Skin Trade (16 page)

He laughed. “Literally?”

“I wish.”

Coming out of the hospital later, I bumped into Tolya going in. He had moved Lily to a room on the ground floor. It had two big windows facing the courtyard. She was sleeping. The nurse told me she had talked a little, then fallen asleep from the effort.

“I don't like the room,” I said to Tolya.

“I fixed it. It's better. Light. Nicer room.”

“It's too fucking exposed.”

“No. This is better. I can keep a guy in the courtyard all the time. Also, if there's trouble we can get her out fast.”

“Don't be so fucking melodramatic”

“How come you're mad at me all the time?”

“I'm just mad at everyone.”

“I got three guys on this, around the clock. Trust me.”

Tolya always has muscle on call, a network he taps into, most of them Russian guys, ex-weightlifters. Big ugly guys. Now I was grateful.

“By the way, I fixed your Ms Carol Browne,” he said.

“How?”

He laughed. “Never mind how. I just fixed it. You'll be OK with her for a couple days.”

“Come on.”

“I hired her.”

“Don't fuck with me.”

“I told her. I say, Carol, I hear you are number one woman from Keyes Security, I don't want some underling, I want you, so I put her on big job and paid her double. I dropped few names, she was impressed. I even bought her lunch.”

“You're nuts.” Sometimes I loved this guy. He laughed.

“What job?”

“I made up some crap about Russian gangsters.”

“She'll buy it?”

“Sure, she'll have a check on her desk tomorrow morning.”

“You'll stay with Lily a while?” He nodded. “I'll stay.”

“Until I get back?”

“Yes, Artyom. I will.”

There were messages from Joe Fallon and Momo Gourad, but nothing from Martha Burnham. I left Tolya and went to her shelter, she wasn't there; I went to McDonald's. Through the window I saw her, head down, sitting opposite a young woman who looked rough.

I tapped on the glass and Martha looked up, her face blank. Maybe she needed glasses. Maybe she didn't recognize me. Again I tapped on the window, then I went inside. Martha saw me coming.

She got out of her seat, pulled the girl with her and disappeared into the back. For a few seconds I stood there. Martha was in the toilet downstairs.

I waited in McDonald's with a gun in my pocket. Eric Levesque, my dead guy with the bank account, had run
a model agency that was a front for whores. Lily found out and someone beat her up for it after she visited her old friend Martha Burnham, who was hiding from me in the toilet in a fast-food joint in Paris.

The junkies glanced at me sidelong from their coffee when I suddenly ran for the stairs. In the bathroom, a couple of girls, smoking weed, looked up, furious. They filled the doorway, they didn't let me through. I looked over them and saw that Martha was gone. There was a back way out where they put the garbage.

“Let me get you a room here.”

“For Chrissake, Tolya, I have my own fucking room, OK?”

After I left McDonalds, I took a taxi back to the hospital, discovered he was gone, and followed him to his hotel. His suite had a parlor with a mural on the wall, a bar spread out on a white linen cloth and a bathroom as big as my apartment in New York.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“It's OK,” he said.

“You said you'd stay with Lily.”

“I left Lily with twenty-four-hour private nursing, plus security on rotation. Around the clock. She's alright.”

“Can you find out if there's anything on a cop named Gourad. Homicide guy, maybe. Vice. I'm not sure. He says he's working Lily's case. Maurice Gourad. They call him Momo. Get him. He has Lily's file and I want it.”

“You look like crap.”

“Thanks.”

“I left my best guys with her.”

“All right, OK. I fucking heard you the first six times.”

Tolya looked surprised. I could hear how cold my voice was. I was tired. I had nothing to bring Lily, no story, no nothing. It was late. “Listen, I think I better go get some sleep.”

“So how come you're here?” He reached over to the bar, picked up a pair of miniatures and with one hand, like a chef cracking a couple of eggs, emptied the Scotch into a glass. “Drink something. You're OK?”

“No.”

“We'll eat.” Tolya thinks if you don't eat you can't think.

I was too tired to argue.

“What do you feel like?”

“I want to work the case. I want Lily back.”

“It's nine o'clock at night. You have to eat.”

“Fine, we'll eat.”

“Get yourself cleaned up and we'll get out of here,” he said. He took the phone out of my hand. He pushed me towards the bathroom.

I had a shower, then we went downstairs to the bar and sat in red plush armchairs. Tolya ordered drinks and snacks and said, “So Lily. It was a way of warning you.”

“Yes. You ever hear of a guy named Eric Levesque?”

He shook his head.

“You know people who run women. Come on, Tolya, you know all the creeps.”

“This is not my area of expertise,” he said, sipping a Bloody Mary. “What about this Gourad? The cop? Tell me what you already know.”

“Like I told you, he's young, smart, he's married, he's in love with a Russian, a Natasha. Calls herself Katya Strogonoff. Real name's Slobodkin. You know her?”

“I met her. She looks good, but she's on the make. He's an idiot. You want to eat here?”

“Let's go out.”

Tolya picked up his phone and made a call. “Come on,” he said. “We'll go eat. It will clear our head. I swear to God, you'll love this place.”

I was in jeans. “Let me stop and get some clothes.”

“For this place you don't need to change. Later you'll change,” he said, and I didn't ask what for.

The black Mercedes was waiting outside with a Russian driver. Tolya gave him directions, and we pulled away from the hotel. My glass was still in my hand.

“You have some business in Paris?” I said.

“Come off it, Artyom, you know what my real business is.”

He opened a small bar in the back of the car, retrieved a can of cashews, unzipped it, took out a handful of nuts and ate them. “Better,” he said.

“So what is it, your business?”

He licked the salt off his finger and laughed. “Keeping you alive.”

The night was frozen, the stars very sharp in the clear, frigid sky. Paris was all lights as we crossed the city. The car finally turned into a narrow side street and pulled up in front of a restaurant.

“Not your usual thing,” I said, glancing at the place.

Tolya likes his restaurants with a lot of gold; he likes them showy.

“This is better. Wait.” His face lit up, expectant. Inside, the headwaiter greeted Tolya like his long-lost brother. At the table reserved for us, automatically I took the chair with its back to the wall and Tolya sat down opposite me.

The waiter brought us a brick of warm, unctuous foie gras. There was fresh toast to go with it; the smell of the bread made me hungry. Tolya waved aside the menus and talked French to the headwaiter. Food arrived. It was like a drug. For an hour we ate.

It was pretty much the best food I ever ate in my whole life, the foie gras, the roast chicken, the shoulder of lamb with its crackling skin that slid off the meat, the potato cakes, and, after, crème caramel. We drank plenty of wine and ended up with old Armagnac; the fumes that came up from the glass were potent. If you drank enough, this stuff could make any problem disappear. I drank.

Tolya gestured for the bottle and the waiter put it on the table. “Better?”

“Much better.”

“They do it different from anyone else,” Tolya said. “The French, when they cook it right, the food is different. Better. Before they gave most of the country away to McDonald's and Pizza Hut.” He looked at the remains of his dessert. “I always want to eat this food. You want anything else?”

“You must be kidding.”

“I'm going in the kitchen to tell them, OK?”

“Sure. You got a number for your guy, the one you left with Lily?”

He took out his cell phone, punched some buttons and handed it to me. I went outside the door and skidded where snow had frozen. The trees were festooned with little icicles.

Tolya's guy said Lily was sleeping. I told him to get the nurse, who also said Lily was asleep. I wanted to be there. I was like a kid with an obsession. I wanted to be there and I wanted to be away so I couldn't see her bruised face and broken hand. For the first time since I got to Paris, I was mildly drunk.

I went back into the restaurant, sat at the table and picked up the Armagnac. Tolya pulled a gold case out of his jacket and extracted two Havanas. “You want?”

“Sure.”

We sat late. We sat until the last customer left. Tolya made me take him through the case one step at a time. We finished the Armagnac.

“I don't know what I'm doing here, I should be working the case,” I said, but I was too stewed to get up. Stewed was how I felt. Stewed like fruit in brandy. Not drunk, mellow. Mindless.

“We have to figure this thing out with logic,” Tolya said.

“You think you can get logic on a case like this off a bottle of Armagnac and a plate of foie gras?”

He was a little drunk, too. The heavy, aromatic booze made his big face pink. “Is about keeping you alive, Artyom. Drink. Food. About keeping you alive.” He smiled. “Also, me.”

There was nothing much I could do this time of night except keep calling Martha Burnham, so I got back in the car with Tolya. It took us to my hotel where I changed, then Tolya's hotel, where he put on a tux, which made him look very big, very regal.

“You like it?”

“I feel under-dressed.” I had on my best Hugo Boss suit that I bought at Century 21.

“I don't blame you.”

“Thanks.”

“You're welcome.” I followed him back into the car.

“This is wonderful place, Artyom. Paris. Wonderful. You can find anything here.” He waved his hand in the general direction of the city. “Anything.”

Tolya moves around, he makes money, he minds other people's business. Sometimes it takes a while. It usually involves prowling some city, New York, Hong Kong, Moscow, in the middle of the night.

I said, “Listen, Tolya, are we going somewhere that's going to help me on Lily? Because I'm not really up for hanging out. I'm in a hurry.”

“Maybe this will help, and anyway, what else are you going to do at midnight, Monday, in Paris? What?” Then he said suddenly, “So the guy is dead and alive at the same time.”

“What guy?”

“Your Mr Levesque,” he said as we turned a corner and pulled up in front of a club.

I checked the street sign. Sixteenth Arrondissement. The street looked rich, cold, sleek and sober. A man in a quilted jacket walked a couple of expensive poodles; a
woman, heavy fur coat hanging open, pearls showing, ducked into a taxi.

“I'll tell you what I think, Toi, OK?”

“Tell me.”

“I think it's all bullshit, you know. I think someone's putting me on is what I think. Someone who knows the case I'm working and wants to fake me out.”

“Maybe.” Tolya climbed out of the car and I followed.

There was a wrought-iron grille in which stylized black birds and flowers were trapped in gilded iron leaves. From inside, subtle lights shone through the opaque glass doors that were etched with Art Deco patterns.

The doorman recognized Tolya and pulled open the gates for us. Inside, the smell of rich people enveloped me; there was chatter in French, English, Russian, Japanese.

“What the hell are we doing here?”

Tolya smiled. “Looking for Monsieur Levesque.”

The emerald in Tolya's ear flashed. We sat at a table in a corner. People, men mostly, sauntered up to him, shook his hand, hugged him, addressed him in French, English, Russian, even once in Chinese. He beamed. The diamonds in his cufflinks were big as marbles. He pulled out the cigarette case so people could admire the ruby on it. He ordered magnums of Cristal. I held one of his Havanas in my hand, sat and watched. The women were spectacular.

It was like something out of a James Bond movie. From the next room, I could hear the sounds of
gambling, the click of the roulette ball, the dice, the chips. I looked up. There was a painted ceiling; the moldings were covered in gold leaf. The high French windows were draped with white brocade. The waiters, in white tie and tail, moved between the tables with bottles of wine and trays of caviar. Maybe because I was still a little boozed up, I wanted to laugh out loud.

The women were young and there were dozens of them, some at the tables, some on a tiny dance floor at the far end of the room. All of them wore evening clothes, and when my eyes adjusted to the low light and the flicker of candles, I thought they seemed to be acting.

This was a set. The director would appear any minute and call for a cut, and the extras would squat by the wall for a smoke and a cup of coffee.

A second wave of guys came at Tolya, again hugging him, exchanging business cards, whispering in his ear and when this wave ebbed and we were alone for a minute, I said, “So tell me.”

“What's that, Artyom?”

“What is this place? It's fucking ridiculous.”

“Sure.”

“You know it's ridiculous.”

“Sure, I know.”

“You putting me on, man?” I was getting restless.

“What are we doing here?”

“I'm looking for information.”

“Come off it, Toi. I'm going back to the hotel. I got stuff to do.”

“You think I don't want for Lily an answer to the shit they did? I also got stuff. Same stuff as you.”