Djibouti

CHAPTER THIRTY

A TAXI DRIVER EVER TRIED to charge him too much, Jama would place the barrel of the Walther against the man's neck and ask him in Arabic, "Again, please. How much is the fare?" The driver would say, oh, he made a mistake and sometimes wouldn't charge for the ride. One time the driver was slow, maybe wondering if he should jump out, but first asking, "Is this a robbery?"

What's the matter with him? Of course it was a robbery. Jama took his money, drove off in the taxi a few blocks and left it in the street.

He used taxis because he'd left Hunter's banged-up car back of his building, through with it, he believed, and through with his Ivy League outfits. He wore a kikoi, a white one that fell past his knees, a scarf he knotted around his head, and had stopped shaving. He dirtied up Hunter's white sneakers, needing fast shoes he ever had to make a run. He hung out in the African quarter till people started asking where he was from, if he was selling khat. That wasn't a bad idea. He bought up a clump a khat-seller had and went around peddling it marked up some. He believed he was being watched. He didn't know it for a fact, but believing it was enough. Each night he changed where he stayed, holes in the walls called hotels.

He talked to sailors hanging around the docks. One of them told him the LNG tanker was out there in the Gulf of Tadjoura waiting for stores. He heard the crew, the Filipinos, had quit and were looking for ships.

Jama was thinking he should have stayed at Hunter's. Have booze, all the ice he wanted. Food in the freezer. He was sorry he had been hasty about Celeste. Have her stay with him at Hunter's place, back in the saddle again out where a friend was a friend. Wherever that was. If the phone rang he'd say, "Hunter? He went to Egypt. Me? I'm taking care of his cat Putie." Give the caller shit like that in a nice voice.

He still had a key. HARRY WAS CLOSE TO biting his nails, tempted, feeling a need to get it done. He said to his Somalis, "Come on, let's stay on it, for Christ sake. Check the African quarter, you know what he looks like. You drove all the way from Eyl with him. He could be dressed like an American or he's gone back to being Arab."

One of the Somali lads said, "I know the back of his head, his hair. I sat behind him two days looking at it."

The other Somali said he was never in the same car with Jama. "But I know he has hair on his face, a beard."

Finally they had traced Jama to the rue de Marseille, Harry out of his car wanting to pace, move around, but managed to hold on to himself. His two Somalis stood waiting, smoking cigarettes. In the dusk, the sky losing its light, the street of apartment houses was already dark. Harry's Bentley, delivered today from Eyl, stood at the curb waiting.

"You're sure he's in that building, staying there."

"The car is in back, one side of it destroyed."

"And he was seen driving it."

"People on the street say yes, he is the one, but not with a beard. Wearing a shirt from a university. But they have not seen him in two days."

"Then why," Harry said, "do they think he's there?"

"A woman said she saw him leave and return, leave again and return, two times."

"How did she know who it was?"

"I told you," the Somali said, "the one who wears the university shirt appears. He leaves. Now she doesn't see him. But when the same one returns now he is in traditional clothes. He goes out, he comes back."

Harry said, "How does she know he's the same one who left?"

The Somali said, "He returns to drive away in the car with its side destroyed."

"Are you sure it's the same BMW?"

"Yes, and the one who lives in this place and owns the car has disappeared."

"Why is talking to you," Harry said, "like trying to solve a fucking puzzle?"

His boys had taken a look at the apartment house mailboxes in the foyer and came back with ten names of Frenchwomen, two Frenchmen they said they had heard of, and one American or Englishman by the name of Hunter Newhouse on the third floor, 303. Harry imagined Jama meeting Hunter in a bar, they talk, get along, Jama desperately needing a place to stay. Hunter, a gentleman and scholar, offers his flat and soon thereafter disappears. If Harry alerted the police to a missing person, he would complicate the ultimate solution, shooting Jama.

He wished he had a bunch of khat to graze on. And told himself no. Stay up to the task with another snort of crystal meth.

Harry had made up his mind, the moment he set eyes on Jama he would shoot him. Place the Somalis on each side of the door. One of them raps on it and moves out of the way. Harry would stand facing the door. Jama opens it half asleep…Or stand back from it. He thought it might be a wide hall in a building as old as this one.

The PPK in his hand, the safety off. The door opens…

He could say something to him.

You know why I'm here, old sport.

But Jama could be holding a pistol, couldn't he? Awakened in the middle of the night…

You don't say a fucking word, Harry told himself. You see him and shoot him. That's it.

"What if when I knock on the door," one of the Somalis said, "he doesn't open it? He asks who is it, what do I want?" HE HEARD FOUR RAPS on the door in the living room, loud, and opened his eyes. No voice came following the raps, like the custom of police at home. Announce themselves and bust down the door. If it wasn't cops it could be al Qaeda.

Jama rolled out of bed in his Levi's and sneakers, the way he slept now, and brought out his Walther from under the sheet. He shoved four 9-mm magazines into his jeans from the night table. Slipped a shirt on over his head and picked up his flight bag from the foot of the bed. He was in the living room when they banged on the door again, Jama sure there'd be a few of them in the hall packing AKs or Uzis, al Qaeda deadheads serving the contract on him.

He opened the door, swung it open and caught the edge of it in his left hand. He put the Walther on the Somalis and shot each one and shot them again, seeing only one other one left. Jesus Christ, Harry. Harry fired, Jama fired. Both missed. They weren't ten feet apart. Both in a hurry fired again, both moving this time. Jama backed into the room and swung the door closed. He released the Walther's magazine, two left, and shoved a full load into the grip. He looked through the door's peephole and saw Harry standing against the opposite wall holding his gun out in both hands to shoot. Jama believed if he swung open the door Harry would fire and he'd step in the doorway and shoot him. Jama felt the trigger-pressure of his means of staying alive. He looked through the peephole again but didn't see Harry, or know which way he'd gone, right or left. He had a fifty-fifty chance of seeing him or getting shot in the back.

Jama said, "Shit," and opened the door. He'd of been right: there was Harry, only down at the end of the hall by the EXIT sign. So Jama went in the bedroom with his gun and his bag, stepped out the window to the fire escape and ran down it, riding that bottom section as it swung down. He went around to the front of the building and watched the entrance. After a few minutes he stepped into shadow and watched the street. Pretty soon he saw headlights pop on. Then off. A few minutes went by and they popped on again. Now the car was coming from the next block, picking up speed. Jama held the Walther in one hand, stepped out to stand in profile to the Bentley coming at him and fired four shots through the windshield and got to the sidewalk to see the car still coming, Harry firing from his window right-handed. The car swerved to miss trash cans and kept going, Jama watching it, wondering, Jesus, what's Harry on?

"I had my beaters out," Harry told Idris the next morning, "scouring Djib for the scoundrel, and he's not two streets away from us all the time. You didn't hear the shooting last night?"

"I was out," Idris said, laying clothes on the bed to be packed. "I took Dara and Helene to dinner."

"This was two in the morning," Harry said.

"We went to a club for dancing, after."

Harry said, "I had every intention of running him down with the Bentley."

"It arrived?"

"Yesterday morning. I started for him, I wanted to run over him, and he put four nines with that German gun of his through my windscreen, but into the left side, forgetting the Bentley is a right-hand-drive motorcar."

Idris said, "So you failed to shoot him."

"You have to imagine," Harry said, "how quickly this was happening. He did shoot the Somali lads with me, upstairs at his door."

"You shot at him?"

"Of course," Harry said. "We both seemed a bit anxious, exchanging shots in the hall. He went down the fire escape while I was hurrying to get the car. I saw him come out of the building and drove directly at him, flooring the Bentley and shooting from the window. When I missed again I kept going. It was that or stop to reload. But I did have him on the run."

"Now what?" Idris said.

"This isn't really my game," Harry said, "I'll probably leave for England in the next couple of days." He sat down to watch Idris packing.

"How was Dara, in good spirits?"

"She's always herself," Idris said.

"Which is to say what?"

"She keeps her eyes open, knows what's going on."

"I'm reasonably certain I could have got on with her," Harry the Sheikh said, "had my mind not been occupied by Jimmy Jama."

"You mean the price on his head."

"Well, that too."