I had a limited time in which to make some decisions – barring freezing conditions, corpses start to stink within a few hours. While the spring weather still kept the tenement relatively cool, the pimp wouldn’t last long.

Regardless of this knowledge, I sat on the couch and watched the body, trying to get the useless and countervailing voices in my head under control. Panic had set himself down in several sections of my brain, alternatively begging the pimp to get up or screaming at me that I had to do something now. I tried to ignore that voice to paw through my options, but I probably spent more time sitting on the couch, breathing deeply in and out of my nose, trying to regain focus.

I didn’t have to ask what had happened – the path of destruction through the apartment laid that out. Jardin had come to speak with Sophie (or maybe never left) and the pimp had either followed her back or leaned on one of the other girls for a location. He had shown up, angry and seeking recompense for his wounded pride and wanted a rematch with Sophie. Surprise had given him a temporary upper hand, wrecking what appeared to be most of our worldly possessions, only to realize he had made some wild miscalculations in regard to his own and Sophie’s abilities. Now he was dead on top of our flattened coffee table.

This was the result of Sophie’s actions, so I thought about calling Alon. He liked Sophie, after all. That was a no-go, though; being charmed by a woman was quite another thing from being willing to transport a corpse for her. And if he got a peek at the body he might panic. I considered trying to get a car from the casino, but most of the autos were operated by services, not the house itself. Hell, I even thought about calling Atwell, but decided doing that might end up with two bodies that needed hiding.

It might have been fatigue affecting my mental processes, but after a time I decided to change the body from a liability into an asset. The pimp might not have been anyone important in life, but he could cause trouble in death.

I left Sophie with instructions to find something to wrap the corpse in. I wasn’t hungry for breakfast, but I headed to Simon’s anyway. There was a small mid-morning crowd there which kicked up my agitation, as if I had the pimp in my pocket and everyone could smell him on me. I had to reassure myself that even if someone saw me and remembered me, it wouldn’t matter. I was just another customer.

I walked past Simon who was taking an order from a couple with the crumpled clothes and bleary eyes of those who have been out all night. A glance at the back mirror showed me more of the same in the goon who had just stumbled in. I gripped the umbrella tightly and went to the bar to sit and wait, trying my best to appear as if I were just very anxious for my morning’s first coffee.

I must have done a pretty good job of it as Simon set an espresso in front of me without me asking for it. “Petit déjeuner?” he asked while keeping an eye on his morning crowd.

I shook my head and replied, “Mobile?” I don’t know why it came out as a question, maybe some part of me afraid Simon had lost it or thrown it away. The question got his attention, though, and caused him to give me an appraising stare. I met his gaze and, after a moment, he nodded.

Wherever he was keeping it couldn’t have been far because he returned a moment later holding the black flip-phone in his hand. He set it down on the counter, across from my coffee, and walked away to tend to his other duties as if he had just forgotten it there.

I curled my fist around it and said, “Et je reviens,” even though I doubted he was still listening. I headed out the back. I swept around the bar, following the black and white tiles that crawled down from it to form the floor that led through the gray pots and silver cabinets of the kitchen. I found a small door at the back where deliveries came in and trash went out. It let out into an alley that I was satisfied was narrow enough that I couldn’t be seen without seeing.

I called the only number the phone had been used for, trying to shake the tension out of my shoulders and voice. I found myself pacing through the alley’s Old World filth, so compact and tidy compared to an America I hadn’t seen in years. A part of me suddenly very much wanted to be some place I had once called home.

The phone rang and rang until I was worried no one would pick up, panic becoming emboldened until it started clawing through my empty options if no one answered. I hoped that whoever picked up didn’t hear my sudden inhalation of breath.

“Da,” came the same inscrutable voice that invited me to Mitnick’s party. If there were any misconceptions about how much time they wanted to spend on the line it was cleared up with a quick, “What is it?”

Uncertain of the protocols surrounding requests within the Eurasian underworld, I stated quickly, “I need an automobile.”

To read the next chapter, go here.

To read the previous chapter, go here.

See the author’s published work here.

Read More »

“I want know where Cheryl’s buried.”

It was Atwell’s turn to be surprised, blinking in an attempt to find some understanding of my request. The heat in my fists became almost irresistible watching him try to recall who Cheryl was. Her death was as unimportant to him as the flies on the Citroen’s windshield. He confirmed this by repeating, “What?”

I breathed slowly through my nose, then responded, “She was my wife.” That produced a change in Atwell, not of recognition but at least he seemed to grasp the significance. “She died in Venice.” To give him something to hold onto I added, “When I was arrested for helping Sophie with her problem.” Even obliquely referring to Verdicchio caused an image of his face to come up, bug-eyed and tongue out, my hands around his throat. I tried to think of Cheryl, to hear her voice, for her to tell me that she was glad someone like Verdicchio was gone and that now wasn’t the right time for Atwell to join him. It helped a little.

“Right.” As thick as Atwell might be, even he recognized the sensitivity of the subject, at least pretending with his one word response that he knew what I was talking about.

“The police took me away before I could,” I stopped, feeling a catch in my throat. I swallowed, continued with, “have anything done with the body.” Blink, keep going, “I don’t know what was done.” I tried not to think about strangers callously handling Cheryl. Instead I gave my most optimistic claim, “She’s probably in a potter’s field somewhere.”

Like a man in a minefield, Atwell didn’t move. When I didn’t continue he prompted me with, “OK.”

“I want to know where she’s buried.”

I couldn’t tell if this request touched Atwell in some human way or if he had regained his ability to lie now that he didn’t have any need to focus on driving the tiny automobile. Either way he responded like he meant it. “I’ll see what I can do.”

I nodded and got out of the car, letting it bounce. I stretched a bit as Atwell drove away, feeling cramped after having spent so much time in the tiny automobile. I took a deep breath, smelling the sulphur of urine and tang of rotting trash, both of which there was plenty of in L’Ariane. Feeling the pride that comes with the possibility of having maybe accomplished something, I started walking towards Triaite and home.

The entrance to the apartment block was the same as it ever was, the hour such that I landed after any early morning shuffling of tenants. I lurched over the subway tiles and passed the always empty mail slots and opted for the stairs, the long hours in the car producing a desire for exercise. It wasn’t until I hit our floor that I heard the crying.

The sound of weeping was not an uncommon noise in our apartment block. A child’s crying, someone coming off a bender, a wife who was the recipient of a husband’s abuse. But this was different. It stopped me at the top of the stairs and caused me to tune in on it, its quiet stuttering that someone was trying to control, the edge of its hysteria just out of their reach. There was something in its craze that caused me to move towards it cautiously, confirming it was issuing from our door. I grasped the doorknob, twisting it slow and breathing deep to control my rising heartbeat.

I tried to only crack the door open enough to let my bowling ball of a head in for a peek. The entry was in disarray, the wooden pole of my reliable hat rack broken on the floor. Whatever force had done this had dented the wall and torn portions of the already peeling wallpaper. What I could see of the kitchen, Sophie’s normally well-organized domain, was also in ruin, the table flipped over, dishes broken on the floor.

But the crying persisted and I doubt any of the hard boys Sophie and I had been dealing with would be weeping. I stepped inside quickly, opening the door as little as possible, and prepared myself for being wrong in that estimate. I eyed the kitchen as I moved down the short hall, no one there, so I kept moving.

The den was a mess in every way, auditorily, physically, the jagged crying of Jardin on the couch, being comforted by Sophie. Her gentle cooing, always a balm for the soul, was almost a distraction from the dead man on the floor. Lying on top of the smashed remains of the coffee table, broken bits of porcelain scattered about him, I could imagine him arriving at the tenement, interrupting a discussion over coffee between the two women. Somewhere in the back of my mind I wondered how he had tracked them down, but all good predators have their secrets. Whatever his were, they hadn’t been a match for Sophie and the skillet that sat nearby, a rust colored stain on its back.

The pimp wasn’t tall, but had thin, powerful arms, nearly hairless, pale against the black short sleeve shirt he was wearing. He was face down, dark, wiry hair nearly covering up the dent in the back of his skull. There was very little blood, but that was one of the advantages of blunt force trauma. To confirm what I already suspected, I awkwardly bent over the remains of the coffee table to feel his wrist for a pulse. There wasn’t one.

Still kneeling, I looked up at Sophie, who continued to comfort the inconsolable Jardin. She had her arms wrapped around her so I could see Sophie’s face over the other’s shoulder, Jardin’s dark hair sticky with panic sweat. The corner of Sophie’s mouth was bruised. I tried to button down the irrational anger this provoked, rising from some selfish place that didn’t care about Sophie’s compassion for the woman, but only the trouble it had brought our way.

I couldn’t keep it all in, though, and a bit of it escaped with, “What the hell is this?”

Sophie’s eyes narrowed, returning my anger with her own. Challenging me to go further with it she replied, “Practice?”

I retreated by placing my brow in the space between thumb and forefinger, resting all the past night’s fatigue and future worry there. While I paused and tried to think Sophie smoothed out Jardin’s hair and kissed her forehead, comforting her as if she were a child. She then stood, and taking Jardin by the hand, led her to the kitchen, away from the body. When I got up to follow Sophie had sat her down in the room’s one still-standing chair and was making her a cup of tea. I watched her do this until she had placed a warm mug into the other woman’s hands. Jardin’s crying had subsided, but she was pallid, her eyes wide with shock. I flipped the table back over so she had a place to set her mug.

When I was certain she could be left alone I gestured for Sophie to follow me back into the den. We both stood just inside the doorway, not saying anything. After a moment I muttered, “I wish he was smaller.”

To read the next chapter, go here.

To read the previous chapter, go here.

See the author’s published work here.

Read More »

There was a lot of movement to get lost in. Trucks came in, vans went out, cross traffic of people and vehicles went between a giant parking lot for the semis and a central hub of buildings. The structure of the hub was laid out like a forward operating base; a central command structure, facilities for drivers and workers, a refueling station, and a series of storage units for moving goods in and out. I was grateful to see that it didn’t have the associated security, so no one paid us any mind. We watched from behind an empty tractor trailer as the black cars parked in front of warehouse.

Once the cars stopped, one of Sartre’s rooks popped out of the rear auto and approached the lowered window of the Night Governor’s car. There was a hurried discussion, the rook doing little more than nodding. His lack of speech didn’t matter much; I couldn’t read lips, especially in French. They spoke long enough, though, that Atwell asked, “What are they doing here?”

Keeping an eye on Sartre I thought about all the gourmet creations that were served at the casino, the champagne and prime roasts, the shrimp and the oysters. “With everything they move in and out of town, there’s probably a meat locker big enough to hide a body in.”

I felt more than saw Atwell shrug. “They have to keep all that caviar somewhere.”

We stopped speculating when the rook gave a sharp nod and returned to his own car, directing the driver by pointing to the rear of a storage unit. He hopped in and the car pulled around back. Sartre’s cars did a long U-turn and headed out of the transfer hub.

Atwell let the clutch out, prepared to follow Sartre when I said, “Wait.”

“For what? We’re going to lose him.”

I pointed to the warehouse the disappeared car was now behind. “We want the other car.”

In the black of the binocular’s periphery I could feel Atwell glaring at me, my tone too close to command for his liking. “We’re following Sartre.” It sounded like Atwell was jerking on a leash, trying to get a stubborn dog to move.

A part of me considered strangling Atwell right there and stuffing him in the back. This struck me as a place an altercation between men might be ignored. I could take control of the car until I didn’t need it anymore and then drive it, along with his incompetent corpse, into some nice, deep part of the swamp.

Mostly to myself, hearing an echo of Cheryl, I said, “Think this through.” I spoke the rest of the sentence to Atwell, “Sartre isn’t going to move the body himself. He’s sent the other car to do the dirty work.”

Atwell flicked his eyes between me and the quickly disappearing Sartre, his pride and my logic doing battle. These resolved themselves into him pulling on the parking brake. I was glad to see that he wasn’t going to force the situation. He sulked about it, but settled back into his seat, waiting for the rook’s sedan to reappear.

I set the field glasses on the dashboard and kept my eyes on the warehouse. We were there long enough that the car interior began to cool in the early morning and I huddled in my peacoat. Atwell picked up the binoculars and scanned the station, trying to will some kind of action.

Fortunately, before Atwell got too antsy or said something too stupid the black sedan reappeared, pulling around the warehouse and then out onto the road. To my surprise, it took us southwest, back towards the city. We followed and kept on long enough that I began to wonder just how far they were going to take Sergei.

I half-expected them to pull off the road somewhere and act out my fantasy of sinking the body into a bog. Instead we skirted the central highlands that separated the inland and the sea, floating somewhere between the lowland banlieues and the mountain homes, the A8 cutting between them. We began to see buildings again, much further apart, raised up from the swamp on concrete and hard work. Many looked like Moreau’s scooter shop, but on a larger scale; squat cinderblock buildings with flat roofs and minimalist design, worn by time and neglect. I might have guessed it was where the honest work in town got done if it weren’t for the cargo in our pursuit.

Despite their trunk’s passenger and the approaching waking hour, the boys driving Sergei kept their cool, sticking close to the speed limit, headed to where they were going with an intentional patience. I almost felt myself begin to drowse, only kept awake by the tension that they might spot us.

Before they did, though, the car pulled into an old gas station, the service sign missing its ‘I.’ The bog around it was trying its best to reclaim the place, grass growing up through the concrete around its pumps. The lights were on, though, letting us know that despite the cracked sign and fogged glass, the place was still in operation.

I watched through the binoculars as the car idled in front of it until a fat man in a wife-beater stepped out of the front entrance, leaning against the door. The sun was just beginning to lighten the sky, but the operator’s ill-will and hangover could be felt through the binoculars.

Whatever his feelings about Sartre’s rooks showing up, the proprietor spoke with them. The conservation began with him gesturing angrily but one of the rooks said something that gentled him down. Not happily, but with a resignation, wife-beater ended it by making a sweeping gesture towards the rear of the station. The black car disappeared around the back, pulling into the thin and cracked strip of concrete that separated the station from the swamp, out of sight from the road.

For whatever reason, a part of me wanted to tell Atwell to pull up to the station to refill what was surely the parched tank of the Citroen. Instead, taking the binoculars from my face I said, “Let’s go.”

Atwell only hesitated a moment then said, “Yeah,” in a tone that suggested it was his idea. He pulled the car around back towards the city, turning his lights back on when we were out of sight.

It was a long, quiet drive back towards town. Driving out of the bog, Atwell said, “Well that certainly was interesting.” I considered responding with a, “You’re welcome,” but I was too tired in that moment. Instead I just nodded off until Atwell woke me with a “You’re here.”

Rubbing the sleep out of my eyes I caught a street sign and realized we were in L’Ariane. It was a tough neighborhood, streets empty of the typical early morning commuters, only the occasional bit of trash and late-night straggler blowing in the wind.

I glanced over at the slab of concrete that was the public housing we were parked in front of – it was the place Atwell had put Sophie and I up in when we first came to the city. I had moved us three times since then. I was glad to see Atwell still thought we bedded down there. Despite the flashes of competence that he had displayed on this night, him dropping me off there was just confirmation of his laziness.

I straightened up and reached for the door handle. Before I opened it, though, something struck me. I rotated my bulk in the car’s small interior, causing it to wobble on its axis a bit as I faced Atwell. “The gas station is a pretty useful piece of information.”

Atwell shrugged, staring down the gray street, reseting to his typical feigned indifference, only the slightest bit of his impatience showing through. “Could be.” Now get out of the car – those words hung unsaid between us.

“And you wouldn’t have found that without me. Which is why you brought me here.” I kept my eyes on him instead of the apartment block, indicating I wasn’t speaking of the current location. “To be useful to you.” I paused, then added, “For national security.”

Atwell looked at me then, some switch flipping inside of him, demeanor moving from feigned indifference to a condescending approval, little more than someone bending down to pet a small dog on the head. “You did good work tonight. Uncle Sam would be proud.”

With those words he sounded like a lieutenant I remembered from Basra, a twisty piece of ‘Semper I’ who could get men killed and wonder why it was their fault. With that I felt my fists heat and my feet burn. I managed not to fight or flight with a, “Thanks.” I almost sounded convincing to myself. I continued with, “When this is over and settled, there’s something I’d like from you.”

Atwell leaned his weight against the driver’s side door, not so much trying to put distance between us but to adjust for evaluation. He produced a cryptic smile, some part of him trying to predict what I wanted and how to best get out of it. I could almost see him mentally shuffling through the usual bribes he might hand out to informants, snitches, and dregs. He probably thought I wanted money or freedom, neither of which he’d likely produce. He surprised me, though, by asking a blunt, “What?”

“I want know where Cheryl’s buried.”

To read the next chapter, go here.

To read the previous chapter, go here.

See the author’s published work here.

Read More »