“Well,” I said sleepily, “in the hospital, the nurses rarely take their uniforms off.”

“They’ve had more training,” said Yasmin. “I’m a beginner at this, I’m still not entirely sure what I’m doing.”

“You know what you’re doing, all right,” I said. Her massaging moved slowly south. I was waking up fast.

“Now, you’re not supposed to do anything too strenuous, so let me do all the work.”

“Fine,” I said. I looked up at her and remembered how much I loved her. I also remembered how crazy she could make me in bed. Before I got completely carried away, I said, “What if Kmuzu comes in?”

“He’s gone to church. Besides,” she said wickedly, “even Christians must learn about sex sooner or later. Otherwise, where do new Christians come from?”

“Missionaries convert them from people who are minding their own business,” I said.

But Yasmin really didn’t intend to get into a religious discussion. She raised up and slid herself down on top of me. She let out a happy sigh. “It’s been a long time,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said. It was all I could think to say; my concentration was elsewhere.

“When my hair gets long again, I’ll be able to tickle you with it like I used to.”

“You know,” I said, beginning to breathe heavily, “I’ve always had this fantasy—”

Yasmin’s eyes opened wide. “Not with my hair, you won’t!” she said. Well, we all have our inhibitions. I just didn’t think I’d ever suggest anything kinky enough to shock Yasmin.

I’m not going to claim that we jammed all morning until we heard Kmuzu enter the living room. First of all, I hadn’t jammed anyone at all in weeks; second, being together again made both of us frantic. It was a short bout, but very intense. Afterward, we held each other and didn’t say anything for a while. I could have fallen back to sleep, but Yasmin doesn’t like that.

“You ever wish I was a tall, willowy, blond woman?” she asked.

“I’ve never gotten along very well with real women.”

“You like Indihar, I know you do. I’ve seen you looking at her.”

“You’re crazy. She’s just not as bad as the other girls”

I felt Yasmin shrug. “But do you ever wish I was toll and blond?”

“You could’ve been. When you were still a boy, you could’ve asked the surgeons for that.”

She buried her face against my neck. “They told me I didn’t have the skeleton,” she said, her voice muffled.

“I think you’re perfect just the way you are.” I waited a beat. “Except you’ve got the biggest feet I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Yasmin sat up quickly. She wasn’t amused. “You want your other collarbone broken, baheem?”

It took me half an hour and a long hot shower together to restore peace. I got dressed and watched Yasmin set herself ready to go out. For once, she wasn’t running late. She didn’t have to go to work until eight o’clock that evening. “Coming by the club later?” she asked, looking at my reflection in the mirror over my dresser.

“Sure,” I said. “I’ve got to make my presence felt, or ill you employees will get the idea I’m running a resort.”

Yasmin grinned. “You ain’t running nothing, honey,” she said. “Chiri runs that club, like she always has.”

“I know.” I’d come to enjoy owning the place. I’d originally planned to turn the club back to Chiri as soon as possible, but now I’d decided to hang on to it for a while. It made me feel great to get special treatment from Brandi, Kandy, Pualani and the others. I liked being Mr. Boss.

After Yasmin left, I went to my desk and sat down. My original apartment had been repaired and painted, and I was living again on the second floor of the west wing. Staying just down the hall from my mother had been nerve-wracking, even for only a few days, even after our surprise reconciliation. I felt recovered enough to turn my attention back to the unfinished business of Umm Saad and Abu Adil.

When I finally decided that I couldn’t put it off any longer, I picked up the tan-colored moddy, the recording of Abu Adil. “Bismillah,” I murmured, and then hesitantly I reached up and chipped it in.

Madness, by the life of the Prophet!

Audran felt as if he were peering through a narrow tunnel, seeing the world with Abu Adil’s mean, self-centered outlook. Things were only good for Abu Adil or bad for Abu Adil; if they were neither, they did not exist.

The next thing Audran noticed was that he was in a state of sexual arousal. Of course; Abu Adil’s only sexual pleasure came from jamming himself, or a facsimile of himself. That’s what Umar was — a frame on which to hang this electronic duplicate. And Umar was too stupid to realize that’s all he was, that he had no other qualifications that made him valuable. When he displeased Abu Adil, or began to bore him, Umar would be replaced immediately, as so many others had been disposed of over the years.

What about the Phoenix File? What did A.L.M. mean?

Of course, the memory was right there… Alif. Lam. Mim.

They weren’t initials at all. They weren’t some unknown acronym. They came from the Qur’an. Many of the surahs in the Qur’an began with letters of the alphabet. No one knew what they meant. Indications of some mystical phrase, perhaps, or the initials of a scribe. Their significance had been lost through the centuries.

There was more than one surah that began with Alif, Lam, Mim, but Audran knew immediately which one was special. It was Surah Thirty, called The Romans; the important line read “Allah is He Who created you and then sustained you, then causeth you to die, then giveth life to you again. “It was obvious that, just like Friedlander Bey, Shaykh Reda also pictured his own face when he spoke the name of God.

And suddenly Audran knew that the Phoenix File, with its lists of unsuspecting people who might be murdered for organs, was recorded on a cobalt-alloy memory plate hidden in Abu Adil’s private bedroom.

And other things became clear to Audran as well. When he thought of Umm Saad, Abu Adil’s memory related that she was not, in fact, any relation to Friedlander Bey, but that she had agreed to spy on him. Umm Saad’s reward would be the removal of her name and that of her son from the Phoenix File. She would never have to worry that someday someone she did not even know might have greater need of her heart or her liver or her lungs. Audran learned that it had been Umm Saad who’d hired Paul Jawarski, and Abu Adil had extended his protection to the American killer. Umm Saad had brought Jawarski to the city and passed along the assignments from Shaykh Reda to kill certain people listed on the Phoenix File. Umm Saad was partly responsible for those deaths, and for the fire and the poisoning of Friedlander Bey.

Audran was sickened, and the horrible, floating feeling of insanity was threatening to overwhelm him. He reached up and grabbed the moddy and pulled it free.

Yipe. That was the first time I’d ever used a moddy recorded from a living person. It had been a disgusting experience. It had been like being immersed in slime, except that you could wash slime away; having your mind fouled was more intimate and more terrible. From now on, I promised myself, I’d stick with fictional characters and moddy constructs.

Abu Adil was even more brainsick than I’d imagined. Still, I’d learned a few things — or, at least, my suspicions had been confirmed. Surprisingly, I could understand Umm Saad’s motivations. If I’d known about the Phoenix File, I’d have done anything to get my name off it too.

I wanted to talk some of this over with Kmuzu, but he wasn’t back from his Sabbath service yet. I thought I’d see if my mother had anything more to tell me.

I crossed the courtyard to the east wing. There was a little pause when I knocked on her door. “Coming,” she called. I heard glass clinking, then the sound of a drawer opening and shutting. “Coming.” When she opened the door to me, I could smell the Irish whiskey. She’d been very circumspect during her stay in Papa’s house, I’m sure she drank and took drugs as much as ever, but at least she had the self-control not to parade herself around when she was smashed.