To start at the beginning go here.
“I need an automobile.”
A rough, short laugh came back through the void between the phones, my odds sinking into whatever abyss they floated up from. In a tone that suggested he’d like a date with Irina Shayk, the voice replied, “Why would you need this?”
Paranoia suddenly struck me; even alone in the alley, I was still afraid to mention Sartre by name. “The Frenchmen,” I hoped the euphemism would be understood by whichever Ukrainian I was talking to, “He’s hiding something. I need a car to take me there.” Again, the statement was close enough to the truth that I could make it ring true.
There was a pause and the ruffled noise of a hand covering the phone. I stood and sweated in the cool of the alley until it felt like it might be there till the next ice age. What was probably just a few minutes later the rustling noise returned followed by the voice. “Where and when do you wish this automobile?”
I froze. Being the big idiot that I am, it hadn’t occurred to me that I would have to give up our address. “I can come pick it up?”
“Non,” the voice said, pronouncing the negative in some bastardization of French and Slavic accent. “It will come to you. Where and when?”
I could hang up, try to steal a car or borrow one from the casino. But each of those had their own drawbacks and I had already played my hand with whatever Russian I was speaking with. I intentionally breathed out of my nose again, slowly emptying my lungs until I gave the tenement’s address with my last few ounces of oxygen. “Pull around back,” I added, “away from the street. After nightfall.” I wasn’t exactly sure when that would be, but given the hours I had witnessed lifetime criminals observe, it would be late enough that local foot traffic would be at a minimum.
“Da,” came the reply, then added a condition. “When you are done, go by the cathedral, tomorrow, at noon. The Brigadier wishes to speak with you.” The connection ended.
I blinked at the phone having to sort through everything that was already cluttering my mind in order to make the connection that ‘the brigadier’ was Mitnick. He had never seemed like the standard-issue gangster, but was he ex-military? That didn’t seem right either, but I lost that train of thought in the realization that I had almost completely forgotten about Mitnick’s request to meet.
I closed the phone and stared at its blackness, feeling like the decision I had just made imbued it with its own weight. I considered taking it with me. After all, Mitnick’s people had my address now. However, they didn’t actually know if I lived there and they didn’t know the apartment number. I also wasn’t crazy about carrying a personal tracker, in general. With that in mind I decided to leave the phone with Simon.
I made my way back inside and set the mobile down where Simon had left it, returning to my espresso. While I sipped it, Simon swept back behind the bar and made the phone disappear into his apron with a nonchalance that made me wonder if he had done this kind of thing before. That got me to thinking about how the name of the local plant life, Maquis, was also the name of the French resistance in World War II, and how the Mediterranean coast had been a hub of smuggling since long before the Vichy government.
All of this floated through my mind as I watched Simon move with a smooth professionalism behind the counter, cooking in between taking orders, brewing coffee, tending to customers when absolutely required. For a moment I wished that I could step out of the peacoat and pick up a broom or a pan and get lost in helping him, disappear into this tiny cafe in this tiny spot on the edge of a tiny ocean.
That lasted until I heard Cheryl laughing at me. She had been one of the few people in my life who never been afraid to poke fun at me and her ghost did it then. It played images for me of the conflicts my life’s decisions had thrust me into, from Ramadi to Denver, and she asked me how long I thought I could work here before I found some kind of trouble.
Even her memory could make me laugh. I let out a small chuckle that caught a quick eye from Simon. I tried to give him a reassuring grin that I only mangled before leaving a euro coin for the coffee. He cleaned a glass and pretended not to watch me leave.
There was plenty of time before nightfall, but I rushed back to the tenement anyway. Jardin was gone or squirreled away to whatever hiding place Sophie had stowed her. Sophie herself was cleaning up as best she could, the corpse covered by a Turkish rug that was worn enough that she might have rescued it from a local dumpster. It gave the air around it the slight tinge of a Victorian mystery.
Whatever amusement that might have produced wasn’t enough to smooth the anger under my skin. I headed back into the bedroom without saying anything, hoping my fatigue might win over all the other competing concerns in my mind. I took off my shoes and coat and fell back onto the bed without bothering with anything else.
Broom and dustpan in hand, Sophie took three steps to cover the distance to the bedroom door. “Would you like something to eat?” she asked me in French or Italian. I was too tired to decipher which.
“No,” I replied, rolling over in a childish indication that I didn’t want to speak. I could feel Sophie hovering, sorry for the trouble she had brought, but not sorry enough that she’d apologize for the dead man in the other room.
I breathed out deeply again, feeling the specter of Cheryl poke me in the ribs from what would have been her side of the bed. Letting out a heavy and equally childish sigh, I rolled onto my back and stared at the water-stained ceiling. “A car will be coming tonight. We’ll move the body downstairs and get it into the trunk. I’ll take it and get rid of it.”
There was a long enough pause that I thought Sophie might have left, the only reminder of her presence a slight flutter of her clothes as she pivoted in position, a clear indicator of uncertainty on her part. She selected what was, I’m sure, one of a number of questions on her mind. “Where does the car come from?”
“Mitnick,” I answered. There was a stillness from Sophie that gave me some malformed pleasure in knowing that with that answer I had transferred some of my worries to her.
“This will not cause trouble?” Her voice was small. There was no contrition there, but I could feel her staring out the sepia window towards an uncertain future.
“Maybe,” I shrugged, causing the bed to creak.
“What will you do with him?” I noted she referred to the corpse as a person, not a thing, and some fatigue-deluded part of me wondered what this meant. It wasn’t likely to be guilt, Sophie being Sophie. Now that he was dead and she had spent some time with him, she could probably see him for the imperfect human being that he was. Regret, I had learned, wasn’t the same as guilt.
“I’ll dump it in one of the bogs outside the city.” I don’t know why I lied, but I did.
“You wish that I should come with you?” Eyes closed, I considered that. Her strength would be useful, in both carrying the body and dealing with any trouble that might come our way.
Sophie had been at Mitnick’s, though, and there was the possibility whoever was being sent with the car might recognized her. So I said, “No,” then giving the realities of the situation some thought I added, “but I’ll need your help carrying,” I waved my hand towards the corpse in the other room, “down to the car.”
After a pause, Sophie only replied, “Si,” and went back to sweeping.
I passed in and out of consciousness for a few hours, fitfully trying to get some sleep. Under the circumstances, I think I did any green recruit proud, but the pimp’s ghost and the specter of future troubles kept me awake most of the time. Sophie lay down with me at some point, but most of her time was spent shuffling around the apartment or on the couch and in the company of the dead man.
Death causes everything to let go; all the muscles relax, the involuntary processes that move the body like a bellows cease. The resulting seepage from the pimp made the den smell like a backed up sewer. That, and the slow sinking of the sun got me out of bed.
To read the previous chapter, go here.
To read the next chapter, go here.
See the author’s published work here.
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