I stared at the oncoming lights. “I’ve been fine Atwell. How are you?”
“I’m an American in France. Does it get any better?” He made it sound like he owned the place.
Given the treatment I sometimes received as an expatriate in France I wasn’t sure I agreed, but I didn’t want to prolong our conversation. So I replied, “I suppose not.”
I could feel Atwell trying to gauge my temperature. His efforts at being subtle equalled his attempts at conversation. He abandoned both with, “So I heard it was an interesting evening at the casino.”
“Yeah.” I didn’t see a reason mention the Corsican’s voyous or the fact that Mitnick was likely the one who sicced them on me. It didn’t make any sense to me, so I didn’t want to explain it to Atwell.
Atwell’s impatience hardened his words. Exiting the motorway towards the city’s interior he said, “Tell me about it.”
I knew that this was the reason Atwell had shown, so I laid out the bare bones. “Marek Mitnick was gambling at the casino this evening. I became aware of his presence around 11:00 p.m. At 11:30 Carlu Sartre arrived and proceeded to threaten Mitnick with a pistol, physically assaulting him and evicting him from the premises.”
I detached from the conversation with, “I suspect they may have been in the midst of a dispute.”
I felt Atwell’s impatience slowly roasting into anger over my dry listlessness. He pulled into an alley, streetlights blocked by the segmented columns of two neo-classic buildings. “Police?”
“No. Casino staff kept it under control. Smartphones are on lockdown on the premise so there were no calls out or digital evidence.”
“And you didn’t think I needed to know about this?”
“You seem to have heard about it all on your own.”
“Both Sartre and Mitnick work for us.” ‘Us’ meaning ‘U.S.’ meaning government. The idea that men that powerful were pawns of whatever obscure anti-terrorist department Atwell was a part of struck me as unlikely. I said so.
“Believe it,” he replied. “There’s a lot of shipping that comes through this part of the world. And they tell us if anything is coming our way that we need to know about.”
“In exchange you let them operate without interference from law enforcement. I wouldn’t call that ‘working for you.’”
“That sounds kind of like what me and you got going on. You saying you don’t work for me?” Atwell very much resembled Jasper in that moment.
Thinking about how I got here and Atwell’s cheap manipulation, I felt my fingers flex. Instead of wrapping them around his throat I replied, “I don’t see a W-2 with my name on it.”
It was Atwell’s turn to grin. “You’re a funny guy.”
“Yeah, that’s what all my co-workers say. ‘That American, he’s a funny guy.’ I mean, I think it’s hilarious that you let guys like Sartre and Mitnick get away with bloody murder just in case they might be able to tell you something.” In controlling my anger I couldn’t help but let my disapproval slip out.
Atwell switched gears into pedantic. “Let me ask you something. If you were given the chance to go back in time and kill baby Hitler, would you do it?”
I hoped my expression communicated how stupid a question I thought that was. “If I could time travel, I’d probably just buy some of his art.”
Not surprisingly, this only confused Atwell. “What?”
“He wanted to be an artist. If someone had supported that ambition he probably would have lived his life out in Vienna hocking postcards.”
That there might be a solution to his question other than the one he possessed only deepened Atwell’s confusion. He shook it off and got to the conclusion he wanted. “The point is, sometimes you need to do bad things to get good results.”
I had seen that kind of logic get manipulated by desert nomads as ignorant as any redneck and I had seen the piles of corpses that resulted. But rather than try to explain that I replied, “Or you could just mollify his ambitions a bit and prevent him from turning into a monster.”
“Mollify? Fancy words like that, no wonder you think you’re so smart.”
“I had a lot of time to read in Capanne.”
“And unless you want to go back you’ll help me figure out what the beef is between Mitnick and Sartre. I can’t have them fighting each other right now.”
Tired of trying to be subtle, I reach for the obvious conclusion. “If Mitnick’s Russian mob –“
“Belarusian.”
That was the first useful thing Atwell said in the conversation and it gave me pause. After a moment I continued, “If he’s not Corsican and Sartre treated him like that, it means he thinks Mitnick is moving in on this territory.” I stared out the windshield. “There. Mystery solved.” A part of me wondered if Mitnick knew about my reporting to Atwell and my relationship with Sartre. It might explain why he had pointed the voyous in my direction.
Atwell’s growing impatience translated into a jackal’s grin. “If that’s the case, I want details so we can make this go away.”
“You’re such good friends with these guys, why don’t you ask them?”
“Because I’m telling you.”
I faced Atwell to let him know I was taking him seriously. “OK.” Satisfied, Atwell gestured towards the passenger door, letting me know I was dismissed.
As I moved to exit the car, Atwell added something as if it were meant to be an afterthought. “Sophie has been around asking questions. Any idea what that’s about?”
“None.” My tone was flat enough that I doubted he could detect the lie.
But he might have, ‘cause he chose to bait me with, “Well, she’s been sucking cock down at ANTS.” Still turned away from him I could feel more than see his smile. “I thought you might want to know about that.”
Before Europe, before Sophie, when Cheryl was alive and we had medical bills to pay, I had worked for a man named Castardi, doing collections and learning an entirely different kind of violence than the Marine Corp had taught me. That experience, its most intense moments often held in spaces like this one, allowed me to do some quick and angry math in the dark, narrow alley. At this time of night, in this part of town, chances were good no one had seen me in the car with Atwell. In the contained space of the Citroen I could kill him without too much noise and disappear. Anyone who did see me probably wouldn’t be the type to go to the cops.
Either way, though, without Atwell, I’d be a fugitive, and Sophie could end up on her own. So instead of murdering the opportunistic weasel I just said, “Now who’s a funny guy?”
Atwell guffawed and banged on the steering wheel. “I just love fucking with you.”
Feeling the first light of the coming day begin to glow around the city I smiled and told him, “Glad to be of service.” Then I stepped out and closed the car door.
Watching the sedan trundle down the alley I wondered about how Sophie had become acquainted with Atwell. And even though I tried to keep my mind away from it I wondered how she had convinced him to spring me from prison. On a rational level I knew that these questions were what his comment was designed to provoke. The fact that I was letting it work only made me angrier.
Read the next chapter here.
Read the previous chapter here.
See the author’s published work here.
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