Felaheen
Written by Jon Courtenay Grimwood
Fiction – Science Fiction; Fiction – Mystery & Detective – Hard-Boiled
Spectra
Trade Paperback
December 2005
0-553-38378-7
CHAPTER 2
Tuesday 1st February
Everything about Manhattan was white, from the sidewalk beneath Major Jalal’s boots to the static in his Sony earbead that told the major his boss was off-line again. White streets, white cars, white noise one way or another snow was responsible for the lot. Well, maybe not the white noise.
Five hours earlier, the windchill along Fifth Avenue had been enough to make grown men cry but now the wind was gone, snow fluttered down between the Knox building and Lane Bryant like feathers from a ruptured pillow and the avenue ahead of him was as empty as the major’s crocodile-skin wallet.
While his boss sat snug in Casino 30/54 losing sums of money the major could barely imagine, Major Jalal had been down to Mount Olive trying to bribe his way into the private room of Charlie Vanhie, the Boston photographer currently being wired for a broken jaw.
The contents of his wallet had gone to the pocket of a porter who took the lot and never came back. And then, when the major gave up in disgust, six sour-faced paparazzi appeared out of nowhere to grab frantic shots of him leaving the hospital, in the mistaken belief that the quietly dressed, moustachioedaidede- camp was his Armani-clad, elegantly bearded boss. The major just hoped His Excellency was having a better night of it.
Unfortunately, Kashif Pasha wasn’t.
Although the casino was in New York and His Excellency came from Ifriqiya, the roulette wheel at which he played originated in Paris. This ensured it had only one nonpaying number rather than the zero and double zero found on US tables. It was French because Kashif Pasha placed bets so high he could dictate the choice of wheel, thus limiting the edge allowed to the house. But for all this Kashif Pasha was still losing. (A situation drearily familiar to his aged mother, the Lady Maryam, his father and his bankers.)
“Excellency . . .”
Looking up, Kashif Pasha was in time to see an apologetic croupier lean forward and rake ten scarlet chips from the grid. So busy had he been listening to the dying clatter of the ivory ball that he’d forgotten to check on which number it landed. To Kashif’s ear that unmistakable, addictive clicking was pitched somewhere between an old man’s death rattle and the tapping of an infestation of wood beetle.
Both of which reminded him of home.
“You there.” Kashif Pasha tried to snap his fingers and winced, making do with a quick wave of his injured hand. The effect was identical. A young black woman in a short deerskin skirt hurried forward, a box of cigars open on her silver tray. Her legs were bare, her breasts laced into a tan waistcoat that otherwise gaped down the front. A badge shaped like a feather announced her as Michelle.
“Sir . . .” The waitress waited for the well-dressed foreigner to select a Monte Cristo and take the matches she offered. Something Kashif Pasha did without appearing to notice the bitten nails of his own hands, which spoke of long nights and too little sleep.
Embossed on the matchbox was a tomahawk. The casino’s designer had no idea if Mohawk Indians actually fought with hand axes or, indeed, if any Native Americans had ever used such weapons, but tomahawk sounded like Mohawk and 30 West 54th Street was Mohawk land.
Before it became such, the land on which Casino 30/54 sat belonged to Clack Associates, owners of a small hotel much loved by rich European tourists. Augustus Clack III sold the hotel for an undisclosed sum to the billionaire financier, Benjamin Agadir, who promptly swapped it with the Mohawks for seven glass necklaces and a blanket. Since federal regulations specifically allowed casinos to be opened on reservations or any Indian land held in trust, this neatly circumvented the state law that banned the establishment of casinos in New York City.
“Faites vos jeux,” announced the croupier, as if inviting a whole table of high rollers to place their bets rather than just the one.
Kashif Pasha ignored the man.
Striking a match, the eldest son and current heir to the Emir of Tunis lifted the match to the tip of his cigar and sucked. His mother disapproved of smoking, gambling, whores and alcohol but since cigars were not expressly mentioned in the Holy Quran, she sometimes kept her peace. Besides, Kashif Pasha was in New York City and she was not.
Quite what Lady Maryam would have made of the striking murals in the gentlemen’s lavatory it was best not to imagine. Kashif Pasha’s favourite by far featured Pocahontas undergoing what Americans called double entry. For what were undoubtedly good cultural reasons, her lovers both sported tails, the back legs of goats, and small horns.
At home there were no paintings in Lady Maryam’s wing of the Bardo and no statues. Even his great-grandfather’s famous Neue Sachlichkeit collection of oils had been banished, saved only by the Emir’s flat refusal to have them destroyed.
Representative art was abhorrent to his mother for usurping the rights of God. But then this was a woman who found even calligraphy suspect. Which, undoubtedly went some way to explaining why she’d burned the present his father sent her at Kashif’s birth. (An Osmanli miniature from the sixteenth century showing the Prophet’s wet nurse Hamina breast-feeding.) And this, in turn, maybe helped explain why Emir Moncef had refused to see his wife since.
Kashif Pasha smiled darkly, his favourite expression, and pushed five ivory chips onto the number thirteen.
“Rien ne va plus,” announced the croupier, as if he hadn’t been waiting. No more bets were to be made. There was a ritual to go through, even though the room was almost empty and the roulette table reserved for Kashif Pasha. The wheel spun one way and the ivory ball was sent tumbling another and when a number other than thirteen came up, Kashif Pasha just shrugged, carelessly he hoped.
Over the course of the next hour the rampart of counters in front of him became a single turret, then little more than ruined foundations and finally almost disappeared, leaving Kashif Pasha with only six ivory chips.
The casino would keep the table open for him while Kashif Pasha ordered more counters, that much was given. High rollers like His Excellency got what they wanted. Their own suites, complimentary meals, limousines to and from the airport. Even use of the casino’s own plane if necessary. And what he wanted now was a break.
“Okay,” said Kashif Pasha. “I’ll be back here at . . .”He glanced at his Rolex and added two hours to the time it was. “At seven,” he said. “Have the table reset. New wheel, new ball, new grid, new stack of counters.” Which was what his croupier seemed to call those hundred-thousand-dollar red chips.
Sliding his six remaining counters across the table, His Excellency smiled. “For you,” he said and watched the croupier blink. It was a good tip, more so since Kashif Pasha was sometimes known not to tip at all. The croupier would give half to the house, but that still left more than he earned in six months.
“Thank you, Excellency,” said the man, moving aside to make room for a crop-haired woman who’d been watching the game from a discreet distance.
“Your Highness.” This was a title Kashif Pasha didn’t warrant but Georgian van Broglie used it anyway. So far she’d acted as facilitator on every visit Kashif Pasha made to Casino 30/54 and he had yet to complain about the social upgrade. “Shall I have the kitchen organize some supper?”
She took his silence as assent.
“Chicken breast,” she suggested, “on focaccia, with honey and mustard sauce. A litre of Evian and maybe some more ginger ale?” She nodded to a line of small and empty bottles of Canada Dry, the plastic screw-top kind.
Kashif Pasha’s usual order. A glorified chicken sandwich washed down with three plastic flasks of champagne. Quite why a forty-four-year-old North African playboy would want to drink Veuve Clicquot from an empty Canada Dry bottle Georgian van Broglie didn’t know, but then she’d never met Lady Maryam.
“Does Your Highness require anything else?”
She saw the man glance across the room to the deerskinned waitress who’d brought him his cigar. “No possible,” she muttered apologetically. “House rules. I’d love to make an exception but . . .”
Kashif Pasha sighed. “Send up something similar,” he said crossly. “After you’ve found me the house doctor.” He checked his knuckles, which were looking more lopsided than ever.
“And get room service to bring me a bucket of ice.”
Excerpted from Felaheen Written by Jon Courtenay Grimwood. Excerpted by permission of Spectra, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
