The hotel fit right in, though the flowers in the boxes in front of the over-sized windows on the main floor could have used more attention. It was three stories tall and was perhaps a hundred years newer than its neighbors, which would have meant it was built around 1800.
Karr drove around the block, looking at the houses. The man he was tracking — still unidentified, for all the Art Room’s efforts — might be in any one of them.
In that case, though, wouldn’t there be more lights on? None of the houses had more than two rooms lit.
Not much of a theory, Karr conceded to himself.
“We have a couple of possibilities in the hotel,” said Chafetz.
“What about the houses across the street?”
“We’re running the names through watch lists, the whole nine yards. I’ll tell you if something comes up. Right now just plant some video bugs around and call it a night.”
“Tell you what, first give me the name of somebody who’s not in the hotel, but was, say, last week.”
“You’re going in?”
“Why not? They’ll see me planting the bugs from the lobby anyway. I might just as well go right on in. This way we can have a close-up if he’s there.” Karr laughed. “Besides, maybe they got a restaurant. I’m a little hungry. They wouldn’t let me take my fish with me.”
“How’s your head?”
“Hurts.”
“You should get it checked out.”
“Will do. Get me that name.”
Bright yellow walls and halogen floodlights gave the hotel lobby a hazy glow. Karr sauntered across the cracked marble floor toward the reception desk, rattled off a greeting in Turkish, then switched to English, asking about a friend he thought was staying there. The man behind the counter jerked his head back, then reached for a small button at the side of his desk.
Not good, thought Karr.
“You sure you don’t know him?” he asked.
“Who are you?” said the clerk, a skinny fellow whose face was the color of a Spaldeen after it had survived a dozen stickball games.
“Burt Thompson,” said Karr, throwing out the first name that came to him. He stuck out his hand. “I was in town for a conference and hoped to see my friend.”
The clerk frowned at his hand. Karr looked at it and realized it was scraped raw. The rough skin on the side was caked with blood.
“Fell down outside,” he said. “Don’t worry. I won’t sue. My friend’s name was Sergoni. From Russia.”
The clerk shrugged. “Not here.”
“Has he been here?”
The clerk shrugged again. A man had come to the curtain behind him, watching.
“Maybe you should check your computer?”
The man shook his head.
“Well, thanks for your help,” said Karr. “By the way, you happen to know of a good restaurant around here?”
Dr. Ramil shined the light into Karr’s eyes, checking his pupils for a sign of concussion. They dilated nicely, very responsive.
“Your head still hurts?” he asked, going into the bathroom for a washcloth and towel.
“Poundin’.”
“You don’t appear to have a concussion, but of course we’ll want to keep a close eye on you. The brain is a delicate instrument, an egg in a basket. We don’t want to just toss it around like a baseball.”
“Heck, no. A football maybe.”
“These are very nasty scrapes,” said the doctor, examining Karr’s arm and shins. “You must have taken some fall.”
“I’ve had much worse, believe me.”
“No doubt.”
Ramil cleaned the wounds, then applied an antibacterial agent from his medical kit. He daubed the wound delicately, almost afraid of it. Funny how a surface injury could sometimes seem more daunting than something much more serious well beneath the skin.
“What do you say, Doc? Want to get a drink?” asked Karr when he was finished.
“I don’t drink.”
“Naw, not drink drink. Like tea or something.”
Ramil, suddenly glad for the company, found his shoes and followed Karr to the winding spiral staircase at the end of the hall. A blast of warm air hit him in the face when he pushed open the door to the roof terrace; though it was fall, the evening was still very warm.
“Some view,” said Karr, pointing toward the Blue Mosque a few blocks up the hill.
Bathed in light, the mosque had an ethereal glow, light flooding upwards around the central dome. Ramil stared at it for a moment, then went over to the table Karr had commandeered. The only other people on the terrace were two older women speaking in hushed tones; Ramil listened for a moment before deciding they were German.
“Are you off for the night?” Ramil asked.
“More or less.” Karr gave him a broad smile. The young agent seemed to be the proverbial jolly giant; Ramil couldn’t remember ever seeing him frown. “Beer,” he told the waiter. “Want one, Doc?”
Though a Muslim, Ramil did occasionally take a drink, but to do so within sight of a mosque felt more than a little sacrilegious. He shook his head brusquely. “Apple tea,” he told the waiter.
“‘They ask you about drinking and gambling,’ ” Ramil told Karr, quoting the passage from the Koran that forbade drinking. “‘Tell them: There is both harm and benefit in them, but the harm is greater.’ From the Holy Koran.”
Karr nodded thoughtfully. “Maybe that’s an argument for moderation, not total abstinence.”
“It hasn’t been interpreted that way. Are you Christian, Tommy?”
“My mom was Eastern Orthodox, and my dad Catholic.”
“Which are you?”
“Both.” Karr beamed. “I got baptized twice.”
“Is that permissible?”
“Beats me. Couldn’t hurt though, right?”
“No,” said Ramil. He leaned back in his chair as the waiter set down his tea.
For a Muslim, or at least for Ramil, Karr’s easygoing attitude about religion was impossible. Growing up, there weren’t many Muslims in America, and his parents had been among the founders of the first mosque in the Washington, D.C., area. Back then, few people outside of the small Egyptian community where he lived — mostly Christian, as a matter of fact — seemed even to have heard of Islam.
Now, of course, everyone in America knew what Islam was — or thought they did. Terrorists like Asad bin Taysr had libeled the religion and its adherents, making it stand for something it wasn’t.
“You religious?” Karr asked.
“I wouldn’t say so.”
What made someone religious? Going to a mosque or church regularly? By that measure, Ramil wasn’t; neither were the majority of people he knew. He prayed, but most often in his heart.
“You feel funny talking about it?” Karr asked.
“What?”
“Religion.”
He did feel funny, Ramil thought. But he shrugged and smiled, and was glad that the waiter was just arriving with their drinks. Karr was a good kid, but he wasn’t the sort of person one discussed religion with.
