Get Off At Babylon

by Marvin H. Albert

  “Well…

  I took her elbow and steered her to my booth, sat her down, and signaled a waiter. Chantal Jacquier ordered a scotch on the rocks. I stayed with my last half glass of wine.

  She glanced at the back of the card I’d left for her. “Your message says my mother asked you to come see me. She didn’t mention anything about that when I phoned her earlier today.”

  “It’s because of your call that I’m here.” I paused when her drink arrived. She took a healthy swallow. I said, “Your mother and her husband are worried about Odile. As she told you, they don’t know where she is. They’ve hired me to locate her, and I hope you can help me with it.”

  “I don’t see how. That’s why I called Mama, to find Odile. So obviously I don’t know where she is either.”

  “That’s so, but it would help if you could tell me who some of her current friends are. Places she hangs out, people she might be staying with.”

  Chantal downed more of her scotch. Liquor seemed to stoke her confidence a bit. “I haven’t the faintest idea about any of that. Odile and I have never had much to do with each other. The last time I saw her must have been more than a year ago. And that was just running into each other by chance. In a Paris department store. And then all we did was talk for a minute or so. Just ‘How are you’ and that sort of thing. So you see, I really don’t know anything that would help you.”

  “That’s a disappointment,” I said, frowning. “I naturally assumed, since you wanted to invite her to your wedding, that you and she were closer than that.”

  “No. Tony just thought we should ask Odile if she’d like to attend. When I called her apartment and didn’t get an answer, he suggested I find out if Mama and Odile’s father knew where she was. That’s all.”

  I didn’t let her see what that piece of information did to me. “I didn’t realize Tony knew Odile that well.”

  “He doesn’t. He just thought since she is part of my family, in a way…and, of course, he’s right.” When she spoke of her fiancé, Chantal Jacquier’s manner became an uneasy mix of pride and nervousness. “As a matter of fact,” she added, “I don’t think Tony’s even ever met Odile.”

  I didn’t get anything else of interest out of her. But what she’d given me was enough.

  Tony Callega was trying to find Odile Garnier, too.

  Put that together with the fact that he was tied somehow to Bruno Ravic, and Tony became my first tangible lead. One worth following for a while, to see what it—and he—led to.

  Chapter 13

  It was dark out when I walked back to the Carlton. The night crowds were as thick as ever, moving in and out of illuminated pockets under the Croisette’s street lamps. Two of the big yachts in the Cannes marina were starting to shoot off red and yellow fireworks.

  Jacquier and Tony Callega were still in conference with the two distributors on the Carlton terrace. I continued along the sidewalk past it, heading toward the hotel’s lobby entrance.

  An ambulance had fought its way through the traffic and pulled into the curved entrance driveway. Its revolving blue lights flashed across glossy green palm leaves and the milk-white facade of the hotel.

  A producer had suffered a massive coronary while hosting a publicity bash for his latest film in one of the Carlton’s private dining rooms. He was being carried out across the lobby on the stretcher when I entered. Few of the movie people packing the lobby interrupted their business conversations to watch him go. He was one of the movers and shakers of their world—but that was five minutes ago.

  I walked through the narrow side lobby, past the temporary booths set up to promote some of the hotter films, and entered the lounge end of the bar. Most of the leather-padded booths were taken, but not all. It wasn’t as important to be seen inside the bar and its offshoots as out on the filled-to-capacity terrace. I settled into a booth that gave me a view through the window-wall of Jacquier’s table outside.

  At the other end of the lounge, the bruiser who’d arrived with Tony Callega was seated at the bar. His stool was turned so he could lean against its padded back and keep an eye on the terrace. If he noticed me, he didn’t show it.

  I ordered a cappuccino from a passing waiter and kept my watch on Tony Callega. The cappuccino arrived as France’s top pop singer, Serge Yonnet, came up onto the terrace. The famous grin flashed right and left as he strolled in the direction of the bar. His progress was delayed a number of times by people getting up from their tables to shake his hand, hug him, kiss him.

  Yonnet didn’t have his customary entourage with him. Just a rangy, wide-shouldered man with a crewcut and thick glasses. Jean-Marie Reju.

  I knew Reju could dress with elegance when one of his personal protection jobs required it. This was not one of those occasions. But even at the Cannes film festival, where people wore all sorts of outfits, his raincoat was conspicuous. Few people use raincoats on the Riviera even when it’s raining.

  He wore it unbuttoned, as always. Reju favored unbuttoned raincoats because they provided both excellent concealment and swift access to the big Colt. 45 he used when working.

  It’s not easy to get a permit to carry a concealed weapon around with you in France. You have to fill out a lot of forms explaining exactly why you need it and for exactly how long. Then they take their time considering your application—sometimes longer than the job you need it for. Jean-Marie Reju never had that problem. He’d been with the government before going private: part of the V.O. service guarding traveling officials. High officials continued to call on his private services. As in every trade, knowing the right people cuts through the red tape.

  Reju followed his present client, Serge Yonnet, into the bar. Yonnet came into the lounge section. Reju stopped beside the bar, exchanged expressionless nods with the bruiser on the stool, and did a careful scan of everybody in the place.

  He was a big man; as big as me. But next to the guy on the bar stool, he didn’t seem big. The bruiser looked like he could throw Reju over a roof without breathing hard.

  Serge Yonnet plunked himself down in a booth occupied by a plump, pretty woman about his age who was gazing gloomily at the tall drink she held in both hands. Her somber expression didn’t change with his arrival. I recognized her then, from a photo layout in Paris-Match of the happy couple at home. Yonnet’s wife. The couple wasn’t a happy one at the moment. They launched a low-voiced argument. They took a two-second break for the waiter who scurried over to take his drink order and then resumed.

  Jean-Marie Reju came from the bar to my booth and said, “Shift.”

  I shifted to one side of the booth so he could sit where he could watch both approaches to his client’s booth: from the terrace and from the hotel lobby. He hadn’t given me a smile of greeting; but then Reju seldom smiled. I’d never seen him laugh. A humorless man. Which led some to regard him as stupid, as well. But I’d never heard of him making a mistake on a job. And I’d watched him play chess with Fritz Donhoff. Fritz was a strong player. Reju was better.

  “Is Yonnet really in danger?” I asked him. “Or are you just for show?”

  “Somebody left a death threat among his messages his first day here,” Reju said. “Probably just a crank, but he got to thinking about what happened to John Lennon and called his manager. Who flew me down. I’ve been here a week, and nobody’s made a move on Yonnet.” Reju shrugged and added, in that dead-serious tone of his, “But that’s all right—he’s paying my top fee, either way.”

  Money was definitely one of the things Reju took most seriously.

  “Who is the jumbo-size character at the bar?” I asked him.

  “Name’s Boyan Traikov.”

  “Bulgarian or Russian?”

  “Bulgarian originally. But he came to France with his parents when he was just a kid.”

  “Where do you know him from?”

  “Met him a couple
of times when I was with a client at one of the gambling clubs owned by Didier Sabarly. He works for Sabarly.”

  Didier Sabarly was one of the current heavyweights of the Parisian underworld, with a range of interests that included loan-sharking and hard drugs as well as the illicit but well-protected gambling clubs. I asked Reju, “What does Traikov do for Sabarly? Muscle?”

  “Started that way, but graduated. To straightening out problems that crop up in any of Sabarly’s business. Don’t be misled by his size. Traikov has a sharp brain in that thick head.”

  “Brain and brawn. Potent combination.”

  “Potent enough to move him up the ladder. High enough, from what I hear, so he never has to risk getting caught carrying a gun any more. Usually has somebody else along to take that risk for him.”

  “Any idea what he’s doing down here?”

  “None at all.”

  “He showed up this evening with Fulvio Callega’s kid brother, Tony.” I indicated Charles Jacquier’s table outside. “The dashing fellow with the mustache.”

  “I didn’t know Callega had a brother.”

  “What do you know about Fulvio Callega?”

  Less than I did, it turned out. Nor did Reju have anything else of use to me. He looked at his watch. “Yonnet and his wife leave for the airport in a few minutes. Flying to London.”

  “Your job finished after you see them off?”

  “Yes. But my room here in the hotel is paid until tomorrow noon. So I might as well use it: come back and enjoy a room-service dinner, get myself a good night of sleep. I haven’t had much the last week. Serge Yonnet is a night owl.”

  I gave it a moment’s thought. “If you’re staying,” I told him, “I’ve got a short job for you. Just to check on something.”

  I explained what I had in mind. Reju looked reluctant.

  “I’m not asking for a personal favor,” I said, “it’s for a client. You’ll get paid.”

  “How long do you want me on it?”

  “A day, two days maximum. If nothing develops by then, my premise is wrong.”

  Reju nodded gravely. “All right.”

  “But not your top fee,” I told him. “My client isn’t that rich.”

  We were haggling over his fee when Serge Yonnet and his wife climbed out of their booth. Reju left me and preceded them through the lounge and into the hotel lobby.

  A few minutes later the group at Jacquier’s table broke up, shaking hands. Inside the bar, the Bulgarian bruiser, Boyan Traikov, paid his bill and relieved the barstool of his considerable weight.

  Jacquier and the two distributors left the terrace and parted on the pavement. Jacquier headed toward the Martinez. They went off in the opposite direction.

  Traikov strolled out of the bar to join Tony Callega, who stood waiting for him. I strolled out after Traikov.

  He and Tony Callega walked down off the terrace and turned away from the Croisette at Rue du Canada, the first side street leading into the interior of town. I followed them, keeping distance between us.

  Traikov’s towering hulk made them easy to follow.

  Chapter 14

  Tony Callega’s villa was near the eastern edge of town, a few blocks in from the smaller of the two Cannes yacht harbors.

  I’d lost him and Boyan Traikov minutes after leaving the Carlton. On the other side of the Rue d’Antibes, where traffic was easing off for the night, they’d walked into a garage and driven out in a sleek gray-blue Daimler Sovereign. With no taxi in sight, and my own car on the other side of the railroad station, all I could do about that was watch them go.

  Tony Callega wasn’t in the phone book, so I’d called the festival’s information center. Sure enough, he’d listed himself there, complete with home address. I’d phoned Reju at the Carlton, but he wasn’t back from the airport yet. Leaving a message for him, I had walked to my car and driven to Tony’s address.

  I parked around the block and walked back to his house. It wasn’t big, as Cannes villas go. About ten rooms, I estimated. In that location it would sell for well over a million dollars. It was a contemporary two-level place in the middle of a garden enclosed by a high chain link fence topped with sharp spikes. The garden was overcrowded with giant cactus plants that loomed like misshapen monsters in the darkness under the palm trees.

  Lights were on inside some of the villa’s downstairs windows, but the sleek Daimler wasn’t in the wide graveled driveway inside the steel-picket gate. Just a two-door Renault 5. But according to Chantal Jacquier, they would all be meeting there before going to dinner. If they hadn’t already been and gone. I decided to give it half an hour. It didn’t take that long.

  I’d been waiting less than ten minutes, in the deep shadow of one of the cedars across the street, when Tony Callega arrived in the Daimler. He stopped in front of his gate and honked the horn.

  Boyan Traikov was no longer with him.

  Lights went on outside the villa’s front door and atop the gateposts. A medium-sized man with a hawk-like face came out of the house and unlocked the gate. Tony Callega drove in, got out of the Daimler, and spoke for a minute to him before going into the villa. Hawkface got in the Renault and drove out, leaving the gate open.

  As the Renault went past my hiding place I could read its license number. I jotted it in my notebook for possible future reference. The car turned a corner and went its way, picking up speed.

  A few minutes later Charles Jacquier and his daughter arrived in a Mercedes. Five minutes after they’d gone inside the villa another Mercedes pulled into the open gateway. The two distributors got out of the front seat, and a couple of women climbed from the back. As they went to the villa door I walked around the block to my Peugeot.

  I cruised back past the villa. The three cars were still in the driveway. I parked at the end of the block, turned off my lights, and waited. Half an hour. Drinks before dinner, I guessed.

  Then the Jacquier Mercedes came out, followed by the other one. The Daimler drove out last. Tony Callega stopped to relock his gate before driving after the first two cars.

  My Peugeot was facing the wrong way. I did a U-turn with my headlights off, let the Daimler get a full block ahead, and then began to tail the three cars.

  They turned away from Cannes and headed east along the coast road. There was just enough traffic there to make tailing easy. I switched on my parking lights and kept a few other cars between me and the Daimler. Now and then I checked my rearview mirror. But I couldn’t tell if any of the cars back there were tailing me.

  A few miles from Cannes we entered Juan-les-Pins, the fashionable little resort town at the western base of Cap d’Antibes. At night most of its activity is concentrated close to the shore, where the posh restaurants and clubs huddle between pine woods and beach. That was where the three cars I was following went, turning into Avenue Guy de Maupassant.

  They pulled into the parking area of Les Mimosas, one of the best and most expensive Basque restaurants on the Riviera. I drove past and found a curbside space for my Peugeot around the corner on Avenue Joffre.

  Across from Les Mimosas there was a self-consciously stylish brasserie with a shiny interior dominated by sculptured aluminum and black mirrors. I used its phone to call the Carlton and ask for Jean-Marie Reju. He’d been and gone. I left another message and managed to get one of the brasserie’s window tables, with a view of Les Mimosas. Which was some compensation for the tough gigot I had for dinner while keeping watch.

  When they came out Tony Callega gave Chantal Jacquier a brief good-night kiss and shook hands with the others. Then he stood outside the restaurant, waving as they drove out of the parking lot and back toward Cannes. When they were gone he started walking briskly away from the brightly lit section and into the dimmer interior of the town.

  I left the brasserie and tailed him. I looked back once to check on whether I had a
tail.

  After five blocks the short, narrow streets became very poorly lighted, with no other people at all in sight. Tony Callega kept going past the dark post office building. It wasn’t until he entered a murky, deserted street by the railroad line that he stopped and looked behind him.

  I stepped into a recessed doorway in time to avoid his spotting me. When I peeked out he’d stopped again; this time beside a four-door Fiat parked by the mouth of a pedestrian tunnel that led under the train tracks.

  Nobody was sitting in the car. But its front window had been wound down and left that way, on the railroad side. Tony Callega took an envelope from his pocket and tossed it in through the open window. Then he hurried away, turning back toward the beach at the next corner.

  I reached the Fiat and leaned down to look inside for the envelope. It wasn’t in sight. What was there was a man of medium height with a hawk-like face, who was lying on his back across the front seat. The one I’d seen leave Tony Callega’s villa in a Renault.

  He grinned up at me and said, “Put your hands on top of the car. And then don’t move again, not at all.”

  His tensed, squeaky voice wasn’t impressive. The pistol in his skinny hand did the impressing. It was fitted with an efficient silencer, its dark snout aimed at my chest, dead center.

  I put my hands on the Fiat’s roof. Someone came out of the tunnel behind me. I turned my head and saw the powerhouse bulk of Boyan Traikov.

  It wasn’t hard to tell the difference between him and a piece of good news.

  Chapter 15

  It hadn’t been necessary for them to tail me. All they’d had to do was wait and let Tony Callega lead me to them.

  Well, I’d wanted to find out if Tony could be provoked into making a revealing move. That it had come so soon told me I was on the right track. Next problem: staying alive to follow up on what I’d learned.

  Boyan Traikov said, “Maurice told you not to move.” He had a deep, heavy voice, the slight Bulgarian accent giving it a peculiar emphasis. “He will shoot you if you don’t obey.”