When Gravity Fails (31 page)

Her eyes got bigger. “Oh,” she said.

I looked back at the freshly watered garden that Seipolt’s money had imposed on the very edge of the creeping dunes. In a couple of weeks, that place would look as dry and dead as the middle of the Empty Quarter. I turned to my companion and smiled easily. We chatted all the way back to the city.

16

At the hotel, I left the blonde in a comfortable chair in the lobby. Her name was Trudi. Trudi Nothing, she told me blithely, just Trudi. She was a close personal friend of Lutz Seipolt. She’d been at his house for more than a week. They’d been introduced by a mutual friend. Uh huh. That Trudi, she was just the nicest, most outgoing girl—and Seipolt, you couldn’t
ask
for a sweeter man, down under all that murder and intrigue he wore just to fool people.

I went to make my phone call, but it wasn’t to anyone in the hotel that I needed to talk—it was Okking. He told me to babysit Trudi until he could get his fat ass moving. I popped out the daddies I was wearing, then put back the German-language one; I wouldn’t be able to say a word to Trudi without it. That’s when I learned Vital Important Fact #154 about the special add-ons Papa had given me:

You Pay For Everything In This World.

See, I
knew
that. I learned it many years ago at my mama’s knee. It’s just that it’s something you keep forgetting and have to relearn every once in a while. Don’t Nobody Get Nothing For Free.

All the time I’d been out at Seipolt’s, the daddies were holding my hormones in check. When I went back into the house to search Seipolt’s desk, I would have been helpless with nausea, knowing that the hacked-up bodies hadn’t been dead very long, knowing that bastard Khan might
still
be around the place somewhere. When Trudi called out
 

“Lutz?” I would have split my skin jumping in twenty directions at once.

When I popped the daddies out, I found out that I hadn’t avoided those terrible feelings, I’d only postponed them. Suddenly my brain and my nerves were tied in an agonizing jumble, like a tangled ball of yarn. I couldn’t untwist the separate emotional currents: there was wide-eyed, gasping horror, stifled by the daddies for a few hours; there was sudden fury directed at Khan, for the satanic method he had chosen to remain unknown, and for making me witness the results of his heinous acts; there was physical pain and utter weariness, as the fatigue poisons in my muscles rendered me almost helpless (the daddy had told my brain and the meat part of me to ignore injury and fatigue, and I was suffering from both now); I realized that I was awfully thirsty and I was getting pretty damn hungry; and my bladder, which the daddies had ordered not to communicate with any other part of my body, was near bursting. ACTH was pouring into my bloodstream, making me even more upset. Epinephrine pumped out of my adrenals, making my heart beat faster still, getting me ready for fight or flight; it made no difference that the threat was long gone. I was getting the entire reaction I would normally have experienced over a period of three or four hours, condensed into a solid, crippling blow of emotion and deprivation.

I chipped those daddies back in as fast as I could, and the world stopped lurching. In a minute, I was smoothly back in control. My breathing became normal, my heartbeat slowed down, the thirst, hunger, hatred, tiredness, and the sensation of my full bladder all vanished. I was grateful, but I knew that I was only postponing the payback yet again; when it came due at the end of all this, it would make the worst drug hangover I’d ever known seem like a quick kiss in the dark. Paybacks,
Us sont un motherfucker, n’est-ce pas, monsieur?

I would have to agree with that.

As I was going back to the lobby and Trudi, someone called my name. I was glad I had the daddies back in; I never liked having my name called in public places anyway, particularly when I was in disguise. “Monsieur Audran?”

I turned and gave one of the hotel clerks a cool look. “Yes?” I said.

“A message for you, monsieur. Left in your box.” I could tell he was having trouble with my
gallebeya
and
keffiya.
He was under the impression that only Europeans stayed in his nice, clean hotel.

It was moderately impossible that anyone had left a message for me, on two counts: the first was that no one knew I was staying here, and the second was that I’d checked in under a made-up name. I wanted to see what kind of foolish mistake had been made, and then throw it in the faces of the hotel’s stuffed shirts. I took the message.

Computer paper, right?

audran:

saw you at seipolt’s, but the time wasn’t right.

sorry.

i want you all to myself, alone and quiet.

i didn’t want anyone to think you were just part of a

random group of victims.

when they find your body,

i want to be sure they know

you received individual attention.

khan

My knees were trying to buckle, brain implants or no. I folded the note and put it in my shoulder bag.

“Are you all right, monsieur?” asked the clerk.

“The altitude,” I said. “It always takes me a while to adjust.”

“But there is none,” he said, bewildered.

“That’s just what I mean.” I went back to Trudi.

She smiled at me as if life had lost its savor while I was away. I wondered what she thought about all by herself. All “alone and quiet.” I winced.

“I’m sorry to have been gone so long,” I murmured. I gave her a little bow and took the chair beside her.

“I was just fine,” she said. She took a long time uncrossing her legs and crossing them the other way. Everyone between here and Osaka must have watched her do it. “Did you speak to Lutz?”

“Yes. He
was
here, but he had some urgent matter to clear up. Something official, with Lieutenant Okking.”

“Lieutenant?”

“He’s in charge of making sure nothing awkward happens in the Budayeen. You’ve heard of that part of our city?”

She nodded. “But why would the lieutenant want to talk with Lutz? Lutz doesn’t have anything to do with the Budayeen, does he?”

I smiled. “Forgive me, my dear, but you sound a trifle naive. Our friend is a very busy, very industrious man. I doubt if anything happens in the city without Lutz Seipolt knowing about it.”

“I suppose so.”

That was all bull; Seipolt was middle-management, at best. He was certainly no Friedlander Bey. “They are sending a car for us, so we’ll all meet together just as we planned. Then we can decide what we’ll do for the rest of the evening.”

Her face lit up again. She wasn’t going to miss out on her new outfit and the free night on the town, after all.

“Would you care for a drink while we wait?” I asked. That’s how we passed the time until a couple of plainclothes gold shields shuffled tiredly across the thick blue carpet toward us. I stood up, made some introductions, and we all left the hotel lobby the best of friends. We continued our pleasant little conversation all the way to the precinct station. We went upstairs, but I was stopped by Sergeant Hajjar. The two plainclothesmen escorted Trudi in to see Okking.

“What happened?” asked Hajjar grimly. I think he was being all cop now. Just to show me he could still do it.

“What do you think happened? Xarghis Khan, who worked for Seipolt and your boss, covered a few more of his tracks. Very thorough, this guy is. If I were Okking, I’d be nervous as hell. I mean, the lieutenant is a stand-out uncovered track himself.”

“He knows it; I’ve never seen him so shook. I made him a present of thirty or forty Paxium. He took a bunch of ’em for lunch.” Hajjar grinned.

One of the uniformed cops came out of Okking’s office. “Audran,” he said, and jerked his head at me. I was just part of the team, they all had a lot of respect for me.

“In a minute.” I turned back to Hajjar. “Listen,” I said, “I’m going to want to look through what you pull out of Seipolt’s desk and file cabinets.”

“I figured,” said Hajjar. “The lieutenant’s too busy to worry about all that, so he’ll tell me to take care of it. I’ll make sure you get first crack at it.”

“All right. It’s important, I hope.” I went into Okking’s glass-walled enclosure just as the two soft-clothes guys led Trudi out. She smiled at me and said
“Marhaba.”
That’s when I guessed that she spoke Arabic, too.

“Sit down, Audran,” said Okking. His voice was hoarse.

I sat down. “Where’s she going?”

“We’re just going to question her in a little more depth. We’re going to sift her brain thoroughly. Then we’ll let her go home, wherever the hell that is.”

It sounded like good police work to me; I just wondered if Trudi would be in any shape to go when they got done sifting her. They’d use hypnosis and drugs and electrical brain stimulation, and it all left you feeling kind of wrung out. That’s what I’ve heard.

“Khan is getting closer,” said Okking, “but the other one hasn’t made a peep since Nikki.”

“I don’t know what that means. Say, Lieutenant, Trudi isn’t Khan, is she? I mean, could she ever have been James Bond?”

He looked at me like I was crazy. “How the hell would
I
know? I never met Bond in person, we just dealt over the phone, by mail. As far as I know,
you’re
the only living person who ever saw him face-to-face. That’s why I can’t get over this little, nagging suspicion I have, Audran. There’s something not quite right about you.”

About
me,
I thought; a lot of damn nerve again, coming from a foreign agent cashing checks from the National Socialists. I was unhappy to hear that Okking wouldn’t be able to pick Khan out of a lineup, if we should get so lucky. I didn’t know if the lieutenant was lying, but he was probably telling the truth. He knew he was high on the list, if not next, to be slashed. He’d been serious about not leaving that room, too: he’d set up a cot in the office, and there was a tray with an unfinished meal on it on his desk.

“The only thing we probably know for sure is that both of them use their moddies not only to kill but to spread a little terror. It’s working fine, too,” I said. “Your guy—” Okking shot me an ugly look, but hell, it was the truth. “Your guy’s changed from Bond to Khan. The other guy is the same as he was, as far as we know. I just hope the Russians’ bumper has gone home. I wish we could know for sure that we don’t have to worry about him anymore.”

“Yeah,” said Okking.

“Did you get anything useful out of Trudi before you sent her downstairs?”

Okking shrugged and flipped over half a sandwich on the tray. “Just the polite information. Her name and all that.”

“I’d like to know how she got involved with Seipolt in the first place.”

Okking raised his eyebrows. “Easy, Audran. Seipolt was the highest bidder this week.”

I let out an exasperated breath. “I figured that much, Lieutenant. She told me she’d been introduced to Seipolt by somebody.”

“Mahmoud.”

“Mahmoud? My friend, Mahmoud? The one who used to be a girl over by Jo-Mama’s before his sex change?”

“You right.”

“What’s Mahmoud got to do with this?”

“While you were in the hospital, Mahmoud got promoted. He took over the position that was left vacant when Abdoulaye got creased.”

Mahmoud. Gone from sweet young thing working in the Greek clubs to petty shakedown artist to big-time white slaver in a couple of easy steps. All I could think was “Where else but in the Budayeen?” You talk about equal opportunity for all. “I’ll have to talk to Mahmoud,” I muttered.

“Get in line. He’s coming in here in a little while, as soon as my boys can roust him.”

“Let me know what he tells you.”

Okking sneered. “Of course, friend; didn’t I promise you? Didn’t I promise Papa? Anything else I can do for you?”

I got up and leaned over his desk. “Look, Okking, you’re used to looking at pieces of bodies splashed around nice peoples’ living rooms, but I can’t do it without throwing up.” I showed him my latest message from Khan. “I want to know if I can get myself a gun or something.”

“What the hell do I care?” he said softly, almost hypnotized by Khan’s note. I waited. He looked up at me, caught my eye, and sighed. Then he pulled open a lower drawer in his desk and took out some weapons. “What do you want?”

There were a couple of needle guns, a couple of static pistols, a big seizure gun, and even a large automatic projectile pistol. I chose a small Smith & Wesson needle gun and the General Electric seizure cannon. Okking put a box of formatted needle clips on his blotter for me, twelve needles to a magazine, a hundred magazines in the box. I scooped them all up and tucked them away. “Thanks,” I said.

“Feel protected now? They give you a sense of invulnerability?”

“You feel invulnerable, Okking?”

His sneer tilted over and crashed. “The hell,” he said. He waved me out of there; I went, as grateful as ever.

By the time I got out of the building, the sky was getting dusky in the east. I heard the recorded cries of muezzins from minarets all over the city. It had been a busy day. I wanted a drink, but I still had some things to do before I could let myself ease off a little. I walked into the hotel and went up to my room, stripped off my robe and headgear, and took a shower. I let the hot water pound against my body for a quarter of an hour; I just rotated under it like lamb on a spit. I washed my hair and soaped my face two or three times. It was regrettable but necessary: the beard had to come off. I had gotten clever, but Khan’s reminder in my mailbox made it plain that I still wasn’t clever enough. First, I cut my long reddish-brown hair short.

I hadn’t seen my upper lip since I was a teenager, so the short, harsh swipes with the razor gave me some twinges of regret. They passed quickly; after a while I was actually curious about what I looked like under it all. In another fifteen minutes I had eliminated the beard completely, going back over every place on my neck and face until the skin stung and blood stood out along bright red slashes.