That’s why I found Frenchy’s story hard to believe.
Maribel would never have the opportunity to see scars on her trick. Not sitting at the corner of the bar like that. “She took this guy home,” said Frenchy, grinning.
“Who’d go home with Maribel?” It was hard to believe.
“Someone who needed the money.”
“Son of a bitch. She pays men to jam her?”
“Money cycles through this world like anything else.”
I thanked Frenchy for the information and told him I needed to talk to Maribel. He laughed and went back to his stool. I moved over to the seat beside her. “Hi, Maribel,” I said.
She had to look at me a while before she recognized me. “Marîd,” she said happily. Between the first syllable and the second, her hand plopped in my lap. “Buy me a cocktail?”
“All right.” I signaled to Dalia, who put a champagne cocktail in front of the old woman. Dalia gave me a crooked smile and I just shrugged helplessly. The girls and changes in Frenchy’s club always got a tall stainless-steel cup of ice water with their drinks. They said it was because they didn’t like the taste of liquor, and to get all that alcohol down they had to drink ice water with it. They sipped some champagne or some hard liquor, then went to the ice water. The marks thought it was tough on these poor girls, having to guzzle two or three dozen drinks every night if they didn’t enjoy the stuff. The truth was that they never swallowed the drink; they spit it out into the metal cup. Every so often Dalia would take the cup away and empty it on the pretext of freshening up the ice water. Maribel didn’t want the spit-back cup. She liked her booze.
I had to admit, Maribel’s hand was as skilled as any silversmith’s. Practice makes perfect, I guess. I was about to tell her to stop, but then I said to myself, what the hell. It was a learning experience. “Maribel,” I said, “Frenchy told me you saw somebody with burn marks and bruises all over his body. Do you remember who?”
“I did?”
“Somebody you went home with.”
“When?”
“I don’t know. If I could find that person, he might be able to tell me something that would save some lives.”
“Really? Would I get some kind of reward for that?”
“A hundred kiam, if you can remember.”
That stopped her. She hadn’t seen a hundred kiam in one lump since her glory days, and they belonged to another century. She hunted through her disordered memories, desperately trying to come up with a mental picture. “I’ll tell you,” she said, “there was somebody like that, I remember that much; but I can’t for the life of me remember who. I’ll get it, though. Will the reward still be good—”
“Whenever you remember, give me a call or tell Frenchy.”
“I won’t have to split the money with him, will I?”
“No,” I said. Yasmin was on stage now. She saw me sitting with Maribel, she saw Maribel’s arm moving up and down. Yasmin gave me a disgusted look and turned away. I laughed. “Thanks, but that’s all right, Maribel.”
“Going, Marîd?” asked Dalia. “That didn’t take very long.”
“Rotate, Dalia,” I said. I left Frenchy’s, worried that my friends, like Okking, Hassan, and Friedlander Bey, believed they were all safe now. I knew they weren’t, but they didn’t want to listen to me. I almost wished something terrible would happen, just so they’d know I was right; but I didn’t want to bear the guilt for it.
In the midst of their relief and celebration, I was more alone than ever before.
Chapter 19
“You do not wish it.”
Audran looked at him. Wolfe sat there like a self-satisfied statue, his eyes half-closed, his lips pushing out a little, pulling in, then pushing out again. He turned his head a fraction of an inch and gazed at me. “You do not wish it,” he said again.
“But I do!” cried Audran. “I just want all of this to be over.”
“Nevertheless.” He raised a finger and wiggled it. “You continue to hope that there will be some simple solution, some way that doesn’t threaten danger or, what is yet worse to your way of thinking, ugliness. If Nikki had been murdered cleanly, simply, then you might have tracked her killer down relentlessly. As it is, the situation becomes ever more repellent, and you desire only to hide from it. Consider where you are now: huddled in the linen closet of some impoverished, nameless fellah.” He frowned disapprovingly.
Audran felt condemned. “You mean I didn’t go about it the right way? But you’re the detective, not me. I’m just Audran, the sand-nigger who sits on the curb with the plastic cups and the rest of the garbage. You always say yourself that any spoke will lead the ant to the hub.”
His shoulders raised a quarter of an inch in a shrug, and then fell. He was being compassionate. “Yes, I say that. However, if the ant walks all the way around the rim three-quarters of the circumference before choosing a spoke, he may lose more than merely time.”
Audran spread his hands helplessly. “I’m getting near the hub in my own clumsy way. So why don’t you use your eccentric genius and tell me where I can find this other killer?”
Wolfe put his hands m the arms of his chair and levered himself up. His expression was set and he barely noticed me as he walked by. It was time to go up to his orchids.
When I chipped out the moddy and replaced the special daddies, I was sitting on the floor of Jarir’s closet, my head on my drawn-up knees. With the daddies back in, I was invincible — not hungry, not tired, not thirsty, not afraid, not even angry. I set my jaw, I ran my hand through my rumpled hair, I did all those valiant things. Step aside buddy, this is a job for …
For me, I guess.
I glanced at my watch and saw that it was early evening. That was all right, too; all the little throat-slashers and their victims would be out.
I wanted to show that bloated Nero Wolfe that real people have their own low cunning, too. I also wanted to live the rest of my life without feeling forever like I had to throw up in the next few seconds. That meant catching Nikki’s killer. I took out the envelope of money and counted it. There was over fifty-seven thousand kiam. I had expected a little more than five. I stared at all that money for a long time. Then I put it away, took out my pill case, and swallowed twelve Paxium without water. I left the little room and passed Jarir. I didn’t say a word to him going out.
The streets in that part of town were deserted already, but the nearer I got to the Budayeen, the more people I saw. I passed through the eastern gate and went up the Street. My mouth was dry despite the daddies that were supposed to keep the lid clamped down on my endocrines. It was a good thing I wasn’t afraid, because I was scared stiff. I passed the Half-Hajj and he said a few words; I just nodded and went by as if he’d been a total stranger. There may have been a convention or a tour group in town, because I remember little knots of strangers standing in the Street, staring into the clubs and the cafés. I didn’t bother walking around them. I just shoved my way through.