Tangier (20 page)

Achar thought of Fischer then, walking these alleys with Driss Bennani months before, such an improbable combination, he'd thought so many times, the young Moroccan with the old American Jew. He'd liked Fischer, missed him, was sorry now that he was dead. The man had been a builder and a dreamer. Now Driss wanted to tear things down.

Achar passed a carpentry shop, waved to the men inside. Walking up an alley by the mosque, he could hear the machine in the miller's shop grinding flour out of wheat. He walked up Rue de Persil, moving to the side to avoid a rat. It lay dead in ooze that trickled down from an outhouse. There were dogs standing in the alleyway, thin, bony mongrels with supplicating eyes. A week or so before, the police had come while men demolished shanties that encroached on private land. Then the trucks took people and their possessions to another quarter, and the uncomprehending dogs were left behind. They seemed to Achar to be getting thinner every day.
Soon they must find a source of garbage
, he thought,
or else they will become savages or die
.

Finally, at the top of the hill, he turned and looked back down. There it was, Dradeb, the slum, and his clinic, a compound of shanties too. The place needed schools, water, most of all a passion to change. Only yards away, across the river on the Mountain, one could buy Cuban cigars and English marmalade.

It was foolish, he knew, to agonize over injustice. Fischer had done that. He'd been naive. Achar knew the world was full of inequalities, always had been, always would be. But Dradeb was so unnecessary. Morocco was not poor. There were huge deposits of phosphates in the south, and tourism earned a fortune in foreign exchange. There was money, it flowed in, not to the people who needed it, but to the coffers of the King and his friends.

Let them be rich
, he thought.
Let them play golf and live in palaces and eat great banquets and dress in haute couture.
They could have all that if only they would share. But they shared nothing, and even took from those who had so much less. They watered their golf course from the reservoir of Dradeb, so that even to drink was now a luxury in the slum.

He looked up at the Mountain, the glittering villas, hanging in terraced gardens so high above.

B
y the middle of June Hamid Ouazzani began to notice certain things that reminded him of other, less unhappy summers in Tangier. In the early evening a huge moon hung full and low above the city while the wind blew wisps of clouds slowly across its face. There was a smell of overflowing sewers in the Casbah, the screams of cats on the roofs at night, and, as he prowled the Moroccan quarters of the town, he felt an anger familiar from the past. The city was short of water. There was garbage on the beach. At noon the crowds of petitioners were thick around the Sûreté. Demonologists stalked the streets offering to rid homes and shops of unwanted spells.

Sometimes Hamid would stop his car at an irregularly shaped rubble-strewn lot. Then he'd get out, lean against his fender, and watch boys playing soccer in the dust. He had played himself at this place when he was young, had run for hours in tattered shorts, his stomach distended by worms. After the games he and his friends had shared their bread, then hiked to the beach to wash. He longed at times to relive those simpler days, the joy of kicking at a battered, misshapen ball. But now his life was being written in another way. He was embroiled in the unsavory affairs of men.

Already his desk was piled with dossiers, and the summer had just begun. Even with extra summer help he was having difficulty keeping up. An English girl drowned at the beach. He talked to her weeping mother on a bad connection to Liverpool. A few minutes later he interrogated a Dane arrested for cavorting naked in the fountain at Place de France. There were complicated automobile accidents involving foreigners' cars. How many times would he have to explain to German tourists that their insurance forms were meaningless when they killed a peasant's sheep?

Then there was a tempest on the Mountain over mishandled deliveries of manure. Patrick Wax was the latest in a chain of victims to find a truckload of goat pellets dumped unceremoniously on his lawn. Hamid investigated. The manure dealer claimed he'd received precise instructions on the phone. He proclaimed his innocence. Hamid believed him. They looked up at the Mountain, faced each other, and shrugged.

Later Hamid drove up the Mountain to see the damage for himself.

"Now look here, Inspector," said Wax, pointing at the pellets, covering his nose with a perfumed scarf, "this has got to be a deliberate thing. The pellets were dumped at the very spot where I erect my summer party tent."

"Could have been an honest mistake," said Hamid. 'Perhaps the manure man got his addresses mixed."

"Impossible! The same thing happened to Countess de Lauzon. Someone's calling up and ordering the stuff, then telling the deliveryman to dump it in just the places where it hurts."

"But who, Mr. Wax? Whom do you suspect?"

Wax looked at him, narrowed his eyes. "Bainbridge," he said. "Couldn't be anyone else. He's cross with me, and also with Françoise, because neither of us will have him in our house. This whole thing smacks of Percy's style—just his sort of revenge."

Hamid wanted to laugh, but he listened solemnly as Wax elaborated on his complaint. He took notes and, when Wax was finished, suggested the pellets be raked around to fertilize his flowers.

"Of course," Wax exclaimed, "that's just what I intended to do. But I wanted you to see this first. This pile of shit is the only evidence I have."

Could it be, Hamid asked himself, driving back to town, that police in other countries trouble themselves with matters such as this? The Europeans were crazy, ordered manure dumped on each other's lawns. What did it mean? What was the pattern of their dance?

Later, back at his office, he paced around his desk. The "Manure Affair" was a comic operetta, but there was a victim, the manure dealer, who'd acted in good faith and now would not be paid. The trouble with police work, he thought, was that it was so inexact. Cases overlapped, dragged on unresolved, everything was a mixture of half-truths and lies, the city was a web of interlocking snares. He felt frustrated, longed for clarity. Even his feelings about Kalinka were murky: love for her and troubling questions about her past were inextricably mixed.

A few days later his head was temporarily cleared. He was sitting in his car outside La Colombe waiting for Aziz. The two of them had been making the usual rounds, checking in with their informants. When they'd arrived at the shop Hamid had asked Aziz to go in alone. He'd seen Zvegintzov several times since May, but he found their meetings difficult, fraught with excessive strain.

When Aziz came out Hamid started up the car. Aziz slid into the passenger seat, then laid his hand on Hamid's arm. "He wants to see you."

"Any idea why?"

Aziz shook his head. "I told him you were busy, but he insisted it would be worth your time."

Hamid thought a moment, then nodded and turned the ignition off. As he walked into La Colombe he dreaded another scene, another request to see Kalinka. But he was determined, no matter what Zvegintzov said, to remain cool and aloof.

Peter was waiting for him, both hands face down on the counter. His shirt was wet beneath the arms.

"You asked to see me?"

"I have information."

Hamid nodded.

"This is valuable information. Possibly worth a great deal."

"You know I'm not going to pay you, Peter. We needn't go through that charade."

"I don't want money, Inspector. I simply ask that you recognize the fact that I'm about to give you something you can obtain from no one else."

"If that's true I'll recognize it."

Peter looked at him. "I want more than that."

"Tell me what you want."

"When I have told you this I want your good regard." Zvegintzov ran his tongue across his upper lip. He turned slightly, until his thick glasses caught the light.

"I've always had high regard for you, Peter."

"But you haven't had respect."

"All right." Hamid was impatient. "What is this about?"

"Last week Aziz asked if I knew of any Nazis in Tangier. I can tell you now that I do."

"I'm listening."

"You're surprised, Hamid. You didn't expect to receive such information today. Admit it. You really do respect me a little now."

Zvegintzov grinned, displaying a row of stained and crooked teeth. Hamid stared at him, tense, annoyed. "Admit it. At least admit that you're surprised."

Hamid exhaled. "Yes, Peter, I'm surprised. Does that satisfy you? You've made your point."

"You really do respect me now?"

"I respect you more and more as each second passes by."

"Thank you." His hands, Hamid noticed, were now loosely curled into fists. His face betrayed a child's pleasure—he'd won himself a trivial point. "There is only one case that I know of undiscovered Nazis in Tangier. These people have gone to great lengths to disguise themselves. I believe I'm the only person here who knows who they really are. When I tell you their names you'll kick yourself for not having thought of them. You'll know instantly that I'm right, and you'll gladly acknowledge that I have formidable abilities which you've underrated much too long."

"In a minute, Peter, I'm going to walk out of here "

"Yes, yes. You're busy. I know. The Freys. You know their house, of course. Their collections. Their paintings and antiques. You know they raise Alsatian dogs. But did you know too that there are indictments against them in Belgium? That there are people in several countries who would give a great deal to know that they are here?"

"How do you know this?"

"I've known for a long time."

"
How?
"

"I've heard certain things. And I've discovered others on my own."

"You have proof?"

"I'm not a judge, Hamid."

"Who are they?"

"So! You believe me. Good!" He leaned forward, toward Hamid's ear, and spoke rapidly in a hoarse whisper, turning away every so often to clear his throat and cough. "They are notorious. The Beckers. Kurt and Inge Becker. Same first names, you see. During the war they ran a confidence ring, pretended they could help prominent Jews escape. They doublecrossed them, stole everything they had, murdered them after they'd signed over everything and placed themselves in their hands. They amassed a great fortune which they somehow managed to have transferred here. You can read about them in books, I expect, and also in Israeli files. Ha!"

He pulled Hamid by his sleeve over to the window, then pointed up at a palace that hung precipitously above the ravine. "Now they live quietly in their big house on the Mountain. That place is impenetrable as a fort. Walls, wire fences, dogs, electric gates. The Freys are courteous people, always dignified and correct. They give money to the local charities, and their servants report that they are kind. There is a rumor around that they are under royal protection. There's nothing more that I can tell you, except that everything I've said is true. They're excellent customers, by the way. Tell me what you'll do."

"You give information to me, Peter. I don't give it to you. But for what you've just told me I certainly hold you in regard."

He was pleased, walking back to the car. Though he knew he couldn't always trust Zvegintzov, this time intuition told him that he should. He had performed, he thought, a marvel of detective work, forming a theory that would explain the presence of an Israeli agent in Tangier, then uncovering information that suggested his theory was correct.

But later, that afternoon, he thought about Zvegintzov and the curious price he'd extracted for the Beckers' names.
Why does Peter want my respect? What possible good could it do him now?

H
e was disturbed the next morning by something he saw on his way to work—a girl, no older than twelve, swinging a cat by its tail against a telephone pole on Rue de Belgique. He stopped his car, called out. The girl glared at him, heaved the cat away, and ran off down the street. The cat was dead. Hamid wrapped the carcass in a newspaper and deposited it in the trash.

Arriving at his office, he felt depressed. A great number of new cases had accumulated during the night. Aziz had arranged the dossiers in order of importance on his desk. Hamid looked at them, groaned, then set to work. By eleven he was finished, and exhausted from the task.

"About Lake," he said to Aziz. "Any idea why he's hanging around La Colombe?"

"We don't have anything on that, Hamid, except that he and Zvegintzov are friends. Lake's had him to the Consulate several times. The Russian takes part in the conversation, sometimes drinks too much and runs off about his clients. Lake's chauffeur says the Consul drives over there nearly every day, and that Zvegintzov gives Lake cigars."

Someone blew a whistle outside. Hamid walked to the window. Two cops were tussling with a boy in front of the building. A small crowd had gathered. A man in a bloodstained butcher's apron was waving his fist. A police jeep was parked by the curb.

"I've never known Peter to give anything away."