Authors: Charles Benoit
Relative Danger (6 page)
“What do you want to drink?” Aisha asked as they settled into their seats at the outdoor café that looked out across the beach and the Atlantic. She had picked him up at the hotel for lunch and, as promised, showed him the sights of the city. It took all of two hours.
The sights of the city—the sites Aisha felt were worth seeing—were limited to a few older buildings, which she consented to slow down in front of as they raced by, and dozens of shops and boutiques that ringed the city.
“Everyone should have a Great Quest in life,” she had announced as she cut around a speeding Fiat, her BMW convertible just missing the Fiat’s back bumper. “Being me, I have two. You know about
Al Ainab
. My other great quest in life,” she said, “is to find the perfect LBD.”
“LBD? Large Big Diamond?”
“Little Black Dress. Every woman should have at least one perfect LBD in her wardrobe. I own, well, a lot of them, but I still have not found the perfect one.
“It’s not just the fit,” she continued, “it’s the fabric, the cut, the color….”
“What color? It’s black.”
She raised her eyebrows as she looked at him, amazed at his level of ignorance. “Some blacks,” she said with authority, “are blacker than others.”
Most of the important sites in Casablanca were potential LBD sites. Aisha tried on different outfits, twirling around a few times in front of the mirror, adjusting straps or raising up on her toes to simulate high heels. She’d sigh, complain that she was too fat for this one or too small breasted for that one, too old to be seen in this style, too young to be wearing that. No one believed her. The salesgirls and other shoppers stared openly at her and even Doug, with his undeveloped sense of fashion, knew she looked perfect. She stopped asking Doug’s opinion after the tenth outfit since all he said was that it looked great. Like a Midas of fashion, she made every dress, every skirt, every blouse look stunning.
“What would you like to see me wearing?” she had asked, “This? This? Or none of these?” Doug could only smile.
“So what do you want to drink?” she asked again. She was ‘Absolutely Exhausted’ from sightseeing and had power-slid her car into the parking lot of the seaside café three minutes ago.
“Anything but tea.”
Aisha ordered two Budweisers and they sat sipping the warm beer as the locals tried to keep cool in the ocean breezes. The beach was littered from one end to the other with fast food wrappers, empty water bottles, and things that looked like car parts. The ocean rolled up the sand, depositing some debris and pulling some back out to sea. The air smelled of salt water and gasoline. It could have been a beautiful place, Doug thought.
“I’m sorry they wouldn’t let you in the mosque. It really is quite impressive. It was probably because they knew you weren’t a Muslim. You have to be a Muslim to go into the mosques here.”
“You think it was because of
me?”
Doug said as he laughed. “You don’t think that the way you are dressed influenced their decision?” She was wearing white shorts, no doubt to highlight her perfectly tanned and sculpted legs, and a man’s button-down oxford with the sleeves rolled up past her elbows. Her’s, Doug thought, or a yet unmentioned boyfriend’s? After seeing her in all those short, wonderfully short, LBDs Doug couldn’t decide if she looked better in black or white. In any case she looked just like she wanted to look—like a model at the beach.
“What is wrong with what I have on?” she said, looking over the top of her sunglasses.
“Honestly, nothing.” And he meant it, too.
“So where were you last night? I called around eleven to see if you wanted to get together but the desk said you were out?”
Holy shit, he thought, she called me. “I had dinner with a guy I met at my hotel, this older guy from Germany, I think. He used to be a museum curator. We were talking about artifacts and things like that. It was interesting, he seemed to know so much.” Doug took a long pull on his beer before he continued. “It’s funny, he recalls the diamond theft but his details are quite different from your research.”
“Oh,” Aisha said as she adjusted the thin paper napkin under her glass. “How strange. The story is well known.”
“Oh yeah, it’s well known, but he seems to believe that it was only discovered this century, someplace in South Africa.” He watched as she continued to re-adjust the napkin.
“Hmmm,” she said as she finished with the napkin and moved on to removing the label with a thumbnail. “He must not have been a very good museum person if he’d get the basic facts of the story all wrong. He must be thinking of a different diamond.”
“Maybe,” Doug said, “but he sounded like he knew exactly what he was talking about.”
“So I guess he showed you all of his research? The eight years of notes put together in dark library reading rooms form Kiev to New York? The accounts he translated
himself?
From Old French on fucking thirteenth century vellum manuscripts?”
“Ah, no, he….”
“Did he tell you how he spent a whole summer in Agra, paying western wages to Indian grad students to transcribe reams of documents, only to find two obscure references to the diamond?”
“No, but….”
“And did he tell you how rather than vacationing in Aspen he spent every spring break going from one archive library to the next? Or how he once had to sleep with a Yugoslavian antiquities official just to look at some papers that turned out to be worthless anyway?”
“Look, Aisha, I’m not doubting you….”
“It sure the hell sounds like it to me,” she said, looking up from her now naked beer bottle. “What did you do, run out right away to check up on me?”
“No, no, no. Honest, Aisha, I was just out to dinner with this guy when we got to talking about why I was here and I told him the basics and he just added the information about the diamond. I trust your research and I trust you. I just have to figure out why the guy would have a totally different story, that’s all. Maybe he is confused, I don’t know. Maybe he’s senile or been in the sun too long.” Although she had focused back on her napkin this made her smile. “Aisha,” he said, getting her to look up, “I do believe you, you know.”
“It’s just that when you doubt the story you doubt all my work—
my work
—and you make my grandfather out to be a liar. And like I said,” she was looking at him again, her voice steady, but softer, “it was his favorite story and it’s all I really have of him anymore.”
“Don’t forget,” Doug said, “you’re also a rich, spoiled brat. You owe him that too.”
“Cute, considering that I’m still pissed at you. Want another?” she said holding up the empty bottle.
“What I don’t get,” she said when the beers arrived, as warm as the last two, “is how you got involved in this. Why look for it now? What’s the sudden interest?”
“Good question. I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. I just wanted to learn something about my uncle. The woman who’s funding this little expedition was a friend of my uncle and she has all these old letters about him and I get to read the parts she decides to send me. And I had the summer off. I don’t do this all the time, you know.”
“Do what? Have a beer at a beach?” she said, starting in on the new label.
“A beer, yes. The beach, maybe. Morocco, no.”
“As you can see,” she said, motioning around with her hand, “you haven’t missed all that much.”
“Not much to you,” he said, “but more than I’ve ever done. You’ve been everywhere….”
“Hardly.”
“Close enough. But me? Aisha, this is my Big Adventure. I’ve never been anywhere before, I’m not rich like you, I work in a fucking brewery. No, I
used
to work in a fucking brewery. I don’t even have that career anymore. So when this woman offered me a chance to actually do something besides sit in a rut, I jumped on it. She thinks I’m doing a great job and I don’t know what I’m doing. Everything I tell her she already knew and she’s all happy.”
“Hey, sounds good to me. She’s happy, you get a trip. What are you complaining about?”
“I don’t know, it all seems so weird. Things like this don’t happen to me.”
“Well they do now. And you get to learn all about your uncle.” She drained her beer and looked around for the waiter.
Doug laughed. “You know, I don’t know if I want to. It turns out that my dear, sweet, departed uncle was a big dick. I’m glad I never met him and I see why my father never talked about him.”
“Well? Is it genetic?” she said, standing up.
“What? His attitude?”
“No, his anatomy. I’ve got to hit the ladies room, order me another, will you?”
Holy shit, Doug thought. Holy shit.
So now what, he wondered? Invite her back to his hotel, to a room the size of her car? Ask to go to the Al-Kady mansion, with the old man wheezing by the pool? Doug quickly ordered the two beers when he spotted her weaving through the crowd, back to their table. Damn, he thought, what should I do?
“After we finish these beers, I’m afraid I’ll have to drop you off at your hotel. I have some family business to take care of, arranging for some deliveries to be made. I’d take you along but you’d cramp my negotiating style.”
Damn, he thought again.
“How long will you be in town?” she asked, taking a long pull on her beer. This woman, this amazing woman, could suck back the beers.
“Good question. I have to sit down and figure out what the hell I’m doing next.” He didn’t want to sound like he was clueless but that was what he was. But incompetence, he had found, seldom aroused a woman’s passion, and he was halfway there with his brewery story. “I’ve already let Edna know that I’d probably be heading to Cairo next. You said that you knew who ended up with it in Cairo?”
“Yes, a man named Nasser Ashkanani. My uncle. He owns a shop or two in the Khan al-Khalili. That’s the big bazaar in Cairo’s old quarter. When my grandfather and your uncle and his friend got hold of the jewels they had to get out of Casablanca quickly. I mean
everybody
assumed they did it, your uncle and his friend, that is. My grandfather was never connected to the theft at all.”
“The home field advantage. Was your Uncle Nasser in on the original idea?”
“I don’t think so,” Aisha said, “but I do know that it was my grandfather’s idea to hook up with him. Our families have been involved in one business deal or another for a hundred years, still are, in fact. But why go to Cairo? Wasn’t your uncle killed in Singapore? I’d think it’d make sense to start there.”
“You’d think so, but this woman in Toronto….”
“Ah, the mystery woman!”
“…she wants me to go to Cairo first. She might have some contacts there she wants me to look up. Maybe a real live clue.”
“I know some people in Cairo, too,” she said. “Maybe I’ll hook you up.”
“What about this Nasser guy? He still alive?” Doug asked.
“Oh very much so. I visited his shop in the Khan just last month. He’d be the person to talk with about the jewel. I’ll make sure to draw you a good map. I can still get lost in the Khan now and then, but I’m usually pretty buzzed when that happens. You almost ready to go?” she said, checking her watch.
Doug drained the rest of the beer and put a hundred dirhem note on the table, which made Aisha laugh. “You buying drinks for the house? Give him five and he’ll call himself lucky.” They headed towards the car and she slipped her arm through his, ignoring the stares from the old women with their heads covered with black scarves.
“If you’ve known this ash can guy….”
Aisha laughed, gripping his arm. “Ashkanani.”
“Whatever. If you’ve known this guy for years why didn’t you ask him about the jewel? Or your grandfather? I mean, we’re talking millions here, right?”
“Right, definitely right. I have asked Uncle Nasser but he always tells me to stick to concrete. As for my grandfather, once Nasser passed on the diamond and sent him a small finder’s fee he lost interest in it. He thought my fascination with
Al Ainab
was a waste of time, but he still loved to talk about it.”
They reached her car, a silver BMW convertible that she had parked, Doug noticed, as recklessly as any other Moroccan. “I’d really like to see you again before you go, Doug. Can you fit me in somehow?”
“Let’s see,” Doug said rubbing his chin, “there’s dinner with the King, and then that little gathering at the British Embassy…. I
might
be able to squeeze you in.”
Aisha laughed that light, honest laugh that Doug loved to hear. He hadn’t blown it. Yet.
“I’ll give you my number,” she said as she raced the car backwards out of the tight space, “you can give me a call later. But you have to promise to spend a long evening with me before you leave.”
Doug raised his right hand and looked to the broad Atlantic sky. “I swear,” he said.
There were days when Tarek Taksha felt he had the best job in all of Morocco.
Today was one of those days.
Not that being the manager of a former, and rapidly deteriorating, premier hotel was an important job, but it was a definite step up from trying to hustle decades-old postcards along the cornice. The Sea Port had lost its four-star rating in the early Seventies and another star in the mid-Eighties, but that did not concern the owner, who had a fifth star painted on the red awning in ninety-five. Tarek had started as a bellboy when he was fourteen, working for tips and a share of what people left behind in their rooms. There were enough guests back then to warrant two bellboys. It was old-fashioned hard work and intense sucking up that allowed Tarek to keep his job when the guests dwindled to a trickle.
When the Sea Port was self-upgraded to a five-star hotel, Tarek became the concierge/bellhop, partially because his English was better than anyone else’s at the hotel, but primarily because he would do the job for the least amount of money. It took a few weeks to find out what it was that a concierge actually did, but once he figured it out, he dedicated himself to being the best damn concierge in a bogus five-star hotel in all of the old area of Casablanca east of the Rue Centrate.
That dedication paid off when, thanks to obviously doctored books, the last manager was fired for embezzling from the already struggling hotel and Tarek was made manager of the Sea Port. Due to the economic difficulties at the Sea Port, he maintained his concierge and bellhop titles as well, and without complaint worked for less than the last manager. This was the opportunity he had worked so hard for and he wasn’t about to let it slip away with petty complaints. He worked even harder, sucked up even more obsequiously, and he made sure that the books would never show his embezzling.
Lately things had picked up at the Sea Port and, for the first time in years, they had over half the rooms rented. The last week had been especially good, with the American bringing so much traffic to the hotel. True, the people who asked questions about the American didn’t rent rooms, but they tipped well when Tarek allowed them to read his dark blue passport. And, for more than it would have cost to rent it, they paid to poke around in the American’s room. He drew the line, however, at removing objects, but saw no harm in letting them read his papers or take photographs.
And there were the phone calls, strange phone calls—“No, sir, I’m afraid I don’t know how tall he is,” “I believe he was wearing a blue shirt, sir,” “Can I arrange it? Of
course
madam, but it is
quite
unusual, and these things, well, it would cost…. Excuse me? Oh
yes
madam, I’m
sure
we can take care of it.” No, it wouldn’t last forever, but it was nice having the American at the hotel.
So it was with a genuine smile that Tarek greeted the American when he stepped out of a silver BMW that disappeared down the crowded street. Good afternoon, sir. Yes, a woman did call from overseas. Of course I can take care of all of your travel arrangements, sir. Everything will be aligned for your speedy departure in the a.m. two days hence. No sir, that’s not necessary. Well if you insist, sir, thank you, sir, you are
most
generous.
Yes, it was nice having the American at the hotel.
***
It was still mid-afternoon and despite the heat Doug decided to investigate the area around the hotel. He grabbed the
Lonely Planet
guide he had picked up at JFK and the tenth-generation photocopy of a mimeographed map, circa 1972, that the man in his concierge role insisted he take with him. He had tried to read up on Morocco on the flight over, but the guidebook droned on and on about Berbers and Almoravids and people with names he could not remember from one sentence to the next. He picked up enough to know that the place was old, that there had been a lot of fighting over the years, that the Nazis had been here—but he knew that from the prologue to
Casablanca
—and that they were independent with a king. He had skipped whole sections entitled Economic Outlook, Relations With Israel, and Sunnis and Shiites, Saints and Mystics. The guidebook had warned him about starting conversations with women—“given the sexual mores of the culture”—but the authors had obviously never met Aisha.
He oriented himself with the map of central Casablanca. His hotel was on Boulevard Houphouet Boigny—Humphrey Bogart?—across the street from what the guide book said was a “smallish version of a typical Berber style souk; bright and affable, it meanders serendipitously around several architectural gems.” On the hotel’s map it just said shops. By the time he had walked past five shops he had twenty offers to come in, look around, have some tea, no charge to look, because, they all assured him, he was their special friend. One by one the touts that Sergei had warned him about introduced themselves, swore that they just wanted to practice their English, and really,
really
wanted him to come and meet their uncle who owned a shop near by. They were “bright and affable” all right, and a pain in the ass.
Most tourist shops were filled with the same tourist crap that they sold at the rest stops off the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Glue anything—a dried lizard, a vial of sand, a rock with eyeballs painted on it—to a piece of driftwood, write a town name underneath it, and some tourist will always buy it. How else could you explain the quantities of the stuff? Doug was offered “real” Rolexes for what worked out to ten bucks. The Rolex he eventually bought, talking the man down from an outrageous fifteen dollars, worked for most of the rest of the afternoon. And this, Doug decided, was why they designed the marketplace like a maze, with every shop looking just like the last. They could rip you off with confidence, knowing you could never find your way back and that if you did, you could never be sure you’d find the right thief.
Despite the watch, despite the touts, despite the fear that he’d get his wallet snatched even with it stuffed in his front pocket, Doug had to admit it was wonderful. There were vegetable carts loaded with fresh produce he’d never seen before, shops with carpets spread out onto what passed for a sidewalk, crammed with so many brass coffee pots and glass water pipes that the shop owner seemed trapped inside, the overpowering smell of the leather shops where craftsmen worked traditional patterns with wood handled punches and tiny hammers, the pastry and bread shops, with their room-sized brick ovens encased with the same white cement that seemed to encase every building in the souk, every building in the city. Small kids, baskets filled with the hot pastry, raced past him and up the narrow staircases that clung to the sides of the alleyway. And everywhere the teashops with their sickeningly sweet tea that Doug had grudgingly started to like. After several hours of touring modern Casablanca, with its Pizza Huts and Gaps, its mobile phones and rap music, its familiar franchise look, the souk reminded him that he wasn’t in Pottsville. It was like nothing he had experienced before, a real adventure in an exotic location, just like Edna had promised. He knew that he was walking around with that big, shit-eating grin he associated with rubes in the big city, but he didn’t care.
When he got back to the hotel there was a note from Sergei Nikolaisen—was he available for an early dinner? Sure, Doug thought, why not. He wanted to call Aisha but didn’t want to sound as desperate as he was. As instructed in the note, he left word with the desk that, yes, he’d be in the lobby at eight. Doug showered and started to read more about Casablanca. He finished two whole paragraphs before he nodded off.