Layover in Dubai

The third number was the other one that had looked familiar, although the listed name—“Basma,” but nothing more—hadn’t.

A woman answered. “Beacon of Light.”

“Of course,” Sharaf said.

“Pardon?”

“I’m sorry. This is Detective Sharaf with Dubai Police. I would like to speak with Basma, please.”

The woman seemed to gasp. Then she paused just long enough to arouse his suspicion before saying, “There is no one here by that name.”

“Not even for a policeman to speak to?”

“No.”

“Then is your director, Mrs. Halami, in?”

“Not this evening.”

“Please have her call me, then. On my mobile. And give her a message. Ask if she is familiar with an American named Charles Hatcher, of the Pfluger Klaxon company. I need to know if he has made contact with Basma or anyone else at the shelter.”

“I will tell her.” The woman’s tone was stiff, tense. Sharaf couldn’t tell if Charlie’s name had made an additional impression. It was the mention of Basma that had set her off. “And your mobile number, please?”

“She has it.”

“Thank you. She will be back tomorrow, probably around midday.”

“You know them?” Sam asked after Sharaf hung up.

“It is a shelter for abused women. Housewives, mostly, although it has also become a place of refuge for prostitutes who manage to escape their pimps. So it is not very well liked by the people we were observing this evening. Some of my police colleagues are not crazy about the place, either.”

“Why not?”

“They believe disagreements between husbands and wives are personal matters, not issues for law enforcement.”

“Even if he beats her? Do you believe that?”

“I do not beat my wife, so it is irrelevant what I believe. Please, you are beginning to sounding like Laleh, who has already spent far too much time among those women. That is why I recognized the number. She donates her money, handles their PR account for free, that kind of thing. She is quite the friend to them. I probably would have gotten further by mentioning her name instead of mine.”

“Maybe Charlie was a donor, too. Out of guilt, considering his track record. He did say something about atonement.”

“Or maybe this Basma was a favorite of his from a past visit, and he was tracking her down. The Tatiana woman could have been his contact. I can see how that might have upset the wrong people, especially if he was helping Basma stay free. Sending her money or something.”

“You really think that’s what happened?”

“That, or a hundred other possibilities. Whores are not the only women who end up at the Beacon of Light, or even wives. They take in housekeepers, maids, nannies. Which in Dubai are just milder forms of prostitution. Shady companies import them by the thousands on hali-wali visas.”

“What’s ‘hali-wali’?”

“A ‘who cares’ visa. Obtained from some dupe in a government office.”

“You mean like those fake ownership papers for Punjabi shopkeepers?”

Sharaf supposed the remark was intended to get a rise out of him.

“I’m guessing Laleh told you about that. But at least you are beginning to grasp the way things work here. Now if you could just tell me what these other scribbles in the datebook mean, you’d actually be contributing something worthy. Otherwise, all we have learned this evening is that, of the three names he listed, one is missing, one is dead, and one may or may not be staying at a place where women sometimes hide from their Mafia pimps. And the message of all that would seem to be pretty clear: If you are a friend of Charlie Hatcher’s, Dubai is not a very safe place.”

That was the thought Sharaf took to bed with him, and the one he awakened with as well. It was why he was now so relieved by Ali’s assurances of Sam Keller’s safety, which left him free to enjoy his coffee and their game of dominoes, while venting about his wayward sons.

“My sons,” he continued to Ali, “wouldn’t know how to handle a real estate transaction unless I did it for them. To them it’s a major crisis if their iPods crash. When those Internet service cables were severed on the ocean floor last summer I thought they were going to cry. You would have thought a ten-day sandstorm had just blown into town, followed by a plague of locusts.”

“Locusts,” Ali said. “Now there’s a memory. Remember that old man in the souk who used to fry them in a big kettle whenever a bunch of them blew in from the desert?”

“Yes. Very tasty. Until that year the British sprayed them all with poison, then went round the neighborhood with a bullhorn, telling us they were unsafe to eat.”

“The visitors always end up ruining things,” Ali said. “And if this speculation market ever comes to ruin, well, at least this time they’ll be burned even more than the locals. Because we will still have our salaries and our homes, while all their precious new buildings stand empty, collecting nothing but desert dust. By the way, Sharaf, did you happen to invite some of your police colleagues to come and visit us here this morning?”