We were led directly into Abu Adil’s presence. I couldn’t even get in to see Friedlander Bey that quickly.
Reda Abu Adil was a large, plump old man. He was like Papa in that it was impossible to guess just how old he might be. I knew for a fact that he was at least a hundred twenty-five. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that he was just as old as Friedlander Bey. He was wearing a loose white robe and no jewelry. He had a carefully trimmed white beard and mustache and thick white hair, out of which poked a dove-gray moddy with two daddies snapped in. I was expert enough to notice that Abu Adil did not have a protruding plug, as I had; his hardware chipped into a corymbic socket.
Abu Adil reclined on a hospital bed that had been elevated so that he could see us comfortably as we spoke. He was covered by an expensive hand-embroidered blanket. His gnarled hands lay outside the cover, flat on either side of his body. His eyes were heavy-lidded, as if he were drugged or desperately sleepy. He grimaced and groaned frequently while we stood there. We waited for him to say something.
He did not. Instead, a younger man standing beside the hospital bed spoke up. “Shaykh Reda welcomes you to his home. My name is Umar Abdul-Qawy. You may address Shaykh Reda through me.”
This Umar person was about fifty years old. He had bright, mistrustful eyes and a sour expression that looked like it never changed. He too looked well fed, and he was dressed in an impressive gold-colored robe and metallic blue caftan. He wore nothing on his head and, like his master, a moddy divided his thinning hair. I disliked him from the getgo.
It was clear to me that I was facing my opposite number. Umar Abdul-Qawy did for Abu Adil what I did for Friedlander Bey, although I’m sure he’d been at it longer and was more intimate with the inner workings of his master’s empire. “If this is a bad time,” I said, “we can come back again.”
“This is a bad time,” said Umar. “Shaykh Reda suffers the torments of terminal cancer. You see, then, that another time would not necessarily be better.”
“We pray for his well-being,” I said.
A tiny smile quirked the edge of Abu Adil’s lips. “Allah yisallimak,” said Umar. “God bless you. Now, what has brought you to us this afternoon?”
This was inexcusably blunt. In the Muslim world, you don’t inquire after a visitor’s business. Custom further requires that the laws of hospitality be observed, if only minimally. I’d expected to be served coffee, if not offered a meal as well. I looked at Shaknahyi.
It didn’t seem to bother him. “What dealings does Shaykh Reda have with Friedlander Bey?”
That seemed to startle Umar. “Why, none at all,” he said, spreading his hands. Abu Adil gave a long, pain-filled moan and closed his eyes tightly. Umar didn’t even turn in his direction.
“Then Shaykh Reda does not communicate at all with him?” Shaknahyi asked.
“Not at all. Friedlander Bey is a great and influential man, but his interests lie in a distant part of the city. The two shaykhs have never discussed anything of a business nature. Their concerns do not meet at any point.”
“And so Friedlander Bey is no hindrance or obstacle to Shaykh Reda’s plans?”
“Look at my master,” said Umar. “What sort of plans do you think he has?” Indeed, Abu Adil looked entirely helpless in his agony. I wondered what had made Lieutenant Hajjar set us on this fool’s errand.
“We received some information, and we had to check it out,” said Shaknahyi. “We’re sorry for the intrusion.”
“That’s quite all right. Karnal will see you to the door.” Umar stared at us with a stony expression. Abu Adil, however, made an attempt to raise his hand in farewell or blessing, but it fell back limply to the blanket.
We followed the servant back to the front door. When we were alone again outside, Shaknahyi began to laugh. “That was some performance,” he said.
“What performance? Did I miss something?”
“If you’d read the file all the way through, you’d know that Abu Adil doesn’t have cancer. He’s never had cancer.”
“Then—”
Shaknahyi’s mouth twisted in contempt. “You ever hear of Proxy Hell? It’s a bunch of lunatics who wear bootleg, underground moddies turned out in somebody’s back room. They’re recordings taken from real people in horrible situations.”
I was dismayed. “Is that what Abu Adil’s doing? Wearing the personality module of a terminal cancer patient?”
Shaknahyi nodded as he opened the car door and got in. “He’s chipped into vicarious pain and suffering. You can buy any kind of disease or condition you want on the black market. There are plenty of deranged masochists like him out there.”
I joined him in the patrol car. “And I thought the girls and debs on the Street were misusing the moddies. This adds a whole new meaning to the word perversion.” Shaknahyi started up the car and drove around the fountain toward the gate. “They introduce some new technology and no matter how much good it does for most people, there’s always a crazy son of a bitch who’ll find something twisted to do with it.”
I thought about that, and about my own bodmods, as we drove back to the station house through the wretched district that was home to Reda Abu Adil’s faithful followers.
During the next week, I spent as much time in the patrol car as I did at my computer on the third floor of the station house. I felt good after my first experiences as a cop on patrol, although it was clear that I still had a lot to learn from Shaknahyi. We intervened in domestic squabbles and investigated robberies, but there were no more dramatic crises like Al-Muntaqim’s clumsy bomb threat.
Shaknahyi had let several days pass, and now he wanted to follow up on our visit to Reda Abu Adil. He guessed that Friedlander Bey had told Lieutenant Hajjar to assign this investigation to us, but Papa was still pretending he wasn’t interested in whatever it was about. Our delicate probing would be a lot more successful if someone would just tell us what we were trying to uncover.
Yet there were other concerns on my mind. One morning, after I’d dressed and Kmuzu had served me breakfast, I sat back and thought about what I wanted to accomplish that day.
“Kmuzu,” I said, “would you wake my mother and see if she’ll speak to me? I need to ask her something before I go to the station house.”
“Of course, yaa Sidi.” He looked at me warily, as if I were trying to pull another fast one. “You wish to see her immediately?”
“Soon as she can make herself decent. If she can make herself decent.” I caught Kmuzu’s disapproving expression and shut up.
I drank some more coffee until he returned. “Umm Marid will be glad to see you now,” Kmuzu said.
I was surprised. “She never liked getting up much before noon.”
“She was already awake and dressed when I knocked on her door.”
Maybe she’d turned over a new leaf, but I hadn’t been listening close enough to hear it. I grabbed my briefcase and sport coat. “I’ll just drop in on her for a couple of minutes,” I said. “No need for you to come with me.” I should have known better by then; Kmuzu didn’t say a word, but he followed me out of the apartment and into the other wing, where Angel Monroe had been given her own suite of rooms.
“This is a personal matter,” I told Kmuzu when we got to her door. “Stay out here in the hall if you want.” I rapped on the door and went in.
She was reclining on a divan, dressed very modestly in a shapeless black dress with long sleeves, a version of the outfit conservative Muslim women wear. She also had on a large scarf hiding her hair, although the veil over her face had been loosened on one side and hung down over her shoulder. She puffed on the mouthpiece of a narjilah. There was strong tobacco in the water pipe now, but that didn’t mean there hadn’t been hashish there recently, or that it wouldn’t be there again soon.