by Ross Pennie
“But KB full of bullshit. Big fat liar.”
Sergeant Bergman threw Zol a what-the-hell? frown as Leila pointed at the syringe and shouted something to her son in Arabic. Zol hoped she was telling him to put the damned thing down before someone got hurt.
Omar shouted back, his tone defiant. He took several steps into the room and waved the weapon in an arc in front of him like a knight with a lance. He narrowed his eyes and pointed the needle at Zol, his right arm fully extended. “KB say we are real friends, not fake Fortnite friends. He make promise on grandmother grave. But he break it.”
“I’m sorry, Omar,” Zol said, acutely aware that the kid and the needle were three short steps away from his eye. “What promise did my son break?”
The boy spat on the floor. When he looked up, his cheeks were wet with tears. “You know. He tell you the secret. He tell you about our garage, and now you come . . . you come for put my mother in jail.”
Leila said something brief and sharp to her son in Arabic. He mumbled a brief response, then swept the room with his teary gaze and raised the syringe above his head. “In here, three drugs. My father bring them. From the hospital. He hide them. But I find them and look on Google. They used for execution purpose.” He looked directly at Zol. “Capital punishment.”
His mother, utterly aghast, tried to speak, but no words came out. She threw up her arms in defeat then dropped them and sobbed into her palms.
Tasha eased toward Leila and sat on the chair next to her, the Tyvek rustling with every step. Tasha’s hands shook as she reached out to comfort the woman, but her eyes stayed clear. And resolute.
The officers, knees flexed, hands gripping their pistols, looked poised to pounce at the first sign of weakness from their prey.
Omar waved the syringe again and filled the room with his hate-filled gaze. “KB, he know about this. I tell him on Facebook.” He studied the syringe as if verifying its integrity, then added, “Anybody want, they can ask him.”
Half a second later, the boy lunged, jabbing the needle through Zol’s Tyvek suit and into his biceps. The large-bore point hit bone and hurt like hell as the kid jammed the barrel against Zol’s arm with the entire weight of his upper body.
Omar locked eyes with the sergeant, raised his left hand, and slowly aimed his thumb at the plunger. “You police, you leave now. If you take my mother . . . I execute KB father. Only fair. Like Fortnite — one v. one.”
No one moved.
Every eye was riveted on the teenager’s thumb.
Zol scanned the room and forced himself to think. If the worst happened, could any of these people do a proper job of mouth-to-mouth? Did police detectives take CPR training? Tasha had taken a basic life-support course a long time ago. Would she remember enough of it to keep him alive until the paramedics arrived? And would they know enough about Omar’s lethal cocktail to ventilate Zol until the paralyzing drugs wore off? And what about Leila? She’d likely be better at mouth-to-mouth than any of the others, but would she do it?
Zol’s arm burned, the sweat poured off his chin, his legs felt like rubber. If Omar had somehow found some potassium chloride and added it to the mix, Zol knew he could be dead before he hit the floor.
Why the hell had Max not told him about Omar’s lethal cocktail?
Movement flashed at the doorway. A figure shot into the room. Omar’s left knee buckled beneath him. The boy went down, and . . . holy shit! . . . a prosthetic foot scuttled across the floor.
Standing astride the moaning teen and struggling to catch his breath was Zol’s barber, Hosam, the syringe now in his fist. Zol massaged his sore arm and wondered how much of its contents had shot into his biceps. In a few seconds, he could be down beside the boy. Out cold.
Hosam glowered at his wife, and in what sounded like Arabic, let fly a string of invective that echoed across the bare walls of the garage.
Leila gasped then mumbled something into her hand as her fearful gaze twitched between her furious husband and wide-eyed son.
Hosam looked around the room, tears threatening to flood his crumpled face. “Jamila is dead. That sweet girl from Hama City, she is dead. Just like our dear, dear Farah.”
Zol caught Tasha’s eye. Jamila’s death was news to them. “I’m so sorry,” Tasha said. “Did she pass away this morning?”
“Her father, he called me from the hospital. Sobbing an ocean of heartbreak. Minutes before, he watched his daughter’s cardiac monitor flatline for the fourth and final time. The parvovirus, it had invaded her heart, and she battled at the brink of life all night long.”
Hosam glared at his wife. “That makes it four of your patients, Leila — four of them dead.”
Tasha straightened her back and settled her palm against her lower abdomen. Zol felt a string of heartbeats catch in his throat. “And did Fadi tell you about Iman and Yara?” Tasha said.
A flash of surprise lit Hosam’s face. “They are from Damascus. Like us, newcomers. And living close by. But . . .” He thought for a moment then said, “Of course, Miss Sharma, you have their names on your list.”
“Fadi told you he’d seen them admitted last night to intensive care, didn’t he?” Tasha said. She touched Leila’s forearm. “And, of course, you know them as well, Leila. When was their last appointment with you?”
Before Leila could respond, Hosam shouted, “I told her, weeks ago, she must suspend her practice.”
Leila got to her feet, her stance suddenly defiant. “Those twins, they were in terrible pain. No other dentist would touch them without guarantee of payment. I had to help them.”
Hosam shook the syringe. Zol tensed at the thought of the needle flying off the damned thing like a rogue dart. “That’s why I came home early. I had to —”
“You had to what?” said Sergeant Bergman. “Bury your tracks deeper this time?”
“Ya Rab, no! Upon the name of the Profit, you must believe me,” Hosam said, looking beseechingly at Zol. “I knew we must . . .” His voice trailed off as the words choked in his throat.
“Spit it out, Hosam,” Zol said.
“I . . . I knew we must put aside our selfish goals.” His face dissolved as he looked at Leila. “Even if my wife might . . . might be sent to jail.”
Bergman holstered her gun but motioned to her colleague to keep his drawn. She threw her shoulders back. “You expect us to believe you were going to come clean?” Even without her weapon drawn, the detective sergeant was a commanding presence. “You two have been running a cozy little operation in this garage for some time. Why would you give it up?”
Leila crossed her arms against her chest. “Our selfish goals, they are not.” She thrust an accusing finger at her husband. “They are his. He is the one wanting thousands of dollars for licensing exams.” She fixed Hosam with a laser-sharp gaze. “It is you that is hungry for status as surgical hot-shot.”
Hosam, still standing astride his terrified but immobile son, swept the sweat off his brow with the back of his left hand. “It is not about status. I was born to be a surgeon. My place, it is in the operating theatre. You said so yourself. Many times.”
“And you said no problem with me working quietly without license.” She held up her left hand and spread its bare fingers. “You traded my ring for” — she swept the room with her outstretched arms — “all this gear. And said not to worry about foolish paperwork because no one will find out.”
Hosam’s face went white. He turned to Bergman. “But that was before. As soon as Fadi told me about Jamila and the twins, I raced home to tell Leila we had to go to Dr. Szabo. You can ask Ibrahim. He gave me money from the till. Two twenties. So I could jump into a taxi instead of waiting for the bus.” He pulled a loose twenty-dollar bill from his pocket and held it out. “Here is the change.”
Leila sank onto her chair. “Ibrahim? He knows? Since when?”
“Since m
inutes ago only,” Hosam said. “I told him I was coming to collect you, and we were going to Dr. Szabo’s office as fast as we could get there.”
Zol felt the room swim and the lights darken. The feeling went out of his legs as they collapsed beneath him. He heard a crack as his shoulder hit the concrete floor.
Chapter 55
“Seriously, Doctor?” asked Hosam. “A pair of old rubber boots?”
“Three pairs, as it turned out,” said Dr. Szabo, dipping his chin while Hosam ran the clippers up the nape of the good doctor’s neck.
The man was getting married tomorrow, so this had to be the best low fade he had ever had. It was the least Hosam could do after Dr. Szabo had smoothed things over for Omar by not insisting that assault charges be laid. Still, the boy was slated to appear before a juvenile court judge who might think otherwise. He had retreated to his room and was still refusing to attend school.
The province’s Royal College of Dental Surgeons had sealed Leila’s dental clinic until it reviewed her credentials. Depending on the outcome of the legal proceedings, they might allow her to serve in a disadvantaged community under close supervision. Or they might come down hard and prevent her from practising anywhere. Hosam continued to be flabbergasted that she had imported the ketamine spray behind his back. And devastated that she had treated the two sisters from Damascus after promising to suspend her operation. Yes, those girls had been in terrible pain, needed immediate extractions, and did not know where else to turn. But that did not negate the fact that the consequences had been horrendous.
Everyone who mattered agreed that there was no criminal intent in Leila’s actions. The Crown Prosecutor was of the opinion that Dr. Szabo’s hastily obtained search warrant would probably not stand up in court. Consequently, the Crown decided not to charge her with the illegal importation of a Schedule I drug but was considering a lesser charge: the administration of a noxious substance. Her court-appointed lawyer was pushing for a charge of mischief, to which she was ready to plead guilty. She was no longer facing jail time or deportation, which was a huge relief. But the episode and its aftermath still clung to them like a rotten smell. How long that smell would affect their marriage, he did not know. He had consulted Omar Khayyam, but the poet had little to say about the complicated topic of forgiveness.
The polio story was not without good news: the bus driver from Omar’s school, the Filipina nanny, the lady from the nail salon, and the twin sisters from Damascus were now breathing on their own and expected to recover. Why some of the polio victims died and the rest recovered remained a mystery.
“Yes,” said Dr. Szabo, “three pairs of dirty boots from a single Guatemalan village caused a lot of heartaches. And damn near gave me a Zika virus infection. But I struck it lucky on that score.”
“The Customs people, they did not check the luggage when those men arrived for the growing season?”
Beneath the cape, Dr. Szabo’s shoulders shrugged. His right one did not seem to be paining him anymore. The hairline crack in the proximal humerus had warranted a few weeks in a sling but had healed. The heat inside Dr. Szabo’s Tyvek suit, not Omar’s lethal cocktail, had caused him to faint onto Leila’s floor.
“What would Customs be on the lookout for?” Dr. Szabo asked. “Mosquito eggs are pretty well microscopic. And Zika virus even more so.”
“But how could the eggs be alive after such a long trip?”
“The rubber protects them. And when the right conditions of warmth and moisture come along, the eggs hatch into larvae.”
“Which are maturing into adults and spreading Zika to my son and the other innocent people who are visiting that flower nursery?”
Dr. Szabo lifted his head and cleared his throat. Hosam understood the message. Omar was not exactly innocent. The boy had a lot to learn about good citizenship.
There was one more thing to which Hosam needed a definite answer. It had been keeping him awake at night for the past month. The guilt and the uncertainty gnawed like a cancer. “Are you having any results from Leila’s spray? Is it containing the parvovirus?”
“I’m afraid so, Hosam. Winnipeg got the results back to us this week. They isolated the same Parvo-W from that nasal preparation as from the polio patients.”
Hosam switched off the clippers and laid them on the worktable. “Leila and I have been expecting that result.” He grabbed a towel and wiped the sweat from his palms. “We are extremely sorry —”
“I know, Hosam, I know. You’ve apologized many times. But if there is a silver lining, we were able to alert our colleague Dr. Khan that the same ketamine spray, manufactured in his home town of Lahore, was likely responsible for their outbreak as well.”
The polio outbreak in Pakistan involved so many people that it had made the international news. “I understand they are having a great many cases.”
“Over a hundred,” said Dr. Szabo. “Ten times the number we had to deal with.”
“Still . . . it should not have happened here.”
“Have you heard of a rather strange, cat-like animal called a civet? We don’t have them in North America, but they’re found in many parts of Asia.”
He shook his head and picked up the cordless trimmer. “Perhaps the Middle East is too dry for them.”
“They’re nocturnal and like to live in people’s homes between the ceiling and the roof.”
“They are probably leaving their urine and feces everywhere.”
Dr. Szabo smiled then gestured toward his friend, Dr. Hamish Wakefield, who was in Ibrahim’s chair having his flattop trimmed to perfection. “At the suggestion of my best man over there, Dr. Khan visited the factory which made the ketamine spray. He found animal droppings on the floor. After some persuasion, the plant manager allowed Dr. Khan to set up an infrared surveillance camera. It turned out that the civets were leaving their nests above the ceiling and exploring the factory’s equipment during the night.”
“Looking for food?”
“I guess.”
“They carry parvovirus, these civets?”
“You bet,” said Dr. Szabo, “and they touched, licked, and urinated on virtually everything in the plant.”
In her own way, Hosam realized, Leila had helped bring a stop to an extensive polio epidemic in Pakistan. There was irony hidden in there somewhere. And perhaps a little comfort.
Dr. Szabo took in the redecorated barbershop. “Looks like the new decor has been good for business, Hosam.”
The shop’s posters of the Colosseum, Piazza San Marco, and the Dolomite Mountains left no doubt about the heritage of the new owner.
“We are looking for a fourth barber. The boss is wanting him to be Italian, like Luigi who started last week.”
“Looks like Luigi brought a lot of his customers with him.”
Hosam smiled but said nothing. He switched on the trimmer and worked carefully around Dr. Szabo’s ears.
A few clients loyal to a mediocre barber had not revived the shop. The new owner, Hosam’s influential client, Giuseppe Michelini (Mr. Joe), alias Mr. Smith, was its saviour. The new boss — never to be addressed as Il Proppo — let it be known among his colleghi that they should support his new venture. In a show of triumph after eliminating the Scarpellinos’ key players, Mr. Joe purchased the strip mall housing the beleaguered Paradise Barbers. When the Michelinis’ lawyers processed the paperwork for the new investment, they discovered that the barbershop’s leaseholder was a recently murdered woman named Saramin Wassef. As she had no descendants and was in no position to pay the rent, Mr. Joe took over the shop as a pet project.
Hosam shuddered as he pictured Saramin’s crimson lips and Madonna locks but could not help smiling as he watched Ibrahim massage shampoo into Dr. Wakefield’s scalp in preparation for the final sculpting of his flattop. Ibrahim had been a new man — smiling and full of amusing stories — ever since they had discover
ed that the Caliph was nothing more than an odious fiction. Saramin had invented the one-eyed monster to control her ragtag mob. Runaway militiamen would never have accepted orders from a woman. Not even in their wildest nightmares.
I’m investing in you, Mr. Joe had told Hosam. You helped us get another jump on the Scarpos and saved my life. And now I’m investing in yours. First as my barber, and later as my surgeon.
When Hosam expressed his wariness of gifts that came with hefty strings attached — the Trojans and their famous horse came to mind — Mr. Joe laughed and said, You have nothing to worry about, mio amico. The only favours you will return to me and my family will take place in the operating room.
Hosam smiled to himself, picked up a comb, and exchanged clippers once more. “You are ready for tomorrow, Dr. Szabo?”
“I picked up my tuxedo from Mr. Gupta yesterday.”
“Custom made, I am trusting?”
“My new mother-in-law would never forgive me for presenting myself in anything less. I hope she likes the colour.”
“Yes?”
“Midnight blue. Not quite as dark as navy, and with a subtle pattern in the weave that you can see only in certain lights.”
That is what he liked about this man. He believed in the power of nuance. “And the boys? They will be serving in the wedding party?”
“Natasha got them fixed up at Hudson’s Bay. Nothing custom made, but they do look sharp in navy. They’ll be here for their haircuts any minute.”
“Is it your tradition not to see the bride’s gown until the wedding day?”
Dr. Szabo chuckled. “You’ve got that right.” With a broad smile, he caught the eye of the slim young man coming through the front door. “Good, here’s Jesse now. One of my employees. He proved to be a creative detective on . . . on a challenging case we had recently. Unfortunately, his talents went unsung.”
“Oh?” Hosam was not surprised about the unsung talents. The boy did not look like a detective. He was wearing long earrings made from feathers and carrying a scuffed backpack and a camera case. His stringy hair needed a proper cut.