by Mark Pryor
Hugo arrived at the embassy an hour after talking to Emma, having stopped by her office to deliver her pastry and collect two sheets of paper. One contained the address and a description of Cecilia Josephine Roget and the other was a brief history of her tenure in charge of the SBP. As curious as he was, he could only glance over it as he hurried back down the hall to the elevator. He'd breezed past the ambassador's secretary with a wave and pushed the door open to the grand office and had started to greet the ambassador but stopped when he saw who else was in the room.
If this was another coincidence, he'd about had his fill.
“Hugo, come on in,” Ambassador Taylor said, “I'm sorry to interrupt your vacation.” He gestured to his guest. “You know Gérard de Roussillon.”
Roussillon stood holding a cup and saucer, and Hugo didn't like the smile that was on his face. He tried not to let his own surprise show, instead shaking hands with the ambassador and then the Frenchman. “Yes, we met last night.”
“So I gather,” Ambassador Taylor said. “Sit down gentlemen, please.” They followed the ambassador to the pair of couches. “Hugo, I know you're out of the office, so to speak, but Gérard had some concerns and I wanted to run them past you directly.”
“Fine,” Hugo said. “What's up?”
“Do you know what the SBP is?” the ambassador asked.
“I do, yes,” said Hugo.
“The organization and the people it represents are kind of an institution in Paris,” the ambassador said. “Gérard here has done a lot of work with them and sometimes acts as liaison between them and the government. You know, disputes about healthcare, working conditions, the limits that the government puts on what they sell.”
“They need a liaison?” Hugo said. “Isn't that what the SBP does?”
“You'd think,” the ambassador said grimly. “But depending on who heads it they sometimes need a tactful voice. Let's just say a mediator can work wonders. Gérard has filled that role for a long time.”
“As you know, I collect books, Monsieur Marston,” Roussillon said. “I get many from the bouquinistes, so if they are happy, I am happy. And I have a lot of contacts in the government, so I help when I can.”
“I see.”
“Anyway,” the ambassador continued, “Gérard tells me that someone from our office, one of your agents, has been pestering Bruno Gravois, the head of the SBP, and starting rumors about disappearing bouquinistes.”
“Rumors?” Hugo asked, cursing himself for giving Gravois his real name.
“There are no police reports and no reports from friends or family.” Roussillon spread his hands wide. “No one has reported anyone missing, and these kinds of rumors…” He trailed off and looked at the ambassador for support.
“Just hang on a minute,” Hugo said. “It's not one of my agents, it's me.” He turned to address Taylor. “Mr. Ambassador, I was there when one bouquiniste was kidnapped.”
“As I said,” Roussillon repeated, “there is no police report, and no friends or family have reported him or anyone else missing.”
“The man kidnapped was my friend, and I was there, I saw it. Whoever did it either paid off or threatened witnesses to say nothing happened. I'm just trying to find out what happened, that's all.”
“Have you been to his home?” the ambassador asked.
“Yes. He wasn't there and his neighbor hadn't seen him.”
“Well, maybe he was out buying books or groceries,” Roussillon said. “I don't see my neighbors for weeks at a time.”
“He lives in an apartment, not a mansion,” Hugo snapped. “And last I checked, he didn't have servants to run out and fetch supplies for him.”
“All right, that's enough Hugo,” Ambassador Taylor said. “Even if you're right and this man is a missing person, unless he's an American citizen we have no interest in the case. And you have no jurisdiction. It's a matter for the Préfecture de Police, and them alone.” The ambassador shifted in his seat, his tone softening. “Hugo, our job here, our mission at the embassy, is to foster and maintain good relations with our French allies. I don't need to tell you that. These bouquinistes, they are an icon for Americans coming here. We can't be stirring up trouble for them. We need to mind our own store and let them do the same.”
“I understand,” Hugo said, biting his tongue. This was not a conversation he wanted to have in front of Roussillon.
“OK, good.“ The ambassador turned to Roussillon. “Is there anything else, Gérard?”
“Non, merci beaucoup.” The Frenchman stood and offered a small bow to the ambassador, a nod to Hugo. “Thank you for your time.”
When he'd left the room Hugo stood, but the ambassador closed the door and said, “Hold on a second, we're not quite done.” Hugo lowered himself back onto the couch. “If I'd known it was you poking around,” the ambassador said, “I would have handled it differently. Roussillon is a powerful man, though, so the lecture was necessary. And true. I thought we'd talked about this. Can I assume you have been disobeying my instructions?”
“Yes, sir,” said Hugo.
“I figured. Then tell me what's really going on.”
Hugo hesitated. “His name is Max. Max Koche. I've known him for years, ambassador. He's a grouchy old guy but loves what he does. Last week I bought a book from him that turned out to be worth a lot of money. Minutes later he was kidnapped, in front of my eyes. But the police won't make a report because some people nearby, who they won't identify, said Max went with these guys of his own accord. It's insane and a bunch of crap. Anyway, I went back to his stall and talked to the new guy running it. When I started asking him about Max, he clammed up after claiming that he didn't know him. So I went to Max's apartment—”
“Yes, you mentioned that. No one home.”
“Right,” Hugo smiled, “but I went to his apartment.” He said the words slowly, making his meaning plain.
“Ah, I'm with you. And?”
“He'd not been there for days, but someone else had.”
“You're sure.”
Hugo nodded. “No one is that much of a slob, certainly not Max. I didn't see signs of a struggle or fight, but I did find his toothbrush. As well as empty suitcases and a closet full of clothes.”
“Fridge?” Hugo remembered that Taylor had been a spook himself, many years ago.
“Full of perished perishables.”
“Oh. That's not good. He have family close by? Or anywhere?”
“Not that I've found.”
“Any ideas?”
“Other than it's something to do with the book, not really. He was once a Nazi hunter, though, so I guess it's possible that caught up with him somehow.”
“Nazi hunter? Impressive.”
“I know. The thing is, this isn't adding up, and no one seems to give a damn.”
“So you say.” The ambassador sat back on the couch and pondered. “Here's my position. I meant what I said before, we really can't go stirring up a hornet's nest for a missing Frenchman. On the other hand, you're on vacation, so forget what I said before. What you do on your own time is your business as long as it doesn't reflect badly on the embassy.”
“Thank you, ambassador. I can be discreet.”
“Really?” the ambassador said dryly. “I've never seen that side of you.”
“It's not easy walking softly,” Hugo said, “when you're wearing cowboy boots.”
“I wouldn't know.” The ambassador stood, signaling an end to the meeting. “And Hugo? Being discreet means you don't flash your badge.”
“Understood.”
“And no gun.”
Hugo raised an eyebrow. “You want my pants, too?”
“No thanks,” said Taylor. “But if you piss off Roussillon and his buddies, I'll have your hide. How's that?”
It was dark by the time Hugo left the embassy, an afternoon killed off in his office doing some reading, some administration, and a lot of nothing. He'd wanted to spend a few hours with Tom at home or a caf
é somewhere, but a short phone conversation with his friend had put paid to that idea.
“Sorry, got plans.”
“Writing me a memo on your homework?”
“Nope, seeing a man about a horse.”
“And I thought you'd come to Paris to see me.”
“Don't be such a baby. Where do you think I'm getting your info?”
“No idea, Tom, you haven't given me any answers.”
“Over dinner?”
“I'm seeing Claudia, but join us. I'd like you to meet her.”
“Shit, she doesn't have any answers.”
“True, but she has several things you don't. Can we talk later?”
“You mean if you don't get lucky and bring her home?”
“Funny. And I think we need to take a trip down to the Pyrénées tomorrow, see a woman about a horse. A horse's ass, to be precise.”
“Hmm.” There was a pause. “OK. Well, in that case I need to be done with this project tonight, which means I won't be home before bedtime. You kids have fun.”
Hugo paused briefly on Pont Neuf, staring into the black ribbon of the Seine, then continued through the narrow streets of the Sixth for his rendezvous with Claudia. Another cold walk, somehow made colder by the stark glare of the Christmas lights that hung like icicles from the city's buildings and trees.
He arrived at the intersection before she did and chose the emptier of the two cafés. He found an outside table warmed by one of the nearby heating lamps. He'd noticed that this and other Parisian cafés had started putting up plastic walls at the sides and front to keep their clientele warm in the evenings. He wasn't in the mood to wait for Claudia before ordering, and was halfway through a scotch when he spotted her walking down Rue Mazarine toward him. He stood and waved, and she waved back.
She slid behind the little table, sitting next to him rather than across, giving him a peck on each cheek. “I like to watch the evening unfold, too,” she said, nodding toward the street.
“I never met a journalist or a cop who liked having his, or her, back to the open,” Hugo said. He caught the eye of a waiter and Claudia ordered wine. “I had the pleasure of your father's company this afternoon.”
“Oh? How did that happen?” Her eyes twinkled with mischief for a second. “Was he the mysterious man following you?”
“No,” Hugo smiled, “I'm sure he doesn't do that sort of thing himself. I saw him at the embassy. I didn't realize he was in thick with the SBP.”
“The who?”
“Syndicat des Bouquinistes de Paris.”
“Oh,” she said, “I didn't know that either.”
“Really?” Hugo sipped his drink.
She looked askance at him. “Really,” she said. “So why was he at the embassy?”
“Apparently he doesn't like me poking around asking questions about Max. It upsets the bouquinistes, he says, and that's bad for business.”
She sighed. “He has a lot of fingers in a lot of pies, so this doesn't surprise me. Are you going to back off ? I assume that's what he wants.”
“It is. And no, I'm not. Does he know you looked into this for me?”
“No, I don't usually talk about my work with him. He's happy when he sees my name in the paper, but that's usually all he knows about what I do.”
They sat in silence for a moment, then the waiter swung past with a small bowl of olives. “So, tell me about your work. This new department or division you were trying to get a story about, how's that going?”
“Good, actually.” She nodded thoughtfully. “They don't usually encourage journalists to get involved, or know too much, but I've been around for a while and I think they trust me. Plus, the fight against drugs usually involves a public relations campaign so I'm sure they plan to use me, too. In fact, I told a couple of people that I'd met an American cop, and they may even be needing your help at some point.”
“Oh?”
“Oui,” she said, “in an advisory capacity. In the last year or so we've seen a flood of drugs into Paris, two in particular: crack cocaine and meth.”
“Drugs for the user on a lower budget,” Hugo said.
“Yes. And no offense, but we think of them as American drugs.”
He smiled. “Thank heavens for Hollywood.”
“Right. The police know, or suspect, that the meth is being manufactured here. The crack, too, in that it comes into Paris as cocaine and then gets altered here. All of the shipments that they've intercepted so far, and there have been quite a few, have been pure cocaine. Too high in quality to go out on the streets.”
“So what is this new task force supposed to do?”
“Well, in the past they've not had much luck stopping the stuff getting into the city. There are just too many access points. Roads, rail, even the river. For them to monitor or control all of those would bring commerce and tourism to a standstill, it's just not possible.” Claudia sipped her wine. “Plus, they figure that if the bad guys are smart enough to get it across the borders, they can get it into Paris.”
“And if it's getting manufactured here, closing down routes into the city wouldn't help anyway.”
“Exactly.” She nodded.
“So the cops are concentrating on finding out where the stuff is being made?”
“Indirectly, yes,” she said. “The plan is to target drug distribution within the city.”
“I don't know if that's a good idea.” Hugo shook his head. “I'm guessing they'll just end up with a bunch of junkies and maybe some low-level dealers. We tried that approach in the United States, I worked on a few task forces myself, and all it did was fill up the jails. The big fish kept swimming.”
“That's because it's all you did. And they're going to do things a little differently.”
“How so?”
“They don't plan to take the users and small-time dealers off the street, they plan to use them to follow the flow of drugs upstream.”
“I've been arguing for that approach for years,” Hugo said. “It takes a lot of manpower and money though.”
“I imagine that's where I come in. If the public cares enough, the police will have their money. For a while, anyway.”
“Makes sense. And the other thing for this to work: the cops will have to make sure those street dealers are more scared of them than they are of the people they buy from.”
“Now that could be a problem.”
Hugo read something in her face. “What do you mean?”
“Have you heard of Anton Dobrescu? Is that name familiar?”
Hugo thought. “Maybe from the news, but I don't remember…”
“Romanian,” she said. “Looked like Rasputin, all hair and wild eyes. He was one of the most dangerous drug dealers in Bucharest and Timisoara, where he made a fortune before moving his operation to France once the borders opened up. He set up in Paris and was the head of an especially violent organized crime group.”
“He's running the drugs?”
“No, he's dead. Killed quite nastily by the other organized crime group in Paris, the North Africans. Algerians, mostly, they call themselves Les Pieds-Noirs.”
“The Black Feet? Never heard of them.”
“I'm not surprised, they're generally pretty quiet. The name refers to the French and other Europeans who settled in Algeria, I guess they all wore black shoes. Anyway, they were happy enough to divide up Paris and share the proceeds for a while, but Dobrescu got greedy. He started putting his dealers in the French mob's territory. And he killed people he shouldn't have.”
“North African mobsters?”
“No, cops. Like I said, his people had a kind of alliance with Les Pieds-Noirs, and mob violence was down for a while. But when he started encroaching on their turf and killing cops,” she shook her head. “Everyone knows you don't do that. Ever. Except Dobrescu, who either didn't know or didn't care. Anyway, I think that once he started down that path, Les Pieds-Noirs figured he was threatening their entire way of life and they decided to hi
t him once, and hard.”
“There was a fire, right?” He remembered the headlines now. “The papers never really said what happened. Not in any detail.”
“Right, that's because the police and media weren't sure ourselves, not at first. We had to piece it all together afterwards, and that wasn't easy after a fire like that. Plus the authorities were pretty tight-lipped.”
“So what do you think happened?” he asked.
“As best we could tell, Les Pieds-Noirs took a handful of Dobrescu's men hostage and somehow got Dobrescu himself. From the positions of the bodies, and their condition, it looked like the North Africans cut up the Romanians. Possibly while Dobrescu was made to watch, but we can't be sure about that. There were reports of a gun fight before the house went up in flames, and there were several Romanians who were shot and not cut up, so we think his men figured out where they were being held and launched a rescue mission.”
“You keep saying cut up, do you mean…?”
“Literally, chopped up. Years before, a member of Les Pieds-Noirs, an informer, turned up in a barrel floating down the Seine. Arms, hands, legs, and feet, all chopped off. We, and the police, wondered then whether it was a play on the name ‘Pieds-Noirs.’ Anyway, generally they were not violent, not on a day-to-day basis.”
“Just don't piss them off, I guess.” Hugo took a sip of his scotch. “You were saying, the rescue mission,” he prompted.
“Yes. Big gunfight and someone started a fire. By the time the cops sorted through the evidence the place was a charnel house, bodies and bits of bodies scattered everywhere, almost all burnt beyond recognition.”
“But the cops identified Dobrescu?”
“They did. They identified him and several of his top lieutenants through DNA and dental records, no doubt about it. Anyway, the Romanians disappeared entirely, which I'm sure was the point of that little exhibition.”
“And with Dobrescu gone, no one to lead a comeback.”
“Right. So, the bottom line is that the police have a good handle on who's running things in Paris now, but proving it is the problem. After that little massacre, and the previous instance of chopping hands and feet, people are afraid to cross them.”
