I’ve got a good relationship with Friedlander Bey — within the walls we all called him Papa; he practically owned the Budayeen, and had the rest of the city in his pocket, as well. I always kept my word, which was a valuable recommendation to someone like Bey. Papa was an old-timer. The rumor was that he might be as much as two hundred years old, and now and then I could believe it. He had an archaic sense of what was honor and what was business and what was loyalty. He dispensed favors and punishments like an ancient idea of God. He owned many of the clubs, whorehouses, and cookshops in the Budayeen, but he didn’t discourage competition. It was all right with him if some independent wanted to work the same side of the street. Papa operated on the understanding that he wouldn’t bother you if you didn’t bother him; however, Papa offered all kinds of attractive inducements. An awful lot of free agents ended up working for him after all, because they couldn’t get those particular benefits for themselves. He didn’t just have connections; Papa was connections.

The motto of the Budayeen was “Business is business.” Anything that hurt the free agents eventually hurt Friedlander Bey. There was enough to go around for everybody; it might have been different if Papa had been the greedy type. He once told me that he used to be that way, but after a hundred and fifty or sixty years, you stop wanting. That was about the saddest thing anyone ever said to me.

I heard Nikki take a deep breath. “Thanks, Marîd. You know where I’m staying?”

1 didn’t pay that much attention to her comings and goings anymore. “No, where?”

“I’m staying by Tamiko for a little while.”

Great, I thought, just great. Tamiko was one of the Black Widow Sisters. “On Thirteenth Street?”

“Yeah.”

“I know. How about if I come by, say, two o’clock?”