When Gravity Fails (7 page)

5

I learned an interesting fact.

It didn’t make up for the particularly foul day I’d had, but it was a fact I could file in my highly regarded cerebrum: police lieutenants are rarely enthusiastic about homicides reported less than half an hour before they’re supposed to go off duty. “Your second cadaver in less than a week,” Okking observed, when he showed up at the Thirteenth Street apartment. “We’re not going to start paying you commissions on these, if that’s what you’re after. On the whole, we try to discourage this sort of thing, if we can.”

I looked at Okking’s tired, florid face and guessed that in the middle of the night, this passed for wry cop humor. I don’t know where Okking was from—one or another dilapidated, bankrupt European country I guess, or one of the North American federations—but he had a genuine gift for getting along with the innumerable squabbling factions residing under his jurisdiction. His Arabic was the worst I’d ever heard—he and I usually held our acerbic conversations in French—yet he was able to handle the several Muslim sects, the devoutly religious and the nonpracticing, Arab and non-Arab, the rich and poor, honest and slightly bent, all with the same elegant touch of humanity and impartiality. Believe me, I hate cops. A lot of people in the Budayeen fear cops or distrust cops or just plain don’t like them. I
hate
cops. My mother had been forced into prostitution when I was very young, to keep us both fed and sheltered. I remember with painful clarity the games the cops had played with her then. That had been in Algeria a long time ago, but cops were cops to me. Except for Lieutenant Okking.

The medical examiner’s usually stoic expression showed a little distaste when he saw Tamiko. She had been dead about four hours, he said. He could get a general description of the murderer from the handprints on her neck and other clues. The killer had plump, stubby fingers, and mine are long and tapered. I had an alibi, too: I had the receipt from the hospital stamped with the time of my treatment, and the written prescription. “Okay, friend,” said Okking, still jovial in his sour way, “I guess it’s safe to let you back out on the streets.”

“What do you think?” I asked, indicating Tami’s body.

Okking shrugged. “It looks like we’ve got some kind of maniac. You know these whores end up like this every so often. It’s part of their overhead, like face paint and tetracycline. The other whores write it off and try not to think about it. They’d
better
think about it, though, because whoever did this is likely to do it again; that’s been my experience. We might end up with two or three or five or ten dead people before we catch up with him. You go tell your friends what you saw. You tell it to them so they listen. Get the word around. Spread it among the six or eight sexes we’ve got in these walls not to accept dates with men about five and a half feet tall, heavyset, with short, fat fingers and a yen for the ultimate sadism while he’s getting laid.” Oh, yeah: the M.E. found that the killer had taken a trip around the world while he’d been beating Tami, branding her naked skin, and strangling her. Traces of semen had been found in all three orifices.

I did my best to get the word out. Everyone agreed with my own secret opinion: whoever had killed Tami had better watch his
awn
ass. Anybody who jammed with the Black Widow Sisters usually got
himself
jammed up, and trashed. Devi and Selima would be picking up every guy they could find who fit the general description, just in the hope he was the right one. I had the feeling they wouldn’t slip the toxin to him at the first chance, either. I’d learned how much they enjoyed what
they
thought of as foreplay.

The next day was Yasmin’s day off, and about two in the afternoon I gave her a call. She hadn’t been home all night; it was none of my business where she’d been. I was amused and startled to find out that I was, however, just the least bit jealous. We made a date for dinner at five at our favorite café. You can sit at a table on the terrace and watch the traffic on the Street. Only two blocks from the gate, the Street isn’t so tawdry. The restaurant was a good place to relax. I didn’t tell Yasmin about any of the previous day’s trouble over the phone. She would have kept me talking all afternoon, and she needed the three hours to make the dinner date on time.

As it was, I had two drinks while I waited for her at the table. She arrived about quarter to six. Three quarters of an hour late is about average for Yasmin; in fact, I hadn’t really expected her until after six o’clock. I wanted to get a couple of drinks ahead. I’d had only about four hours of sleep, and I struggled with terrible nightmares the whole time. I wanted to get some liquor into me, and a good meal, and have Yasmin hold my hand while I told her of my ordeal.

“Marhaba!”
she called gaily as she wove her way between the iron tables and chairs.

I signaled to Ahmad, our waiter, and he took Yasmin’s drink order and left menus. I looked at her as she studied her menu. She was wearing a light cotton European-style summer dress, yellow with white butterflies. Her black hair was brushed down sleek and lustrous. She wore a silver crescent on a silver chain around her darkly tanned neck. She looked lovely. I hated to bother her now with my news. I decided to put it off as long as I could.

“So,” she said, looking up at me and grinning, “how was your day?”

“Tamiko’s dead,” I said. I felt like a fool. There must have been a way to begin the story with less of an awful thud.

She sort of goggled at me. She murmured an Arabic superstitious phrase to ward off evil.

I took a deep breath and let it out. Then I started with dawn, yesterday morning, and my enthusiastic wake-up call from the Sisters. I went through the whole day, ending with my dismissal by Okking and my weary and lonely walk home.

I saw a tear slide slowly down one of her carefully blushed cheeks. She wasn’t able to speak for several seconds. I didn’t know she’d be so upset; I berated myself for my clumsiness.

“I wish I’d been with you last night,” she said at last. She didn’t realize how hard she was squeezing my hand. “I had a date, Marîd, some guy from the club. He’s been coming in to see me for weeks, and finally last night he offered me two hundred kiam to go out with him. He’s a nice guy, I suppose, but—”

I raised a hand. I didn’t need to hear this. I didn’t care how she paid her rent. I would have liked to have had her with me last night, too. I would have liked to have held her between the nightmares. “It’s all over now, I guess,” I said. “Let me blow the rest of my fifty kiam on this dinner, and then let’s go for a long walk.”

“Do you really think it’s all over?”

I chewed my lip. “Except for Nikki. I wish I knew what that phone call meant. I just can’t understand her running out on me like that, sticking me for Abdoulaye’s three thousand. I mean, in the Budayeen, you can never be sure how loyal your friends are; but I’d gotten Nikki out of one or two scrapes before. I thought that might have counted for something with her.”

Yasmin’s eyes opened wider, then she laughed. I couldn’t see what she thought was so humorous. My face still looked swollen and bruised, and by ribs still hurt like the devil. The day before had been anything but clownish. “I saw Nikki yesterday morning,” said Yasmin.

“You did?” Then I remembered that Chiriga had seen Nikki about ten o’clock, and that Nikki had left Chili’s to find Yasmin. I hadn’t connected that visit to Chiri with Nikki’s later skip-out.

“Nikki looked very nervous,” said Yasmin, “and she told me she’d quit her job and had to move out of Tami’s apartment. She wouldn’t tell me why. She said she’d tried to call you again and again, but there wasn’t any answer.” Of course not; when Nikki was trying to call me, I was lying unconscious on my floor. “She gave me this envelope and told me to be sure you got it.”

“Why didn’t she just leave it with Chiri?” That would have saved a lot of mental and physical anguish.

“Don’t you remember? Nikki worked in Chili’s club, oh, a year ago, maybe longer. Chiri caught Nikki shortchanging customers and stealing from the other girls’ tip jars.”

I nodded; now I recalled that Nikki and Chiri left each other pretty much alone. “So Nikki went to Chiri just to get your address?”

“I asked her a lot of questions, but she wouldn’t answer a thing. She just kept saying, ‘Make sure Marîd gets this,’ over and over.”

I hoped it was a letter, an apology maybe, with an address where I could reach her. I wanted my money back. I took the envelope from Yasmin and tore it open. Inside was my three thousand kiam, and a note written in French. Nikki wrote:

My dearest Marîd:

I so much wanted to give you the money in person. I called many times, but you did not answer. I am leaving this with Yasmin, but if you never get it, how will you know? You will hate me forever, then. When we meet again, I will not understand. My feelings are so confused.

I am going to live with an old friend of my family. He is a wealthy businessman from Germany, who always brought me presents whenever he visited. That was when I was a shy, introverted little boy. Now that I am, well, what I am, the German businessman has discovered that he is even more inclined to give me presents. I was always fond of him, Marîd, although I can’t love him. But being with him will be so much more pleasant than staying with Tamiko.

The gentleman’s name is Herr Lutz Seipolt. He lives in a magnificent house on the far side of the city, and you must ask the driver to take you to (I have to copy this down for you) Bayt il-Simsaar il-Almaani Seipolt. That ought to get you to the villa.

Give my love to Yasmin and to everyone. I will visit the Budayeen when I can, but I think I will enjoy playing the mistress of such an estate for a while. I am sure you, of all people, Marîd, will understand: Business is business, mush hayk? (And I’ll bet you thought I never learned a
single
word of Arabic!)

With much love,

Nikki

When I finished reading the letter, I sighed and handed it to Yasmin. I’d forgotten that she couldn’t read a word of French, and so I translated it for her.

“I hope she’ll be happy,” she said when I folded the letter up.

“Being kept by some old German bratwurst? Nikki? You know Nikki. She needs the action as much as I do, as much as you do. She’ll be back. Right now, I guess, it’s sugar-daddy time on the Princess Nikki Show.”

Yasmin smiled. “She’ll be back, I agree; but in her own time. And she’ll make that old bratwurst pay for every minute of it.” We both laughed, and then the waiter brought Yasmin’s drink, and we ordered dinner.

As we finished the meal, we lingered over a last glass of champagne. “What a day yesterday was,” I said bemusedly, “and now everything is back to normal. I have my money, except I’ll be out a thousand kiam in interest. When we leave here, I want to find Abdoulaye and pay him.”

“Sure,” said Yasmin, “but even then, everything won’t be back to normal. Tami’s still dead.”

I frowned. “That’s Okking’s problem. If he wants my expert advice, he knows where to find me.”

“Are you really going to talk to Devi and Selima about why they beat you?”

“You bet your pretty plastic tits. And the Sisters better have a damn good reason.”

“It must have something to do with Nikki.”

I agreed, although I couldn’t imagine what. “Oh,” I said, “and let’s stop by Chiriga’s. I owe her for the stuff she let me have last night.”

Yasmin gazed at me over the rim of her champagne glass. “It sounds like we might not get home until late,” she said softly.

“And when we do get home, we’ll be lucky to find the bed.”

Yasmin made a sweeping, mildly drunken gesture. “Fuck the bed,” she said.

“No,” I said, “I have more worthy goals.”

Yasmin giggled a little shyly, as if our relationship were beginning all over again from the very first night together. “Which moddy do you want me to use tonight?” she asked.

I let out my breath, taken by her loveliness and her quiet, unaffected charm. It
was
as if I were seeing her again for the first time. “I don’t want you to use any moddy,” I said quietly. “I want to make love with
you.”

“Oh, Marîd,” she said. She squeezed my hand, and we stayed like that, staring into each other’s eyes, inhaling the perfume of the sweet olive, hearing the songs of thrushes and nightingales. The moment lasted almost forever . . . and then . . . I remembered that Abdoulaye was waiting. I had better not forget Abdoulaye; there is an Arabic saying that a clever man’s mistake is equal to the mistakes of a thousand fools.

Before we left the café, however, Yasmin wanted to consult the book. I told her that the Qur’ân didn’t contain much solace for me. “Not the Book,” she said, “the wise mention of God. The
book.”
She took out a little device about the size of a pack of cigarettes. It was her electronic
I Ching.
“Here,” she said, giving it to me, “switch it on and press H.”

I didn’t have a lot of faith in the
I Ching,
either; but Yasmin had this fascination with fate and the unseen world and the Moment and all of that. I did as she told me, and when I pressed the square white spot marked H, the little computer played a reedy, tinkling tune, and a woman’s tinny voice spoke up. “Hexagram Eighteen. Ku. Work on that which has been spoiled. Changes in the fifth and sixth lines.”

“Now hit J, for Judgment,” said Yasmin.

I did, and the calculator peeped out its goddamn little song again and said, “Judgment:

Putting effort into what has been ruined

Brings great success.

It profits one to cross the great water.

Heed three days before beginning.

Heed three days before completing.

“What has been ruined can be made good again through effort. Do not fear danger—crossing the great water. Success depends on forethought; be cautious before beginning. A return of ruin must be avoided; be cautious before completing.