To start at the beginning of the story go here.
I pivoted to a direction that would take me to the nearest tram station when Lanzo said, “Wait.”
I turned back to him. Lanzo’s eyes were watery and worried and he looked like the kid that probably used to play in front of his uncle’s motor shop. It gave me a bit more patience than I was expecting, but when he continued not to say anything I asked, “What?”
After a long moment of moving his mouth around like a dying fish he said, “Will they know?”
I shuffled the trench coat and umbrella from under one arm to the other and tried to figure out what he meant. “The Idiots?”
Lanzo corrected me. “Mes hommes.”
Worried that Lanzo was losing his nerve, I found that I had genuine sympathy for his conflict of fraternal loyalty. “You heard it out of their own mouths – they were planning on betraying you and Nika from the beginning. What difference does it make if they know you got the better of them first?”
Lanzo’s eyes drifted down to the sidewalk, his shovel of a nose nearly hiding his uncertainty and shame. I realized that Lanzo knew by absconding with Nika he wouldn’t just be leaving his friends with a bag of trouble, but would be escaping with their best ticket out of poverty. Once you got out beyond the periphérique there weren’t a lot of economic opportunities. Particularly if you had an abundance of skin pigmentation.
“Lanzo,” saying his name directly to him for the first time got his attention. “Your friends are using people as pawns. You. Nika. Me.” I was about to say, “You’re better off without them,” but realized those words had never helped any young person. Instead I said, “She’ll only be safe when you get her away from them.” In some small consideration to his feelings, I added, “I won’t tell them what happens to you and her. That’s all I can promise.”
Lanzo nodded, taking whatever consultation he could from that. I switched the conversation to something more practical. “Tomorrow night? Bring the pistol.”
For the first time, Lanzo grinned at me, closing an eye against the brilliance of the afternoon sun. “Ça ne marche pas.” I blinked as I translated the words, genuinely impressed he had successfully bluffed me with a broken revolver. I let out a short, single, “Huh.”
When the humor of that moment passed, I saw an opportunity and executed on it. “Do you want me to fix it?”
Lanzo blinked, an entirely new possibility entering his world. “Oui.”
“Where is it?”
“My uncle’s.”
I tried to keep my groan from audibly escaping. That was back towards Grenoble, which meant making our way across town again. However, I had wanted to lay my hands on a firearm since the henhouse. “OK. Let’s go.”
Thank God for the tram system. Even as the edges of town had begun to decay with the Financial Crisis and all that had happened after it, the tram system still nearly extended out to the river, making it easy to get near the moto shop. I didn’t let Lanzo drag ass, though, moving at a double-time pace.
Once there, not wanting to deal with Moreau, I sent Lanzo into the shop alone. I waited outside the alley where he had bluffed shooting me.
I waited for a long time, watching what few tourists had made their way out into the town’s outer banks eddy around, either lost or wandering. I gave it more time than I should have, figuring that Lanzo had run into his uncle and the two were having a heart-to-heart. Eventually, though, I lost my patience and made my way to the shop’s back entrance.
The screen door that I had banged through in my chase of Lanzo was pulled askew on its hinges. I tried to remember if I did that on my last visit. I couldn’t recall, so I moved cautiously. I laid the trench coat out of the way but kept the umbrella in hand, using it to push open the shop door.
There was nothing inside but a hot stillness, the air baking from the day’s sun. I waited just inside, hearing nothing, until the faint sound of child crying came back me. Confused, I slowly into the shop.
In the garage, kneeling next to a broken down pile of scooters, Lanzo faced the motley heap of metal and shook with sobs. The scooters themselves were spread out like the rings of an impact crater, Moreau’s body in the middle. His head was darkened with blood and bruises. The rest of the shop was in disarray; tools, electric cords, and scrap metal thrown about the place.
The only sound in the shop was coming from Lanzo, hiccups of uncontrolled weeping pulled out of him by the sight of his broken uncle. Uncertain what to do, I quickly made my way through the garage to confirm we were alone. Whoever had killed Moreau was, for better or worse, not in the shop anymore.
I approached Lanzo from behind, examining the room as I did. Moreau wasn’t restrained, a lug wrench not far from his grasp. Someone had shown up at his shop looking for something and Moreau hadn’t taken kindly to the avenue of questioning. He hadn’t gone down without a fight, though – I suspected not all the blood on the floor was his. From what little I had known about the man, that wasn’t a surprise.
Certain the questions Moreau’s attackers asked had involved one of us I bent down to take Lanzo by the elbow. “We have to go.”
Lanzo threw off my hand and continued to cry, unable to process his loss or that we might still be in danger. In an attempt to reach him I whispered, “Whoever did this still might be here.” Or, as unlikely as it might be in this neighborhood, someone might have seen something suspicious and called the police. Either way, we didn’t want to be there.
Lanzo latched onto those words, though, and his eyes flew open, red rage. “Why?”
What little I knew about Moreau ran through my mind, thinking about the whispers from him and Sartre that had hinted at a relationship, remembering Whip and Brick following me to the shop. Both of these provided a number of reasons someone might have killed Moreau, none of them his fault. “I don’t know. But we can’t find out if the police show.”
Eyes laced with bloodshot madness, Lanzo jumped up from the corpse and ran upstairs. Uncertain of what he was capable of in this state I followed, slow enough that by the time I got to the bottom of the stairs Lanzo was headed back down. He breathed heavily, showing me the heavy black revolver.
I reached out to take it but he snatched it away, the violence in his eyes making me glad the pistol wasn’t functional. I kept my own anger from rising in response to his and only said, “What are you going to do with it?”
The question landed on Lanzo, deflating him till he lowered himself to the stairs. I laid a hand on his shoulder in an imitation of comfort. With the other hand, I slipped the revolver away from him. I let a few moments pass, then reminded him that we had to go. Guiding Lanzo by the shoulder, we moved towards the exit.
On the way out I picked up the trench coat again and wrapped the revolver in it, juggling this while moving Lanzo along. I pushed him the opposite way we had come, not wanting anyone who might be watching the opportunity to see us twice.
I hustled Lanzo down the back alleys for as long as I could, staying off the streets. I was getting a little too accustom to fleeing murder scenes.
To read the previous chapter, go here.
To read a polished and published prequel to this story go here.
Related Posts
The Persuader Next Post:
The Commencement
