I’m sure it’s the same man I saw fleeing Ala’s apartment after I found the body. He tried to run us down.”

  “The same man?”

  “He’s wearing black and driving a blue Jeep with dark windows,” Khamis Zeydan said.

  “You think it’s Rashid?” Hamza rolled his tongue between his back teeth, thoughtfully.

  Khamis Zeydan said, “What theories are you operating on?”

  Omar Yussef lifted his finger. “Can we release my son before we go any further?”

  “If Allah wills it, soon, ustaz.” Hamza turned to Khamis Zeydan. “There’re fewer killings in Brooklyn than you might expect. In this precinct, we only had one murder last year. Those that do occur are mainly connected to turf battles between rival drug dealers. That’s probably what’s behind this, even though the PLO has cleaned up its act.”

  “The PLO?” Omar Yussef asked.

  Hamza flexed his fingers on the squash ball. “A local street gang of Palestinian youths. They used to strut about looking tough. They sold drugs.”

  “That sounds familiar.” Khamis Zeydan laughed. “Are you sure they aren’t the real PLO?”

  “What do you mean that they’ve ‘cleaned up their act’?” Omar Yussef said.

  “They came up against the Bloods, the Crips, the Latin Kings. In the neighborhoods around here, the black and Hispanic gangs are much, much nastier than the PLO was. Frankly, our boys were whipped. Eventually they just gave up the gang life.”

  “What became of them?”

  “They’re community leaders now, speaking out against drugs,” Hamza said. “But they’re still hard men. If they found a dealer in our community, they might put him out of action. They might even go too far and leave him dying. Maybe that’s what happened to Nizar, may Allah have mercy upon him.”

  Only if the PLO gang also read up on the Assassins and the myth of the Veiled Man, Omar Yussef thought. Otherwise they wouldn’t have known to leave those clues. “I can’t believe it. What possible connection could Nizar have to the drug trade?”

  “I didn’t say for certain that it’s drug-related, only that it’s probable. If I had evidence that drugs were involved, I’d have to be in touch with the Drug Enforcement Agency. You’d find its agents less sympathetic to your son than me, ustaz.”

  “There’s no need to involve them, as you say.” Omar Yussef tried an encouraging smile, but it came out as a blink of his eyes and a wince around the lips.

  Hamza drummed the desktop. “Is that all now, ustaz? I have to get going.”

  “What’re you doing to find Rashid?” Khamis Zeydan said. “He might have the answers.”

  Hamza stood and took his coat from the back of his chair. “If he’s still alive, we’ll find him.”

  Omar Yussef exhaled impatiently. “Will you release my son now?”

  “I only have your word about that alibi.”

  “So check it.” Omar Yussef slapped his hand on the arm of his chair.

  Hamza rolled his heavy shoulders and headed for the frosted-glass door at the entrance to the detectives’ bureau.

  Khamis Zeydan touched his arm as he passed. “The drugs around here—where do they come from, mainly?”

  “Just recently, from Lebanon.”

  Khamis Zeydan’s mustache twitched. “‘Just recently’?”

  “The Lebanese army used to uproot the hashish crops in the Bekaa Valley. But since the Israelis fought that stupid war with Hizballah in 2006, all the Lebanese soldiers are in the south in case the Israelis try to drive to Beirut.”

  “And the drug trade in the Bekaa got back into gear?” Omar Yussef scowled.

  “That’s correct.”

  Omar Yussef followed Hamza to the exit, perspiring in the overheated detectives’ bureau. “You aren’t suggesting my son has anything to do with th
is drug trade? He’s a computer technician.”

  “The heads of Hamas are all engineers and doctors,” Hamza said. “The founder of Islamic Jihad was a medical man.”

  “We’re talking about my son, not those hotheads. Ala is innocent.” Omar Yussef lunged for Hamza’s big fists and pressed them to his chest. “Let him go, please.”

  “If Allah wills it.” Hamza started down the Spartan staircase, his heavy footsteps echoing off the whitewashed walls. “Perhaps you can help me with a little background from back home. Tell me about Nizar’s father.”

  Omar Yussef glanced at Khamis Zeydan. “He was a big shot in the PLO—the real PLO. He was killed here in New York because he wanted to make peace with the Israelis.”

  “Killed by whom?”

  “Someone else within the PLO, maybe? I don’t know. His family maintains it was the Mossad.”

  “The killing was never solved?” Hamza glanced at Khamis Zeydan, who rattled his cigarettes in their pack as they approached the exit, edgy at the prospect of lighting up. “So Nizar’s family isn’t new to intrigue and murder.”

  You knew already, didn’t you? Omar Yussef thought. With Nizar’s family background, you won’t believe that he was an innocent victim.

  “Where can we find the gang?” Omar Yussef said. “These ‘PLO’ people?”

  “A basement mosque in an apartment building at the other end of Fifth Avenue,” Hamza said. “A couple of blocks down from the restaurant where we ate yesterday, ustaz. When you get there, ask someone for the mosque.”

  “I’ll find it. Where’re you going?”

  “To take Rania’s statement. I’m at your command, after all.” The detective buttoned his parka. “At the mosque, ask to speak to Nahid Hantash. He’s the top guy. May Allah ease your path.”

  Chapter 14

  The Arab men wished each other evenings of joy and light as they departed Maghrib prayers, pulling the hoods of their parkas over their white skullcaps. Omar Yussef leaned on the onyx balustrade by the sidewalk and looked down on the concrete staircase to the basement mosque. The last of the worshipers zipped their coats and shook hands at the door. As they reached the street, Omar Yussef called to one of them: “Peace be upon you.”

  “Upon you, peace, ustaz.”

  “Will we find the Honored Nahid Hantash inside?”

  “He’s always the last to leave after prayers, ustaz.”

  Omar Yussef descended past boarded-up basement windows and entered a short corridor. The wall was covered with posters of Palestinian children, hackneyed images of defiance and suffering, and political slogans that fatigued Omar Yussef with their posturing and sentimentality. He glanced over a photo of a burned-out car, three victims of Israeli helicopter missiles lying within, their bearded faces vaguely nauseous in death, empty eyes staring past the camera. Is this meant to promote the correct frame of mind for prayer? he thought.

  He slipped out of his loafers and slid them into a wooden cubbyhole still wet from the last worshiper’s shoes.

  At the end of the corridor, a sheet of prayer times laid out the schedule of devotion like a dense page of logarithms. The time for every prayer advanced by a minute or two each day as the moon shifted over the course of the month. Khamis Zeydan rapped his knuckles against the notice. “I don’t know how they have time to do anything else,” he said. “I can think of only a few things that’re worth doing five times a day, and praying isn’t one of them.”

  Beyond the door, low stools surrounded a big circular water fountain tiled in fake jade and marble, where worshipers would sit to wash their feet, hands, ears, and nostrils before prayer. Khamis Zeydan turned on one of the shiny copper faucets and scooped water into his mouth. Wiping his mustache, he looked along the narrow mosque. “Do you think that’s our man?” he said.

  Omar Yussef peered into the dim light from the scalloped glass light fixtures along the wall. The basement was painted white, and its carpet was gray with diagonal green stripes. At its far end was a niche decorated with the same fake marble as the water fountain and the chair from which the imam would deliver his sermons. On the floor beside the niche, his head leaning back against the wall and his legs stretched out before him, sat a dark man in his early thirties.

  As they came toward him, the man brought his palm to his heart and bowed his head. “Peace be upon you,” he whispered, hoarse and calm, with the accent of Palestine.

  “Upon you, peace,” Omar Yussef said. “Are you his Honor Nahid?”

  The man held up his hands modestly. He wore a light suede baseball jacket, baggy jeans, and white socks. A blue stocking cap was pulled low on his brow and over his ears. He had shaved his facial hair into a thin line along his jaw and around his mouth, as though it were the scaffolding upon which a beard would later be constructed. In one eyebrow, a small scar, pale and hairless, made his eyes look ready for a scrap.

  “May you feel as though you were with your family and in your own home,” Nahid Hantash murmured.

  “Your family is with you.” Omar Yussef sat on the floor in front of Hantash. “Brother Nahid, I’m the father of Ala Sirhan, a friend of Nizar Jado.”

  “Ah, Nizar, may Allah have mercy upon him.”

  “May Allah grant you long life.”

  “I’ve met your son.”

  “Here in the mosque?”

  Hantash’s smile was forbearing. “You don’t need to pretend that your boy is religious, nor will you have to quote the Koran to make me like you, ustaz. If you’re Ala’s father, you must be from Dehaisha Camp. I know it well. You and I are linked by our struggle to liberate Islamic land from the Occupation. That’s all that counts.”

  “I saw your posters in the corridor.”

  “We still must play our part, even if we’re thousands of miles from home.”

  “It has more to do with playing a part than with reality.”

  Hantash twitched his head with puzzlement.

  “Those posters have no place in a house of worship,” Omar Yussef said. “Such images are no good for the soul. It’s sick.”

  “O Allah,” Khamis Zeydan sighed.

  “They’re the truth,” Hantash said. “Facts.”

  Omar Yussef had vented his frustrations on the young Iraqi in the street, but he couldn’t afford to be so harsh with Hantash. Calm down, Abu Ramiz, he told himself. You need this man on your side. “What would you expect an American to think if he saw your posters?”

  “Americans don’t come here.” Hantash swung a languid arm around the basement. “They wish we didn’t exist. We aren’t even allowed to broadcast the call to prayer on loudspeakers, because of their noise laws. But if they did come, I’m sure these images of martyrdom would remind them of their Christian churches. They have a big model there of a man being tortured to death. They call it a crucifix. Some of them hang it over their beds when they sleep—and you say I’m sick?”

  Hantash drew his legs up and linked his fingers around his shins. The knuckles were pink and white and scarred, like the skinned knee of a child, reminding Omar Yussef that the man had done battle with the gangs of Brooklyn.

  “Americans aren’t innocent of crimes against Muslims,” Hantash said. “In Iraq, they kill thousands. The U.S. government’s secret jails are full of men whose only offense is to have obeyed Allah. On the streets, Islam is mocked and hated. It’s hard for us to live here.”

  Khamis Zeydan offered a cigarette to Hantash, who waved it away with a gesture that showed he didn’t object to his guest smoking. “Where are you from, Brother Nahid?” the police chief said.

  “I was born in Hebron. My family left the West Bank when I was a teenager.”

  Hard-headed and stubborn by reputation, the Hebronites, Omar Yussef thought, and violent.

  “May Allah bless your town. Forgive my friend for his ill humor,” Khamis Zeydan said. “His son has been arrested, and he’s very nervous about him.”

  “Arrested?”

  “He won’t give an alibi for the time whe
n his roommate was killed.”

  “He’s a suspect? That’s ridiculous,” Hantash said. “Ala wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

  Omar Yussef forgot his antagonism and warmed to Hantash with a desperate swiftness. “I want to find out more about Nizar and Rashid,” he said. “My son tells me there was some sort of conflict between them.”

  Hantash was silent. His eyelids were low and lazy.

  “The police also think Nizar’s death may have had something to do with drugs,” Omar Yussef said, “and that you might be able to give us some leads.”

  The young man’s eyes flickered with hostility.

  Khamis Zeydan whistled impatiently. “My friend means that, as a community leader, you know what happens on the streets,” he said. “Certainly he doesn’t mean that you’re involved in drugs.”

  “No, of course.” Omar Yussef cringed and wrung his hands.

  Hantash focused hard on his scabbed knuckles. “The police have been here already,” he said. “We’re accustomed to their harassment.”

  “Do they suspect you?”

  “The Arab detective Abayat suspects all Arabs. You ought to remember that, ustaz. Don’t trust him just because he calls you ‘uncle.’” Hantash stroked his fingers across the carpet. “In truth, the police have no reason to suspect me. I used to be a gang leader. I led the PLO. We thought that was a good joke— to name ourselves after another gang of Palestinian hard men. But I put an end to it after the attack on the Twin Towers.”

  “Why?”

  Hantash held up his index fingers, parallel to each other, almost touching. “The hour of Doom is drawing near, and the moon is cleft in two,” he said, parting his fingers. “In the Holy Koran the splitting of the moon into two is a sign of the Day of Judgment. When I saw the two towers explode, they were like the sun and the moon, and their destruction was an image of the end of the world. And everything happened twice— both towers exploded, both fell, and there were attacks in two cities, here and in Washington.”

  “A sign?” Omar Yussef couldn’t disguise the doubt in his voice.

  “Call it a reminder, if you prefer. The same verse says: We have made the Koran easy to remember; but will anyone take heed? I took heed of that day. I brought the gang to an end. The boys of the PLO became active in the community, instead of running around at night doing unwholesome things. My part was to found this mosque.”