"He was paid off," Xavier said. "Where's Jama get a gun? You notice his behavior, we talkin to him?"
"Cool," Dara said. "Confident."
"Made sure we understood he wouldn't be hangin around. Statin it as a fact. I wondered, why's he doin that, the man tippin us off."
"Showing off," Dara said.
"That's all right, he told us he's walkin out and he did. You notice anything else? I believe he's been livin as a homasexual at this time. Years of runnin with the Qaeda boys. Close to Qasim while they're blowin up things. Workin right under him till they alone. Then Jama's on top."
"I don't know," Dara said. "I bet I can get him to come on to me."
"Listen to you. He gets lucky, remembers girls and goes straight?"
"Why do you think he's gay?"
"Just somethin about him."
"He's not at all effeminate."
"No, a man comes out actin girlish over here he can get stoned. I mean get rocks thrown at him. But you've seen Arabs walkin along holdin hands, haven't you? They in a man's world, the women at home lookin out the window. It's like in prison," Xavier said, "you don't have to be in love to get a blow job."
Dara watched a medical truck back up to where the body bags were laid out.
"Why did he shoot everybody?"
"They know him. Can point him out."
"The cop didn't ask if I knew any of them."
"You tell him you know the man that got away?"
"Every word-one of Judy Garland's biggest hits."
"You tell him you know the guy they want or not?" She hesitated and Xavier said, "You messin with police business now."
"Maybe somebody else shot them."
"If I know," Xavier said, "you know. Jama shot his Qaeda boss and four Somalis, the boys just makin a buck. You want to see if you can turn him up. Hopin it keeps goin. It does, you got material for a feature. I told you that before."
"I see myself sitting in a studio exec's office," Dara said. "He's got my screenplay in front of him. Or it might be a treatment."
"What are you callin it?"
"Djibouti. They'll want to change it to something else, tell you foreign words don't sell as features."
"Like Casablanca," Xavier said. "They don't like Djibouti, go indie. Get financin from some rich guy loves you or the story. Billy Wynn. He's on his two-million-dollar boat thinkin of this same movie as we speak. Starrin himself."
"Helene said he's finally in love with her-killing herself acting like a little sailor. I hope she gets him."
"The man loves movies. Take his money and make him the producer."
"You know what I keep thinking," Dara said. "I write a screenplay and show it to a studio exec and he says, 'I had a great time reading this one. It's a howl. It's out there and has legs. But where are the backstories to show motivations?' He'll say something like 'It lacks verisimilitude.'"
"Tell him you don't know what that means and walk out. Get independent financin and a girl like Naomi Watts to play the documentary filmmaker turnin to features."
"You think I look like her?"
"Naomi can look like you. Naomi never overplays her parts. You see her in Happy Time? She makes you keep watchin her."
"She's in her underwear half the picture."
"Naomi could dress like a nun, you still be watchin her." Xavier said, "In that picture, the boy that made her take off her clothes? He's homasexual. Else he'd of jumped her. Can you see another star playin that role? One that liked bein in her underwear? She'd make 'em change the ending. Not Naomi," Xavier said. "Put her name above the title, Djibouti. You know what it means, Djibouti?"
"I have no idea."
"It means 'my casserole.' No one knows why. Comes from the Afar language. I read someplace Djibouti is 'splendidly seedy…Gallic elegance turned shabby.' Look at this building, you see it."
He watched Dara staring at the house where five men were found shot to death, one bullet each. Xavier said, "You want to find the boy playin he's more African than American, huh? Wouldn't mind runnin into him."
"I'll bet we could," Dara said.
"Labor Day one time," Xavier said, "I was in Atlantic City and called a girl I know lived there with her sister. The sister tells me, oh, she's gone to play the slot machines. I stepped out on the Boardwalk and five minutes later who do I see coming toward me in the Labor Day crowd of people? LaDonna. The girl lit up, she's so glad to see me back from seafarin. She'd just won seventeen hundred dollars playin a quarter machine and we celebrated it together. LaDonna always liked me."
"Don't tell me," Dara said, "you expected to run into her."
"I didn't expect not to," Xavier said. "I always keep it open. It happens, it happens. When it don't, what are you out? It's best never be anxious."
Dara took his arm and they walked away from the house.
She said, "All right, I'll leave it up to you. We keep at it or quit and go home."
"Just a minute ago you talkin about makin a feature with Naomi Watts. All we need to know is what happens next. Now you just as soon go home?"
Dara said, "I think we'd have a better chance of finding the Gold Dust Twins than Jama. Now he's free he's gonna hide out or change his looks."
"They still hijackin ships," Xavier said. "The world navies not shuttin 'em down any."
They came to the white rental car. He opened the door for her, walked around and got in.
"The latest hijack," Xavier said, "they want a million for a Finnish ship, the Arctic Sea, with fifteen Russian crewmen on board. Flies a Maltese flag. They think it might have a 'secret cargo' they callin it. They tested it in Finland for nuclear shit aboard and musta scored positive. But now the ship's gone and disappeared."
Dara said, "Where was it last seen?"
"In the English Channel, two weeks ago."
"It's not around here?" Dara surprised.
"In the channel on its way to Algeria, but never arrived. You want to know more," Xavier said, "you have to call Billy. I bet he can tell where the ship's at."
Dara said, "I keep thinking about Jama. He could still be around here."
"But the Twins'll be easier to locate," Xavier said. "Give Idris a call. Find out what they're up to. Talk to Harry. Ask him how come he blew his big chance."
"If he wasn't at the house," Dara said, "he'll blame Idris."
"You think they know what they doin?"
"I think they have no idea," Dara said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
THEY MET AT THE Club ZuZu and before long the young gentleman named Hunter was telling Jama where he lived.
"In a residential hotel on rue de Marseille. Sort of an upscale Frenchified joint done in Gallic moderne. My digs are on the top floor. A stairway takes one to the roof-it's quite nice-with a French-blue awning that rolls out to shade the deck, or rolls back to reveal as much sun as you'd ever want. Widows, I suppose well off enough, have suites there, but never venture topside."
The next afternoon they were on the roof, several floors above the surroundings, Jama lying naked. Hunter said, "I'm surprised you have tan lines."
Jama said, "You never kept house with a black man before?"
"Keeping house," Hunter said, "that's what we're doing?"
"Giving shelter to a seaman down on his luck. Hit over the head by a man stepped out of an alley. Robbed while I'm lying dazed and my ship is gone without me," Jama said, his black snake exposed for Hunter to admire.
"You want to touch it, don't you?"
Hunter said, "You mind?" HE WAS TWENTY-FIVE, AN American in this god-awful place to learn the shipping business. "I sit before a computer all day looking at figures and schedules. I'd rather be scraping hulls." He said, "I'm kidding. I'm bored. Maybe I should go to sea. Is it fun?"
Hunter was from New York, the grandson of a man who owned and ran a half-dozen shipping terminals, "practically with a whip," Hunter said. "Dad slipped away ages ago to sell debentures, and my dear mother, who swears she loves me more than her clothes, offered me up to her father, a dedicated scoundrel."