Stamping Butterflies

CHAPTER 41 Marrakech, Summer 1977 [Then]

Celia, the woman who once sacked a Glaswegian punk band mid-tour while facing down a drunk roadie on a twenty-four-hour, amphetamine-enhanced rampage, was scared. And the man who scared her was a balding and badly dressed French official who stank of death and carried himself like a man entering hospital for the last time.

Jake, however, was angry.

There might have been some fear in Jake's anger. A level of self-protection that displayed itself in a snarl and an upturned, arrogant set to his chin, but it was real fury, of the kind which took no prisoners and expected no mercy in return. The object of his anger was Claude de Greuze and the fact that Major Abbas also stood in the courtyard of Riad al-Razor was a barely noticed irrelevance.

That Jake had decided his real argument was with de Greuze and not the Major was accurate; it also spoke volumes about Jake's background and cultural limitations, not to mention a mind-set he affected to despise.

"Look at him," Jake demanded, hands clenched into fists. They were talking about Moz, in particular about Moz's split lip and the camouflage pattern of bruises that mottled the boy's temples and cheeks. "Is this how you treat children?"

It was, Moz had to admit, one of the stupidest things he'd ever heard Jake say, among a whole list of stupid things. Everyone knew that compared to the old days, those now advising the government were as children themselves, casually cruel but not coruscated by decades of hate.

"I don't think," said de Greuze, "you realize how serious this is."

"No," said Jake, his fists still balled but now almost grinding into his hips, his pose unconscious but still taken straight from the cover of his second LP, Anemone of the State. "You don't realize how serious this is. You kidnap a child, torture him, only bring him back after I telephone the US consul and police HQ to report the boy missing."

Jake had called the Hotel de Police?

Moz was shocked. No one involved themselves in the affairs of the police unless they had little alternative and, even then, most Marrakchi would find an alternative.

"Go to Celia." Jake's voice was sharp.

Moz glanced from the Major to the woman with the blonde bob. She sat, still scared but now more openly defiant, on a wicker divan which Jake and Moz had painted pink for a joke one morning a couple of weeks earlier.

"Sit here," Celia said. "You're safe now." And it sounded as if she half believed what she said, that somehow the purple-painted walls of the riad's courtyard, the pink wicker and the sheer fury in Jake's face could save Moz even from this.

Celia looked as if she'd spent the morning in tears. Dark landslides of mascara deepened her pale blue eyes. Moz wanted to say It's okay, although obviously it wasn't and probably never would be.

Having mentally discounted Major Abbas, Jake was now concentrating his vitriol on Claude de Greuze, each word accompanied by a stab of his finger that never quite touched the old man's chest. "The boy's with me," he said. "Have you got that?"

"With you?" Major Abbas said suddenly. "How, exactly, ‘with you’?"

Too angry to be careful, Jake flicked his attention from de Greuze to the small police officer. "Ah yes," he said, "you... The man from the station. The one who was so helpful when Celia's watch was stolen. How could I forget?" Contempt practically dripped from Jake's lips while his eyes racked up and down the policeman, finding him wanting.

Moz wanted to explain that this was Major Abbas. The son and grandson of police officers. A man feared throughout the Mellah. And the nasrani with him, the Frenchman, was more dangerous still. They were not people to whom Jake should be rude.

Only Jake was nasrani himself and the world he saw through his eyes was not the one Moz saw, no matter that he had nasrani blood himself, for only a foreigner could have showed such open anger to an officer of the Sécurité.

"Stolen?" Major Abbas said. "Didn't you sign a declaration saying it had been lost?"

Jake shrugged away the detail like the technicality it was. Lost/stolen, what difference did it make? Celia had got her gold Omega back and, if it had gone, he'd have just bought her another.

"You know exactly what I mean," said Jake.

"I very much hope," said Major Abbas, "that I don't."

The American grinned, a wolfish grin that exposed one canine and creased up his eyes until he could have been staring into the lens of a Hasselblad. It was a look Celia had seen before and she didn't like what it presaged. The only thing worse than Jake drunk or wired out of his skull was Jake self-consciously flying in the face of hidebound, bourgeois convention.

"You wouldn't believe," he told Major Abbas, "I mean, you really wouldn't believe some of the VIPs who've come to my parties." Suggestions of naked children, drugged roadies, copious hashish and doubtful politics hung in the air between them.

"Moroccan VIPs," Celia said, just in case Major Abbas had missed that point.

"And, of course," said Jake, "I've kept a diary of my time in Marrakech. A very detailed diary obviously. Names and places, dates, bribes paid... And I can tell you," he added, "most of it makes Saturday night at Studio 54 look like my first day at Montessori."

Neither Jake nor Celia had ever been to Studio 54, obviously enough. He hung out at CBGB, a club in the Bowery situated below a flop-house. He was talking, however, not just to the Arab police officer but to de Greuze and the Frenchman could be relied upon to know of Studio 54, in a way he might not of a club where at least one person was reputed to have jacked off in the chilli, the bartender often forgot to change the beer and the whole place stank of piss.

"This famous diary," Major Abbas said darkly. "You can show it to me?"

Something passed in a glance between Celia and Jake. A look that marked a point beyond which Celia had not intended to go, although she promptly went straight beyond it. Jake had always had that effect on her.

"Of course he can't," she said dismissively. "Jake writes it in weekly installments and I mail it to Jann Wenner." She named the brains behind Rolling Stone, hoping fervently that Mr. Wenner would never find out quite how liberally she'd taken his name in vain.

"Malika," Moz reminded Celia, pulling at her hand. Very carefully, the Englishwoman unpeeled his fingers.

Again that glance.

"We'll help your friend later," said Celia. "If we can. But first we need to sort this out because Mr. de Greuze says you're in trouble." Celia spoke slowly, as if to a very small child. "And we all know you didn't really do anything wrong."

"I didn't?"

"No," said Celia. "It's okay. Jake's told them the truth." There was something about the way Celia said this which told Moz more was being said than he first understood. At the same time he felt a cold certainty that something very wrong was in the process of happening and somehow he was allowing it to happen.

"Malika," Moz insisted.

"Forget her." The Major's voice was hard. "Worry about yourself." Turning to face the boy, he said, "I need you to tell me the truth. Were you here last Wednesday evening?"

"Of course he was." Jake's voice was equally sharp. "We've already been through this."

"I wasn't talking to you," said Major Abbas. Words that should have reduced Jake to frightened silence.

Jake just sighed. "I've been through it with Mr. de Greuze." He put heavy emphasis on the word "mister," so maybe the Frenchman wasn't a mister at all. He certainly behaved like an officer in the Sécurité, all sweaty skin and suspicious, watchful eyes.

"Well?" Major Abbas demanded.

"I was..." Moz knew exactly where he'd been. On the roof of Dar el Beida, the dog woman's old house opposite the entrance to Derb Yassin. Sun tightening the skin on his neck as he slowly unbuttoned the front of Malika's shirt. "I was with Malika," he said firmly. What else could he say?

The Major and the Frenchman looked at each other, then the Major glanced from Jake to where Moz sat beside Celia.

"You're certain?"

Moz nodded.

In de Greuze's pocket was a folded square of foolscap. A dark stain on one side forming a map of no country Moz could recognize, the other outlined Malika's part in planting a bomb for the Polisario. The confession used the word "I" a lot and Moz was referred to throughout as "he." It was signed in childish capitals.

"What's that?" When Jake stepped forward the Major also stepped forward, putting himself between Jake and the boy.

"Let him read it," Major Abbas said. "He's the only one who can tell us if this is true."

"Of course it isn't," Moz said, handing back the paper. "It's a lie."

"Malika didn't plant the bomb?"

Moz stared at the Major. "She was with me," he said firmly. "That's the truth. She was with me."

"And you were both where?"

"On the roof of Dar el Beida. I'm doing some painting there. An English friend of Jake's is going to buy the house." He would have told them about delivering the drugs for Caid Hammou, but then he'd have been in even worse trouble.

"Moz was not on that roof or any other," Jake said firmly. "The boy was here."

"And I'm expected to believe that?" de Greuze asked. He was looking at Jake when he said this, but it was Celia who answered. And for once her voice was matter-of-fact, no cut-glass drawl to drag her words beyond breaking.

"Moz was here," she said. "For the entire afternoon and evening. None of us even left this riad."

"That's not true..." Moz protested.

The four adults ignored him.

"You have witnesses?"

"Of course." It was Jake who answered the Frenchman. "Celia and I were both here. I say the boy never left my side and Celia is my witness."

"She's your girlfriend." A sour smile accompanied those words.

"No, she's not," said Jake, avoiding the Englishwoman's gaze. "She's my manager, and her name's Lady Celia Vere. Her uncle was British ambassador to Paris."

The look on de Greuze's face suggested this information was new to him. "And you," he said. "Should I know who you are?" His English was heavy but the sarcasm was edged with something that suggested he was reassessing.

Jake smiled. "I don't see why you should," he said. "It's not likely we've met."

The way Jake said this made Celia wince, but de Greuze barely seemed to notice. "I take it Jake Razor isn't your real name?"

"A persona," said Jake. "Nothing more."

"And your real name?" That was Major Abbas.

The name he gave meant little to Moz but de Greuze recognized it instantly and even Major Abbas blinked.

"As in...?"

Jake nodded, casually apologetic. And behind his nod were good schools, family trusts, Norland nannies and a New York bank and City of London brokerage that still bore his name. He'd been given the very best to resent and Jake had the wit to recognize that. Of all the facts stacking themselves up in the head of the elderly Frenchman, only one was really significant.

The financier about to donate Virgin and Child with St. Anne to the New York Met was Jake's grandfather. His donations to the Met, the National Gallery in London, the Paris Louvre and the Prado in Madrid were famous. His donations to competing political parties more famous still.

"You are still American?"

"For my sins," Jake said. "My mother was English," he added, catching Moz's eye. He'd told the boy he came from London. "I went to Westminster."

"It's not true," Moz said.

"Yes it is," insisted Jake. "I lived with my grandmother."

"No," said Moz tearfully. "It's not true that I was here. Malika and I spent the entire afternoon on the roof. She let me get into her knickers," he added desperately, as if that might convince them. "You're both lying."

"Moz." Celia's voice was firm. "You were here."

"No I wasn't." He sounded about twelve, Moz realized. Arguing in a language that wasn't even his own. "You know I was with Malika..." Actually, there was no way they could know that but Moz was beyond caring.

"Look," Celia said. "We know the girl's a good friend of yours but you can't help her. She confessed. When Mr. de Greuze came here we had to tell him the truth. You were with us." Her voice hesitated and something sad flitted across her face.

"With Jake," she amended. "Jake told him everything."

"I had to," Jake said. "It was the only way... And now I'm the one in trouble." He looked between Major Abbas and de Greuze, his eyes troubled, almost apologetic.

"What?" Moz asked. "What did you tell him?"

Although he already knew. Understanding now the look given him by the soldiers on the stairs of the police station, the contempt in the eyes of the Frenchman.

"I showed them the photographs."

What photographs? Moz wanted to shout, but his throat was tight and despair had begun to shake his body. He felt as if the whole world were watching him and the weight of their watching was more than he could bear.

"I'm sorry," Celia said, "there wasn't anything else we could do." Her eyes were huge with tears and she wouldn't look at Jake when he came back from collecting the folder.

There were maybe fifty photographs in all. Most showed Moz sleeping, his head cradled on a thin forearm, his naked body turned on its side and curled around itself like a child suspended in dreams. An upper sheet had been turned down in all of these, sometimes only as far as Moz's hips, although a few showed the sheet turned lower. The last showed him standing naked in a doorway, his head turned towards the camera and a surprised expression on his face.

"You took these?" Major Abbas asked.

Jake nodded.

The spike-haired, gangly boy from the Mellah was beautiful. Not handsome like Hassan or striking as Malika had been but beautiful, a single reed waiting to be broken.

"I'll take those," said Major Abbas, holding out his hand.

"Why?" de Greuze looked puzzled.

"Evidence," said the Major.