The Diaries - 01 (21 page)

He turned to face
the girl,
what’s her name?
 
Dropping the two blades onto the bear rug,
Nicky stroked himself, licking his lips ravenously.
 
“Ready to take the beast again?”

She probably
couldn’t even hear him over the music, but it appeared she got the gist of the
question, rolling her eyes as she removed a mirror from the bedside table,
snorting a crooked line of the white powder.

Nicky grabbed the
remote and turned the volume down. “You’re a junkie,” he said with disdain.

“Me?” she
laughed.
 
“You’re the one with a nose
like an industrial vacuum cleaner.”

“Shut up,
bitch.”
 
Nicky swaggered to the television
and stared at the three women bobbing and moving, their bodies glistening with
oil.
 
He pointed to the one with red hair
and, just as he was beginning to give pointers, Marcel burst into the room.
 
His face was grim and tight; he held a silken
bathrobe for Nicky.
 
The girl, in all her
nakedness, didn’t even flinch at the presence of another man.

“Not now, damn
it!” Nicky boomed, turning back to the silenced video.

Marcel threw the
robe at him, his voice rising to an uncharacteristic level.
 
“It’s important, Nicky. We need to talk
right now
.”

Nicky examined
Marcel’s eyes, seeing the uncharacteristic electricity.
 
Marcel didn’t typically act with such
alacrity when summoning him.
 
Appearing
momentarily sensible, Nicky nodded.

They moved to the
glassed-in balcony, Nicky sipping a mineral water as he looked over the
scattered lights of the Marne valley.
 
This was his land.
 
He’d been born
fatherless, his mother working as a waitress and part-time prostitute, raising
him to a point where he could begin to provide for himself—something he was
forced to do at fourteen when she was killed as collateral damage during a
hold-up.
 
Small in stature his entire
life, Nicky had learned to be tough and, very early on, had learned the
benefits of striking first.
 
In his last
year attending school, at age fifteen, one of the larger kids had thrown
Nicky’s second-hand jacket in the mud.
 
It was the last thing his mother had ever given him and, as the older teen
stood laughing with his buddies, something in Nicky had snapped.
 
He grabbed a hand-sized rock from the ground,
smacking the bully in the cheek, knocking him to the ground.
 
While the stunned onlookers watched in
horror, Nicky pounded the big kid’s face into hamburger, shattering orbital
sockets and knocking all his front teeth out in the process.
 
The kid was in the hospital for weeks of
reconstructive surgery.
 
From that moment
on, Nicky Arnaud had been a different man.

He’d tried to run
but was caught days later outside of Paris.
 
During eight months in the orphanage, Nicky crafted his skills as a
brawler and intimidator, developing a crew and running the cigarette and nudie
magazine trade.
 
He was small but feared,
and not one resident had their way with Nicky, sexually.
 

But that didn’t
include the staff.
 

One counselor in
particular, a sallow, skinny-faced Parisian named
Velonois
,
had trapped Nicky in an office one morning, raping him with force.
 
Velonois
threatened
to spread the word that Nicky was a queen if he didn’t acquiesce to future
encounters.
 
A rumor such as that,
especially from a counselor, would have effectively ended Nicky’s reign as
someone of influence.
 
The orphanage was
nothing more than a medium-security prison—the rumor would have probably led to
Nicky’s death.
 
So Nicky did what he had
to do, for a period of weeks, all the while vowing to get his revenge.
 
And fifteen months after his release, Nicky
followed through.
 
When the police found
the body of counselor Pierre
Velonois
, a bachelor and
(as they soon learned) child-abuser, in his dingy basement flat, they’d
determined that he had been bound and gagged for nearly a day, sodomized
repeatedly with all manner of objects before his life escaped him due to
extreme shock and the loss of blood.
 
After
digging into some of the rumors at the orphanage, the police let the case go
cold, each of them secretly happy with the street-justice the counselor had
received.

It was one of the
few things Nicky ever did that anyone admired.

He sipped his
water as his predatory eyes swept the rolling hills.
 
They were bathed in purple light as the cold
half-moon shined down.
 
The memories of
his first killing were pleasing to him, like a cozy blanket that always
provided just enough warmth without getting too hot.
 
There had been other killings since then—many
others—but none that lived so vividly in his mind.
 
He shook his head, clearing his
thoughts.
 
There’s business at hand, and Marcel had been saying something, hadn’t
he?

“What did you
say?” Nicky asked, blinking rapidly and focusing on his advisor.

Marcel tried to
hide his irritation.
 
“This is
important,
Nicky.
 
Do you need to sober up first?”

Anger spiked in
Nicky’s jumbled mind, but a rare rational thought outweighed the emotion.
 
He did need a clear mind for important business.
 
Rubbed his eyes.
 
“I’m fine,” he lied to Marcel and himself.
 
“Now, what was it you were saying?”

Marcel heaved a
breath, his narrow chest drooping as he exhaled heavily.
 
“Please sit.
 
I’ve got bad news.”

When most people
hear such a grave preamble, their face shows a combination of fear and
dread.
 
Most people.
 
Nicky’s face, though, displayed something
between amusement and anger.
 
He was not
a normal person.
 
And he did not sit.

“Out with it.”

“Bruno called,
just a few minutes ago.
 
He said…”
 
Marcel’s voice cracked before he paused to
wet his mouth.

Nicky leaned
forward, his voice growing.
 
“What, Marcel?
 
What the hell did Bruno say?”

“It’s your cousin,
Nicky.
 
It’s Leon.
 
He’s dead.”
 
The finality of such a statement crashed into the glass room like an enormous
boulder.

Nicky was stone-still
for half a minute.
 
Finally, he dropped
back into the leather seat, absently reaching for the mineral water and
knocking it over in the process.
 
He
spoke in a low voice.
 
“How?
 
What happened?”

“Bruno and Leon
were in Metz, working some sort of deal with a degenerate merchant.
 
The merchant had made an arrangement with
some German man, a lucrative arrangement, to pay his debt to us.
 
A rare book, or something like that.
 
Something went wrong at the meet and…well, the
German killed Leon.”

“How?”

“He…he shot him in
the face.”

Nicky flinched at
that, waiting a moment before finally speaking. “A German.”
 
His voice had taken on the velvety undertone
Marcel and everyone else close to Nicky knew well.
 
Danger was in the air.

“Yes, and a girl.”

Nicky held his
hand up as he often did when he wanted silence for thought.
 
He moved hardly a muscle for minutes.
 
He was perfectly still, only blinking
occasionally.
 
His breaths were audible,
in through the nose, out through the mouth.
 
At one point he nodded before resuming his thoughts.
 
Finally, he stood and, with a primal scream,
he lifted the leather chair and hoisted it through the window in a hail of
broken glass.
 

Leon was far more
than Nicky’s cousin.
 
He handled all of
eastern France for the Glaives, and he was as close to a friend as anyone Nicky
had ever had.
 
And now he was dead,
killed—shot in the face—
by a fucking
German?

As the cold gushed
through the shattered void, Nicky straightened his back and sucked in great
quantities of the nighttime air, his arms open wide as if he were drawing
energy from the frigid night.
 
He swept
his eyes over the land before turning to Marcel, his face stolid as he gestured
with his hand.

“Then let’s go to
Metz.”

Chapter 7

Gage
had no idea that Bruno had
kept the killing quiet.
 
He assumed
something—the gunshots, Michel’s employee Gerard, a silent alarm—would have
alerted the police and they would now be on the lookout for him and Monika.
 
They would be wanted for questioning in a
double murder and, by the way, also for assaulting a hotel desk clerk.
 
If Gage were a normal person, without an
alias, without his background as a deadly soldier, he might go to the police
and tell them every single thing that had occurred.
 
It would be cumbersome to fully explain;
especially going back into Michel’s shop the way he did, doing so only because
he cared for Michel’s welfare.
 
Gage
would argue that any normal man would do the same.

But Gage was not a
normal man.

They would pick his
story apart, pegging him for the cold-blooded murder of the short thug.
 
They would circle him in the interrogation
room, thumping the pages of his file, yelling, “But you’re a trained killer,
Monsieur Hartline!
 
You certainly knew
what you were doing.
 
You could have left
well enough alone and simply called us after you heard that gunshot.
 
But no, you had to go back and get revenge,
to take a human life.”

It wasn’t true; he
did not go back for revenge.
 
Did I?
 
Further complicating matters was the fact that he wasn’t in the United
States, or even Germany.
 
In either of
those countries, and probably the U.K. too, Gage could predict the police’s
actions.
 
Here in France, however, he had
no idea what he was up against.
 
And he
also had no inkling who the two hoods were.
 
They could be a part of a larger organization, one with tentacles that
reached into the fabric of the police.
 
There
were too many unknowns; and because of the uncertainty, Gage desperately needed
to get back into Germany.

As they drove in
the direction of the border, doing things the old-fashioned way, Gage held the
map on his lap, touching their slowly moving location as he directed Monika
eastward on the secondary roads.
 
If the
border was blocked—and with Metz being a border city, he was certain it would
be—they would have to ditch the car and cross on foot, or by another method.

“How much money do
we still have?” he asked.
 
“In cash.”

“Why?”

“We may have to
bribe our way back to Germany.”

She turned to him
with a horrified face.
 
“What are you
talking about?”

“We may have to
pay someone off,” he said matter-of-factly.

“My God, I didn’t
sign up for this!
 
I cannot go on the run
because you killed someone.
 
I haven’t
done
anything
wrong!”

Gage chewed his
lower lip as he stared at her.
 
She had
every right to be upset.
 
When he’d told
her about Michel, it had taken five minutes of soothing to get her moving
again.
 
He wanted to defend himself by going
into detail about the incredibly stupid stunt Michel had pulled, the catalyst
for everything that had happened, but decided to table it until they were back
in Germany.
 

Still gnawing at
his mind was the fact that the two hoods, in his estimation, weren’t garden-variety
street toughs.
 
Working as a team, one
brains and one muscle, as well as carrying a piece like that gleaming Colt and
having a backup ankle holster set them apart in Gage’s mind.
 
The short one, with his proficient handling
of the gun and his confident manner of speech, displayed a man well-versed in
the businesses of theft and violence.
 
Gage
had seen mobsters, even worked with them, many times before.
 
Germany, on one hand, was relatively
crime-free when it came to organized crime.
 
But France, like their distant cousins to the south, was known to be
riddled with layers of organized crime syndicates.
 
Some of them were rumored to be interwoven
into the arms of the government.
 
Gage’s
mind went to Gerard, Michel’s employee and rare book buyer.
 
He could point the police, or the remaining criminals,
to Monika as Michel’s cousin.
 
And from
there it would be only a matter of hours before pursuers would be swarming over
her every footprint.

The diaries were
far from Gage’s mind at this point.
 
But
his plastic background wasn’t.
 
In his
profession, it wasn’t wise to hang around for the local cops after a situation
turned violent.
 
And this time Gage was
on his own, naked to the situation.
 
He
didn’t have a black vacuum of some government, or a huge corporation backing
him up, telling him at every turn what he needed to do to escape.
 
It was just Gage and this poor girl who had
been saddled with him because she’d made the unfortunate mistake of spilling
her drink on him and finding him somewhat interesting.

And although it
was Monika who had led him to Michel, he felt awful for dragging her into such
a mess.
 
His mind kept coming back to
Gerard, the one loose end.
 
He knew that Monika
was Michel’s cousin.
 
After the discovery
of the bodies, they would locate Gerard, and he would put everything together
for them, spilling his guts.
 
Gage gave
it until sunrise before the authorities made the connection to Monika, and subsequently
to Gage Hartline, American expatriate, of Frankfurt.

A large blue sign
announced the German border in thirteen kilometers.
 
Gage instructed Monika to take the next right
turn.
 
There was one thing he could do,
one marker he hated to call in, but he had no choice.
 
It was his only play at this point, and they
needed a very private phone booth.
 

Gage needed to phone
an old friend.

Two tired-looking
plainclothes policemen nosed around the back office and foyer as they
questioned the front desk clerk and the only witness, Damien Ellis.
 
They weren’t even bothering to take
notes.
 
Damien guessed their shift ended
at midnight and they were ready to get home.
 
To them it was just a simple assault, and who really cares if some hotel
clerk gets whacked in the neck and is left with no visible injuries?

The older
detective spoke excellent English, looking at Ellis with heavy lids covering
half of his eyes.
 
“So, even though the
clerk said they were German, you say the man and woman clearly spoke English?”

Ellis nodded
confidently. “That’s right.
 
She started
out by speaking German, but then he told her to put a diary under the seat, or
something close to that.
 
His accent was certainly
American English.
 
If pressed, I would
say upper-Midwest because of the way he dragged out the vowel sounds.”

The Frenchman
glanced to his partner.
 
Both men seemed
amused by Ellis’s theory on the man’s intonation.
 
The investigator glanced back at his
notepad.
 
“The diary?”

“Diary or diaries—hard
to tell.
 
I found that odd, too,” Ellis
answered.
 
“Don’t know what he was
talking about.”

“Well, they didn’t
steal anything from here.
 
He could’ve
been talking about anything.
 
Most likely
it was their code for drugs.
 
These small-timers
panic when someone sees them buying a bag.
 
That shit makes you paranoid,
oui
?
” the man
chuckled, glancing at his partner again.

Ellis, irritation
growing, waved his hand to the clerk.
 
“But our friend here said the man asked him about the security tape
before he took him down with a single blow to the neck.”
 
Calming himself, Ellis softened his face and
continued.
 
“I know you know this, but a
neck strike like that—while done in the movies—is very difficult to pull
off.
 
A man has to hit someone in the
exact perfect spot, just so,” he said, making a gesture with thumb and index
finger to display the small margin.
 
“Obviously it takes a highly-trained person to do it.
 
The assailant then gagged the clerk to buy
enough time to get the security tape and get away.
 
Don’t you think he was a bit more
professional than you’re giving him credit for?
 
Perhaps you should check to see if there are other crimes in Metz the
man could be connected with?”

The detective eyed
Ellis as he sipped from the paper cup of coffee.
 
From his pocket, he produced a small radio, keying
it and speaking rapid French.
 
After
listening to the reply, he nodded respectfully to Ellis.
 
“If something else has happened, they will
let us know.
 
And Monsieur Ellis, I
understand you are a detective and trying to be helpful.
 
But you will also understand that each area
has its own characteristics, and Metz is no different.
 
It’s a wealthy town with many
foreigners.
 
They like to come here for
the hot baths, the sexy clubs and the champagne.
 
And yes, the drugs too.
 
It’s my guess that what we have here is some
American, or German, who panicked and tried to—”

The radio
interrupted the detective.
 
He lifted it
and listened before looking at his partner with a tight, knowing smile.
 
He turned back to Ellis.

“Nothing else
tonight other than typical drunks and a wreck involving a bread truck.”

Ellis arched his
brows and nodded.
 
Fine by him.
 
He didn’t need to get involved in this.
 
“Thanks, gentlemen.”
 
He gave them his schedule for the remainder
of his vacation, just in case they were to need him.
 
The clerk walked from behind the counter, an
ice pack on his neck as he began gesturing and speaking loudly to an older man
who had just arrived.
 
Ellis presumed him
to be the hotel’s owner.
 
Looking at the
ice pack, and then to the camera in the corner of the atrium, Ellis felt his
instinct saying something to him.
 
There
was something else at play here, everything inside him told him something
bigger was going on, and it was right under his nose.

But this isn’t your territory, Captain
Ellis. And you’re on vacation.

With a yawn and a
rub of his eyes, Damien Ellis trudged up the stairs and went to sleep.
 
There was fine wine to be had on the morrow.

 
***

In the day of
every type of portable communication device imaginable, it took Gage a full
fifteen minutes to find a pay phone, now a dwindling anachronism of a time long
past.
 
He huddled in the graffiti-laden
phone booth, stabbing the silver numbers of the large phone.
 
He was using the prepaid phone card from his
wallet, and a glance at his watch told him that it was just before 6 p.m. in
Fayetteville, North Carolina.
 
After
going through three sequences of numbers, the familiar American ring told him
that he had finally gotten through.

“Hunter, here,”
said the brusque voice on the other end of the line, probably fresh in from a
late afternoon workout and watching the evening news.

“Hello, sir.
 
You know who this is by my voice?
 
If so, don’t say.”

There was a
pause.
 
“I know a lot of voices, son.
 
Tell me something to shake my memory.”

“We shared a
rubber raft once.
 
It had a hole in it
that you had to plug with your thumb, and we beached on a dangerous strip of
land that’s in the news a great deal, especially in the last decade.”

“Damn,” Hunter
muttered.
 
“Thought you must be dead.”

“Aren’t we all,
sir?”

An agreeable snort
was heard before he said, “Okay son, what’s up?” Hunter’s tone was curt,
quick.
 
He most likely knew this wasn’t a
social call, especially since he and Gage hadn’t spoken in several years, just
before Gage left the United States.

“Would anyone be
listening?” Gage asked.

“No, not that I
could imagine.
 
To anyone who might be
interested I’m just a washed-up old relic who needs to hurry up and die.”

“Sir, I need some
help.
 
Some quiet help.”

Hunter paused for
a very long time.
 
“And what might that
be?”

“I’m in France,
sir.
 
Need to know if I have been pinged,
or if there’s a search laid on, especially at the eastern border.”

“Sonofabitch.”
 
There was a shuffling and the sound of a
drink being sipped.
 
“Okay, a search
just
for you?”