Saied didn’t even wait for his drink. He stood up and sort of strolled over to Joie. You know, “nothing can touch me because, deep inside, I’m Attila the Hun, and all you other faggots better watch your asses.” He engaged Joie in conversation; I couldn’t hear a word, and I didn’t want to. Fuad followed the Half-Hajj like a pet lamb, piping up in his shrill voice now and then, agreeing vigorously with Saied or denying vigorously the new whore.
“I don’t know nothing about this chump’s thirty kiam,” she said.
“She’s got it, look in her purse,” screeched the Unlucky One.
“I got more than that, you son of a bitch,” cried Joie. “How you gonna prove some of it is yours?”
Tempers were igniting fast. The Half-Hajj had the sense to turn and send Fuad back to our table, but Joie followed the scrawny fellah, pushing him and calling him all kinds of foul names. I thought Fuad was almost on the verge of tears. Saied tried to pull Joie away, and she turned on him. “When my people gets here, he’s gonna climb into your ass,” she shouted.
The Half-Hajj gave her one of his little, heroic smiles. “We’ll see about that when he gets here,” he said calmly. “In the meantime, we’re giving my friend here his money back, and I don’t want to hear about you shaving him or any of my other friends again, or you’ll have so many cuts on your face you’ll have to turn tricks with a bag over your head.”
It was at just this moment, with Saied holding Joie’s wrists together, with Fuad standing on her other side, blithering loudly into her ear, that Joie’s pimp came into the bar. “Here we go,” I murmured.
Joie called to him and quickly told him what was happening. “These cocksuckers are trying to take my money,” she cried.
The pimp, a big, one-eyed Arab named Tewfik who everybody called Courvoisier Sonny, didn’t need to hear a word from anyone. He slapped Fuad aside without so much as a glance. He put one hand around Saied’s right wrist and made him release Joie’s hands. Then he shoved the Half-Hajj’s shoulder and sent him backward, staggering. “Messing with my girl like that can get you cut, my brother,” he said in a deceptively soft voice.
Saied strolled back to our table. “She is a deb,” he said. “Just a man in a dress.” He and Sonny were standing right above me, and I wished they’d take their negotiations outside. The disturbance hadn’t seemed to draw the attention of either Fatima or Nassir. Meanwhile, Fanya had ended her turn on stage, and a tall, lanky black sex-change, American, began to dance.
“Your ugly, thieving, syphilitic whore took thirty kiam of my friend’s money,” said Saied in the same soft voice as Sonny.
“You gonna let him call me names, Sonny?” demanded Joie. “In front of all these other bitches?”
“Praise Allah,” said Mahmoud sadly, “it has turned into an affair of honor. It was a lot simpler when it was just larceny.”
“I won’t let nobody call you nothing, girl,” said Sonny. He had put a little growl into his soft voice. He turned to Saied. “I’m telling you now to shut the fuck up.”
“Make me,” said Saied, smiling.
Mahmoud, Jacques, and I grabbed our beers and got halfway out of our seats; we were too late. Sonny had a knife in the rope belt around his gallebeya; he reached for it. Saied got his knife out quicker. I heard Joie cry a warning to Sonny. I saw Sonny’s eyes get narrow as he backed away a step. Saied swung his left fist hard at Sonny’s jaw, and Sonny ducked away. Saied took a step forward, blocked Sonny’s right arm, bent a little, and drove his knife into Sonny’s side.
I heard Sonny make a little sound, a quiet, gurgling, surprised groan. Saied had slashed Sonny’s chest and cut some big vessels. Blood spurted in all directions, more blood than you would think possible for one person to carry around. Sonny stumbled one step to his left, then two steps forward, and fell onto the table. He grunted, jerked and thrashed a few times, and slipped off the table to the floor. We were all staring at him. Joie hadn’t made another sound. Saied hadn’t moved; he was still in the same position he’d been in when his knife had cut open Sonny’s heart. He slowly rose up straight, his knife-hand falling to his side. He was breathing heavily, loudly. He turned around and grabbed his beer; his eyes were glassy and expressionless. He was soaked with blood. His hair, his face, his clothing, his hands and arms, all were covered with Sonny’s blood. There was blood all over the table. There was blood all over us. I was almost drenched in blood. It had taken me a moment, but now I realized how much blood I had on me, and I was horrified. I stood up, trying to pull my blood-soaked shirt away from my body.
Joie began to scream, again and again; someone finally slapped her a few times, and she shut up. At last Fatima called Nassir out of the back room, and he called the police. The rest of us just sat down at another table. The music stopped, the girls went into their dressing room, the customers slipped out of the bar before the police could arrive. Mahmoud went to Fatima and got a pitcher of beer for us.
Sergeant Hajjar took his time coming around to see the aftermath. When he arrived at last, I was surprised to see that he’d come alone. “What’s that?” he asked, indicating Sonny’s corpse with the toe of a boot.
“Dead pimp,” said Jacques.
“They all look the same, dead,” said Hajjar. He noticed the blood splashed all over everything. “Big guy, huh?”
“Sonny,” said Mahmoud.
“Oh, that motherfucker.”
“He died for thirty lousy kiam,” said Saied, shaking his head unbelievingly.
Hajnar looked around the bar thoughtfully, then looked straight at me. “Audran,” he said, stifling a yawn, “come with me.” He turned to walk back out of the bar.
“Me?” I cried. “I didn’t have anything to do with it!”
“With what?” asked Hajjar, puzzled.
“With that knifing.”
“The hell with the knifing. You got to come with me.” He led me to his patrol car. He didn’t care at all about this murder. If some rich-bitch tourist gets done in, the police break their buns lifting fingerprints and measuring angles and interrogating everybody twenty or thirty times. But let someone nip this gorilla one-eyed stable-boss or Tami or Devi, and the cops act as bored as an ox on a hill. Hajjar wasn’t going to question anybody or take pictures or anything. It wasn’t worth his time. To the officials, Sonny had only gotten what he had coming; in Chiriga’s philosophy, “Paybacks are a motherfucker.” The police didn’t mind if the whole Budayeen decimated itself, one worthless degenerate at a time.
Hajjar locked me into the back seat, then slid behind the steering wheel. “Are you arresting me?” I asked.
“Shut up, Audran.”
“Are you arresting me, you son of a bitch?”
“No.”
That brought me up short. “Then what the hell are you holding me for? I told you I didn’t have a goddamn thing to do with that killing in the bar.”
Hajjar glanced back over his shoulder. “Will you forget about that pimp already? This doesn’t have anything to do with that.”
“Where are you taking me?”
Hajjar looked around again and gave me a sadistic grin. “Papa wants to talk to you.”
I felt cold. “Papa?” I’d seen Friedlander Bey here and there, I knew all about him, but I’d never actually been summoned into his presence before.
“And from what I hear, Audran, he’s spitting mad. You’d be better off if I did bring you in for murder.”
“Mad? At me? What for?”