Genie for Hire (2 page)

There was no immediate match, so he expanded his search.
What if the man was foreign-born, using a scent that connected him to his
homeland? He went through a catalog of Russian fragrances, Latin American ones,
even French ones that a Haitian might wear, though he didn’t believe the man
who’d stood outside the door was black.

He began to get frustrated. It was not normally this hard
for him to make connections. He was forced to isolate the specific elements—a
fizzy lemon-ginger, cardamom, cedar and patchouli, with hints of incense and
musk. The elements clicked into place and he recognized the scent as Acqua di
Parma Colonia Intensa, a high-end men’s fragrance from Italy.

But the man was not Italian; Biff was sure of that. He
spotted a few dark hairs on the ground, and picked one up. He sniffed it, and
placed it on his tongue.

“Jewish,” he said out loud. “And Russian. Interesting.” He
recognized chemicals secreted by Jews, due to their Semitic heritage and the
effects of circumcision, as well as an aftertaste of vodka and cooked cabbage.

He focused again on the skin cells the man had shed, knowing
now the man’s ethnic background and approximate age. He isolated those
characteristics and then recognized the metallic tang that accompanies the
presence of steroids in the body. “A bodybuilder,” he said. “No wonder he could
break through Sveta’s door so easily.”

With the thief’s characteristics identified, Biff walked
into the back office of Sveta’s studio, following the man’s trail. It was a
small room, crowded with light tables, filing cabinets, and a portable clothing
rack of filmy negligees and feather boas. A toy chest full of props for
children to play with while being photographed stood in the far corner.

The walls were lined with photos Sveta had taken. Some were
older, with Sveta’s Ukraine address in Cyrillic characters on the mats. Others
were more recent. All the women looked dishy, whether from nature, makeup,
surgery, or gauzy filters. Interestingly, there were no photos back there of
children or their parties.

Biff followed the thief’s progress around the room. He had
opened file cabinets and rifled through papers, and his touch was everywhere in
the room, as was his scent. Biff’s nostrils dilated as he sensed the man’s
increasing agitation. By Sveta’s light box, there was a dramatic drop in the
man’s anxiety; he had found what he was looking for.

Sveta peered in the back door. “You are finding evidence?”

“Yes.” He described the man based on his interpretations.
“Do you recognize anyone like him?”

Sveta frowned, horizontal lines rising on her forehead.
“Most people who are hiring me are woman. For own pictures, or children. No man
like that come here for much time.”

Biff nodded, then stepped past Sveta, back to the service
drive. It was harder to trace the man’s progress out there, because of the
competition with other humans and their scents, as well as the degradation that
occurred from the effects of sun, wind and humidity.

Closing his eyes and reaching his hands out, he took small
steps down the service drive. “Mr. Andromeda!” Sveta called to him. “Is truck
coming!”

Biff appreciated the notice, but he knew the delivery truck
was approaching before it had even turned the corner of the building. He
stepped smoothly out of its way as it passed, pulling up at the back door of the
medical equipment store.

He resumed his progress, zeroing in on the skin cells the
young Russian man had shed as he passed. The trail stopped at a parking space
under an Australian pine. “You are able to find him?” Sveta asked, coming up to
where he stood. “Man who stole files?”

“I need to do some thinking,” he said. “I’ll get back to
you. But I want you to make a police report anyway. Even if it’s just for the
insurance, getting your door fixed.”

“If you are saying so.”

A sudden gust of wind blew down the service drive, stirring
up the decaying leaves under the Australian pines, filling the air with
moisture and tiny bits of mold and pollen. In the midst of that small
maelstrom, Biff sensed once again the energy he had felt outside the door to
Sveta’s studio.

This time, though, the signature was clear. The combination
of power, passion and ancient magic could belong to only one. Farishta. The
idea that she had returned, after so much time, nearly overwhelmed him. He
stumbled and reached out to a tree for support.

Then everything went black.

“Mr. Andromeda! Mr. Andromeda!”

Biff opened his eyes and looked around him. He was slumped
against an Australian pine, with Sveta hovering beside him. He took a deep
breath, which turned into a coughing fit, and then he blew his nose loudly into
a linen handkerchief embroidered with his initials. As his strength returned he
stood, towering over Sveta, who was at least a foot shorter than he was.

“You will be all right?” Sveta asked, putting a dainty hand
on his lower arm.

“I’ll be fine. Just a little hiccup.”

He resisted her efforts to walk him back to his office, and
trudged back around to the front of the center and to his office door by
himself, touching his fingertip to the painting of the eye there as he entered.
To customers it represented the “private eye,” of his title; to him it meant
the mystical third eye of dharmic meditative traditions, which he used as part
of his investigative techniques. It was a sort of touchstone to him, in the way
that religious Jews pressed their fingertips to the
mezzuzot
they placed
at the entries to their homes.

He was still shaky when he entered the office, so he sat in
the visitor chair and picked up the ornate oil lamp from his desk, the one
Sveta had nearly knocked over.

It had been made of hand-forged brass over a thousand years
before, by a metalsmith in Constantinople who had a touch of magic in his
fingers. It was about twelve inches long, with an ornate, half-moon shaped
handle and a long narrow spout. The brass lid had been engraved with an image
of the Hagia Sophia cathedral, which added to its mystical power.

He wrapped his hands around it. The brass was always warm to
the touch, and as he rubbed the lamp he felt power and energy move from its
reservoir into him.

No genie emerged from the lamp as he rubbed it; he always
thought that was a foolish myth. How could such a small container hold the
power of a full-blown genie? The lamp was a reservoir for centuries of energy,
power, and yes, even magic. It always rejuvenated him to touch it.

He had to be very careful in the exercise of his powers in
this time and place. Centuries before, in the courts of the Ottoman emperors,
there had been a greater acceptance of magic and a tolerance for the
inexplicable. Even then, though, Biff had been forced into careful habits. Any
vizier or minor noble could attempt to trap him and force him into granting
favors, or seek to punish him for granting a wish to an enemy.

Those had been exciting days, living with Farishta, dabbling
in court intrigue, the two of them merging their powers to create phenomena
neither could have done alone. As science came to dominate faith, Biff and the
other genies faded into the background. A cardinal rule of his kind was that a
genie could not use his or her magic for personal service. So he couldn’t
create a mansion for himself with a bank account to accompany it. The code
allowed him to lie to humans, trick them, or steal from them, all while
pretending to be in their service, but Biff preferred to perform honest tasks
in exchange for the currency of whatever culture he found himself in.

His powers were limited by the source of his energy: the
earth itself. With the touch of a hand, he could heal minor illnesses and
nurture plants and animals. He could marshal the dust in the air to allow him
to transform into a faint cloud and slip past any lock, and he could connect
mentally with most kinds of mechanisms.

But he could not fly, he could not teleport, and he could
not transform himself into any other creature. He could replicate simple
objects – for example, generating a handkerchief to give to a sobbing woman. He
could manipulate a human’s view of reality within limits but he couldn’t change
someone’s destiny. He couldn’t make one person love another or hate another
outside of the use of persuasion.

His greatest danger was water. Just the touch of a few
raindrops caused his skin to swell and blister; if he were caught in a
rainstorm his whole body would rebel and it would take days to heal, drawing on
the power of his lamp—or the touch of a water-based genie like Farishta.

Once he felt refreshed, he released the lamp and returned to
his desk chair. The missing files were a problem, certainly; his client was
paying him to find them. But if Farishta was involved, the possibility of a
dangerous situation had just increased a thousand-fold.

Her name meant
angel
in Pashto, but she was far from
angelic. Over the years, she’d been like a little devil sitting on Biff’s
shoulder, encouraging him to deviate from the straight and narrow. She was more
alluring than any mortal woman could ever be, with unblemished skin the color
of milky coffee, and jet-black hair that curved and coiled around her face as
if she was a distant relative of Medusa. Her eyes were dark as olives cured in
the sun, and her figure was exquisitely proportioned.

The days and nights he had spent in her company had been the
most passionate, the most exciting, the craziest and wildest and most dangerous
of his life. She was like a drug he could never get enough of. She parceled her
favors out to him, sometimes spending weeks at a time in his company, other
times disappearing for what seemed like eternities.

He closed his eyes and remembered the last time he had seen
her. He was living in Beirut, and when the Lebanese civil war broke out in
1975, he closed his agency and determined to live on his investments for a
while. He tracked Farishta to Florida, finding her living on a houseboat at a
resort in Islamorada, in the Florida Keys.

All her power came from the water, and from her association
with it. Biff remembered standing at the dock, staring forward at the boat
called
Life in a Bottle
, which rocked gently at the end of the pier. He
could smell Farishta; she was there, just a few feet away, alone. All he had to
do was walk down the floating pier and step onto the boat, and she would be his
again.

A breeze stirred in the sheltered bay, and salt water stung
his face, arms and legs like tiny needles. But still he didn’t move.

Farishta stepped out onto the stern of the boat, wearing a
tank top and filmy harem pants. Her long black hair was gathered on top of her
head in a careless pile, ebony strands curling around her face. She raised her
hands in the air like an orchestra conductor, then swooped them around. A
waterspout rose in the bay, twirling like a dervish, and headed straight for
the dock.

“Are you just going to stand there?” Farishta called, as the
air pressure around him dropped and the wind began to howl.

It was the devil’s own choice. Stand there and be destroyed
by the approaching column of water, or run forward and be destroyed, once
again, by the woman he loved. He took off at a trot, reaching the boat in a few
long strides, jumping on board and sweeping Farishta into his arms.

The column of water swept over the boat, drenching them
both. But holding Farishta, Biff felt nothing but ecstasy. He picked her up and
carried her below, where they made love in the main cabin, the humidity and
smell of salt water their accompaniment.

Biff could not tolerate water, except in Farishta’s
presence. Though both of them were genies, she was a
marid
, one who
derives her power from the sea. Biff was an
ifrit
; his strength came
from the earth itself. Though technically ifrits were stronger than marids,
when it came to Farishta, all bets were off.

Farishta was a troublemaker; she was the woman Biff couldn’t
live without, but living with her was full of drama and danger, things he
instinctively fought against. She thought of human beings as her personal
playthings, loving to create chaos wherever she went. If she was involved in
the theft of the photos, even peripherally, then the Ovetschkins were in for
serious trouble.

If he could figure out why the files had been stolen, he was
closer to understanding what Farishta was up to. And he couldn’t help himself;
he wanted to see her again, damn the consequences.

He went back to the facts of the case. Douschka Ovetschkin
had told Sveta she wanted the pictures for her husband. But he was angry about
them for some reason, and wanted the original files, most likely to destroy
them. His wife was unable to supply them, because they had remained with the
photographer. She must have sent her husband to Sveta.

Ovetschkin had no motivation to steal them himself, then
come to Sveta demanding them. But who else could have known about the pictures,
and stolen the files?

Biff opened an Internet connection and found an address for
Kiril and Douschka Ovetschkin, on Collins Avenue, the main thoroughfare through
Sunny Isles Beach. He dialed their number, but got an answering machine
instructing him in Russian to leave a message. He declined.

There was little online about Douschka or Kiril; they seemed
like ordinary citizens. Kiril was a member of a few different groups, and he
and his wife had attended a number of fund-raising events which had been
publicized in the local paper. That was about it. Of course, if Ovetschkin was
a member of the Russian Mafiya, as Sveta thought, he would be unlikely to
advertise that on Facebook or Twitter. He could just imagine the tweets: 3 new
protection clients – LOL!

Frustrated, he changed directions. What did he know about
the larcenist? He turned back to the computer, opened a new document, and began
typing. The man was a bodybuilder, about thirty, of Russian Jewish origin, who
used an expensive cologne. But how could these traits help track him?