Date with a Sheesha (20 page)

“Tell me what happened,” the man finally said. His deep voice was dull, devoid of anything resembling texture or timbre.

“Excuse me? Tell you what happened about what?”

“Neil. Something is wrong, isn’t it?”

I nodded slowly, finding myself almost mesmerized by his unwavering glare. “I’m sorry to tell you this, Mr. Aashiq, but Neil was killed a week ago.”

Although this wasn’t a moment for enjoyment, there is something hauntingly beautiful about a handsome man fighting to keep from crying. As his eyes filled, the pool of unwept tears reflected the gentle flame of our table’s candle. His heavy jaw tensed, the corners of his mouth quivered. His left hand tightened around his cocktail glass, and I worried it would break.

“Tell me what happened please,” he finally got out.

I gave a rough description of Neil’s death in the souk, much as his father had told it to me. Only when I was done did Aashiq’s eyes leave my face. They came to rest on some dark, uncharted spot, far beyond the glass of the windows that faced the sea.

The waitress arrived with our drinks. Giving Aashiq a few minutes to take in the obviously distressing news, I sipped my wine. It was very good. And it should have been: I later found out that every sip cost me roughly five dollars.

“Did you know Neil very well?” I ventured after about fifteen bucks’ worth.

“Yes. No. It depends how you mean it.”

Good answer. “Mr. Aashiq, why were you meeting Neil here tonight?”

“Aashiq. Just Aashiq is fine.”

I noticed he wasn’t giving up his surname too readily. “All right, Aashiq. Why were you meeting Neil?”

The man’s eyes left the safety of far far away and made a quick trip around the room before finally settling on me. “Who are you?” he asked, as if seeing me for the first time.

“My name is Russell Quant. I’ve come to replace Neil at the university. I saw he had an appointment scheduled with you tonight. I came because I thought it might have something to do with Neil’s work here in Dubai.”

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Aashiq studied my face more closely. “You work for whom?”

“The university.”

He glanced around again. Was he looking for someone? Did he think someone was watching us? Was this meeting supposed to be a secret? Was he worried that I’d been followed? Who did he think I was?

For all I knew, maybe I had been followed. So I too took a gander around the room. Not knowing exactly what I was looking for, it didn’t take me long.

“Is that what you were meeting about tonight? About Neil’s work at the university? About antique carpets?”

He let out a mild scoffing sound. “No. I know nothing about those carpets of his.” He stopped there and looked as if he’d said something he hadn’t wanted to. And maybe he had. His statement told me a lot. First, he’d confirmed that this was a meeting that had nothing to do with university business. Second, the way he’d said it made it sound to me as if Aashiq knew Neil in a more personal way.

“You were friends then? You and Neil?”

“Why are you asking these questions?” he asked, heavy brows settling over suspicious eyes. “You came here to find out if this was a business meeting of your concern. It was not. You should leave now.” He wanted to be left alone. Well, good luck with that.

I still had thirty dollars’ worth of wine to drink.

“You didn’t seem exactly surprised I showed up tonight, rather than Neil.” Time to obfuscate with a change of topic. “You looked very unhappy, but not surprised. Why is that?”

He observed me coolly, taking a long sip of his drink. The man’s confidence and poise were quickly coming back to him.

“Again, Mr. Quant, that is none of your concern.”

“It is when a man is dead, brutally attacked and stabbed to death before he even reached thirty years old. I’m very concerned about that.”

A noisy group of patrons, being led off to their dinner reservation at Al Muntaha, passed by, followed closely by Aashiq’s wary eyes.

“Is something wrong?”

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“Maybe. I don’t trust you, Mr. Quant.” The words rolled over me like a piece of heavy machinery.

“Why do you need to?”

That got him. He eyed me carefully, then signalled our waitress for another drink. We sat in silence, neither of us quite wanting to leave, neither sure how to proceed. I decided that if I wanted more out of this man, I’d have to give him something.

“Aashiq,” I said, “I lied to you. I am not employed by the university. I was sent here by Neil’s father.”

Something changed in his face. At the mention of Neil’s father, his eyes softened and the tension in his jaw relaxed, if only just a bit.

“Is this true?” I could tell he very much wanted it to be.

“I’m a Canadian detective. Pranav Gupta, Neil’s father, believes his son’s death was not a result of random violence. He wants me to find out if that is true.” I waited a beat, and then added, “Is it true, Aashiq?”

In a movement almost too slow to see, Aashiq nodded. He whispered: “Yes.”

With Aashiq’s third Manhattan came a sense that he was ready to confide in me. Starting with a large gulp that took up almost a third of the bittersweet drink, he began to reveal himself to me. “I do not live in Dubai,” he began. “I run my business in Abu Dhabi.”

I knew that Abu Dhabi was the neighbouring emirate. It was, by far, the largest of the UAE. From what I’d read online, Abu Dhabi is somewhat less cosmopolitan but more livable than Dubai. “Is that where you met Neil?”

“No. We first met here. I come to Dubai every four or five weeks for my work. We met at…a party.”

Something wasn’t being said here. I thought I knew what it was. “You mean a gay bar?”

He appeared shocked. “No!” He took another drink. “A party.”

I looked at him but said nothing.

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“A party…for…fabulous men.”

I see. Safety in synonyms. “I understand. You and Neil were boyfriends.”

He sucked in his cheeks, pursed his lips, stared at me for a while, and then said, “Casually so. Whenever he was in Abu Dhabi, or I was here, we would meet.”

So, tonight had been a booty call.

“But we were more than lovers, you must understand. In many ways, we were friends too. We wouldn’t always jump right into bed, you see. We would meet first for dinner, or drinks, and talk. Then we’d go to a party. Spend time with other men. Men like us.” (The aforementioned fabulous men, I was guessing.)

“Sometimes, that was all we did. It was nice, you know, to have someone from another city, from another country, to confide in, tell things you wouldn’t tell your wife.”

The naive me gulped. “You’re married?”

“Of course.”

“When I arrived instead of Neil, you looked…certainly taken aback, and sad, and not all that surprised. You knew there might be a chance he wouldn’t show up, didn’t you?” What I left unsaid was: “As if you knew he was dead.”

“Neil called me, at my office in Abu Dhabi. This was unusual.

Each time we saw each other, we’d make plans for our next meeting. There was no need to be in contact between our meetings. But he called. He sounded not like himself. He sounded nervous.

Unhappy.”

“What did he say?”

“He pretended he wanted to confirm our date for tonight. But then he told me there was a possibility he might not show up. I asked him what the problem was. He wouldn’t say anything at first. Then he said it was too complicated to explain. He told me that if he did not come to meet me tonight at the Burj Al Arab, that I would know something bad had happened to him. He gave me a phone number for his father in Canada. He told me I should call him. To ask for help.”

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. Pranav Gupta had sensed his son was in danger. He had sensed Neil met his death 139

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for a reason other than what the police claimed. It seemed, yet again, that he was right. Neil too must have known he was in danger. Had the black petals warned him he was involved in something perilous? That he was risking his life? A risk he took and lost.

“Did he tell you what this bad thing might be?”

“No. Only that I was to trust no one other than his father.”

“But he must have said more than that. How would his father know how to help if he had no idea what Neil was dealing with?”

“I wrote it down,” Aashiq said as his fingers dipped into the breast pocket of his dark suit jacket. He pulled out a small square of paper and handed it to me. “This is the only thing he told me.”

Next to a phone number, which I recognized as Pranav Gupta’s in Saskatoon, was a single word. I stared at it. It was familiar, yet at the same time wholly mysterious to me. I looked up at the other man with questioning eyes.

“Saffron. This is all he told me,” Aashiq said. “He told me to me to tell his father to find saffron.”

Back in my marina apartment—after a short, jet-lag induced nap—I stewed about saffron. Why did a spice, albeit a locally popular one, keep on popping up in this case? And why would Neil leave his father such a cryptic message? “Find saffron.” How could he possibly expect anyone to know what that meant?

Unless…unless that information was in the “Z” folder I suspected was missing from Neil’s apartment. Still, what could a spice possibly have to do with Neil Gupta’s death? The options floated through my mind as I changed into something more appropriate for a late-night outing. Stolen saffron? Poisoned saffron?

Smuggled saffron? Missing saffron? Poor quality saffron sold as the more expensive variety, like the stuff I’d picked up earlier from Rahim in the Spice Souk? Had Neil stumbled upon something like that and been killed for what he knew? Possible. But how could I ever hope to prove it?

I had to know more about Neil, about his friends, about his life outside the university. About saffron. And “more” wasn’t 140

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going to just show up at my door. Which was why I’d convinced Aashiq to invite me to the “party for fabulous men” he and Neil had planned to attend together tonight.

As I was finding out, whether you’re in the Middle East or the West Village, some things never change. Apparently the merry-making didn’t really get going until after one a.m. So I had plenty of time to come up with increasingly incredible and absurd saffron-related criminal activities. I’d donned the requisite stylishly distressed jeans and tight T, and was considering a saffron-in-the-Dubai-food-supply-causing-Mad-Camel-Disease scenario, when the phone rang. It was after midnight.

“Russell Quant,” I answered, assuming it was someone from home who hadn’t quite figured out the time change.

“Quant! Up for a pint, mate?” Guess who? Could he be more British?

“Oh, Alastair, it’s rather late, isn’t it?”

I heard his trademark raucous laugh, like a pleasant hyena.

“It’s never too late or too early for a pint, old boy!” he chided. “I just thought, with it being your first weekend in the big city and all, you might fancy a look round the hot spots.”

Having an interpreter along tonight wouldn’t be such a bad idea, I suddenly realized. And it was much too late to call on Umar, our driver. “You know a little Arabic, don’t you Alastair?”

“Wee bit, why?”

“I
would
like to go out tonight. As long as I get to pick the place.”

“Absolutely. Whereabouts then?”

“Can you get yourself here? Then we’ll take a taxi.”

There was a short pause. He had sniffed out that something was up. “Just where is it you’re taking us, Russell?”

The jig was up. I knew he’d figure it out sooner or later. Plus, this was the Middle East after all. I wasn’t simply inviting him out on another night on the town. I was asking him to take on a certain degree of risk. He deserved to know. “It’s a party. For gay men.”

More hesitation. “I see,” he finally said. “No problem.” Pause.

“But on one condition.”

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Alastair and I gingerly got out of the taxi.

The area wasn’t quite what I expected it to be. I thought when the cab dropped us off, we’d find ourselves in a dark and dingy back alley, with wild dogs and shady characters creeping around the edges of crumbling buildings. Instead, the street seemed pretty average-looking, and certainly safe enough. It was busy too.

Lots of foot traffic. Cars whizzing by. I wasn’t exactly sure what part of town this was. Neither was Alastair (which gave me some concern). But the area looked to be a bit of an entertainment mecca (no pun intended). There wasn’t rock music blaring from rooftops, or drunk and disorderly twenty-somethings staggering about from bar to bar, but there did seem to be a jovial atmos-phere, with a preponderance of young people.

Alastair poked his head back into the cab. “It’s okay,” he said.

Hema stepped out of the car. I think it was the first time since we’d left for Dubai that I’d seen her without her BlackBerry. When not tapping away at miniscule keypads, her hands looked small, like those of a little girl, and soft like toffee; tonight she’d painted her nails dark crimson. Her outfit and intricately mussed up hair hinted that she was not unused to going out dancing after midnight.

I paid the cab fare. Then the three of us stood side by side, looking up at the nondescript building in front of us.