The two European marks got up and left the club about a half hour later. Yasmin came and leaned against the bar near me. She was brushing her hair again. “What jerks,” she said.
They’re all jerks, is the general opinion.
“I called about Vi,” I said. “No vampire. She was just murdered in the alley.”
“Huh,” Lily said dubiously. “Like she could bite herself in her own neck.”
I spread my hands. “They haven’t confirmed the business about the puncture wounds. You’re just exaggerating all of this way out of proportion.”
Yasmin looked at me knowingly. “You’ll see,” she said. She turned to Lily, who nodded her agreement. Dealing with my employees is sometimes very hard on my nerves. I thought about having my first drink of the day, but I didn’t. I went out to get something to eat instead.
Now, Chiriga’s is about halfway between the eastern gate of the Budayeen and the western end — the cemetery. There are plenty of places to eat along the Street, and on this particular occasion I decided to head toward Kiyoshi’s. I hadn’t walked far before I saw the Lamb Lady.
“Oh boy,” I muttered. Safiyya the Lamb Lady is a regular feature of the Budayeen, one of our favorite odd characters. She’s harmless, but she can talk at you so long you’re sure you’ll never get away. She lives on money people give her and she sleeps wherever anybody will let her. I’ve let her stay in my club a few times. She’s completely honest, just addled a bit. That’s why I was surprised to see her wearing a lot of expensive-looking jewelry. She had on eight or ten silver rings, two silver necklaces, silver earrings, and silver bracelets and bangles from her wrists halfway to her elbows.
“Where’d you get all that, Safiyya?” I asked.
“Watch out for the lamb,” she said in a hoarse voice. She used to have a lamb that followed her around the Budayeen, but it was accidentally killed. Now Safiyya has an imaginary lamb. I’d almost bumped into it.
“Sorry,” I said.
“Isn’t this nice stuff?” she said. She jingled her bracelets. “I found it all in the trash.”
“In the trash?” The silver she was wearing must have been worth four or five hundred kiam. “Where?”
“Oh, it’s all gone now,” Safiyya said. “I took it. I’ll show you, though, if you want to see.” I followed her because I was curious. She led me to the back of a whitewashed, two-story apartment building, where four trash cans had been upended. Garbage was strewn all over the narrow passageway between buildings, but we didn’t find any more jewelry.
When Safiyya started showing off all this silver, she would make herself a target for robbery, or worse. I decided to mention this to one of my connections in the police department; they’d keep an eye on Safiyya. With crazy Vi’s unsolved murder the night before, I guessed there’d be a stronger police presence in the Budayeen tonight. I’d hate to see the Lamb Lady become the killer’s second victim.
However, the rest of the day passed quietly. Nothing happened to Safiyya, and nothing happened to me. I went home, trimmed my beard, took a long shower, and sat down at my desk to get some of my paperwork done. After a while, Kmuzu interrupted me.
“The master of the house wishes you to meet with him in an hour, yaa Sidi,” he said.
I nodded. The master of the house was my great-grandfather, Friedlander Bey, who controlled much of the illicit activities in the city. He was a very powerful man, so powerful that he also found it profitable to control the rise and fall of certain nearby nations. It was like a hobby with him.
Forty-five minutes later I was dressed the way Papa liked me to dress, standing at the door to his office. It was guarded by Habib and Labib, Papa’s huge, silent bodyguards. I wasn’t going in until they felt like letting me go in.
Tariq, Friedlander Bey’s secretary and valet, came out and noticed me. “I hope you haven’t been waiting long,” he said.
I shrugged. “I’ve just been watching these two guys. You know, they don’t move at all. They don’t even breathe. How do they manage that?”
Tariq did the smart thing and ignored me. He ushered me into Papa’s inner office. Friedlander Bey reclined on a lacquered divan. He indicated that I should seat myself across from him. Between us was a table loaded down with trays of food and fruit, juices and silver coffee things. We chatted informally while we drank the customary cups of coffee. Then, suddenly, Papa was all business.
“You are spending too much time in the Budayeen,” he said.
“But O Shaykh, you gave me the nightclub — “
He raised a hand. I shut up. “There are more important matters. Representatives from the Empire of Parthia will be arriving tomorrow. They wish our support in their expansion into Kush.”
“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
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.”
“Marid? 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, Marid? 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.”
