The Little Burgundy: A Jeanne Dark Adventure

by Bill Jones Jr.

  She placed a hand on my wrist. “No, Foss. I know you like her, but you must face the truth.”

  I squinted at her, as my head still hurt too much to focus. I wasn’t sure how she knew I liked the girl, since I hadn’t decided that myself until midway through our little game. I certainly didn’t tell Dark. She’d been right about my professionalism, and it could have cost me my life. After years in intel, I’d come to love how much interviews were a contest—man against man, wit versus wit. I played along with Rosie mostly because I liked the challenge and wanted to win. I was so bent on winning that I ignored my attraction to her. Dark had warned me, but I got defensive instead of admitting she made sense. Some men like skydiving, others drive too fast. I do both of those things, but for real danger, I like to swim with sharks of the female persuasion. I was grateful my partner wasn’t one of them.

  “What truth, Jeanne?”

  She sat back. “You told me you heard a buzzing just before Rosie stood up to leave.”

  “Yes.”

  “I think that was a signal from Danny that he was in place and to lure you out.”

  I shook my head, which was a mistake. Holding it to stop the world from spinning backward, I shut my eyes and spoke. “I don’t think so. She’d been rambling on about her life and I think she lost track of time. She was close to telling me everything about the setup. I figure she had an alarm set for when Danny was due back, and she realized she had to get me out of there. But we were too late.” Dark twisted a corner of her mouth and folded her arms. “The first thing she did when the phone went off was check the time, not look for a message.”

  Dark inhaled and exhaled heavily. “How do you suppose she planned to make love to you if she was on a time budget?”

  “How … how did you know about that?”

  “Foss, when are going to believe I can feel what I tell you I feel?” She waved her hand around me. “The stink of it is all over you like cheap cologne.” She closed her eyes, inhaled another steadying breath, and continued. “Look, whatever happened in there is your business.”

  “Nothing happened but an interview. I already told you that.”

  “Bien sûr que non.” She rolled her eyes and I lay back on the bed and shut mine, so I didn’t have to see it. She waited until I reopened my eyes. “You are a grown adult, Foster Cain. I’m not telling you what you can and cannot do. I am only being your partner and your friend.” She dramatically wiped her hands together with a clap. “C’est tout.”

  I sat up too quickly. “You’re being a friend by accusing me of trying to sleep with a witness?”

  “Honey, I didn’t say that. I said she tried to sleep with you. But it wasn’t real.” She shook her head and placed two fingers against the artery in her neck. “You raise my blood pressure, you know that?”

  “You raise mine too.”

  “Oui. I am very sexy.”

  I tried not to laugh for three seconds and then gave up. It was the tension breaker we needed and we both had a chuckle. I lay back down and Dark placed a hand on my chest. “Foss, I don’t even think Rosie likes men.”

  “What? Come on. You just said yourself she was trying to get me in bed.”

  “For protection, oui. You give off a very strong protective aura. Rosie must have picked that up.”

  I wasn’t buying Rosie’s being a man-hater, but there was at least some truth to Dark’s theory. “She mentioned more than once about knowing rough men. I’m guessing she’s been beaten up a few times.”

  “Being with abusers would fit the pattern after being manipulated by her stepfather. He likely trained her early not to know where good boundaries are. That’s how girls get in those situations.”

  “Even if she didn’t start a relationship with him until she was eighteen?” I asked. Dark just gave me a frowny look. “You didn’t believe that either, huh?”

  “No. It’s why she doesn’t trust men.” She gave me a pointed stare. “Even you.”

  I tried to wipe the fog from my eyes. “Okay, I can buy she wasn’t really being straight with me, and maybe she was nicing up to me so that I would offer to protect her, but why then would she go through all this trouble to set me up? It would have been easier just to refuse to talk to me.”

  “Maybe she and Danny were trying to get you in a compromising situation, and when that didn’t work, they knocked you out and took off.”

  I thought about that one for a while. If that was the case, then this Danny character was an idiot. He’d basically committed assault, maybe attempted murder, and then left me in a flat that Dark told me was leased in his name. Not exactly a criminal mastermind, but that’s exactly the most dangerous type. I theorized that Rosie had told me more than she should have, got nervous about it, and fled with the boyfriend. What I still didn’t know was if she was afraid of the cops or Danny. If she was being straight with me about her activities, then it was doubtful the police would have been able to tie her to anything illegal. She was smart enough to know that, which left one choice.

  “She was trying to get me to protect her from Danny. She told me she’d be alone all night, but she must have known I wouldn’t go along. She figured I’d be gone before he showed.”

  “She didn’t need you to have sex with her, she only needed you to want to.”

  “Or at least to want to help her,” I said. “When things took too long, she had no choice but to lead me to him to make it seem like she was still on board with him.”

  “Perhaps,” Dark said. Without another word, she stood and grabbed her coat and hat from the closet.

  “Wait, where are you going?”

  “To talk to the escorts at the restaurant. We need to know Danny’s role in this.” She paused at the door. “Are you coming?” she asked. She stepped into the corridor and let the door close behind her.

  I managed to drag myself off the bed and met her in the hallway outside our room. “You’re really bad at making exits, did you know that?”

  “I am great at exiting. I’m just not so good at explaining when I want to go or asking permission like a schoolgirl. It should be obvious I am leaving when I actually put on my coat and leave.”

  “You are a strange woman.”

  She did a curtsy, quite a feat while carrying a cane. “Merci. I love you too.”

  I sniffed. “Are you smoking?”

  “Non. At the moment, only the cigarette is smoking.”

  I reached around her, took it from her, and put it out against the wall. “First of all, this is non-smoking hotel. Second, since when do you smoke?”

  “Since I was twelve. Do I need your permission for that too?”

  “Way,” I said.

  She frowned another smile at me. “I am French. It is my right to smoke.”

  “Take it up with the French Embassy.” We headed down the hall, this time with Dark helping me to walk. “You really don’t think Rosie likes men?”

  “Non.”

  “Then why have a boyfriend in the first place?”

  “I have a theory about that.”

  The lift’s door opened and we entered. Dark stood facing the mirrored door. “Well, are you going to tell me your theory?” I asked.

  “Non.”

  I was wrong. Rosie wasn’t nearly as exasperating as Dark; she only got me concussed once. Jeanne gave me headaches daily.

  ***

  Dark and I returned to the Chennai Concourse, getting there shortly before its 11:30 closing time. We staked out the rear door that opened to an alley. Thirty minutes went by before anyone came out, during which time I confiscated two more cigarettes from my partner. I tried to explain to her that her body was a temple and she should treat it accordingly. She explained to me in graphic detail which activities I could treat my body to. After she finished cursing at me in French, I capitulated on the third cigarette, especially since by then I’d realized she’d never once puffed on the stupid things, but instead used them as props while she puzzled through whatever riddle was occupying
her brilliant, cloche-covered head. Rather than fight her, I decided right then to buy her some of those long filters they used in 1930s movies. Nothing would have suited her style more. She was pacing, her footfalls orbiting a puddle that reflected the full moon and the prison-like visages of the brick buildings lining the alley. Though she seemed calm, I was not. The alley was creepy quiet, my head was as fuzzy as a night of too much drink, and I was unarmed.

  Just as I’d reached my anxiety threshold and was prepared to bull my way into the place, the door opened and a skinny man with an oil slick of ginger hair came out. He jumped, startled by our presence. The feeling was mutual. I looked at Dark who gave him the barest glance and remained in orbit. Seeing neither of us with a knife, he majestically flung his scarf around his neck, paused to bum a cancer stick from Dark, and sauntered down the cobbled alley. She continued her slow pace, walking her ellipse, heel to toe. Two more of the staff exited, neither speaking English, and again Dark glimpsed at, and then ignored them. Just as her cigarette was prepared to burn into the filter, she took a prolonged drag, tilted her head skyward, and exhaled a plume of white effluvium into the night air. It caught my eye in the moonlight, as if she’d nominated a new pope. Perhaps she had. The very next second, an olive-skinned, stocky little bandicoot with a pointed beak and protruding ears came swaggering through the door wearing a hipster’s trilby and a suit he shouldn’t have been able to afford. He was whistling some upbeat I’m-too-young-to-know-the-world-is-shit dance tune and looking awfully damned spiffy for a waiter leaving work at almost midnight in the middle of the week. I was watching Dark, who looked at him, then at me, and then nodded.

  He took one look at me, shoved me into a stack of rubbish bins, and took off running. If I hadn’t been woozy from the night’s earlier events, it would have occurred to me not to be standing behind the door in the first place. I made a hell of a clatter trying to extrude myself from the garbage pile, enough so that were any other potential suspects inside, I was sure they’d by now shimmied out the front door. After thirty or forty seconds, I managed to right myself and, holding my aching head, wobbled over to check on Dark. She was sitting on the kid, arms folded, looking as if she were catching a moon tan on her favorite chaise lounge. The only difference was in this case, the lounge chair was vibrating as if he were having a petit mal seizure.

  “What you hit me wiv?” he gurgled out. His torso was quivering, and a combination of tears and snot streaked his face.

  I looked at her with the same question in my mind as his. Her cane lay next to him, and I could just make out small barbs on the ends that I’d never noticed before. I reached to see what they were.

  “Don’t, unless you want another concussion! You are too big for me to catch when you fall.”

  I jerked back, moving so quickly that I became dizzy. Once I’d regained some control, I bent lower, while the alley spun around me, and looked closer. “Is … is that thing a stun gun?”

  “Non,” she said, reaching over to grasp the handle. She flexed her index finger, pushing one of two almost imperceptible buttons underneath the swan’s head handgrip. The barbs retracted into the cane’s shaft. “Technically, it is a Taser,” she said. “However, he was close and I could use it on stun mode.”

  “You fuckin’ Tasered me? What for? I didn’t do nuffin.”

  Dark looked at him but remained silent. She took the cane and used it to push herself to her feet. The woman was a bundle of tricks.

  “Is that thing legal?” I asked.

  “Depends on the country.”

  “How’d you get it through airport security?”

  She winked at me. “You’re not the only one who knows people.”

  “Are eiver of you going to tell me why I’m being nicked?” When neither of us responded, he added, “I was running because I didn’t know you was the bill. I thought this bloke was going to mug me.”

  “Because I’m black,” I said.

  “No, mate, because you’re big as a fuckin house.” He sat up, though he was slumped into a low curve that left his chest resting on his knees. He swept a hand over his close-cropped hair and looked at us. Dark stood over him, leaning on her cane with both hands and looking like Queen of All the Spies in her long coat and cloche hat. In the shadowed gleam of the streetlights, I could make out the barest glint in her eye, while her skin glowed with what looked like inner moonlight. She was having fun, and she looked amazing doing it.

  “You lot are the bill, right?” he asked.

  “Who is Bill?” Dark asked me.

  “The cops,” I responded.

  “I thought they were named Bobby.”

  I opened my mouth, but then shook my head and turned to the waiter. “You heard us talk. I’m American and she’s French. Does that sound like we’re cops?” Normally, I’d have let the jackass assume we were cops; it made questioning easier. But our welcome with D.I. Arnold was already wearing thin and I didn’t want an impersonation charge adding to the tension. “We’re not from here and we’re not cops. We just want a little information.”

  Our new friend looked from one of us to the other, twitching like a nervous squirrel on meth. “That don’t prove nuffin. This is London. Nobody’s from here.”

  “Funny thing about not being a cop,” I said. “I mostly don’t have to care if you get hurt during questioning.”

  “I got nuffin to say to you,” he said.

  I pulled Mr. Tough Guy onto his feet using one arm. It was partly to send him the message that the next time he tried something, I wouldn’t be such an easy mark, but the other part was because I was embarrassed that I’d gotten jacked while Dark saved our butts. I’d been knocked on my ass twice in one night, both times by guys half my size. Maybe the street savvy part of me had been fooled by the—to my American ears—elegant English accents. Where I grew up, people this articulate were targets. Not here. This was just another big city, and these people were as tough as nails. I wouldn’t make that mistake again.

  I checked his pockets for weapons, being sure to ask him if there was anything in them that would hurt me. In the movies, cops are bold and brash. In real life, they’re substantially more concerned with getting home intact. Finding none, I checked his wallet and found his name to be Jean-Luc Dupuy, aged 26. I handed him back the wallet and his cute little hat. Though on the short side, he looked the model type, with skin rich in a Mediterranean tonal quality, a broad nose, thick brows, and a perfect three-day growth of beard I was certain he trimmed daily. I guessed he was Algerian.

  “In a bit of a hurry, aren’t you, Luc?”

  He squinted at me. “Only me mates call me Luc. You been talking to them?” I hadn’t. I was actually trying to irritate him to keep off balance. Having him think I knew something about him was just as effective, however.

  Dark cut right to the chase. “Tell us about Danny,” she said.

  “Who’s Danny?”

  I smacked the hat off of him. “Not in the mood, Luc,” I said.

  He frowned and picked it back up. “Watch it! You’ve go’ it wet. I paid thirty quid for this.”

  I was close to pissing on it while he was still wearing it, but I refrained from letting him know that. I allowed him to fret with it, wiping the puddled rainwater off before continuing. Then, once he’d settled, I knocked it off again and said, “The lady asked you a question. We want to know what Danny’s role in your little prostitution ring is.” He opened his mouth and I not-so-gently squeezed his lips closed. “And if you waste my time telling me you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’m gonna make you eat that stupid hat.”

  “Foss,” Dark said. She bent over and picked up his hat, handing it to him.

  “I’m not afraid of you,” he said. One hundred percent of his body language told me he was lying. “If you ain’t the bill, this is kidnapping.”

  “I said we weren’t police. I didn’t say we don’t work for them.” I reached in my pocket and handed him the only card I had for D.I. Arnold. “Ma
ybe you want to talk to him instead.”

  He scowled razor blades at me. “I don’t want to talk to any of you lot wivout a solicitor.”

  “You won’t need one,” Dark said. “This is strictly off the record. We only want to find Danny.” Luc met her gaze. “I promise,” she said.

  Luc’s visage softened and he looked at me for confirmation. I nodded. “It’s personal,” I said. “He and I have some business.”

  Luc sniggered. “First of all, he is a she. It’s Danni wiv an i.

  I looked at Dark who was rolling her eyes as if he’d just said the earth is round. I guess I was the only one who thought it was flat.

  Seeing my surprise, Luc pulled a slight smile and started speaking directly to Dark. I’d just been demoted to moron by a man whore—this had turned out not to be the best day I ever had on the job. “Look, Danni’s a git, but she’s a female git.”

  My partner winced at his use of the c-word and her hand tightened on the cane.

  “What do you know about her?” I asked, mainly trying to distract her from Tasering him again.

  He shrugged. “All I know is she’s living with Rosie like they’re married. It ain’t legal, but it might as well be.” He gave an unreadable look that made Dark tilt her head.

  “Is Danni volatile?” she asked.

  “If by that you mean mad, then yeah. I heard she once smashed some geezer wiv a plate for chatting up Rosie on the job. He fell, and Danni started kicking him like he was a proper football.” He laughed, though I saw little humor in the story. “If Rosie’s mum didn’t own the place, they’d have fired her. As it was, Danni got banned after that.”

  “Until after hours, eh?” Dark asked.

  Luc looked confused at first. “What, you mean our parties?”

  “Parties, yes,” she said. He missed her disgust, but I didn’t.

  He shook his head. “Danni never gets involved directly wiv the client work. Mostly, she handles the business end wiv her contact.”

  Dark reached in her bag and pulled out a sketch pad. I wondered why she carried the oversized thing. “Is this Danni?” she asked.