The Fourth Assassin: An Omar Yussef Mystery

by Matt Beynon Rees

  Omar Yussef covered his mouth with his hand. He liked to think of himself as a cosmopolitan, educated man, but each day in New York made him long for his family, for the traditions and routines of Bethlehem. The girl had judged him correctly.

  “But you cover your head like a Muslim believer,” Omar Yussef said.

  “You see, you can’t imagine that a woman might retain some of our traditions and reject others. You assume that if I bend the rules a little bit, I’ll soon be a whore. You think it’s easy to wear this headscarf in Brooklyn? Once I leave these couple of blocks in Little Palestine, people laugh and curse at me. ‘Look at the ninja,’ they shout. But I decide who I am. I follow our traditions of dress and modesty, but I don’t want to live as though this was the Bekaa instead of Brooklyn.”

  “I understand.”

  “You didn’t understand my father, and you don’t understand me.” Her voice quivered with the force of so much emotion finally uncovered. She spoke with the pace of one who mustn’t cease talking for fear that her words would be stopped by sobbing. “You’re a refugee. Everyone in the Arab world at least pays lip service to your human rights and says they respect your cause. My father and I had to flee Lebanon, but no one calls us refugees and no one respects us. We had to slink away from Lebanon like criminals.” Rania reached out a finger toward the photo on the wicker shelf. “My mother died while my father was in prison. He was convinced no decent man would marry me, because he had been jailed for the shameful act of dealing narcotics, which is against the laws of Islam. We left my mother’s grave behind and came to America. My father thought we could start again. He opened a new business and tried to find me a suitable husband.”

  “May Allah have mercy upon your mother,” Omar Yussef murmured.

  “May you have a long life.” Rania picked at the hem of her black smock. “Maybe hatred and violence are just part of being an Arab. Maybe you can’t escape them. Maybe the mistake is to try. Anyway, they’ve got me.”

  “You’re still young, my daughter. Don’t give up hope for a better life.”

  “I deluded myself, visiting the Broadway theaters with Nizar, going to movies, to expensive Italian restaurants. All the time, the Middle East was in me like the cancer that killed my mother.” Rania rubbed a tear from her eye and stared at the moisture on the back of her hand. “I dreamed that Nizar had returned. But he came to you, not to me.” She spoke petulantly, like a thwarted child. Her shoulders dropped, as though the anger had seeped out of her and left only an inanimate sadness. “For me, it will be as though that body in his apartment really was Nizar’s corpse.”

  “I can’t believe that you’d rather think of him as a corpse than a living man,” Omar Yussef said. “You told me you wanted to experience happiness now, not in the hereafter.”

  “His memory will always be with me.”

  “Do you believe he killed his friend?”

  “That wouldn’t make him the worst man I ever met. I’m from Lebanon.”

  Omar Yussef left her in the glow of the kitchen light. He went through the café and pulled the door shut behind him. He took a few painful steps on his swollen ankle, pushed through the entrance next to the boutique, and mounted the stairs to Ala’s apartment. The handwritten sign with the words The Castle of the Assassins written across it had been removed, but the tape that had affixed it to the door remained, like the frame of a painting cut away by thieves.

  His son’s face was gray and tired when he opened the door. He barely spoke as he showed Omar Yussef to the single bed. The door to the next room, where the corpse had lain, was closed. Omar Yussef wondered if the police had finished their work in there.

  “My son,” he said, “I saw Nizar tonight. He’s alive.”

  Ala sat on the edge of the bed. He rubbed his palm against the cheap blanket and tried to speak, but he managed only a stuttering gasp.

  “I saw him at Coney Island.”

  “Saw him?” Ala croaked.

  Omar Yussef turned away from his boy. “I also saw Rashid’s head. It was his body we found in this apartment, not Nizar’s. I’m sorry to be so blunt, my son.”

  Omar Yussef heard his son whisper the name of his dead roommate. The sound seemed like a cold wave in the air, chilling Omar Yussef’s throat and lungs, and he wondered if that was the way a final breath might feel.

  Ala stared at his father, as though it were he, not Nizar, who had come back from the dead. “I don’t understand,” he said.

  “Go and rest. We’ll talk about it in the morning.”

  The boy shuffled out of the bedroom and flopped onto the couch.

  After Omar Yussef had turned out the light, he heard the sibilant whimpers of his son in the other room, shivering through a nightmare.

  Chapter 23

  In the dull dawn, Ala’s hand dangled off the sofa and a trace of saliva glistened on his jaw. Omar Yussef lifted the boy’s wrist, laid it on his chest, and went to the kitchen. The coffeepot was wedged beneath a tangle of dirty dishes and pans. He grappled with it, but the crockery shifted noisily as he brought the pot out of the sink.

  Ala sat up on the couch and rubbed his face. “Let me do that, Dad,” he mumbled. He took the coffeepot from his father and rinsed it.

  Omar Yussef leaned against the windowsill. He watched the rain erase the snow on the sidewalk and thought about the man who had returned from the dead the night before.

  Ala measured ground coffee into the battered pot and ran some water. He put it on the heat. The smell of burning gas was comforting and homely.

  “I dreamed about severed heads,” Ala said. “Not just Nizar’s or Rashid’s. Everyone’s head, cut off.”

  The coffeepot ticked gently against the stovetop as Ala swirled the thick liquid. “The meaning of the severed head, the Veiled Man—it’s so strange and mystical,” he said, his voice raw and dry. He smiled at his father with a twitchy concentration that made Omar Yussef worry for his sanity. “Somehow it’s most appropriate for death to come that way.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Death is spiritual. But murder is usually so ordinary. It should take something more mystical than a bullet to kill a man. We’re created through a miracle, formed in the image of Allah from the clot of blood that he used to make humankind, according to the holy Koran. Then the end comes—a plain little chunk of lead, red hot, flying through the air, shattering your body, breaking your skin and bone, all in a second.”

  “What’s more mystical than a piece of metal that can fly?” Omar Yussef rasped out a grating laugh. “It’s no wonder religious extremists love bullets so much. They’re Allah’s greatest miracle.”

  Ala took a small cup from the cupboard, wiped it with his forefinger, and poured Omar Yussef’s coffee. He added a long stream of sugar to the coffee that was left in the pot and heated it some more.

  Omar Yussef left his cup in the kitchen and went to the bedroom. He lifted his coat from the bed, took the package Maryam had given him from the pocket, and brought it to his son. “I’ve been carrying this around. It’s time you had it,” he said. “Your mother spoils you.”

  Ala held the gift as though it were his mother’s hand, his eyes tearing up and his lips quivering.

  “Open it, quickly,” Omar Yussef said.

  Inside, Ala found the Mont Blanc pen in its plush black box. “It’s marvelous,” he said. “It’s like the one you have, Dad.”

  “Now you can write proper letters to your mother, instead of sending her e-mails through Nadia.”

  Heavy footsteps came up the stairs. The pen held Ala’s attention, but Omar Yussef turned toward the door as the bell rang. At the entrance, he noticed a brown smudge on the matchstick model of the Dome of the Rock. He remembered that it was blood from the corpse in the bedroom and that he had smeared it there as he tried to repair the model. His hand shook as he opened the door to find Sergeant Abayat shaking the rain off his parka.

  “Greetings, ustaz. Morning of joy.”

  “Morn
ing of light, O Hamza,” Omar Yussef said gloomily. The detective brought murder firmly back into the room, and Omar Yussef knew that Ala’s comforting thoughts of his mother would be crowded out. “Come in.”

  Hamza lowered himself onto the couch and slapped his thighs. “I’ve just been in the gym doing squats. My quads are dead.”

  Ala stepped out of the kitchen, the pen balanced like an offering on his fingertips.

  “Are you going to write a confession for me?” Hamza asked.

  Ala shoved the pen into his pocket.

  “It’s you who must confess, Hamza,” Omar Yussef said. “You failed to identify the body I found in this apartment as Rashid’s. Even though it had no head, surely you could’ve checked the fingerprints.”

  Hamza let his shoulders slump. “It was a mistake. We should’ve matched his prints against his visa application, but we would’ve had to call in the INS. Those guys treat anything involving an Arab like a big terror scare, and to tell you the truth, they aren’t respectful to me, because I’m a local cop.”

  “Your performance is about what I’d expect from an Arab detective,” Ala said. Omar Yussef saw the dangerous intensity on his son’s face and gestured toward him with a calming motion of his hand.

  “I thought you said I was no longer an Arab. Infidels can mess up, too, I suppose.” Hamza looked hard at Ala. “The identification was a mistake, and it cost us a couple of days. But now Nizar appears to want to make himself known to us anyway.”

  “You think Nizar will come here?” Omar Yussef asked.

  “Remember what you said yesterday—your boy’s the bait. Any kid fishing for sprats off a jetty in Gaza could tell you it’s no good baiting your hook if you’re not going to keep your hands on the rod.”

  “Does that mean you have this apartment under surveillance?”

  The policeman rolled the big muscles in his back. “Did Nizar sound friendly when he spoke to you at Coney Island? Or do you think he was intending to kill you?”

  Omar Yussef remembered the fear that had been upon him like the cold air inside Playland. Beneath his initial shock at seeing Nizar, he realized that he had been comforted by the presence of his old pupil in the empty amusement arcade. “I’m quite certain Nizar wanted to talk. He gave me a friendly greeting before the shooting started. I’m sure he wouldn’t have harmed me.”

  “You think so? Rashid was his best friend, and that proved to be no protection. Maybe you’ll hear from him again. You or Ala—the Old Man of the Mountain and the third Assassin.”

  Omar Yussef ignored the detective’s mocking smile. The mention of the childhood gang drew his thoughts to the fourth Assassin. Had Ismail followed him to Coney Island? Though he was confused by the boy’s behavior, Omar Yussef couldn’t believe that Ismail would have fired the shots at Playland. He narrowed his focus to the one member of The Assassins he was sure he had seen alive there. “If Nizar appears again, I’m convinced he’ll try to contact Rania.”

  Hamza pursed his lips. “Why? To ask forgiveness, perhaps? You see, I think we’ll discover that Nizar killed Rania’s father, as well as Rashid.”

  “Over drugs?”

  Hamza scratched his groin. “No better reason for murdering someone—apart from being married to them.”

  “You’re a real romantic.”

  “I’ve already given my wife her Valentine’s Day present this morning, so I’m free to say what I really feel about love.”

  Ala brought a coffee cup to Hamza.

  “May Allah bless your hands,” the detective said.

  “Blessings.” Ala choked on the word. He stepped into the kitchen and stared into the coffeepot, all his rage seeming to collapse into hopelessness. Omar Yussef watched him with pity as he listened to the heavy breath through Hamza’s mouth. Ala wiped the back of his hand across his eyes. He poured the thick coffee dregs into the sink.

  After Hamza left, Omar Yussef stayed all day with Ala. The tears he had seen the boy shed in the kitchen convinced him that his son was in shock. He also considered that Hamza could be right—if he waited here, Nizar might come to him. He found a backgammon board in the bedroom and forced Ala to play until the boy had won many games in a row and Omar Yussef, in spite of himself, became annoyed at losing.

  “Sorry, Dad,” Ala said. “I haven’t had much to do lately, so I’ve become very good at sheysh-beysh.” He went into the kitchen.

  Omar Yussef watched him soaping the plates in the sink. “Did the police finish in the bedroom?”

  His son scrubbed hard at the smears of hummus and fava bean foule that had dried on the plates. “I guess so. They took away the body and left the room in a mess.”

  Omar Yussef was shocked. “So, inside that room—”

  “You’d better be glad it’s not summer, or we’d have a lot of flies, Dad.”

  Omar Yussef gasped at his son’s callousness. “How’re you going to live in this apartment with your friend’s blood all over the bedroom?”

  Ala reached into a dirty coffee cup and rubbed hard at the grounds. “I’m not staying. I’m going home to Bethlehem, Dad. The woman I loved betrayed me. My friends are dead or destined for jail. New York is too harsh for me. I’m going back to the Middle East.” He snorted a bitter laugh. “At least with the Israeli occupation, you know where you stand.”

  Omar Yussef eased his son aside and knelt to open the cupboard beneath the sink. He pulled out a bucket, a pair of rubber gloves, and a bottle of floor cleaner. In the bathroom he filled the bucket with warm water and hauled it to the bedroom.

  He pushed the door open and held his breath against the humid, coppery stink in the room. Lunging for the window, he shoved the frame until the old wood squeaked a few inches away from the sill, admitting clean, chilly air. The blood on the cold floor hadn’t decomposed yet, and Omar Yussef was glad he didn’t have to smell that. He remembered the places in Bethlehem where people had been killed in a gunfight or smashed by a tank shell and their blood had remained plastered on the wall or pooled black and sticky in a corner. Even outdoors, the sharp fermented scent of rotten blood was repulsive. In this room, it would have been unbearable.

  He went onto his knees and scrubbed hard at the blood— in part to keep himself warm, as the cold air swept through the gap he had forced in the window.

  Omar Yussef wrung the cloth. Rashid’s blood spattered into the bucket. In Bethlehem, his nightmares were racked by violent death, stalking his pupils as they walked home from class down streets where the Martyrs Brigades and the Israeli army met. Even in those distressing dreams, I never imagined that it would be one of my little Assassins who’d become a victim, he thought.

  He sat on the second bed and stared at the empty space across the room where the corpse had lain. So many difficult nights Nizar must have passed there, unable to sleep, wrestling with his religious beliefs and his desire for Rania.

  Peeling off the rubber gloves, Omar Yussef ran his finger along the bookshelf at the foot of the bed. He pulled out the Koran, bound in imitation brown leather, and let it fall open. The spine dropped and the pages settled at the thirtieth sura, al-Rum. Omar Yussef read two sentences that had been underscored with a fingernail on the delicate paper: “He created for you spouses from among yourselves, that you might live in peace with them, and planted love and kindness in your hearts. Surely there are signs in this for thinking men.” He closed the book.

  When he left the bedroom, the sudden warmth of the living room made him dizzy. He put his hand to his eyes, and the Koran slipped to the floor. The pages fluttered open to the same verse. Ala came out of the kitchen as Omar Yussef bent to retrieve the book.

  “Isn’t that Nizar’s Koran?” Ala asked.

  “Do you think I carry a copy around in my back pocket? Of course it’s Nizar’s.” Omar Yussef laughed with a rough choking sound. “He seems to have a penchant for al-Rum.”

  Ala smiled wistfully. Omar Yussef was relieved that his son could still visit at least the furthest edges of pleasur
e. “That’s his favorite verse,” the boy said. “He liked the lines about spouses for us to live in peace with.”

  “Rania?”

  Ala’s smile took on a brittle edge. “When he was religious, Nizar used to talk about achieving martyrdom. He seemed to think he’d be able to have endless sex with the houris in Paradise if he was killed fighting for Islam.”

  “Come on, that’s how village boys think. Nizar was too clever for that.”

  “I think he was trying to convince himself of something— of the rightness of religion, perhaps—so he boiled it down to that simplistic concept.”

  “Did he change those views when he stopped praying?”

  “When he met Rania. They fell in love, Dad. That’s why he liked that verse so much.”

  The sheikhs cite that passage as evidence the houris aren’t heavenly beauties at all. They’re our earthly wives, polished up by Allah in Paradise, Omar Yussef thought. Which would’ve made it even more important for Nizar to have Rania now.

  “He stopped talking about martyrdom then too,” Ala said. “He didn’t need the seventy-two virgins up in Paradise. All he wanted was the girl next door on Fifth Avenue.”

  “And you, my son? What reward do you expect to receive here or in Paradise?”

  “I want to taste Mamma’s hummus and see my nephews and nieces,” Ala said. “I’m not speculating about Paradise, but I know it’s not here in Brooklyn.”

  Chapter 24

  As Omar Yussef stood by the window, the pallid twilight put him in mind of the charcoal skin of a heavy smoker. He wondered if that was why the sky lacked breath to shift the flat clouds. Ala snored on the sofa, overcome by his sleepless nights in the cell at the Detention Facility. His asthma gave each exhalation a coda of wheezing high notes like the cries of a frightened dog.

  Omar Yussef blinked as the streetlamps flickered into a purple glow. A bell rattled on the door of a shop below, and he glanced down. A woman hunted in her handbag for her keys, a placard resting against her leg. She wore a black head-scarf edged around with gold. As she locked the café, Rania looked up. Omar Yussef stepped behind the curtain. He noticed that she was smiling.