A Fire in the Sun

When my admirable add-on woke me on Monday morning, I lay in bed for a few moments, thinking. I was willing to admit that maybe I’d made a few mistakes the night before. I wasn’t sure how I might have repaired the situation with Chiri, but I should have tried. I owed that much to her and our friendship. I wasn’t happy about seeing my mother at the door later, either. I’d solved that problem by digging out fifty kiam and packing her off into the night. I sent Kmuzu with her to find a hotel room. At breakfast, Friedlander Bey offered me some constructive criticism on that decision.

He was furious. There was a husky, hoarse quality to his voice that let me know he was trying like hell not to shout at me. He put his hands on my shoulders, and I could feel him tremble with emotion. His breath was perfumed with mint as he quoted the noble Qur’an. “If one of your parents or both of them attain old age with thee, say not fie unto them nor repulse them, but speak unto them a gracious word. And lower unto them the wing of submission through mercy, and say: My Lord! Have mercy on them both as they did care for me when I was little.”

I felt shaken. Being inundated by Friedlander Bey’s wrath was kind of like practicing for The Day of Judgment. He’d think that comparison was sacrilegious, of course, but he’s never been the target of his own fury.

I couldn’t keep from stammering. “You mean Angel Monroe.” Jeez, that was a lame thing to say, but Papa’d surprised me with this tirade. I still wasn’t thinking clearly.

“I’m talking about your mother,” he said. “She came to you in need, and you turned her away from your door.”

“I provided for her the best way I knew how.” I wondered how Papa had heard about the incident in the first place.

“You do not cast your mother out to abide with strangers! Now you must seek the forgiveness of Allah.”

That made me feels a little better. This was one of those times when he said “Allah” but he meant “Fried-lander Bey.” I had sinned against his personal code; but if I could find the right things to say and do, it would be all right again. “O Shaykh,” I said slowly, choosing my words carefully, “I know how you feel about women in your house. I hesitated to invite her to stay the night under your roof, and it was too late to consult with you. I balanced my mother’s need against your custom, and I did what I thought best.” Well, hell, that was almost true.

He glared at me, but I could see that he’d lost the edge of his anger. “Your action was a worse affront to me than having your mother as a guest in my home,” he said.

“I understand, O Shaykh, and I beg you to forgive me. I did not mean to offend you or disregard the teaching of the Prophet.”

“May the blessing of Allah be upon him and peace,” Papa murmured automatically. He shook his head ruefully, but with each passing second his grim expression lightened. “You are still young, my son. This is not the last error of judgment you will make. If you are to become a righteous man and a compassionate leader, you must learn from my example. When you are in doubt, never be afraid to seek my counsel, whatever the time or place.”

“Yes, O Shaykh,” I said quietly. The storm had passed.

“Now you must find your mother, return her here, and make her welcome in a suitable apartment. We have many unused rooms, and this house is yours as well as mine.”

I could tell by his tone that this conversation was over, and I was pretty damn glad. It had been like crossing between the minarets of the Shoal Mosque on a tightrope. “You are the father of kindness, O Shaykh,” I said.

“Go in safety, my nephew.”

I went back up to my suite, my breakfast forgotten. Kmuzu, as usual, went with me. “Say,” I said, as if the thought had just occurred to me, “you didn’t happen to let Friedlander Bey know about last night, did you?”

“Yaa Sidi,” he said with a blank expression, “it is the Will of the master of the house that I tell him of these things.”

I chewed my lip thoughtfully. Talking to Kmuzu was like addressing a mythical oracle: I had to be sure to phrase my questions with absolute precision, or I’d get nonsense for an answer. I began simply. “Kmuzu, you are my slave, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” he said.

“You obey me?”

“I obey you and the master of the house, yaa Sidi.”

“Not necessarily in that order, though.”

“Not necessarily,” he admitted.

“Well, I’m gonna give you a plain, unambiguous command. You won’t have to clear it with Papa because he suggested it to me in the first place. I want you to find a vacant apartment somewhere in the house, preferably far away from this one, and install my mother comfortably. I want you to spend the entire day seeing to her needs. When I get home from work, I’ll need to talk to her about her plans for the future, so that means she gets no drugs and no alcohol.”

Kmuzu nodded. “She could not get those things in this house, yaa Sidi.”

I’d had no problem smuggling my Pharmaceuticals in, and I was sure Angel Monroe had her own emergency supply hidden somewhere too. “Help her unpack her things,” I said, “and take the opportunity to make sure she’s checked all her intoxicants at the door.”

Kmuzu gave me a thoughtful look. “You hold her to a stricter standard than you observe yourself,” he said quietly.

“Yeah, maybe,” I said, annoyed. “Anyway, it’s not your place to mention it.”

“Forgive me, yaa Sidi.”

“Forget it. I’ll drive myself to work today.”

Kmuzu didn’t like that, either. “If you take the car,” he said, “how can I bring your mother from the hotel?”

I smiled slowly. “Sedan chair, oxcart, hired camel caravan, I don’t care. You’re the slave, you figure it out. See you tonight.” On my desk was yet another thick envelope stuffed with paper bills. One of Friedlander Bey’s little helpers had let himself into my apartment while I’d been downstairs. I took the envelope and my briefcase and left before Kmuzu could come up with another objection.

My briefcase still held the cell-memory file on Abu Adil. I was supposed to have read through it last night, but I never got around to it. Hajjar and Shaknahyi were probably going to be griped, but I didn’t care. What could they do, fire me?

I drove first to the Budayeen, leaving my car on the boulevard and walking from there to Laila’s modshop on Fourth Street. Laila’s was small, but it had character, crammed between a dark, grim gambling den and a noisy bar that catered to teenage sexchanges. The moddies and daddies in Laila’s bins were covered with dust and fine grit, and generations of small insects had met their Maker among her wares. It wasn’t pretty, but what you got from her most of the time was good old honest value. The rest of the time you got damaged, worthless, even dangerous merchandise. You always felt a little rush of adrenalin before you chipped one of Laila’s ancient and shopworn moddies directly into your brain.

She was always — always — chipped in, and she never stopped whining. She whined hello, she whined goodbye, she whined in pleasure and in pain. When she prayed, she whined to Allah. She had dry black skin as wrinkled as a raisin, and straggly white hair. Laila was not someone I liked to spend a lot of time with. She was wearing a moddy this morning, of course, but I couldn’t tell yet which one. Sometimes she was a famous Eur-Am film or holo star, or a character from a forgotten novel, or Honey Pilar herself. Whoever she was, she’d yammer. That was all I could count on.

“How you doing, Laila?” I said. There was the acrid bite of ammonia in her shop that morning. She was squirting some ugly pink liquid from a plastic bottle up into the corners of the room. Don’t ask me why.

She glanced at me and gave me a slow, rapturous smile. It was the look you get only from complete sexual satisfaction or from a large dose of Sonneine. “Marid,” she said serenely. She still whined, but now it was a serene whine.

“Got to go out on patrol today, and I thought you might have—”

“Marid, a young girl came to me this morning and said, ‘Mother, the eyes of the narcissus are open, and the cheeks of the roses are red with blushing! Why don’t you come outside and see how beautifully Nature has adorned the world!’ ”

“Laila, if you’ll just give me a minute—”

“And I said to her, ‘Daughter, that which delights you will fade in an hour, and what profit will you then have in it? Instead, come inside and find with me the far greater beauty of Allah, who created the spring.” Laila finished her little homily and looked at me expectantly, as if she were waiting for me either to applaud or collapse from enlightenment.

I’d forgotten religious ecstasy. Sex, drugs, and religious ecstasy. Those were the big sellers in Laila’s shop, and she tested them all out personally. You had her personal Seal of Approval on every moddy.

“Can I talk now? Laila?”

She stared at me, swaying unsteadily. Slowly she reached one scrawny arm up and popped the moddy out. She blinked a couple of times, and her gentle smile disappeared. “Get you something, Marid?” she said in her shrill voice.

Laila had been around so long, there was a rumor that as a child she’d watched the imams lay the foundation of the Budayeen’s walls. But she knew her moddies. She knew more about old, out-of-print moddies than anyone else I’ve ever met. I think Laila must have had one of the world’s first experimental implants, because her brain had never worked quite right afterward. And the way she still abused the technology, she should have burnt out her last gray cells years ago. She’d withstood cerebral torture that would have turned anyone else into a drooling zombie. Laila probably had a tough protective callus on her brain that prevented anything from penetrating. Anything at all.

I started over from the beginning. “I’m going out on patrol today, and I was wondering if you had a basic cop moddy.”

“Sure, I got everything.” She hobbled to a bin near the back of the store and dug around in it for a moment. The bin was marked “Prussia/Poland/Breulandy.” That didn’t have anything to do with which moddies were actually in there; Laila’d bought the battered dividers and scuffed labels from some other kind of shop that was going out of business.

She straightened up after a few seconds, holding two shrink-wrapped moddies in her hand. “This is what you want,” she said.

One was the pale blue Complete Guardian moddy I’d seen other rookie cops wearing. It was a good, basic piece of procedural programming that covered almost every conceivable situation. I figured that between the Half-Hajj’s mean-mother moddy and the Guardian, I was covered. “What’s this other one?” I asked.

“A gift to you at half price. Dark Lightning. Only this version’s called Wise Counselor. It’s what I was wearing | when you came in.”

I found that interesting. Dark Lightning was a Nipponese idea that had been very popular fifty or sixty years ago. You sat down in a comfortable padded chair, and Dark Lightning put you instantly into a receptive trance. Then it presented you with a lucid, therapeutic dream. Depending on Dark Lightning’s analysis of your current emotional state, it could be a warning, some advice, or a mystical puzzle for your conscious mind to work on.

The high price of the contraption kept it a curiosity among the wealthy. Its Far Eastern fictions — Dark Lightning usually cast you as a contemptuous Nipponese emperor in need of wisdom, or an aged Zen monk begging sublimely in the snow — limited its appeal still further. Lately, however, the Dark Lightning idea had been revived by the growth of the personality module market. And now apparently there was an Arabic version, called Wise Counselor.

I bought both moddies, thinking that I wasn’t in a position to turn down any kind of help, friend or fantasy. For someone who once hated the idea of having his skull amped, I was sure building up a good collection of other people’s psyches.

Laila had chipped in Wise Counselor again. She gave me that tranquil smile. It was toothless, of course, and it made me shiver. “Go in safety,” she said in her nasal wail.

“Peace be upon you.” I hurried out of her shop, walked back down the Street, and passed through the gate to where the car was parked. It wasn’t far from there to the station house. Back at my desk on the third floor, I opened my briefcase. I put my two purchases, the Complete Guardian and Wise Counselor, in the rack with the others. I grabbed the green cobalt-alloy plate and slotted it into the data deck, but then I hesitated. I really didn’t feel like reading about Abu Adil yet. Instead I took Wise Counselor, unwrapped it, then reached up and chipped it in.

After a moment of dizziness, Audran saw that he was reclining on a couch, drinking a glass of lemon sherbet. Facing him on another couch was a handsome man of middle years. With a shock, he recognized the man as the Apostle of God. Quickly, Audran popped the moddy out.

I sat there at my desk, holding Wise Counselor and trembling. It wasn’t what I’d expected at all. I found the experience deeply disturbing. The quality of the vision was absolutely realistic — it wasn’t like a dream or a hallucination. It didn’t feel as if I’d only imagined it; it felt as if I’d truly been in the same room with Prophet Muhammad, blessings and peace be on him.

It should be clear that I’m not a terribly religious person. I’ve studied the faith and I have tremendous respect for its precepts and traditions, but I guess I just don’t find it convenient to practice them. That probably damns my soul for eternity, and I’ll have plenty of time in Hell to regret my laziness. Even so, I was shocked by the pure arrogance of the moddy’s manufacturer, to presume to depict the Prophet in such a way. Even illustrations in religious texts are considered idolatrous; what would a court of Islamic law make of the experience I’d just had?

Another reason I was shaken, I think, was because in the brief moment before I’d popped the moddy, I’d gotten the distinct impression that the Prophet had something intensely meaningful to tell me.

I started to toss the moddy back into my briefcase, when I had a flash of insight: The manufacturer hadn’t depicted the Prophet, after all. The visions of Wise Counselor or Dark Lightning weren’t pre-programmed vignettes written by some cynical software scribbler. The moddy was psychoactive. It evaluated my own mental and emotional states, and enabled me to create the illusion.

In that sense, I decided, it wasn’t a profane mockery of the religious experience. It was only a means of accessing my own hidden feelings. I realized I’d just made a world-class rationalization, but it made me feel a lot better. I chipped the moddy in again.

After a moment of dizziness, Audran saw that he was reclining on a couch, drinking a glass of lemon sherbet. Facing him on another couch was a handsome man of middle years. With a shock, he recognized the man as the Apostle of God.

“As-salaam alaykum,” said the Prophet.

“Wa alaykum as-salaam, yaa Hazrat,” replied Audran. He thought it was odd that he felt so comfortable in the Messenger’s presence.

“You know, “said the Prophet, “there is a source of joy that leads you to forget death, that guides you to an accord with the will of Allah.”

“I don’t know exactly what you mean, “Audran said.

Prophet Muhammad smiled. “You have heard that in my life there were many troubles, many dangers.”

“Men repeatedly conspired to kill you because of your teachings, O Apostle of Allah. You fought many battles.”

“Yes. But do you know the greatest danger I ever faced?”

Audran thought for a moment, perplexed. “You lost your father before you were born.”

“Even as you lost yours,” said the Prophet.

“You lost your mother as a child.”

“Even as you were without a mother.”

“You went into the world with no inheritance.”

The Prophet nodded. “A condition forced upon you, as well. No, none of those things were the worst, nor were the efforts of my enemies to starve me, to crush me with boulders, to burn me in my tent, or to poison my food.”

“Then, yaa Hazrat,” asked Audran, “what was the greatest danger?”

“Early in my season of preaching, the Meccans would not listen to my word. I turned to the Sardar of Tayefand asked his permission to preach there. The Sardar gave permission, but I did not know that secretly he plotted to have me attacked by his hired villains. I was badly hurt, and I fell unconscious to the ground. A friend carried me

out of Tayefand lay me beneath a shady tree. Then he went into the village again to beg for water, but no one in Tayef would give him any.”

“You were in danger of dying?”

Prophet Muhammad raised a hand. “Perhaps, but is a man not always in danger of dying? When I was again conscious, I lifted my face to Heaven and prayed, ‘O Merciful, You have instructed me to carry Your message to the people, but they will not listen to me. Perhaps it is my imperfection that prevents them from receiving Your blessing. O Lord, give me the courage to try again!’

“Then I noticed that Gabriel the Archangel lay upon the sky over Tayef, waiting for my gesture to turn the village into a blasted wasteland. I cried out in horror: ‘No, that is not the way! Allah has chosen me among men to be a blessing to Mankind, and I do not seek to chastise them. Let them live. If they do not accept my message, then perhaps their sons or their sons’ sons will.’

“That awful moment of power, when with a lifted finger I might have destroyed all of Tayefand the people who lived there, that was the greatest danger of my life.”

Audran was humbled. “Allah is indeed Most Great,” he said. He reached up and popped the moddy out.

Yipe. Wise Counselor had sifted through my subskullular impulses, then tailored a vision that both interpreted my current turmoil and suggested solutions. But what was Wise Counselor trying to tell me? I was just too dull and literal-minded to understand what it all meant. I thought it might be advising me to go up to Friedlander Bey and say, “I’ve got the power to destroy you, but I’m staying my hand out of charity.” Then Papa would be overcome with guilt, and free me of all obligations to him.

Then I realized that it couldn’t be that simple. In the first place, I didn’t have any such power to destroy him. Friedlander Bey was protected from lesser creatures like me by baraka, the almost magical presence possessed by certain great men. It would take a better person than I to lift a finger against him, even to sneak in and pour poison in his ear while he slept.

Okay, that meant I’d misunderstood the lesson, but it wasn’t something I was going to worry about. The next time I met an imam or a saint on the street, I’d have to ask

him to explain the vision to me. In the meantime I had more important things to do. I put the moddy back in my briefcase.

Then I loaded the file on Abu Adil and spent about ten minutes glancing through it. It was every bit as boring as I was afraid it would be. Abu Adil had been brought to the city at an early age, more than a century and a half ago. His parents had wandered for many months after the disaster of the Saturday War. As a boy, Abu Adil helped his father, who sold lemonade and sherbets in the Souk of the Tanners. He played in the narrow, twisting alleys of the medtnah, the old part of town. When his father died, Abu Adil became a beggar to support himself and his mother. Somehow, through strength of will and inner resources, he rejected his poverty and miserable station and became a man of respect and influence in the medmah. The report gave no details of this remarkable transformation, but if Abu Adil was a serious rival to Friedlander Bey, I had no trouble believing it had happened. He still lived in a house at the western edge of the city, not far from the Sunset Gate. By all reports it was a mansion as grand as Papa’s, surrounded by ghastly slums. Abu Adil had an army of friends and associates in the hovels of the medmah, just as Friedlander Bey had his own in the Budayeen.

That was about as much as I’d learned when Officer Shaknahyi ducked his head into my cubicle. “Time to roll,” he said.

It didn’t bother me in the least to tell my data deck to quit. I wondered why Lieutenant Hajjar was so worked up about Reda Abu Adil. I hadn’t run across anything in the file that suggested he was anything but another Fried-lander Bey: just a rich, powerful man whose business took on a gray, even black character now and then. If he was, like Papa — and the evidence I’d seen indicated that’s just what he was — he had little interest in disturbing innocent people. Friedlander Bey was no criminal mastermind, and I doubted that Abu Adil was, either. You could rouse men like him only by trespassing on their territory or by threatening their friends and family.

I followed Shaknahyi downstairs to the garage. “That’s mine,” he said, pointing to a patrol car coming in from the previous shift. He greeted the two tired-looking cops who got out, then slid behind the steering wheel. “Well?” he said, looking up at me.

I wasn’t in a hurry to start this. In the first place, I’d be stuck in the narrow confines of the copcar with Shaknahyi for the duration of the shift, and that prospect didn’t excite me at all. Second, I’d really rather sit upstairs and read boring files in perfect safety than follow this battle-hardened veteran out into the mean streets. Finally, though, I climbed into the front seat. Sometimes there’s only so much stalling you can do.

“What you carrying?” he said, looking straight out the windshield while he drove. He had a big wad of gum crammed into his right cheek.

“You mean this?” I held up the Complete Guardian moddy, which I hadn’t chipped in yet.

He glanced at me and muttered something under his breath. “I’m talking about what you’re gonna use to save me from the bad guys,” he said. Then he looked my way again.

Under my sport coat I was wearing my seizure gun. I took it out of the holster and showed him. “Got this last year from Lieutenant Okking,” I said.

Shaknahyi chewed his gum for a few seconds. “The lieutenant was always all right to me,” he said. His eyes slid sideways again.

“Yeah, well,” I said. I couldn’t think of anything terribly meaningful to add. I’d been responsible for Okking’s death, and I knew that Shaknahyi knew it. That was something else I’d have to overcome if we were going to accomplish anything together. There was silence in the car for a little while after that.

“Look, that weapon of yours ain’t much good except for maybe stunning mice and birds up close. Take a look on the floor.”

I reached under my seat and pulled out a small arsenal. There was a large seizure cannon, a static pistol, and a needle gun that looked like its flechettes could strip the meat from the bones of an adult rhinoceros. “What do you suggest?” I asked.

“How do you feel about splashing blood all over everything?”

“Had enough of that last year,” I said.

“Then forget the needle gun, though it’s a dandy side arm. It alternates three sedative barbs, three iced with nerve toxin, and three explosive darts. The seizure cannon may be too hefty for you too. It’s got four times the power of your little sizzlegun. It’ll stop anybody you aim at up to a quarter of a mile away, but it’ll kill a mark inside a hundred yards. Maybe you ought to go with the static gun.”

I stuffed the needle gun and the seizure cannon back under the seat and looked at the static gun. “What kind of damage will this do?”

Shaknahyi shrugged. “Hit ’em in the head with that two or three times and you’ve crippled ’em for life. The head’s a small target, though. Get ’em in the chest and it’s Heart Attack City. Anywhere else, they can’t control their muscles. They’re helpless for half an hour. That’s what you want.”

I nodded and tucked the static gun into my coat pocket. “You don’t think I’ll—” My telephone began warbling, and I undipped it from my belt. I figured it was one of my other problems checking in. “Hello?” I said.

“Marid? This is Indihar.”

It seemed like they just weren’t making good news anymore. I closed my eyes. “Yeah, how you doing? What’s up?”

“You know what time it is? You own a club now, Maghrebi. You got a responsibility to the girls on the day shift. You want to get down here and open up?”

I hadn’t given the club a goddamn thought. It was something I really didn’t want to worry about, but Indihar was right about my responsibility. “I’ll get there as soon as I can. Everybody show up today?”

“I’m here, Pualani’s here, Janelle quit, I don’t know where Kandy is, and Yasmin’s here looking for a job.”

Now Yasmin too. Jeez. “See you in a few minutes.”

“Inshallah, Marid.”

“Yeah.” I clipped the phone back on my belt.

“Where you got to go now? We don’t have time for no personal errands.”

I tried to explain. “Friedlander Bey thought he was doing me this big favor, and he bought me my own club in the Budayeen. I don’t know a damn thing about running a club. Forgot all about it until now. I got to pass by there and open the place.”

Shaknahyi laughed. “Beware of two-hundred-year-old kingpins bearing gifts,” he said. “Where’s this club?”

“On the Street,” I said. “Chiriga’s place. You know which one I mean?”

He turned and studied me for a moment without saying anything. Then he said, “Yeah, I know which one you mean.” He swung the patrol car around and headed for the Budayeen.

You might think it’d be a kick to zip through the eastern gate in an official car, and drive up the Street when other vehicular traffic is forbidden. My reaction was just the opposite. I scrunched myself down in the seat, hoping no one I knew would see me. I’d hated cops all my life and now I was one; already my former friends were giving me the same treatment I used to give Hajjar and the other police around the Budayeen. I was grateful that Shaknahyi had the sense not to turn on the siren.

Shaknahyi dropped the car right in front of Chiriga’s club, and I saw Indihar standing on the sidewalk with Pualani and Yasmin. I was unhappy to see that Yasmin had cut her long, beautiful black hair, which I’d always loved. Maybe since we’d broken up, she felt she had to change things. I took a deep breath, opened the door, and got out. “How y’all doing?” I said.

Indihar glowered at me. “We lost about an hour’s tips already,” she said.

“You gonna run this club or not, Marid?” said Pualani. “I can go work by Jo-Mama’s real easy.”

“Frenchy’d take me back in a Marrakesh minute,” said Yasmin. Her expression was cold and distant. Riding around in copcars wasn’t improving my status with her at all.

“Don’t worry,” I said, “I just had a lot on my mind this morning. Indihar, could I hire you to manage the place for me? You know more about running the club than I do.”

She stared at me for a few seconds. “Only if you give me a regular schedule,” she said. “I don’t want to have to come in early after staying late on night shift. Chiri made us do that all the time.”

“All right, fine. You got any other ideas, let me know.”

“You’re gonna have to pay me what other managers make too. And I’m only gonna get up and dance if I feel like it.”

I frowned, but she had me in a corner. “That’s okay too. Now, who do you suggest to manage at night?”

Indihar shrugged. “I don’t trust none of those sluts. Talk to Chiri. Hire her back.”

“Hire Chiri? To work in her own club?”

“It’s not her own club anymore,” Yasmin pointed out.

“Yeah, right,” I said. “You think she’d do it?”

Indihar laughed. “She’ll make you pay her three times what any other manager on the Street gets. She’ll give you hell about it too, and she’ll steal you blind out of the register if you give her half a chance. But she’ll still be worth it. Nobody can make money like Chiri. Without her, you’ll be renting this property to some rug merchant inside of six months.”

“You hurt her feelings real bad, Marid,” said Pualani.

“I know, but it wasn’t my fault. Friedlander Bey organized the whole thing without talking to me about it first. He just dropped the club on me as a surprise.”

“Chiri doesn’t know that,” said Yasmin.

I heard a car door slam behind me. I turned and saw Shaknahyi walking toward me, a big grin on his face. All I needed now was to have him join in. He was really enjoying this.

Indihar and the others hated my guts for turning cop, and the cops felt the same way because to them I was still a hustler. The Arabs say, “You take off your clothes, you get cold.” That’s advice against cutting yourself off from your support group. It doesn’t offer any help if your friends show up in a mob and strip you naked against your will.

Shaknahyi didn’t say a word to me. He went up to Indihar, bent, and whispered something in her ear. Well, a lot of the girls on the Street have this fascination with cops. I never understood it, myself. And some of the cops don’t mind taking advantage of the situation. It just surprised me to find out that Indihar was one of those girls, and that Shaknahyi was one of those cops.

It didn’t occur to me to add this to the list of recent unnatural coincidences: My new partner just happened to have a thing going with the new manager of the club Friedlander Bey had just given me.

“Got everything settled here, Audran?” Shaknahyi asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “I got to talk to Chiriga sometime today.”

“Indihar’s right,” said Yasmin. “Chili’s gonna give you a hard time.”

I nodded. “She’s entitled, I guess, but I’m still not looking forward to it.”

“Let’s mount up,” said Shaknahyi.

“If I got time later,” I said, “I’ll drop in and see how y’all are doing.”

“We’ll be fine,” said Pualani. “We know how to do our jobs. You just watch your ass around Chiri.”

“Protect your middle,” said Indihar. “If you know what I mean.”

I waved and headed back to the patrol car. Shaknahyi gave Indihar a little kiss on the cheek, then followed me. He got behind the wheel. “Ready to work now?” he asked. We were still sitting at the curb.

“How long you known Indihar? I never seen you come into Chiri’s club.”

He gave me this wide-eyed innocent look. “I been knowing her for a long time,” he said.

“Right,” I said. I just left it there. It didn’t sound like he wanted to talk about her.

A shrill alarm went off, and the synthesized voice of the patrol car’s comp deck crackled. “Badge number 374, respond immediately to bomb threat and hostage situation, Cafe de la Fee Blanche, Ninth Street North.”

“Gargotier’s place,” said Shaknahyi. “We’ll take care of it.” The comp deck fell silent.

And Hajjar had promised me I wouldn’t have to worry about anything like this. “Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Raheem, “I murmured. In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful.

This time as we rode up the Street, Shaknahyi let the siren scream.

There was a crowd gathered outside the low railing of the Cafe de la Fee Blanche’s patio. An old man sat at one of the white-painted iron tables, drinking something from a plastic tumbler. He seemed oblivious to the crisis that was occurring inside the bar. “Get him out of here,” Shaknahyi growled at me. “Get these other people out of here too. I don’t know what’s happening in there, but we got to treat it like the guy has a real bomb. And when you got everybody moved back, go sit in the car.”

“But—”

“I don’t want to have to worry about you too.” He ran around the corner of the cafe to the north, heading for the cafe’s rear entrance.

I hesitated. I knew backup units would be getting here soon, and I decided to let them handle the crowd control. At the moment, there were more important things to worry about. I still had Complete Guardian, and I tore open the shrink-wrap with my teeth. Then I chipped the moddy in.

Audran was sitting at a table in the dimly lighted San Saberio salon in Florence, listening to a group of musicians playing a demure Schubert quartet. Across from him sat a beautiful blond woman named Costanzia. She raised a cup to her lips, and her china-blue eyes looked at him over the rim. She was wearing a subtle, fascinating fragrance that made Audran think of romantic evenings and soft-spoken promises.

“This must be the best coffee in Tuscany,” she murmured. Her voice was sweet and gentle. She gave him a warm smile.

“We didn’t come here to drink coffee, my darling,” he said. “We came here to see the season’s new styles.”

She waved a hand. “There is time enough for that. For now, let’s just relax.”

Audran smiled fondly at her and picked up his delicate cup. The coffee was the beautiful color of polished mahogany, and the wisps of steam that rose from it carried a heavenly, enticing aroma. The first taste overwhelmed Audran with its richness. As the coffee, hot and wonderfully delicious, went down his throat, he realized that Costanzia had been perfectly correct. He had never before been so satisfied by a cup of coffee.

“I’ll always remember this coffee,” he said.

“Let’s come back here again next year, darling, “said Costanzia.

Audran laughed indulgently. “For San Saberio’s new fashions?”

Costanzia lifted her cup and smiled. “For the coffee,” she said.

After the advertisement, there was a blackout during which Audran couldn’t see a thing. He wondered briefly who Costanzia was, but he put her out of his mind. Just as he began to panic, his vision cleared. He felt a ripple of dizziness, and then it was as if he’d awakened from a dream. He was rational and cool and he had a job to do. He had become the Complete Guardian.

He couldn’t see or hear anything that was happening inside. He assumed that Shaknahyi was making his way quietly through the cafe’s back room. It was up to Audran to give his partner as much support as possible. He jumped the iron railing into the patio.

The old man at the table looked up at him. “No doubt you are eager to read my manuscripts,” he said.

Audran recognized the man as Ernst Weinraub, an expatriate from some Central European country. Weinraub fancied himself a writer, but Audran had never seen him finish anything but quantities of anisette or bourbon whiskey. “Sir,” he said, “you’re in danger here. I’m going to have to ask you to go out into the street. For your own safety, please move away from the cafe.”

“It’s not even midnight yet,” Weinraub complained. “Just let me finish my drink.”

Audran didn’t have time to humor the old drunk. He left the patio and walked decisively into the interior of the bar.

The scene inside didn’t look very threatening. Monsieur Gargotier was standing behind the bar, beneath the huge, cracked mirror. His daughter, Maddie, was sitting at a table near the back wall. A young man sat at a table against the west wall, under Gargotier’s collection of faded prints of the Mars colony. The young man’s hands rested on a small box. His head swung to look at Audran. “Get the fuck out,” he shouted, “or this whole place goes up in a big bright bang!”

“I’m sure he means it, monsieur, “said Gargotier. He sounded terrified.

“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 back to the barkeep, 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 Martd. 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 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 green room 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 Monsieur 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 creased 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 pillcase 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 Marid Audran, Ideal Law Enforcement Officer.

I stood up feeling a lot better, and followed Shaknahyi out of the dimly lighted bar. Monsieur 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 anytime,” Gargotier said gratefully.

“Maybe we will.” Shaknahyi turned to me. “Let’s ride,” he said. We went out through the patio gate. Old Weinraub was still sitting beneath his Cinzano umbrella, apparently oblivious to everything that had gone on.

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.

Before I got into the car, a muezzin from some mosque beyond the quarter chanted the afternoon call to prayer. I watched Shaknahyi go into the patrol car’s backseat and come out with a rolled prayer rug. He spread the rug on the sidewalk and prayed for several minutes. For some reason it made me feel very uncomfortable. When he finished, he rolled the prayer rug again and put it back in the car, giving me an odd look, a kind of silent reproach.

We both got into the patrol car, but neither of us said anything for a while.

Shaknahyi cruised back down the Street and out of the Budayeen. Curiously, I was no longer wary of being spotted in the copcar 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 for lunch?” he asked.

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

“There’s a place near the station house we sometimes go to.” He punched the siren and made some fast time through the traffic. About a block from the beanery, he turned off the horn and glided into an illegal parking place. “Police perks,” he said, grinning at me. “There ain’t many others.”

When we got inside, I was pleasantly surprised. The cookshop was owned by a young Mauretanian named Meloul, and the food was pure Maghrebi. By bringing me here, Shaknahyi more than made up for the pain he’d caused me earlier. I looked at him, and suddenly he didn’t seem like such a bad guy.

“Let’s grab this table,” he said, picking one far from the door and against a wall, where he could watch the other customers and keep an eye on what was happening outside too.

“Thanks,” I said. “I don’t get food from home very often.”

“Meloul,” he called, “I got one of your cousins here.”

The proprietor came over, carrying a stainless steel pitcher and basin. Shaknahyi washed his hands carefully and dried them on a clean white towel. Then I washed my hands and dried them on a second towel. Meloul looked at me and smiled. He was about my age, but taller and darker. “I am Berber,” he said. “You are Berber too, yes? You are from Oran?”

“I’ve got a little Berber blood in me,” I said. “I was born in Sidi-bel-Abbes, but I grew up in Algiers.”

He came toward me, and I stood up. We exchanged kisses on the cheek. “I live all my life in Oran,” he said. “Now I live in this fine city. Sit down, be comfortable, I bring good food to you and Jirji.”

“The two of you got a lot in common,” said Shaknahyi.

I nodded. “Listen, Officer Shaknahyi,” I said, “I want to—”

“Call me Jirji. You slapped on that goddamn moddy and followed me into Gargotier’s. It was stupid, but you had guts. You been initiated, sort of.”

That made me feel good. “Yeah, well, Jirji, I want to ask you something. Would you say you were very religious?”

He frowned. “I perform the duties, but I’m not gonna go out on the street and kill infidel tourists if they don’t convert to Islam.”

“Okay, then maybe you could tell me what this dream means.”

He laughed. “What kind of dream? You and Brigitte Stahlhelm in the Tunnel of Love?”

I shook my head. “No, nothing like that at all. I dreamed I met the Holy Prophet. He had something to tell me, but I couldn’t understand it.” I related the rest of the vision Wise Counselor had created for me.

Shaknahyi raised his eyebrows, but he said nothing for a few moments. He played with the ends of his mustache as he thought. “Seems to me,” he said finally, “it’s about simple virtues. You’re supposed to remember humility, as Prophet Muhammad, blessings and peace be upon him, remembered it. Now’s not the time for you to make great plans. Later maybe, Allah willing. That make any sense to you?”

I kind of shivered, because as soon as he said it, I knew he was right. It was a suggestion from my backbrain that I shouldn’t worry about handling my mother, Umm Saad, and Abu Adil all by myself. I should take things slowly, one thing at a time. They would all come together eventually. “Thanks, Jirji,” I said.

He shrugged. “No thanks are necessary.”

“I bring you good food,” said Meloul cheerfully, setting a platter between Shaknahyi and me. The mounded-up couscous was fragrant with cinnamon and saffron, and it made me realize just how hungry I was. In a well in the middle of the ring of couscous, Meloul had piled bite-sized pieces of chicken and onions browned in butter and flavored with honey. He also brought a plate of bread and cups of strong black coffee. I could hardly keep myself from diving right in.

“It looks great, Meloul,” said Shaknahyi.

“May it be pleasant to you.” Meloul wiped his hands on a clean towel, bowed to us, and left us to our meal.

“In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful,” Shaknahyi murmured.

I offered the same brief grace, arid then allowed myself to scoop up a chunk of chicken and some of the couscous. It tasted even better than it smelled.

When we’d finished, Shaknahyi called for our bill. Meloul came to the table, still smiling. “No charge. My countrymen eat for free. Policemen eat for free.”

“That’s kind of you, Meloul,” I said, “but we’re not allowed to accept—”

Shaknahyi drank the last of his coffee and put down his cup. “It’s all right, Marid,” he said, “this is different. Meloul, may your table last forever.”

Meloul put his hand on Shaknahyi’s shoulder. “May God lengthen your life,” he said. He hadn’t turned a copper fiq on our patronage, but he looked pleased.

Shaknahyi and I left the cookshop well fed and comfortable. It seemed a shame to spoil the rest of the afternoon with police work.

An old woman sat begging on the sidewalk a few yards from Meloul’s. She was dressed in a long black coat and black kerchief. Her sun-darkened face was deeply scored with wrinkles, and one of her sunken eyes was the color of milk. There was a large black tumor just in front of her right ear. I went up to her. “Peace be upon you, O Lady,” I said.

“And upon you be peace, O Shaykh,” she said. Her voice was a gritty whisper.

I remembered that I still had the envelope of money in my pocket. I took it out and opened it, then counted out a hundred kiam. It hardly made a dent in my roll. “O Lady,” I said, “accept this gift with my respect.”

She took the money, astonished by the number of bills. Her mouth opened, then shut. Finally she said, “By the life of my children, you are more generous than Haatim, O Shaykh! May Allah open His ways to you.” Haatim is the personification of hospitality among the nomad tribesmen.

She made me feel a little self-conscious. “We thank God every hour,” I said quietly, and turned away.

Shaknahyi didn’t say anything to me until we were sitting in the patrol car again. “Do that a lot?” he asked.

“Do what?”

“Drop a hundred kiam on strangers.”

I shrugged. “Isn’t alms-giving one of the Five Pillars?”

“Yeah, but you don’t pay much attention to the other four. That’s odd too, because for most people, parting with cash is the toughest duty.”

In fact, I was wondering myself why I’d done it. Maybe because I was feeling uncomfortable about the way I’d been treating my mother. “I just felt sorry for that old woman,” I said.

“Everybody in this part of the city does. They all take care of her. That was Safiyya the Lamb Lady. She’s a crazy old woman. You never see her without a pet lamb. She takes it everywhere. She lets it drink from the fountain at the Shimaal Mosque.”

“I didn’t see any lamb.”

He laughed. “No, her latest lamb got run over by a shish kebab cart a couple of weeks ago. Right now she has an imaginary lamb. It was standing there right beside her, but only Safiyya can see it.”

“Uh yeah,” I said. I’d given her enough to buy herself a couple of new lambs. My little bit to alleviate the suffering of the world.

We had to skirt the Budayeen. Although the Street runs in the right direction, it comes to a dead end at the entrance to a cemetery. I knew a lot of people in there — friends and acquaintances who’d died and been dumped in the cemetery, and the still breathing who were so desperately poor that they’d taken up residence in the tombs.

Shaknahyi passed to the south of the quarter, and we drove through a neighborhood that was entirely foreign to me. At first the houses were of moderate size and not too terribly rundown; but after a couple of miles, I noticed that everything around me was getting progressively shabbier. The flat-roofed white stucco homes gave way to blocks of ugly tenements and then to burned-out, vacant lots dotted with horrible little shacks made of scrap plywood and rusting sheets of corrugated iron.

We drove on, and I saw groups of idle men leaning against walls or squatting on the bare earth sharing bowls of liquor, probably laqbi, a wine made from the date palm. Women screamed to each other from the windows. The air was foul with the smells of wood smoke and human excrement. Children dressed in long tattered shirts played among the garbage strewn in the gutters. Years ago in Algiers I had been like these hungry urchins, and maybe that’s why the sight of them affected me so much.

Shaknahyi must have seen the expression on my face. “There are worse parts of town than Hamidiyya,” he said. “And a cop’s got to be ready to go into any kind of place and deal with any kind of person.”

“I was just thinking,” I said slowly. “This is Abu Adil’s territory. It doesn’t look he does all that much for these people, so why do they stay loyal to him?”

Shaknahyi answered me with another question. “Why do you stay loyal to Friedlander Bey?”

One good reason was that Papa’d had the punishment center of my brain wired when the rest of the work was done, and that he could stimulate it any time he wanted. Instead, I said, “It’s not a bad life. And I guess I’m just afraid of him.”

“Same goes for these poor fellahin. They live in terror of Abu Adil, and he tosses just enough their way to keep them from starving to death. I just wonder how people like Friedlander Bey and Abu Adil get that kind of power in the first place.”

I watched the slums pass by beyond the windshield. “How do you think Papa makes his money?” I asked.

Shaknahyi shrugged. “He’s got a thousand cheap hustlers out there, all turning over big chunks of their earnings for the right to live in peace.”

I shook my head. “That’s only what you see going on in the Budayeen. Probably seems like vice and corruption are Friedlander Bey’s main business in life. I’ve lived in his house for months now, and I’ve learned better. The money that comes from vice is just pocket change to Papa. Counts for maybe five percent of his annual income. He’s got a much bigger concern, and Reda Abu Adil is in the same business. They sell order.”

“They sell what?”

“Order. Continuity. Government.”

“How?”

“Look, half the countries in the world have split up and recombined again until it’s almost impossible to know who owns what and who lives where and who owes taxes to whom.”

“Like what’s happening right now in Anatolia,” said Shaknahyi.

“Right,” I said. “The people in Anatolia, when their ancestors lived there it was called Turkey. Before that it was the Ottoman Empire, and before that it was Anatolia again. Right now it looks like Anatolia is breaking up into Galatia, Lydia, Cappadocia, Nicaea, and Asian Byzantium. One democracy, one emirate, one people’s republic, one fascist dictatorship, and one constitutional monarchy. There’s got to be somebody who’s staying on top of it all, keeping the records straight.”

“Maybe, but it sounds like a tough job.”

“Yeah, but whoever does it ends up the real ruler of the place. He’ll have the real power, because all the little states will need his help to keep from collapsing.”

“It makes a weird kind of sense. And you’re telling me that’s what Friedlander Bey’s racket is?”

“It’s a service,” I said. “An important service. And there are lots of ways for him to exploit the situation.”

“Yeah, you right,” he said admiringly. We turned a corner, and there was a long, high wall made of dark brown bricks. This was Reda Abu Adil’s estate. It looked like it was every bit as huge as Papa’s. As we stopped at the guarded gate, the luxuriousness of the main house seemed even grander contrasted to the ghastly neighborhood that surrounded it.

Shaknahyi presented our credentials to the guard. “We’re here to see Shaykh Reda,” he said. The guard picked up a phone and spoke to someone. After a moment, he let us continue.

“A century or more ago,” Shaknahyi said thoughtfully, “crime bosses had these big illicit schemes to make money. Sometimes they also operated small legal businesses for practical reasons, like laundering their money.”

“Yeah? So?” I said.

“Look at it: You say Reda Abu Adil and Friedlander Bey are two of the most powerful men in the world, as ‘consultants’ to foreign states. That’s entirely legitimate. Their criminal connections are much less important. They just provide livelihoods for the old men’s dependents and associates. Things have gotten turned around ass-back-wards.”

“That’s progress,” I said. Shaknahyi just shook his head.

We got out of the patrol car, into the warm afternoon sunshine. The grounds in front of Abu Adil’s house had been carefully landscaped. The fragrance of roses was in the air, and the strong, pleasant scent of lemons. There were cages of songbirds on either side of an ancient stone fountain, and the warbling music filled the afternoon with a languorous peace. We went up the ceramic-tiled path to the mansion’s geometrically carved front door. A servant had already opened it and was waiting for us to explain our business.

“I’m Officer Shaknahyi and this is Marid Audran. We’ve come to see Shaykh Reda.”

The servant nodded but said nothing. We followed him into the house, and he closed the heavy wooden door behind us. Sunlight streamed in from latticed windows high over our heads. From far away I heard the sound of someone playing a piano. I could smell lamb roasting and coffee brewing. The squalor only a stone’s throw away had been completely shut out. The house was a self-contained little world, and I’m sure that’s just as Abu Adil intended it.

We were led directly into Abu Adil’s presence. I couldn’t even get in to see Friedlander Bey that quickly.

Reda Abu Adil was a large, plump old man. He was like Papa in that it was impossible to guess just how old he might be. I knew for a fact that he was at least a hundred twenty-five. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that he was just as old as Friedlander Bey. He was wearing a loose white robe and no jewelry. He had a carefully trimmed white beard and mustache and thick white hair, out of which poked a dove-gray moddy with two daddies snapped in. I was expert enough to notice that Abu Adil did not have a protruding plug, as I had; his hardware chipped into a corymbic socket.

Abu Adil reclined on a hospital bed that had been elevated so that he could see us comfortably as we spoke. He was covered by an expensive hand-embroidered blanket. His gnarled hands lay outside the cover, flat on either side of his body. His eyes were heavy-lidded, as if he were drugged or desperately sleepy. He grimaced and groaned frequently while we stood there. We waited for him to say something.

He did not. Instead, a younger man standing beside the hospital bed spoke up. “Shaykh Reda welcomes you to his home. My name is Umar Abdul-Qawy. You may address Shaykh Reda through me.”

This Umar person was about fifty years old. He had bright, mistrustful eyes and a sour expression that looked like it never changed. He too looked well fed, and he was dressed in an impressive gold-colored robe and metallic blue caftan. He wore nothing on his head and, like his master, a moddy divided his thinning hair. I disliked him from the getgo.

It was clear to me that I was facing my opposite number. Umar Abdul-Qawy did for Abu Adil what I did for Friedlander Bey, although I’m sure he’d been at it longer and was more intimate with the inner workings of his master’s empire. “If this is a bad time,” I said, “we can come back again.”

“This is a bad time,” said Umar. “Shaykh Reda suffers the torments of terminal cancer. You see, then, that another time would not necessarily be better.”

“We pray for his well-being,” I said.

A tiny smile quirked the edge of Abu Adil’s lips. “Allah yisallimak,” said Umar. “God bless you. Now, what has brought you to us this afternoon?”

This was inexcusably blunt. In the Muslim world, you don’t inquire after a visitor’s business. Custom further requires that the laws of hospitality be observed, if only minimally. I’d expected to be served coffee, if not offered a meal as well. I looked at Shaknahyi.

It didn’t seem to bother him. “What dealings does Shaykh Reda have with Friedlander Bey?”

That seemed to startle Umar. “Why, none at all,” he said, spreading his hands. Abu Adil gave a long, pain-filled moan and closed his eyes tightly. Umar didn’t even turn in his direction.

“Then Shaykh Reda does not communicate at all with him?” Shaknahyi asked.

“Not at all. Friedlander Bey is a great and influential man, but his interests lie in a distant part of the city. The two shaykhs have never discussed anything of a business nature. Their concerns do not meet at any point.”

“And so Friedlander Bey is no hindrance or obstacle to Shaykh Reda’s plans?”

“Look at my master,” said Umar. “What sort of plans do you think he has?” Indeed, Abu Adil looked entirely helpless in his agony. I wondered what had made Lieutenant Hajjar set us on this fool’s errand.

“We received some information, and we had to check it out,” said Shaknahyi. “We’re sorry for the intrusion.”

“That’s quite all right. Karnal will see you to the door.” Umar stared at us with a stony expression. Abu Adil, however, made an attempt to raise his hand in farewell or blessing, but it fell back limply to the blanket.

We followed the servant back to the front door. When we were alone again outside, Shaknahyi began to laugh. “That was some performance,” he said.

“What performance? Did I miss something?”

“If you’d read the file all the way through, you’d know that Abu Adil doesn’t have cancer. He’s never had cancer.”

“Then—”

Shaknahyi’s mouth twisted in contempt. “You ever hear of Proxy Hell? It’s a bunch of lunatics who wear bootleg, underground moddies turned out in somebody’s back room. They’re recordings taken from real people in horrible situations.”

I was dismayed. “Is that what Abu Adil’s doing? Wearing the personality module of a terminal cancer patient?”

Shaknahyi nodded as he opened the car door and got in. “He’s chipped into vicarious pain and suffering. You can buy any kind of disease or condition you want on the black market. There are plenty of deranged masochists like him out there.”

I joined him in the patrol car. “And I thought the girls and debs on the Street were misusing the moddies. This adds a whole new meaning to the word perversion.” Shaknahyi started up the car and drove around the fountain toward the gate. “They introduce some new technology and no matter how much good it does for most people, there’s always a crazy son of a bitch who’ll find something twisted to do with it.”

I thought about that, and about my own bodmods, as we drove back to the station house through the wretched district that was home to Reda Abu Adil’s faithful followers.

During the next week, I spent as much time in the patrol car as I did at my computer on the third floor of the station house. I felt good after my first experiences as a cop on patrol, although it was clear that I still had a lot to learn from Shaknahyi. We intervened in domestic squabbles and investigated robberies, but there were no more dramatic crises like Al-Muntaqim’s clumsy bomb threat.

Shaknahyi had let several days pass, and now he wanted to follow up on our visit to Reda Abu Adil. He guessed that Friedlander Bey had told Lieutenant Hajjar to assign this investigation to us, but Papa was still pretending he wasn’t interested in whatever it was about. Our delicate probing would be a lot more successful if someone would just tell us what we were trying to uncover.

Yet there were other concerns on my mind. One morning, after I’d dressed and Kmuzu had served me breakfast, I sat back and thought about what I wanted to accomplish that day.

“Kmuzu,” I said, “would you wake my mother and see if she’ll speak to me? I need to ask her something before I go to the station house.”

“Of course, yaa Sidi.” He looked at me warily, as if I were trying to pull another fast one. “You wish to see her immediately?”

“Soon as she can make herself decent. If she can make herself decent.” I caught Kmuzu’s disapproving expression and shut up.

I drank some more coffee until he returned. “Umm Marid will be glad to see you now,” Kmuzu said.

I was surprised. “She never liked getting up much before noon.”

“She was already awake and dressed when I knocked on her door.”

Maybe she’d turned over a new leaf, but I hadn’t been listening close enough to hear it. I grabbed my briefcase and sport coat. “I’ll just drop in on her for a couple of minutes,” I said. “No need for you to come with me.” I should have known better by then; Kmuzu didn’t say a word, but he followed me out of the apartment and into the other wing, where Angel Monroe had been given her own suite of rooms.

“This is a personal matter,” I told Kmuzu when we got to her door. “Stay out here in the hall if you want.” I rapped on the door and went in.

She was reclining on a divan, dressed very modestly in a shapeless black dress with long sleeves, a version of the outfit conservative Muslim women wear. She also had on a large scarf hiding her hair, although the veil over her face had been loosened on one side and hung down over her shoulder. She puffed on the mouthpiece of a narjilah. There was strong tobacco in the water pipe now, but that didn’t mean there hadn’t been hashish there recently, or that it wouldn’t be there again soon.

“Morning of well-being, O my mother,” I said.

I think she was caught off guard by my courteous greeting. “Morning of light, O Shaykh,” she replied. Her brow furrowed as she studied me from across the room. She waited for me to explain why I was there.

“Are you comfortable here?” I asked.

“It’s all right.” She took a long pull on the mouthpiece and the narjilah burbled. “You done pretty well for yourself. How’d you happen to land in this lap of luxury? Performing personal services for Papa?” She gave me a crooked leer.

“Not the services you’re thinking of, O Mother. I’m Friedlander Bey’s administrative assistant. He makes the business decisions and I carry them out. That’s as far as it goes.”

“And one of his business decisions was to make you a cop?”

“That’s exactly the way it was.”

She shrugged. “Uh yeah, if you say so. So why’d you decide to put me up here? Suddenly worried about your old mom’s welfare?”

“It was Papa’s idea.”

She laughed. “You never was an attentive child, O Shaykh.”

“As I recall, you weren’t the doting mother, either. That’s why I’m wondering why you showed up here all of a sudden.”

She inhaled again on the narjilah. “Algiers is boring, I lived there most of my life. After you came to see me, I knew I had to get out. I wanted to come here, see the city again.”

“And see me again?”

She gave me another shrug. “Yeah, that too.”

“And Abu Adil? You drop by his palace first, or haven’t you been over there yet?” That’s what we in the cop trade call a shot in the dark. Sometimes they pay off, sometimes they don’t.

“I ain’t having nothing more to do with that son of a bitch,” she said. She almost snarled.

Shaknahyi would have been proud of me. I kept my emotions under control and my expression neutral. “What’s Abu Adil ever done to you?”

“That sick bastard. Never mind, it’s none of your business.” She concentrated on her water pipe for a few moments.

“All right,” I said. “I’ll respect your wishes, O my mother. Anything I can do for you before I leave?”

“Everything’s great. You run along and play Protector of the Innocent. Go roust some poor working girl and think of me.”

I opened my mouth to make some sharp reply, but I caught myself in time. “You get hungry, or you need anything, just ask Youssef or Kmuzu. May your day be happy.”

“Your day be prosperous, O Shaykh.” Whenever she called me that, there was heavy irony in her voice.

I nodded to her and left the room, closing the door quietly behind me. Kmuzu was in the corridor, right where I’d left him. He was so goddamn loyal, I almost felt like scratching him behind the ears. I didn’t buy that act for a minute.

“It would be well for you to greet the master of the house before we leave for the police station,” he said.

“I don’t need you to rehearse me on my manners, Kmuzu.” He had this way of annoying me. “Are you implying that I don’t know my duties?”

“I imply nothing, yaa Sidi. You are inferring.”

“Sure.” You just can’t argue with a slave.

Friedlander Bey was already in his office. He sat behind his great desk, massaging his temples with one hand. Today he was wearing a pale yellow silk robe with a starched white shirt over it, buttoned to the neck and with ho tie. Over the shirt he had on an expensive-looking herringbone-tweed suit jacket. It was a costume only an old and revered shaykh could get away with wearing. I thought it looked just fine. “Habib,” he said. “Labib.”

Habib and Labib are the Stones That Speak. The only way you can tell them apart is to call one of the names. There’s an even chance one of ’em will blink. If not, it doesn’t really make any difference. In fact, I couldn’t swear that they blink in response to their own names. They may be doing it just for fun.

Both of the Stones That Speak were in the office, standing on either side of a straight-backed chair. In the chair, I was surprised to see, was Umm Saad’s young son. The Stones each had one hand on Saad’s shoulders, and the hands were kneading and crushing the boy’s bones. He was being put to the question. I’ve had that treatment, and I can testify that it isn’t a lick of fun.

Papa smiled briefly when I came into the room. He did not greet me, but looked back at Saad. “Before you came to the city,” he said in a low voice, “where did you and your mother dwell?”

“Many places,” Saad answered. There was fear in his voice.

Papa returned to rubbing his forehead. He stared down at his desktop, but waved a few fingers at the Stones That Speak. The two huge men tightened their grip on the boy’s shoulders. The blood drained from Saad’s face, and he gasped.

“Before you came to the city,” Friedlander Bey repeated calmly, “where did you live?”

“Most recently in Paris, O Shaykh.” Saad’s voice was thin and strained.

The answer startled Papa. “Did your mother like living among the Franj?”

“I guess so.”

Friedlander Bey was doing an admirable impersonation of a bored person. He picked up a silver letter opener and toyed with it. “Did you live well in Paris?”

“I guess so.” Habib and Labib began to crush Saad’s collarbones. He was encouraged to give more details. “We had a big apartment in the Rue de Paradis, O Shaykh. My mother likes to eat well and she likes giving parties. The months in Paris were pleasant. It surprised me when she told me we were coming here.”

“And did you labor to earn money, so your mother could eat Franji food and wear Franji clothing?”

“I did no labor, O Shaykh.”

Papa’s eyes narrowed. “Where do you think the money came from to pay for these things?”

Saad hesitated. I could hear him moan as the Stones applied still more pressure. “She told me it came from her father,” he cried.

“Her father?” said Friedlander Bey, dropping the letter opener and looking at Saad directly.

“She said from you, O Shaykh.”

Papa grimaced and made a quick gesture with both hands. The Stones moved back, away from the youth. Saad slumped forward, his eyes tightly closed. His face was shiny with sweat.

“Let me tell you one thing, O clever one,” said Papa. “And remember that I do not lie. I am not your mother’s father, and I am not your grandfather. We share no blood. Now go.”

Saad tried to stand, but collapsed back into the chair. His expression was grim and determined, and he glared at Friedlander Bey as if he were trying to memorize every detail of the old man’s face. Papa had just called Umm Saad a liar, and I’m sure that at that moment the boy was entertaining some pitiful fantasy of revenge. At last he managed to stand up again, and he made his way shakily to the door. I intercepted him.

“Here,” I said. I took out my pillcase and gave him two tabs of Sonneine. “You’ll feel a lot better in a few minutes.”

He took the tabs, looked me fiercely in the eye, and dropped the sunnies to the floor. Then he turned his back on me and left Friedlander Bey’s office. I bent down and

reclaimed the Sonneine. To paraphrase a local proverb: a white tablet for a black day.

After the formal greetings, Papa invited me to be comfortable. I sat in the same chair from which Saad had just escaped. I have to admit that I suppressed a little shudder. “Why was the boy here, O Shaykh?” I asked.

“He was here at my invitation. He and his mother are once again my guests.”

I must have missed something. “Your graciousness is legendary, O my uncle; but whey do you permit Umm Saad to intrude on your peace? I know she upsets you.”

Papa leaned back in his chair and sighed. At that moment, he showed every year of his long life. “She came to me humbly. She begged my forgiveness. She brought me a gift.” He gestured to a platter of dates stuffed with nutmeats and rolled in sugar. He smiled ruefully. “I don’t know where she got her information, but someone told her that these are my favorite treat. Her tone was respectful, and she made a claim upon my hospitality that I could not dismiss.” He spread his hands, as if that explained it all.

Friedlander Bey observed traditions of honor and generosity that have all but disappeared in this day and age. If he wanted to welcome a viper back into his home, I had nothing to say about it. “Then your instructions concerning her have changed, O Shaykh?” I asked.

His expression did not alter. He didn’t even blink. “Oh no, that’s not what I mean. Please kill her as soon as it’s convenient for you, but there’s no hurry, my son. I find I’m getting curious about what Umm Saad hopes to accomplish.”

“I will conclude the matter soon,” I said. He frowned. “Inshallah, “I added quickly. “Do you think she’s working for someone else? An enemy?”

“Reda Abu Adil, of course,” said Papa. He was very matter-of-fact about it, as if there wasn’t the slightest cause for concern.

“Then it was you, after all, who ordered the investigation of Abu Adil.”

He raised a plump hand in denial. “No,” he insisted, “I had nothing to do with that. Speak to your Lieutenant Hajjar about it.”

Lot of good that would do. “O Shaykh, may I ask you another question? There’s something I don’t understand about your relationship to Abu Adil.”

Suddenly he looked bored again. That put me on my guard. I gave a reflexive glance over my shoulders, half expecting to see the Stones That Speak moving in close behind me. “Your wealth comes from selling updated data files to governments and heads of state, doesn’t it?”

“That is greatly oversimplified, my nephew.”

“And Abu Adil pursues the same business. Yet you told me you do not compete.”

“Many years before you were born, before even your mother was born, Abu Adil and I came to an agreement.” Papa opened a plain clothbound copy of the holy Qur’an and glanced at the page. “We avoided competition because someday it could result in violence and harm to ourselves or those we love. On that long-ago day we divided the world, from Morocco far in the west to Indonesia far in the east, wherever the beautiful call of the muezzin awakens the faithful from sleep.”

“Like Pope Alexander drawing the Line of Demarcation for Spain and Portugal,” I said.

Papa looked displeased. “Since that time, Reda Abu Adil and I have had few dealings of any sort, although we live in the same city. He and I are at peace.”

Yeah, you right. For some reason, he wasn’t going to give me any direct help. “O Shaykh,” I said, “it’s time for me to go. I pray to Allah for your health and prosperity.” I came forward and kissed him on the cheek.

“You will make me lonely for your presence,” he replied. “Go in safety.”

I left Friedlander Bey’s office. In the hallway, Kmuzu tried to take my briefcase from me. “It is unseemly for you to carry this, when I am here to serve you,” he said.

“You want to go through it and look for drugs,” I said with some irritation. “Well, there aren’t any in there. I got them in my pocket, and you’ll have to wrestle me to the ground first.”

“You are being absurd, yaa Sidi,” he said.

“I don’t think so. Anyway, I’m not ready to leave for the office yet.”

“It is already late.”

“Goddamn it, I know that! I just want to have a few words with Umm Saad, now that she’s living under this roof again. Is she in the same suite?”

“Yes. This way, yaa Sidi.”

Umm Saad, like my mother, stayed in the other wing of the mansion. While I followed Kmuzu through the carpeted halls, I opened my briefcase and took out Saied’s moddy, the tough, ruthless personality. I chipped it in. The effect was remarkable. It was the opposite of the Half-Hajj’s dumbing-down module, which had narrowed and blurred my senses. This one, which Saied always called Rex, seemed to focus my attention. I was filled with purpose; but more than that, I was determined to drive straight toward my goal, and I’d crush anything that tried to obstruct me.

Kmuzu knocked lightly on Umm Saad’s door. There was a long pause, and I heard no one stirring inside. “Get out of the way,” I said to Kmuzu. My voice was a mean growl. I stepped up to the door and rapped on it sharply. “You want to let me in?” I called. “Or you want me to let myself in?”

That got a response. The boy swung the door open and stared at me. “My mother isn’t—”

“Out of the way, kid,” I said. I pushed him aside.

Umm Saad was sitting at a table, watching the news on a small holoset. She looked up at me. “Welcome, O Shaykh,” she said. She wasn’t happy.

“Yeah, right,” I said. I sat in a chair across the table from her. I reached across and tapped the holoset off. “How long you known my mother?” I asked. Another shot in the dark.

Umm Saad looked perplexed. “Your mother?”

“Goes by Angel Monroe sometimes. She’s staying down the hall from you.”

Umm Saad shook her head slowly. “I’ve only seen her once or twice. I’ve never spoken to her.”

“You must’ve known her before you came to this house.” I just wanted to see how big this conspiracy was.

“Sorry,” she said. She gave me a wide-eyed, innocent smile that looked as out of place on her as it would have on a desert scorpion.

Okay, sometimes a shot in the dark doesn’t get you anywhere. “And Abu Adil?”

“Who’s that?” Her expression was all angelic and virtuous.

I started to get angry. “I just want some straight answers, lady. What I got to do, bust up your kid?”

Her face got very serious. She was doing “sincere” now. “I’m sorry, I really don’t know any of those people. Am I supposed to? Did Friedlander Bey tell you that?”

I assumed she was lying about Abu Adil. I didn’t know if she’d been lying about my mother. At least I could check that out later. If I could believe my mother.

I felt a heavy hand on my shoulder. “Yaa Sidi?” said Kmuzu. He sounded afraid that I might rip Umm Saad’s head off and hand it to her.

“All right,” I said, still feeling wonderfully malignant. I stood up and glared down at the woman. “You want to stay in this house, you’re gonna have to learn to be more cooperative. I’m gonna talk to you again later. Think up some better answers.”

“I’ll be looking forward to it,” said Umm Saad. She batted her heavy fake eyelashes at me. It made me want to punch her face in.

Instead, I turned and stalked out of the apartment. Kmuzu hurried behind me. “You can take the personality module out now, yaa Sidi,” he said nervously.

“Hell, I like it. Think I’ll leave it in.” Actually I did enjoy the feeling it gave me. There seemed to be a constant flood of angry hormones in my blood. I could see why Saied wore it all the time. Still, it wasn’t the right one to wear around the station house, and Shaknahyi’d promised to annihilate any moddy I wore in his presence. I reached up reluctantly and popped it out.

I could feel the difference immediately. My body was still quivering from the leftover adrenalin, but I calmed down pretty quick. I returned the moddy to my briefcase, then grinned at Kmuzu. “I was pretty tough, huh?” I said.

Kmuzu didn’t say a word, but his look let me know just how low his opinion was.

We went outside, and I waited while Kmuzu brought the car around. When Kmuzu let me out at the station house, I told him to go back home and keep Angel Monroe out of trouble. “And pay attention around Umm Saad and the boy too,” I said. “Friedlander Bey is sure she’s somehow connected to Reda Abu Adil, but she’s playing it very cagey. Maybe you can learn something.”

“I will be your eyes and ears, yaa Sidi,” he said.

As usual, the crowd of hungry young boys was loitering outside the copshop. They’d all begun waving and screaming when they saw my Westphalian sedan pull up to the curb. “O Master!” they cried. “O Compassionate!”

I reached for a handful of coins as I usually did, but then I remembered the Lamb Lady I’d helped the week before. I took out my wallet and dropped a five-kiam bill on each of the kids. “God open upon you,” I said. I was a little embarrassed to see that Kmuzu was watching me closely.

The boys were astonished. One of the older kids took my arm and steered me away from the rest. He was about fifteen years old, and already there was a dark shadow of beard on his narrow face. “My sister would be interested to meet such a generous man,” he said.

“I’m just not interested in meeting your sister.”

He grinned at me. Three of his yellow teeth had been broken off in some fight or accident. “I have a brother as well,” he said. I winced and went past him into the building. Behind me, the boys were yelling my praises. I was real popular with them, at least until tomorrow, when I’d have to buy their respect all over again.

Shaknahyi was waiting for me by the elevator. “Where you at?” he said. It seemed that no matter how early I got to work, Shaknahyi got there earlier.

“Aw right,” I said. Actually, I was still tired and I felt mildly nauseated. I could chip in a couple of daddies that would take care of all that, but Shaknahyi had me intimidated. Around him I functioned with just my natural talents and hoped they were still enough.

It wasn’t that long ago that I prided myself on having an unwired brain as smart and quick as any moddy in the city. Now I was putting all my confidence in the electronics. I’d become afraid of what might happen if I had to face a crisis without them.

“One of these days, we’re gonna have to catch Abu Adil when he’s not chipped in,” said Shaknahyi. “We don’t want to make him suspicious, but he’s got some tough questions to answer.”

“What questions?”

Shaknahyi shrugged. “You’ll hear ’em next time we pass by there.” For some reason, he wasn’t confiding in me any more than Papa had.

Sergeant Catavina found us in the corridor. I didn’t know much about him except he was Hajjar’s right-hand man, and that meant he had to be bent one way or another. He was a short man who lugged around too much weight by about seventy pounds. He had wavy black hair parted by a moddy plug, always with at least one daddy chipped in because he didn’t understand five words in Arabic. It was a total mystery to me why Catavina had come to the city. “Been lookin’ for you two,” he said. His voice was shrill, even filtered through the Arabic-language daddy.

“What is it?” I asked.

Catavina’s predatory brown eyes flicked between me and Shaknahyi. “Just got a tip on a possible homicide.” He handed Shaknahyi a slip of paper with an address on it. “Go take a look.”

“In the Budayeen,” said Shaknahyi.

“Yeah,” said the sergeant.

“Whoever called this in, anybody recognize the voice?”

“Why should anybody recognize the voice?” asked Catavina.

Shaknahyi shrugged. “We got two or three leads like this in the last couple of months, that’s all.”

Catavina looked at me. “He’s one of these conspiracy guys. Sees ’em everywhere.” The sergeant walked away, shaking his head.

Shaknahyi glanced at the address again and jammed the slip of paper into a shirt pocket. “Back of the Budayeen, spitting distance from the graveyard,” he said.

“If it isn’t just a crank call,” I said. “If there is a body in the first place.”

“There will be.”

I followed him down to the garage. We got into our patrol car and cut across the Boulevard il-Jameel and under the big gate. There was a lot of pedestrian traffic on the Street that morning, so Shaknahyi angled south on First Street and then west along one of the narrow, garbage-strewn alleys that wind between the flat-roofed, stucco-fronted houses and the ancient brick tenements. Shaknahyi drove the car up onto the sidewalk. We got out and took a good look at the building. It was a pale green two-story house in terrible disrepair. The entryway and front parlor stank of urine and vomit. The wooden lattices covering the windows had all been smashed some time ago, from the look of things. Everywhere we walked, we crunched broken brick and shards of glass. The place had probably been abandoned for many months, maybe years.

It was very still, the dead hush of a house where the power is off and even the faint whir of motors is missing. As we made our way up from the ground floor to the family’s rooms above, I thought I heard something small and quick scurrying through the trash ahead of us. I felt my heart pounding in my chest, and I missed the sense of calm competence I’d gotten from Complete Guardian.

Shaknahyi and I checked a large bedroom that had once belonged to the owner and his wife, and another room that had been a child’s. We found nothing except more sad destruction. A corner of the house had entirely collapsed, leaving it open to the outside; weather, vermin, and vagrants had completed the ruin of the child’s bedroom. At least here the fresh air had scoured out the sour, musty smell that choked the rest of the house.

We found the corpse in the next room down the hall. It was a young woman’s body, a sexchange named Blanca who used to dance in Frenchy Benoit’s club. I’d known her well enough to say hello, but not much better. She lay on her back, her legs bent and turned to one side, her arms thrown up above her head. Her deep blue eyes were open, staring obliquely at the water-stained ceiling above my shoulder. She was grimacing, as if there’d been something horrible with her in the room that had first terrified her and then killed her.

“This ain’t bothering you, is it?” asked Shaknahyi.

“What you talking about?”

He tapped Blanca’s hand with the toe of his boot. “You’re not gonna throw up or nothing, are you?”

“I seen worse,” I said.

“Just didn’t want you throwing up or nothing.” He bent down beside Blanca. “Blood from her nose and ears. Lips drawn back, fingers clutching like claws. She was

juiced at close range by a good-sized static gun, I’ll bet. Look at her. She hasn’t been dead half an hour.”

“Yeah?”

He lifted her left arm and let it fall. “No stiffness yet. And her flesh is still pink. After you’re dead, gravity makes the blood settle. The medical examiner will be able to tell better.”

Something struck me as kind of odd. “So the call that came into the station—”

“Bet you kiams to kitty cats the killer made the call himself.” He took out his radio and his electronic log.

“Why would a murderer do that?” I asked.

Shaknahyi gazed at me, lost in thought. “The hell should I know?” he said at last. He made a call to Hajjar, asking for a team of detectives. Then he entered a brief report in his log. “Don’t touch nothing,” he said to me without looking up.

He didn’t have to tell me that. “We done here?” I asked.

“Soon as the gold badges show up. In a hurry to travel?”

I didn’t answer. I watched him pocket his electronic log. Then he took out a brown vinyl-covered notebook and a pen and made some more notations. “What’s that for?” I asked.

“Just keeping some notes for myself. Like I said, there’s been a couple of other cases like this lately. Somebody turns up dead and it seems like the bumper himself tips us off.”

By the life of my eyes, I thought, if this turns out to be a serial killer, I’m going to pack up and leave the city for good. I glanced down at Shaknahyi, who was still squatting beside Blanca’s body. “You don’t think it’s a serial killer, do you?” I asked.

He stared through me again for a few seconds. “Nah,” he said at last, “I think it’s something much worse.”

I remembered how much Hajjar’s predecessor, Lieutenant Okking, had liked to harass me. Still, no matter how hard it had been to get along with Okking, he’d always gotten the job done. He’d been a shrewd if not brilliant cop, and he’d had a genuine concern for the victims he saw in a day’s work. Hajjar was different. To him it was all a day’s work, all right, but nothing more.

It didn’t surprise me to learn that Hajjar was next to useless. Shaknahyi and I watched as he went about his investigation. He frowned and looked down at Blanca. “Dead, huh?” he said.

I saw Shaknahyi wince. “We got every reason to think so, Lieutenant,” he said in a level voice.

“Any ideas who’d want to shade her?”

Shaknahyi looked at me for help. “Could be anybody,” I said. “She was probably wearing the wrong moddy for the wrong customer.”

Hajjar seemed interested. “You think so?”

“Look,” I said. “Her plug’s bare.”

The lieutenant’s eyes narrowed. “So what?”

“A moddy like Blanca never goes anywhere without something chipped in. It’s suspicious, that’s all.”

Hajjar rubbed his scraggly mustache. “I guess you’d know all about that. Not much to go on, though.”

“The plainclothes boys can work miracles sometimes,” Shaknahyi said, sounding very sincere but winking to let me know just how little regard he had for them.

“Yeah, you right,” said Hajjar.

“By the way, Lieutenant,” said Shaknahyi, “I was wondering if you wanted us to keep after Abu Adil. We didn’t get very far with him last week.”

“You want to go out there again? To his house?”

’To his majestic palatial estate, you mean,” I said.

Hajjar ignored me. “I didn’t mean for you to persecute the guy. He throws a lot of weight in this town.”

“Uh huh,” said Shaknahyi. “Anyway, we’re not doing any persecuting.”

“Why do you want to bother him again in the first place?” Hajjar looked at me, but I didn’t have an answer.

“I got a hunch that Abu Adil has some connection to these unsolved homicides,” said Shaknahyi.

“What unsolved homicides?” Hajjar demanded.

I could see Shaknahyi grit his teeth. “There’ve been three unsolved homicides in the last couple of months. Four now, including her.” He nodded toward Blanca’s body, which the M.E.’s boy had covered with a sheet. “They could be related, and they could be connected to Reda Abu Adil.”

“They’re not unsolved homicides, for God’s sake,” said Hajjar angrily. “They’re just open files, that’s all.”

“Open files,” said Shaknahyi. I could tell he was really disgusted. “You need us for anything else, Lieutenant?”

“I guess not. You two can get back to work.”

We left Hajjar and the detectives going over Blanca’s remains and her clothes and the dust and the moldy ruins of the house. Outside on the sidewalk, Shaknahyi pulled my arm and stopped me before I got into the patrol car. “The hell was that about the bitch’s missing moddy?” he asked.

I laughed. “Just hot air, but Hajjar won’t know the difference. Give him something to think about, though, won’t it?”

“It’s good for the lieutenant to think about something now and then. His brain needs the exercise.” Shaknahyi grinned at me.

We were both ready to call it a day. The sky had clouded over and a brisk, hot wind blew grit and smoke into our faces. Angry, grumbling thunder threatened from far away. Shaknahyi wanted to go back to the station house, but I had something else to take care of first. I undipped 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 Marid.”

“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.”

I might have mentioned that Friedlander Bey had paid to have the punishment center of my brain wired, and that he could stimulate it whenever he wanted. That’s how he kept me in line. But Chiri wouldn’t have understood. I might have described the torment Papa could cause me anytime he touched the right keypad. None of that was important to her. All she knew was that I’d betrayed her.

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

I knew the answer to that: because 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 liked 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.”

“Like Weinraub on Gargotier’s patio,” I said.

“Yeah,” said Shaknahyi, “except Courane owns his own dive. He stays in there and doesn’t bother anybody. Give him that much credit, anyway. 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.

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 into 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 lamp-lit 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 leatherworker’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 these 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.

“Sandor,” said Shaknahyi, “this is my partner, Marid Audran.”

“Glad to meet you,” said Courane.

“May Allah increase your honor,” I said.

Courane’s look was amused. “Right,” he said. “Can I get you boys something to drink?”

I glanced at Shaknahyi. “Are we on duty?” I asked.

“Nah,” he said. I asked for my usual, and Shaknahyi got a soft drink. We followed Courane into his establishment. It was just as I’d pictured it: shiny chrome and glass tables, white wicker chairs, a beautiful antique bar of polished dark wood, chrome ceiling fans, and, as Shaknahyi had mentioned, lots of dusty artificial plants stuck in corners and hanging in baskets from the ceiling.

Chiriga was sitting at a table near the back. “Where you at, Jirji? Marid?” she said.

“Aw right,” I said. “Can I buy you a drink?”

“Never in my life turned one down.” She held up her glass. “Sandy?” Courane nodded and went to make our drinks.

I sat down beside Chiri. “Anyway,” I said uncomfortably, “I want to talk to you about coming to work in the club.”

“Yasmin mentioned something about that,” Chiri said. “Kind of a ballsy thing for you to ask, isn’t it?”

“Hey, look, I told you what the situation was. How much longer you gonna keep this up?”

Chiri gave me a little smile. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m getting a big kick out of it.”

I’d reached my limit. I can only feel so guilty. “Fine,” I said. “Go get another job someplace else. I’m sure a big, strong kaffir like you won’t have any trouble at all finding somebody who’s interested.”

Chiri looked hurt. “Okay, Marid,” she said softly, “let’s stop.” She opened her bag and took out a long white envelope, and pushed it across the table toward me.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“Yesterday’s take from your goddamn club. You’re supposed to show up around closing time, you know, to count out the register and pay the girls. Or don’t you care?”

“I don’t really care,” I said, peeking at the cash. There was a lot of money in the envelope. “That’s why I want to hire you.”

“To do what?”

I spread my hands. “I want you to keep the girls in line. And I need you to separate the customers from their money. You’re famous for that. Just do exactly what you used to.”

Her brow furrowed. “I used to go home every night with all of this.” She tapped the envelope. “Now I’m just gonna get a few kiam here and there, whatever you decide to spill. I don’t like that.”

Courane arrived with our drinks and I paid for them. “I was gonna offer you a lot more than what the debs and changes get,” I said to Chiri.

“I should hope so.” She nodded her head emphatically. “Bet your ass, honey, you want me to run your club for you, you’re gonna have to pay up front. Business is business, and action is action. I want 50 percent.”

“Making yourself a partner?” I’d expected something like that. Chiri smiled slowly, showing those long, filed canines. She was worth more than 50 percent to me. “All right,” I said.

She looked startled, as if she hadn’t expected me to give in so easily. “Should’ve asked for more,” she said bitterly. “And I don’t want to dance unless I feel like it.”

“Fine.”

“And the name of the club stays ‘Chiriga’s.’ ”

“All right.”

“And you let me do my own hiring and firing. I don’t want to get stuck with Floor-Show Fanya if she tickles you into giving her a job. Bitch gets so loaded, she throws up on customers.”

“You expect a hell of a lot, Chiri.”

She gave me a wolfish grin. “Paybacks are a bitch, ain’t they?” she said.

Chiri was wringing every last bit of advantage out of this situation. “Okay, you pick your own crew.”

She paused to drink again. “By the way,” she said, “that’s 50 percent of the gross I’m getting, isn’t it?”

Chiri was terrific. “Uh yeah,” I said, laughing. “Why don’t you let me give you a ride back to the Budayeen? You can start working this afternoon.”

“I already passed by there. I left Indihar in charge.”

She noticed that her glass was empty again, and she held it up and waved it at Courane. “Want to play a game, Marid?” She jerked a thumb toward the back of the bar, where Courane had a Transpex unit.

It’s a game that lets two people with corymbic implants sit across from each other and chip into the machine’s CPU. The first player imagines a bizarre scenario in detail, and it becomes a wholly realistic environment for the second player, who’s scored on how well he adapts — or survives. Then in turn the second player does the same for the first.

It’s a great game to bet money on. It scared the hell out of me at first, though, because while you’re playing, you forget it’s only a game. It seems absolutely real. The players exercise almost godlike power on each other. Courane’s model looked old, a version whose safety features could be bypassed by a clever mechanic. There were rumors of people actually having massive strokes and coronaries while they were chipped into a jiggered Transpex.

“Go ahead, Audran,” said Shaknahyi, “let’s see what you got.”

“All right, Chiri,” I said, “let’s play.”

She stood up and walked back to the Transpex booth. I followed her, and both Shaknahyi and Courane came along too. “Want to bet the other 50 percent of my club?” she said. Her eyes glittered over the rim of her cocktail glass.

“Can’t do that. Papa wouldn’t approve.” I felt pretty confident, because I could read the record of the machine’s previous high games. A perfect Transpex score was 1,000 points, and I averaged in the upper 800s. The top scores on this machine were in the lower 700s. Maybe the scores were low because Courane’s bar didn’t attract many borderline nutso types. Like me. “I’ll bet what’s inside this envelope, though.”

That sounded good to her. “I can cover it,” she said. I didn’t doubt that Chiri could lay her hands on quite a lot of cash when she needed it.

Courane set fresh drinks down for all of us. Shaknahyi dragged a wicker chair near enough to watch the computer-modelled images of the illusions Chiri and I would create. I fed five kiam into the Transpex machine. “You can go first, if you want,” I said.

“Yeah,” said Chiri. “It’s gonna be fun, making you sweat.” She took one of the Transpex’s moddy links and socketed it on her corymbic plug, then touched Player One on the console. I took the second link, murmured “Bismillah,” and chipped in Player Two.

At first there was only a kind of warm, flickering fog, veined with iridescence like shimmery mother of pearl. Audran was lost in a cloud, but he didn’t feel anxious about it. It was absolutely silent and still, not even a whisper of breeze. He was aware of a mild scent surrounding him, the fragrance of fresh sea air. Then things began to change.

Now he was floating in the cloud, no longer sitting or standing, but somehow drifting through space easily and peacefully. Audran still wasn’t concerned; it was a perfectly comfortable sensation. Only gradually did the fog begin to dissipate. With a shock Audran realized that he wasn’t floating, but swimming in a warm, sun-dappled sea.

Below him waved long tendrils of algae that clung to hillocks of brightly colored coral. Anemones of many hues and many shapes reached their grasping tentacles toward him, but he cut smartly through the water well out of their reach.

Audran’s eyesight was poor, but his other senses let him know what was happening around him. The smell of the salt air had been replaced by many subtle aromas that he couldn’t name but were all achingly familiar. Sounds came to him, sibilant, rushing noises that echoed in hollow tones.

He was a fish. He felt free and strong, and he was hungry. Audran dived down close to the rolling sea bottom, near the stinging anemones where tiny fishes schooled for protection. He flashed among them, gobbling down mouthfuls of the scarlet and yellow creatures. His hunger was appeased, at least for now. The scent of others of his species wafted by him on the current, and he turned toward its source.

He swam for a long while until he realized that he’d lost the trace. Audran couldn’t tell how much time had passed. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered here in the sparkling, sunny seas. He browsed over a gorgeous reef, worrying the delicate feather dusters, sending the scarlet-banded shrimps and the porcelain crabs scuttling.

Above him, the ocean darkened. A shadow passed over him, and Audran felt a ripple of alarm. He could not look up, but compression waves told him that something huge was circling nearby. Audran remembered that he was not alone in this ocean: It was now his turn to flee. He darted down over the reef and cut a zigzag path only a few inches above the sandy floor.

The ravenous shadow trailed close behind. Audran looked for somewhere to hide, but there was nothing, no sunken wrecks or rocks or hidden caves. He made a sharp evasive turn and raced back the way he’d come. The thing that stalked him followed lazily, easily.

Suddenly it dived on him, a voracious, mad engine of murder, all dead black eyes and gleaming chrome-steel teeth. Flushed from the sea bottom, Audran knifed up through the green water toward the surface, though he knew there was no shelter there. The great beast raged close behind him. In a froth of boiling seafoam, Audran broke through the waves, into the fearfully thin air, and — flew. He glided over the white-capped water until, at last, he fell back into the welcoming element, exhausted.

And the nightmare creature was there, its ghastly mouth yawning wide to rend him. The daggered jaws closed slowly, victoriously, until for Audran there was only blackness and the knowledge of the agony to come.

“Jeez,” I murmured, when the Transpex returned my consciousness.

“Some game,” said Shaknahyi.

“How’d I do?” asked Chiri. She sounded exhilarated.

“Pretty good,” said Courane. “Six hundred twenty-three. It was a promising scenario, but you never got him to panic.”

“I sure as hell tried,” she said. “I want another drink.” She gave me a quirky grin.

I took out my pillcase and swallowed eight Paxium with a mouthful of gin. Maybe as a fish I hadn’t been paralyzed with fear, but I was feeling a strong nervous reaction now. “I want another drink too,” I said. “I’ll stand a round for everybody.”

“Bigshot,” said Shaknahyi.

Both Chiri and I waited until our heartbeats slowed down to normal. Courane brought a tray with the fresh drinks, and I watched Chiri throw hers down in two long gulps. She was fortifying herself for whatever evil things I was going to do to her mind. She was going to need it.

Chiri touched Player Two on the game’s console, and I saw her eyes slowly close. She looked like she was napping placidly. That was going to end in a hell of a hurry. On the holoscreen was the same opalescent haze I’d wandered through until Chiri’d decided it was the ocean. I reached out and touched the Player One panel.

Audran gazed down upon the ball of mist, like Allah in the highest of the heavens. He concentrated on building a richly detailed illusion, and he was pleased with his progress. Instead of letting it take on form and reality gradually, Audran loosed an explosion of sensory information. The woman far below was stunned by the purity of color in this world, the clarity of sound, the intensity of the tastes and textures and smells. She cried out and her voice pealed in the cool, clean air like a carillon. She fell to her knees, her eyes shut tightly and her hands over her ears.

Audran was patient. He wanted the woman to explore his creation. He wasn’t going to hide behind a tree, jump out and frighten her. There was time enough for terror later.

After a while the woman lowered her hands and stood up. She looked around uncertainly. “Marid?” she called. Once again the sound of her own voice rang with unnatural sharpness. She glanced behind her, toward the misty purple mountains in the west. Then she turned back to the east, toward the shore of a marshy lake that reflected the impossible azure of the sky. Audran didn’t care which direction she chose; it would all be the same in the end.

The woman decided to follow the swampy shoreline to the southeast. She walked for hours, listening to the liquid trilling of songbirds and inhaling the poignant perfume of unknown blossoms. After a while the sun rested on the shoulders of the purple hills behind her, and then slipped away, leaving Audran’s illusion in darkness. He provided a full moon, huge and gleaming silver like a serving platter. The woman grew weary, and at last she decided to lie down in the sweet-smelling grass and sleep.

Audran woke her in the morning with a gentle rain shower. “Marid?” she cried again. He would not answer her. “How long you gonna leave me here?” She shivered.

The golden sun mounted higher, and while it warmed the morning, the heat never became stifling. Just after noon, when the woman had walked almost halfway around the lake, she came upon a pavilion made all of crimson and sapphire-blue silk. “What the hell is all this, Marid?” the woman shouted. “Just get it over with, all right?”

The woman approached the pavilion anxiously. “Hello?” she called.

A moment later a young woman in a white gown came out of the pavilion. Her feet were bare and her pale blond hair was thrown carelessly over one shoulder. She was smiling and carrying a wooden tray. “Hungry?” she asked in a friendly voice.

“Yes,” said the woman.

“My name is Maryam. I’ve been waiting for you. I’m sorry, all I’ve got is bread and fresh milk.” She poured from a silver pitcher into a silver goblet.

“Thanks.” The woman ate and drank greedily.

Maryam shaded her eyes with one hand. “Are you going to the fair?”

The woman shook her head. “I don’t know about any fair.”

Maryam laughed. “Everybody goes to the fair. Come on, I’ll take you.”

The woman waited while Maryam disappeared into the pavilion again with the breakfast things. She came back out a moment later. “We’re all set now,” she said gaily. “We can get to know each other while we walk.”

They continued around the lake until the woman saw a scattering of large peaked tents of striped canvas, all with colorful pennants snapping in the breeze. She heard many people laughing and shouting, and the sound of axes biting wood, and metal ringing on metal. She could smell bread baking, and cinnamon buns, and lamb roasting on spits turning slowly over glowing coals. Her mouth began to water, and she felt her excitement growing despite herself.

“I don’t have any money to spend,” she said.

“Money?” Maryam asked, laughing. “What is money?”

The woman spent the afternoon going from tent to tent, seeing the strange exhibits and miraculous entertainments. She sampled exotic foods and drank concoctions of unknown liquors. Now and then she remembered to be afraid. She looked over her shoulder, wondering when the pleasant face of this fantasy would fall away. “Marid,” she called, “what are you doing?”

“Who are you calling?” asked Maryam.

“I’m not sure,” said the woman.

Maryam laughed. “Look over here, “she said, pulling on the woman’s sleeve, showing her a booth where a heavily muscled woman was shaping a disturbing collage from the claws, teeth, and eyes of lizards.

They listened to children playing strange music on instruments made from the carcasses of small animals, and then they watched several old women spin their own white hair into thread, and then weave it into napkins and scarves.

One of the toothless hags leered at Maryam and the woman. “Take,” she said in a gravelly voice.

“Thank you, Grandmother,” said Maryam. She selected a pair of human-hair handkerchiefs.

The hours wore on, and at last the sun began to set. The moon rose as full as yester eve. “Is this going to go on all night?” the woman asked.

“All night and all day tomorrow,” said Maryam. “Forever.”

The woman shuddered.

From that moment she couldn’t shake a growing dread, a sense that she’d been lured to this place and abandoned. She remembered nothing of who she’d been before she’d awakened beside the lake, but she felt she’d been horribly tricked. She prayed to someone called Marid. She wondered if that was God.

“Marid,” she murmured fearfully, “I wish you’d just end this already.”

But Audran was not ready to end it. He watched as the woman and Maryam grew sleepy and found a large tent filled with comfortable cushions and sheets of satin and fine linen. They laid themselves down and slept. In the morning the woman arose, dismayed to be still trapped at the eternal fair. Maryam found them a good breakfast of sausage, fried bread, broiled tomatoes, and hot tea. Maryam’s enthusiasm was undiminished, and she led the woman toward still more disquieting entertainments. The woman, however, felt only a crazily mounting dread.

“You’ve had me here for two days, Marid,” she pleaded. “Please kill me and let me go.” Audran gave her no sign, no answer.

They passed the third day examining one dismaying thing after another: teenage girls who seemed to have living roses in place of breasts; a candlemaker whose wares would not provide light in the presence of an infidel; staged combat between a blind man and two maddened dragons; a family hammering together a scale model of the fair out of iron, a project that had occupied them for generations and that might never be completed; a cage of crickets that had been taught to chirp the Shahada, the Islamic testament of faith.

The afternoon passed, and once again night began to fall. All through the fair, men jammed blazing torches into iron sconces on tall poles. Still Maryam led the woman from tent to tent, but the woman no longer enjoyed the spectacles. She was filled with a sense of impending catastrophe. She felt an urgent need to escape, but she knew she couldn’t even find her way out of the infinite fairgrounds.

And then a shrill, buzzing alarm sounded. “What’s that?” she asked, startled. All around her, people had begun to flee. “Yallah!” cried Maryam, her face stricken with horror. “Run! Run and save your life!”

“What is it?” the woman shouted. “Tell me what it is!”

Maryam had collapsed to the ground, weeping and moaning. “In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful, “she muttered over and over again. The woman could get nothing more sensible from her.

The woman left her there, and she followed the stream of terrified people as they ran among the tents.

And then the woman saw them: two immense giants, impossibly huge, hundreds of feet tall, crushing the landscape as they came nearer. They waded among the distant mountains, and then the shocks from their jolting footsteps began to churn the water in the lake. The ground heaved as they came nearer. The woman raised a hand to her breast, then staggered backward a few steps.

One of the giants turned his head slowly and looked straight at her. He was horribly ugly, with a great scar across one empty eye socket and a mouthful of rotten, snaggled fangs. He lifted an arm and pointed to her.

“No,” she said, her voice hoarse with fear, “not me!” She wanted to run but she couldn’t move. The giant stooped toward her, fierce and glowering. He bent to capture her in his enormous hand.

“Marid!” the woman screamed. “Please!” Nothing happened. The giant’s fist began to close around her.

The woman tried to reach up and unplug the moddy link, but her arms were frozen. She wouldn’t escape that easily. The woman shrieked as she realized she couldn’t even jack out.

The disfigured giant lifted her off the ground and drew her close to his single eye. His horrid grin spread and he laughed at her terror. His stinking breath sickened the woman. She struggled again to lift her hands, to pull the moddy link free. Her arms were held fast. She screamed and screamed, and then at last she fainted.

My eyes were bleary for a moment, and I could hear Chiri panting for breath beside me. I didn’t think she’d be so upset. After all, it was only a Transpex game, and it wasn’t the first time she’d ever played. She knew what to expect.

“You’re a sick motherfucker, Marid,” she said at last.

“Listen, Chiri, I was just—”

She waved a hand at me. “I know, I know. You won the game and the bet. I’m still just a little shook, that’s all. I’ll have your money for you tonight.”

“Forget the money, Chiri, I—”

I shouldn’t have said that. “Hey, you son of a bitch, when I lose a bet I pay up. You’re gonna take the money or I’m gonna cram it down your throat. But, God, you’ve got some kind of twisted imagination.” “That last part,” said Courane, “where she couldn’t raise her hands to pop the moddy link, that was real cold.” He said it approvingly.

“Hell of a sadistic thing to do,” said Chiri, shivering. “Last time I ever touch a Transpex with you.”

“A few extra points, that’s all, Chiri. I didn’t know what my score was. I might have needed a couple more points.”

“You finished with 941,” said Shaknahyi. He was looking at me oddly, as if he were impressed by my score and repelled at the same time. “We got to go.” He stood up and tossed down the last slug of his soft drink.

I stood up too. “You all right now, Chiri?” I put my hand on her shoulder.

“I’m fine. I’m still shaking off the game. It was like a nightmare.” She took a deep breath and let it out. “I got to get back to the club so Indihar can go home.”

“Give you a ride?” asked Shaknahyi.

“Thanks,” said Chiri, “but I got my own transportation.”

“See you later then,” I said.

“Kwa heri, you bastard.” At least she was smiling when she called me that. I thought maybe things were okay between us again. I was real glad about that.

Outside, Shaknahyi shook his head and grinned. “She was right, you know. That was a hell of a sadistic thing. Like unnecessary torture. You are a sick son of a bitch.”

“Maybe.”

“And I got to ride around the city with you.”

I was tired of talking about it. “Time to check out yet?” I asked.

“Just about. Let’s pass by the station house, and then why don’t you come home with me for dinner? You got plans already? You think Friedlander Bey can get along without you for one night?”

I’m not a very sociable person, and I always feel uncomfortable in other people’s homes. Still, the idea of spending an evening away from Papa and his Circus of Thrills was immensely attractive. “Sure,” I said.

“Let me call my wife and find out if tonight’s okay.”

“I didn’t even know you were married, Jirji.”

He just raised his eyebrows at me and spoke his commcode into the phone. He had a brief conversation with his wife and then clipped the phone back on his belt. “She says it’s okay,” he said. “Now she’s got to run around cleaning and cooking. She always goes crazy when I bring somebody home.”

“She don’t have to do that just for me,” I said.

Shaknahyi shook his head. “It’s not for you, believe me. She comes from this old-fashioned family, and she’s all the time got to prove she’s the perfect Muslim wife.”

We stopped at the station house, turned the patrol car over to the guys on the night shift, and checked in briefly with Hajjar. Finally we logged out and headed back downstairs to the street. “I usually walk home unless it’s pouring rain,” said Shaknahyi.

“How far is it?” I asked. It was a pleasant evening, but I wasn’t looking forward to a long walk.

“Maybe three, three-and-a-half miles.” “Forget it,” I said. “I’ll spring for a cab.” There are always seven or eight taxis waiting for fares on the Boulevard il-Jameel, near the Budayeen’s eastern gate. I looked for my friend Bill, but I didn’t see him. We got into another cab, and Shaknahyi gave the driver his address.

It was an apartment house in the part of town called Haffe al-Khala, the Edge of the Wilderness. Shaknahyi and his family lived about as far south as you could go in the city, so near the desert that mounds of sand like infant dunes had crept up against the walls of the buildings. There were no trees or flowers on these streets. It was bare and quiet and dead, as cheerless as any place I’ve ever seen.

Shaknahyi must have guessed what I was thinking. “This is all I can afford,” he said sourly. “Come on, though. It’s better inside.”

I followed him into the foyer of the apartment house, and then upstairs to his flat on the third floor. He unlocked the front door and was immediately tackled by two small children. They clung to his legs as he came into the parlor. Shaknahyi bent down laughing, and rested his hands on the boys’ heads. “My sons,” he said to me proudly. “This is Little Jirji, he’s eight, and Hakim, he’s four. Zahra’s six. She’s probably getting in her mother’s way in the kitchen.”

Well, I don’t have much patience with kids. I suppose they’re fine for other people, but I’ve never really understood what they’re for. I can be polite about them when I have to, though. “Your sons are very handsome,” I said. “They do you honor.”

“It is as Allah pleases,” said Shaknahyi. He was beaming like a goddamn searchlight.

He dislodged Little Jirji and Hakim and, to my dismay, left me alone with them while he went in to see how supper was progressing. I didn’t actually bear these children any ill will, but my philosophy of raising kids is kind of extreme. I think you should keep a baby around for a few days after it’s born — until the novelty wears off — and then you put it in a big cardboard box with all the best books of Eastern and Western civilization. Then you bury the box and dig it up again when the kid’s eighteen. I watched uneasily as first Little Jirji and then Hfikim realized I was sitting on the couch. Hakim lurched toward me, a bright red toy figure in his right hand, another in his mouth. “What do I do now?” I muttered.

“How you boys getting along out here?” said Shaknahyi. I was saved. He came back into the parlor and sat beside me in an old, shabby armchair.

“Great,” I said. I said a little prayer to Allah. This looked like it could be a long night.

A very pretty, very serious-faced girl came into the room, carrying a china plate of hummus and bread. Shaknahyi took the plate from her and kissed her on both cheeks. “This is Zahra, my little princess,” he said. “Zahra, this is Uncle Marid.” Uncle Marid! I’d never heard anything so grotesque in my entire life.

Zahra looked up at me, blushed furiously, and ran back into the kitchen while her father laughed. I’ve always had that effect on women.

Shaknahyi indicated the plate of hummus. “Please,” he said, “refresh yourself.”

“May your prosperity increase, Jirji,” I said.

“May God lengthen your life. I’m gonna get us some tea.” He got up again and went back into the kitchen.

I wished he’d stop fussing. It made me nervous, and it left me outnumbered by the kids. I tore off some bread and dipped it in the hummus, keeping a careful eye on Little Jirji and Hakim. They seemed to be playing together peacefully, apparently paying no attention to me at all; but I wasn’t going to be lulled so easily.

Shaknahyi came back in a few minutes. “I think you know my wife,” he said. I looked up. He was standing there with Indihar. He was grinning his damnfool grin, but she looked absolutely pissed.

I stood up, bewildered. “Indihar, how you doing?” I said. I felt like a fool. “I didn’t even know you were married.”

“Nobody’s supposed to know,” she said. She glared at her husband, then she turned and glared at me.

“It’s all right, sweetheart,” Shaknahyi said. “Marid won’t tell anybody, right?”

“Marid is a—” Indihar began, but then she remembered that I was a guest in her home. She lowered her eyes modestly to the floor. “You honor our family with your visit, Marid,” she said.

I didn’t know what to say. This was a major shock: Indihar as beautiful Budayeen dancer by day, demure Muslim wife by night. “Please,” I said uncomfortably, “don’t go to any trouble for me.”

Indihar flicked her eyes at me before she led Zahra out of the room. I couldn’t read what she was thinking.

“Have some tea,” said Shaknahyi. “Have some more hummus. “Hakim had at last found the courage to look me over. He grabbed my leg and drooled on my pants.

This was going to be even worse than I’d feared.

It was Shaknahyi’s small brown notebook, the one he’d carried in his hip pocket. The first time I’d seen it was when we’d investigated Blanca’s murder. Now I stared at its vinyl cover, smeared with bloody fingerprints, and wondered about Shaknahyi’s coded entries. I supposed I was going to have to find out what they all meant.

This was a week after my visit to Jirji and Indihar’s apartment. The day had started off on a low note and it never improved. I looked up to see Kmuzu standing beside my bed holding a tray of orange juice, toast, and coffee. I guess he’d been waiting for my wake-up daddy to kick in. He looked so sick that I almost felt sorry for the poor sucker. “Good morning, yaa Sidi,” he said softly.

I felt like hell too. “Where are my clothes?”

Kmuzu winced. “I don’t know, yaa Sidi. I don’t remember what you did with them last night.”

I didn’t remember much either. There was nothing but sick blackness from the time I came in the front door late last night until just a moment ago. I crawled out of bed naked, my head throbbing, my stomach threatening immediate upheaval. “Help me find my jeans,” I said. “My pillcase is in my jeans.”

“This is why the Lord forbids drinking,” said Kmuzu, I glanced at him; his eyes were closed and he was still holding the tray, but it was tilting dangerously. There was going to be coffee and orange juice all over my bed in a few seconds. That wasn’t important to me right then.

My clothes weren’t under the bed, which was the logical place to look. They weren’t in the closet, and they weren’t in the dressing room or the bathroom. I looked on the table in the dining area and in my small kitchen. No luck. I finally found my shoes and shirt rolled up in a ball in the bookcase, crammed between some paperback novels by Lutfy Gad, a Palestinian detective writer of the middle twenty-first century. My jeans had been folded neatly and hidden on my desk beneath several thick sheaves of computer printout.

I didn’t even put the pants on. I just grabbed the pillcase and hurried back into the bedroom. My plan was to swallow some opiates, maybe a dozen Sonneine, with the orange juice.

Too late. Kmuzu was staring down in horror at the sticky, sweet-smelling puddle on my bedclothes. He looked up at me. “I’ll clean this up,” he said, gulping down a wave of nausea, “immediately.” His expression said that he expected to lose his comfortable job in the Big House, and be sent out to the dusty fields with the other unskilled brutes.

“Don’t worry about it right now, Kmuzu. Just hand me that cup of—”

There was a gentle scraping sound as the coffee cup and saucer slid southward and tumbled over the edge of the tray. I looked at the ruined sheets. At least you couldn’t see the orange juice stain anymore.

“Yaa Sidi—”

“I want a glass of water, Kmuzu. Right now.”

It had been a hell of a night. I’d had the bright idea to go to the Budayeen after work. “I haven’t had a night out in a long time,” I said to Kmuzu when he arrived to pick me up at the station house.

“The master of the house is pleased that you’re concentrating on your work.”

“Yeah, you right, but that don’t mean I can’t see my friends now and then.” I gave him directions to Jo-Mama’s Greek club.

“If you do this, you will not get home until late, yaa Sidi.”

“I know it’ll be late. Would you rather I went out drinking in the morning?”

“You must be at the station house in the morning.”

“That’s a long time from now,” I pointed out.

“The master of the house—”

“Turn left here, Kmuzu. Now!” I wasn’t going to listen to any more argument. I guided him northwest through the twisting streets of the city. We left the car on the boulevard and walked through the gate into the Budayeen.

Jo-Mama’s club was on Third Street, jammed tight against the high northern wall of the quarter. Rocky, the relief barmaid, frowned at me when I took a stool at the front bar. She was short and hefty with brushy black hair, and she didn’t look glad to see me. “Ya want to see my manager’s license, cop?” she said in a sour voice.

“Get a grip, Rocky. I just want a gin and bingara.” I turned to Kmuzu, who was still standing behind me. “Grab a seat,” I told him.

“Who’s this?” said Rocky. “Your slave or something?”

I nodded. “Give him the same.”

Kmuzu raised a hand. “Just some club soda, please,” he said. Rocky glanced at me, and I shook my head slightly.

Jo-Mama came out of her office and grinned at me. “Marid, where y’at? You ain’t been comin’ around no more.”

“Been busy,” I said. Rocky set a drink in front of me and an identical one in front of Kmuzu.

Jo-Mama smacked his shoulder. “You know your boss here got some guts,” she said admiringly.

“I’ve heard the stories,” said Kmuzu.

“Yeah, ain’t we all?” said Rocky. Her lip curled just a little.

Kmuzu sipped his gin and bingara and grimaced. “This club soda tastes strange,” he said.

“It’s the lime juice,” I said hastily.

“Yeah, I put some lime in it for ya,” said Rocky.

“Oh,” said Kmuzu. He took another taste.

Jo-Mama snorted. She’s the largest woman I’ve ever met — big, strong, and often friendly. She has a loud, gruff voice and a remarkable memory for who owes her money and who’s done her dirt. When she laughs, you see beer splash out of glasses all around the bar; and when she gets angry, you don’t hang around long enough to see anything. “Your friends are at a table in the back,” she said.

“Who?”

“Mahmoud and the Half-Hajj and that snotty Christian.”

“Used to be my friends,” I said. Jo-Mama shrugged. I picked up my drink and went deeper into the dark cavern of the club. Kmuzu followed me.

Mahmoud, Jacques, Saied, and Saied’s adolescent American lover, Abdul-Hassan, were sitting at a table near the edge of the stage. They didn’t see me at first because they were appraising the dancer, a stranger to me but clearly a real girl. I moved a couple of chairs up to their table, and Kmuzu and I sat down.

“How ya doin’, Marid?” said the Half-Hajj.

“Look who it is,” said Mahmoud. “Come in to inspect the permits?”

“That’s a bum line I heard already from Rocky,”

It didn’t bother Mahmoud. Although as a girl he’d been lithe and pretty enough to dance here in Jo-Mama’s club, he’d put on weight and muscle after the sexchange. I wouldn’t want to fight him to see which of us was tougher.

“Why are we watching this bint?” asked Saied. Abdul-Hassan was glaring spitefully at the girl on stage. The Half-Hajj was teaching him well.

“She’s not so bad,” said Jacques, giving us the benefit of his militantly conventional viewpoint. “She’s very pretty, don’t you think?”

Saied spat on the floor. “The debs on the Street are prettier.”

“The debs on the Street are constructs,” said Jacques. “This girl’s natural.”

“Shellfish toxin is natural, if that’s what you care about,” said Mahmoud. “I’d rather watch somebody who’s spent some time and effort making herself look good.”

“Someone who’s spent a fortune on bodmods, you mean,” said Jacques.

“What’s her name?” I asked.

They ignored my question. “You hear that Blanca’s dead?” Jacques said to Mahmoud.

“Probably beaten to death in a police riot,” Mahmoud replied. His eyes flicked at me.

I wasn’t going to put up with any more of this. I got out of my chair. “Finish your… club soda,” I said to Kmuzu.

Saied stood up and came closer to me. “Hey, Marid,” he whispered, “don’t pay any attention to ’em. They’re just trying to bubble your bile.”

“It’s working,” I said.

“They’ll get tired of it soon, everything’ll go back the way it used to be.”

I downed the rest of my drink. “Sure,” I said, surprised by Saied’s naivete. Abdul-Hassan gave me a flirtatious look, batting his thick eyelashes. I wondered what sex he’d be when he grew up.

Jo-Mama had disappeared into her office again, and Rocky didn’t bother saying goodbye. Kmuzu trailed me out of the bar. “Well,” I said to him, “enjoying yourself?”

He gave me a blank stare. He didn’t look pleased.

“We’ll pass by Chiri’s,” I told him. “If anybody even looks at me cross-eyed in there, I can throw him out. It’s my club.” I liked the way that sounded.

I led Kmuzu south, and then turned up the Street. He came along with a solemn and disapproving look on his face. He wasn’t the perfect drinking companion, but he was loyal. I knew he wouldn’t abandon me if he met some hot girl somewhere.

“Why don’t you loosen up?” I asked him.

“It’s not my job to be loose,” he said.

“You’re a slave. It’s your job to be what I tell you to be. Gear down a. little.”

I got a nice welcome when I went into the club. “Here he comes, ladies,” called Chiri, “the boss man.” This time she didn’t sound bitter when she called me that. There were three sexchanges and two debs working with her. The real girls were all on the day shift with Indihar.

It felt great to feel at home somewhere. “How’s it going, Chiri?” I asked.

She looked disgusted. “Slow night,” she said. “No money.”

“You always say that.” I went down and took my usual seat at the far end of the bar, where it curved around toward the stage. I could sit there and look down the whole length of the bar, and see anybody coming into the club. Kmuzu sat beside me.

Chiri flipped a cork coaster toward me. I tapped the place in front of Kmuzu, and Chiri nodded. “Who is this handsome devil?” she asked.

“His name’s Kmuzu,” I said. “He’s uncommunicative.”

Chiri grinned. “I can fix that. Where you from, honey?” she asked.

He spoke to Chiri in some African language, but neither she nor I understood a word of it. “I’m Sidi Marid’s slave,” he said.

Chiri was dismayed. She was almost speechless. “Slave? Forgive me for saying it, sweetie, but being a slave’s nothing to brag about. You can’t really make it sound like an achievement, you know?”

Kmuzu shook his head. “There is a long story behind it.”

“I guess so,” said Chiri, looking at me for an explanation.

“If there’s a story, nobody’s told me,” I said.

“Papa just gave him to you, right? Like he gave you the club.” I nodded. Chiri put a gin and bingara on my coaster and another in front of Kmuzu. “If I was you,” she said, “I’d be careful what I unwrapped under his Christmas tree from now on.”

Yasmin watched me for half an hour before she came up to say hello, and then only because the other two changes were kissing on me and rubbing themselves up against me, trying to get in good with the new owner. It was working, too. “You come a long way, Marid,” Yasmin said.

I shrugged. “I feel like I’m still the same simple noraf I’ve always been.”

“You know that’s not true.”

“Well, I owe it all to you. You’re the one who bullied me into getting my skull amped, doing what Papa wanted.”

Yasmin looked away. “Yeah, I guess so.” She turned toward me again. “Listen, Marid, I’m sorry if—”

I put my hand on hers. “Don’t ever say you’re sorry, Yasmin. We got past all that a long time ago.”

She looked grateful. “Thanks, Marid.” She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. Then she hurried back down the bar where two dark-skinned merchant seamen had taken seats.

The rest of the night passed quickly. I downed one drink after another, and I made sure that Kmuzu did the same. He still thought he was drinking club soda with some strange lime juice in it.

Somewhere along the line I began to get drunk, and Kmuzu must have been nearly helpless. I recall Chiri closing the bar about three in the morning. She counted out the register and gave me the money. I gave half the receipts back to her as per our agreement, then paid Yasmin and the other four their wages. I still ended up with another thick wad of bills for myself.

I got a very enthusiastic goodnight kiss from a change named Lily, and a slip of paper with a commcode from someone named Rani. I think Rani gave a slip of paper to Kmuzu too, just to cover her bets.

That’s when I really blacked out. I don’t know how Kmuzu and I got home, but we didn’t bring the car with us. I guess Chiri called us a cab. The next thing I knew, I was waking up in bed and Kmuzu was about to spill orange juice and hot coffee all over me.

“Where’s that water?” I called. I stumbled around my suite, holding the sunnies in one hand and my shoes in the other.

“Here, yaa Sidi.”

I took the glass from him and swallowed the tabs. “There’s a couple left for you,” I said.

He looked appalled. “I can’t—”

“It’s not recreational. It’s medicine.” Kmuzu overcame his aversion to drugs long enough to take a single Sonneine.

I was still far from sober, and the sunnies I’d taken didn’t help steady me. I didn’t hurt anymore, but I was only vaguely conscious. I dressed quickly without paying much attention to what I put on. Kmuzu offered me breakfast, but the whole idea turned my stomach; for once, Kmuzu didn’t badger me into eating. I think he was glad not to have to cook.

We stumbled blearily downstairs. I called a taxi to take me to work, and Kmuzu came with me to pick up the sedan. In the cab, I let my head fall back against the seat, and I closed my eyes and listened to peculiar noises inside my head. My ears were thrumming like the engine room of an ancient tugboat.

“May your day be blessed,” said Kmuzu, when we got to the station house.

“May I live to see lunch, you mean,” I said. I got out of the cab and pushed my way through my crowd of young fans, throwing them a little money.

Sergeant Catavina gave me a jaundiced look when I got to my cubicle. “You don’t look well,” he said.

“I don’t feel well.”

Catavina clucked his tongue. “I’ll tell you what I do when I get a little hung over.”

“You don’t show up for work,” I said, dropping into my molded plastic chair. I didn’t feel like conversing with him.

“That always works too,” he said. He turned and left my cubicle. He didn’t seem to like me, and I didn’t seem to care.

Shaknahyi came by fifteen minutes later. I was still staring at my data deck, unable to dig into the mound of paperwork that waited on my desk. “Where you at?” he said. He didn’t wait for an answer. “Hajjar wants to see us both right now.”

“I’m not available,” I said glumly.

“I’ll tell him that. Come on, move your ass.”

I followed him reluctantly down the corridor to Hajjar’s little glass-walled office. We stood in front of his desk while he toyed with a small pile of paper clips. After a few seconds he looked up and studied us. It was a careful act. He had something difficult to tell us, and he wanted us to know that It Would Hurt Him More Than It Hurt Us. “I don’t like havin’ to do this,” he said. He looked real sad.

“Just skip it then, Lieutenant,” I said. “Come on, Jirji, let’s leave him alone.”

“Shut up, Audran,” said Hajjar. “We got an official complaint from Reda Abu Adil. I thought I told you to lay off him.” We hadn’t gone out to see Abu Adil again, but we’d been talking to as many of his crummy underlings as we could corner.

“Okay,” said Shaknahyi, “we’ll lay off.”

“The investigation is finished. We compiled all the information we need.”

“Okay,” said Shaknahyi.

“You both understand? Leave Abu Adil alone from now on. We ain’t got a thing on him. He’s not under any kind of suspicion.”

“Right,” said Shaknahyi.

Hajjar looked at me. “Fine,” I said.

Hajjar nodded. “Okay. Now I got somethin’ else I want you two to check out.” He handed Shaknahyi a sheet of pale blue paper.

Shaknahyi glanced at it. “This address is right nearby,” he said.

“Uh huh,” said Hajjar. “There been some complaints from people in the neighborhood. Looks like another baby peddler, but this guy’s got an ugly wrinkle. If this On Cheung’s there, cuff him and bring him in. Don’t worry about evidence; we’ll make some up later if you don’t find nothin’. If he ain’t there, go through what you find and bring the good stuff back here.”

“What do we charge him with?” I asked.

Hajjar shrugged. “Don’t need to charge him with nothing. He’ll hear all about it soon enough at his trial.”

I looked at Shaknahyi; he shrugged. This was how the police department used to operate in the city a few years ago. Lieutenant Hajjar must have gotten nostalgic for the good old days before due process.

Shaknahyi and I left Hajjar’s office and headed toward the elevator. He jammed the blue paper in his shirt pocket. “This won’t take long,” he said. “Then we can get something to eat.” The idea of food-nauseated me; I realized that I was still half-loaded. I prayed to Allah that my condition wouldn’t get us into trouble on the street.

We drove about six blocks to an area of crumbling red brick tenements. Children played in the street, kicking a soccer ball back and forth and leaping on each other with loud shrieks. “Yaa Sidi! Yaa Sidi!” they cried when I got out of the copcar. I realized that some of them were the kids I distributed cash to every morning.

“You’re becoming a celebrity in this neighborhood,” Shaknahyi said with some amusement.

Groups of men were sitting in front of the tenements on battered kitchen chairs, drinking tea and arguing and watching traffic go by. Their conversation died as soon as we appeared. They watched us walk by with narrowed, hate-filled eyes. I could hear them muttering about us as we passed.

Shaknahyi consulted the blue sheet and checked the address of one of the tenements. “This is it,” he said. There was a dark storefront on the ground floor, its display window obscured by flattened cardboard boxes taped in place on the inside.

“Looks abandoned,” I said.

Shaknahyi nodded and walked back to where some of the men were watching us closely. “Anybody know anything about this On Cheung?” he asked.

The men looked at each other, but none of them said anything.

“Bastard’s been buying kids. You seen him?”

I didn’t think any of the unshaven, hungry-looking men would help us, but finally one of them stood up. “I talk to you,” he said. The others mocked him and spat at his heels as he followed Shaknahyi and me down the sidewalk.

“What you know about it?” Shaknahyi asked.

“This On Cheung shows up a few months ago,” said the man. He looked over his shoulder nervously. “Every day, women come here to his shop. They bring children, they go inside. A little while later they come out again, but they don’t come out with the children.”

“What does he do with the kids?” I asked.

“He breaks their legs,” said the man. “He cuts off their hands or pulls out their tongues so people will feel sorry for them and give them money. Then he sells them to slavemasters who put them on the street to beg. Sometimes he sells the older girls to pimps.”

“On Cheung would be dead by sundown if Friedlander Bey knew about this,” I said.

Shaknahyi looked at me like I was a fool. He turned back to our informant. “How much does he pay for a kid?”

“I don’t know,” said the man. “Three, maybe five hundred kiam. Boys are worth more than girls. Sometimes pregnant women come to him from other parts of the city. They stay a week, a month. Then they go home and tell their family that the baby died.” He shrugged.

Shaknahyi went to the storefront and tried the door. It rattled but wouldn’t open. He took out his needle gun and smashed a glass panel over the lock, then reached in and opened the door. I followed him into the dark, musty storefront.

There was trash strewn everywhere, broken bottles and Styrofoam food containers, shredded newspaper and bubblewrap packing material. A strong odor of pinescented disinfectant hung in the still air. There was a single battered table against one wall, a light fixture hanging from the ceiling, a stained porcelain sink in a back corner with one dripping faucet. There was no other furniture. Evidently on Cheung had had some warning of the police interest in his industry. We walked around the room, crunching glass and plastic underfoot. There was nothing more we could do there.

“When you’re a cop,” said Shaknahyi, “you spend a lot of time being frustrated.”

We went outside again. The men on the kitchen chairs were shouting at our informant; none of them had any use for On Cheung, but their friend had broken some goddamn unwritten code by talking to us. He’d have to suffer for it.

We left them going at it. I was disgusted by the whole thing, and glad I hadn’t seen evidence of what On Cheung had been up to. “What happens now?” I asked.

“To On Cheung? We file a report. Maybe he’s moved to another part of the city, maybe he’s left the city altogether. Maybe someday somebody’ll catch him and cut his arms and legs off. Then he can sit on a street corner and beg, see how he likes it.”

A woman in a long black coat and gray kerchief crossed the street. She was carrying a small baby wrapped in a red-and-white-checked keffiya. “Yaa Sidi?” she said to me. Shaknahyi raised his eyebrows and walked away.

“Can I help you, O my sister?” I said. It was highly unusual for a woman to speak to a strange man on the street. Of course, I was just a cop to her.

“The children tell me you are a kind man,” she said. “The landlord demands more money because now I have another child. He says—”

I sighed. “How much do you need?”

“Two hundred fifty kiam, yaa Sidi.”

I gave her five hundred. I took it out of last night’s profits from Chiri’s. There was still plenty left.

“What they say about you is true, O chosen one!” she said. There were tears slipping from her eyes.

“You embarrass me,” I said. “Give the landlord his rent, and buy food for yourself and your children.”

“May Allah increase your strength, yaa Sidi!”

“May He bless you, my sister.”

She hurried back across the street and into her building. “Makes you feel all warm inside, don’t it?” Shaknahyi said. I couldn’t tell if he was mocking me.

“I’m glad I can help out a little,” I said.

“The Robin Hood of the slums.”

“There are worse things to be called.”

“If Indihar could see this side of you, maybe she wouldn’t hate your guts so much.” I stared at him, but he only laughed.

Back in the patrol car, the comp deck spoke up. “Badge number 374, respond immediately. Escaped murderer Paul Jawarski has been positively identified in Meloul’s on Nur ad-Din Street. He is desperate, well armed, and he will shoot to kill. Other units are on their way.”

“We’ll take care of it,” said Shaknahyi. The comp deck’s crackle faded away.

“Meloul’s is where we ate lunch that time, right?” I said.

Shaknahyi nodded. “We’ll try to ease this bastard Jawarski out of there before he puts holes in Meloul’s couscous steamer.”

“Holes?” I asked.

Shaknahyi turned and gave me a broad grin. “He likes old-fashioned pistols. He carries a .45 automatic. Put a dimple in you big enough to throw a leg of lamb through.”

“You heard of this Jawarski?”

Shaknahyi swung into Nur ad-Din Street. “We street cops have been seeing his picture for weeks. Claims he’s killed twenty-six men. He’s the boss of the Flathead Gang. There’s ten thousand kiam on his head.”

Evidently I was supposed to know what he was talking about. “You don’t seem too concerned,” I said.

Shaknahyi raised a hand. “I don’t know whether the tip’s genuine or just another pipe dream. We get as many fake calls as good ones in this neighborhood.”

We were the first to arrive at Meloul’s. Shaknahyi opened his door and got out. I did the same. “What do you want me to do?” I asked.

“Just keep the citizens out of the way,” he said. “In case there’s some—”

There was a volley of shots from inside the restaurant.

Those projectile weapons make a respectable noise. They sure catch your attention when they go off, not like the spitting and hissing of static and seizure guns. I dropped to the sidewalk and tried to wrestle my static gun free of my pocket. There were more shots and I heard glass shattering nearby. The windshield, I guessed.

Shaknahyi had fallen back alongside the building, out of the line of fire. He was drawing his own weapon.

“Jirji,” I called.

He waved to me to cut off the back of the restaurant. I got up and moved a few yards, and then I heard Jawarski run out the front door. I turned and saw Shaknahyi chasing after him, firing his needle gun down Nur ad-Din Street. Shaknahyi shot four times, and then Jawarski turned. I was looking straight at them, and all I could think about was how big and black the mouth of Jawarski’s gun looked. It seemed like it was pointed straight at my heart. He fired a few times and my blood froze until I realized I hadn’t been hit.

Jawarski ran into a yard a few doors from Meloul’s, and Shaknahyi went in after him. The fugitive must have realized that he couldn’t cut through to the next street, because he doubled back toward Shaknahyi. I got there just as the two men stood facing each other, shooting it out. Jawarski’s gun emptied and he turned and ran to the back of a two-story house.

We chased him through the yard. Shaknahyi ran up a flight of steps in the back, pushed open a door, and went inside the house. I didn’t want to, but I had to follow him. As soon as I opened the back door, I saw Shaknahyi. He was leaning against a wall, shoving a fresh clip into his needle gun. He didn’t seem to be aware of the large, dark stain that was spreading across his chest.

“Jirji, you’re shot,” I said, my mouth dry and my heart hammering.

“Yeah.” He took a deep breath and let it out. “Come on.”

He walked slowly through the house to the front door. He went outside and stopped a civilian in a small electric car. “Too far to get the patrol car,” he said to me, panting for breath. He looked at the driver. “I’m shot,” he said, getting into the car.

I got in beside him. “Take us to the hospital,” I ordered the mousy little man behind the wheel.

Shaknahyi swore. “Forget that. Follow him.” He pointed to Jawarski, who was crossing the open space between the house he’d hidden in and the next.

Jawarski saw us and fired as he ran. The bullet went through the window of the car, but the bald-headed driver kept on going. We could see Jawarski dodging from one house to another. Between houses, he’d turn and take a few shots at us. Five more bullets spanged into the car.

Finally Jawarski got to the last house on the block, and he ran up the porch. Shaknahyi steadied his needle gun and fired. Jawarski staggered inside. “Come on,” said Shaknahyi, wheezing. “I think I got him.” He opened the car door and fell to the pavement. I jumped out and helped him to his feet. “Where are they?” he murmured.

I looked over my shoulder. A handful of uniformed cops were swarming up the stairs of Jawarski’s hiding place, and three more patrol cars were racing up the street. “They’re right here, Jirji,” I said. His skin was starting to turn an awful gray color.

He leaned against the shot-up car and caught his breath. “Hurts like hell,” he said quietly.

“Take it easy, Jirji. We’ll get you to the hospital.”

“Wasn’t no accident, the call about On Cheung, then the tip on Jawarski.”

“What you talking about?” I asked.

He was in a lot of pain, but he wouldn’t get in the car. “The Phoenix File,” he said. He looked deeply into my eyes, as if he could burn this information directly into my brain. “Hajjar let it slip about the Phoenix File. I been keeping notes ever since. They don’t like it. Pay attention to who gets my parts, Audran. But play dumb or they’ll take your bones too.”

“The hell is a Phoenix File, Jirji?” I was frantic with worry.

“Take this.” He gave me the vinyl-covered notebook from his hip pocket. Then his eyes closed and he slumped backward across the hood of the car. I looked at the driver. “Now you want to take him to the hospital?”

The shrimpy bald-headed man stared at me. Then he looked at Jirji. “You think you can keep that blood off my upholstery?” he asked.

I grabbed the little motherfucker by the front of his shirt and threw him out of his own car. Then I gently eased Shaknahyi into the passenger seat and drove to the hospital as fast as I’ve ever driven.

It didn’t make any difference. I was too late.