Bill Burroughs lay in bed on the far end of the room. His eyes were closed and he lay on his side, one arm stretched out. A belt lay loosely around his bicep. A needle with a drop of blood on the tip lay on a stack of books beside the bed.
I walked over to him, having to take a weaving path to avoid the scattering of pages covered in crazy scrawl.
The first thing I did was to check his pulse. It was slow but steady. I raised an eyelid and shouted his name. No response.
For a minute I just stood there.
“I’m sorry, Bill,” I whispered. “I should have visited you like I promised.”
I covered him with a threadbare blanket, switched off the light, closed the door behind me, and used my lockpicks to lock the door again.
With a slow, sad step, I went over to Melanie’s.
She rushed over to me as soon as I entered the cafe and put one of those soft hands on my cheek. How could she keep those hands so soft and still practice regularly with a pistol? That crack shot she had made back on the road hadn’t been luck.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, giving me a kiss.
“Bill Burroughs. I forgot to visit him at the hospital and he fell off the wagon.”
She shook her head, those lovely blonde locks brushing her shoulders.
“That is not your fault, Kent. He is an addict. There is nothing you can do. He has to fix it himself.”
We headed upstairs while the waiters averted their eyes and served the customers.
I sat down hard on the bed, my head woozy from that wonderful Scotch.
“This whole case has been about people who can’t help what they are,” I complained. “Felipe is playing the fascist martyr when really he’s doing it because he’s got a thing for Octavio. Octavio couldn’t resist seeing Juan and ended up getting the guy killed. The anarchists killed Juan because they couldn’t put the war behind them, not even for a harmless guy like him. This is supposed to be the freest city in the world and people can’t just live and let live.”
Melanie sat down next to me.
“It’s difficult to accept other people when you can’t accept yourself. Just because the laws are loose here doesn’t mean people can throw off their problems like an overcoat after the rain has stopped.”
I slumped. “Like poor Bill.”
“You cannot change the world, Kent. Not even the whole Party can do that. That’s what I realized after the war. Even a Revolution isn’t going to change what people are. The best we can do is help them a little, and enjoy what we have.”
I looked into those big blue eyes. “Well, I sure enjoy what I have, baby.”
The corners of those luscious red lips turned up in a little smile.
“Then give me a cigarette.”
I pulled a pack out of my pocket and gave it a little jerk so one popped halfway out. Without taking her eyes off mine, she took it and put it to her lips.
Our hands flashed to our pockets as we both drew out a lighter and flicked it on.
She beat me by a mile.
“Got a new flint, eh?” I said.
She laughed. “Yes, and I’ve been practicing my fast draw.”
“I noticed. I still owe you a dinner for that one.”
“Tonight. We should work up an appetite first.”
We put our flames together. Melanie lit.
She took a long drag, held it for a moment, and then let the smoke waft out her nostrils. My lips parted a little so she could put the cigarette between them.
I breathed in, letting the relaxing smoke ease the tension of the past few days.
She grabbed the back of my head and pulled me to her. Our lips locked, and I let the smoke flow into her mouth. Our lips and tongues embraced as the cigarette haze coiled and expanded around us.
We had a hearty appetite when we finally made it to dinner that night.
HISTORICAL NOTE
Tangier in northern Morocco was an International Protectorate from 1924 until a newly independent Morocco reclaimed it in 1956. During those years, the city and a small area of land around it was dubbed the International Zone and ruled jointly by the United Kingdom, France, Spain, the United States, Portugal, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Sweden. Until independence, the rest of Morocco was divided up between France and Spain, with little left over for the Moroccan Sultan.
For reasons that remain unclear, the various powers decided to make Tangier not only a free port, but a place that allowed what these governments never allowed back home. Drugs were rampant. Prostitutes of both sexes and all ages were freely available. Money laundering was smiled at, passports cursorily checked, and only the simplest paperwork was required to set up any sort of business. It was a place where one could reinvent oneself. And for many, that reinvention was the path to quick personal downfall. Tangier has always been a relaxed but not terribly forgiving town, and the stories of the wastrels and overdoses outnumber the tales of the glamorous parties and scintillating cafe conversation.
Many characters in this book are real people. Observant readers will have already picked out William S. Burroughs and Paul Bowles. Dean of Dean’s Bar was a famous figure throughout the last years of the Interzone era. It would be impossible to write a book set in that time and not have Dean’s Bar in it because, as they used to say, “Everybody goes to Dean’s.”
Gerald Richardson was the real Tangier chief of police at the time that this story takes place, and he did write his memoirs. Crime Zone was published in 1959. While long out of print, it is well worth tracking down for those with an interest in the era.
Màrius’s tales of pissoir bombs and restaurant shootings actually happened. I learned of these attacks and many more from the book La Barcelona de la Dinamita, el Plomo y el Petróleo, by Marc Viaplana and Raj Kuter, an account of anarchist activities in Barcelona around the turn of the last century that manages to be simultaneously horrifying and hilarious.
Many political details about the Spanish Second Republic I gleaned from The Battle for Spain by Antony Beevor.
Other books that helped me were The Dream at the End of the World: Paul Bowles and the Literary Renegades of Tangier by Michelle Green, and Tangier: City of the Dream by Iain Finlayson. Both have proven to be invaluable sources of information, as have my many friends and acquaintances in Tangier, where this book was written.
I would also like to thank the librarians at the American Legation in Tangier for opening up their research facility to me. The Legation library has one of the best collections on Moroccan history and culture in the world, and an excellent archive of the Tangier Gazette. The pages of this newspaper gave me lots of little details such as the restoration of the Grand Socco that sporadically took place in the 1950s.
(Oh, and the Bastille Cellar was a real sex club in Copenhagen, but in the 1980s, not the 1950s. While I was too young to go in, its newspaper ads did fire my adolescent imagination.)
About the Author
Sean McLachlan worked for ten years as an archaeologist in Israel, Cyprus, Bulgaria, and the United States before becoming a full-time writer. He is the author of numerous fiction and nonfiction books, which are listed on the following pages. When he’s not writing, he enjoys hiking, reading, traveling, and, most of all, teaching his son about the world. He divides his time between Madrid, Oxford, and Cairo.
To find out more about Sean’s work and travels, visit him at his Amazon page or his blog, and feel free to friend him on Goodreads, Twitter, and Facebook.
You might also enjoy his newsletter, Sean’s Travels and Tales, which comes out every one or two months. Each issue features a short story, a travel article, a coupon for a free or discounted book, and updates on future projects. You can subscribe using this link. Your email will not be shared with anyone else.
Fiction by Sean McLachlan
Tangier Bank Heist: An Interzone Mystery
Right after the war, Tangier was the craziest town in North Africa. Everything was for sale and the price was cheap. The perverts
came for the flesh. The addicts came for the drugs. A whole army of hustlers and grifters came for the loose laws and free flow of cash and contraband.
So why was I here? Because it was the only place that would have me. Besides, it was a great place to be a detective. You got cases like in no other place I’d ever been, and I’d been all over. Cases you couldn’t believe ever happened. Like when I had to track down the guy who stole the bank.
No, he didn’t rob the bank, he stole it.
Here’s how it happened . . .
Available in electronic edition! Print edition coming soon!
The Case of the Purloined Pyramid (The Masked Man of Cairo Book One)
An ancient mystery. A modern murder.
Sir Augustus Wall, a horribly mutilated veteran of the Great War, has left Europe behind to open an antiquities shop in Cairo. But Europe’s troubles follow him as a priceless inscription is stolen and those who know its secrets start turning up dead. Teaming up with Egyptology expert Moustafa Ghani, and Faisal, an irritating street urchin he just can't shake, Sir Wall must unravel an ancient secret and face his own dark past.
Available in electronic and print editions!
The Case of the Shifting Sarcophagus (The Masked Man of Cairo Book Two)
An Old Kingdom coffin. A body from yesterday.
Sir Augustus Wall had seen a lot of death. From the fields of Flanders to the alleys of Cairo, he’d solved several murders and sent many men to their grave. But he’s never had a body delivered to his antiquities shop encased in a 5,000 year-old coffin.
Soon he finds himself fighting a vicious street gang bent on causing national mayhem while his assistant, Moustafa Ghani, faces his own enemies in the form of colonial powers determined to ruin him. Throughout all this runs the street urchin Faisal. Ignored as usual, dismissed as usual, he has the most important fight of all.
Available in electronic edition! Print edition coming soon!
Radio Hope (Toxic World Book One)
In a world shattered by war, pollution, and disease…
A gunslinging mother longs to find a safe refuge for her son.
A frustrated revolutionary delivers water to villagers living on a toxic waste dump.
The assistant mayor of humanity's last city hopes he will never have to take command.
One thing gives them the promise of a better future—Radio Hope, a mysterious station that broadcasts vital information about surviving in a blighted world. But when a mad prophet and his army of fanatics march out of the wildlands on a crusade to purify the land with blood and fire, all three will find their lives intertwining, and changing forever.
Available in print and electronic editions!
Refugees from the Righteous Horde (Toxic World Book Two)
When you only have one shot, you better aim true.
In a ravaged world, civilization’s last outpost is reeling after fighting off the fanatical warriors of the Righteous Horde. Sheriff Annette Cruz becomes New City’s long arm of vengeance as she sets off across the wildlands to take out the cult’s leader. All she has is a sniper’s rifle with one bullet and a former cultist with his own agenda. Meanwhile, one of the cult’s escaped slaves makes a discovery that could tear New City apart…
Refugees from the Righteous Horde continues the Toxic World series started in Radio Hope, an ongoing narrative of humanity’s struggle to rebuild the world it ruined.
Available in electronic edition!
We Had Flags (Toxic World Book Three)
A law doesn't work if everyone breaks it.
For forty years, New City has been a bastion of order in a fallen world. One crucial law has maintained the peace: it is illegal to place responsibility for the collapse of civilization on any one group. Anyone found guilty of Blaming is branded and stripped of citizenship.
But when some unwelcome visitors arrive from across the sea, old wounds break open, and no one is safe from Blame.
Available in electronic edition!
The Scavenger (A Toxic World Novelette)
In a world shattered by war, pollution, and disease, a lone scavenger discovers a priceless relic from the Old Times.
The problem is, it’s stuck in the middle of the worst wasteland he knows—a contaminated city inhabited by insane chem addicts and vengeful villagers. Only his wits, his gun, and an unlikely ally can get him out alive.
Set in the Toxic World series introduced in the novel Radio Hope, this 10,000-word story explores more of the dangers and personalities that make up a post-apocalyptic world that's all too possible.
Available in electronic edition!
Trench Raiders (Trench Raiders Book One)
September 1914: The British Expeditionary Force has the Germans on the run, or so they think.
After a month of bitter fighting, the British are battered, exhausted, and down to half their strength, yet they’ve helped save Paris and are pushing towards Berlin. Then the retreating Germans decide to make a stand. Holding a steep slope beside the River Aisne, the entrenched Germans mow down the advancing British with machine gun fire. Soon the British dig in too, and it looks like the war might grind down into deadly stalemate.
Searching through No-Man’s Land in the darkness, Private Timothy Crawford of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry finds a chink in the German armor. But can this lowly private, who spends as much time in the battalion guardhouse as he does on the parade ground, convince his commanding officer to risk everything for a chance to break through?
Available in electronic edition!
Digging In (Trench Raiders Book Two)
October 1914: The British line is about to break.
After two months of hard fighting, the British Expeditionary Force is short of men, ammunition, and ideas. With their line stretched to the breaking point, aerial reconnaissance spots German reinforcements massing for the big push. As their trenches are hammered by a German artillery battery, the men of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry come up with a desperate plan—a daring raid behind enemy lines to destroy the enemy guns and give the British a chance to stop the German army from breaking through.
Available in electronic edition!
No Man’s Land (Trench Raiders Book Three)
No Man’s Land—a hellscape of shell craters and dead bodies. Soldiers have fought over it, charged across it, and bled on it for a year of grueling war, but neither side has dominated it.
Until now.
An elite German raiding party is passing through No Man’s Land every night, attacking the British trenches at will. The Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry need to reassert control over their front lines.
So the exhausted men of Company E decide to set a trap, a nighttime ambush in the middle of No Man’s Land, where any mistake can be fatal. But the few surviving veterans are leading recruits who have only been in the trenches for two weeks. Mistakes are inevitable.
Available in electronic edition!
Christmas Truce
Christmas 1914
In the cold, muddy trenches of the Western Front, there is a strange silence. As the members of a crack English trench raiding team enjoy their first day of peace in months, they call out holiday greetings to the men on the German line. Soon both sides are fraternizing in No Man’s Land.
But when the English recognize some enemy raiders who only a few days before launched a deadly attack on their position, can they keep the peace through the Christmas truce?
Available in electronic edition!
Warpath into Sonora
Arizona 1846
Nantan, a young Apache warrior, is building a name for himself by leading raids against Mexican ranches to impress his war chief, and the chief’s lovely daughter. But there is one thing he and all other Apaches fear—a ruthless band of Mexican scalp hunters who slaughter entire villages.
Nantan and his friends have sworn to fight back, but they are inexperienced, and led by a war chief driven mad with a thirst f
or revenge. Can they track their tribe’s worst enemy into unknown territory and defeat them?
Available in electronic edition!
A Fine Likeness (House Divided Book One)
A Confederate guerrilla and a Union captain discover there’s something more dangerous in the woods than each other.
Jimmy Rawlins is a teenage bushwhacker who leads his friends on ambushes of Union patrols. They join infamous guerrilla leader Bloody Bill Anderson on a raid through Missouri, but Jimmy questions his commitment to the cause when he discovers this madman plans to sacrifice a Union prisoner in a hellish ritual to raise the Confederate dead.
Richard Addison is an aging captain of a lackluster Union militia. Depressed over his son’s death in battle, a glimpse of Jimmy changes his life. Jimmy and his son look so much alike that Addison becomes obsessed with saving him from Bloody Bill. Captain Addison must wreck his reputation to win this war within a war, while Jimmy must decide whether to betray the Confederacy to stop the evil arising in the woods of Missouri.
Available in print and electronic editions!
The River of Desperation (House Divided Book Two)
In the waning days of the Civil War, a secret conflict still rages…
Lieutenant Allen Addison of the USS Essex is looking forward to the South's defeat so he can build the life he's always wanted. Love and a promising business await him in St. Louis, but he is swept up in a primeval war between the forces of Order and Chaos, a struggle he doesn't understand and can barely believe in. Soon he is fighting to keep a grip on his sanity as he tries to save St. Louis from destruction.
The long-awaited sequel to A Fine Likeness continues the story of two opposing forces that threaten to tear the world apart.
Three Passports to Trouble Page 17
