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.”