Corsican Death (17 page)

Car horns blared—a raw cry of warning and anger—and Jean-Paul’s large hands gripped the steering wheel tighter, whipping it to the right, keeping the Citroën in its own lane. The ugly sound of the oncoming car horn whizzed by, trailing off into the night. Dinard let the air out of his lungs, pressing the heels of both hands against his forehead. God. Too close. To be killed while rushing to stop a friend from being killed. It would have been too ironic.

This was going to be a hell of a ride if they lived through it.

Jean-Paul and Roger were speeding through the night to Count Lonzu’s monastery. They had to get there before the Count killed John Bolt.

“You sure he hasn’t got a gun?” Roger turned to Jean-Paul, seeing the big man’s face move in and out of shadows as car headlights came at them from the opposite lane and passed on.

“
Oui.
He told me Remy searched him, and I saw the police do it, too. No, he’s out there alone.”

Roger nodded. “He’s in the open now because of Edith, because of my wife.” He shook his head sadly, feeling the weight of her betrayal bear down on him. She calls a cop working for the Count, thought Dinard, then she calls me to weep and beg forgiveness. The telephone can be a deadly instrument. It can kill a man, and maybe it can even kill what is between a man and a woman.

“How much farther?”

“Kilometers,” said Jean-Paul, shrugging, keeping his eyes on the highway. “Too many kilometers.”

The big cop listened to the sounds of his car speeding in the night, hearing it groan and creak, protesting the way the old do when too much is asked of them. Be lucky, Johnny, be lucky. Corsicans are vicious, and your death is nothing to them. To protect Alain, the Count would kill your mother and mine and not lose sleep or appetite over it.

Roger licked his lips, his mind and soul heavy with sadness at what his wife had done to his friend. “What happens when we get there?”

“We’re cops; they’ve got to let us in.”

“Think they know about
our
connection with John? I mean, you think the Count will …?” Roger left the sentence unfinished, ashamed of himself for letting fear get to him. Yet he was experienced enough to know that
everybody
felt fear and those who
said
they didn’t were crazy, stupid, or lying. You felt it; you just tried not to give in to it.

“I think we get there on time, everything will go right,” said Jean-Paul. “We get there at the wrong time, things will go wrong. That’s what I think. I think, too, that to be a good cop you got to have good luck.” He paused, adding, “Sometime.”

“Now would be a good time for luck.”

Jean-Paul nodded yes.

Roger’s lips were a tight thin line as he fingered his moustache and stared ahead at his reflection in the windshield. They passed one or two cars, a couple of trucks, then hit a long empty stretch with no one in front of them. It was like driving in a dark tunnel—blackness on both sides of them and a harsh white highway ahead of them. The blackness was good—it hid the new buildings, the skyscrapers made of steel, chrome, concrete that the government insisted had to be built outside of Paris. Good.

Roger loved the old buildings, and he was glad that the government had stopped them from being torn down. The Paris skyline was the same as it was twenty years ago. Don’t destroy something that has lasted for a while.

That made him think of Edith and their marriage. She had been poor, an orphan raised by nuns, a woman who now ate too much because she once never had enough to eat. She made her own clothes, out of fear as much as frugality, and she held on to Roger because he was the only thing in her life she could call her own. Roger knew that people often loved something so much that they killed or maimed to get it.

Edith had done that tonight with her phone call to the St. Marie station. She had betrayed John Bolt because she loved Roger. Was she any better than Count Lonzu and Remy Patek, who acted to keep the heroin trade flourishing?

Yes, she was. They did it for money; Edith had done it for love. And if the rest of us don’t betray, it’s because we haven’t had the opportunity.

Roger sighed, sitting up straight in the car, eyes still on the highway rushing up to meet him. Edith. She was his wife, and he loved her. For better or for worse. That’s what the priest had said to them on their wedding day. For better or for worse.

Aloud he said to Jean-Paul, “I love her, you know. I love her.”

The big man understood. Flexing his fingers, he gripped the steering wheel harder, braking slightly, then cutting around a huge truck in front of him. “I know, my friend, I know. I’m glad for you.”

Jean-Paul thought: But it won’t be the same between the two of you after tonight. It will be worse or better. Weaker or stronger, but not the same. I wish you luck, my friend.

Roger touched the 9mm M1950 pistol shoved in his waistband. A good gun, France’s most powerful handgun, a military pistol like the American Colt .45. The .45. That’s Johnny’s gun, the one he likes so much, the one he had Jean-Paul and me get for him.

“Johnny doesn’t have a gun,” said Roger, low and almost to himself.

“He’s got himself, and that’s a lot.”

“I hope so. Christ, you’re a rotten driver.” Jean-Paul smiled his sad smile. Roger was feeling better, a little bit better. Good.

The Citroën rattled and sped through the night, both men silently staring straight ahead.

Slowly, his hands pushing the patio gate open by inches, Alphonse stepped into the quiet area behind Jean-Paul’s small house, the small, dark Corsican’s ears picking up the sound of the dogs’ breathing. Two men came into the patio behind him, each with a flashlight. A dog barked, and the flashlight beam sped to him, trapping him in its glare.

The collie. It was on its feet, barking louder now, warning the others, its thin young head thrusting forward with each sound.

Now all of the dogs were awake, the older ones, the puppies, their tiny eyes slitted against the night and still half-closed with sleep. They sat on their haunches, some half in, half out of their kennels, others barking and scampering around in circles, barking louder. A couple of dogs growled, lips pulled back to show their teeth, ears flat to their skulls in preparation for attack.

Alphonse said, “Get busy.”

The men with him needed no urging. Growling dogs frightened them, and the sooner they did what they had come here to do, the better. And the men knew they had to follow Remy Patek’s orders or they would wish they had stayed and gotten chewed by the dogs.

Remy wanted Jean-Paul’s dogs slaughtered.

His anger at being tricked by Joe Belli, at having Clément tell him Jean-Paul was in on it, knew
all
about it and had joined in his humiliation, had been too much. Especially since this information had come on top of the attempt on Remy’s life by Count Lonzu. Remy’s frustration, his anger, his grief over Claude, had all welled up and exploded in an order to Alphonse.

Kill Jean-Paul’s dogs.

Count Lonzu would kill that
other
dog, the American undercover narcotics agent. Remy, remembering the conversation between Joe Belli and Jean-Paul in the Blue Cat, wanted to strike back, knowing they had been laughing at him while
pretending
to be strangers. He couldn’t kill Belli, and he couldn’t kill the Count. Not just yet, anyway. But he
could
kill the dogs.

Alphonse, a twenty-three-year-old Corsican thug, stocky, dark as an Arab, was anxious to please, to move up in the world of narcotics.

Reaching down, he picked up a small brown puppy that had staggered over to him on young, unsteady legs, wagging its tail and leaping up and down ready to play.

Holding it in his left hand, feeling its warm body, he smiled and brought the knife up, slitting its throat. Tossing the bleeding puppy high into the night, he moved forward, hearing the flat ugly sounds of gunfire as the other two men shot the animals, hearing the animals bark in instinctive panic, hearing them whine in pain.

The scene was ugly, as dogs ran in trapped circles, darting in and out of flashlight beams, back and forth in darkness, crying out and dying, bullets thudding into their sleep-warm flesh, and the bleeding animals falling in place or crawling away.

Alphonse smiled. It’s going well, goddamnit, it’s going well. He crouched, one hand outstretched for the collie, the other hand holding the knife, its blade up.

The collie, sensing evil and death in the small dark man, flattened its ears in fear, backing away, showing its teeth, its thin body tense.

Alphonse reached out for it, and the collie snapped, its young teeth tearing the Corsican’s flesh, making him draw back in fear and pain.

“Fucking dog! Fucking dog!” Alphonse’s voice was high with anger and fear as he slashed at the collie.

“
F
IND HIM! FIND HIM!
Don’t open those gates for anybody, for anybody, you hear me? For no reason! They stay shut! Belli’s an agent, an American cop. Narcotics!
”

Bertrand stood at an open window of the room John Bolt had escaped from, shouting down to armed guards in the moonlit courtyard below. He was angry and tense. His face was red, and his voice close to cracking with anxiety. Fucking American. He had escaped.
How?
What the hell was he, a goddamn bird?

“If he gets away, the Count is going to want to know why, you hear me! Now, goddamnit,
move, move!
”

The men scattered, all of them armed—handguns, rifles, and some with killer dogs. The Count. No one wanted to face the old man. Or Bertrand either, for that matter. Find the American, find that damn agent. Take him alive if you can, let the Count question him in his own
special
way. If you can’t take him alive, don’t worry about it. Kill him. Just don’t let him escape.

Bertrand watched two men check the front gate to the compound, and when they waved to him to signal that the gate was barred, he turned to the three guards behind him. His face was red with rage, and his pink-tinted glasses made him look as though he had a bad suntan. His blond hair was worn long. At six-feet-four and two hundred and ten pounds, there wasn’t any fat on him.

Bertrand, thirty-two, had been with Count Lonzu for six years. He knew the Count wanted the American dead because the American had come into the monastery like a filthy waterfront rat eating its way into a warehouse. The Count was too proud to accept deception gracefully.

There was another reason why the American had to die: he was in France to harm Alain. Alain, whom the Count had practically raised when their parents had died of hard work and too much nothing. Alain, who had his brother’s love in a way that Bertrand could never understand, but would never question. Corsicans were strange people, but Bertrand, who was half-Swedish, half-French, didn’t let that bother him.

He was making good money with the Count as security chief, enforcer, and bodyguard. Damn good money. Just follow orders, and the money would keep on coming in. But first, the American. Get him. Kill him.

Bertrand, remembering what it had felt like punching Belli’s head into a stone wall, moved a corner of his mouth in a deadly smile. “Find him.
Find him!
”

The men turned, running from the room, running as much from Bertrand’s anger as to get the American. This was serious. And until the American was found, no one would be safe from the Count or Bertrand. To stay alive, the men would have to kill the American. An easy enough choice to make: him or them.

Find him!

Bolt winced, teeth gritted against the pain, hugging himself, his arms across his bare chest, hands under his armpits. His bleeding hands. Jesus, they hurt!

He was in darkness, in a room where moonlight was bright on a polished suit of armor near a window. Men rushed by outside the room, shouting in French and Italian. Dogs barked; other doors slammed.

They know I’m gone. They goddamn well know.

He’d heard Bertrand’s shout to the men in the courtyard. And he’d heard men shouting in the halls. Somehow they had learned he was an agent, which gave them two reasons to be nasty: he had left without saying goodbye, and he was an American narcotics agent. Well, you can’t please everybody.

He pressed his bandaged hands tight against both sides of his rib cage, keeping himself flat against the wall so if the door opened he’d be behind it. Climbing out of the window hadn’t been so bad. Hanging on to small beams and hauling himself along from one to another one hundred feet above the ground like some fucking chimpanzee hadn’t been too bad either. But pulling himself onto the roof had been a bitch.

He’d torn both hands,
both!
The edge of the overhanging roof tiles had been razor-sharp, and he’d bitten his tongue to keep from crying out, feeling his hands getting wetter each second with his own blood. He lay on the monastery roof, bleeding from both hands, afraid to raise himself and look down because one of the guards in the courtyard might see him.

So he kept to the far side, away from the guards’ vision, crawling, moving in a crouch, slipping to his knees and holding his breath, hoping none of the red tiles slipped loose and fell down below. It was too far for him to jump down, and as far as he was concerned, it was too far to fall down, too. Into the courtyard or off the other side and down into the green earth would both be bad news.

Until …

Keep crawling, keep bleeding, keep hurting.

An idea.

Swing down, hang off the edge, catch the small beams again, and go back inside the monastery, into a different room this time, and try to make his way down to the courtyard and out. What the hell else was there to do? Not a goddamn thing.

He had done that, first taking off his shirt, tearing it slowly, agonizingly slowly with teeth and bloodied hands, making strips and bandaging his hands. Not just to stop the bleeding, but also to give him traction to grip with. Bloody hands were slippery. And slippery hands meant falling one hundred feet straight down. Well, it ain’t the fall that kills you, it’s the sudden stop.

He eased himself to the edge, belly-down, lips together in hard concentration; easy, easy, then the hard part—gripping the edge of the razor-sharp red-clay tiles again. Oh Jesus, Jesus, it hurt! Now he was hanging there, gripping the tiles, his legs kicking back and forth in the air as though he were riding an invisible bicycle.