A Fire in the Sun

by George Alec Effinger

  He glanced up from some paperwork. His expression turned fearful when he saw the look on my face. "Audran," he said. "What is it?"

  I lofted the .45 onto his desk in front of him. "Remember that American we were looking for? The guy who killed Jirji? Well, they found him lying on the floor of some rattrap. Somebody shot him with his own gun."

  Hajjar stared unhappily at the automatic. "Somebody shot him, huh? Any idea who?"

  "Unfortunately, no." I gave him an evil grin. "I don't have a microscope or nothing, but it looks to me like whoever did it also wiped his fingerprints right off the weapon. We may never solve this murder, either."

  Hajjar sat back in his reclining chair. "Probably not. Well, at least the citizens will be glad to hear that Jawarski's been neutralized. Good police work, Audran."

  "Yeah," I said. "Sure." I turned to leave, and I got as far as the door. Then I faced him again. "That's one down, know what I mean? And two to go."

  "The hell you talking about?"

  "I mean Umm Saad and Abu Adil are next. And something else: I know who you are and I know what you're doing. Watch your ass. The guy who blew Jawarski away is out there, and he may have you in his sights next." I had the pleasure of seeing Hajjar's superior grin vanish. When I left his office, he was muttering to himself and reaching for his phone.

  Catavina was waiting in the corridor by the elevator. "What'd you say?" he asked worriedly. "What'd you tell him?"

  "Don't worry, Sarge," I said, "your afternoon nap is safe, at least for a while. But I wouldn't be surprised if suddenly there's a call to reform the police department. You might have to start acting like a real cop for a change." I pushed the button for the elevator. "And lose some weight while you're at it."

  My mood was a little better as I rode back down to the ground floor. When I walked back into the early evening sunlight, I felt almost normal.

  Almost. I was still a prisoner of my own guilt. I'd planned to go home and find out more details about Kmuzu's relationship to Abu Adil, but I found myself heading in the other direction. When I heard the evening call to prayer, I left the car on Souk el-Khemis Street. There was a small mosque there, and I paused in the courtyard to remove my shoes and make the ablution. Then I went into the mosque and prayed. It was the first time I'd done that seriously in years.

  Joining in worship with the others who came to this neighborhood mosque didn't cleanse me of my doubts and bad feelings. I hadn't expected that they would. I did feel a warmth, however, a sense of belonging that had been missing from my life since childhood. For the first time since coming to the city, I could approach Allah in all humility, and with sincere repentance my prayers might be accepted.

  After the prayer service, I spoke with an elder of the mosque. We talked for some time, and he told me that I had been right to come and pray. I was grateful that he didn't lecture me, that he made me comfortable and welcome.

  "There is one more thing, O Respected One," I said.

  "Yes?"

  "Today I killed a man."

  He did not seem terribly shocked. He stroked his long beard for several seconds. "Tell me why you did this," he said at last.

  I told him everything I knew about Jawarski, about his record of violent crimes before he'd come to the city, about his shooting of Shaknahyi. "He was a bad man," I said, "but, even so, I feel like a criminal myself."

  The elder put one hand on my shoulder. "In the Surah of The Cow," he said, "it is written that retaliation is prescribed in the matter of murder. What you did is no crime in the eyes of Allah, all praise to Him."

  I looked deeply into the old man's eyes. He wasn't merely trying to make me feel better. He wasn't just putting my conscience at ease. He was reciting the law as the Messenger of God had revealed it. I knew the passage of the Qur'ân he'd mentioned, but I needed to hear it from someone whose authority I respected. I felt wholly absolved. I almost wept with gratitude.

  I left the mosque in a strange mixture of moods: I was filled with unrequited rage toward Abu Adil and Umm Saad, but at the same time I felt a well-being and gladness I could not describe. I decided to make another stop before I went home.

  Chiri was taking over the night shift when I came into the club. I sat on my usual stool at the bend of the bar. "White Death?" she asked.

  "No," I said, "I can't stay long. Chiri, you got any Sonneine?" She stared at me for a few seconds. "I don't think so. How'd you hurt your arm?"

  "Any Paxium then? Or beauties?"

  She rested her chin in her hand. "Honey, I thought you'd sworn off drugs. I thought you were being clean from now on."

  "Aw hell, Chiri," I said, "don't give me a hard time."

  She just reached under the counter and came up with her little black pillcase. "Take what you want, Marîd," she said. "I guess you know what you're doing."

  "I sure do," I said, and I helped myself to half a dozen caps and tabs. I got some water and swallowed them, and I didn't even pay much attention to what they were.

  18

  I DIDN'T DO anything strenuous for a week or so, but my mind raced like a frantic greyhound. I plotted revenge against Abu Adil and Umar a hundred different ways: I scalded their flesh in boiling vats of noxious fluids; I let loose hideous plague organisms that would make their Proxy Hell moddies seem like summer colds; I hired teams of sadistic ninjas to creep into the great house and slaughter them slowly with subtle knife wounds. In the meantime, my body began to recover its strength, although all the superluminal brain augmentation in the world couldn't speed up the knitting of broken bones.

  The delay was almost more than I could stand, but I had a wonderful nurse. Yasmin had taken pity on me. Saied had been responsible for distributing the story of my heroics. Now everyone in the Budayeen knew how I'd faced down Jawarski single-handed. They'd also heard that he'd been so shamed by my moral example that he embraced Islam on the spot, and that while we prayed together Abu Adil and Umar tried to tiptoe in and kill me, but Jawarski leaped between us and died saving the life of his new Muslim brother.

  Then there was the sequel, in which Umar and Abu Adil captured me and took me back to their evil castle, where they tortured me, mind-raped me, and forced me to sign blank checks and deceptive home repairs contracts until Saied the Half-Hajj burst in to my rescue. What the hell. I didn't see that embellishing the facts a little hurt him or me.

  In any event, Yasmin was so attentive and solicitous, I think Kmuzu was a little jealous. I didn't see why. Many of the attentions I received from Yasmin weren't in Kmuzu's job description at all. I awoke one morning to find her straddling me, rubbing my chest. She didn't have a stitch of clothing on.

  "Well," I said sleepily, "in the hospital, the nurses rarely take their uniforms off."

  "They've had more training," said Yasmin. "I'm a beginner at this, I'm still not entirely sure what I'm doing."

  "You know what you're doing, all right," I said. Her massaging moved slowly south. I was waking up fast.

  "Now, you're not supposed to do anything too strenuous, so let me do all the work."

  "Fine," I said. I looked up at her and remembered how much I loved her. I also remembered how crazy she could make me in bed. Before I got completely carried away, I said, "What if Kmuzu comes in?"

  "He's gone to church. Besides," she said wickedly, "even Christians must learn about sex sooner or later. Otherwise, where do new Christians come from?"

  "Missionaries convert them from people who are minding their own business," I said.

  But Yasmin really didn't intend to get into a religious discussion. She raised up and slid herself down on top of me. She let out a happy sigh. "It's been a long time," she said.

  "Yeah," I said. It was all I could think to say; my concentration was elsewhere.

  "When my hair gets long again, I'll be able to tickle you with it like I used to."

  "You know," I said, beginning to breathe heavily, "I've always had this fantasy—"

  Yasmin's eyes opened wide. "Not with m
y hair, you won't!" she said. Well, we all have our inhibitions. I just didn't think I'd ever suggest anything kinky enough to shock Yasmin.

  I'm not going to claim that we jammed all morning until we heard Kmuzu enter the living room. First of all, I hadn't jammed anyone at all in weeks; second, being together again made both of us frantic. It was a short bout, but very intense. Afterward, we held each other and didn't say anything for a while. I could have fallen back to sleep, but Yasmin doesn't like that.

  "You ever wish I was a tall, willowy, blond woman?" she asked.

  "I've never gotten along very well with real women."

  "You like Indihar, I know you do. I've seen you looking at her."

  "You're crazy. She's just not as bad as the other girls."

  I felt Yasmin shrug. "But do you ever wish I was tall and blond?"

  "You could've been. When you were still a boy, you could've asked the surgeons for that."

  She buried her face against my neck. "They told me I didn't have the skeleton," she said, her voice muffled.

  "I think you're perfect just the way you are." I waited a beat. "Except you've got the biggest feet I've ever seen in my life."

  Yasmin sat up quickly. She wasn't amused. "You want your other collarbone broken, baheem?"

  It took me half an hour and a long hot shower together to restore peace. I got dressed and watched Yasmin get herself ready to go out. For once, she wasn't running late. She didn't have to go to work until eight o'clock that evening. "Coming by the club later?" she asked, looking at my reflection in the mirror over my dresser.

  "Sure," I said. "I've got to make my presence felt, or all you employees will get the idea I'm running a resort."

  Yasmin grinned. "You ain't running nothing, honey," she said. "Chiri runs that club, like she always has."

  "I know." I'd come to enjoy owning the place. I'd originally planned to turn the club back to Chiri as soon as possible, but now I'd decided to hang on to it for a while. It made me feel great to get special treatment from Branch, Kandy, Pualani and the others. I liked being Mr. Boss.

  After Yasmin left, I went to my desk and sat down. My original apartment had been repaired and painted, and I was living again on the second floor of the west wing. Staying just down the hall from my mother had been nerve-wracking, even for only a few days, even after our surprise reconciliation. I felt recovered enough to turn my attention back to the unfinished business of Umm Saad and Abu Adil.

  When I finally decided that I couldn't put it off any longer, I picked up the tan-colored moddy, the recording of Abu Adil. "Bismillah," I murmured, and then hesitantly I reached up and chipped it in.

  Madness, by the life of the Prophet!

  Audran felt as if he were peering through a narrow tunnel, seeing the world with Abu Adil's mean, self-centered outlook. Things were only good for Abu Adil or bad for Abu Adil; if they were neither, they did not exist.

  The next thing Audran noticed was that he was in a state of sexual arousal. Of course; Abu Adil's only sexual pleasure came from jamming himself or a facsimile of himself. That's what Umar was—a frame on which to hang this electronic duplicate. And Umar was too stupid to realize that's all he was, that he had no other qualifications that made him valuable. When he displeased Abu Adil, or began to bore him, Umar would be replaced immediately, as so many others had been disposed of over the years.

  What about the Phoenix Filet What did A.L.M. mean?

  Of course, the memory was right there . . . Alif. Lâm. Mîm.

  They weren’t initials at all. They weren t some unknown acronym. They came from the Qur'ân. Many of the sûrahs in the Qur'ân began with letters of the alphabet. No one knew what they meant. Indications of some mystical phrase, perhaps, or the initials of a scribe. Their significance had been lost through the centuries.

  There was more than one sûrah that began with Alif. Lâm, Mîm, but Audran knew immediately which one was special. It was Sûrah Thirty, called The Romans; the important line read "Allah is He Who created you and then sustained you, then causeth you to die, then giveth life to you again. "It was obvious that, just like Friedlander Bey, Shaykh Reda also pictured his own face when he spoke the name of God.

  And suddenly Audran knew that the Phoenix File, with its lists of unsuspecting people who might be murdered for organs, was recorded on a cobaltalloy memory plate hidden in Abu Adil's private bedroom.

  And other things became clear to Audran as well. When he thought of Umm Saad, Abu Adil's memory related that she was not, in fact, any relation to Friedlander Bey, but that she had agreed to spy on him. Umm Saad's reward would be the removal of her name and that of her son from the Phoenix File. She would never have to worry that someday someone she did not even know might have greater need of her heart or her liver or her lungs.

  Audran learned that it had been Umm Saad who'd hired Paul Jawarski, and Abu Adil had extended his protection to the American killer. Umm Saad had brought Jawarski to the city and passed along the assignments from Shaykh Reda to kill certain people listed on the Phoenix File. Umm Saad was partly responsible for those deaths, and for the fire and the poisoning of Friedlander Bey.

  Audran was sickened, and the horrible, floating feeling of insanity was threatening to overwhelm him. He reached up and grabbed the moddy and pulled it free.

  Yipe. That was the first time I'd ever used a moddy recorded from a living person. It had been a disgusting experience. It had been like being immersed in slime, except that you could wash slime away; having your mind fouled was more intimate and more terrible. From now on, I promised myself, I'd stick with fictional characters and moddy constructs.

  Abu Adil was even more brainsick than I'd imagined. Still, I'd learned a few things—or, at least, my suspicions had been confirmed. Surprisingly, I could understand Umm Saad's motivations. If I'd known about the Phoenix File, I'd have done anything to get my name off it too.

  I wanted to talk some of this over with Kmuzu, but he wasn't back from his Sabbath service yet. I thought I'd see if my mother had anything more to tell me.

  I crossed the courtyard to the east wing. There was a little pause when I knocked on her door. "Coming," she called. I heard glass clinking, then the sound of a drawer opening and shutting. "Coming." When she opened the door to me, I could smell the Irish whiskey. She'd been very circumspect during her stay in Papa's house. I'm sure she drank and took drugs as much as ever, but at least she had the self-control not to parade herself around when she was smashed.

  "Peace be on you, O Mother," I said.

  "And on you be peace," she said. She leaned against the door a little unsteadily. "Do you want to come in, O Shaykh?"

  "Yes, I need to talk to you." I waited until she'd opened the door wider and stepped back. I came in and took a seat on the couch. She faced me in a comfortable armchair.

  "I'm sorry," she said, "I got nothin' to offer you."

  "Uh yeah, that's okay." She looked well. She had abandoned the outlandish makeup and clothing, and now she rather resembled my former mental image of her: Her hair was brushed, she was suitably dressed, and she was modestly seated with her hands folded in her lap. I recalled Kmuzu's comment that I judged my mother more harshly than I judged myself, and forgave her the drunkenness. She wasn't hurting anybody.

  "O Mother," I said, "you said that when you came back to the city, you made the mistake of trusting Abu Adil again. I know that it was my friend Saied who brought you here."

  "You know that?" she said. She seemed wary.

  "And I know about the Phoenix File. Now, why were you willing to spy on Friedlander Bey?"

  Her expression was amazed. "Hey," she said, "if somebody offered to cross you off that goddamn list, wouldn't you do just about anything? I mean, hell, I told myself I wouldn't give Abu Adil nothin' he could really use against Papa. I didn't think I was hurtin' nobody."

  That's just what I'd hoped to hear. Abu Adil had squeezed Umm Saad and my mother in the same vise. Umm Saad had responded by trying to kill ev
eryone in our house. My mother had reacted differently; she'd fled to Friedlander Bey's protection.

  I pretended that the matter wasn't important enough to discuss further. "You also said that you wished to do something useful with your life. You still feel that way?"

  "Sure, I suppose," she said suspiciously. She looked uncomfortable, as if she were waiting for me to condemn her to some horrible fate of civic consciousness.

  "I've put away some money," I said, "and I've given Kmuzu the job of starting up a kind of charity kitchen in the Budayeen. I was wondering if you'd like to help with the project."

  "Oh sure," she said, frowning, "whatever you want." She couldn't have been less enthusiastic if I'd asked her to cut out her own tongue.

  "What's wrong?" I asked.

  I was startled to see tears slipping down her pale cheek. "You know, I didn't think I'd come to this. I'm still good lookin', ain't I? I mean, your father thought I was beautiful. He used to tell me that all the time, and that wasn't so long ago. I think if I had some decent clothes—not that stuff I brought with me from Algiers—I could still turn a few heads. No reason I got to be lonely the rest of my life, is there?"

  I didn't want to get into that. "You're still attractive, Mother."

  "You bet your ass," she said, smiling again. "I'm gonna get me a short skirt and some boots. Don't look at me that way, I mean a tasteful short skirt. Fifty-seven years old ain't so bad these days. Look at Papa."

  Yeah, well, Papa was lying helpless in a hospital bed, too weak to pull his own sheet up under his chin.

  "And you know what I want?" she asked with a dreamy expression.

  I was afraid to ask. "No, what?"

  "I saw this picture of Umm Khalthoum in the souk. Made out of thousands of flat-head nails. This guy pounded 'em all into this big board, then painted each nail head a different color. You can't see what it is close up, but when you step back, it's this gorgeous picture of The Lady."