One of Khayyam’s rubaiyyat kept going through my mind. Something about regret:
Again, again, Repentance oft before I vowed — but was I sober when I swore? Again, again I failed, for younger thoughts my frail Repentance into tatters tore.
“Chiri, please,” I said, holding up my empty glass. The club was almost empty. It was late and I was very tired. I closed my eyes and listened to the music, the same shrill, thumping hispo music Kandy played every time she got up to dance. I was getting tired of hearing the same songs over and over again.
“Why don’t you go home?” Chiri asked me. “I can take care of the place by myself. What’s the matter, don’t you trust me with the cash?”
I opened my eyes. She’d put a fresh vodka gimlet in front of me. I was in a bottomless melancholy, the kind that doesn’t get any help at all from liquor. You can drink all night and you never get loaded. You end up with a bad stomach and a pounding headache, but the relief you expect from your troubles never comes. “ ’S all right,” I said. “I got to stay. You go ahead and close up, though. Nobody’s come in for an hour at least.”
“What you say, boss,” said Chiri, giving me a worried look. I hadn’t told her about Shaknahyi. I hadn’t told anybody about him.
“Chiri, you know somebody I can trust to do a little dirty work?”
She didn’t look shocked. That was one of the reasons I liked her so much. “You can’t find somebody with your cop connections? You don’t have enough thugs working for you at Papa’s?”
I shook my head. “Somebody who knows what he’s doing, somebody I can count on to keep a low profile.”
Chiri grinned. “Somebody like what you used to be before your lucky number came up. What about Morgan? He’s dependable and he probably won’t sell you out.”
“I don’t know,” I said. Morgan was a big blond guy, an American from Federated New England. He and I didn’t travel in the same circles, but if Chiri recommended him, he was probably all right.
“What you need done?” she asked.
I rubbed my cheek. Reflected in the back mirror, my red beard was beginning to show a lot of gray. “I want him to track somebody down for me. Another American.”
“See there? Morgan’s a natural.”
“Uh huh,” I said sourly. “If they blow each other away, nobody’ll miss ’em. Can you get hold of him tonight?”
She looked doubtful. “It’s two o’clock in the morning.”
“Tell him there’s a hundred kiam in it for him. Just for showing up and talking to me.”
“He’ll be here,” said Chiri. She dug an address book out of her bag and grabbed the bar’s phone.
I gulped down half the vodka gimlet and stared at the front door. Now I was waiting for two people.
“You want to pay us?” Chiri said some time later.
I’d been staring at the door, unaware that the music had been turned off and the five dancers had gotten dressed. I shook my head to clear the fog out of it, but it didn’t do much good. “How’d we do tonight?” I asked.
“Same as always,” said Chiri. “Lousy.”
I split the receipts with her and began counting out the dancers’ money. Chiri had a list of how many drinks each girl had gotten from the customers. I figured out the commissions and added them to the wages. “Nobody better come in late tomorrow,” I said.
“Yeah, right,” said Kandy, snatching up her money and hurrying for the door. Lily, Rani, and Jamila were close behind her.
“You all right, Marid?” asked Yasmin.
I looked up at her, grateful for her concern. “I’m fine,” I said. “Tell you all about it later.”
“Want to go out for some breakfast?”
That would have been wonderful. I hadn’t gone out with Yasmin in months. I realized that it had been a very long time since I’d gone out with anybody. I had something else to do tonight, though. “Let me postpone that,” I said. “Tomorrow, maybe.”
“Sure, Marid,” she said. She turned and went out.
“There is something wrong, huh?” said Chiri.
I just nodded and folded up the rest of the night’s cash. No matter how fast I gave it away, it just kept accumulating.
“And you don’t want to talk about it.”
I shook my head. “Go on home, Chiri.”
“Just gonna sit here in the dark by yourself?”
I made a shooing motion with my hand. Chiri shrugged and left me alone. I finished the vodka gimlet, then went behind the bar and made myself another one. About twenty minutes later, the blond American came into the club. He nodded to me and said something in English.
I just shook my head. I opened my briefcase on the bar, took out an English-language daddy, and chipped it in. There was just a moment while my mind worked to translate what he’d said, and then the daddy kicked in and it was as if I’d always known how to speak English. “Sorry to make you come out so late, Morgan,” I said.
He ran a large hand through his long blond hair. “Hey, man, what’s happenin’?”
“Want a drink?”
“You can draw me a beer if it’s free.”
“Help yourself,” I said.
He leaned across the bar and held a clean glass under one of the taps. “Chiri said something about a hundred kiam, man.”
I took out my money. The size of the roll dismayed me. I was going to have to get to the bank more often, or else I’d have to let Kmuzu play bodyguard full-time. I dealt out five twenty-kiam bills and slid them down toward Morgan.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and scooped up the money. He looked down at the bills, then back at me. “Now I can go, right?” he said.
“Sure,” I said, “unless you want to hear how you can make a thousand more.”
He adjusted his steel-rimmed spectacles and grinned again. I didn’t know if the glasses were functional or just an affectation. If his eyes were bad, he could have had them reconstructed cheaply enough. “This is a lot more interesting than what I was doin’, anyway,” he said.
“Fine. I just want you to find somebody.” I told him all about Paul Jawarski.
When I mentioned the Flathead Gang, Morgan nodded. “He’s the guy that killed the cop today?” he asked.
“He got away.”
“Well, hey, man, the law will bring him in sooner or later, you can bet on that.”
I didn’t let my expression change. “I don’t want to hear about sooner or later, okay? I want to know where he’s at, and I want to ask him a couple of questions before the cops get to him. He’s holed up somewhere, probably been stung with a needle gun.”
“You’re payin’ a thousand kiam just to put the finger on this guy?”
I squeezed the wedge of lime into my gimlet and drank some. “Uh huh.”
“You don’t want me to rough him up a little for you?”
“Just find him before Hajjar does.”
“Aha,” said Morgan, “I get you, man. After the lieutenant gets his hooks into him, Jawarski won’t be available to talk to nobody.”
“Right. And we don’t want that to happen.”
“I guess we don’t, man. How much you gonna pay me up front?”
“Five now, five later.” I cut him another five hundred kiam. “I get results tomorrow, right?”
His big hand closed on the money and he gave me his predatory grin. “Go get some sleep, man. I’ll be wakin’ you up with Jawarski’s address and commcode.”
I stood up. “Finish your beer and let’s get out of here. This place is starting to break my heart.”
Morgan looked around at the dark bar. “Ain’t the same without the girls and the mirror balls goin’, is it?” He gulped down the rest of his beer and set the glass gently on the bar.
I followed him toward the front door. “Find Jawarski,” I said.
“You got it, man.” He raised a hand and ambled away up the Street. I went back inside and sat in my place. My night wasn’t over yet.
I drank a couple more gimlets before Indihar showed up. I knew she was going to come. I’d been waiting for her.
She’d thrown on a bulky blue coat and tied a maroon and gold scarf over her hair. Her face was pale and drawn, her lips pressed tightly together. She came to where I was sitting and looked down at me. Her eyes weren’t red, though; she hadn’t been crying. I couldn’t imagine Indihar crying. “I want to talk to you,” she said. Her voice was cold and calm.