LITMIR.BIZ

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apparently had non-Wolves business. While Altan waited in the shadows, Erol’s knife had come out and done its work.

      Work. Just work. Remember that… It was all for the glorious cause.

      He vomited again, wiped his mouth, and made his way back to Eminönü and the ferry.

      The companion who had been training him for several days, Yusuf, fell into line behind him at the ferry. As their eyes met, Yusuf gave an almost imperceptible thumbs up.

      So Erol was being followed and checked on. He wasn’t surprised.

      CHAPTER 34

      …a resolution the more necessary to be made, but perhaps not the more easily kept, because she saw that the suspicions of the whole party were awakened against them…

      Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

      It wasn’t my first dead body, but I was shaking. The man, when Le Reau shone his flashlight on his face, was young. Too young to be lying against a wall, dead. Unless, of course, he was a drug addict. Youth is no proof against addiction—the opposite, actually. The two are often found together.

      His clothes were unremarkable. Jeans. Sweatshirt that proclaimed his loyalty to the Fenerbahçe soccer team. Baseball hat saying “New York Yankees.”

      What was remarkable was the amount of blood on the sidewalk, pooling now in a slippery mess. Since he had been standing when I inadvertently knocked him over, the murder must have happened just before I bumped against the guy. I may even have met the killer as I approached the hotel, since I’d come from the darker side of the street. Apparently the guards at the American consulate the next door had not heard a thing. Running to the site, their representative appeared shocked that anyone would have the nerve to commit a crime so close.

      Having taken charge at first, Jean Le Reau became an innocent-looking bystander as soon as the police arrived. The team of six policemen, including two in plainclothes, came quickly and took preliminary statements from all three of us—Le Reau, the concierge, and me. We sat in lobby seats for the process, in front of the little desk. Out the window I could see the body being loaded onto a gurney. These guys were nothing if not efficient.

      Jean Le Reau and I sat a long time in the bar area of the Pera waiting to give more detailed statements. A watchful officer kept an eye on us while questioning the desk clerk, who remained on duty. Few people seemed to have been disturbed by the incident. There was no crowd. A couple of hotel guests wondered aloud why police cars were there and were told, “Bir şey değil—it’s nothing to worry about.” The Pera was far from full, so there weren’t many guests.

      “Get you something?” asked Le Reau, as he headed for the bar.

      “A glass of white wine—Ҫankaya, if they have it. And a bottle of water, too? Thanks.”

      The velvet chairs and the warmth of the room, plus the wine, helped me pull myself together. For quite a while, we didn’t speak.

      “Do you have any idea who that man was?” I finally said.

      “None at all. I think he was a drug addict.”

      “I assumed so. But why was he killed? Why here?”

      Silence from Le Reau. Then, “I’m not at all sure. It is odd.” He looked troubled. “Not so odd that an addict got killed as that it happened here, right in front of the Consulate guards.”

      I admit it: we each had two glasses of wine. By the time the plainclothes detective whose nameplate said “Durmaz” returned to us, we were feeling pretty relaxed.

      “Do you have anything to add to your earlier statements?” Detective Durmaz asked, looking at the business cards we had handed him. When we shook our heads, he smiled enigmatically and politely and said he would like to speak with each of us. “Separately, please. Ladies first, Mizz Darcy.”

      He led me through French doors to an isolated part of the old lobby, where a small round coffee table separated our chairs. A third chair was occupied by a police translator, though I didn’t think Durmaz needed him. Occasionally we spoke a few words in Turkish, which I could follow fine. I explained the incident and told him I was in Istanbul on an interim assignment for the Washington Tribune. I couldn’t help the regret in my voice when I said the word, “interim.”

      “Yes, I know about your paper’s former correspondent,” Detective Durmaz said. “I worked on that case.”

      “You did?” I had a thousand questions, but this was not the time for any of them. As soon as I was released, I waved goodnight to Jean Le Reau, shook hands with Detective Durmaz, and went upstairs.

      I locked the door to my room and undressed, tossing clothes onto the armchair. How tenuous life seemed in this city of mystery! Who was that dead man? Was I being pursued? How much could I trust Le Reau? He had been a godsend tonight. Almost too quickly on the scene…

      I pulled yesterday’s note from the back of a drawer where I’d put it. Was this a piece of solid evidence that I was someone’s target? “Lock your door. This is from a friend.” Was it really from a friend? Did I have any friends?

      I crumpled the note and threw it in the wastebasket.

      CHAPTER 35

      With patience, mulberry leaves become satin.

      Work as if you were to live forever; live as if you were to die tomorrow.

      Two Turkish proverbs

      The next day was as gray as the solid multi-storied building in Cağaloğlu with the newspaper’s name, Cümhüriyet, down a corner in big letters. I folded my umbrella and shook rain off my coat as I stepped into the gloomy reception area. Walking, it had taken me seven minutes from the Tribune’s little office. By car in all that traffic, it would have taken twenty.

      “May I see Haldun Kutlu, please? He’s expecting me.” A spindly, downtrodden clerk asked me to wait on an old wooden chair, one of several. The others were occupied, I guessed, by nervous job applicants, or in some cases, young writers trying to sell their free-lance work. The trousers of one young man’s suit didn’t quite match the jacket. I hoped he had better coordination between his verb tenses and nouns.

      Digging into my bag, I found Tony Hillerman’s Dark Wind and started reading. The red mesas of New Mexico lent their familiar and comforting presence to this dreary waiting room. Navajo officer Jim Chee had often felt out of place, too, caught between his native culture and the white man’s world. It’s not easy to live in two universes at once.

      Chee and his boss, Joe Leaphorn, had barely finished their first argument when the clerk returned to escort me to Haldun Kutlu’s office.

      The room was shabby but spacious. Kutlu ranked high within the tough world of Turkish journalism, especially here at the country’s largest newspaper.

      The room had another attraction: an elegant white cat with varicolored eyes, one blue, one green. The cat occupied the chair facing the desk. I went over, presented the tips of my fingers for approval, and petted the beautiful creature. She looked exactly like the cat I’d seen at the Eminönü wharf.

      “Sit down,” said Kutlu, looking up from his writing to give me a professorial inspection.

      The cat deigned to let me have the chair. Jumping down, she sat on a stack of papers on the floor, cleaning her whiskers. Entranced, I asked what her name was.

      “Sultana,” he said.

      Kutlu was balding and paunchy and looked as though he had slept in his clothes. He lit one brown Yeni Bahar from another, scattering ashes over the red-brown carpet that had clearly been used for that purpose before.

      “Do you take one or two sugars in your tea?”

      Feeling a little like Alice with the March Hare, I held up one finger, and wriggled into place on the reclaimed chair. After searching through the papers on his desk, Kutlu found and rang a bell. A tea boy responded, and was given the hospitality order.

      The

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