A Twist of Orchids (11 page)

“I’m looking for someone named Kazim Ismet. Rides a red Honda Bol d’Or. You seen him around?”

“
Négatif.
”

“But you know him?”

“
Négatif.
”

“You know anyone who does?”

“
Négatif.
” Without ever looking up, the youth continued to bind the front end of his skateboard, the laminations of which were coming apart, with the string.

“Can’t you say anything but
négatif?
And anyway, shouldn’t you be wearing a helmet?”

“Get lost.”

Julian strolled around the cathedral. There was a little garden with leafless trees, grotesquely pollarded, on the south side. It was empty except for an old man and a dog. A cold wind whipped the man’s coat and flattened his trousers against bony shanks as he waited for his dog to do its business. The dog, a terrier of some kind, sniffed around the base of a bronze cannon that pointed over the garden parapet in the direction of the river. Then it lifted its leg against the cement mount.

There were a number of cafés and bars in the streets surrounding the cathedral. One, on the corner of Rue Salinière, advertised parimutuel betting and snacks. Its windows were opaque with condensation and plastered with notices of snooker competitions. Julian found the place full of men who sat or stood staring up at a television showing a rugby match in progress. Toulouse against Biarritz. The air was hazy with cigarette smoke, but the warmth from the radiators and the close
press of people was welcoming. As Julian made his way to the counter, the room erupted in groans. Toulouse had missed a try. Julian ordered a coffee. He asked the woman serving if she knew Kazim Ismet.

“What’s he look like?”

Julian described him as best he could, extrapolating from the school photo and Betul’s information. “Rides a red Honda.”

The woman shook her head and called the question down to a man drying glasses at the other end of the counter, who also shook his head.

A successful try for Toulouse brought a roar of approval from the crowd. Julian looked around him. He noticed now what he had failed to see when he had entered. The patrons were men in their middle age and or older, intent on one thing: rugby. Not the kind of people who hung around or wanted to hang around with a Turkish tearaway. He finished his coffee and left.

The café a few doors down, Le Select, was not so crowded but attracted a younger, rougher-looking clientele. The television on the wall was also tuned to the rugby game. Men in denim and leather were clustered around the bar looking up at the screen. A thin fellow with the walleyed look of a bolting mule hung around the edge of the group. Julian pushed between unobliging bodies to the bar.

“
Café-crème.
”

When the bartender brought it, Julian put down five euros, told the man to keep the change, leaned across, and said in a conspiratorial tone, “I’m looking for Kazim. You seen him lately?”

“Kazim who?” The bartender, a big, bald fellow, didn’t bother lowering his voice.

“Ismet. Young, slim, dark curly hair—”

“Buddy, they all look like that,” said the other enigmatically. He gave Julian a baleful glare and moved away.

“What about you?” Julian asked two men who stood immediately next to him drinking pastis and who seemed openly interested in his inquiry. “Kazim Ismet. Turkish fellow. Rides a red Honda?”

“Why d’you want to know?” asked the one nearest him, a fellow with the hulking stance of a wrestler and small, mean eyes.

“Let’s just say I need to talk to him.”

“About what?” sneered the other. This one had very bad teeth and wore a row of signet rings like a knuckle-duster on his right hand.

“Business.”

The first man fixed Julian with a hard stare that made him decide not to give out his card. Instead he scrawled a number on the back of a coaster advertising Kronenbourg beer and left it on the bar. “Just tell him to call me. It could be worth his while.”

Neither man touched the coaster. Wordlessly they turned back to their pastis.

After a few more unsuccessful attempts in other cafés and bars, Julian gave up. Maybe his detecting skills, or his detecting persona, needed developing after all. He had reached the conclusion that Kazim, wherever he was, was not going to be found today. Nor was the Ismets’ son going to be as easy to track down as Julian had hoped. But his time had not been entirely wasted. He had discovered that the only people who knew Kazim looked like the wrong sort, and they weren’t prepared to talk. So why were they being so secretive? Whatever Kazim was up to, Julian was pretty sure the lad wasn’t on the side of the angels. How much, he wondered, did a Honda Bol d’Or cost, and how did the son of Turkish immigrant shopkeepers afford such a toy?

He became aware that someone was following him as he made his way down Rue Denfert-Rochereau. In the Place Daumesnil he paused to stare into a shop window. So did his
follower, a man, that much he could make out. After a minute or two of intense study of a display of women’s lingerie, Julian began to feel conspicuous. Too bad he didn’t smoke. It would have been a natural thing to fumble in his pockets for cigarettes, take his time lighting up. He could pretend to shelter his match from the wind and use the moment to turn around, get a look at his follower. Private investigators did that kind of thing. As it was, he felt obliged to move on. So did the man behind him.

Julian strolled slowly across the
place.
He had already decided against returning to the van by way of the narrow, deserted alleys of the old town. It was mid-afternoon, broad daylight, but he preferred to stay where there were people about. He took Avenue Daumesnil all the way to the bottom and then turned left onto Boulevard Georges Saumande. The street was like a wind tunnel. He zipped up his parka. The River Isle running below him looked choppy and cold.

A quick look told Julian that his follower was still there. The other man, who walked with a limp, quickened his pace when he saw Julian opening the door of the Peugeot. Julian counted to twenty, then turned around.

“What do you want?” he demanded.

The man stopped by the rear of the van. Julian recognized the walleyed bloke from Le Select, a sorry, slouching creature who did not inspire fear.

“You were asking about someone named Kazim?” He was extremely twitchy, and he wheezed like a leaky accordion.

“That’s right.”

“What do you want with him?”

Julian frowned. He should be the one asking questions. Instead, it always seemed to go the other way around. Time to get tough. He slammed the van door shut and strode back to
confront Walleyes. Up close, Julian found that he was a good head taller than his tracker. Also that the other man smelled bad.

“Listen, I don’t know who you are, but if you’ve got anything to say, spit it out direct, okay? I’m not in a mood to fool around.”

“No need to get nasty.” The other man took a few stumbling steps back and wiped his nose on a sleeve streaked with mucus. His hands, Julian noticed, were shaking. “Maybe I can help you. Maybe I know where this Kazim hangs out.”

“I’m listening.”

“It’ll cost.”

“Who are you?”

“Freddy. Everybody around here knows me as Freddy.”

“Well, Freddy, you come up with Kazim for me and I’ll talk money. Nothing up front. Got that?”

Freddy looked sulky. “I could do with thirty. Say, twenty.”

“I said nothing up front. You deliver, and I’ll make it worth your while. I’ll give you a number—”

Julian had started to dig out pen and paper when Freddy, with a greasy smile, showed him the Kronenbourg coaster he had palmed off the Select bar.

“You gave them my cellphone number?” Mara stared at him in disbelief.

“Oh, Freddy probably had it off those two before they even had a chance to look at it.” Julian opened a bottle of red and set it aside to breathe.

“I’m reassured.”

“You can trace a land line. I didn’t want that lot finding out where we live.”

“You can do reverse search with a cellphone number, too. So now I’m going to get death threats on my
portable?
”

“Er—I don’t think it’ll come to that.”

“It had better not.”

She moved to the stove, driving the dogs before her. They skittered away and regrouped immediately around her. She emptied some kind of powder from a foil pouch into a pot of something liquid and brought the mixture to the boil. As it thickened, it took on the appearance of a brown sauce.

“This has to simmer”—she broke off to read the cooking instructions on the back of the pouch—“for a couple more minutes.”

Julian looked about him and sniffed. Something was cooking, but he couldn’t tell what. Something she had shoved into the oven the minute he had walked in the door. When he had asked what was for dinner, she had acted rather mysterious.

“So,” he went on, “to cut a long story short, I had no luck running Kazim to earth. And I don’t know what he’s up to, but it seems to me he mixes with some pretty dodgy company.”

“Probably selling drugs. Ecstasy. That’s what all the kids are doing nowadays.”

He supposed she was right. He took glasses down from the cupboard and carried them and the wine out to the dining room. When he gathered up cutlery to set the table, she said, “Just forks.”

He hung about watching her, running through in his mind the kinds of things one ate only with forks. She cut the fire under the brown sauce and turned her attention to tossing a simple salad in walnut oil and vinegar. Ten minutes later, she opened the oven door and pulled out a tray of golden-brown potatoes cut into strips.

“Ta-da!
Frites
the easy way,” she announced. “Frozen, pre-cut, pre-seasoned. Twenty minutes in the oven. Dead simple.”

“Ah,” he said, very little enlightened. He wondered what else came with them. Apart from the salad and the sauce, there appeared to be nothing else.

Now she shoveled the sizzling potatoes into two large bowls, sprinkled handfuls of what looked like wet cheese bits on top, and poured on the sauce.

“Hmm,” he said cautiously. “Chips au gratin and gravy?”

She shook her head. “Poutine. The ultimate in comfort food, Quebec style.”

“Poutine?”

“Fries and cheese curds with
sauce velouté.
I had a hard time finding really fresh curds. Back home we say you know the curds are fresh if they make your teeth squeak. I also found the sauce packaged. You have to let it sit a minute to give everything a chance to sort of soak in. Bring the salad, will you?”

She carried the bowls into the dining room and they sat down. Jazz and Bismuth settled themselves strategically beside their chairs.

“Well, this is a first,” said Julian, gazing doubtfully at the rather soggy-looking mixture before him. When he tried it, however, he found it surprisingly good, in that gut-level, satisfying way that only a high octane mix of hot starch, cholesterol, and salty seasoning can be. As she had said, comfort food.

“What I don’t get,” he said after a few moments of appreciative eating—she was right, the curds did make his teeth squeak—“is why everyone is being so bloody secretive about Kazim. Nadia wasn’t prepared to say anything, and the English kid, Peter, I’m sure led me a wild goose chase just for a handout of ten euros. Surely someone selling Ecstasy isn’t such a big affair?”

“Well, it
is
illegal.”

“They probably thought I was a narc.” He grinned at the thought.

Mara stopped chewing. “Don’t say that.” She looked at him anxiously and added, “You know what happened to the other one.”

•

Freddy tried to bum the use of a cellphone, but no one would trust him with anything that was not nailed down. Finally, he put through his call on one of France’s last remaining coin pay phones. The phone was situated at the end of the old-fashioned zinc counter in the Café de Paris. Toulouse had won, and the place was crowded and noisy with topers. He had to shout to be understood as well as plug his free ear with a finger in order to hear. The fact that he was cramping and shaking badly did not make the conversation any easier.

“I said, he’s looking for your boy. Tall, skinny
anglais.
No, man, he didn’t introduce himself, but I got a phone number and a license plate. Peugeot van. White. What? Shit, man, I don’t
know. He didn’t tell me.” Freddy’s cramps, coming in rapid waves, were nearly doubling him over. He clutched the edge of the counter for support, fought off a rush of nausea, and realized that he was about to mess his pants. Desperately, he broke in: “Look, I got a name. It’s yours for a couple of
balles.
It’s urgent, man. No, for crap’s sake, I can’t wait.” A moment later he closed his eyes. “Okay. Okay. I’ll be there. But hurry.”

•

The Ton, surrounded by asparagus ferns and hostas, was playing toesies in the king-sized Jacuzzi with Lydia. A floating tray between them held a mini-bar and an array of health drinks. The phone rang. Lydia stood up, lowering the water level considerably. Full body streaming, she reached for the phone on a nearby wicker stand, flipped it open, punched a button, and listened.

“It’s Serge.” Lydia passed the phone across.

“Yeah, what?” barked the Ton.

“I’ve just talked to Freddy. He knows who our boy is. Kid named Kazim Ismet.”

The Ton wiped moisture from his chin. “You think he’s playing straight? The little
con
would say anything for a fix.”

“He seemed sincere.”

The Ton laughed. “Sincerely in deep shit.”

“There’s something more,” said Serge. “Someone else is on Kazim’s tail.”

Ton-and-a-Half frowned. “A narc?”

“Freddy doesn’t know. Said he was a tall, skinny guy. English. Freddy got a phone number and a car plate.”

“Okay. Find out who this
anglais
is, but go easy until we know what we’re dealing with.”

“Right,” said Serge.

“The trouble with fighting crime,” complained Albert, “is you’ve got to do it everywhere at the same damned time.”

Laurent sighed in agreement.