by Neil Plakcy
He was still shaky when he entered the office, so he sat in the visitor chair and picked up the ornate oil lamp from his desk, the one Sveta had nearly knocked over.
It had been made of hand-forged brass over a thousand years before, by a metalsmith in Constantinople who had a touch of magic in his fingers. It was about twelve inches long, with an ornate, half-moon shaped handle and a long narrow spout. The brass lid had been engraved with an image of the Hagia Sophia cathedral, which added to its mystical power.
He wrapped his hands around it. The brass was always warm to the touch, and as he rubbed the lamp he felt power and energy move from its reservoir into him.
No genie emerged from the lamp as he rubbed it; he always thought that was a foolish myth. How could such a small container hold the power of a full-blown genie? The lamp was a reservoir for centuries of energy, power, and yes, even magic. It always rejuvenated him to touch it.
He had to be very careful in the exercise of his powers in this time and place. Centuries before, in the courts of the Ottoman emperors, there had been a greater acceptance of magic and a tolerance for the inexplicable. Even then, though, Biff had been forced into careful habits. Any vizier or minor noble could attempt to trap him and force him into granting favors, or seek to punish him for granting a wish to an enemy.
Those had been exciting days, living with Farishta, dabbling in court intrigue, the two of them merging their powers to create phenomena neither could have done alone. As science came to dominate faith, Biff and the other genies faded into the background. A cardinal rule of his kind was that a genie could not use his or her magic for personal service. So he couldn’t create a mansion for himself with a bank account to accompany it. The code allowed him to lie to humans, trick them, or steal from them, all while pretending to be in their service, but Biff preferred to perform honest tasks in exchange for the currency of whatever culture he found himself in.
His powers were limited by the source of his energy: the earth itself. With the touch of a hand, he could heal minor illnesses and nurture plants and animals. He could marshal the dust in the air to allow him to transform into a faint cloud and slip past any lock, and he could connect mentally with most kinds of mechanisms.
But he could not fly, he could not teleport, and he could not transform himself into any other creature. He could replicate simple objects – for example, generating a handkerchief to give to a sobbing woman. He could manipulate a human’s view of reality within limits but he couldn’t change someone’s destiny. He couldn’t make one person love another or hate another outside of the use of persuasion.
His greatest danger was water. Just the touch of a few raindrops caused his skin to swell and blister; if he were caught in a rainstorm his whole body would rebel and it would take days to heal, drawing on the power of his lamp—or the touch of a water-based genie like Farishta.
Once he felt refreshed, he released the lamp and returned to his desk chair. The missing files were a problem, certainly; his client was paying him to find them. But if Farishta was involved, the possibility of a dangerous situation had just increased a thousand-fold.
Her name meant angel in Pashto, but she was far from angelic. Over the years, she’d been like a little devil sitting on Biff’s shoulder, encouraging him to deviate from the straight and narrow. She was more alluring than any mortal woman could ever be, with unblemished skin the color of milky coffee, and jet-black hair that curved and coiled around her face as if she was a distant relative of Medusa. Her eyes were dark as olives cured in the sun, and her figure was exquisitely proportioned.
The days and nights he had spent in her company had been the most passionate, the most exciting, the craziest and wildest and most dangerous of his life. She was like a drug he could never get enough of. She parceled her favors out to him, sometimes spending weeks at a time in his company, other times disappearing for what seemed like eternities.
He closed his eyes and remembered the last time he had seen her. He was living in Beirut, and when the Lebanese civil war broke out in 1975, he closed his agency and determined to live on his investments for a while. He tracked Farishta to Florida, finding her living on a houseboat at a resort in Islamorada, in the Florida Keys.
All her power came from the water, and from her association with it. Biff remembered standing at the dock, staring forward at the boat called Life in a Bottle, which rocked gently at the end of the pier. He could smell Farishta; she was there, just a few feet away, alone. All he had to do was walk down the floating pier and step onto the boat, and she would be his again.
A breeze stirred in the sheltered bay, and salt water stung his face, arms and legs like tiny needles. But still he didn’t move.
Farishta stepped out onto the stern of the boat, wearing a tank top and filmy harem pants. Her long black hair was gathered on top of her head in a careless pile, ebony strands curling around her face. She raised her hands in the air like an orchestra conductor, then swooped them around. A waterspout rose in the bay, twirling like a dervish, and headed straight for the dock.
“Are you just going to stand there?” Farishta called, as the air pressure around him dropped and the wind began to howl.
It was the devil’s own choice. Stand there and be destroyed by the approaching column of water, or run forward and be destroyed, once again, by the woman he loved. He took off at a trot, reaching the boat in a few long strides, jumping on board and sweeping Farishta into his arms.
The column of water swept over the boat, drenching them both. But holding Farishta, Biff felt nothing but ecstasy. He picked her up and carried her below, where they made love in the main cabin, the humidity and smell of salt water their accompaniment.
Biff could not tolerate water, except in Farishta’s presence. Though both of them were genies, she was a marid, one who derives her power from the sea. Biff was an ifrit; his strength came from the earth itself. Though technically ifrits were stronger than marids, when it came to Farishta, all bets were off.
Farishta was a troublemaker; she was the woman Biff couldn’t live without, but living with her was full of drama and danger, things he instinctively fought against. She thought of human beings as her personal playthings, loving to create chaos wherever she went. If she was involved in the theft of the photos, even peripherally, then the Ovetschkins were in for serious trouble.
If he could figure out why the files had been stolen, he was closer to understanding what Farishta was up to. And he couldn’t help himself; he wanted to see her again, damn the consequences.
He went back to the facts of the case. Douschka Ovetschkin had told Sveta she wanted the pictures for her husband. But he was angry about them for some reason, and wanted the original files, most likely to destroy them. His wife was unable to supply them, because they had remained with the photographer. She must have sent her husband to Sveta.
Ovetschkin had no motivation to steal them himself, then come to Sveta demanding them. But who else could have known about the pictures, and stolen the files?
Biff opened an Internet connection and found an address for Kiril and Douschka Ovetschkin, on Collins Avenue, the main thoroughfare through Sunny Isles Beach. He dialed their number, but got an answering machine instructing him in Russian to leave a message. He declined.
There was little online about Douschka or Kiril; they seemed like ordinary citizens. Kiril was a member of a few different groups, and he and his wife had attended a number of fund-raising events which had been publicized in the local paper. That was about it. Of course, if Ovetschkin was a member of the Russian Mafiya, as Sveta thought, he would be unlikely to advertise that on Facebook or Twitter. He could just imagine the tweets: 3 new protection clients – LOL!
Frustrated, he changed directions. What did he know about the larcenist? He turned back to the computer, opened a new document, and began typing. The man was a bodybuilder, about thirty, of Russian Jewish origin, who used an expensive cologne. But how could these traits help track him?
He flipped the top down of his Mini Cooper convertible and headed east, crossing the interstate and then turning south at US 1. To get to Collins Avenue he had to turn left at the causeway, where he got stuck behind a line of tourists and snowbirds on their way to Miami Beach. He used the time he waited to consider the thief’s motives.
Why steal a set of digital photos of a woman in sex poses? To sell to a magazine? To use for blackmail? The crook was Russian, and so were the Ovetschkins. Did he know them? Have a secret crush on Douschka and want the pictures for his own enjoyment? Had the purloiner stolen the files in order to extort money from Kiril, or create some kind of hold over him?
The light changed and Biff turned onto the causeway, which soared past the side of Aventura Mall and gave him a quick glimpse of sunlight shimmering on the blue, green and purple ocean before it dipped back down to ground level. Such a beautiful day, he thought. A day to be sunbathing, or goldbricking with a tropical drink, not crawling in traffic.
European tourists in skimpy bathing suits headed toward the beach carrying lounge chairs, and fashionable mothers pushed strollers or watched their children cavort at the playground. The new condo towers gleamed in the morning sun, and Biff wondered how many of those luxury beachfront apartments were occupied, and how many were on the rolls of distressed properties repossessed by mortgage companies.
The gym was located at the back of one of the ubiquitous U-shaped shopping centers along Collins Avenue, and it seemed like every parking spot was taken. He found one by waiting for a young woman to unload a shopping cart full of groceries into her monstrous SUV. Once everything was loaded, she took an inordinate amount of time adjusting her mirrors, fastening her seat belt, and probably calling everyone in her cell phone address book before backing out.
He walked across the lot as the sun beat down on him. Through the tall glass windows of the gym, he saw women in an aerobics class, jumping up and down like deranged kangaroos. He slipped past the fit young Russian woman at the registration desk while she was issuing a credit to a customer because a spinning class had been cancelled, and walked to the locker room.
The smell hit him as he pushed open the swinging door. Sweat, festering workout clothes, clashing soaps, too much cologne and the pine-scented cleanser used to disinfect the showers. He stepped to the side and began the slow, tedious process of isolating and then ignoring each scent. As he did, he surveyed the crowd.
Though it was mid-morning, the room was busy, with buff twenty-something men who probably worked the late shift at bars and restaurants sharing space with elderly men whose stomachs sagged with the weight of too much vodka and honey cake. The predominant language was Russian, and Biff identified accents from Vladivostok, Moscow and Georgia as he stowed his bag in a locker.
“Proshhat!” a heavyset, older man said, pushing roughly past him. It was hardly worth saying excuse me, Biff thought, if you were going to be rude. The man was as hairy as a bear, and he glared at Biff, as if challenging him to complain. Biff ignored him; sometimes humans were just assholes.
Biff closed the locker and walked out to the main floor. Most of the space was taken up with exercise equipment that reminded him, all too uncomfortably, of medieval torture devices. He chose a set of free weights along one wall, adjusted the number of disks on the bar, then lay down on the bench and began lifting.
It was simple and mindless, and left his brain free to focus on the environment around him. He was sure that the thief had been there, and recently; he smelled the same combination of fancy Italian scent with the tang of a circumcised, steroid-using bodybuilder of Russian origin.
But that was as far as he could get. The man wasn’t in the building, and without a name to attach to the scent, he was stymied. As he lifted, a pair of young guys speaking in Russian stepped up to the weights beside him, and he eavesdropped on their conversation.
“So, Yuri, you are coming to Marouschka tonight?” the slimmer one asked, lying on his back on the weight bench. He had a wispy mustache and hair that hung too low over his ears.
“Is there a party?” Yuri asked, assuming the spotter position behind his friend.
“Only the best one this month,” his friend replied. “All the guys from the gym will be there, with the prettiest Russian girls in town.” He grasped the weight bar with his gloved hands. “I want to get lucky. You can be my wing man.”
Yuri was the better-looking of the two, with a slightly crooked nose that gave character to his young, unlined face. Biff could see that he was the one the girls would flock to, and his friend could pick up Yuri’s discards.
Yuri made a Russian pun on the word “wing,” and Biff forced himself not to laugh and betray his understanding of the language. As the young man on the bench went through his repetitions, he and his friend continued a rowdy discussion of the party, the girls expected, and what could happen, all in obscene slang.
Biff noted the details of the event. It was the best lead he was likely to find at the gym, since the burglar wasn’t there and Biff still had no name to attach to him. He did not shower after his workout; his body did not sweat, and besides, the water would scald his skin.
From the gym, he walked across the parking lot to Moscow Video and sniffed up and down the aisles. No luck. There was no trace of the man at Lula Kebab, where Biff ate a couple of pierogies, nor at Kalinka, where he nibbled on smoked herring snacks. Either the thief was so Americanized he lived off McDonald’s and Pizza Hut, or he had a wife who did all the cooking and shopping.
Because he couldn’t resist, Biff stopped at the Crimean Sea bakery on Collins Avenue and treated himself to a kartoshka, a chocolate-covered pastry that looked like a potato. He thought perhaps the man he was looking for had been in the bakery, but at least a week or more before.
His last stop was the newsstand, in the retail center in the middle of Sunny Isles Boulevard. The shelves were stocked with papers from all over the world, from Helsinki to Hong Kong and Dublin to Darwin, as well as Pravda, The Chechen Times, and Epigraph, from Novosibirsk, as well as a number of other Russian papers. He browsed the shelves, picking up a selection of papers from places he’d lived in the past. He could read and understand most languages, at least those with Indo-European roots. He’d never bothered with the tribal languages of South America or the Far East, and Basque left him at sea.
His favorites were the Indo-Iranian and Slavic languages, from Sanskrit and Pashto to Slovak and Serbian. He was always hungry for news in those dialects, and the store fed his habit. He placed a hefty stack of newsprint on the counter, exchanging a couple of pleasantries in Russian with the elderly woman who gave him his change.
Back in the Mini Cooper, he called the Ovetschkins again, but got the same recording. He drove north a few blocks on Collins to the Starbucks, where he ordered a venti raspberry mocha and relaxed in one of the overstuffed chairs with his pile of newspapers, his ears attuned to any Russian he could overhear.
He had chosen to begin with the bodybuilder, ignoring for as long as he could the traces of Farishta’s presence he had felt behind Sveta’s studio. There was no trace of her anywhere in Sunny Isles Beach, and he began to wonder if perhaps he’d imagined that energy signature. He hadn’t sensed her presence at the shopping center; he was sure he would have recognized her, even after so many years had passed. But somehow she was connected to the thief; he was sure of it.
It was time to think about her again, after he had worked so hard to push away her memory. And the first thing he had to do was figure out where she ha
d been for the last twenty years, and what might have brought her back to Florida. He began thumbing through the papers he had purchased. The last time he had news of Farishta, she was in Bosaso, in northern Somalia, a port city on the Gulf of Aden. As he read the accounts of piracy arising from that area, he saw Farishta’s hand. Strange waterspouts, unexpected windstorms, boats capsizing and riches mysteriously disappearing.
He was reading an International Herald Tribune article when he heard a woman’s voice, speaking Russian. She was a beautiful teenager, with perfect skin and flat auburn hair trimmed in wings that reminded him of the sails of a ship. As she waited to order her coffee, she complained to her mother in Russian with a heavy American accent. “But I need a new dress for the party tonight. Daddy would give me the money for something pretty.”
“Your father is too busy to be bothered with your dresses, Natasha.” The older woman stepped up to the counter and ordered a tall chai tea. In Russian, she asked her daughter, “What do you want, little one?”
“I am not little!” Natasha said in English, and stamped her tiny foot, clad in jewel-trimmed sandals with improbably high heels.
“A grande caramel Frappuccino,” the older woman said.
“I want a venti! With extra caramel.”
Natasha’s mother sighed. “Venti.” She paid with a gold Starbucks card and walked toward the pick-up counter, the girl trailing behind her, complaining once more in Russian.
Biff assumed they were talking about the party at the Marouschka restaurant, just up A1A in Hallandale Beach, and so he continued to eavesdrop. Natasha was a tiresome brat, a spoiled Russian-American princess, and he toyed with the impulse to flick a finger and snap her heel, sending her sprawling to the slate floor. But he needed to know whatever he could about the party at the Marouschka.