A Fire in the Sun (15 page)

"If it isn't just a crank call," I said. "If there is a body in the first place."

"There will be."

I followed him down to the garage. We got into our patrol car and cut across the Boulevard il-Jameel and under the big gate. There was a lot of pedestrian traffic on the Street that morning, so Shaknahyi angled south on First Street and then west along one of the narrow, garbage-strewn alleys that wind between the flat-roofed, stucco-fronted houses and the ancient brick tenements. Shaknahyi drove the car up onto the sidewalk. We got out and took a good look at the building. It was a pale green two-story house in terrible disrepair. The entryway and front parlor stank of urine and vomit. The wooden lattices covering the windows had all been smashed some time ago, from the look of things. Everywhere we walked, we crunched broken brick and shards of glass. The place had probably been abandoned for many months, maybe years.

It was very still, the dead hush of a house where the power is off and even the faint whir of motors is missing. As we made our way up from the ground floor to the family's rooms above, I thought I heard something small and quick scurrying through the trash ahead of us. I felt my heart pounding in my chest, and I missed the sense of calm competence I'd gotten from Complete Guardian.

Shaknahyi and I checked a large bedroom that had once belonged to the owner and his wife, and another room that had been a child's. We found nothing except more sad destruction. A corner of the house had entirely collapsed, leaving it open to the outside; weather, vermin, and vagrants had completed the ruin of the child's bedroom. At least here the fresh air had scoured out the sour, musty smell that choked the rest of the house.

We found the corpse in the next room down the hall. It was a young woman's body, a sexchange named Blanca who used to dance in Frenchy Benoit's club. I'd known her well enough to say hello, but not much better. She lay on her back, her legs bent and turned to one side, her arms thrown up above her head. Her deep blue eyes were open, staring obliquely at the water-stained ceiling above my shoulder. She was grimacing, as if there'd been something horrible with her in the room that had first terrified her and then killed her.

"This ain't bothering you, is it?" asked Shaknahyi.

"What you talking about?"

He tapped Blanca's hand with the toe of his boot. "You're not gonna throw up or nothing, are you?"

"I seen worse," I said.

"Just didn't want you throwing up or nothing." He bent down beside Blanca. "Blood from her nose and ears. Lips drawn back, fingers clutching like claws. She was

juiced at dose range by a good-sized static gun, I'll bet. Look at her. She hasn't been dead half an hour."

"Yeah?"

He lifted her left arm and let it fall. "No stiffness yet. And her flesh is still pink. After you're dead, gravity makes the blood settle. The medical examiner will be able to tell better."

Something struck me as kind of odd. "So the call that came into the station—"

"Bet you kiams to kitty cats the killer made the call himself." He took out his radio and his electronic log.

"Why would a murderer do that?" I asked.

Shaknahyi gazed at me, lost in thought. "The hell should I know?" he said at last. He made a call to Hajjar, asking for a team of detectives. Then he entered a brief report in his log. "Don't touch nothing," he said to me without looking up.

He didn't have to tell me that. "We done here?" I asked.

"Soon as the gold badges show up. In a hurry to travel?"

I didn't answer. I watched him pocket his electronic log. Then he took out a brown vinyl-covered notebook and a pen and made some more notations. "What's that for?" I asked.

"Just keeping some notes for myself. Like I said, there's been a couple of other cases like this lately. Somebody turns up dead and it seems like the bumper himself tips us off."

By the life of my eyes, I thought, if this turns out to be a serial killer, I'm going to pack up and leave the city for good. I glanced down at Shaknahyi, who was still squatting beside Blanca's body. "You don't think it's a serial killer, do you?" I asked.

He stared through me again for a few seconds. "Nah," he said at last, "I think it's something much worse."

Chapter 8

I remembered how much Hajjar's predecessor, Lieutenant Okking, had liked to harass me. Still, no matter how hard it had been to get along with Okking, he'd always gotten the job done. He'd been a shrewd if not brilliant cop, and he'd had a genuine concern for the victims he saw in a day's work. Hajjar was different. To him it was all a day's work, all right, but nothing more.

It didn't surprise me to learn that Hajjar was next to useless. Shaknahyi and I watched as he went about his investigation. He frowned and looked down at Blanca. "Dead, huh?" he said.

I saw Shaknahyi wince. "We got every reason to think so, Lieutenant," he said in a level voice.

"Any ideas who'd want to shade her?"

Shaknahyi looked at me for help. "Could be anybody," I said. "She was probably wearing the wrong moddy for the wrong customer."

Hajjar seemed interested. "You think so?"

"Look," I said. "Her plug's bare."

The lieutenant's eyes narrowed. "So what?"

"A moddy like Blanca never goes anywhere without something chipped in. It's suspicious, that's all."

Hajjar rubbed his scraggly mustache. "I guess you'd know all about that. Not much to go on, though."

"The plainclothes boys can work miracles sometimes," Shaknahyi said, sounding very sincere but winking to let me know just how little regard he had for them.

"Yeah, you right," said Hajjar.

"By the way, Lieutenant," said Shaknahyi, "I was wondering if you wanted us to keep after Abu Adil. We didn't get very far with him last week."

"You want to go out there again? To his house?"

'To his majestic palatial estate, you mean," I said.

Hajjar ignored me. "I didn't mean for you to persecute the guy. He throws a lot of weight in this town."

"Uh huh," said Shaknahyi. "Anyway, we're not doing any persecuting."

"Why do you want to bother him again in the first place?" Hajjar looked at me, but I didn't have an answer.

"I got a hunch that Abu Adil has some connection to these unsolved homicides," said Shaknahyi.

"What unsolved homicides?" Hajjar demanded.

I could see Shaknahyi grit his teeth. "There've been three unsolved homicides in the last couple of months. Four now, including her." He nodded toward Blanca's body, which the M.E.'s boy had covered with a sheet. "They could be related, and they could be connected to Reda Abu Adil."

"They're not unsolved homicides, for God's sake," said Hajjar angrily. "They're just open files, that's all."

"Open files," said Shaknahyi. I could tell he was really disgusted. "You need us for anything else, Lieutenant?"

"I guess not. You two can get back to work."

We left Hajjar and the detectives going over Blanca's remains and her clothes and the dust and the moldy ruins of the house. Outside on the sidewalk, Shaknahyi pulled my arm and stopped me before I got into the patrol car. "The hell was that about the bitch's missing moddy?" he asked.

I laughed. "Just hot air, but Hajjar won't know the difference. Give him something to think about, though, won't it?"

"It's good for the lieutenant to think about something now and then. His brain needs the exercise." Shaknahyi grinned at me.

We were both ready to call it a day. The sky had clouded over and a brisk, hot wind blew grit and smoke into our faces. Angry, grumbling thunder threatened from far away. Shaknahyi wanted to go back to the station house, but I had something else to take care of first. I undipped the phone from my belt and spoke Chili's commcode into it. I heard it ring eight or nine times before she answered it. "Talk to me," she said. She sounded irked.

"Chiri? It's Marîd."

"What do you want, motherfucker?"

"Look, you haven't given me any chance to explain. It's not my fault."

"You said that before." She gave a contemptuous laugh. "Famous last words, honey: 'It's not my fault.' That's what my uncle said when he sold my mama to some goddamn Arab slaver."

"I never knew—"

"Forget it, it ain't even true. You wanted a chance to explain, so explain."

Well, it was show time, but suddenly I didn't have any idea what to say to her. "I'm real sorry, Chiri," I said.

She just laughed again. It wasn't a friendly sound.

I plunged ahead. "One morning I woke up and Papa said, 'Here, now you own Chiriga's club, isn't that wonderful?' What did you expect me to say to him?"

"I know you, honey. I don't expect yod to say anything to Papa. He didn't have to cut off your balls. You sold "em."

I might have mentioned that Friedlander Bey had paid to have the punishment center of my brain wired, and that he could stimulate it whenever he wanted. That's how he kept me in line. But Chiri wouldn't have understood. I might have described the torment Papa could cause me anytime he touched the right keypad. None of that was important to her. All she knew was that I'd betrayed her.

"Chiri, we been friends a long time. Try to understand. Papa got this idea to buy your club and give it to me. I didn't know a thing about it in advance. I didn't want it when he gave it to me. I tried to tell him, but—"

"I'll bet. I'll just bet you told him."

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I think she was enjoying this a lot. "I told him about as much as anyone can tell Papa anything."

"Why my place, Marîd? The Budayeen's full of crummy bars. Why did he pick mine?"

I knew the answer to that: because Friedlander Bey was prying me loose from the few remaining connections to my old life. Making me a cop had alienated most of my friends. Forcing Chiriga to sell her club had turned her against me. Next, Papa'd find a way to make Saied the Half-Hajj hate my guts too. "Just his sense of humor,

 Chiri," I said hopelessly. "Just Papa proving that he's always around, always watching, ready to hit us with his lightning bolts when we least expect it."

There was a long silence from her. "And you're gutless too."

My mouth opened and closed. I didn't know what she was talking about. "Huh?"

"I said you're a gutless panya."

She's always slinging Swahili at me. "What's a panya, Chiri?" I asked.

"It's like a big rat, only stupider and uglier. You didn't dare do this in person, did you, motherfucker? You'd rather whine to me over the phone. Well, you're gonna have to face me. That's all there is to it."

I squeezed my eyes shut and grimaced. "Okay, Chiri, whatever you want. Can you come by the club?"

"The club, you say? You mean, my club? The club I used to own?"

"Yeah," I said. "Your club."

She grunted. "Not on your life, you diseased jackass. I'm not setting foot in there unless things change the way I want 'em. But I'll meet you somewhere else. I'll be in Courane's place in half an hour. That's not in the Budayeen, honey, but I'm sure you can find it. Show up if you think you can handle it." There was a sharp click, and then I was listening to the burr of the dial tone.

"Dragged you through it, didn't she?" said Shaknahyi. He'd enjoyed every moment of my discomfort. I liked the guy, but he was still a bastard sometimes.

I clipped the phone back on my belt. "Ever hear of a bar called Courane's?"

He snorted. "This Christian chump shows up in the city a few years ago." He was wheeling the patrol car through Rasmiyya, a neighborhood east of the Budayeen that I'd never been in before. "Guy named Courane. Called himself a poet, but nobody ever saw much proof of that. Somehow he got to be a big hit with the European community. One day he opens what he calls a salon, see. Just a quiet, dark bar where everything's made out of wicker and glass and stainless steel. Lots of potted plastic plants. Nowadays he ain't the darling of the brunch crowd anymore, but he still pulls this melancholy expatriate routine."

"Like Weinraub on Gargotier's patio," I said.

"Yeah," said Shaknahyi, "except Courane owns his own dive. He stays in there and doesn't bother anybody. Give him that much credit, anyway. That where you're gonna meet Chiri?"

I looked at him and shrugged. "It was her choice."

He grinned at me. "Want to attract a lot of attention when you show up?"

I sighed. "Please no," I muttered. That Jirji, he was some kidder.

Twenty minutes later we were in a middle-class district of two-and three-story houses. The streets were broader than in the Budayeen, and the whitewashed buildings had strips of open land around them, planted with small bushes and flowering shrubs. Tall date palms leaned drunkenly along the verges of the pavement. The neighborhood seemed deserted, if only because there were no shouting children wrestling on the sidewalks or chasing each other around the corners of the houses. It was a very settled, very sedate part of town. It was so peaceful, it made me uncomfortable.

"Courane's is just up here," said Shaknahyi. He turned into a poorer street that was little more than an alley. One side was hemmed in by the back walls of the same flat-roofed houses. There were small balconies on the second floor, and bright lamp-lit windows obscured by lattices made of narrow wooden strips. On the other side of the alley were boarded-up buildings and a few businesses: a leatherworker's shop, a bakery, a restaurant that specialized in bean dishes, a bookstall.

There was also Courane's, out of place in that constricted avenue. The proprietor had set out a few tables, but no one lingered in the white-painted wicker chairs beneath these Cinzano umbrellas. Shaknahyi tapped off the engine, and we got out of the patrol car. I supposed that Chiri hadn't arrived yet, or that she was waiting for me inside. My stomach hurt.

"Officer Shaknahyi!" A middle-aged man came toward us, a welcoming smile on his face. He was about my height, maybe fifteen or twenty pounds heavier, with receding brown hair brushed straight back. He shook hands with Shaknahyi, then turned to me.

"Sandor," said Shaknahyi, "this is my partner, Marîd Audran."