Echo of War

7

Paris

Whether by choice or by assignment Tanner didn’t know, but Susanna Vetsch had chosen to live in Paris’s worst neighborhood. Called the Pigalle, it was located in the Montmartre quarter, north of Rue de Provence and south of Boulevard de Clichy. Though safer than it once was, the Pigalle was still considered the city’s red light district, with block after block of burlesque clubs, sex shops, and heavily made-up — and often heavily medicated—putain only too happy to service customers in the Pigalle’s warren of shadowed alleys and deep doorways.

However Susanna had come to the Pigalle, the choice did make sense. Not only was it the home of all things carnal, but the Pigalle also boasted the city’s highest rates in street narcotics traffic, strong-arm robberies, burglaries, sexual assaults, and gang violence. If Susanna had been trying to submerge herself in the underworld of Paris, this was the best place to do it.

As dusk settled over the city, Tanner and Cahil left the St. Beuve and boarded the 13 Metro at the Sevres Babylone exchange and rode it north across the Seine to the Gare St. Lazare exchange, where they got off. They were at the southern edge of the Pigalle and Tanner wanted to walk the area as evening fell. Nothing spoke better of a neighborhood’s subculture than how its character changed from day to night.

They walked up Rue St. Lazare to Square de la Trinite then turned north onto Rue Blanche. One by one the streetlights began to flicker on, casting the sidewalks in pale yellow light. Garish neon signs above the clubs and taverns glowed to life. The apartment buildings were tall and narrow, looming over narrow sidewalks and blackened doorways. The alleys were dark slits between the buildings, most no wider than a man’s shoulders. Trash and empty bottles littered the gutters. Echoing up and down the streets, voices called to one another, mostly in French but with a smattering of Arabic, Chinese, and English thrown in.

As Tanner’s eyes adjusted he could see movement in the darkness of the alley two figures joined together, pressed against the brick; the scuffed tip of a gold sequined boot. From behind the glowing dot of a cigarette a voice called, “Veut quelques-uns?” Want someone?

“Je n’ai pas envie,” Tanner called back and kept walking.

“What’d she want?” Cahil asked.

“I’m not sure she was a she.”

“What did it want?”

“I think it liked the cut of your jib.”

Cahil grimaced. “Oh, man.”

Tanner chuckled.

As they turned right onto Rue Pigalle proper, a half dozen smiling and waving Gypsy teenagers skipped across the street toward them. “Don’t let them put their hands on you,” Tanner whispered to Cahil. “They’re the best pickpockets in Europe.”

“Allo, allo,” one of the teenagers called.

“Four le camp!” Cahil growled at them. “Casse toi!” Beat it! Piss off!

The group stopped in its tracks, was silent for a moment, then turned and trotted back across the street. Tanner glanced at Bear in surprise. “Been practicing, I see.”

“Only the vulgar stuff.”

The street began curving upward. Here the streetlights were farther apart At the edges of each pool of light Tanner could see figures in huddled discussion; hands would come together then part, and the figures would go their separate ways — money into one hand, drugs into the other.

“Notice the taxis?” Cahil said.

“You mean that there are none?”

“Right.”

Regardless of the country, taxis are often a bellwether of dangerous neighborhoods. Tanner recalled seeing a line of five or six taxis sitting along Rue St. Lazare. Evidently, if residents of the Pigalle wanted a ride, they had to walk to the frontier to find one. “Haven’t seen any gendarmes, either.”

“You know,” Bear mused, “you always take me to the nicest places.”

“I do my best.”

Now in the heart of the Pigalle, they turned onto Rue Blausier, the block on which Susanna’s apartment was located. The building facades were painted in shades of sun-faded pastels and covered in graffiti, most of which Tanner couldn’t decipher.

“Gang sign,” Cahil said. “Last year I ran across a report from the Renseignements Generaux — the gendarmie’s intell division. Seems the ETA and the FLNC have been moving north. Looks like we’ve found their new stomping grounds.”

The ETA was the Spanish acronym for the Basque Separatist Party, a terrorist group that generally operated in southern France and northern Spain. The FLNC, or the National Front for the Liberation of Corsica, also operated in southern France and had gone in recent years from bombing government buildings, banks, and military installations to assassinating French officials in Corsica.

“Christ, Briggs, what the hell was she doing here?”

“Her job.” Tanner replied. With every step they were slipping deeper into the world in which Susanna had chosen to live, and with every step Briggs could feel the dull ache in his chest expand a little more. Perhaps it was best he’d never had children, he decided. To protect them from the dangers of the world, he might have been tempted to lock them in their bedrooms. Of course, there’d come the point when you had to let go, but how could that be anything but gut-wrenching?

Briggs looked sideways at Cahil. “I don’t know how you do it, Bear.”

“For one thing, my girls aren’t dating until they’re thirty-five.”

Tanner laughed. “Does Maggie know that?”

“We’re debating it.”

They reached Susanna’s apartment building. Eight stories tall and no wider than two car lengths, it was painted a robin’s egg blue; in places the plaster and brick had been badly patched and repainted in dark blue. They looked like scabs, Tanner decided. An ancient Citroen sat listing at the curb, its wheels missing, one axle perched on the curb.

“You see him?” Tanner murmured.

“Yep. Ugly fella.”

Sitting on a stool just inside the apartment’s foyer door was a man with great, sloping shoulders, no neck, and a square head. His oft-broken nose looked like it had been reset with a ball-peen hammer. He was, Tanner assumed, the apartment’s informal doorman/concierge/bouncer. It was common in some of Paris’s seedier neighborhoods for residents to donate a percentage of their rent money toward the upkeep of such gatekeepers.

“Let’s see if we can get an invite,” Tanner said. Across the street a pair of prostitutes had been sizing them up. Tanner nodded at one of them, a mid-forties platinum blonde in a clear plastic miniskirt. Her panties were lime green. She cocked her head and jerked a thumb at her chest. Tanner nodded again and she strolled over.

“Emmener Popaul au cirque?” the woman said.

It took Tanner a few moments to dissect the words and reassemble them. He chuckled. “Mon éléphant est trés particulier du cirque,” he replied.

“What?” Cahil asked.

“She wants to know if I’d like her to take my elephant to the circus.”

“Interesting way of putting it. Popaul is the name of your elephant?”

“Evidently.”

“And Popaul enjoys the circus, does he?”

“She seems to think so,” Tanner said.

“What’d you say?”

“I told her my elephant was rather particular about his outings.”

Bear muttered, “Welcome to the nastiest circus on earth, I’d say.”

“Parlez-vous Anglais?” Tanner asked her.

“Non … attente.” She turned and called across the street to the other woman, “Trixie, venir ici!” Trixie, a redhead in a pair of denim shorts the size of a handkerchief, trotted over. “Anglais,” the first one told her.

“Where’re ya from?” Trixie asked in a Cockney accent.

“Canada,” Cahil replied.

“Dog’s bollocks! Canadians are cheap.”

“We’re different,” Tanner replied.

“Care for a bonk, then?”

“I’d rather talk about it off the street, if you don’t mind.”

“Right.”

Trixie and the other woman, whom Trixie called Sabine, led them to the foyer, muttered something to the gatekeeper, then led them up to the second-floor landing. Trixie pushed through a door and gestured them in. The room was lit by a single hanging bulb. In each corner of the room was a bare mattress. A pair of stained and torn armchairs sat before a coffee table made from stacked bricks and planks.

“What’s your pleasure, gov?” Trixie asked.

“Something tells me you’re not from here.”

“Liverpool. Pay’s better here. What’s your pleasure?”

“Information,” Tanner replied.

“Core love a duck!” Trixie turned to Sabine and fired off a few sentences in French. Tanner caught the phrase “Nancy boys” before Trixie turned back. “Information or shaggin’, you still pay.”

Tanner pulled a hundred-dollar bill from his pocket and held it up. “U.S. okay?”

Quick as a snake, Trixie snatched it from his hand. “Brill! Ask away.”

“We’re looking for a friend of ours — Susanna. She lives on the fourth floor.”

“Suzie? Sure, we know her. She your old lady?”

“Family.”

“Haven’t seen her about for a while.” Trixie translated for Sabine, who shook her head. “Non.”

“When was the last time you saw her?”

“A fortnight or so.”

“Anyone with her?”

Trixie frowned, scratched her head; flakes of dandruff swirled in the glare of the lightbulb. “Not that I recall.” She put the question to Sabine, listened to her answer, then said, “Right … now I remember. There was a bloke we saw around. Tall, off-color skin. Had this one eye, too, like somebody’d taken a blade to the corner.” Trixie used her index finger to pull down the corner of her eye. “You know?”

Tanner nodded. “Does he have a name?”

“Not that I heard. Nom, Sabine?” Sabine shook her head, then fired off a reply. Trixie nodded, then said to Tanner, “Sabine heard them arguing once and thought he sounded German.” Trixie grinned; one of her teeth looked like a lima bean. “Sabine’s an international girl, ya see.”

“I can see that. He sounded German — how? Accent, words, what?”

Trixie listened, then translated, “Words, she says. Curse words. She knows those.”

“Did he drive a car?”

“Didn’t see one. Would’ve noticed that.”

Cahil asked her, “What about the guy downstairs? Would he know anything?”

“René? Worth an ask, I guess.”

“Thanks,” Tanner replied. “Has anyone been in her apartment in the last couple weeks?”

“Couldn’t say for sure. We’re out a lot, ya see. I’ll ask Rene that, too.”

Tanner pulled another bill from his pocket and handed it across. “We’re going to have a look around her place. Do you have any problem with that?”

This time Sabine was quicker than her partner, as she snatched the bill away. Trixie glared at her then said, “Long as you don’t nab off with nothin’.”

“We won’t.”

“Have at it.”

Susanna’s apartment was only slightly more welcoming than Trixie and Sabine’s. The undressed brick walls were painted a bright yellow, which improved the mood of the space, but the furniture was equally sparce and soiled. In the corner was a futon frame and mattress covered in a black comforter. A withered houseplant sat on the windowsill, its stalks drooping down the wall. Tucked against the opposite wall were two cardboard boxes Susanna had obviously been using as a chest of drawers. A side door led into a small kitchenette. Tanner walked through, flipped on the overhead light, and watched as dozens of cockroaches scurried for the baseboards He opened the fridge and found it empty.

“Wow,” Cahil murmured.

“Let’s get started,” Tanner replied.

Fifteen minutes later they were done. The search turned up nothing. If Susanna had disappeared voluntarily she’d taken pains to cover her trail. If she’d been taken, someone had sanitized her apartment. Of course, the apartment’s anonymity may have simply been good tradecraft on her part: Without the trappings of daily life to exploit, anyone digging into her identity would have little to pursue.

Being this careful takes a tremendous amount of mental and emotional energy, and Tanner found himself wondering how Susanna had borne the stress. He’d been in this position before. If you lose your way for even a short while or let your self-discipline waver, the lines between the real you and the character you’re playing begin to blur. Beyond that lay paranoia and depression, and quick on their heels come the mistakes and lapses of judgment that got you killed.

My god, Susanna, where are you? Tanner wondered. “Anything?” he asked Cahil

“Clean as a whistle.”

“Here, too. Let’s go downstairs and check on Trixie.”

Tanner took a final look through the kitchen cupboards, then turned to leave. He stopped. He turned back and opened one of the cupboards. Drawn on the inside of the door in blue ink was what looked like a cartoon dog; beneath it were twelve digits: 774633998127.

Cahil walked into the kitchen and peered at the cupboard. “What’s that?”

Tanner smiled, chuckled. “That’s my girl.”

“What?” Cahil repeated. “It’s a dog.”

“It’s a goat — Susanna’s goat.”

“A goat. Wonderful. What’s that do for us?”

“If we’re lucky,” Tanner replied, “it’s going to tell us where she went.”