I put the phone on my belt, invisible beneath the suit coat. As an afterthought, I slipped the little needle gun into a pocket; it barely made a bulge, and I was thinking “better safe than sorry.” My malicious mind was telling me “safe and sorry”; but it was too late at night to listen to my mind, I’d been doing that all day. I was just going down to the hotel’s bar for a little while, that’s all.
Nevertheless, Xarghis Khan knew what I looked like, and I knew nothing about him except that he probably didn’t look anything like James Bond. I remembered what Hassan had said only a few hours ago: “I trust nobody.”
That was the plan, but was it practical? Was it even possible to go through a single day being totally suspicious? How many people did I trust without even thinking about it — people who, if they felt like getting rid of me, could have murdered me quickly and simply? Yasmin, for one. The Half-Hajj, I’d even invited him up to my apartment; all he needed to be the assassin was the wrong moddy. Even Bill, my favorite cabbie; even Chiri, who owned the hugest collection of moddies in the Budayeen. I’d go crazy if I kept thinking like that.
What if Okking himself was the very murderer he was pretending to track down? Or Hajjar?
Or Friedlander Bey?
Now I was thinking like the Maghrebi bean-eater they all thought I was. I shook it off, left the hotel room, and rode the elevator down to the mezzanine and the dimly lighted bar. There weren’t many people there: the city had few enough tourists to begin with, and this was an expensive and quiet hotel. I looked along the bar and saw three men on the stools, all leaning together and talking quietly. To my right there were four more groups, mostly men, sitting at tables. Recorded European or American music played softly. The theme of the bar seemed to be expressed in potted ferns and stucco walls painted pastel pink and orange. When the bartender raised his eyebrows at me, I ordered a gin and bingara. He made it just the way I liked, down to the splash of Rose’s. That was a point for the cosmopolitans.
The drink came and I paid for it. I sipped at it, asking myself why I’d thought sitting here would help me forget my problems. Then she drifted up to me, moving in an unhuman slow-motion as if she were half-asleep or drugged. It didn’t show in her smile or her speech, though. “Do you mind if I sit with you?” Trudi asked.
“Of course not.” I smiled graciously at her, but my mind was roiling with questions.
She told the barman she wanted peppermint schnapps. I would have put fifty kiam on that. I waited until she got her drink; I paid for it, and she thanked me with another languorous smile.
“How do you feel?” I asked.
She wrinkled her nose. “What do you mean?”
“After answering questions all day for the lieutenant’s men.”
“Oh, they were all as nice as they could be.”
I didn’t say anything for a few seconds. “How did you find me?”
“Well,” she gestured vaguely, “I knew you were staying here. You brought me here this afternoon. And your name—”
“I never told you my name.”
“ — I heard it from the policemen.”
“And you recognized me? Though I don’t look anything like the way I did when you met me? Even though I’ve never worn clothes like these before or been without my beard?”
She gave me one of those smiles that tell you that men are such fools. “Aren’t you glad to see me?” she asked, with that glaze of hurt feelings that the Trudies do so well.
I went back to my gin. “One of the reasons I came down to the bar. Just on the chance you’d come in.”
“And here I am.”
“I’ll always remember that,” I said. “Would you excuse me? I’m a couple drinks ahead of you.”
“Sure, I’ll be fine.”
“Thanks.” I went off to the men’s room, got myself in a stall, and unclipped my phone. I called Okking’s number. A voice I didn’t recognize told me he was in his office, asleep for the night, and he wasn’t going to be awakened except for an emergency. Was this an emergency? I said I didn’t think so, but that if it was I’d get back to him. I asked for Hajjar, but he was out on an investigation. I got Hajjar’s number and punched it.
He let his phone ring a while. I wondered if he were really investigating anything or just soaking up ambience. “What is it?” he snarled.
“Hayar? You sound out of breath. Lifting weights or something?”
“Who is this? How’d you get—”
“Audran. Okking’s out for the night. Listen, what did you learn from Seipolt’s blonde?”
The phone went mute for a moment, then Hajjar’s voice came back on, a little more friendly. “Trudi? We knocked her out, dug around as deep as we could, and brought her back up. She didn’t know anything. That worried us, so we put her out a second time. Nobody should know as much nothing as she does and still be alive. But she’s clean, Audran. I’ve known tent stakes that had more going for them than she does, but all she knows about Seipolt is his first name.”
“Then why is she still alive and Seipolt and the others aren’t?”
“The killer didn’t know she was there. Xarghis Khan would have jammed the living daylights out of her, then maybe killed her. As it happened, our Trudi was in her room taking a nap after lunch. She doesn’t remember if she locked her door. She’s alive because she’d only been there a few days and she wasn’t part of the regular household.”
“How’d she react to the news?”
“We fed her the facts while she was under, and took out all the horribleness for her. It’s like she read about it in the papers.”
“Praise Allah, you cops are nice. Did you put anybody on her when she left?”
“You see anybody?”
That stung me. “What makes you so sure I’m with her?”
“Why else would you be calling me about her this time of night? She’s clean, sucker, as far as we could tell. As for anything else, well, we didn’t give her a blood test, so you’re on your own.” The line went dead.
I grimaced, clipped the phone back on my belt, and went out to the bar. I spent the rest of that gin and tonic looking for Trudi’s shadow, but I didn’t see a likely candidate. We went out to have something to eat, to give me the chance to ease my mind. By the end of the supper, I was sure no one was following either Trudi or me. We went back to the bar and had a few more drinks and got to know each other. She decided we knew each other well enough just before midnight. “It’s kind of noisy in here, isn’t it?” she said. I nodded solemnly. There were only three other people in the bar now, and that included the block of wood who was making our drinks. It was just that time when either Trudi or I had to say something stupid, and she beat me to it. It was right then that I simultaneously misplaced my caution and decided to teach Yasmin a lesson. Listen, I was mildly drunk, I was depressed and lonely, Trudi was really a sweet girl and absolutely gorgeous — how many do you need?
When we went upstairs, Trudi smiled at me and kissed me a few times, slowly and deeply, as though morning wasn’t coming until after lunch some time. Then she told me it was her turn to use the bathroom. I waited for her to close the door, then I called down to the desk and asked them to be sure I was awake by seven the next morning. I took out the small plastic needle gun, threw back the bedspread, and hid the weapon quickly. Trudi came out of the bathroom with her dress hanging loosely, its fastenings left undone. She smiled at me, a lazy, knowing smile. As she came toward me, my only thought was that this would be the first time I’d ever gone to sleep with a gun under my pillow.