The house where Tarak and his family were staying was quiet when Vin arrived; the windows shuttered, the doors closed. The murmur of people eating, talking, laughing was eerily absent. Vin cursed beneath his breath and slipped down the narrow alley that ran the length of the block. The homes to either side and behind his friend’s were equally quiet and still. Vin’s gut tightened with nerves. Something was wrong, very wrong. He reached the back door and pushed it open. Hinges corroded with years worth of sand creaked and groaned loudly in the unnatural quiet of the street. Vin winced and sent furtive glances up and down the alley, but he was as alone here in the middle of Casablanca as he’d never been out in the desert. It was unnerving and Vin slid between the narrow gap between door and wall feeling his path with his sandalled feet and searching hands. With no moonlight able to breach the curtained and shuttered windows, the room was pitch black and Vin had to ignore his growing uneasiness in order to picture the layout of the home in his mind.
The kitchen. He should be in the kitchen… and right along here was the pantry. Vin’s hand felt along the wall for the door that led to the walk-in pantry. He could smell the spices and herbs stored there, the salted meats and cured cheeses that filled one whole wall of the small room. A lot of people lived and visited in this home and there was always plenty of food. The door was open and Vin stepped in, hands searching now for the spare rushes that were kept just inside and the old-fashioned tinderbox used to light them. He found them quickly and lit one, nearly dropping it when a squeak and a whimper came from inside a large covered basket in the corner.
"Who’s there?" Vin whispered in the Berber dialect. The whimper turned to sobs – a child crying – and Vin was at the basket in two short strides, lifting the lid and holding the flaming rush up to see Tarak’s youngest son curled in a tight ball his dirty hands protecting his face from the light. "It’s okay," Vin assured him reaching down to help the boy out of his hiding place. "It’s the Amreeka," he added. "Vin."
When he had the boy out of the basket and standing on his own two feet, Vin knelt down and looked into his tear-stained face. The flickering light from the torch glistened in the boy’s watery eyes. "What happened? Where is everyone?"
"They came and took them all," the boy whispered.
"Who came?"
"I don’t know. They had guns… they yelled… words…and… Foreigners in uniforms and then… others, but mostly foreigners... Not like you," the boy’s jumbled words came to a shuddering stop as he swallowed down more sobs.
"Did they arrest everybody?"
The boy shook his head. "No, we hid. Papa put me in the basket. When they left, he came back, but there was somebody else so he said to stay here and be quiet till… he… he cried, I heard him and… and… then you came. He told me to stay and wait… he opened the door and let something bad in… I heard it… a djin… it laughed… and papa cried…"
Vin wrapped an arm around the boy in a fierce protective hug as hysterical sobbing overtook the small frame. Whether it was Germans or a djin or both, something terrible had happened tonight and Vin owed it to his friend to find out what and to protect the boy from further harm. "Come," he said softly. "Whatever was here has gone. We will light the torches and scare the djin from the shadows and then we shall see…" See what? he broke off to ask himself with deep foreboding. See what?
Another torch was lit and the pair stepped into the passageway. Vin touched the flame to a lamp set into the wall and as the light spread and brightened, Vin saw what the darkness had hidden and what the boy had heard; a trail of blood spattered along the floor and a perfect, bloody handprint on the pale plastered wall.
The passage curved away and widened to become the main living area of the house. Here in this room was where friends and family came to meet and eat. It was a friendly and inviting room. The floor was covered in rugs and cushions. Against one wall was an altar with a bundle of incense sticks smouldering. Their smoke curled around a small statue of a goddess older than Allah before drifting up to the ceiling. A low table was still burdened with plates of food and mugs of mint tea. There were signs of a scuffle near the door that led out to the street. An oil lamp had been upturned, a glass dropped and broken, furniture knocked over. The disarray led into the living area and stopped as if someone had already started putting things in order. And perhaps they had, but why? Vin couldn’t begin to guess and didn’t want to. In the corner, perched as if ready to welcome a new round of visitors, was Tarak; bloodless surely, his ruined blood-sodden clothes attested to that. Dead definitely, his blue lips and unblinking staring eyes appeared as shocked by the presence of a huge knife protruding from his chest as Vin was to discover his friend had been savagely murdered.
The grand re-opening of Café Americain came and went with a full, if subdued house, and without a hitch. The orchestra belted out their usual tunes. Sam, the piano player, visited every table and played every conceivable melody, but one. Corina took up her guitar in between to strum songs of love in springtime and summers in the south of France. Carl and Sacha were kept busy the entire night serving drinks and regaling the customers with various stories of Rick’s flight from Casablanca – none of them close to the truth.
Sam continued to play after all the customers left and Carl was the only one left to hear. As the waiter removed his apron and donned his coat, Sam finally played the one song he’d refused all evening. Carl bowed his head and listened to the piano man’s tired voice croon, "You must remember this…"
The waiter moved quietly for such a big man, extinguishing lights around the room until only one was left and then he sat down at the edge of it and just listened.
‘A kiss is just a kiss,
a sigh is just a sigh…
The fundamental things in life…
As… time… goes… by.’
The song ended on a slight catch and the music faded in the half-light.
"It just isn’t the same without Mr. Rick," Carl said, standing again and coming to the piano player’s side.
Sam pulled the lid down over the keyboard and stood as well. It was late and he was tired, and it wasn’t the same without Rick around.
"Nope," he agreed with the German. "It ain’t the same at all."
The last light faded as the two men walked out of the saloon and into the night. Each kept to the shadows as they made their way home. Curfew was long past and patrols had been more regular since the murder of Major Strasser. The revolving spotlight of the airport beacon striped the streets and buildings with regular flashes of light that threw the side alleys and doorways into even darker relief. The effect was stark and eerie in the quiet town.
In their hurry to be home, neither man saw the glow of a cigarette from beneath the awning of the building opposite, or the faint silhouette of a man as he breathed its smoke in deeply and released it slow. The man stayed hidden until the light of dawn greyed the dark shadows and then, with the sound of life stirring in the streets, he slipped away – unnoticed, unlooked for and unknown; death on two feet.
Long day.
Longer night.
And it wasn’t over.
Chris stole a glance at his watch – just past midnight – and shoved his hands into his pants pocket. He was in Ezra Standish’s hotel room, his living room to be exact. An archway led to where Chris imagined there would be some sort of fancy four-poster bed a body needed a stepladder to climb into. Standish was never one to sleep in a cheap hotel room when there was a suite to be had.
Ezra was fixing drinks. Nathan sat on an overstuffed chaise lounge in the corner watching every move the gambler made – not sure if he could trust the man. Chris smirked. Jackson was smart not to trust Standish. The man could turn any situation, no matter how bad, to suit his advantage. Chris had seen him do it; still smarted over the outcome of their last meeting, when the little situation they had both been involved in had resulted in Larabee escaping prison by the edge of his teeth and the resolve of his fists, and Ezra vanishing into thin air – to turn up here in Casablanca.
Now Larabee was standing here waiting to discuss how each of the men could help the other. Larabee wanted out of the country, Standish wanted in. Chris wasn’t sure what Nathan wanted, but it had turned out the doc had something in common with the gambler. Both had come perilously close to losing their lives over the matter of the murdered German officer and had been saved at the last minute by a Texan masquerading as a Moroccan. It seemed that Vin Tanner had not made his appointment that afternoon and Chris wondered again what the man was involved in.
They’d agreed it would be safer to discuss the current political climate in Morocco and how it might impair each of the men’s wellbeing in the privacy of a hotel room. Ezra’s was closest.
"How well do you know Monsieur Ferrari?" Ezra asked Chris, handing him a glass of brandy.
"Not at all and I prefer to keep it that way. The man’s a snake," Chris replied.
"Maybe a snake, but he’s probably your best bet for getting information and papers," Nathan said. "He’s got a lot of pies and a finger in each one."
"Or Tanner," Ezra suggested. "He’s as forthcoming as a rock, but I get the feeling he’s right in the middle of everything, and he knows the locals."
Chris shrugged. "Don’t exactly know him either, but I’d sooner trust him than Ferrari." Or you, Ezra, the mercenary added to himself. "What about you?"
"Me?" Ezra asked, confused. "I certainly agree with you about Tanner…"
"No," Chris interrupted. "I mean, how far can we trust you, Ezra? How do I know you won’t cut and run, and leave me holding the bag?"
"As we don’t know yet what the bag, so to speak, is I can only assure you that we’re on the same side… so to speak." Ezra tilted his glass in Chris’s direction. "It seems the situation in Casablanca is a little warmer than I thought, more volatile. Definitely not the place to be right now without friends."
"Friends…?" Chris started to scoff.
Nathan left his seat. Larabee was about to lose his temper with the wordy Ezra Standish and the doctor couldn’t see how that would help anyone. "The past is the past. Forget about it and start thinking about today. I don’t see how I could help much, Ezra, only been here a few months myself, but I do know a few people. Guess they wouldn’t be the type you’d normally care to know, but they might help."
Ezra turned away from Chris to level a cool look at Nathan. "You’d be surprised at the type of people I know, Dr. Jackson. After all, I know Mr. Larabee…"
"An’ ya know me."
The three men turned startled faces to the darkened bedroom entrance. The shadowed form of Vin Tanner stood leaning against the wall. "Havin’ a party, boys?"
"How did you get there?" Ezra asked, astonished by the man’s silent entry from of all places, the bedroom.
"Left the balcony door open, Ez. Walked right in."
Vin moved into the room and nodded to the other men. "How’re ya doin’ there, Doc? Larabee?"
Chris caught a gleam of light reflecting from the Texan’s hand and raised his eyebrows in question. Vin smiled and showed the long knife he held in his hand before it disappeared into the folds of his clothes.
"Wasn’t sure who all was in here," Vin assured them with a shrug. He looked around the room, checking the shadows for danger. "What’s goin’ on?"
Chris had noticed the wary look in Vin Tanner’s eyes, the pale face. He let Ezra and Nathan fill the Texan in on what had transpired through the course of the evening. Nothing but suspicions and a general uneasiness, but each of them relied on their gut instincts and when those instincts were screaming ‘Trouble’ with a capital ‘T’, none of them were prepared to ignore the situation. Chris watched and waited, and when the discourse fell into a lull he looked straight into Vin Tanner’s eyes and asked, "What happened tonight?"
Nathan and Ezra locked gazes for a brief moment before turning to Tanner. Something had happened? their expressions asked.
Tanner’s shoulders slumped. He’d been fighting with visions of Tarak’s body ever since he’d left the house. The boy was asleep, emotionally exhausted, on Ezra’s bed, though he had yet to mention that fact to Ezra. What to say? He didn’t know. It was too much, too soon. He couldn’t put his mind around it. Didn’t know whom he could tell, whom he could trust. He closed his eyes against Larabee’s hard stare and it suddenly felt like the floor was tilting beneath him.
Chris grabbed Vin’s arm as the man swayed. Nathan stepped forward and helped guide the exhausted man to a chair. They’d been standing around chatting while Tanner was about ready to drop at their feet. Was dropping, Nathan realised as the weight grew heavier.
Vin sat heavily in the chair and sunk his head in his hands. Hell, he cursed in silence. He figured he could really use a drink if he was going to keep going tonight and looked up in surprise when Ezra forced a glass into his hand. "Top shelf brandy, my friend. Sip it slow."
Vin nodded and began sipping. "Should never have come here," he muttered. "The whole thing’s gone to hell and I’m goin’ with it." He shuddered and stared into space. Tarak’s dead eyes swam accusingly in front of him.
Ezra touched the man’s shoulder to bring him back to the present and had to force himself not to flinch from the desolation he saw in Tanner’s face.
"Tell us what happened?" Chris asked again. He could sense the horror and the danger like a tangible presence in the room and almost wished he were back in Libya, rethinking his decision to escape to Casablanca.
Vin looked back up to Larabee, this time holding the gaze. "Hell! That’s what happened… hell. I missed my ride out of town this afternoon, but Tarak had something for me. I went back to get it…"
"Tarak, that the guy you were with in the market place? The real deal guy?" Chris asked.
"Yeah, we’ve been working together for a year or so, been friends longer. Got into some trouble north of here, he was helping me get out. Anyways, I went to see him, only when I got there no one was home. Not anyone. Seems they all got herded down to the police station, I don’t know. I went in to have a look around and found his son hiding in the pantry. He told me what happened." Vin paused and turned to Ezra. "I left him in your bedroom, Ezra. Had nowhere else to take him."
"That’s quite all right, Mr. Tanner," Ezra replied and pushed the brandy glass up to Vin’s lips.
Vin drank the rest of the brandy in one mouthful and swallowed it with a gulp.
"I lit some lamps and we had a look around. Found Tarak in the living room, by himself… dead. We got out as fast as we could."
"You sure he was dead?" Nathan asked.
Vin’s reply was a bitter chuff of laughter. "The man’s throat was slit from ear to ear and there was a big old knife stickin’ out of his chest. He was bathin’ in his own blood. Don’t get much deader than that."
It was still hours to dawn. The full moon overhead glimmered against pale buildings, mixing with the sharp shadows of windows and doorways; voids of light and life in a surreal, distorted landscape. Humanity went indoors at night, safe from prowling demons and ghouls, haunting djins and evil spirits. In Casablanca, the night belonged to the stalkers. Cats haunted the high places, rats the low and evil in between.
Monsieur Ferrari had enjoyed the previous evening and its profits immensely. Now, too keyed up to sleep, he sat and waited for the morning. The glowing tip of his cigar traced an orange path through the darkness of his room as he smoked and drank and thought about his successes. He had enough money put aside to retire from public life whenever he so chose, but he wasn’t the type of man to sit idle while still more money could be made. Money was power. Knowledge was money. Soon he’d have enough of both to run Casablanca like it should be run.
On the side table by his chair sat a square of folded paper. The telegram had come while Ferrari gathered his money and knowledge at the Café. He’d read it at once and then again while enjoying a celebratory drink back in his rooms. He was still smiling, hours later, at the news it contained. Casablanca was about to become an important part of the ongoing war talks, a cog in the gears of peace, and Ferrari was right in the middle of it. In a few more hours, he would become a very important man, not only in Casablanca, but around the world.
His chuckle of pleasure was gruff and tainted with the deep vein of greed that ran through his being to the centre of his soul. Ferrari rested his head back on the seat and sighed. "Life is good…"
"And can only get better," a voice interrupted from behind.
Ferrari felt his heart pound with fright as he dropped his drink and jumped to his feet. His mouth gaped open at the shadow that broke away from the rest and came into the pale moonlit room. "You’re back," he stated, finding his voice. His fist closed around the cigar in fear as he fought to control his trembling voice and racing heart.
"I am," the shadow said. "I need your help with something… minor."
"I’ve helped you all I can. No one knows what happened, what you did, I swear," Ferrari wanted to turn and run, but he was blocked by the chair and the side table. He glanced down and remembered the telegram still sitting in plain view.
The shadow followed Ferrari’s gaze and stretched out to take the piece of paper with his fine-boned hand. "What’s this? Something I should know about?"
"No," Ferrari replied. "It’s nothing. Really, nothing at all."
The visitor raised an eyebrow, the moonshine and the night turning his face into a horrible mask. "What I need help with is entirely separate from before." He unfolded the paper and began to read. "Interesting…"
"I can still get you papers. Any name you want…"
"I’ve managed to obtain papers. That’s not what I want at all. In fact, this telegram fills my needs perfectly. How pleasantly easy that was."
Ferrari didn’t know whether to be relieved or concerned. The information in the telegram was important, but hardly worth any hardship on his part… on the other hand, he preferred to work his many deals and plans with a lone hand, and this one did promise many things. "That information is classified," he started to say.
"True," the man agreed. "I’ve been chasing it up for some time. You’ve saved me a great deal of trouble. Now, of course, I don’t need you or your help at all." The shadow moved away.
Ferrari decided relief was the best path to take. He’d had nightmares after his last dealings with this shadowy man and had no desire to suffer again. The man would go – finished with him before he had a chance to start – and Ferrari could return to his ruminations of a successful future. He was safe and would stay safe, he thought as he allowed himself to relax back down into his chair. The cigar glowed brightly as he brought it back to his lips and inhaled deeply.
He was safe.
He was dead.
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