Relative Danger Read Online Free Page A

hotel.
    “The information I have that pertains to the last weeks of your uncle’s life starts here in Casablanca. According to the papers I have, he arrived on June 16, 1948. He signed off the Belle Noctche and received four hundred and twelve dollars in back pay. Apparently, he had gotten into a fight with a shipmate over some missing hashish and the shipmate’s younger sister and the captain sided with the other man. There were also some rumors about how he had conspired with Jesus to cheat his shipmates out of money.”
    Doug reread the last line, but it didn’t make sense. The next line, however, cleared it up.
    “Jesus Alverez was the radio operator on the Belle Noctche and, according to Charley, they would delay the results of sporting events. It’s a common Spanish name and an old confidence trick,” she added.
    “According to information I have here from Charley,” the note continued, “the two of them—and a third person Charley never met—were involved in a complex operation involving some merchandise that was being re-routed from its original destination to Palermo, Sicily. Charley was supposed to finalize the deal but became romantically involved with the wife of the port agent and the deal fell through. This is what led them to getting involved with the jewels.”
    It’s all how you say things, Doug thought. The way she wrote it you’d hardly think criminal activity was involved.
    “The third man, the one Charley knew only as Sasha, arranged for Russell to meet Omar Sabagh, a Syrian involved in the black market. These two, then, worked out the plans for the theft. Charley was indisposed at the time.”
    He tried the term out to see how well it would work. Indispose you. Indispose off. It was indisposingly great. We indisposed all night. Nope. It didn’t work.
    “Attached are the addresses of some people I want you to look up and I’ve marked them on the map as well. I want you to talk to them before I send you more details about the actual theft. That way you are not influenced by the things I say and are able to listen clearly to their accounts.”
    This was her plan? It sure sounded a lot more planned when he was half-drunk in Toronto. What was he supposed to hear and why would any of these people talk to him? It didn’t make sense, but she was paying for it. Maybe it would fall together as he went. Relax and enjoy it, he thought.
    He put the packet back in the folder and picked up a few postcards he bought in the hotel lobby. “Hey Guys,” he wrote, “You’ll never guess where I am.”
    ***
    Thanks to the map and the saint-like patience of a young police officer eager to practice his English, it took Doug only forty minutes to find the first address on the list, a small restaurant less than a half mile from the hotel. Casablanca was not at all as he pictured it, but he realized that his picture was based more on a California movie set than anything else. There were wide streets radiating out from central hubs along which small cars of some Euro-design jockeyed for position at each stoplight. The buildings looked like four- or five-story wedding cakes with the ornate facades, rooflines, and window frames resembling intricate frosting patterns. The corners curved gently, blending into the next wedding cake building, and every floor had a balcony and every balcony had the same wrought iron rail, painted the same flat white. Up close, however, the dusting of built-up carbon from the unleaded and diesel fuel turned the frosting into ordinary cement. There was no sand, no open market bazaar, no camels, no Rick’s.
    At every rounded corner there were outdoor cafés, a remnant of French rule the photocopy said, but rather than chic Parisian women sipping espresso, the tables were filled with men—and only men—drinking pot after pot of a sickeningly sweet mint tea, smoking French cigarettes, and eating pastries. With every building and every street corner looking the same, it was by chance