I pressed again. “Did he tell you where he might be going?” I asked. “Did he tell any of your girls he was going away?”
Fatasha spoke sharply to the girls and they shook their heads. Once they realized I wasn’t a customer they had sat down on a large bed and were busy talking, playing cards, and one even had a doll for which she was fashioning clothes, just as young girls anywhere would be doing. Only they were stark naked and serenely unconscious of it.
“Karminian not here,” Fatasha said again, dismissing me with the phrase.
I nodded to her, slipped through the draped archway and went back into the heat of the streets. My next stop was the Chez Caliph and outside the medina, though the streets of Casablanca were busy with late afternoon traffic, they seemed almost empty to me.
I found the place on the Boulevard Zerktouni, just as Aggie had said, and the bartender was not at all reluctant to talk about Karminian. What he said, though, made my eyebrows go up, discreetly, of course.
“Sure, he came in all the time around five o’clock for a glass of sherry,” the man said. He was a European who spoke English well. “Karminian was a loner, very quiet. He’d sit in a corner and just watch people. I only saw him with a woman once or twice, a gorgeous, black-haired dame, tall, real class.”
That sure as hell wasn’t Aggie Foster, I thought to myself. And Karminian a “loner?” That didn’t fit either.
It was getting late and evening was already closing in. Without a good description of what the man looked like it was useless for me to try touring the jazz spots. I decided to go back to his apartment and wait there until it was time for Aggie to be finished, then visit her for a better description of the man.
I stopped in at a restaurant, the Rissani, and had a delicious meal of chicken cooked in olives and lemons and stuffed with almonds, raisins, semolina, honey and rice.
Back at Karminian’s place, I was washing it all down with a nice long bourbon and water and thinking of how a man could be a gregarious, heavy-drinking patron of erotic pursuits and a sherry-sipping loner at the same time, a jazz buff with a record collection of Mozart and Scarlatti. Karminian was turning out to be a man of many parts.
I heard the sound of footsteps outside, clattering up the staircase, before I heard a woman’s voice. The door suddenly resounded to short, hard knocking-
“Anton,” the voice said, a low, mellifluous voice. “Let me in. I know you’re there. I saw the light as I passed downstairs.”
There was a pause and then some more knocking. “Anton,” she said. “Please open up? What is it? What’s the matter? Why did you come back without letting me know?”
I crossed to the door in two, fast strides and yanked it open.
The woman almost fell into the room and I caught her with my hand. Her eyes widened in astonishment and I took in gorgeous black hair, softly curled behind her ears, thin, black eyebrows over deep eyes of brown, delicately pronounced cheekbones and a rather long, aquiline nose. It was a face to remember, at once beautiful and proud, delicate and sensuous.
The body matched the face, full, thrusting breasts inside an off-white dress that clung like a petal to a flower. Her thighs curved in a long, slender line and somehow, I knew at once, who she was.
“You’re not Anton,” she gasped, finding her voice.
“No, but you’re Marina,” I said simply. “Come in, please.”
She frowned and looked at me warily but entered the room. As I closed the door I saw that her breasts moved gently, provocatively as she walked, obviously held by a very loose brassiere.
“Who are you?” she asked directly, fastening me with the deep, brown orbs that seemed to say more than her words.
“I’m Glen Travis,” I said, smiling at her. “I’m looking for Anton Karminian and, since he’s not here, I’m staying here. He owes me money for paintings of mine that he bought.”
“How did you know my name?” she asked, her voice a low, sultry thing, velvet over fire.
“A guess,” I said. “I saw the name on some of the record albums and you look as though your name would be Marina. It’s a lovely name, an unusual name. It should go with a beautiful woman only.”
“You know the right things to say,” she smiled, and her lovely, proud face lighted with its own special glow.
“Most artists do,” I said. “I want to find Karminian. From what you said, you may know where he is.”
She sat down and a sadness crept into her eyes. “I wish I did,” she said. “All I know is that Anton called me one afternoon and said he had to go away unexpectedly. He didn’t even have time to see me to say goodbye.”
“You were his girl friend?” I asked. She looked at me coolly.
“I was his friend,” she said. “Anton and I had a very unusual relationship.”
“I can believe that,” I said. “You look the type who could have an unusual relationship. But you don’t know where he went?”
She shook her head.
“You know,” I went on, “it’s very important that I find him. I can’t go into all the details, but if you help me you’d be doing him a big favor too.”
“I cannot help you,” she said, sitting down and crossing her legs. She wore only leg make-up, and the long line of her thigh was a thing of beauty.
I wished for a moment I really were artist enough to paint her.
“Marina,” I said, turning the word over in my mouth. “An unusual name and an unusual girl, I would guess. Will you join me in a bourbon?”
“Scotch, please,” she said. “On the rocks.”
She settled back in the chair and studied me as I fixed the drink and handed it to her. Her breasts seemed to curve upward in a beautiful, graceful line as she sat relaxed in the chair.
“Having seen you,” I said, “I think perhaps I don’t want to find Karminian.”
Marina smiled, a mischievous, slow smile that played around the edges of her finely molded lips. “But you do,” she answered. “You want to find him very much.”
“That’s right,” I said. “He owes me a lot of money.”
“No,” she said. “I think it is something more.”
She was a smart dish, and I grinned at her. “Your special intuition,” I said. “Some powers you have?”
“No, but there is something about you that makes me feel an urgency, perhaps even a sense of danger,” she answered. “And yet, somehow, you make me feel as though I should help you, though I don’t really believe your story about Anton owing you money for your paintings.”
“Don’t tell me you’re an Egyptian fortuneteller,” I laughed. She was too damned perceptive.
“I am part Spanish and part Moroccan,” she said. “Maybe that does give me strange powers.”
“Then you’d better believe me that your friend Anton might be in trouble if I don’t find him,” I answered. “I’m told he’s a big drinker, and that can be dangerous.”
“Anton? A big drinker?” she queried, frowning. “Absolutely not. Only wines, with perhaps a small brandy after dinner.”
That fitted what the barkeep at the Chez Caliph had said. But nothing else fitted so far. “Tell me more about him?” I pressed.
“Anton and I, as I said, had an unusual relationship,” Marina said, settling back deeper in the chair, her deep eyes growing distant and veiled. “He was very intellectual, very introverted. He never liked crowds or people in general. He preferred to stay here or at my place, just the two of us, quietly listening to records. He liked Bach, of course, and Mozart, but he had a special feeling for Palestrina.”
“He smoked?” I asked, making my questions sound casual.
“Only his pipes,” she answered.
“I was told he came on strong,” I said and she frowned.