“Oh, just that he’s back in town. I heard it from Floor-Show Fanya who works over by the Red Light.”
I nodded. The Red Light had always been Fuad’s favorite club. Dumb criminals really do return to the scene of the crime, as if the Felons Federation had given him a copy of their pamphlet Common Sense: Why Bother? Here he was back in the city and probably believing that I’d never find out about it.
“I praise Allah for your good news,” I said. “That’s Fuad’s idea of laying low, huh?”
“You heard how he’s got this weird thing about going out with the black working girls. They know they can rob him all day and all night long. It gets him hot or something. Now he’s got himself a job as an itinerant crumber.”
I closed my eyes and rubbed my forehead. It was only two in the afternoon, and already things were getting a little strange. “The hell is an itinerant crumber, Yasmin?”
“Oh, a guy who travels from town to town, friendless and alone, living on his wits, with his stainless steel implement. He scrapes away the bread crumbs and stuff between courses in good restaurants.”
“You mean like a busboy?”
“Sure,” she said, nodding. Then she shook her head. “No, not really. Crumbing is one step below busboy. He’s working over by Anna’s restaurant in the Hotel Palazzo di Marco Aurelio, you want to go see.”
Didn’t interest me. “What, he wears a white shirt and a bow tie and all that waiter drag?”
Yasmin nodded again. “Yeah, but he’s so starved-looking, he’s no great advertisement for the restaurant.”
“Shukran,” I said. Thanks. “Very interesting, sweetheart.”
“Thought you’d like to hear it.” She squeezed my arm, slipped off her stool, and casually made her way down the bar toward the three customers who’d just come into the club. There were worse ways to get hustled than by buying Yasmin drinks for an hour.
Chiriga, my good friend, partner, and barmaid, rested her elbows on a clean bar towel. She noticed that I’d already knocked back about half my white death. “You take it easy with those,” she said, frowning. “I think Papa and Kmuzu are right. You’re more fun to have around when you’re not drunk or taking pills.”
I didn’t even answer. This was one of those black-pot kettle-calling times. Instead, I looked around our club. There were five dancers working for us in the daytime. One was Yasmin; one was the beautifully restructured real girl, Pualani; the third was Lily, a sexchange who had a crush on me; and two new dancers named Baby and Kitty. I hadn’t yet read them: Were they real girls, debs, changes? I didn’t really need to know, but everyone else on the Street hung on the day the truth would come out.
“Slow shift so far,” I said.
“Always slow in the daytime. The really kinky girls make more money at night.”
“So why don’t you work nights again and make more money?”
Chiri looked at me as if I were stupid. “Didn’t I just say? ‘Cause the really kinky girls are there.” She gave a little shudder, as if she herself hadn’t seen everything and done it all twice.
“Depends on your definition of kinky,” I said. I was twisting my thin little red straw into an equilateral triangle.
Chiri grinned at me. Her strong white teeth were filed to points, the ancient fashion among the old cannibals back home. “I’m kinky, Marîd. You’re kinky. Every girl, deb, and change here in the afternoon is kinky. But those bitches at night, though — wow, kinky is what they did last summer. They’re into whole new realms by now. I don’t even want to think about it.”
“Another drink, Chiri, please.” She took my tumbler and scooped some ice cubes into it, then went to the back bar for the bingara.
I thought some more about Fuad. I suppose that with my connections I could’ve gotten even with him with less expensive preparations, but I didn’t care at all about the money. Papa had made me wealthier than I’d ever dreamed, although I never let anyone know the details. As far as my interest in Fuad was concerned, it was the principle of the thing. And after all, I was planning to get back my twenty-four-hundred kiam, as well as every copper fiq that I would invest in the scheme to make it work.
Now, what did I know for sure? Only that Fuad was back in the city, working at the Ristorante Maximo, and still courting trouble nightly at Fatima and Nassir’s Red Light Lounge. Good enough. It was time to set my scheme in motion.
I unclipped my phone from my belt and whispered Sulome’s name into it. The phone found her stored commcode and began ringing. After a few moments, I heard her voice, husky with sleep. “Marhaba,” she said.
“Il-hamdu lillaah!” I said. Praise be to God. “I’m sorry I woke you up, Sulome. It’s Marîd Audran.” Chiri brought my second white death, and served it to me with a decided lack of graciousness.
“You couldn’t have waited another couple of hours?” Sulome sounded grumpy. “It was a long night.”
“I said I was sorry. Anyway, the guy I told you about came back to the city a few weeks ago, and he’s just lately started showing up in all his old haunts. I think it’s a good time to take him down, if you’re not too busy, of course.”
There was a pause from Sulome. “Well, I’ve got nothing important lined up. What do you want me to do?”
I looked at my watch. “You go back to sleep. I’ll send one of my associates — “
“One of your murdering thugs, you mean.”
I smiled. “Bin Turki’s reliable. I’ll send him on a suborbital with your ticket and half the money we agreed on. You’ll both be back in the city by sunset prayers tonight. I’ll have my man Kmuzu meet your flight and take you to our house. We’ll sort out all the small details in the morning.”
“Fine,” Sulome said in a bored voice.
“And keep your hands off bin Turki. He’s a good kid.”
Sulome laughed. “Sure, except he kills people. Whatever you say, Audran. See you later.” And then I was listening to empty dial tone.
I returned the phone to my belt and felt good. Business is business, and action is action — and I liked action better.
I slammed back the second drink and stood up. Yasmin was being shyly courted by a quiet Eur-Am guy. Lily had taken up conversation with a dark Mediterranean gentleman. Pualani was busily describing something chest-high to a man with Asian features. And Baby and Kitty were, as usual, brushing each other’s hair. There were other customers for them to try, men who would probably fall all over themselves buying champagne cocktails just to hear their low, purring voices, yet they only had eyes for each other.
“Going home early,” I announced to Chiri.
“When you get there,” she said, “tell that fine young man, Kmuzu, to come park his ass in here for a while. I think I could teach him a thing or two.”
“You and I both know you could teach him plenty. You’ve heard him, though. Won’t mess with a woman while he’s still my slave, he says.”
Chiri grinned slowly. “And that gets me so crazy. I think about him a lot, you know.”
“I know you do.”
“I think about him a lot.” She waved the bar towel at me, and I went out into the bright, hot, afternoon sun.
I didn’t want to wait for Kmuzu to come pick me up in my car, so I walked along the Street to get something to eat. It seemed as if every kind of flower in the world was in bloom, hanging in pots from balconies in a shower of pink, purple, white, red, and blue; it was like daytime neon. The air was still except for the lazy buzzing of insects — and the signals of the boys and men who watched over me while I was in the Budayeen. They whistled an old children’s tune that told me all was clear, I wasn’t being followed.