After a moment Wolfe heard a young woman’s voice. She sounded worried. Audran was still writhing on the floor, trying to breathe, trying merely to stand up again. “Are you all right?” the young woman asked.
Wolfe’s eyes narrowed to little slits in the fat pouches that surrounded them. He looked at her. “Quite all right, Miss Nablusi,” he said. He sat up slowly, and she came toward him to help him stand. He waved at her impatiently, but he did lean on her a bit as he got to his feet.
Wolfe’s recollections, artfully wired into the moddy, mixed with Audran’s submerged thoughts, feelings, sensations, and memories. Wolfe was fluent in many languages: English, French, Spanish, Italian, Latin, Serbo-Croatian, and others. There wasn’t room to pack so many language daddies into a single moddy. Audran asked himself what the French word for al-kalb was, and he knew it: le chien. Of course, Audran spoke perfect French himself. He asked for the English and Croatian words for al-kalb, but they eluded him, right on the tip of the tongue, a mental tickle, one of those frustrating little memory lapses. They—Audran and Wolfe—couldn’t remember which people spoke Croatian, or where they lived; Audran had never heard of the language before. All this made him suspect the depth of this illusion. He hoped they wouldn’t hit bottom at some crucial moment when Audran was depending on Wolfe to get them out of some life-threatening situation. “Pfui,” said Wolfe.
Ah, but Nero Wolfe rarely got himself into life-threatening situations. He let Archie Goodwin take most of those risks. Wolfe would uncover the Budayeen’s assassins by sitting behind his familiar old desk—figuratively, of course—and ratiocinating his way to the killers’ identities. Then peace and prosperity would descend once more upon the city, and all Islam would resound with Marîd Audran’s name.
Wolfe glanced again at Miss Nablusi. He often showed a distaste for women that bordered on open hostility. How did he feel toward a sex-change? After a moment’s reflection, it seemed the detective had only the same mistrust he held for organically grown, nothing artificially added, lo-cal, high-fiber females in general. On the whole, he was a flexible and objective evaluator of people; he could hardly have been so brilliant a detective otherwise. Wolfe would have no difficulty interviewing the people of the Budayeen, or comprehending their outré attitudes and motivations.
As their body grew more comfortable with the moddy, Marîd Audran’s personality retired even further into passivity, able to do little more than make suggestions, while Wolfe assumed more control. It became clear that wearing a moddy could lead to the expenditure of a lot of money. Just as the murderer who’d worn the James Bond moddy had reshaped his physical appearance and his wardrobe to match his adopted personality, so too did Audran and Wolfe suddenly want to invest in yellow shirts and yellow pajamas, hire one of the world’s finest chefs, and collect thousands of rare and exotic orchid plants. All that would have to wait. “Pfui,” grumbled Wolfe again.
They reached up and popped the moddy out.
There was another dizzy swirl of disorientation; and then I was standing in my own room, staring stupidly down at my hand and at the module it held. I was back in my own body and my own mind.
“How was it?” asked Yasmin.
I looked at her. “Satisfactory,” I said, using Wolfe’s most enthusiastic expression. “It might do,” I admitted. “I have the feeling that Wolfe will be able to sort through the facts and find the explanation, after all. If there is one.”
“I’m glad, Marîd. And remember, if this one isn’t good enough, there are thousands of other moddies you can try, too.”
I put the moddy on the floor beside the bed and lay down.
Maybe I ought to have had my brain boosted a long time ago. I suspected that I’d been missing a bet, that I’d been wrong and everybody else had been right. Well, I was all grown-up and I could admit my mistakes. Not out loud, of course, and never to someone like Yasmin, who’d never let me forget about it; but deep down inside I knew, and that’s what counted. It had only been my pride and fear, after all, that had kept me from getting wired sooner—my feeling that I could show up any moddy with my own native good sense and one cerebral hemisphere tied behind my back. I unclipped my phone and called the Half-Hajj at home; he hadn’t gone out yet for lunch, and he promised to pass by my apartment in a few minutes. I told him I had a little gift for him.
Yasmin lay down beside me while we waited for Saied to arrive. She put a hand across my chest and rested her head on my shoulder. “Marîd,” she said softly, “you know that I’m really proud of you.”
“Yasmin,” I said slowly, “you know that I’m really scared out of me wits.”
“I know, honey; I’m scared, too. But what if you hadn’t done your part in all this? What about Nikki and the others? What if more people are killed, people you could have saved? What could I think about you then? What would you think?”
“I’ll make a deal with you, Yasmin: I’ll go on and do what I can and take whatever chances I can’t avoid. Just stop telling me all the time that I’m doing the right thing and that you’re so glad I may be dead in the next half-hour. All the cheering in the reserved seats is great for your morale; but it doesn’t help me in the least, after a while it gets kind of tiresome, and it won’t make bullets or knives bounce off my hide. Okay?”
She was, of course, hurt, but I meant exactly what I’d said; I wanted to nip all this “Go out there and get ’em, boy!” choo in the bud. I was sorry that I’d been so hard on Yasmin, though. To cover it, I got up and went to the bathroom. I closed the door and ran a glass of water. The water is always warm in my apartment, summer or winter, and I rarely had ice in the little freezer. After a while you can drink the tepid water with its swirling, suspended particles in it. Not me, though. I’m still working on that. I like a glass of water that doesn’t stare back at you.
I took my pill case from my jeans and scrabbled out a cluster of Sonneine. These were the first sunnies I’d taken since I got out of the hospital. Like some kind of addict I was celebrating my abstinence by breaking it. I dropped the sunnies into my mouth and took a gulp of warm water. There, I thought, that’s what will keep me going. A couple of sunnies and a few tri-phets are worth a stadium full of well-wishers with their bedsheet banners. I closed the pill case quietly—was I trying to keep Yasmin from hearing? Why?—and flushed the toilet. Then I went back into the big room.
I was halfway across the floor when Saied knocked on the door. “Bismillah,” I called, and swung it open.
“Yeah, you right,” said the Half-Hajj. He came into the room and dropped himself on the corner of the mattress. “What you got for me?”
“He’s amped now, Saied,” said Yasmin. He turned toward her slowly and gave her that rough-and-tough glare of his. He was in that hitter frame of mind again. A woman’s place is in certain areas of the home, seen and not heard, maybe not even seen if she knows what’s good for her.
The Half-Hajj looked back at me and nodded. “I was wired when I was thirteen years old,” he said.
I wasn’t going to arm-wrestle with him about anything. I reminded myself that I was asking him to help me, and that it would truly be dangerous for him. I flipped the Archie Goodwin moddy to him, and he caught it easily with one hand. “Who is it?” he asked.
“A detective from some old books. He works for the greatest detective in the world. The boss is big and fat and never leaves his home, so Goodwin does all the legwork for him. Goodwin is young and good-looking and smart.”
“Uh huh. And I suppose this moddy is just an end-of-Ramadân gift, a little late, right?”
“No.”
“You took Papa’s money, and you took his wire-job, and so you’re really going out after whoever’s been disenfranchising our friends and neighbors. Now you want me to chip in sturdy, reliable Goodwin and ride along with you after adventure or something.”
“I need someone, Saied,” I said. “You were the first person I thought of.”
He looked a little flattered by that,
but he was still far from enthusiastic. “This just isn’t my line,” he said.
“Chip it in, and it will be.”
He looked at that one from both sides and realized I was right. He took off his keffiya, which he’d shaped into a kind of turban, popped out the moddy he was wearing, and plugged in Archie Goodwin.
I walked by him, toward the sink. I watched as his expression lost focus and then reformed subtly into something else. He seemed more relaxed, more intelligent now. He gave me a wry, amused smile, but he was measuring me and the new contents of his mind. His eyes took in everything in the room, as if he’d have to make an item-by-item catalog of it all later. He waited, giving me a look that was part insolence and part devotion. He wasn’t seeing me, I knew; he was seeing Nero Wolfe.
Goodwin’s attitudes and personality would appeal to Saied. He’d love the chance to jazz me with Goodwin’s sardonic remarks. He liked the idea of being devastatingly attractive; wearing that moddy, he’d even be able to overcome his own aversion to women. “We’d have to discuss the matter of salary,” he said.
“Of course. You know that Friedlander Bey is underwriting my expenses.”
He grinned. I could see visions of expensive suits and intimate dinners and dancing at the Flamingo whirl through his rectified mind.
Then, suddenly, the grin receded. He was riffling through Goodwin’s artificial memories. “I’ve been punched around more than a little, working for you,” he said, thoughtfully.
I wiggled a finger at him, in Wolfe’s manner. “That is part of your job, Archie, and you are well aware of it. I surmise it is the part you enjoy most.”
The grin filled his face again. “And you enjoy surmising about me and my surmising. Well, go ahead, it’s the only exercise you get. And you might be right about that. Anyway, it’s been a long time since we had a case to work on.”
Maybe I should have had my Wolfe moddy chipped in, too; without it, watching the Half-Hajj do his sidekick imitation solo was almost embarrassing. I gave a Wolfe grunt because it was expected, and paused. “Then you’ll help me?” I asked.
“Just a minute.” Saied popped the moddy out and chipped in his old one. It took less time for him to get used to going from a moddy to his own naked brain and into a second moddy. Of course, as he said, he’d been doing it since he’d been thirteen; I’d only done it once, a few minutes ago. He looked me over sourly, from my face down to the floor and back up again. When he started talking, I knew immediately that he wasn’t in a good mood. Without Goodwin’s moddy to make it all seem fun and romantic and excitingly risky, the Half-Hajj was having none of it. He stepped closer to me and spoke with his jaws clenched tightly together. “Look,” he said, “I’m real sorry Nikki got killed. It bothers me that somebody’s aced out the Black Widow Sisters, too, though they were never friends of mine; it’s just a bad thing all the way around. As for Abdoulaye, he got what was coming to him and, if you ask me, he got it later than he deserved. So it comes down to a grudge match between you and some blazebrain on account of Nikki. I say wonderful, you got the whole Budayeen and the city and Papa himself on your side. But I don’t see where you get the goddamn nerve”—and he poked me real hard in the chest with a forefinger that was like a heavy iron rod—“to ask me to screen you from everything bad that might happen. You’ll take the reward, all right, but the bullet holes and the stab wounds you figure you can palm off onto me. Well, Saied can see what you’re doing, Saied isn’t as crazy as you think he is.” He snorted, almost amazed at my audacity. “Even if you get out of all this alive, Maghrebi, even if everybody in the world thinks you’re some kind of hero, we’re going to have to settle this business between us.” He looked at me, his face fierce and red, his jaw muscles working, trying to cool down enough to get his rage out coherently. At last he gave up; for a few seconds I thought he was going to slug me. I didn’t move an inch. I waited. He raised his fist, hesitated, then grabbed the Archie Goodwin moddy from his other hand. He threw the moddy to the floor, chased it a few yards as it skidded across the room, then raised one foot and brought it down, crushing the plasty moddy beneath the heavy wooden stacked heel of his leather boot. Shattered pieces of the plastic case and bright, colored bits of the circuitry within flew in all directions. The Half-Hajj stared down at the ruined moddy for a moment, his eyes blinking stupidly. Then he slowly looked up at me again. “You know what that guy drinks?” he shouted. “He drinks milk, goddamn it!” Deeply offended, Saied headed toward the door.
“Where are you going?” asked Yasmin timidly.
He glanced at her. “I’m going to find the biggest porterhouse steak in the city and put it where it belongs. I’m going to have a hell of a good time in honor of how close I came to getting conned to death by your boyfriend here.” Then he threw open the front door and stalked out, slamming the door shut behind him.
I laughed. It had been a great performance, and just the release I had been needing. I wasn’t looking forward to the reckoning Saied had threatened; but if the two assassins didn’t make the matter trivial, I was sure that the Half-Hajj would get over his anger soon enough. If I did end up a hero, unlikely as it seemed, he’d be in an unpopular minority, sounding spiteful and envious. I was sure that Saied would never stay in any unpopular group if he could do anything about it. I’d just have to keep breathing long enough, and the Half-Hajj would eventually be my friend again.
My good humor, I guessed, coincided with the rising of the sunnies. See, I told myself, how already they’re helping you stay in control? What good would it have done to get into a fistfight with Saied?
“Now what?” asked Yasmin.
I wished she hadn’t asked that. “I’ll go find another moddy, as you suggested. In the meantime, I have to put all the information together the way Papa wants, and try to sort all this out and see if there’s a definite pattern or line of investigation to follow.”
“You weren’t being a coward, were you, Marîd? About getting the brain implants?”
“Sure, I was afraid. You know that. I wasn’t being a coward about it, though. It’s more as if I was putting off the inevitable. I’ve felt like Hamlet a lot lately. Even when you admit that the thing you fear is inevitable, you’re not sure it’s still the correct thing to do. Maybe Hamlet could have solved things with less bloodshed another way, without forcing his uncle’s hand. Maybe getting my brain amped only seems right. Maybe I’m overlooking something obvious.”
“If you just diddle with yourself like this, more people will die, maybe even yourself. Don’t forget, if half the Budayeen knows you’re on the killers’ trail, the killers know it, too.”
That hadn’t yet occurred to me. Even the sunnies couldn’t buoy me up after that piece of news.
An hour later I was in Lieutenant Okking’s office. As usual, he didn’t show much enthusiasm when I looked in on him. “Audran,” he said. “Collected another dead body for me? If all’s right with the world, then you’re dragging yourself in here mortally wounded, desperate for my forgiveness before you kick off.”
“Sorry, Lieutenant,” I said.
“Well, I can dream, can’t I?”
Ya salaam, he was always so goddamn amusing. “I’m supposed to work more closely with you, and you’re supposed to cooperate willingly with me. Papa thinks it best if we pool all our information.”
He looked like he’d just sniffed something decomposing nearby. He muttered a few words unintelligibly under his breath. “I don’t like his high-handed butting in, Audran, and you can tell him that for me. He’s going to make it harder for me to close this case. Friedlander Bey’s only endangering himself more by having you interfere with police business.”
“He doesn’t see it that way.”
Okking nodded glumly. “All right, what do you want me to tell you?”
I sat back and tried to look casual. “Everything you know about Lutz Seipolt and the Russian who was killed in Chiri’s club.”
Okking was startled. It took him a moment
to compose himself. “Audran, what possible connection could there be between the two?” he asked.
We’d been through this before; I knew he was just stalling. “There have to be overlapping motives or some broad conflict we don’t understand, being played out in the Budayeen.”
“Not necessarily,” said the lieutenant. “The Russian wasn’t part of the Budayeen. He was a political nobody who set foot in your quarter only because you asked him to meet you there.”
“You’re doing a good job of changing the subject, Okking. Answer the question: Where is Seipolt from and what does he do?”
“He came to the city three or four years ago, from someplace in the Fourth Reich, Frankfurt, I think. He set himself up as an import-export agent—you know how vague a description that is. His main business is food and spices, coffee, some cotton and fabrics, Oriental rugs, junk copper and brass pieces, cheap jewelry, Muski glass from Cairo, and other minor things. He’s big in the European community, he seems to turn a nice profit, and he has never shown any signs of being involved in any high-level illicit international trade. That’s about all I know.”
“Can you imagine why he pulled a gun on me when I asked him a few questions about Nikki?”
Okking shrugged. “Maybe he just likes his privacy. Look, you aren’t the most innocent-looking guy in the world, Audran. Maybe he thought you were there to put the arm on him and run off with his collection of ancient statuary and scarabs and mummified mice.”
“Then you’ve been to his place?”
Okking shook his head. “I get reports,” he said. “I’m an influential police administrator, remember?”
“That’s right, I keep forgetting. So the Nikki-Seipolt angle is a dead end. What about the Russian, Bogatyrev?”
“He was a mouse working for the Byelorussians. First his kid went missing, and then he had the bad luck to stop this James Bond’s slug. He has even less of a connection to the other murders than Seipolt does.”
When Gravity Fails Page 21
