Okay, that meant I’d misunderstood the lesson, but it wasn’t something I was going to worry about. The next time I met an imam or a saint on the street, I’d have to ask
him to explain the vision to me. In the meantime I had more important things to do. I put the moddy back in my briefcase.
Then I loaded the file on Abu Adil and spent about ten minutes glancing through it. It was every bit as boring as I was afraid it would be. Abu Adil had been brought to the city at an early age, more than a century and a half ago. His parents had wandered for many months after the disaster of the Saturday War. As a boy, Abu Adil helped his father, who sold lemonade and sherbets in the Souk of the Tanners. He played in the narrow, twisting alleys of the medtnah, the old part of town. When his father died, Abu Adil became a beggar to support himself and his mother. Somehow, through strength of will and inner resources, he rejected his poverty and miserable station and became a man of respect and influence in the medmah. The report gave no details of this remarkable transformation, but if Abu Adil was a serious rival to Friedlander Bey, I had no trouble believing it had happened. He still lived in a house at the western edge of the city, not far from the Sunset Gate. By all reports it was a mansion as grand as Papa’s, surrounded by ghastly slums. Abu Adil had an army of friends and associates in the hovels of the medmah, just as Friedlander Bey had his own in the Budayeen.
That was about as much as I’d learned when Officer Shaknahyi ducked his head into my cubicle. “Time to roll,” he said.
It didn’t bother me in the least to tell my data deck to quit. I wondered why Lieutenant Hajjar was so worked up about Reda Abu Adil. I hadn’t run across anything in the file that suggested he was anything but another Fried-lander Bey: just a rich, powerful man whose business took on a gray, even black character now and then. If he was, like Papa — and the evidence I’d seen indicated that’s just what he was — he had little interest in disturbing innocent people. Friedlander Bey was no criminal mastermind, and I doubted that Abu Adil was, either. You could rouse men like him only by trespassing on their territory or by threatening their friends and family.
I followed Shaknahyi downstairs to the garage. “That’s mine,” he said, pointing to a patrol car coming in from the previous shift. He greeted the two tired-looking cops who got out, then slid behind the steering wheel. “Well?” he said, looking up at me.
I wasn’t in a hurry to start this. In the first place, I’d be stuck in the narrow confines of the copcar with Shaknahyi for the duration of the shift, and that prospect didn’t excite me at all. Second, I’d really rather sit upstairs and read boring files in perfect safety than follow this battle-hardened veteran out into the mean streets. Finally, though, I climbed into the front seat. Sometimes there’s only so much stalling you can do.
“What you carrying?” he said, looking straight out the windshield while he drove. He had a big wad of gum crammed into his right cheek.
“You mean this?” I held up the Complete Guardian moddy, which I hadn’t chipped in yet.
He glanced at me and muttered something under his breath. “I’m talking about what you’re gonna use to save me from the bad guys,” he said. Then he looked my way again.
Under my sport coat I was wearing my seizure gun. I took it out of the holster and showed him. “Got this last year from Lieutenant Okking,” I said.
Shaknahyi chewed his gum for a few seconds. “The lieutenant was always all right to me,” he said. His eyes slid sideways again.
“Yeah, well,” I said. I couldn’t think of anything terribly meaningful to add. I’d been responsible for Okking’s death, and I knew that Shaknahyi knew it. That was something else I’d have to overcome if we were going to accomplish anything together. There was silence in the car for a little while after that.
“Look, that weapon of yours ain’t much good except for maybe stunning mice and birds up close. Take a look on the floor.”
I reached under my seat and pulled out a small arsenal. There was a large seizure cannon, a static pistol, and a needle gun that looked like its flechettes could strip the meat from the bones of an adult rhinoceros. “What do you suggest?” I asked.
“How do you feel about splashing blood all over everything?”
“Had enough of that last year,” I said.
“Then forget the needle gun, though it’s a dandy side arm. It alternates three sedative barbs, three iced with nerve toxin, and three explosive darts. The seizure cannon may be too hefty for you too. It’s got four times the power of your little sizzlegun. It’ll stop anybody you aim at up to a quarter of a mile away, but it’ll kill a mark inside a hundred yards. Maybe you ought to go with the static gun.”
I stuffed the needle gun and the seizure cannon back under the seat and looked at the static gun. “What kind of damage will this do?”
Shaknahyi shrugged. “Hit ’em in the head with that two or three times and you’ve crippled ’em for life. The head’s a small target, though. Get ’em in the chest and it’s Heart Attack City. Anywhere else, they can’t control their muscles. They’re helpless for half an hour. That’s what you want.”
I nodded and tucked the static gun into my coat pocket. “You don’t think I’ll—” My telephone began warbling, and I undipped it from my belt. I figured it was one of my other problems checking in. “Hello?” I said.
“Marid? This is Indihar.”
It seemed like they just weren’t making good news anymore. I closed my eyes. “Yeah, how you doing? What’s up?”
“You know what time it is? You own a club now, Maghrebi. You got a responsibility to the girls on the day shift. You want to get down here and open up?”
I hadn’t given the club a goddamn thought. It was something I really didn’t want to worry about, but Indihar was right about my responsibility. “I’ll get there as soon as I can. Everybody show up today?”
“I’m here, Pualani’s here, Janelle quit, I don’t know where Kandy is, and Yasmin’s here looking for a job.”
Now Yasmin too. Jeez. “See you in a few minutes.”
“Inshallah, Marid.”
“Yeah.” I clipped the phone back on my belt.
“Where you got to go now? We don’t have time for no personal errands.”
I tried to explain. “Friedlander Bey thought he was doing me this big favor, and he bought me my own club in the Budayeen. I don’t know a damn thing about running a club. Forgot all about it until now. I got to pass by there and open the place.”
Shaknahyi laughed. “Beware of two-hundred-year-old kingpins bearing gifts,” he said. “Where’s this club?”
“On the Street,” I said. “Chiriga’s place. You know which one I mean?”
He turned and studied me for a moment without saying anything. Then he said, “Yeah, I know which one you mean.” He swung the patrol car around and headed for the Budayeen.
You might think it’d be a kick to zip through the eastern gate in an official car, and drive up the Street when other vehicular traffic is forbidden. My reaction was just the opposite. I scrunched myself down in the seat, hoping no one I knew would see me. I’d hated cops all my life and now I was one; already my former friends were giving me the same treatment I used to give Hajjar and the other police around the Budayeen. I was grateful that Shaknahyi had the sense not to turn on the siren.
Shaknahyi dropped the car right in front of Chiriga’s club, and I saw Indihar standing on the sidewalk with Pualani and Yasmin. I was unhappy to see that Yasmin had cut her long, beautiful black hair, which I’d always loved. Maybe since we’d broken up, she felt she had to change things. I took a deep breath, opened the door, and got out. “How y’all doing?” I said.