Corsican Death (12 page)

Beg me, Cloris, go on and beg me. …

J
ESUS, THOUGHT BOLT, SOMEBODY
did a job on you, baby. A job and a half.

He was in Cloris Carroll’s small, untidy apartment, sitting in a stuffed yellow-and-pink chair directly across from her, watching her light a cigarette with trembling hands and keep her face turned sideways to him to hide what had been done to her. Dark glasses couldn’t hide all of the bruises, multicolored against her pale skin. Purple, yellow, and ugly red—the bruises were a rainbow of horror, a reminder of what must have been done to the twenty-four-year-old nightclub dancer.

The narc watched her small hand touch her face, saw her draw back from her own touch. What is it, baby? he thought. Teeth, jawbone, what? No matter how many times you see it and try to be cool, you still feel a special pain when it happens to a woman. It had happened to this one in a big way.

Her face wasn’t the worst thing. Her hair. Christ. He’d seen it, a part of it anyway. It was a lovely color, soft platinum, but he saw what the blue kerchief didn’t cover, and it wasn’t very nice. Somebody had cut it off, butchered it, and Bolt knew the hair had gone with the beating and maybe a lot more that she probably didn’t want to remember or talk about.

Using Alain’s name had gotten him in the door. What else would it get him?

Let’s find out. “Who did that to you?” He kept his voice low, speaking in French because she hadn’t said much in French, English, or any other language. She wasn’t much—just a girl with a lot of bad luck who had gotten caught in something too big for her to understand.

“Remy Patek, did he …?” Bolt let the sentence die without finishing it. He didn’t have to. When he said Remy’s name, Clori?’ head had snapped toward him, then turned back to where she had been staring at the floor.

Remy. That meant it had to do with Alain Lonzu. Remy was playing it hard now, trying to find out about Alain and the four million. And Cloris was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It must have cost her a lot.

“Have you heard from Alain’s friends?” Don’t have time to be silently understanding. Less than four days. I’d better have it all together by then or be damn close, else Alain’s liable to run into me and point me out to his big bad brother, the Count.

She shook her head no. She was too tired and burned out inside to resist. That’s why she had opened the door when this man had mentioned Alain’s name. She was too tired and empty inside. She felt sick and strange, and she wished, God how she wished it had all been a bad dream. Alain was mean sometimes, and he hit her, but never, never had he done to her what the Algerian had done.

The Algerian. When he finished, he had put his lips to her ear and whispered, “I’ll be back,
chérie.
I promise I’ll be back.”

The sound of his voice, the warm touch of his lips on her ear. Oh God, how she remembered, and how she hated to remember. These were the kind of men you never told the police about; she knew that. What could the police do now, put her back together again? Make her forget what the Algerian had done to her? Heal her body and her mind?

She turned to look at the American, the man who had said he had met Alain Lonzu in America. “No,” she said in a voice that was so tiny Bolt had to lean forward to hear it.

“Did he say anything to you about his American trip, before he went, I mean?”

“No.”

“I know he has a brother, but suppose he had trouble, suppose Alain had to go somewhere and hide out, does he have friends who would hide him?”

She shrugged, the ash on her forgotten cigarette getting longer. “Girls. His friends are women.” She sighed, then suddenly stiffened with sharp pain and bad memories. Frowning, she began to weep quietly, tears rolling down her face as her chin trembled with her struggle not to weep out loud. Horrible. Oh God, it had been horrible.

Don’t come apart now, baby, thought Bolt. Hang on. “His, uh, his women friends, are they all in Paris?”

She shook her head, tears clinging to her chin, lips pressed tightly together. When she spoke, her voice broke as she forced the words out. “Ro-ome, Gene-neva, London.”

Bolt frowned. The bastard could hide out anywhere. Lonzu was using his cock for a compass. Wherever the four winds blow, Lonzu had grabbed some nookie, and that gave him a hole to crawl into in more ways than one. Shit, why couldn’t Lonzu have been a fag or a priest? Then it would have been a lot easier to track him down.

Bolt shrugged. What the fuck? “Who does he know in London?”

“Gir-girl. Shana Johns. Dancer at a nightclub. Penguin. Penguin Club.”

Screws his ass off, then comes back and tells her about it. A sweetheart. And she puts up with it. True love? Who the fuck knows?

Shana Johns. Well, let’s file that one, thought Bolt. But Alain’s coming to France, not England, right? Right so far. Something started to push its way through a hidden part of Bolt’s mind, when the front doorbell rang and Cloris Carroll swung around as though she had just heard a gunshot.

Bolt said, “Easy, easy. Take it easy. They’re not coming back.” He hoped he was right.

He leaned his head toward the door, signaling her to get up and answer it. Jabbing what was left of the unsmoked cigarette into an ashtray, she stood up, smoothed her white dressing gown down, touched the kerchief on her head, and looked at Bolt. He smiled, winking once and nodding toward the door.

She looked at him for a few seconds longer, then crossed the room quickly, as though if she hesitated she’d decide not to do it. Bolt watched her. If you come from a small town, baby, go back there and marry the boy who owns the gas station. Bright lights and the big city ain’t everything.

She opened the door and her fist went to her mouth and she stepped back, eyes wide, heart in her throat. The hell was on her again.

The Algerian.

Oh God, he was …

Ahmed, smiling, pushed her slowly back into the apartment, eyes on her face and enjoying her fear. She’s scared of me. That’s good, that’s good.

Kicking the door closed behind him, he held up the bag with the champagne. “See,
chérie,
I told you I would come back. And this time I brought you a little present. I …”

Ahmed stopped, freezing in place, eyes flicking to the man sitting quietly and staring at him. Who …?

Bolt didn’t need to know any more. This is the one, the animal who put his Marc on her last night. One of Remy Patek’s boys. Ugly son-of-a-bitch. Swarthy. Algerian, probably. Face looks like somebody jabbed it with a fork forty times. No brains, all muscle, and probably has a piece under that expensive jacket.

I got one, too, but I don’t want to use it. Still, it would be nice to dance on his face for a while. I don’t like apes who lay pain on a woman.

Ahmed, arrogant and strong with the knowledge of who he worked for, asked, “Who are you?” This one didn’t look French, and that scar on his forehead—it made him look like he was a tough guy. American. He looks American, but it’s hard to tell.

“Santa Claus,” said Bolt. “I come once a year.” Fuck you, greaseball. He stood up, getting ready for whatever had to be done.

Ahmed sneered. American. They always thought they were amusing. They weren’t. “Time for you to leave, Santa Claus. Now
.”
Ahmed placed both hands on Cloris’ shoulders, effortlessly moving the small woman to one side.

She’d been pretty once, thought Bolt. A few hours ago she lived in a world she knew and understood. Right now she’s got less than a handful of shit, and lover here, he’s come back for seconds.

Ahmed unbuttoned his jacket. His gun, a Luger, was in a shoulder holster on his left side, and he wanted to be able to get it in a hurry. American wise guy. If Ahmed didn’t have other things on his mind, he’d work this guy over just for the fun of it. Just for the fun of it.

Bolt shrugged, both hands palms-up in resignation and polite defeat. “Guess you’re right. I’ve run out of toys anyway.”

He smiled at Cloris—”Pleasure to have met you”—and his eyes still on her, walked slowly toward the door.

Cloris held her breath, her mind screaming for him not to go, not to leave her alone with the Algerian. Sensing her reaction, Ahmed roughly grabbed her arm, gripping it hard and painfully, whispering, “I told you I would return,
chérie,
didn’t I?”

The American brushed by Ahmed, who ignored him, his eyes still on Cloris.

Spinning around, Bolt faced Ahmed’s back and swung hard, driving the barrel of the .45 into the Algerian’s skull, sending pain and swift blackness racing across his brain. Ahmed, folding at the knees, went down, dropping the champagne on the floor, falling forward and spinning, landing on his left side.

Tucking the .45 back into his belt, Bolt looked down at the unconscious man. Yeah, that felt good. It ain’t much, but it’s all I can give you, Cloris. He turned to her. “You have friends out of town?”

She nodded, still frightened but forcing herself to speak. It was all happening so fast. This American and Ahmed, and the American had …

“Pack a bag and go stay with them for a while, a week at least.” Reaching over, Bolt took out Ahmed’s wallet and gun, removing the money and giving it to Cloris. “He won’t mind. Go on, quick, quick. We’ll wait for you. Remember, stay out of town for a week, O.K.?”

She nodded, turning to run toward the bedroom, to pack, to leave. A week. She was going to stay longer, much, much longer.

“Anything,
monsieur,
anything. You pay, we do. Anything.” A sales pitch. A promise. From two teen-age French whores working as a team.

Christian Lombard smiled, nodding yes, red-rimmed, bloodshot eyes narrowing as he stood in the cheap hotel room imagining the girls naked in bed with him. Both of them. Yes. He sighed, happy at the thought of it.

With whores, you paid in advance. Two hundred francs for the girls, one hundred francs for the room, ten francs for the ugly maid who left clean white towels and stood silently with her hand outstretched until she got her tip. No matter. These girls would be worth it, every penny. Monique, the dark-haired one; Suzanne, the blond one.

Christian Lombard was fifty-four, a short, pudgy man, balding, with a bright red beard grown to hide sores and scars burned into his face by acid used changing morphine base into heroin for Count Lonzu.

The red-bearded man was a chemist, an important man in the world of illicit narcotics. It was Christian’s scientific skills—and those of men like him—that accomplished the final step in the opium processing. Christian, like other narcotics chemists, produced the treasured white powder of heroin.

The pudgy man, working out of Marseilles, exclusively for Count Lonzu, was paid extremely well for his scientific skills: five hundred dollars per kilo of heroin turned out. This afternoon he was in Paris spending some of his money on his chief pleasure in life—teen-age whores.

Young flesh, firm, sweet-smelling, delicious.

Licking his lips, he fingered a freshly ironed towel, more sexually excited now but controlling it so that it would last longer. “How old are you?” he said to Monique, the dark-haired girl.

“Fourteen,
monsieur
.” She shrugged, dismissing the fact as unimportant. It wasn’t. She was almost seventeen, but shrewdly played on her customers’ desire for young girls. If they thought you were a schoolgirl, they paid you more.

Christian unbuttoned his shirt, his fat, pale, hairy chest heaving deeply with lust. He turned to Suzanne. “You?”

“Fifteen,
monsieur
.” Polite, thought Christian. We French have good manners.

He continued undressing, savoring the moment, prolonging his pleasure, and increasing it at the same time.

Monique’s smile was small, calculating, a tiny manifestation of the certainty of her advantage over this fat, ugly old man. Neither Monique nor Suzanne was poor, orphaned, or desperate for money. They came from good families and were part-time whores because they enjoyed the power it gave them over men old enough to be their fathers.

They also enjoyed the money, which let them show off for their friends at school by buying them presents. Whoring, done only in the afternoon, was a game, their own secret game. Everyone in the world used whatever power he had, and Monique and Suzanne were no different.

This afternoon they had waited in front of the café where Christian Lombard was having lunch, refusing other customers until the pudgy, red-bearded man came out and spotted them. Monique and Suzanne were following orders given them by one of Remy Patek’s men. Each girl had been given two hundred francs by Patek’s man and told that they could also keep whatever money they collected from Christian Lombard. This was going to be a good day for them—a lot of money just to play a trick on somebody.

A trick. That’s all it was. Get the fat, red-bearded man in the room; then, when his friends burst in laughing, leave quickly. It was their game, and they were getting paid well to play a trick on the red-bearded man. Good fun and good money.

I’ve earned this, thought Christian, stepping out of his shapeless gray pants and dropping them on the floor. I’ve earned this. Yes, he made good money, but he worked like a dog, sometimes three days or more without sleep. No choice about that: you had to convert the morphine base into heroin as soon as possible, because it had to be shipped, usually to America, before police confiscated it or rival mobs stole it.

And the chemicals he had to use—they smelled, God they smelled, burning his skin, lungs, the inside of his nose, and making him so sick at times that he threw up. But when Count Lonzu wanted a load converted, you did it, and you did it fast. The Count paid well, however, even though Christian had to work in Marseilles and frequently change the location of his laboratory. No problem there: the Count paid for all equipment and even helped him to relocate when necessary. That’s how valuable a good chemist was.

But the work was hard and dangerous. Sometimes a lab would blow up, killing a chemist and anyone working with him.

There was danger around Christian now, which was why he was in Paris. The Count had called him there for a series of talks about a lot of things—Alain, a different date for delivery to the black in America, and Remy Patek. That Remy was a problem. Sick bastard. Everybody was waiting for him to do something about Claude’s death, and when he did, it would probably be aimed at the Count.