I phoned him from the bathroom because I didn’t want Kmuzu to overhear me. I told Bill to pick me up just outside the high walls that surrounded Friedlander Bey’s estate. Bill didn’t remember who I was for a while, but that’s usual. Bill’s about as aware as a sleeping skink. He chose that for himself years ago, buying an expensive bodmod that constantly braised his brain in a very frightening high-tech hallucinogen. It would have driven most people to suicide within a handful of days; in Bill’s case, I understand it sort of settled him down.
On the way from Papa’s mansion to the eastern gate of the Budayeen, Bill and I had a disjointed conversation about the imminent war with the state of Gadsden. I eventually figured out that he was having some kind of flashback. Before he came to the city he’d lived in America, in the part now called Sovereign Deseret. His skink brain let him believe he was still there.
It was all right because he found the Budayeen easily enough. I gave him enough money so that he’d wait for me and drive me home after I finished the morning’s legwork. I started up the Street in the direction of the cemetery. I didn’t know yet what I wanted to do first. What did I have to go on? Two homicide victims, that’s all, with nothing tangible connecting them except the similarity of method. I had, on one hand, my employees’ overheated warning that a vampire was loose around here, and, on the other hand, my absolute disbelief in the supernatural.
There was nothing to do but call Chiri. I knew I’d be waking her up. I heard her pick up her phone and say, “Uh. Yeah?”
“Chiri, it’s Marîd. I’m not waking you up, am I?”
“No.” Her voice was real damn cold.
“Sorry. Listen, do you know where Sheba lives?”
“No, and I don’t care, either.”
“Then who do we know who could give me the address? I think I need to just drop by and ask Sheba a couple of things.”
There was a pause: Chiri was being angry. “Yasmin would know. Or Lily.”
“Yasmin or Lily. I probably should’ve called them first.”
Another pause. “Probably.”
I grimaced. “Sorry, Chiri. Go back to sleep. I’ll see you later.” She didn’t say anything before she slammed the phone down.
I called Yasmin next, but I didn’t get an answer. That didn’t surprise me. I remembered from the days when Yasmin and I lived together that she was one of the best little sleepers that Allah ever invented. She could sleep through any major catastrophe except a missed meal. I gave up after listening to the phone ring a dozen and a half times, and then I called Lily. She was just as unhappy to be roused as Chiri, but her tone changed when she found out it was me. Lily has been waiting for me to call for a long time. She’s a gorgeous sexchange, and she was well aware that I’ve never had much success with real women.
She was less happy when I told her I just wanted another girl’s address and commcode. I heard ice through the ether again, but she finally gave me the information. It turned out that Sheba didn’t live too far from my club.
“And one other thing,” Lily said. “We checked by the Red Light Lounge. Sheba couldn’t have been late to supper on account of some guy buying her drinks. She doesn’t work daytimes, she’s never worked daytimes — just like we said. So she lied. You just don’t see her around when the sun is up.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said.
“So why you want to get next to that for? If you’re spending too much time all by yourself, honey, I’ll help you out.”
I didn’t need this now. “Yasmin would scratch your eyes out, Lily. I’ve only been protecting you.”
“Huh, Yasmin don’t remember how to spell your name, Marîd.” She slammed the phone down, too. I decided it wouldn’t be a good idea to set foot in my own business today. I’d probably be slashed to ribbons.
I found Sheba’s apartment building and went up to the second floor. It was an old place with a thin, worn carpet runner on the stairs. The paint on the walls hung down in grimy, blowzy strips. Sheba’s front door was painted a dark reddish brown, the color of a bloodstain on clothing. I knocked. There was no response. Well, Sheba was a Budayeen hustler, she was probably asleep. I knocked louder and called her name. Finally I unclipped my phone again and murmured her commcode into it; I could hear the ringing from within the apartment.
It took me perhaps a minute and a half to get past her lock. The first thing I learned was that Sheba wasn’t home. The second was that it appeared she hadn’t been around for a while — several envelopes had been pushed beneath her door. One had been closed only with a rubber band. I opened it; it contained a hundred kiam in ten-kiam bills, and a note from some admirer. Clothes, jewelry, stuffed animals, all sorts of things were strewn across the floor of the apartment’s large room.
There was a mattress with a single sheet lying tipped up against a wall. The room’s only window was standing open, water-stained yellow curtains blowing in on a warm breeze. Below the window was another heap of clothing and personal articles. I brushed the curtains aside and looked out. Below me was a narrow alley leading crookedly in the direction of Ninth Street.
A light was on in the bathroom; when I looked in there, it was as much a mess as the other room. It seemed to me that Sheba had been in a hell of a hurry, had grabbed up a few things, and had gotten out of the apartment as fast as she could. I couldn’t guess why.
I looked more closely at what she’d left behind. Near the bathroom was a pile of cellophane and cardboard scraps that Sheba had kicked together. I sorted through the stuff and saw quickly that it was mostly packaging material ripped from several personality modules. I was familiar enough with the blazebrain field to know that some of the moddies Sheba had collected were not your regular commercial releases.
Sheba fancied black-market titles, and very dangerous ones, too. She liked illegal underground moddies that fed her feelings of superiority and power; while she was wearing them she’d become these programmed people, and her behavior could range from the merely vicious to the downright sinister and deadly. She could almost certainly become capable of murder.
I recalled that months ago, when she worked for me at Chiri’s, she was almost always chipped in to some moddy or other. That wasn’t unusual among the dancers though. I was sure that Sheba wasn’t using these hardcore moddies back then, at least not at work. Something had happened in the meantime, something that had drastically changed her, and not for the better.
I put some of the wrappers in my pocket and went back to the window. A niggling thought had been bothering me, and I looked outside again. My attention was drawn to the four trash cans below. They weren’t just any trash cans. Safiyya the Lamb Lady had brought me here. She had found all her silver jewelry in Sheba’s alley.
I took another look around Sheba’s shabby apartment. There were dead flowers shoved into one corner, several books thrown together on the floor, and shattered glass everywhere. I found another double handful of abandoned jewelry, a heap of pendants and necklaces, cheap stuff. Most were decorated with familiar symbols, all jumbled together — there were a couple of Christian crosses; Islamic crescents and items with Qur’ânic inscriptions; a Star of David; an ankh; Buddhist, Hindu, and other Asiatic religious tokens; occult designs; Native American figures; and others I wasn’t able to identify. These were the only things I saw that might have had some connection to the vampire mythology, but I still discounted them — the things might just have been left behind like the rest of the jewelry. I couldn’t be sure there was any particular significance to them.
Nothing else set off a bell in my highly perceptive crime-solving mind. The moddies were the best clue, and so my next stop was Laila’s modshop on Fourth Street. I was surprised that Laila herself wasn’t in when I got there, but I was relieved, too. Laila is almost impossible to deal with. Instead, there was a young woman standing behind the counter.
She smiled at me. She didn’t seem crazy at all. She was either wearing a moddy that force-fed her a pleasant personality, or something was definitely not right here. This was not a shop where you met people under the control of their own unaugmented selves.