Arabesk (5 page)

ZeeZee laughed.

“I died years ago,” he said and unravelled in one fluid sweep, a sideways twist creating exactly the right amount of space to let him bring his palm up under the man’s chin, snapping back his skull so hard the sound of teeth breaking echoed off both alley walls. Without further hesitation, ZeeZee buried his forearm in a suddenly exposed throat and crushed the golem’s larynx.

The follow-though, where ZeeZee’s elbow swept back to crack a skull and drop the man to the dirt was unnecessary, but he did it anyway. The old Rasta he’d learnt from had been very strict about always completing each sequence.

In all, it took less than two seconds. And had there been anyone else in that alley to watch, which there wasn’t, they’d have been presented with moves so fluid, so controlled that they could have passed for some deadly ballet.

“Shit,” said ZeeZee, blinking hard. Two courses of primal therapy, a complete twelve-point plan and three years of anger management straight down the drain. Personally, he blamed the fox.

Under a blue blazer golem features carried a new ceramic Colt in a flashy leather shoulder holster, the fancy saddle-stitched kind with a chrome buckle just guaranteed to show up under a full body scan. So maybe he wasn’t such a professional after all.

Apart from that, the idiot was clean, right down to labels cut out of his clothes and no keys of any description in any of his pockets. The only other thing of interest, was a Polaroid in a crumpled manila envelope. ZeeZee knew exactly what the shot would show even before he examined it. But he was wrong.

He wasn’t the man in the photo staring out at the world through hooded eyes, because he’d never worn a goatee beard like that or had elegant hair swept back behind his ears. And he’d definitely never worn a drop pearl earring. But the man in the picture
was
him. The high cheekbones were his, the heavy nose, the whole shape of the face was the same, right down to his mouth.

And in the background of the picture, just out of focus behind the man, was a soaring minaret outlined against a shockingly blue sky. The mosque to which the minaret was attached was impressive, heart-breakingly beautiful and undoubtedly famous but ZeeZee could honestly say he didn’t recognize it.

Pocketing the Polaroid, ZeeZee rolled the body against a wall and left it there.

“Head south towards the equestrian statue of Khedive Mohammed Ali, turn right at Place Manshiya and walk briskly on. The road directly ahead is Rue Faransa…”

ZeeZee thanked the map without thinking, not noticing the glance he got from other tourists waiting their turn. Talking to machinery was a prison quirk. Even in soft habitats like Huntsville it could be the closest anyone got to a day’s decent conversation.

Walking briskly was out, what with the gash over his ribs taped shut with instant skin from a chemist behind the bus station, but he managed a slow stroll through the square towards the waiting statue.

From the Khedive’s bronze turban and fierce beard, to his gut bound round with a vast cummerbund, and the ornate horse pistol hanging from his saddle, Mohammed Ali was impossible to miss. Though his mount looked unnaturally square at the corners, as if the sculptor had used up all the roundness available to replicate the Khedive’s impressive bulk.

ZeeZee stopped rubber-necking Mohammed the moment he realized he was the only person on Place Mohammed paying Khedive the slightest attention. He didn’t want to look the tourist, even when that was so obviously what he was.

The first three shops in Rue Faransa sold bric-a-brac masquerading as antiques. A Bakelite radio in one window caught ZeeZee’s eye but when he went inside to examine it he discovered that someone had replaced the original valves with a cheap Somali chipset. So he put the radio back in the window and retreated under the shopkeeper’s watchful eye.

Two clothes boutiques followed, both in the process of closing for the night and both featuring short dresses in washed-out silk by designers ZeeZee had never heard of, though given the prices displayed in pounds Iskandryian, US dollars and Reichsmarks everyone else obviously had.

The next shop looked much more promising. It sold menswear, was still open and, even better than that, had an industrial-strength air-conditioning unit sticking straight out into the street. ZeeZee couldn’t tell how expensive the suits in the window were from their price tags because there weren’t any such tags—which probably made the garments concerned seriously upscale. But since it wasn’t really his charge card he could live with that.

Something tastefully restrained was playing on the sound system as he entered. Gorecki probably. One wall was matt black, the rest sand-blasted brick. All of which left ZeeZee as singularly unimpressed as the intimidating elegance of the boutique’s French manager, the simplicity of her stark granite desk and the three obsidian-topped work tables.

ZeeZee might heal unnaturally fast but he was still in too much pain from his ribs and far too strung out to take note of the shop’s expensively understated detail. All he noticed was a framed page from
Esquire,
showing a man wearing a black tee under a loose lightweight black coat with matching trousers. The shoes the model wore had Cuban heels and sloped to a point at the toes. The outfit looked elegant, sophisticated and just slightly threatening. But most of all it looked cool. Not fashion-victim cool, just as if the model wasn’t overheating.

“That,” said ZeeZee, nodding at the cover and putting his card on the counter. “I want that.”

The glance the woman gave his card was so fleeting ZeeZee almost missed it. “Good choice,” she said. “Good choice.” Pushing herself up off a silver chair, the manager stepped quickly behind ZeeZee and ran one slim hand across his shoulders and then down his spine from his neck to the small of his back. And even as ZeeZee tensed, the manager was across the other side of the boutique, standing next to a rack of jackets, muttering measurements under her breath.

“Smart silk,” she told ZeeZee, returning with a coat. “Double-stitched, jet buttons, silk half-lining. Ideal for this weather.” She slung the garment across ZeeZee’s back, not bothering to get her only customer of the evening to thread his arms through the sleeves. “If it hangs okay like this then the fit is good. I’ll check sleeve length later, but it will be fine.”

She stepped towards
ZeeZee
and hesitated as he stepped swiftly back. “I need to check your waist,” she said. “If that’s a problem I have a tape…”

“No problem.” ZeeZee stood as the woman touched her fingers together over his spine and deftly smoothed the tips around his waist until they met slightly below his navel. If she noticed the heavy cross-hatches of tape coming down from his damaged ribs she didn’t mention it.

“Thirty, maybe thirty-one. We’ll try both. Okay, now the length.” She skimmed one hand up ZeeZee’s inside leg and nodded. “Thirty-three…” A pair of silk trousers joined the jacket, leaving only a black cotton tee that the woman selected from a pile on the obsidian-topped table. Shoes came last.

“The changing room’s through there.”

“There” was a black curtain screening off a tiny corner of the boutique, a CCT camera bolted baldly to the bare brick wall.

“How about shades?” ZeeZee asked when he emerged, his duty-free clothes and shoes crumpled into a bundle in his hands.

She shrugged, the merest hint of an apology. “Afraid not, but Versace’s across the street…”

ZeeZee initialled the slip she handed him without checking the amount, dropped his old clothes in a bin and took a small silver-and-red business card the woman was offering. It was only when he felt its weight he realized the card really was silver, the hallmarked kind.

“We make hotel calls,” said the manager. “If your itinerary is too crowded to allow for a revisit. Our number is in enamel.”

29th June

“I don’t usually…”

The boy with the cats-eye contacts nodded like he understood and Zara took a good look and realized that he did. Which was just as well, because someone had to understand that she had her reasons for not wanting to be back.

“Where are we going…?”

She knew the answer to that because he’d already told her, but asking again was easier than trying to remember, particularly as remembering might bring back something best forgotten.

“My place,” said the boy.

Her answering smile was wry, almost ironic. There were a dozen reasons why this was an extremely bad idea,

“Okay,” said Zara and climbed onto the waiting tram.

Where?

The elderly woman who stumbled into ZeeZee from behind when he suddenly stopped dead took one look at the foreigner’s scowling face and decided to keep walking, in another direction. Not that ZeeZee even noticed: he was too busy stripping down his memory, deleting taste, smell and extraneous movement to find a simple primary colour.

There.

It took ZeeZee a split second to reassure himself that the people on tram weren’t staring at him because he was dripping blood (he’d already sealed the knife cut with surgical glue from his complimentary Pan American medical kit before taping his ribs with skin from the all-night pharmacist). And it wasn’t his suit that worried the people on the green tram, even though most of the other men wore flowing jellabas. It was his beard and dreadlocks. Or maybe it was the shades.

Too bad.

And yes, once they’d been a trademark of his but that had been by accident—and besides, it had been in another country. He wore shades from necessity because without them his eyes swallowed too much light. Just one of the little childhood modifications for which he had his mother’s friends to thank.

Lately he’d taken to wearing polarized contacts but his supply was back at Huntsville along with his stash of crystalMeth and the rest of his life. Except it wasn’t just life he’d been doing at Huntsville, it had been all day
and
all night, life with no option of parole. Which was still a pretty good result, given the district attorney had been going for throwing the big red switch.

“Excuse me.” ZeeZee stepped carefully across some market trader’s outstretched boots and slid between two thick-set construction workers in concrete-splashed jellabas.

His brain was headed for what the fox would call a five-car crash and he needed that seat. Besides, that was where the girl sat, the girl he’d seen hesitate, then get on a green tram. The one whose sadness was flash-frozen to the inside of his eyes like lightning.

Though maybe that was just the meth.

ZeeZee knew immediately why his seat had been left free when the tram braked suddenly and the girl shot forward, straight into him. No amount of cologne could hide the reek of alcohol.

“I’m sorry,” said the boy beside her. He half stood, then sank back into his seat and turned away with the embarrassment of the still-young. Fourteen, thought ZeeZee, fifteen at the most. Silver hair, gold tear, laser tattoo. Not as hard as he wanted to be.

Politely, ZeeZee put one hand on each of the girl’s shoulders and pushed her back into her seat. The slightest of nods was all he got by way of acknowledgement. And it was obvious that she didn’t trust herself to speak. As if sitting very still could hide the fact that she was too drunk to stand. A birthday or leaving do, ZeeZee decided, noting the card clutched loosely in her fingers and the bunch of orchids wilting on her lap.

Birthday parties gave good access. He’d used them back in Seattle. People’s guards came down, making it easy to get close. Much closer than they mostly wanted: but then that was ZeeZee’s speciality, getting close to targets who spent time and money keeping people like him at arm’s length.

Style was a key factor and ZeeZee could do style. Looking right got you through doors that remained closed to others. Neatness, youth and an ability to blend. There’d been few places he couldn’t enter if needs must… There was even a name for it. Negative capability…

ZeeZee smiled.

He was still smiling when the girl hunched forward and dribbled vomit from her mouth onto the tram floor between his shoes. She didn’t do anything as vulgar as actually throw up, she just let the alcohol make its own return trip.

“Sorry.” That was the boy again.

ZeeZee shrugged. “It happens.”

At Rue Sherif, ZeeZee pushed himself up off his seat and paused. He needed to know who she was, but he also needed to get off at this stop. Most of all, he wanted to tell the boy not to worry. But anything he said would have drawn attention to the girl’s plight, so ZeeZee just nodded and kept going. He’d been those people, both of them. Just not for a long time.

29th June

Lodging House & Eating Shop read the old sign at the
corner of Abu Dadrda and Rue Cif, though the building in question showed nothing but empty spaces where windows and door should have been. At ground level even the floorboards were missing, long wooden joists stretching out over darkness that dropped to a cellar below.

A plank had been nailed crudely across the open doorway as vague warning of the dangers that hid inside. And over by the far wall in the darkness something glittered that might have been glass reflected in the headlights of a car but proved to be a fox when ZeeZee removed his shades to take a proper look.

“Later,” said ZeeZee and the fox grinned toothily, saying nothing.

The man didn’t believe in omens and of his many childhood demons only the arctic fox remained untamed. And Tiriganaq was more afraid of him than ZeeZee was of the fox. Because, if necessary, ZeeZee could stop answering and then it wouldn’t matter if the fox called itself
Tiriganaq, Smoke
or
Earl Grey Malkin,
it would be alone.

Still, they’d always faced trouble together before, so ZeeZee couldn’t imagine how he might have thought the fox would lie low this time.

Above them both, three storey walls gave way to a thin night sky, softened and faded by a sodium glare that didn’t stretch far enough down to reach the side walk, had there been one.

East of El-Gomruk and south of Manshiya, but way too far north to be Karmus or Moharrem Bey, ZeeZee wasn’t sure what this district was called. It had been blank of any name on the map at the tram station, its streets cross-hatched to tell cash-rich tourists that here was where they could find Iskandryia’s famous souks.