“Let’s see,” Doug said rubbing his chin, “there’s dinner with the King, and then that little gathering at the British Embassy…. I might be able to squeeze you in.”
Aisha laughed that light, honest laugh that Doug loved to hear. He hadn’t blown it. Yet.
“I’ll give you my number,” she said as she raced the car backwards out of the tight space, “you can give me a call later. But you have to promise to spend a long evening with me before you leave.”
Doug raised his right hand and looked to the broad Atlantic sky. “I swear,” he said.
Chapter 8
There were days when Tarek Taksha felt he had the best job in all of Morocco.
Today was one of those days.
Not that being the manager of a former, and rapidly deteriorating, premier hotel was an important job, but it was a definite step up from trying to hustle decades-old postcards along the cornice. The Sea Port had lost its four-star rating in the early Seventies and another star in the mid-Eighties, but that did not concern the owner, who had a fifth star painted on the red awning in ninety-five. Tarek had started as a bellboy when he was fourteen, working for tips and a share of what people left behind in their rooms. There were enough guests back then to warrant two bellboys. It was old-fashioned hard work and intense sucking up that allowed Tarek to keep his job when the guests dwindled to a trickle.
When the Sea Port was self-upgraded to a five-star hotel, Tarek became the concierge/bellhop, partially because his English was better than anyone else’s at the hotel, but primarily because he would do the job for the least amount of money. It took a few weeks to find out what it was that a concierge actually did, but once he figured it out, he dedicated himself to being the best damn concierge in a bogus five-star hotel in all of the old area of Casablanca east of the Rue Centrate.
That dedication paid off when, thanks to obviously doctored books, the last manager was fired for embezzling from the already struggling hotel and Tarek was made manager of the Sea Port. Due to the economic difficulties at the Sea Port, he maintained his concierge and bellhop titles as well, and without complaint worked for less than the last manager. This was the opportunity he had worked so hard for and he wasn’t about to let it slip away with petty complaints. He worked even harder, sucked up even more obsequiously, and he made sure that the books would never show his embezzling.
Lately things had picked up at the Sea Port and, for the first time in years, they had over half the rooms rented. The last week had been especially good, with the American bringing so much traffic to the hotel. True, the people who asked questions about the American didn’t rent rooms, but they tipped well when Tarek allowed them to read his dark blue passport. And, for more than it would have cost to rent it, they paid to poke around in the American’s room. He drew the line, however, at removing objects, but saw no harm in letting them read his papers or take photographs.
And there were the phone calls, strange phone calls—“No, sir, I’m afraid I don’t know how tall he is,” “I believe he was wearing a blue shirt, sir,” “Can I arrange it? Of course madam, but it is quite unusual, and these things, well, it would cost…. Excuse me? Oh yes madam, I’m sure we can take care of it.” No, it wouldn’t last forever, but it was nice having the American at the hotel.
So it was with a genuine smile that Tarek greeted the American when he stepped out of a silver BMW that disappeared down the crowded street. Good afternoon, sir. Yes, a woman did call from overseas. Of course I can take care of all of your travel arrangements, sir. Everything will be aligned for your speedy departure in the a.m. two days hence. No sir, that’s not necessary. Well if you insist, sir, thank you, sir, you are most generous.
Yes, it was nice having the American at the hotel.
***
It was still mid-afternoon and despite the heat Doug decided to investigate the area around the hotel. He grabbed the Lonely Planet guide he had picked up at JFK and the tenth-generation photocopy of a mimeographed map, circa 1972, that the man in his concierge role insisted he take with him. He had tried to read up on Morocco on the flight over, but the guidebook droned on and on about Berbers and Almoravids and people with names he could not remember from one sentence to the next. He picked up enough to know that the place was old, that there had been a lot of fighting over the years, that the Nazis had been here—but he knew that from the prologue to Casablanca—and that they were independent with a king. He had skipped whole sections entitled Economic Outlook, Relations With Israel, and Sunnis and Shiites, Saints and Mystics. The guidebook had warned him about starting conversations with women—“given the sexual mores of the culture”—but the authors had obviously never met Aisha.
He oriented himself with the map of central Casablanca. His hotel was on Boulevard Houphouet Boigny—Humphrey Bogart?—across the street from what the guide book said was a “smallish version of a typical Berber style souk; bright and affable, it meanders serendipitously around several architectural gems.” On the hotel’s map it just said shops. By the time he had walked past five shops he had twenty offers to come in, look around, have some tea, no charge to look, because, they all assured him, he was their special friend. One by one the touts that Sergei had warned him about introduced themselves, swore that they just wanted to practice their English, and really, really wanted him to come and meet their uncle who owned a shop near by. They were “bright and affable” all right, and a pain in the ass.
Most tourist shops were filled with the same tourist crap that they sold at the rest stops off the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Glue anything—a dried lizard, a vial of sand, a rock with eyeballs painted on it—to a piece of driftwood, write a town name underneath it, and some tourist will always buy it. How else could you explain the quantities of the stuff? Doug was offered “real” Rolexes for what worked out to ten bucks. The Rolex he eventually bought, talking the man down from an outrageous fifteen dollars, worked for most of the rest of the afternoon. And this, Doug decided, was why they designed the marketplace like a maze, with every shop looking just like the last. They could rip you off with confidence, knowing you could never find your way back and that if you did, you could never be sure you’d find the right thief.
Despite the watch, despite the touts, despite the fear that he’d get his wallet snatched even with it stuffed in his front pocket, Doug had to admit it was wonderful. There were vegetable carts loaded with fresh produce he’d never seen before, shops with carpets spread out onto what passed for a sidewalk, crammed with so many brass coffee pots and glass water pipes that the shop owner seemed trapped inside, the overpowering smell of the leather shops where craftsmen worked traditional patterns with wood handled punches and tiny hammers, the pastry and bread shops, with their room-sized brick ovens encased with the same white cement that seemed to encase every building in the souk, every building in the city. Small kids, baskets filled with the hot pastry, raced past him and up the narrow staircases that clung to the sides of the alleyway. And everywhere the teashops with their sickeningly sweet tea that Doug had grudgingly started to like. After several hours of touring modern Casablanca, with its Pizza Huts and Gaps, its mobile phones and rap music, its familiar franchise look, the souk reminded him that he wasn’t in Pottsville. It was like nothing he had experienced before, a real adventure in an exotic location, just like Edna had promised. He knew that he was walking around with that big, shit-eating grin he associated with rubes in the big city, but he didn’t care.
When he got back to the hotel there was a note from Sergei Nikolaisen—was he available for an early dinner? Sure, Doug thought, why not. He wanted to call Aisha but didn’t want to sound as desperate as he was. As instructed in the note, he left word with the desk that, yes, he’d be in the lobby at eight. Doug showered and started to read more about Casablanca. He finished two whole paragraphs before he nodded off.
Chapter 9
He was a cop. He had to be. He had that bull neck, that close-cropped hair, and that look that always see
ms to say I can fuck with you all I want and you can’t do squat. Not all cops had the look, just the few who got off on harassing guys like Doug for petty shit like open beer in a car or a loud party in the middle of nowhere. He was a cop but fortunately he was Sergei’s friend. Unfortunately, Doug was struggling not to laugh at him.
“Yehia here was the police captain I was telling you about,” Sergei said as he waved off the waiter with the wine list. “Since you had a common interest I thought it would be helpful if you met.”
Doug didn’t know if it was Sergei’s accent or if it was the way it was supposed to be pronounced, but the burly ex-cop’s name sounded like “Ya-ya.” It was hard for Doug to look at a man he’d just met and call him Ya-ya. Especially a man like Yehia. Doug chose to call him sir, which the power-deprived ex-cop liked.
Yehia was leaning back into his chair, his bulky body—once impressive, now just fat—lapped over the arms of the chair like a candle melting in the North African sun. Dark stubble covered the acreage of his chins and somewhere under those eyebrows, two black eyes stared out, still trying to intimidate guys like Doug. “I was captain here in Casa for twenty-eight years. I saw many things.” He flipped his hands over as if to say it was nothing, routine for a man like me.
“So when did you retire?” Doug asked, but Sergei leaned forward, cutting off Yehia’s answer and Doug’s apparently stupid questions.
“Yehia was an excellent officer and the way they treated him…well it was all politics, and personally I think that it should have been the government’s barrister who was forced out of office. Criminal, really.”
“If there was corruption it certainly wasn’t in my department,” Yehia said offhandedly, either tired of defending himself or no longer believing his own protests. “And as for the money, well they never found it at my home and do you see me living like a rich man? And besides, those who insulted me the loudest were too busy to show up for court. Yes. Politics indeed.”
“Yehia and I were reminiscing about the post-war years and I reminded him of the robbery of the red diamond you mentioned,” Sergei said. Doug wasn’t sure what to say so he just smiled and nodded and thanked the waiter for the whiskey and soda that Sergei had ordered for them all.
“I don’t know what your esteemed friend here told you,” Yehia said, motioning his glass towards Sergei, “but Casa was not as lawless as your movies make it out to be. Those of us who found it necessary to work for the Germans when they were here were able to keep our positions after they left. Of course it was not easy but….” Again that offhanded shrug. “No, it was quite civilized here then. If you had problems with someone—an opium dealer, say, or a sex maniac—you didn’t have to wait for the courts to get around finally to do their duty. They were always delaying things, pushing things back and making our jobs complicated. And for what? They might as well have put the handcuffs on us for all the good they accomplished. A quick ride out of town and pop,” he made a gun shape out of his first two fingers and his thumb, “just like a dog. No, the streets were quite safe.”
Except from the police, Doug thought. He swirled his drink around in the glass and wondered if the restaurant used bottled water to make the ice.
“Of course I remember the red diamond case. It had a strange name, German I think.”
“The Jagersfontien Diamond,” Sergei said. “South African.”
“Yes, South African. But then South Africa after the war was where you went to find Germans,” Yehia said, chuckling to himself.
Sergei smiled. “There were many Germans there indeed, but the diamond was actually found before the war if you recall.”
“Whatever,” Yehia said and waved for the waiter to bring him another drink. “While we were questioning a well-known thief he mentioned that there was going to be an attempt to steal the diamond. I don’t remember who owned it.”
“A gentleman with the misfortune of having one of those absolutely unpronounceable Afrikaner names. I’ll admit that German names are bad enough, but that so-called language, well it sounds just too comical when two Boers get together on the stoep for a braai to talk about life on the karral. We used to call them ropes. Thick and twisted.”
“Yes, well,” Yehia said, dismissing the interruption, “the man we were questioning said that a couple of Americans and a Moroccan planned on ambushing the rightful owner—your South African—somewhere here in the city but he knew little else so….”
So you put a bullet in his forehead, thought Doug. He remembered something Aisha said about post-war Casablanca, about there being a gray area between the good guys and the bad guys. So far Doug hadn’t seen much of a difference.
“Late one night,” Yehia continued, “we get a call about some bodies in the wharf area which, of course, was not unusual. What was unusual was who made the call. It seemed that this was different, he didn’t want his people accused of this one. I didn’t understand what he meant until I got there myself. Sergei, I must say that this is damn good whiskey you ordered.” Yehia looked at his half full glass and Sergei understood the not so subtle hint and motioned for the waiter to bring and leave the bottle.
“Have you ever seen a dead body, Mr. Pearce?” Yehia asked as he topped off his glass.
“Yes, many times I’m afraid,” Doug said. And it was true. There was his grandmother’s funeral, his father’s, his uncle Pete’s, the security guard’s from the brewery whom Doug sort of knew. In Pottsville every funeral was an open casket funeral. There wasn’t much excitement in Pottsville, the joke went, so you might as well entertain your friends on your way out.
“In my line of work it is almost everyday. I have seen men strung up with piano wire, a woman whose head was cut off and baked into a cake. And when the Gestapo was here, well, let us say they worked hard to earn their reputation.”
Didn’t you say you worked for them? Doug thought.
“What I saw that night, it stays with me still. It was a warehouse, an older place, dark, of course, and deserted. Most of the honest companies had moved to the newer docks. There were five or six bare bulbs hanging from the rafters. I was a new lieutenant and I wanted to make a good investigation. I entered the crime scene slowly, just like I had been taught, trying to see the whole scene. At first I thought there were small stacks of sand bags here and there. When I came closer I saw they were men…bodies…curled up on their sides like infants in a cradle. My men were afraid to touch them, there was far more blood than normal and my men were simple men, easily spooked by such things.” Yehia sipped his drink and paused for effect.
“I rolled the first man over with my foot.” He pushed his leg out to demonstrate, as if the body lay on the floor under the table. Doug pulled his own legs up under his chair. “His body was still soft. He had been dead less than an hour. When he flopped onto his back I saw why there was so much blood. They had been gut shot, two or three times, with a big bore handgun. Their intestines were squeezing out of the holes and you could tell that they were a long time in dying, trying to hold their insides in with their own hands. It was the same with each of the bodies. Whoever shot them had meant them to die slowly.”
“How can you tell?” Doug asked.
“With a gun that size, one shot to the chest and they would die instantly, or at least quickly. No, whoever shot them knew exactly what he was doing. No vital organs, but no hope of surviving. Just a long, slow and painful death. I have shot a few men myself, I’ll admit, but never in the stomach. In the back of the head and they die painlessly, they don’t even know what it was. A man who shoots another man in the gut is an animal.”
Was Yehia telling the truth? Doug couldn’t tell. There was that show that comes with being the kind of cop he was, but something about his manner changed while he was describing the scene. Was he truly remembering what he saw or was he trying to create the scene the way he felt it should have looked? Was he exaggerating for effect or minimizing to be polite?
“We never caught them. We found one in an alley not
far away, his face shot off. We still were able to identify him, a local man, petty thief. We found two more bodies later, but we often found bodies. As far as the crime, we don’t even know that the red diamond was involved….”
“But the South African insisted that it was there,” Sergei said. “His claim, as I recall now, insisted that the men who were killed worked for him and that they were transporting the diamond, along with some lesser jewels.”
“But the insurance companies disagreed, my friend.”
“Of course. Who wants to pay off on a claim that size?”
“In any case, the jewel left Casablanca within a day and with it went the killers and my connection to this case.”
“Weren’t you interested in catching whoever did it?” Doug said. “I mean, you are clearly a professional and a famous police officer. It must have bothered you.”
Yehia smiled, enjoying the compliment and the attention the story had bought. “Of course, of course. Naturally I wanted justice and to find who was responsible. And we did search around here, made a few arrests….”
“Rounded up the usual suspects, I suppose?” Doug said.
“Yes, that, and some unusual ones, too. But my friend, I had by then learned that if I was to grow old wearing that uniform, I had to develop a certain attitude. C’est la vie, this is the life; you do what you can but learn to walk away and trust in Allah.”
“And Douglas,” Sergei said across the table, “that might be the best advice when it comes to your friend. Do what you can for her but don’t get too involved.”
“When did this robbery happen? Forty-eight? That’s over fifty years ago. I doubt that bloodthirsty killers are still lurking around, trying to get their hands on this diamond.”
“Fifty years is not that long ago, Douglas. I was twenty-two then and I’d like to think I’m still able to get about. But perhaps my years of lurking are behind me,” Sergei said, darting his eyes from side to side theatrically, like a silent movie version of the villain.
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