A Twist of Orchids (17 page)

As he raced along the deserted straightaway, he realized he had underestimated the Mercedes. It was gaining on him, and this, he sensed, was where it would happen. Another surge of fear brought a taste of bile to his mouth. But the Merc merely hung on his ass like a fart, making no attempt to overtake, to drive him off the road, or to send him flying headfirst into its path, where it could finish the job by running him over. Kazim found that he
was drenched with sweat under his leather jacket. The bastard was playing with him, like a cat with a mouse.

It was the Honda’s turn to fishtail dangerously as Kazim took a squealing right into a narrow lane. And so he went, dodging and weaving through the network of tiny streets. By now he had lost sight of the Merc, but the throaty roar of his
moto
, bouncing off the stone faces of the darkened buildings, announced his presence as effectively as a beacon. He eased the engine back to a soft purr and regained the city center. He knew with certainty that he had shaken Serge when he found himself alone in Place St-Louis. Gently, he nosed the Honda into a cobbled passage leading through the old quarter. From there it was a short run to safety.

•

“Blimey, where you been, mate? They’re all over lookin’ for you,” Peter said in an awed voice when Kazim burst into the garret.
“Eels voo shersh par-too,”
he translated in his execrable French.
“Say vray, Naahd?”

Nadia, who was sitting at the plastic table eating a takeout, almost choked on her food. She stood up, knocking over a cardboard container. Greasy
pommes frites
spilled onto the floor. She ran to the door and slammed it shut.

“Did anyone follow you?”

Kazim postured, unzipping his leather jacket. “Not a chance. I left him swallowing my dust.”

She turned on him, fists clenched. “Well, you can’t stay here.”

“Hey, what’s with you?”

“I said, not here.”

“Look, just the night,” Kazim pleaded. Stripped of all his swagger, he looked young, scared, and dazed.

Nadia shook her head vehemently. Her black and orange hair stuck up in angry spikes. Her green eyes darted about, her lips,
black-lined, in-filled with purple, were pulled back in a grimace of fear. Peter stood behind her, rubbing his nose. Despite his linguistic handicap, he seemed very much a part of the conversation. Brigitte was stretched out on the sofa, blankets pulled up to her chin. She appeared to be the only one enjoying the scene.

“Sling your gear and go,” insisted Nadia. “Now.”

“Like where?” Kazim’s voice was shrill. “Home is off limits. I told you, I don’t want to land my parents in it.”

“What about us? If they find you here, you’ll land
us
in it. We’ll all be hyper in the
merde.
”

“Yeah,” Peter said, not bothering with French. “Be a good boy and push off.”

“Three of them,” Brigitte spoke up for the first time. She fingered her gold lip ring. “All looking for little Kazim.”

“Three?” Kazim swung around and stared about him wildly, as if all of his pursuers were somewhere hidden in the flat.

Brigitte grinned. “A guy with a limp. That skinny, weird-looking guy they call Serge. And a tall one.”

“Serge,” croaked Kazim. “He came here?”

Peter said, “Nah. Just the tall bloke. Left this.” He dug Julian’s card from one of his voluminous pockets and flipped it to Kazim. “Check ’im out, mate. Maybe ’e can ’elp you.” Kazim, who spoke no English, stared at Peter uncomprehendingly but caught the card.

“He knows your parents,” said Brigitte.

“Look,” Kazim swung back to Nadia. “I got a couple of caps left. High-grade white. Just let me put down here for the night and they’re yours.” He dug out the heroin-filled capsules, two of the four that he had remaining.

Nadia gave him a nasty sneer. Reluctantly, he added another capsule. She snatched them from him.

“’Course they’re mine!” she screamed. “You owe me that for back rent. Now get going.” She gave him a shove.

Kazim shoved back. “You owe
me
, bitch!” he yelled. “Who’s your pipeline? Who keeps you in
came?
Where’s your supply going to come from tomorrow? The next day? And the day after? You think of that?” He squared off, looking both desperate and furious.

Nadia laughed. “You
nul.
You
double zéro.
You don’t know the first thing. Without me you’d have
given
the stuff away. Besides,” she added sullenly, “you haven’t got a pipeline. Not anymore.”

“Save your breath,” Brigitte advised him over the top of her sleeping bag. “You’re finished.”

Kazim looked stunned. Then he advanced on Nadia, his face working in fury. “You sold me! You piece of garbage, you sold me!”

“Get out!” cried Nadia, retreating. Beneath her wild makeup she looked terrified. “We don’t know you. We never heard of you.”

“C’mon, mate. Use your loaf. We don’t want trouble.” Peter stepped in to intercept the Turk. The two men struggled briefly, but Nadia jerked the door open and then flew in with a crazed strength to help Peter push Kazim out it.

“I’ll make you bleed for this!” Kazim yelled as he stumbled into the blackness of the landing. The door slammed. He heard the bolt click.

The rush of events left him feeling weak and dizzy. After a moment he gathered his wits and what courage remained to him and groped along the wall until he found the
minuterie.
He still clutched the card Peter had given him. He blinked at it in the sudden illumination of the timed light. Slowly, he reached into his jacket for his cellphone.

•

The telephone in Julian’s cottage sounded. After five rings, the
répondeur
kicked on with its bilingual message:
“Bonjour. Vous avez rejoint le numéro de Julian Wood …
Hello, you’ve reached the number for Julian Wood. Sorry I’m not here to take your call, but I do check my messages frequently …”

Kazim did not comprehend English, but he understood the recorded greeting in French. He wasn’t talking to any
fichu
answering machine. He killed the connection. Then he changed his mind. Brigitte said the man knew his parents. He redialed. This time he left a message: “This is Kazim. Look, if anything happens, I want you to know a
gars
named Serge is after me. Nix on the cops. I don’t want my parents mixed up in this.” He paused to think. “Tell them … just tell them I’m okay …” He switched off but continued hanging on to the phone as if it were a tenuous lifeline.

The light went out. He punched the
minuterie
again and headed down the stairs. As he went, he tried the doors giving onto the landings. They were locked, as he knew they would be. His
moto
was parked at the bottom of the stairwell. Predictably, the light gave out again just as he was wheeling it out the door. The street outside was deep in shadow, lit only by a distant lamp. He had to negotiate his way around the big skip of debris that seemed to be a permanent annex to the front of the house. A slight noise, coming from his right behind the skip, startled him. He whirled around. A cat slid away. He was almost sick with relief.

Then a voice spoke softly in his left ear.

“
Poisson d’avril
, Kazim. Going somewhere?”

To Kazim, the April Fools’ greeting sounded as sharp as the snap of a switchblade.

“Frequently,” for Julian, meant whenever he stopped by his cottage to collect his mail and check up on things. That was when he also listened to his phone messages. One of these days he would have to break down and get a cellphone. He hated the things, considered them an unnecessary disturbance of his life, which was already unsettled enough. For now, all of his existing clients knew to reach him at Mara’s, but prospective new business did not. Perhaps that was why no prospective new business had come his way.

He did not pick up Kazim’s message until Monday morning: “… if anything happens, I want you to know a
gars
named Serge is after me. Nix on the cops. I don’t want my parents mixed up in this …” Julian could almost smell the fear in the young man’s voice.

Kazim had not left a number, but Julian was able to retrieve it and put in a return call. There was no reply. He left a message: “Kazim, this is Julian Wood. Look, whatever you’re up to, you sound like you’re in over your head. Don’t be stupid. Go to the police. Far better they deal with you than Serge. And call me or at least get in touch with your parents as soon as you get this. They’re worried sick about you.”

Then he phoned the Ismets, but they weren’t answering either, so he left a message for them as well: “It’s Julian. Call me. Right away.” He hung up, glumly imagining a futuristic world in which telephones that no one answered faithfully recorded urgent messages that no one listened to.

Kazim had said no cops. Just the kind of stupid thing a nineteen-year-old kid in trouble would say. As a compromise, Julian called the Brames Gendarmerie and asked to speak particularly with Sergeant Laurent Naudet. Laurent was not there, but at least there was a live person at the other end of the line. Briefly, Julian considered raising an alarm about Kazim but decided against it. He was probably overreacting, and he didn’t know what fallout there could be for Betul and Osman. Besides, he’d rather talk to Laurent, whose discretion he trusted. He left his name and number and asked that Laurent get in touch with him as soon as possible.

Tired of leaving messages, Julian opted for direct action. He decided to drive to Périgueux. He phoned Mara.

“This sounds serious,” she said after he had repeated Kazim’s words. She put aside being sniffy that he had not taken her attempt to trace Christine Gaillard seriously; also, she was fed up with waiting for a response from any electrician willing to take on rewiring the Hurleys’ house. “I’ll go with you. You need backup.”

•

“Where exactly are we going?” she asked when Julian picked her up at the house in Ecoute-la-Pluie. Jazz and Bismuth, desperate not to be left behind, shoved ahead of her into the van.

“Nadia’s place. I’m pretty sure Kazim’s been staying there.”

They started off. Jazz assumed his favorite position, forelegs planted on the tool box behind Julian’s seat, big head resting on Julian’s left shoulder. That way he got a comfortable place for his chin and a view of the passing countryside through the driver’s window. Bismuth, less interested in the journey than the arrival, curled up between two bags of potting soil and went to sleep.

“Serge,” Mara said. “Didn’t Loulou mention someone by that name? Rocco Luca’s henchman?”

“Not necessarily the same bloke,” said Julian, not liking the
thought. “It’s a common enough name, and it could just be someone Kazim’s fallen out with. He seems to run with a tough crowd.” He braked at a stop sign. “You’ll enjoy meeting Nadia. Hair like a wolverine and a personality to match.”

“It has to be drugs. That’s probably how he financed his bike. Maybe Kazim pushes for Luca. Kazim held out on him, and Serge was sent in to settle the score.”

Julian hated to admit it, but what she said made sense. Jazz snorted gustily, blasting him with a dose of dog breath.

•

The bells of the city had finished pounding out their noon symphony. Now they were followed by a coda of metal grilles being dragged across shop fronts. People hurried out of buildings and down the sidewalks. All had the purposeful tread of those with a serious mission: the quest for lunch. The cafés and restaurants filled up. The day was warm and bright, with that delightful playfulness of spring that is so quickly replaced by rain squalls. The outdoor tables were quickly taken. People were hungry for sun and sat soaking it up, faces raised to a limitless blue sky. Waiters and waitresses, harried, balletic, ran their mini-marathons, dodging, weaving among the tables.

“The shrimp omelet? Who’s it for?”

“Two Kronenbourg!”

They delivered up plates of sandwiches and pizzas for fast snackers; four-course meals for those intent on digging in for the longer haul. Conversations took place among the clatter of cutlery, the clink of glassware, the rumble of passing traffic. People chatted into cellphones. A woman drew deeply on a cigarette, draped her arm over the back of her chair, closed her eyes, and let a cloud of smoke drift slowly from her mouth.

Julian parked below the cathedral in the only patch of shade they could find and rolled the windows halfway down for the
dogs, who remained in the van. They walked up Avenue Daumesnil. Julian helped an elderly woman carry her little wire shopping cart down the steps leading into Rue Porte-de-Graule. Nadia’s building was at the lower end of the narrow road. The skip that had stood in front of it was gone. In its place was a van. A couple of workmen were sitting in the open rear of the van eating their lunch. They paid no attention to Julian and Mara as they entered the house. They appeared to be used to people coming and going.

As they trudged up the spiral staircase, Julian noticed that the
minuterie
had been overridden. The stair lights were on and stayed on. The men were now working on the second floor. Open doors gave glimpses of newly painted walls, tiles being laid. Somewhere in the back of the house someone was using a power drill. This time there was no rock music coming from the flat at the top of the house.

There was no answer to Julian’s knock, either. He rattled the doorknob. The door swung open.

The flat looked to have been vacated in a hurry. The plastic furniture was scattered and overturned, the wooden crates empty of all belongings, the pans placed to catch rainwater kicked aside, and the mattress on the floor stripped, displaying impressive aureoles of stains.

“They’ve done a bunk,” he said, stating the obvious.

Mara moved quickly through the flat, turning over old newspapers with the toe of her shoe, peering into the sink.

“Ugh.”

Julian looked into the bedroom. The bed there had also been stripped. The dresser drawers hung open and empty.

They went back down.

Julian asked the workmen, “Either of you know where the people who lived at the top went?”