The neighborhood was alive with activity as Liz pulled the Tracer into a parking spot. While two Cambridge police officers decked the building and nearby parking meters with bright yellow plastic ribbon reading POLICE LINE—DO NOT CROSS, a harried-looking Portuguese butcher complained to a policeman in plain clothes, “It’s criminal, no? To take-a my turkeys like that!” The butcher rubbed his hands on his bloodied apron and added, “I just-a killed them this morning for the Christmas dinners. My sign, it tells-a the truth. ‘Fresh Killed,’” he read, pointing proudly to the bright yellow, hen-shaped sign jutting out from the building over his head.
“Good morning, Officer, and good morning to you, too, sir,” Liz said, addressing the policeman and butcher in turn. “I’m Liz Higgins of the Beantown Banner. Do you mind telling me what happened here?”
“Mr. Torrentino here claims his shop assistant, Lucarno, gave some guy dressed in a Santa suit twenty-seven birds this morning.”
“Fresh-killed! Put that in the pay-puh. Four and twenty fresh-killed turkeys, two ducks, and one goose,” the butcher said.
“Where’s Lucarno now? Why would he give away the turkeys?
“It’s turkeys, two ducks, and one goose. All fresh-killed. Not only the turkeys,” Mr. Torrentino said. “He’s a-went with the other policeman to the station. He’s a-gonna look at the mugs shots, like-a they have on the television.”
“To see if he can I.D. the thief,” the police officer interjected. “Kid claimed the Santa told him he was there to pick up the birds for charity.”
“Lucarno didn’t check with you before he gave them away?” Liz asked the butcher.
“That’s a-right. The idiot, he’s a-never asked me.”
“More a scam than a straightforward theft, then? Is that how you see it, Officer?” Liz asked.
“That about sums it up. Kid did chicken shit to prevent it, though. In fact, he helped load the birds into the van they were taken away in. He actually helped the birds fly the coop,” the officer smiled, obviously proud of his own joke. “And here’s the kicker—after all that, he couldn’t describe the vehicle!”
“May I quote you? Sorry, Officer, I didn’t get your name.”
“Sure you can quote me. And it’s Hurley. Detective Matt Hurley.”
“What’s with all the crime scene tape, then, Detective Hurley?” Liz inquired.
The policeman whispered in Liz’s ear, “Makes Mr. Torrentino here feel like something’s being done. Don’t ever let anyone tell you the Cambridge Police don’t have a heart.”
“Thanks, Detective. Will you give me a call if anything else develops?” Liz asked, handing him her card. “And by the way, do you know where Turkoman Books is located?”
“That way, past the gravestone yard, cigar shop, and curtain place. It’s upstairs, over a shop called Rosalita’s Notions.”
“Thanks, and Merry Christmas.”
“Yeah. You, too.”
After getting a few more details for her story, Liz retrieved an umbrella from her car and set out on foot to find Turkoman Books. With the raw drizzle intensifying into a pounding rain and the sodden snow banks oozing slush puddles, it might not have been a pleasant walk, but there was something oddly heartwarming about the plethora of Christmas lights and cheap decorations that ornamented the area. Even Empire Monument Works—a yard filled with shaped blocks of granite awaiting the names of the dearly departed to come—was strung with colored lights. Looking at one block carved in the shape of linked hearts with a cross—instead of Cupid’s arrow—piercing the pair on an angle, Liz told herself even gravestone merchants deserve a little holiday cheer.
The cigar shop outdid the monument yard in ornamentation, with a pair of plastic candy canes, illuminated from within, on either side of the doorstep and bubbling Christmas lights strung around the door and in the shop window. Here, cigar boxes and humidors formed a semicircular backdrop around a crèche complete with figures of the Holy Family.
The curtain shop, too, was dolled up for the holidays. Behind its expansive plate glass windows was a gaudy array of heavily embroidered curtain panels in shades of red, green, and gold. But that wasn’t all there was to see. Also packed into the display were a set of crisp white café curtains embroidered with poinsettias, shower curtains printed with a snowflake motif, and padded plastic toilet seat covers printed with Santas, snowmen, reindeer, and even an image of the Grinch from How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
Finally, Liz came to Rosalita’s Notions, a tiny storefront with a window jammed with religious statuary, cut-glass candy dishes, gilt-edged tea sets, and silk flowers. All of the items were covered with a layer of dust so thick that it made the illuminated Madonna and Child look as if they were covered with volcanic ash. Now here was a home for that New York City cabdriver’s painting!
Liz knocked on the door next to Rosalita’s and, receiving no answer, looked around for a doorbell or buzzer. Before she found one, the door opened inward and she saw, standing in a dust-free, newly refurbished stairway, a small man with a warm smile.
“I’m looking for Turkoman Books and a man by the name of Faisal Al-Turkait,” Liz said.
“Then you’ve come to the right place and the right man. Let me show you into the shop.”
Although many of the books that lined the walls were old, the clean, well-lighted environment they were housed in formed a sharp contrast with the notions shop downstairs. Here, the odor of old leather bookbindings blended pleasingly with the aroma of recently brewed coffee. Motioning his visitor into a chair, the proprietor of Turkoman Books said, “Let me give you a cup of coffee. Then we can sit and you can tell me about the library you represent and discuss the books you’re looking for.”
“This is delicious,” Liz said of the strong brew. “But I don’t want to mislead you, Mr. Al-Turkait. I’m not a librarian and I’m not here to purchase numerous books.”
“Ah, then I have the rare pleasure of welcoming a browser!” the book dealer said. “You see, the vast majority of my business consists of acquiring books on demand for academic and research libraries. I take it you are a scholar then?”
“I wish I were! As it happens, I would be incapable of browsing here, unless it were for an Arabic–English dictionary. I have familiarity with neither Arabic nor any other Middle Eastern language. I came here to ask if I might hire you to translate a book title and a list of words for me. I’m rather certain they’re written in Arabic.”
“Let’s start with the list of words. How long is it?”
Liz pulled the Xeroxed copy of the list out of her bag and showed it to him.
“I cannot take your hard-earned money for such an easy task. This list and the title of one book? It’s nothing.”
“No, really, I’d be happy to reward you for your valuable time.”
“I agree time is valuable, but the value of it is not always to be measured in money. Here it is, the beginning of the Christmas holiday, a day I fully expected to spend entirely on my own. Not because, as you may assume, I am Muslim. On the contrary, I am a Christian Arab. There are millions of us, you know. I’m alone because my only daughter is abroad on a work-study project. She is a college student,” he added proudly, pointing to her photo on his desk. “I’m a widower, and the rest of my family is in Tikrit—that’s in northern Iraq.” Looking around his shop, the book dealer went on, “I kept the shop open today because it gives me something to do. There is always correspondence to catch up on. But I never thought I’d be welcoming a customer, and one who must have a story to tell, since it would only take something important, worrying, or complicated to bring a lovely lady like yourself into a hole in the wall like this the day before Christmas. Especially with a mere grocery list to consult me about.”