The Fourth Assassin: An Omar Yussef Mystery

by Matt Beynon Rees

  When he turned off the water, he heard footsteps on the stairs. He went into the living room, fearing that the man in the black coat had returned. But the steps were casual and loud. It must be the police, he thought. Looking down at his brown trousers, he wondered if the bloodstains at the knees were obvious. He became suddenly afraid that he might be blamed for the murder. His hands may have left blood on his face before he washed them, so he removed his glasses and rubbed at his brow with the cuff of his windbreaker.

  He put his spectacles back on and saw Ala in the doorway.

  “Dad, peace be upon you.” The boy smiled, opened his arms, and approached Omar Yussef. The immobility of his father’s face stopped him. “What’s that on your trousers, Dad?”

  “My boy, you’re alive.” Omar Yussef stroked the light curls of Ala’s black hair and felt the thin bristles of his mustache. At five feet seven, Ala was only an inch taller than his father, but he seemed to tower over the nervous, hunched man before him.

  “Thanks be to Allah.” Ala grasped his father’s elbows and kissed his cheeks. “But what do you mean? Are you making a joke? Some parts of Brooklyn are dangerous, but Bay Ridge isn’t such a bad neighborhood.”

  “My son, there’s a body in your bedroom.”

  Ala gripped Omar Yussef’s arms harder. “What? Dad, be serious. What’s happening?”

  Omar Yussef gestured toward his son’s bedroom and lowered his head. The young man stepped into his room.

  “May Allah have mercy upon him,” Ala mumbled. “It’s Nizar.”

  “My son, I thought it might be you.” Omar Yussef shuddered as he came to the doorway.

  “That shirt.” Ala’s voice, edged with tears, broke. “Those shoes, he was very proud of them. He called them his ‘Armani boots.’ They’re expensive. It’s Nizar.” He took Omar Yussef’s hand, still pink and warm from the scrubbing, squeezed it with tremulous fingers, then turned back to his dead friend with glassy eyes.

  Omar Yussef let himself fall to the sofa and tried to find a way to sit that would hide the blood on his trousers. He covered his lap with a cushion. It was embroidered red on black with the geometric tribal pattern customary in Bethlehem. He ran his forefinger over the thick stitching and wondered if Maryam had made it for her son. He closed his eyes and tried to visualize his wife, but Nizar’s face came to him instead. My old pupil, he thought. My dear boy.

  Ala came out of the bedroom. The tears and the trembling were gone. His face was stern. Omar Yussef thought he detected pity and hate in his son’s narrowed, hazel eyes.

  “The son of a whore,” the boy said. “Rashid. He finally did it. He killed Nizar.”

  “No, he was his best friend.”

  Ala shoved the front door hard. While its slam still echoed, he shouted, “Things have changed since we were all together at the Frères School, Dad.”

  “Even so, murder? What could’ve driven Rashid to something like that?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “I won’t believe it. You can’t be sure of a thing like that.”

  Ala turned to the window, pulled back a corner of the net curtain, and looked down at the gray street. His jaw stiffened, and his voice was sharp when he spoke. “He made it as clear as he could.”

  “What do you mean?”

  The young man rubbed the thin curtain between his fingers. “The Veiled Man.”

  “What?”

  Ala’s eyes stayed on the window, furious. “That bit of material placed over the pillow, where Nizar’s head would’ve been. It’s a veil. Like the veil worn by a woman.”

  “But a veiled man?”

  “You know as well as I do, Dad. You taught us about it in history class.”

  “The veil worn in the messianic stories by the traitorous man, the enemy of the Mahdi.”

  “That’s it. When our messiah, the Mahdi, comes, the man who opposes him is supposed to wear a veil, and the Mahdi will battle him and kill him.”

  A siren sounded nearby.

  “What does that have to do with Rashid?” Omar Yussef asked.

  Ala shook his head. “Rashid and Nizar—”

  The siren drew closer.

  “Little Palestine isn’t as I’ve led you to believe, Dad,” Ala said. “America is very harsh. No one cares about my computer degree from Bethlehem University. I couldn’t find a decent job. It’s been the same for Rashid and Nizar. We’re just another gang of Arabs to the Americans, terrorists or supporters of terrorism, anti-American bigots who deserve bigoted treatment in return.” He slapped his hands against his hips and let his shoulders drop. “I’m not a programmer. I work as a computer salesman in a shop run by another Palestinian guy. To make ends meet, I drive a cab a few nights a week. Rashid and Nizar drive for the same company. I share this apartment with them because I can’t afford a place of my own.”

  “What does that have to do with this? How does that prove that Rashid killed Nizar?”

  “I’ve been here with them, close to them. I know how difficult life was for them here in America, and I know what went on between them.”

  “Which is what?”

  Ala rubbed his hand across his eyes and let the curtain drop over the window. “The police are here,” he said.

  Chapter 3

  The crime-scene technicians called out details about the body, its position and condition, its distance from the objects surrounding it. Their vowels were nasal and their tongues slapped distorted consonants into their front teeth, so that it was hard for Omar Yussef to understand them. Slumped in the corner of the couch, he wondered how he might explain to them why the dead boy had fled Bethlehem for Brooklyn. His hometown seemed distant and would surely be alien to these detectives. He feared they might misinterpret whatever he said for the worse, as those confronted by foreign situations usually do.

  At the other end of the couch, Ala no longer appeared to be listening to the police. He stared at the scratches on the floorboards with his jaw clamped angrily. What is it that he knows? Omar Yussef thought. How can he be so sure this killing was the work of his roommate? He fought a resentful urge to lash out at someone for causing this disturbance to his visit. Despite himself, he blurted out, “Ala, what’ve you become involved in?” He instantly wanted to apologize, but Ala’s eyes were bitter and forbidding.

  Omar Yussef tugged at his spectacles and sighed. “Do you remember,” he asked, “how Nizar used to tease Father Michel at the Frères School? How he used to imitate his accented Arabic?”

  Ala touched his fingertips to his brow, covering his face and refusing to engage his father. But when Omar Yussef mimicked the shrug and pout of the Catholic priest who had taught the boy French as a teenager, his son giggled and joined in. “The Father used to say, ‘My boy, if I wished to offend you, I would call you a heretical Protestant, but instead I will stick to the facts and say you are merely a stupid child, eh?’ Nizar impersonated him perfectly.”

  “Nizar was always the funniest boy.” Omar Yussef’s gaze was distant, lost in enchanted memories.

  “When Father Michel was sick one time, Nizar took him a pot of his mother’s mouloukhiyeh to warm him,” Ala said.

  “Yes, his mockery was always loving.”

  Their laughter subsided, both of them drifting through their reminiscences of the man whose body lay in the next room.

  A short, dark-skinned woman with straight black hair spraying across her narrow shoulders hurried through the front door. She pushed a headband back from her forehead and adjusted her round glasses before she unbuttoned her long blue overcoat.

  Behind her, the doorway filled with the heavy shoulders of a tall Arab man. His features seemed familiar to Omar Yussef. Bulky and jowly above a thick neck, his head tapered to a small crown, the hair shaved almost away. His lower lip drooped, and he breathed through his mouth. He wore a trim black goatee, and his eyes were dark, languid, and hard.

  “They sent the token Arab cop to handle the dead Arab,” Ala said.

  Om
ar Yussef looked at the boy, appalled by his disrespect and hostility. He’s had a terrible shock, he thought, but there’s something more that’s eating him. He’s covering it with a shield of aggression.

  “Not just an Arab cop,” the big man said in a voice that was low and rasping. “I’m Palestinian, and I’m not here to handle the dead Arab, as you put it. We have specialists in the dead, Arab or not. I’m here to handle you.”

  He’ll understand our language and recognize the nuances in our statements, Omar Yussef thought. I hope that’ll make him forgiving of my son’s anger.

  “What’re we looking at?” the woman called to the nearest uniformed officer. Her voice was high-pitched and sharp.

  “The victim is back in the bedroom there, Lieutenant,” the officer said. “Should we, you know, inform the FBI?”

  “The Feds?” She stared at him.

  “The victim’s Arab,” the big detective said. “That’s what he means.”

  “Yeah, that’s it.” The patrolman nodded.

  “You think he’s some kind of suicide terrorist?” The Arab detective fixed him with the mirthless sneer of an imam at an orgy. “Did he cut off his head and throw it at someone? Maybe he kept a stockpile of illegal hand-grenades in his cheeks and one of them went off by accident.”

  The patrolman scraped his foot back and forth on the linoleum in the entrance to the kitchen. “Ah, Jesus, Lieutenant,” he muttered, appealing to the other detective.

  She shook her head and beckoned to the Arab detective. “Come on. Let’s see what we’ve got back there.”

  The big detective followed her into the bedroom. As he went, he let his eyes linger on Ala. They had a drowsy intensity that made him look like a wrestler gathering strength between bouts.

  Through the open door, Omar Yussef heard the Arab carry on a low conversation with someone already in the room. The other detective’s sharp voice described the location and condition of the body. She came into the doorway and glanced at Omar Yussef, still talking into a small voice recorder.

  As he listened to her catalogue of Nizar’s visible features, Omar Yussef wondered how the detective might have described him, had he been the subject of her investigation. Victim appears to be over the age of seventy, though identity documents show him to be fifty-eight. Hair: white, combed over liver-spotted bald scalp. Eyes: brown. White mustache. Gold-rimmed glasses, Gucci brand. Shoulders and chest show general lack of physical activity. Clothing expensive and good quality. Blue shirt, monogrammed OYS; fawn cardigan and windbreaker; brown pants, bloodstained. As he mused, Omar Yussef looked up. The lieutenant was still in the doorway. She held her recorder to her chin, but she had stopped speaking. He saw that she had noticed the blood on his knees.

  The Arab detective moved past the woman and stood above Omar Yussef.

  “Greetings, ustaz,” he said, in Arabic. His voice was lighter than it had been, as though he were greeting a friend.

  “Double greetings.” Omar Yussef stood.

  “The other officers tell me you’re visiting from Bethlehem. That’s my hometown.”

  Omar Yussef smiled and looked at Ala. “Did you hear that, my boy?” His son twitched his cheek and sneered at his hands.

  “I’m Hamza Abayat. I grew up just down the hill from the Nativity Church.”

  “I know the Abayats,” Omar Yussef said. “You’re from the Ta’amra clan.”

  Hamza grinned broadly. “Welcome, welcome to New York.”

  “Unfortunately, this is quite an unwelcome welcome.” Omar Yussef choked out a bitter laugh. He was surprised at how warmly he felt toward the policeman, simply because they shared a hometown. I must be feeling even more lost in this city than I suspected, he thought.

  The lieutenant came out of the doorway and looked at Omar Yussef. “The victim’s Palestinian?”

  “That’s correct,” Omar Yussef said.

  She addressed herself to the Arab detective. “Here’s what we found in the victim’s pockets.” She held up a transparent plastic evidence bag containing a blue passport. “Jordanian passport, identifies holder as Nizar Fayez Khaled Jado, born Bethlehem, West Bank, April 18, 1984. How does this guy have a Jordanian passport if he’s Palestinian?”

  “Palestinians don’t have a state, so they don’t have passports of their own,” Hamza said. “Not the kind that’re worth anything, at least.”

  The lieutenant waved the Jordanian passport. “You were born in Bethlehem, Hamza. Do you have this kind of passport?”

  “I have an American passport, Lieutenant.”

  “Right, right.” The woman smiled and brandished another clear bag. “Wallet containing New York State driver’s license, bank card, Social Security card, all in the name of the said Nizar Fayez Khaled Jado, resident at this address. A couple of ticket stubs from the Cyclone at Coney Island and some paintball thing out that way, too—a thrill-seeker, this guy. Then there’s this one other bag. What does this say, Hamza? It’s in Arabic, right?”

  “What’s paintball?” Omar Yussef asked.

  “Killing for fun,” Hamza mumbled, reaching for the last plastic bag. Spread inside it was a sheet of pink writing paper covered in delicate script. Omar Yussef noticed Ala look up, as the detective read.

  “It’s a letter from someone named Rania. She’s writing to this Nizar,” Hamza said.

  “What does it say?” the lieutenant asked again.

  Hamza cleared his throat. “It’s a love letter.”

  “Come on, bashful. Translate.”

  “‘I want to be with you again, to feel you close—’” The big detective stopped. “It’s not decent to read it here. It’s very—detailed.”

  Ala sucked in his breath.

  The lieutenant took the letter. “Okay, fine, we’ll go back to the precinct house and dim the lights, and you’ll read me Romantic Rania’s letter over a nice bubbly flute of Chateau Budweiser.” She turned to the bedroom, halted, and pointed at the smaller room. “Whose room is this?”

  Ala mumbled, “My roommate, Rashid.”

  “Rashid? Get his full details, Hamza.” She went back to the corpse.

  The Arab detective took out a narrow notebook, small in his thick hand. He rubbed his chin and lifted his eyebrows at Ala.

  The boy dropped his eyes to Hamza’s tan boots. His lip rose as though he felt nauseous. “His name is Rashid Takrouri,” he said.

  “Where is he?”

  “Perhaps he’s working. He drives a taxi. So did Nizar. They were like brothers.”

  “That’d make him a prime suspect—it’s a specialty of us Palestinians to kill our brothers.” Hamza wiggled his fingers. “His description?”

  Ala shrugged like a surly teenager. “Rashid’s about my height, a bit shorter. All three of us used to share clothes, except for some of Nizar’s better items; he was very particular about them. Anyway, Rashid’s slim and has dark hair that he wears brushed back. He’s clean-shaven. He smokes all the time, and he’s very jumpy.”

  “Does he have a black coat?” Omar Yussef asked.

  “Yeah,” Ala said.

  The detective stared at Omar Yussef, even as he posed his next question to Ala. “When did you last see him?”

  “Yesterday evening, when I went out to do my night shift in the taxi.”

  “Anything unusual? Did he seem especially nervous or excited?”

  Ala folded his arms. “Especially nervous? Since he came to New York, Rashid has always behaved like there was someone around the next corner who might want to kill him. He’s constantly terrified of being mugged or shot or stabbed or pushed under a subway train.”

  “Why?”

  “He thinks Americans are all blood-crazed street hoodlums who hate Arabs.” Ala stuck out his jaw and sneered. “What do you think of Americans?”

  “Stick with Rashid, okay?”

  “He’s perpetually terrified.”

  “And that’s how he seemed last night?”

  “No more than usual.”

  Ham
za turned to Omar Yussef. “What’s your name, ustaz? Where in Bethlehem does your family live?”

  “I’m Omar Yussef Sirhan, from Dehaisha Refugee Camp.”

  His eyes on the notepad in his hand and his voice quiet, the detective said, “You’re the schoolteacher called Abu Ramiz. From the UN Girls’ School in the camp?”

  Omar Yussef looked in surprise at the policeman. “How do you know?”

  Hamza rocked his head from side to side on his thick neck. “I don’t seem familiar to you?”

  Omar Yussef swallowed. “You do look like someone with whom I had a run-in a couple of years ago.”

  “Hussein Tamari.”

  “The gunman. The head of the Martyrs Brigades in Bethlehem.”

  “He was my uncle, may Allah have mercy upon him.”

  “May his lost years be added to yours by Allah to lengthen your life,” Omar Yussef mumbled. “Your uncle and I—”

  “It’s in the past, ustaz.”

  Omar Yussef examined the damp, dark eyes of the big detective and wondered if his conflict with the man’s uncle was truly forgotten.

  “I hadn’t seen him for years, anyway,” Hamza said. “My father brought me to Brooklyn when I was barely a teenager. All those things, the intifada, the Israeli occupation, they seem so far away.”

  “Lucky for you.”

  Hamza sucked his back teeth and tapped his fingernail against his notebook. “If you don’t mind, ustaz?”

  Omar Yussef gestured with his open palm for the detective to continue.

  “What time did you arrive at the apartment?”

  “It was noon. I checked my watch, because I couldn’t believe that the sun would be so obscured at that hour.” Omar Yussef glanced at his wristwatch and noticed that Nizar’s blood still smeared its face. He took out his handkerchief and rubbed it away.

  “Where were you before you came here?”

  “My hotel in Manhattan. I’m here for a conference at the UN.”

  Hamza raised an eyebrow.