Shaknahyi nodded as he opened the car door and got in. “He’s chipped into vicarious pain and suffering. You can buy any kind of disease or condition you want on the black market. There are plenty of deranged masochists like him out there.”

I joined him in the patrol car. “And I thought the girls and debs on the Street were misusing the moddies. This adds a whole new meaning to the word perversion.” Shaknahyi started up the car and drove around the fountain toward the gate. “They introduce some new technology and no matter how much good it does for most people, there’s always a crazy son of a bitch who’ll find something twisted to do with it.”

I thought about that, and about my own bodmods, as we drove back to the station house through the wretched district that was home to Reda Abu Adil’s faithful followers.

During the next week, I spent as much time in the patrol car as I did at my computer on the third floor of the station house. I felt good after my first experiences as a cop on patrol, although it was clear that I still had a lot to learn from Shaknahyi. We intervened in domestic squabbles and investigated robberies, but there were no more dramatic crises like Al-Muntaqim’s clumsy bomb threat.

Shaknahyi had let several days pass, and now he wanted to follow up on our visit to Reda Abu Adil. He guessed that Friedlander Bey had told Lieutenant Hajjar to assign this investigation to us, but Papa was still pretending he wasn’t interested in whatever it was about. Our delicate probing would be a lot more successful if someone would just tell us what we were trying to uncover.

Yet there were other concerns on my mind. One morning, after I’d dressed and Kmuzu had served me breakfast, I sat back and thought about what I wanted to accomplish that day.

“Kmuzu,” I said, “would you wake my mother and see if she’ll speak to me? I need to ask her something before I go to the station house.”

“Of course, yaa Sidi.” He looked at me warily, as if I were trying to pull another fast one. “You wish to see her immediately?”

“Soon as she can make herself decent. If she can make herself decent.” I caught Kmuzu’s disapproving expression and shut up.

I drank some more coffee until he returned. “Umm Marid will be glad to see you now,” Kmuzu said.

I was surprised. “She never liked getting up much before noon.”

“She was already awake and dressed when I knocked on her door.”

Maybe she’d turned over a new leaf, but I hadn’t been listening close enough to hear it. I grabbed my briefcase and sport coat. “I’ll just drop in on her for a couple of minutes,” I said. “No need for you to come with me.” I should have known better by then; Kmuzu didn’t say a word, but he followed me out of the apartment and into the other wing, where Angel Monroe had been given her own suite of rooms.

“This is a personal matter,” I told Kmuzu when we got to her door. “Stay out here in the hall if you want.” I rapped on the door and went in.

She was reclining on a divan, dressed very modestly in a shapeless black dress with long sleeves, a version of the outfit conservative Muslim women wear. She also had on a large scarf hiding her hair, although the veil over her face had been loosened on one side and hung down over her shoulder. She puffed on the mouthpiece of a narjilah. There was strong tobacco in the water pipe now, but that didn’t mean there hadn’t been hashish there recently, or that it wouldn’t be there again soon.

“Morning of well-being, O my mother,” I said.

I think she was caught off guard by my courteous greeting. “Morning of light, O Shaykh,” she replied. Her brow furrowed as she studied me from across the room. She waited for me to explain why I was there.

“Are you comfortable here?” I asked.

“It’s all right.” She took a long pull on the mouthpiece and the narjilah burbled. “You done pretty well for yourself. How’d you happen to land in this lap of luxury? Performing personal services for Papa?” She gave me a crooked leer.

“Not the services you’re thinking of, O Mother. I’m Friedlander Bey’s administrative assistant. He makes the business decisions and I carry them out. That’s as far as it goes.”

“And one of his business decisions was to make you a cop?”

“That’s exactly the way it was.”

She shrugged. “Uh yeah, if you say so. So why’d you decide to put me up here? Suddenly worried about your old mom’s welfare?”

“It was Papa’s idea.”

She laughed. “You never was an attentive child, O Shaykh.”

“As I recall, you weren’t the doting mother, either. That’s why I’m wondering why you showed up here all of a sudden.”

She inhaled again on the narjilah. “Algiers is boring, I lived there most of my life. After you came to see me, I knew I had to get out. I wanted to come here, see the city again.”

“And see me again?”

She gave me another shrug. “Yeah, that too.”

“And Abu Adil? You drop by his palace first, or haven’t you been over there yet?” That’s what we in the cop trade call a shot in the dark. Sometimes they pay off, sometimes they don’t.

“I ain’t having nothing more to do with that son of a bitch,” she said. She almost snarled.

Shaknahyi would have been proud of me. I kept my emotions under control and my expression neutral. “What’s Abu Adil ever done to you?”

“That sick bastard. Never mind, it’s none of your business.” She concentrated on her water pipe for a few moments.

“All right,” I said. “I’ll respect your wishes, O my mother. Anything I can do for you before I leave?”

“Everything’s great. You run along and play Protector of the Innocent. Go roust some poor working girl and think of me.”

I opened my mouth to make some sharp reply, but I caught myself in time. “You get hungry, or you need anything, just ask Youssef or Kmuzu. May your day be happy.”

“Your day be prosperous, O Shaykh.” Whenever she called me that, there was heavy irony in her voice.

I nodded to her and left the room, closing the door quietly behind me. Kmuzu was in the corridor, right where I’d left him. He was so goddamn loyal, I almost felt like scratching him behind the ears. I didn’t buy that act for a minute.

“It would be well for you to greet the master of the house before we leave for the police station,” he said.

“I don’t need you to rehearse me on my manners, Kmuzu.” He had this way of annoying me. “Are you implying that I don’t know my duties?”

“I imply nothing, yaa Sidi. You are inferring.”

“Sure.” You just can’t argue with a slave.

Friedlander Bey was already in his office. He sat behind his great desk, massaging his temples with one hand. Today he was wearing a pale yellow silk robe with a starched white shirt over it, buttoned to the neck and with ho tie. Over the shirt he had on an expensive-looking herringbone-tweed suit jacket. It was a costume only an old and revered shaykh could get away with wearing. I thought it looked just fine. “Habib,” he said. “Labib.”

Habib and Labib are the Stones That Speak. The only way you can tell them apart is to call one of the names. There’s an even chance one of ’em will blink. If not, it doesn’t really make any difference. In fact, I couldn’t swear that they blink in response to their own names. They may be doing it just for fun.

Both of the Stones That Speak were in the office, standing on either side of a straight-backed chair. In the chair, I was surprised to see, was Umm Saad’s young son. The Stones each had one hand on Saad’s shoulders, and the hands were kneading and crushing the boy’s bones. He was being put to the question. I’ve had that treatment, and I can testify that it isn’t a lick of fun.

Papa smiled briefly when I came into the room. He did not greet me, but looked back at Saad. “Before you came to the city,” he said in a low voice, “where did you and your mother dwell?”

“Many places,” Saad answered. There was fear in his voice.