by Janice Law
“Issam!” my patient exclaimed.
“He is safe,” the stranger said, his face radiant with sudden relief.
“Certainly, but he needs a doctor, and he cannot stay here much longer.”
I put out the bread and dates and opened my bundle for the European-style pants, shirt, and sandals I’d bought in the souk, along with a now rather squashed straw hat and a pair of cheap sunglasses.
There was some resistance to my idea, but I displayed Nadir’s discarded djellaba, which was badly stained and torn. “He will be a Spaniard, an invalid, and you will be his assistant,” I told them. “You can take Nadir’s own clothes with him.”
We had a struggle to get Nadir dressed. I think only then did Issam realize quite how badly he had been injured. But when we got to the hat and sunglasses, we discovered a further problem: Nadir’s face was black across both cheekbones.
Fortunately, I had a solution. I quite like makeup, and living around David I have sometimes needed it. A little foundation, a little rouge, a little dry ochre pigment and Nadir’s face would pass muster even if the man himself could scarcely stand.
“A safe place soonest,” I said, “and change his dressings twice a day. I had no sulfa powder for him.”
“Understood. I will get a taxi.”
Nadir and I sat waiting for Issam’s return. I saw that his skin was gray under the makeup, and he was silent for a while, as if recovering from the effort of getting dressed. Then he began fiddling with the bracelet around his wrist. The beads were metal with a curious design. He removed one before retying the bracelet and putting it back on. He held out the bead to me.
“This with my name,” he said in his hoarse voice, “will keep you safe.”
Shades of The Desert Song and schoolboy annuals! I was touched, nonetheless. Although I could not imagine being at the mercy of mountain tribesmen, I put the bead in my pocket. At that moment, I much underestimated the weird complexities of life in Tangier.
A few minutes later, Issam returned, and we managed to get Nadir downstairs to the waiting cab—with the useful driver from the previous night. After I tidied away the discarded dressings, I left for the afternoon with a light heart. I met David for dinner, and after a few drinks at the Palace Bar, set off for an evening with the International Zone’s high society, presided over by a nice old queen with a big house and a bigger entertainment budget.
Fugitives in the morning, dinner jackets at night. Just the sort of contrast I like, and I could almost hear myself telling David, My dear, he was too much. Right out of the Rif Mountains complete with dagger, etc., as I do love to camp it up. But I didn’t say a word about Nadir and his one-eyed bodyguard. On our way to the party, I realized that I wasn’t going to say anything to David, that at some level, I no longer trusted him. And that made me sad.
Chapter Two
Up the Mountain in the velvet night. Sea breeze and distant lights; palms and eucalyptus and some heavy-scented flowers that played up my asthma. Still, picturesque. I could imagine old Matisse reaching for his brush and dreaming of orange and green and purple patterns. Not my cup of tea, but I do like luxury as well as squalor, and this promised to be a party deluxe. Our host was a younger son with a handsome allowance from a textile fortune. That, plus an exaggerated fear of prosecution and disgrace back home, had brought him to the International Zone where he enjoyed discreet liaisons and a spectacular garden.
Most of the expats and visitors were present: holiday-making gangsters rubbed elbows with the foreign consuls and legation staffs; poets and musicians, queer to a man, chatted to shady financiers; and society dames with parrots on their shoulders and diamonds in their hair considered propositions from oily types with their eyes on the main chance. Jews who had escaped with two suitcases kept a wary eye on notorious collaborators visiting Africa for their post-Reich health, while big-time smugglers and currency traders exchanged gossip and tried to catch the political winds. It was Monte Carlo with minarets and very much to my liking.
There was a sprinkling of wealthy Moroccans, too, uncomfortable individuals of sophisticated tastes and haughty expressions, and the Zone’s new police commissioner, an Algerian import supposedly charged with making Tangier respectable. I, myself, rather enjoy the frisson of illegality, but every other queer in town seemed nervous about the new cop.
I would discover that a number of my compatriots were already angling to get on his good side by fingering others. I had doubts about his success, given the economy of the city, and even though I intended to give him a wide berth, I could not help glancing occasionally at the commissioner. You know painters by their production. Policemen, too, and I’d been overly close to his squad’s handiwork.
David took another tack. We’d been drinking and chatting with friends, and he was standing companionably with his hand on my shoulder, fending off (for the moment) requests to “favor us with a tune.” He seemed relaxed and content, the latest faithless boy forgotten, my company cherished, and his alcohol intake at a happy level.
I stepped to one side, the better to hear a poet who’d recently had a scandalous success among the easily shocked Yanks. A few moments later, I noticed that David had left our circle. Whether by accident or design, he’d struck up a conversation with the new commissioner, and I could see he was being charming.
That was a conversation I had no wish to join. I have a habit of speaking my mind, especially after numerous visits from the champagne trays. With rare common sense, I sidled to the back of the house, where I began chatting with one of the formidable grande dames of the Zone. Born and raised in Tangier, Miss Woodward was a spinster with a bold profile, Edwardian manners, and something cynical and knowing in her expression that reminded me painfully of Nan. I wasn’t sorry when we were interrupted.
“Francis!” This was our host, pale, slightly portly, with an expensive blond toupee and a vague, distracted air that might also be ersatz. Richard was reputed to be a kindly man, except when scrambling up the social ladder of the International Zone. I found him pleasant, but I didn’t trust him, perhaps because he always played the old duffer although he couldn’t have been even ten years my senior.
“Marvelous party, Richard. The South of France couldn’t put on its equal.”
He gave a little shiver of pleasure, as if fluffing invisible feathers. “A good party is like a good sherry; it needs a fine blend, I do believe.”
“This one has a fine bouquet,” I said.
Maybe I laid it on too thick, for he beamed and, leaning over confidentially, said, “I’ve a favor to ask of you. Bought a little picture a while back. A Picasso, don’t you know, and I wonder if you’d take a look at it.”
I said that would be a pleasure, a certain period of the Spaniard’s work having been a big influence early in my career.
“Splendid. You’re just the man I need.”
I winked, he smirked; we proceeded down the hall toward the garden. The painting, nicely framed and well lit, was hanging over a fine chest. I saw right away that it was from Picasso’s “bone period,” a beach scene with a woman, part African mask, part stylized biomorph, sitting at the edge of the water. I leaned in close to the work: the design was handsome, the muted colors lovely.
“Very nice,” I said. “Lovely, in fact. Too bad it’s a fake.”
“Really?”
“The varnish is barely dry,” I said. “And look here: the paint layer is so smooth. No pentimento, no indication of second thoughts. Too perfect in a word. I’d guess it’s a copy of a genuine Picasso. Probably the image was projected onto canvas, the lines traced, and the paint filled in. With the help of an optical device, anyone with a steady hand could have made it.”
I expected Richard would be distressed that his connoisseur’s eye had let him down, but though he remarked, “A good bargain is sometimes a bad bargain,” there was something curiously avid in his expression.
“A moment, Francis,” he said, and he plunged into the crowd, returning a moment later with a short, swarthy Algerian colon. He had large, almost unblinking eyes that—with his chilly, impassive face—gave him the air of a dangerous amphibian.
“Police Commissioner Bellefleur,” Richard announced, and before I had even the thought of escape, I was introduced and found myself shaking hands with the uniformed and beribboned nemesis of my tribe.
“Explain to the commissioner what you just told me,” Richard said.
I said that the painting was a copy if not an outright fake. “Naturally, we don’t know the intentions of the painter.”
The commissioner seemed uninterested in intentionality, for he made an impatient gesture. I guessed he was more of an “eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth” man.
After I pointed out the pertinent details of the canvas, he asked whether the copyist would have needed the original.
“Not necessarily. A good color reproduction would do. If he had the dimensions.”
“Explain that,” he said abruptly. He was not exactly your society conversationalist. Though his voice was soft and his expression bland, he seemed habituated to command and accustomed to being feared. A taste of mine on certain occasions, but not this one.
“If one knew the size and the colors, the safest painting to forge would be a reproduction of a work lost in the war, because there would be no possibility of comparison.”
The commissioner fixed me with his unblinking stare. “I believe you are a painter, yourself, monsieur.”
I nodded.
“Who works from photographs. Is that correct?”
I didn’t like the way this was going, and I wondered who had been so informative. “Sometimes, yes. But for me, a photograph is just a jumping-off point. This painter”—I gestured toward the fake Picasso—“is set to deceive.”
The commissioner shook his head. “No, monsieur, this painter is dead.” He frowned and drew himself up and turned to Richard. “We cannot speak further here. Bring Monsieur Francis with you to my office. Eleven tomorrow.” And with a curt bon nuit, he exited through the garden.
Talk about going from bad to worse—or, as Nan used to say, from the frying pan into the fire. I had no intention of going anywhere near the police station, and I was making that very clear to Richard, when he took my arm and began shaking his head.
“Francis, Francis!” he said. “Think a minute. Think of your situation. Our situation.”
“My situation is that I can be on the ferry to Gibraltar any day of the week.”
“But not all of us are so fortunate, dear. Some of us have cast our fate permanently in Tangier.”
“Where the police appear to spend their time beating up the natives.” This was indiscreet, and I reminded myself to avoid any mention of Berbers, particularly political Berbers.
“The police are changing,” Richard said. “The Moroccans want their king back, and if the demonstrations and violence continue across the country, you’ll see the French will have to bring him home. And really, Francis, Madagascar, for a man of the desert! I don’t know what the Frenchies were thinking.”
“I suspect they wanted him well out of the way.”
“And when he comes back—”
“If he comes back—”
“The Zone will be finished within a year. Mark my words. The new commissioner is already a bow to Moroccan sentiment.”
“Another reason not to meet him.”
“And you don’t have to. You can take the ferry any day, but David is in jeopardy.” Richard tipped his head to one side and gave me a sly glance. “Wasn’t there an incident the last time you visited? A little altercation in a taxi ending in the local lockup? Blood and bruises sufficient to alarm one of our not easily spooked cabbies?”
“I didn’t press charges,” I said quickly. I would just as soon have passed over that disastrous and humiliating night, a ghastly combination of jealousy and drink.
“Of course you didn’t, but there have been other little incidents with the beach boys. Yes, yes, my dear, I know that he’s usually gotten the worst of it, but still. There’s a new Tangier around the corner. A bloody great looming disaster, and it behooves us all to be good citizens at the moment.”
So, though I am usually immune to appeals for civic duty, I was waiting outside my studio the next morning when Richard appeared with his driver. We arrived in the best Mountain style at the commissioner’s HQ, a fine old Moroccan building well beyond the stink of the much less salubrious prison. We were ushered into a handsome tiled courtyard, complete with a small fountain splashing in the morning shadows, and then into a high-shuttered room, where the commissioner sat in state like a minor pasha behind an antique desk with several telephones and an octopus of wires and cords. Behind him were rows of green file cabinets and a large-scale map of Tangier. In front of the desk, three straight chairs awaited unlucky visitors.
“Ah, Richard. How very kind of you to bring Monsieur Francis. I wish all Tangierinos were as public spirited.”
He rose from his desk and shook hands, all bonhomie, but when Richard moved toward one of the chairs, the commissioner stopped him. “No, do not trouble yourself, Richard. I will not keep a man as busy as you unnecessarily. There is no need for you to be concerned with sordid police matters.” And with surprising deftness, he escorted Richard from the office.
A moment later, he returned, closing the door behind him with a crisp little click like a sprung trap. His manner had changed, too. Richard got the fussy courtesy. I got the stony stare and the big silence. The commissioner sat down and ruffled through some folders before passing a large black-and-white photo across the desk to me.
It was a crime scene, stark in the police flash that spotted the bare wall and the tile floor with reflected light then sank darkly into a slim figure lying facedown. For a moment I could not tell if the corpse was male or female, given the short, thick hair, the capri pants, the sandals. What was unmistakable was the black pool of blood underneath the body.
“A young Spaniard,” the commissioner said after I had studied the image. “We think he was the painter.”
“Why?”
“He worked for a photographer, a man who produces special images for special tastes and still tints his pictures by hand.” The commissioner’s mouth gave a subtle twist to indicate disgust; pornographers as well as queers had better watch their step in the newer edition of Tangier. “I am told that work was done with dyes and watercolors. But when we found the body, the boy had traces of oil paint on his hands and on his clothes.”
“Did you find any paintings? Prepared canvases?”
“Unfortunately, no. And no device such as you so helpfully described.”
I shrugged. “The killer would have been foolish to leave the evidence behind.”
“Exactly. There is someone clever behind this.”
“A challenge for the department,” I agreed.
“Requiring the assistance of civic-minded residents.” Though scarcely prepossessing, the commissioner had a powerful presence. I felt his gaze like a sandbag on my chest. He wanted something, and I sensed it would involve me in something unpleasant. Be careful, Francis!
“The perpetrators of this scheme will be on the lookout for a replacement,” the commissioner said after a moment. “Someone skilled.”
“Or semiskilled,” I suggested. I thought briefly of the young Moroccan I’d been tutoring. His name was on the tip of my tongue before my better nature whispered that he would be exceedingly vulnerable.
“A man,” the commissioner continued relentlessly, “who can recognize a Picasso if it presents itself. Monsieur Richard, with a fine sense of civic responsibility, came to me about the painting. And told me where he’d bought it. I would like you to contact the gallery.”
“I already have a gallery in London. My deale
r would not be pleased if I open negotiations with a little establishment here.”
“My dear monsieur,” he said, his voice softened even if his gaze stayed malevolent, “you are clearly an intelligent man. Think of something. Some interest in his pictures, a need for some painting material, or that old reliable: a desire for ready cash. I’m sure you’ll think of something.”
“I am sure I will not,” I said. “I’ve assisted you enough already.”
He said nothing for a moment. Then he produced another piece of paper from the pile and handed it to me. It was an arrest warrant for David. My heart jumped, which was clearly what he’d been counting on, because on closer examination, I saw that there was neither date nor victim.
“This warrant is useless,” I said. “No date. No complaint.”
“It is in reserve,” the commissioner said evenly. “If you help us, it remains blank. If not, I can find someone to complain within the hour. Be assured of that, Monsieur Francis. And I think that your friend would not find confinement in our jail comfortable. Not even for a short stay.”
I got up and went straight to the door before I could say something that would really get me in the soup. Bastard! Of course, he was bluffing. A respectable member of the international community was not going to be locked up on a bogus charge. I repeated that to myself several times with steadily diminishing conviction, concluding, at worse, that David might have to take a little trip to Spain. Return to England. Lay off the whiskey. We’d work something out.
I found him in the Petit Socco, alone and looking pensive. When he saw me, his face lit up, and he greeted me the way he had in the old days when we were just starting out together and everything was exciting. “A sight for sore eyes!” he cried and patted the seat next to him. “I’m so bored in Tangier. Let’s take a trip.”
“Good idea.”