The Second Saladin (28 page)

It took him a long time to find the right place. He knew the name, the address even—from the telephone book—and one night, late, he found a black man.

“I want to find a place. This place.” He showed him the page ripped from a phone book.

“Jack, you talkin’ to the wrong man.”

“Tell me how to get there.”

“Man, you gotta take a
bus
. Make a
transfer
. Take another
bus
. Jack, that’s enemy territory. Ain’t no way I’m going
there.”

“What bus? Tell me of this bus.”

“Jack, back way down. Take a
cab
rent a Hertz
car
, ride the train or the subway. Man, stay away from me.”

“You must help.”

“No way, Jack.”

Ulu Beg shoved some money at him. “Here. Show me. Show me.”

“Jesus, Jack, you must be
hungry.”

It was a small place, tucked away in an obscure old section of the city. He memorized the route, returned late the next night. The neighborhood was quiet then. He
waited across the street, watching in the shadows until he was sure the place was empty. Then, at last convinced, he ran across the street and hid in the back another ten minutes. Occasionally a car rolled by, and once a police vehicle crept down the alley, but he lay still until it passed. He stood finally and tested the door, which did not give to his effort. He’d expected nothing else. He moved to the window and examined it carefully.

“Bars you’ll see right away. But look especially for wire. Everybody in America has wires connecting them to the police or to alarm bells, because in America everybody steals from everybody all the time.” He was beginning to see that they were very cynical about America; they hated it. But their vision of it was usually correct and their counsel well taken; he always obeyed. “In the window, along the edge of the glass, the wires. It’s a small place in a poor part and they probably can’t afford anything fancy. But in America, who knows? A salesman may have come along and sold them something fancy. It happens all the time in America. There may also be a dog. If so, it must be killed immediately.”

He looked again at the window: no wires, nothing.

He reached into his pack and pulled out a short-bladed knife. He leaned forward and—expertly, as he had been taught—inserted the blade in the slot between upper and lower windows. It was so easy. He worked the blade to the lock quickly and nudged the point against the lever of the lock. Twisting and shoving the blade, he got the lock to move—it fought him for just a second, and then popped free. He withdrew the blade and quickly lifted the window.

He listened for the yapping of a dog. Only silence. He looked each way in the alley; it was empty. From the open window a current of warm air rushed toward him, carrying
a familiar range of odors with it. But he could not pause to admire them; he tossed in his pack, and followed.

He lay on the floor, letting his eyes adjust in the dark. A splash of light from the street cut across the floor. It was a simple room, with a few tables encased in cloths, their chairs stacked atop them. Ulu Beg moved swiftly across the floor to a door on the other side and came into the kitchen. It smelled largely of strong industrial soap, but even under this blinding American smell he could pick out the familiar: scents of lamb and chicken, of falafel and grape leaves, of honey cake, spinach and cabbage, kibbe cakes, mint, other spices. It all felt good in his nose and the temptation came to tear open the cupboard, but he didn’t; first, because the longer he stayed, the more danger he was in, and second, because to yield would be to admit how he missed what he’d left, how the grief at losing it cut so very deep.

He moved swiftly. He opened his pack and there, under the wrapped Skorpion, removed a tin.

They had explained it to him very carefully.

“Americans, who live in vast houses, aspire to more primitive things. They cook over coals, like hill people, and think this makes them rugged and vital. You may buy the fluid by which they light their coals anywhere for a dollar without suspicion. It’s less volatile than gasoline and less pungent; it is, quite simply, perfect.”

He opened the linen cupboard and squirted the fluid into it. He moved through the kitchen, squirting rapidly. He could smell the fumes filling the air in the dining room; he doused the curtains and sprayed patterns on the walls.

Then, with a match, he ignited the curtain. The flames spurted in one hot instant, billowing up with a crackling hiss, filling the room with light. He winced in the power of the blaze, watching it go from one puddle to another, in
each unleashing a pool of flame that splashed through the room.

He stood for just a second by the window; he could see half a dozen fires in the room, each feeding and leaping. Two joined to become a single larger one; then a third joined in. Through the door of the kitchen he saw bright flames.

He hoisted himself through the window, feeling the air cool and sweet in his lungs. It seemed to him that once in a battle against the Iraqis he’d been trapped in a burning building. A memory of encircling flame came to him, but he could not remember how or when. He only remembered the same joyous feeling as the cool air hit him.

Gripping the pack tightly, he cut down two alleys and was on a far street when he first heard sirens. A police car rushed by, light flashing.

Another thought came to Ulu Beg and he rationed himself one more bitter smile: for had not Jardi once made a prophecy? Some day, Jardi had promised, you’ll burn Baghdad. You’ll burn it to the ground.

As before, Jardi was right.

Ulu Beg turned and walked more quickly into the night.

T
hey could see a Ford parked outside the shack.

“That’s it,” cried Roberto. “That’s their car.”

Trewitt grunted uncomfortably.

“Now go shoot those guys,” said Miguel.

“Just a minute,” said Trewitt. He looked about in the twilight and saw nothing, no
policía
, no other humans. It was the quiet hour in this slum. Usually there were chickens about and goats and children and old ladies and tough young men. But up and down the crooked little lane he could see nothing.

“Use that gun.” coached the younster. “You got a fifty-dollar gun. Go up there and shoot those cocksuckers.”

This kid was really beginning to get on Trewitt’s nerves. Sure, use the gun. Who do you think I am, kid, G. Gordon Liddy? An immense bitterness settled over Trewitt. His options were so bleak. It was not fair.

“Sure,” the older boy now, “go on, shoot those shitheads.”

“You just don’t go shooting people,” Trewitt instructed. But his thoughts were beginning to focus on the pistol, for there seemed no other place to focus them. He sure wasn’t going up there
without
it. A crappy little Beretta,
probably fifty years old, older than he was, a veteran of the Abyssinian campaign, where he was a veteran of nothing beyond several libraries.

“You better do something fast, mister.”

“I know, I know,” said Trewitt, who did not want to do anything at all, much less anything fast. “Maybe we ought to wait,” he said, through a sudden accumulation of phlegm in his throat.

Both boys looked at him. How did he ever get stuck in this anyhow, with an ancient pistol and two kids?

“Okay, okay,” he said.

The sun, a huge orange ball, a grapefruit, rotting and opulent, descended behind a line of sleazy blue and gray hovels.

“You better do something, mister,” Roberto said.

A scream rose from the house. They could just barely hear it.

Trewitt reached for the pistol, and found that it had worked its way around until it was almost in the small of his back. He plucked it out of his pants with two fingers. He looked dumbly at the thing, oily and ugly and squat. He couldn’t remember if it were cocked or not. His mind was empty.

“I think somebody just got killed,” said Roberto.

Trewitt finally remembered the principle of the automatic pistol and threw the slide with an oily
klack
, ramming back the hammer. A perfectly fine cartridge spun out of the breach. Goddamn, it
had
been cocked. Roberto handed him the bullet.

Trewitt popped the magazine out of the handle and reinserted the slug. He slid the mag back up until it locked. He got out of the car and stood for a second on shaky legs, trying to devise a plan. Yet the more he thought, the more nervous he became and in the end he simply ran up toward the shack, keeping exactly in line
with the corner, out of view therefore of the windows. He ran low, as he’d seen it done in the movies, and his Weejuns kept slipping in the mud. He made it to the house and paused for a second at the door. He heard muffled sounds of agony. Somebody was getting punched around pretty bad. Yet he could not move, was frozen to the earth, his tasseled loafers sinking into the very planet itself. The two boys had left the car also and were watching him.

At last Trewitt tested the door with his shoulder. It would not budge. He leaned again, harder—nothing. He heard somebody hitting somebody.

Oh, fuck it all, he thought.

These words seemed to liberate him. They filled him with violence and courage. He leaned back on one leg and with the other leg drove his Weejun against the door, blasting it open.

There were two of them, as Roberto had said. It did not occur to Trewitt that he had fired his pistol—he had no sensation of recoil, heard no report—but indeed he must have, for one sat down with a sudden terrified oafishness, mouth open, eyes open, hands flying to midsection. The second man recovered swiftly from the shock of the flying yellow apparition that was Trewitt and struggled to free a pistol from his own belt. But Trewitt had the small automatic pointed at him from a range of about four feet and was shouting
“Stick ’em up”
insanely, his eyes bulging, his veins swelling, and something of his abject horror must have communicated itself to the man, for he threw his hands up.

“Don’t move.
Don’t
you move,”
Trewitt commanded. But the man moved. He smiled and waved his hands to show that they were empty and walked over to his friend.

“Don’t you move.
Freeze, goddammit,”
Trewitt shouted. “I mean it, I’ll shoot.” Trewitt could imagine the bullet plunking into the man’s neck.

The man smiled, still waving his hands to prove his harmlessness and bent to pry his dyspeptic partner from the floor.

“Kill him,” somebody yelled.

“Don’t move.
Goddammit
, don’t move,” Trewitt shouted.

The two began edging toward the door. “Kill them. Shoot them!”

Trewitt could see the white face just above the dark blur of his pistol. The range was less than five feet. The man wore a white shirt inside a dirty seersucker coat. He needed a shave. He had veins in his throat. One of his teeth was brown.

“Kill him. Kill them,” came the command. “Shoot!”

“Freeze,” Trewitt ordered. “Goddammit, I’ll—”

He fired—into the ceiling—to show he meant business.

The unwounded man just looked at him numbly—he was terrified too, Trewitt could see, pupils dilated like dimes, his lips smiling a lunatic’s grin—but he just kept shoving his friend toward the door. Until he reached it.

Trewitt aimed at the fleeing figures as they ambled down the hill and off into an alley. He still had not decided
not
to shoot. It still occurred to him that shooting was a possibility. Yet he could not fire. They disappeared.

“Yeeeeeeee-
Owwwwww
,” howled a fat, mad Mexican, corkscrewing from a chair even though his hands and feet were bound and hopping about like a toad. “You should have killed them, Mother of Jesus, you had them, you should have shot them
bang
right in the face.”

“I did shoot
one
,” Trewitt protested.

“You should have killed those cocksuckers,” Miguel said.

“Well,” Trewitt began to explain. But his eyes hooked on the woman.

The pool of blood—blackish and thick—in which she
lay had almost soaked her clothes strawberry. So much? He was astonished. She lay like a doll, terribly, totally dead, deader than he could ever imagine anyone being, if only because a woman, if only because innocent of this whole business and slain for random cruelty, if only because defiled by the pints of her own blood soaking her, its vaguely menstrual associations troubling his brain. Her face lay in it, tilted, one nostril half under the surface of the pool. Her eyes were mercifully closed. The wound in her throat had drained and was clean. Her mouth was partially open and he could see teeth and tongue. Her dress had collected around her waist and her thighs were bubbly with cellulite—Trewitt, the Beretta still in his hand, was mesmerized by these details—and her calves and shins badly needed a shave.

“Mother of Jesus,” the fat man was saying in Spanish, “you hear her scream? She wake the dead.” Somebody had untied him. His face was swollen
from
the beating he had so recently absorbed and he was rubbing his sore wrists. He gave a little chuckle of astonishment. “She sure was loud,” he said again. “Old Madonna, squawking till the end. Old ugly lady. Mother of Jesus. Jesus.” He laughed again. “Hey, mister, how come you didn’t shoot those two bastards? This could be big trouble. I don’t think you did much damage with that little gun. You have given that one a stomachache, but they’ll be back. If you have an advantage in these things, you should always use it. It’s a hard lesson, but you’ve got to be strong if you want people to respect you.”

Trewitt puked chicken tortilla and Carta Blanca all over himself, all over his yellow polyester suit, his tassels, his Beretta. He went to his knees, broken and helpless by the rebellion of his gastrointestinal system, and felt it all come up, all over everything.

“Hey, what’s with him?” asked Ramirez.

“
Patrón
, I don’t know,” said Roberto. “Maybe the food don’t sit good in his belly.”

“That’s a very bad mess, mister. It’s going to smell something terrible.”

“Oh, God,” Trewitt moaned. Would no one comfort him? No. He took off his jacket and wiped his face and hands with an unsoiled section of sleeve, then chucked it into the corner.