Mysterious Cairo (10 page)

"Cage! Please!" Payne stammered, his carnival voice winding down like a tired music box. "I do not want to die. You do not know how horrible death is where I come from. Please ..."

If Quentin Payne—whatever he was—had anything more to say, Cage didn't hear it. For Cairo had its own sounds, and they were loud and fresh and alive. They were the best sounds he ever heard, and they filled his senses with light and life. Angus Cage pulled his beat-up Fedora down over his eyes and, without a glance back, walked into the harsh, wonderful Cairo sunshine.

Greg Farshtey

The dawn was coming up over Cairo, washing the city in a pale yellow light that drove the rats back into their holes and the drunks back into the gin joints for one more round. My head was pounding and my tongue felt as if it had grown fur — my usual reaction to bad bathtub booze. But the private eye business doesn't always allow you to choose what you drink, or who you drink it with.

The traders were setting up their wares as I moved down what someone had laughingly dubbed "the Mobius Strip": a string of cheap massage parlors, seedy gambling joints, and "private clubs" where you checked your heater at the door before getting clipped. Places like that attracted a ritzier clientele, and the dealers lived a lot longer, too.

Up ahead, a beggar was asking for alms from the wrong guy. Sam "The Vulture" Burke was a Terran enforcer now working for Ali Bejjar, one of Cairo's big guns, and he didn't take kindly to bums looking for handouts. He was about to kick the poor sap for the third time when I clapped a hand on his shoulder.

"Kind of early in the morning for so much exercise, isn't it, Vulture?" I said, knowing full well the only thing Burke hated worse than beggars was wise guys. He grunted and swung a meaty paw at me, which I easily ducked. I came up and connected with my right on his lantern jaw and he folded like an accordion. He would be out for an hour at least, but I lifted his rod just to be on the safe side.

The bum I'd saved was giving me a gratitude number. He was in a bad way — one of those French stormers who had come to Cairo to make a few bucks, but something went sour. Now he was sitting on a street corner with two useless metal legs that wouldn't be walking anywhere anytime soon. I handed him my card and a little spare change and was about to get going when I saw his eyes widen.

He was looking past me and his mouth was moving frantically, but no words were coming out. You don't last long on Terra or here by being slow on the uptake, so I grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him into the alley. Just then, a Tommy gun chewed up the wall where we'd been a second ago. Somebody had a chip on their shoulder, and had decided to drop it on me.

"Legs" was crying, and I told him to shut up while I pulled out my .45. When the shooting stopped, I spotted three hoods in a black sedan across the street, all of them armed. I recognized them as lieutenants in "Nails" Nash's mob, a group I'd done a bad turn to now and then. But "Nails" had never gone in for daylight hits before, let alone with shooters dumb enough to stop their car and make themselves targets.
Then again,
I thought, as the chatter-guns went off in my direction,
maybe he's trying to break out of his rut.

The Frenchman was trying to crawl away on his useless legs, and I shoved him behind a dumpster and told him in broken French to stay there. The last thing I wanted was the guy catching a bullet meant for me. The rest of the locals had already followed the Nile's first law of survival: when lead starts flying, be someplace else.

The tallest of the three gunmen was trying unsuccessfully to hunch down behind the hood of the car. I aimed for his head and made sure he'd get a closed coffin funeral. His two pals weren't happy about that, and made their point by turning the trash cans at the alley's mouth into so much scrap metal. The noise woke up a lady down the block. She leaned out her window and yelled at us to knock it off.

I fired off a few more rounds and shattered some of the windows in the sedan. In the old days, I could have counted on the cops arriving right about now, although there'd be no way to know whose side they'd take. But not here — Mobius kept his hands off Cairo, and the only shocktroopers in town were sleeping it off in the local whorehouses. As the bullets shattered more bricks into dust, I began to wish I hadn't junked my Mystery Man signal ring before coming to Earth.

I was about to make a run for a nearby auto when the two surviving triggermen piled into their wheels and took off. Just like that. They left their buddy bleeding all over the street, and left me wondering what in hell this had all been about. I told "Legs" it was all over and helped him back out on to the sidewalk.

People were breaking their liplocks with the concrete, dusting themselves off, and going on about their business. Nobody took any notice of me or the stiff. I holstered my cannon and went to check out the body.

There wasn't any face left to know, but his suit was good material. I steeled myself and reached inside his jacket for his wallet. I came out with a wad of dough that would have kept this mug in gin and skirts for a few months. I pocketed it. His wallet held a battered driver's license and a card with the address of Nash's nightspot, The Oasis Club.

I heard sirens in the distance, probably a meat wagon coming for Moneybags. I didn't have any answers to give them, so I decided to try to reach the office again. Since walking was apparently bad for my health, I hailed a nice, safe cab.

* * *

The hack let me off around the corner from the Nabib Building, just in case any more nasty surprises were waiting for me. They weren't, so I went inside and headed for the staircase leading to the second floor and the Living Truth Agency.

I was met halfway up by Fasoud, the apothecary, who was fighting a losing battle against perspiration with only a small perfumed handkerchief. "Praise Allah you have returned, McMasters," he sputtered. "I had begun to fear for my very life. I was certain those men would come back and wreck the entire building in their rage."

He wasn't making any sense, but he was certainly upset about something. He had sweated right through his best white linen suit, the one that always looked two sizes too large on him. "Calm down, pal," I said. "Tell the story from the beginning."

"I will do better than tell you, McMasters," he said, nodding. "I will show you."

Panting and wheezing, Fasoud led the way up to the landing. I didn't need a road map to see what he was talking about — the floor of the hallway was covered with glass, and it literally had my name on it. Somebody had shattered the window of my office door.

Leaving Fasoud wringing out his handkerchief, I ran down the hall and skidded into my office. It looked like a dust devil had been through it — chairs overturned, stuffing ripped out of cushions, papers scattered all over.

I like to think I'm a man who has his priorities straight. My first thought as I waded into the office, glass pulverizing under my shoes, was of Sadi, my partner/secretary/confidant. She could hold her own in just about any situation, but what had attacked this office looked to be a force of nature, and an angry one at that. I checked the inner office — which was just as bad, if not worse, than the reception area — but she wasn't there.

I went back to the hallway and found Fasoud. "Has Sadi been here this morning?"

"No, no, McMasters," he assured me. "Miss Bel-Adda has not yet arrived. Surely you do not think — ?"

"I don't know what to think, Fasoud," I said grimly, remembering the three hoods who had tried to ventilate me on my way here. "Do me a favor and call her apartment, will you? Somebody tossed my phone against a wall two or three times."

"As you wish," he answered, hurrying into his shop.

It was only then that I thought about the little secret I keep in my office. When I was just a struggling gumshoe on Terra, I used to watch the police haul in drunks every day, while the bootleggers who peddled the poison drove around in fancy cars and laughed at the law. Then one night, a friend of mine, Anthony Tortino, told a few of these big shots that he wouldn't let them use the back of his paint store for a speakeasy. He'd call the law, he said.

That was the last stand Tony would ever take. The rum-runners shot him down in cold blood, and then they murdered his wife and two little girls for good measure. The cops never made an arrest in the case — too many palms had been greased, I guess.

Tony's murder made me realize I should be doing more than snapping photos in divorce cases and nabbing jaywalkers. The world was full of Jacks and Janes putting on funny costumes and giving the underworld hell — "Mystery Men," the papers called them. With the help of Sadi, I designed a silver and red costume and joined them, as the Silver Scarab. Right after that, Dr. Alexus Frest (the big brain behind a lot of the heroes) gave me a zap gun he jokingly referred to as "the Scarab's Sting."

When I came to Earth and rented this place, I built a concealed closet in my inner office. It was there I kept my costume and my weapon, safe and sound until I needed them.

And it only took a second for me to see that my secret wasn't a secret any longer.

Sadi showed up just in time to see me staring at an empty closet with a stupid look on my face. To describe her in a few words, Sadi is the vision guys see when they're lost in the desert and dreaming of someday seeing a woman again. She was working undercover as a "hostess" in a Chicago speakeasy when I met her, entertaining the customers by telling their fortunes. It turned out we were both on the same case, so we brought down the bad guys together. I discovered she had a genuine talent for sensing things about people and objects — but today wasn't one of her more perceptive days.

"What has happened here?" she said, looking around at the devastation. "McMasters, are you hurt?"

"Could be," I answered. "It remains to be seen just how badly." I told her about the morning's events and saw a light dawn in her beautiful dark eyes. Some big bruiser had tried to lean on her right after she left her apartment — she had made short work of him, of course, but he delayed her long enough for all this to have happened.

"Did you recognize him, angel?" I asked, having a pretty good idea what the answer would be.

"It was 'Rhino' Watson, and it will be some time before he will be able to use his hand in just that way again," Sadi said. "He works for Mr. Nash, does he not?"

"Diamond Jack" Murphy could have put this one together, and a weird scientist he ain't. "That he does, kid. Let's get this place cleaned up, and then I think I'll pay a call on the Oasis Club. I could use a night out."

* * *

On my way out of the building, I asked Fasoud for a description of the bums who had wrecked my place. Nothing rang any bells — tall, clean-shaven, dressed in dark blue suits. They never spoke to each other, and Fasoud was hiding when they left (a good thing, too, or he would have seen them carrying my evening wear). He said one interesting thing: the men looked as if they had spent a lot of time in the sun, but they weren't locals.

I turned that over in my mind while I rode to the Oasis Club. When I emerged in front of the nightspot, I noticed with a chuckle that "Rhino" was working as bouncer, his right arm in a sling. Sadi was as good as ever.

"What's with the wing?" I asked him. It took him a minute to remember—"Rhino" hadn't gotten the nickname just because he was built like a Mk1 Aperehen.

"I walked into a door," he said, finally.

"Got to watch out for those doors, pal," I said, as I pushed through the doors. "Especially when they're brunette and pack a mean right cross."

The place was packed, the music was cool jazz, and the booze was flowing. I shook off a cigarette girl and grabbed a table close to the piano. The canary was an American, and she was doing a nice job wailing "'Round Midnight." She leaned in close as she finished the song and gave me a sweet smile.

"Buy a drink for a lady?" she asked.

"Depends," I answered. "Won't your boss mind?"

She shrugged and sat down. "'Nails?' He doesn't care if I have a few with the customers. Keeps 'em happy, he says."

"He's right," I replied, taking her in. She was younger than she was acting—probably got caught in Cairo when the storms hit and now was going along for the ride.

She said her name was Teri, and she was only working this dive till she got a chance in a show. I decided to try and get her to sing a little for me. "How's business? Nash still keeping a goon squad around to watch the crap tables, or does he have Wu Han working for him now?"

She laughed. It was a good sound, soft and not yet jaded by the life she was leading. "Yeah, he always has his boys around. Except this morning — Al, Benny and George got sent out on some big, mysterious 'job.' Benny didn't come back — Nash says he had some deliveries to make."

Nash had a sense of humor. Benny was out making a delivery, all right, only it was him getting delivered to the city morgue.

I was about to buy her another drink and get a few more answers when I felt a slab of granite with fingers land on my shoulder. I turned around to see one of my pals from the morning, apparently still unhappy about the way things had turned out. "Nails" was right behind him.

"Beat it," he growled at the girl across from me. She paled and took off backstage. I glanced around the room and saw hoods had come out of the woodwork. It was nice to feel wanted. I casually put my right hand in my pocket and fingered my heater.