A Fire in the Sun

My mother had brought me pistachio nuts and fresh figs, but I was still having some trouble swallowing. “Then have some of this,” she said. “I even brought a spoon.” She took the lid from a plastic bowl and set it on the hospital tray table. She was very self-conscious about this visit.

I was sedated, but not as sedated as I could have been. Still, a mild dose of Sonneine from a perfusor is better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. Of course, I own an experimental daddy that blocks pain, and I could have chipped it in and stayed completely clearheaded and lucid. I just didn’t want to use it. I hadn’t told my doctors and nurses about it, because I’d rather have the drug. Hospitals are too tedious to endure sober.

I lifted my head from the pillow. “What is it?” I asked in a hoarse voice. I leaned forward and took the plastic bowl.

“Curdled camel’s milk,” said my mother. “You used to love that when you were sick. When you were little.” I thought I detected an uncharacteristic softness in her voice.

Curdled camel’s milk doesn’t sound like something that could get you to jump out of bed with glee. It isn’t, and I didn’t. I picked up the spoon, however, and made a show of enjoying it just to please her. Maybe if I ate some of the stuff, she’d be satisfied and leave. Then I could call for another shot of Sonneine and take a nice nap. That’s what was worst about being in the hospital: reassuring all the visitors and listening to the histories of their own illnesses and accidents, which were always of far more traumatic proportions than yours.

“You were really worried about me, Marid?” she asked.

“Course I was,” I said, letting my head fall back to the pillow. “That’s why I sent Kmuzu to make sure you were safe.”

She smiled sadly and shook her head. “Maybe you’d be happier if I’d burned up in the fire. Then you wouldn’t be embarrassed about me no more.”

“Don’t worry about it, Mom.”

“Okay, honey,” she said. She looked at me in silence for a long moment. “How are your burns?”

I shrugged, and that made me wince. “They still hurt. The nurses come in and slather this white gunk on me a couple of times a day.”

“Well, I suppose it’s good for you. You just let ’em do what they want.”

“Right, Mom.”

There was another awkward silence. “I suppose there’s things I ought to tell you,” she said at last. “I ain’t been completely honest with you.”

“Oh?” This wasn’t any surprise, but I thought I’d swallow the sarcastic comments that came to mind, and let her tell her story her own way.

She stared down at her hands, which were twisting a frayed linen handkerchief in her lap. “I know a lot more about Friedlander Bey and Reda Abu Adil than I told you.”

“Ah,” I said.

She glanced up at me. “I known both of ’em from before. From even before you was born, when I was a young girl. I was a lot better looking in those days. I wanted to get out of Sidi-bel-Abbes, maybe go someplace like Cairo or Jerusalem, be a holoshow star. Maybe get wired and make some moddies, not sex moddies like Honey Pilar, but something classy and respectable.”

“So did Papa or Abu Adil promise to make you a star?”

She looked back down at her hands. “I came here, to the city. I didn’t have no money when I got here, and I went hungry for a while. Then I met somebody who took care of me for a while, and he introduced me to Abu Adil.”

“And what did Abu Adil do for you?”

Again she looked up, but now tears were slipping down her cheeks. “What do you think?” she said in a bitter voice.

“He promise to marry you?” She just shook her head. “He get you pregnant?”

“No. In the end, he just laughed at me and handed me this bus ticket back to Sidi-bel-Abbes.” Her expression grew fierce. “I hate him, Marid.”

I nodded. I was sorry now that she’d begun this confession. “So you’re not telling me that Abu Adil is my father, right? What about Friedlander Bey?”

“Papa was always good to me when I first came to the city. That’s why even though I was so mad at you for finding me in Algiers, I was glad to hear that Papa was taking care of you.”

“Some people hate him, you know,” I said.

She stared at me, then shrugged. “I went back to Sidi-bel-Abbes, after all, and then after a few years I met your father. It was like my life was passing so fast. You were born, and then you got older and left Algiers. Then more years went by. Finally, right after you came to see me, I got a message from Abu Adil. He said he’d been thinking about me and wanted to see me again.”

She had gotten agitated, and now she paused until she calmed down a little. “I believed him,” she said. “I don’t know why. Maybe I thought I could have a second chance to live my life, get back all those years I lost, fix all the mistakes. Anyway, goddamn if I didn’t fuck up all over again.”

I shut my eyes and rubbed them. Then I looked at my mother’s anguished face. “What did you do?”

“I moved in with Abu Adil again. In that big place he’s got in the slums. That’s how I know all about him, and about Umm Saad. You got to watch out for her, baby. She works for Abu Adil, and she’s planning to ruin Papa.”

“I know.”

My mother looked bewildered. “You know already? How?”

I smiled. “Abu Adil’s little fuck-buddy told me. They’ve pretty much written off Umm Saad. She’s not part of their plans anymore.”

“Still,” said my mother, raising a warning finger, “you got to watch out for her. She’s got her own schemes in the fire.”

“Yeali, I guess so.”

“You know about Abu Adil’s moddy? The one he’s made of himself?”

“Uh huh. That son of a bitch Umar told me all about it. I’d like to get my hands on it for a few minutes.”

She chewed her lip thoughtfully. “Maybe I could think of a way.”

Yipe. That’s all I needed. “It’s not that important, Mom,” I told her.

She began to weep again. “I’m so sorry, Marid. I’m so sorry for everything I done, for not being the kind of mother you needed.”

Jeez, I really wasn’t feeling well enough to deal with her attack of conscience. “I’m sorry too, Mom,” I said, and I was surprised to realize that I truly meant it. “I never showed you the respect—”

“I never earned no respect—”

I raised both hands. “Why don’t we stop before we’re fighting over who’s hurt who the most? Let’s call a truce or something.”

“Maybe we could start over again?” Her voice had a peculiar shyness to it.

I had a lot of doubt about all of this. I didn’t know if it was possible to start over again, especially after all that had happened between us, but I thought I could give her a chance. “That’s fine with me,” I said. “I got no love for the past.”

She smiled crookedly. “I like living in Papa’s house with you, baby. It makes me think I won’t have to go back to Algiers and… you know.”

I took a deep breath and let it out. “I promise you, Mom,” I said, “you’ll never have to go back to that life again. Just let me take care of you from now on.”

She got up and came toward my bed, her arms outstretched, but I wasn’t quite ready for an exchange of mother-son affection. I have a little trouble expressing my feelings, I guess, and I’ve never been a very demonstrative person. I let her bend down and kiss my cheek and give me a hug, and she murmured something that I couldn’t make out. I kind of patted her on the back. It was the best I could manage. Then she went back to her chair.

She sighed. “You made me very happy, Marid. Happier than I got a right to be. All I ever wanted was a chance for a normal life.”

Well, what the hell, what did it cost me? “What do you want to do, Mom?” I asked.

She frowned. “I don’t really know. Something useful. Something real.”

I had a ludicrous image of Angel Monroe as a candy-striper in the hospital. I dismissed the notion immediately. “Abu Adil brought you to the city to spy on Papa, right?”

“Yeah, and I was a sucker to think he really wanted me.”

“And on what kind of terms did you leave him? Would you be willing to spy on him for us?”

She looked doubtful. “I really let him know I didn’t like being used,” she said. “If I went back there, I don’t know if he’d believe I was sorry. But maybe he would. He’s got a big ego, you know. Men like that, they always think their women’d walk through fire for ’em. I suppose I could make him buy it.” She gave me a wry grin. “I was always a good actress. Khalid used to tell me I was the best.”

Khalid, I remembered, had been her pimp. “Let me think about it, Mom. I wouldn’t get you into anything dangerous, but I’d like to have a secret weapon Abu Adil didn’t know anything about.”

“Well, anyway, I feel like I owe Papa something. For letting Abu Adil use me like that, and for all Papa’s done for me since I came to live in his house.”

I wasn’t crazy about letting my mother get involved any further with the intrigue, but I was aware that she might be a wonderful source of information. “Mom,” I said casually, “what do the letters A.L.M. mean to you?”

“A.L.M.? I don’t know. Nothing, really. The Alliance of Lingerie Models? That’s a hooker’s trade union, but I don’t even know if they got a local in this city.”

“Never mind. How about the Phoenix File? That ring a bell?”

I saw her flinch just a little. “No,” she said slowly, “I never heard of that at all.” There was something about the way she said it, though, that persuaded me she was lying. I wondered what she was hiding now. It took the optimistic edge off our previous conversation, making me doubt how much I could trust her. It wasn’t the right time to pursue the matter, but there’d be a moment of truth when I got out of the hospital again.

“Mom,” I said, yawning, “I’m getting kind of sleepy.”

“Oh, baby, I’ll go then.” She got up and fussed with my covers. “I’ll leave the curdled camel’s milk with you.”

“Great, Mom.”

She bent and kissed me again. “I’ll be back tomorrow. I’m gonna see how Papa’s doing now.”

“Give him my regards and tell him that I pray to Allah for his well-being.” She went to the door, turned, and waved to me. Then she was gone.

The door had barely shut before a thought struck me: The only person who knew that I’d gone to visit my mother in Algiers had been Saied the Half-Hajj. He must have located Mom for Reda Abu Adil. It must have been Saied who’d brought her to the city to spy on Papa and me. Saied had to be working for Abu Adil. He’d sold me out.

I promised myself still another moment of truth, one that the Half-Hajj would never forget.

Whatever the goal of the conspiracy, whatever the significance of the Phoenix File, it must be tremendously urgent to Abu Adil. In the past few months, he’d set Saied, Kmuzu, and Umm Saad to pry into our affairs. I wondered how many others there were that I hadn’t identified yet.

Later that afternoon, just before suppertime, Kmuzu came to visit. He was dressed in a white shirt, no tie, and a black suit. He looked like an undertaker. His expression was solemn, as if one of the nurses outside had just told him that my situation was hopeless. Maybe my burned hair would never grow back, or I’d have to live with that awful, cold white gunk on my skin for the rest of my life.

“How are you feeling, yaa Sidi?” he asked.

“I’m suffering from Delayed Post-Fire Stress Syndrome,” I said. “I’m just realizing how close I came to not making it. If you hadn’t been there to wake me up—”

“You would have been roused by the fire if you hadn’t been using the sleep add-on.”

I hadn’t thought of that. “I suppose,” I said. “Still, I owe you my life.”

“You rescued the master of the house, yaa Sidi. He shelters me and protects me from Reda Abu Adil. You and I are even.”

“I still feel I’m in your debt.” How much was my life worth to me? Could I give him something of equivalent value? “How would you like your freedom?” I asked.

Kmuzu’s brows drew together. “You know that liberty is what I desire most. You also know it’s in the hands of the master of the house. It’s up to him.”

I shrugged. “I have a certain amount of influence with Papa. I’ll see what I can do.”

“I would be most grateful, yaa Sidi.” Kmuzu’s expression had become noncommittal, but I knew he wasn’t as cool as he was pretending.

We talked for a few minutes more, and then he got up to go. He reassured me that my mother and our servants would be safe enough, inshallah. We had two dozen armed guards. Of course, they hadn’t prevented someone from entering the grounds and torching the west wing. Collusion, espionage, arson, attempted murder — it had been a long while since Papa’s enemies had so noisily expressed their displeasure.

After Kmuzu left, I got bored very quickly. I turned on the holoset fixed to the furniture across from my bed. It wasn’t a very good unit and the projection coordinates were off by a considerable margin. The vertical variable needed adjusting; the actors in some contemporary Central European drama struggled along knee-deep in the dresser. The elaborate production was subtitled, but unfortunately the captions were lost, out of sight with the actors’ legs in my sock drawer. Whenever there was a close-up, I’d see the person only from the top of his head to the bottom of his nose.

I didn’t think I’d care, because at home I don’t watch much holo. In the hospital, however, where the order of the day was boredom, I found myself turning it on again and again all day long. I browsed through a hundred channels from around the world, and I never found anything worth watching. That might have been due to my semi-stoned state and my lack of concentration; or it might have been the fault of the little amputated figures wading around on the dresser, speaking a dozen different languages.

So I bailed out of the Thuringian tragedy and told the holoset to turn itself off. Then I got out of bed mi mm «• my robe. That was kind of uncomfortable because of my burns and also because of the white gunk; I hated the way it felt, stuck to my hospital gown. I stuck my feet to the green paper slippers the hospital provided, and headed for the door.

An orderly, was coming in just as I was going out, carrying a tray with my lunch. I was pretty hungry and my mouth began to water, even before I found out what was on the plates. I decided to stay in the room until after I ate. “What do we have?” I asked.

The orderly set it down on my tray table. “You got tasty fried liver,” he said. His tone let me know it wasn’t my thing to look forward to.

“I’ll eat it later.” I left my room and walked slowly down the corridor. I spoke my name to the elevator, and in a few seconds the car arrived. I didn’t know how much freedom of movement I had.

When the elevator asked me what floor I wanted, I asked for Friedlander Bey’s room number. “VIP Suite One,” it told me.

“What floor is that on?” I asked. “Twenty.” That was as high as you could go. This hospital was one of only three in the city with VIP suites. It was the same hospital where I’d had my brainwork done, less than a year before. I liked having a private room, but I didn’t really need a suite. I didn’t really feel like entertaining.

“Do you wish the twentieth floor?” the elevator asked.

“You bet.”

“Do you wish the twentieth floor?” “Yes,” I said. It was a stupid elevator. I stood hunched over while it traveled slowly from the fifteenth floor to the twentieth. I was looking for a posture that didn’t feel sticky and squishy, and I wasn’t having any luck. I was also starting to get very sick of the white gunk’s intense peppermint smell.

I got off on Twenty, and the first thing I saw was a beefy, thick-necked woman in a white uniform sitting in the middle of a circular nurse’s station. There was a muscular man nearby too, dressed in a Eur-Am style security guard outfit. He had a huge seizure cannon bolstered on his hip, and he looked at me as if he were deciding whether or not to let me live.

“You’re a patient in this hospital,” said the nurse. Well, she was at least as bright as the elevator.

“Room 1540,” I said.

“This is the twentieth floor. What are you doing here?”

“I want to visit Friedlander Bey.”

“Just a moment.” She frowned and consulted her computer terminal. From her tone of voice, it was obvious she didn’t think anyone as scruffy as me could possibly be on her list of approved visitors. “Your name?”

“Marid Audran.”

“Well, here you are.” She glanced up at me. I thought maybe when she found my name on the list, she’d show a little grudging respect. No such luck. “Zain, show Mr. Audran to Suite One,” she told the guard.

Zain nodded. “Right this way, sir,” he said. I followed him down a lushly carpeted hallway, turned into a cross corridor, and stopped outside the door to Suite One.

I wasn’t surprised to see one of the Stones standing sentry duty. “Habib?” I said. I thought I saw his expression flicker just a bit. I pushed by him, half-expecting him to reach out his brawny arm to stop me, but he let me pass. I think both Stones accepted me now as Friedlander Bey’s deputy.

Inside the suite, the lights were turned off and the shades drawn on the windows. There were flowers everywhere, jammed into vases and growing from elaborate pots. The sweet fragrance was almost sickening; if it had been my room, I would have told a nurse to give some of the flowers to other sick people in the hospital.

Papa lay motionless in his bed. He didn’t look well. I knew he’d been burned as badly as I’d been, and his face and arms had been smeared with the same white gunk. His hair was neatly combed, but he hadn’t been shaved in a few days, probably because his skin was still too painful. He was awake, but his eyelids drooped. The Sonneine was knocking him out; he didn’t have my tolerance.

There was a second room adjoining, and I could see Youssef, Papa’s butler, and Tariq, his valet, sitting at a table playing cards. They started to get up, but I signaled that they should go on with their game. I sat in a chair beside Papa’s bed. “How do you feel, O Shaykh?” I said.

He opened his eyes, but I could see that it was difficult for him to stay awake. “I am being well cared for, my nephew,” he said.

That wasn’t what I’d asked, but I let it pass. “I pray every hour for your return to health.”

He attempted a weak smile. “It is good that you pray.” He paused to take a deep breath. “You risked your life to save me.”

I spread my hands. “I did what I had to.”

“And you suffered pain and injury on my account.”

“It is of small consequence. The important thing is that you are alive.”

“I owe you a great debt,” said the old man wearily.

I shook my head. “It was only what Allah decreed. I was but His servant.”

He frowned. Despite the Sonneine, he was still in discomfort. “When I am well, and we are both again at home, you must allow me to find a gift equal to your deed.”

Oh no, I thought, not another gift from Papa. “In the meantime,” I said, “how may I serve you?”

“Tell me: How did the fire start?”

“It was clumsily done, O Shaykh,” I said. “Immediately after we escaped, Kmuzu found matches and half-burnt rags soaked in some flammable fluid.”

Papa’s expression was grim, almost murderous. “I feared as much. Do you have any other clues? Whom do you suspect, O my nephew?”

“I know nothing more, but I will investigate the matter tirelessly when I leave the hospital.”

He seemed satisfied for the moment. “You must promise me one thing,” he said.

“What do you wish, O Shaykh?”

“When you learn the identity of the arsonist, he must die. We cannot appear weak to our enemies.”

Somehow I just knew he was going to say that. I was going to have to get a little pocket notebook just to keep track of everybody I was supposed to murder for him. “Yes,” I said, “he will die.” I didn’t promise that I, personally, would kill the son of a bitch. I mean, everybody dies. I thought I might turn the matter over to the Stones That Speak. They were like pet leopards; you had to take them off their leashes now and then and let them run around to catch their own meal.

“Good,” said Friedlander Bey. He let his eyes close.

“There are two more matters, O Shaykh,” I said hesitantly.

He looked at me again. His expression was agonized. “I am sorry, my nephew. I do not feel well. Even before the fire, I was suffering from some illness. The pain in my head and belly has grown worse.”

“Have the doctors here explained it?”

“No, they are fools. They tell me they can find nothing wrong. There are always more tests they wish to run. I am plagued by incompetence and tortured with indignity.”

“You must put yourself in their hands, my uncle,” I said. “I was treated very well in this hospital.”

“Yes, but you were not a frail old man, clinging hopelessly to life. Every one of their barbarous procedures robs me of another year of life.”

I smiled. “It’s not as bad as that, O Shaykh. Let them discover the cause of your ailment and cure it, and then soon you will be as strong as ever.”

Papa waved a hand impatiently, indicating that he didn’t want to talk about it anymore. “What are these other worries you will inflict on me?”

I had to approach both of them correctly. They were very sensitive matters. “The first concerns my servant, Kmuzu,” I said. “Even as I rescued you from the fire, Kmuzu rescued me. I promised him that I would ask you to reward him.”

“Why, of course, my son. He surely has earned a good reward.”

“I thought you might give him his freedom.”

Papa looked at me in silence, his expression empty. “No,” he said slowly, “it is not yet time. I will consider the circumstances, and decide on some other appropriate compensation.”

“But—” He stopped me with a single gesture. Even weakened as he was, the force of his personality would not permit me to press him further when he’d already made up his mind. “Yes, O Shaykh,” I said humbly. “The second matter concerns the widow and children of Jirji Shaknahyi, the police officer who was my partner. They are in desperate financial straits, and I wish to do more than merely offer them cash. I seek your permission to move them into our house, perhaps for only a little while.” Papa’s expression told me that he did not want to talk any longer. “You are my darling,” he said weakly. “Your decisions are my decisions. It is good.”

I bowed to him. “I will leave you to rest now. May Allah grant you peace and well-being.” “I will miss your presence, O my son.” I got up from my chair and glanced into the other room. Youssef and Tariq appeared to be engrossed in their card game, but I was sure they’d noted every word that had passed between Papa and me. As I headed for the door, Friedlander Bey began to snore. I tried to make no noise as I left the suite.

I went down in the elevator to my room, and climbed back into bed. I was glad to see that the liver lunch had been taken away. I’d just turned on the holoset again when Dr. Yeniknani came in to visit me. Dr. Yeniknani had assisted the neurosurgeon who’d amped my skull. He was a dark, fierce-looking Turk who was actually a student of Sufi mysticism. I’d gotten to know him pretty well during my last stay here, and I was glad to see him again. I looked up at the holoset and said “Off.”

“How are you feeling, Mr. Audran?” said Dr. Yeniknani. He came up next to my bed and smiled down at me. His strong teeth looked very white against his swarthy skin and his big, black mustache. “May I sit down?”

“Please, make yourself comfortable,” I said. “So, are you here to tell me that the fire baked my brain, or is this just a friendly call?”

“Your reputation suggests that you don’t have much brain left to bake,” he said. “No, I just wanted to see how you were feeling, and if there’s anything I can do for you.”

“I’m grateful. No, I don’t think I need anything. I’d just like to get out of here already.”

“Everyone says that. You’d think we tortured people in here.”

“I’ve had nicer holidays.”

“I have an offer for you, Mr. Audran,” said Dr. Yeniknani. “How would you like to hold off some of the effects of the aging process? Prevent the degeneration of your mind, the slow deterioration of your memory?”

“Uh oh,” I said. “There’s some kind of horrible catch coming, I can tell.”

“No catch. Dr. Lisan is experimenting with a technique that promises to do everything I just mentioned. Imagine never having to worry about your mental faculties wearing out as you get older. Your thought processes will be as sharp and quick when you’re two hundred as they are today.”

“Sounds great, Dr. Yeniknani. But you’re not talking about vitamin supplements here, are you?”

He gave me a rueful grin. “Well, no, not exactly. Dr. Lisan is working with plexiform cortical augmentation. He’s wrapping the cerebral cortex of the brain in a mesh of microscopic wire reticulations. The mesh is made of incredibly fine gold filaments to which are bonded the same organic nemes that link your corymbic implant to your central nervous system.”

“Uh huh.” It sounded like mad scientist stuff to me.

“The organic strands pass your brain’s electrical impulses from your cerebral cortex to the gold mesh, and back in the opposite direction. The mesh serves as an artificial storage mechanism. Our early results show that it can triple or quadruple the number of neuronal connections in your brain.”

“Like adding extra memory to a computer,” I said.

“That’s too easy an analogy,” said Dr. Yeniknani. I could tell that he was getting excited, explaining his research to me. “The nature of memory is holographic, you know, so we’re not just offering you a vast number of empty slots in which to file thoughts and recollections. It , goes beyond that — we’re supplying you with a better redundancy system. Your brain already stores each memory in many locations, but as brain cells wear out and die, some of these memories and learned activities disappear. With cortical augmentation, however, there is a capability for multiply storing information on a level many times higher than normal. Your mind will be safe, protected against gradual failure, except of course in the case of traumatic injury.”

“All I have to do,” I said dubiously, “is let you and Dr. Lisan plop my brain into a string bag, like a cabbage head at the market.”

“That’s all. You’ll never feel a thing.” Dr. Yeniknani grinned. “And I think I can promise, in addition, that the augmentation will speed up the processing in your brain. You’ll have the reflexes of a superman. You’ll—”

“How many people have you done this to, and how do they feel about it?”

He studied his long, tapered fingers. “We haven’t actually performed the operation on a human subject,” he said. “But our work with laboratory rats shows a lot of promise.”

I felt relieved. “I really thought you were trying to sell me on this,” I said.

“Just keep it in mind, Mr. Audran,” he said. “In a couple of years we’ll be looking for some brave volunteers to help us push back the frontiers of medicine.”

I reached up and tapped my two corymbic implants. “Not me. I’ve already done my part.”

Dr. Yeniknani shrugged. He leaned back in his chair and gazed at me thoughtfully. “I understand that you saved the life of your patron,” he said. “I once told you that death is desirable as our passage to paradise, and that you should not fear it. It is also true that life is even more desirable as our means of reconciliation with Allah, if we choose to follow the Straight Path. You are a courageous man.”

“I don’t think I really did anything brave,” I said. “I wasn’t really thinking about that at the time.”

“You do not strictly follow the commands of the Messenger of God,” said Dr. Yeniknani, “but you are a worshipful man in your own way. Two hundred years ago, a man said that the religions of the world are like a lantern with many different colored glass panels, but that God was the single flame within.” He shook my hand and stood up. “With your permission.”

It seemed that every time I spoke with Dr. Yeniknani, he gave me some Sufi wisdom to think about. “Peace be upon you,” I said.

“And upon you be peace,” he said. Then he turned and left my room. I ate supper later, a kind of baked lamb, chick-pea, and bean casserole with onions and tomatoes, which would have been pretty good if only someone would tell the kitchen staff about the existence of salt and maybe a little lemon juice. Then I was bored all over again, and I turned on the holoset, turned it off, stared at the walls, and turned it on again. Finally, to my great relief, the telephone beside my bed warbled. I answered it and said, “Praise Allah.”

I heard Morgan’s voice on the other end. I didn’t have an English-language daddy with me, and Morgan can’t even find the bathroom in Arabic, so the only words I understood were “Jawarski” and “Abu Adil.” I told him I’d talk to him when I got out of the hospital; I knew he didn’t understand any more of what I said than I’d understood of him, so I hung up.

I lay back on my pillow and stared up at the ceiling. I wasn’t really surprised to learn there might be a connection between Abu Adil and the crazy American killer. The way things were starting to shape up, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that Jawarski was really my own long-lost brother.

I spent almost a week in the hospital. I watched the holoset and got a lot of reading done, and despite my wishes a few people came to see me — Lily, the sexchange who had a crush on me, Chiri, Yasmin. There were two surprises: the first was a basket of fruit from Umar Abdul-Qawy; the second was a visit from six total strangers, people who lived in the Budayeen and the neighborhood around the copshop. Among them I recognized the young woman with the baby to whom I’d given some money, that day Shaknahyi and I had been sent to look for On Cheung.

She seemed just as shy and embarrassed as she had when she’d approached me in the street. “O Shaykh,” she said in a trembling voice, setting a cloth-covered basket on my tray table, “we all beseech Allah for your recovery.”

“Must be working,” I said, smiling, “because the doctor says I’ll be out of here today.”

“Praise God,” said the woman. She turned to the others who’d come with her. “These people are the parents of children, the children who call to you in the streets and at the police station house. They are grateful for your generosity.”

These men and women lived in the kind of poverty I’d known most of my life. The odd thing was that they didn’t show any petulance toward me. It may seem ungrateful, but sometimes you resent your benefactors. When I was young, I’d learned how humiliating it can be to take charity, especially when you’re so desperate that you can’t afford the luxury of pride.

It all depends on the attitude of the givers. I’ll never forget how much I hated Christmas as a kid in Algiers.

Christians in the neighborhood used to put together baskets of food for my mother, my baby brother, and me. Then they’d come by our shabby apartment and stand around beaming at us, proud of their good deeds. They’d look from my mother to Hussain to me, waiting until we’d acted appropriately grateful. How many times I wished that we weren’t so hungry, that we could just throw those goddamn canned goods back in their faces!

I was afraid these parents might feel the same way about me. I wanted them to know that they didn’t have to go through any forelock-tugging acts of appreciation for my benefit.

“I’m glad to help, my friends,” I said. “But, really, I got my own selfish motives. In the noble Qur’an it says, ‘That which you spend for good must go to parents and near kindred and orphans and the needy and the wayfarer. And whatever good ye do, lo! Allah is aware of it.’ So maybe if I kick a few kiam to a worthy cause, it’ll make up for the night I stayed up partying with the blond twins from Hamburg.”

I saw a couple of my visitors smile. That let me relax a little. “Even so,” said the young mother, “we thank you.”

“Less than a year ago, I wasn’t doing so well myself. Sometimes I was eating only every other day. There were times when I didn’t have a home to go to, and I slept in parks and abandoned buildings. I been lucky since, and I’m just returning a favor. I remember how much kindness everyone showed me when I was broke.” Actually, practically none of that was true, but it sure was gracious as all hell.

“We’ll leave you now, O Shaykh,” said the woman. “You probably need your rest. We just wanted to let you know, if there’s anything we can do for you, it would give us much happiness.”

I studied her closely, wondering if she meant what she said. “As it happens, I’m looking for two guys,” I said. “On Cheung the baby seller, and this killer, Paul Jawarski. If anyone’s got any information, I’d be very grateful.”

I saw them exchange uneasy glances. No one said anything. It was just as I expected. “Allah grant you peace and well-being, Shaykh Marid al-Amin,” murmured the woman, backing toward the door.

I’d earned an epithet! She’d called me Marid the Trustworthy. “Allah yisallimak,” I replied. I was glad when they left.

About an hour later, a nurse came in and told me that my doctor had signed my release from the hospital. That was fine with me. I called Kmuzu, and he brought me some clean clothes. My skin was still very tender and it hurt to get dressed, but I was just glad to be going home.

“The American, Morgan, wishes to see you, yaa Sidi,” said Kmuzu. “He says he has something to tell you.”

“Sounds like good news,” I said. I got into the electric sedan, and Kmuzu closed the passenger door. Then he went around and got in behind the steering wheel.

“You also have some business matters to take care of. There is a considerable amount of money on your desk.”

“Uh yeah, I guess so.” There should be two fat pay envelopes from Friedlander Bey, plus my share of the take from Chiri’s.

Kmuzu let his glance slide over to me. “Do you have any plans for that money, yaa Sidi?” he asked.

I smiled at him. “What, you got a horse you want me to back?”

Kmuzu frowned. No sense of humor, I recalled. “Your wealth has grown large. With the money that came while you were in the hospital, you have more than a hundred thousand kiam, yaa Sidi. Much good could be done with that great a sum.”

“Didn’t know you were keeping such close tabs on my bank balance, Kmuzu.” He was such a friend sometimes, I tended to forget that he was really only a spy. “I had some ideas about putting the money to good use. A free clinic in the Budayeen, maybe, or a soup kitchen.”

I’d really startled him. “That’s wonderful and unexpected!” he said. “I heartily approve.”

“I’m so glad,” I said sourly. I really had been thinking along those lines, but I didn’t know how to begin. “How’d you like to study the feasibility? All my time is taken up with this Abu Adil-Jawarski thing.”

“I would be more than happy. I don’t think you have enough to fund a clinic, yaa Sidi, but providing hot meals to the poor, that is a worthy gesture.”

“I hope it’s more than just a gesture. Let me know when you have some plans and figures for me to look at.”

The nice part of all this was that it would keep Kmuzu busy and out of my hair for a while.

When I went into the house, Youssef grinned and gave me a bow. “Welcome home, O Shaykh!” he said. He insisted on wrestling my suitcase away from Kmuzu. The two of them followed me down the corridor.

“Your apartment is still being rebuilt, yaa Sidi,” said Kmuzu. “I’ve made us comfortable in a suite in the east wing. On the first floor, away from your mother and Umm Saad.”

“Thank you, Kmuzu.” I was already thinking about the work I had to do. I couldn’t take any more time off to recuperate. “Is Morgan here now, or do I have to call him?”

“He’s in the antechamber of the office,” said Youssef. “Is that all right?”

“Fine. Youssef, why don’t you give that suitcase back to Kmuzu. He can carry it to our temporary apartment. I want you to let me into Friedlander Bey’s inner office. You don’t think he’d mind if I used it while he’s in the hospital, do you?”

Youssef thought about that for a moment. “No,” he said slowly, “I don’t see any problem.”

I smiled. “Good. I’m gonna have to take care of his business until he’s healthy again.”

“Then I’ll leave you, yaa Sidi,” said Kmuzu. “May I begin working on our charity project?”

“As soon as possible,” I said. “Go in safety.”

“God be with you,” said Kmuzu. He turned toward the servants’ wing. I went on with Youssef to Papa’s private office.

Youssef paused at the threshold. “Shall I send the American in?” he asked.

“No,” I said, “let him wait a couple of minutes. I need my English-language add-on, or I won’t understand a word he says. Would you mind fetching it?” I told him where to find it. “Then when you come back, you can show Morgan in.”

“Of course, O Shaykh.” Youssef hurried away to do my bidding.

I felt an unpleasant thrill when I sat in Friedlander Bey’s chair, as if I’d occupied a place of unholy strength. I didn’t like the feeling at all. For one thing, I had no desire to step into the role of Junior Crime Lord, or even the more legitimate office of International Power Broker. I was at Papa’s feet now; but if, Allah forbid, something terminal were to happen to him, I wouldn’t hang around to be anointed as his successor. I had other plans for my future.

I glanced through the papers on Papa’s desk for a few minutes, finding nothing racy or incriminating. I was about to start rummaging through the drawers when Youssef returned. “I’ve brought the entire rack, yaa Sidi,” he said.

“Thank you, Youssef. Please show Morgan in now.”

“Yes, O Shaykh.” I was getting to like all this subservience, but that was a bad sign.

I chipped in the English daddy just as the big, blond American came in. “Where y’at, man?” he said, grinning. “I never been here before. You got a nice place.”

“Friedlander Bey’s got a nice place,” I said, indicating that Morgan should make himself comfortable. “I’m just his errand boy.”

“Whatever you say. Now, you want to hear what I got?”

I leaned back in the chair. “Where’s Jawarski?” I said.

Morgan’s grin disappeared. “Still don’t know, man. I got the word out to everybody, but I haven’t heard a clue. I don’t think he’s left the city. He’s here somewhere, but he’s done a damn good job of evaporating.”

“Yeah, you right. So what’s the good news?”

He rubbed his stubbly chin. “I know somebody who knows somebody who works for some business front that’s owned by Reda Abu Adil. It’s a shady package delivery service. Anyway, this guy my friend knows says he heard somebody else say that this Paul Jawarski wanted his money. Seems like your friend Abu Adil arranged to make it easy for Jawarski to blast his way out of the pokey.”

“A couple of guards died on account of it, but I don’t suppose that bothers Abu Adil none.”

“I suppose not. So Abu Adil hired Jawarski through this delivery company to come to the city. I don’t know what Abu Adil wanted, but you know what Jawarski’s specialty is. This friend of mine calls it the Jawarski Finishing School.”

“And now Abu Adil is making sure Jawarski stays unstumbled on, right?”

“The way I figure it.”

I closed my eyes and thought about it. It made perfect sense. I didn’t have hard evidence that Abu Adil had hired Jawarski to kill Shaknahyi, but in my heart I knew it was true. I also knew Jawarski had killed Blanca and the others in Shaknahyi’s notebook. And because Lieutenant Hajjar was two-timing both Friedlander Bey and the halls of justice, I was pretty confident that the police were never going to dig Jawarski up. Even if they did, Jawarski would never be prosecuted.

I opened my eyes and stared at Morgan. “Just keep looking, buddy,” I said, “because I don’t think anybody else is.”

“Money?”

I blinked at him. “What?”

“You got any money for me?”

I stood up angrily. “No, I ain’t got money for you! I told you I’d pay you another five hundred when you found Jawarski. That’s the deal.”

Morgan stood up. “All right, man, just take it easy, okay?”

I was embarrassed by my outburst. “I’m sorry, Morgan,” I said. “I’m not mad at you. This whole business is making me crazy.”

“Uh yeah. I know you were good friends with Shaknahyi. All right, I’ll keep at it.”

“Thanks, Morgan.” I followed him out of the office and showed him to the front door. “We’re not gonna let them get away with it.”

“Crime don’t pay, right, man?” Morgan grinned and slapped my burned shoulder. The pain made me wince.

“Yeah, you right.” I walked with him down the curving gravel driveway. I wanted to get away from the house, and if I left right now, I could escape without Kmuzu tagging along. “Like a ride to the Budayeen?” I asked.

“No, that’s all right. I got some other stuff to do, man. See you later.”

I turned back toward the house and got the car out of the garage. I thought I’d drop in on my club and see if it was still in one piece.

The day shift was still on, and there were only five or six customers. Indihar frowned and looked away when I caught her eye. I decided to sit at a table, rather than at my usual place at the bar. Pualani came up to say hello. “Want a White Death?” she asked.

“White Death? What’s that?”

She shrugged her slender shoulders. “Oh, that’s what Chiri calls that awful gin and bingara thing you drink.” She grimaced.

“Yeah, bring me a White Death.” It wasn’t a bad name.

Brandi was on stage, dancing to the Sikh propaganda music that had suddenly become wildly popular. I hated it a lot. I didn’t want to listen to political rantings, even if it had a great beat and a catchy two-bar figure.

“Here you go, boss,” said Pualani, dropping a cocktail napkin in front of me and pinning it in place with a highball glass. “Mind if I sit down?”

“Huh? Oh, sure.”

“Want to ask you about something. I’m thinkin’ of, you know, havin’ my brain wired so I can use moddies?” She cocked her head to the side and peered at me, as if I might not comprehend what she was telling me. She didn’t say anything more.

“Yeah,” I said at last. You had to respond like that with Pualani or you could spend the rest of your life trapped in the same conversation.

“Well, everybody says you know more’n anybody about it. I was wonderin’ if you could, like, recommend somebody?”

“A surgeon?”

“Uhhuh.”

“Well, there’s plenty of doctors around who’ll do it for you. Most of ’em are pretty reliable.”

Pualani gave me a pretty frown. “Well, I was wonderin’ if I could go to your doctor and use your name.”

“Dr. Lisan doesn’t have a private practice. But his assistant, Dr. Yenjknani, is a good man.”

Pualani squinted at me. “Would you write his name down for me?”

“Sure.” I scribbled the name and commcode on the cocktail napkin.

“And also,” she said, “does he do tits?”

“I don’t think so, honey.” Now Pualani had already spent a small fortune modifying her body. She had a cute ass that had been rounded with silicone, and cheekbones accentuated with silicone, and her chin and nose reshaped, and she’d already had breast implants. She had a devastating figure, and I thought it was a mistake to blow up her bust any more; but I’d learned a long time ago that you can’t reason with dancers when it comes to breast size.

“Oh, okay,” she said, obviously disappointed. I took a sip of my White Death. Pualani snowed no sign of going away. I waited for her to continue. “You know Indihar?” she said.

“Sure.”

“Well, she’s havin’ a lot of trouble. She’s really broke.”

“I tried giving her a loan, but she wouldn’t take it.”

Pualani shook her head. “No, she won’t take a loan. But maybe you could help her out some other way.” Then she got up and wandered toward the front of the club, and sat down next to a couple of Oriental men wearing sailor’s caps.

Sometimes I just wished real life would leave me alone. I gulped a little more of my drink, then stood up and went to the bar. Indihar noticed me and came over. “Get you something, Marid?” she asked.

“Jirji’s pension ain’t gonna help you very much, right?”

She gave me an annoyed look and turned away. She headed for the other end of the bar. “Don’t want your money,” she said.

I followed her. “I’m not offering money. How would you like a low-hassle job where you can live free and watch your kids all day? You wouldn’t have to pay a babysitter.”

She turned around. “What’s this all about?” Her expression was mistrustful.

I smiled. “I mean bringing Little Jirji, Zahra, and Hakim and moving into one of the empty apartments in Papa’s house. Save you a lot of money every month, Indihar.”

She considered that. “Maybe. Why would you want me in Papa’s house?”

I had to come up with some phony but real-sounding reason. “It’s my mother. I need someone to keep an eye on her. I’d be willing to pay you whatever you wanted.”

Indihar patted the bar with one hand. “Already got a job, remember?”

“Hey,” I said, “if that’s the problem, you’re fired.”

Her face lost its color. “The hell you talking about?”

“Think about it, Indihar. I’m offering you a nice home, free rent and meals, plus good money every week for a part-time job making sure my mom doesn’t do anything crazy. Your kids’ll be taken care of and you won’t have to come into this bar every day. You won’t have to take your clothes off and dance, and you won’t have to deal with the drunk jerks and the lazy-ass girls like Brandi.”

She raised her eyebrows. “I’ll let you know, Marid,” she said. “Soon as I figure out what kind of hustle you’re trying to pull. Sounds too good to be straight, sweetheart. I mean, you’re not wearing a Santa Glaus moddy or nothing.”

“Yeah, you think about it. Talk it over with Chiri. You trust her. See what she thinks.”

Indihar nodded. She was still watching me uncertainly. “Even if I say yes,” she said, “I’m not gonna fuck you.”

I sighed. “Yeah, you right.” I went back to my table. A minute after I sat down again, Fuad il-Manhous let himself drop into the other chair. “I woke up the other day,” he said in his high-pitched, nasal voice, “and my mama says to me, ‘Fuad, we don’t have no money, go out and take one of the chickens and sell it.’ ”

He was starting one of his dumb fables. He was so desperate for attention that he’d make himself look like a total fool just to make me laugh. The sad thing was that even his most fantastic stories were based on Fuad’s actual fuck-ups.

He looked at me closely, to make sure I understood him so far. “So I did. I went out to my mama’s chicken coop and I chased those chickens around and around till I caught one. Then I carried it down the hill and up the hill and over the bridge and through the streets till I came to the Souk of the Poultry Dressers. Well, I never took a chicken to market before, so I didn’t know what to do. I stood there in the middle of the square all day, until I saw the merchants locking their money up in boxes and loading their leftover stuff onto their carts. I’d already heard the sunset call to prayer, so I knew I didn’t have much time.

“I took my chicken to one of the men and told him I wanted to sell it, and he looked at it and shook his head.

’This chicken has lost all its teeth,” he says.

“So I looked at it, and by Allah, he was right. That chicken didn’t have a tooth in its head. So I says, ‘What will you give me for it?’ And the man gave me a handful of copper fiqs.

“Then I walked home with one hand in my pocket and my other hand holding the copper fiqs. Just when I was crossing the bridge over the drainage canal, there was this fierce swarm of gnats. I started waving my hands and swatting them, and then I ran the rest of the way across the bridge. When I got to the other side, I looked and I saw that I didn’t have the money anymore. I’d dropped all the coins into the canal.”

Fuad coughed quietly. “Can I have a glass of beer, Marid?” he asked. “I’m getting real thirsty.”

I signaled to Indihar to draw one. “You paying for this, Fuad?” I said. His long face fell further. He looked like a puppy about to get a beating. “Just kidding,” I said. “The beer’s on the house. I want to hear how this story comes out.”

Indihar set a mug in front of him, then stood around to hear the rest of the story. “Bismillah,” murmured Fuad, and he took a long gulp. Then he set the beer down, gave me a quick, thankful grimace, and started again. “Anyway,” he said, “when I got home, my mama was real mad. I didn’t have no chicken and I didn’t have no money. ‘Next time,’ she says, ‘put it in your pocket.’

“ ‘Ah,’ I go, ‘I should have thought of that.’ So the next morning, my mama wakes me up and tells me to take another chicken to the souk. Well, I got dressed and went out and chased them around some more and caught one and carried it down the hill and up the hill and across the bridge and through the streets to the souk. And this time I didn’t stand in the hot sun all morning and all afternoon. I went right up to the merchant and showed him the second chicken.

“ ‘This one looks as bad as the one you brought yesterday,’ he says. ‘And besides, I’ll have to provide space far ft here in my stall all day. But I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll give you a big jug of honey in trade. It’s very fine honey.*”

“Well, it was a good trade because my mama had four other chickens, but she didn’t have no honey. So I took the jug of honey from him and started home. I’d just crossed the bridge when I remembered what my mama told me. I opened the jug and poured the honey in my pocket. By the time I climbed the last hill, it was all gone.

“So my mama was real mad again. ‘Next time,’ she says, ‘balance it on your head.’

“ ‘Ah,’ I go, ‘I should have thought of that.’ On the third morning, I got up and caught another chicken, and carried it to the souk and brought it to the merchant.

“ ‘Are all your chickens in such bad shape?’ he says. ‘Well, in the name of Allah, I will give you my supper for this bird.’ And the merchant gave me a mess of curds and whey.

“Well, I remembered what my mama told me, and I balanced it on my head. I went through the streets and across the bridge and down the hill and up the hill. When I got home, my mama asked me what I got for the chicken. ‘Enough curds and whey for our evening meal,’ I go.

“ Then where is it?’ she says.

“ ‘On my head,’ I go. She took one look and dragged me to the washstand. She poured a whole pitcher of cold water over my head and scrubbed my hair with a stiff brush. All the time she was shouting and blaming me for losing the curds and whey.

“ ‘Next time, carry it carefully in your hands,’ she says.

“ ‘Ah,’ I go, T should have thought of that.’ So the next morning, very early before the sun came up, I went out to the chicken coop and chose the nicest, fattest chicken that was left. I left the house before my mama woke up, and I carried the chicken down the hill and through the streets to the Souk of the Poultry Dressers.

“ ‘Good morning, my friend,’ says the merchant. ‘I see you have another aged, toothless chicken.’

“ ‘This is a very nice chicken,’ I go, ‘and I want what it’s worth and nothing less.’

“The merchant looked at the chicken closely and mumbled to himself. ‘You know,’ he says at last, ‘these feathers are stuck on very tight.’

“ ‘Isn’t that how they’re supposed to be?’ I go.

“He pointed to a row of dead chickens with their heads cut off. ‘See any feathers on these?’

“ ‘No,’ I go.

“ ‘Ever eat a roast chicken with feathers?’

“ ‘No,’ I go.

“ Then I’m sorry. It will cost me much time and labor to unstick all these feathers. I can only offer you this big fierce tomcat.’

“I thought that was a good trade, because the tomcat would catch the mice and rats that crept into the coop and stole the chicken feed. I remembered what my mama had told me, and I tried to carry the tomcat carefully in my hands. Just after I went down the hill and before I went up the hill, the tomcat snarled and spit and squirmed and scratched until I couldn’t hold him any longer. He jumped out of my hands and ran away.

“I knew my mama was gonna be mad again. ‘Next time,’ she says, ‘tie him with a string and pull him behind you.’

“ ‘Ah,’ I go, ‘I should have thought of that.’ Now, there’s only two chickens left, so it took me longer to catch one the next morning, even though I didn’t even care which one it was. When I got to the souk, the merchant was very glad to see me.

“ ‘Praise Allah that we are both well this morning,’ he says, smiling at me. ‘I see you have a chicken.’

“ ‘Yeah, you right,’ I go. I laid the chicken on the warped board he used for a counter.

“The merchant picked up the chicken and weighed it in his hands, and thumped it with his finger like you’d thump a melon. ‘This chicken doesn’t lay eggs, does it?’ he asks.

“ ‘Sure, it lays eggs! It’s the best egg-laying hen my mama ever had.’

“The man shook his head and frowned. ‘You see,’ he says, ‘that’s a problem. Every egg this chicken lays, that’s less meat on its bones. This might’ve been a nice heavy chicken if it hadn’t laid no eggs. It’s a good thing you brought it to me now, before it shrunk away to nothing.’

“ ‘All the eggs ought to be worth something,’ I go.

“ ‘I don’t see no eggs. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll trade you this killed, cleaned chicken ready to eat for your egg-laying chicken. You won’t find a better deal than that from any of these other poultry dressers. Once they hear this chicken is such a good egg-layer, they won’t give you two copper fiqs.’

“I was just glad this man had taken a liking to me, because he was telling me things none of the other merchants would’ve told me. So I traded my worthless egg-layer for his dressed chicken, even though to me it looked a little scrawny and smelled funny and was kind of the wrong color. I remembered what my mama told me, so I tied a string around it and pulled it along behind me as I walked home.

“You should’ve heard my mama yelling at me when I got home! That poor plucked chicken was completely ruined. ‘By the life of my eyes!’ she shouted. ‘You are the biggest fool in all the lands of Islam! Next time, carry it on your shoulder!’

“ ‘Ah,’ I go, ‘I should have thought of that.’

“So there was one chicken left, and I promised myself that I was gonna get the better of the deal the next day. Again I didn’t wait for my mama to wake me. I rose early, scrubbed my face and hands, put on my best suit of clothes, and went out to the coop. It took me an hour to catch that last chicken, which had always been my mama’s favorite. It’s name was Mouna. Finally I got my hands on its thrashing, flapping body. I carried it out of the chicken coop, down the hill, up the hill, across the bridge, through the streets to the souk.

“But this morning the poultry dresser was not in his stall. I stood there for several minutes, wondering where my friend could be. Finally, a girl came up to me. She was dressed as a modest Muslim woman should be dressed, and I couldn’t see her face because of the veil; but when she spoke, I knew from her voice that she probably was the most beautiful girl I’d ever met.”

“You can get yourself in a lot of trouble that way,” I told Fuad. “I’ve made the mistake of falling in love over the telephone. More than once.”

He frowned at the interruption and went on. “She was probably the most beautiful girl I’d ever met. Anyway, she says, ‘Are you the gentleman who has been trading his chickens with my father every morning?’

“I go, ‘I’m not sure. I don’t know who your father is. Is this his poultry stall?’ She says it is. I go, Then I’m that gentleman, and I have our last chicken right here. Where’s your father this morning?’

“Big bright tears collect in the corners of her eyes. She looks up at me with a pitiful expression on her face, at least the part of it I can see. ‘My father is desperately ill,’ she says. ‘The doctor doesn’t expect him to live through the day.’

“Well, I was shocked by the news. ‘May Allah have mercy on your father, and grant him health. If he dies, I’ll have to sell my chicken to someone else today.”

“The girl didn’t say anything for a moment. I don’t think she really cared what happened to my chicken. At last she said, ‘My father sent me here this morning to find you. His conscience is troubling him. He says that he traded unfairly with you, and he wishes to make up for it before he is called to the bosom of Allah. He begs that you accept his donkey, the very donkey that faithfully pulled my father’s cart for ten years.”

“I was a little suspicious about this offer. After all, I didn’t know this girl as well as I knew her father. ‘Let me fet this straight,” I go. ‘You want to trade your fine donkey for this chicken?’

“ ‘Yes,’ she says.

“ Til have to think it over. It’s our last chicken, you know.’ I thought about it and thought about it, but I couldn’t see anything that would make my mama mad. I was sure that finally she’d be happy about one of my trades. ‘All right,’ I go, and I grabbed the donkey’s rope halter. Take the chicken, and tell your father that I will pray for his well-being. May he return tomorrow to his stall in this souk, inshallah.’

“ ‘Inshallah,’ the girl says, and she lowered her eyes to the ground. She went away with my mama’s last chicken, and I never saw her again. I think about her a lot, though, because she’s probably the only woman I’ll ever love.”

“Yeah, you right,” I said, laughing. Fuad has this thing for mean hookers, the kind who carry straight razors. You can find him every night over at the Red Light Lounge, Fatima and Nassir’s place. Nobody else I know even has the guts to go in there alone. Fuad spends a lot of time in there, falling in love and getting ripped off.

“Anyway,” he said, “I started leading the donkey home, when I remembered what my mama told me. So I strained and pushed and lifted until I got that donkey to my shoulders. I got to admit, I really didn’t know why my mama wanted me to carry it that way, when it could walk by itself just as well as I could. Still, I didn’t want her mad at me anymore.

“I staggered toward home with the donkey across my back, and as I climbed down the hill, I passed the beautiful walled palace of Shaykh Salman Mubarak. Now, you know Shaykh Salman lived in that great mansion with his beautiful daughter, who was sixteen years old and had never laughed from the time she’d been born. She had never even smiled. She could talk all right, but she just didn’t. Nobody, not even her wealthy father, had ever heard her say a single word since the shaykh’s wife, the girl’s mother, had died when the girl was three years old. The doctors said that if anyone could make her laugh, she’d be able to speak again; or if anyone could make her speak, she’d then laugh as any normal person might. Shaykh Salman had made the usual offers of riches and his daughter’s hand in marriage, but suitor after suitor had tried and failed. The girl just sat glumly by the window, watching the world pass by below.

“That’s when I happened to walk by carrying the donkey. It must have looked pretty weird, upside down on my back with its hooves waving in the air. I was told later that the shaykh’s beautiful daughter stared at me and the donkey for a few seconds, and then burst out into a helpless fit of laughter. She recovered her speech then too, because she called loudly for her father to come look. The shaykh was so grateful, he ran out into the road to meet me.”

“Did he give you his daughter?” asked Indihar.

“You bet,” said Fuad.

“How romantic,” she said.

“And when I married her, I became the richest man in the city after the shaykh himself. And my mother was quite pleased, and didn’t mind that she had no chickens left at all. She came to live with my wife and me in the shaykh’s palace.”

I sighed. “How much of that was true, Fuad?” I asked.

“Oh,” he said, “I forgot a part. It turns out that the shaykh was really the poultry dresser, who went to the souk every morning. I don’t remember the reason why. And so the veiled girl was just as beautiful as I thought she’d be.”

Indihar reached over and grabbed Fuad’s half-full mug of beer. She raised it to her lips and finished it off. “I thought the poultry dresser was dying,” she said.

Fuad frowned in serious thought. “Yeah, well, he was, see, but when he heard his daughter laughing and calling his name, he was miraculously healed.”

“All praise to Allah, Fount of blessings,” I said.

“I made up that part about Shaykh Salman and his beautiful daughter,” said Fuad.

“Uh huh,” said Indihar. “You and your mama really raise chickens?”

“Oh sure,” he said eagerly, “but we don’t got any right at the moment.”

“Because you traded them?”

“I told my mama we should start again with younger chickens that still got their teeth.”

“Thank God, I have to go mop up the spilled beer,” said Indihar. She went back behind the bar.

I drained the last of my White Death. After Fuad’s story, I wanted three or four more drinks. “Another beer?” I asked him.

He stood up. “Thanks, Marid, but I got to make some money. I want to buy a gold chain for this girl.”

“Why don’t you give her one of the ones you try selling to the tourists?”

He looked horrified. “She’d scratch my eyes out!” he said. It sounded like he’d found another hot-blooded sweetheart. “By the way, the Half-Hajj said I should show you this.” He pulled something out of his pocket and dropped it in front of me.

I picked it up. It was heavy, shiny, and made of steel, about six inches long. I’d never held one in my hand before, but I knew what it was: an empty clip from an automatic pistol.

Not many people used the old projectile weapons anymore, but Paul Jawarski used a .45 caliber gun. That’s what this came from.

“Where’d you get this, Fuad?” I asked casually, turning the clip over in my hands.

“Oh, in the alley behind Gay Che’s. Sometimes you can find money there, it falls out of their pockets when they go out into the alley. I showed it to Saied first, and he said you’d like to see it.”

“Uh huh. I never heard of Gay Che’s.”

“You wouldn’t like it. It’s a tough place. I don’t ever go in there. I just hang around in the alley.”

“Sounds smart. Where is it?”

Fuad closed one eye and looked thoughtful. “Hamidiyya. On Aknouli Street.”

Hamidiyya. Reda Abu Adil’s little kingdom. “Now, why did Saied think I’d want to know about this?” I asked.

Fuad shrugged. “He didn’t tell me. Did you? Want to see it, I mean?”

“Yeah, thanks, Fuad. I owe you one.”

“Really? Then maybe—”

“Another time, Fuad.” I made a distracted, dismissing motion with my hand. I guess he took the hint, because in a little while I noticed he was gone. I had a lot to think about: Was this a clue? Was Paul Jawarski hiding out in one of Abu Adil’s crummier enterprises? Or was it some kind of a trap baited by Saied the Half-Hajj, who couldn’t know that I no longer trusted him?

I didn’t have any choice. Trap or not, I was going to follow it up. But not just yet waited until the next morning before I followed up on Fuad’s information. I had the disconcerting feeling that I was being set up, but at the same time I felt I might as well live dangerously. I sure wasn’t getting any closer to finding Jawarski using more conventional methods. Maybe sticking my head on the block would tempt the executioner to make an appearance.

And then maybe the clip didn’t belong to Jawarski, after all, and there wasn’t anything at Gay Che’s but a lot of guys in exquisitely tailored caftans.

I thought about this as I walked back on the Street, past Frenchy Benoit’s club to the cemetery. I had a sense that events were moving quickly to their conclusion, although I couldn’t yet tell if that ending would be tragic or happy for me. I wished I had Shaknahyi to advise me, and I wished I had made better use of his experience while he was still alive. It was his grave I wanted to visit first.

There were several people at the entrance to the cemetery, sitting or squatting on the uneven, broken slabs of concrete. They all jumped to their feet when they saw me, the old men selling Coca-Cola and Sharab from battered coolers on tricycles, the toothless old women grinning and shoving bundles of dead, drooping flowers in my face, the children crying “O Generous! O Compassionate!” and blocking my way. Sometimes I don’t respond well to organized, clamorous begging. I lose a lot of my sympathy. I pushed through the crowd, stopping only to trade a couple of kiam for a wilted bouquet. Then I passed beneath the brick arch, into the cemetery.

Shaknahyi’s grave was across the way, near the wall on the western side. The dirt was still bare, although a little grass had begun to poke through. I bent down and placed the meager bouquet at the grave’s head, which in accordance with Muslim tradition pointed toward Mecca.

I stood up and looked back toward Sixteenth Street, over the many graves thrown haphazardly together. The Muslim tombs were each marked with a crescent and star, but there were also a few Christian crosses, a few Stars of David, and many unmarked at all. Shaknahyi’s final resting place had only an upended flat rock with his name and the date of his death scratched on. Someday soon that rock would topple over, and no doubt it would be stolen by another mourner too poor to afford a proper marker. Shaknahyi’s name would be removed with a little sandpaper or steel wool, and the rock would serve as someone else’s headstone until it was stolen again. I made a mental note to pay for a permanent grave marker. He deserved that much, at least.

A young boy in a robe and turban tugged on my sleeve. “O Father of sadness,” he said in a high-pitched voice, “I can recite.”

This was one of the young shaykhs who’d committed the entire Qur’an to memory. He probably supported his family by reciting verses in the cemetery. “I will give you ten kiam to pray for my friend,” I said. He’d caught me in a weak moment.

“Ten kiam, effendi! Do you want me to recite the whole Book?”

I put my hand on his bony shoulder. “No. Just something comforting about God and Heaven.”

The boy frowned. “There’s much more about Hell and the eternal flames,” he said.

“I know. I don’t want to hear that.”

“All right, effendi.” And he began murmuring the ancient phrases in a singsong voice. I left him beside Shaknahyi’s grave and wandered back toward the entrance.

My friend and occasional lover, Nikki, had been laid to rest in a low whitewashed tomb that was already falling into disrepair. Nikki’s family certainly could have afforded to bring her body home for burial, but they’d preferred to leave her here. Nikki had been a sexchange, and her family probably didn’t want to be embarrassed. Anyway, this lonely tomb seemed to be in keeping with Nikki’s hard, loveless life. On my desk in the police station, I still kept a small brass scarab that had belonged to her. A week didn’t go by when I didn’t think of Nikki.

I passed by the graves of Tamiko, Devi, and Selima, the Black Widow Sisters, and of Hassan the Shiite, the son of a bitch who’d almost killed me. I found myself maundering gloomily along the narrow brick paths, and I decided that wasn’t how I wanted to spend the rest of the afternoon. I shook off the growing depression and headed back toward the Street. When I glanced over my shoulder, the young shaykh was still standing beside Shaknahyi’s grave, reciting the holy words. I felt sure that he’d stay there ten kiams’ worth, even after I was gone.

I had to force my way through the mob of beggars again, but this time I threw a handful of coins to them. When they scrambled for the money, it made it easier to escape. I undipped my phone from my belt and spoke Saied the Half-Hajj’s commcode. I waited a few rings, and I was about to give up when he answered. “Marhaba, “he said.

“It’s Marid. How you doin?”

“Aw right. What’s happening?”

“Oh, nothing much. I got out of the hospital.”

“Ah! Glad to hear it.”

“Yeah, I get tired of that place. Anyway, you with Jacques and Mahmoud?”

“Uh yeah. We’re all sitting in Courane’s getting drunk. Why don’t you come on by?”

“I think I will. I need you to do me a favor.”

“Yeah?”

“Tell you about it later. See you in maybe half an hour. Ma’ as-salaama.”

“Allah yisallimak.”

I clipped the phone back on my belt. I’d walked all the way back to Chiriga’s, and suddenly I had a terrific urge to go in and see if Indihar or any of the girls had a few sunnies or tri-phets they could spare. It wasn’t withdrawal I was feeling; it was a hunger that had been growing for many days. It took a lot of willpower to fight off the craving. It would have been so much easier to admit my true nature and give in. I might have, except I knew that later I’d need my brains unaddled.

I kept on walking until I got to Fifth Street, when I was stopped by one of the most unusual sights I’ve ever seen. Laila, the old black hag who owned the modshop was standing in the middle of the Street, screaming shrill curses at Safiyya the Lamb Lady, who was standing a block away and yelling her head off too. They looked like two gunfighters from an American holoshow, screeching and snarling and threatening each other. I saw some tourists coming up the street; they stopped and watched the old women nervously, then backed away again toward the eastern gate. I felt the same way. I didn’t want to get in between those two witches. You could almost see the green rays shooting out of their eyes.

I couldn’t actually understand what they were saying. Their voices were strained and hoarse, and they may not have been screaming in Arabic. I didn’t know if the Lamb Lady’d had her skull amped, but Laila never went anywhere without a moddy and a handful of daddies. She could have been ranting in ancient Etruscan for all I knew.

After a little while they both got tired of it. Safiyya left first, making an obscene gesture in Laila’s direction and heading back down the Street toward the Boulevard il-Jameel. Laila stared after her, throwing a few final un-pleasantries her way. Then, muttering to herself, she turned down Fourth Street. I followed her. I thought I might find a useful moddy in her shop.

When I got there, Laila was behind her cash register, humming to herself and sorting a stack of invoices.

When I came in, she looked up and smiled. “Marid,” she said sadly, “do you know how boring it is to be the wife of a country doctor?”

“To be honest, Laila, no, I don’t.” Evidently, she’d chipped in another moddy as soon as she got back to her shop, and now it was as if she hadn’t seen the Lamb Lady at all. “Well,” she said slyly, giving me a wicked smile, “if you did know, you wouldn’t blame me at all if I considered taking a lover.” “Madame Bovary?” I asked.

She just winked. The effect was moderately hideous. I began browsing in her dusty bins. I didn’t exactly know what I was looking for. “Laila,” I called over my shoulder, “do the letters A.L.M. mean anything to you?”

“L’Association des Larves Maboules?” That meant the Association of Crazy Wimps. “Who are they?” I asked. “You know. People like Fuad.” “Never heard of it,” I said. “I just made it up, cheri.”

“Uh huh.” I picked up a moddy package that caught my eye. It was an anthology of fictional types, mostly Eur-Am defenders of the meek, although there was an ancient Chinese poet-king, a Bantu demigod, and a Nordic trickster. The only name I recognized was Mike Hammer. I still owned a Nero Wolfe moddy, although the companion hardware, Archie Goodwin, had died horribly under the heel of Saied the Half-Hajj.

I decided to get the anthology. I figured it gave me a wide sampling of skills and personalities. I took it over to Laila. “Just this one today,” I said.

“There’s a special on—”

“Wrap it, Laila.” I handed her a ten-kiam bill. She took my money and looked hurt. I thought about what I’d chip in to visit Gay Che’s. I still had Rex, Saied’s badass moddy. I decided I’d wear that, and carry this new one in reserve.

“Your change, Marid.”

I took my package, but let the old woman keep the change. “Buy yourself something pretty, Laila,” I told her.

She smiled again. “And you know, I expect Leon will bring me a romantic surprise this evening.”

“Yeah, you right.” I left the shop feeling as creepy as I always did around her.

I took three steps toward the Street, and then I heard blaam! blaam! blaam! A flying chip of concrete cut my face just under my right eye. I threw myself into the doorway of the gambling den next to Laila’s. Blaam! blaam! blaam! I heard bricks shatter and saw puffs of red dust drift from the edge of the doorway. I pressed myself in as far as I could. Blaam! blaam! Two more: Someone had just taken eight shots at me with a high-powered pistol.

Nobody came running. Nobody was curious enough to see if I was all right, or maybe needed medical attention. I waited, wondering how long before it was safe to stick my head out again. Was Jawarski still hiding somewhere across the street, a fresh clip in his .45? Or was this only a warning? Surely, if he truly wanted to kill me, he could have done a better job of it.

I got tired of being scared after a few minutes and left the safety of the doorway. I have to admit that I had a peculiar vulnerable feeling between my shoulder blades as I hurried down to the corner. I decided that this had been Jawarski’s way of sending me an invitation. I had no intention of declining; I just wanted to be prepared.

Yet even so, I still had other business to finish before I could turn my full attention to the American. I went to my car and threw the new moddy into the backseat, where I’d left my briefcase. I drove slowly and calmly through the Rasmiyya neighborhood to Courane’s. When I got there, I parked the car in the narrow street and took Saied’s moddy out of the briefcase. I looked at it thoughtfully for a moment and chipped it in, along with the daddies that blocked pain and fatigue. Then I got out of the car and went into Courane’s dim bar.

“Monsieur Audran!” said the expatriate, coming toward me with both hands outstretched. “Your friends told me you’d be coming. It’s good to see you again.”

“Yeah,” I said. I could see the Half-Hajj, Mahmoud, arid Jacques at a table near the back.

Courane followed me, speaking in a low voice. “Wasn’t that just terrible about Officer Shaknahyi?”

I turned to look at him. “That’s what it was, Courane. Terrible.”

“I was truly upset.” He nodded to let me know how sincere he was.

“Vodka gimlet,” I said. That made him go away.

I dragged over a chair and sat at the table with the others. I looked at them but didn’t say anything. The last time I’d been with this group, I hadn’t been very popular. I wondered if anything had changed.

Jacques was the Christian who was always patronizing me about how he had more European blood than I did. This afternoon he just closed one eye and nodded his head. “I hear you pulled Papa out of a burning building.”

Courane arrived with my drink. Instead of answering, I lifted the glass and sipped.

“I was in a fire once,” said the Half-Hajj. “Well, actually, I was in a building that burned down about an hour after I left. I could’ve been killed.”

Mahmoud, the male sexchange, snorted. “So, Marid,” he said, “I’m impressed.”

“Yeah,” I said, “I really just wanted to impress you bastards.” I squeezed the wedge of lime into the gimlet. Vitamin C, you know.

“No, really,” Mahmoud went on, “everybody’s talking about it. It was pretty gutsy.”

Jacques shrugged. “Especially if you think that you could’ve ended up with all of Friedlander Bey’s light-speed clout for yourself. Just by letting the old fucker fry.”

“Did you think about that?” asked Mahmoud. “While it was all happening, I mean?”

It was time to take a long swallow of vodka, because I was getting really mad. When I set my glass down again, I looked from one to the other. “You know Indihar, right? Well, since Jirji’s been dead, she’s having a tough time paying her bills. She won’t take a loan from me or Ghiri, and she can’t make enough tending bar in the club.”

Mahmoud’s eyebrows went up. “She want to come work for me? She’s got a nice ass. I could get her good money.”

I shook my head. “She’s not interested in that,” I said. “She wants me to find a new home for one of her kids. She’s got two boys and a girl. I told her she could spare one of the boys.”

That shut ’em up for a little while. “Maybe,” said Jacques at last. “I can ask around, anyway.”

“Do it,” I said. “Indihar said she might even be willing to part with the girl too. If they both go together, and if the price is right.”

“When do you need to know?” said Mahmoud.

“Soon as you can find out. Now, I got to go. Saied, you mind taking a ride with me?”

The Half-Hajj looked first at Mahmoud, then at Jacques, but neither of them had anything to say. “Guess not,” he said.

I took twenty kiam out of my pocket and dropped it on the table. “Drinks are on me,” I said.

Mahmoud gave me a judicious look. “We been kind of hard on you lately,” he said.

“I hadn’t noticed.”

“Well, we’re glad things are straightened out between us. No reason things can’t be like they were before.”

“Sure,” I said, “right.”

I gave Saied’s shoulder a little shove, and we headed back out into the sunlight. I stopped him before he got into the car. “I need you to tell me how to find Gay Che’s,” I said.

His face went suddenly pale. “Why the hell you want to go there?”

“I heard about it, that’s all.”

“Well, I don’t want to go. I’m not even sure I can give you directions.”

“Sure you can, pal,” I said, my voice grim and threatening. “You know all about it.”

Saied didn’t like being pushed around. He stood up straight, trying to give himself a little height advantage. “Think you can make me go with you?”

I just stared at him, my face empty of emotion. Then very slowly I raised my right hand up to my lips. I opened my mouth and bit myself savagely. I ripped a small gobbet of flesh loose from the inside of my wrist and spat it at the Half-Hajj. My own blood trickled down the corners of my mouth. “Look, motherfucker,” I growled hoarsely, “that’s what I do to me. Wait till you see what I do to you!”

Saied shuddered and backed away from me on the sidewalk. “You’re crazy, Marid,” he said. “You gone fuckin’ crazy.”

“In the car.”

He hesitated. “You’re wearing Rex, ain’t you? You shouldn’t wear that moddy. I don’t like what it does to you.”

I threw back my head and laughed. I was only behaving the way he acted when he wore the same moddy. And he wore it often. I could understand why — I was beginning to like it a lot.

I waited until he slid into the passenger seat, then I went around and got behind the wheel. “Which way?” I asked.

“South.” His voice was tired and hopeless.

I drove for a while, letting him worry about how much I knew. “So,” I said finally, “what kind of place is it?”

“Nothing much.” The Half-Hajj was sullen. “A hangout for this jackboot gang, the Jaish.”

“Yeah?” From the name, I’d pictured the clientele of Gay Che’s like that guy I’d seen in Chiri’s a few weeks before, the one in the vinyl pants with his hand chained behind his back.

“The Citizen’s Army. They wear these gray uniforms and have parades and pass out a lot of leaflets. I think they want to get rid of the foreigners in the city. Down with the heathen Franj. You know that routine.”

“Uh huh. I get the idea from il-Manhous that you spend some time there.”

Saied didn’t like this conversation at all. “Look, Marid,” he began, but then he fell silent. “Anyway, you gonna believe everything you hear from Fuad?”

I laughed. “What you think he told me?”

“I don’t know.” He slid farther away from me, up against the passenger door. I almost felt sorry for him. He didn’t speak again except to give me directions.

When we got there, I reached under my seat where my weapons were hidden. I had the small seizure gun I’d gotten so long ago from Lieutenant Okking, and the static pistol Shaknahyi’d given me. I looked at the guns thoughtfully. “This a setup, Saied? You supposed to bring me here so Abu Adil’s thugs could ice me?”

The Half-Hajj looked frightened. “What’s this all about, Marid?”

“Just tell me why the hell you told Fuad to show me that .45 caliber clip.”

He sagged unhappily in his seat. “I went to Shaykh Reda because I was confused, Marid, that’s all. Maybe it’s too late now, but I’m real sorry. I just didn’t like standing around while you got to be the big hero, when you got to be Friedlander Bey’s favorite. I felt left out.”

My lip curled. “You mean you set me up to be killed because you were fucking jealous?”

“I never meant for anything like that.”

I took the empty clip from my pocket and held it in front of his eyes. “An hour ago, Jawarski emptied another one of these at me, in broad daylight on Fourth Street.”

Saied rubbed his eyes and muttered something, didn’t think this would happen,” he said softly.

“What did you think would happen?”

“I thought Abu Adil would treat me the way Papa’s treating you.”

I stared at him in amazement. “You really hired yourself out to Abu Adil, didn’t you? I thought you just told him about my mother. But you’re one of his tools, right?”

“I told you I was sorry,” he said in an anguished voice. “I’ll make it up to you.”

“Goddamn right you will.” I handed him the seizure gun. “Take this. We’re going in there and we’re gonna find Jawarski.”

The Half-Hajj took the weapon hesitantly. “I wish I had Rex,” he said sadly.

“No, I don’t trust you with Rex. I’m gonna keep wearing it.” I got out of the car and waited for Saied. “Put your gun away. Keep it out of sight unless you need it. Now, is there any kind of password or anything?”

“No, you just got to remember nobody in there’s very fond of foreigners.”

“Uh huh. Come on, then.” I led the way into the bar. It was crowded and noisy and all I saw were men, most of them dressed in what I guessed was the gray uniform of this right-wing Citizen’s Army. It wasn’t dimly lighted and there wasn’t music playing: Gay Che’s wasn’t that kind of bar. This was a meeting place for the kind of men who liked dressing up as brave soldiers and marching through the streets and not actually having shots fired at them. What these jokers reminded me of was Hitler’s SS, whose main attributes had been perversion and pointless brutality.

Saied and I pushed our way through the mob of men to the bar. “Yeah?” said the surly bartender.

I had to shout to make myself heard. “Two beers,” I said. This didn’t look like a place to order fancy drinks.

“Right.”

“And we’re looking for a guy.”

The bartender glanced up from his tap. “Won’t find him here.”

“Oh yeah?” He set the beers in front of the Half-Hajj and me, and I paid. “An American, might still be recovering—”

The bartender grabbed the ten-kiam bill I’d laid down. He didn’t offer any change. “Look, cap, I don’t answer questions, I pour beer. And if some American came in here, these guys’d probably tear him apart.”

I took a gulp of the cold beer and looked around the room. Maybe Jawarski hadn’t been in this bar. Maybe he was hiding out upstairs in the building, or in a nearby building. “Okay,” I said, turning back to the bartender, “he ain’t been in here. But you seen any Americans around this neighborhood lately?”

“Didn’t you hear me? No questions.”

Time to bring out the hidden persuader. I took a hundred-kiam bill from my pocket and waved it in the bartender’s face. I didn’t need to say a word.

He looked into my eyes. It was clear that he was torn by indecision. Finally he said, “Let me have the money.”

I gave him a tight smile. “Look at it a little longer. Maybe improve your memory.”

“Well, stop flashing it around, cap. You’ll get us both roughed up.” I put the money on the bar and covered it with my hand. I waited. The bartender went away for a moment. When he came back, he slid a torn piece of cardboard toward me. I picked it up. There was an address written on it. I showed the cardboard to Saied. “Know where this is?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said in an unhappy voice, “it’s about two blocks from Abu Adil’s place.”

“Sounds right.” I handed the hundred kiam to the bartender, who made it disappear. I took out the static pistol and let him see it. “If you’ve fucked me over,” I said, “I’m coming back and using this on you. Understand?”

“He’s there,” said the bartender. “Just get out of here and don’t come back.”

I put the gun away and shoved my way toward the door. When we were on the sidewalk again, I looked at the Half-Hajj. “See now?” I said. “That wasn’t so bad.”

He gave me a hopeless look. “You want me to go with you to find Jawarski, right?”

I shrugged. “No,” I said, “I already paid somebody else to do that. I don’t want to have to come near Jawarski if I can help it.”

Saied was furious. “You mean you put me through all that grief and dragged me into that place for nothing?”

I opened the car door. “Hey, it wasn’t for nothing,” I said, smiling. “Allah probably agrees it was good for your soul.”

The westphalian sedan was headed north, away from Hamidiyya. I had my English daddy chipped in and I was speaking on the phone to Morgan. “I found him,” I said.

“Great, man.” The American sounded disappointed. “That mean I don’t get the rest of the money?”

“Tell you what I’ll do. I’ll give you the other five hundred if you baby-sit Jawarski for a few hours. You got a gun?”

“Yeah. You want me to use it?”

The idea was very tempting. “No. I just want you to keep an eye on him.” I read off the address on the piece of cardboard. “Don’t let him go anywhere. Hold him till I get there.”

“Sure, man,” said Morgan, “but don’t take all day. I’m not crazy about hangin’ around all day with a guy who’s killed twenty-some people.”

“I got faith in you. Talk to you later.” I hung up the phone.

“What you gonna do?” asked Saied.

I didn’t want to tell him, because despite his earnest confession and apology, I still didn’t trust him. “I’m taking you back to Courane’s,” I said. “Or you rather I drop you off somewhere in the Budayeen?”

“Can’t I go with you?”

I laughed coldly. “I’m gonna visit your favorite kingpin, Abu Adil. You still on good terms with him?”

“I don’t know,” said the Half-Hajj nervously. “But maybe I ought to go back to Courane’s. I thought of something I got to tell Jacques and Mahmoud.”

“I’ll bet.”

“Besides, I don’t need to run into that bastard Umar ever again.” Saied pronounced the name “Himmar,” by changing the vowel just a little and aspirating it. It was an Arabic pun. The word himmar means donkey, and Arabs consider the donkey one of the filthiest animals on earth. This was a clever way of insulting Umar, and when he was wearing Rex, the Half-Hajj may even have said it to Abdul-Qawy’s face. That may be one of the reasons Saied wasn’t popular around Hamidiyya anymore.

He was quiet for a little while. “Marid,” he said at last, “I meant what I said. I made a bad mistake, turning my coat like that. But I never had no contract with Friedlander Bey or nothing. I didn’t think I was hurting anybody.”

“I almost died twice, pal. First the fire, then Jawarski.”

I pulled the car to the curb outside Courane’s. Saied was miserable. “What you want me to say?” he pleaded.

“You got nothing to say. I’ll see you you later.”

He nodded and got out of the car. I watched him walk into Courane’s bar, then I popped the tough-guy moddy. I drove west and north, to Papa’s house. Before I confronted Abu Adil, I had two or three other things to take care of.

I found Kmuzu in our temporary apartment, working at my Chhindwara data deck. He looked up when he heard me come into the room. “Ah, yaa Sidi!” he said, as pleased as I’d ever seen him. “I have good news. It will cost less to organize charity food distribution than I thought. I hope you’ll forgive me for examining your financial situation, but I’ve learned that you have more than twice what we need.”

“That a hint, Kmuzu? I’m only going to open one soup kitchen, not two. You got an operating budget worked out?”

“We can run the food center for a full week on the money you get from Chiriga’s on a single night.”

“Great, glad to hear it. I was just wondering why you’re so excited about this project. How come it means so much to you?”

Kmuzu’s expression turned solidly neutral. “I just feel responsible for your Christian moral education,” he said.

“I don’t buy it,” I said.

He looked away. “There is a long story, yaa Sidi, “he said. “I do not wish to tell it now.”

“All right, Kmuzu. Another time.”

He turned to me again. “I have information about the fire. I told you I’d found proof it was deliberately set. That night in the corridor between your apartment and that of the master of the house, I discovered rags that had been soaked in some flammable fluid.” He opened a desk drawer and took out some badly scorched cloth remnants. They’d been burned in the fire, but hadn’t been totally destroyed. I could still see a decorative pattern of eight-pointed stars in pale pink and brown.

Kmuzu held up another cloth. “Today I found this. It’s obviously the cloth from which those rags were torn.”

I examined the larger cloth, part of an old robe or sheet. There wasn’t any doubt that it was the same material. “Where’d you find this?” I asked.

Kmuzu put the rags back in the desk drawer. “In the room of young Saad ben Salah,” he said.

“What were you doing poking around in there?” I asked with some amusement.

Kmuzu shrugged. “Looking for evidence, yaa Sidi. And I believe I’ve found enough to be certain of the arsonist’s identity.”

“The kid? Not Urnm Saad herself?”

“I’m sure she directed her son to set the fire.”

I wouldn’t put it past her, but it didn’t quite fit. “Why would she do that, though? Her whole scheme has been to get Friedlander Bey to admit that Saad is his grandson. She wants her son to be heir to Papa’s estate. Killing the old man off now would leave her out in the cold.”

“Who can say what her reasoning was, yaa Sidi? Perhaps she gave up her plan, and now she’s seeking revenge.”

Jeez, in that case, who knew what she’d try next? “You’re keeping an eye on her already, aren’t you?” I asked.

“Yes, yaa Sidi.”

“Well, be extra watchful.” I turned to go, then faced him once more. “Kmuzu,” I said, “do the letters A.L.M. mean anything to you?”

He gave it a moment’s thought. “Only the African Liberation Movement,” he said.

“Maybe,” I said dubiously. “What about the Phoenix File?”

“Oh, yes, yaa Sidi, I heard about it when I worked in Shaykh Reda’s house.”

I’d run into so many dead ends that I’d almost given up hope. I’d begun to think the Phoenix File was something Jirji Shaknahyi had invented, and that the meaning of the words had died with him. “Why did Abu Adil discuss it with you?” I asked.

Kmuzu shook his head. “Abu Adil never discussed anything with me, yaa Sidi. I was only a bodyguard. But bodyguards are often overlooked or forgotten. They become like the furniture in a room. Several times I overheard Shaykh Reda and Umar talk about whom they wished to add to the Phoenix File.”

“So what is the damn thing?” I demanded.

“A list,” said Kmuzu. “A compilation of the names of everyone who works for Shaykh Reda or Friedlander Bey, either directly or indirectly. And of anyone who owes either of them a great favor.”

“Like rosters,” I said, puzzled. “But why should the file be so important? I’m sure the police could put together the same list anytime they wanted. Why did Jirji Shaknahyi risk his life investigating it?”

“Each person on the list has a coded entry that describes his physical condition, his tissue-matching profile, and his record of organ transplants and other modifications.”

“So both Abu Adil and Papa keep up with their people’s health. That’s great. I didn’t think they’d bother with details like that.”

Kmuzu frowned. “You don’t understand, yaa Sidi. The file is not a list of who might need to receive a transplant. It is a list of available donors.”

“Available donors? But these people aren’t dead, they’re still—” My eyes opened wider and I just stared at him.

Kmuzu’s expression let me know that my horrified realization was correct. “Everyone on the list is ranked,” he said, “from the lowest underling to Umar and yourself. If a person on the list is injured or becomes ill and needs an organ transplant, Abu Adil or Friedlander Bey may choose to sacrifice someone with a lower rating. This is not always done, but the higher one’s rating, the more likely it is that a suitable donor will be chosen.”

“May their houses be destroyed! The sons of thieves!” I said softly. This explained the notations in Shaknahyi’s notebook — the names on the left side were people who’d been prematurely relaxed to provide spare parts for people on the right side. Blanca had been too far down on the list for her own good; she’d been just another expendable slut.

“Perhaps everyone you know is listed in the Phoenix File,” said Kmuzu. “You yourself, your friends, your mother. My name is there as well.”

I felt fury growing in me. “Where does he keep it, Kmuzu? I’m gonna shove this file down Abu Adil’s throat.”

Kmuzu raised a hand. “Remember, yaa Sidi, that Shaykh Reda is not alone in this terrible enterprise. He cooperates with our master. They share information, and they share the lives of their associates. A heart from one.of Shaykh Reda’s minions may be put in the chest of Friedlander Bey’s lieutenant. The two men are great competitors, but in this they are cordial partners.”

“How long has this been going on?” I asked.

“For many years. The two shaykhs began it to make certain they themselves would never die for lack of compatible organs.”

I slammed my fist on the desk. “That’s how they’ve both lived to such doddering old age. They’re fucking fossils!”

“And they are insane, yaa Sidi,” said Kmuzu.

“You didn’t tell me where to find it. Where is the Phoenix File?”

Kmuzu shook his head. “I don’t know. Shaykh Reda keeps it hidden.”

Well, I thought, I’d planned to take a ride out to that neighborhood that afternoon anyway. “Thanks, Kmuzu. You’ve been a lot of help.”

“Yaa Sidi, you aren’t going to confront Shaykh Reda with this, are you?” He looked very troubled.

“No, of course not,” I said. “I know better than to take on both of the old men together. You just keep working on our soup kitchen. I think it’s time the House of Friedlander Bey began giving back something to the poor people.”

“That is good.”

I left Kmuzu working at the data deck. I went back out to the car, revising my schedule for the day in light of the blockbuster that had just gone off at my feet. I drove to the Budayeen, parked the car, and started up the Street to Chiri’s.

My phone rang. “Marhaba,” I said.

“It’s me, man. Morgan.” I was glad I was still wearing the English daddy. “Jawarski’s here, all right. He’s holed up in a crummy apartment in a real slum. I’m hangin’ out in the stairwell, watchin’ the door. You want me to drop in on the man?”

“No,” I said, “just make sure he doesn’t leave. I want to know that he’ll be there when I come by later. If he tries to go somewhere, though, stop him. Use your gun and back him up into the apartment. Do whatever you got to, but keep him under wraps.”

“You got it, man. But don’t take too long. This isn’t as much fun as I thought it’d be.”

I clipped the phone back on my belt and went into the club. Chiri’s was pretty crowded for late afternoon. A new black girl named Mouna was on stage. I recalled suddenly that Mouna had been the name of the pet chicken in Fuad’s long story. That meant he was probably adoring this girl, and that meant she was probably trouble. I’d have to keep my eyes open.

The other girls were sitting with customers, and love was in bloom all along the bar. It was fucking heartwarming. I went down to my usual place arid waited for Indihar to come over. “White Death?” she asked.

“Not right now. You thought any about what we talked about?”

“About rne moving into Friedlander Bey’s little cottage? If it wasn’t for the kids, I wouldn’t give it a second thought. I don’t want to owe him nothing. I don’t want to be one of Papa’s little wenches.”

I’d felt that way myself, not so long ago. and now that I’d learned the significance of the Phoenix File, I knew she had even more reason to distrust Papa. “You’re right about that, Indihar,” I said, “but I promise you that won’t happen. Papa’s not doing this for you; I am.”

“Is there a difference?”

“Yes. A big one. Now, what’s your answer?”

She sighed. “Okay, Marid, but I’m not going to be one of your wenches, either. You know what I mean?”

“You’re not going to fuck me. You already made that clear.”

Indihar nodded. “Just so you understand. I’m mourning my husband. I may go on mourning him forever.”

“Take as long as you need. You got a lot of life left to live, honey,” I said. “Someday you’ll find someone else.”

“I don’t even want to think about it.”

It was past time to change the subject. “You can start moving in any time you want, but finish out the shift for me,” I said. “This means I got to find a new daytime barmaid.”

Indihar looked left and right, then leaned closer. “If I was you,” she said in a low voice, “I’d hire somebody from outside. I wouldn’t trust any of these girls to run this place. They’d rob you blind, especially that Brandi. And Pualani’s not bright enough to put the napkin down, then the drink.”

“What do you think I should do?”

She chewed her lip for a moment. “I’d hire Dalia away from Frenchy Benoit. That’s what I’d do. Or Heidi from the Silver Palm.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Call me if you need anything.” It was just something else I had to worry about. Right now, though, my thoughts were centered mainly on the blighted neighborhood on the western side of town. I walked back out into the late afternoon sun. It had begun to rain, and there was a good, wet smell coming from the warm sidewalks.

A few minutes later, I was back in the modshop on Fourth Street. Twice in one day was enough of Laila to last anybody a year. I overheard her discussing a module with a customer. The man needed something to let him do armadontia. That’s the science of converting human teeth into high-tech weapons. Laila was still Emma: Madame Bovary, Dentist of Tomorrow.

When the customer left — yes, Laila’d found just what he was looking for — I tried to tell her what I wanted without getting into a conversation. “Got any Proxy Hell moddies?” I asked.

She’d already opened her mouth to greet me with some secondhand Flaubertian sentiment, but I’d shocked her. “You don’t want that, Marid,” she said in her whiny voice.

“Not for me. It’s for a friend.”

“None of your friends do that, either.”

I stopped myself before I grabbed her by the throat. “It’s not for a friend, then. It’s for a goddamn enemy.”

Laila smiled. “Then you want something really bad, right?”

“The worst,” I said.

She bustled out from behind her counter and went to the locked door in the rear of the shop. “I don’t keep merchandise like that out,” she explained as she dug in a pocket for her keys. Actually, they were on a long, green plastic necklace around her neck. “I don’t sell Proxy Hell moddies to kids.”

“Keys are around your neck.”

“Oh, thanks, dear.” She unlocked the door and turned to look at me. “Be right back.” She was gone a minute or two, and she returned with a small brown cardboard box.

There were three moddies in the box, all plain, gray plastic, all without manufacturer’s labels. These were bootleg modules, dangerous to wear. Regular commercial moddies were carefully recorded or programmed, and all extraneous signals were removed. You gambled when you wore an underground moddy. Sometimes bootlegs were “rough,” and when you popped them out, you found they’d caused major brain damage.

Laila had stuck handwritten labels on the moddies in the box. “How about infectious granuloma?” she asked.

I considered it for a moment, but decided that it was too much like what Abu Adil had been wearing when I’d first met him. “No,” I said.

“Okay,” said Laila, pushing the moddies around with her long, crooked forefinger. “Cholecystitis?”

“What’s that?”

“Don’t have any idea.”

“What’s the third one?”

Laila held it up and read the label. “D Syndrome.”

I shivered. I’d heard about that. It’s some kind of awful nerve degeneration, a disease caused by slow viruses. The patient first suffers gaps in both long- and short-term memories. The viruses continue to eat away at the nervous system until the patient collapses, staring and stupid, bedridden and in terrible agony. Finally, in the last stages, he dies when his body forgets how to breathe or keep its heart beating. “How much for this?” I asked.

“Fifty kiam,” she said. She looked up slowly into my eyes and grinned. The few teeth she still had were black stumps, and the effect was grotesquely ugly. “You pay extra ’cause it’s a hard-to-get item.”

“All right,” I said. I paid her and stuffed the D Syndrome moddy in my pocket. Then I tried to get out of Laila’s shop.

“You know,” she said, putting her clawlike hand on my arm, “my lover is taking me to the opera tonight. All of Rouen will see us together!”

I pulled myself away and hurried out the door. “In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful,” I muttered.

During the long drive out to Abu Adil’s estate, I thought about recent events. If Kmuzu were right, then the fire had been started by Umm Saad’s son. I didn’t think that young Saad had acted on his own. Yet Umar had assured me that neither he nor Abu Adil still employed Umm Saad. He had flatly invited me to dispose of her, if I found her too irritating. Then if Umm Saad wasn’t getting her orders direct from Abu Adil, why had she decided suddenly to take things into her own hands?

And Jawarski. Had he taken a few potshots at me because he didn’t like my looks, or because Hajjar had let Abu Adil know that I was nosing around after the Phoenix File? Or were there even more sinister connections that I hadn’t yet discovered? At this point, I didn’t dare trust Saied or even Kmuzu. Morgan was the only other person who had my confidence, and I had to admit that there really wasn’t any good reason to trust him, either. He just reminded me of the way I used to be, before I’d gone to work changing a corrupt system from within.

That, by the way, was my current rationalization for what I was doing, the easy life I was leading. I suppose the bitter truth was that I didn’t have the guts to face Friedlander Bey’s wrath, or the heart to turn my back on his money. I told myself that I was using my position deep in the pits of dishonor to help the less fortunate. It didn’t really shut up my guilty conscience.

As I drove, the guilt and loneliness amounted almost to desperation, and are probably to blame for the tactical error that came next. Maybe I should have had more faith in Saied or Kmuzu. I could at least have brought one of the Stones That Speak with me. Instead, I was counting on my n cleverness to see me through a confrontation with Aou Adil. After all, I did have two separate plans: First, I thought I might try bribing him with the D Syndrome noddy; and second, if he didn’t take to buttering up, my fallback position consisted of hitting him between the eyes with my full knowledge of what he was up to.

Well, hell, it sounded like a great idea at the time.

The guard at Abu Adil’s gate recognized me and passed me through, although Kamal, the butler, demanded to know what I wanted. “I’ve brought a gift for Shaykh Reda,” I said. “It’s urgent that I talk with him.”

He wouldn’t let me leave the foyer. “Wait here,” he said with a sneer. “I will see if it is permitted.”

“The passive voice should be avoided,” I said. He didn’t get it.

He went all the way down to Abu Adil’s office, and came all the way back with the same contemptuous look his face. “I’m to bring you to my master,” he said. It sounded like it broke his heart to accommodate me.

He led me into one of Abu Adil’s offices, not the same one I’d seen on my first visit with Shaknahyi. A sweet smell, maybe incense, filled the air. There were framed prints of European art masterpieces on the walls, and a recording of Umm Khalthoum playing softly.

The great man himself was sitting in a comfortable armchair, with a beautifully embroidered blanket over his knees. His head lolled back against the back of the chair, his eyes were closed. His hands were laid flat on his knees, and they trembled.

Umar Abdul-Qawy was there, of course, and he didn’t look happy to see me. He nodded to me and put one finger his lips. I guessed this was a signal not to mention any of the things he’d discussed with me concerning his plans to unseat Abu Adil and rule the old shaykh’s empire in his place. That wasn’t why I was here. I had more important things to worry about than Umar’s half-assed power struggle.

“I have the honor to wish Shaykh Reda good afternoon,” I said.

“May Allah make the afternoon prosperous to you,” said Umar.

We’ll see, I thought. “I beg to present the noble shaykh with this small gift.”

Umar made a small gesture, the little flick of the hand a lordly king uses to command a peasant to approach. I wanted to stuff the moddy down his fat throat. “What is it?” he asked.

I said nothing. I just gave it to him. Umar turned it over in his hand a few times. Then he looked up at me. “You are more clever than I gave you credit,” he said. “My master will be greatly pleased.”

“I hope he doesn’t already have this module.” “No, no.” He placed it on Abu Adil’s lap, but the old man made no move to examine it. Umar studied me thoughtfully. “I would offer you something in return, although I’m certain you would be courteous enough to refuse.”

“Try me,” I said. “I’d like a little information.” Umar frowned. “Your manners—”

“They’re terrible, I know, but what can I say? I’m just an ignorant beaneater from the Maghreb. Now, I seem to have uncovered all kinds of incriminating information about you and Shaykh Reda — about Friedlander Bey too, to be honest. I’m talking about this goddamn Phoenix File of yours.” I waited to see Umar’s reaction.

It wasn’t long in coming. “I’m afraid, Monsieur Audran, that I don’t know what you’re talking about. I suggest that your master may be engaged in highly illegal activities, and has attempted to shift the blame—”

“Be silent.” Umar and I both turned to stare at Reda Abu Adil, who had popped the Proxy Hell moddy he’d been wearing. Umar was badly shaken. This was the first time Abu Adil had seen fit to participate in a conversation. It seemed he wasn’t just a senile, helpless figurehead. Without the cancer moddy chipped in, his face lost its slackness, and his eyes gained an intelligent fierceness. Abu Adil threw off the blanket and stood up from the chair. “Hasn’t Friedlander Bey explained to you about the Phoenix File?” he demanded.

“No, O Shaykh,” I said. “It’s something I learned of only today. He has kept the thing hidden from me.”

“But you delved into matters that don’t concern you.” I was frightened by Abu Adil’s intensity. Umar had never shown such passion or such strength of will. It was as if I were seeing Shaykh Reda’s baraka, a different kind of personal magic than Papa’s. The moddy of Abu Adil that Umar wore did not hint at the depth of the man. I supposed that no electronic device could hope to capture the nature of baraka. This answered Umar’s claim that with the moddy he was the equal of Abu Adil. That was just self-delusion.

“I think they concern me,” I said. “Isn’t my name in that file?”

“Yes, I’m sure it is,” said Abu Adil. “But you are placed highly enough that you stand only to benefit.”

“I’m thinking of my friends, who aren’t so lucky.”

Umar laughed humorlessly. “You show your weakness again,” he said. “Now you bleed for the dirt beneath your feet.”

“Every sun has its setting,” I told him. “Maybe someday you’ll find yourself slipping down in the Phoenix File ratings. Then you’ll wish you’d never heard of it.”

“O Master,” said Umar angrily, “have you not heard enough of this?”

Abu Adil raised a weary hand. “Yes, Umar. I have no great love for Friedlander Bey, and even less for his creatures. Take him into the studio.”

Umar came toward me, a needle gun in his hand, and I backed away. I didn’t know what he had in mind, but it wasn’t going to be pleasant. “This way,” he said. Under the circumstances, I did what he wanted.

We left the office and walked down a connecting hallway, then climbed a stairway to the second floor. There was always an air of peace in this house. The light was filtered through wooden lattices over high windows, and sounds were muffled by thick rugs on the floors. I knew this serenity was an illusion. I knew I’d soon see Abu Adil’s true nature.

“In here,” he said, opening a thick metal door. He had a strange, expectant expression on his face. I didn’t like it at all. I went past him into a large soundproofed room. There was a bed, a chair, and a cart with some electronic equipment on it. The far wall was a single sheet of glass, and beyond it was a small control booth with banks of dials and readouts and switches. I knew what it was. Reda Abu Adil had a personality module recording studio in his home. It was like the hobbyist’s ultimate dream.

“Give me the gun,” said Abu Adil.

Umar passed the needle gun to his master, then left the soundproofed room. “I suppose you want to add me to your collection,” I said. “I don’t see why. My second-degree burns won’t be all that entertaining.” Abu Adil just stared at me with that fixed grin on his face. He made my skin crawl.

A little while later, Umar returned! He had a long. thin metal rod, a pair of handcuffs, and a rope with a hook at one end. “Oh jeez,” I said. I was starting to feel sick to my stomach. I was truly afraid that they wanted to record more than just that.

“Stand up straight,” said Umar, walking around and around me. He reached out and removed the moddy and daddies I was wearing. “And whatever you do, don’t duck your head. That’s for your own good.”

“Thanks for your concern,” I said. “I appreciate—” Umar raised the metal rod and brought it down across my right collarbone. I felt a knife-edge of pain shoot through me, and I cried out. He hit me on the other side, across the other collarbone. I heard the abrupt snapping of bone: and I fell to my knees.

“This may hurt a little,” said Abu Adil in the voice of a kindly old doctor.

Umar began beating me on the back with the rod, once, twice, three times. I screamed. He struck me a few more times. “Try to stand up,” he urged.

“You’re crazy,” I gasped.

“If you don’t stand up, I’ll use this on your face.”

I struggled to my feet again. My left arm hung uselessly. My back was a bleeding ruin. I realized I was breathing in shallow sobs.

Umar paused and walked around me again, evaluating me. “His legs,” said Abu Adil.

“Yes, O Shaykh.” The son of a bitch whipped the rod across my thighs, and I fell to the floor again. “Up,” grunted Umar. “Up.”

He hit me where I lay, on my thighs and calves until they were dripping with blood too. “I’ll get you,” I said in a voice hoarse with agony. “I swear by the blessed Prophet, I’ll get you.”

The beatings went on for a long time, until Umar had slowly and carefully worked over every part of me — except my head. Abu Adil had instructed him to spare my head, because he didn’t want anything to interfere with the quality of the recording. When the old man decided that I’d had enough, he told Umar to stop. “Connect him,” he said.

I lifted my head and watched. It was almost like being in someone else, far away. My muscles jumped in anguished spasms, and my wounds sent sharp signals of torment through every part of me. Yet the pain had become a barrier between my mind and body. I knew that I still hurt terribly, but I’d taken enough punishment to send my body into shock. I muttered curses and pleas to my two captors, threatening and begging them to give me back the pain-blocking daddy.

Umar only laughed. He went over to the cart and did something with the equipment there. Then he carried a large, shiny moddy link over to me. It looked a lot like the one we used with the Transpex game. Umar knelt beside me and showed it to me. “I’m going to chip this in for you,” he said. “It will allow us to record exactly what you’re feeling.”

I was having a difficult time breathing. “Motherfuckers,” I said, my voice a shallow wheeze.

Umar snapped the chrome-steel moddy link onto my anterior corymbic plug. “Now, this is a completely painless procedure,” he said.

“You’re gonna die,” I muttered. “You’re gonna fuckin’ die.”

Abu Adil was still holding the needle gun on me, but I couldn’t have done anything heroic anyway. Umar knelt down and fastened my hands behind me with the handcuffs. I felt like I was going to pass out, and I kept shaking my head to stay conscious. I didn’t want to black out and be completely at their mercy, though that was probably already true.

After he got my wrists bound, Umar caught the handcuffs with the hook and pulled on the rope until I staggered to my feet. Then he threw the end of the rope over a bar mounted on the wall high over my head. I saw what he was going to do. “Yallah,” I cried. He pulled on the rope until I was hoisted up on tiptoes with my arms raised behind my back. Then he pulled some more until my feet no longer touched the floor. I was hanging from the rope, the full weight of my body slowly pulling my arms from their sockets.

It was so excruciating, I could only take panting little breaths. I tried to shut out the horrible pain; I prayed first for mercy, then for death.

“Put the moddy in now,” said Abu Adil. His voice seemed to come from another world, from high on a mountaintop or far below the ocean.

“I take refuge with the Lord of the Dawn,” I murmured. I kept repeating that phrase like a magic charm.

Umar stood on the chair with the gray moddy in his hand, the D Syndrome moddy I’d brought. He chipped it onto my posterior plug.

He was hanging from the ceiling, but he couldn’t remember why. He was in terrible agony. “In the name of Allah, help me!” he cried. He realized that shouting just made the pain worse. Why was he here? He couldn’t remember. Who had done this to him?

He couldn’t remember. He couldn’t remember anything.

Time went by, and he might have been unconscious. He had the same feeling one has on waking from a particularly vivid dream, when the waking world and the dream are superimposed for a moment, when aspects of one distort images of the other, and one must make an effort to sort them and decide which shall have precedence.

How could he explain being alone and bound like this? He wasn’t afraid of the hurting, but he was afraid he wasn’t equal to the task of understanding his situation. There was the low hum of a fan above his head, and a faint spicy smell in the air. His body twisted a little on the rope, and he felt another slash of pain. He was bothered more by the notion that he appeared to be involved in a terrible drama and had no sense at all of its significance. “Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds,” he whispered, “the Beneficent, the Merciful. Owner of the Day of Judgment. Thee alone we worship. Thee alone we ask for help”

Time passed. The suffering grew. Finally, he did not remember enough even to wince or writhe. Sights and sounds played through his numbed senses upon his drowsing mind. He was beyond evaluating or reacting, but he was not yet quite dead. Someone spoke to him, but he did not respond.

“How’s that?”

Let me tell you, it was horrible. All of a sudden, understanding poured back into my consciousness. Every bit of pain that had been held at bay suddenly returned with a vengeance. I must have whimpered, because he kept saying “It’s all right, it’s all right.”

I looked up. It was Saied. “Hey,” I said. It was all I could manage.

“It’s all right,” he told me again. I didn’t know if I could believe him. He looked pretty worried.

I was lying in an alley between some rundown, abandoned tenement buildings. I didn’t know how I’d gotten there. At the moment, I didn’t care.

“These yours?” he said. He was folding a small handful of daddies and three moddies.

One of them was Rex and one was the gray D Syndrome moddy. I almost wept when I recognized the pain-blocker daddy. “Gimme,” I said. My hands shook as I reached up and chipped it in. Almost instantly I felt great again, although I knew I still had terrible lacerations and at least a broken collarbone. The daddy worked faster than even a ton of Sonneine. “You got to tell me what you’re doing here,” I said. I sat up, filled with the illusion of health and well-being.

“I came after you. Wanted to make sure you didn’t get into any trouble or anything. The guard at the gate knows me, and so does Kamal. I went into the house and saw what they were doing to you, then I waited till they dragged you out. They must’ve thought you were dead, or else they don’t care if you recover or not. I grabbed up the hardware and followed. They dumped you in this stinking alley, and I hid around the corner till they left.”

I put my hand on his shoulders. “Thanks,” I said.

“Hey,” said the Half-Hajj with a loopy grin, “no thanks are needed. Muslim brothers and all that, right?”

I didn’t want to argue with him. I picked up the third moddy he’d found. “What’s this?” I asked.

“You don’t know? It’s not one of yours?”

I shook my head. Saied took the moddy from me, reached up, and chipped it in. A moment later his expression changed. He looked awed. “May my father’s balls burn in Hell!” he said. “It’s Abu Adil.”

The Half-Hajj insisted on going with me to find the building where Paul Jawarski was hiding out. “You’re a wreck,” he told me, shaking his head. “You pop that daddy, you’ll realize what bad shape you’re in. You should go to the hospital.”

“I just got out of the hospital,” I said.

“Well, obviously it didn’t take. You got to go back again.”

“Fine, I’ll go when this business with Jawarski’s all over. I’ll keep the daddy in till then. And I’ll probably need Rex.”

Saied squinted at me. “You need a lot more than Rex. You need half a dozen of your cop buddies.”

I laughed bitterly. “I don’t think they’d show up. I don’t think Hajjar would even send them.”

We were making our way slowly along Hamidiyya’s main north-south avenue. “What do you mean?” asked Saied. “You think Hajjar wants to pull off Jawarski’s capture himself? Get himself a commendation and a medal?”

We turned down a narrow trash-choked alley and found the rear of the building we were looking for. “Shaknahyi had the idea that he’d been set up,” I said. “He thought maybe Jawarski was working for Hajjar.”

“I thought Jawarski was working for Shaykh Reda.”

I shrugged. Without the pain-blocker, that would have been excruciatingly painful. “Everybody we know moonlights. Why should Jawarski be any different?”

“No reason, I guess,” said the Half-Hajj. “Now, you want me to go in with you?”

“No thanks, Saied. I want you to stay down here and guard this back entrance. I’m going upstairs and talk with Morgan. I want to be alone with Jawarski. I’m gonna send Morgan down to watch the front.”

Saied looked worried. “I don’t think that’s smart, Maghrebi. Jawarski’s a clever guy, and he don’t mind killing people. You’re not in any condition to wrestle with him.”

“I won’t have to.” I reached up and chipped in Rex. I took my static pistol out of my pocket.

“Well, what you gonna do? If Hajjar’s just gonna let Jawarski go free—”

“I’m going over Hajjar’s head,” I said. I was determined that Jawarski wasn’t going to escape justice. “I’m gonna call the captain and the police superintendent and the news media. They can’t all be crooked.”

“I don’t see why not,” said the Half-Hajj. “But you’re probably right. Remember, we’ll be right down here if you need help. Jawarski won’t get away this time.”

I grinned at him. “Bet your ass he won’t.” I moved past him into the tenement building. I was in a cool, dark hallway that led to a flight of stairs. There was the usual dank, musty smell of an abandoned building. My feet scattered bits of rubble as I climbed up to the third floor. “Morgan?” I called. He probably had a gun in his hand, and I didn’t want to surprise him.

“Is that you, man? You sure took long enough getting here.”

I arrived at the landing where he was sitting. “Sorry,” I said, “I ran into a little trouble.”

His eyes got big when he saw how torn and hurt I was. “Looks like you already ran into as much as you can handle today, man.”

“I’m fine, Morgan.” I took five hundred kiam out of my jeans and paid him the rest of his money. “Now, go keep an eye on the street entrance. I’ll call if I need help.”

The blond American started downstairs. “You need help,” he said dubiously, “it’ll be too late by the time you shout.”

The daddy had me feeling no pain, and Rex made me think I was equal to any challenge Jawarski might present. I checked the charge in my static pistol, then rapped on the apartment door. “Jawarski,” I shouted, “this is Marid Audran. Jirji Shaknahyi was my partner. I’m here to take you in for his murder.”

I didn’t have to wait long. Jawarski opened the door, laughing. He was holding a black .45 caliber automatic pistol. “Stupid son of a bitch, ain’t you?” he said. He stood back so I could get by.

I made sure he saw my weapon as I went past him, but he was so sure of himself that he didn’t act the least bit concerned. I sat down on a torn couch opposite the door. Jawarski dropped into an armchair covered in blood-gained floral material. I was shocked by how young he was. I was surprised to see that he was at least five years younger than me.

“Ever hear what Islamic law does to murderers?” I asked him. We were holding our guns on each other, but Jawarski seemed almost nonchalant.

“Nah, it don’t make much difference,” he said. “I don’t care if I die.” Jawarski had a peculiar way of talking out of one side of his mouth, as if he thought it made him look tough and fierce. He obviously had some serious psychological problems, but he wasn’t going to live long enough to clear them up. “So who told you I was here? I always bumped off squealers. Tell me who it was, so I can fog the bastard.”

“You won’t get the chance, pal. You can’t have the whole city bought off.”

“Let’s make this quick,” he said, trying to upset me. “I’m supposed to collect my money and leave town tonight.” He didn’t seem to be bothered at all by my static pistol.

He was staring to my right. I let my eyes drift in that direction, toward a small wooden table not far from the couch, covered with newspaper. There were three clips of ammunition lying there. “Was it Hajjar who told you to kill Shaknahyi?” I asked. “Or Umar, Abu Adil’s punk?” “I ain’t a squawker,” he said. He gave me a twisted grin.

“And the others — Blanca Mataro, the rest of them. You didn’t use that .45. How come?”

Jawarski shrugged. “They told me not to. They didn’t want any of the parts damaged, I guess. They told me who to put away and I done it with a little static gun. I always called in the tip to the cops myself, so the cripple cart’d get there fast. I guess they didn’t want the meat to spoil.” He gave a grunting chuckle that set my teeth on edge.

I glanced at the table, thinking that Jawarski might not have bothered to put a clip into his pistol before he let me into the room. He looked like he enjoyed bluffing. “How many have you killed?” I asked.

“You mean altogether?” Jawarski looked up at the ceiling. “Oh, I’ve got twenty-six anyway. That’s all I ever kept track of. Pretty near one for every year. And my birthday’s comin’ up soon. How’d you like to be number twenty-seven?”

I felt a rush of fury. “You’re real close, Jawarski,” I said through clenched teeth.

“Go ahead, you got a girl’s gun, lay me out if you got the guts.” He was enjoying this, mocking me and goading me. “Look, here’s a clipping,” he said. “ ‘Jawarski Bad Man, Legendary Figure,’ it says. How ’bout that?” “Ever think about the people you shoot?” I asked. “I remember that cop. I turned and let him have it in the chest. He didn’t even wobble, but he shot back at me. I wasn’t hit, though, and I beat it around behind the house. When I got to the other side, I peeked around the corner and saw the cop I shot coming after me. I let fly at him again, and ran behind another house. When I looked again he was still following me. There was blood running all over the front of his coat then, but he was still following me. God, that guy was a real man.”

“Ever think about his family? Shaknahyi had a wife, you know. He had three kids.”

Jawarski stared at me, and another crazy grin spread slowly across his face. “Fuck “em,” he said.

I stood up and took three steps. Jawarski raised his eyebrows at me, inviting me to come closer. As he stood, I tossed him the static gun. He fumbled it against his chest with his left hand, and I pulled my fist back and cracked him in the corner of his mouth. Then I grabbed his right wrist tightly and turned outward, prepared to break the bones if I had to. He grunted and dropped the automatic. “I’m not Hajjar,” I snarled. “I’m not that goddamn Catavina. You’re not gonna buy me off, and right now I’m in no mood to worry about protecting your civil rights. Understand?” I bent and scooped up his gun. I’d been wrong. It was loaded.

Jawarski put a hand to his lips. When he pulled it away, his fingers were bloody. “You been watching those holoshows again, buddy,” he said. He grinned, still not terribly worried. “You’re no better’n Hajjar. You’re no better’n me, you want to know the truth. You’d put a round right through me, if you thought you could get away with it.”

“You’re right about that,” I said.

“But you think there’s too many like Hajjar already. And it ain’t even that Hajjar’s a rotten cop. He ain’t. He’s just acting the way they all act, the way everybody expects him to act, the way he’s supposed to act. It ain’t wrong if everybody knows about it ahead of time. I’ll tell you a secret: You’re gonna end up just like Shaknahyi. You’re gonna help little old ladies across the street until you’re old enough to retire, and then some young son of a bitch like me is gonna plant you in the ground.” He reached his little finger into his ear and jiggled it a few times. “And then,” he said thoughtfully, “after you’re gone, the young son of a bitch is gonna jam your wife.”

My face felt hard and tense, frozen into a cold stare. I raised the pistol calmly and held it steadily, pointed between Jawarski’s eyes. “Watch it,” he said scornfully. “That ain’t a toy.”

I grabbed back the static pistol and put it in my pocket. I motioned for Jawarski to sit down, and I returned to my seat on the couch. We looked at each other for a few seconds. I was breathing hard; Jawarski looked like he was enjoying himself.

“I’ll bet you’re doing everything you can to comfort Shaknahyi’s widow,” he said. “You jammed her yet?”

I felt rage and frustration growing in me again. I hated hearing his lies, his justifications for crime and corruption. The worst part was that he was telling me Shaknahyi had died stupidly, for no good reason. I wasn’t going to let him say that. “Shut up,” I said in a strained voice. I found myself waving the automatic pistol at Jawarski.

“See? You can’t shoot. It’d be smart to shoot. I’ll get away clean otherwise, ’cause no matter who locks me up, I’ll be sprung. Shaykh Reda will make sure I get sprung. Ill never be brought to trial in this town.”

“No, you wouldn’t be,” I said, knowing it was probably true. I fired once. The explosion was tremendous, and the booming crack rumbled on forever, like thunder.

Jawarski fell backward in slow motion, half of his face blasted away. There was blood everywhere. I dropped the pistol to the floor. I’d never shot anyone with a projectile weapon before. I backed away and fell against the couch, unable to catch my breath.

When I’d come through the door, I hadn’t planned to kill this man, but I had done it. It had been a conscious decision. I had taken the responsibility for seeing justice done, because I’d become certain it would be done no other way. I looked at the blood on my hands and arms.

The door crashed loudly into the room. Morgan ran in first, followed by Saied. They stopped just inside the threshold and took in the scene. “Aw right,” said the Half-Hajj quietly. “That’s one loose end tied up tight.”

“Listen, man,” said Morgan, “I got to go. You don’t need me for anything more, do you?”

I just stared at them. I wondered why they weren’t horrified too.

“Let’s go, man,” said Morgan. “Somebody might’ve heard that.”

“Oh, somebody heard it, all right,” Saied said. “But in this neighborhood, nobody’s dumb enough to check on it.”

I reached up and popped the tough-guy moddy. I’d had enough of Rex for a while. We left the apartment and went down the stairs. Morgan turned one way on the sidewalk, and the Half-Hajj and I turned the other.

“What now?” asked Saied.

“We got to go get the car,” I said. I didn’t like the idea at all. The sedan was still back at Abu Adil’s. I really didn’t feel like going back there so soon after the bastard mind-raped me. I was going back there; I had that score to settle. But not just yet, not just now.

Saied must have guessed my feelings from the tone of my voice. “Tell you what,” he said. “I’ll go get the car, you sit here and wait. Won’t take long.”

“Fine,” I said, and I gave him the keys. I was immensely grateful that he’d come looking for me, and that I could count on him for help. I had no trouble trusting him again. That was good, because even with the pain-override daddy chipped in, my body was near collapse. I needed to get to a doctor soon.

I didn’t want to sit down on a step, because I thought I’d have a hard time standing again. Instead, I leaned against the white stucco front of a small, tottery house. Overhead, I heard the shrill peenting cries of nighthawfcs as they swooped over the rooftops hunting for insects. I stared across the street at another apartment building, and I saw wild, healthy ferns growing from horizontal surfaces up and down the wall, weeds that had found favorable conditions in the most unlikely place. Cooking smells drifted from open windows: cabbage boiling, meat masting, bread baking.

I was immersed in life here, yet I could not forget that I’d shed a murderer’s blood. I was still holding the automatic pistol. I didn’t know how I was going to dispose of it. My mind wasn’t thinking clearly.

After a while, I saw the cream-colored sedan stop beside me at the curb. Saied got out and helped me around to the passenger side. I slid into the seat, and he closed the door. “Where to?” he asked. “Goddamn hospital,” I said. “Good idea.”

I closed my eyes and felt the car thrumming through the streets. I dozed a little. Saied woke me when we got there. I shoved my static pistol and the .45 under the seat, and we got out of the car.

“Listen,” I said, “I’m just going into the emergency room and get patched up. After that, I got a few people to see. Why don’t you get going?”

The Half-Hajj’s brows narrowed. “What’s the matter? Still don’t trust rne?”

I shook my head. “It’s not that, Saied. I’ve gotten over all that. It’s just sometimes I work better without an audience, okay?”

“Sure. A busted collarbone ain’t enough for you. You won’t be happy till we got to bury you in five separate containers.” “Saied.”

He raised both hands. “All right, all right. You want to storm back in on Shaykh Reda and Himmar, that’s your business.”

“I’m not gonna face them again,” I said. “I mean, not yet.”

“Uh yeah, well, let me know when you do.”

“You bet,” I said. I gave him twenty kiam. “You can get a cab here, can’t you?”

“Uh huh. Give me a call later.” He gave me back the keys to my car.

I nodded and went up the curving drive to the emergency room entrance. Saied had brought me to the same hospital I’d been in twice before. I was beginning to feel comfortable there.

I filled out their damn forms and waited half an hour until one of the residents could see me. He pumped something under the skin of my shoulder with a perfusor, then went about manipulating the broken bones. “This is probably gonna hurt,” he said.

Well, he didn’t know that I had software chipped in that took care of that. I was probably the only person in the world who had that add-on, but I wasn’t a well-known celebrity. I made some appropriate grunts and grimaces, but on the whole I acted brave. He immobilized my left arm with a kind of superstiff shrinkwrap. “You’re handling this real well,” he said.

“I’ve had esoteric training,” I said. “The control of pain is all in the mind.” That was true enough; it was plugged into the mind on the end of a long, plastic-sheathed silver wire.

“Whatever,” said the doctor. When he finished with my collarbone, he treated the cuts and scrapes. Then he scribbled something on a prescription pad. “Still, I’m gonna give you this for pain. You may find that you need it. If you don’t, great.” He ripped the page loose and handed it to me.

I glanced at it. He’d written me for twenty Nofeqs, painkillers so feeble that in the Budayeen you couldn’t’ trade ten of them for a single Sonneine. “Thanks,” I said bluntly.

“No sense being a hero and toughing it out when medical science is there to help.” He glanced around and decided that he was finished with me. “You’ll be all right in about six weeks, Mr. Audran. I advise you to see your own physician in a few days.”

“Thanks,” I said again. He gave me some papers and I took them to a window and paid cash. Then I went out into the main lobby of the hospital and took the elevator up to the twentieth floor. There was a different nurse on duty, but Zain, the security guard, recognized me. I went down the hall to Suite One.

A doctor and a nurse stood beside Papa’s bed. They turned to look at me as I came in, their faces grim. “Is something wrong?” I asked, frightened.

The doctor rubbed his gray beard with one hand. “He’s in serious trouble,” he said.

“What the hell happened?” I demanded.

“He’d been complaining of weakness, headaches, and abdominal pain. For a long while we couldn’t find anything to explain it.”

“Yes,” I said, “he’d been getting ill at home, before the fire. He was too sick to escape by himself.”

“We ran more sensitive tests,” said the doctor, “and finally something turned up positive. He’s been given a rather sophisticated neurotoxin, apparently over a period of weeks.”

I felt cold. Someone had been poisoning Friedlander Bey, probably someone in the house. He certainly had enough enemies, and my recent experience with the Half-Hajj proved that I couldn’t dismiss anyone as a suspect. Then, suddenly, my eyes fell on something resting on Papa’s tray table. It was a round metal tin, its cover lying beside it. In the tin was a layer of dates stuffed with nutmeats and rolled in sugar.

“Umm Saad,” I murmured. She’d been feeding those dates to him since she’d come to live in his house. I went to the tray table. “If you analyze these,” I told the doctor, “I’ll bet you’ll find the source.”

“But who—”

“Don’t worry about who,” I said. “Just make him well.” This was all because I’d been so caught up in my own vendetta against Jawarski that I hadn’t given proper attention to Umm Saad. As I headed for the door I thought, didn’t Augustus Caesar’s wife poison him with figs from his own tree, to get rid of him so her son could be emperor? I excused myself for overlooking the similarity before; there’s so goddamn much history, it just can’t help repeating itself.

I went down and bailed my car out of the parking lot, then drove to the station house. I had myself completely under control by the time the elevator brought me up to the third floor. I headed toward Hajjar’s office; Sergeant Catavina tried to stop me, but I just shoved him up against a painted plasterboard wall and kept walking. I flung open Hajjar’s door. “Hajjar,” I said. All the anger and disgust I felt toward him were in those two syllables.

He glanced up from some paperwork. His expression turned fearful when he saw the look on my face. “Audran,” he said. “What is it?”

I lofted the .45 onto his desk in front of him. “Remember that American we were looking for? The guy who killed Jirji? Well, they found him lying on the floor of some rattrap. Somebody shot him with his own gun.”

Hajjar stared unhappily at the automatic. “Somebody shot him, huh? Any idea who?”

“Unfortunately, no.” I gave him an evil grin. “I don’t have a microscope or nothing, but it looks to me like whoever did it also wiped his fingerprints right off the weapon. We may never solve this murder, either.”

Hajjar sat back in his reclining chair. “Probably not. Well, at least the citizens will be glad to hear that Jawarski’s been neutralized. Good police work, Audran.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Sure.” I turned to leave, and I got as far as the door. Then I faced him again. “That’s one down, know what I mean? And two to go.”

“The hell you talking about?”

“I mean Umm Saad and Abu Adil are next. And something else: I know who you are and I know what you’re doing. Watch your ass. The guy who blew Jawarski away is out there, and he may have you in his sights next.” I had the pleasure of seeing Hajjar’s superior grin vanish. When I left his office, he was muttering to himself and reaching for his phone.

Catavina was waiting in the corridor by the elevator. “What’d you say?” he asked worriedly. “What’d you tell him?”

“Don’t worry, Sarge,” I said, “your afternoon nap is safe, at least for a while. But I wouldn’t be surprised if suddenly there’s a call to reform the police department. You might have to start acting like a real cop for a change.” I pushed the button for the elevator. “And lose some weight while you’re at it.”

My mood was a little better as I rode back down to the ground floor. When I walked back into the early evening sunlight, I felt almost normal.

Almost. I was still a prisoner of my own guilt. I’d planned to go home and find out more details about Kmuzu’s relationship to Abu Adil, but I found myself heading in the other direction. When I heard the evening call to prayer, I left the car on Souk el-Khemis Street. There was a small mosque there, and I paused in the courtyard to remove my shoes and make the ablution. Then I went into the mosque and prayed. It was the first time I’d done that seriously in years.

Joining in worship with the others who came to this neighborhood mosque didn’t cleanse me of my doubts and bad feelings. I hadn’t expected that they would. I did feel a warmth, however, a sense of belonging that had been missing from my life since childhood. For the first time since coming to the city, I could approach Allah in all humility, and with sincere repentance my prayers might be accepted.

After the prayer service, I spoke with an elder of the mosque. We talked for some time, and he told me that I had been right to come and pray. I was grateful that he didn’t lecture me, that he made me comfortable and welcome.

“There is one more thing, O Respected One,” I said.

“Yes?”

“Today I killed a man.”

He did not seem terribly shocked. He stroked his long beard for several seconds. “Tell me why you did this,” he said at last.

I told him everything I knew about Jawarski, about his record of violent crimes before he’d come to the city, about his shooting of Shaknahyi. “He was a bad man,” I said, “but, even so, I feel like a criminal myself.”

The elder put one hand on my shoulder. “In the Surah of The Cow,” he said, “it is written that retaliation is prescribed in the matter of murder. What you did is no crime in the eyes of Allah, all praise to Him.”

I looked deeply into the old man’s eyes. He wasn’t merely trying to make me feel better. He wasn’t just putting my conscience at ease. He was reciting the law as the Messenger of God had revealed it. I knew the passage of the Qur’an he’d mentioned, but I needed to hear it from someone whose authority I respected. I felt wholly absolved. I almost wept with gratitude.

I left the mosque in a strange mixture of moods: I was filled with unrequited rage toward Abu Adil and Umm Saad, but at the same time I felt a well-being and gladness I could not describe. I decided to make another stop before I went home.

Chiri was taking over the night shift when I came into the club. I sat on my usual stool at the bend of the bar. l “White Death?” she asked.

“No,” I said, “I can’t stay long. Chiri, you got any Sonneine?”

She stared at me for a few seconds. “I don’t think so. How’d you hurt your arm?”

“Any Paxium then? Or beauties?”

She rested her chin in her hand. “Honey, I thought you’d sworn off drugs. I thought you were being clean from now on.”

“Aw hell, Chiri,” I said, “don’t give me a hard time.”

She just reached under the counter and came up with her little black pillcase. “Take what you want, Marid,” she said. “I guess you know what you’re doing.”

“I sure do,” I said, and I helped myself to half a dozen caps and tabs. I got some water and swallowed them, and I didn’t even pay much attention to what they were.

I didn’t do anything strenuous for a week or so, but my mind raced like a frantic greyhound. I plotted revenge against Abu Adil and Umar a hundred different ways: I scalded their flesh in boiling vats of noxious fluids; I let loose hideous plague organisms that would make their Proxy Hell moddies seem like summer colds; I hired teams of sadistic ninjas to creep into the great house and slaughter them slowly with subtle knife wounds. In the meantime, my body began to recover its strength, although all the superluminal brain augmentation in the world couldn’t speed up the knitting of broken bones.

The delay was almost more than I could stand, but I had a wonderful nurse. Yasmin had taken pity on me. Saied had been responsible for distributing the story of my heroics. Now everyone in the Budayeen knew how I’d faced down Jawarski single-handed. They’d also heard that he’d been so shamed by my moral example that he embraced Islam on the spot, and that while we prayed together Abu Adil and Umar tried to tiptoe in and kill me, but Jawarski leaped between us and died saving the life of his new Muslim brother.

Then there was the sequel, in which Umar and Abu Adil captured me and took me back to their evil castle, where they tortured me, mind-raped me, and forced me to sign blank checks and deceptive home repairs contracts until Saied the Half-Hajj burst in to my rescue. What the hell. I didn’t see that embellishing the facts a little hurt him or me.

In any event, Yasmin was so attentive and solicitous, I think Kmuzu was a little jealous. I didn’t see why. Many of the attentions I received from Yasmin weren’t in Kmuzu’s job description at all. I awoke one morning to find her straddling me, rubbing my chest. She didn’t have a stitch of clothing on.

“Well,” I said sleepily, “in the hospital, the nurses rarely take their uniforms off.”

“They’ve had more training,” said Yasmin. “I’m a beginner at this, I’m still not entirely sure what I’m doing.”

“You know what you’re doing, all right,” I said. Her massaging moved slowly south. I was waking up fast.

“Now, you’re not supposed to do anything too strenuous, so let me do all the work.”

“Fine,” I said. I looked up at her and remembered how much I loved her. I also remembered how crazy she could make me in bed. Before I got completely carried away, I said, “What if Kmuzu comes in?”

“He’s gone to church. Besides,” she said wickedly, “even Christians must learn about sex sooner or later. Otherwise, where do new Christians come from?”

“Missionaries convert them from people who are minding their own business,” I said.

But Yasmin really didn’t intend to get into a religious discussion. She raised up and slid herself down on top of me. She let out a happy sigh. “It’s been a long time,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said. It was all I could think to say; my concentration was elsewhere.

“When my hair gets long again, I’ll be able to tickle you with it like I used to.”

“You know,” I said, beginning to breathe heavily, “I’ve always had this fantasy—”

Yasmin’s eyes opened wide. “Not with my hair, you won’t!” she said. Well, we all have our inhibitions. I just didn’t think I’d ever suggest anything kinky enough to shock Yasmin.

I’m not going to claim that we jammed all morning until we heard Kmuzu enter the living room. First of all, I hadn’t jammed anyone at all in weeks; second, being together again made both of us frantic. It was a short bout, but very intense. Afterward, we held each other and didn’t say anything for a while. I could have fallen back to sleep, but Yasmin doesn’t like that.

“You ever wish I was a tall, willowy, blond woman?” she asked.

“I’ve never gotten along very well with real women.”

“You like Indihar, I know you do. I’ve seen you looking at her.”

“You’re crazy. She’s just not as bad as the other girls”

I felt Yasmin shrug. “But do you ever wish I was toll and blond?”

“You could’ve been. When you were still a boy, you could’ve asked the surgeons for that.”

She buried her face against my neck. “They told me I didn’t have the skeleton,” she said, her voice muffled.

“I think you’re perfect just the way you are.” I waited a beat. “Except you’ve got the biggest feet I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Yasmin sat up quickly. She wasn’t amused. “You want your other collarbone broken, baheem?”

It took me half an hour and a long hot shower together to restore peace. I got dressed and watched Yasmin set herself ready to go out. For once, she wasn’t running late. She didn’t have to go to work until eight o’clock that evening. “Coming by the club later?” she asked, looking at my reflection in the mirror over my dresser.

“Sure,” I said. “I’ve got to make my presence felt, or ill you employees will get the idea I’m running a resort.”

Yasmin grinned. “You ain’t running nothing, honey,” she said. “Chiri runs that club, like she always has.”

“I know.” I’d come to enjoy owning the place. I’d originally planned to turn the club back to Chiri as soon as possible, but now I’d decided to hang on to it for a while. It made me feel great to get special treatment from Brandi, Kandy, Pualani and the others. I liked being Mr. Boss.

After Yasmin left, I went to my desk and sat down. My original apartment had been repaired and painted, and I was living again on the second floor of the west wing. Staying just down the hall from my mother had been nerve-wracking, even for only a few days, even after our surprise reconciliation. I felt recovered enough to turn my attention back to the unfinished business of Umm Saad and Abu Adil.

When I finally decided that I couldn’t put it off any longer, I picked up the tan-colored moddy, the recording of Abu Adil. “Bismillah,” I murmured, and then hesitantly I reached up and chipped it in.

Madness, by the life of the Prophet!

Audran felt as if he were peering through a narrow tunnel, seeing the world with Abu Adil’s mean, self-centered outlook. Things were only good for Abu Adil or bad for Abu Adil; if they were neither, they did not exist.

The next thing Audran noticed was that he was in a state of sexual arousal. Of course; Abu Adil’s only sexual pleasure came from jamming himself, or a facsimile of himself. That’s what Umar was — a frame on which to hang this electronic duplicate. And Umar was too stupid to realize that’s all he was, that he had no other qualifications that made him valuable. When he displeased Abu Adil, or began to bore him, Umar would be replaced immediately, as so many others had been disposed of over the years.

What about the Phoenix File? What did A.L.M. mean?

Of course, the memory was right there… Alif. Lam. Mim.

They weren’t initials at all. They weren’t some unknown acronym. They came from the Qur’an. Many of the surahs in the Qur’an began with letters of the alphabet. No one knew what they meant. Indications of some mystical phrase, perhaps, or the initials of a scribe. Their significance had been lost through the centuries.

There was more than one surah that began with Alif, Lam, Mim, but Audran knew immediately which one was special. It was Surah Thirty, called The Romans; the important line read “Allah is He Who created you and then sustained you, then causeth you to die, then giveth life to you again. “It was obvious that, just like Friedlander Bey, Shaykh Reda also pictured his own face when he spoke the name of God.

And suddenly Audran knew that the Phoenix File, with its lists of unsuspecting people who might be murdered for organs, was recorded on a cobalt-alloy memory plate hidden in Abu Adil’s private bedroom.

And other things became clear to Audran as well. When he thought of Umm Saad, Abu Adil’s memory related that she was not, in fact, any relation to Friedlander Bey, but that she had agreed to spy on him. Umm Saad’s reward would be the removal of her name and that of her son from the Phoenix File. She would never have to worry that someday someone she did not even know might have greater need of her heart or her liver or her lungs. Audran learned that it had been Umm Saad who’d hired Paul Jawarski, and Abu Adil had extended his protection to the American killer. Umm Saad had brought Jawarski to the city and passed along the assignments from Shaykh Reda to kill certain people listed on the Phoenix File. Umm Saad was partly responsible for those deaths, and for the fire and the poisoning of Friedlander Bey.

Audran was sickened, and the horrible, floating feeling of insanity was threatening to overwhelm him. He reached up and grabbed the moddy and pulled it free.

Yipe. That was the first time I’d ever used a moddy recorded from a living person. It had been a disgusting experience. It had been like being immersed in slime, except that you could wash slime away; having your mind fouled was more intimate and more terrible. From now on, I promised myself, I’d stick with fictional characters and moddy constructs.

Abu Adil was even more brainsick than I’d imagined. Still, I’d learned a few things — or, at least, my suspicions had been confirmed. Surprisingly, I could understand Umm Saad’s motivations. If I’d known about the Phoenix File, I’d have done anything to get my name off it too.

I wanted to talk some of this over with Kmuzu, but he wasn’t back from his Sabbath service yet. I thought I’d see if my mother had anything more to tell me.

I crossed the courtyard to the east wing. There was a little pause when I knocked on her door. “Coming,” she called. I heard glass clinking, then the sound of a drawer opening and shutting. “Coming.” When she opened the door to me, I could smell the Irish whiskey. She’d been very circumspect during her stay in Papa’s house, I’m sure she drank and took drugs as much as ever, but at least she had the self-control not to parade herself around when she was smashed.

“Peace be on you, O Mother,” I said.

“And on you be peace,” she said. She leaned against the door a little unsteadily. “Do you want to come in, O Shaykh?”

“Yes, I need to talk to you.” I waited until she’d opened the door wider and stepped back. I came in and took a seat on the couch. She faced me in a comfortable armchair.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “I got nothin’ to offer you.” “Uh yeah, that’s okay.” She looked well. She had abandoned the outlandish makeup and clothing, and now she rather resembled my former mental image of her: Her hair was brushed, she was suitably dressed, and she was modestly seated with her hands folded in her lap. I recalled Kmuzu’s comment that I judged my mother more harshly than I judged myself, and forgave her the drunkenness. She wasn’t hurting anybody.

“O Mother,” I said, “you said that when you came back to the city, you made the mistake of trusting Abu Adil again. I know that it was my friend Saied who brought you here.”

“You know that?” she said. She seemed wary.,

“And I know about the Phoenix File. Now, why were you willing to spy on Friedlander Bey?”

Her expression was amazed. “Hey,” she said, “if somebody offered to cross you off that goddamn list, wouldn’t you do just about anything? I mean, hell, I told myself I wouldn’t give Abu Adil nothin’ he could really use against Papa. I didn’t think I was hurtin’ nobody.”

That’s just what I’d hoped to hear. Abu Adil had squeezed Umm Saad and my mother in the same vise. Umm Saad had responded by trying to kill everyone in our house. My mother had reacted differently; she’d fled to Friedlander Bey’s protection.

I pretended that the matter wasn’t important enough to discuss further. “You also said that you wished to do something useful with your life. You still feel that way?” “Sure, I suppose,” she said suspiciously. She looked uncomfortable, as if she were waiting for me to condemn her to some horrible fate of civic consciousness.

“I’ve put away some money,” I said, “and I’ve given Kmuzu the job of starting up a kind of charity kitchen in the Budayeen. I was wondering if you’d like to help with the project.”

“Oh sure,” she said, frowning, “whatever you want.” She couldn’t have been less enthusiastic if I’d asked her to cut out her own tongue.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

I was startled to see tears slipping down her pale cheek. “You know, I didn’t think I’d come to this. I’m still good lookin’, ain’t I? I mean, your father thought I was beautiful. He used to tell me that all the time, and that wasn’t so long ago. I think if I had some decent clothes — not that stuff I brought with me from Algiers — I could still turn a few heads. No reason I got to be lonely the rest of my life, is there?”

I didn’t want to get into that. “You’re still attractive, Mother.”

“You bet your ass,” she said, smiling again. “I’m gonna get me a short skirt and some boots. Don’t look at me that way, I mean a tasteful short skirt. Fifty-seven years old ain’t so bad these days. Look at Papa.”

Yeah, well, Papa was lying helpless in a hospital bed, too weak to pull his own sheet up under his chin.

“And you know what I want?” she asked with a dreamy expression.

I was afraid to ask. “No, what?” “I saw this picture of Umm Khalthoum in the souk. made out of thousands of flat-head nails. This guy pounded ’em all into this big board, then painted each nail head a different color. You can’t see what it is close up, but when you step back, it’s this gorgeous picture of The Lady.”

“Yeah, you right,” I said. I could just see it hanging on the wall over Friedlander Bey’s expensive and tasteful furniture.

“Well, hell, I got some money put away too.” I must have looked surprised, because she said, “I got some secrets of my own, you know. I been around, I seen things. I got my own friends and I got my own cash. So don’t think you can order my life for me just ’cause you set me up here. I can pick up and leave anytime I want.”

“Mother,” I said, “I really don’t want to tell you how to act or what to do. I just thought you might like helping out in the Budayeen. There’s a lot of people there as poor as we used to be.”

She wasn’t listening closely. “We used to be poor, Marid,” she said, drifting off to a fantasy recollection of what those times had been like, “but we was always happy. Those were the good days.” Then her expression turned sad, and she looked at me again. “And look at me now.

“Got to go,” I said. I stood up and headed for the door. “May your vigor continue, O Mother. By your leave.”

“Go in peace,” she said, coming with me to the door. “Remember what I told you.”

I didn’t know what she meant. Even under the best conditions, conversations with my mother were filled with little information and much static. With her, it was always one step forward and two steps back. I was glad to see that she didn’t seem to have any thoughts of returning to Algiers, or going into her old line of work here. At least, that’s what I thought she’d meant. She’d said something about “turning some heads,” but I hoped she meant purely in a noncommercial way. I thought about these things as I went back to my suite in the west wing.

Kmuzu had returned, and was gathering up our dirty laundry. “A call came for you, yaa Sidi,” he said.

“Here?” I wondered why it hadn’t come on my personal line, on the phone I wore on my belt.

“Yes. There was no message, but you are supposed to call Mahmoud. I left the number on your desk.”

This could be good news. I’d planned to tackle the second of my three targets next — Umm Saad; but she might have to wait. I went to the desk and spoke Mahmoud’s commcode into the phone. He answered immediately. “Allo,” he said.

“Where y’at, Mahmoud. It’s Marid.”

“Good… I have some business to discuss with you.”

“Let me get comfortable.” I pulled out a chair and sat down. I couldn’t help a grin from spreading over my face. “Okay, what you got?”

There was a slight pause. “As you know, I was greatly saddened by the death of Jirji Shaknahyi, may the blessings of Allah be on him.”

I knew nothing of the kind. If I hadn’t known Indihar was married, I doubted if Mahmoud or Jacques or anybody else knew either. Maybe Chiriga. Chiri always knew these things. “It was a tragedy to the entire city,” I said. I was staying noncommittal.

“It was a tragedy to our Indihar. She must be helpless with grief. And to have no money now, that must make her situation even harder. I’m sorry that I suggested she work for me. That was callous. I spoke quickly before I considered what I was saying.”

“Indihar is a devout Muslim,” I said coldly. “She’s not about to turn tricks for you or for anyone.”

“I know that, Marid. No need for you to be so defensive on her behalf. But she’s realized that she can’t support all her children. You mentioned that she’d be willing to place one of them in a good foster home, and perhaps earn enough that way to feed and clothe the others in a proper manner.”

I hated what I was doing. “You may not know it,” I said, “but my own mother was forced to sell my little brother when we were children.”

“Now, now, Maghrebi,” said Mahmoud, “don’t think of it as ‘selling.’ No one’s got the right to sell a child. We can’t continue this conversation if you maintain that attitude.”

“Fine. Whatever you say. It’s not selling; call it whatever you want. The point is, have you found someone who might be interested in adopting?”

Mahmoud paused. “Not exactly,” he said at last. “But I know a man who frequently acts as go-between, arranging these matters. I’ve dealt with him before, and I can vouch for his honesty and delicacy. You can see that these transactions require a great amount of sympathy and tact.”

“Sure,” I said. “That’s important. Indihar is in enough pain as it is.”

“Exactly. That’s why this man is so highly recommended. He’s able to place a child in a loving home immediately, and he’s able to present the natural parent with a cash gift in such a way as to prevent any guilt or recriminations. It’s just his way. I think Mr. On is the perfect solution to Indihar’s problem.”

“Mr. On?”

“His name is On Cheung. He’s a businessman from Kansu China. I’ve had the privilege of acting as his agent before.”

“Uh yeah.” I squeezed my eyes shut and listened to the blood roaring in my head. “This is leading us into the topic of money. How much will this Mr. On pay, and do you get a cut of it?”

“For the elder son, five hundred kiam. For the younger son, three hundred kiam. For the daughter, two hundred fifty. There are also bonuses: an extra two hundred kiam for two children, and five hundred if Indihar relinquishes all three. I, of course, take 10 percent. If you have arranged with her for a fee, that must come from the remainder.”

“Sounds fair enough. That’s better than Indihar had hoped, to be truthful.”

“I told you that Mr. On was a generous man.”

“Now what? Do we meet somewhere or what?”

Mahmoud’s voice was growing excited. “Of course, both Mr. On and I will need to examine the children, to be sure they’re fit and healthy. Can you have them at 7 Rafi ben Garcia Street in half an hour?”

“Sure, Mahmoud. See you then. Tell On Cheung to bring his money.” I hung up the phone. “Kmuzu,” I called, “forget about the laundry. We’re going out.”

“Yes, yaa Sidi. Shall I bring the car around?”

“Uh huh.” I got up and threw a gallebeya over my jeans. Then I stuffed my static pistol in the pocket. I didn’t trust either Mahmoud or the baby seller.

The address was in the Jewish Quarter, and it turned out to be another storefront covered with newspaper, very much like the place Shaknahyi and I had investigated in vain. “Stay here,” I told Kmuzu. Then I got out of the car and went to the front door. I rapped on the glass, and after a little while Mahmoud opened the door an inch or two.

“Marid,” he said in his husky voice. “Where’s Indihar and the children?”

“I told ’em to stay in the car. I want to check this out first. Let me in.”

“Sure.” He swung the door wider, and I pushed past him. “Marid, this is Mr. On.”

The baby seller was a small man with brown skin and brown teeth. He was sitting on a battered metal folding chair at a card table. There was a metal box at his elbow. He looked at me through a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles. No Nikon eyes for him, either.

I stepped across the filthy floor and held out my hand to him. On Cheung peered up at me and made no move to shake hands. After a few seconds, feeling like a fool, I dropped my hand.

“Okay?” asked Mahmoud. “Satisfied?”

“Tell him to open the box,” I said.

“I don’t tell Mr. On to do anything,” said Mahmoud. He’s a very—”

“Everything okay,” said On Cheung. “You look.” He flipped open the top of the metal box. There was a stack of bundred-kiam bills in there that could have bought every child in the Budayeen.

“Great,” I said. I reached into my pocket and brought out the pistol. “Hands on heads,” I said.

“You son of a bitch,” shouted Mahmoud. “What’s this, a robbery? You’re not gonna get away with it. Mr. On will make you sorry. That money’s not going to do you a damn bit of good. You’ll be dead before you spend a fiq of it.”

“I’m still a cop, Mahmoud,” I said sadly. I closed the metal box and handed it to him. I couldn’t carry it with my one good arm and still point the static pistol. “Hajjar’s been looking for On Cheung for a long time. Even a crooked cop like him has to bust somebody for real now and then. I guess it’s just your turn.”

I led them out to the car. I kept the gun on them while Kmuzu drove to the station house. All four of us went up to the third floor. Hajjar was startled as our little parade entered his glass-walled office. “Lieutenant,” I said, “this is On Cheung, the baby seller. Mahmoud, drop the box of money. It’s supposed to be evidence, but I don’t expect anybody’ll ever see it again after today.”

“You never cease to amaze me,” said Hajjar. He pushed a button on his desk, calling cops from the outer

’This one’s for free,” I said. Hajjar looked puzzled. “I told you I still had two to go. That’s Umm Saad and Abu Adil. These stiffs are kind of a bonus.”

“Right, thanks a lot. Mahmoud, you can go.” The lieutenant looked up at me and shrugged his shoulders. “You really think Papa’d let me hold him?” he said. I thought about that for a moment and realized he was right.

Mahmoud looked relieved. “Won’t forget this, Maghrebi,” he muttered as he shoved by me. His threat didn’t worry me.

“By the way,” I said, “I quit. You want anybody to file traffic reports or enter logbook records from now on, you get somebody else. You need somebody to waste his time on wild-goose chases, get somebody else. You need help covering up your own crimes or incompetence, check with somebody else. I don’t work here anymore.”

Hajjar smiled cynically. “Yeah, some cops react that way when they face real pressure. But I thought you’d last longer, Audran.”

I slapped him twice, quickly and loudly. He just stared at me, his own hand coming up slowly to touch his stinging cheeks. I turned and walked out of the office, followed by Kmuzu. Cops were coming from all around, and they’d seen what I’d done to Hajjar. Everybody was grinning. Even me.

Kmuzu,” I said as he drove the sedan back to the house, “would you invite Umm Saad to have dinner iwith us?”

He looked across at me. He probably thought I was a complete fool, but he was great at keeping his opinions to himself. “Of course, yaa Sidi,” he said. “In the small dining room?”

“Uh huh.” I watched the streets of the Christian Quarter go by, wondering if I knew what I was doing.

“I hope you’re not underestimating the woman,” said Kmuzu.

“I don’t think so. I think I’ve got a healthy regard for what she’s capable of. I also think she’s basically sane. When I tell her I know about the Phoenix File, and about her reasons for insinuating herself in our house, she’ll realize the game is over.”

Kmuzu tapped the steering wheel with his index fingers. “If you need help, yaa Sidi, I’ll be there. You won’t have to face her alone, as you faced Shaykh Reda.”

I smiled. “Thanks, Kmuzu, but I don’t think Umm Saad is as loony or as powerful as Abu Adil. She and I will just be sitting down to a meal. I intend to stay in control, inshallah.”

Kmuzu gave me one more thoughtful glance, then turned his attention back to driving.

When we arrived at Friedlander Bey’s mansion, I went upstairs and changed my clothes. I put on a white robe and a white caftan, into which I transferred my static pistol. I also popped the pain-blocking daddy. I didn’t really need it all the time anymore, and I was carrying plenty of sunnies just in case. I felt a flood of annoying aches and pains, all of which had been blocked by the daddy. The worst of all was the throbbing discomfort in my shoulder. I decided there was no point in suffering bravely, and I went right for my pillcase.

While I waited for Umm Saad’s response to my invitation, I heard the sunset call to prayer from Papa’s muezzin. Since my talk with the elder of the mosque in Souk el-Khemis Street, I’d been worshiping more or less regularly. Maybe I didn’t manage to hit all five daily prayers, but I was doing decidedly better than ever before. Now I went downstairs to Papa’s office. He kept his prayer rug there, and he had a special mihrab built into one wall. The mihrab is the shallow semicircular alcove you find in every mosque, indicating the precise direction of Mecca. After I washed my face, hands, and feet, I unrolled the prayer mat, cleared my mind of uncertainty, and addressed myself to Allah.

When I’d finished praying, Kmuzu murmured, “Umm Saad waits for you in the small dining room.”

“Thank you.” I rolled up Papa’s prayer rug and put it away. I felt determined and strong. I used to believe that this was a temporary illusion caused by worship, but now I thought that doubt was the illusion. The assurance was real.

“It is good that you’ve regained your faith, yaa Sidi,” said Kmuzu. “Sometime you must let me tell you of the miracle of Jesus Christ.”

“Jesus is no stranger to Muslims,” I replied, “and his miracles are no secret to the faith.”

We went into the dining room, and I saw Umm Saad and her young son sitting in their places. The boy hadn’t been invited, but his presence wouldn’t stop me from what I planned to say. “Welcome,” I said, “and may Allah make this meal wholesome to you.”

“Thank you, O Shaykh,” said Umm Saad. “How is your health?”

“Fine, all praise be to Allah.” I sat down, and Kmuzu stood behind my chair. I noticed that Habib had come into the room as well — -or maybe it was Labib, whichever of the Stones wasn’t guarding Papa in the hospital. Umm Saad and I exchanged more pleasantries until a serving woman brought in a platter of tahini and salt fish.

“Your cook is excellent,” said Umm Saad. “I have relished each meal here.”

“I am pleased,” I said. More appetizers were brought out: cold stuffed grape leaves, stewed artichoke hearts, and eggplant slices stuffed with cream cheese. I indicated that my guests should serve themselves.

Umm Saad piled generous portions of each dish on her son’s plate. She looked back at me. “May I pour coffee for you, O Shaykh?” she asked.

“In a moment,” I said. “I’m sorry that Saad ben Salah is here to hear what I’ve got to say. It’s time to confront you with what I’ve learned, I know all about your work for Shaykh Reda, and how you’ve attempted to murder Friedlander Bey. I know that you ordered your son to set the fire, and I know about the poisoned stuffed dates.”

Umm Saad’s face went pale with horror. She had just taken a bite of a stuffed grape leaf, and she spat it out and dropped the remainder on her plate. “What have you done?” she said hoarsely.

I picked up another stuffed grape leaf and put it in my mouth. When I finished chewing, I said, “I’ve done nothing as terrible as you’re thinking.”

Saad ben Salah stood up and moved toward me. His young face was twisted in an expression of rage and hate. “By the beard of the Prophet,” he said, “I won’t allow you to speak that way to my mother!”

“I only speak the truth,” I said. “Isn’t that so, Umm Saad?”

The boy glared at me. “My mother had nothing to do with the fire. That was my own idea. I hate you, and I hate Friedlander Bey. He’s my grandfather, yet he denies me. He leaves his own daughter to suffer in poverty and misery. He deserves to die.”

I sipped some coffee calmly. “I don’t believe it,” I said. “It’s commendable of you to shoulder the blame, Saad, but it’s your mother who’s guilty, not you.”

“You’re a liar!” cried the woman.

The boy leaped toward me, but Kmuzu put himself between us. He was more than strong enough to restrain Saad.

I turned again to Umm Saad. “What I don’t understand,” I said, “is why you’ve tried to kill Papa. I don’t see that his death would benefit you at all.”

“Then you don’t know as much as you think,” she said. She seemed to relax a little. Her eyes flicked from me to Kmuzu, who still held her son in an unbreakable grip. “Shaykh Reda promised me that if I discovered Fried-lander Bey’s plans, or eliminated him so that Shaykh Reda would have no further obstacle, he would back my claim to be mistress of this house. I would take over Friedlander Bey’s estate and his business ventures, and I would then turn over all matters of political influence to Shaykh Reda.”

“Sure,” I said, “and all you’d have to do is trust Abu Adil. How long do you think you’d last before he eliminated you the way you eliminated Papa? Then he could unite the two most powerful houses in the city.”

“You’re just inventing stories!” She got to her feet, turning to look at Kmuzu again. “Let my son go.”

Kmuzu looked at me. I shook my head.

Umm Saad took a small needle gun from her bag. “I said, let my son go!”

“My lady,” I said, holding up both hands to show that she had nothing to fear from me, “you’ve failed. Put down the gun. If you go on, not even the resources of Shaykh Reda will protect you from the vengeance of Friedlander Bey. I’m sure Abu Adil’s interest in your affairs has come to an end. At this point, you’re only deluding yourself.”

She fired two or three fleehettes into the ceiling to let me know she was willing to use the weapon. “Release my boy,” she said hoarsely. “Let us go.”

“I don’t know if I can do that,” I said. “I’m sure Fried-lander Bey would want to—”

I heard a sound like thitt! thitt! and realized that Umm Saad had fired at me. I sucked in a deep breath, waiting to feel the bite of pain that would tell me where I’d been wounded, but it didn’t happen. Her agitation had spoiled her aim even at this close range.

She swung the needle gun toward Kmuzu, who remained motionless, still shielded by Saad’s body. Then she turned back toward me. In the meantime, however, the Stone That Speaks had crossed the few feet between us. He raised one hand and chopped down on Umm Saad’s wrist, and she dropped the needle gun. Then the Stone raised his other hand, clenched into a huge fist.

“No,” I shouted, but it was too late to stop him. With a Sowerful backhand clout, he knocked Umm Saad to the oor. I saw a bright trail of blood on her face below her split lip. She lay on her back with her head twisted at a grotesque angle. I knew the Stone had killed her with one blow. “That’s two,” I whispered. Now I could give my complete attention to Abu Adil. And Umar, the old man’s deluded plaything.

“Son of a dog!” screamed the boy. He struggled a moment, and then Kmuzu permitted him to go to her. He bent and cradled his mother’s corpse. “O Mother, Mother,” he murmured, weeping.

Kmuzu and I let him mourn her for a short while. “Saad, get up,” I said finally.

He looked up at me. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much malignity in a person’s face. “I’ll kill you,” he said. “I promise you that. All of you.”

“Get up, Saad,” I said. I wished this hadn’t happened, but it was too late for regrets.

Kmuzu put his hand on Saad’s shoulder, but the boy shrugged it off. “You must listen to my master,” said Kmuzu.

“No,” said Saad. Then his hand flashed out quickly for his mother’s needle gun. The Stone stamped down on the boy’s forearm. Saad collapsed beside his mother, holding his arm and whimpering.

Kmuzu knelt and took the needle gun. He stood up again and gave the weapon to me. “What do you wish to do, yaa Sidi?” he asked.

“About the boy?” I looked at Saad thoughtfully. I knew that he bore me nothing but malice, but I only pitied him. He had been only a pawn in his mother’s bargain with Abu Adil, a dupe in her vicious scheme to usurp Friedlander Bey’s power. I didn’t expect that Saad could understand that, of course. To him, Umm Saad would always be a martyr and a victim of cruel injustice.

“What is to be done?” Kmuzu said, breaking in on my thoughts.

“Oh, just let him go. He’s certainly suffered enough.” Kmuzu stood aside, and Saad got to his feet, holding his bruised forearm close to his chest. “I’ll make all the proper preparations for your mother’s funeral,” I said.

Once again, his expression twisted in loathing. “You will not touch her!” he cried. “I will bury my mother.” He backed away from me and stumbled toward the door. When he reached the exit, he turned to face me. “If there are such things as curses in this world,” he uttered in a feverish voice, “I call them all down on you and your house. I will make you pay a hundred times for what you’ve done. I swear this three times, on the life of the Prophet Muhammad!” Then he fled the dining room.

“You have made a bitter enemy, yaa Sidi,” said Kmuzu.

“I know,” I said, “but I can’t worry about it.” I just shook my head sadly.

A telephone on the sideboard warbled, and the Stone answered it. “Yes?” he said. He listened for a moment, then held it out to me.

I took it from him. “Hello?” I said.

There was just one word from the caller, “Come.” It had been the other Stone.

I felt chilled. “We’ve got to get to the hospital,” I said. I glanced down at Umm Saad’s body, undecided what to do.

Kmuzu understood my problem. “Youssef can make the arrangements, yaa Sidi, if that’s what you wish.”

“Yes,” I said. “I may need both of you.”

Kmuzu nodded, and we left the dining room with Labib or Habib right behind me. We went outside, and Kmuzu drove the sedan around to the front of the house. I got in the back. I thought the Stone would have an easier time cramming himself into the passenger seat.

Kmuzu raced through the streets almost as wildly as Bill the taxi driver. We arrived at Suite One just as a male nurse was leaving Papa’s room.

“How is Friedlander Bey?” I asked fearfully.

“He’s still alive,” said the nurse. “He’s conscious, but you can’t stay long. He’s going into surgery shortly. The doctor is with him now.”

“Thank you,” I said. I turned to Kmuzu and the Stone. “Wait outside.”

“Yes, yaa Sidi,” said Kmuzu. The Stone didn’t even grunt. He just cast a quick, hostile glance at Kmuzu.

I went into the suite. I saw another male nurse shaving Papa’s skull, evidently prepping it for surgery. Tariq, his valet, stood by looking very worried. Dr. Yeniknani and another doctor sat at the card table, discussing something in low voices. “Praise God you’re here,” said the valet. “Our master has been asking for you.”

“What is it, Tariq?” I asked.

He frowned. He looked almost on the point of tears. “I don’t understand. The doctors can explain. But now you must let our master know that you’re here.”

I went to Papa’s bedside and looked down at him. He seemed to be dozing, his breath light and fluttery. His skin was an unhealthy gray color, and his lips and eyelids were unnaturally dark. The nurse finished shaving his head, and that just accentuated Papa’s bizarre, deathlike appearance.

He opened his eyes as I stood there. “You have made us lonely, my nephew,” he said. His voice was faint, like words carried on the wind.

“May God never make you lonely, O Shaykh,” I said. I bent and kissed him on the cheek.

“You must tell me,” he began. His breath wheezed and he couldn’t finish his sentence.

“All goes well, praise Allah,” I said. “Umm Saad is no more. I have yet to instruct Abu Adil on the folly of plotting against you.”

The corners of his mouth quirked. “You will be rewarded. How did you defeat the woman?”

I wished he would stop thinking in terms of debts and rewards. “I have a personality module of Shaykh Reda,” I said. “When I chipped it in, I learned many things that have been useful.”

He caught his breath and looked unhappy. “Then you know—”

“I know of the Phoenix File, O Shaykh. I know that you protect that evil thing in cooperation with Abu Adil.”

“Yes. And you know also that I am your mother’s grandfather. That you are my great-grandson. But do you understand why we kept that knowledge a secret?”

Well, no, I hadn’t known that until just that moment, although if I’d been wearing Abu Adil’s moddy and stopped to think about myself or my mother, the information might have popped into my consciousness.

So all that stuff about Papa possibly being my father was just Mom being cute and clever. I guess she’d known the truth all along. And that’s why Papa’d been so upset when I’d kicked her out of the house when she first came to the city. That’s why Umm Saad had caused him so much grief: Because everybody but me understood that she was trying to squeeze out the natural heirs, with Abu Adil’s assistance. And Umm Saad was using the Phoenix File to blackmail Papa. Now I saw why he allowed her to remain in the house so long, and why he preferred that I dispose of her.

And ever since Friedlander Bey’s divine finger first descended from the clouds to tap me so long ago, I’d been aimed toward lofty ends. Had I been cut out to be merely Papa’s indispensable, reluctant assistant? Or had I been groomed all along to inherit the power and the wealth, every bit of it, along with the terrible life-and-death decisions Papa made every day?

How naive I’d been, to think that I might find a way to escape! I was more than just under Friedlander Bey’s thumb; he owned me, and his indelible mark was written in my genetic material. My shoulders sagged as I realized that I would never be free, and that any hope of liberty had always been empty illusion.

“Why did you and my mother keep this secret from me?” I asked.

“You are not alone, my… son. As a young man, I fathered many children. When my own eldest son died, he was older than you are now, and he has been dead more than a century. I have dozens of grandchildren, one of whom is your mother. In your generation, I do not know how many descendants I can claim. It would not have been appropriate for you to feel unique, to use your relationship with me to further selfish ends. I needed to be sure that you were worthy, before I acknowledged you as my chosen one.”

I wasn’t as thrilled by that speech as he probably thought I should be. He sounded like a lunatic pretending to be God, passing on his blessing like a birthday present. Papa didn’t want me to use my connection for selfish ends! Jeez, if that wasn’t the height of irony!

“Yes, O Shaykh,” I said. It didn’t cost me anything to sound docile. Hell, he was going to have his skull carved in a few minutes. Still, I made no promises.

“Remember,” he said softly, “there are many others who would take away your privileged position. You have scores of cousins who may someday do you harm.”

Great. Something else to look forward to. “Then the computer records I searched—”

“Have been changed and changed again many times over the years.” He smiled faintly. “You must learn not to put your faith in truth that has only electronic existence. Is it not our business, after all, to supply versions of that truth to the nations of the world? Have you not learned how supple truth can be?”

More questions occurred to me every second. “Then my father was truly Bernard Audran?”

“The Provencal sailor, yes.”

I was relieved that I knew one thing for certain.

“Forgive my, my darling,” murmured Papa. “I did not wish to reveal the Phoenix File to you, and that made it more difficult for you to deal with Umm Saad and Abu Adil.”

I held his hand; it trembled in my grasp. “Don’t worry, O Shaykh. It’s almost over.”

“Mr. Audran.” I felt Dr. Yeniknani’s large-knuckled hand on my shoulder. “We’ll be taking your patron down to surgery now.”

“What’s wrong? What are you going to do?”

It was obvious that there wasn’t time to go into a long explanation. “You were right about the tainted dates. Someone had been feeding him the poison for some time. It has severely impaired his medulla, the part of the brain that controls respiration, heartbeat, and wakefulness. It’s been damaged to such an extent that, unless something is done very soon, he will fall into an irreversible coma.”

My mouth was dry, and my heart was racing. “What are you going to do?” I asked.

Dr. Yeniknani looked down at his hands. “Dr. Lisan believes the only hope is a partial medullar transplant. We have been waiting for healthy tissue from a compatible donor.”

“And today you’ve found it?” I wondered who on that goddamn Phoenix File had been sacrificed for this.

“I can’t promise success, Mr. Audran. The operation has only been tried three or four times before, and never in this part of the world. But you must know that if any surgeon can offer you hope, it’s Dr. Lisan. And of course, I will be attending. Your patron will have all the skill at our disposal, and all the prayers of his faithful friends.”

I nodded dumbly. I looked up to see two male nurses lifting Friedlander Bey from his hospital bed onto a wheeled cart. I went to grasp his hand once more.

“Two things,” he said in a husky whisper. “You have moved the policeman’s widow into our home. When the four months of proper mourning are over, you must marry her.”

“Marry her!” I was so startled, I forgot to be properly respectful.

“And when I recover from this illness—” He yawned, almost unable to keep his eyes open against the medication the nurses had given him. I lowered my head to catch his words. “When I am again well, we will go to Mecca.”