A Fire in the Sun (24 page)

"Enter string to be searched," muttered the Annam-ese deck in its peculiar American accent.

"Bouhatta." Ishaq Abdul-Hadi Bouhatta was the first entry in Shaknahyi's notebook, a murder victim whose killer had not yet been caught.

"Enter password," said the computer. I had the list of security codes scribbled on a torn sheet of paper that I'd hidden in a tech manual. I'd memorized the top-level password long ago, however. It was a twenty-four-character mix of alphanumerics and Arabic Standard Code for Information Interchange symbols. I had to key those in manually.

"Accepted," said the data deck. "Searching." In about thirty seconds, Bouhatta's complete file appeared on my monitor. I skipped through the personal biography and the details of his death—except to note that he'd been killed at close range by a charge from a static pistol, the same as Blanca. What I wanted to know was where his body had been taken. I found that information in the medical examiner's report, which formed the last page of the file. There'd been no autopsy; instead, Bouhatta's corpse had been delivered to Abu Emir Hospital in Al-Islam Square.

"Search again?" asked the deck. "No," I said. "Import data." "Database?"

"Abu Emir Hospital," I said.

The computer thought about that for a moment. "Current security code is sufficient," it decided. There was a long pause while it accessed the computer records of the hospital.

When I saw the hospital's main menu on my screen, I ordered a search of Bouhatta's records. It didn't take long, and I found what I needed. Just as Shaknahyi's notes suggested, Bouhatta's heart and lungs had been removed almost immediately after his death and transplanted into the body of Elwau Chami. I supposed then that Shaknahyi's other information was correct, concerning the victims of the other unsolved murders.

Now I wanted to take his research one important step further. "Search again?" the hospital's database inquired. "Yes," I said.

"Enter string to be searched." "Chami." A few seconds later, I saw a list of five names, from Chami, AH Masoud to Chami, Zayd. "Select entry," said the deck.

"Chami, Elwau." When the file came up on the screen, I read through it carefully. Chami was a faceless man, not as poor as some, not as rich as others. He was married and had seven children, five sons and two daughters. He lived in a middle-class neighborhood northeast of the Budayeen. The medical records said nothing about any run-ins with the law, of course, but there was one important fact buried in the redundant forms and reports: Elwau Chami operated a small shop in the Budayeen, on Eleventh Street north of the Street. It was a shop I knew well enough. Chami sold cheap Oriental rugs in the front, and he leased the rear of the establishment to an old Pakistani married couple who sold brass ornaments to tourists. The interesting fact was that I knew Friedlander Bey owned the building; Chami probably also worked as gatekeeper for the high-stakes gambling parlor upstairs.

Next I researched Blanca Mataro, the sexchange whose corpse I'd discovered with Jirji Shaknahyi. Her body had been taken to another hospital, and it had provided urgently needed kidneys and liver to a seriously ill young woman she'd never met. This in itself wasn't unusual; many people signed up to donate organs in case of sudden or accidental death. I just found it rather coincidental that the recipient happened to be the niece of Umar Abdul-Qawy.

I spent an hour and a half tracking down files on all the other names in Shaknahyi's notebook. Besides Chami, two of the murder victims—Blanca and Andreja Svobik— had ties to Papa. I was able to prove to my satisfaction that of the other four names, two had rather obvious connections to Reda Abu Adil. I was willing to bet a large sum of money that the rest did too, but I didn't need to pursue the matter any further. None of this was ever going to have to stand up in court. Neither Abu Adil nor Fried-lander Bey would ever be dragged in front of a judge.

So what had I learned, after all? One: There had been at least four unsolved murders in the city in the last several weeks. Two: All four victims had been killed in the same way, with a shot at close range from a static pistol. Three: Healthy organs were taken from all four victims after death, because all four were listed in the city's charity file of voluntary donors. Four: All four victims and all four recipients had direct ties to either Abu Adil or Papa.

I had proved Shaknahyi's suspicion beyond the possibility of coincidence, but I knew that Hajjar would still deny that the murders were related. I could point out that the killers had used a static pistol so that none of the internal organs would be damaged, but Hajjar'd shrug that off too. I was pretty damn certain that Hajjar knew about all this already, which was why I'd been put to pasture investigating On Cheung, instead of looking into Shaknahyi's death. There were a lot of powerful men allied against me. It was a good thing I had God on my side. "Search again?" asked my data deck. I hesitated. I did have one more name to check, but I really didn't want to know the details. After he'd been shot, Shaknahyi had told me to find out where his parts went. I thought I already knew, although I didn't have an exact name. I was sure that some of Jirji Shaknahyi still lived on in the body of some low-level employee of Abu Adil or Friedlander Bey, or one of their friends or relatives. I was completely disgusted, so I just said "Quit." I looked at the monitor's dark screen and thought about what I needed to do next.

I was just fighting down the urge to find somebody in the station house who might sell me a few sunnies when the phone on my belt rang. I undipped it and leaned back in my padded chair. "Hello," I said.

"Marhaba," said Morgan's gruff voice. That was about all the Arabic that he knew. I leaned over and grabbed my English-language daddy from the rack, then reached up and chipped it in. "Where y'at, man?" he said. "All right, praise be to God. What's up?" "Remember how I promised to let you know Wednesday where this Jawarski guy's hidin' out?"

"Yeah, I was wondering when you'd check in." "Well, turns out I was maybe a little optimistic." He sounded rueful.

"Had a feeling Jawarski'd cover his tracks pretty well."

"Got a feelin' he's had help, man." I sat up straight. "What do you mean?" There was a pause before Morgan spoke again. "There's a lot of talk on the street about Shaknahyi's shooting. Most people couldn't care less that a cop got dusted, but I can't find nobody with a personal grudge against Shaknahyi himself. And Jawarski's crazy as a bedbug, so nobody I know would lift a finger to help him get clear."

I closed my eyes and massaged my forehead. "Then why haven't you or I located him yet?" I asked.

"I'm comin' to that. What it comes down to is it looks like the cops are hidin' the son of a bitch."

"Where? Why?" Chiri vouched for Morgan's dependability, but this story of his was a little too incredible.

"Ask your Lieutenant Hajjar. He and Jawarski had some drinks together in the Silver Palm a couple weeks ago."

In the words of the great Christian humorist, Mark Twain, this was too various for me. "Why would Hajjar, a high-ranking police official, set up one of his own officers for a lunatic escaped killer?"

I could almost hear Morgan shrug. "You think maybe Hajjar's involved with somethin' crooked, man?"

I laughed sourly, and Morgan laughed too. "It's not funny, though," I said. "I guessed all along that Hajjar was mixed up with something, but I didn't see him passing orders to Jawarski. Still, it answers some of my own questions."

"What's it all about, then?"

"It's about something called the Phoenix File. I don't know yet what the hell that means. Just keep trying to pin down Jawarski, okay? You learn anything useful about him yet?"

"Some," said Morgan. "He was waitin' around in a jail cell in Khartoum, supposed to be executed. Some guy smuggled a gun in to him. One afternoon Jawarski walks down a corridor and meets two unarmed guards. He shoots the guys, then walks into the jail office and starts firin" all around like a maniac till somebody hands over the keys. Then he unlocks the big main doors and walks out calmly into the street. There's a crowd of people out there 'cause of the gunshots, and he pushes his way through 'em and goes half a block to a waitin' car. Jawarski drives away and there's no sign of him again till he shows up here in the city."

"When was that?" I asked.

"Been here a month, maybe six weeks. Pulled a coupie of robberies, killed another couple of people. Then the other day somebody recognized Jawarski in Meloul's and called the cops. Hajjar sent Shaknahyi and you. You know the rest."

"I wonder," I said. "I wonder if somebody really recognized him in the cookshop. Shaknahyi thought that Hajjar had fingered us, putting Jawarski in Meloul's and sending Jirji and me over there to get taken down."

"Could be, man. We'll have to ask Jawarski when we collar him."

"Yeah, you right," I said grimly. "Thanks, Morgan. You keep nosing around."

"You got it, man. I want to earn the rest of that money. Take care of yourself."

"You bet," I said, clipping the phone to my belt again.

It helped that I knew more than my enemies did. I had the advantage of having my eyes open. I still couldn't see where it all was leading me, but at least I understood the extent of the conspiracy I was trying to uncover. I wouldn't be so foolish as to trust anyone entirely. Anyone at all.

When the shift was over, I drove the patrol car back to the "police officers' lounge" and picked up Sergeant Catavina, who had gotten very drunk. I dropped him off at the station house, turned the car over to the night shift, and waited for Kmuzu to arrive. The workday was done, but I still had plenty of investigating to do before I could go to sleep.

Chapter 12

Fuad il-Manhous was not the brightest person I knew. One look at Fuad and you said to yourself, "This guy is a
fool
." He looked like the character in a fairy tale who would get three wishes from a djinn and blow the first on a plate of beans, the second on a spoon, and the third on cleaning the dish and spoon when he was done eating.

He was tall, but so thin and starved-looking he might have been a refugee from the Benghazi death camps. I once saw my friend Jacques circle Fuad's arm above the elbow with his thumb and forefinger. And Fuad's joints were huge, swollen as if from some horrible bone disease or vitamin deficiency. He had long, dirty brown hair that he combed into a high pompadour, and he wore thick eyeglasses in heavy plastic frames. I don't suppose Fuad had ever had enough cash to afford new eyes, not even the cheap Guatemalan ones with the counterfeit Nikon lenses. His expression was permanently bewildered and hurt, because Fuad was always a beat and a half behind the rest of the band.

// manhous means something like "the permanently hapless," yet Fuad didn't seem to mind the nickname. In fact, he seemed happy to be recognized at all. And he played the part of fool better than anyone I'd ever known. He had a certain genius for it, as a matter of fact.

I was sitting at a table in Chiriga's with Kmuzu, near the back. We were talking about what my mother had been up to lately. Fuad il-manhous came and stood beside me, holding a cardboard box. "Indihar lets me come in here in the daytime, Marîd," he said in his raspy, twangy voice.

"I got no problem with that," I said. He'd made me

forget what I'd been about to say. I looked up at him, and he grinned down and shook the cardboard box. Something inside made a rattling sound. "What's in the box?" I asked.

Fuad took that as an invitation to sit down. He dragged a chair over from another table, making the legs shriek on the flooring. "Indihar said as long as nobody complained, it was all right with her."

"What's all right?" I demanded impatiently. I hate having to pry information out of people. "The hell you got in there?"

Fuad ran a gnarled hand through his greasy hair and shot Kmuzu a mistrustful look. Then he hunched forward over the table, set the box down, and lifted the lid. There were maybe a dozen cheap gold-filled chains inside. Fuad reached in with a long forefinger and poked them around. "See?" he said.

"Uh huh," I said. I looked up and caught Kmuzu's eye. He was finishing a glass of iced tea—I felt bad about tricking him into drinking so much liquor that time, and since then I'd respected his feelings. He set his glass down carefully on the cocktail napkin. He was keeping his face free of any expression, but I could tell that he didn't approve of Fuad at all. Kmuzu didn't approve of anything he saw in Chiri's.

"Where'd you get them, Fuad?" I said.

"Take a look." He grinned. His teeth were bad too.

I fished one of the chains out of the box and tried to examine it closely, but the light was too dim in the club. I turned the price tag around. It said two hundred and fifty kiam. "Sure, Fuad," I said dubiously. "The tourists and locals we get in here complain about paying eight kiam for a drink. I think you're gonna have some sales resistance."

"Well, I'm not selling them for that much."

"How much are you selling them for?"

Il-Manhous closed his eyes, pretending to concentrate. Then he looked at me as if he were begging a favor. "Fifty kiam?"

I looked back into the box and pushed the chains around myself. Then I shook my head.

"Okay," said Fuad, "ten kiam, but yaa late efll won't make any profit that way."

"Maybe you could sell them for ten," I admitted. "The price tags are from some of the best shops in town."

Fuad grabbed the box away from me. "So they're worth more than ten, huh?"

I laughed. "See," I said to Kmuzu, "the chains are cheap plated metal. Probably not worth fifty fiqs. Fuad here goes into some exclusive boutique and steals some tags with the shop's classy name on them and a price in three figures. Then he ties the tags to his junk jewelry and hawks it to drunken tourists. He figures they might not notice what they're buying, especially out of the bright sunlight."

"That's why I wanted to ask you if it'd be okay to come in during the night shift," said Fuad. "It's even darker in here at night. I'd probably do a whole lot better."