The Exile Kiss

by George Alec Effinger

  Instead, I turned to Jacques and said, "You still up to helping us out?"

  "Of course." Jacques looked a little frightened. As with most of the people of the Budayeen, he preferred to accept the protection of the house of Friedlander Bey, but he was scared out of his mind when it came time to repay that generosity.

  "Then call me tomorrow, about noon," I said. "You have my number at Papa's mansion, don't you?"

  "Uh huh," said Jacques nervously.

  "Oh," said Mahmoud, "have you sold out now, too?"

  "Look who's talking," said Jacques. "Mr. Lackey of Shaykh Reda himself finds room to criticize."

  "I'm no one's lackey," said Mahmoud, half-rising from his seat.

  "Oh no, of course not," said Saied.

  I ignored their childish debate. "I've got the hardware, Jacques," I said, "and I've been playing around with it, and it definitely looks like a good deal for us as well as for the club owners who subscribe. You don't have to worry about doing anything illicit—we have a complete set of permits from the city, and everything's legal and aboveboard."

  "Then why is Friedlander Bey interested?" said Mahmoud. "I didn't think he cared about anything that wasn't at least a little bit bent."

  The Half-Hajj leaned back in his chair and regarded Mahmoud for a few seconds. "You know, my friend," he said at last, "someday somebody's going to take care of that mouth of yours. You're going to wish you'd never changed sexes and joined the big boys."

  Mahmoud only laughed disdainfully. "Any time you think you're man enough, Saied," he said.

  The bickering was interrupted by the arrival of Yasmin. "How y'all are?" she asked.

  "Fine," said the Half-Hajj. "We're just sitting here in the sun, drinking and eating baklava and listening to ourselves claw at each other's throats. Have some?"

  Yasmin was tempted by the honey pastry, but she exercised more restraint than I gave her credit for. "No," she said, smiling, "can't do it. Hips are just right the way they are."

  "I'll second that," said Jacques.

  "You bad boy," said Yasmin.

  "Listen, Yasmin," I said.

  "The hell do you want, married man?" she said bitterly.

  "I was only wondering when you were going to drop this jealousy thing."

  "What jealousy thing?" she asked haughtily. "You think I even think about such midges and mites as you and Indihar? I have more important things on my mind."

  I shook my head. "As I see it," I said, "Islam gives me the option of marrying up to four wives, if I can support them all equally. That means that I can still date, even though I'm married to Indihar. And I'm married to her in name only."

  "Ha!" cried Saied. "I knew it! You've never consummated that wedding, have you!"

  I glared at him for a few seconds. "Yasmin," I said, "give me a break, all right? Let me buy you dinner sometime. I think we need to talk."

  She frowned at me, giving me no encouragement at all. "We'll talk," she said. "We'll talk at the club tonight, if Indihar gives you permission to go out." Then she grabbed a piece of baklava, turned on her heel, and headed off down the Street.

  Not long after she left, I got up and bid my friends good day. Then I had Kmuzu drive me back to Papa's estate. I still had paperwork to attend to.

  The third meal of the day, of course, was chez Shaykh Reda. When I returned home after my lunch break, I tried to get a little work done. It was very difficult. I knew Friedlander Bey was counting on my contribution to both the datalink project and the on-going business of stabilizing or destabilizing the Muslim nations who came to us for help. Still, on this particular day, I couldn't help worrying a little about what was in Abu Adil's mind. Why had he invited us to dinner? To finish what he'd started when he'd had us kidnapped several weeks ago?

  That's why I wore a small needle gun on my belt, turned around so that it rested in the small of my back. I chose the needle gun because it was constructed entirely of plastic, and wouldn't show up on an X-ray. It was loaded with razor flechettes, unpoisoned. Half a clip of those suckers would rip away enough flesh to be memorable, if the target survived.

  I'd worn my best outfit to the wedding reception Shaykh Mahali had thrown, and so it had been destroyed by the rigors of our desert travels. I'd also given the valuable ceremonial dagger to Shaykh Hassanein. Tonight I wore my best remaining outfit, a long white gallebeya decorated with hand-embroidered flowers in a cream-colored silk thread. It was a beautiful gallebeya, and I was very proud of it. It had been a gift from a family in the Budayeen I'd given a little help to.

  I wore sandals and a black-and-white checked keffiya. I also carried a sheathed dagger in the manner of the Bedu, front and center against my belly. When I put it on my belt, I decided to ask Friedlander Bey if we could bring bin Turki with us to the dinner. We'd already planned to bring Tariq and Youssef. We didn't want to offer ourselves up within Shaykh Reda's stronghold without a small army of our own.

  Papa agreed that bin Turki might be useful, so he accompanied the four of us to Shaykh Reda's mansion in the city's western district, Hamidiyya. Abu Adil squatted like a toad in the center of one of the worst parts of town. His own estate was rivaled in the city only by Papa's and Shaykh Mahali's, but Shaykh Reda was surrounded by the burned-out, abandoned, fallen-in tenements of Hamidiyya. It always reminded me of Satan sitting at the center of his hellish realm.

  We drove through a gate in the high, brown brick wall that enclosed the mansion and stopped to identify ourselves to a guard. Then we parked the car and the five of us went to the front door. This time we wouldn't permit our party to be separated.

  We had no trouble with the man who answered the doorbell. He led us to a small dining hall where places for ten had been set. Our group took seats at one end of the table, and we waited for Abu Adil to make his entrance.

  And that's just what he did. A hefty bodyguard type entered first, followed by Shaykh Reda in a wheelchair, which was pushed by his little Kenneth. Following them came two more bruisers. I have no doubt that the shaykh watched our arrival from somewhere and made up a guest list of his employees equal to our number. Five against five.

  "I'm happy you've chosen to honor my house," said Abu Adil. "We should do this sort of thing more often. Perhaps then there'd be less tension between us."

  "We thank you for the invitation, O Shaykh," I said warily.

  Kenneth was looking at me appraisingly. Then he gave a quiet laugh and shook his head. He had nothing but contempt for me, and I didn't know why. Maybe if I broke his fingers and toes for him, he'd lose that smirk. It was a harmless fantasy, I thought.

  Servants brought in platters of couscous, kefta kabobs, roast lamb, and vegetables in wonderful, succulent sauces. "In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful, may it be pleasant to you!" said Shaykh Reda.

  "May your table last forever, O Father of Generosity," said Friedlander Bey.

  Papa and I ate sparingly, watching for any sign of treachery from Abu Adil or his musclemen. Bin Turki ate as if he'd never seen food before. I'm sure he'd never seen such a banquet.

  I whispered to him, "Shaykh Reda is probably trying to seduce you away from our household." I didn't really mean it. It was a joke.

  Bin Turki turned white. "You don't think my loyalty is for sale, do you?" His hands began to tremble with suppressed emotion.

  "I was just kidding, my friend," I said.

  "Ah," he said, "good. Your city humor is sometimes incomprehensible to me. In fact, I don't even know what's happening here tonight."

  "You're not the only one," I told him.

  Abu Adil's goons said nothing, as usual. Kenneth said nothing, either, although he rarely turned his gaze away from me. We ate in silence, as if we were waiting for some dreadful trap to spring shut around us. Finally, when the meal was almost at an end, Shaykh Reda stood and began to speak.

  "Once again," he said, "it's my great pleasure to present a little gift to Marîd Audran. Let us give thanks to Allah that he and Friedlander Bey
have returned safely from their ordeal."

  There was a chorus of "Allah be praised!" around the table.

  Abu Adil reached down and got a gray cardboard box. "This," he said, opening it, "is the uniform that befits your rank of lieutenant in the Jaish. You command three platoons of loyal patriots, and lately they've grown restive, wondering why you do not attend our rallies and exercises. One reason, I thought, was that you didn't have a proper outfit. Well, you no longer have that excuse. Shaykh Marîd, wear this in good health!"

  I was struck speechless. This was even more ludicrous than the original commission. I didn't know what to say, so I just stammered a few words of thanks and accepted the boxed uniform. A lieutenant's insignia had already been added to it.

  Shortly thereafter, when none of us could eat another thing, Shaykh Reda excused himself and wheeled out of the dining room, followed by Kenneth and his three goons.

  Bin Turki bent toward me and whispered, "What was wrong with him? Why is he in a wheelchair? Surely he's wealthy enough to afford any sort of medical aid. Even in the Rub al-Khali, we heard marvelous tales of the miracles that are wrought by civilized physicians."

  I spread my hands. "He's not really an invalid," I explained in a low voice. "His 'hobby' is collecting personality modules recorded from actual sufferers from all sorts of fatal illnesses. It's a perversion called Proxy Hell. He can enjoy— if that's the right word—the worst pain and disablement, and pop the moddy out whenever it gets to be too much. I suppose he's got an unusual tolerance for pain, though."

  "That's contemptible," whispered bin Turki, frowning.

  "That's Shaykh Reda Abu Adil," I said.

  In two or three minutes, we were all walking back to our car. "How about that," exclaimed Tariq. "The one time we're ready for him and come into his house armed to the teeth, he just serves us a dandy meal and drops a uniform on Shaykh Marîd."

  "What do you think that means?" asked Youssef.

  "I trust we'll find out eventually," said Papa. I knew his words were true. There had to be something devious happening at that meal, but I couldn't imagine what.

  And did it all mean that we were now obliged to have them over sometime? If this kept going, sooner or later the two houses would end up going to movies and watching prizefights on the holoset and drinking beer together. I couldn't face that.

  12

  I waited for Yasmin so that we could have our talk, but she never came into work that night. I went home about two o'clock in the morning, and let Chiri close up. There was no breakfast meeting with Papa the next day, so I told Kmuzu I wanted to sleep a little later. He gave me permission.

  When I awoke, I eased into the morning. I took a long, hot bath and reread one of my favorite Lutfy Gad murder mysteries. Gad was the greatest Palestinian writer of the last century, and I guess now and then I unconsciously imitate his great detective, al-Qaddani. Sometimes I fall into that clipped, ironic way al-Qaddani spoke. None of my friends ever noticed, though, because as a group they're not terribly well read.

  When I emerged from the tub, I dressed and skipped the well-balanced breakfast Kmuzu'd prepared for me. He gave me a grim look, but he'd learned over many months that if I didn't feel like eating, I wouldn't eat. Unless Papa demanded it.

  Kmuzu silently handed me an envelope. Inside was a letter from Friedlander Bey addressed to Lieutenant Hajjar, requiring that I be reinstated on the city's police force for the duration of my investigation of Khalid Maxwell's death. I read it through and nodded. Papa had an uncanny ability to anticipate that sort of thing. He also knew that he could "require" something of the police and it would be done.

  I put the letter in my pocket and relaxed in a comfortable black leather chair. I decided it was time to check in with Wise Counselor. The Counselor was a personality module that gauged my current emotional state, and offered a super-realistic fantasy that expressed my problems and offered a symbolic—sometimes indecipherable—solution. "Bismillah," I murmured, and reached up to chip the moddy in.

  Audran was transformed into the great Persian poet, Hafiz. He'd led a life of luxury, and his poems also contained imagery that stricter Muslims objected to. Over the years, Audran had made a large number of enemies, so that when he died, the strict Muslims argued that his body should be denied the blessing of the traditional funeral prayer. Their reasoning condemned Audran with his own words.

  "Has the poet not written about unholy practices such as imbibing alcoholic beverages and indulging in promiscuous sex?" they asked. "Listen to his poetry:

  "Come here, come here, cup-bearer!

  Pass around and give the cup,

  For love looked free and easy at first,

  But too many troubles have come up."

  This fueled a long debate between Audran's enemies and his admirers. Finally, it was decided that the correct course of action should be dictated by a random reference to his own poems. To that end, a large selection of Audran's verses were written out on slips of paper and thrown into an urn. An innocent child was asked to reach into the urn and pick one verse. This is the couplet that the child drew:

  In the funeral of Audran gladly take part,

  For sinful as he was, for Heaven doth he start.

  The verdict was acknowledged by both sides, and so Audran was given a funeral with all proper ceremonies. When the story came to its end, Audran reached up and popped the moddy out.

  I shuddered. Those fantasies that showed me dead and hovering over my own funeral always gave me the creeps. Now I had to decide what it meant, how it related to me. I hadn't written a poem in fifteen years. I filed the vision away as something to discuss Real Soon Now with Kmuzu.

  It was time to start digging up information about Khalid Maxwell and his violent death. The first step, I decided, was to go to the copshop that oversaw the activities in the Budayeen, where Lieutenant Hajjar was in charge. I didn't hate Hajjar, he just made my skin crawl. He wasn't the sort of person who derived pleasure from pulling the wings from flies—he was the sort of person who'd go into the next room and watch someone else do it, through a secret peephole.

  Kmuzu drove me in the cream-colored Westphalian sedan to the precinct house on Walid al-Akbar Street. As usual, there was a crowd of boys on the sidewalk, and I waded through them flinging coins left and right. Still they begged, chanting, "Open to us, O Generous One!" I liked the kids. It wasn't so long ago that I myself haunted the edges of crowds, pleading for money to feed myself. Somewhere along the line the roles were reversed, and now I was the big rich guy. I was rich, all right, but I never forgot my origins. I didn't begrudge the kids their baksheesh.

  I entered the police station and headed toward the computer room on the second floor. I was braced a couple of times by uniformed men, but I said nothing, just showing them the letter with Friedlander Bey's signature. The cops all melted aside like phantoms.

  I remembered very well how to operate the computers. I even recalled the secret backdoor password, Miramar. The staff in this station house had rather relaxed standards, and I was confident they hadn't gotten around to changing that password in months. I guess the risk of an outsider getting into the police files was preferable to making the entire force memorize a new word.

  I sat down at the beat-up old Annamese data deck and began murmuring commands. The female sergeant who acted as the data librarian saw me and hurried over. "I'm sorry, sir," she said in a voice that wasn't sorry at all, "but these decks are not accessible to the public."

  "You don't remember me, do you?" I asked.

  She squinted one eye and considered. "No, so you'll have to leave."

  I took out Papa's letter and showed it to her. "I've just got a few minutes' work to do here," I said.

  "I'll have to check on this," she said, folding the letter again and giving it back to me. "No one's spoken to me about any of this. I'll call the lieutenant. In the meantime, leave that data deck alone."

  I nodded, knowing that I'd have to wait for her to work her wa
y up through the chain of command. It didn't take long. In a few minutes, Lieutenant Hajjar himself came huffing into the data library. "What do you think you're doing, Audran?" he shouted. His expression was a black scowl.

  I held out Papa's letter. I wasn't about to stand up or try to explain myself. The letter could speak for me, and I felt like exerting a little dominance. Hajjar needed to be put in his place every once in a while.

  He snatched the paper from my hand and read through it once and then again. "What's this?" he said harshly.

  "It's a letter. From you know who, you've already read it."

  He glared at me and crumpled the sheet of paper into a ball. "This letter don't cut it with me, Audran. Not at all. And what are you doing at large? You were formally exiled. I should take you into custody right now."

  I shook my finger at him and smiled. "Nuh uh, Hajjar. The amir's granted us an appeal, and you know it."

  "Still," he said.

  "Still," I said, taking the crumpled paper and holding it against his temple. "You really don't think this letter cuts it, huh?"

  "No way." He sounded much less sure this time.

  "Well," I said calmly, "Papa has plenty of people who could cut you."

  Hajjar licked his lips. "Well, what the hell do you want, then?"

  I smiled in a completely phony friendly way. "I just want to use this data deck for a minute or two."

  "I suppose that could be arranged. What are you trying to dig up?"

  I spread my hands. "I want to clear our names, of course. I want to find out what you know about Khalid Maxwell."

  A look of fear came and went in his eyes. "I can't allow that," he said. Now his voice shook noticeably. "It's classified police business."

  I laughed. "I'm classified police," I said. "At least for the moment."

  "No," he said, "I won't allow it. That case is closed."