Tangier fd-1

by William Bayer

  Thus Kalinka's story was completed up to the time of her arrival in Tangier, a jigsaw puzzle of a life in which Hamid had searched for matching edges, gradually filled in holes and gaps. Still, for him, the biggest gap was not yet filled: Why had Peter settled in Tangier, and why had he insisted that Kalinka pretend to be his wife?

  He wondered why this was so important, why, having learned so much, he couldn't leave these matters alone. Am I, he asked himself, behaving like a lover or a detective? Both, he decided finally-I can't help myself; I have to know. Was it because Kalinka was getting away from him, growing, changing, beginning to contradict the personality he thought he had understood as, so laboriously, he'd unraveled her early life? He couldn't say. He knew only that solving the relationship between her and Peter had become an obsession, the problem to which his great troubling questions about all the foreigners had finally been reduced.

  At 2:00 A.M. one morning the telephone rang, jarring Hamid from sleep. Eyes still closed, he grasped about for the receiver, then accidentally knocked it to the floor.

  Kalinka turned on the lights. "I can hear someone talking," she said.

  Hamid strained his ears and heard it too, an urgent garble of Arabic, distant and indistinct. "Yes?" he said, retrieving the receiver. "Yes? Yes?"

  "Aziz, Inspector. I'm at the Surete."

  "You want me to come down there too, I suppose." He sat up, adjusted his pillows. Kalinka covered up her ears and yawned.

  "We need you, Hamid. We've got a fiasco down here. I wouldn't call at this hour if I weren't facing special difficulties-"

  "All right, Aziz. I'll see you in a little while."

  He hung up and began to dress. "There's a certain ironic tone," he explained to Kalinka, "that finds its way, occasionally, into Aziz's voice. Then I know I'm in for it. Absurd passions. A glimpse at the rot of the West." He slipped into his moccasins. "It's the best part of my job."

  There was not a car on Hassan II as he drove quickly through the night, only a few souls still lingering at the cafes off Place de France. Aziz was waiting on the steps of the Surete, pacing back and forth, puffing nervously on a cigarette.

  "This one's something, Hamid-prominent persons, overtones of sex. I have the principals separated now. A few minutes ago, when we put them all together, they started to fight like medina cats."

  Poor Aziz, he thought, so loyal, so intelligent, but when it comes to the foreigners he still gets flustered and confused.

  "Don't worry." Hamid slapped him on the back. "We'll straighten this out soon enough. We'll go to my office. I want to hear everything in sequence. We must conduct our business in an orderly way."

  He stopped off at a lavatory to splash cold water on his face. He wanted, always, to appear clear-headed and set a calm example for his staff.

  When, finally, they were seated in the office, Aziz began to talk. Hamid was pleased by the cogency of his delivery and by gestures he recognized as his own.

  "About an hour ago our operator received a call. The night clerk at the Hotel Continental reported a disturbance in one of his rooms. Since the Continental is in the Dar Baroud sector of the medina, the operator referred the complaint to the First Arrondisement. A pair of officers responded, arrests were made, and since foreigners were involved all the parties were brought down here. This is what we have: Mohammed Seraj, better known as Pumpkin Pie; an old whore who goes under the name of Sylvia; two young prostitutes, a boy and a girl, each about sixteen years old; Mr. and Mrs. Codd."

  "Ashton and Musica Codd?"

  Aziz gave a triumphant grin. "The Codds claim the role of complainants, but there's a difference of opinion on that. For one thing, they were arrested nude. And our investigating officers say Codd tried to thrash them with his walking stick. Pumpkin Pie claims they hired him to convince the teenagers to perform unnatural sexual acts. He says the whole fracas began when he refused and they turned on him in rage. The old whore claims she just happened to be in the next room and came out only when she heard the noise. The teenagers say she's their mother, and that she's in the business of renting them out."

  "What do the Codds say to that?"

  "They're claiming they were framed. They were 'interviewing' the kids, they say, when the whore arrived suddenly with Pumpkin Pie. These two tried to blackmail them, and when they refused to pay out they were brutally stripped and robbed. Codd says he assumed our men were other members of the gang. He merely tried to defend himself with the only implement he had at hand."

  "Whew! All right, Aziz. Arrange six chairs in a crescent around my desk. Bring everybody in. I'm going down to the canteen. I need a cup of coffee before I deal with this."

  He knew he was in for it on his way back upstairs, even before he reached his floor. The clamor of their shrieks echoed in the corridor. He could hear Aziz shouting at them in Arabic and French, warning them that when the Inspector arrived they'd better be still and behave.

  "Shut up," he yelled, walking back into his office. "This is a department of criminal investigation, not a zoo."

  He looked at them, fixed each one of them in turn. Pumpkin Pie, in a soiled undershirt, held himself with the arrogance of a hustler who felt himself desired. The old whore was pathetic-fat and wasted, her face contorted in a toothless grin. The two children were beautiful, but Hamid knew they were capable of infinite lies. And the Codds-Hamid recognized the grimace of shame. Their clothing was disheveled, their faces stained with mercurochrome dots. The famous old Irish playwright and his wife sat as proudly as they could, determined, he could see, to brave things out.

  "A sorry-looking group," he said to Aziz in French. "Is anybody injured? Is everyone all right?"

  "Superficial cuts, Inspector. Our officers were beaten worst of all."

  "The old bugger hit me with his walking stick," said Pumpkin Pie. "I'm going to sue him for damages as soon as I'm released."

  "What makes you think you're going to be released?" Hamid asked.

  "They're perverts, Inspector. Can't you see?"

  "He says the two of you are perverts," Hamid said in English to the Codds.

  "He did, did he? Well-he's a blackmailer." Codd brandished his fist. "He tried to frame us. He ought to be locked away."

  "Publicly thrashed, I'd say," said Mrs. Codd.

  "Piss on you, bitch," said Pie in Arabic. "Your cunt stinks like a rotten fish."

  "Shut up!" screamed Aziz.

  "What did he say?" asked Codd.

  "I'm afraid, Mr. Codd, he was insulting your wife."

  "This is absurd, Inspector. I demand that we be released. Surely you're not going to take the word of scum like this against people like my wife and me. We're tired. We're willing to drop our charges. All we ask is that you release us so we may return to our home and go to sleep."

  "That's all very well, Mr. Codd," said Hamid. "But your charges aren't the only ones we're dealing with tonight."

  "It was all a misunderstanding. I'm sorry about the officers. I'll gladly pay them damages. It was a trivial misunderstanding-nothing more."

  Hamid shook his head. "Not so trivial as all that. Solicitation of minors, attacking a policeman, engaging in a brawl, false registration at a hotel. These are serious crimes that could lead to your expulsion. What a tragedy for you to end your residency here that way."

  Hamid sat back then and watched them squirm. Musica Codd held back a sob. Ashton sat stiff and pale.

  "Before we begin our investigation, I can call in Clive Whittle if you wish."

  "That won't be necessary." Codd vigorously shook his head. "I'm quite certain we can straighten this out for ourselves."

  "Very well," said Hamid, "but I insist on hearing the truth. This absurd story about your 'interviewing' these children is not something I'm prepared to believe."

  "But-"

  "Let me finish. It's a foolish, impractical lie. If you're going to stick to that, you'll only force me to pursue this case. Then this matter, in all its obscene detail, will become the deligh
t of our local press."

  Musica choked. Ashton bowed his head.

  "It's a well-known fact, Mr. Codd, that both you and your wife have, for some time, been trying to arrange yourselves a partouze. It seems as though you've finally succeeded, though perhaps not with the result you had in mind. Do you deny any of this? What were you doing with these children? Do you really expect me to believe you were set up for blackmail by ignorant thugs like these?"

  He turned away before Codd had a chance to answer, switched to Arabic, and addressed himself to the whore. "What have you got to say, you bag of bones?" he asked.

  Sylvia set her mouth to show she wasn't going to talk.

  "You set this whole thing up with Mohammed here. He made a deal with you, didn't he? How much money do you get for selling the bodies of your kids?"

  "That's a lie, Inspector!" Pumpkin Pie screamed out.

  "Shut up! I haven't gotten to you yet!"

  "They're perverts! This is my country! We're brothers in Islam! You cannot side with them!"

  "If he says another word, Aziz, take him back downstairs."

  Aziz nodded, delighted by the whole affair. Hamid rubbed his eyes. Already he was bored.

  "All right," he said, "we have testimony that contradicts. Clearly you children are the key. Now listen, and tell me if I'm right. Your mother told you to go with Mohammed and meet this English couple in the room. She told you to do whatever the English wanted. Isn't that correct?"

  Both children nodded eagerly.

  "So," he said sympathetically, "tell me what went wrong?"

  "We didn't want to do it," said the boy.

  "Yes. I understand. But why the fight?"

  "Him!" The girl pointed at Pie. "He told us we had to or he'd beat us up."

  "Go on."

  "Well," said the boy, "we were scared so we went along. But when we saw the infidels we didn't want to anymore."

  "They were too old," said the girl.

  "Their flesh was gray and fat."

  "We refused. And then the infidels got mad."

  "They started to scream at us."

  "Our mother and Mohammed came in to find out what was wrong."

  "And then what happened?"

  "Then the infidels and Mohammed began to quarrel. Mohammed told the infidels they'd have to pay extra because they were so ugly and old. The infidels refused to pay, and then they started to fight. A little later the police arrived."

  It all sounded perfectly reasonable to Hamid, including the part about asking for extra money from the Codds. The case was simple. It more or less solved itself. All of them were guilty. He wondered what to do. He felt a strong disgust and was gnawed at by the notion that no matter how he handled this affair it would end up being a waste of time. He turned to the Codds, translated what the children had said.

  "Well," he asked, "have you anything to add?"

  "We've been stupid, Inspector," said Codd, "terribly stupid. And of course we're deeply ashamed." The Codds looked at each other, then averted their eyes. "I don't know what more to say."

  Contrition-Hamid had heard it all before. Suddenly he was tired of Europeans, their nasty escapades, their evasive, pleading eyes.

  "I don't know either, Mr. Codd," he said. "All my life I've tried to understand people like you. You come down here, set yourselves up on the Mountain, and then, not content with your luxurious lives, you insist on disgracing yourselves in the gutters of Tangier. Why? Can you explain it? Is it something about our town? Or is it nothing more than the natural weaknesses of your all-too-imperfect flesh?"

  He waited for them to answer, and when they did not he shook his head. "I don't know what to do with you. There's a side of me that wants to be harsh. But I find I have no desire to listen to your confessions or lock you up and watch you writhe. In fact, I think that would be meaningless. You've made fools of yourselves. You've been absurd. You are what you are, and you've done what you've done. You don't even offer me an excuse."

  He looked at them again, taking no particular pleasure in their embarrassment or in his power, as an Inspector, to settle their case as he liked. They were so pathetic, such grotesque antiques, that he felt sick looking at them, sick of their lechery and wounded pride.

  "All right," he said suddenly, "leave. Go home. Next time there'll be no mercy. Now get out of here quick, before I change my mind."

  Ashton Codd started to say something, but Hamid waved his hand. He was not interested in gratitude. He felt tired and filled with scorn.

  "So," said Aziz when they were gone, "do we release the others too?"

  "Yes. Throw them out, all of them. Let's go home and get some sleep."

  When they were all released he gave Aziz a lift. Finally, at home, standing on his terrace, he stared out at the Mountain and listened to the wind.

  The only pleasure he found those hot July days occurred during his noontime marches down the beach. He liked swaggering on the sand, pointing at people and ordering them removed. He felt then that he was doing something, perhaps purifying Tangier, but he learned from Aziz that these actions were not universally admired in other bureaus of the police. One day the Prefect himself suggested Hamid could overplay his hand.

  "Look, Hamid," he said, "what are you trying to prove? Your cleanups don't accomplish anything. You just chase the scum someplace else."

  "Perhaps," said Hamid, "but at least the beach is clean. There's less crime now around the hotels."

  "My advice is to stick to foreigners and not worry so much about vice. Inspectors sometimes go too far and then they find themselves transferred. Ever been to Ksar es Souk? In the Sahara the sun shrivels up your tongue."

  It was a threat without substance, and it failed to fill him with any fear. Still he wondered if he was doing good, if his cleanup was anything more than a charade.

  The day he spotted the joggers on Vasco de Gama turned out to be the hottest of July. As he drove about Tangier, feeling the heat rise hour by hour, he had an inkling of what August would be like, and bit his lip in dread. It would be Ramadan, coinciding with the hottest month as it did once in twenty-five years. Sunrise to sunset without food or a drop to drink-in August that would be more than fasting; that would be agony without respite.

  He spent the day visiting his men, trying to sort out crimes of substance from a backlog of unresolved complaints. He was tired of sex crimes and smugglers of hashish, tempests on the Mountain, vagrant hippies, trivial disputes. Something was happening in Tangier, but he didn't know what it was. He could feel the tension all around but couldn't put his finger on its cause.

  He passed people as he drove: Robin Scott giggling in a cafe, Laurence Luscombe walking wearily on the Boulevard, stooping in the heat. The old actor's face was pale as chalk. His wisps of whitened hair blew crazily in the blowtorch wind.

  He noticed the Freys' limousine parked before a bank. Though he knew they were the notorious Beckers, he also knew there was nothing he could do. Since they were rich, they could keep an extradition order from ever getting to the courts. His only hope, he felt, was to keep up a patient watch. If an Israeli agent ever did turn up, he might manage to catch them all in a tour de force.

  Heading back to the Surete he saw Vicar Wick leaving Madame Porte's salon de the. The man's gait was nervous, his face haggard, tense. There was something about him that struck Hamid-as if he were enduring an enormous strain.

  Finally at seven, exhausted by another incoherent day, he picked up the book Farid had found for him, left his office, and walked downtown. He fought his way through the throngs that crowded Boulevard Pasteur at dusk, passed a band marching back and forth blowing trumpets and beating drums.

  When he walked into his brother's store, Farid's assistant was showing a necklace. His customer, a French lady accompanied by a boxer dog, was debating the merits of the piece and the astronomical asking price. Hamid interrupted, asked the assistant for Farid. The bartering continued. The assistant pointed to the stairs. Hamid mounted them quietly-
only later he asked himself why. He hadn't intended to surprise his brother, but he didn't want to disturb the negotiations in the shop. He had just stepped into the dim upstairs room, the room where Farid stored and showed his rugs, was looking around, wondering where his brother was, when he heard a groan quickly followed by a gasp. He moved slowly, quietly, toward a mound of rugs piled near the wall. He heard the sound again and, following his policeman's instincts, moved closer so he could look behind.

  He guessed they'd heard his footsteps-the next moment their startled eyes looked into his: Farid and Herve Beaumont, the olive-skinned body of his brother, the pale one of the European boy, entwined, naked on the floor.

  The bargaining downstairs had become shrill-he could hear the high-pitched cries of the Frenchwoman demanding a concession in the price. Herve began to giggle, then to rock his body back and forth, but Farid remained still, his face impassive, a look Hamid remembered from their boyhood, as if he expected to be hit.

  A long moment passed between them as they searched each other's eyes. Later Hamid had the impression that they'd tried to peer into each other's brains. But then the mood was broken by a bark-the Frenchwoman's boxer downstairs.

  "I just came by to return the book," he said. He laid it on top of the rugs, turned, and walked away.

  Downstairs Farid's assistant was standing in the doorway talking to another assistant shopkeeper from across the street. "What a bitch," he was saying as Hamid brushed by. "When I met her price she laughed at me, yanked at her dog, and left."

  "Yes," said the other, "they're all like that this year. Pigs' vaginas, tourist trash-"

  A few days after he surprised his brother, Hamid decided to abandon his cleanup of the beach. He also decided that the time had come to confront Zvegintzov without letting him wriggle away.

  He pulled up in front of La Colombe at ten o'clock, long after the shop had closed. This time there'd be no interruptions, customers intruding, or telephone ringing in the back. Pausing in his car, he studied the iron grill pulled down over the store's facade. He remembered sitting out here one afternoon in May wanting to warn Peter about following Kalinka, then hesitating and finally driving off. This time it was different. He knew the questions he must ask. He also knew that Peter was afraid of him, though he had no desire to exploit that fear.