Djibouti

  Harry turned on the stairs. “Yes, you’re right.”

  Idris could see he was still buzzed, not sure of what he was doing. “There are al Qaeda around here,” Idris said, “who can help him.”

  Harry came down one step at a time saying, “Have you ever looked at Qasim and wondered if he’s homosexual?”

  Yes, Harry was still buzzed.

  “It’s always a woman,” Idris said, “tells me some man is gay. But Qasim is al Qaeda.”

  “They’re fellows with fellows,” Harry said, “nearly all the time, aren’t they? The only girls they see are whores.”

  “Some quite lovely,” Idris said. “But why would you think this one is gay?”

  “Certain mannerisms, the way he touches his hair. The way he looks at other men. Coming from Eyl,” Harry said, “talking to him in the car, I would feel his breath on me in the dark. This was the time he consented to tell me Jama’s real name. I could feel he wanted to.”

  “But he didn’t. Listen to me,” Idris said, “we should leave here, get off the street, people watching us, and go to my apartment. We can rest, decide what to do.”

  “About what?” Harry said.

  Idris told him not to think anymore.

  THIS TIME—IT WAS THE next afternoon—they turned the corner in the African section and found themselves behind a crowd of people watching police coming out of the house with body bags, two policemen to a sagging bag, one at each end. Police cars, a medical truck, the National Police on the scene. Five bags came out of the house.

  Xavier counted four guards, two Qaedas and the Twins, eight in the house. If Harry still hadn’t returned, that would be seven. Xavier didn’t want Idris to be in one of the bags, so he believed Idris had left. Four guards and one Qaeda. Which one in the bag?

  Qasim.

  Because Xavier saw Jama thinking up this breakout. He wouldn’t be shot escaping, he was the man in this deal, working it. Xavier imagined somebody much later on shooting him. It would be unexpected, Jama with a look of surprise on his face.

  Dara was talking to a police officer, the two of them speaking French, both laughing now at something she said. Dara put her hand on his arm, thanking him, and came through the crowd to Xavier, the people in the street turning to look at her.

  “Five bodies, but not the Twins. That leaves the four Somali guards and one other. Who is it?”

  “Qasim.”

  “I was pretty sure too,” Dara said. “The cops know who he is. Shot through the head, four of them, one through the heart. One shot each. The cops think with a pistol. At suppertime. The guard brings in the spaghetti and is overpowered.”

  “He was paid off,” Xavier said. “Where’s Jama get a gun? You notice his behavior, we talkin to him?”

  “Cool,” Dara said. “Confident.”

  “Made sure we understood he wouldn’t be hangin around. Statin it as a fact. I wondered, why’s he doin that, the man tippin us off.”

  “Showing off,” Dara said.

  “That’s all right, he told us he’s walkin out and he did. You notice anything else? I believe he’s been livin as a homasexual at this time. Years of runnin with the Qaeda boys. Close to Qasim while they’re blowin up things. Workin right under him till they alone. Then Jama’s on top.”

  “I don’t know,” Dara said. “I bet I can get him to come on to me.”

  “Listen to you. He gets lucky, remembers girls and goes straight?”

  “Why do you think he’s gay?”

  “Just somethin about him.”

  “He’s not at all effeminate.”

  “No, a man comes out actin girlish over here he can get stoned. I mean get rocks thrown at him. But you’ve seen Arabs walkin along holdin hands, haven’t you? They in a man’s world, the women at home lookin out the window. It’s like in prison,” Xavier said, “you don’t have to be in love to get a blow job.”

  Dara watched a medical truck back up to where the body bags were laid out.

  “Why did he shoot everybody?”

  “They know him. Can point him out.”

  “The cop didn’t ask if I knew any of them.”

  “You tell him you know the man that got away?”

  “Every word—one of Judy Garland’s biggest hits.”

  “You tell him you know the guy they want or not?” She hesitated and Xavier said, “You messin with police business now.”

  “Maybe somebody else shot them.”

  “If I know,” Xavier said, “you know. Jama shot his Qaeda boss and four Somalis, the boys just makin a buck. You want to see if you can turn him up. Hopin it keeps goin. It does, you got material for a feature. I told you that before.”

  “I see myself sitting in a studio exec’s office,” Dara said. “He’s got my screenplay in front of him. Or it might be a treatment.”

  “What are you callin it?”

  “Djibouti. They’ll want to change it to something else, tell you foreign words don’t sell as features.”

  “Like Casablanca,” Xavier said. “They don’t like Djibouti, go indie. Get financin from some rich guy loves you or the story. Billy Wynn. He’s on his two-million-dollar boat thinkin of this same movie as we speak. Starrin himself.”

  “Helene said he’s finally in love with her—killing herself acting like a little sailor. I hope she gets him.”

  “The man loves movies. Take his money and make him the producer.”

  “You know what I keep thinking,” Dara said. “I write a screenplay and show it to a studio exec and he says, ‘I had a great time reading this one. It’s a howl. It’s out there and has legs. But where are the backstories to show motivations?’ He’ll say something like ‘It lacks verisimilitude.’”

  “Tell him you don’t know what that means and walk out. Get independent financin and a girl like Naomi Watts to play the documentary filmmaker turnin to features.”

  “You think I look like her?”

  “Naomi can look like you. Naomi never overplays her parts. You see her in Happy Time? She makes you keep watchin her.”

  “She’s in her underwear half the picture.”

  “Naomi could dress like a nun, you still be watchin her.” Xavier said, “In that picture, the boy that made her take off her clothes? He’s homasexual. Else he’d of jumped her. Can you see another star playin that role? One that liked bein in her underwear? She’d make ’em change the ending. Not Naomi,” Xavier said. “Put her name above the title, Djibouti. You know what it means, Djibouti?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “It means ‘my casserole.’ No one knows why. Comes from the Afar language. I read someplace Djibouti is ‘splendidly seedy…Gallic elegance turned shabby.’ Look at this building, you see it.”

  He watched Dara staring at the house where five men were found shot to death, one bullet each. Xavier said, “You want to find the boy playin he’s more African than American, huh? Wouldn’t mind runnin into him.”

  “I’ll bet we could,” Dara said.

  “Labor Day one time,” Xavier said, “I was in Atlantic City and called a girl I know lived there with her sister. The sister tells me, oh, she’s gone to play the slot machines. I stepped out on the Boardwalk and five minutes later who do I see coming toward me in the Labor Day crowd of people? LaDonna. The girl lit up, she’s so glad to see me back from seafarin. She’d just won seventeen hundred dollars playin a quarter machine and we celebrated it together. LaDonna always liked me.”

  “Don’t tell me,” Dara said, “you expected to run into her.”

  “I didn’t expect not to,” Xavier said. “I always keep it open. It happens, it happens. When it don’t, what are you out? It’s best never be anxious.”

  Dara took his arm and they walked away from the house.

  She said, “All right, I’ll leave it up to you. We keep at it or quit and go home.”

  “Just a minute ago you talkin about makin a feature with Naomi Watts. All we need to know is what happens next. Now you just as soon go ho
me?”

  Dara said, “I think we’d have a better chance of finding the Gold Dust Twins than Jama. Now he’s free he’s gonna hide out or change his looks.”

  “They still hijackin ships,” Xavier said. “The world navies not shuttin ’em down any.”

  They came to the white rental car. He opened the door for her, walked around and got in.

  “The latest hijack,” Xavier said, “they want a million for a Finnish ship, the Arctic Sea, with fifteen Russian crewmen on board. Flies a Maltese flag. They think it might have a ‘secret cargo’ they callin it. They tested it in Finland for nuclear shit aboard and musta scored positive. But now the ship’s gone and disappeared.”

  Dara said, “Where was it last seen?”

  “In the English Channel, two weeks ago.”

  “It’s not around here?” Dara surprised.

  “In the channel on its way to Algeria, but never arrived. You want to know more,” Xavier said, “you have to call Billy. I bet he can tell where the ship’s at.”

  Dara said, “I keep thinking about Jama. He could still be around here.”

  “But the Twins’ll be easier to locate,” Xavier said. “Give Idris a call. Find out what they’re up to. Talk to Harry. Ask him how come he blew his big chance.”

  “If he wasn’t at the house,” Dara said, “he’ll blame Idris.”

  “You think they know what they doin?”

  “I think they have no idea,” Dara said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  THEY MET AT THE Club ZuZu and before long the young gentleman named Hunter was telling Jama where he lived.

  “In a residential hotel on rue de Marseille. Sort of an upscale Frenchified joint done in Gallic moderne. My digs are on the top floor. A stairway takes one to the roof—it’s quite nice—with a French-blue awning that rolls out to shade the deck, or rolls back to reveal as much sun as you’d ever want. Widows, I suppose well off enough, have suites there, but never venture topside.”

  The next afternoon they were on the roof, several floors above the surroundings, Jama lying naked. Hunter said, “I’m surprised you have tan lines.”

  Jama said, “You never kept house with a black man before?”

  “Keeping house,” Hunter said, “that’s what we’re doing?”

  “Giving shelter to a seaman down on his luck. Hit over the head by a man stepped out of an alley. Robbed while I’m lying dazed and my ship is gone without me,” Jama said, his black snake exposed for Hunter to admire.

  “You want to touch it, don’t you?”

  Hunter said, “You mind?”

  HE WAS TWENTY-FIVE, AN American in this god-awful place to learn the shipping business. “I sit before a computer all day looking at figures and schedules. I’d rather be scraping hulls.” He said, “I’m kidding. I’m bored. Maybe I should go to sea. Is it fun?”

  Hunter was from New York, the grandson of a man who owned and ran a half-dozen shipping terminals, “practically with a whip,” Hunter said. “Dad slipped away ages ago to sell debentures, and my dear mother, who swears she loves me more than her clothes, offered me up to her father, a dedicated scoundrel.”

  Another night at ZuZu’s, Hunter watching the sailors on the dance floor, Jama’s eyes on the slim chicks rolling their asses to the music, he said to Hunter, “When I missed my ship and got waylaid, I was following a boy down the alley.”

  Hunter said, “A boy?”

  “A young man like yourself. And I’ve been punished for it, losing my ship and getting in trouble.”

  Hunter took Jama’s hand, a candle burning between them on the table at ZuZu’s, Hunter telling him, “No, you haven’t, you’ve found what you’re looking for,” and Jama saw his luck turning.

  The third day with Hunter, Jama telling him sea stories about incredibly ugly men finding each other and getting it on. “I saw two miserable dogs, both desperately in need of basic hygiene, kissing each other on the mouth. I did, one night when I walked in the head, I see these two hounds in each other’s arms.”

  Hunter said, “Awww, the poor guys.”

  “Their grubby look reminded me, I’m shaving off my beard today.”

  “No! I love your beard.”

  “It smells old.”

  “It does not.”

  “I’m letting you shave it off,” Jama said, “since you have a tender feeling for it. Use your scissors to cut it down to where you can use your straightedge to finish.”

  He seemed to like it, running his fingers through Jama’s beard as he snipped, his eyes moist, sniffling at first. Jesus. Never said a word. Lathered Jama’s face and became intent on shaving it clean. Hunter grinning by then, touching his work, surprising himself as he said, “Why, Mr. Bushy, you’re more beautiful without it.”

  Jama said, “Is that right?” looking at himself in the mirror.

  Hunter started on his hair with a comb and scissors till Jama told him he didn’t need the comb. “Get to it, cut it down.” There was no way to hurry him. Finally, turning his head from side to side in the mirror, Jama said, “Hunter, my boy, you did it.”

  Jama sat on a high stool in the bathroom, naked. Hunter stood between his legs, taller, head raised just a bit, still fooling with Jama’s hair. Hunter said, “Hand me the scissors, the comb too, please, if you don’t mind.” He said, “Have you ever been referred to as a chic sheikh?” His head still raised.

  Jama picked up the straightedge from the counter and sliced the blade across Hunter’s throat.

  He saw Hunter’s eyes taking on a dreamy look, and brought him against his chest to bleed on him, wondering at what moment Hunter would know he was dead and Jama could let the boy slide down his body to the tiles. He’d take a shower and then look through Hunter’s closet. Find something casual to wear, something maybe collegiate. He thought of Hunter looking even younger in his T-shirt and jeans and decided it was the way to go. Become Jama the college boy.

  Or maybe James Russell, from Brown.

  Wear this brown T-shirt with BROWN on the front of it big, in white. Coming out of the drawer it became BROWN UNIVERSITY with a coat of arms between the names, some red in it.

  Jama slipped it over his head and looked in the mirror to see brown on brown, the shirt darker than his bare arms. The size an extra-large that hung straight on him to cover his biceps and flat stomach. He’d be lying naked on the bed and Hunter would pretend to play his ribs, saying if he could plug Jama in he could play him like an instrument. Jama told him he wanted to play music there was an instrument standing right next to him. They did a lot of that kind of shit, saying cute things to each other. This boy, a graduate of Brown University, would use words Jama had never heard people say, like sardonic and saturnine, and he’d have to look them up. He thought of a saturnine person as mostly cool. Hunter’s style was acting like a child, begging Jama to tell him his real name and wanting to know why he’d changed it. All the time asking things like that. He said to Jama, “To be intimate is to know each other’s secrets.” He said, “God, to be the only person in the entire world to know your mysterious past.”

  The time came in bed, Jama spent and having a smoke, he told Hunter, “It’s James.” Tired of him begging in homosexual ways, some cute, some woeful.

  “James Russell. All right? My name while I was doing time. My name before I turned to Islam and became an al Qaeda gunman.”

  Hunter said, “Oh, my God,” spacing the words, and Jama had to hold him for a minute and got him to sit on the bed. He was all right after, by the time Jama got his shave. Full of questions till Jama told him, “Let’s wait till we finish here.” He didn’t mind being called beautiful, but the guy beat it to death. Said he was Russell’s love slave. This grown man who could have all the cooze he wanted, anywhere, turns it down as the way to go. But when he cranked up his homo shit with the gestures, he’d let it come out, knowing he was secure with a lover, and Jama would feel himself getting semihard. But no comparison to the ones he got thinking of Red Sea chicks and the
number one, Celeste, his Ethiopian. The one Idris thought was his girl, set her up nice. Two days with Hunter were okay. The third day he couldn’t take any more and ended the relationship.

  Jama wedged his passport into a pair of Hunter’s Reebok sneakers. By now it was hard to tell it was a passport, though it was readable inside. He’d make up a story how it got this way for Customs and Immigration when he got home. Tell them a Nile croc ate it and he had to cut the passport out of the croc’s tummy.

  He put on a pair of hundred-dollar jeans, the cuffs folding on the sneakers just right. He put other stuff, T-shirts and some of Hunter’s panties and some aftershave, in a black flight bag, plain, no writing on it. He slipped on a pair of Hunter’s shades that didn’t fuck up his vision too much, ones he’d been wearing. Hunter had all kinds of glasses, all the cases here in his desk drawer. Jama brought them out looking at different styles. He picked up a case and this one was fat and soft with bills Jama pulled out, fifty, sixty new hundred-dollar bills. Six grand plus the three hundred he got from Hunter’s billfold, sixty-three hundred, man. Where do you want to go?

  There were a couple of things he would do first because he wanted to and had made up his mind.

  Find the two Arab snobs, Idris and Lord Harry, and shoot them each in the head.

  Then locate Aphrodite, loaded with frozen natural gas and—according to Qasim—C4 explosives, shape charges among the tanks, and watch the ship blow up Djibouti, the gateway to Islam. Or the back door to the West, the dividing line between God and Allah. Watch the city burn, people running for their lives. Qasim showed him how you could blow up the city with a cell phone from a safe distance. They had taken Qasim’s cell days ago. But didn’t Hunter have one? He believed so.

  He had Hunter’s car. Use it later tonight to dump his body. This afternoon he would stroll down the rue de Marseille to the Djibouti Airlines office and see about flights south to Nairobi, take it easy for a time, spend some of the money Allah had given him for being a good boy. Then come back…No, he should do it first. Kill anyone who knew his name.