Skin Trade (10 page)

A few minutes later, we left. In the street, Gourad said, “You want to come with me?”

“Where?”

“My regular shift. Show you Paris by night. We got he/shes in the Bois de Boulogne where Maurice Chevalier sang ‘Sank' eaven for Leetle Girls', we got Albanian pimps, terrorists, human smuggling rings out of China, pickpockets on motorbikes. This is gay Paree, Artie. What's your pleasure? My car's across the street.”

“Your boss doesn't like me.”

“No.”

“He wishes I'd beat it.”

“He thinks, you being a cop, you're going to get involved with Lily's case.”

“He's right.”

“Don't do it.”

“I'm not a cop.”

“In your genes, you're a cop. He can tell. I'm hungry. You?”

“No.”

He stopped for a Big Mac and fries, and offered me some. I shook my head. The fries smelled good. He leaned against his car, finishing the food.

“Help yourself, Artie.”

“Thanks.”

“Don't get me pushed off Lily Hanes' case, you understand? Don't make waves.”

“How come it matters so much to you?”

“It's my fucking case is how come, you know? I said this to them when she got hurt, give me some time on this, OK, and I'll get it. I want it. Please. But, of course, I'm just what you call a detective, and they'll toss this upstairs to one of the big brigades where it will sit in a file and some commissaire will read it and then go for lunch for three hours. That's why I'm spending my free time on it. I hate the way the bastards are so callous. I hate the whole fucking system here. I hate the paper-work. You saw the chief. Yes sir, no sir, pretend we are playing soldiers, sir.” He finished his food and tossed the container into a garbage can. “I saw your friend, Lily, and how hurt she was, and I thought, fuck them all. This is my case.”

I passed him some cigarettes. He shook his head and looked for his own pack.

Face red with anger, Momo said, “I know stuff they'll never know but I don't write it all down. So, Artie, I'll give you whatever I can. You tell me what you want, OK? But do it quiet.” Gourad was big, ugly and smart. He was much too good a cop for the shit he swallowed.

“On Lily, you did prints? DNA?”

“Of course. But these bastards who do this kind of stuff to women, I mean, no one has records on them. They appear from the East like from the slime and they disappear. No records. No nothing.”

“Russian?”

“You got a special interest in the Russians?”

“Yeah.”

Still leaning on the car, he looked across at me. “OK, I hear you. You want to tell me why?”

“I was born there.”

Why did I say it? Maybe I figured if Momo was going to give me something, I'd have to share with him after all. He offered me his French fries; I offered him my past.

I said, “Also I've gone a few rounds with them. Not here, but they got connections and long memories. I fucked with them in New York, in London once. Low-life Russians. Rich Russians who are connected everywhere.”

Momo nodded. “The muscle, the kind of thug that does women, they can be anything.”

“The kid behind the billboard?”

“Who knows? There was one that was Albanian. This one tonight, who the fuck knows?” Gourad added, “Someone's been asking after Lily.”

“What kind of someone?”

“Pompous little prick from your embassy.”

“What the fuck for?”

“Lily's an American. An American gets beat up bad in Paris, the embassy takes an interest. Didn't they call you?”

“I don't know. I didn't get a message. You told them what, exactly?”

“It's freezing out here, let's get in the car,” he said.

We got back in the green Golf. Momo slammed the door. “So you want to come along while I do my idiotic shift?”

“Sure. You told the embassy prick what?”

He drove into the night. “Me? I didn't tell them anything they didn't already know.”

“The other guys working her case, you know them?”

“Sure I know them.”

“What kind of cops are they?”

“They're OK. I mean they're what they are, some of them are smart cops, a couple are idiots. They'll do the case right if the boss leaves them be.” He was defensive. “So what do you think Lily was doing in Paris in the first place? How come she gets to Paris and gets herself cracked up with a hammer the first night she's in town?”

“I don't know.”

Momo was silent as he stepped on the gas. He adjusted his belly behind the steering wheel and squinted out the window, a cigarette hanging off his lip. On the dashboard was a photograph of a smiling man in a baseball cap.

“Who's that?”

“That is the most wanted man in France. A serial killer who murders women on the train between Marseille and Paris. We don't get a lot of serial killers in France. Not officially. We call them terrorists.” He laughed. “Or foreigners.”

“He looks harmless.”

“Look, Art, I don't want to get brutal or nothing, but if you're going to work this, you need to get your brain in shape. You need to reconstruct the last days, you, Lily, what's been going on.”

“Did the attack have a signature?”

“Maybe. You want to share anything with me that you found in Lily's stuff? She must have left things in London, papers, whatever.”

“I got a quick look before I left London. There's nothing.”

“Nothing?”

I said, “It's weird, she cleaned up her desk before she left like you do if you're leaving for a while, no credit-card receipts, nothing. I think she didn't want me to know what she was doing.”

“You working some kind of case? Something that could concern people who don't want you nosing around and think Lily's in on it?”

“I don't think so. I'm mostly on a bank thing for a security outfit. Bullshit stuff, but I make a buck. Most of it's in America. There's a couple loose ends I have to pick up here.”

He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Where were you last night, Artie? I tried to get hold of you. I came by the hotel.”

“I don't know, out eating.”

“The hotel clerk said you went over to the Portes de Vanves. You asked directions.”

“I was meeting a guy.”

“What guy?”

“Someone from the bank.”

“About your case?”

“Yes.”

“Anything else?”

If I told him about the roller-coaster, there would be questions, officials, forms to fill out, time wasted. I said, “No, really.”

Gourad knew I was lying, but he let it go.

Outside, the city sped by in a wet blur. My hands shook when I lit a cigarette. “You said Lily was raped.” The words came out flat, harsh.

“It looks that way. I'm sorry. You want the details?”

“No.” Don't think about it, I said to myself. Just keep moving.

“What?”

I was talking to myself out loud. Momo looked at me sympathetically.

“Nothing,” I said.

“Take it easy.”

“Your guys are nowhere on Lily's case, isn't that right?

Gourad, angry, said, “You got it.”

“Where we going?”

“My shift, like I said.”

If I stayed with Gourad, he might open up. He wanted to talk. He was angry with the brass and I knew how that was, so I'd keep with him. “You from Paris, Momo?”

“Sure.”

“Parents?”

“What's the difference?”

“Hey, I'm just making polite conversation. No one gives a shit where your parents came from.”

“You think that?” he said. “You're from New York where no one gives a shit. It matters in France. You're not French unless you've been here five hundred years. I'm part Moroccan. My father's parents came over when he was a kid.”

I kept my mouth shut.

“I wish to God I could spend all my time on Lily's case, but we waste our time on small shit. Last night we had to shake down some West African guys for swiping
fake Vuitton handbags, then we picked up some Algerians for selling an ounce of hash. I could be working on the fucks who beat up Lily, who killed that little girl and stuffed her body behind the billboard. But we have to make Paris nice.”

Gourad's fury spurted up out of him, it made him tick, it made him ambitious.

I said, “You got kids?”

“Sure. Nice wife, two nice kids, nice house in the suburbs. You'd like Monique. You'll come for dinner, she'll make her cheese soufflé. You like a cheese soufflé, Artie?”

“Sure. Thanks.”

“One more thing.”

“What's that?”

“You carrying, Artie? You have a weapon? It's not allowed in France. This is not the Wild West, OK? We're not in Texas.”

I didn't answer. I didn't have a gun, not yet.

“Momo?”

“What?”

“Lily's hair. When you found her, how was her hair?”

“Short,” he said. “Her hair was short.”

“There was hair at the scene? Her hair?” He didn't answer.

“Tell me.”

“Yes. I don't know why. I don't know what the fuck this means, but something happened to her hair. We found chunks of her hair where they beat her up, like someone hacked it off.”

*

Momo Gourad drove like a crazy man. He drove me around the parts of Paris he worked on his shift and kept up a stream of chatter. He was up-front about his own boss and the way, like most cops, he hated the system. He was also holding back, feeling me out, wary. He had some kind of personal investment in the case that I didn't understand. He had the gray binder with Lily's case file in his desk drawer and I wanted it bad enough to sit alongside him in the car and listen to him however long it took.

“It won't help, calling again,” Gourad said as I started dialing the hospital for the third time. “Give it a break. Please.”

I called anyway. There was no news.

Snow kept falling as Gourad drove. Everywhere, I clocked the streets, memorizing what I could, figuring out the city. Rue Saint-Denis where there were sex shops and peep shows and clubs marked
cuirs,
like they were selling leather goods. “
Salons de Lingeries”, “Show Lesbiennes”.
There were fast-food joints, fake English pubs, kebab stalls where huge lumps of meat turned on a spit.

A van pulled up next to Gourad's car. Through the windows I could see three cops in uniform, young guys in dark-blue jumpsuits. The driver had gelled hair and the focused prettiness of a storm-trooper in a Fascist recruiting poster. He saluted Gourad and pulled away. We turned into rue Blondel, where there were hookers old enough to be my mother.

We pulled up for a red light. Enormous breasts popping out of her white leather coat, one of them
leaned against the car. She had on war-paint an inch thick.

In front of an ancient church, five or six guys loitered.

“Prescription drugs,” Gourad said. “They get free meds on the national health service, sell them at three bucks a pop. Good business.”

“It's organized?”

“No. This is small stuff.”

I made conversation. “What about the big stuff? Heroin? Cocaine?”

“Other districts. Not so much on the street here. You see that McDonald's, man, the other side of the place Clichy?” He nodded in the direction of the restaurant. “It's a supermarket. You want to see? You can get anything. Dope. Ecstasy. Hash. What the kids call Mitsubishi.”

He stepped on the gas, put on the siren, then drove me the wrong way around the square and pulled up in front of the lighted glass box that was McDonald's. Inside, people were slumped at tables, picking over their burgers, slurping up the Coke and coffee.

“You want something, Artie?”

“I'm not hungry.”

“I wasn't talking about food.”

I took it like a joke, but he was already out of the car into the street, looking through the window, working the pavement.

A couple of teenagers leaned against the window, cigarettes hanging out of their surly faces. One talked into a phone. The other watched him. Gourad came back to the car, mumbling about the Arabs.

“I thought you were Moroccan,” I said and wished I'd kept my mouth shut.

“What's that got to do with it?” he said. “I'm not some fucking Arab.”

“Lighten up.”

“You know all us cops are racists, right, Artie? Everyone, good cops, bad cops, black, white, we're all fucking racist pigs, don't you agree? Isn't that the sociology? Isn't it?”

“Sure, Momo. Whatever.”

I said, “Show me where the girls work off the trucks. The prostitutes. Show me where I can find the American. Burnham. Her shelter.”

“Why?”

“I want to see.”

“Whoever ordered the attack on Lily didn't come from around here.”

“How do you know?”

“They don't mess with Americans. They don't go off-turf like that. It doesn't work that way.”

“You must have some fucking idea who did Lily?”

He didn't answer. He drove on, out of the square, away from the neon lights and sex clubs and tourists traps. The streets were darker here, wherever the hell we were, and it was hilly. It was snowing harder. People slipped in and out of doorways like ghosts.

This wasn't Paris the way I had imagined it; dismal, hopeless, the ugly walls pitted with holes, scratched with graffiti, the streets slimy with garbage, this was another place. At the end of a narrow street, a ramshackle building was lit up by a couple of bare bulbs over the doorway.

“Burnham's shelter?”

“Yes.”

“It was for the homeless. She took it over for the bitches. Sorry, prostitutes. I should be politically correct with you around.”

I didn't answer. I needed some air.

“There's nothing here, Artie.”

“Let me off, OK?” I put my hand on the car door. “I'll be fine. Drop me at the McDonald's. What the fuck can happen to you at a McDonald's, right?”