Flashback

SEVEN

Figuring I’d try the El Minzah later, I took a taxi back to the Continental. I was doubtful I’d find Brian at the piano bar that night, more doubtful still that he’d tell me anything if I did, but Joshi’s tip was the only trail I had to follow and I planned on pursuing it to its end.

Abdesselom had evidently quit for the night, and a middle-aged Moroccan woman with a bad orange dye-job and too much makeup had taken his place behind the desk. When I asked her what time things usually got started at the El Minzah, she folded her arms across her chest and eyed me skeptically.

“You are going to Caid’s?” she asked.

I gave her a look of confusion.

“Caid’s. The piano bar,” she elaborated.

I nodded.

“Ten, ten-thirty.” The woman shrugged. “But you can’t go like that. Caid’s is very fancy, very fancy.”

I looked down at myself, at my convent work boots, faded canvas shirt, and patched jeans. The change of clothes in my pack wasn’t much better, and certainly less clean. “It’ll have to do,” I told her.

Making my way up to my room, I locked the door and rummaged in my pack. I pulled out a rumpled black sweater and laid it on the bed, smoothing the wrinkles with the back of my hand, dabbing it clean with a damp washcloth before putting it on. I ran a brush through my hair and pulled it back off my face. With a little luck I hoped I could pull off the slumming-rich-girl look.

Yes, I thought, giving myself a good once-over in the mirror, it would have to do. I tucked a stray wisp of hair behind one ear, turned, and headed for the door. That’s when I noticed the little book that lay open on my nightstand. I stopped short and stepped toward it. It had not been there before, of that I was certain. The maid must have left it, I told myself, glancing at the two open pages, the Arabic script. And yet if a maid had come while I’d been out, she had not stayed long enough to fold the two towels I’d tucked haphazardly over the chrome bar next to the sink.

I picked up the book. The text was divided into short, numbered sections, verses, it seemed. A religious book, but not the Bible, the Koran most likely. I closed the cover and, taking the book with me, picked up my rucksack. No doubt it wasn’t appropriate attire for the El Minzah, but I couldn’t leave it, not now, knowing someone had been in my room. Hoisting the pack onto my shoulder, I stepped into the hallway and headed down to the lobby.

“Is this the hotel’s?” I asked the clerk. I set the Koran down on the counter in front of her.

The woman scowled up at me. “Where did you find that?”

“Someone left it in my room,” I told her. “Do you know who it belongs to?”

She slid the book protectively toward herself, then set it on the desk next to her computer. “I will see that it gets back to its owner. Good night, Mademoiselle.”

It was just after ten-thirty when I pulled up in front of the sandstone portal and heavy, iron-studded wooden door that marked the El Minzah’s front entrance. I paid my taxi driver, climbed out, and made my way inside. If the Hotel Continental was the geriatric specter of French colonialism, then the El Minzah was its teenage reincarnation, the Versace-clad, cell phone-carrying spirit of the unstoppable empire of twenty-first-century globalism.

Inside the plush lobby, potbellied oil money mingled with B-list celebrity. American English predominated; a variety of well-crafted accents wafted through the potted palms and up toward the blue-and-white zillij mosaics. The air smelled of Cuban cigars and eucalyptus.

Conscious of my convent clothes and work-blunted fingernails, I followed one of the doormen’s directions down a flight of stairs, past the rambling Andalusian courtyard at the heart of the hotel to the piano bar. Scanning the sea of faces for Brian, I stepped into the elegant room, found an empty table, and settled in to wait. The piano bar was more British than French or Moroccan, dark and richly paneled like the library in some English gentleman’s country estate. A large oil portrait of a serious-looking Scot in full military dress dominated the room, staring down on a crowd tinged with the shabby, desperate whiff of exile.

From down in the dank and tangled streets of the medina it would be hard to imagine the existence of such a place as Caid’s. It would be difficult to conceive of such blind and easy luxury, the thin rattling of ice in a crystal glass, the fizz of champagne, a woman’s bare shoulders rising like a frail white flower from the black sheath of her dress. There were no beggars in Caid’s, no dirt-smeared children grappling for change, only the pervasive stink of orchids and tobacco, and a nauseating blend of expensive perfumes. Here, I thought, was the fantasy money can buy, the Victorian illusion of a separation between this world and the savage one, these few dozen bodies clustered under the pale archways and dark pleated drapes like exotic orchids in a winter hothouse.

The staff was all Moroccan and male, as was the piano player, a small round man with a smile as white as his dinner jacket. He was singing a maudlin rendition of “Ne Me Quitte Pas” while several couples pawed each other on the dance floor. One of the waiters, a handsome young man in a neatly tailored red vest and black pants, started over to me, his face brightening as he neared.

“Ms. Boyle,” he said warmly when he had reached my table. Tucking his tray under his arm, he leaned in closer, beaming, shaking his head in evident disbelief. “I almost didn’t recognize you.”

Boyle, I thought, Ms. Boyle. I looked up at the man’s delicate, caramel-colored face, searching in vain for something familiar.

“Nadim,” he said, motioning to himself.

I smiled. “Yes, of course, Nadim.”

He stood there for a moment, an awkward silence passing between us, then made a slight stiff bow. “Your drink,” he said, turning. “I will be right back.”

I watched him walk to the bar. He said something to the bartender, and they both glanced back at me and nodded; then the bartender pulled a clear bottle from the shelf behind him. I had been here, I thought, shifting my gaze to the piano player and the dark bank of windows beyond him, the panes reflecting the bar’s dim faces. I had been here, and yet I could not remember. The waiter came back carrying a martini glass and laid a small linen bar napkin on the table in front of me.

“When was I here last?” I asked.

Nadim set the glass on the napkin, then straightened up. “It has been a while,” he said, scowling, trying to remember. “A year. Maybe longer. You stayed with us.”

I looked down at the drink. A single delicate sliver of lemon rested at the bottom of the glass. “Was I alone?”

“Yes.”

“And I was here before that?”

The waiter drew back now, puzzled. “Of course. Ms. Boyle, is everything all right?”

“Alone?”

“Why no, with Mr. Haverman.”

I took a sip of the martini. It was vodka, cold and citrusy, studded with tiny shards of ice. “A friend?” I asked.

“Of course, Madame.”

“What does he do, this Mr. Haverman?”

“Do?” Nadim asked, perplexed.

“For a job.”

“He’s an American,” the waiter said, as if being an American were a profession in itself. “Like you. A nice man.”

“And what does he look like?”

Nadim shuffled his feet nervously. “Young, like yourself.”

“Brown hair? Blond?”

“Brown,” Nadim said, growing more and more wary of this game by the second.

A customer several tables away signaled for service, and the waiter gratefully excused himself. I put the drink down and reached up and grasped his wrist. “What else, Nadim?” I asked, desperate to keep him there. “What else do you know?”

The waiter looked down, fear flashing across his face. “You are a patron of the hotel, Ms. Boyle,” he said, trying to compose himself. “And a lovely lady. You drink vodka martinis with a twist. This is all I know.”

“And Mr. Haverman?”

“A friend,” he said, repeating his previous answer, “a customer like yourself. This is all I know.”

Nadim had made no attempt to remove his wrist from my grip; now his arm was beginning to tremble. The man at the other table waved again, and I loosed my grasp. “I’m sorry,” I told him as he hurried away, obviously embarrassed by what had just happened.

I finished my drink, ordered another, and watched the crowd revolve. Toward the end of the evening the American film crew from the Continental showed up. They were loud and underdressed, as Americans almost always are, throwing dollars around and ordering overpriced Scotch.

It didn’t seem possible that this had been my life, and suddenly I didn’t want it to be. I wanted my old clothes back, and if not the convent, some place like it, a small plain room and a little garden on a hill, a bell ringing the hours.

The piano player tapped out the first few lines of “As Time Goes By,” and a smattering of applause rose from the tables. Giving up on Brian, I downed the last of my drink, stood, and made my way out of the bar. It was late enough that the rest of the hotel was nearly deserted. Out in the courtyard the only sound was the splash and gurgle of a fountain, and a woman’s quiet laughter that drifted down from an open window somewhere above. The stars were out, a carpet of faraway sun catchers. The black shape of a bat cruised silently overhead.

I climbed up into the empty lobby and headed for the front desk, where a young woman in a blue suit was bent over a computer keyboard. She looked up when she saw me coming and straightened, fixing some unseen crease in her jacket. I watched her face for some expression of recognition but saw none.

“May I help you?” she asked.

I nodded, thinking of the form I’d filled out when I’d checked in at the Continental. Surely a hotel as nice as the El Minzah would require just as much information from its clients, if not more. If I had been a guest here, there might be some record in the computer.

“How long have you worked here?” I asked, stepping forward, propping my elbows on the marble counter.

“Six months,” the woman said. She was meticulously made up, her lips stained the same dark red as the drapes in the piano bar. Her name tag read Ashia.

I smiled. “I stayed here about a year ago,” I explained. “I’m trying to pin down the dates. I just can’t seem to remember. Do you keep a record of your guests on file?”

Ashia nodded. She looked at me expectantly and when I didn’t answer, cleared her throat. “Your name, Madame?”

“Boyle,” I said.

“B-o-y-l-e?” she asked, already typing the name into her computer.

“Yes,” I said, hoping it was the right answer.

She hit ENTER and squinted down at the screen, her brow furrowing as she manipulated her mouse. “Hannah?” she asked without looking up.

“Sorry?”

“Your first name, Madame.”

“Oh. Yes.” I nodded. “Hannah.”

“Here it is. Fall of last year. You spent eight days with us. September twenty-eighth to October fifth.” She glanced up and smiled, appreciative of her own efficiency, then tapped at the keyboard again and frowned.

“Is there a registration form you have guests fill out?” I asked, pushing my luck and not caring. “You know, address, passport number, credit card?”

She nodded, half preoccupied by whatever she saw on the monitor. “Normally, yes, but I can’t seem to find the information here.” I watched her click her mouse again, her dark eyes roving the screen. “Look at that,” she murmured to herself, then to me. “It looks like you left something with us, in the safe.”

She looked up at me, suddenly skeptical, and I felt the skin along my arms flush with goose bumps.

“Oh, yes,” I said easily, feigning irritation and surprise at my own thoughtlessness. “I had almost forgotten. How stupid of me. It’s just something I picked up in the medina. I can’t believe you’ve held on to it all this time.”

“Of course,” the clerk said, offended that I would question the hotel’s reliability.

I took a step back from the counter and casually adjusted a stray lock of hair. Just a forgotten trinket, I told myself, trying to quell the desperate surge in my heart. “Could you get it for me?”

The woman nodded. “If I could just see your passport, Madame.”

“Yes.” I smiled. “Of course.” I set my pack down and reached into the front pocket, brushing aside Marie’s passport, pulling a one-hundred-euro note from my savings. I thought for a second, contemplating the plush lobby, the woman’s blue suit. No, I didn’t want to get this wrong. Reluctantly, I pulled out a second note.

“Will this do?” I asked, straightening up, sliding the two bills across the counter.

The woman hesitated a moment, and I felt my heart still. Then she put her hand out and carefully considered the sum before her.

“Yes, Ms. Boyle,” she said, finally. “This will do.”

Hannah Boyle. I said the name to myself, running my tongue along each syllable, hoping to feel the familiar pattern in the sounds, the words worn to fit like the ledge just below the altar at the convent’s chapel, the stone cupped from all the knees it had received. All those months with the sisters I had imagined some kind of epiphany, a flash of self-recognition. I would stumble on something, I thought, a place, a name, and the past would spring open like a rusty gate newly oiled.

And yet, there in the lobby of the El Minzah, nothing had changed. The Tangier Hannah had moved in was still a mystery, the woman herself only a gaunt shadow, someone with a taste for vodka martinis, someone a waiter might remember fondly, even after a year. As I watched the desk clerk emerge from the door she’d disappeared through earlier, I remembered something Dr. Delpay had once told me. We all struggle to know ourselves, he had said, our whole lives.

The woman had a small black case in her hands, a little smaller than a shoebox. She came out from behind the desk, crossed to where I was sitting, and set the case on the low table in front of me. It was fastened by a lock, a metal circle with a narrow slit for a key.

“Thank you,” I told her.

She nodded, her duty discharged, and turned away.

I sat for a moment, staring down at the relic, remembering how I’d acted with Joshi, more uncertain than ever of just how much I wanted to know. Just a trinket, I reminded myself, and perhaps it was nothing more than a forgotten bauble, a dead end.

There was laughter out on the patio. A group I’d seen earlier at the piano bar stumbled into the lobby and out the front door. The desk clerk raised her head as they passed, then looked back down, deeply engaged in some task. I needed privacy, I thought, glancing around the room, my eyes lighting on a row of wooden phone booths in the back of the lobby and beyond them an alcove marked WC. Taking the box with me, I stood and made my way to the ladies’ room.

Ducking into one of the stalls, I sat down on the toilet and set the box on my knees. I fished two bobby pins from my pack, bent them slightly, slipped them into the lock, one on top of the other, and jiggled them gently. Yes, I knew how to do this. When I heard the latch click softly free, I set my thumbs on the box’s lid and eased it open.

This was not a trinket, I thought, as the top fell back on its hinges and my heart stopped momentarily. Sitting on the very top of the box’s contents, wrapped in a thin velvet cloth, was a bulky L-shaped object. There was no mistaking what the cloth covered, and when I finally unwrapped it I was not surprised to see the burnished black body of a handgun staring up at me. I picked it up and read the writing etched into the barrel: PIETRO BERETTA, GARDONE V.T.-MADE IN ITALY. And below, in smaller letters: MOD. 84 F-CAL. 9 SHORT.

There was a clip in the barrel. I released it, and it fell into my lap, fresh and full, the ten bullets it was meant to hold still neatly packed. I put my hand around the stock, and my hand knew the feel and weight of it. My palm knew the gun’s contours, the pattern of ridges and the circular stamp of the maker, just as it had come to know the smooth texture of perfectly kneaded bread dough.

Setting the gun aside, I turned my attention back to the case. Beneath the cloth was a thick stack of dull green American dollars, the top bill a hundred. I picked up the stack and flipped through it. My best guess said there were at least five thousand dollars in all. A nice nest egg, enough for several rainy days, I thought, setting the bills in my lap, turning my attention to what lay under them.

At the bottom of the case were some half dozen passports, seven, to be exact, once I’d counted them. The covers and countries of origin varied. Among the seven were two American, one Canadian, one French, one British, one Swiss, and one Australian passport. I opened each little book and paged through the contents, studying the names and birth dates, studying the glossy face that graced each document. Here was Sylvie Allain, a brunette, with close-cropped hair and a pale face. Here was Michelle Harding, her face tanned, her hair bleached by the Australian sun. Here was Meegan McCallister, a redhead, born on an April day in Toronto. Here was Leila Brightman, a severe-looking Brit. But the one passport I’d expected to find was not in the bunch. Among the faces, shocking in their familiarness, the features my own, the noses and mouths and slightly asymmetrical eyes, was no Hannah Boyle.

Each passport was imprinted with a variety of visas and exit and entry stamps. Whoever these women were, they were a well-traveled bunch. The smudged stamps showed trips to everywhere from Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland to Argentina, South Africa, and a number of former Soviet Bloc countries. Not pleasure trips, I assumed, unless the beaches of the Black Sea were your idea of a tropical vacation. It was a disparate set of destinations, with little to tie them together other than the fact that of the dozens of trips each woman had taken, none, according to the dates on the imprints, had been made within the last five years. Not a single one.

The bathroom door opened, and I heard heels on the polished floor. Leaning forward, I peered through the crack where the door met the stall and watched the newcomer make her way to the sinks. Familiar, I thought, and then I realized that beneath the makeup and simple black sheath was the fanny-packed woman from the Continental’s lobby. She set her purse on the marble counter and leaned in toward the mirror, surveying her face.

Hesitating a moment, I stuffed everything back into the case and closed the lid. Then I stood, reached back, flushed the toilet, slid the case into my pack, and let myself out of the stall. I glanced up at the woman when I emerged. She’d taken a lipstick from her bag, and the red tip was poised against her mouth. Her eyes were intent on her task, focused on the double arch of her upper lip, but as I turned for the door I saw them move slightly, taking note of me as I went.

As my taxi headed past the Jewish cemetery and the walls of the Old City toward the Continental, I tried in vain to fit the pieces of the newly formed puzzle together. The case rested heavily in my lap, its implications weighing even heavier on my mind. I had come to Tangier for answers, but what I’d found was an ever-growing snarl of questions.

The little red taxi veered to the left, and we rattled upward through the low, arched gate that marked the southeast entrance to the medina. I had to find the American, Brian, and no doubt he’d be keeping a low profile now that he knew I was looking. As we passed by the Great Mosque, I looked up to see Joshi’s Japanese flag glowing in the window of his apartment, the electric lights blazing brightly behind it.

“Left here, please,” I told the driver, directing him away from the Continental and toward Joshi’s building. Maybe Joshi did know where the man lived after all. At the very least, it was worth a try. Faced with the Beretta, the little man might find his memory greatly improved.

The street to the building’s front door was far too narrow for the car to pass. The driver stopped at the entrance to the little alley, turned back, and eyed me skeptically.

“It’s not safe, Miss,” he said in French, shaking his head, and then in English to make sure I’d understood, “Not safe.” He was an older man with a neat nap of gray hair. A thick wool scarf was wrapped around his neck.

I paid him and opened the door. “It’s okay,” I told him, but he didn’t seem reassured.

He sat with his engine idling while I navigated the cobbled street, his lights casting the alley in sharp relief. I wasn’t sure how I was going to get past the locked wooden door, and I waved the driver away, knowing whatever I did to get in wasn’t going to look right to the old man. But the little taxi stayed stubbornly in place, the sound of its motor rattling through the medina.

I ran through my options as I approached the shallow alcove, but as the door slid into view I could see that it was sitting slightly ajar, open just barely an inch, but open. Stepping into the entryway, I grasped the handle and let myself inside, out of the glare of the alley and into the darkness of the building’s foyer.

Feeling the wall, I located the light switch I’d used on my earlier visit. The overhead bulb clicked on, the light flat and garish, the walls of the stairwell mottled and scarred where the paint had peeled away. I started upward.

I found Joshi’s door closed, and knocked softly. There was no answer, and no sound from inside. The building around me was quiet as a tomb. I knocked again, louder this time, and pressed my ear to the door. Nothing. There was a soft click in the stairwell, and the overhead bulb switched off, plunging me into a darkness interrupted only by the thin bright bar of light that seeped out from under Joshi’s door. Sweeping downward with my palm, I found the knob and twisted. It was unlocked, and the door swung open at my touch.

I stood on the landing for a moment and peered into the little apartment. From where I stood I could see straight down the narrow front hallway to what I guessed was the living room beyond. Just a part of the room was visible, one arm of a settee, a small wooden table and two chairs, Joshi’s Japanese flag in the window. And there, at the very edge of my view, lying motionless on the rug, were four pallid fingers, the hand they belonged to hidden behind the plaster doorjamb.

“Joshi?” I called quietly, not quite sure what to do. My first and fairly certain guess was that the little man was dead. But it also occurred to me that he could be sick, or hurt, and in need of help. I thought of the taxi driver’s words. It’s not safe.

Stepping into the hallway, I set my pack down, took the case from it, and pulled out the Beretta. I jammed the clip up into the stock and heard it engage; then, flattening my back against the wall, I started forward.

The apartment was neat as a pin. Several feet down the front hall a tiny galley kitchen opened off to the left, its open shelves revealing a sparse but orderly collection of dishes and pans, an English teapot, a handful of chopsticks upright in a water glass like blossomless flowers. Farther along, to the right, was the tiny bathroom, no tub or shower, just a rust-stained sink and a toilet.

Aside from these two rooms, there was just the living room, which evidently served as bedroom and dining room and office as well. In one corner was a simple sleeping mat, its pillows and blankets neatly arranged. A Macintosh PowerBook sat open on the little table by the window.

Some part of me had expected to see Joshi as he’d been that morning, in his proper pajamas and robe. But he was fully dressed, in wool pants, a knit vest, a white oxford shirt, and a tie. Except for the lack of sunglasses, he looked much the same as he had when I’d met him on the street. On his feet were the familiar orange running shoes with their glittery laces. His right hand, the hand I’d seen from the hallway, was extended above his head, as if he was doing the backstroke across the carpet. He lay face-up, his eyes staring at the ceiling, one knee bent at an unnatural angle. On his neck was a thin dark line, a crease where someone had taken a cord or a wire and pulled it hard enough to stop his breathing.

When I had first arrived at the convent, one of the older sisters, a nun named Ruth, had died in her sleep. As far as I could remember, this had been my only experience with death. Sister Ruth had been old and frail, in the twilight of her nineties, and she had been heard in the chapel sometimes, praying for the end. When she finally did go, there was an earnest peacefulness to her corpse, an illusion, almost, of joy in passing.

There was nothing peaceful about Joshi. My first full glimpse of him repulsed me; I could smell the violence of his death. But I was fascinated as well, momentarily rooted in place by the grim sight, caught between my own curiosity and the urge to flee. Run, I told myself. It took a moment for me to obey my own command, but I finally turned and started back down the hall.

I had left the apartment’s door ajar when I entered, and as I passed the kitchen I saw the light in the stairwell come on. I stopped short and strained my ears. Down at the bottom of the stairs a body shifted, clothes rustling as it started upward, the sound of feet on the steps magnified by the stairwell’s hard walls and tall ceiling.

I took a breath and caught it, then ducked into the little kitchen. A European woman stood out in this part of Tangier, and the last thing I wanted was to be seen leaving the apartment of a dead man. Placing myself just inside the kitchen’s doorway, I counted the person’s steps. If whoever it was stopped on the second floor, I’d be okay.

But the steps kept coming, leather soles shuffling across the gritty tiles of the floor. The safety, I thought instinctively, fumbling with the gun, my thumb finding the little lever. I heard the person reach the third-floor landing and stop, then continue cautiously forward. A hand brushed the open door, and it swung inward, its hinges sighing.

It wasn’t warm in the apartment; December reached Tangier with an almost autumnal chill, and the temperature inside the building was the same as the temperature outside, but I was sweating. You can do this, I told myself, pressing my back to the wall, steadying my breath. There was no doubt in my mind I had fired the gun before. Just like riding a bike, Dr. Delpay had said, and he’d been right. Skills had come back to me, and so would this, just like the delicate and miraculously unforgettable feat of balancing on two narrow tires.

The intruder stepped into the hallway, moving so quietly that my knowledge of his presence was almost purely intuition. No doubt he saw what I had seen by now, the pale fingers on the rug.

Steady, I told myself, steady. The person took a step closer, and I whirled around the jamb, Beretta at eye level, wrists straight, forearms tensed.

“Don’t move,” I said, slamming the barrel of my gun against the man’s left temple.