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10

Lieutenant Okking’s out of his office at the moment,” said a uniformed officer. “Can I help you with something?”

“Will the lieutenant be back soon?” I asked. The clock above the officer’s desk said almost ten o’clock. I wondered how late Okking was going to work tonight; I had no desire to talk to Sergeant Hajjar, whatever his connection to Papa. I still didn’t trust him.

“The lieutenant said he’d be right back, he’s just gone downstairs for something.”

That made me feel better. “Is it all right if I wait in his office? We’re old friends.”

The cop looked at me dubiously. “Can I see some identification?” he asked. I gave him my Algerian passport; it’s expired, but it’s the only thing I own with my photograph on it. He punched my name into his computer, and a moment later my whole history began spilling across his screen. He must have decided that I was an upright citizen, because he gave me back my passport, stared up into my face for a moment, and said, “You and Lieutenant Okking go back a ways together.”

“It’s a long story, all right,” I said.

“He won’t be another ten minutes. You can take a seat in there.”

I thanked the cop and went into Okking’s office. It was true, I had spent a lot of time here. The lieutenant and I had formed a curious alliance, considering that we worked opposite sides of the legal fence. I sat in the chair beside Okking’s desk and waited. Ten minutes passed, and I began to get restless. I started looking at the papers piled in hefty stacks, trying to read them upside-down and sideways. His Out box was half-filled with envelopes, but there was even more work crammed into the In box. Okking earned whatever meager wages he got from the department. There was a large manilla envelope on its way to a small-arms dealer in the Federated New England States of America; a handwritten envelope to some doctor in the city; a neatly addressed envelope to a firm called Universal Exports with an address near the waterfront—I wondered if it was one of the companies Hassan dealt with, or maybe it was one of Seipolt’s; and a heavily stuffed packet being sent to an office-supplies manufacturer in the Protectorate of Brabant.

I had glanced at just about everything in Okking’s office when, an hour later, the man himself appeared. “Hope I haven’t kept you waiting,” he said distractedly. “What the hell do you want?”

“Nice to see you, too. Lieutenant. I’ve just come from a meeting with Friedlander Bey.”

That caught his attention. “Oh, so now you’re running errands for sand-niggers with delusions of grandeur. I forget: is that a step up or a step down for you, Audran? I suppose the old snake charmer gave you a message?”

I nodded. “It’s about these murders.”

Okking seated himself behind his desk and gazed at me innocently. “What murders?” he asked.

“The two with the old pistol, the two throat-slashings. Sure, you remember. Or have you been too busy rounding up jaywalkers again?”

He shot me an ugly look and ran a finger along a heavy jaw that badly needed shaving. “I remember,” he said bluntly. “Why does Bey think this concerns him?”

“Three of the four victims did odd jobs for him, back in the days when they had a little more spring in their step. He just wants to make sure that none of his other employees get the same treatment. Papa has a lot of civic consciousness that way. I don’t think you appreciate that about him.”

Okking snorted. “Yeah, you right,” he said. “I always thought those two sex-changes worked for him. They looked like they were trying to smuggle cantaloupes under their sweaters.”

“Papa thinks these murders are aimed at him.”

Okking shrugged. “If they are, those killers are lousy marksmen. They haven’t so much as nicked Papa yet.”

“He doesn’t see it that way. The women who work for him are his eyes, the men are his fingers. He said that himself, in his own warm and wonderful way.”

“What was Abdoulaye, then, his asshole?”

I knew that Okking and I could go on like that all night. I briefly explained the unusual proposition Friedlander Bey had asked me to deliver. As I expected, Lieutenant Okking had as little faith as I. “You know, Audran,” he said dryly, “official law-enforcement groups worry a lot about their public image. We get enough beating-up in the news media as it is, without having to go out on the front steps and kiss ass with somebody like Friedlander Bey because nobody thinks we can do a damn thing about these murders without him.”

I patted the air to make it all better between us. “No, no,” I said, “it isn’t that at all. You’re misunderstanding me, you’re misunderstanding Papa’s motives. No one’s saying you couldn’t nail these murderers without help. These guys aren’t any more clever or dangerous than the scruffy, beetle-headed crumbs you pull in here every day. Friedlander Bey only suggests that because his own interests are directly involved, teamwork might save everybody time and effort, as well as lives. Wouldn’t it be worth it, Lieutenant, if we keep just one of your uniformed cops from stopping a bullet?”

“Or one of Bey’s whores from annexing a butcher knife? Yeah, listen, I already got a call from Papa, probably while you were on your way over here. We went through this whole song-and-dance already, and I agreed to a certain point. A certain point. Audran. I don’t like you or him trying to make police policy, telling me how to run my investigation, interfering in any way. Understand?”

I nodded. I knew both Lieutenant Okking and Friedlander Bey, and it didn’t make any difference what Okking said he didn’t want; Papa’d get his way anyhow.

“Just so we understand each other on this,” said the lieutenant. “The whole thing is unnatural, like rats and mice going to church to pray for the recovery of a cat. When it’s over, when we have those two killers, don’t expect any more honeymoon. Then it will be seizure guns and batons and the same old harassment on both sides.”

I shrugged. “Business is business,” I said.

“I’m real tired of hearing that line,” he said. “Now get out of my sight.”

I got out and took the elevator down to the ground floor. It was a nice, cool evening, a swelling moon slipping in and out of gleaming metal clouds. I walked back to the Budayeen, thinking. In three days I was going to have my brain wired. I’d avoided that fact since I left Friedlander Bey’s; now I had all the time in the world to think about it. I felt no excitement, no anticipation, only dread. I felt that, somehow, Marîd Audran would cease to be and someone new would awaken from that surgery, and that I’d never be able to put my finger on the difference; it would bother me forever, like a popcorn hull wedged permanently between my teeth. Everyone else would notice the change, but I wouldn’t because I was on the inside.

I went straight to Frenchy’s. When I got there, Yasmin was working on a young, thin guy wearing white baggy pants with drawstrings around the ankles and a gray salt-and-pepper sport coat about fifty years old. He probably bought his whole wardrobe in the back of some antique shop for one and a half kiam; it smelted musty, like your great-grandmother’s quilt that has been left in the attic too long. The girl on stage was a sex-change named Blanca; Frenchy had a policy about not hiring debs. Girls were all right with him, and debs who’d had their full changes, but the ones stuck indecisively in the middle made him feel that they might get stuck sometime in the middle of some other important transaction, and he just didn’t want to be held responsible. You knew when you went into Frenchy’s that there wasn’t going to be anybody in there with a cock bigger than yours unless it was Frenchy himself or one of the other customers, and if you found out that awful truth you had nobody to blame but yourself.

Blanca danced in a peculiar, half-conscious way that was common among dancers all up and down the Street. They moved vaguely in rime to the music, bored and tired and waiting to get out from under the hot lights. They stared at themselves incessantly in the smeared mirrors behind them, or they turned and stared at their reflections across the room behind the customers. Their eyes were fixed forever in some empty space about a foot and a half above the customers’ heads. Blanca’s expression was a faint attempt to look pleasant—“attractive” and “alluring” weren’t in her professional vocabulary—but she looked as if she’d just had a lot of nerve-deadening drug pumped into her lower jaw and she hadn’t decided if she liked it yet. While Blanca was on stage she was selling herself—she was promoting herself as a product entirely separate from her own self-image, herself as she would be when she came down from the stage. Her movements—mostly weary, halfhearted imitations of sexual motions—were supposed to titillate her watchers, but unless the customers had had a lot to drink or were otherwise fixated on this particular girl, the dancing itself would have little effect. I’d watched Blanca dance dozens, maybe hundreds, of times; it was always the same music, she always made the same gyrations, the same steps, the same bumps, the same grinds at the same instants of each song.

Blanca finished her last number and there was a scattering of applause, mostly from the mark who had been buying her drinks and thought he was in love with her. It takes a little longer for you to establish an acquaintance in a place like Frenchy’s—or any of the other bars along the Street. That seems like a paradox, because the girls rushed up to grab any single man who strayed into the place. The conversation was so limited, though: “Hi, what’s your name?”

“Juan-Javier.”

“Oh, that’s nice. Where you from?”

“Nuevo Tejas.”

“Oh, that’s interesting. How long have you been in the dty?”

‘A couple of days.”

“Want to buy me a drink?”

That’s all there is, there ain’t no more. Even a top-notch international secret agent couldn’t relay more information in that small amount of time. Beneath it all was a constant undercurrent of depression, as if the girls were locked into this job, although the illusion of absolute freedom hovered almost visibly in the air. “Any time you want to quit, honey, you just walk out that door.” The way out the door, though, led to one of only two places: another bar just like Frenchy’s, or the next step down the ladder toward the deadly bottom of the Life: “Hi, handsome, looking for some company?” You know what I mean. And the income gets lower and lower as the girl gets older, and pretty soon you get people like Maribel turning tricks for the price of a shot glass of white wine.

After Blanca, a real girl called Indihar came on stage; it might even have been her real name. She moved the same as Blanca, hips and shoulders swaying, feet almost motionless. As she danced, Indihar mouthed the words to the songs silently, completely unaware that she was doing it. I asked a few girls about that; they all mouthed the lyrics, but none of them realized they did it. They all got self-conscious when I mentioned the fact, but the next time they got up to dance, they sang to themselves just as they always had. Made the time go quicker, I guess, gave them something to do besides look at the customers. Back and forth the girls swayed, their lips moving, their hands making empty gestures, their hips swirling where habit told them to swirl their hips. It might have been sexy to some of the men who’d never seen such things before, it might have been worth what Frenchy charged for his drinks. I could drink for free because Yasmin worked there and because I kept Frenchy amused; if I’d had to pay, I would have found something more interesting to do with my time. Anything would have been more interesting; sitting alone in the dark in a soundless room would have been more interesting.

I waited through Indihar’s set, and then Yasmin came out of the dressing room. She gave me a wide smile that made me feel special. There was some applause from two or three men scattered along the bar: she was mixing well tonight, making money. Indihar threw on a gauzy top and started hitting up the customers for tips. I kicked in a kiam and she gave me a little kiss. Indihar’s a good kid. She plays by the rules and doesn’t hassle anybody. Blanca could go to hell, as far as I was concerned, but Indihar and I could be good friends.

Frenchy caught my eye and motioned me down to the end of the bar. He was a big man, about the size of two average Marseilles enforcers, with a big, black, bushy beard that made mine look like the fuzz in a cat’s ear. He glowered at me with his black eyes. “Where ya at, cap?” he asked.

“Nothing happening tonight, Frenchy,” I said.

“Your girl’s doing all right for herself.”

“That’s good,” I said, “because I lost my last fiq through a hole in my pocket.”

Frenchy squinted and looked at my gallebeya. “You don’t have any pockets in that outfit, mon noraf.”

“That was days ago, Frenchy,” I said solemnly. “We’ve been living on love since.” Yasmin had some orbital-velocity moddy chipped in, and her dancing was something to watch. People all up and down the bar forgot their drinks and the other girls’ hands in their laps, and stared at Yasmin.

Frenchy laughed; he knew that I was never as flat-out broke as I always claimed to be. “Business is bad,” he said, spitting into a small plastic cup. With Frenchy, business is always bad. Nobody ever talks prosperity on the Street; it’s bad luck.

“Listen,” I said, “there’s some important thing I have to talk over with Yasmin when she’s finished this set.”

Frenchy shook his head. “She’s working on that mark down there wearing the fez. Wait until she milks him dry, then you can talk to her all you want. If you wait until the mark leaves, I’ll get someone else to take her next turn on stage.”

“Allah be praised,” I said. “Can I buy you a drink?”

He smiled at me. “Buy two,” he said. “Pretend one’s for me, one’s for you. Drink them both. I can’t stomach the stuff anymore.” He patted his belly and made a sour face, then got up and walked down the bar, greeting his customers and whispering in the ears of his girls. I bought two drinks from Dalia, Frenchy’s short, round-faced, informative barmaid; I’d known Dalia for years. Dalia, Frenchy, and Chiriga were very likely fixtures on the Street when the Street was just a goatpath from one end of the Budayeen to the other. Before the rest of the city decided to wall us in, probably, and put in the cemetery.

When Yasmin finished dancing, the applause was loud and long. Her tip jar filled quickly, and then she was hurrying back to her enamored mark before some other bitch stole him away. Yasmin gave me a quick, affectionate pinch on the ass as she passed behind me.

I watched her laughing and talking and hugging that cross-eyed bastard son of a yellow dog for half an hour; then his money ran out, and both he and Yasmin looked sad. Their affair had come to a premature end. They waved fond, almost passionate farewells and promised they’d never forget this golden evening. Every time I see one of those goddamn wogs climbing all over Yasmin—or any of the other girls, for that matter—I remember watching nameless men grabbing at my mother. That was a hell of a long time ago, but for certain things my memory works just too well. I watched Yasmin and I told myself it was just her job; but I couldn’t help the sick, acid feeling that climbed out of my gut and made me want to start breaking things.

She scooted down beside me, drenched with perspiration, and gasped, “I thought that son of a slut would never leave!”

“It’s your charming presence,” I said sourly. “It’s your scintillating conversation. It’s Frenchy’s needled beer.”

“Yeah,” said Yasmin, puzzled by my annoyance, “you right.”

“I have to talk to you about something.”

Yasmin looked at me and took a few deep breaths. She mopped her face with a clean bar towel. I suppose I sounded unusually grave. Anyway, I went through the events of the evening for her: my second meeting with Friedlander Bey; our—that is, his&mdashconclusions; and how I had failed to impress Lieutenant Okking. When I finished, there was stunned silence from all around.

“You’re going to do it?” asked Frenchy. I hadn’t noticed him returning. I wasn’t aware that he’d been eavesdropping, but it was his place and nobody knew his eaves better.

“You’re going to get wired?” asked Yasmin breathlessly. She found the whole idea vastly exciting. Arousing, if you get my meaning.

“You’re crazy if you do,” said Dalia. Dalia was as close to being a true conservative as you could find on the Street. “Look what it does to people.”

“What does it do to people?” shouted Yasmin, outraged, tapping her own moddy.

“Oops, sorry,” said Dalia, and she went to mop up some imaginary spilled beer at the far, far end of the bar.

“Think of all the things we could do together,” said Yasmin dreamily.

“Maybe it’s not good enough for you the way it is,” I said, a little hurt.

Her expression fell. “Hey, Marîd, it’s not that. It’s just—”

“This is your problem,” said Frenchy, “it’s none of my business. I’m going in the back and count tonight’s money. Won’t take me very long.” He disappeared through a ratty gold-colored cloth that served as a flimsy barrier to the dressing room and his office.

“It’s permanent,” I said. “Once it’s done, it’s done. There’s no backing out.”

“Have you ever heard me say that I wanted to have my wires yanked?” asked Yasmin.

“No,” I admitted. It was just the irrevocableness of it that prickled my skin.

“I haven’t regretted it for an instant, and neither has anybody else I know who’s had it done.”

I wet my lips. “You don’t understand,” I said. I couldn’t finish my argument; I couldn’t put into words what she didn’t understand.

“You’re just afraid,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said. That was a good starring point.

“The Half-Hajj has his brain wired, and he’s not even a quarter of the man you are.”

“And all it got him was Sonny’s blood all over everything. I don’t need moddies to make me act crazy, I can do that on my own.”

Suddenly she got a faraway, inspired look in her eyes. I knew something fascinating had occurred to her, and I knew it most likely meant bad news for me. “Oh, Allah and the Virgin Mary in a motel room,” she said softly. That had been a favorite blasphemy of her father’s, I think. “This is working out just like the hexagram said.”

“The hexagram.” I had put that I Ching business out of my mind almost before Yasmin had finished explaining it to me.

“Remember what it said?” she asked. “About not being afraid to cross the great water?”

“Yeah. What great water?”

“The great water is some major change in your life. Getting your brain wired, for instance.”

“Uh huh. And it said to meet the great man. I did that. Twice.”

“It said to wait three days before beginning, and three days before completing.”

I counted up quickly: tomorrow, Saturday, Sunday. Monday, when I was going to have this thing done, would be after three days. “Oh, hell,” I muttered.

“And it said that nobody would believe you, and it said that you had to keep up your confidence during adversity, and it said that you didn’t serve kings and princes but higher principles. That’s my Marîd.” And she kissed me.

I felt ill. There was absolutely no way I could get out of the surgery now, unless I started running and began a new life in some new country, shoving goats and sheep around and eating a few figs every couple of days to stay alive like the other fellahin.

“I’m a hero, Yasmin,” I said, “and we heroes sometimes have secret business to attend to. Got to go.” I kissed her three or four times, squeezed her right silicone tit for luck, and stood up. On the way out of Frenchy’s I patted Indihar’s ass, and she turned and grinned at me. I waved good-night to Dalia. Blanca I pretended didn’t even exist.

I walked down the Street to the Silver Palm, just to see what people were doing and what was going on. Mahmoud and Jacques were sitting at a table, having coffee and sopping up hummus with pita bread. The Half-Hajj was absent, probably out kicking gigantic heterosexual stone- cutters around for the hett of it. I sat down with my friends. “May your and so forth, and so forth,” said Mahmoud. He was never one to worry about formalities.

“Yours too,” I said.

“Getting yourself wired, I hear,” said Jacques. “A crucial decision. A major undertaking. I’m sure you’ve considered both sides of the matter?”

I was a little astonished. “News travels fast, doesn’t it?”

Mahmoud raised his eyebrows. “That’s what news is for,” he said, around a mouthful of bread and hummus.

“Permit me to buy you some coffee,” said Jacques.

“Praise Allah,” I said, “but I feel like something stronger.”

“Just as well,” said Jacques to Mahmoud. “Marîd has more money than the two of us together. He’s on Papa’s payroll now.”

I didn’t like the sound of that rumor at all. I went to the bar and ordered my gin, bingara, and Rose’s. Behind the bar, Heidi grimaced, but she didn’t say anything. She was pretty—hell, she was one of the most beautiful real women I’d ever met. She always fitted into her well-chosen clothing the way some of the debs and changes wished they could, with their store-bought bodies. Heidi had wonderful blue eyes and soft, pale bangs. I don’t know why, but bangs on young women always make me jittery. I think it’s the hebephile in me; if I examine myself closely enough, I find hints of every objectionable quality known to man. I’d always wanted to get to know Heidi really well, but I guess I wasn’t her type. Maybe her type was available on a moddy, and after I got my brain wired . . . 

While I was waiting for her to mix my drink, another voice spoke up about twenty feet away, beyond a group of Korean men and women who would soon learn, no doubt, that they were in the wrong part of town. “Vodka martini, dry. Pre-war Wolfschmidt’s if you’ve got it, shaken and not stirred. With a twist of lemon peel.”

Well, now, I said to myself. I waited until Heidi came back with my drink. I paid her and swirled the liquor and ice in tight, counterclockwise circles. Heidi brought my change; I tipped her a kiam, and she started some polite conversation. I interrupted her rather rudely; I was more interested in the vodka martini.

I picked up my glass and stepped back from the bar, just enough to get a good look at James Bond. He was just as I remembered him from the brief encounter in Chiri’s place, and from Ian Fleming’s novels: black hair parted on one side, a heavy lock of it falling in an unruly comma over the right eye, the scar running down the right cheek. He had straight, black brows and a long, straight nose. His upper lip was short and his mouth, though relaxed, somehow gave the impression of cruelty. He looked ruthless. He had paid a great deal of money to a team of surgeons to make him look ruthless. He glanced at me and smiled; I wondered if he recalled our previous meeting. His gray-blue eyes crinkled a bit at their edges as he observed me; I had the distinct feeling that I was, in fact, being observed. He was wearing a plain cotton shirt and tropical worsted trousers, no doubt of British manufacture, with black leather sandals suitable to the climate. He paid for his martini and came toward me, one hand extended. “Nice to see you again, old man,” he said.

I shook hands with him. “I don’t believe I’ve been granted the honor of making the gentleman’s acquaintance,” I said in Arabic.

Bond answered me in flawless French. “Another bar, another circumstance. It was of no great consequence. Everything turned out satisfactorily in the end.” It had been satisfactory for him, at least. At the moment, the dead Russian had no opinion at all.

“May Allah forgive me, my friends are waiting,” I said.

Bond smiled his famous half-smile. He gave me back an Arabic saying—in perfect local Arabic. “What has died has passed,” he said, shrugging, meaning either that bygones were bygones, or that it would be good policy for me to begin forgetting all the recently dead; I wasn’t sure which interpretation Bond intended. I nodded, disconcerted more by his facility with my language. Then I remembered that he was wearing a James Bond moddy, probably with an Arabic-language daddy chipped in. I took my drink to the table where Mahmoud and Jacques were sitting, and chose a chair from which I could keep an eye on the bar and its single entrance. By the time I’d seated myself, Bond had downed his martini and was going out into the cobbled Street. I felt a chilly wave of indecision: what was I supposed to do? Could I hope to bring him down now, before I had my brain wired? I was unarmed. What possible good could come of attacking Bond prematurely? Yet surely Friedlander Bey would consider this an opportunity lost, one that might well mean the death of someone else, someone dear to me . . . 

I decided to follow. I left my drink untasted on the table and gave my friends no explanation. I got out of my chair and went to the open doorway of the Silver Palm, just in time to see Bond turn left into a side street. I crept along carefully behind. Evidently I wasn’t careful enough, because when I stopped at the comer and peered cautiously around, James Bond was gone. There were no other streets parallel to the Street for him to have turned onto; he must have entered one of the low, whitewashed, flat-roofed dwellings on the block. That was some information, at least. I turned around again to walk back to the Silver Palm, when a flare of pain detonated behind my left ear. I crumpled to my knees, and a strong, tanned hand grabbed the light material of my gallebeya and dragged me back to my feet. I muttered some curses and raised my fist. The edge of his hand chopped at the point of my shoulder, and my arm dropped, numb and useless.

James Bond laughed softly. “Every time you see a well-setup European in one of your grimy, quaint rumshops, you think you can come along behind and relieve him of his pocketbook. Well, my friend, sometimes you choose to rob the wrong European.” He slapped me across the face, not very hard, threw me away from himself against the rough face of the wall behind me, and stared at me as if I owed him an explanation or apology. I decided he was right.

“A hundred thousand pardons, effendi.” I murmured. Somewhere in my mind arose the thought that this James Bond was handling himself a good sight better than he had when he let me escort him out of Chiri’s a couple of weeks ago. Tonight, his goddamn black comma of hair wasn’t even out of place. He wasn’t even breathing hard. There was some logical explanation for all that, too; I’d let Papa or Jacques or the I Ching figure it out: my head was throbbing too hard and my ears were chiming.

“And you needn’t bother with that ‘effendi’ bunk,” he said grimly. “That’s a Turkish flattery, and I still have more than one grudge against the Turks. You’re no Turk, anyway, by the looks of you.” His slightly cruel mouth gave me a slightly vicious sneer and he walked by me as if I were no threat at all to his safety or his wallet. That, in point of fact, was the plain truth. I had just had my second run-in with the man who called himself James Bond. At the moment, we each had a score of one, out of a possible two; I was in no hurry at all to play the rubber match. He seemed to have learned a lot since our last meeting, or for some reason of his own he had allowed me to chuck him so easily out of Chiri’s. I knew I was badly outclassed here.

As I walked slowly and painfully back to the Silver Palm, I came to an important decision: I was going to tell Papa that I wouldn’t help him. It wasn’t merely a matter of being afraid to have my brain wired; hell, even with it goosed from here to the Prophet’s Birthday, I was no competition for these killers. I couldn’t even follow James Bond down one goddamn block in my own neighborhood without getting my ass kicked around. I didn’t have a single doubt that Bond could have dealt more harshly with me, if he’d chosen to. He thought I was just a robber, a common Arab thief, and he merely treated me the way he treated all common Arab thieves. It must have been a daily occurrence for him.

No, there was nothing that could persuade me otherwise. I didn’t need the three days to think about it—Papa and his wonderful scheme could just go to hell.

I went back to the Silver Pafm and threw down my drink in two great gulps. Over the protestations of Mahmoud and Jacques, I said that I had to be going. I kissed Heidi on the cheek and whispered a licentious suggestion in her ear, the same suggestion I always whispered; and she replied with the same amused rejection. I walked thoughtfully back to Frenchy’s to explain to Yasmin that I was not going to be a hero, that I was not going to serve higher principles than kings and princes and all the rest of that foolishness. Yasmin would be disappointed in me, and I probably wouldn’t get into her pants for a week; but that was better than getting my throat slashed and having my ashes strewn over the sewage treatment plant.

I would have a lot of explaining to do to everybody. I would have a lot of apologizing to do, too. Everyone from Selima to Chiri to Sergeant Hajjar to Friedlander Bey himself would be after my balls, but I had made my decision. I was my own man, and I wouldn’t be pressured into accepting a terrifying fate, however morally right and public-spirited they all made it sound. The drink at the Silver Palm, the two at Frenchy’s, a couple of tri-phets, four sunnies, and eight Paxium all agreed with me. Before I found my way back to Frenchy’s, the night was warm and safe and wholly on my side, and everybody who was urging me to wire my brain was stuffed down deep in a dark pit into which I planned never again to peek. They could all jam each other silly, for all I cared. I had my own life to lead.



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