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I managed to catch a tram before it began to rain again, hopping off long before I got to the casino. None of the trams went directly from the poorer quarters into the heart of the old city. A chain of tram stations formed a periphérique between the outer banlieue and the luxurious homes, tourist hotels and Promenade of the central city, with its orange roofs and port filled with yachts baking in the sun. Whether you hopped onto another tram or went on foot, it gave the gendarmerie, standing around in body armor and rifles, black as old knights, plenty of time to look over the crowd, trying to pick out the next thief or friend of Tariq’s. I had learned that even my light skin didn’t keep me from scrutiny, the eyes behind masks boring into me as I walked by. I didn’t make eye contact and moved on.
I had been thinking about how long Mitnick’s boys might have been watching me and if they might have seen Atwell pick me up. I decided if they had, the Beard wouldn’t have wanted to talk to me, so I didn’t want to be as clumsy or obvious as Atwell if I could help it.
Walking from the tram station I took a relaxed, circuitous route, sticking to the pedestrian streets as I meandered to the southeast, heading back towards the harbor and promenade that cradled the casino. The bustle of early season tourists made it easier to spot anyone who might have been a tail, most folks moving in solid, direct lines, going from A to B. Instead I took a quick turn here and another there ending up at the cathedral.
A massive Byzantine structure that sat on a Greek Cross plan, the basilica had all the spikes and arches that someone a long time ago had associated with God. I always thought is was some kind of joke to Atwell having the dead drop there. The stone structure didn’t bring up any memories of the catechistic education of my youth, though. Instead its stone towers and onion domes always reminding me of minarets, half evoking the long, lonely call of the muezzin whenever I came into sight of the church.
Whatever the church reminded people of, it drew their attention, so across the street and just around the corner was the perfect place for the dead drop. An old telephone booth stood on the corner, a glass box that looked like something Superman would have changed in, but cracked and stenciled with graffiti, browned like a smoker’s teeth. I took a few moments to chew a piece of gum and dial a fake number, using a dry erase marker to write out the note, simply stating, “Made contact.” Waiting for the husky, automated voice of the phone sex line to pick up and ask for a credit card I doodled on the phone booth’s glass, leaving a tally mark to signal that there was something for pick up. Sticking the gum to the note I slapped it underneath the phone and got out, briskly walking away as a man who’s concluded his business.
I spiraled away from the cathedral, circling back to make sure I was still clean from a tail, then hopped on another tram to the casino. It had begun to rain again before I stepped off, reminding me of the umbrella and to be grateful for it. Relatively dry by the time I got inside, I put on my blazer and headed deeper into the casino’s gray interior, over to the security office.
The office was small, but well-lit, windows high in the walls. Reconstituted wood from the old barn that had once stood in the airfield lined the walls and desk, the color warm and reddish. As the head of the ‘Found Property Office’ at Majorca’s sole airport, Busby had been the purveyor of relief and disappointment for over 15 years, handing travelers back their prized possessions or the news that no thing fitting their description had been found.
It was mostly mundane items, jackets and glasses and briefcases, but he had also been witness to the extraordinary: a bag of glittery stones that surely could have been diamonds; a portfolio of intimate photographs of the famous; a carrier with the baby still in it, the mother so exhausted that anything but her own fatigue had ceased to exist. Busby had treated all as he thought they should be, as prized possessions that surely someone would return for once they discovered their absence.
He had never, though, been left with with a pocketbook that appeared to consist solely of a person’s identify – passport, license, something called a social security card, business cards, photographs, even a birth certificate and marriage license. A valuable treasure trove of materials to prove to the modern world that you are who you claim to be. Busby locked this away in a small safe for such things, certain that the woman who belonged to them would show up, her desperation being replaced with gratitude when she realized her documented self was safe.
Part of Busby, though, couldn’t help but imagine the sandy-haired woman in the pocketbook’s photographs intentionally departing from the airplane without her baggage. He pictured her striding forth, departing without her assemblage of individuality, striding freely into a world made new by her leaving on old one behind.
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I shrugged out of my coat and stepped into the kitchen, opening up the cracked fridge to the chorus of jangling glass from the La Parfait jars that Sophie used for her various projects. Sophie always kept the commissary well stocked.
Using a loaf of pain de mie from on top of the icebox, I made myself a sandwich from the ham and gruyere cheese that I found on the inside. One thing you have to give the French, they know how to make good bread.
I was warming up the sandwich in a skillet when I heard the door open and the impossibly light footsteps of Sophie come in. Sweeping into the kitchen she smiled at me, setting down the bags of fresh vegetables she had acquired from one of the street markets she frequented. Bundled up as she was in a high-neck sweater and jeans, a throw-over knit to keep off the early spring chill, she probably charmed pretty good prices out of most merchants.
A quick kiss on the cheek was followed by a disapproving cluck at my self-serve sandwich. Returning to the bag she used some of its contents to put together a salad with small tomatoes and a vinaigrette. She set this down on the counter next to me, indicating that I was meant to eat it. The sandwich properly warmed I slid it from the skillet onto the top of the salad, grabbed a fork and headed to the couch.
Following me after she had made her own salad with warmed bread, slightly greasy from the cheese of my sandwich, Sophie joined me, looking expectantly at me with patient eyes. I speared a few leafs and shoveled them into my mouth, feeling like a bull eating grass in front of her. Sorting through what was important, I put together what I wanted to say as I chewed, the lightest expectation from Sophie filling the room.
“The driver,” I started after taking a bite of the sandwich. Sophie came to attention. “Didn’t know who the Corsican kid was, but he remembered where he dropped him off.”
“Where was this?”
“His uncle’s place.” I gestured to the apartment’s western wall, covered by a bookshelf with various paperbacks and the children’s books that Sophie had used to help me learn French. “It’s a scooter repair shop. I didn’t get to talk to him too much. Some of Mitnick’s boys showed up.” Sophie stared at me for a moment before I realized I had never actually named him. “Mitnick is the high-roller the Corsican kid mentioned. The Beard.” At having to explain this I realized it felt like a very long time since I had last seen Sophie. This filled me with a desire to pick her up and take her to bed, to lie there with her, to hold her until the world outside just went away. But even something that simple felt like a betrayal to Cheryl and the shame of it stoked a fire in me that made me want to strangle someone.
That fantasy was ground away by Sophie’s sharpened interest, the naming of Mitnick giving her something to focus on. “The one who has the girl?”
“That’s what the Corsican said. So, maybe.” Sensing there was more to it, Sophie waited, taking the lettuce off her fork in minute bites. I brushed sandwich crumbs off my hands and into the salad. “When I asked Mitnick about it, he changed the subject awfully fast though.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out the roll of Euros. “He wants me to keep an eye out in the casino for him.”
As practical as ever, Sophie eyed the bundle of money. I knew from experience she could live happily in poverty but, like most people, she preferred the comforts of life. Which she could easily get from someone like Mitnick, or maybe just some middle class slob, someone she could make happy and would take care of her in turn. Not for the first time that made me wonder what she was doing in a rundown tenement with me and how badly had Verdicchio hurt her. Before I could think on that too long Sophie asked, “Why does he wish this?”
“He’s planning something. Something Sarti isn’t too happy about.” I peeled off a few hundreds and set them on the table. After a moment a thought occurred to me that caused me to peel off a few more hundreds.
“I could visit him,” Sophie suggested, still eyeing the money. For a moment that idea caused a spike in jealousy to shoot through me, even though I had no right to feel that way.
Her eyes had acquired that cold glassiness, though, that turned them into infinite pools. Realizing she wasn’t suggesting some kind of seduction I saw a flash of her with a knife in her hand, walking through a palazzo in Venice covered in blood. I blinked that away and answered, “I think it’s a little early for that yet.”
Sophie returned to Earth, the warmth coming back to her green eyes with an almost imperceptible shake of her head. She smiled at me, the slightest merriment in her expression as if the idea had been ludicrous. “Then what shall we do?”
“Look,” I rotated towards her on the couch, causing it to groan with the shifting weight, “we don’t even know if the girl or this Corsican, this Larenz,” I dropped his name in for Sophie, “need our help. So I think we should find out a bit more before we go visiting anyone.” I emphasized the next to last word, putting it into quotations. In reality I didn’t care – for all I cared about Mitnick and Sarti we could burn them both down and I might even enjoy it. But Sophie might get hurt in the crossfire.
She smiled again, banishing whatever banshee had visited her. “Si,” she agreed. I returned her smile and finished off the salad.
After sweating it out with Mitnick’s boys I needed a shower. The ventilation in the apartment was poor enough that it was so humid I couldn’t towel all the moisture off me. I finished drying myself by standing in my boxers while ironing a few work shirts and slacks, the simple black and white of which reminded me of Simon and his more honest work. Sophie lay on the couch while I did this, ostensibly reading one of her paperbacks (Le Père Goriot), while sneaking the occasional glance my way. I pretended not to notice or that it didn’t do my ego some good.
Heading out the door in one of the freshly pressed outfits with a coat to protect it from the Spring rain, she asked me, “Are you leaving so soon?”
I stopped, looking back at Sophie, who floated in the kitchen doorway. It was enough of an image to make any man want to stay inside. Instead I said, “Yeah. I’ll need to hit the dead drop. Atwell will want to know I made contact with Mitnick.” She closed the short distance between the kitchen and the apartment’s exit. I thought I was about to get a continental kiss good-bye when she handed me an umbrella, placing its handle gently on my shoulder. “You have no hat. Take this.” I felt the weight of it on my shoulder, realizing it was the umbrella we had picked up in Switzerland, a metal cored rod with fiberglass ribs and a stainless steel tip, a shield against the elements or attackers. It reminded me of a nastier version of the truncheon the Corsican’s fat friend had carried.
I was surprised as ever by Sophie’s small gestures of kindness, but it was her sudden proximity that caused my internal temperature to rise. I took the umbrella quickly, mumbled a ‘thank you’ and left.
He erased the word ‘cancer’, backing over it with the repeated, urgent taps on his keyboard. He couldn’t even look at it.
It wasn’t death that bothered him, that becoming nothing that he had witnessed in his patients so many times. There was little to that: you were and then you weren’t.
It was the process that bothered him, how one went about it. And even as he had smoked cigarette after cigarette, sitting in the tiny Chicago office with its linoleum floors and fluorescent lights, his one small vice in tending to the needy, he had hoped for a good death.
Now, though, the prognosis was in, and it promised his worst fear; a lingering death, long and filled with pain. He had cursed the guns that made his job on the Southside a daily struggle. And now he wondered how he would get one.
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I had never asked Simon for a favor or a free meal and wasn’t sure what his reaction would be to this odd request. It had the mildly surprising effect of transforming his disgust for the phone into curiosity. He picked it up and examined it more closely, flipping it over as if their might be some insignia or hidden cypher that could provide him with an explanation.
When
none presented itself he raised an eyebrow, withdrew a cigarillo from his breast pocket and used his free hand to light a match off the bottom of the counter. Touching the flame to the cigar he inhaled deeply, flipping the phone open with his thumb. He watched me for any reaction to this as he exhaled. I stood there, expressionless, until I felt the moment was right to give the slightest of shrugs. He returned the gesture, said, “D’accord,” and placed the phone behind the cafe’s bar.
I thanked him. Not wanting to rush off, I bought an espresso and drank
it standing. Simon started up another conversation about the weather, how the summer was going to be a hot one, only to be interrupted by a customer that was clearly from the States. Tall and
sure of himself, blonde enough that for a moment I thought he might
be Australian, he came in from the outside seemingly just to tell
Simon, “Hey, you can’t smoke in here.” I stared over my
shoulder at him, letting anger cloud my befuddlement, feeling Simon’s
disdain and his exhalation of cigar smoke joined me.
The
blonde scuttled back outside, no more immune to Simon’s scorn than
the average tourist. I went back to my coffee and Simon gave a
chuckle. “What? Does he think an inspector from Social Cohesion
is going to show up here?” He gestured towards the streets outside
his windows, half the storefronts shuddered and covered with
graffiti. I just shrugged again, laughing at the slightly Orwellian
name of the French health department. Thinking I was laughing at his
joke, Simon patted my hand. “You’re the only American I ever
cared for.” I gave him a small, chagrinned smile, suddenly
uncomfortable at having asked him to keep the phone.
Instead
of asking for it back, though, I retreated by draining my cup and
bidding him adieu. With a few hours to go before work I headed back
to the apartment. Dog hair and dust floated across the subway tiles
as I entered, a late afternoon wind moving with me passed the chipped
paint of the doors. Someone, probably not the constantly drunk
superintendent, had closed the broken elevator, maybe even before
anyone had fallen into the shaft. I climbed the stairs.
The apartment was empty. I called Sophie’s name, but my voice just dissipated into the small space, absorbed by so much peeling wallpaper and worn wooden trim. With the afternoon’s events I found that this produced a disquiet in me. But there was no sign of a struggle in the house and if someone had come to take Sophie there would be blood.
