Quicksand (3 page)

She pushed his arm off. “I really, really liked these.”

He tilted his head, regarding the blood-soaked sneakers. “They are pretty fly.”

“
Were
pretty fly.”

“Yes, were pretty fly. Now, they're pretty nasty.”

She turned her head to look at him. “What if you had missed?”

He grinned at her, green eyes flashing. “But I didn't miss.”

“But what if you had missed? You were on stakeout all night. You were a wreck. You're always a wreck after stakeouts. How could you trust yourself with that shot?”

“Nora, I couldn't miss. With all that shouting, no one heard us come in the balcony door. I was, like, four feet away. And … it was
you
.”

She tilted her head slightly, realizing suddenly how much she liked the way he had said that. Then, to make sure he didn't sense her feelings, she pointed at her ear. “What? I can't hear you because I'm actually deaf now.”

“I'm sorry, Nora. We didn't know there was a third person in the apartment.”

“How long had you been watching the place?”

“Hey, as soon as we got the information from Daniella Miller we started watching the place.”

She went back to staring at the commotion four flights down, willing herself not to think about the life snuffed out to save her own. Below them, Wansbrough was overseeing the bag that contained Lisa Halston's nude and mostly headless corpse as it was bundled away by the medical examiner. The third in the threesome, apparently a working colleague of Lisa's, had been turned over to the police for prosecution. They had found no identification for her in the loft, and once she had stopped screaming, she could not be coerced to speak.

John had wanted Nora to come down so the EMTs could check her out, but she wasn't budging. Irritated, he finally stopped motioning up to her and called her cell phone.

“Nora, just let them see you,” he said.

She switched the phone to her good ear. “John. It's okay. I'm okay. I just want to go home and take a shower.”

“Nora, come down now … it will take five minutes.”

“I can't … Calder and I are bonding over how he almost killed me.”

Calder waved down at him.

Wansbrough was frustrated. “Look,” he said, “Like it or not, I know you're shaken up. Burton and I will take Fulton downtown, and Calder can drive you home after you secure the scene up there. Take it easy the rest of the day, and we'll meet up to talk to Dewayne tomorrow morning at nine, when the meth is out of his system.” He hung up without saying good-bye, and went back to sorting through the controlled chaos around him. Dewayne was the last to go, and Nora watched curiously as Eric Burton ushered him into the back of Wansbrough's Suburban.

Nora and Calder walked through the crime scene together, stopping at the bathroom out of which Lisa Halston had pounced on Nora. They stared at a laptop computer. It sat next to an empty condom wrapper on the tiled floor. The darkened screen gaped up at the ceiling.

“Why is there a laptop in the bathroom?” asked Nora.

Ben took a pair of latex gloves from an evidence tech. He pulled on the gloves and then tapped the screen.

“Password?”

“Grumpy hooker
?” Nora suggested.

“Nice,” said Ben. He tried a few entries, then shrugged. “We'll take it to Jonas and Libby.”

They catalogued it with the techs and then made their way out of the building, passing Juanita, who appeared in the midst of a classic concierge-breakdown as she fielded frantic inquiries from tenants and neighbors. Nora nodded at her as they passed out into what was left of the cool autumn morning.

Traffic was light on the way back to Center City. Calder was quiet, and Nora observed him carefully. His auburn hair was thick and close-cropped, and his features were strong. His pointed chin was covered with stubble after his night in the car. The green eyes had dark shadows under them. “Hey, you okay there?” she asked.

He nodded.

“How many people you killed so far?”

Calder glanced over at her. “Total? In the past four years of service?”

“Yes. Total.”

“One.”

Despite herself, Nora laughed out loud. “All that shooting—?”

“I try to aim for like, legs and thighs … I wasn't a college track star like you, so I have to get the advantage somehow.”

“Very savvy,” she admitted. “What's next?”

Ben shrugged. “I'll take this laptop to Jonas and Libby. I'll write up my report about what happened with Halston, Lisa, twenty-six, and hope it matches what the medical examiner finds so that Internal Affairs doesn't make a big deal about it. I'll go home and play a violent video game and hope we get to do it all again tomorrow.”

Nora smiled. “I'm not even gonna worry about you…”

“No, no worries,” he said, pulling up in front of the Cairo Café. “Okay, Nora. If you need anything, call.”

She nodded. “Thanks, Ben.” She opened the car door, then paused. “Ben.”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for saving my life.”

His eyes locked with her wide, brown ones, and she watched him exhale slowly, looking for words. She slipped out of the car before he said anything she might want to hear.

She was careful not to watch him drive away as she pushed open the door to her father's restaurant.

*   *   *

The Cairo Café
sat quietly in the midst of the Logan Square neighborhood, only a few blocks from the river and the Market Street skyscrapers—just out of the way enough, it seemed to Nora, to be doomed to constant struggle. It was small but spare, with simple two-top tables and long leather benches running along each wall. It could seat about fifty people comfortably and, in its twenty-seven years of business, it had never departed from the staid, pressed, beige tablecloths and primly folded cloth napkins. The requisite Quranic verse warding off envy hung over the hostess's stand (although there was never a need for an actual hostess), and various Egyptian relics were rather randomly placed throughout the dining area.

The electronic bell announced her, echoing through the empty restaurant, lancing through the soft strains of an old Abd al-Wahhab tune that spun from the CD player. It was ten thirty, and they opened for lunch at eleven.
“As-salaam alaykum,”
she said into the dimness.

Baba set down his glass of tea and hastily stubbed out his cigarette.
“Wa alaykum as-salaam, ya Noooora!”
He was sitting at his customary table near the cash register, enjoying a quiet moment before dealing with the first customers of the day. He offered her a rough cheek. “
Inti fayn
?” Where have you been? “I didn't think you were home at breakfast.”

She bent to kiss him, waving away the remaining cloud of smoke, then sank into the chair across from him. “Working,” she answered in English.

“In that?” he asked, taking in her running clothes. He didn't notice her blood-soaked shoes in the muted light, and she hurriedly pulled her feet under her seat.

“Casual Friday,” she said. “And you know you shouldn't be smoking inside the restaurant. Your employees can sue you.”

“I'll never do it again,” he said contritely. This was Ragab's latest strategy for dealing with his daughter's many “don'ts.”

She narrowed her eyes, recognizing the strategy for what it was, and moved on. “Did you get Ahmad his breakfast?”

“He can't get his own breakfast?”

Nora frowned at her father. “He can but he won't, he's spoiled. You have to lay something out for him or he won't eat. You know this.”

Her father made a disapproving noise and patted his own girth where it strained against his button-down shirt, as though to say that that was certainly not his own approach. “I think he's become more spoiled since he's started studying for this test.”

Nora sighed. “Well, he's entitled, he's studying hard.” The SATs were two weeks away, and Ahmad had been haunting the Kaplan sessions.

Her father shrugged, then regarded her. “What can I make you to eat?” he asked. “You want a foule sandwich?”

“Nothing now, not hungry.” Nora wondered if the writhing in her stomach would ever ease, or if she would ever stop feeling the gun at her head or the sticky heat of Lisa Halston's life splashed across the back of her neck and hair.

“Eat with me. Don't be rude.”

“You're not eating,” she observed.

“I'll have Katie make you some tea,” he said, gesturing at the straggly ponytailed server hunched over her phone, thumbs a blur.

But not even tea sounded good to Nora today. She stared distractedly at the Egyptian newspaper splayed out across the table, open to the sports section; Arabic headlines shrieked the footballers' latest triumphs. “You could get that paper for free on your phone, by the way.”

“Phone, phone. Phones are for calling. Everything is on the phone now, you lose the phone, you lose your whole world,” Ragab said. “Anyway, what can I do to the phone when I read that Zamalek has lost again to the Ahly bastards. I can't smack it, like this,” he gave the page a dismissive slap with the back of his palm. “What, I'm going to throw my phone across the room? I didn't buy the insurance.”

She smiled at him, shaking her head. Ragab was a born extrovert who knew almost all of his customers by their first names. His booming laugh always seemed to fill the small restaurant and spill out onto the street beyond. He had only shouted at Nora once: when Zack Gray from the boy's track team had had the audacity to try to ask her to prom. Apart from that, she had only really seen Baba enraged and explosive when Zamalek lost to the Ahly club in the Egyptian national championships. He had actually punched his fist through the living room's drywall.

He leaned in. “What are you working on, anything interesting?”

“Nothing I can tell you about,” she whispered; this was their routine, and she gamely responded the same way every time. Nora rose. “I'm going up to take a shower, Baba. And maybe a nap.”

He squinted at her. “What is this, are you okay?”

She nodded. “I finished a project at work, and my boss gave me the rest of the day off.” Simple.

Ragab smiled, his features relaxing. “Good, good. You can go to Friday prayer for once!”

“Maybe,” she said. She quickly kissed the top of his head and headed through the kitchen to the back stairs leading to their apartment. She tried not to think of the health code violations attached to her bloody sneakers.

*   *   *

Nora stood for
a long time under the shower with all of her clothes on. Even the shoes. Especially the shoes. The water swirling into the drain was at first tinged slightly pink. Little by little Nora had begun peeling off layers and pushing them into the far end of the tub. She shampooed and rinsed no less than ten times before emerging to wrap herself in a fraying green towel.

She rubbed a circle in the fogged mirror and stared at herself. Her facial features were her mother's, the brown eyes, the caramel skin and high cheekbones, the prominent nose that was the legacy of her mother's father. After the long, hot shower her hair had reverted to its unrepentant curl, and it fell in inky coils to her shoulders.

Nora liked to tell other people that her mother had asked her to join the force—that it had been her dying wish. It had great shock value, and wasn't exactly a lie.
Nora,
habibti
, you are so strong, so smart. Fast feet and fast mind,
ma sha Allah
. I'm depending on you. Your father is a good man. But he is not wise. You need to help him. Help him take care of Ahmad. Protect Ahmad for me, and make sure he can grow to be a good and wise man.

Her mother had asked her to take care of her family, and this turned out to be the way that made the most sense to Nora. “I know today wasn't what you had in mind, Mama. I'm sorry,” she said softly.

She transferred a load of Baba and Ahmad's things from the washer into the dryer to make room for her bundle of sopping clothes, wishing—as always—for her own place, her own space. Then she slid under her blanket, and the quiet tears that came had slightly less to do with dead hookers and rather more to do with wishing her mother's voice could suddenly break the stillness with an old Arabic love song, or that her warm hand was there to rub Nora's back and stroke her hair until she slept.

*   *   *

He was waiting.
In the same room from which she'd fled, he was standing, his face dark and angry.

The tall one with the dark glasses did not disentwine his coarse hands from her hair until he shoved her into the shabby room, cursing her.

It won't happen again
, he said, by way of apology to the waiting man. Tonight she's learning the consequences of running. Isn't that right, whore? Isn't that right? If you didn't have a customer waiting, I would have taken that bitch who tried to help you and cut her up right in front of you. But I'll deal with her later …

Rahma cowered, terrified for the stranger she had now endangered.

He leaned close to her face, and she saw through the dark glasses the blank, shriveled skin where his eye had been. His breath was hot against her face.
You and the others will learn what it is to defy us.

As the tall one's footsteps echoed on the stairway, Rahma watched in terror as the man crossed to her. She whimpered, hating the scent of him, hating him, hating him. He had something cupped in his clenched fist, something she couldn't see, and it scared her that he was hiding it from her. Could there be something worse or more fearsome than what had gone on in that room the night before?

He sank on one knee onto the mattress and clamped his free hand over her mouth, a sure sign that he was going to rape her again. But suddenly his clenched other hand opened and he wiped his palm under her nostrils, pushing hard against her nose—she struggled for air, trying hard not to inhale through her nose, but she was gasping and choking, and then she felt the powder shoot up into her nose, exploding behind her eyes, boring into her brain, and she was overcome.