Next door, Mary Timmons flopped onto her sofa and filled a glass from a jug on the coffee table. She raised a toast to her brother, who was sitting in a chair across the room. “Bernie, I really like that kid. If I were fifty years younger, I’d go for him myself. He’s only been here a month, but I can tell he’s a good one. And a worker too. What other young man would clean that whole apartment, so you could lick the floor and not taste a bit of dust? Wouldn’t let me pay for a thing. I never in my life saw so much bleach. He must have carried in a hundred gallons. What in the world was he thinking? But then, the place was filthy. The Olsons, who lived in there before, were as near to pigs as pigs could be. Their mongrel dog did his jobs on the upstairs carpet until there was a ring around the whole bed — left his filth for the whole world to see! Can you fathom a stench like that? How could people with working nostrils tolerate such a—?”
“Mrs. Timmons?” Akil’s voice spoke through the screen door.
“Come right in, Kenny. I’ve been swearing up a storm about the previous tenants when I should be thanking the Savior for who I have now.” She tried to rise but gave up. “Kenny, this is my brother, Bernard Sloan.”
Countryside Irish, Bernard was a hairless clone of his sister, complete with rosy cheeks and perpetual smile. He stood and extended his hand.
“It’s a fine pleasure to meet you, Mr. Wory. Me sister’s told me quite a bit about you and your sick mother, and I surely hope that she’s making good progress back to the world of the healthy.”
There was a moment of awkward silence as Akil struggled to comprehend the fast monotone. He noted the strength in the little man’s grip. It was icy from caressing a huge glass of beer.
“I’ve never been to Ireland, but I hear it’s beautiful.”
“Oh, it’s far more than that. So many think the populace lives in the bigger towns, but there’s a whole ’nuther world out there among the greens.”
“What part of Ireland?”
“Greencastle County Down, right along the coast of the Irish Sea, about an hour’s drive to the south of Belfast. We can see the ferries making their way up to Ulster. Been a lobster man all me life, but that’s only for six or seven months of the year, so then I try and get a good price for the shellfish.”
Akil nodded. For a moment he thought the language was some form of old Gaelic. He managed to hear the words lobster and fish in the diatribe and correctly concluded that the man had something to do with the sea.
“Greencastle is a medieval fortress that sits on the hill behind our old homestead,” Mrs. Timmons said. “Would you believe that Bernard and I used to play up there when we were just six years old? The Normans built it all from stone in the thirteenth century. We could see all the way down to the cellar through the holes in the floors. We’d jump across without any fear at all. Bernard would hide and then scare me half to death with his screams. Pigs stayed in that place, and they’d chase after us. What I wouldn’t give to hear them snort again. But that was ages ago.”
“It sounds very nice,” Akil said, noting the time.
“Kenny’s a bartender, Bernard. I’m sure the two of you would’ve hit it off,” Mrs. Timmons continued. “And he’s a trickster too. But only at night. In the daytime he attends the university.”
Bernard nodded curtly, tipping his glass.
“That’s a fine place to start out now, as long as you know what you’re wanting to study.”
“It’s gadgets,” Mrs. Timmons said. “He tinkers with everything. And that reminds me, Kenny. Why in the world would you have so many of those tiny little telephones all lined up on your sink? Plugged into the wall sockets like kittens drinking their mother’s milk. The other day, I think there were five. God rest his soul, Dermott used to say they were the toys of the devil himself.”
Akil smiled broadly. “I… um, gifts. They’re family gifts. They were on sale.”
“You’re a thoughtful one, Kenneth. Are you able to join me for dinner tomorrow? I bought a beef roast fat enough for the whole neighborhood.”
“I’m really sorry, but I can’t,” Akil said as though in pain. “My mother’s been asking for me again. I have to leave in the morning. I should be back in about a week.”
“Well, that’s a shame, but family comes before all else in this world. Godspeed to you when you travel. And speaking of travel, did you happen to find that spare set of Scotch and Soda in the stores?”
Akil grimaced. “I completely forgot. I promise I’ll bring it next time.”
“Do you have yours, then? I know you never go anywhere without it.”
Akil reached in his pocket and produced a plastic case the size of a cigarette pack. Scotch and Soda was a brilliant vintage coin trick that made a quarter literally disappear from a person’s closed hand. Mrs. Timmons’s father had dabbled in sleight-of-hand when she was a child. She had been enamored by Akil and his magic coins since the day he’d rented the flat.
Akil completed the trick with his usual flair and tucked the little case away.
A vehicle horn beeped twice.
Bernard hugged his sister in a long embrace. He wiped his eyes with a handkerchief. “I guess I’m just not used to that odor comin’ from next door.”
“Now don’t you try and blame Kenny and his hundred gallons of bleach, you old crier,” Mrs. Timmons chided through her tears. “Even though he’s got enough to scrub the whole neighborhood. I’ll miss you too.”
One bullet per head, Akil thought. They’d fall together onto the sofa in some final act of macabre embrace. The basement and heavy plastic would easily mask the odor of two bodies for perhaps ten days.
“Somebody call a cab?” a voice shouted from outside.
“You ring me when you get home, or I’ll worry through the night!” Mrs. Timmons shouted above the roar of another aircraft.
Bernard walked to the curb, shook Akil’s hand, and blew his sister a kiss.
The taxi sped off.
Akil returned to his flat and peered through binoculars from his upstairs bedroom. The planes on LaGuardia’s Runway 4 were backed up and averaging four minutes of hold time between departures.
He opened his Qur’an.
Surah 48. Victory, Conquest
1. Verily we have granted thee a manifest victory.
2. That Allah may forgive thee thy faults of the past and those to follow; fulfill His favor to thee; and guide thee on the straight way.
3. And that Allah may help thee with powerful help…
4. And that He may punish the hypocrites, men and women, and the polytheists, men and women, who imagine an evil opinion of Allah. On them is a round of eviclass="underline" the wrath of Allah is on them. He has cursed them and got hell ready for them, and evil is it for a destination…
5. We have truly sent thee as a witness, as a bringer of glad tidings, and as a warner…
6. Verily those who plight their fealty to thee do no less than plight their fealty to Allah. The hand of Allah is over their hands: then anyone who violates his oath, does so to the harm of his own soul, and anyone who fulfills what he has covenanted with Allah, Allah will soon grant him a great reward.
Chapter 11
Linda Robertson sat up in bed, jarred awake by footsteps in the hallway. The clock on the nightstand suggested dawn, but the room was nearly black, thanks to the room-darkening window blinds. There had been a recent string of morning break-ins in their normally crimefree suburb ten minutes northeast of Atlanta. Her mind raced to remember if she’d activated the alarm system. She slithered her hand under the covers and tapped her husband. Michael didn’t respond. A pinch produced a mild snort.