The Fourth Assassin

Chapter 2

In his shock, Omar Yussef sat with the terrified, expectant stillness of a hunted animal. Eventually he wondered how long he had been on the floor of the bedroom. He watched his wrist lift like a corpse floating up through water. There was blood on the face of his watch. He rubbed it away with his thumb. Beneath the brown smear that remained, the dial showed one o’clock.

He heard a footstep in the living room. He waited. Three more steps, soft yet decisive. He sensed someone was just beyond the open door of the bedroom.

Maybe it’s Ala, he thought. He’s alive. He opened his mouth to call the name of his son, but then he glanced at the body on the bed. Or the murderer has returned.

He shoved himself to his feet, feeling as though all his muscles were encased in plaster. He was unsure if he intended to confront the killer or find a place to hide. His knees shook. His brain seemed to lurch into the backs of his eyeballs. He braced himself against the door frame as he stepped into the living room.

The front door was swinging and Omar Yussef glimpsed the back of a man clad in a black padded coat, black pants and shoes, and a black woolen cap. The man had bumped the edge of the matchstick model as he passed, and it toppled to the floor. Omar Yussef made for the door, but by the time he reached it the man was down the stairs and gone.

His neck spasmed with adrenaline. It could’ve been a thief who happened to see an open door and decided to try his luck, he told himself. But he was sure he had seen the killer. He felt isolated and vulnerable. What if the murderer realized that he had no need to flee from the feeble old man trembling in the bedroom?

On the floor by the sofa, he noticed the telephone. I have to get the police, he thought. He picked up the receiver, then halted. What’s the number for the emergency services in this country? He recalled reading an article which had explained why the deadly date had been so evocative for Americans, and he dialed.

A woman’s voice answered. “Nine-one-one emergency.”

Omar Yussef cleared his throat and spoke in his precise English. “I wish to report a death.”

“What is the mode of death, sir?”

Omar Yussef strained to comprehend the woman on the other end of the line. The operator’s voice had the impenetrability of poor diction forced to cope with a pre-scripted, elevated grammar. “I mean to say, it’s a murder.”

“How do you know it’s a murder, sir?”

The phone shook in Omar Yussef’s hand. “He has no head.”

“You have a dead person there with no head, sir?”

Omar Yussef nodded at the phone.

“Sir? That is the situation?”

“That’s correct,” he stammered. “No head.”

“What’s your location, sir?”

Omar Yussef looked around for the slip of paper with his son’s address. He checked his pockets, but it was gone. “I don’t remember the address. It’s in Bay Ridge. On Fifth Avenue. Above a boutique.”

“The name of the boutique, sir?”

“Abdelrahim. But that’s in Arabic. In English, it just says Boutique.”

“What’s your name, sir?”

“Are you sending the police now?”

“Yes, sir. What’s your name?”

“Sirhan. Omar Yussef Sirhan. From Dehaisha Refugee Camp.”

“Where, sir?”

“Ah, Bethlehem, in Palestine. I’m not American.” As he added that final, unnecessary information, Omar Yussef felt he had spoken from some kind of shame. It sounded to him like an admission of complicity in the murder of the man in the next room and those other murders infamously committed by his people in this land, a confession that he was an outsider not bound by the decency and trust that Americans believed they shared.

“Do you know the identity of the victim, sir?”

“Not absolutely.” Omar Yussef sensed the pressure behind his eyes again. He dropped to the sofa and put his hand to his forehead.

“Sir?”

“It might be my son.”

“Remain where you are, sir. The police are on their way.”

“If Allah wills it, let them come. Meanwhile, I’ll stay here, with him.”

“Sir?”

Only after Omar Yussef had hung up did he realize he had spoken his last words to the operator in Arabic.

He picked up the matchstick model. The golden dome was caved in on one side, where it had landed on the floor. He tried to poke it back into shape, but his fingers smeared brown over the matches. He stared at his sticky hands, went to the kitchen, and ran the hot water, rubbing the blood off his palms. On the back of his hand, a liver spot dappled his olive skin. He felt aged and frail. His body was decaying-but still it lived. He gasped, thinking that his son might never grow old.

When he turned off the water, he heard footsteps on the stairs. He went into the living room, fearing that the man in the black coat had returned. But the steps were casual and loud. It must be the police, he thought. Looking down at his brown trousers, he wondered if the bloodstains at the knees were obvious. He became suddenly afraid that he might be blamed for the murder. His hands may have left blood on his face before he washed them, so he removed his glasses and rubbed at his brow with the cuff of his windbreaker.

He put his spectacles back on and saw Ala in the doorway.

“Dad, peace be upon you.” The boy smiled, opened his arms, and approached Omar Yussef. The immobility of his father’s face stopped him. “What’s that on your trousers, Dad?”

“My boy, you’re alive.” Omar Yussef stroked the light curls of Ala’s black hair and felt the thin bristles of his mustache. At five feet seven, Ala was only an inch taller than his father, but he seemed to tower over the nervous, hunched man before him.

“Thanks be to Allah.” Ala grasped his father’s elbows and kissed his cheeks. “But what do you mean? Are you making a joke? Some parts of Brooklyn are dangerous, but Bay Ridge isn’t such a bad neighborhood.”

“My son, there’s a body in your bedroom.”

Ala gripped Omar Yussef’s arms harder. “What? Dad, be serious. What’s happening?”

Omar Yussef gestured toward his son’s bedroom and lowered his head. The young man stepped into his room.

“May Allah have mercy upon him,” Ala mumbled. “It’s Nizar.”

“My son, I thought it might be you.” Omar Yussef shuddered as he came to the doorway.

“That shirt.” Ala’s voice, edged with tears, broke. “Those shoes, he was very proud of them. He called them his ‘Armani boots.’ They’re expensive. It’s Nizar.” He took Omar Yussef’s hand, still pink and warm from the scrubbing, squeezed it with tremulous fingers, then turned back to his dead friend with glassy eyes.

Omar Yussef let himself fall to the sofa and tried to find a way to sit that would hide the blood on his trousers. He covered his lap with a cushion. It was embroidered red on black with the geometric tribal pattern customary in Bethlehem. He ran his forefinger over the thick stitching and wondered if Maryam had made it for her son. He closed his eyes and tried to visualize his wife, but Nizar’s face came to him instead. My old pupil, he thought. My dear boy.

Ala came out of the bedroom. The tears and the trembling were gone. His face was stern. Omar Yussef thought he detected pity and hate in his son’s narrowed, hazel eyes.

“The son of a whore,” the boy said. “Rashid. He finally did it. He killed Nizar.”

“No, he was his best friend.”

Ala shoved the front door hard. While its slam still echoed, he shouted, “Things have changed since we were all together at the Freres School, Dad.”

“Even so, murder? What could’ve driven Rashid to something like that?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“I won’t believe it. You can’t be sure of a thing like that.”

Ala turned to the window, pulled back a corner of the net curtain, and looked down at the gray street. His jaw stiffened, and his voice was sharp when he spoke. “He made it as clear as he could.”

“What do you mean?”

The young man rubbed the thin curtain between his fingers. “The Veiled Man.”

“What?”

Ala’s eyes stayed on the window, furious. “That bit of material placed over the pillow, where Nizar’s head would’ve been. It’s a veil. Like the veil worn by a woman.”

“But a veiled man?”

“You know as well as I do, Dad. You taught us about it in history class.”

“The veil worn in the messianic stories by the traitorous man, the enemy of the Mahdi.”

“That’s it. When our messiah, the Mahdi, comes, the man who opposes him is supposed to wear a veil, and the Mahdi will battle him and kill him.”

A siren sounded nearby.

“What does that have to do with Rashid?” Omar Yussef asked.

Ala shook his head. “Rashid and Nizar-”

The siren drew closer.

“Little Palestine isn’t as I’ve led you to believe, Dad,” Ala said. “America is very harsh. No one cares about my computer degree from Bethlehem University. I couldn’t find a decent job. It’s been the same for Rashid and Nizar. We’re just another gang of Arabs to the Americans, terrorists or supporters of terrorism, anti-American bigots who deserve bigoted treatment in return.” He slapped his hands against his hips and let his shoulders drop. “I’m not a programmer. I work as a computer salesman in a shop run by another Palestinian guy. To make ends meet, I drive a cab a few nights a week. Rashid and Nizar drive for the same company. I share this apartment with them because I can’t afford a place of my own.”

“What does that have to do with this? How does that prove that Rashid killed Nizar?”

“I’ve been here with them, close to them. I know how difficult life was for them here in America, and I know what went on between them.”

“Which is what?”

Ala rubbed his hand across his eyes and let the curtain drop over the window. “The police are here,” he said.