"It's extravagant!"
"Read the spreadsheet. Gas, mileage, food, accommodations, ammunition…it's all there. Ahmad has it down to the penny."
"I see…"
After a few more less than amiable amenities, Ari rang off. Storming out of the bushes, he encountered a glance of enquiry from Sadiq. He waved him off.
"Just die, will you?" Swerving around women in various forms of undress (in his current state of mind, that included full-body burkinis), Ari island-hopped across the artificial lagoons until he reached the opposite side of the pool. Seeing the fire in his eyes, Lawson and Nabihah ceased their low-volume negotiations and drew back a little from each other, as if they had been caught in an illicit act. "I am strapped to the gills!" he announced.
"You mean you're broke?" Lawson asked.
"Absolutely!" He was lying, of course. After paying off Abu Jasim and Ahmad the $60,000-plus extortion, he would have more than three times as much left over, and that did not include the little stipend for living expenses provided by the U.S. Government. In fact, he had made plenty in the Land of Plenty, most of it coming from odd jobs and the sale of weapons he had lifted off over-armed Americans. It was his friend's egregious gouging that tore at his sense of fair play. He did not actually believe in fair play. He would be dead, or at least a pauper, if he did. And Abu Jasim had charged him much more for jobs in the past. It was the itemization that irked him. Where was the honorable fudge factor? Was one to be charged a fee for every little prick that drew blood?
Lawson responded with a sage, mechanical nod. "Yes, life is expensive in CONUS. I wouldn't want to be a poor Italian immigrant in these hardscrabble times. Why just the other day, the government had to bail out another financial institution."
"I did not come to America to participate in its financial crises," Ari asserted.
"Nor did I," said Nabihah languidly, reaching for a bloody mary. "Mr. Ciminon, as you see, my guests have moved away to give us privacy. Why don't you join us?"
Ari gave Yilmaz a wary glance. She was well within earshot. At the moment, she was tossing her mother an inflatable tugboat, perhaps in the hope of stopping her from emulating the inflatable porpoise by constantly spitting into the pool. It worked like a charm. Karida tossed the hapless porpoise aside and took hold of the boat.
"Hoot-hoot!"
"You must know by now that Abou el-Zahraa has my complete confidence."
Yilmaz and Ari exchanged adversarial glances as he took a chair.
"I believe your pecuniary situation has improved dramatically, Ari," said Lawson.
"Five-hundred dollars will not cover my needs."
"Tosh!" Lawson laughed, patting his briefcase. Seeing Ari's eyes light up, he shook his head. "No, this isn't filled with hundred-dollar bills. What you have coming to you wouldn't begin to fit in here."
Ari squirmed in his latticed chair. He couldn't help himself. Nabihah laughed.
"Mr. Lawson has a very kind offer to propose to you."
"With strings," Lawson added.
Ari stopped squirming.
"First, though, I would like to thank you for ridding us of those pesky hijackers. There have been no others. You were right. Sanad was looking for a particular type of…cargo. It's understandable that the similarity between the O'Connor's freight schedule and the deaths of those unfortunate women would lead you to suspect one of my drivers. But Sanad and Nizzar were simply following the trail. New immigrants to this country are not inclined to post their artworks in eBay, knowing as they do that many of them had been pilfered from museums and private galleries." She paused. "Did you happen to meet Abbas Al Jallawi at my husband's party?"
"By the time I arrived he had broken into tears over his wife's death. Your husband took him into the bedroom to calm him down. Sirdar Singh told me he was in Vancouver when his wife burned to death on a playground."
"Yes," said Nabihah. "I think Mr. Lawson can give you more information about that."
"Al Jallawi has business dealings with an import/export company which apparently doesn't limit itself to halal chicken nuggets and spring rolls. It seems they are well-known in the Middle Eastern art community for helping to shuffle stolen art around the world. They don't keep anything in their Vancouver office, but they have many contacts, including…" Lawson nodded at Nabihah.
"Which he discovered thanks to your nephew, Ahmad."
"He of worthless fame? He's not my nephew! But how…" Ari looked at Lawson and felt a twitch next to his eye. "You got Mrs. Sadiq's laptop from him?"
"He was acting as a CVG operative. Remember? The meeting in my office? Where we put both him and Abu Jasim and Ben Torson on the payroll?"
"You mean he just handed it over to you?"
"Actually…we had to provide him with a little financial incentive before he would tell us where he hid it."
"You paid him for stolen property?" Ari stared at Lawson. "How much?"
"Oh, now, I think you'll have to ask him about that, yourself," Lawson harrumphed. "I don't disclose business between—"
"And yet you now possess all of my secrets," said Nabihah dolefully. "You found the commissions I had paid out to Vancouver for helping me find new acquisitions. Abbas Al Jallawi happened to live in Richmond, but others…as you saw from our freight schedule."
"So the death of Abbas's wife was murder, Sanad-style."
"Yes," said Nabihah.
Ari, still steaming from Ahmad's unreported income, scowled at Lawson. "Well?"
"Oh, Ari, I think we can leave it at that."
"You mean, accept her lie?"
"Let's face it, her lie isn't any worse than you being 'Italian'."
"I disagree," Ari sniffed. "And I am Italian. Italians hate having the wool pulled over their eyes. That doesn't mean it doesn't happen all the time, but we don't like it."
"But there's no question Sanad and Nizzar murdered Al Jallawi's wife, Ari."
"Of course there's no doubt. I'm speaking of the circumstances. You must have seen the peculiarity…as well as the consistency."
"I'm sure I don't know what you two are talking about now," said Nabihah, draping her arm towards the small table next to her chair to retrieve her drink.
"Do not be feckless, Mrs. Sadiq," Ari said imperiously. That business with Ahmad had really put him out. How much had that idiot nephew gotten away with? And why hadn't he kept the computer? There was no telling what financial dealings were squirreled away in its electronic folders. "I have already had this discussion with your husband. He was as unenlightened as you are. You are in great danger, as well as your guests. You knew from the beginning there was a risk, although you did not realize how great it was. I'm sure you warned these women in advance that if they accepted your offer their very lives were at stake. That is why you created the myth of your worst enemy, 'The Namus', to scare off the fainthearted."
"Why do you think I hired all of Mr. Lawson's warriors, Mr. Ciminon?" Nabihah said churlishly. "Until I know that all of Sanad's men have been caught—"
"I don't think the Cairo Gang can be so easily dismissed, as I told Teraq just now."
Nabihah began to choke. Admiring the result of his words, Ari turned to Lawson. "What, in your opinion, is the most outstanding lie in this business? She is trying to infer that this Vancouver importer acted as a go-between, when in fact there were no sales commissions at all. What she purchased was a list of owners. After that—"
"All right," said Lawson. "But you're going to have to tell me more about this Cairo business. The most striking blemish on the Sadiq story is the conjunction of the trucks and the women. It's not enough to say that the women were packed into the trailers to keep honorable Muslims at bay. Sounded too mystical to me, and anyway we know it didn't work. "
Yilmaz came racing with a glass of water for her choking mistress.
"What did you do to her?" she demanded.
"We drowned her in sorrow," said Ari. "Mr. Lawson? Please continue…"
"The artworks and
women were a package deal." Lawson sighed and looked out over the women lounging by pool. "It struck me right away that…well, these girls don't look terribly battered. Oh, on my first visit here I saw some bruises, contusions…but nothing like what I see here today, thanks to Sanad and Nizzar. There are ways of hurting someone without it showing, of course. And there's psychological torture. One thing beyond question: they wanted to leave home. Whatever the circumstances were…and maybe they were just unhappy or wanted to wear Western clothes…they got fed up and got out. That seems to be a little more risky for women to do in some cultures…"
Still sputtering, Nabihah gave him a roll of her eyes.
"Now, Mrs. Sadiq seemed to indicate that word of her little escape hatch for women spread through various organizations: Muslim counseling groups, charities, that sort of thing. But there's no way you could make something so slapdash workable. Besides, why didn't these women simply drive here and knock on the door? Why the trucks?"
"Some of these women are not allowed to drive," Yilmaz muttered as she wiped away the vodka and tomato juice Nabihah had spilled. "No license, no car."
"Maybe…but the bottom line is that you sought out most of the women here…those with valuable artworks, at least. The others heard about you through the grapevine. They might have arrived without anything in their hands, but they weren't charity cases. Nabihah put them to work. Between what was brought here by her guests, what her agents picked up in America and whatever she managed to smuggle from overseas, she had a growing backlog of art for sale."
"All of my guests are compensated fairly," Nabihah protested. "If I can't find husbands for them, or a suitable divorce lawyer…"
"You teach them a trade," Lawson nodded.
"Yes."
"But getting back to those with something to barter…some of those artworks they took from their homes were pretty hefty," Lawson added. "It was a lot easier for a truck to pull up and have a few brawny movers take out the haul. Rami's men. It was even easier if the man of the house wasn't in the house. Things went wrong with poor Abbas. He was away from home on legitimate business, it turns out. His wife had probably discussed a pickup with Mrs. Sadiq or Rami in advance. It would have been convenient. She was local, so there was no need to find a spot for her in the luxury trailer. Was the pickup made? Yes. According to the inventory on Nabihah's laptop some of the paintings that were in Abbas's house now sit behind yellow tape at Allah's Oriental Carpets. The truck pulled away from his house, Nizzar arrived as she was locking up to leave…and you know the result."
"But how?" Nabihah said. Her choking tears had disappeared, to be replaced by tears of sorrow.
Ari joined Lawson in casting a glance over the posh landscape. To Ari's thinking, many of them were thieves. They had financed their escape from home by stealing art from their own walls and pedestals. Sanad had been punishing families for profiting from Islamic heritage when in fact none of it had been for sale by the original owners. Lawson had shown Ari the list of phone numbers and addresses Nabihah had purchased from Vancouver before they arrived at the mansion. The import/export firm risked very little in the way of lost commissions, because it was a list of people known to own particular treasures, not those who were putting them on the market.
"Mrs. Sadiq," said Lawson. "I know how these home sales groups work. You are going from home to home selling plastic containers and cosmetics. One of the key features of network marketers is the way they recruit new members , who in turn push sales and add new members, et cetera."
"Like Al Qaeda," said Ari.
"Maybe…" Lawson scowled at him. "Next time the Electrolux guy shows up at my door, I'll double check to make sure it isn't bin Laden. The observation I'm making is that, in addition to Tupperware and Avon, your guests are pushing the home for battered women."
"As well as mating services," said Ari.
"I think Mr. Ciminon is referring to your being a kind of matchmaker." His gaze happened to fall on Karida, happily pushing her tugboat across the aqua blue water. "And good luck with that."
"My mother is wonderful," Yilmaz snarled.
"Sorry…I'm sure she is…" Lawson pulled himself together.
"She loves children. She would make an excellent nanny."
Lawson allowed his facial mechanics to hide his skepticism.
"All of these women are thieves," said Ari, taking in the feminine vista.
"Not at all," Lawson said. "You can't steal from yourself. They voluntarily handed the art over to Nabihah and Rami as donations for their upkeep. From what I've heard, only three claims were filed at other companies for theft. Oddly enough, they all involved unmarried nieces living with their uncles. Younger women, barely of legal age. Nabihah hasn't told me how she got their names, since they weren't listed as owners on the Vancouver list."
"They overheard their aunts speaking of my proposal."
"Maybe those aunts are pissed because they had planned to run away, too," Lawson conjectured. "Interestingly, no missing person reports were made. Maybe the uncles and aunts were glad to be rid of the troublemakers. In the end, no crime was committed because all of the claims were withdrawn when the guardians realized the provenance of the stolen art wasn't all that clean—a fact that they probably knew, or suspected, in the first place. And that's why the others didn't contact their insurance companies. Either the husbands were too embarrassed that their wives had run off, or they understood certain foreign parties had better claims to ownership."
"And they feared the Namus," said Nabihah.
"You were asking how your adversaries knew who and when there would be pickups. You are a very organized lady. You have a calendar on your laptop with all the dates, times—"
"No one else has access to that!"
"Not Badawi Bahrani? Not…?"
Feeling Lawson's gaze on her back, Yilmaz whirled and assumed a deadly stance in front of him.
"Shit…!" Lawson pointed his cane at her. "I wish I had a killer cane like—fuck it, Ari, take out your gun!"
"No need," Ari said. "I know the source of the leak: Cindy."
This brought everyone short with a collective 'huh?'
"Wait…you mean Cindy Besser?" said Nabihah. "Rami Nohra's Cindy, out at Allah's Oriental Carpets?"
"Is that a Jewish name?" asked Ari, somewhat alarmed.
"Maybe. What about it? Except for a few programs out of the Microsoft suite, I know next to nothing about computers. She installed security on my laptop."
"That explains it," said Lawson, still keeping his cane pointed at Yilmaz, who had only slightly relaxed her stance. "My tech guys found ActivAccess software on the laptop Ahmad turned over to us. Someone had practically real-time access to everything you did on it."
"You should have said that before you accused me," said Yilmaz.
"Well I didn't know anything about Cindy Besser, did I? Who is she again? Nohra's secretary? What makes you think she's behind it?"
"Ahmad can attest that she is a premier computer geek," Ari smirked, thinking of Ahmad's chagrin when he received the YOU WILL DIE FOR THIS message on his own laptop, now at the bottom of the James River. "And during my little scuffle at the carpet store—"
"Where you snuffed two armed men," said Lawson, looking at him askance.
"This is news to me." Nabihah lifted her feet to the other side of her chaise lounge, away from Ari. "Are we sure he isn't the Namus?"
"It would be a great surprise to me," said Ari. "During the fight—"
"'Scuffle'," Lawson amended.
"I thought one of Sanad's men was going to use Cindy as a human shield. Instead, he called for her to watch out and thrust her out of the line of fire. Why would he risk exposing himself that way unless Cindy was very important to Sanad? Mr. Lawson, where is Cindy now?"
"Nohra and his boys are in the Chesterfield lockup awaiting a hearing. I don't know about Cindy. If she was bailed out, she might be long gone."
"Perhaps she is even now melting under the workload at a
kibbutz," said Ari, pleased by the idea.
"She might have passed on the Sadiq art inventory to a third party."
"She would have passed it on to Sanad, but I doubt if he shared it with the Cairo Gang," Ari said. "In his place, I would have used this valuable information as a safeguard. He would want to protect himself and his family. He may have been a touch luti, as Nabihah has suggested, but he still had a wife and children he seems to have cherished…or at least appreciated." But no…he had called his children things. He saw no benefit in clarification. "Of course, Cindy also gave Sanad the calendar Nabihah used to schedule pickups."
"At least no one is cyber-spying on you now," said Lawson.
"I was waiting to get my laptop back," said Nabihah.
"Certainly, but you might want my IT guys to clean it up for you, first."
"And I could make Ahmad available to install security on it," Ari added.
Nabihah looked from one man to the other. "I think I'll buy a new laptop."
Lawson and Ari exchanged glances of amazement. Why ever for?
"Mr. Lawson, can't we return to our original topic of conversation? Mr. Ciminon arrived just as we were getting down to brass tacks. You might want to explain to him how he avoided prosecution."
Ari placed his open hand on his chest. Lawson began:
"I'll be blunt, Ari. You have some deep friends in the U.S. Marshal's Service. I suspect it goes a lot further than that. In any event, Deputy Marshal Sylvester—yes, that same agent who was watching us in Hollywood Cemetery and gave every indication that you were a criminal of the first water—wailed away at the authorities to prevent you from becoming a person of interest. She didn't let on to very much, but I got the distinct impression that you are extremely important to our national interests. In effect, you have disappeared from all accounts of what has happened over the last couple of weeks. People with that kind of influence, I don't mess with. I just accept what I'm told, like the good old soldier I am."
The Shelter for Buttered Women Page 44