by Sue Star
He waved them to a pair of sofas. “Gulsen will bring the tea momentarily.”
Anna sat down. “How nice of you, Mr. Aydenli, to ask us here.”
“Ahmet, please.”
“Ah, yes, Ahmet. Where did you learn English? It’s very good.”
“In an English-speaking university in Istanbul. It’s quite popular among Turks who admire the west.”
“Such as yourself?”
He hesitated, and a moment of awkwardness touched the air. She smoothed a pleat in her skirt, and finally he said, “It’s a complicated issue. My school was a better choice than the War College.” His smile revealed more amusement than happiness. “That is where my father wanted me to go.”
“But you resisted.”
“Yes. I did not wish to become another military man like my father. He served the last Sultan, you know, as military attaché to Berlin.”
“He must’ve been disappointed that you did not follow in his footsteps.”
“He never knew. He died several years earlier, fighting Mustafa Kemal.”
Priscilla piped up. “That’s Atatürk.”
He nodded. “Kemal didn’t take the name of Atatürk until later, not until its meaning came true: ‘Father of Turks’.”
Some Turks hadn’t wanted to be rid of the Sultan, Anna realized, and apparently Ahmet’s father was one of them. Just as she was wondering what kind of response to make that would sound neutral, maybe something about her impending Turkish lessons, Ahmet’s attention switched to a doorway.
“Here is Gulsen now,” he said, springing to his feet with an alacrity that made Anna wonder if she’d brought up painful memories for him.
The USOM bulletins warned against saying anything negative about Atatürk, and now Anna had practically made Ahmet confess that his own family opposed the Father of Turks.
While Anna worried about her blunder, Ahmet supervised Gulsen and her pouring of the tea into two glass cups. Smiling shyly at Anna, she passed the cups to the adults and then sat down in her puffy pants next to Priscilla. The two girls giggled and looked as if they were about to pop with excitement.
“Well, go on,” Ahmet said with a laugh at the girls. “Run along and play. I know you’re more anxious to play than you are to have tea.”
Linking arms, they skipped out of the room.
Anna felt grateful that Gulsen distracted Priscilla from her recent glimpses of death. No child should have to witness such a trauma. She wondered about Gulsen’s loss of her mother and how difficult it would be to accept a new one, a woman forced on her. Not willing to risk another blunder, she said nothing and took a sip of her tea, flavored with jasmine.
Ahmet finally spoke, breaking the comfortable silence. “It is a new world we face, is it not?”
She agreed, remembering that Yaziz had said something similar in his office. “How is the investigation going? You said you’d have your office check into it. Have they found anything yet?”
Ahmet flicked his head backwards in the no gesture, then set his cup down and rose slowly. He looked tired. Fingering his worry beads behind his back, he crossed the room to the heavy drapes covering a window. “It will have to wait until Monday, thanks to Atatürk.”
“Monday? Why Monday?”
“Kemal gave us the western weekend, even though not everyone wishes to observe the days he chose for us. Still, my office follows the Eternal Leader’s dictum. By now, we Turks have grown accustomed to the imposition of western ways on our lives.”
Was there a note of sarcasm to his tone of voice, Anna wondered, or was it her own disorientation that was affecting her? “Anyway, I thought Detective Yaziz was already working on the case. Only last night, he—”
“Veli Bey is too valuable a resource to waste on such a case of tshinghiane.”
“Tshinghiane?” She stumbled over imitating his pronunciation.
“Turkish gypsies. They are not important enough to deserve the talents of a man like Veli Yaziz. He is koreli, a veteran of Korea.” Ahmet lifted one end of the drapes and peered through the crack. “But I did not invite you here today to hear myself talk.” He stood at the window several long minutes contemplating the scene outside. “There was quite a lot of activity last night. I suppose you attended the party across the street?”
Anna nodded. “You mean at the Wingates?” He probably didn’t mean the general’s gathering of men. “Do you know the Wingates?”
“Yes, but they don’t often invite anyone outside their circle to one of their parties. I couldn’t help but notice the arrival of many police last night. I gather the party did not end happily?”
“You don’t know what happened?”
“I am nothing more than an administrator, as I told you, and my office is closed. You will have to tell me the gossip.”
Anna shifted in her seat. Well then, she had been summoned here, not invited to a neighborly tea. Still, she always cooperated, and so she told him the story of the photographer’s death, and how they supposed it was a sudden heart attack. She left out her opinion: murder. And of course she left out the parts about Rainer.
His face paled throughout her tale of the night before, and he thumbed his worry beads. When she was finally done, he said, “But I know him. Young Emin is the brother to one of my employees in the rug shop that I own.” He dropped his string of beads into his trouser pocket, strode across the room, and glanced at his wristwatch. “No, I can’t believe it. A fine, young man in excellent health. It’s just not possible that he would fall dead like that. I shall have to go to the shop. You understand?”
“Yes, of course.” She stood. “The girls will be disappointed to interrupt their play. Perhaps Gulsen could come home with Priscilla and me?”
“No, no, no.” More finger drumming on his upper lip. “I’ve got a better idea. Our maid Bahar will stay with them. Here. Why don’t you come along with me? I would be honored to show you my rug shop.”
* * * * *
Yaziz palmed the broken blue beads as he stood in the shade of the covered passageway. Above him rose the crooked building where the Alekci family lived. Before him, the lone eşek slept on its feet, twitching in the sun. Already the sun scorched the air, and the day had hardly begun.
From the sound of women’s agitated voices streaming through the open windows above his head, Yaziz thought the Alekcis had been up a while, too. With one last glance at the eşek that wore no blue beads round its neck, Yaziz pocketed the broken ones he held in his palm and headed for the wooden stairs.
A withered woman with no teeth let Yaziz in through the broken front door of the second-floor apartment. She wore fear in her eyes and a forgotten head scarf falling around her shoulders.
“You have news of my niece?” she asked.
He lifted an eyebrow and shrugged. Something else he did not know.
“Meryem hasn’t come home all night,” she said in a wavering voice, on the verge of tears.
Yaziz pulled out his notebook. Flipped it open. Meryem, missing when the gypsy died, had led Yaziz to Kavaklidere last night, where Emin had died. Now, she was missing again.
“What happened to your door?” He nodded at the splintered hole beside the doorknob.
The old woman wailed instead of answering.
“The eşek in the yard below,” he said, faltering, “does it belong to Meryem?”
The wailer sniffled, quivering her knobby jaw. “T-to her,” she managed to say. “And to Umit, too. One of them has never owned anything that the other does not share.” Then, overcome, she fled the room, leaving Yaziz standing there, staring at a small boy with inquisitive eyes. He was tall enough to be five or six years old but skinny enough to be much younger.
“A bad man came and broke the door,” the boy said.
“Did you see him?” Yaziz asked.
The boy nodded. “But auntie was already gone. I think he was looking for her.”
“What’s your name?”
“Mustafa.”
“
What did the bad man look like?” Yaziz asked, his pencil poised over a fresh sheet of paper in his notebook.
“Rich.”
“He looked rich? How could you tell?”
“From his coins.” Yaziz supposed that everyone would look rich from the perspective of this boy.
“Mustafa!” said a woman—another one—from the doorway into the second room of the apartment. She held a bald baby in her arms. “Go play with your sister.”
The boy gave Yaziz one more bashful look, then slunk away, past his mother, into the other room. The woman with the baby stepped closer.
“You have found my husband’s killer?” she said.
Yaziz jerked his head back. No.
She choked on a sob. “My sister-in-law is dead, too, isn’t she? Is that what you’ve come to tell us?”
Instead of confessing his ignorance, he asked, “Where did she go last night?” He already knew where she went. It was after the disruption of the American’s scream that he’d lost her again.
The widow shrugged. “Who knows where? Umit used to go with her sometimes. Meryem had to go alone last night.”
“Did your husband never tell you about their night-time business?”
“He said they read fortunes for the gadje. That’s what gypsies do.”
“Do you know whose fortunes they read?”
“As long as the customer has money, it doesn’t matter who they are. They’re all the same.”
Yaziz pulled out the broken beads. “Do you recognize these?”
She shielded herself with the baby and let out a soft gasp. “Where did you find them?”
“At Anit Kabir. The day your husband was murdered there. These beads belonged to your eşek, didn’t they?”
“I...I don’t know. They all look alike. Maybe they belonged to the ox that was stolen last night, from the yard below, right under our neighbor’s nose, the baker.”
Yaziz jotted down notes, but there was nothing he could do about those problems just then. “Meryem and the eşek were with your husband that day he was murdered, weren’t they?”
“They were supposed to be working their rounds.”
“And now they’re gone.”
“You don’t think...but she couldn’t have killed him.”
“Did your husband and sister-in-law take the eşek with them at night when they read fortunes?”
“Sometimes.”
“Do you know why these beads are broken?”
“The beads have nothing to do with reading fortunes.”
“They would crush, don’t you think, if someone stepped on them?”
“I suppose so, but what does that have to do with my husband’s murder?”
“Think, Bayan Alekci. Who were your husband’s customers?”
“I know nothing.”
“Who else might know, if you do not? It is important. If we are ever to track your husband’s killer.”
“You think where Meryem went last night to read fortunes is where my husband’s killer was?”
He shrugged again. He doubted the general had done it, but he could not account for where the sister had gone after she was done at the general’s. After he’d lost her. “How did they find their customers?”
“You think Meryem knows who killed Umit?”
“Yes,” he lied. “We must find her, if we are to find your husband’s killer. Where did they get these beads?”
“Well... I suppose you could ask Ozturk Bey.”
“Ozturk Bey?”
“Yes. He’s a merchant near the bazaar.”
“I know where he is.” Yaziz tensed. “What is your connection to him?”
Her eyes widened, and she shrank backwards a step or two. “Nothing. He’s a wise one. A hoça. He knows everything.”
“He’s not a hoça, Bayan. There is no place for such religious men today in Atatürk’s Republic. But Ozturk Bey does sell beads like these. Is that where these came from?”
“Yes! Yes! That’s how we know him. That’s all.”
Clearly, that wasn’t all. Yaziz pocketed his notebook and took his leave. He’d already thought of Ozturk Bey while on his roof that morning, as a possible source of the opium bribe. And if it hadn’t come from him, then that old poppy farmer would know where else it had come from.
But what he hadn’t understood, until the matter of the beads just now, was why Ozturk Bey should have an interest in seeing the police drop the investigation of a gypsy. He still did not know why, but for some reason, Ozturk Bey was protecting this family.
That’s why he’d given them blue beads. When the widow saw them broken, she’d known her protection had shattered as well as her world.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
In the leather interior of Ahmet’s car, a white Mercedes recently imported, Anna felt a growing unease. Aside from the events of the last two days, something else wasn’t quite right. She couldn’t put her finger on it.
Ahmet’s knuckles stood out against the grip-wrapped steering wheel. They sped a bit too fast, in her opinion, down the hill and onto Atatürk Boulevard.
It didn’t feel right to head off somewhere like this, without Priscilla. Or her purse. She’d only needed the house key, when they’d left to call on Ahmet, and she’d tucked it in the pocket of her skirt. Next week, when Priscilla would go away to school, Anna would have plenty of time to explore. Not yet.
She leaned back in her seat and tried to relax. “You said your father was military attaché in Berlin. That must’ve been interesting. Were you there, too?”
Ahmet chuckled softly. “My mother was German. I grew up there, until the Sultan needed Father on the home front.”
“After your father’s death, you returned to Germany with your mother?”
“No, she went back alone. I am Turkish, not German. I stayed on here with my aunt and uncle.”
“And became both a merchant and head of police. An interesting combination.”
“I am not the head of police.”
“Administration, then, that oversees the police. Does that answer your German half? And selling rugs, your Turkish half? How do you manage both sides at the same time?”
He took his eyes off the street. Glanced at her. She watched the road for him as they sailed past a donkey laden with sticks.
“One job is good for the other,” he said, slowly turning his attention back to his driving. “There are official matters with the Americans from time to time, and the rug shop allows me to establish a better...how would you call it? ‘Rapport,’ I think. Yes, that is it.”
“Did you have a rapport with my sister? Did she buy her rugs from you?”
“Yes, she is a good customer, as are many of the Americans.”
“I expect you know a lot of them. Fran Lafferty, perhaps.”
Ahmet laughed, which helped to break the strain of nervous energy in the air. “Fran? A smart woman. I will send for her as the representative from your embassy to advise me of the accident last night.”
Anna stared out the window at the palatial compounds that lined the street. “Regarding those accidents,” she said, “would you say that they’re normal? Detective Yaziz says that trouble seems to follow me around.”
“Yaziz said that?” This time his eyebrows arched to sharp points as he glanced at her.
With his curiosity aroused, Anna had to say something. So she told him about the incident in the shop the day before, when someone had tried to steal her purse after hitting her over the head.
Another coincidence, she thought, that the detective had mysteriously rushed to her rescue. Three times, now, Yaziz had intervened for her.
“Wherever you have large crowds,” Ahmet said when she was done, “there is always a greater chance for crime. But they’re thieves, not killers. As long as you are careful, you will remain safe. We are a safe country. It is only those troublemakers who wish to upset the status quo that we have to worry about.”
“Who are they? I understand there’s talk of a coup.�
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He whipped around to look at her, even though they’d joined more traffic of taxis and buses the closer they approached to downtown. “Where did you hear such a preposterous claim?”
“At the party last night.” She waved away her words as casual chatter. “It was just gossip, which you said you wanted to hear. I thought you could tell me if it’s true or not.”
A sour moodiness descended over him as he turned his attention back to the road. “We will have elections next May, and then we will see if Menderes remains in power as Prime Minister.”
They drove on in silence, a queasy ache spreading at the pit of her stomach. She wondered what had provoked his apparent unhappiness—Menderes, or the need for elections? Or was it something else? Something that concerned her presence. She’d made a mistake, coming along today, and now she wasn’t sure how to recover.
Downtown, buildings squeezed closer together, taking on a bland, gray sameness. Ahmet turned off the boulevard onto a narrow side street, a more crowded place. Blocky buildings towered over them as they sailed past a neon sign for the Republic News.
“What do the newspapers report?” she asked. “There must be some news of unrest if there’s talk of a coup, whether or not it’s true.”
“It’s not true. Not even the brother of my future wife believes it is true, and he is a troublemaker who works back there.”
“At that newspaper office we just passed? Is he a reporter?” She wondered if Emin had ever worked there too as a photographer.
Ahmet scowled. “You will find no information from him, because there will not be a coup. Now then, you can rest more easily.”
If only she could. She remembered that Paul and his friends had said the night before something about a press law that restricted reporters from reporting anything negative. Hints of a coup. Still, she wondered what people in the business of digging up information—reporters, like Ahmet’s future brother-in-law, or perhaps photo journalists, like Emin—what they might’ve found out. Was that why Emin had died?
Perhaps she shouldn’t dig too hard for answers to the troubling questions that engulfed her. She could become the next victim. Her breath caught in her throat.