A Fire in the Sun

by George Alec Effinger

  I didn't want to argue with him. I picked up the third moddy he'd found. "What's this?" I asked.

  "You don't know? It's not one of yours?"

  I shook my head. Saied took the moddy from me, reached up, and chipped it in. A moment later his expression changed. He looked awed. "May my father's balls burn in Hell!" he said. "It's Abu Adil."

  17

  THE HALF-HAJJ insisted on going with me to find the building where Paul Jawarski was hiding out. "You're a wreck," he told me, shaking his head. "You pop that daddy, you'll realize what bad shape you're in. You should go to the hospital."

  "I just got out of the hospital," I said. "Well, obviously it didn't take. You got to go back again." "Fine, I'll go when this business with Jawarski's all over. I'll keep the daddy in till then. And I'll probably need Rex."

  Saied squinted at me. "You need a lot more than Rex. You need half a dozen of your cop buddies."

  I laughed bitterly. "I don't think they'd show up. I don't think Hajjar would even send them."

  We were making our way slowly along Hâmidiyya's main north-south avenue. "What do you mean?" asked Saied. "You think Hajjar wants to pull off jawarski's capture himself? Get himself a commendation and a medal?"

  We turned down a narrow trash-choked alley and found the rear of the building we were looking for. "Shaknahyi had the idea that he'd been set up," I said. "He thought maybe Jawarski was working for Hajjar."

  "I thought Jawarski was working for Shaykh Reda."

  I shrugged. Without the pain-blocker, that would have been excruciatingly painful. "Everybody we know moonlights. Why should Jawarski be any different?"

  "No reason, I guess," said the Half-Hajj. "Now, you want me to go in with you?"

  "No thanks, Saied. I want you to stay down here and guard this back entrance. I'm going upstairs and talk with Morgan. I want to be alone with Jawarski. I'm gonna send Morgan down to watch the front."

  Saied looked worried. "I don't think that's smart, Maghrebi. Jawarski's a clever guy, and he don't mind killing people. You're not in any condition to wrestle with him."

  "I won't have to." I reached up and chipped in Rex. I took my static pistol out of my pocket.

  "Well, what you gonna do? If Hajjar's just gonna let Jawarski go free—"

  "I'm going over Hajjar's head," I said. I was determined that Jawarski wasn't going to escape justice. "I'm gonna call the captain and the police superintendent and the news media. They can't all be crooked."

  "I don't see why not," said the Half-Hajj. "But you're probably right. Remember, we'll be right down here if you need help. Jawarski won't get away this time."

  I grinned at him. "Bet your ass he won't." I moved past him into the tenement building. I was in a cool, dark hallway that led to a flight of stairs. There was the usual dank, musty smell of an abandoned building. My feet scattered bits of rubble as I climbed up to the third floor. "Morgan?" I called. He probably had a gun in his hand, and I didn't want to surprise him.

  "Is that you, man? You sure took long enough getting here."

  I arrived at the landing where he was sitting. "Sorry," I said, "I ran into a little trouble."

  His eyes got big when he saw how torn and hurt I was. "Looks like you already ran into as much as you can handle today, man."

  "I'm fine, Morgan." I took five hundred kiam out of my jeans and paid him the rest of his money. "Now, go keep an eye on the street entrance. I'll call if I need help."

  The blond American started downstairs. "You need help," he said dubiously, "it'll be too late by the time you shout."

  The daddy had me feeling no pain, and Rex made me think I was equal to any challenge Jawarski might present. I checked the charge in my static pistol, then rapped on the apartment door. "Jawarski," I shouted, "this is Marid Audran. Jirji Shaknahyi was my partner. I'm here to take you in for his murder."

  I didn't have to wait long. Jawarski opened the door, laughing. He was holding a black .45 caliber automatic pistol. "Stupid son of a bitch, ain't you?" he said. He stood back so I could get by.

  I made sure he saw my weapon as I went past him, but he was so sure of himself that he didn't act the least bit concerned. I sat down on a torn couch opposite the door. Jawarski dropped into an armchair covered in bloodstained floral material. I was shocked by how young he was. I was surprised to see that he was at least five years younger than me.

  "Ever hear what Islamic law does to murderers?" I asked him. We were holding our guns on each other, but Jawarski seemed almost nonchalant.

  "Nah, it don't make much difference," he said. "I don't care if I die." Jawarski had a peculiar way of talking out of one side of his mouth, as if he thought it made him look tough and fierce. He obviously had some serious psychological problems, but he wasn't going to live long enough to clear them up. "So who told you I was here? I always bumped off squealers. Tell me who it was, so I can fog the bastard."

  "You won't get the chance, pal. You can't have the whole city bought off."

  "Let's make this quick," he said, trying to upset me. "I'm supposed to collect my money and leave town tonight." He didn't seem to be bothered at all by my static pistol.

  He was staring to my right. I let my eyes drift in that direction, toward a small wooden table not far from the couch, covered with newspaper. There were three clips of ammunition lying there. "Was it Hajjar who told you to kill Shaknahyi?" I asked. "Or Umar, Abu Adil's punk?"

  "I ain't a squawker," he said. He gave me a twisted grin.

  "And the others—Blanca Mataro, the rest of them. You didn't use that .45. How come?"

  Jawarski shrugged. "They told me not to. They didn't want any of the parts damaged, I guess. They told me who to put away and I done it with a little static gun. I always called in the tip to the cops myself, so the cripple cart'd get there fast. I guess they didn't want the meat to spoil." He gave a grunting chuckle that set my teeth on edge.

  I glanced at the table, thinking that Jawarski might not have bothered to put a clip into his pistol before he let me into the room. He looked like he enjoyed bluffing. "How many have you killed?" I asked.

  "You mean altogether?" Jawarski looked up at the ceiling. "Oh, I've got twenty-six anyway. That's all I ever kept track of. Pretty near one for every year. And my birthday's comin' up soon. How'd you like to be number twenty-seven?"

  I felt a rush of fury. "You're real close, Jawarski," I said through clenched teeth.

  "Go ahead, you got a girl's gun, lay me out if you got the guts." He was enjoying this, mocking me and goading me. "Look, here's a clipping," he said. " Jawarski Bad Man, Legendary Figure,' it says. How 'bout that?"

  "Ever think about the people you shoot?" I asked.

  "I remember that cop. I turned and let him have it in the chest. He didn't even wobble, but he shot back at me. I wasn't hit, though, and I beat it around behind the house. When I got to the other side, I peeked around the corner and saw the cop I shot coming after me. I let fly at him again, and ran behind another house. When I looked again he was still following me. There was blood running all over the front of his coat then, but he was still following me. God, that guy was a real man."

  "Ever think about his family? Shaknahyi had a wife, you know. He had three kids."

  Jawarski stared at me, and another crazy grin spread slowly across his face. "Fuck 'em," he said.

  I stood up and took three steps. Jawarski raised his eyebrows at me, inviting me to come closer. As he stood, I tossed him the static gun. He fumbled it against his chest with his left hand, and I pulled my fist back and cracked him in the corner of his mouth. Then I grabbed his right wrist tightly and turned outward, prepared to break the bones if I had to. He grunted and dropped the automatic. 'Tm not Hajjar," I snarled. "I'm not that goddamn Catavina. You're not gonna buy me off, and right now I'm in no mood to worry about protecting your civil rights. Understand?" I bent and scooped up his gun. I'd been wrong. It was loaded.

  Jawarski put a hand to his lips. When Tie pulled it away, his
fingers were bloody. "You been watching those holoshows again, buddy," he said. He grinned, still not terribly worried. "You're no better'n Hajjar. You're no better'n me, you want to know the truth. You'd put a round right through me, if you thought you could get away with it."

  "You're right about that," I said.

  "But you think there's too many like Hajjar already. And it ain't even that Hajjar's a rotten cop. He ain't. He's just acting the way they all act, the way everybody expects him to act, the way he's supposed to act. It ain't wrong if everybody knows about it ahead of time. I'll tell you a secret: You're gonna end up just like Shaknahyi. You're gonna help little old ladies across the street until you're old enough to retire, and then some young son of a bitch like me is gonna plant you in the ground." He reached his little finger into his ear and jiggled it a few times. "And then," he said thoughtfully, "after you're gone, the young son of a bitch is gonna jam your wife."

  My face felt hard and tense, frozen into a cold stare. I raised the pistol calmly and held it steadily, pointed between Jawarski's eyes. "Watch it," he said scornfully. "That ain't a toy."

  I grabbed back the static pistol and put it in my pocket. I motioned for Jawarski to sit down, and I returned to my seat on the couch. We looked at each other for a few seconds. I was breathing hard; Jawarski looked like he was enjoying himself.

  "I'll bet you're doing everything you can to comfort Shaknahyi's widow," he said. "You jammed her yet?"

  I felt rage and frustration growing in me again. I hated hearing his lies, his justifications for crime and corruption. The worst part was that he was telling me Shaknahyi had died stupidly, for no good reason. I wasn't going to let him say that. "Shut up," I said in a strained voice. I found myself waving the automatic pistol at Jawarski.

  "See? You can't shoot. It'd be smart to shoot. I'll get away clean otherwise, 'cause no matter who locks me up, I'll be sprung. Shaykh Reda will make sure I get sprung. I'll never be brought to trial in this town."

  "No, you wouldn't be," I said, knowing it was probably true. I fired once. The explosion was tremendous, and the booming crack rumbled on forever, like thunder. Jawarski fell backward in slow motion, half of his face blasted away. There was blood everywhere. I dropped the pistol to the floor. I'd never shot anyone with a projectile weapon before. I backed away and fell against the couch, unable to catch my breath.

  When I'd come through the door, I hadn't planned to kill this man, but I had done it. It had been a conscious decision. I had taken the responsibility for seeing justice done, because I'd become certain it would be done no other way. I looked at the blood on my hands and arms.

  The door crashed loudly into the room. Morgan ran in first, followed by Saied. They stopped just inside the threshold and took in the scene. "Aw right," said the Half-Hajj quietly. "That's one loose end tied up tight."

  "Listen, man," said Morgan, "I got to go. You don't need me for anything more, do you?"

  I just stared at them. I wondered why they weren't horrified too.

  "Let's go, man," said Morgan. "Somebody might've heard that."

  "Oh, somebody heard it, all right," Saied said. "But in this neighborhood, nobody's dumb enough to check on it."

  I reached up and popped the tough-guy moddy. I'd had enough of Rex for a while. We left the apartment and went down the stairs. Morgan turned one way on the sidewalk, and the Half-Hajj and I turned the other.

  "What now?" asked Saied.

  "We got to go get the car," I said. I didn't like the idea at all. The sedan was still back at Abu Adil's. I really didn't feel like going back there so soon after the bastard mind-raped me. I was going back there; I had that score to settle. But not just yet, not just now.

  Saied must have guessed my feelings from the tone of my voice. "Tell you what," he said. "I'll go get the car, you sit here and wait. Won't take long."

  "Fine," I said, and I gave him the keys. I was immensely grateful that he'd come looking for me, and that I could count on him for help. I had no trouble trusting him again. That was good, because even with the pain-override daddy chipped in, my body was near collapse. I needed to get to a doctor soon.

  I didn't want to sit down on a step, because I thought I'd have a hard time standing again. Instead, I leaned against the white stucco front of a small, tottery house. Overhead, I heard the shrill peenting cries of nighhawks as they swooped over the rooftops hunting for insects. I stared across the street at another apartment building, and I saw wild, healthy ferns growing from horizontal surfaces up and down the wall, weeds that had found favorable conditions in the most unlikely place. Cooking smells drifted from open windows: cabbage boiling, meat roasting, bread baking.

  I was immersed in life here, yet I could not forget that I'd shed a murderer's blood. I was still holding the automatic pistol. I didn't know how I was going to dispose of it. My mind wasn't thinking clearly.

  After a while, I saw the cream-colored sedan stop beside me at the curb. Saied got out and helped me around to the passenger side. I slid into the seat, and he closed the door. "Where to?" he asked.

  "Goddamn hospital," I said. "Good idea."

  I closed my eyes and felt the car thrumming through the streets. I dozed a little. Saied woke me when we got there. I shoved my static pistol and the .45 under the seat, and we got out of the car.

  "Listen," I said, "I'm just going into the emergency room and get patched up. After that, I got a few people to see. Why don't you get going?"

  The Half-Hajj's brows narrowed. "What's the matter? Still don't trust me?"

  I shook my head. "It's not that, Saied. I've gotten over all that. It's just sometimes I work better without an audience, okay?"

  "Sure. A busted collarbone ain't enough for you. You won't be happy till we got to bury you in five separate containers."

  "Saied."

  He raised both hands. "All right, all right. You want to storm back in on Shaykh Reda and Himmar, that's your business."

  "I'm not gonna face them again," I said. "I mean, not yet."

  "Uh yeah, well, let me know when you do."

  "You bet," I said. I gave him twenty kiam. "You can get a cab here, can't you?"

  "Uh huh. Give me a call later." He gave me back the keys to my car.

  I nodded and went up the curving drive to the emergency room entrance. Saied had brought me to the same hospital I'd been in twice before. I was beginning to feel comfortable there.

  I filled out their damn forms and waited half an hour until one of the residents could see me. He pumped something under the skin of my shoulder with a perfusor, then went about manipulating the broken bones. "This is probably gonna hurt," he said.

  Well, he didn't know that I had software chipped in that took care of that. I was probably the only person in the world who had that add-on, but I wasn't a well-known celebrity. I made some appropriate grunts and grimaces, but on the whole I acted brave. He immobilized my left arm with a kind of superstiff shrinkwrap. "You're handling this real well," he said.

  "I've had esoteric training," I said. "The control of pain is all in the mind." That was true enough; it was plugged into the mind on the end of a long, plastic-sheathed silver wire.

  "Whatever," said the doctor. When he finished with my collarbone, he treated the cuts and scrapes. Then he scribbled something on a prescription pad. "Still, I'm gonna give you this for pain. You may find that you need it. If you don't, great." He ripped the page loose and handed it to me.

  I glanced at it. He'd written me for twenty Nofeqs, painkillers so feeble that in the Budayeen you couldn't trade ten of them for a single Sonneine. "Thanks," I said bluntly.

  "No sense being a hero and toughing it out when medical science is there to help." He glanced around and decided that he was finished with me. "You'll be all right in about six weeks, Mr. Audran. I advise you to see your own physician in a few days."

  "Thanks," I said again. He gave me some papers and I took them to a window and paid cash. Then I went out into the main lobby of the
hospital and took the elevator up to the twentieth floor. There was a different nurse on duty, but Zain, the security guard, recognized me. I went down the hall to Suite One.

  A doctor and a nurse stood beside Papa's bed. They turned to look at me as I came in, their faces grim. "Is something wrong?" I asked, frightened.

  The doctor rubbed his gray beard with one hand. "He's in serious trouble," he said.

  "What the hell happened?" I demanded.

  "He'd been complaining of weakness, headaches, and abdominal pain. For a long while we couldn't find anything to explain it."

  "Yes," I said, "he'd been getting ill at home, before the fire. He was too sick to escape by himself."

  "We ran more sensitive tests," said the doctor, "and finally something turned up positive. He's been given a rather sophisticated neurotoxin, apparently over a period of weeks."

  I felt cold. Someone had been poisoning Friedlander Bey, probably someone in the house. He certainly had enough enemies, and my recent experience with the Half-Hajj proved that I couldn't dismiss anyone as a suspect. Then, suddenly, my eyes fell on something resting on Papa's tray table. It was a round metal tin, its cover lying beside it. In the tin was a layer of dates stuffed with nutmeats and rolled in sugar.

  "Umm Saad," I murmured. She'd been feeding those dates to him since she'd come to live in his house. I went to the tray table. "If you analyze these," I told the doctor, "I'll bet you'll find the source."

  "But who—"

  "Don't worry about who," I said. "Just make him well." This was all because I'd been so caught up in my own vendetta against Jawarski that I hadn't given proper attention to Umm Saad. As I headed for the door I thought, didn't Augustus Caesar's wife poison him with figs from his own tree, to get rid of him so her son could be emperor? I excused myself for overlooking the similarity before; there's so goddamn much history, it just can't help repeating itself.

  I went down and bailed my car out of the parking lot, then drove to the station house. I had myself completely under control by the time the elevator brought me up to the third floor. I headed toward Hajjar's office; Sergeant Catavina tried to stop me, but I just shoved him up against a painted plasterboard wall and kept walking. I flung open Hajjar's door. "Hajjar," I said. All the anger and disgust I felt toward him were in those two syllables.