George Effinger - When Gravity Fails

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?”

Hajjar just shrugged. “I don’t know. I was just told to fetch you. Let Papa do his own talking.”

Just at this moment of growing fear and menace, the tri-phets decided to kick in and race my heart even harder. It had started out to be such a nice evening, too. I’d won some money, I was looking forward to a pleasant meal, and Yasmin was going to spend the night again. Instead I was in the back of a police cruiser, my shirt and jeans still damp with Sonny’s blood, my face and arms beginning to itch as the blood dried on them, heading toward some foreboding meeting with Friedlander Bey, who owned everybody and everything. I was sure it was some sort of accounting, but I couldn’t imagine for what. I’ve always been extremely careful not to tread on Papa’s toes. Hajjar wouldn’t tell me any more; he only grinned wolfishly and said that he wouldn’t want to be in my boots. I didn’t want to be in my boots, either, but that’s where I’d found myself too often lately. “It is the will of Allah,” I murmured anxiously. Nearer My God to Thee.

Friedlander Bey lived in a large, white, towered mansion that might almost have qualified as a palace. It was a large estate in the middle of the city only two blocks from the Christian Quarter. I don’t think anyone else had such a great expanse of property walled off. Papa’s house made Seipolt’s look like a Badawi tent. But Sergeant Hajjar didn’t drive me to Papa’s house: we were going in the wrong direction. I mentioned this to Hajjar, the bastard.

“Let me do the driving,” he said in a surly voice. He called me “il-Maghrib.” Maghrib may mean sunset, but it also refers to the vast, vague part of North Africa to the west, where the uncivilized idiots come from — Algerians, Moroccans, semihuman creatures like that. Lots of my friends will call me il-Maghrib, or Maghrebi, and then it’s only a nickname or an epithet; when Hajjar used it, it was definitely an insult.

“The house is back the other way about two and a half miles,” I said.

“Don’t you think I know that? Jesus Christ, would I love to have you handcuffed to a pole for fifteen minutes.”

“Where on Allah’s good, green earth are you taking me?”

Hajjar wouldn’t answer any more questions, so I just gave up and watched the city go by. Riding with Hajjar was a lot like riding with Bill: you didn’t learn very much and you weren’t sure where you were going or how you were going to get there.

The cop pulled into an asphalt driveway behind a cinder-block motel on the eastern outskirts of the city. The cinder blocks were painted a pale green, and there was a small handlettered sign that said simply motel no vacancy. I thought a motel with a permanent No Vacancy sign was a trifle unusual. Hajjar got out of the cop car and opened the back door. I slid out and stretched a little; the tri-phets had me humming in a high-velocity way. The combination of the drugs and my nervousness added up to a headache, a very sick stomach, and fidgeting that flirted with total emotional collapse.

I followed Hajjar to room nineteen of the motel. He rapped on the door in some kind of signal. The door was opened by a hulking Arab who looked like a block of sandstone that walked. I didn’t expect him to be able to talk or think; when he did, I was astonished. He nodded to Hajjar, who didn’t acknowledge it; the sergeant went back toward his car. The Stone looked at me for a moment, probably wondering where I’d come from; then he realized that I must have come with Hajjar, and that I was the one he was waiting to let into the damn motel room. “In,” he said. His voice sounded like sandstone that spoke.

I shuddered as I passed by him. There were two more men in the room, another Stone That Speaks on the far side, and Friedlander Bey, sitting at a folding table set up between the king-sized bed and the bureau. All the furnishings were European, but a little worn and shabby.

Papa stood when he saw me come in. He was about five feet two inches tall, but almost two hundred pounds. He wore a plain, white cotton shirt, gray trousers, and slippers. He wore no jewelry. He had a few wisps of graying hair brushed straight back on his head, and soft brown eyes. Friedlander Bey didn’t look like the most powerful man in the city. He raised his right hand in front of his face, almost touching his forehead. “Peace,” he said.

I touched my heart and my lips. “And on you be peace.”

He did not look happy to see me. The formalities would protect me for a short while and give me time to think. What I needed to plan was a way to bowl over the two Stones and get out of that motel room. It was going to be a challenge.

Papa seated himself at the table again. “May your day be prosperous,” he said. He indicated the chair across from him.

“May your day be prosperous and blessed,” I said. As soon as I could, I was going to ask for a glass of water, and take as many Paxium as I had with me. I sat down.