“The same man?”
“He’s wearing black and driving a blue Jeep with dark windows,” Khamis Zeydan said.
“You think it’s Rashid?” Hamza rolled his tongue between his back teeth, thoughtfully.
Khamis Zeydan said, “What theories are you operating on?”
Omar Yussef lifted his finger. “Can we release my son before we go any further?”
“If Allah wills it, soon, ustaz.” Hamza turned to Khamis Zeydan. “There’re fewer killings in Brooklyn than you might expect. In this precinct, we only had one murder last year. Those that do occur are mainly connected to turf battles between rival drug dealers. That’s probably what’s behind this, even though the PLO has cleaned up its act.”
“The PLO?” Omar Yussef asked.
Hamza flexed his fingers on the squash ball. “A local street gang of Palestinian youths. They used to strut about looking tough. They sold drugs.”
“That sounds familiar.” Khamis Zeydan laughed. “Are you sure they aren’t the real PLO?”
“What do you mean that they’ve ‘cleaned up their act’?” Omar Yussef said.
“They came up against the Bloods, the Crips, the Latin Kings. In the neighborhoods around here, the black and Hispanic gangs are much, much nastier than the PLO was. Frankly, our boys were whipped. Eventually they just gave up the gang life.”
“What became of them?”
“They’re community leaders now, speaking out against drugs,” Hamza said. “But they’re still hard men. If they found a dealer in our community, they might put him out of action. They might even go too far and leave him dying. Maybe that’s what happened to Nizar, may Allah have mercy upon him.”
Only if the PLO gang also read up on the Assassins and the myth of the Veiled Man, Omar Yussef thought. Otherwise they wouldn’t have known to leave those clues. “I can’t believe it. What possible connection could Nizar have to the drug trade?”
“I didn’t say for certain that it’s drug-related, only that it’s probable. If I had evidence that drugs were involved, I’d have to be in touch with the Drug Enforcement Agency. You’d find its agents less sympathetic to your son than me, ustaz.”
“There’s no need to involve them, as you say.” Omar Yussef tried an encouraging smile, but it came out as a blink of his eyes and a wince around the lips.
Hamza drummed the desktop. “Is that all now, ustaz? I have to get going.”
“What’re you doing to find Rashid?” Khamis Zeydan said. “He might have the answers.”
Hamza stood and took his coat from the back of his chair. “If he’s still alive, we’ll find him.”
Omar Yussef exhaled impatiently. “Will you release my son now?”
“I only have your word about that alibi.”
“So check it.” Omar Yussef slapped his hand on the arm of his chair.
Hamza rolled his heavy shoulders and headed for the frosted-glass door at the entrance to the detectives’ bureau.
Khamis Zeydan touched his arm as he passed. “The drugs around here-where do they come from, mainly?”
“Just recently, from Lebanon.”
Khamis Zeydan’s mustache twitched. “‘Just recently’?”
“The Lebanese army used to uproot the hashish crops in the Bekaa Valley. But since the Israelis fought that stupid war with Hizballah in 2006, all the Lebanese soldiers are in the south in case the Israelis try to drive to Beirut.”
“And the drug trade in the Bekaa got back into gear?” Omar Yussef scowled.
“That’s correct.”
Omar Yussef followed Hamza to the exit, perspiring in the overheated detectives’ bureau. “You aren’t suggesting my son has anything to do with this drug trade? He’s a computer technician.”
“The heads of Hamas are all engineers and doctors,” Hamza said. “The founder of Islamic Jihad was a medical man.”
“We’re talking about my son, not those hotheads. Ala is innocent.” Omar Yussef lunged for Hamza’s big fists and pressed them to his chest. “Let him go, please.”
“If Allah wills it.” Hamza started down the Spartan staircase, his heavy footsteps echoing off the whitewashed walls. “Perhaps you can help me with a little background from back home. Tell me about Nizar’s father.”
Omar Yussef glanced at Khamis Zeydan. “He was a big shot in the PLO-the real PLO. He was killed here in New York because he wanted to make peace with the Israelis.”
“Killed by whom?”
“Someone else within the PLO, maybe? I don’t know. His family maintains it was the Mossad.”
“The killing was never solved?” Hamza glanced at Khamis Zeydan, who rattled his cigarettes in their pack as they approached the exit, edgy at the prospect of lighting up. “So Nizar’s family isn’t new to intrigue and murder.”
You knew already, didn’t you? Omar Yussef thought. With Nizar’s family background, you won’t believe that he was an innocent victim.
“Where can we find the gang?” Omar Yussef said. “These ‘PLO’ people?”
“A basement mosque in an apartment building at the other end of Fifth Avenue,” Hamza said. “A couple of blocks down from the restaurant where we ate yesterday, ustaz. When you get there, ask someone for the mosque.”
“I’ll find it. Where’re you going?”
“To take Rania’s statement. I’m at your command, after all.” The detective buttoned his parka. “At the mosque, ask to speak to Nahid Hantash. He’s the top guy. May Allah ease your path.”
Chapter 14
The Arab men wished each other evenings of joy and light as they departed Maghrib prayers, pulling the hoods of their parkas over their white skullcaps. Omar Yussef leaned on the onyx balustrade by the sidewalk and looked down on the concrete staircase to the basement mosque. The last of the worshipers zipped their coats and shook hands at the door. As they reached the street, Omar Yussef called to one of them: “Peace be upon you.”
“Upon you, peace, ustaz.”
“Will we find the Honored Nahid Hantash inside?”
“He’s always the last to leave after prayers, ustaz.”
Omar Yussef descended past boarded-up basement windows and entered a short corridor. The wall was covered with posters of Palestinian children, hackneyed images of defiance and suffering, and political slogans that fatigued Omar Yussef with their posturing and sentimentality. He glanced over a photo of a burned-out car, three victims of Israeli helicopter missiles lying within, their bearded faces vaguely nauseous in death, empty eyes staring past the camera. Is this meant to promote the correct frame of mind for prayer? he thought.
He slipped out of his loafers and slid them into a wooden cubbyhole still wet from the last worshiper’s shoes.
At the end of the corridor, a sheet of prayer times laid out the schedule of devotion like a dense page of logarithms. The time for every prayer advanced by a minute or two each day as the moon shifted over the course of the month. Khamis Zeydan rapped his knuckles against the notice. “I don’t know how they have time to do anything else,” he said. “I can think of only a few things that’re worth doing five times a day, and praying isn’t one of them.”
Beyond the door, low stools surrounded a big circular water fountain tiled in fake jade and marble, where worshipers would sit to wash their feet, hands, ears, and nostrils before prayer. Khamis Zeydan turned on one of the shiny copper faucets and scooped water into his mouth. Wiping his mustache, he looked along the narrow mosque. “Do you think that’s our man?” he said.
Omar Yussef peered into the dim light from the scalloped glass light fixtures along the wall. The basement was painted white, and its carpet was gray with diagonal green stripes. At its far end was a niche decorated with the same fake marble as the water fountain and the chair from which the imam would deliver his sermons. On the floor beside the niche, his head leaning back against the wall and his legs stretched out before him, sat a dark man in his early thirties.