“There’s a dress code,” the tall man with a shaved head, dressed all in black, told me in French. He was definitely a telepath. A sign on the wall said the cover charge was fifty euros.
“I’m dressed,” I responded, giving him a smile, “or is it an undress code?”
He laughed. “Mademoiselle, no blue jeans are allowed.”
“If you want me to change into something else, you’ll have to let me through to the ladies’ room,” I told him. I was wearing a red shell top, a khaki jacket and jeans. I did have my travel dress in my bag.
Just then, a burst of psychic energy rolled over us, a succubus broadcasting her orgasm. I clamped down my shields and was able to cut off most of it. The emotions still filtered through. I looked at the bouncer. He leaned against the wall, eyes glazed over.
I walked past him into the club. It was very large and open. No tobacco smoke in there, but the smell of hashish mixed with the smell of humanity and alcohol. The seating consisted of chairs and couches arranged around low coffee tables. A band played on a stage at the back, and the dance floor was crowded. On either side of the stage, a nude woman lay in a sling. One of them was shagging a man who was standing between her legs.
The patrons were in various stages of dress or undress, kissing, fondling or being fondled. I passed a couple having sex on a couch. She was straddling him with her skirt hiked up. Everyone was dressed fairly nicely. The women mostly wore dresses, though some were in slacks. The men were in slacks and jackets, or suits. As I passed various groups, I heard at least a dozen different languages.
The patrons were mostly young, the women my age and younger. The men were from their twenties up to about sixty, though I did see a couple of gray hairs. For a telepath, that meant far past a hundred. All of the older men were with women decades younger than they were.
A man in a suit saw me and started to get up from his stool at the bar. The expression on his face told me that he was probably with the management and he wasn’t happy with the way I was dressed. I elbowed my jacket open, providing a better look at my chest. It had the desired effect. He quit worrying about how I was dressed and settled back on his seat.
Another blast from a succubus rolled through the room. I looked toward the stage and saw the man who was shagging her stagger back and slump to the floor. Two bouncers picked him up and carried him out of sight behind the stage. While this was going on, another man stepped up to the succubus on the other side of the stage and handed money to a bouncer. The customer dropped his trousers and moved between her legs.
Figuring I should be a little less conspicuous, I headed for the ladies’ room to change.
A good-looking man, tall with dark hair, stepped in front of me. He smiled.
“I haven’t seen you in here before,” he said in Italian-accented French, “and I would have noticed.”
“Do you spend so much time here that you know all the patrons?” I asked, also in French. I speak Italian, but the accent in parts of southern France is heavily influenced by Italian. I hadn’t heard him speak enough to know whether he was Italian or southern French. He was very handsome, and if I weren’t working, I might have welcomed his attention.
He laughed. “I’m in here often enough, I guess. This is the happening place.”
“I guess I’m a bit out of touch,” I responded. “It’s been some years since I’ve been in Paris.”
“And where are you from?”
I hesitated. With my coloring, I could claim a number of northern European countries.
“St. Petersburg,” I finally replied.
“And how are you enjoying Paris?” he asked in terrible Russian.
“Very much,” I answered in the same language. “And where did you learn Russian? Have you spent much time there?”
“Some. In St. Petersburg and in Moscow.”
“Your accent is terrible,” I said. “Your girlfriends really should spend more time teaching you the language and less time on other things.” I gave him a poisonous smile. In French, I said, “Please excuse me.” I brushed past him and proceeded to the loo.
After I changed, I headed for the bar. When telepaths are making an effort to get drunk, not detoxifying the alcohol and drugs in their systems, their shields tend to get sloppy. This seemed like a perfect place to pick up on the trail of sex trafficking. I had already identified at least a dozen women working as escorts.
As I neared the bar, my friend with the Italian accent sidled up to me.
“May I buy you a drink?” he said in French.
“No, thank you,” I replied in Italian. I let a thought leak through my shields, I’m trying to cut back on date rape drugs this month.
He snorted out a laugh. “Miss Kendrick, you are truly delightful,” he said in Italian. “Let me introduce myself. I’m Lorenzo di Medici.”
“My, you certainly have aged well,” I replied, clamping down my shields as tight as I could. How did he know my name? “I wouldn’t have thought you were a day over three hundred.”
He laughed again. He had a nice laugh.
“I was named after my great-great-great grandfather,” he said.
“I think I was named after a Fleetwood Mac song. But my mother always said she should have named me Trouble.”
There were people all around us, and he was standing very close to me. He couldn’t see me slip my left hand under my skirt and draw the ceramic stiletto strapped to the inside of my thigh. After half a dozen people had tried to kill me this week, I was feeling a little paranoid. Too many strangers seemed to know who I am.
“Get your drink, Miss Kendrick. Then, if you don’t mind, I’d like to talk with you.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“I’m not asking you to. We can talk here. At a table in the middle of the room, if you wish.”
He moved away from me, then turned and waited. I caught the bartender’s eye and held out a twenty-euro bill.
“Sparkling water, poured from an unopened bottle in front of me,” I said. “And keep the change.”
He produced a bottle of Perrier, cracked the top and poured it into a glass.
“Are the limes marinated in rohypnol?” I asked.
“No, Mademoiselle,” he said with a grin. “Tonight’s special is maraschino cherries with GBH.”
“That’s good to know. If I see someone I like, I’ll buy him a Manhattan.”
He chuckled and squeezed a quarter lime into my drink. “Have a safe evening, Mademoiselle.”
Di Medici was still waiting for me, standing far enough away that he couldn’t have heard my conversation with the bartender. The band wasn’t very good, but they were trying to make up for it by being loud.
“Lead on, Signore,” I said.
He led me to a table near the center of the room. Two overstuffed chairs sat facing a small table and the stage.
“I am curious as to how you know my name,” I said. The stiletto was tucked up my sleeve.
“I’m very interested in the current difficulties between CBW and O’Donnell,” he said.
“I don’t know what that has to do with me. I’m not affiliated with either one.”
“I am my family’s ... ah, how shall I say this ... ambassador to Interpol,” he said.
I had to laugh at that one. Ambassador my arse. He meant spy.
“I work in the human trafficking section,” he continued. “There are two of us who are telepaths. We’ve been very concerned by the escalation in traffic of certain types of women.”
I tipped my glass toward the stage. “Such as those?”
“Yes, though those women are working without coercion. They seem to like what they do.”
I shook my head. “To each her own, I guess. I couldn’t do something like that in public.”
“A succubus has a different view of the world.”
“Signore, there are succubi in my family. Those girls up there have no self-respect. They give succubi a bad name.” My statement was punctuat
ed with another blast of orgasmic pleasure, broadcast for all to enjoy. A girl at the next table writhed in ecstasy. Another one humped the clothed leg of the man she was with. All around, panting men’s eyes glazed over as they groped their dates.
Lorenzo’s eyes were also far away, his breathing fast and shallow. I waited for him to come back to himself.
“Is that why you come here, Signore? Are you a psychic voyeur?”
“My apologies,” he said, taking a deep breath. “I try to block it out, but obviously my shields aren’t as strong as yours.”
I ignored that. “I’ll ask again, how do you know who I am?”
“The word is out on the street that you are working for the Irish Clans. Seeking a girl.”
“I’m interested in how that information got out on the street. I pride myself on conducting inquiries with discretion.”
He just looked at me. The silence stretched.
“Someone I’ve dealt with has not been discreet,” I finally said.
“One might draw that conclusion. As for Interpol, of course we have a dossier on you, with your pictures. British authorities share their PI registry with us.”
“Of course.”
“So how can I help?” he asked.
“If I remember correctly,” I said, “di Medici is more closely aligned with CBW than the Irish Clans.”
“We are neutral. And even within CBW, there are many who do not condone the trafficking. Perhaps I should say most. While some of the Clans find trafficking humans repugnant, they don’t consider what other Clans are doing as their business. When Gordon and von Ebersberg began selling telepaths, they crossed a line.”
“I’m not here to solve the world’s problems, Signore. I’m simply looking for one girl.”
“And you think she’s here in Paris.”
“I don’t know. I have found evidence that she was. I’m hoping I can find where these girls go, and maybe I can track her down and return her to her family.”
He nodded to a gray haired man in an expensive suit sitting on a couch near us. A young woman had her face in his lap.
“Herr Hermann Brandt. He runs a spa west of the city. He keeps a stable of young men and women to pleasure his customers. Almost any pleasure you can imagine. He seems to be the intake for von Ebersberg here in Paris. If she hasn’t been moved east, then that would be the place to look.”
“If my face and business are common knowledge on the street, that might be a very dangerous idea.”
He nodded. “It might. But I might be able to help.” He handed me a piece of paper. “Meet me at that address at ten o’clock in the morning. I’ll set you up with a man who can take you inside.”
~~~
Before leaving the club, I changed my shoes for the boots I had worn into the club. I wanted to be able to run if I needed to. Using my mobile, I called a taxi and asked that the driver call me when he arrived. When he called, I exited the loo with a tight air shield over me, my hand in my bag holding the stiletto.
The taxi took me to the Gare du Nord metro station, where I caught a bus to near Mum’s in Montmartre. She was waiting for me, and we walked back to her flat together.
“A hotel?” she asked.
“Yeah. He told me to meet him at a hotel in Vincennes tomorrow morning. He said he had a man who could get me inside Palais de Plaisir. Not a very original name.”
“The Germans tend to be a very unoriginal people,” Mum said. “Did he say how he plans to disguise you?”
I had bought some black hair dye on the way home. It was the cheap stuff that didn’t hold the color very long. “He said to wear a bikini. Do you have one I can borrow?”
She chuckled. “I have one that will probably work. It will be a bit small up top and a bit large on the bottom.”
“The story of my life with borrowed clothes.”
Mum helped me dye my hair and shave down below. The string bikini was adjustable, and she said the fact it barely covered anything was all the better.
“No one will be looking at your face,” she said. “They’ll all be waiting for you to fall out.”
“Thanks, Mum. Just what I wanted to hear.”
She also loaned me a sundress, a pair of sandals and a larger bag.
Before going to bed, I contacted the other two people I knew I could trust and asked them to check on Lorenzo di Medici. In my conversation with Lord O’Byrne, I also mentioned my suspicions of a leak inside O’Donnell.
~~~
Chapter 15
I didn’t sleep well. So much of what Medici had said sounded a bit wrong. I knew that O’Donnell wasn’t cooperating with Interpol. And the last I heard, O’Donnell wasn’t on very good terms with the Italian Clans other than Federicci. That situation went back to the 1950s.
It seemed a stretch that the same source inside O’Donnell was sharing information with both the traffickers and Interpol. So there were multiple leaks, or Medici had sources inside the traffickers, or ...
Another coincidence was meeting Lorenzo at that club. I doubted that he hung out there regularly and just happened to bump into me. Since no one but me knew about the list I’d pulled from Carpenter’s mind, the obvious conclusion was that I was being followed. Why would Lorenzo be following me?
In my business, coincidences are always viewed with skepticism. Medici might spend a lot of time at that club, and our meeting was just serendipity. If so, he was very well prepared for serendipity. I checked out the hotel where we were to meet on the internet. It seemed respectable, an international chain. He’d given me a room number. Maybe Interpol kept the room all the time.
Who was the man who could get me inside? One of the traffickers? An international playboy known to the establishment?
I hoped the hotel wouldn’t be too upset if I blew the place up getting out. I expected some kind of ambush, and I resolved that I wouldn’t be gentle if it happened.
~~~
I arrived at the hotel half an hour early and thoroughly cased the place. I checked with Grandmum, and she sent me a thought package of everything she could gather on Lorenzo di Medici. The details brought a smile to my face. I had the numbers and passcodes to three of his accounts.
She hadn’t found any deposits from known Gordon or von Ebersberg sources, but the balances in two of the accounts were eye popping. If the boy turned out to be clean, I might let him show me a good time. He seemed to like what he saw the night before.
The tale about him working for Interpol was true, and Medici was officially neutral. But just as the German Clans had backed Hitler, so had Medici backed Mussolini. If not for the Irish Clans, Medici and its allies would control all of Italy, and a large chunk of the rest of Europe. Grandmum didn’t trust him.
I didn’t bother to contact Lord O’Byrne. He had been my mentor in Distance Communication. If he had something for me, he’d contact me. He knew my timetable.
And just as I was walking into the hotel lobby, he sent me a spear thread.
*Rhiannon. I haven’t been able to find out much about Lorenzo, but he does work for Interpol. He’s a section chief in their Human Trafficking Division, and well respected. But we’ve never considered Medici as friends. Be careful, and if you need a safe house, contact my son Brian at the O’Byrne offices in Paris.*
I thanked him and went up to the room.
Lorenzo was there with an older man and a woman. He introduced the man as Vladimir Sholokhov. The woman he introduced only as Maria. She sat me down and began working on my face. When she finished, she held a mirror up. I barely recognized myself. The shape of my eyes and mouth had changed. It seemed that my chin and jawline were different, and my cheekbones weren’t as prominent.
“Maria is a wonder, is she not?” Lorenzo said. “She works for the film industry.”
He handed me a passport. “You are Rimma Gorbacheva,” he said. “You are Vladimir’s girlfriend, at least his girlfriend this week.” He smiled. Vladimir smirked.
The picture in the passport look
ed sort of like me. The black hair was shorter. The passport said it was issued three years before.
“I will get you inside,” Vlad said. “I will go off for a massage and a little recreation. If you are not apprehended, we will meet for dinner at the main restaurant at eight o’clock and then leave. If you are apprehended, I will tell them I picked you up at a club last night.”
I nodded.
~~~
Palais de Plaisir was an eighteenth century palace near Versailles. Definitely the high rent district. As we drove, Vlad explained that the palace sat on an estate covering about thirty hectares. It offered everything a wealthy telepath on holiday might want. Horseback riding, tennis, swimming, and of course pleasures of the flesh.
Vlad told me, “There are two tiers of staff. Those dressed formally are off limits. Any man or woman, or boy or girl, wearing a pink and purple swimsuit is available for the patrons’ pleasure.”
The way his eyes lit up when he said “boy or girl” made me feel a bit sick to my stomach. At least I wouldn’t have to watch. I could tell that he wanted to be as far from me as possible if I got caught trying to spirit Myrna out of the place.
When we got to the estate, we went inside and he paid an entrance fee for both of us. He looped a ribbon with a gold medallion around my neck and handed me a plastic shopping bag. Inside was an envelope. I peeked in. It was full of hundred-euro bills. The other thing in the bag was a pink and purple bikini.
“The gold disk tells people you’re a guest, not a pleasure girl,” he said in Russian. “If you put on the other swimsuit, take off the disk. Refreshments, such as drinks and appetizers, are included. Everything else is an extra charge.”
Louder, and still in Russian, he said, “Have a good time. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t.” Then he slapped me on the arse and walked off down a hallway.
I checked out a map of the building and grounds. It also included prices for the more mundane services, such as massages and riding a horse. I found the women’s locker room and stashed my bags and dress. A small bag with a long strap hung inside the locker. When I opened it, I discovered it had a place for the locker key, a pocket for money, and a pocket full of condoms and lubrication. You had to hand it to the people running the place. They thought of everything.
Broken Dolls: An Urban Fantasy (The Telepathic Clans Saga Book 3) Page 13
