Donkey-Vous by Michael Pearce

terrace into the shadow cast by a slender potted palm.
    On the other side of the steps the arabeah-drivers dozed in the shade of their vehicles or lay stretched out on the ground beneath them. Their horses drooped in the heat. Owen and Georgiades walked along the rank to where three men were sitting together idly casting dice in the dust. They looked up as Owen and Georgiades approached.
    “Hello!” they said. “We’ve been expecting you.” Georgiades dropped into a squat beside them.
    “My friend,” he said, indicating Owen.
    “We know you,” they said to Owen. “You’re the Mamur Zapt, aren’t you?”
    “That’s right.”
    “We’re surprised you haven’t been along to see us before. Everyone else has.”
    “Because everyone else has,” said Owen, “I have not.”
    “Are you getting anywhere?” they asked. “You don’t seem to be.”
    “I know some things now that I didn’t know before.”
    “We do too. And one of them is how much a thing like this mucks up business.”
    “You’re not going to run it all through again, are you?” asked one of the drivers. “The way you did it the other day? I can tell you that really did set us back. We were blocked in for hours. Couldn’t go, couldn’t get back. It cost us real money, that did.”
    “Sorry!”
    “It wasn’t us,” said Georgiades. “It was the Parquet.”
    “That young chap in the smart suit? He came along and talked to us. He’s quite sharp.”
    “He must make a lot of money,” said another of the men. “Look at that suit.”
    “They all do. Mind you, he works hard. No siestas for him!”
    “That’s the difference between him and us. I like a siesta.”
    “It’s not the only difference,” the other driver insisted stubbornly.
    “He’s cleverer than we are.”
    “He’s got pull,” the stubborn one said. “They all have. That’s how they get these jobs in the first place.”
    “Ah well, the British are different.”
    “Not very.”
    They all laughed.
    “Ah well, it’s the way of the world.”
    “That old man, the one that’s disappeared, he must have pull,” said one of the drivers.
    “Why?”
    “The Parquet’s here, you’re here. The Bimbashi was here the other day.”
    “I don’t know how much pull he’s got,” said Owen. “That’s one of the things I’m trying to find out.”
    “And so you come to us.”
    “So I come to you.”
    “Well, we can’t help you much. We’ve hardly had anything to do with him. He’s never used us much. He doesn’t get around.”
    “It’s his friends we’re interested in.”
    “Yes.” The driver looked at Georgiades. “That’s what your friend said this morning.”
    “Tell my friend what you told me.”
    “About that young one? The one with the bulging eyes? Very well, if you want. He’s a bit of a sly one, that one. You’d think he never did anything. But he slips out from time to time, at night especially. And comes back late.”
    “You’d think he was after the ladies of the night,” said another of the drivers. “But he’s not like that, really.”
    “He prefers the houses.”
    “We know about Anton’s,” said Georgiades. “Which other houses does he go to?”
    The men mentioned several.
    “But Anton’s is his favorite. He goes there regularly. Not just when they’re playing, either.”
    “Not just when they’re playing? Are you sure?”
    “That’s right,” another of the drivers confirmed. “I took him there once myself. That was in the afternoon, about this sort of time, and they certainly weren’t playing then.”
    “Did he go to see someone?”
    The man shrugged his shoulders. “He just went inside.”
    “Did anyone come out with him?”
    “I didn’t see. Anton, perhaps.”
    “How often does he go? When they’re not playing, I mean?”
    The drivers consulted.
    “Not often. Two, three times perhaps.”
    “What about the woman?” asked Georgiades.
    The arabeah-drivers immediately sat up.
    “Ah, now you’re