— You know Commissioner Burrows?
— Know him? Willard said. -He and I trod the boards in college; we played Othello together. He was a helluva Moor, let me tell you, scary-good-I knew his rage was genuine because I knew where he came from. He nodded, as if to himself. -Lester Burrows is one African American who has transcended the utter poverty of his childhood in every sense of the word. That‘s not to say he‘s forgotten it, not by a long shot, but, unlike his predecessor, who never met a bribe he didn‘t take, Lester Burrows is a good man underneath the mean streak he‘s cultivated to protect himself, his office, and his men.
— So he‘ll listen to you, Marks said.
— I don‘t know about that — Willard‘s eyes twinkled- but he sure as hell won‘t turn me away.
There was a brass knocker in the shape of an elephant that Willard used to announce their presence.
— What is this place? Marks asked.
— You‘ll see soon enough. Just follow my lead and you‘ll be okay.
The door opened, revealing a young African American woman dressed in a fashionable business suit. She blinked once and said, — Freddy, is that really you?
Willard chuckled. -It‘s been a while, Reese, hasn‘t it?
— Years and years, the young woman said, a smile creasing her face.
— Well, don‘t just stand there, come on in. He‘s going to be tickled beige to see you.
— To fleece me, you mean.
Now it was the young woman‘s turn to chuckle, a warm, rich sound that seemed to caress the listener‘s ear.
— Reese, this is a friend of mine, Peter Marks.
The young woman stuck out her hand in a no-nonsense fashion. She had a rather square face with an aggressive chin and worldly eyes the color of bourbon. -Any friend of Freddy‘s… Her smile deepened. -Reese Williams.
— The commissioner‘s strong right hand, Willard supplied.
— Oh, yes. She laughed. -What would he do without me?
She led them down a softly lit, wood-paneled hallway, decorated with photos and watercolors of African wildlife, most predominantly elephants, with a smattering of rhinos, zebras, and giraffes thrown in.
They arrived soon after at double pocket doors, which Reese threw open to a blue cloud of aromatic cigar smoke, the discreet clink of glassware, and the fast-paced dealing of cards on a green baize table in the center of the library. Six men-including Commissioner Burrows-and one woman sat around the table, playing poker. All of them were high up in various departments of the district‘s political infrastructure. The ones Marks didn‘t know on sight, Willard identified for him.
As they stood on the threshold, Reese went ahead of them, crossing to the table, where Burrows sat, patiently playing his hand. She waited just behind his right shoulder until he‘d raked in the considerable pot, then leaned over and whispered in his ear.
At once the commissioner glanced up and a wide smile spread over his face. -Goddammit! he exclaimed, pushing his chair back and rising. -Well, wash my socks and call me Andy, if it isn‘t Freddy Fucking Willard! He strode over and engulfed Willard in a bear hug. He was a massive man with a bowling-ball head, who looked like an overstuffed sausage. His freckledappled cheeks belied the master manipulator‘s eyes and the pensive mouth of a seasoned politician.
Willard introduced Marks and the commissioner pumped his hand with that sinister warmth peculiar to people in public life, which flicks on and off with the quickness of a lightning strike.
— If you‘ve come to play, Burrows said, — you‘ve come to the right joint.
— Actually, we‘ve come to ask you about Detectives Sampson and Montgomery, Marks said impulsively.
The commissioner‘s brow pulled down, darkening into a furry mass. -Who are Sampson and Montgomery?
— With all due respect, sir, you know who they are.
— Son, are you some sort of psychic? Burrows turned on Willard. -Freddy, who the hell is he to tell me what I know?
— Ignore him, Lester. Willard inserted himself between Marks and the commissioner. -Peter‘s been a little on edge since he went off his medication.
— Well, get the man back on it, stat, Burrows said. -That mouth is a fucking menace.
— I will certainly do that, Willard said as he grabbed Marks to keep him out of the line of fire. -In the meantime, do you have room for one more at the table?
Noah Perlis, sitting in the lime-scented shade of the lavish rooftop garden at 779 El Gamhuria Avenue, could see all of Khartoum, smoky and indolent, laid out before him to his right, while to his left were the Blue and White Nile rivers that divided the city into thirds. In central Khartoum the hideous Chinese-built Friendship Hall, and the weird futuristic Al-Fateh building, so like the nose cone of an immense rocket, mixed uneasily with the traditional mosques and ancient pyramids of the city, but the unsettling juxtaposition was a sign of the times-hide-bound Muslim religion seeking its way in the alien modern world.
Perlis had his laptop open, the latest iteration of the Bardem program running the last of the scenarios: the incursion by Arkadin and his twentyman cadre into that section of Iran where, like Palestine, the milk and honey flowed, in the form of oil.
Perlis never did one thing when he could do two or, preferably, three at once. He was a man whose mind was so quick and restless that it needed a kind of internal web of goals, puzzles, and conjectures to keep from imploding into chaos. So while he studied the probabilities of Pinprick‘s end phase the program was spitting out he thought about the devil‘s deal he‘d been forced to make with Dimitri Maslov and, by extension, Leonid Arkadin. First and foremost, it galled him to partner with Russians, whose corruption and dissolute lifestyle he both loathed and envied. How could a bunch of scummy pigs like that be so awash in money? While it was true that life was never fair, he mused, sometimes it could be downright malevolent. But what could he do? He‘d tried many other routes but, in the end, Maslov had been the only way to get to Nikolai Yevsen, who felt about Americans the way he, Perlis, felt about Russians. Accordingly, he‘d been forced to make a deal with too many partners-too many partners for whom double dealing and backstabbing had been ingrained in their nature virtually from birth. Contingencies had to be made against the threat of such treachery, and that meant triple the planning and man-hours. Of course, it also meant he‘d been able to triple the fee he was charging Bud Halliday, not that the price meant anything to the secretary, the way the US Mint was printing up dollars as if they were confetti. In fact, at the last Black River board meeting, members of the steering committee were so concerned with the threat of hyperinflation that they had voted unanimously to convert their dollars into gold bullion for the next six months while they put their clients on notice that starting September 1, the company would accept fees only in gold or diamonds. What bothered him about that meeting was that Oliver Liss, one of the three founding members and the man he reported to, was absent.
Simultaneously, he was thinking of Moira. Like a cinder in his eye, she had become an irritant. She was firmly lodged in a corner of his mind ever since she had abruptly quit Black River and, after a short hiatus, had started her own company in direct competition with him. Because, make no mistake, Perlis had taken her defection and subsequent treachery personally. It hadn‘t been the first time, but he vowed to himself that it would be the last. The first time… well, there were good reasons not to think about the first time. He hadn‘t for years and he wasn‘t about to start now.