by Todd Grimson
Further information, however, revealed that the woman had tattoos not shown, tattoos several years old, typical of a Casa prostitute. Additional photos proved that it was not Lauren, no chance. Patrick felt a surge of disappointment, and then immediately after, guilt. He had wished Lauren dead.
The night before he was to leave for the States, Patrick found himself in a room with ten Moroccans, males, some of them the students he and Anthony had played basketball with. They were talking with great relish about something, in their own language. The air smelled of kif, but no one offered him some. One of them, Akbar or Abdul, something like that, translated some of the repartee, but then became tired of this, or bored, which was okay. The strangeness of it, the atmosphere—the different way they gestured, acting things out, one now walking like a woman, lithely, imitating someone, making the others all laugh. Patrick saw that he could not bridge the otherness. Sometimes he caught a glimpse, but he knew there was an inaccessible realm.
In New York, he stayed with Anthony Pendergraph, and paid a visit to Lauren’s family in Brooklyn Heights. This visit was excruciatingly painful. The mother cried, and wanted to know the blow-by-blow, she wanted impossible details; the father was knowing and morose and seemed implicitly to blame Patrick for the whole thing. Patrick broke down outside in the back of the cab. He didn’t care if the Jamaican cabdriver watched him weep while reggae played.
So he went back to Seattle and returned to his work. He was in mourning, he knew. Grief was a physical condition, like a sickness, but it would pass. He worked long hours and tried to will himself to remember only the pleasurable times with Lauren. Yes, she was dead. He didn’t know how, but she was dead. If she was in an exotic harem, it was the same thing. It did no good to imagine her in such circumstances. In fact, as he did so and began to find the evolving scenario sexually exciting late one night, he knew he dishonored her. Yet didn’t he hate her, in a way, for abandoning him like that? This was his revenge. Nothing was as simple as anyone thought.
II.
ALMOST A YEAR later, Anthony got a call just as he was leaving with his girlfriend to go check out a new trendy restaurant. It was hot and humid and they were running late.
“Hello?”
“Anthony. This is Patrick Murtaugh. I just got home and checked my mail – she’s alive! Anthony, Lauren’s alive!”
“Wait. What, she sent you a letter?”
“A postcard, postmarked Tangier. It says ‘Missed you in the Grand Socco Square. Love, Lauren.’”
“Wait, wait, Patrick. Don’t you think it might be a joke? Some kind of sick joke?”
“I don’t know. Jesus. Well, it doesn’t matter. I’ve got to go back over there and see. I mean, it looks like her handwriting. I don’t have enough data yet to have any real idea what’s going on.”
Anthony wasn’t sure, really, how hard to try to dissuade him. Going through channels wouldn’t do a damn thing. He knew what those Foreign Service officers were like. If it had been Anthony, he would have gone over there, if for nothing else then to sit in the Café de Paris on the Grand Socco Square, waiting to be contacted in some way.
This, as it turned out, was precisely Patrick’s plan. He and Anthony had a reunion, they talked it all over, as Patrick arrived in New York and stayed three days before he could get a direct flight across the Atlantic to Casablanca. Casa was an ominous city, at least what Patrick had seen of it, tall dark bluish-gray sky-scrapers and Berber tribesmen in djellabas leading donkeys with carts through the streets. Everyone seemed to look at you with a hostile gaze, recognizing you instantly as someone who did not belong. They were too wised-up, Patrick mused, and Anthony knew exactly what he meant. But that was the entry, by air. A connecting flight would put him in Tangier the same day.
Patrick promised to send cards. He and Anthony hugged, hard, at JFK before Patrick got on the overbooked plane.
The first postcard arrived in eight days. It said, ‘Nothing. Nada. Rien.’ Then another, five days later. It said, ‘Might have seen S. Maybe not. Eating swordfish every night.’
That turned out to be the last Anthony heard from him. He went about his business, thinking about derivatives and the latest Wall Street malefactors, but he was nervous, impatient — he couldn’t conceive of Patrick having the resources to really deal with it if there was true evil in the air.
Patrick was essentially an innocent. He wasn’t entirely naive, which was why they could be friends, but he was innocent. He meant well. In certain circumstances, he might have been dangerous in this way. Because he might not have experienced enough doubt that he meant well, and that sort of invincible innocence was how you conquered the world. You didn’t even notice the peripheral victims until too late, and then you were very sorry, you even had the pleasure of feeling sorry for them. Was all of that really in Patrick, Anthony wondered, or was he projecting it onto him because he was white, and Anthony saw him as a specimen of a certain kind of possible white?
Anthony didn’t know. He asked Kalinda, his girlfriend, what she thought. He’d had too many drinks tonight. It was late. The last card had come two weeks ago. It’d been postmarked a week before that.
Anthony made some calls the next day, from the Wall Street Journal newsroom. A state department assistant undersecretary who’d been in his class at Yale called him back at 5 p.m.
“Patrick William Murtaugh, right? 32-year-old white male. Seattle, Washington.”
“Yeah, that’s him. What’s up?”
“You’re a friend of his? I’m sorry, there’s bad news.”
“What happened?”
“He’s dead. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage. There was bleeding in the subdural region of his brain. He probably died in his sleep, in his hotel bed. The maid found him the next day. His body was shipped to Seattle last week. That’s all I have.”
“Thanks. Yes, he was a friend of mine.”
Anthony wanted to know if there was any sort of investigation of the card Patrick had received, allegedly from Lauren, more likely a bad joke, which had in effect lured him over there to his death.
Mike knew nothing about any of that. He did say that as far as he knew, a cerebral hemorrhage was a natural death. He didn’t think it could be faked, or induced, or anything like that. Anthony could hear in his voice that he was reluctant to talk about it anymore, so he said thanks again and got off the phone.
He took the subway home. “Home.” The loft he sublet from an artist who was presently on a small island near Crete. Anthony was numb. He didn’t know why Patrick’s death should necessarily have anything to do with him, but it felt like it did. He and Patrick, had Patrick lived, might have been friends for life. Even if at a distance. Probably not, but there had been an undeniable, automatic connection. Shit. He’d felt more in common with this white guy than he’d ever felt with his own brother, Eric. Half-brother. Same mother, different dads. Eric’s father, Anthony’s stepfather, was an L.A. County Judge. He was probably responsible for Anthony “making it,” for him getting into Yale and so forth, he’d pushed him hard, but going along with this pressure not to fuck up, not to be like his real father, to prove that he could do it… there was at the same time, always, the unspoken belief that Anthony had less natural intellect, his thinking wasn’t sound, in the sense of say Hegel’s thinking being sound, thus it hung in the air that Anthony was just waiting to drop out and become shiftless and violent like his father… all reinforced by the fact that Anthony’s skin was darker than Eric’s, or than his mother, not to speak of being much darker than the judge.
Anthony had base motives for everything he did, the judge thought. He was selfish and vain, he wanted to blow all his money and fuck white girls, he was just waiting to be a nigger like his dad. He was riding for a fall. Sooner or later this white world he’d penetrated would find him out. He drank too much. Who knew what kind of slick designer drugs he did these days? This was what they thought, the judge and his mother, that was the family myth. Anthony was a big talker, but in
the end he’d fuck up. He loved money, but he didn’t know what it was to save and work. It was ridiculous, they were irrational, but that was how they saw him.
Why was he thinking about this shit? He tried to call Kalinda, but he only got her machine. He wanted to talk to someone, needed to, but he didn’t know who would help. He tried Vernon, got him for a few minutes, but it wasn’t enough. He tried Dan. The sense of exclusion from a true understanding of fate dogged him, he saw Patrick’s death as tragic, the man was doomed – Patrick’s whole life had changed its shape now that he was dead. When Kalinda called him later, they talked about it. Anthony was trying to get to something and she didn’t understand, when she thought she could get away with it, to desentimentalize things, she finally came out and flat-out just said Patrick had been a fool.
“Don’t you think he knew that?” Anthony said. “All you can do is take what’s predetermined, already programmed into the stars, try to see this yourself and reconcile it with what’s improvised, open to invention, to find out what it’s impossible for you to do.”
It was a vexed matter to him, that Kalinda didn’t understand. It made him see her differently in his mind. He wanted a cigarette, though he had quit. He wanted a drink. Andy Warhol had said his favorite brand of bourbon was Jack Daniels, because it made you feel confident. (Had Andy Warhol really needed any help feeling confident? Saying such things had been part of his act.)
Patrick had loved Lauren, though he knew and understood that she was flawed. Anthony had thought, on scant acquaintance, that she was spoiled, self-centered… and he thought Patrick had probably known this very well. He wasn’t stupid. But he had loved her anyway. He’d had no choice. And in this, he knew that he was doomed. He went ahead anyway.
As soon as Kalinda called Patrick a fool, Anthony knew he had to go back to Morocco. Maybe he’d known it since he heard Patrick was dead. It was an accident that he even knew the guy, that he’d ever known him, but in the contingent dwelt fate.
Kalinda thought that for him to go over there was senseless. What was it for? Did he really expect to find anything out? Life wasn’t like that except in movies. Patrick died of natural causes. End of story. To look for anything else was absurd. Anthony wasn’t a detective. Even if he was a detective, he didn’t speak Arabic. Morocco was a closed society to outsiders.
Actually, Dan came up with a theory, it wasn’t much but it was vaguely possible. He said a friend of his, a crime-buff, said that maybe you could stick an ice-pick or a stiff wire through the eye to get to the brain, through the tear duct, without leaving any evidence on the outside.
Kalinda came over early Saturday afternoon—the day of Anthony’s flight on Royal Air Maroc—and they had a reconciliation of sorts. She said she was sorry for much of what she’d said, but she was worried about him. She was scared.
She began to cry then. Anthony held her close, and thought about just stopping there and intentionally missing his flight, forgetting about it. It was a pointless exercise in any case. He didn’t know what he was doing going back over there. He wasn’t looking forward to any of it.
Royal Air Maroc, direct to Casablanca, then a smaller plane for the connecting flight to Tangier. Sunday afternoon. July. The skies were clear. Radiant, light blue. It was Ramadan.
During the Islamic month of Ramadan, the believers are required to fast during daylight hours, from the time the muezzins call through the loudspeakers from the mosques at 4:30 a.m. until the sun went down at 7:30 or close to 8:00. No food, nothing to drink, no tobacco, no sex. Banks and stores have reduced hours, and in general it’s a month when little gets done.
Anthony quickly discovered that everyone came out at night. It was a very different atmosphere from when he’d been here before. The streets were crowded, people were out until well after midnight, it was impossible to go to sleep before dawn. Anthony heard processions, off on distant streets, singing and clapping, drums and those weird nasal oboes running up and down a distinctively Asian scale. Then just when it had been quiet for a while a rooster began crowing, just as he was finally about to lose consciousness, it sounded like its throat was half torn.
He went for a long walk the next afternoon, into some parts of Tangier he had neglected before. It was hot out and the sun shone brilliantly pale yellow on all of the glittery tiny broken shards of glass and the blown white sand. This was a poorer section, eerie it was so quiet, it seemed virtually abandoned…
He pondered his presence here, as he walked in the heat. The American and African-American acculturation in him seemed so much a part of him, all the knowledge of TV shows, and songs, Miles Davis, the immortal riffs of James Brown. What would it be like to think in African ways, to experience and live life as an African?
Funny how you tend to make the immediate, fundamental error of imagining it would be simpler, a less complex worldview and mental landscape, but being a day-laborer in Lagos, Nigeria, or a postman in Zaire, a tribesman off someplace in the wild… maybe in fact it is in reality simpler, more crude, to have your American head stuffed full of and diverted with all this essentially worthless, forgettable information, it stops you from seeing anything clearly in front of you, because you’re hearing and reading about all these people you don’t even know, they pop onto the screen and they’re gone, they might be recycled but that’s just capitalism, reuse your discarded one-hit wonders and temporary celebrities. Maybe that’s not even the point… Anthony momentarily despaired. He was okay, though. This was who he was.
A garage door was up, the garage built into the ground floor of a three-story house, and two boys maybe nine and twelve were running this store with hardly anything in it. He spoke French to the older one, who solemnly fetched a Stork beer from the barely running refrigerator and proceeded to wrap the bottle up in brown paper, rolling it up and twisting both ends neatly so it stayed that way. Anthony handed over the requisite dirhem, said “Merci,” and left.
Later, downtown, some other boy shouted, “Jimi Hendrix!” at him, which made him laugh. He went back up into his hotel room, which did not have air-conditioning; opened the window and took off his shirt. There was an intermittent, faint breeze from the sea. He drank the warm but tasty beer.
That night, in the Café de Paris, a pleasant Moroccan in a white shirt talked to him, discovering he was from New York and asking about that. He wanted to visit the U.S., but New York seemed frightening. He was modest, reasonably charming. He was doing government service for two years, then they would put him through school. They talked about Israel and the Palestinians, just a little, and then the fellow asked Anthony his religion. Knowing that to say “None” would be a mistake, Anthony said he was a Christian. A Nazarene.
“What do you know about the Koran?” the guy asked, eyes bright and dark, eager to talk. Anthony managed to extricate himself from this, to the fellow’s visible disappointment. He wanted to explain Islam.
Anthony went to a seafood restaurant on a steep cobble-stoned street he’d never noticed before, and had grilled swordfish, along with two salads. Both were of couscous. One had chickpeas, green onions, the other currants, shredded carrot and mint. It was a family restaurant, and he seemed to be the only non-Moroccan present. It was jam-packed.
He walked to the medina. Many stalls and souks seemed ready to stay open all night. He bought cigarettes and some matches: local matches were these twisted splinters of wood that usually broke. Really, you needed a lighter if you were going to smoke over here.
More noise, until the muezzin’s amplified call to last or first prayer just at dawn. That horrible rooster again. Anthony fell asleep and awoke perspiring and dry-mouthed, still very tired, at noon. He poured himself a glass of Sidi Ali water and drank it down.
Inspector Mohammed Qasir listened to the theory of the ice-pick through the tear-duct, which Anthony delivered with a certain irony, not taking entire responsibility. Qasir’s response was: “Yes, maybe such a thing is possible, and it’s possible our pathologist may have missed it�
� but do you think Patrick Murtaugh would have lain still for such a procedure? He was a fit young man, bigger and stronger than the average Moroccan. Any resistance on his part would have left signs. You see that, don’t you? He would have had to have been heavily sedated, but there were no drugs in his system. Nothing, not even a low level of alcohol. His skin had no bruises. So you see: violence seems ruled out. He died in his sleep. It was a congenital defect. This could have happened at any time.”
“What about Lauren?”
“Yes, of course that’s a more difficult matter. We don’t have a body, or any evidence except the fact that she was here and then she was gone. It’s all negative. If I can be frank with you… my own best hypothesis, my idea—is that your Lauren’s buried in the countryside somewhere, deeply, under some stones. What might have happened before this, whether she partially cooperated by her fate by willingly going for a ride in a car with a stranger whose intentions she did not divine… unless someone comes forward, we may never know. Here in Morocco we occasionally have our deviants, just like anywhere else. Such crimes, unless they are repeated, and there is some evidence, or witnesses, a pattern, all that… such random crimes are almost impossible to solve. And then, M’sieur Murtaugh coming back to the scene, and dying like he did, at a relatively young age, unexpectedly… I admit it makes for a certain symmetry, it’s interesting, superficially it is an intrigue. I understand your disquiet.”
“And the postcard?”
“A cruel prank.” Qasir shook his head.
Anthony thanked him and said goodbye. It was all reasonable, everything the inspector said. It was all probably true. There were no other hypotheses available, really. What? Lauren kidnapped and sold into a harem, Patrick murdered by supernatural or occult means? No.