George Effinger - When Gravity Fails

“Okay, friend,” said Okking, still jovial in his sour way, “I guess it’s safe to let you back out on the streets.”

“What do you think?” I asked, indicating Tami’s body.

Okking shrugged. “It looks like we’ve got some kind of maniac. You know these whores end up like this every so often. It’s part of their overhead, like face paint and tetracycline. The other whores write it off and try not to think about it. They’d better think about it, though, because whoever did this is likely to do it again; that’s been my experience. We might end up with two or three or five or ten dead people before we catch up with him. You go tell your friends what you saw. You tell it to them so they listen. Get the word around. Spread it among the six or eight sexes we’ve got in these walls not to accept dates with men about five and a half feet tall, heavyset, with short, fat fingers and a yen for the ultimate sadism while he’s getting laid.”

Oh, yeah: the M.E. found that the killer had taken a trip around the world while he’d been beating Tami, branding her naked skin, and strangling her. Traces of semen had been found in all three orifices.

I did my best to get the word out. Everyone agreed with my own secret opinion: whoever had killed Tami had better watch his own ass. Anybody who jammed with the Black Widow Sisters usually got himself jammed up, and trashed. Devi and Selima would be picking up every guy they could find who fit the general description, just in the hope he was the right one. I had the feeling they wouldn’t slip the toxin to him at the first chance, either. I’d learned how much they enjoyed what they thought of as foreplay.

The next day was Yasmin’s day off, and about two in the afternoon I gave her a call. She hadn’t been home all night; it was none of my business where she’d been. I was amused and startled to find out that I was, however, just the least bit jealous. We made a date for dinner at five at our favorite café. You can sit at a table on the terrace and watch the traffic on the Street. Only two blocks from the gate, the Street isn’t so tawdry. The restaurant was a good place to relax. I didn’t tell Yasmin about any of the previous day’s trouble over the phone. She would have kept me talking all afternoon, and she needed the three hours to make the dinner date on time.

As it was, I had two drinks while I waited for her at the table. She arrived about quarter to six. Three quarters of an hour late is about average for Yasmin; in fact, I hadn’t really expected her until after six o’clock. I wanted to get a couple of drinks ahead. I’d had only about four hours of sleep, and I struggled with terrible nightmares the whole time. I wanted to get some liquor into me, and a good meal, and have Yasmin hold my hand while I told her of my ordeal.

“ Marhaba !” she called gaily as she wove her way between the iron tables and chairs.

I signaled to Ahmad, our waiter, and he took Yasmin’s drink order and left menus. I looked at her as she studied her menu. She was wearing a light cotton European-style summer dress, yellow with white butterflies. Her black hair was brushed down sleek and lustrous. She wore a silver crescent on a silver chain around her darkly tanned neck. She looked lovely. I hated to bother her now with my news. I decided to put it off as long as I could.

“So,” she said, looking up at me and grinning, “how was your day?”

“Tamiko’s dead,” I said. I felt like a fool. There must have been a way to begin the story with less of an awful thud.

She sort of goggled at me. She murmured an Arabic superstitious phrase to ward off evil.

I took a deep breath and let it out. Then I started with dawn, yesterday morning, and my enthusiastic wake-up call from the Sisters. I went through the whole day, ending with my dismissal by Okking and my weary and lonely walk home.

I saw a tear slide slowly down one of her carefully blushed cheeks. She wasn’t able to speak for several seconds. I didn’t know she’d be so upset; I berated myself for my clumsiness.

“I wish I’d been with you last night,” she said at last. She didn’t realize how hard she was squeezing my hand. “I had a date, Marîd, some guy from the club. He’s been coming in to see me for weeks, and finally last night he offered me two hundred kiam to go out with him. He’s a nice guy, I suppose, but—”

I raised a hand. I didn’t need to hear this. I didn’t care how she paid her rent. I would have liked to have had her with me last night, too. I would have liked to have held her between the nightmares. “It’s all over now, I guess,” I said. “Let me blow the rest of my fifty kiam on this dinner, and then let’s go for a long wait.”

“Do you really think it’s all over?”

I chewed my lip. “Except for Nikki. I wish I knew what that phone call meant. I just can’t understand her running out on me like that, sticking me for Abdoulaye’s three thousand. I mean, in the Budayeen, you can never be sure how loyal your friends are; but I’d gotten Nikki out of one or two scrapes before. I thought that might have counted for something with her.”

Yasmin’s eyes opened wider, then she laughed. I couldn’t see what she thought was so humorous. My face still looked swollen and bruised, and by ribs still hurt like the devil. The day before had been anything but clownish. “I saw Nikki yesterday morning,” said Yasmin.

“You did?” Then I remembered that Chiriga had seen Nikki about ten o’clock, and that Nikki had left Chiri’s to find Yasmin. I hadn’t connected that visit to Chiri with Nikki’s later skip-out.

“Nikki looked very nervous,” said Yasmin, “and she told me she’d quit her job and had to move out of Tami’s apartment. She wouldn’t tell me why. She said she’d tried to call you again and again, but there wasn’t any answer.” Of course not; when Nikki was trying to call me, I was lying unconscious on my floor. “She gave me this envelope and told me to be sure you got it.”

“Why didn’t she just leave it with Chiri?” That would have saved a lot of mental and physical anguish.

“Don’t you remember? Nikki worked in Chiri’s club, oh, a year ago, maybe longer. Chiri caught Nikki shortchanging customers and stealing from the other girls’ tip jars.”

I nodded; now I recalled that Nikki and Chiri left each other pretty much alone. “So Nikki went to Chiri just to get your address?”

“I asked her a lot of questions, but she wouldn’t answer a thing. She just kept saying, ‘Make sure Marîd gets this,’ over and over.”

I hoped it was a letter, an apology maybe, with an address where I could reach her. I wanted my money back. I took the envelope from Yasmin and tore it open. Inside was my three thousand kiam, and a note written in French. Nikki wrote:

My dearest Marîd :

I so much wanted to give you the money in person. I called many times. but you did not answer. I am leaving this with Yasmin, but if you never get it, how will you know? You will hate me forever, then. When we meet again, I will not understand. My feelings are so confused .

I am going to live with an old friend of my family . He is a wealthy businessman from Germany who always brought me presents whenever he visited . That was when I was a shy , introverted little boy . Now that I am , well , what I am , the German businessman has discovered that he is even more inclined to give me presents . I was always fond of him , Marîd , although I can’t love him . But being with him will be so much more pleasant than staying with Tamiko .

The gentleman’s name is Herr Lutz Seipolt . He lives in a magnificent house on the far side of the city , and you must ask the driver to take you to (I have to copy this down for you) Bayt il-Simsaar il-Almaani Seipolt . That ought to get you to the villa .