A Fire in the Sun (20 page)

I opened my eyes. She'd put a fresh vodka gimlet in front of me. I was in a bottomless melancholy, the kind that doesn't get any help at all from liquor. You can drink all night and you never get loaded. You end up with a bad stomach and a pounding headache, but the relief you expect from your troubles never comes. " 'S all right," I said. "I got to stay. You go ahead and close up, though. Nobody's come in for an hour at least."

"What you say, boss," said Chiri, giving me a worried look. I hadn't told her about Shaknahyi. I hadn't told anybody about him.

"Chiri, you know somebody I can trust to do a little dirty work?"

She didn't look shocked. That was one of the reasons I liked her so much. "You can't find somebody with your cop connections? You don't have enough thugs working for you at Papa's?"

I shook my head. "Somebody who knows what he's doing, somebody I can count on to keep a low profile."

Chiri grinned. "Somebody like what you used to be before your lucky number came up. What about Morgan? He's dependable and he probably won't sell you out."

"I don't know," I said. Morgan was a big blond guy, an American from Federated New England. He and I didn't travel in the same circles, but if Chiri recommended him, he was probably all right.

"What you need done?" she asked.

I rubbed my cheek. Reflected in the back mirror, my red beard was beginning to show a lot of gray. "I want him to track somebody down for me. Another American."

"See there? Morgan's a natural."

"Uh huh," I said sourly. "If they blow each other away, nobody'11 miss 'em. Can you get hold of him tonight?"

She looked doubtful. "It's two o'clock in the morning."

"Tell him there's a hundred kiam in it for him. Just for showing up and talking to me."

"He'll be here," said Chiri. She dug an address book out of her bag and grabbed the bar's phone.

I gulped down half the vodka gimlet and stared at the front door. Now I was waiting for two people.

"You want to pay us?" Chiri said some time later.

I'd been staring at the door, unaware that the music had been turned off and the five dancers had gotten dressed. I shook my head to clear the fog out of it, but it didn't do much good. "How'd we do tonight?" I asked.

"Same as always," said Chiri. "Lousy."

I split the receipts with her and began counting out the dancers' money. Chiri had a list of how many drinks each girl had gotten from the customers. I figured out the commissions and added them to the wages. "Nobody better come in late tomorrow," I said.

"Yeah, right," said Kandy, snatching up her money and hurrying for the door. Lily, Rani, and Jamila were close behind her.

"You all right, Marîd?" asked Yasmin.

I looked up at her, grateful for her concern. "I'm fine," I said. "Tell you all about it later."

"Want to go out for some breakfast?"

That would have been wonderful. I hadn't gone out with Yasmin in months. I realized that it had been a very long time since I'd gone out with anybody. I had something else to do tonight, though. "Let me postpone that," I said. "Tomorrow, maybe."

"Sure, Marîd," she said. She turned and went out.

"There is something wrong, huh?" said Chiri.

I just nodded and folded up the rest of the night's cash. No matter how fast I gave it away, it just kept accumulating.

"And you don't want to talk about it."

I shook my head. "Go on home, Chiri."

"Just gonna sit here in the dark by yourself?"

I made a shooing motion with my hand. Chiri shrugged and left me alone. I finished the vodka gimlet, then went behind the bar and made myself another one. About twenty minutes later, the blond American came into the club. He nodded to me and said something in English.

I just shook my head. I opened my briefcase on the bar, took out an English-language daddy, and chipped it in. There was just a moment while my mind worked to translate what he'd said, and then the daddy kicked in and it was as if I'd always known how to speak English. "Sorry to make you come out so late, Morgan," I said.

He ran a large hand through his long blond hair. "Hey, man, what's happenin'?"

"Want a drink?"

"You can draw me a beer if it's free."

"Help yourself," I said.

He leaned across the bar and held a clean glass under one of the taps. "Chiri said something about a hundred kiam, man."

I took out my money. The size of the roll dismayed me. I was going to have to get to the bank more often, or else I'd have to let Kmuzu play bodyguard full-time. I dealt out five twenty-kiam bills and slid them down toward Morgan.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and scooped up the money. He looked down at the bills, then back at me. "Now I can go, right?" he said.

"Sure," I said, "unless you want to hear how you can make a thousand more."

He adjusted his steel-rimmed spectacles and grinned again. I didn't know if the glasses were functional or just an affectation. If his eyes were bad, he could have had them reconstructed cheaply enough. "This is a lot more interesting than what I was doin', anyway," he said.

"Fine. I just want you to find somebody." I told him all about Paul Jawarski.

When I mentioned the Flathead Gang, Morgan nodded. "He's the guy that killed the cop today?" he asked.

"He got away."

"Well, hey, man, the law will bring him in sooner or later, you can bet on that."

I didn't let my expression change. "I don't want to hear about sooner or later, okay? I want to know where he's at, and I want to ask him a couple of questions before the cops get to him. He's holed up somewhere, probably been stung with a needle gun."

"You're payin' a thousand kiam just to put the finger on this guy?"

I squeezed the wedge of lime into my gimlet and drank some. "Uh huh."

"You don't want me to rough him up a little for you?"

"Just find him before Hajjar does."

"Aha," said Morgan, "I get you, man. After the lieutenant gets his hooks into him, Jawarski won't be available to talk to nobody."

"Right. And we don't want that to happen."

"I guess we don't, man. How much you gonna pay me up front?"

"Five now, five later." I cut him another five hundred kiam. "I get results tomorrow, right?"

His big hand closed on the money and he gave me his predatory grin. "Go get some sleep, man. I'll be wakin' you up with Jawarski's address and commcode."

I stood up. "Finish your beer and let's get out of here. This place is starting to break my heart."

Morgan looked around at the dark bar. "Ain't the same without the girls and the mirror balls goin', is it?" He gulped down the rest of his beer and set the glass gently on the bar.

I followed him toward the front door. "Find Jawarski," I said.

"You got it, man." He raised a hand and ambled away up the Street. I went back inside and sat in my place. My night wasn't over yet.

I drank a couple more gimlets before Indihar showed up. I knew she was going to come. I'd been waiting for her.

She'd thrown on a bulky blue coat and tied a maroon and gold scarf over her hair. Her face was pale and drawn, her lips pressed tightly together. She came to where I was sitting and looked down at me. Her eyes weren't red, though; she hadn't been crying. I couldn't imagine Indihar crying. "I want to talk to you," she said. Her voice was cold and calm.

"That's why I been sitting here," I said.

She turned away and stared at herself in the wall of mirrors behind the stage. "Sergeant Catavina said you weren't in very good shape this morning. That true?" She looked at me again. Her expression was perfectly empty.

"Is what true?" I said. "That I wasn't feeling well?

"That you were high or hung over today when you went out with my husband."

I sighed. "I showed up at the station house with a hangover. It wasn't crippling, though."

Her hands began clenching and unclenching. I could see her jaw muscles twitch. "You think it might have slowed you down any?"

"No, Indihar," I said, "I don't think it affected me at all. You want to blame me for what happened? Is that what this is about?"

Her head turned very slowly. She stared directly into my eyes. "Yes, I want to blame you. You didn't back him up fast enough. You didn't cover him. If you'd been there for him, he wouldn't be dead."

"You can't say that, Indihar." I had a sick, hollow feeling in my belly because I'd been thinking the same thing all day. The guilt had been growing in me since I'd left Shaknahyi lying on a cot at the hospital with a bloody sheet over his face.

"My husband would be alive and my children would  still have a father. They don't now, you know. I haven't told them yet. I don't know how to tell them. I don't know how to tell myself, if you want to know the truth. Maybe tomorrow I'll realize that Jirji's dead. Then I'll have to find a way to get through the day without him, through the week, through the rest of my life."

I felt a sudden nausea and closed my eyes. It was as if I weren't really there, as if I were just dreaming this nightmare. When I opened my eyes, though, Indihar was still looking at me. It had all happened, and she and I were going to have to play out this terrible scene. "I—"

"Don't tell me you're sorry, you son of a bitch," she said. Even then she didn't raise her voice. "I don't want to hear anybody tell me he's sorry."

I just sat there and let her say whatever she needed to say. She couldn't accuse me of anything that I hadn't already confessed to in my own mind. Maybe if I hadn't gotten so drunk last night, maybe if I hadn't taken all those sunnies this morning—

Finally she just stared at me, a look of despair on her face. She was condemning me with her presence and her silence. She knew and I knew, and that was enough. Then she turned and walked out of the club, her gait steady, her posture perfect.

I felt absolutely destroyed. I found the phone where Chiri'd left it and spoke my home commcode into it. It rang three times and then Kmuzu answered. "You want to come get me?" I said. I was slurring my words.

"Are you at Chiriga's?" he asked.

"Yeah. Come quick before I kill myself." I slapped the phone down on the bar and made myself another drink while I waited.

When he arrived, I had a little present for him. "Hold out your hand," I said.

"What is it, yaa Sidi?"

I emptied my pillcase into his upturned palm, then clicked the pillcase closed and put it back in my pocket. "Get rid of 'em," I said.

His expression didn't change as he closed his fist. "This is wise," he said.

"I'm way overdue." I got up from my stool and followed him back into the cool night air. I locked the front door of Chiri's and then let Kmuzu drive me home.

I took a long shower and let the hot needle spray blast my skin until I felt myself begin to relax. I dried off and went into my bedroom. Kmuzu had brought me a mug of strong hot chocolate. I sipped it gratefully.

"Will you be needing anything else tonight, yaa Sidi?" he asked.

"Listen," I said, "I'm not going into the station house in the morning. Let me sleep, all right? I don't want to be bothered. I don't want to answer any phone calls or deal with anybody's problems."

"Unless the master of the house requires you," said Kmuzu.

I sighed. "That goes without saying. Otherwise—"

"I will see that you're not disturbed."

I didn't chip in the wake-up daddy before I went to bed, and I got a restless night's sleep. Bad dreams woke me again and again until I fell into deep, exhausted sleep at dawn. It was close to noon when I finally got out of bed. I dressed in my old jeans and work shirt, a costume I didn't wear very often around Friedlander Bey's mansion.

"Would you like some breakfast, yaa Sidi?" asked Kmuzu.

"No, I'm taking a vacation from all that today."

He frowned. "There is a business matter for your attention later."

"Later," I agreed. I went to the desk where I'd thrown my briefcase the night before, and took Wise Counselor from the rack of moddies. I thought my troubled mind could use some instant therapy. I seated myself in a comfortable black leather chair and chipped the moddy in.

Once upon a time in Mauretania there was or maybe there wasn 't a famous fool, trickster, and rascal named Martd Audran. One day Audran was driving his cream-colored Westphalian sedan on his way to take care of some important business, when another car collided with his. The second car was old and broken down, and although the accident was clearly the fault of the other driver, the man jumped out of the wrecked heap and began screaming at Audran. "Look what you 've done to my magnificent vehicle!" shouted the driver, who was Police Lieutenant Hajjar. Reda Abu Adil, Hassan the Shiite, and Pauljawar-

ski also got out of the car. All four threatened and abused Audran, although he protested that he had done nothing wrong.

Jawarski kicked the creased fender of Hajjar's automobile. "It's useless now," he said, "and so the only fair thing is for you to give us your car."

Audran was outnumbered four to one and it was clear that they were not in a mood to be reasonable, so he agreed.

"And will you not reward us for showing you the path of honor?" asked Hajjar.

"If we hadn 't insisted," said Hassan, "your actions would have put your soul in jeopardy with Allah."

"Perhaps," said Audran. "What do you wish me to pay you for this service?"

Reda Abu Adil spread his hands as if it mattered little. "It is but a token, a symbol between Muslim brothers, " he said. "You may give us each a hundred kiam." So Audran handed the keys to his cream-colored Westphalian sedan to Lieutenant Hajjar, and paid each of the four a hundred kiam.

All afternoon, Audran pushed Hajjar's wrecked car back to town in the hot sun. He parked it in the middle of the souk and went to find his friend, Saied the Half-Hajj. "You must help me get even with Hajjar, Abu Adil, Hassan, and Jawarski," he said, and Saied was agreeable. Audran cut a hole in the floor of the derelict automobile, and Saied lay by the opening covered with a blanket so that none could see him, with a small bag of gold coins. Then Audran started the engine of the car and waited.