Frings sat at a table in the back of the Cairo, sipping a whiskey on the rocks and chatting with a gink named William Ebanks, a Bohemian of sorts. Up front, Renate, decked in a long, tight emerald dress, sang a seductive number in Portuguese. Frings sat in the back to avoid her notice. She hadn’t been home in a week. He didn’t want to talk to her, just enjoy the music and talk with Ebanks.
The Cairo was run by a private club called the Pharaohs that occupied the building next door. Ebanks was a third-generation Pharaoh, a guy whose bohemianism was supported by family wealth. As far as Frings knew, Ebanks had never worked a day in his life, though he seemed to collect a new academic degree every few years.
They’d smoked a reefer earlier in the Pharaoh’s library, an imitation of a London gentlemen’s club library, Frings thought, with dark, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves holding leather-bound books; well-padded chairs; and heavily shaded table lamps. Ebanks had long since failed to shock the other Pharaoh members with his open marijuana use, now considered a club eccentricity along with Fitz Dalgliesh’s extended and intense conversations with empty chairs and ancient Hamish Strachan’s habit of arriving for dinner from his upstairs room without some essential piece of clothing.
Ebanks knew of Renate’s affairs, but was not the type to bring it up.
Frings asked, “You ever been down to the Uhuru Community, Bill?”
Ebanks smiled broadly, widened his eyes, and raised his eyebrows—a signature expression. “But of course. Wherever there is a chance to sample something unusual, Frank, I explore.”
“What’d you think?”
“What, the shantytown?”
“That’s right.”
Ebanks shook his head. “Poverty, Frank. You wonder how a place like that is ever going to rise above it. What kind of hope is there for those people?”
“No. I had a chum—a Negro—who went with me. Not a big deal, but we kept our eyes open. Why do you ask?”
“I went in today. It’s an interesting place.”
“No doubt about that. Interesting cats there, interesting reefer, but a little spooky, too. Did you pick up on that, the weird Caribbean vibe—like voodoo or something?”
Frings had picked up on something in the shanties, putting it down to the poverty and the foreign roots of most of the people. Ebanks had traveled, though, and if he found it weird, maybe there was something to it.
Renate’s set ended and, along with it, talk of the Uhuru Community. The conversation drifted. Another reefer appeared from Ebanks’s jacket pocket and they passed it back and forth while Ebanks enthusiastically related his recent interest in Buddhism, his discovery of a guitarist who was tearing up the Checkerboard, and some hash he’d tried a couple of weeks ago.
Frings listened and watched Renate talking with a couple of her musicians onstage, experiencing that weird feeling he sometimes had after smoking reefer, that distance from people he wasn’t actually interacting with. His nights with her seemed a vague memory.
“Listen, Bill, are you going to donate any money to the mayor’s campaign?”
Ebanks laughed. “That fascist?”
“He’s hardly a fascist.” Ebanks’s politics were strange, but mostly revolved around his being able to do whatever the hell he wanted without any hassle. Anything that got in the way was “fascism.” “You’ve got a problem with him, wait until you see Vic Truffant.”
Ebanks rolled his eyes. “Really? Frank, you know that there’s nothing I find more excruciating than politics. I really can’t get too excited about the choice between one fascist and another.”
Frings sighed, ordered another drink, and talked into the night, knowing that his apartment would be empty when he returned.