Tangier: A Novel

by Stephen Holgate

  He didn’t know how much time had passed—an hour? two?—when he heard footsteps behind him and looked up to find Draper standing at the other end of the platform.

  Though Draper must have seen him, the pianist had chosen to keep the length of the platform between them. And why not? After inviting Chaffee to come hear him play, Draper must have seen him walk out of the bar only a couple of numbers into his set.

  Grunting with the effort, he rose to his feet, and strolled down the platform with his hands in his pockets until Draper was forced to acknowledge his presence.

  “Look, Draper—Pete—I’m sorry.”

  “S’okay, Chris,” he said without looking at him. “Plenty of people have listened to me play and then made a run for it.”

  Chaffee forced a smile. “It wasn’t your playing. I liked what you were doing. Very much. It’s just that someone started to talk to me and I didn’t want to talk to him. Didn’t want to . . . ” He let the thought dribble out half-formed.

  Draper nodded. “Someone you knew?”

  “No. He just recognized me from somewhere.”

  “You famous or something?”

  “No. Got my face in the papers for the wrong reasons.”

  Draper looked at him, saw someone new. When Chaffee said nothing more, the pianist shrugged one shoulder. “None of my business.”

  “Thanks.”

  An odd sensation came over him, almost like pleasure. He reflected that if he’d known it felt this good to make amends he might have tried it long ago.

  For a moment Chaffee thought the deep vibration he felt in his gut came from the tectonic plates of his soul shifting to a new position. Then a light appeared out of the darkness and the two men shifted toward the center of the platform.

  They found an empty compartment and sat down opposite each other, saying nothing, until Draper asked, “So, how do you like les Ambassadeurs?”

  “Fine, I guess.”

  “How long you going to stay?”

  “Not long. A few more days. You?”

  Draper leaned back in his seat. “Not sure. Kinda open-ended. I’ll stay as long as I’m working, I guess.”

  “You’ve been there long?”

  “Two years now.”

  Chaffee blinked in surprise.

  “You figured it was for just a few weeks or something? I did too.” Draper looked out the window, watched the darkness go by. “Funny, how I came here. A friend of mine back in the States got some money in a settlement from an accident and decided he’d always wanted to own a bar in Portugal. Asked me if I’d come play piano. I figure, sure. Turns out that getting run over by a school bus doesn’t automatically make you a good businessman. Place went under after six months. He went back to Oregon. I decided to stay. Heard there was work for a guy like me in Morocco. I got the gig at the Minzah right off and the one in Asilah a little later. Thought I was on my way. It turns out I’d already gotten as far as I was going to get.”

  “So, you’ve been doing this for two years?”

  “Yeah. Just enough to keep me going. Not enough to get home.” He made a face at himself in the window. “That’s show biz.”

  “It’s easy, getting the work visa?”

  “Work visa?” Draper ducked his head. “Got nothing but a tourist visa—and it lapsed about a year ago.” He smiled at Chaffee, embarrassed. “Yeah, I’m an illegal. Dead set against ’em back home, but here I am one.”

  “And you’ve been staying at les Ambassadeurs the whole time?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Well, someone should tell the owner that his desk clerk isn’t helping the place any. Acts like he owns the place.”

  Draper looked quizzically at Chaffee.

  Chaffee frowned. “What?”

  “He does.”

  “What do you mean? Does what?”

  “He owns the place. Miloud—that’s his name, Miloud Mansour—he’s owned the place for years.”

  Chaffee threw his head back, wondering how many things he could get wrong in this place. What a wearying trip this was getting to be. He tried to recover some ground. “I’d think a hotel owner would hire someone to do that stuff. Get a desk clerk.”

  “Who’s got the money? He has to do almost everything himself. You’ve seen the lady in the breakfast room? His wife. A daughter changes the beds.”

  Chaffee sighed. “Well, he’s not making much of a success of it. Every room needs painting. Carpets are old.”

  Draper unwrapped a stick of gum and offered one to Chaffee, who shook his head. The musician chewed contentedly for a while. “But, y’see, he’s already a success. That’s how he sees it, anyway.”

  Chaffee snorted his derision. “How does he figure that one?”

  “Being a good man, running his hotel, taking care of his family—that’s success. In America you’re not a success at something unless you’re making a ton of money at it. Here, if you’re doing what you figure you’re meant to do—what Allah wants you to be doing—then you’re okay. The guy who owns a little hole-in-the-wall grocery store, he’s not going to bed every night trying to figure how to turn it into a franchise. No, he’s supposed to run his little store, make his living, that’s all. That guy’s a success. Same with some farmer way out in the bled, out in the countryside.”

  Chaffee shook his head. “It’s a different way of looking at things, that’s for sure.” He couldn’t help adding, “Explains a lot about this place.”

  Draper chewed his gum for a while. “I mean, look at me. No record contract. No concert tours. Living hand to mouth. Back home everyone would look at me and see a failure. I’d probably feel the same way. But here I’m a musician. I’ve got a job where I get to make music. So I’m a success. And, insha’Allah, I’ll get to keep doing it.”

  “Insha’Allah?”

  “God willing. That’s the thing to say here. ‘You going to get that job?’ ‘Insha’Allah.’ God willing. ‘You’ll meet me at the café at noon?’ ‘Insha’Allah.’ Back home, you say, ‘I’m going on vacation in two weeks.’ ‘I’m going to make a killing in the markets.’ ‘I’m going to straighten that boy out.’ Here, they figure you can’t know that. You can’t know what’s coming next. That’s up to God. So, hey, you acknowledge that. Insha’Allah.” Draper chuckled. “Of course, it can mean a lot of other things too. It can be a polite way of saying ‘dream on,’ or ‘no way,’ or ‘I’m not really listening,’ or even ‘go to hell.’ Me? I’m going to keep being a musician—insha’Allah.” He laughed. “You can’t know the future. You can’t even know the past.”

  “Can’t even know the past.” Caught by the thought, Chaffee repeated it to himself. “You sound like you’ve become quite the philosopher.”

  Draper dropped his head, played with his gum wrapper. Chaffee sensed for the first time that, despite his seeming garrulousness, Draper was essentially a shy man.

  “Well, like you say,” the pianist said, “it’s a different way of looking at things.” He took the gum out his mouth, stuck the wrapper around it and parked it in the ashtray below the window. “You stay here long enough, you might start seeing things that way yourself.”

  “Insha’Allah.”

  “Damn straight.”

  Both men rode the rest of the short trip in comfortable silence.

  They arrived in Tangier well past midnight and grabbed the last taxi waiting outside the station. When they got back to the hotel, Chaffee made for the stairs, but stopped himself and nodded toward the desk. “Bon soir, Monsieur Mansour.”

  The hotel’s owner made no visible reaction, but Chaffee thought he heard a hint of warmth in his voice as he replied, “Bon soir, Mr. Chaffee.” The Moroccan cleared his throat meaningfully and nodded toward the far side of the lobby.

  Across the room sat a woman in a straight-backed chair set against the wall, hands in her lap, the picture of patient repose.

  “She has been waiting for you for several hours,” Mansour said.

  In a heavy djel
laba, its hood pulled over her head, Chaffee at first didn’t recognize her.

  “Malika.”

  She said nothing as she rose to her feet; her presence told him everything he needed to know.

  “You’ve found Drake.”

  She nodded, held his eyes a moment, then walked toward the door.

  Chaffee turned to Draper. “Sorry, Pete, but I have to go,” he said, and, not waiting for a reply, followed her out into the street.

  She walked steadily, not looking to see if Chaffee was following. The fatigue Chaffee felt earlier had vanished and he felt a tingling of something like excitement and something like dread as she led him away from the center of town and into a neighborhood of small houses and modest apartment buildings ranged along deserted streets.

  After perhaps thirty minutes of steady walking, she stopped before a cinder block apartment house. For the first time since they had left the hotel she looked back at him.

  “This is it?” he asked himself aloud as he tilted his head back to look up at the building.

  “Yes.”

  Though it was only a single word, her use of English startled him.

  She gestured toward the building’s metal door.

  By the dim light over the entrance Chaffee searched the row of mail slots set in the wall until he found the name he was looking for.

  When he looked back to make sure she was coming with him, Malika was already half a block away, walking back toward the medina. He thought of calling after her, but knew she wouldn’t stop. For a moment he considered turning around and following her back to the hotel, but he had to stay for the same reason she had to leave.

  Expelling a ragged breath, he walked up the steps and knocked on the door of number 404.

  Chaffee heard voices from inside, but no one answered. He knocked again, and when he got no reply pounded hard enough to make the door rattle in its frame.

  The door opened a crack, revealing a young Moroccan, perhaps fifteen, peeking uncertainly around the door frame.

  “I’m looking for Pickford Drake,” Chaffee said in French.

  The boy glanced nervously behind him and seemed about to close the door when an unsteady voice called, “Who the hell are you, and what the fuck do you want?”

  The toffee-nosed English accent did nothing to soften the speaker’s vulgarity.

  The words, like bullets whizzing past the boy’s ear, made him duck out of sight as the door swung open.

  Shoving his unsteady hands into his pockets, Chaffee walked into the dim apartment like a man stepping into a cave full of bats.

  It was a small room with a fake-leather couch, a cheap coffee table and a couple of wooden chairs. A television was the room’s sole source of illumination. Around its small screen three boys, even younger than the one who had opened the door, sat cross-legged, two of them with video game controls in their fists, the third looking on. Though it was past one in the morning, they showed no signs of fatigue, their eyes wide, jaws slack, mesmerized by the progress of two stick figures gliding down an imaginary ski slope.

  “Hadir!” the voice shouted again, “Shut the goddam door, you little shit!” Though he clearly wished to come across as strong and commanding, he sounded like a braying donkey.

  The older boy did as he was told and stepped back into the shadows. If the other boys had noticed the newcomer’s entrance they gave no sign.

  Chaffee could make out a man in a bathrobe sitting on the couch, the orange ember of a cigarette glowing like a warning light in the gloom.

  It glowed a little brighter as the man took a drag from the cigarette. “Well?”

  “I’m looking for a man named Pickford Drake.”

  The man stared at Chaffee and rubbed his chin as if someone had socked him. “What for?”

  “I need to talk to him.”

  “Does Drake owe you something?” The man tilted his head to one side in an attitude of suspicion that appeared part of his nature—a permanent state of mind brought on by years of living a variety of lies.

  “Owe me something?” Chaffee repeated. “I don’t know. It’s possible.”

  The man frowned, confused. “How much.”

  “Not money.”

  The man clutched the edges of his robe over his scrawny chest, like a nervous virgin. “Then I don’t know what the hell you’re doing here.” The supercharged wariness in his eyes appeared almost comic, yet something dangerous lurked behind it.

  “I want to talk to you.”

  “Me? So, talk.”

  For a moment Chaffee thought he had the wrong man. The one in front of him looked too young to be the former spy Sands had spoken of. But as Chaffee’s eyes adjusted to the dark he realized the man possessed only the false youthfulness of dyed hair and a terror of aging.

  “I’d prefer to speak to you in private.”

  “Why me?”

  “You’re Pickford Drake, aren’t you?”

  “Well, if you don’t know, how the hell am I supposed to know?” He slapped at the table in front of him. “Christ, no. Drake left. He’s not here. Come back another time.” He closed his eyes and squeezed his head between his hands, his cigarette still smoldering between his fingers. A groan came from deep in his throat, like the growl of a worried dog. “I used to know Drake. Good man, Drake.”

  Sands had warned him Drake might be caught in the coils of dementia—and equally possible he might feign madness if he found it convenient.

  However he might deny it, Chaffee knew he’d found the man he was looking for.

  “I want to talk to you about Rene Laurent.”

  Chaffee had wanted to spring the name on Drake unexpectedly, but the Englishman’s reaction still took him by surprise. With a sharp intake of breath, he turned his head away as if slapped, unable to look at Chaffee. After making a visible effort to compose himself, he croaked, “Never heard of him.”

  Visibly struggling for self-control, Drake stubbed out his cigarette and barked something in Arabic to the boys, still glued to the television. None of them moved. He slammed his hand onto the coffee table and repeated the phrase in a hoarse shout. Without looking at him, the boys at the television dropped their controls, jumped to their feet and disappeared through a doorway that led to the back of the small apartment.

  Drake cocked his chin at Hadir, the one who had opened the door for Chaffee, making clear that the message applied to him too and the older boy ran to follow the others.

  The little scene had given Drake time to regain control of himself. Chin high, he looked at Chaffee. “You’re not Rene Laurent.”

  “How would you know? You said you’d never heard of him.”

  “Fuck you.” He spoke the words with exquisite distinction.

  “Why did you tell the boys to leave?”

  “Fuck. You.”

  “You say you don’t know Rene Laurent. Fine. But I know you. Your name’s Pickford Drake and during the war you worked for British intelligence here in Tangier.”

  His eyes shining with distrust and fear, Drake forced a laugh.

  Chaffee squared his stance. “I believe you knew Rene Laurent, a French diplomat who came here in the summer of 1940 and was still here at least until the fall of that year. He may still be in Morocco. I’m here to find him.”

  The Englishman spread his arms across the back of the couch in an unconvincing show of composure. “If Drake returns,” he said, “I’ll be sure to tell him that some crazed stranger came in raving about an imaginary Frenchman.”

  Chaffee sensed that Drake’s behavior hid a double bluff. He seemed to believe that his boorish persona masked how much he understood, when in fact he was masking from himself how little he could recall of his own life, how much he was swimming alone in dark waters. And the thought of whatever was hidden in those waters terrified him.

  Chaffee took a pen and a business card from his pocket, unable to cross out his old job title anymore than he could have defaced his own tombstone, and scribbled a quick note. “I’m g
oing to give you the name of my hotel. You can leave a message for me when you’re ready to talk about—”

  “Drake’s not here.”

  “—when you’re ready to talk about what you know.” He held the card out to Drake, who turned away like a sulky child and refused to take it.

  Chaffee put the card on the table and took a step toward the door. “I’ll be waiting for Drake to come back.”

  “Go shit yourself.”

  The man’s pathetic bluff followed Chaffee out the door.

  “My god, Chris, what time is it back there?”

  “Don’t know. Past two. Did I wake you up?”

  “I’m not sure,” his wife said. “But you, you can’t sleep?”

  “No, I’m fine. It’s been a long night.”

  He waited for Julie to make a joke about him carousing all evening. Instead, he heard the concern in her voice.

  “What’s going on, Chris?”

  “I don’t know. I just wanted to hear your voice.”

  “Chris, you need to come home. To hell with your mother. She can’t really think that your father’s still alive, still in Morocco. You’re wasting your time.”