Page 89 of Exit Party

“You’re Service,” she said. “Ibari Waker. I saw it on the transport request.”

“But you didn’t know the transport had arrived.”

“Exactly,” she said. “See?” She rotated a monitor so I could see it. I saw a little dot that must have been the car I’d just taken, blinking on the surface of a map. From her screen, it looked like the car had stalled out in the desert.

“Is it a problem with the car, or with the system?”

“Who knows,” she said. “Who are you here to see?”

“I need a private room for a phone call,” I said, “and then I need to see Kareem Fayed.”

“You have an identifier number?”

“No.”

She sighed, and tapped the name into her system. “Karim with an I?”

“Kareem with two E’s. Middle name unknown. Last name Fayed. His place of birth and home address might be missing.”

“Right,” she said. “Okay. I have him here.” She entered something into the computer, and waited a moment. “He has no identifier,” she said. “I’ve never seen that before. I don’t know how he’s getting fed.”

“Well, hopefully he hasn’t starved to death,” I said. “Where can I make a phone call?”

“Go through those double doors and make a left,” she said, pointing, and a moment later I was in a very small room with a bolt on the inside of the door and a single plastic chair, no other furniture. I bolted myself in and sat for just a moment in the windowless quiet. I didn’t want to be a monster, that was the thing I was thinking as I transmitted the recording from the hair salon to David Grissom, but of course it was too late for that. I appended a message—Call me—and he did, a moment later.

“I don’t understand,” he said. Fear in his voice. “Why is Latika saying I was involved in the exit visa crime? Why’s she setting me up like this?”

“David,” I said, “I can make this go away, in exchange for a story.”

There was a long silence.

“What’s the story,” he said finally. I felt his contempt. He knew I was corrupt, and could do nothing about it.

“Today you went with me to Camp Five,” I said. “Together, we visited a resident, Kareem Fayed. We left together, you and I, while the resident returned to work.”

“Why were we visiting him?”

“Because he came up in relation to the exit visa case,” I said. “Someone mentioned him at a meeting. We were just following a lead.”

“Did the lead go anywhere?”

“Nowhere,” I said.

Later, in a visitors’ room, a white cavernous space with cement tables at intervals, I sat alone with my racing thoughts. There was natural light here, through skylights far above, but sand had settled in patches on the glass and the room was dimmer than it should have been. I felt outside of myself. But there was a world where another me had served almost twenty years in prison, I told myself, and what that meant was that I was strong enough for prison time. The thought of that other person was with me constantly now. Ari, my double, my other, my ghost.

A door clanged open on the far side of the room, and the Kareem from the other place entered. His clothes were several sizes too large, and his shirt had buttons missing. He looked thinner than he had when I’d seen him last, more tired.

“Kareem,” I said. I’d met this version of Kareem only briefly, in the shortest interrogation I’d ever done. “I’m Detective Ibari Waker.”

“You’re the other Ari. I remember you.” He took a seat across from me.

“Explain your clothes,” I said.

“There’s a clothing shortage.” Kareem’s voice was a little hoarse. He cleared his throat and tried again. “There’s an everything shortage, actually.”

“Are you being interrogated here?”

“No. I’m being stored here, I think. No one’s talked to me in a long time. I don’t have an identifier number, and it means I don’t get regular rations. It’s like they don’t really know I’m here.” I felt his desperation across the table. “You’re the first person in a long time. I don’t understand what I . . . I don’t understand what I did to get here,” he said. “It wasn’t my choice to come here. It wasn’t my fault.”