Dana Stabenow - Powers of Detection

She caught me in the process of pouring the remaining contents of my old glass into the new, and I managed to slosh some scotch over the table. Slowly, I put the glass back down, not really believing that I’d really heard what Madame Fouad had just said.

“He killed your husband?” I stared at her.

“Yes. Locked him in a coffin and threw him in the river. It was a very nice coffin, but it’s the principle of the thing. I have no doubt something similar has happened again.”

I stared down at my glass, toying with it as I worked out what I was going to say. “I see,” I said slowly.

Great line, Jacques. Now, you get all sorts in my business, and you hear some things, but I just wasn’t ready for this. I thought I did a pretty good job of covering what was going through my head. She was an attractive woman, seemed to be in control, someone who looked like she was used to having a handle on a situation. I was prepared to listen. Like I said, you hear all sorts in my line of work, particularly in a place like Cairo. The Egyptians are generally a superstitious lot, and you can use that. But I just couldn’t swallow a lot of the stuff they believed.

Madame Fouad continued, and I found myself being drawn deeper by the rich tones of her voice.

“His brother, Seth, has always had designs on the family business. With Ossie gone, his way would be clear.”

“But what about you, Madame Fouad?”

She fixed me with a firm gaze. “This is Egypt. We may have become enlightened over time, but this is still Egypt, and I am still a woman.”

I nodded. “What sort of business is it?”

She regarded me steadily with those wide, dark eyes, and I found myself having problems keeping my attention focused on the matter at hand. “All sorts of things, Mr. Jacques. Import/export. Other holdings. We have a diverse range of interests. You might say we deal with bits and pieces of everything. But the nature of our business should not concern you.”

I was prepared to accept that for the time being; I could do some digging on my own.

“So why me?”

And that was the question. I could see no reason why someone like her would bother contacting someone like me. She had to have the resources at her disposal to pick anyone she wanted.

“I need discretion,” she said, her gaze unflinching. “If word of this should get out… You are someone outside our usual circles. I very much doubt you would have had previous dealings with my brother-in-law. Perhaps with some of the people he employs from time to time, but no… you are not the… usual type.”

“Hmm, you’re probably right,” I said, quite prepared to take her word for it at that moment.

“I am certain that I am,” she said, lifting her glass for another sip of tea.

I glanced around the bar, but there was no one in earshot.

“My rates, Madam Fouad…”

She gave a dismissive wave of her hand. “Are unimportant.”

And that was that. There was some more small talk, and when prompted, she handed over a faded photograph showing her husband, Ossie, in traditional Egyptian garb. Maybe it had been taken at a party somewhere. He was darker than she, but a good-looking man, all the same, sporting a small dark beard. I studied the photograph, then slipped it away inside my jacket. She fixed me with that deep gaze of hers, and I found myself wanting to help her in any way I could, whether she was half-crazy or not… or whether I was half-crazy too. She stood, apparently satisfied that our business was done for now.

“Madame Fouad,” I said. “How will I…?”

“I will be in touch with you,” she said, then turned, heading for the exit. She dealt with the check on the way out with a flash of gold.

I sat there for a while longer, savoring the amber burn in my glass while I worked out what my next move would be. She hadn’t given me a whole lot to go on, and I hadn’t even thought to get her first name.

–

The light fell golden across the spans of the 25 July Bridge. The early-evening muezzin calls floated above the city, urging the faithful to prayer. Boats cruised up and down the stretch of brown-green water before me, tinged brassy with the fading sun. I walked past the rank of black-and-white taxis, their drivers waiting to haggle with the well-to-do tourists, looking for three, four times the going rate, heading away from the Gizera Sporting Club, up toward the bridge.

I had two choices. It was either the City of the Dead or the Khan el-Khalili, where the stallholders would be starting to set up for the evening’s trade. But the Khan was no ordinary souk. You could get just about anything you might want at the Great Khan, if you knew where to look, and me, I knew where to look.

I might just have given Madame Fouad’s statement more pause for doubt; but to be honest, I needed the work. The flash of gold goes a long way to shutting up that little voice in the back of your head, and in Cairo the dead are as much a part of everyday life as the living. Look at the City of the Dead. The locals have taken up living among the tombs and mausoleums. Not only among, but inside them too. The dead have a life of their own in Egypt, and had since the dawn of time. It was a part of their culture. And I thought I could live with it, especially if someone like Madame Fouad was footing the bill.

So, I stood there on the banks of the Nile, the wash of garbage and traffic wrinkling my nose, the shouts and car noise swelling around me, and the only question running through my head was where I should go first. Maybe that was wrong. Maybe I should have listened, but there’s so much noise in this grand old city that sometimes you don’t know what might be the little bit that counts.

A little way up the street, I hailed a cab. He wanted too much, clearly taking me for a foreign tourist, and I walked away. I fared a little better with the next one. He only wanted double the standard rate, but this was Zamalek, so I agreed and climbed into the front seat next to the driver as was the custom. In my Western garb I was going to stand out anyway, but anything you could do to mark yourself as not too removed could only help.

The driver was good at what he did. Meandering in and out between the trucks and buses, his hand pressed flat against the horn. Sometimes I really wished drivers in Cairo would use their lights in the burgeoning dark or late at night, but I just had to trust to the fact that this cab was probably more valuable than the driver’s life. It was in his own interests to keep us in one piece.

On the way, I pulled out the faded photograph and studied it. A good-looking Egyptian guy looking like he was out of his proper time. I hadn’t heard of Ra Industries before, as far as I could remember. Ossie was a common enough Egyptian diminutive, but Seth, now that was different. Maybe their parents, like so many others of their class, had had them schooled abroad, wanting them to move above and beyond their roots. Sometimes a name is a simple enough step upon that path. I slipped the photograph back into my inside pocket and tried to avoid watching the near misses as we weaved in and out of the traffic. Maybe, just maybe, Madame Fouad had been speaking metaphorically. That didn’t make sense though, at least not then.

My driver dropped me at the Midan Hussein and I left him there with a quick shukrun. I could have entered the Khan farther down Al Azhar Street, but I liked the long walk up Muski, past the perfumers and the costumes and the bits and pieces designed to trap the unwary tourists. The scents, the sounds, gave me a transition into that canvas-covered other world that is the Khan proper. My goal was farther north, but walking up past the twinned mosques, past the goldsmiths and copper shops of al-Muizz li-Din Allah took me away from modern Cairo, into another time and another place. Everywhere there was noise; the hawkers, the touts, the blare of radios and other music. Everywhere was the smell of another era, another reality. It was almost as if I had stepped into another age.