All I could figure was that I was looking for a pervert who needed a savage, caged carnivore to get his juices flowing. The notion of resigning flashed through my mind, the often-played scene of quitting despite Friedlander Bey’s soft-spoken threats. This time I went as far as to imagine myself beside the cracked roadway, waiting for the ancient electric bus with its crowd of peasants on top. My stomach was turning, and it had only just so much room to move.
It was too early to find the Half-Hajj and talk him into being my accomplice. Maybe about three or four o’clock he’d be at the Café Solace, along with Mahmoud and Jacques; I hadn’t seen or spoken to any of them in weeks. I hadn’t seen Saied at all since the night he’d sent Courvoisier Sonny on the Great Circle Route to paradise, or somewhere. I went back home. I thought I might take the Nero Wolfe moddy out and look at it and turn it over in my hand a couple of dozen times and maybe peel off the shrinkwrap and find out if I’d have to swallow a few pills or a bottle of tende to get the nerve to chip the damn thing in.
Yasmin was in my apartment when I got there. I was surprised; she, however, was upset and hurt. “You got out of the hospital yesterday, and you didn’t even call me,” she cried. She dropped down on the corner of the bed and scowled at me.
“Yasmin—”
“Okay, you said you didn’t want me to visit you in the hospital, so I didn’t. But I thought you’d see me as soon as you came home.”
“I did want to, but—”
“Then why didn’t you call me? Ill bet you were here with somebody else.”
“I went to see Papa last night. Hassan told me that I was supposed to report in.”
She gave me a dubious look. “And you were there all night long?”
“No,” I admitted.
“So who else did you see?”
I took a deep breath and let it out. “I saw Selima.”
Yasmin’s scowl turned into a grimace of utter contempt. “Oh, is that what tricks you these days? And how was she? As good as her advertisements?”
“Selima’s on the list now, Yasmin. With her sisters.”
She blinked at me for a moment. “Tell me why I’m not surprised. We told her to be careful.”
“You just can’t be that careful,” I said. “Not unless you go live in a cave a hundred miles from your nearest neighbor. And that wasn’t Selima’s style.”
“No.” There was silence for a while; I guess Yasmin was thinking that it wasn’t her style, either, that I was suggesting that the same kind of thing might happen to her. Well, I hope she was thinking that, because it’s true. It’s always true.
I didn’t tell her about the blood-o-gram Selima’s killer left for me in the hotel suite’s bathroom. Somebody had figured Marîd Audran for an easy mark, so it was time for Marîd Audran to play things close to the chest. Besides, mentioning it wouldn’t improve Yasmin’s mood, or mine, either. “I got a moddy I want to try,” I said.
She raised an eyebrow. “Anybody I know?”
“No, I don’t think so. It’s a detective out of some old books. Thought he might help me stop these murders.”
“Uh huh. Did Papa suggest it?”
“No. Papa doesn’t know what I’m really going to do. I told him I was just going to follow along after the police and look at the clues through a magnifying glass and all that. He believed me.”
“Sounds like a waste of time to me,” said Yasmin.
“It is a waste of time, but Papa likes things orderly. He operates in a steady, efficient, but dreary and minimal-velocity way.”
“But he gets things done.”
“Yes, I have to admit that he gets things done. Still, I don’t want him looking over my shoulder, vetoing every other step I take. If I’m going to do this job for him, I have to do it my way.”
“You’re not doing the job just for him, Marîd. You’re doing it for us. All of us. And besides, remember the I Ching? It said no one would believe you. This is that time. Do what you think is right, and you’ll be vindicated in the end.”
“Sure,” I said, smiling grimly, “I only hope my fame doesn’t come posthumously.”
“ ‘And covet not that which Allah hath made some of you excel others. Unto men a fortune from that which they have earned, and unto women a fortune from that which they have earned. Do not envy one another, but ask Allah of His bounty. Behold! Allah is the Knower of all things.’ ”
“Right, Yasmin, quote at me. Suddenly you’re all religious.”
“You’re the one worrying about where your devotions lie. I already believe; I just don’t practice.”
“Fast without prayer is like a shepherd without a crook, Yasmin. And you don’t even fast, either.”
“Yeah, but—”
“But nothing.”
“You’re evading the subject again.”
She was right about that, so I changed evasions. “To be or not to be, sweetheart, that is the question.” I tossed the moddy a few inches into the air and caught it. “Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind—”
“Will you plug the goddamn thing in already?”
So I took a deep breath, murmured “In the name of God,” and plugged it in.
The first frightening sensation was of being suddenly engulfed by a grotesque glob of flesh. Nero Wolfe weighed a seventh of a ton, 285 pounds or more. All Audran’s senses were deceived into believing he had gained a hundred and thirty pounds in an instant. He fell to the floor, stunned, gasping for breath. Audran had been warned that there would be a time lag while he adjusted to each moddy he used; whether it had been recorded from a living brain or programmed to resemble a fictional character, it had probably been intended for an ideal body unlike Audran’s own in many ways. Audran’s muscles and nerves needed a little while to learn to compensate. Nero Wolfe was grossly fatter than Audran, and taller as well. When Audran had the moddy chipped in he would walk with Wolfe’s steps, take things with Wolfe’s reach and grasp, settle his imaginary corpulence into chairs with Wolfe’s care and delicacy. It hit Audran harder than he had even expected.
After a moment Wolfe heard a young woman’s voice. She sounded worried. Audran was still writhing on the floor, trying to breathe, trying merely to stand up again. “Are you all right?” the young woman asked.
Wolfe’s eyes narrowed to little slits in the fat pouches that surrounded them. He looked at her. “Quite all right, Miss Nablusi,” he said. He sat up slowly, and she came toward him to help him stand. He waved at her impatiently, but he did lean on her a bit as he got to his feet.
Wolfe’s recollections, artfully wired into the moddy, mixed with Audran’s submerged thoughts, feelings, sensations, and memories. Wolfe was fluent in many languages: English, French, Spanish, Italian, Latin, Serbo-Croatian, and others. There wasn’t room to pack so many language daddies into a single moddy. Audran asked himself what the French word for al-kalb was, and he knew it: le chien. Of course, Audran spoke perfect French himself. He asked for the English and Croatian words for al-kalb, but they eluded him, right on the tip of the tongue, a mental tickle, one of those frustrating little memory lapses. They — Audran and Wolfe — couldn’t remember which people spoke Croatian, or where they lived; Audran had never heard of the language before. All this made him suspect the depth of this illusion. He hoped they wouldn’t hit bottom at some crucial moment when Audran was depending on Wolfe to get them out of some life-threatening situation. “Pfui,” said Wolfe.