Budayeen Nights (14 page)

“I didn’t even know they—“

“I do not believe we will give them what they desire. Indeed, I think it is time that Parthia be, shall we say, disunited.”

What could I do but agree? We discussed these weighty affairs for some time. At last, Papa relaxed. He took an apple and a small paring knife. “You called the medical examiner today, my darling,” he said.

I was astonished. “Yes, O Shaykh.”

“You are interested in the death of the young dancer. It is of no importance.”

Maybe it’s because I used to be a poor street kid myself, but the lives and deaths of the people of the Budayeen matter more to me.

Friedlander Bey went on. “Your employees believe in vampires.” He was amused. “Lieutenant Giragosian of the police does not.” Here his amusement ended. “You will not pursue this further. It is a waste of time, and it is unseemly for you to concern yourself with what is, after all, chiefly a Christian myth.”

Crazy Vi’s body in the morgue was no myth. And in the Maghreb, the far western part of North Africa where I’d grown up, there are still stories of the Gola. She is a female djinn, very big and strong, sometimes with goat’s feet and covered with hair like an unshorn sheep. Her trick is that she speaks sweetly and gently to people, and then kills them and drinks their blood. The Gola is usually described as having those familiar long, fierce, canine teeth and eyes like blazing fire. Still, I wasn’t about to mention any of this to my benefactor.

“You and I will share luncheon tomorrow with the Parthians,” Papa said. “Forget about the murdered woman, your nightclub, and the Budayeen for a while.”

“As you wish, O Shaykh,” I said. Yeah, sure, I thought.

I returned to my suite and relaxed with a detective novel by Lutfy Gad, my favorite Palestinian mystery writer. He’d been dead for decades, so there were no new Gad books, but the old ones were so good I could enjoy them again and again. This one was called
The Deep Cradle
, and if I remembered correctly, it was the one in which Gad’s dark and dangerous detective, al-Qaddani, ended up in Breulandy with almost every bone in his body broken.

It’s amazing, sometimes, how resilient those paperback detectives are. I wish I knew how they did it.

The phone on my belt rang. That meant the call was probably from one of my disreputable friends and associates; otherwise, the desk phone would have rung. I unclipped it and murmured, “Marhaba.”

“Marîd? It’s Yasmin, and guess what?”

She actually waited for me to guess. I didn’t bother.

“You know that boys’ club of yours?” she said. I have a small army of kids who look out for me in the Budayeen, watch me and make sure I’m not being followed by the cops or anything. I throw them a few kiam now and then.

“What about them?” I asked.

“One of ‘em’s dead and it looks like Sheba all over again. Kid’s throat is torn open and before you say anything, I saw the goddamn puncture marks this time, like from fangs. So you’re wrong.”

It bothered me that her notion about Sheba was more important to her than the death of that poor boy. “Who was it?” I asked. “Anybody you know?”

“Yeah, stupid. Sheba, like I been telling you.”

I took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “No, not her. The boy. Who was it?”

I could almost hear her shrug. “They have names, Marîd? I mean, how would I know?”

I closed my eyes. “Call the police, Yasmin.”

“Chiri already did.”

“All right. I’ve got to go now.”

“Something else, Marîd. Lily and me and this girl you don’t know, Natka, and Sheba were all going to have supper after work tonight. At Martyrs of Democracy. Anyway, Sheba comes in real late with this lame excuse about having this admiral or something buy her one bottle of champagne after another even though the night shift had come in. What’s an admiral doing in the Budayeen in the first place? And I know Sheba’s no dayshift girl. So she’s all out of breath and she seems really nervous, not just to me, you can ask Lily about it. And you know what? When we ordered the food, she asked me please not to get the pork strings in garlic sauce. That’s what I always order. So I asked her why, and she said her stomach was bothering her, like maybe she was pregnant or had the flu or something, and the smell of the garlic would make her sick. Garlic, Marîd, get it?”

I opened my eyes. “Maybe it wasn’t the garlic, sweetheart. Maybe she just remembered that none of you good Muslim women ought to be eating pork, in strings or anyhow.”

There was a pause while Yasmin figured if I was kidding her or not. She let it go. “How much more proof do you need, Marîd?” she asked angrily. “You’re really being a jackass about this.” I heard her slam the phone down. I put mine back on my belt and shook my head.

Behind me, I heard Kmuzu say, “If I may say so, yaa Sidi, I have noticed a tendency on your part to hesitate to get involved in such matters until you yourself are personally threatened. In the meantime, innocent lives can be lost. If you think back, I’m sure you’ll recall other—“

“The voice of my conscience,” I said wearily, turning to face him. “Thank you so much. Are you telling me I should take this vampire stuff seriously? Especially after Papa specifically told me to ignore it?” You see, Kmuzu wasn’t merely my slave; he’d been a “gift” from Friedlander Bey, someone to spy on me and report back to Papa.

He shrugged. “The people of the Budayeen have no one to turn to but you.”

“So if I pursued this, you’d help me?”

Kmuzu spread his hands. “Oh no. The master of the house has made his feelings clear. Nevertheless, you could telephone Lieutenant Giragosian and learn what he knows.”

I did just that. I called the copshop. “Lieutenant Giragosian’s office,” a man said.

“I’d like to speak to the lieutenant, please. This is Marîd Audran.”

“Audran, son of a bitch. The lieutenant isn’t, uh, available right now.”

“Who’s this, then?”

“This is his executive assistant, Sergeant Catavina.” Jeez, the laziest, most easily bought cop in the city. How his star had risen.

“Look, Catavina,” I said, “there’ve been two murders in the Budayeen in the last couple of days. One was a dancer, a real girl named Vi, and the other was a boy. Both had their throats torn out. Know anything about them?”

A pause. “Sure we do.” He was playing it cagey. Dumb cagey.

“Look, pal, you want me to have Friedlander Bey send over a couple of guys to question you personally?”

“Take it easy, Audran.” There was a gratifying hint of anxiety in Catavina’s voice. “What are you looking for?”

“First, what’s the ID on the boy?”

“Kid named Mahdi il-Mallah. Eleven years old.”

I knew him. He was one of my friends. I felt a familiar coldness in my gut. “What about puncture wounds on the neck?”

“How’d you know? Yeah, that’s in the report. Now, I got to tell the lieutenant you called. What you want me to tell him when he asks me what you’re up to?”

I sighed. I wasn’t happy about this. “Tell him I’m going to catch his vampire for him.”

“Vampire! Audran, what are you, crazy?”

I hung up instead of replying.

Kmuzu’s expression was difficult to read. I didn’t know if he approved or not. I don’t know why I cared. “One piece of advice, yaa Sidi, if you’ll permit me: It would be a mistake to begin your investigation of this woman Sheba tonight.”

“Uh-huh. Why do you say that?”

He shrugged again. “If I had to hunt a vampire, I’d do it during the daylight.”

Good point. The next day I arose at dawn, made my ritual ablutions and prayed, then set out to begin serious investigations. If Kmuzu wasn’t planning to offer any direct assistance—meaning that he wouldn’t even drive me over to the Budayeen—then I’d have to rely on Bill the cab driver. Now, if you know Bill, you know how amusing the concept of relying on him is. He’s as dependable as a two-legged footstool.

I phoned him from the bathroom because I didn’t want Kmuzu to overhear me. I told Bill to pick me up just outside the high walls that surrounded Friedlander Bey’s estate. Bill didn’t remember who I was for a while, but that’s usual. Bill’s about as aware as a sleeping skink. He chose that for himself years ago, buying an expensive bodmod that constantly braised his brain in a very frightening high-tech hallucinogen. It would have driven most people to suicide within a handful of days; in Bill’s case, I understand it sort of settled him down.

On the way from Papa’s mansion to the eastern gate of the Budayeen, Bill and I had a disjointed conversation about the imminent war with the state of Gadsden. I eventually figured out that he was having some kind of flashback. Before he came to the city he’d lived in America, in the part now called Sovereign Deseret. His skink brain let him believe he was still there.

It was all right because he found the Budayeen easily enough. I gave him enough money so that he’d wait for me and drive me home after I finished the morning’s legwork. I started up the Street in the direction of the cemetery. I didn’t know yet what I wanted to do first. What did I have to go on? Two homicide victims, that’s all, with nothing tangible connecting them except the similarity of method. I had, on one hand, my employees’ overheated warning that a vampire was loose around here, and, on the other hand, my absolute disbelief in the supernatural.

There was nothing to do but call Chiri. I knew I’d be waking her up. I heard her pick up her phone and say, “Uh. Yeah?”

“Chiri, it’s Marîd. I’m not waking you up, am I?”

“No.” Her voice was real damn cold.

“Sorry. Listen, do you know where Sheba lives?”

“No, and I don’t care, either.”

“Then who do we know who could give me the address? I think I need to just drop by and ask Sheba a couple of things.”

There was a pause: Chiri was being angry. “Yasmin would know. Or Lily.”

“Yasmin or Lily. I probably should’ve called them first.”

Another pause. “Probably.”

I grimaced. “Sorry, Chiri. Go back to sleep. I’ll see you later.” She didn’t say anything before she slammed the phone down.

I called Yasmin next, but I didn’t get an answer. That didn’t surprise me. I remembered from the days when Yasmin and I lived together that she was one of the best little sleepers that Allah ever invented. She could sleep through any major catastrophe except a missed meal. I gave up after listening to the phone ring a dozen and a half times, and then I called Lily. She was just as unhappy to be roused as Chiri, but her tone changed when she found out it was me. Lily has been waiting for me to call for a long time. She’s a gorgeous sexchange, and she was well aware that I’ve never had much success with real women.

She was less happy when I told her I just wanted another girl’s address and commcode. I heard ice through the ether again, but she finally gave me the information. It turned out that Sheba didn’t live too far from my club.

“And one other thing,” Lily said. “We checked by the Red Light Lounge. Sheba couldn’t have been late to supper on account of some guy buying her drinks. She doesn’t work daytimes, she’s never worked daytimes—just like we said. So she lied. You just don’t see her around when the sun is up.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said.

“So why you want to get next to that for? If you’re spending too much time all by yourself, honey, I’ll help you out.”

I didn’t need this now. “Yasmin would scratch your eyes out, Lily. I’ve only been protecting you.”

“Huh, Yasmin don’t remember how to spell your name, Marîd.” She slammed the phone down, too. I decided it wouldn’t be a good idea to set foot in my own business today. I’d probably be slashed to ribbons.

I found Sheba’s apartment building and went up to the second floor. It was an old place with a thin, worn carpet runner on the stairs. The paint on the walls hung down in grimy, blowzy strips. Sheba’s front door was painted a dark reddish brown, the color of a bloodstain on clothing. I knocked. There was no response. Well, Sheba was a Budayeen hustler, she was probably asleep. I knocked louder and called her name. Finally I unclipped my phone again and murmured her commcode into it; I could hear the ringing from within the apartment.

It took me perhaps a minute and a half to get past her lock. The first thing I learned was that Sheba wasn’t home. The second was that it appeared she hadn’t been around for a while—several envelopes had been pushed beneath her door. One had been closed only with a rubber band. I opened it; it contained a hundred kiam in ten-kiam bills, and a note from some admirer. Clothes, jewelry, stuffed animals, all sorts of things were strewn across the floor of the apartment’s large room.

There was a mattress with a single sheet lying tipped up against a wall. The room’s only window was standing open, water-stained yellow curtains blowing in on a warm breeze. Below the window was another heap of clothing and personal articles. I brushed the curtains aside and looked out. Below me was a narrow alley leading crookedly in the direction of Ninth Street.

A light was on in the bathroom; when I looked in there, it was as much a mess as the other room. It seemed to me that Sheba had been in a hell of a hurry, had grabbed up a few things, and had gotten out of the apartment as fast as she could. I couldn’t guess why.

I looked more closely at what she’d left behind. Near the bathroom was a pile of cellophane and cardboard scraps that Sheba had kicked together. I sorted through the stuff and saw quickly that it was mostly packaging material ripped from several personality modules. I was familiar enough with the blazebrain field to know that some of the moddies Sheba had collected were not your regular commercial releases.

Sheba fancied black-market titles, and very dangerous ones, too. She liked illegal underground moddies that fed her feelings of superiority and power; while she was wearing them she’d become these programmed people, and her behavior could range from the merely vicious to the downright sinister and deadly. She could almost certainly become capable of murder.

I recalled that months ago, when she worked for me at Chiri’s, she was almost always chipped in to some moddy or other. That wasn’t unusual among the dancers though. I was sure that Sheba wasn’t using these hardcore moddies back then, at least not at work. Something had happened in the meantime, something that had drastically changed her, and not for the better.