He bent over the dead man to search for identification. Maryam stepped in his way and pressed her hand against his chest. “You have to believe me.”
“Why?” he asked.
“Why?” she repeated, fighting tears. “Why? Because I’ll go out of my mind if you don’t.”
In late evening the industrial neighborhood was devoid of pedestrians and auto traffic. On the next block a streetlamp covered the nearest house in an umbrella of gray light. Somewhere a siren resounded, and its shrill call was answered by a pack of dogs that worshiped it. Darius put Maryam in the Paycon, and they raced eight blocks—until he pulled over for an oncoming fire company—without her taking her eyes from the gun he was holding in his lap.
“Where are you bringing me?” she asked him.
“As far away from here as we can get.”
“But where?”
It was a question he was counting on to answer itself. Headquarters was as secure as his apartment. He had no close friends left, no one he trusted with a life. His only relatives were his mother and three half-sisters from whom he had been estranged forever. Someplace would come up, because it had to. In the meantime it was enough to keep moving.
“That boy,” Maryam said, “Hamid. He died to save my life. He didn’t even know me.”
“Don’t flatter yourself. He lost his head, and paid the price. There’s a lesson in it for you.”
“Just because you killed those two doesn’t mean others like them aren’t looking for me. They’ll never stop.”
“You have an exalted opinion of yourself,” he said. “What makes you so sure it’s you they were after?”
“Who else was there? You mean you? You’re the police. Your methods may be smoother, but basically you’re on the same side as them.”
“How do you—” He hadn’t meant to sound like that. But when he repeated the question, it came out with the same derision for everything she’d said. “How do you know whose side I’m on?” Except he’d almost added,
When I don’t know, myself.
He turned off the main road to avoid the Komiteh roadblocks. They wove through loud streets where whole families sought a rare night breeze on rooftop mattresses, and parked at a house behind an ivy-covered wall.
Maryam was shivering despite the heat returned by the pavement, which lingered in late summer almost till dawn. He hustled her from the curb past neighbors who looked away from her bad hejab as though bare arms and legs had the power to strike them blind. He punched the bell, pounded on the door before the ringing faded.
Light footsteps inside tapered off well back of the door. “Did you forget your key again?” an angry voice shouted. “Good. Stay out all night for all I care.”
“It’s Darius. Open up.”
There was no more from inside. He shook the knob, rattled it till the door quivered in the frame.
“You’ll tear the house down,” the voice said, and then Sharera stood in the doorway with her hands on her hips. Her jet black hair was in curlers. A scowl directed at Maryam held special hatred for Darius.
“Mansur is not at home?” he asked.
“He’s at the morgue. Where he belongs.”
“Sharera, meet Maryam Lajevardi,” he said, and pushed inside before Sharera could lock them out. “If it’s all right with you, she’ll be your houseguest for several days.”
“Nothing is all right.”
Darius would not have been surprised if Sharera went for Ghaffari’s off-duty gun and came back shooting.
“She’s one of Mansur’s sluts, isn’t she?” Sharera spat. “Or is she yours? You’re no better than he. Why did you bring her here?”
“Maryam is in hiding for her life,” he said.
“Hiding from who? From another woman like me, who she betrayed? Let her hide somewhere else.”
“Stop, Sharera—we’ve been friends too long. I know you’d never turn away anyone in danger. You and Mansur are the only ones I can depend on.”
“I depended on you once, too, Darius. You promised to keep Mansur in line. Where were you then?”
“You have to take her in,” he said stubbornly. “It’s another debt to add to my account.”
“I have a nine-year-old daughter. I can’t subject Shahla to this. Put her wherever Mansur keeps his girls.”
“Anyplace else, and they’ll find her and kill her for sure.”
“That’s not my problem.” Sharera held her ground as she groped for the right combination of words that would banish her enemies from her house.
Maryam shivered and rubbed her hands against her arms. She moaned softly, and lifted her hem to inspect a running wound above the knee.
“This girl is hurt,” Sharera said. “What’s wrong with you, Darius? Why didn’t you say something?”
Stepping aside, she allowed them into the living room, where Shahla was scribbling in a coloring book on the floor. “Bring mother the first-aid kit,” she told the child as she tore away a fringe of charred cloth over Maryam’s thigh. “How did this happen?”
“Maryam has been burned out of her house,” Darius said. “She needs a place to stay until arrangements can be made for her.”
“What kind of arrangements?” Sharera’s tone was sharp, rebuking him for not taking better care of Maryam. Having saved her life, who better than he should understand that preserving it had become his responsibility?
“I’m working on it.” Darius decided that he was jealous of Maryam for having someone, even someone like him, to look after her. Why was there no one to relieve him of the nuisance of keeping himself alive? Hamid had tried, it could be argued, but when he had gotten himself killed for his effort the weight of two lives had shifted to Darius’s overburdened shoulders. “May I use your phone?”
“You know where it is.”
He went into the kitchen, and dialed Homicide. “This is Bakhtiar. Criminalist Hamid has been fatally wounded at a house six kilometers west of the Azadi Monument on the Old Karaj Road. Send men right away. They’ll know the address. The fire department has already responded to the scene.
“I’m going to Maryam’s now,” he told the women. “When Mansur gets home, tell him everything.”
“When will you be back?” Maryam asked.
“Not until we’re ready to move you. I can’t risk leading anyone here. You’re in good hands with Sharera and Ghaffari.”
He could have been returning to a place he hadn’t seen in years. The house was a black shell a third of its former size; the rear section alone had been left standing. The roof had caved in, and one wall was down, leaving the kitchen exposed, more like a stage set than a structure where someone had made her home until an hour ago. Firemen dragged hoses through the rubble, pouncing on hot spots that flared up at them with the crackle of sniper fire. Three bodies covered in green blankets were arranged in the yard in an orderly row that reminded Darius of the captured pieces beside Maryam’s chessboard. But now the players were a uniformed sergeant and Ghaffari.
“I came as soon as I heard.” In his hurry to reach Darius’s side Ghaffari had left the sergeant talking to himself. “What happened here?”
Darius turned back the blanket. The men he had shot lay on either side of Hamid, the criminalist’s escort into the next world. Though they were strangers to him, he was familiar with their rough type—uneducated, underemployed, deeply religious men from the southern slums who embraced the Revolution unquestioningly and achieved status commensurate with the blindness of their devotion.
“These two tossed a firebomb in the living room and then started shooting. Hamid acquitted himself with more courage than I gave him credit for, but wasn’t as lucky as I.”
“You’re unhurt?”
Darius nodded.
“Praise Allah,” Ghaffari said. “What about the girl? Where is she?”
Darius walked him out of earshot of the sergeant. “At your house, Mansur. For safekeeping.”
Ghaffari yanked his arm from Darius’s grasp. “What right do you have to jeopardize my family?”
He had no right—nor anything to say to Ghaffari, who knew as well as anyone that the better part of being a policeman was going along with unreasonable demands. Darius went back to the bodies alone. Murder’s ruddy patina lent tragic dignity to Hamid’s immature face; but embarrassment was crusted on his lips. In the moment of his death the criminalist had realized his mistake. The men who had killed him wore the slight smiles of martyrs they had not planned to be that day, still straining for a glimpse of the gates of paradise—a dumber mistake.
Darius sorted through the pockets of both corpses, finding identification for a Pihzman Bahunar, thirty-five years old, and Mahdi Attarha, twenty-eight, both of Dharvazeh Ghor. Attarha was also carrying stone worry beads and the keys to a Peugeot automobile. Darius looked across the street toward a jaunty blue sedan mixed improbably among the police cars. Neither man had as much as ten thousand rials with him. He lifted a corner of the blanket under which two .38-caliber revolvers, newer models of his own American weapon, had been collected with a pencil jammed into the muzzles.
“You can’t keep the girl at my house forever.” Ghaffari played his one-note song over Darius’s shoulder. “What now?”
“Will your cousins in Tabriz put her up?”
“They have their hands full with Nahid. She’s not easy to live with.”
“Another one like her won’t be noticed,” Darius said.
The morgue wagons that he had left behind at Mehta’s pulled up to the house ahead of a Paycon junker. Baghai limped out of the lead truck leaning heavily on an attendant’s arm. “Don’t you ever quit?” he asked Darius. “You’re wearing me out.”
“We’ll try to arrange the next slaughter for a convenient hour.”
“A good piece of shooting,” Baghai said. “Unambiguous death is in short supply these days.”
The driver of the Paycon approached the men standing over the bodies. After taking a few steps, he stopped and looked back, and the sergeant pointed at Darius.
“Sir,” the young man said, “I have an important message.”
“Yes?”
“I am instructed it is for your ears only.” He backed off four long strides, and looked disappointed when Darius didn’t follow.
“I am Probationary Patrolman Banani,” he confided. “Be advised that the Revolutionary Prosecutor, Mr. Zakir, wishes to speak to you tonight, and is in his office now.”
Bijan’s warning that the invitation was coming had never been far from Darius’s consciousness. A great weight lifting from his shoulders was not the pleasant release he had anticipated, though, and immediately was reasserted over his heart.
“If this man has brought news of another bloodbath …” Baghai was saying.
A basij brought Darius into the outer office to wait until the Revolutionary Prosecutor finished with a matter of national concern. The draft from the adjacent toilet pumped currents of lemon-flavored air around his head. After a long while, a bald man in a tailored suit came out of Zakir’s office with an uncommonly attractive red-haired woman. Darius had seen the woman before, on more than one occasion, but couldn’t say where. As the couple went past him, he heard her whisper, “Does that bastard think for one minute I would subject myself to something like that? I would die sooner than—”
“Yes, you would,” her companion agreed, silencing her.
Zakir sat at his large desk jabbing a pencil without a point into a gunmetal gray box that looked to Darius like an oversize electric sharpener. On the blotter were about two dozen other new pencils sawed cleanly in half.
“Did you happen to notice the woman who just left?”
“She was quite handsome,” Darius said.
“She is stunning. She is Niloofar Bihruzi, the film actress, one of the most famous faces in Iran. She finds herself embroiled in a serious conflict with the Komiteh, and has come to me for advice.”
Zakir’s pause was not a hint for Darius to interrupt. It was a statement that he would not proceed to such mundane business as the police until he had finished with his adventures with the movie star.
“It is an unusual case. In every one of Niloofar’s films she is called upon to make love with her leading man. She is an accomplished performer; by any standard the scenes are steamy. You might say they are her bread and butter. The Komiteh have taken offense. As Niloofar is not married to the men she is kissing, they want to bring charges of prostitution against her.”
“Don’t they understand she’s acting?”
“Ah, but you are missing the important issue they have raised. What are the faithful to conclude when they see such a beautiful woman making love with legions of men? Forget that these are movies. Are her kisses not real? Are they less than a kiss because they are captured on film? Are they anything else? Pressure is being brought to bear against Niloofar to do something about allegations of immoral behavior. Her manager advised her to see me. We have been working together on her problem for some time.”
It dawned on Darius that, like Zakir, he found the movie queen’s dilemma more interesting than his own, or at least was in no hurry for word that he had been relieved of his duties.
“In consultation with Ayatollah Mahallati I have decided that, starting with her next picture, Niloofar must seegah for her leading man, whoever he may be. She will become a temporary wife for the duration of each movie she makes, and her kisses will be blessed by holy law. Even better, Niloofar and her leading man can spend their nights in real lovemaking, which will lend authenticity to their performances. It is a brilliant solution, if I say so myself. No?”
“I wouldn’t have thought of it,” Darius said.
“Unfortunately, not all cases lend themselves to such happy resolution. I did not summon you here so you could catch a glimpse of Niloofar Bihruzi, but to let you know that after much hard debate it has been decided to reopen the investigation into the killing of Colonel Farmayan, your former boss in SAVAK. It will be necessary for you to resign from the National Police, and to surrender your weapons.”
So Bijan and Sarmadi had spared him the best part, letting the news break gradually, so that he wouldn’t go to pieces—or run.
“I executed the shah’s torturer. For this the government wants to bring me to trial a second time?”
“Shooting Farmayan was a praiseworthy act. Even the so-called victim’s nephew has come to applaud it. Does Bijan seem hostile to you? Do you have strained relations? No, the real offense is that for too long you were an obedient agent of SAVAK, an organization that perverted its charter to crack down on the activities of the communists, and instead repressed the Muslim faithful. But you will be tried for murder because it is necessary to make an example of you, and murder is the strongest charge we can prove.”