Aftershock (11 page)

“His family still have the house?”

“That’s a good question. Should I find out?”

“Yeah. Please.”

She sat there, like a beautiful bird on a tree branch. Not impatient, but ready to move if she had to.

“Those friends of yours. The ones who we buy the flowers from?”

“Yes …?”

“I need a car, Dolly. It can’t be ours. And if I’m stopped driving it, it has to have real papers. Not only that, whoever actually owns it has to tell the cops I’m driving it with their permission. Borrowed it for a few days, or something like that.”

“What makes you think they’d—?”

“It feels to me like you’re real friends. And there’s two of them, so maybe we’ve got twice the chance of getting lucky. I know they’ve got some kind of panel truck, but that wouldn’t work—their store name is painted all over it.”

“I’ll ask, Dell. When would you want it?”

I touched one of the red dots on Dolly’s map. A little strip of closed-down stores, right off the highway. When I’d asked her why she’d marked that spot, she told me it was a supermarket, but not one you could see. Behind the closed-down stores, you could buy dope—meth and pills, mostly—and other stuff: unregistered guns, bootleg CDs … just about anything a burglar could snatch.

Then I put my finger on another red dot, much bigger than all the others. Raised my eyebrows.

“That used to be a fast-food place, but it went out of business. Now it’s a day-care center. Fixed up very nicely, and I haven’t heard a wrong word about the people who run it.

“But after dark, the parking lot behind it is a different kind of hangout spot than the others. It’s run by kids—young men, really—who some of the girls think are so cool that they’re willing to pay an admission charge.

“Those … the people I’m talking about, they almost live out
there. At night, I mean. I don’t know what makes them so special, but they have their own thing going. Whatever that is, they don’t mix with anyone else. Not the way skinheads don’t mix with skateboarders, it’s much more than that—nobody in their right mind would just go over to them and ask them to join.”

“So why the big red dot?”

“Like I said, that gang has an admission charge. It’s sex. No girl would get a second look from them unless they knew she’d be willing to … to do whatever. Not like the Lovers’ Lane when that striped truck pulls in—I’ve heard that trick doesn’t always work. There’s been times when a girl just ran away once she realized what the real deal was.

“But
this
place is different. It’s eyes-wide-open. Nobody gets played into coming there. They don’t even give girls a ride. And sex isn’t enough—the girls would have to be willing to do other things, too.

“Nobody just happens to wander into the back of a parking lot where all the lights have been cut down. There’s plenty of parking space right up close to the center during the day. So, if you drive around to the other side, where it’s
always
dark, it’s the same as … well, you know.”

“Yeah. That car, I’d want one as soon as I could get it. If they don’t want to lend one to you, there’s plenty of other ways, but they’d take more time.”

“I’ll be right back,” Dolly said. Meaning, she wanted any call she made to be private. “Why don’t you take Rascal out in the yard?”

S
he came into the backyard in less than ten minutes.

“You can pick up the car tonight.”

“That’s great. Should I leave something for security, or would I be insulting them?”

“You’d be insulting them. But that won’t come up, anyway—I’ll drive you over in our Jeep, then just come back home later.”

“Do you know which one they’ll lend me?”

“No. I didn’t ask. And I think they have others, too. Does it matter?”

“Not really. I mean, I wouldn’t want something that really stood out, but, outside of that …”

“It’ll be fine,” she said, sounding confident. Then she made a soft whistling sound, and Rascal came bounding over to us. She asked him if he wanted to take a ride, and he went half crazy, like he always does when she asks.

T
hey had three cars in their garage. A charcoal Lexus SUV, a red Mini Cooper, and a faded blue Facel Vega coupé that was mostly in pieces.

“That’s a real beauty,” I told them.

“You know what it is?”

“A Facel Vega, right? Can’t be that many of them left in the world.”

“Now you’re
never
going to abandon your project,” the taller one said to his partner. He turned to me. “Are you some kind of car nut, like Martin?”

“No,” I said. “I’ve just seen a car like this before. It looked new, the one I saw, but one of the guys I was with told me what it was. He said it had to be at least fifteen, twenty years old.”

“A fully restored one?” the guy who must be Martin asked me.

“I don’t know. I don’t know much about them. The guy I was with told us it was a French body with an American engine. Very special, very expensive.”

“Where did you see it?”

“Paris.”

“Oh. Well, I guess if you were going to find one in original condition, that would be the place to look.”

“It was a long time ago.”

“I’ll just bet,” he said. “Did you know that Albert Camus died in a Facel Vega?”

I shook my head. What I did know was that some of my comrades developed that
esprit de corps
so deeply that they loved the whole
idea
of a Facel Vega. To them, it represented the best of an era, that postwar period when gangsters ruled Paris. To a legionnaire, they represented true hard men. They walked their own road, and answered to no authority. The more flamboyantly, the better.

Their idol was Mesrine, probably because he shared some of their early experiences: when he was conscripted, he asked to be sent to Algeria, and won medals for valor in battle. But Mesrine’s real specialty was robbing banks, taunting the police, and escaping from prisons. When he was finally killed in a police ambush, he was mourned by many.

Buisson was from an earlier time than Mesrine, but had the same bloodlines. He, too, served in North Africa, in a penal battalion, and also won the honors for bravery in battle. As a gangster, he was known for using Sten guns in holdups, for which they forgave him, because he would drive no car other than a Citroën.

Another critical connection was his breaking his brother out of jail, just as Mesrine had helped comrades escape.

Perhaps the final irony of Buisson’s life was to be guillotined at the same “escape-proof” prison from which Mesrine fled, armed with handguns that must have been smuggled in. How the pistols got inside that prison varied with press accounts, but to legionnaires, the aid must have been supplied by members of the OAS, those
vrais guerriers
who had been betrayed by de Gaulle’s search for a “political solution” in Algeria. As they saw it, the ground there held too much of their comrades’ blood for them to give it up to anyone, ever.

And, to a man, everyone I served with worshiped
la cinéma
. It
was accepted that only the actor Alain Delon could “represent” Mesrine, and that only a special car could possibly capture the flamboyance required. Their exemplar was
Le Samouraï
. I never saw that movie, but I knew that
“Delon préfère la Citroën”
was, to them, proof within proof, as if the movie were looping back around Buisson.

Maybe it seems bizarre to you that men trained to kill would glorify movie stars or cry over an Édith Piaf record. To me, it always made perfect sense. Men who have to leave their feelings behind when they go to war would need a way to reclaim them when they returned.

“Which one would you like?” his partner asked, clearly trying to change the subject.

“Would that one be okay?” I asked, pointing to the Lexus. Even though it was really my only option, I was okay with it. Its SUV configuration would look right at home in places I had to go—it could play off as luxury or menace, depending on what I needed.

“Absolutely,” he said, handing over a key fob. He gave me a business card with a number written on the back. “If you get stopped, tell the police to give us a call. Either one—it’s registered in both our names. The number on the back is my cell. Martin has the same number, but I’m the one who seems to always answer the calls.”

“Thank you,” I said, extending my hand.

“You are more than welcome,” he answered. His grip was a practiced one, under control.

“You’re a sweetheart, Johnny,” Dolly said, kissing him on the cheek.

“After you explained, how could I say no?”

“I didn’t think you would,” she said.

“And I’m—what?—not involved?” the other one said.

“Oh, just stop, Martin!” Dolly said. She kissed him, too. “I’m in time for tea, aren’t I?”

I took my black duffel out of the truck bed, put it on the floor
of the front seat of the Lexus, fired it up. I watched the temp gauge before I put it in gear—I didn’t think Martin would appreciate a cold-start move.

I backed slowly out of their garage, turned carefully, and pulled out very gently.

I
knew Dolly wouldn’t be following behind me, but I kept right near the speed limit anyway. I wasn’t in a hurry.

Normally, I’d start fishing where I’d most expect to get a bite. But the place that was marked off limits to Dolly’s girls might get more action later on, so I tried the supermarket.

Whoever told Dolly that you could buy “anything” at that place had never spent any time in places where “anything” ranged from counterfeit bills to real children.

I parked the Lexus at the edge and just sat there and watched. As near as I could tell, the cars were like signs at a flea market. The only thing that told them apart was their color—every one seemed to be a big-winged, high-gloss front-driver, with deep-tint windows. What they call “tuner cars” on this coast, probably because they were all powered by tiny engines and huge turbochargers with adjustable boosts—that’s how you “tuned” those cars, with a laptop you plugged into the engine.

The car that got the least play was a dull-gray Evo. Same kind of buzz-bomb as the others, but this one was a four-door, with all-wheel drive—a world-class rally racer you could buy right off a showroom floor.

The hand-to-hand marijuana dealers wouldn’t need to check out anyone too close—probably only dealt with the people they knew, anyway. But a firearms merchant would be a different story.

If my watching through the windshield of the Lexus spooked
any of them, I couldn’t see any sign of it. I didn’t see any prowl cars, either.

The small-time dealers had probably reached a détente with the local cops. I guess the lawmen figured they might as well have marijuana traffic all go down in the same place. That way, they could watch it randomly to check the plates of anyone leaving that they might want for something else.

But as I watched, I could see the pattern. It wasn’t one car dealing the marijuana, it was a whole crew. Every time I saw a window come down, it would be followed by a quick headlight flash. Then a guy would get out of one of the other cars, and toss a small packet into the open window on the other side of the dealer’s car.

I figured the state probably had some “personal use” exception, so getting caught with a half-ounce or so wouldn’t draw more than a fine. With enough cars in the chain, they could probably sell off a couple of pounds a night without any real risk.

But “anything” still had to include more than marijuana. And this was an expensive operation, especially in a state where you could buy just about any kind of weapon legally. So either they were moving heavy ordnance, or they were losing money.

Whatever they had going, it was no experiment. Buyers always went to the same car, but the guy with the resupply might come out of any of the others. And that guy would always walk over to the Evo. Sometimes he’d carry a package away, sometimes not.

My night glasses showed me the Evo was slotted between a pair of rust-bucket American sedans. Crash cars. No ATF agent was going to run back to wherever he was parked before the Evo could blast out of there, with the crash cars jamming up the back exit to a dirt road, which split into a dozen others just like it.

On those roads, no federal agent’s car was going to catch that Evo.

I
’m not good with accents, but I can tune my voice to sound like I’m anything from smart to stupid. Or hard to soft, if that’s more useful.

I didn’t study this. I didn’t even think about it until another legionnaire pointed it out for me. You never asked a man where he was from, but some wore it on their sleeves, like chevrons.

I had picked “Jacques Héron” for my
nom de guerre
. “Jacques” was the most common first name I could think of, so even if I slipped it wouldn’t be a long fall.

That’s how I figured “Patrice” wasn’t such a big jump from “Paddy.” He was way older than me—even older than I’d told the recruiter.

“I don’t mind,” he told me one night. It had cooled down a bit, and we were still far enough away from “engagement” to smoke.

“Don’t mind what?”

“This new name I had to pick. Once my time is up, I’ve got a place to go back to. I just needed to be away for a while. Far away. Can’t think of a better place than this one. Not for a man without vast money, anyway.”

“They pay us here.”

“That’s not money, lad. There’s a dozen places around the world where a man could earn a hell of a lot more doing just what we’re doing right now.”

I didn’t say anything. I had learned that, if you just nod to show you’re listening, that’s enough to keep most people talking.

“I miss being home. Like some of the others, maybe. Not all of them, mind. But I left my wife before I even had a bairn of my own. And I left my best mate, too. Mickey, he was like my own blood. We were almost exactly the same age, him and me. We were one and the same—folks called us ‘the Twins’ even when we were tykes.

“Mickey was no ArmaLite expert; he was a street soldier with nothing but a fire-bottle in his hand when they gunned him down. Then they rolled one of those bloody Saracens over him like he was rubbish standing in their way.”