Budayeen Nights (23 page)

I raised a hand, hoping Lily would understand what the gesture meant. I brushed by her, still following Sulome.

Then it was Jacques. “Marîd, is it my imagination, or is that moddy Saied’s wearing making him behave just a little on the
nelly
side of nice, know what I mean? If he could see and hear himself, he’d rip that moddy out and stomp it into tiny plastic pieces.”

I raised my hand again and kept moving. Sulome seemed to be getting farther away. I didn’t understand how that could be.

Frenchy grabbed me by the arm. “Listen, cap,” he said, “before you leave town—“

I raised my hand.

I’d almost caught up to Sulome. She was collecting a triple Johnny Walker Red with a Coke back from Rocky. I was too drunk to be aware of much that was going on around me, but somehow I can remember what she was drinking. Don’t ask me why. Anyway, she couldn’t have been more than six feet away. I took a step, then another. I reached out toward her.

Yasmin put herself between us. “This time I’ve
had
it, you
noraf
son of a bitch.” I didn’t know what the hell she was talking about.

“Sulome,” I said. I put my hand on her shoulder, and she turned around so fast she nearly knocked me down.

“Don’t
ever
grab at me again,” she snarled.

“Sorry,” I said. She and I weren’t getting off on the right foot here. “You’re supposed to be—“

“Back at Friedlander Bey’s house,” she said. “Fuck that. I didn’t want to sit in a room all night. Bin Turki and this Kmuzu guy made sure I had everything I needed, and when they left me alone I snuck out. What you gonna do,
fine
me?”

I looked around helplessly. “Nobody’s supposed to know—“

“Yeah, yeah. Who knows me here, except you? If anybody connects us later on, it’s because they’re watching us talking right now. So
go away
.”

“I think we both should go back to the house. Grab some food and let’s go. I’ll kick you an extra hundred if that’ll get you out of here right now.”

She shrugged. “A hundred.
Cash
. Forget the food, I can’t stand that sushi stuff. What are we going to do, get a cab? Or you gonna call one of your thugs?”

“Stop calling them—” I was urging Sulome toward the door. We’d almost reached it, when Fuad came into the club. I pulled Sulome back.

“
Goddamn
, Marîd, didn’t I just warn you about that?”

“We can’t let that guy see us together.” This had to be one of the worst nights of my life. I wondered how many of my past sins I was paying for all at once.

“Who? That ugly scrawny guy? Hey, that’s not—“

“That’s Fuad, all right. That’s your mark. Oh, hell, he’s seen us. You don’t know me, all right?”

“What do you want me to do?” she asked in a hoarse whisper.

“The hell do
I
know? Fake it.”

She grunted. “
That
I know how to do.”

I couldn’t believe that Fuad had crashed my party. Coming back to the city at all was pretty dumb; showing up at his old hangouts was plain stupid; but walking right into my nightclub was the kind of mistake that usually removed you permanently from the common gene pool. He was heading straight for me—and he was
grinning
!

“Marîd!” he said cheerfully, as if I’d be overjoyed to see him.

I nodded. “Fuad,” I said. He held his hand out, but I didn’t shake it.

After a few seconds he glanced down at his hand and put it in his pocket. He looked at Sulome, who was pretending to be interested in something happening behind Fuad’s head. I could see that he was immediately interested in her. Well, I’d known he would be; I just hadn’t planned for them to meet this way, or this soon. “Where y’at, Marîd?” he said.

“I’ll be right back,” I said. “I got to hit the John.” That was the truth. I turned and staggered to the back of the club, steadying myself on every piece of furniture along the way. I went into the men’s toilet, leaned my head against the dirty green wall, and closed my eyes. I paid back most of what I’d had to drink that night. I just hoped that my master plan for Fuad hadn’t been totally screwed up before it even started.

I threw a little water in my face—I wanted it to be cold, but during the summer months in the city there’s no such thing as cold water—and I told myself I felt better. I took a quick glance at my reflection in the mirror, and I did not look good at all. I left the toilet, trying to decide whether to get Sulome out of the club, or let her make a first impression on our victim.

As I walked by, I saw the big bearded guy who’d come in with Baby and Kitty. He was still sitting in the same booth with a cup of coffee in front of him. He’d fallen asleep; I figured I’d do him a favor, so I shook him by the shoulder. “Not a good idea to nap in here,” I said. “You could lose your wallet. Or something. I can call for a cab if you like.”

I shook him twice more before I realized that this man was not going to wake up. Ever. “Yaa alam, yaa nas!” I muttered. That was “O world, O people!” a phrase I saved for those times when every force under Heaven was conspiring against me.

I must’ve been at least partly sober, because I did something right for a change. I sat in the booth beside the poor dead guy, and I unclipped my phone from my belt. I called Friedlander Bey’s house and spoke to Tariq, Papa’s valet. I told him exactly what had happened. He instructed me to do just what I was doing, not let anyone else know about the situation, and wait twenty minutes before calling the police.

It was the better part of an hour before the cops actually arrived. If I’d been smart, I would’ve laid off the white deaths, at least until after they’d taken my statement. Well, sure, it’s easy enough to say that now. That night I figured another drink or two couldn’t make things any worse.

So it had to be almost two in the morning when a softclothes guy and a uniform came in. I recognized the uniform—it was Sergeant Catavina, who had taken corruption to such a high level, he might as well have been honest. I mean, with Catavina you knew exactly how he’d react to any situation, so in an odd sort of way he was completely dependable. He was easier to deal with than someone who changed the rules as he went along.

Catavina didn’t have much to do though. He was along to make sure no one left before Detective ibn Tali said they could leave. I’d never met ibn Tali before, but I knew there’d been a big shakeup in the police department, particularly in the copshop that oversaw activities in the Budayeen. The previous man in charge there, a real motherfucker by the name of Hajjar, had come to a bad end at the hands of an unruly mob. I’d had a little to do with that, and I hoped the current lieutenant, whoever he was, didn’t hold it against me.

Because I’d discovered the body and because I’d phoned the police, ibn Tali wanted to talk with me first. That was just fine, because by then I really wanted to get out of the club and go home. I told the detective everything I could remember about the party from the time we closed Chiriga’s at ten o’clock. I mentioned that I’d never seen the victim before, that he’d come in with Baby and Kitty, that the two girls had left to seek their fortune elsewhere before he’d turned stiff, and that I couldn’t imagine anyone at the party had any sort of motive to kill the poor bastard in the first place.

Ibn Tali jotted that all down in his notebook. “I’m gonna listen to everybody else’s story,” he said. “Then I’m gonna come back to you, and you’re gonna tell me yours all over again. That’ll give you a chance to put in the little bits you forgot about the first time through.”

“Excuse me, officer.” A very sleepy looking man in a pale yellow gallebeya and plain white checked keffiya had come up to the booth where we were sitting. I wondered how he’d gotten past Sergeant Catavina.

“It’s detective,” ibn Tali said, “not officer. And wait your turn. We’re all gonna be here for a long time, so just make yourself comfortable.”

The newcomer shoved a sheet of paper at ibn Tali. It must’ve been a magic sheet of paper, because as he read it, the detective’s face became more and more unhappy. Ibn Tali stood up, and the two men moved away a few feet and conferred in low voices. The detective shook his head, the yellow gallebeya insisted. This went on for a minute or two. At last, ibn Tali looked disgusted, muttered something under his breath, and turned back to me.

“Audran,” he said, “this guy’s from the city.
High up
in the city, one of the amir’s special assistants. He’s tellin’ me you can go home now. Thank Friedlander Bey for that when you see him; but look, I ain’t done with you. I hear you’re goin’ into the hospital today, so I’ll probably be there waitin’ when the anesthetic wears off.”

“I’ll be looking forward to it, detective.” I stood up, and I almost passed out right in front of everybody. That was the last thing I remembered about last night.

No wonder Kmuzu was treating me with such badly concealed disdain. I had been pathetic last night, and it was my bad luck to be in that shape during a moment of crisis. Now, sober again, I was frankly humiliated, and I didn’t need any more of Kmuzu’s silent disregard. I felt like standing under the shower and letting the hot water beat down on me for half an hour.

“Yaa Sidi,” he said, “before you—“

I waved at him. “Later, Kmuzu. Let me get cleaned up.”

“Wait, yaa Sidi! There’s—“

I went into the bathroom and caught sight of myself in the mirror. I was going to have to stop doing that; I looked as terrible as I felt. Then I saw that I couldn’t take a shower, because the bathtub was already filled, with steaming warm water and bubbles.

And in the bubbles, relaxing luxuriously, was Abdul-Hassan, the American kid. When he saw me, he gave me a slow, languorous smile.

Kmuzu had warned me—“It gets worse.” I wished it would
stop
getting worse pretty goddamn soon.

The World as We Know It

George wrote this one for an anthology of future crime stories, attempting to devise a kind of crime that wouldn’t even have been thought of in earlier days and ages. He had the idea for Consensual Realities long before; the
Futurecrime
anthology just gave him a way to play with it, to link it to something.

When he wrote
The Exile Kiss,
George planned out two more Budayeen novels to complete the character arcs of Marîd, Friedlander Bey, Indihar, and the complex network of friendships, rivalries, and enmities in which they exist. Though the narrator of this story never says it, he is, of course, Marîd Audran—Marîd after the end of the unwritten, untitled fifth book, when he is an outcast hiding from Friedlander Bey’s victorious enemies.

An older, tireder, and less cocky Marîd, simultaneously looked down upon and looked up to by the newcomer punks of a crime scene that is as far beyond Marîd’s own street-punk days as the science fiction of the nineties was beyond that of the seventies, when George first burst upon the scene in the forefront of the so-called New Wave.

The Grand Master as Has-Been.

But still able—marginally—to hold his own.

—
Barbara Hambly

THE SETUP COULD HAVE BEEN PRETTY CLEVER
with a little more thought, I have to admit. Using some of the newest-generation cerebral hardware, an ambitious but dangerously young man, a recent parolee—you know, a low-level street punk, much as I’d been once upon a time—had stolen a small crate from Mahmoud’s warehouse. The punk hadn’t even known what was in the crate. It turned out, if I can trust Mahmoud, that the crate contained a shipment of recently developed biological agents.

These bios had two major uses: They could promote the healing of traumatic wounds while making the attendant pain disappear for a while, without subjecting the patient to the well-documented narcotic disadvantages we’ve all come to know and love; or what was contained in the many disposable vials could easily be reconfigured to wipe out entire cities, using very small doses—thus becoming the most powerful neurological weapons ever devised. The small crate was labeled to be shipped to Holland, where the Dutch revolution was still at its full, vicious, inhuman peak.

Of course, Mahmoud was frantic to get his crate back. He and a few of my old friends, from the good old days when I had power and could move through the city without fear of being dusted by my many enemies, knew where I was now living. I’d left the Budayeen and adopted a new identity. Mahmoud had come to me and offered me money, which I didn’t need—I’d lost just about everything, but I’d carefully protected the cash I’d acquired—or contacts and agents, which I did need, and desperately. I agreed to look into the matter for Mahmoud.

It wasn’t very difficult. The thief was such a beginner that I almost felt like taking him aside and giving him a few pointers. I restrained that impulse, however.

The kid, who told me his name was Musa, had left a trail through the city that had been easy as hell for a predator like me to follow. I know the kid’s name wasn’t Musa, just as he knew my name wasn’t the one I gave him when I finally caught up to him. Names and histories were not important information to either of us at the time. All that mattered was the small crate.

I dragged him back to my office, far from the Budayeen, in a neighborhood called Iffatiyya. This part of the city, east beyond the canal, had been reduced to rubble in the last century, the fifteenth after the Hegira, the twenty-second of the Christian era. It was now about a hundred years later than that, and at last some of the bombed-out buildings were being reclaimed. My office was in one of them.

I was there because most of my former friends and associates had leaped to the other side, to the protection of Shaykh Reda Abu Adil. There were very few places that were safe for me back in the walled quarter, and few people I could trust. Hell, I didn’t really trust Mahmoud—never had—except he was reliably, scrupulously straightforward when large sums of money were involved.

I opened the outer door of my office, the one with the glass panel on which some frustrated portrait artist had lettered my new name, in both Arabic and Roman alphabets. Inside the door was a waiting room with a sagging couch, three wooden chairs, and a few items to help my few anxious clients pass the time: a scattering of newspapers and magazines, and chipzines for my more technologically advanced visitors, to be chipped directly into a moddy or daddy socket located in the hollow at the base of the skull.

I had a good grasp of the material of Musa’s gallebeya, which I used to propel him through the open inner door. He fell sprawling on the bare, shabby, wooden floor. I slouched in the comfortable chair behind my beat-up old desk. I let a sarcastic smile have its way for a second or two, and then I put on my grim expression. “I want to clear this up fast,” I said.

Musa had gotten to his feet and was glaring at me with all the defiance of youth and ignorance. “No problem,” he said, in what he no doubt imagined was a tough voice. “All you gotta do is come across.”

“By fast,” I said, deliberately not responding to his words, “I mean superluminal. Light-speed. And I’m not coming across. I don’t do that. Grab a seat while I make a phone call, O Young One.”

Musa maintained the rebellious expression, but some worry had crept into it, too. He didn’t know who I planned to call. “You ain’t gonna turn me over to the rats, are you?” he asked. “I just got out. Yallah, another fall and I think they’ll cut off my right hand.”

I nodded, murmuring Mahmoud’s commcode into my desk phone. Musa was right about one thing: Islamic justice as currently interpreted in the city would demand the loss of his hand, possibly the entire arm, in front of a huge, cheering crowd in the courtyard of the Shimaal Mosque. Musa would have no opportunity to appeal, either, and he’d probably end up back in prison afterward, as well.

“Marhaba,” said Mahmoud when he answered his phone. He wasn’t the kind of guy to identify himself until he knew who was on the other end of the line. I remembered him before he had his sex change, as a slender, doe-eyed sylph, dancing at Jo-Mama’s. Since then, he’d put on a lot of weight, toughness, and something much more alarming.

“Yeah, you right,” I replied. “Good news, Mahmoud. This is your investigator calling. Got the thief, and he hasn’t had time to do anything with the product. He’ll take you to it. What becomes of him afterward is up to you. Come take charge of him at your convenience.”

“You are still a marvel, O Wise One,” said Mahmoud. His praise counted about as much as a broken Bedu camel stick. “You have lost much, but it is as Allah wills. Yet you have not lost your native wit and ability. I will be there very soon, inshallah, with some news that might interest you.” Inshallah means “if God wills.” Nobody but He was too sure about anything of late.

“The news is the payment, right, O Father of Generosity?” I said, shaking my head. Mahmoud had been a cheap stiff as a woman, and he was a cheap stiff now as a man.

“Yes, my friend,” said Mahmoud. “But it includes a potential new client for you, and I’ll throw in a little cash, too. Business is business.”

“And action is action,” I said, not that I was seeing much action these days. “You know how much I charge for this sort of thing.”

“Salam alekom, my friend,” he said hurriedly, and he hung up his phone before I could salam him back.

Musa looked relieved that I hadn’t turned him over to the police, although I’m sure he was just as anxious about the treatment he could expect from Mahmoud. He had every reason in the world to be concerned. He maintained a surly silence, but he finally took my advice and sat down in the battered red-leather chair opposite my desk.

“Piece of advice,” I said, not even bothering to look at him. “When Mahmoud gets here—and he’ll get here fast—take him directly to his property. No excuses, no bargains. If you try holding Mahmoud up for so much as a lousy copper fiq, you’ll end up breathing hot sand for the remainder of your brief life. Understand?”

I never learned if the punk understood or not. I wasn’t looking at him, and he wasn’t saying anything. I opened the bottom drawer of my desk and took out the office bottle. Apparently a slow leak had settled in, because the level of gin was much lower than I expected. It was something that would bear investigating during my long hours of solitude.

I built myself a white death—gin and bingara with a hit of Rose’s lime juice—and took a quick gulp. Then I drank the rest of the tumblerful slowly. I wasn’t savoring anything; I was just proving to myself again that I could be civilized about my drinking habits.

Time passed in this way—Musa sitting in the red-leather chair, sampling emotions; me sitting in my chair, sipping white death. I’d been correct about one thing: It didn’t take Mahmoud long to make the drive from the Budayeen. He didn’t bother to knock on the outer door. He came through, into my inner office, accompanied by three large men. Now, even I thought three armed chunks were a bit much to handle ragged, little old Musa there. I said nothing. It wasn’t my business any longer.

Now, Mahmoud was dressed as I was, that is, in keffiya, the traditional Arab headdress, gallebeya, and sandals; the men with Mahmoud were all wearing very nice, tailored European-style business suits. Two of the suit jackets had bulges just where you’d expect. Mahmoud turned to those two and didn’t utter a word. The two moved forward and took pretty damn physical charge of Musa, getting him out of my office the quickest way possible. Just before he passed through the inner door, Musa jerked his head around toward me and said, “Rat’s puppet.” That was all.

That left Mahmoud and the third suit.

“Where you at, Mahmoud?” I asked.

“I see you’ve taken to dyeing your beard, O Wise One,” said Mahmoud by way of thanks. “You no longer look like a Maghrebi. You look like any common citizen of Asir or the Hejaz, for instance. Good.”

I was so glad he approved. I was born part Berber, part Arab, and part French, in the part of Algeria that now called itself Mauretania. I’d left that part of the world far, far behind, and arrived in this city a few years ago, with reddish hair and beard that made me stand out among the locals. Now all my hair was as black as my prospects.

Mahmoud tossed an envelope on the desk in front of me. I glanced at it but didn’t count the kiam inside, then dropped the envelope in a desk drawer and locked it.

“I cannot adequately express my thanks, O Wise One,” he said in a flat voice. It was a required social formula.

“No thanks are needed, O Benefactor,” I said, completing the obligatory niceties. “Helping a friend is a duty.”

“All thanks be to Allah.”

“Praise Allah.”

“Good,” said Mahmoud with some satisfaction. I could see him relax a little, now that the show was over. He turned to the remaining suit and said, “Shaykh Ishaq ibn Muhammad il-Qurawi, O Great Sir, you’ve seen how reliable my friend is. May Allah grant that he solve your problem as promptly as he solved mine.” Then Mahmoud nodded to me, turned, and left. Evidently, I wasn’t high enough on the social ladder to be actually introduced to Ishaq ibn Muhammad il-Qurawi.

I motioned to the leather chair. Il-Qurawi made a slight wince of distaste, then sat down.

I put on my professional smile and uttered another formulaic phrase that meant, roughly, “You have come to your people and level ground.” In other words, “Welcome.”

“Thank you, I—“

I raised a hand, cutting him off. “You must allow me to offer you coffee, O Sir. The journey from the Budayeen must have been tiring, O Shaykh.”

“I was hoping we could dispense with—“

I raised my hand again. The old me would’ve been more than happy to dispense with the hospitality song-and-dance, but the new me was playing a part, and the ritual three tiny cups of coffee was part of it. Still, we hurried through them as rapidly as social graces permitted. Il-Qurawi wore a sour expression the whole time.

When I offered him a fourth, he waggled his cup from side to side, indicating that he’d had enough. “May your table always be prosperous,” he said, because he had to.

I shrugged. “Allah yisallimak.” May God bless you.

“Praise Allah.”

“Praise Allah.”

“Now,” said my visitor emphatically, “you have been recommended to me as someone who might be able to help with a slight difficulty.”

I nodded reassuringly. Slight difficulty, my Algerian ass. People didn’t come to me with slight difficulties.

As usual, the person in the leather chair didn’t know how to begin. I waited patiently, letting my smile evaporate bit by bit. I found myself thinking about the office bottle, but it was impossible to bring it out again until I was alone. Strict Muslims looked upon alcoholic beverages with the same fury that they maintained for the infidel, and I knew nothing about il-Qurawi’s attitudes about such things.

“If you have an hour or two free this afternoon,” he said, “I wonder if you’d come with me to my office. It’s not far from here, actually. On the eastern side of the canal, but quite a bit north of here. We’ve restored a thirty-six-story office building, but recently there’s been more than the usual amount of vandalism. I’d like to hire you to stop it.”

I took a deep breath and let it out again. “Not my usual sort of assignment, O Sir,” I said, shrugging, “but I don’t foresee any problem. I get a hundred kiam a day plus expenses. I need a minimum of five hundred right now to pique my interest.”

Il-Qurawi frowned at the discussion of money and waved his hand. “Will you accept a check?” he asked.

“No,” I said. I’d noticed that the man was stingy with honorifics, so I’d decided to hold my own to the minimum.

He grunted. He was clearly annoyed and doubtful about my ability to do what he wanted. Still, he removed a moderate stack of bills from a black leather wallet, and sliced off five for me. He leaned forward and put the money on my desk. I pretended to ignore it.

I made no pretense of checking an appointment book. “I’m certain, O Shaykh, that I can spare a few hours for you.”

“Very good.” Il-Qurawi stood up and spent a few moments vitally absorbed in the wrinkles in his business suit. I took the time to slide the five hundred kiam into the pocket of my gallebeya.

“I can spare a few hours, O Shaykh,” I said, “but first I’d like some more information. Such as who you are and whom you represent.”

He didn’t say a word. He merely slid a business card to the spot where the money had been.

I picked up the card. It said:

Ishaq ibn Muhammad il-Qurawi
Chief of Security
CRCorp

Below that was a street address that meant nothing to me, and a commcode. I didn’t have a business card to give him, but I didn’t think he cared. “CRCorp?” I asked.

He was still standing. He indicated that we should begin moving toward the door. It was fine by me. “Yes, we deal in consensual realities.”

“Uh huh,” I said. “I know you people.” By this time, we were standing in the hallway and he was watching me lock the outer door.

We went downstairs to his car. He owned a long, black, chauffeur-driven, restored, gasoline-powered limousine. I wasn’t impressed. I’d ridden in a few of those. We got in and he murmured something to the driver. The car began gliding through the rubble-strewn streets, toward the headquarters of CRCorp.