A Fire in the Sun

by George Alec Effinger

  There was a large living room, a small kitchen, and a bathroom. There wasn't much furniture—a cheap card table and six chairs in the living room, along with a torn black vinyl couch, a small holoset, and four folding cots. There were uniformed cops asleep on two of the cots. I recognized them but didn't know their names. Catavina dropped heavily onto the couch and stared at me across the bare floor. "Want a drink?" he asked.

  "No," I said.

  "Bring me some whiskey then. There's ice in the kitchen." I went into the kitchen and found a good collection of liquor bottles. I tossed a few ice cubes into a glass and poured in three fingers of raw Japanese liquor. "So what are we doing here," I called, thinking of the department's motto, "protecting or serving?" I carried the drink back into the living room and handed it to Catavina.

  "You're serving," he said, grunting. "I'm protecting."

  I sat down in one of the folding chairs and stared at him, watching him down half the Japanese whiskey in one long gulp. "Protecting what?" I asked.

  Catavina smiled contemptuously. "Protecting my ass, that's what. It ain't gonna get shot up while I'm here, that's for damn sure."

  I glanced at the two sleeping cops. "Gonna stay here long?"

  "Till the shift's over," he said.

  "Mind if I take the car and get some work done in the meantime?"

  The sergeant looked at me over the rim of his whiskey glass. "Why the hell you want to do that?" he asked.

  I shrugged. "Shaknahyi never let me drive."

  Catavina looked at me like I was crazy. "Sure, just don't smash it up." He dug in his pocket and fished out the car keys, then tossed them to me. "You better come back and pick me up by five o'clock."

  "Right, Sergeant," I said. I left him staring at the holoset, which wasn't even turned on. I rode the elevator back down to the filthy lobby, wondering what I was going to do next. I felt an obligation to find something that might lead me to On Cheung, but instead it was Jirji Shaknahyi who occupied my mind.

  His funeral had been the day before, and for a while I thought I'd just stay home. For one thing, I didn't know if I was emotionally settled enough to handle it; for another, I still felt partly responsible for his death, and it didn't seem right for me to attend. I didn't want to face Indihar and the children under those circumstances. Nevertheless, on Thursday morning I went to the small mosque near the station house where the memorial was being held.

  Only men were permitted to participate in the worship service. I removed my shoes and performed the ritual ablutions, then entered the mosque and took a place near the back. A lot of the other cops in the congregation seemed to be looking at me with vengeful expressions. I was still an outsider to them, and in their eyes I might as well have pulled the trigger that killed Shaknahyi.

  We prayed, and then an elderly, gray-bearded imam delivered a sermon and a eulogy, going through some weary truisms about duty and service and bravery. None of it made me feel any better. I was truly sorry that I'd talked myself into attending the service.

  Then we all got up and filed out of the mosque. Except for some birds singing and a dog barking, it was almost supernaturally quiet. The sun burned down from a high, cloudless sky. A faint, tremulous breeze rippled the dusty leaves in the trees, but the air was almost too hot to breathe. The odor of spoiled milk hung like a sour mist over the cobblestone alleys. The day was just too oppressive to draw the business out much longer. I'm sure Shaknahyi'd had many friends, but right now they all just wanted to get to the graveyard and get him planted.

  Indihar led the procession from the mosque to the cemetery. She was dressed in a black dress with her face veiled and her hair covered with a black kerchief. She must have been stifling. Her three children walked beside her, their expressions bewildered and frightened. Chiri had told me that Indihar hadn't had enough money to pay for a tomb in the cemetery in Haffe al-Khala where Shaknahyi's parents were buried, and she wouldn't accept a loan from us. Instead, Shaknahyi was laid to rest in what amounted to a pauper's grave in the cemetery on the western edge of the Budayeen. I followed far behind her as Indihar crossed the Boulevard il-Jameel and passed through the eastern gate. People who lived in the quarter as well as foreign tourists came out and stood on the sidewalks as the funeral party made its way up the Street. I could see many people weeping and murmuring prayers. There was no way to tell if those people even knew who the deceased was. It probably didn't make any difference to them.

  All of Shaknahyi's former comrades wanted to help carry the particleboard coffin through the streets, so instead of six pallbearers there was a pushing, shoving mob of uniformed men all straining to reach the flimsy box. The ones who couldn't get near enough to touch it marched alongside and in a long parade to the rear, beating their chests with their fists and shouting testaments of their faith. There was a lot of chanting and fingering of Muslim rosaries. I found myself moving my lips along with the others, reciting ancient prayers that had been inscribed in my memory as a young child. After a while, I too was caught up in the odd mixture of despair and celebration. I found myself praising Allah for visiting so much injustice and horror on our helpless souls.

  In the cemetery, I kept my distance again as the unadorned coffin was lowered into the ground. Several of Shaknahyi's closest friends on the police force took turns shoveling in dirt. The mourners offered more prayers in unison, although the imam had declined to accompany the funeral to its conclusion. Indihar stood bravely by, clutching the hands of Hâkim and Zahra, and eight-year-old Little Jirji held tightly to Hâkim's other hand. Some representative of the city went up to Indihar and murmured something, and she nodded gravely. Then all of the uniformed police officers filed past and offered her their individual condolences. That's when I saw Indihar's shoulders begin to slump; I could tell that she had begun to weep. Meanwhile, Little Jirji looked out over the crumbling tombs and overgrown grave markers, his expression perfectly blank.

  When the funeral was over, everyone left but me. The police department had provided a small spread of food at the station house, because Indihar didn't have the money for that, either. I saw how humiliating the whole situation was for her. Besides grieving for her husband, Indihar also suffered the pain of having her poverty revealed to all her friends and acquaintances. To many Muslims, an unworthy funeral is as much a calamity for the survivors as the death of the loved one itself.

  I chose not to attend the reception at the station house. I stayed behind, staring down at Jirji's unmarked grave, my mind confused and troubled. I said a few prayers alone and recited some passages from the Qur'ân. "I promise you, Jirji," I murmured, "Jawarski won't get away with this." I didn't have any illusions that making Jawarski pay would let Shaknahyi rest any easier, or make Indihar's grief any less, or ease the hardships for Little Jirji, Hakim, and Zahra. I just didn't know what else to say. Finally I turned away from the grave. I blamed myself for my hesitancy, and prayed that it wouldn't lead to anyone else getting hurt ever again.

  The funeral was on my mind as I drove from Catavina's secret coop back to the station house. I heard the rolling rumble of thunder, and it surprised me because we don't get many thunderstorms in the city. I glanced through the windshield up at the sky, but there were no clouds at all in sight. I felt an odd chill, thinking that maybe the thunder had been a humbling sign from God, underscoring my memories of Shaknahyi's burial. For the first time since his death, I felt a deep emotional loss.

  I also began to think that my idea of vengeance would not be adequate. Finding Paul Jawarski and bringing him to justice would neither restore Shaknahyi nor free me from the intrigue in which Jawarski, Reda Abu Adil, Friedlander Bey, and Lieutenant Hajjar were somehow involved. In a sudden realization, I knew that it was time to stop thinking of the puzzle as one large problem with one simple solution. None of the individual players knew the entire story, I was certain of that. I'd have to pursue them separately and assemble what clues I could find, hoping that in the end it would all add up to something indicta
ble. If Shaknahyi's hunches were wrong and I was heading off on a fool's errand, I would end up worse than disgraced. I would surely end up dead.

  I parked the copcar in the garage and went up to my cubicle on the third floor of the station house. Hajjar rarely left his glass booth, so I didn't think there'd be much chance that he'd catch me. Catch me! Hell, all I was doing was getting some work done.

  It had been a couple of weeks since I'd done any serious work at my data deck. I sat down at my desk and put a new cobalt-alloy cell-memory plate in one of the computer's adit ports. "Create file," I said.

  "File name," prompted the data deck's indifferent voice.

  "Phoenix File," I said. I didn't have a lot of actual information to enter. First I read in the names from Shaknahyi's notebook. Then I stared at the monitor screen. Maybe it was time to follow up on Shaknahyi's research.

  All of the satellite decks in the station house were connected to the central police database. The problem was that Lieutenant Hajjar had never entirely trusted me, and so I'd been given only the lowest security clearance. With my password, I could only obtain information that was also available to any civilian who came in the front door of the station house and inquired at the information desk. However, in the months I'd worked at the copshop, I'd casually nosed out all the codes from other paper-pushers with higher ratings. There was a great and active underground involved with circulating classified information among the nonuniformed staff. This was technically highly illegal, of course, but in actual fact it was the only way any of us could get our jobs done.

  "Search," I said.

  "Enter string to be searched," muttered the Annamese deck in its peculiar American accent.

  "Bouhatta." Ishaq Abdul-Hadi Bouhatta was the first entry in Shaknahyi's notebook, a murder victim whose killer had not yet been caught.

  "Enter password," said the computer.

  I had the list of security codes scribbled on a torn sheet of paper that I'd hidden in a tech manual. I'd memorized the top-level password long ago, however. It was a twenty-four-character mix of alphanumerics and Arabic Standard Code for Information Interchange symbols. I had to key those in manually.

  "Accepted," said the data deck. "Searching."

  In about thirty seconds, Bouhatta's complete file appeared on my monitor. I skipped through the personal biography and the details of his death—except to note that he'd been killed at close range by a charge from a static pistol, the same as Blanca. What I wanted to know was where his body had been taken. I found that information in the medical examiner's report, which formed the last page of the file. There'd been no autopsy; instead, Bouhatta's corpse had been delivered to Abu Emir Hospital in Al-Islam Square.

  "Search again?" asked the deck.

  "No," I said. "Import data."

  "Database?"

  "Abu Emir Hospital," I said.

  The computer thought about that for a moment. "Current security code is sufficient," it decided. There was a long pause while it accessed the computer records of the hospital.

  When I saw the hospital's main menu on my screen, I ordered a search of Bouhatta's records. It didn't take long, and I found what I needed. Just as Shaknahyi's notes suggested, Bouhatta's heart and lungs had been removed almost immediately after his death and transplanted into the body of Elwau Chami. I supposed then that Shaknahyi's other information was correct, concerning the victims of the other unsolved murders.

  Now I wanted to take his research one important step further. "Search again?" the hospital's database inquired.

  "Yes," I said.

  "Enter string to be searched."

  "Chami." A few seconds later, I saw a list of five names, from Chami, Ali Masoud to Chami, Zayd.

  "Select entry," said the deck.

  "Chami, Elwau." When the file came up on the screen, I read through it carefully. Chami was a faceless man, not as poor as some, not as rich as others. He was married and had seven children, five sons and two daughters. He lived in a middle-class neighborhood northeast of the Budayeen. The medical records said nothing about any run-ins with the law, of course, but there was one important fact buried in the redundant forms and reports: Elwau Chami operated a small shop in the Budayeen, on Eleventh Street north of the Street. It was a shop I knew well enough. Chami sold cheap Oriental rugs in the front, and he leased the rear of the establishment to an old Pakistani married couple who sold brass ornaments to tourists. The interesting fact was that I knew Friedlander Bey owned the building; Chami probably also worked as gatekeeper for the high-stakes gambling parlor upstairs.

  Next I researched Blanca Mataro, the sexchange whose corpse I'd discovered with Jirji Shaknahyi. Her body had been taken to another hospital, and it had provided urgently needed kidneys and liver to a seriously ill young woman she'd never met. This in itself wasn't unusual; many people signed up to donate organs in case of sudden or accidental death. I just found it rather coincidental that the recipient happened to be the niece of Umar Abdul-Qawy.

  I spent an hour and a half tracking down files on all the other names in Shaknahyi's notebook. Besides Chami, two of the murder victims—Blanca and Andreja Svobik—had ties to Papa. I was able to prove to my satisfaction that of the other four names, two had rather obvious connections to Reda Abu Adil. I was willing to bet a large sum of money that the rest did too, but I didn't need to pursue the matter any further. None of this was ever going to have to stand up in court. Neither Abu Adil nor Friedlander Bey would ever be dragged in front of a judge.

  So what had I learned, after all? One: There had been at least four unsolved murders in the city in the last several weeks. Two: All four victims had been killed in the same way, with a shot at close range from a static pistol. Three: Healthy organs were taken from all four victims after death, because all four were listed in the city's charity file of voluntary donors. Four: All four victims and all four recipients had direct ties to either Abu Adil or Papa.

  I had proved Shaknahyi's suspicion beyond the possibility of coincidence, but I knew that Hajjar would still deny that the murders were related. I could point out that the killers had used a static pistol so that none of the internal organs would be damaged, but Hajjar'd shrug that off too. I was pretty damn certain that Hajjar knew about all this already, which was why I'd been put to pasture investigating On Cheung, instead of looking into Shaknahyi's death. There were a lot of powerful men allied against me. It was a good thing I had God on my side.

  "Search again?" asked my data deck.

  I hesitated. I did have one more name to check, but I really didn't want to know the details. After he'd been shot, Shaknahyi had told me to find out where his parts went. I thought I already knew, although I didn't have an exact name. I was sure that some of Jirji Shaknahyi still lived on in the body of some low-level employee of Abu Adil or Friedlander Bey, or one of their friends or relatives. I was completely disgusted, so I just said "Quit." I looked at the monitor's dark screen and thought about what I needed to do next.

  I was just fighting down the urge to find somebody in the station house who might sell me a few sunnies when the phone on my belt rang. I undipped it and leaned back in my padded chair. "Hello," I said.

  "Marhaba," said Morgan's gruff voice.

  That was about all the Arabic that he knew. I leaned over and grabbed my English-language daddy from the rack, then reached up and chipped it in.

  "Where y'at, man?" he said.

  "All right, praise be to God. What's up?"

  "Remember how I promised to let you know Wednesday where this Jawarski guy's hidin' out?"

  "Yeah, I was wondering when you'd check in."

  "Well, turns out I was maybe a little optimistic." He sounded rueful.

  "Had a feeling Jawarski'd cover his tracks pretty well."

  "Got a feelin' he's had help, man."

  I sat up straight. "What do you mean?"

  There was a pause before Morgan spoke again. "There's a lot of talk on the street about Shaknahyi's shooting. Most p
eople couldn't care less that a cop got dusted, but I can't find nobody with a personal grudge against Shaknahyi himself. And Jawarski's crazy as a bedbug, so nobody I know would lift a finger to help him get clear."

  I closed my eyes and massaged my forehead. "Then why haven't you or I located him yet?" I asked.

  "I'm comin' to that. What it comes down to is it looks like the cops are hidin' the son of a bitch."

  "Where? Why?" Chiri vouched for Morgan's dependability, but this story of his was a little too incredible.

  "Ask your Lieutenant Hajjar. He and Jawarski had some drinks together in the Silver Palm a couple weeks ago."

  In the words of the great Christian humorist, Mark Twain, this was too various for me. "Why would Hajjar, a high-ranking police official, set up one of his own officers for a lunatic escaped killer?"

  I could almost hear Morgan shrug. "You think maybe Hajjar's involved with somethin' crooked, man?"

  I laughed sourly, and Morgan laughed too. "It's not funny, though," I said. "I guessed all along that Hajjar was mixed up with something, but I didn't see him passing orders to Jawarski. Still, it answers some of my own questions."

  "What's it all about, then?"

  "It's about something called the Phoenix File. I don't know yet what the hell that means. Just keep trying to pin down Jawarski, okay? You learn anything useful about him yet?"

  "Some," said Morgan. "He was waitin' around in a jail cell in Khartoum, supposed to be executed. Some guy smuggled a gun in to him. One afternoon Jawarski walks down a corridor and meets two unarmed guards. He shoots the guys, then walks into the jail office and starts firm' all around like a maniac till somebody hands over the keys. Then he unlocks the big main doors and walks out calmly into the street. There's a crowd of people out there 'cause of the gunshots, and he pushes his way through 'em and goes half a block to a waitin' car. Jawarski drives away and there's no sign of him again till he shows up here in the city."

  "When was that?" I asked.

  "Been here a month, maybe six weeks. Pulled a couple of robberies, killed another couple of people. Then the other day somebody recognized Jawarski in Meloul's and called the cops. Hajjar sent Shaknahyi and you. You know the rest."