“Why?”
“You’ll see. Be prepared, though; it’s pretty sickening.”
That just made me less eager to go into the bathroom. I did, though. I had to, there was no choice. The first thing I saw was a human heart, hacked from Selima’s chest, sitting in the bathroom sink. That made me retch right there. The sink was fouled with her dark blood. Then I saw the blood smeared all over the mirror above the sink. There were uneven borders and geometric patterns and unintelligible symbolic marks drawn on the glass. The most unsettling part were the few words written in blood in a dripping handwriting, that said Audran, you next.
I felt a faint, unreal sensation. What did this insane butcher know about me? What connection did I have with the monstrous slaying of Selima, and of the other Black Widow Sisters as well? The only thought I had was that my motivation up until now had been a kind of gallant desire to help protect my friends, those who might be future victims of the unknown mad murderers. I had had no personal interest, except possibly a desire for revenge, for Nikki’s killing and for the others. Now, though, with my name written in congealing blood on that mirror, it had been made personal. My own life was at stake.
If anything in the world could induce me to take the final step and chip in my first moddy, this was it. I knew absolutely that from now on, I’d need every bit of help I could get. Enlightened self-interest, I called it; and I cursed the vile executioners who had made it necessary.
14
First thing the next morning, I paid a call on Laila at her modshop on Fourth Street. The old woman was just as creepy as ever, but her costume had undergone some slight revision. She had her dirty, thin gray hair shoved up under a blond wig full of ringlets; it didn’t look so much like a hairpiece as something your great-aunt would slip over a toaster to hide it from view. Laila couldn’t do much with her yellowed eyes and wrinkled black skin, but she sure tried. She had so much pale powder on her face that she looked like she’d just busted out of a grain elevator. Over that she had smeared bright cerise streaks on every available surface; to me it appeared that her eye shadow, cheek blush, and lipstick had all come out of the same container. She wore a sparkly pair of plastic sunglasses on a grimy string around her neck—cat’s-eye sunglasses, and she had chosen them with care. She hadn’t bothered to find herself some false teeth, but she had swapped her filthy black shift for an indecently tight, low-cut slit-skirted gown in blazing dandelion yellow. It looked like she was trying to shove her head and shoulders free of the maw of the world’s biggest budgie. On her feet she wore cheap blue fuzzy bedroom slippers. “Laila,” I said.
“Marîd.” Her eyes weren’t quite focused. That meant that she was just her own inimitable self today; if she had been chipping in some moddy, her eyes would have been focused and the software would have sharpened up her responses. It would have been easier to deal with her if she had been someone else, but I let it go.
“Had my brain wired.”
“I heard.” She snickered, and I felt a ripple of disgust.
“I need some help choosing a moddy.”
“What you want it for?”
I chewed my lip. How much was I going to tell her? On one hand, she might repeat everything I said to anyone who came into her shop; after all, she told me what everybody else said to her. On the other hand, nobody paid any attention to her in the first place. “I need to do a little work. I got wired because the job might be dangerous. I need something that will jack up my detective talent, and also keep me from getting hurt. What do you think?”
She muttered to herself for a while, wandering up and down the aisles, browsing through her bins. I couldn’t make out what she was saying, so I just waited. Finally she turned around; she was surprised that I was still there. Maybe she’d already forgotten what I’d asked. “Is a made-up character good enough?” she said.
“If the character is smart enough,” I said.
She shrugged and mumbled some more, snagged a plastic-wrapped moddy in her clawlike fingers, and held it out to me. “Here,” she said.
I hesitated. I recalled thinking that again she reminded me of the witch from Snow White; now I looked at the moddy like it was a poisoned apple. “Who is it?”
“Nero Wolfe,” she said. “Brilliant detective. Genius for figuring out murders. Didn’t like to leave his own house. Someone else did all his legwork and took the beatings.”
“Perfect,” I said. I sort of remembered the character, although I don’t think I ever read any of the books.
“You’ll have to get somebody to go ask the questions,” she said. She held out a second moddy.
“Saied’ll do it. I’ll just tell him he’ll get to knock some heads together whenever he wants, and he’ll jump at the chance. How much for both of them?”
Her lips moved for a long time while she tried to add two figures together. “Seventy-three,” she whined. “Forget the tax.”
I counted out eighty kiam and took my change and the two moddies. She looked up at me. “Want to buy my lucky beans?” I didn’t even want to hear about them.
There was still one little item troubling me, and it may have been the key to the identity of Nikki’s killer, the torturer and throat-slasher who still needed silencing. It was Nikki’s underground moddy. She may have been wearing it when she died, or the killer may have been wearing it; as far as I knew, goddamn nobody may have been wearing it. It may just be a big nothing. But then why did it give me such a sick, desperate feeling whenever I looked at it? Was it only the way I recalled Nikki’s body that night, stuffed into trash bags, dumped in that alley? I took two or three deep breaths. Come on, I told myself, you’re a damn good stand-in for a hero. You’ve got all the right software ready to whisper and chuckle in your brain. I stretched my muscles.
My rational mind tried to tell me thirty or forty times that the moddy didn’t mean anything, nothing more than a lipstick or a crumpled tissue I might have found in Nikki’s purse. Okking wouldn’t have been pleased to know that I’d withheld it and two other items from the police, but I was getting to the point where I was beyond caring about Okking. I was growing weary of this entire matter, but it was succeeding in pulling me along in its wake. I had lost the will even to bail out and save myself.
Laila was fiddling with a moddy. She reached up and chipped it in. She liked to visit with her ghosts and phantoms. “Marîd!” She whined this time in the thrilling voice of Vivien Leigh from Gone With the Wind.
“Laila, I’ve got a bootleg moddy here and I want to know what’s on it.”
“Sure, Marîd, nevah you mind. Just you give me that little ol’—”
“Laila,” I cried. “I don’t have time for any of that goddamn Southern belle! Either pop your own moddy or force yourself to pay attention.”
The idea of popping out her moddy was too horrifying for her to consider. She stared at me, trying to distinguish me in the crowd. I was the one between Ashley, Rhett, and the doorway. “Why, Marîd! What’s come ovah you? You seem so feverish an’ all!”
I turned my head away and swore. For the love of Allah, I really wanted to hit her. “I have this moddy,” I said, and my teeth didn’t move apart a fraction of an inch. “I have to know what’s on it.”
“Fiddle-dee-dee, Marîd, what’s so important?” She took the moddy from me and examined it. “It’s divided into three bands, honey.”
“But how can you tell what’s recorded on it?”
She smiled. “Why, that’s just the easiest thing in the world.” With one hand, she popped the Scarlett O’Hara moddy and tossed it carelessly somewhere beside her; it hit a rack of daddies and skittered into a corner. Laila might never find her Scarlett again. With the other hand she centered my suspect moddy and chipped it in. Her slack face tightened just a bit. Then she dropped to the floor.
“Laila?” I said.
She was twisting into grotesque positions, her tongue protruding, her eyes wide and staring and sightless. She was making a low, sobbing sound, as if sh
e’d been beaten and maimed for hours and didn’t even have the strength left to cry out. Her breathing was harsh and shallow, and I heard it rasp in her throat. Her hands were bundles of dry black sticks, scrabbling uselessly at her head, desperate to pop the moddy out, but she couldn’t control her muscles. She was crying deep in her throat, and rocking back and forth on the floor. I wanted to help her, but I didn’t know what to do. If I’d come any closer, she might have clawed me.
She wasn’t human anymore, it was horribly easy to see that. Whoever had designed that moddy liked animals—liked to do things to animals. Laila was behaving like a large creature; not a housecat or small dog, but a caged, furious, tormented jungle animal. I could hear her hiss, I could see her snapping at the legs of the furniture and striking out at me with her nonexistent fangs. When I stooped near her, she swung on me quicker than I thought possible. I tried to grab at the moddy and came away with three long, bloody slashes down my arm. Then her eyes locked on mine. She crouched, pulling her knees forward.
Laila leaped, her thin, black body launched toward me. She gave a shrieking, wailing cry and stretched out her hands for my neck. I was sickened by the sight, by the change that had come over the old woman. It wasn’t just Laila attacking me: it was the old hag’s body possessed by the corrupt influence of the moddy. Ordinarily, I could have held Laila away with one hand; today, however, I found myself in mortal danger. This beast-Laila would not be happy merely with cornering me or wounding me. It wanted me dead.
As she flew toward me, I sidestepped as neatly as I could, giving her a lot of movement with my arms the way a matador fools the eye of the bull. She crashed into a bin of used daddies, flipped on her back, and drew her legs up as if to disembowel me. I brought my right fist down hard on the side of her face. There was a muffled crack of bone, and she collapsed limply in the bin. I bent down and chipped out the bootleg moddy and tucked it away with my other software. Laila wasn’t unconscious long, but she was stunned. Her eyes wouldn’t focus, and she was muttering deliriously. When she felt better she was going to be very unhappy. I looked quickly around her shop for something to fit her vacant implant. I ripped open a new moddy package—it was an instructional unit, I think, because it came with three daddies. Something about giving dinner parties for Anatolian bureaucrats. I was sure Leila would find that one fascinating.
I unclipped my phone and called the hospital where I’d had my own amping done. I asked for Dr. Yeniknani; when he answered at last, I explained what had happened. He told me an ambulance would be on its way to Laila’s shop in five minutes. He wanted me to give the moddy to one of the paramedics. I told him that whatever he learned about the moddy was confidential, that he shouldn’t divulge the information to the police or even Friedlander Bey. There was a long pause, but finally Dr. Yeniknani agreed. He knew and trusted me more than he trusted Okking and Papa put together.
The ambulance arrived within twenty minutes. I watched the two male paramedics carefully lift Laila on a stretcher and put her into the wagon. I committed the moddy to one of them and reminded him to give it to no one but Dr. Yeniknani. He nodded hurriedly and climbed back behind the steering wheel. I watched the ambulance drive off, out of the Budayeen, toward whatever medical science might or might not be able to do for Laila. I clutched my own two purchases and locked and shut the door to the old woman’s shop. Then I got the hell out of there. I shuddered on the sidewalk.
I’d be jammed if I knew what I’d learned. First—granting the huge condition that the bootleg moddy originally belonged to the throat-cutter—did he wear it or did he give it to his victims? Would a timber wolf or a Siberian tiger know how to burn a helpless person with cigarettes? No, it made better sense to picture the moddy chipped into a raging but well-secured victim. That accounted for the wrist bruises—and Tami, Abdoulaye, and Nikki had all had their skulls socketed. What did the assassin do if the victim wasn’t a moddy? Probably just iced the sucker and sulked all afternoon.
All I could figure was that I was looking for a pervert who needed a savage, caged carnivore to get his juices flowing. The notion of resigning flashed through my mind, the often-played scene of quitting despite Friedlander Bey’s soft-spoken threats. This time I went as far as to imagine myself beside the cracked roadway, waiting for the ancient electric bus with its crowd of peasants on top. My stomach was turning, and it had only just so much room to move.
It was too early to find the Half-Hajj and talk him into being my accomplice. Maybe about three or four o’clock he’d be at the Café Solace, along with Mahmoud and Jacques; I hadn’t seen or spoken to any of them in weeks. I hadn’t seen Saied at all since the night he’d sent Courvoisier Sonny on the Great Circle Route to paradise, or somewhere. I went back home. I thought I might take the Nero Wolfe moddy out and look at it and turn it over in my hand a couple of dozen times and maybe peel off the shrinkwrap and find out if I’d have to swallow a few pills or a bottle of tende to get the nerve to chip the damn thing in.
Yasmin was in my apartment when I got there. I was surprised; she, however, was upset and hurt. “You got out of the hospital yesterday, and you didn’t even call me,” she cried. She dropped down on the corner of the bed and scowled at me.
“Yasmin—”
“Okay, you said you didn’t want me to visit you in the hospital, so I didn’t. But I thought you’d see me as soon as you came home.”
“I did want to, but—”
“Then why didn’t you call me? I’ll bet you were here with somebody else.”
“I went to see Papa last night. Hassan told me that I was supposed to report in.”
She gave me a dubious look. “And you were there all night long?”
“No,” I admitted.
“So who else did you see?”
I took a deep breath and let it out. “I saw Selima.”
Yasmin’s scowl turned into a grimace of utter contempt. “Oh, is that what trigs you these days? And how was she? As good as her advertisements?”
“Selima’s on the list now, Yasmin. With her sisters.”
She blinked at me for a moment. “Tell me why I’m not surprised. We told her to be careful.”
“You just can’t be that careful,” I said. “Not unless you go live in a cave a hundred miles from your nearest neighbor. And that wasn’t Selima’s style.”
“No.” There was silence for a while; I guess Yasmin was thinking that it wasn’t her style, either, that I was suggesting that the same kind of thing might happen to her. Well, I hope she was thinking that, because it’s true. It’s always true.
I didn’t tell her about the blood-o-gram Selima’s killer left for me in the hotel suite’s bathroom. Somebody had figured Marîd Audran for an easy mark, so it was time for Marîd Audran to play things close to the chest. Besides, mentioning it wouldn’t improve Yasmin’s mood, or mine, either. “I got a moddy I want to try,” I said.
She raised an eyebrow. “Anybody I know?”
“No, I don’t think so. It’s a detective out of some old books. Thought he might help me stop these murders.”
“Uh huh. Did Papa suggest it?”
“No. Papa doesn’t know what I’m really going to do. I told him I was just going to follow along after the police and look at the clues through a magnifying glass and all that. He believed me.”
“Sounds like a waste of time to me,” said Yasmin.
“It is a waste of time, but Papa likes things orderly. He operates in a steady, efficient, but dreary and minimal-velocity way.”
“But he gets things done.”
“Yes, I have to admit that he gets things done. Still, I don’t want him looking over my shoulder, vetoing every other step I take. If I’m going to do this job for him, I have to do it my way.”
“You’re not doing the job just for him, Marîd. You’re doing it for us. All of us. And besides, remember the I Ching? It said no one would believe you. This is that time when you have to keep working away according to what you think is right, a
nd you’ll be vindicated in the end.”
“Sure,” I said, smiling grimly, “I only hope my fame doesn’t come posthumously.”
“‘And covet not that which Allah hath made some of you excel others. Unto men a fortune from that which they have earned, and unto women a fortune from that which they have earned. Do not envy one another, but ask Allah of His bounty. Behold! Allah is the Knower of all things.’”
“Right, Yasmin, quote at me. Suddenly you’re all religious.”
“You’re the one worrying about where your devotions lie. I already believe; I just don’t practice.”
“Fast without prayer is like a shepherd without a crook, Yasmin. And you don’t even fast, either.”
“Yeah, but—”
“But nothing.”
“You’re evading the subject again.”
She was right about that, so I changed evasions. “To be or not to be, sweetheart, that is the question.” I tossed the moddy a few inches into the air and caught it. “Whether ’tis nobler in the mind—”
“Will you plug the goddamn thing in already?”
So I took a deep breath, murmured “In the name of God,” and plugged it in.
The first frightening sensation was of being suddenly engulfed by a grotesque glob of flesh. Nero Wolfe weighed a seventh of a ton, 285 pounds or more. All Audran’s senses were deceived into believing he had gained a hundred and thirty pounds in an instant. He fell to the floor, stunned, gasping for breath. Audran had been warned that there would be a time lag while he adjusted to each moddy he used; whether it had been recorded from a living brain or programmed to resemble a fictional character, it had probably been intended for an ideal body unlike Audran’s own in many ways. Audran’s muscles and nerves needed a little while to learn to compensate. Nero Wolfe was grossly fatter than Audran, and taller as well. When Audran had the moddy chipped in he would walk with Wolfe’s steps, take things with Wolfe’s reach and grasp, settle his imaginary corpulence into chairs with Wolfe’s care and delicacy. It hit Audran harder than he had even expected.
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