Budayeen Nights (9 page)

“Bet your ass I mean it!” said the young man.

Being a police officer meant sizing up dangerous situations and being able to make quick, sure judgments. Complete Guardian suggested that in dealing with a mentally disturbed individual, Audran should try to find out why he was upset and then try to calm him. Complete Guardian recommended that Audran not make fun of the individual, show anger, or dare him to carry out his threat. Audran raised his hands and spoke calmly. “I’m not going to threaten you,” Audran said.

The young man just laughed. He had dirty long hair and a patchy growth of beard, and he was wearing a faded pair of blue jeans and a plaid cotton shirt with its sleeves torn off. He looked a little like Audran had, before Friedlander Bey had raised his standard of living.

“Mind if I sit and talk with you?” asked Audran.

“I can set this off any time I want,” said the young man. “You got the guts, sit down. But keep your hands flat on the table.”

“Sure.” Audran pulled out a chair and sat down. He had his hack to the barkeeper, but out of the corner of his eye he could see Maddie Gargotier. She was quietly weeping.

“You ain’t gonna talk me out of this,” said the young man.

Audran shrugged. “I just want to find out what this is all about
.
What’s your name?”

“The hell’s that got to do with anything?”

“My name is Marîd. I was born in Mauretania.”

“You can call me Al-Muntaqim.” The kid with the bomb had appropriated one of the Ninety-Nine Beautiful Names of God. It meant “The Avenger.”

“You always lived in the city?” Audran asked him.

“Hell no. Misr.”

“That’s the local name for Cairo, isn’t it?” asked Audran.

Al-Muntaqim jumped to his feet, furious. He jabbed a finger toward Gargotier behind the bar and screamed, “See? See what I mean? That’s just what I’m talkin about! Well, I’m gonna stop it once and for all!” He grabbed the box and ripped open the lid.

Audran felt a horrible pain all through his body. It was as if all his joints had been yanked and twisted until his bones pulled apart. Every muscle in his body felt torn, and the surface of his skin stung as if it had been sandpapered. The agony went on for a few seconds, and then Audran lost consciousness.

“You all right?”

No, I didn’t feel all right. On the outside I felt red-hot and glowing, as if I’d been staked out under the desert sun for a couple of days. Inside, my muscles felt quivery. I had lots of uncontrollable little spasms in my arms, legs, trunk, and face. I had a splitting headache and there was a horrible, sour taste in my mouth. I was having a lot of trouble focusing my eyes, as if someone had spread a thick translucent gunk over them.

I strained to make out who was talking to me. I could barely make out the voice because my ears were ringing so loud. It turned out to be Shaknahyi, and that indicated that I was still alive. For an awful moment after I came to, I thought I might be in Allah’s greenroom or somewhere. Not that being alive was any big thrill just then. “What—” I croaked. My throat was so dry I could barely speak.

“Here.” Shaknahyi handed a glass of cold water down to me. I realized that I was lying flat on my back on the floor, and Shaknahyi and M. Gargotier were standing over me, frowning and shaking their heads.

I took the water and drank it gratefully. When I finished, I tried talking again. “What happened?” I said.

“You fucked up,” Shaknahyi said.

“Right,” I said.

A narrow smile crossed Shaknahyi’s face. He reached down and offered me a hand. “Get up off the floor.”

I stood up wobbily and made my way to the nearest chair. “Gin and bingara,” I said to Gargotier. “Put a hit of Rose’s lime in it.” The barkeep grimaced, but he turned away to get my drink. I took out my pill case and dug out maybe eight or nine Sonneine.

“I heard about you and your drugs,” said Shaknahyi.

“It’s all true,” I said. When Gargotier brought my drink, I swallowed the opiates. I couldn’t wait for them to start fixing me up. Everything would be just fine in a couple of minutes.

“You could’ve gotten everybody killed, trying to talk that guy down,” Shaknahyi said. I was feeling bad enough already, I didn’t want to listen to his little lecture right then. He went ahead with it anyway. “What the hell were you trying to do? Establish rapport or something? We don’t work that way when people’s lives are in danger.”

“Yeah?” I said. “What do you do?”

He spread his hands like the answer should have been perfectly obvious. “You get around where he can’t see you, and you ice the motherfucker.”

“Did you ice me before or after you iced Al-Muntaqim?”

“That what he was calling himself? Hell, Audran, you got to expect a little beam diffusion with these static pistols. I’m real sorry I had to drop you, too, but there’s no permanent damage, inshallah. He jumped up with that box, and I wasn’t gonna wait around for you to give me a clear shot. I had to take what I could get.”

“It’s all right,” I said. “Where’s The Avenger now?”

“The meat wagon came while you were napping. Took him off to the lock ward at the hospital.”

That made me a little angry. “The mad bomber gets shipped to a nice bed in the hospital, but I got to lie around on the filthy floor of this goddamn saloon?”

Shaknahyi shrugged. “He’s in a lot worse shape than you are. You only got hit by the fuzzy edge of the charge. He took it full.”

It sounded like Al-Muntaqim was going to feel pretty rotten for a while. Didn’t bother me none.

“No percentage in debating morality with a loon,” said Shaknahyi. “You go in looking for the first opportunity to stabilize the sucker.” He made a trigger-pulling motion with his right index finger.

“That’s not what Complete Guardian was telling me,” I said. “By the way, did you pop the moddy for me? What did you do with it?”

“Yeah,” said Shaknahyi, “here it is.” He took the moddy out of a shirt pocket and tossed it down on the floor beside me. Then he raised his heavy black boot and stamped the plastic module into jagged pieces. Brightly colored fragments of the webwork circuitry skittered across the floor. “Wear another one of those, I do the same to your face and then I kick the remnants out of my patrol car.”

So much for Martd Audran, Ideal Law Enforcement Officer.

I stood up feeling a lot better, and followed Shaknahyi out of the dimly lighted bar. M. Gargotier and his daughter, Maddie, went with us. The bartender tried to thank us, but Shaknahyi just raised a hand and looked modest. “No thanks are necessary for performing a duty,” he said.

“Come in for free drinks any time,” Gargotier said gratefully.

“Maybe we will.” Shaknahyi turned to me. “Let’s ride,” he said.

We went out through the patio gate. On the way back to the car I said, “It makes me feel kind of good to be welcome somewhere again.”

Shaknahyi looked at me. “Accepting free drinks is a major infraction.”

“I didn’t know they
had
infractions in the Budayeen,” I said. Shaknahyi smiled. It seemed that things had thawed a little between us.

Shaknahyi cruised back down the Street and out of the Budayeen. Curiously, I was no longer wary of being spotted in the cop car by any of my old friends. In the first place, the way they’d been treating me, I figured the hell with ‘em. In the second place, I felt a little different now that I’d been fried in the line of duty. The experience at the Fee Blanche had changed my thinking. Now I appreciated the risks a cop has to take day after day.

Shaknahyi surprised me. “You want to stop somewhere?” he asked.

“Sounds good.” I was still pretty weak and the sunnies had left me a little lightheaded, so I was glad to agree.

I unclipped the phone from my belt and spoke Chiri’s commcode into it. I heard it ring eight or nine times before she answered it. “Talk to me,” she said. She sounded irked.

“Chiri? It’s Marîd.”

“What do
you
want, motherfucker?”

“Look, you haven’t given me any chance to explain. It’s not my fault.”

“You said that before.” She gave a contemptuous laugh. “Famous last words, honey: ‘It’s not my fault.’ That’s what my uncle said when he sold my mama to some goddamn Arab slaver.”

“I never knew—“

“Forget it, it ain’t even true. You wanted a chance to explain, so explain.”

Well, it was show time, but suddenly I didn’t have any idea what to say to her. “I’m real sorry, Chiri,” I said.

She just laughed again. It wasn’t a friendly sound.

I plunged ahead. “One morning I woke up and Papa said, ‘Here, now you own Chiriga’s club, isn’t that wonderful?’ What did you expect me to say to him?”

“I know you, honey. I don’t expect you to say
anything
to Papa. He didn’t have to cut off your balls. You sold ‘em.”

“Chiri, we been friends a long time. Try to understand. Papa got this idea to buy your club and give it to me. I didn’t know a thing about it in advance. I didn’t want it when he gave it to me. I tried to tell him, but—“

“I’ll bet. I’ll just bet you told him.”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I think she was enjoying this a lot. “I told him about as much as anyone can tell Papa anything.”

“Why
my
place, Marîd? The Budayeen’s full of crummy bars. Why did he pick mine?”

I knew the answer to that: Friedlander Bey was prying me loose from the few remaining connections to my old life. Making me a cop had alienated most of my friends. Forcing Chiriga to sell her club had turned her against me. Next, Papa’d find a way to make Saied the Half-Hajj hate my guts, too. “Just his sense of humor, Chiri,” I said hopelessly. “Just Papa proving that he’s always around, always watching, ready to hit us with his lightning bolts when we least expect it.”

There was a long silence from her. “And you’re gutless, too.”

My mouth opened and closed. I didn’t know what she was talking about. “Huh?”

“I said you’re a gutless
panya
.”

She’s always slinging Swahili at me. “What’s a
panya
, Chiri?” I asked.

“It’s like a big rat, only stupider and uglier. You didn’t dare do this in person, did you, motherfucker? You’d rather whine to me over the phone. Well, you’re gonna have to face me. That’s all there is to it.”

I squeezed my eyes shut and grimaced. “Okay, Chiri, whatever you want. Can you come by the club?”

“
The
club, you say? You mean,
my
club? The club I used to own?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Your club.”

She grunted. “Not on your life, you diseased jackass. I’m not setting foot in there unless things change the way I want ‘em. But I’ll meet you somewhere else. I’ll be in Courane’s place in half an hour. That’s not in the Budayeen, honey, but I’m sure you can find it. Show up if you think you can handle it.” There was a sharp click, and then I was listening to the burr of the dial tone.

“Dragged you through it, didn’t she?” said Shaknahyi. He’d enjoyed every moment of my discomfort. I was starting to like the guy, but he was still a bastard sometimes.

I clipped the phone back on my belt. “Ever hear of a bar called Courane’s?”

He snorted. “This Christian chump shows up in the city a few years ago.” He was wheeling the patrol car through Rasmiyya, a neighborhood east of the Budayeen that I’d never been in before. “Guy named Courane. Called himself a poet, but nobody ever saw much proof of that. Somehow he got to be a big hit with the European community. One day he opens what he calls a salon, see. Just a quiet, dark bar where everything’s made out of wicker and glass and stainless steel. Lots of potted plastic plants. Nowadays he ain’t the darling of the brunch crowd anymore, but he still pulls this melancholy expatriate routine. That where you’re gonna meet Chiri?”

I looked at him and shrugged. “It was her choice.” He grinned at me. “Want to attract a lot of attention when you show up?”

I sighed. “Please no,” I muttered. That Jirji, he was some kidder.

6

Twenty minutes later we were in a middle-class district of two-and three-story houses. The streets were broader than in the Budayeen, and the whitewashed buildings had strips of open land around them, planted with small bushes and flowering shrubs. Tall date palms leaned drunkenly along the verges of the pavement. The neighborhood seemed deserted, if only because there were no shouting children wrestling on the sidewalks or chasing each other around the corners of the houses. It was a very settled, very sedate part of town. It was so peaceful, it made me uncomfortable.

“Courane’s is just up here,” said Shaknahyi. He turned onto a poorer street that was little more than an alley. One side was hemmed in by the back walls of the same flat-roofed houses. There were small balconies on the second floor, and bright, lamplit windows obscured by lattices made of narrow wooden strips. On the other side of the alley were boarded-up buildings and a few businesses: a leather-worker’s shop, a bakery, a restaurant that specialized in bean dishes, a bookstall.

There was also Courane’s, out of place in that constricted avenue. The proprietor had set out a few tables, but no one lingered in the white-painted wicker chairs beneath the Cinzano umbrellas. Shaknahyi tapped off the engine, and we got out of the patrol car. I supposed that Chiri hadn’t arrived yet, or that she was waiting for me inside. My stomach hurt.

“Officer Shaknahyi!” A middle-aged man came toward us, a welcoming smile on his face. He was about my height, maybe fifteen or twenty pounds heavier, with receding brown hair brushed straight back. He shook hands with Shaknahyi, then turned to me.