A minute later, Blondie returned with an old man, an Arab in the employ of the household. The two men spoke together briefly. The old fellah turned to me and smiled. “Peace be upon you!” he said.
“And upon you,” I said. “O neighbor, is this man the honored and excellent one, Lutz Seipolt Pasha?”
The old man laughed a little. “You are mistaken, my nephew,” he said. “He is but the doorman, a menial even as I am.” I really doubted that they were all that equal. Evidently the blond man was part of Seipolt’s retinue, brought from Germany.
“On my honor, I am a fool!” I said. “I have come to ask an important question of His Excellency.” Arabic terms of address frequently make such use of elaborate flattery. Seipolt was a businessman of some sort; I had already called him Pasha (an obsolete title used in the city for ingratiation) and His Excellency (as if he were some sort of ambassador). The old, leather-skinned Arab understood what I was doing well enough. He turned to the German and translated the conversation.
The German seemed even less pleased. He replied with a single, curt sentence. The Arab spoke to me. “Reinhardt the doorman wishes to hear this question.”
I grinned into Reinhardt’s hard eyes. “I’m only looking for my sister, Nikki.”
The Arab shrugged and relayed the information. I saw Reinhardt blink and make the beginning of some gesture, then catch himself. He said something to the old fellah. “There is no one by that name here,” the Arab told me. “There are no women at all in this household.”
“I am certain that my sister is here,” I said. “It is a matter of my family’s honor.” I sounded threatening; the Arab’s eyes opened wide.
Reinhardt hesitated. He was undecided whether to slam the door in my face, after all, or kick this problem upstairs. I figured him for a coward; I was right. He didn’t want to take the responsibility for the decision, so he agreed to convey me somewhere inside the cool, lavishly furnished house. I was glad to get out of the hot sun. The old Arab disappeared, returning to his duties. Reinhardt did not deign to look at me or address a word in my direction; he merely walked deeper into the house, and I followed. We came to another heavy door, this one of a fine-grained dark hardwood. Reinhardt rapped; a gruff voice called out, and Reinhardt answered. There was a short pause, then the gruff voice gave an order. Reinhardt turned the doorknob, pushed the door open just a little, and walked away. I entered the room, putting the dumb-Arab look back on my face. I pressed my hands together in supplication and dipped my head a few times for good measure. “You are His Excellency?” I asked in Arabic.
I was looking at a heavy, coarse-featured, bald man in his sixties, with a moddy and two or three daddies plugged into his sweat-shiny skull. He sat behind a heavily-littered desk, holding a telephone in one hand and a large, blued-steel needle gun in the other. He smiled at me. “Please do me the honor of coming closer,” he said in unaccented Arabic; it was probably a language daddy speaking for him.
I bowed again. I was trying to think, but my mind was like a blank parchment. Needle guns do that to me sometimes. “O Excellent One,” I said, “I beg your pardon for intruding.”
“To hell with all that ‘Excellent One’ bull. Tell me why you’re here. You know who I am. You know I don’t have a lot of time to waste.”
I pulled Nikki’s letter from my shoulder bag and gave it to him. I guessed he’d figure it out quickly enough.
He read it through and then put down the telephone — but not the needle gun. “You’re Marîd, then?” he said. He’d stopped smiling.
“I have that privilege,” I said.
“Don’t get smart with me,” said Seipolt. “Sit down in that chair.” He waved me aside with the pistol. “I’ve heard one or two things about you.”
“From Nikki?”
Seipolt shook his head. “Here and there in the city. You know how Arabs like to gossip.”
I smiled. “I didn’t realize I had such a reputation.”
“It’s nothing to get excited about, kid. Now, what makes you think this Nikki, whoever she is, is here? This letter?”
“Your house seemed like a good place to start looking. If she’s not here, why is your name so prominent in her plans?”
Seipolt looked genuinely bewildered. “I don’t have any idea, and that’s the truth. I’ve never heard of your Nikki, and I don’t have the least interest in her. As my staff will attest, I haven’t had an interest in any woman in many years.”
“Nikki’s not just any woman,” I said. “She’s a simulated woman built on a customized boy’s chassis. Maybe that’s what’s been stirring your interest during those years.”
Seipolt’s expression grew impatient. “Let me be blunt, Audran. I no longer have the apparatus to get sexually interested in anyone or anything. I no longer have the desire to have that condition repaired. I have found that I prefer business. Versteh’?”
I nodded. “I don’t suppose you’d allow me to search your lovely home,” I said. “I needn’t disturb you while you work: don’t mind me, I’ll be quiet as a jerboa.”
“No,” he said, “Arabs steal things.” His smile grew slowly until it was an evil thing.
I don’t taunt easily, so I just shook that one off. “May I have the letter back?” I asked. Seipolt shrugged; I went to his desk and picked up Nikki’s note, tucked it back in my shoulder bag. “Import-export?” I asked.
Seipolt was surprised. “Yes,” he said. He looked down at a stack of bills of lading.
“Anything in particular, or the usual odds and ends?”
“What the hell difference does it make to you what I—” I waited for him to reach the middle of his outraged reply, then swiftly hit the inside of his right forearm with my left hand, swinging the muzzle of the needle gun away, and slapped him across his plump, white face with my right hand. Then I tightened my grip on his left wrist. We struggled silently for a moment. He was sitting, and I was standing over him, balanced, with momentum and surprise on my side. I twisted his wrist outward, abusing the small bones in his forearm. He grunted and dropped the needle gun to the desk, and with my right hand I swept it all the way across the room with one motion. He made no attempt to retrieve it.
“I have other weapons,” he said softly. “I have alarms to summon Reinhardt and the others.”
“I do not doubt that,” I said, not relaxing my hold on his wrist. I felt my little sadistic streak beginning to enjoy this. “Tell me about Nikki,” I said.
“She’s never been here, I don’t know a damn thing about her,” said Seipolt. He was starting to suffer. “You can hold the gun on me, we can fight and wrestle around the room, you can battle my men, you can search the house. Goddamn it, I don’t know who your Nikki is! If you don’t believe me now, there isn’t a damn thing in the world I can say that will change your mind. Now, let’s see how smart you really are.”
“At least four people received that same letter,” I said, thinking out loud. “Two of them are dead now. Maybe the police could find some clue here, even if I couldn’t.”
“Let go of my wrist.” His voice was icy and commanding. I let go of his wrist; there didn’t seem to be much point in holding it any longer, anyway. “Go ahead and call the police. Let them search. Let them persuade you. Then after they leave, I will make you sorry you ever stepped onto my property. If you don’t get out of my office right now, you uncivilized idiot, you may never get another chance. Versteh’?”