“Take the gun out and drop it,” Leroy said. “Slow and careful, just use your thumb and forefinger.”
The big man didn’t have much choice. Asa watched him do what he’d been told. The look on his face was something to see — all pop-eyed and scrunched up with disbelief. He hadn’t hardly paid any mind to Leroy since he walked in, and sure never once considered him to be listening and watching, much less to be a threat.
Leroy backed the two of them up a few paces. Then he said, “Asa, take charge of his gun. And then go ring up my office.”
“Yes, sir, you bet.”
The stranger said, “Office?”
“Why, sure. This fella’s been pretending to work here for the past couple days, bodyguarding me ever since the capital police got wind Rawles had hired himself a professional gunman. Name’s Leroy Heavens — Sheriff Leroy Heavens. First black sheriff in the history of Hallam County.”
The big man just gawped at him.
Asa grinned as he bent to pick up the gun. “Looks like I was right and you were wrong, mister,” he said. “Sometimes things change for the better, all right. Sometimes they surely do.”
Arabian Nights in Fez
by MacLean O’Spelin
© 1979 by MacLean O’Spelin.
Another adventure of O’Spelin, the sophisticated spy who alternates between exciting exploits in exotic places and peaceful interludes of fly fishing in far-off streams... This tale of a Sultan’s palace, a harem courtyard, of the fragrance industry and secret formulas, of glowing copper and brass, hanging carpets, luxurious cushions, and inviting beds, of clandestine skulduggery, will remind you of magic lamps and bottled jinn — in a phrase, of a thousand and one nights entertainments...
I’ve always liked Fez. And its Hotel Mamounia.
So it wasn’t heartrending when I had to stop trout fishing in the Moyen Atlas mountains in central Morocco, pack my Holbrook rods and Hardy reels, whirl the hired Lamborghini Miura down the cool slopes and out onto the hot desert plain, and check in at the Mamounia. Not heartrending, no, but still a wrench.
My profession is industrial espionage, but my passion is fly fishing. The first supports the second plus other lesser but often costly indulgences. I prefer the indulgences to working. But my funds were running perilously low.
So work it had to be. And sooner than I’d planned. Which fact touched off a series of male-female, masculine-feminine mixups that would have daunted the earliest bird.
Originally, the Mamounia had been a minor sultan’s palace. A cautious fellow, he’d had it built for safety’s sake right into the wall around the medina of Fez. If you’re not sure what a medina is, think of a kasbah — come weez me to zee kasbah, cherie — and you’ll have the idea.
Oh, there are differences. But they’re irrelevant to this tale. Both the medina and the kasbah have thick walls and, inside, a web of labyrinthine passageways linking a jammed-in hodgepodge of Arab dwellings, both rich and poor, artisans’ ateliers, merchants’ stalls, and in Fez’s case the ancient Karouine Mosque.
The Fez medina is vast and right out of the Arabian Nights. Visitors are not barred. But don’t expect a magic carpet or even a red one. There are occasional donkeys but no cars; if you want a tranquil stroll, better hire a trustworthy guide.
The Mamounia is small but deluxe. It, too, is a labyrinth and a guide can be useful. Mine was Monsieur le Directeur himself, a suave young Moroccan in tailor-made suit and white boutonniere. “Welcome, Monsieur O’Spelin — no, it is of no consequence that you are ahead of time.”
He guided me along richly carpeted, romantically dimlit corridors that turned and re-turned at apparent random. We padded up and down short flights of stairs. The small raised numbers on the doors we passed were hard to see and seemed to have no logical sequence.
But we made it safely. M. le Directeur celebrated by bowing me into the two-room suite at the top of the Sultan’s Tower and I slipped him an appreciative wad of Moroccan dirhams which he suavely made dematerialize. I looked a question at him, he held up a warning palm, crossed the room, and unplugged a hammered brass lamp on an inlaid table.
“Bugs in the brasswork, eh, Hamad?” I said and he showed perfect teeth and made a coarse gesture. “Merde a la Sûreté, Mac. Merde aux cops.”
“Betcha,” I said. “Find al-Fassi and send him up the back way, will you, please. And let me have a master key as usual and patch my telephone around the switchboard directly into a trunk line.”
“No sweat.” Grinning at his mastery of Yankee slang, he handed over a big key. Then he pointed a forefinger at me and waggled his thumb. “Bang, bang!”
Hamad was a useful contact, so I laughed politely although I seldom enjoyed his jokes as much as he did. His admirable contempt for the Sûreté was no joke though; he relished thwarting them even though he could scarcely refuse if police routine called for bugged rooms and tapped switchboards in all hotels.
Beckoning me, he went to a window. The Sultan’s Tower was squatter than most towers, but its perch atop the slope of the medina toward the River Fez gave it the illusion of towering. I gazed down over the tightly packed jumble of buildings, gripped by this look back over turbulent centuries.
“No, no, Mac. Directly below.”
At the foot of the tower, perhaps 30 feet down, was an interior walled patio. I remembered that the hotel’s brochure boasted of a harem courtyard built for the Sultan’s ladies to take the air unseen by any eyes but his.
Maybe it was true — anyway, there was a lady there now. Taking the air and the midafternoon sun. On a lounge chair, wearing an eyeshield and a one-piece swimsuit that was modest in our string-bikini and nude-bathing world.
But not so modest that it left her lovely torso completely to the imagination. The swimsuit’s black matched her long hair and complemented the bronze of her lithe body perfectly. From that angle I couldn’t appraise her face systematically, but I was sure its quality matched the rest. Rating: Knockout.
“Madame la Generale Fouchette, Mac. Just your type.”
“Thanks. She’s staying here?”
“Partly. That is, she was born in the medina and maintains a pied-à-terre there. But whenever she’s in Fez she reserves the room with the courtyard. Often she dines here, now and then spends the night.”
Thus began the male-female thing I warned you of. Also the masculine-feminine thing. I’ve lost many battles with grammatical gender in French, but I did know that the feminine title “Madame la Generale” did not mean that the woman was a female general. It meant that she was a general’s wife.
“Her husband is attached to the French Embassy in Rabat and is now on an observation mission on the Algerian border. The lady is lonely, perhaps.”
“Hamad, I follow you like a medina mugger. You’ll see to it that I’m seated close to her table if she’s dining here tonight?”
“No sweat.”
I have a pied-à-terre of my own, a five-room pad on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco. Also a twin engine Cessna, fishing camps here and there around the world, a Pantera and a classic BMW 280 °CS and so on. Not many of these playthings are fully paid for. So my cash flow turns negative often, and I have to go to work. Like now.
I left the tantalizing view, got rid of M. le Directeur, and after giving him time to bypass the switchboard taps, telephoned Le Domaine Bigard. M. Louis Bigard, I learned, was in residence although not immediately available.