laugh was hard, staccato. “Liar! You and your cousin Sanjit have bought over a thousand of these Barbies —”
“Not Barbies, Babjis,” Jinnah corrected her. “They’re for personal use. Not for sale.”
Slightly bewildered, Sanderson looked over to Crystal in a mute appeal for explanation.
She obliged. “He’s trying to corner the North American market. Says Indo-girls here haven’t had a decent non-white role model since Vanessa Williams —”
“I meant Michelle Obama!” Jinnah cried, hating how Crystal made him look dated.
“But how much?” demanded Sanderson.
“You wanna know the price, go to Jinnah’s website. They’re about $39.95 — right, Hakeem?”
“In U.S. funds,” said Jinnah stiffly, twisting around and placing the Babji doll under his desk. “Sorry, Ronald. No infidels need apply.”
Sanderson’s egalitarian protests were pre-empted by a bellow from city desk. Sanderson leapt for his desk. Crystal drifted indifferently towards the coffee machine, leaving Jinnah alone to face the considerable wrath of Nicole “Frosty” Frost, senior assistant city editor in charge of poking indolent crime reporters with a sharp stick.
“You are supposed to be making calls, not flogging dolls.”
Jinnah looked at Frosty with a perfectly calm, totally professional exterior. His intestinal tract, however, was being savaged by Sanderson’s deadly fungi. Frosty was in her fifties and the original tough broad. Before being promoted to middle management she’d worked every beat worth having on the Trib while out drinking and out swearing her male colleagues. Now she ran city desk with an iron hand and an enlarged liver, and had everyone’s respect or their fear. She had been Jinnah’s mentor when he had arrived at the paper and there was a genuine affection between them. But at the moment, Frosty looked like one of those angry prophets in the Old Testament whom she was fond of quoting. Since Jinnah was an Ismaili Muslim he didn’t give a moment’s thought to whether he was supposed to be Solomon or Rehoboam.
“Frosty. You’re looking ravishing this morning! What can I do for you?”
“Some work!” snapped Frosty and winced at her own volume. “You haven’t filed a story in two days. Don’t make it three.”
“It’s ridiculously early,” protested Jinnah. “I shall rise again on the third day. Don’t worry — News God will provide.”
Despite her foul mood and her habitual hangover, Frosty almost smiled at this. Jinnah must be really desperate to invoke the name of the fickle deity quietly worshipped by all good news reporters.
“News God helps those who help themselves by doing cop checks,” she growled.
Jinnah was about to take a cheap shot, something about scotch and corn flakes, when, as if in answer to the invocation of the Name, his telephone rang. He looked at the call display and smiled. Thanks to Allah. It wasn’t that damned doll supplier wondering where his money was. Jinnah snatched up the receiver as Frosty stood, arms crossed, making sure he wasn’t freelancing on company time. “Y’ello, Craig.”
“Would it hurt you to address me as ‘Sergeant Graham, sir,’ just once in a while?”
Sergeant Craig Graham’s voice faded and surged over his cellphone. Jinnah grinned. Aside from being in a bad cell zone, Graham was sounding persecuted, and that usually meant he had something good. Graham was the closest thing Jinnah had to a friend on the Vancouver Police force. Frosty, satisfied Jinnah was not persisting in the sin of sloth, returned to her desk.
“Where the hell are you, Sergeant Graham, sir?” Jinnah yelled into his phone. “Outer Mongolia?”
“Close. Corner of Main and Terminal. Get your brown ass down here.”
“Is it good?”
“Spec-bloody-tacular.”
“Be there in five.”
“Bring a barf bag. It’s not pretty.”
Jinnah hung up. He grabbed his coat, notebook, and microcassette and called out to Frosty at city desk. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours with the front page story, Frosty,” he said smugly.
“Got a hot one?” chirped Sanderson from his desk.
Jinnah wasn’t fooled. Sanderson couldn’t get around him by appealing to his massive ego. Well, not all the way around him anyway.
“Yes. And while I’m gone, keep your filthy, white, effeminate hands off my Babjis.”
“I had no intentions —” sputtered Sanderson, but Jinnah cut him off.
“Remember, Ronald: News God is watching you.”
As he slammed out of the newsroom, Jinnah was delighted when Ronald actually looked involuntarily over his shoulder.
* * *
Jinnah walked down to the company parking lot and climbed into his van. His colleagues had dubbed it the “satellite-guided Love Machine” because, in a moment of weakness, Jinnah had tried to convince Crystal Wagner that he had a waterbed in the back. He didn’t, really; just a small fridge and a propane stove. He did, however, have a satellite guidance system, which was his prized possession. He loved seeing where he was on the digital map screen, plugging in coordinates, having the computer remind him, “You must turn right at the next intersection to reach your preset destination.” His son, Saleem, had helped him alter the system’s voice menu and now Jinnah could be prompted to change course by Ensign Sulu’s voice. But Jinnah didn’t need satellite guidance to reach Main and Terminal. It was all too familiar territory.
“Name of God,” Jinnah whistled when he reached The Corner.
Main and Terminal was a three-ring media circus, complete with freak show in the heart of the concrete jungle. A phalanx of TV camera crews, print and radio reporters, and photographers were pressed against the circle of yellow and black crime scene tape that protected the centre of the park from their advance. Wandering around the edge of this massive scrum were the drunks, the deinstitutionalized, and the druggies, displaced from their sleeping quarters, taking the opportunity to tell their life stories to the cameras and bum a little change. Their ranks were swollen by the squeegee kids, who had forsaken hustling to take in the spectacle.
But it was the third ring that caught Jinnah’s attention. About a dozen clean and sober youths dressed in white bomber jackets marched back and forth, carrying signs bearing slogans like “Repent!” and “Jesus Died for You.” All the while they and anyone else who cared to listen were being harangued by a white-haired man in his fifties, who looked like Elijah in a cheap suit, shouting through a megaphone. Jinnah groaned. He always did when the Reverend Peter Hobbes and his God Squad manifested.
Jinnah felt sorry for Graham. Investigating a murder was a tough job at the best of times, but how the hell was he going to work in this kind of zoo? He decided to park in the MacDonald’s lot a half block away. It was free, unlike the more secure pay parking at Science World across the street. But unless you had a good car alarm, you could find your tires slashed or your stereo gone if you tarried too long. Fortunately, Jinnah had rigged his alarm to let out an ear-bleeding
