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 nighthawfcs 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 masting, 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 rne?”
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.
He glanced up from some paperwork. His expression turned fearful when he saw the look on my face. “Audran,” he said. “What is it?”
I lofted the .45 onto his desk in front of him. “Remember that American we were looking for? The guy who killed Jirji? Well, they found him lying on the floor of some rattrap. Somebody shot him with his own gun.”
Hajjar stared unhappily at the automatic. “Somebody shot him, huh? Any idea who?”
“Unfortunately, no.” I gave him an evil grin. “I don’t have a microscope or nothing, but it looks to me like whoever did it also wiped his fingerprints right off the weapon. We may never solve this murder, either.”
Hajjar sat back in his reclining chair. “Probably not. Well, at least the citizens will be glad to hear that Jawarski’s been neutralized. Good police work, Audran.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Sure.” I turned to leave, and I got as far as the door. Then I faced him again. “That’s one down, know what I mean? And two to go.”
“The hell you talking about?”
“I mean Umm Saad and Abu Adil are next. And something else: I know who you are and I know what you’re doing. Watch your ass. The guy who blew Jawarski away is out there, and he may have you in his sights next.” I had the pleasure of seeing Hajjar’s superior grin vanish. When I left his office, he was muttering to himself and reaching for his phone.