Deathwish World

sells the cheapest plonk in Tangier. Drink it and you wake up with the jumping Joe Blakes in the moring, fair dinkum. As a matter of fact, cobber, I was off in that direction meself when I bagged you looking lost.'

'If you don't mind, I'll tag along,' Frank said. 'Bloody well told. Let's go.' They started up the boulevard.

Frank looked up at his elongated companion and said, 'Do you think I might make a contact at this Paul's bar?'

Nat Fraser considered it. 'With the two thousand Swiss francs I suppose you've got in your kick from your flashing government, I'd think you could wait it out until you're able to cobber up somebody who could give you a steer.'

Frank inwardly winced but said nothing about the fact that his thousand pseudo-dollars had melted down to less than two hundred.

At the end of Pasteur Boulevard they entered an attractive square, largely lined with sidewalk cafes. 'Place de France,' the Aussie told Frank. The sidewalk tables were well patronized, largely by prosperous European types, most of whom were reading newspapers. Moroccan waiters, in red fezzes and baggy black pants like bloomers, scurried around taking and delivering orders. There was a superfluity of shoeshine boys.

They turned right, down a winding street considerably narrower than Pasteur Boulevard had been. The composition of the pedestrians began to change radically. As they progressed, they saw fewer people in European clothing and more in the dress of Africa, the Near East, and the Orient.

'The Rue de la Liberte,' Nat Fraser told him. 'Where the bloody twain meets. You know, East is East and West is West.' He gave running comment on races and costume.

There were growing numbers of Rifs, Arabs, Berbers— even an occasional Blue Man down from the mountains. The name of the latter, Nat explained, sprang from the indigo dye of their robes which, when they sweated, came off on their skins, giving them an eerie look. At least half of the women still wore the djellaba or haik with veil; half the men wore the brown camel's-hair burnoose. Africa, evidently, changed slowly even in the 21st Century.

'And this is the Grand Socco, mate. Cooee, a fair cow, eh? Ever see so many wogs in your life?'

It was a large square, packed with humanity and with a hundred different varieties of stalls—flower booths, food stands, and herb stands, hashish being among the other so-called herbs. There were displays of vegetables, fruits, hand-woven textiles, yellow or white babouche slippers, and a multitude of other commodities, some seemingly desirable in the eyes of Moroccans and some aimed deliberately to attract tourists. There were still more of the Arabs and Rifs, plus sailors up from the port and European riffraff from a score of countries. Donkeys seemed to be the means of transport; no car could have gotten through the press of bodies. Odors of mint, saffron, and kif, the North African cannabis, mingled in the air.

Rather than press into the souk, the teeming native market, they turned left and did their best to get through the crowded way, the Australian in front, running interference. It seemed one hell of a strange location for an English-speaking bar.

Nat was explaining over his shoulder, 'Paul's been here for donkey's years,' he said. 'He's so warm in half a dozen countries, he'll never be able to leave. Owes something like a hundred and fifteen years in Italy alone for smuggling, and with his TB he wouldn't last six months in one of those cold, damp, wop nicks. No extradition from Tangier. He'll never leave, oh my word. Interpol would grab him in ten minutes if he put a toe down in Gibraltar.'

They arrived at Paul's Bar—there was a small faded sign hanging out in front.

Inside, it was dark and cool but hardly prepossessing. There were six or seven stools at the bar, three tables with chairs. On the walls were pasted aged clippings about the proprietor's exploits in the old days when he was allegedly a ranking lockpicker, screwsman, grifter, and smuggler. They were alternated with pinups from aged pornographic magazines. From the ceiling hung a fisherman's net and a ship's wheel which doubled as a chandelier, a vain attempt to give Paul's Bar a nautical decor.

There were only three people present—one slumped at a table, head on arms, one seated dejectedly on a stool at the bar with a bottle of beer before him, and the bartender himself. Automated bars seemed to be unknown in Tangier, at least in this part of town—the medina, as Nat had named it.

The bartender had once been a larger man. Now he was emaciated. His sallow face had a sardonic quality and he wore a moth-eaten Vandyke beard tinged with gray. He looked up when the newcomers entered and wiped the well-worn bar with a dirty bar rag, uselessly.

He said, 'Cheers, Nat,' then looked at Frank. It seemed that in Paul's Bar one was introduced before being served.

Nat and Frank crawled onto stools and the Austalian said, 'Paul, meet Frank Pinell, a new cobber in town from the States. He's looking for a contact.' Paul put a thin hand over the bar and shook hands. However, his eyes were narrow. 'What kind of a contact?' he said. It was the tone that bothered Frank. He said, 'Well, I don't know. Just about anything, I guess.'

'You warm?' Paul Rund said. Frank thought he understood what the other meant. 'Only in the States,' he said. And then, not particularly liking this, added, 'Why?'

Paul leaned on the bar and said, 'Because this is a poxy town, Frank. There's no extradition laws, there's practically no laws at all, but what there are get pretty well obeyed, get it? This is the end of the line for a lot of grifters. There's no place else to go if they kick you out. So we're poxy careful not to foul our own nest, get it? We lay doggo, that's the word, lay doggo. We don't take no scores here in Tangier.

Absolutely. And the boys take a dim view if anybody tries it. We don't want the present easygoing laws to be no way changed.'

'That's the dinkum oil,' Nat said, nodding. 'But you've got it wrong, Paul. Gawd strewth. Pull your head in. Frank didn't come here to do a romp. Deported from the States, he was. The poor cove's got to cobber up with somebody and get an angle.'

Paul evidently took the tall Australian's word for it. He said, 'Good show. Just wanted to tell you the drill here, Frank. You look like the type of sod who'd pinch something here in Tangier and put all our bloody arses in a sling. What'll it be, lads? First drink's on the bloody house, Frank.'

Nat said, 'Make it a couple of Storks, Paul.' He looked at Frank as the bartender turned to serve them. 'Not up to Aussie brew, strike me blind. But, from what I hear, better than you Yanks are turning out these days.'

'It wouldn't have to be very good,' Frank told him. 'They make syntho-beer from sawdust or something.'

The two took their bottles of beer and glasses and went to the remotest of the three tables and sat down. The beer glass wasn't clean but Frank didn't give a damn. He poured appreciatively. It was the first drink he'd had for several months and a lot of guff had been thrown at him in the past couple of days in particular.

'Not bad suds considering it's made by ragheads,' his companion said, downing his whole glass in one vast draught. 'The cheeky barstids don't suppose to ever enjoy a shivoo in their whole narky lives. Oh my word, no. Against Allah's buggering rules.'

Frank didn't take much longer to finish his. The Aussie was right. It wasn't bad beer at all. Probably still made from malt and hops, he assumed, instead of the crap being turned out at home these days for the prole palate.

Nat said, 'How about another, cobber?' He came to his feet. Frank said, 'All right, but I ought to pay for this.'

'Don't be a zany. You can't afford to play the toff until you get yourself settled in. Been down on the bone meself in me time. Settle down, cobber.' The Aussie went over to the bar and secured another couple of bottles from the thin-faced bartender. Frank looked after him thoughtfully.

When he had returned and they had refilled their glasses, Frank held his up and said, 'Thanks, Nat. Mud in your eye.' Nat said, holding up his glass in toast, 'Fuck Ireland.' They both drank and then Frank said, 'What did you say?'

'Oh. Fuck Ireland.'

Frank looked at him. 'Why?'

The Australian's easygoing face took an expression of being put upon. 'Cooee, cobber, I don't know. That's what we say in Melbourne, strewth.'

Frank said, 'Look here, Nat. Do you always talk this way? I miss about half of what you mean.'

Nat Fraser grinned, a ruefulness there. 'A bit thick, eh? Always sets you Yanks back. I wasn't trying to cozen you.'

Frank chuckled, the first occasion he could remember having done so for some time. He said, 'All right, no