Eyes Full of Empty (14 page)

“
The Wild Bunch
!” He lifts the box in the air triumphantly as Nat looks on, astonished.

“I hesitated between that and another joyride around Paris,” I joke.

Cherif leans forward, telling Nat like an innocent little kid I hardly remember ever seeing, “The one time this guy wanted me to skip school with him was for the movies. Back then, we thought he was a nerd, so I didn't want to go. But he said he'd buy my ticket, that it was a classic, so I went. Wham! Never regretted it. One of the greatest films of all time.”

He turns to me. It looks like there are tears in his eyes. “This makes me so happy. We'll watch it together at your place next week. You come too, Nat. I'm counting on you!”

“It'll be my pleasure,” she says.

He sets his gift on the bar, watches us with kid eyes. “Well, we boozing it up? What can I get you?”

A good dozen drinks later, after seeing all my old friends—and all the morons from my neighborhood—I stumble on Cherif talking with a lot of sweeping gestures to Nat, who's utterly at ease. I walk over, intrigued.

“I was telling her about our school days.”

“Not like you stayed there long.”

“See,” he says, pointing at me, “I don't know what your relationship is, or how long you've known each other, or—”

His speech gets thick. If I hadn't drank just as much, and if Nat weren't a married woman but officially my significant other, I think I'd be afraid of what he was about to say.

“—but I've known this kid for a long time. I could go on for hours.”

“Cherif, how about you stop? C'mon and dance, let me pour you a drink or something, but don't drag all that old stuff up again. She's a classy lady; she couldn't give a fuck.”

“No, not at all,” Nat retorts. “I'm riveted.”

Cherif's too far past embarrassment not to go on. I know he's going to tell a story that makes me uncomfortable—I'm just not sure yet which one.

“We were hanging out on the stoop, we must've been thirteen, fourteen? Being little shits, we were bored. Our parents didn't like seeing us loiter around. But they had other things on their mind. Idir's father, though, would always come looking for his son. On his way back from work, he'd drag him away by the ear, humiliating Idir each time. We'd all tease him for it. Still, he took it. Despite that thick little skull of his, he had one thing straight. Even talking trash in front of his friends, he never disrespected his father. Never. The rest of us were already past saving; I think I'd have smacked my dad a good one if he'd shown me up in front of the assholes I hung out with back then. But Idir, he knew who his father was and what he owed him.”

“Oh, how sweet!” Nat simpers.

“Stop fucking with me. What good did it do? My dad thought I was saved, but I still found a way to go to jail.”

I hadn't wanted to talk about this—my dad, my childhood,
my failures—but somehow I still found a way to. Cherif looks me right in the eyes and enunciates clearly, like he'd just purged all the alcohol he'd gulped down from his bloodstream. “Can't do nothing about that, brother.
Maktub
. It is written.”

On the way back, I put my arm around Nat and we stagger around looking for a taxi.

“Look, you're a woman and you're in a dress. Get out there on the edge of the sidewalk. It'll be easy then.”

“Whatever.”

“You're not from Paris.”

“So?”

“So you don't know a thing about Paris taxis.”

Annoyed, she says, “Fine, but I bet you money it won't make a difference.”

“OK, you're on. If I win, you stay with me all morning.”

She gives me a defiant stare. I know I'm asking a lot. So does she.

“All right.”

Despite a high blood alcohol level, my logic turns out to be flawless. A taxi with its light off stops right in front of her while I linger in the shadows. The driver's just finished his shift but offers to drop her if it's on his way. Of course it's on his way. When he spots me walking up I can see he recognizes the con instantly and regrets ever having stopped. We get in. In the rearview, his eyes glower, not thrilled that a brown boy like me and a woman as beautiful as Nat are spending the night together.

We kiss on the landing. Once we're in the bed, our ardor flags, and we fall asleep, far too drunk to do a thing.

When I wake up, I realize she hasn't kept her word. Nat's gone, leaving me alone with the mother of all headaches. I get up and realize it won't be long before I throw up, which I do a
few minutes later after tossing back a whole glass of water in my kitchen. My forehead's still propped on the toilet seat when I feel my phone vibrating in my pocket. I lift my head and bring a shaky hand to my jeans. I check the caller. Eve?

I probably sound like death warmed over when I pick up. “Hello?”

“Idir?”

“Yes.” A beat. “How're things, Eve?”

“Fine, I—I'm with someone who'd like to talk to you. Can we meet up?”

I gauge my hangover. Just appraising it hurts very much. “Oh. I, uh—”

“It's about Thibaut. It's important. Real important.”

“OK. I can be over in half an hour.”

“Not my place. Meet me in the same café as the first time.”

I drag myself over to the shower. When I step out on the street, the light ambushes me. The metro ride is one of the worst I've ever taken—I feel like I'm in a goddamn rowboat off goddamn Cape Horn.

I reach the café. Eve is seated at a table, talking with a young man. I'm glad they're sitting outside. I don't know if I could've stood being indoors amid assholes and their chatter about the latest show at the Cartier-Bresson Foundation. Just then, the waiter drops by and asks me what I want. The thought of a coffee makes me want to puke. A Coke at €5.50 seems like the best money I've ever spent. I order and sit down.

“Idir, this is Arthur.”

“Nice to meet you.”

They look at each other, embarrassed, like we've got all the time in the world.

“Look, I was out late last night. My head is killing me, and I
was planning to spend the day in bed. You look like a sweet kid, but that won't keep me from throwing up all over you if we stay here too long. So say what you have to say, or I'm outta here.”

Eve dives in first. “Arthur was…Thibaut's boyfriend. He contacted me last night. Thibaut had told him about me.”

Thibaut never mentioned Arthur on the tapes. I turn to him. “Well?”

He makes up his mind to speak at last. His voice sounds worried. I get the feeling he might break out blubbering any minute. “We were supposed to go away together. We'd bought our plane tickets. The day we were supposed to leave, I was going to meet him at the airport but he didn't show up.”

“Go where?”

“A little tour around South America.”

Poor dumb fucks thought they were adventurers. The kind of guys you'd find wandering around Ciudad Juárez at three in the morning looking for a karaoke bar. I'm thinking it's a good thing this trip never happened. It wouldn't have ended well.

“I haven't heard from him since.”

I feel bad for Arthur. He's one of those people who don't believe evil exists. A vast club whose members I keep running into day after day. Always thinking everything's going to work out just fine. They haven't seen what I've seen. Usually when I meet them, they've just gotten booted out on their asses from this fraternity of the gullible and are frantically looking around for an instruction manual that doesn't exist.

“Not a word?” I ask, to be sure he's not hiding anything.

“No.” He doesn't sound like he's lying.

“His phone?”

“Voice mail.”

“Was he acting funny before you guys were due to leave?”

“He was happy.”

“Did he give you the impression he was…seeing someone else?”

He shakes his head.

“Nothing out of the ordinary?”

“He said he felt like he was being followed.” He swallows. “He'd been feeling that way for weeks. Then one night, two guys tried to force him into a car on our way back to his place. I screamed, and since there were people around, the two guys drove off.”

“You remember what they look like?”

“No, it was dark out.”

“Did you report the incident?”

“Yes, but they didn't come up with anything.”

Faint alarm bells ring in my head, and I can't blame the hangover. I told Oscar everything would work out because I was sure his brother had up and left to live his life the way he wanted—somewhere free of the assholes who circled like vultures. But if his boyfriend was left waiting at the airport, representing Thibaut's biggest chance at escape, and he didn't show up for it…that put a different spin on things.

“Is that everything?”

He looks at me, wide-eyed. “Isn't that enough?”

I try not to be brusque with him. “I don't work for the cops. Just his brother, who paid me to try and find him. I can't go any further.”

“You got your money, so you don't give a shit, is that it?”

“Listen up, you little fuck. If I didn't give a shit I wouldn't be here watching you snivel and listening to your sob story. Got it?”

He looks down, intimidated. “His brother's a bastard. He hated Thibaut. He always kept him at a distance, afraid he'd hurt the family's reputation. The thought that he could benefit
even a little from the empire their father left behind drove him crazy. He would've killed him to keep him from getting any of it.”

I think back to the press clippings that showed them joined at the hip. And Thibaut's voice on the tapes. I begin to think I've messed up big time, that I've been wrong about everything from the start.

I go home. Try to reach Nat. Leave her a message saying I had a great time last night and I hope I'll see her again tonight. After which I lie down on the couch for a break. I make like nothing's wrong, but I know I'm trying to fend off guilt. Guilt over botching a case and getting paid off. Guilt over thinking about Nat while a little voice inside me whispers:
You're just a shit. You're sleeping with a married woman—a woman married to your friend. But she'll never be your wife. And—
The voice stops. I'd completely forgotten about the GPS I abandoned on a corner of my dresser—the one I found in the bedroom at the Louasse brothers' house. I unwind the power cord and examine the device. It's in bad shape. There's a hairline crack all the way down the right side of the screen. I lie back down on the couch and press the little button on the side to turn it on. The screen blinks; not much battery left. Mechanically, I press on the icon for recent destinations. They're all in Seine-Saint-Denis, zip code prefix 93, or in Paris. From the list of a dozen or so, only two stick out. One in Boulogne-Billancourt, to the southwest, and the other far out in Seine-et-Marne. I press on the screen again, like I'm actually trying to go to these places. A female voice rings out in the apartment and announces that I am approximately
forty-five minutes from my destination. Suddenly, a brief beep and the screen goes dark. No more battery. I could let it go. I figure I'd had enough alcohol yesterday to merit a little siesta right about now. But I pick up my phone again, this time to call Cherif.

“Yeah?”

“I need you, Cherif.”

“I'm fucking sleeping!”

“Cherif, I really need you.”

“What for?”

“I have to go somewhere. Out in 77, Seine-et-Marne.”

He lets out a laugh. “Are you crazy? Come by and grab my car, if you have to, but—”

“You know I don't have a license.”

“Then take the bus!”

He hangs up. Can't argue with that.

I lie down on the couch again and tell myself maybe it's better this way. But my phone rings.

“Fuck me, you are such an asshole! I'm awake now. Riquet in half an hour.”

Cherif's face is puffy from drinking, lack of sleep, and a bad mood. He hasn't bothered changing out of his tracksuit and a thick cotton sweatshirt before coming out.

“Why'd you bring a GPS?” he asks once I'm in the car. “I have one.”

“It's the GPS I found in Bagnolet. There's an address in it I want to visit.”

“What do you want to go there for?”

“I'll explain on the way.”

“Well, start explaining.”

The GPS lets out a long, shrill beep.

“I think the batteries are dead.”

“Oh, give it to me!” He grabs the device from my hands and plugs the cord into his lighter. He checks the trip time on the screen and groans at the distance.

“Oh, quit moaning. Don't you want to spend the afternoon with me?”

“I wanted to spend it at home, sleeping.”

We exit Paris and head east on the highway. When the GPS tells us to exit, we find ourselves in the middle of the countryside. Soon the pavement runs out and we're heading down a bumpy road. A quick curve to the left and the car finds itself nosed up against a gate.