by Kate Flora
"May we come in?" Burgess asked now, moving forward quickly so the boy automatically stepped back, allowing him to edge into the room. Perry piled in behind him, while the translator held back. There was a pile of shoes beside the door. "Would you like us to remove our shoes?"
The boy nodded.
"Can you please tell the Imam that we're here and that we need to speak with him." Command and control. Don't give people time to think or resist. He'd been in thousands of places over the years where he was unwelcome. He looked at the room. It seemed like any other house he might go into in this neighborhood. Furniture a little tired, and all arranged to view the TV. In this case, an impressively large, expensive TV. Usually, he saw TVs like that in drug dealer's houses. Nothing much in the way of furniture or décor, but always outsized TVs. Maybe it was just to get the full benefit of Al Jazeera in English.
He reined in his thoughts. Detective's rule #1: Don't let your assumptions get ahead of the facts. So far, he had no facts. He looked at the boy, then at the translator. "Can you ask him if he speaks English?"
"Of course I speak English."
"Then you can tell us your name."
"Ali Ibrahim." The boy divulged it like a miser giving up gold, then said, "I will go now and tell him you are here." He all but stomped out of the room.
"Do you know the Imam?" Burgess asked the translator.
Osman shook his head. "I am not in this part of the city."
"So he is not a well-known community leader?"
A shrug. "He is a leader in his community."
Another cultural thing. They were incredibly class-oriented, clan-oriented, and sons inherited their status from their fathers. Sometimes, immigrants who had had no status at home claimed to be elders who spoke for the community here. When they were done with the Imam, he would ask Osman to explain further.
A door at the far side of the room opened, and a very old man shuffled in, followed by two men who might have been around Burgess's age, and three younger ones. The boy was not with them. The old man took a seat while the others remained standing.
"Detective Sergeant Burgess, Portland police," Burgess said. "Are you Muhammad Ibrahim?"
The translator translated, and the old man nodded. "And these other gentlemen. Their names? Their addresses?"
In a reluctant mumble, they gave up their information, and Perry wrote it down. All except one were Ibrahims. All gave their addresses as the Imam's house, though the place was too small to have housed them all, especially if they had families. Perhaps city records would help locate other addresses.
"Are you the Imam of the mosque on Ashton Street?" Another nod. "There is some writing on the walls of the building. Some hateful writing. Has it been there long?"
The old man spoke, and Osman translated. "It was not there yesterday. It was there this morning."
"Do you have any idea who might have done it?"
A shrug. A flurry of words among the men and with the translator. "Many people do not like us. They resent the fact that we want to live here. They do not understand our religion or our culture. They see much about terrorists on the television, and they think that anyone who is a Muslim is a terrorist."
"Have you received any specific threats? Do you know of anyone who might want to harm your mosque?"
This time, the men conferred among themselves before answering. Finally, one of the middle-aged men said, "There are so many. There are the Sudanese young men, who quarrel with our young men. They have moved away from their elders' civilizing influences. They do not care what they do or who they harm. They think that being gangsters makes them more American."
"Do you know of specific people? Do you have any names?"
The man shrugged. He knew but he wasn't saying. Burgess heard Perry's pen stop. Nothing more to note about this. The officer who worked with gangs might have some information about Sudanese and Somali gang issues.
"Is there anyone we might talk to who could give us names?"
Another conference. Another set of shrugs. Burgess couldn't understand their words but he was good at reading faces. He saw conflict, dislike, power plays, and the decision to lie. Their final answer was they were sorry, but they didn't know who that might be. Not a problem. There were other ways to get at information among the young people. Youth workers. Teachers. Some of the more progressive parents. Sometimes even from the young men themselves. Even, though more rarely, from the young women. At least there were other avenues to follow.
But the writing on the wall didn't seem like something a Muslim would write, unless it was someone trying to deflect suspicion from himself or to confuse a simple act of arson. It wouldn't be the first time a suspicious fire was traced back to the owner of the building. Or an aggrieved tenant.
Somewhere in the house, he heard soft women's voices, and a baby crying.
"Is there anyone else who might have written on your walls?"
There was a flurry of conversation. This was such a slow process, the translator trying to get them focused on a response, then testing the response for accuracy before he conveyed their words back to the police. Finally, Osman said, hesitantly, "Motorcycle gangs. We sometimes have trouble with them. They like to harass our women and scare our children. We have complained about it many times."
"Anyone in particular? Anyone you can identify or describe?"
They conferred, and then one of the men answered. "We don't know his name. He is a very big man with a..." His hands made gestures indicating a ponytail.
"Old man or young man?" Burgess asked.
"My age, perhaps," the man said, which Burgess took to mean around fifty.
"Can you tell me anything else about him? Or about his motorcycle? Did he have anything distinctive about his clothing?"
Leather jacket. Bandana. Ponytail. Something embroidered on the jacket, they couldn't say what. They might do better if he could show them pictures. The motorcycle was big, black, noisy, and had a lot of chrome. No one had recorded a license plate. In short, a generic picture of any of dozens of Portland's finest motorcycle outlaws. Maybe the department's records of their complaints would be illuminating. He wasn't optimistic.
"Okay," he said, as Perry's pen scratched behind him. "Maybe Sudanese. Maybe members of a motorcycle gang. Is there anyone else? Anyone in the neighborhood?"
"Some people in the neighborhood are kind to us. Others would like us gone. They stand and stare when we are going to our prayers and say bad things. They call us bloodsuckers and welfare cheats. They call me 'Osama.' But I know of no one in particular."
Burgess realized that everyone in the room was standing except the Imam. Cops weren't the only ones who understood the use of power and position in an interview.
One more question before he moved on to the fire. "What about members of your own community? Someone angry or disaffected? A rival mosque?"
Forgetting that he was not supposed to understand English, the old man spoke without waiting for the translator. "Always you do this," he said. "Someone attacks us and you make it that we have attacked ourselves. Why would we?"
He sat up straighter and said, almost shouting, "You shoot our young men and claim they drew their guns first. It is always what we did. Never what you did." He repeated his earlier question, "Why would we do this to ourselves?"
A good question. Burgess had a few answers. For sympathy. For public relations. For funds to enhance their building. Perhaps a power play in a dispute with the landlord? And often, a power play in a dispute with the city. They held many cards. The race card. Religion card. Immigrant card. For that matter, the young man he assumed the Imam was referring to had had a gun and drawn it in a confrontation with an officer. It wouldn't help this conversation to bring that up, nor to mention the rash of armed robberies of convenience stores and other small businesses.
He wondered if the Irish would have fared better when they came to America if they'd been able to knock back those old Yankees with claims of prejudice. If "you owe u
s because our potato crops got the blight and we had to emigrate or starve" would have brought food and shelter? Everyone in this country except Native Americans had been a refugee or an immigrant at one time. It probably meant he was a bitter old cynic, but he thought that there were more stubborn lumps in the melting pot these days. Guys he knew who worked at the federal level were even more cynical than he.
He moved on. "This building that you use for your mosque... are you the only ones who use it? There are many rooms in that building. Are there other groups who also have offices there or do business there?"
This time, the discussion went on for quite a while. Then the translator said, "We have offices that do community outreach and help us to administer some of our programs to serve our people, but it is only for our members. For our work."
"Do you own the building?" It should have been a straightforward question, but that also brought a flurry of discussion.
At last the Iman said, "No."
"Do you rent?"
He got what felt like a rather reluctant, "Yes."
"And who do you rent the building from?"
"I will have to check my records." Which also seemed odd. Presumably they paid rent to someone.
"You have records of rental payments, and to whom they are made?"
Another nod.
"And you keep those records here? Not at the mosque?"
The Imam nodded, then looked like he wished he hadn't.
"Can you check those records and get back to me tonight?" Burgess offered the Imam his card, which one of the other men collected.
This time, the Imam didn't answer at all.
Perry was taking notes, but Burgess had his own notebook out, too. Now he pretended to consult it. "You know that there was a fire at the mosque earlier tonight."
"We have heard about it."
But you didn't rush over there? What did that mean about the girl in the closet? About what they knew? Was there nothing in that building they wanted to save? In those brief moments in the closet, searching with his flashlight, he'd seen that the shelves were stacked with boxes, and that the boxes were labeled as computer equipment. A lot of computer equipment. New computer equipment.
"All of you heard about the fire?" he asked. They nodded. "But none of you went over there to see what was happening? To assess the damage? To try and save your property?"
He shifted his eyes from face to face, seeking an answer from each one of them. Each man, in turn, said he had not been there.
"Do you have insurance on the building?"
The Imam inclined his head in an affirmative. About this he did not have to check his records.
The boy who had answered the door had crept into the room, hovering quietly by the door, listening. The others didn't seem aware he was there.
Burgess watched their faces closely as he asked his next question. "We found two people inside the building. A young woman and a small baby. They were locked in a closet and could not escape."
He saw visible shock on the boy's face before he slipped out of the room again. The others stirred in agitation, their voices a low murmur that began before the translator had delivered his words.
"They both suffered from severe smoke inhalation. The girl was burned." He watched their faces. Knew Perry was doing the same. "She may live. The baby, a little boy, has died."
One younger man who had stood slightly aloof, taller than the others and with a distinctive scar on his forehead, jerked suddenly, then got himself back under control, and Burgess found himself thinking about collecting DNA and questions of paternity.
"Do any of you know who this girl might have been or what she was doing there?"
The heads shook, almost as one.
"Before I go, could one of you sketch the building for me, and label the rooms and how they are used?"
Another period of shifting and murmuring. Then one of the older men, Omar Ibrahim, said, "I will do it, but it will take some time. Perhaps you could have someone pick it up tomorrow?"
"I'll have someone pick it up later tonight. Time is important. Someone has died. How long do you need?"
It should have taken a few minutes for someone familiar with the place, but they were acting like he was asking them to write their last wills and testaments. He had things to do and places to go. Finally, he interrupted, "I'll be back for it in two hours. I will find you here?"
The man nodded.
"May I have a phone number where I can contact you?"
The man gave the same number the Imam had given. Burgess expected they all had cell phones. These days, everyone had cell phones. But no one was offering those numbers.
He thanked them all for their time, gave the usual speech about getting in touch if they remembered anything else, and passed out his cards. He expected they'd find their way to a trashcan before he was back in his car.
Chapter 4
Their translator seemed in a hurry to be gone, but Burgess detained him at the curb. "How many of them do you think speak English?"
He shrugged. "I expect they all have some English. They're just more comfortable in their own language. Especially when dealing with the police."
"Can you give us any insight about their standing in the community?" When Osman didn't respond, he added, "This isn't the only mosque in Portland. Is this a prominent one? Is Muhammad Ibrahim known as a community leader?"
As part of remaking themselves in their new country, many older Somali men claimed to be tribal elders who spoke for the community. Sometimes it was true. Just as often not. Something that had been difficult for the police, and city leaders—Portland's own elders—to get a handle on. He needed to know as much as he could about this mosque, its structure, its leaders, the population it served, to effectively handle this case, and he already knew, from the way this interview had gone, that getting information would be a challenge.
A slideshow of emotions passed over the translator's face as he weighed his response. He didn't want to venture an opinion. He didn't want to betray his own prejudices. He wanted to continue to work with the police department. Finally he said, "It is a smaller group. A less well-funded one, I understand. There are rumors that—"
But he didn't want to share those rumors. Instead, he said, "You know about hawala?"
"A little bit."
Hawala was the nonbank system many Muslims used to send money back home. Mostly to their families. Sometimes, as the powers that be—FBI and Homeland Security—were discovering, to fund terrorists. As one cynical FBI type had said in a recent meeting, "They come here, they take our money, ship it overseas, and it funds the weapons and explosives they use to kill our boys in other parts of the world. Then, when we start poking around and asking questions, they wave the race card and all the public officials scurry behind their desks and tell us to stop."
It was one truth. But there were many. One of which was that these people genuinely were refugees who had come to this country to make a new life, often after horrific experiences at home. Many of them, especially the women, were enjoying the freedoms life in Maine offered. And the fact was that to be a survivor in a chaotic, often violent culture, you had to be enterprising and look out for yourself and your family. Maybe assimilation was always a slow process. And dealing with human complexity was always a challenge, whoever your witnesses, suspects, and even victims, were.
He was formulating his next question when Perry said, "Joe, there's a—"
"I know," Burgess said quickly.
Perry nodded, shifted his eyes back to Osman. "You don't like 'em much, those people in there, do you, Osman."
The translator was a small, neat man, Stan Perry a big, scary one with a shaved head that gave him a thuggish look. The man squirmed uncomfortably. "I am only a translator. It is not my place to have opinions about these things."
"Right," Perry said. "Just like us. We're only the cops. It's not our place to have opinions. Never mind that a poor helpless baby died tonight because someone locked him
and his mother in a closet and left them there to try and claw their way out before the smoke and fire got 'em. That's not something you need to be worried about, is it?"
Sometimes Burgess missed the days when Perry had had longish, curly hair, and a disarmingly boyish look. It had been useful in getting some people to talk, especially women and kids. This fierce, tough look had its uses, too.
The translator shuffled his feet and glanced toward the house. "Maybe we could talk about this another time. Another place?"
So he, also, knew the boy was listening. "We could," Burgess said. "When and where would be good for you?"
Osman named a coffee shop in South Portland. "You know the place?"
"We can find it. When?"
"Tomorrow morning, perhaps eleven?"
They made the date, then drove away. All the time they'd been talking, they were being watched from behind the curtains, and by the boy crouching in the shrubbery at the edge of the lot, not as quietly as he probably imagined. He'd wanted the boy to listen, and Perry had almost blown it. He couldn't fault Perry for being observant, though.
The boy's reaction inside, and his lurking to eavesdrop, confirmed Burgess's instinct that he should find the boy away from this house and try to have a conversation. The boy clearly knew something about the situation, and Burgess never knew who might be willing to talk. Maybe he'd find the boy at the high school. He looked to be the right age.
His phone rang. Kyle, checking in. "I'm done here. Are we still meeting at 109, 'cuz if we are, I've got to give Michelle a heads-up that I won't be home."
Michelle, Kyle's live-in girlfriend, would be at home with his two girls. Kyle tried hard not to leave Michelle with too much of the childcare for kids that weren't her own, but the detective's schedule was an uncertain one. Michelle wanted marriage, and a baby of her own. Kyle loved her like crazy, but after escaping the marriage from hell, he was gun-shy.
"You learn anything?"