“I’ll bet you’re doing everything you can to comfort Shaknahyi’s widow,” he said. “You jammed her yet?”

I felt rage and frustration growing in me again. I hated hearing his lies, his justifications for crime and corruption. The worst part was that he was telling me Shaknahyi had died stupidly, for no good reason. I wasn’t going to let him say that. “Shut up,” I said in a strained voice. I found myself waving the automatic pistol at Jawarski.

“See? You can’t shoot. It’d be smart to shoot. I’ll get away clean otherwise, ’cause no matter who locks me up, I’ll be sprung. Shaykh Reda will make sure I get sprung. Ill never be brought to trial in this town.”

“No, you wouldn’t be,” I said, knowing it was probably true. I fired once. The explosion was tremendous, and the booming crack rumbled on forever, like thunder.

Jawarski fell backward in slow motion, half of his face blasted away. There was blood everywhere. I dropped the pistol to the floor. I’d never shot anyone with a projectile weapon before. I backed away and fell against the couch, unable to catch my breath.

When I’d come through the door, I hadn’t planned to kill this man, but I had done it. It had been a conscious decision. I had taken the responsibility for seeing justice done, because I’d become certain it would be done no other way. I looked at the blood on my hands and arms.

The door crashed loudly into the room. Morgan ran in first, followed by Saied. They stopped just inside the threshold and took in the scene. “Aw right,” said the Half-Hajj quietly. “That’s one loose end tied up tight.”

“Listen, man,” said Morgan, “I got to go. You don’t need me for anything more, do you?”

I just stared at them. I wondered why they weren’t horrified too.

“Let’s go, man,” said Morgan. “Somebody might’ve heard that.”

“Oh, somebody heard it, all right,” Saied said. “But in this neighborhood, nobody’s dumb enough to check on it.”

I reached up and popped the tough-guy moddy. I’d had enough of Rex for a while. We left the apartment and went down the stairs. Morgan turned one way on the sidewalk, and the Half-Hajj and I turned the other.

“What now?” asked Saied.

“We got to go get the car,” I said. I didn’t like the idea at all. The sedan was still back at Abu Adil’s. I really didn’t feel like going back there so soon after the bastard mind-raped me. I was going back there; I had that score to settle. But not just yet, not just now.

Saied must have guessed my feelings from the tone of my voice. “Tell you what,” he said. “I’ll go get the car, you sit here and wait. Won’t take long.”

“Fine,” I said, and I gave him the keys. I was immensely grateful that he’d come looking for me, and that I could count on him for help. I had no trouble trusting him again. That was good, because even with the pain-override daddy chipped in, my body was near collapse. I needed to get to a doctor soon.

I didn’t want to sit down on a step, because I thought I’d have a hard time standing again. Instead, I leaned against the white stucco front of a small, tottery house. Overhead, I heard the shrill peenting cries of nighthawfcs as they swooped over the rooftops hunting for insects. I stared across the street at another apartment building, and I saw wild, healthy ferns growing from horizontal surfaces up and down the wall, weeds that had found favorable conditions in the most unlikely place. Cooking smells drifted from open windows: cabbage boiling, meat masting, bread baking.

I was immersed in life here, yet I could not forget that I’d shed a murderer’s blood. I was still holding the automatic pistol. I didn’t know how I was going to dispose of it. My mind wasn’t thinking clearly.

After a while, I saw the cream-colored sedan stop beside me at the curb. Saied got out and helped me around to the passenger side. I slid into the seat, and he closed the door. “Where to?” he asked. “Goddamn hospital,” I said. “Good idea.”

I closed my eyes and felt the car thrumming through the streets. I dozed a little. Saied woke me when we got there. I shoved my static pistol and the .45 under the seat, and we got out of the car.

“Listen,” I said, “I’m just going into the emergency room and get patched up. After that, I got a few people to see. Why don’t you get going?”

The Half-Hajj’s brows narrowed. “What’s the matter? Still don’t trust rne?”

I shook my head. “It’s not that, Saied. I’ve gotten over all that. It’s just sometimes I work better without an audience, okay?”

“Sure. A busted collarbone ain’t enough for you. You won’t be happy till we got to bury you in five separate containers.” “Saied.”

He raised both hands. “All right, all right. You want to storm back in on Shaykh Reda and Himmar, that’s your business.”

“I’m not gonna face them again,” I said. “I mean, not yet.”

“Uh yeah, well, let me know when you do.”

“You bet,” I said. I gave him twenty kiam. “You can get a cab here, can’t you?”

“Uh huh. Give me a call later.” He gave me back the keys to my car.

I nodded and went up the curving drive to the emergency room entrance. Saied had brought me to the same hospital I’d been in twice before. I was beginning to feel comfortable there.

I filled out their damn forms and waited half an hour until one of the residents could see me. He pumped something under the skin of my shoulder with a perfusor, then went about manipulating the broken bones. “This is probably gonna hurt,” he said.

Well, he didn’t know that I had software chipped in that took care of that. I was probably the only person in the world who had that add-on, but I wasn’t a well-known celebrity. I made some appropriate grunts and grimaces, but on the whole I acted brave. He immobilized my left arm with a kind of superstiff shrinkwrap. “You’re handling this real well,” he said.

“I’ve had esoteric training,” I said. “The control of pain is all in the mind.” That was true enough; it was plugged into the mind on the end of a long, plastic-sheathed silver wire.

“Whatever,” said the doctor. When he finished with my collarbone, he treated the cuts and scrapes. Then he scribbled something on a prescription pad. “Still, I’m gonna give you this for pain. You may find that you need it. If you don’t, great.” He ripped the page loose and handed it to me.

I glanced at it. He’d written me for twenty Nofeqs, painkillers so feeble that in the Budayeen you couldn’t’ trade ten of them for a single Sonneine. “Thanks,” I said bluntly.

“No sense being a hero and toughing it out when medical science is there to help.” He glanced around and decided that he was finished with me. “You’ll be all right in about six weeks, Mr. Audran. I advise you to see your own physician in a few days.”

“Thanks,” I said again. He gave me some papers and I took them to a window and paid cash. Then I went out into the main lobby of the hospital and took the elevator up to the twentieth floor. There was a different nurse on duty, but Zain, the security guard, recognized me. I went down the hall to Suite One.

A doctor and a nurse stood beside Papa’s bed. They turned to look at me as I came in, their faces grim. “Is something wrong?” I asked, frightened.

The doctor rubbed his gray beard with one hand. “He’s in serious trouble,” he said.

“What the hell happened?” I demanded.

“He’d been complaining of weakness, headaches, and abdominal pain. For a long while we couldn’t find anything to explain it.”

“Yes,” I said, “he’d been getting ill at home, before the fire. He was too sick to escape by himself.”

“We ran more sensitive tests,” said the doctor, “and finally something turned up positive. He’s been given a rather sophisticated neurotoxin, apparently over a period of weeks.”

I felt cold. Someone had been poisoning Friedlander Bey, probably someone in the house. He certainly had enough enemies, and my recent experience with the Half-Hajj proved that I couldn’t dismiss anyone as a suspect. Then, suddenly, my eyes fell on something resting on Papa’s tray table. It was a round metal tin, its cover lying beside it. In the tin was a layer of dates stuffed with nutmeats and rolled in sugar.