“Yes,” said Remal. “You will just suddenly disappear.” He shrugged and said, “It has happened before. Even in your country it happens, am I right? And you have so many more laws.”
Now the bastard is laughing at me and he’s right and I’m wrong.
“Was that the blackmail, Mister Quinn?”
“No. And all I wanted from you…”
“Come to the point.”
There was a magazine on the table and Quinn flipped the pages once so that they made a quick, nervous rat-tat-tat. Then he looked up. “I’ve got some of your merchandise.”
“Also a thief, I see.”
“And this merchandise talks. She was going out on a boat tonight, white slave shipment to some place, which would interest anyone from your local constable to the High Commissioner of the Interpol system.”
This time Remal sat down, but he was smiling. “All this, Mister Quinn, so I don’t put you on a curfew?”
“That’s how it started,” said Quinn, which he knew didn’t answer the question. That’s how it started, he thought, but I don’t know any more. I might like to go further.
Remal threw his head back and laughed loud and hard. When he was done he did not care how Quinn was looking at him.
“You found her where, Mr. Quinn, on my boat?”
“In the quarter.”
“Ah. And she was being used, no doubt, somewhere in an alley.”
“The point is I have her.”
“Was she thin and young, Mister Quinn?” And when Quinn didn’t answer, Remal said as if to himself, “They usually are, the ones Hradin brings in.”
“Maybe you didn’t get my point, Mayor.”
“Oh that,” and Remal sighed. Then he said, “More important, you’re not getting mine. I know the trader who brought her, I know from which tribe she comes, and I know something else which seems to have escaped you. She, her type, has been owned since childhood. One owner, two, more, I don’t know. Uh, Mister Quinn, have you talked to her?”
“I don’t speak Arabic.”
“Neither does she. But have you talked to her?”
“Get to it, Mayor.”
“I will. The ones Hradin brings in, the women of her type-” Remal, in a maddening way, interrupted to laugh. He got up and kept laughing. “Mister Quinn,” said Remal from the door, “when or if you see that little whore again, ask her to open her mouth. She has no tongue, perhaps not since she was five.”
Remal slammed the door behind him, but even after that he kept laughing.
Chapter 11
First Quinn sat, and it was as if he were blind with confusion. But this did not last. He sat and was blind to everything except his hate for the laugh, and for his own stupidity. Because, for a fact, Quinn was not new to this. Neither to the contest with the man, Remal in this case, nor to the simple, sharp rules of the game: that you don’t go off half-cocked, that you don’t threaten unless you can hit.
Quinn got up, left the house fast. His teeth touched on edge, as if there were sand there and he needed to bite through the grains. The garden gate was locked. He went back to the house, stumbled once on a stone in the garden.
“Quinn?” he heard in the hall.
One light was on over the stairs and Beatrice stood on the first landing, no longer looking half asleep. She came down, saying his name again.
“Open the gate for me,” he said. “It’s locked.”
She stepped up to him and put her hand on his arm. “Perhaps-” She didn’t seem to know how to go on.
“You got the key or not?”
“He’s gone,” she said. “He went out the back gate. If you like, you can stay here.”
He looked at her and felt surprised that she could seem so hesitant.
“What did you do?” she said. “He came back cold as ice.”
“I asked him to get off my back and he laughed.”
“Quinn, stay-”
“I’m getting out. I’ve got to.”
She misunderstood. “Can you leave town? If you let me help you…”
He stepped hack, not to feel her hand on his arm. He felt sorry he had met her like this and had a small, rapid wish-it only leaped by, nothing more-that she might be elsewhere, and himself, too. But then he sucked in his breath to interrupt, because unless he knew why he had this wish about her, he would not permit it.
He thought he knew, of course, why he felt anger with Remal, so he stuck to that.
“I’m going out there and don’t worry. Open the gate.”
“What are you going to do?” she asked and ran after him into the garden.
“Have you got the key?”
She went back into the house and brought the key. She said nothing else, brought nothing else, just unlocked the gate and let him go out. She wished she knew what to say, what she wanted. Then she locked the gate.
It was no darker now than it had been before, but as Quinn walked hack to Whitfield’s he thought it was darker, and colder. I have to see Turk and set something up, he kept thinking. Whitfield? No help there. But I’ll need help. Either because of what the mayor does next or what I want to do next. What? I’ll see. First, check out that girl, check out Turk, even Whitfield-he knows the mayor, he can help make this clear if I’m imagining that something’s going to break He walked fast, which preoccupied him, and got to the yard out of breath. He stood for a moment there in the dark and called Turk. There was no answer. There was only the pump sound of his blood and the hard sound of his breathing. You listen to that long enough, he thought, and you get scared.
“Turk?”
Nothing. He’s with the whore, of course.
Quinn ran up the stairs and the first door was open. The light was on inside and the room was empty. No girl, no Turk. In the next room, Whitfield was asleep.
Quinn did not know what to think and did not care to think. He ran to the bed and started to shake Whitfield awake.
“Listen, listen to me,” he kept saying, until Whitfield opened his eyes.
There was an empty gin bottle on the floor and Quinn kicked it out of the way.
“How was she, huh?” said Whitfield. “Okay?” He sounded thick.
“Shut up and listen to me.”
“Once a week. Back next week. Okay? Nice girl-” Quinn tried a while longer but was too anxious to give Whitfield a chance to come out of his drunk. Quinn was so anxious he could feel himself shake inside.
Everybody gone, he thought. I’m imagining something, but not this. Everybody gone and me alone here. End up dead in an alley this way. That’s no imagination. Like the first time wasn’t imagination. End up dead in a coffin, next end up dead in an alley. That’s twice. That doesn’t happen to me, twice-And he let go of Whitfield as if he were a bundle of laundry. But Quinn didn’t race out. He felt alone but now this did not give him fright but strength. He picked up the gin bottle and left Whitfield’s apartment. In the yard he cracked the bottle against a stone wall and held onto the neck. He looked at the vicious jags on the broken end and heard his own breathing again.
“Turk?” he called once more.
Only his breathing. It didn’t frighten him this time, only made him feel haste. He left fast, to go to the only other place which he knew, which was Beatrice’s house. He didn’t get there.
On the way he saw shadows, imagined shapes, and fright played him like a cracked instrument. He bit down on his teeth, held his bottle, and with a fast chatter of crazy thoughts going in and out of his head, he had to stop finally or come apart.
It was very quiet, and except for a cat running by some little way off he seemed to be alone. His jitters embarrassed him now, but not much. Stands to reason, he thought. Stands to reason getting worked up like this, but no more now. Ninety-five per cent imagination. Try sticking with the other five for a while. He wished he had a cigarette, and the wish was ordinary enough to take the wild shimmer off his imaginings. In a while, standing by the wall of a house, he felt better. He moved on.
As he turned the next corner, he stumbled over a man lying on the ground.