window. Here, cigar boxes and humidors formed a semicircular backdrop around a creche 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 cafe 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
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.”
“I realize there’s a grocery list on one side of the paper, but it’s the Arabic writing on the other side that I need you to translate for me,” Liz said.
“That’s just what I am telling you. The Arabic writing is also a grocery list, you see. It lists exactly the same things in Arabic, and in the same order, as it does in English. Look here: This word,
The grocery list might not have been very helpful, but at least something remained to be learned from the book dealer. “I still have the book title for you to translate, if you wouldn’t mind,” Liz said, taking out the photo of the Johanssons’ living room with the open book splayed on the armchair.
The book dealer’s demeanor changed. But he retained a polite tone as he said, “This is a strange way to inquire about a book title and, perhaps, a less honest approach than I would have expected from a polite lady like yourself, to involve me in something I should not involve myself in. This is a police photo, is it not?” he said, holding the eight-by-ten-inch picture at arm’s length.
“You were correct, Mr. Al-Turkait, when you said it is a complicated, worrying story that brings me into your shop the day before Christmas. And you deserve to know the background of my inquiry. Will you please let me fill you in?”
Setting down the photo and fetching more coffee for them both, Faisel Al-Turkait sat without a word while Liz told him how the list had been found in a New York City cab, how the cab and a few photos were all she had to go on regarding Ellen Johansson’s outing, and how the cabdriver had gone missing, too. “I’ve been grasping at straws,” she concluded.
“But sometimes that’s the only way to find the needle in the haystack,” Faisal Al-Turkait said. “Perhaps you’ve found one such needle here,” he added, picking up the photo. “The title of this book translates to
“The British intelligence expert who’s always commenting on problems in the Middle East!” Liz exclaimed, meeting the book dealer’s eyes.
“Your taxi driver may be an average guy, but perhaps your lady is a spy,” he said.
Chapter 14
Liz popped open her umbrella to walk back to her car, crossing the street this time to get a closer look at shop windows on the other side. They were just as varied and just as interesting. Here, a carpet shop loaded with the “Remnants and Mill Ends” its sign promised was neighbor to a Portuguese fish market and a toy emporium calling itself Godzilla Toyshop. A few doors down, Liz came upon the Globetrotter’s Music Shop, with a window advertisement promising, “International Instruments Our Specialty.”
Here was a case of truth in advertising. The walls reaching up to high ceilings were hung with drums of every description, many of them made of skins stretched over huge, hollowed-out gourds. There were also maraca-like gourds on handles, and guitars, balalaikas, lutes, ukuleles, and banjos.
“Do you carry strings for Irish tenor banjos?” Liz asked the clerk and was pleased when he pulled four cellophane packets, each containing a different string, from a well-organized drawer.
After paying the clerk, she returned to her car and drove through very sluggish shopping traffic to the newsroom. She arrived early enough to open a number of small gifts on her desk, adding several small chocolates she found there to her stash in the zipped coconut.
Then, after fetching a cup of coffee and sandwich from the cafeteria downstairs—egg salad, not chicken or turkey—she started to write her story about the turkey heist. Lines were not up, and she did not know how much space she’d be given, so she took special care to keep the essentials at the top of the story.
“It was a case of duck, duck, goose—and 24 turkeys, too—when a Santa-suit–clad scamster lifted 27 fresh- killed birds from Torrentino’s Poultry Place in East Cambridge yesterday,” Liz wrote.
“According to butcher and shop owner Luigi Torrentino, 68, his shop clerk Lucarno Fino, 15, was taken in by the Santa look-alike’s story that he was picking up the fresh-killed fowl for charity. Torrentino said the teen did not verify with him that the poultry was intended as a charitable donation.
