Salim knew what it was like to be an outsider in George W. Bush’s America, no matter how many speeches the president made about Islam being a peaceful religion. With all his heart, Salim knew this to be true, but he doubted very much that Mr. Bush believed what he was saying.
Just before sundown that Friday, Salim pulled his yellow taxi into the curb in front of a little shop on a busy street in Majesta. Here in Ikram Hassan’s store, devout Muslims could purchase whatever food and drink was considered halal — lawful or permitted for consumption as described in the Holy Koran.
The Koran decreed, “Eat of that over which the name of Allah hath been mentioned, if ye are believers in His revelations.” Among the acceptable foods were milk (from cows, sheep, camels, or goats), honey, fish, plants that were not intoxicant, fresh or naturally frozen vegetables, fresh or dried fruits, legumes (like peanuts, cashews, hazelnuts, and walnuts), and grains such as wheat, rice, barley, and oats.
Many animals, large and small, were considered halal as well, but they had to be slaughtered according to Islamic ritual. Ikram Hassan was about to slay a chicken just as his friend Salim came into the shop. He looked up when a small bell over his door sounded.
“Hey there, Salim,” he said in English.
There were two major languages in Afghanistan, both of them imported from Iran, but Pushto was the official language the two men had learned as boys growing up in Kandahar, and this was the language they spoke now.
Salim fidgeted and fussed as his friend hunched over the chicken; he did not want to be late for the sunset prayer. Using a very sharp knife, and making certain that he cut the main blood vessels without completely severing the throat, Ikram intoned “Bismillah Allah-u-Albar” and completed the ritual slaughter.
Each of the men then washed his hands to the wrists, and cleansed the mouth and the nostrils with water, and washed the face and the right arm and left arm to the elbow, and washed to the ankle first the right foot and then the left, and at last wiped the top of the head with wet hands, the three middle fingers of each hand joined together.
Salim consulted his watch yet another time.
Both men donned little pillbox hats.
Ikram locked the front door to his store, and together they walked to the mosque four blocks away.
The sun had already set.
It was ten minutes to seven.
Among other worshippers, Salim and Ikram stood facing Mecca, their hands raised to their ears, and they uttered the words, “Allahu Akbar” which meant “Allah is the greatest of all.” Then they placed the right hand just below the breast and recited in unison the prayer called istiftah.
“Surely I have turned myself, being upright holy to Him Who originated the heavens and the earth and I am not of the polytheists. Surely my prayer and my sacrifice and my life and my death are for Allah, the Lord of the worlds, no associate has He; and this I am commanded and I am one of those who submit. Glory to Thee, O Allah, and Thine is the praise, and blessed is Thy name, and exalted is Thy majesty, and there is none to be served besides Thee.”
A’udhu bi-llahi minash-shaitani-r-rajim.
“I seek the refuge of Allah from the accursed devil.”
Six hours later, Salim Nazir would be dead.
In this city, all the plays, concerts, and musicals let out around eleven, eleven-thirty, the cabarets around one, one-thirty. The night clubs wouldn’t break till all hours of the night. It was Salim’s habit during the brief early-morning lull to visit a Muslim friend who was a short-order cook at a deli on Culver Avenue, a mile and a half distant from all the midtown glitter. He went into the deli at one-thirty, enjoyed a cup of coffee and a chat with his friend, and left twenty minutes later. Crossing the street to where he’d parked his taxi, he got in behind the wheel, and was just about to start the engine when he realized someone was sitting in the dark in the back seat.
Startled, he was about to ask what the hell, when the man fired a bullet through the plastic divider and into his skull.
The two Midtown South detectives who responded to the call immediately knew this killing was related to the one that had taken place uptown the night before; a blue Star of David had been spray-painted on the windshield. Nonetheless, they called their lieutenant from the scene, and he informed them that this was a clear case of First Man Up, and advised them to wait right there while he contacted the Eight-Seven, which had caught the original squeal. The detectives were still at the scene when Carella and Meyer got there at twenty minutes to three.
Midtown South told Carella that both MCU and the ME had already been there and gone, the corpse and the vehicle carried off respectively to the morgue and the PD garage to be respectively dissected and impounded. They told the Eight-Seven dicks that they’d talked to the short-order cook in the deli across the street, who informed them that he was a friend of the dead man, and that he’d been in there for a cup of coffee shortly before he got killed. The vic’s name was Salim Nazir, and the cab company he worked for was called City Transport. They assumed the case was now the Eight-Seven’s and that Carella and Meyer would do all the paper shit and send them dupes. Carella assured them that they would.
“We told you about the blue star, right?” one of the Midtown dicks said.
“You told us,” Meyer said.
“Here’s the evidence bullet we recovered,” he said, and handed Meyer a sealed manila envelope. “Chain of Custody tag on it, you sign next. Looks like you maybe caught an epidemic.”
“Or maybe a copycat,” Carella said.
“Either way, good luck,” the other Midtown dick said.
Carella and Meyer crossed the street to the deli.
Like his good friend, Salim, the short-order cook was from Afghanistan, having arrived here in the city seven years ago. He offered at once to show the detectives his green card, which made each of them think he was probably an illegal with a counterfeit card, but they had bigger fish to fry and Ajmal Khan was possibly a man who could help them do just that.
Ajmal meant “good-looking” in his native tongue, a singularly contradictory description for the man who now told them he had heard a shot outside some five minutes after Salim finished his coffee. Dark eyes bulging with excitement, black mustache bristling, bulbous nose twitching like a rabbit’s, Ajmal reported that he had rushed out of the shop the instant he heard the shot, and had seen a man across the street getting out of Salim’s taxi on the driver’s side, and leaning over the windshield with a can of some sort in his hand. Ajmal didn’t know what he was doing at the time but he now understood the man was spray-painting a Jewish star on the windshield.
“Can you describe this man?” Carella asked.
“Is that what he was doing? Painting a Star of David on the windshield?”
“Apparently,” Meyer said.
“That’s bad,” Ajmal said.
The detectives agreed with him. That was bad. They did not believe this was a copycat. This was someone specifically targeting Muslim cab drivers. But they went through the routine anyway, asking the questions they always asked whenever someone was murdered: Did he have any enemies that you know of, did he mention any specific death threats, did he say he was being followed or harassed, was he in debt to anyone, was he using drugs?