Omar Yussef mounted the bare staircase to the detectives’ bureau at the 68th Precinct, trudging slowly in his soggy shoes as patrolmen and plainclothes officers hurried past. Breathless from the climb, he waved across the gray metal furniture to Sergeant Hamza Abayat, whose desk was crammed into a corner near a high window, and crossed the room.
Holding a phone to his ear, the Arab detective came halfway to his feet, shook Omar Yussef’s hand, and touched his palm to his heart in the traditional gesture of sincerity. From a chair in front of his battered desk, he picked up a large tub of whey protein with a ludicrously muscled man straining to lift a pair of massive dumbbells on the label and motioned for Omar Yussef to sit.
Next to the desk, Khamis Zeydan rested his foot on a pile of bodybuilding magazines. Omar Yussef glanced at the thick sinews in the tanned, oiled chest of the cover model by his friend’s shoe. Beside the magazines was a pile of community newspapers. He read the main headline on the first tabloid: “NY Youth 2nd in Int’l Koran Contest.” The murder of the Veiled Man will push that off the front page of the Muslim press, he thought.
“I’ll send a uniformed officer along to talk to them, Missus Pierre,” Hamza said. He looked impatiently at the telephone in his hand. “Don’t worry. Thank you for your call.”
He put down the receiver and lifted his eyes to the ceiling. “By Allah, these people are crazy,” he said. “May Allah preserve you, ustaz Abu Ramiz. How’re you?”
“Thanks be to Allah, Hamza. This is my friend Abu Adel.”
The sergeant rolled a chair from the next desk toward Khamis Zeydan. “Are you the Abu Adel who’s the police chief in Bethlehem?”
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 Cafe 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 this 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.”