The Fourth Assassin

Back underground, Omar Yussef checked his watch impatiently as he reached his station. He needed to get to Hamza, to tell him what Marwan had said when he stood in the street weeping-about the danger “they” posed. It had proved real enough for Marwan, and the poor man had warned that Ala might be next.

From the train, he rushed toward Fifth Avenue. Around the Cafe al-Quds, blue police barriers blocked the sidewalk. He approached an officer who was slapping his hands against his ribs to keep warm while he stood guard.

“Is Sergeant Abayat here?” Omar Yussef asked. “I need to see him.”

“Who’re you, sir?” the officer said. Beneath his peaked police cap, he wore a close-fitting black felt headband designed to cover his ears. It came low over his brow and gave him the look of a medieval Crusader.

“My name is Sirhan. I’m involved in the case of this man who is now dead.” He flicked his fingers toward the cafe. “May Allah have mercy upon him.”

The officer muttered into the radio clipped to his collar. A voice crackled a response, and the policeman shoved the wooden barrier aside with his foot to let Omar Yussef pass.

Inside the cafe, he recognized the agitated crime-scene technicians he had seen at Ala’s apartment. Hamza Abayat leaned against the bar with his back to the door. The female lieutenant emerged from under the bar and spotted Omar Yussef. The big Arab detective turned and frowned.

Omar Yussef made his way between the tables. The lights, which had been dimmed when he visited Marwan Hammiya the day before, were bright on the busy technicians. He remembered Khamis Zeydan’s suspicion that the Cafe al-Quds was a front with few real clients. Murder has turned it into a bustling cafe, he thought.

“Hamza, why didn’t you call me?” he said.

“Are you a detective on the case?” Hamza rolled his neck, and Omar Yussef heard a vertebra click as the big muscles moved. “I know that you like to play the sleuth back in Bethlehem, but what makes you think I’d need your help here?”

“I was in this cafe yesterday talking to Marwan. He even followed me along the street to plead with me. Maybe he told me something that might be useful to you.”

“Take him into the kitchen,” the lieutenant said, ducking behind the bar once more.

The lights glared off the stainless-steel counters in the kitchen. The floor was smeared with blood, like a butcher’s shop on the day of the Eid al-Adha. Omar Yussef put his open hand flat against the doorpost and imagined he had left the bloody print with which he had seen Egyptians mark their entryways during that feast of sacrifice.

“Where’s the body?” he asked, conscious that he spoke with a little extra force to compensate for the tremble in his stomach.

Hamza rubbed the back of his hand across his nose. “Gone. For autopsy.”

“You’re sure it’s Marwan?”

“The daughter refused to identify the body. Says she’s too traumatized. It’s him. I’d seen him around.”

“When did it happen?”

Hamza lifted his sleeve and glanced at his wristwatch. It was silver with a luminous blue dial, glowing even under the kitchen lights. In the dark, it would be very bright. “The middle of last night. About eight hours ago.”

“You should’ve called me.”

The detective blew out a breath of impatience and resignation.

Omar Yussef remembered Rania’s testimony. “Did the girl confirm Ala’s alibi?”

“She did.”

“So you can release my boy?”

“It’s done.”

Omar Yussef felt relief flooding his chest, as though tension had constricted his breathing for days.

“But your son wasn’t too pleased that Rania decided to speak up,” Hamza said. “I think he preferred to play the wounded romantic hero.”

Omar Yussef blamed himself for his son’s stubbornness. It was an unfortunate trait the boy had inherited from him. “What did you find here?”

“What do you think? A dead man on the kitchen floor.”

Omar Yussef averted his eyes from the bloody tiles. “How did he die?”

“He was stabbed repeatedly. With venom, I’d say. Someone wanted him dead, but they didn’t do it efficiently with a single cut through the jugular.”

“Do you have the knife?”

Hamza looked with curiosity at Omar Yussef. “The murder weapon? Yes. No prints on it. But I didn’t say it was a knife.”

“Is it a knife?”

“Sure, but how did you know?”

Omar Yussef let out a dismissive sigh. “Come on, you said he’d been stabbed. It’s the same murderer, isn’t it? The one who killed Nizar.”

“We haven’t established a definite connection between the two killings.”

“Two murders within a few steps of each other in a couple of days. No connection?”

“Not a clear one. Nizar’s killer didn’t descend into the frenzy of the person who stabbed Marwan over and over again. And Marwan wasn’t decapitated, as Nizar was.”

“It’s too much of a coincidence. What do you think this was-a random robbery that went wrong?”

“A robbery? No.” Hamza let a nasty sarcasm into his voice. “If robbers had done this, they’d probably have taken the case full of hashish and the used twenty-dollar bills we found in that cupboard behind the tubs of hummus.”

Hantash knew what he was talking about, Omar Yussef thought. Marwan was involved in drugs, after all. “Nizar was dealing drugs too. Nahid Hantash told me.”

Hamza sucked his upper lip. “That’s why I don’t deny that there’s a possible connection between the two deaths. If they worked together, maybe someone in their drug ring is tying up loose ends.”

“Surely someone from the drug ring would’ve taken the hashish and the money after they killed him.”

“Right.” The skinny lieutenant came to the kitchen door. “And drug dealers usually don’t kill with a bread knife. They like big, big handguns.”

“A burglary gone wrong?” Hamza said.

“The techs don’t think there’s any sign of a break-in,” she said. “It must be someone known to the victim, someone he’d allow to enter his kitchen with him.”

“That could be a member of the drug ring, even if it doesn’t add up that they didn’t take the drugs and the money.” Hamza rubbed the black stubble of his close-cropped hair.

“They could’ve left that stuff behind to throw us off.” The lieutenant removed her spectacles, breathed on them, and cleaned them with the end of her sweatshirt. “What’d you get from the girl?”

“The victim’s daughter was sleeping upstairs in the family apartment at the time of the murder. She didn’t hear anything.”

“I guess it’s possible she could’ve slept through it.” The lieutenant replaced her spectacles. “Despite the repeated stab wounds, there’s no sign that the victim fought back.”

“The girl says she got out of bed in the middle of the night-bad dreams about headless boyfriends. She saw that her father’s bedroom was empty. She came down here, found the body, and called nine-one-one.”

The lieutenant tipped her chin. Her cell phone rang, and she went back into the cafe.

“Why wouldn’t Marwan defend himself?” Omar Yussef said. “When he came after me on the street, he was terrified. I’m sure he’d have been prepared for an attack.”

“Maybe he didn’t like to hit anyone except his daughter,” Hamza said. “Although she doesn’t have any bruises today.”

“What do you mean by that?”

Hamza rubbed his bottom lip with a coarse thumbnail. “You said Marwan came after you, to plead with you? About what?”

“He said it was safer for Ala to stay in jail. He thought my son would be in danger-and perhaps me too-