The Baklava Club: A Novel (Investigator Yashim) Read Online Free PDF

ribbon.
    “Enough planning, Yashim. You can see to the rest of it.” She put the packet of letters back into the box and pushed it aside. “Now,” she said, “I will have a little sleep. It is all quite an excitement, n’est-ce pas ?”

 
    7
    L EANDROS Ghika listened to the tramp of feet on the stairs outside and smiled, a little sourly, in the near dark. The feet meant lodgers, and lodgers meant money. But it also meant damage and repairs, which cost; and worry.
    He passed his hand across the ulcer in his stomach; then he put another sunflower seed into his mouth and cracked it between his teeth.
    The woman had been a mistake. Three men was enough, and the woman was a complication even if she was married to one of them. He spat the shell onto the floor. And that was by no means certain, was it? Ghika had not thought, when they took the place, to look for a ring; but he was fairly sure he had not noticed one; and Ghika was a man to notice things.
    He put out his hand and mechanically retrieved another seed from the bowl.
    For the woman, they paid extra. Three men with a woman—it wasn’t right. And they’d paid up, too—so they knew that as well as he did.
    His ulcer twinged: he should have asked for more. They would have paid. He had looked them over, and seen at once that they could afford to pay. Well-made, well-fed boys, and the girl—well; plump as a partridge, and pink and blond like something from a sultan’s harem, like the women he could dimly remember when there had been money at home and his mother took him visiting in the neighborhood. He had spent hours playing with buttons on stiff-backed chairs while soft and beautiful wives with starched coiffures and necklaces of lucky coins received them in rooms draped with figured silks and decorated with icons. The women smoked chibouks scented with applewood. Another life, before his father died.
    The Frankish woman was soft, like them. A different creature from the women he knew best now, those bundles of bones and sores and stinking mouths he resorted to when he felt the urge.
    And when he had the money. Well, he had the money now. But had also, he discovered, lost the urge.
    He listened. There was a woman’s laughter coming down the stairs. It made him wince just to think of it, the attention it attracted. Priests, imams—and always someone to run off and complain. The ulcer flared, as he knew it would. It wasn’t worth the money. What was it that the Jew who lived on the corner used to say? What was money if you didn’t have your health. Your health, and your family.
    Ghika rubbed his nose. Perhaps the Jew was wrong. If you had a pain in the stomach, and no one to run around for you—then you did need the money. Money, most of all.
    He waited for the sharp, slicing pain below his ribs to subside, then he got to his feet and opened the door to the stairs. He’d go up and have a word with the rich boys—and have a look at that woman, too.
    See if she really wore a ring.
    Have another look at her white blond hair.

 
    8
    T HE cart that had met Palewski at the waterfront rolled to a halt by the bridge, and Palewski climbed down stiffly, cradling his Boutet, to stamp his feet on the solid earth.
    To the east, the dawn made a thin pale rim against the black land. The cart moved off, creaking, across the bridge, and Palewski leaned on the parapet, wondering how long he would have to wait, listening to the gurgling of frogs in the reeds below. It was a sound that, like the feel of the narrow fowling piece, carried him off to another time in another country, and he had drifted into a reverie when a hand took him by the shoulder, and he jumped.
    “ Salaam alaikum ,” a voice murmured.
    “ Salaam alaikum . You surprised me.”
    A low chuckle. “We hunters have to move quietly, am I right? Come, the punt’s below.”
    Palewski followed his near-invisible companion off the bridge and into the reeds. The punt showed as a dark length jutting into the