Get Off At Babylon

by Marvin H. Albert

  The Amsterdam syndicate that had sold him Petar had also supplied Dutch government forms stating that Andre was the boy’s official adoptive father. The adoption papers were phony of course. But Andre and Petar had come to care for each other as though they were father and son. Another anxiety that had begun tormenting Andre the last I’d seen him was the risk of the police catching the boy and putting him in a home for delinquent kids.

  André shut the bedroom door quietly and led me on toward the rear of the house. “Petar’s had a fever the last couple of days,” he told me. “I’ve had to keep him home from school.”

  “School?”

  Andre nodded. “In Cannes. I take him in the morning and bring him back in the afternoon.” He looked just a bit embarrassed. “I don’t let him work anymore. I couldn’t take the anxiety. Worrying about the cops separating us. Petar needs me…and I need him.”

  “That mean you’re back to sharing half your profits with outside thieves?”

  “Yes, but that’s not as bad as the worry. And I don’t need as much money anymore, now that I don’t have to pay for my habit.”

  “If you don’t need that much money now, you ought to go back to teaching.”

  “That doesn’t pay enough to take care of Petar’s future education. No, I’m saving up to buy a little souvenir shop in Nice.”

  “I hope you make that switch before the cops catch you,” I said. “Or you won’t be able to do anything for Petar.”

  “Please,” Andre begged, “don’t make me more neurotic about that than I already am.”

  “I’ve got a little money in savings right now,” I told him. “If you don’t need much more to get the place in Nice, I could give you a short-term loan.”

  “No,” he said, with that perverse but genuine dignity of his. “Though I do thank you for the offer. I want to do it on my own. As I’ve done everything else in my life—good and bad.”

  We went down the back steps to a huge old-fashioned kitchen that was also dining and living room. Andre had installed full-sized windows in the back wall there. They looked across a wide ravine of red stone spires and dark Maritime pines.

  “Coffee?”

  I nodded, and André went to the stove to prepare it. The stove was one of the better brands. So were the other appliances. Andre seldom risked going to a bank with his checks and credit cards. He preferred to buy things with them. Most of what he acquired that way was resold to a fence in Cannes. But some things he kept.

  When we were seated at the table with our cups of café creme I pushed one of my photos of Odile Garnier across to him. “Ever seen her around?”

  Andre studied her face. “No.” I told him her name, but that didn’t mean anything to him either. I tried the close-up of the boy who’d been in the other snapshot with her. Another blank.

  “The girl was with Bruno Ravic for a while,” I told him. “What do you know about him?”

  He cocked an eyebrow at me: “I know what happened to him.”

  “Including who killed him?”

  “No, that I don’t know.”

  “I’m interested in before he got killed. I figured you might know some background stuff on him.”

  “You mean because he was from Yugoslavia, and so is Petar?” Andre shook his head. “If Ravic was ever involved with smuggling the kids out of there, it’s news to me.”

  “I mean because he was involved in supplying dope—and you were a user.”

  “We never had any contact,” Andre told me. “But I did hear things about him.”

  “Like what?”

  “Ravic wasn’t a dealer. Not a pusher, either. The word was he was a transporter. Used to carry supplies from here up to Paris. That’s nothing I can swear to, understand. Merely something I heard.”

  It sounded right. It would fit with pieces I’d been putting together. “Did what you heard include the name of the Paris buyer?”

  Andre shook his head. “No idea.”

  “What about Didier Sabarly?”

  “As the buyer in Paris? It’s possible.”

  “What do you think of Fulvio Callega as the supplier Ravic carried the drugs for?”

  “That’s possible, too. But I just don’t know.”

  I tried the name of Boyan Traikov on Andre, but it didn’t mean anything to him.

  We were interrupted by Petar, who came down the back steps in his pajamas and slippers. He gave me a sleepy stare, saying politely, “Bonjour, Monsieur.” Then he climbed onto Andre’s lap and reached for his coffee.

  Andre pushed the cup away from him. “Caffeine isn’t good for you right now.” He kissed Petar on the forehead, letting his lips stay there for a moment. “But I think your temperature is down.”

  “I’m thirsty.”

  “I’ll get you some orange juice.” Andre sat the boy on his chair and went to fill a glass with juice. He brought it back and said, “Drink it in your bed, and I’ll be up soon to take your temperature. Monsieur Sawyer and I are having a private discussion.”

  Petar nodded and went back up the steps with his orange juice. No sign of reluctance. He’d spent enough of his life in a world where “private discussions” were respected.

  When he was gone I asked Andre, “Do you know Tony Callega?”

  “Not personally. I know a bit about him. The same as with Ravic: only things I’ve heard from other people.”

  “He and Ravic were involved in something together,” I told him. “It could have been drugs. Heard anything along that line?”

  “You mean is Tony Callega involved with dope on a commercial basis? I don’t think so. The word around is that his brother doesn’t want him mixed up in anything too illegal.”

  That, too, fitted everything I’d learned so far.

  “Of course,” Andre added, “he does have access to drugs. Coke, heroin, pills—anything some of the jet set might run short of when they’re down here. According to my information, Tony can always supply whatever they need—or tell them where to get it. But not for money. To ingratiate himself with them, I guess. The same reason he supplies girls.”

  That reminded me of my speculation about how Tony Callega had gotten in with the Parisian BCBGs. “Girls—do you mean call girls?”

  “No, just plain girls.” Andre smiled a little. “Actually, girls who aren’t plain. But not whores. Just those beautiful young things who pour down from all over the world to the Riviera beaches every year to get a feeling of glamour with their suntans. According to my source, that’s where Tony picks some of them up. Along the beaches. And then maybe gets them high on something and feeds them to his jet set friends.”

  “Who’s your source?”

  André hesitated and then remembered he could trust me. “My cousin. Josette. She has a place Tony Callega drops into once in a while, outside St. Tropez. A disco bar near the beach. The Casbah. Do you know it?”

  I didn’t. He told me how to find it.

  Chapter 17

  Brigitte Bardot did for St. Tropez what Columbus did for America. But the mass immigration that followed her discovery is strictly seasonal. St. Tropez is on the side of a cape facing north. It’s one of the few resorts along the Riviera that gets unpleasantly cold all through wintertime. That’s when St. Tropez shrinks back into a sleepy little fishing village, and the beaches outside it become as deserted as the Sahara.

  But by May the mass invasion of vacationers has swelled the village to bursting with eccentrically clad visitors, and the beaches are packed to capacity with unclad flesh. On the St. Tropez beaches—Les Salins, Tahiti, La Bouillabaisse and Pampelonne—topless long ago gave way to over-all.

  The bodies carpeting the sand of the public plages belong to young people short of cash. The rich get their tans beside hotel pools or on the decks of the yachts anchored close offshore. Where they can roll over without mixing their swe
at with that of the strangers on either side of them.

  The two classes do meet, and sometimes mingle, in places like the Casbah, after the sun goes down. The rich search for low-down adventure, and the poor for someone who might stake them to a square meal, or even a longer stay.

  The Casbah was about three hundred yards from Tahiti Plage. There was one large room with a bar, tables, and a dance space. It was open on one side to a thatch-shaded courtyard with more tables and dance space, enclosed on three sides by a picket fence through which you could see the beach, the sea, and the yachts. The Casbah’s speakers were blaring hard rock, inside and out. But it was too early for most people to abandon the sun. The courtyard was empty, and the room inside almost so.

  There were only two young couples dancing to the blare. The boys wore brief monokinis. One of the girls had on a full-length skirt of separate blue-plastic ropes. The other wore a cowboy hat and boots, and nothing between them—not that unusual a sight around St. Tropez. All four of them were Scandinavian blonds, and badly sunburned, which probably accounted for their seeking shade.

  The only other customer was a pale middle-aged man in flowered sport shirt, bermuda shorts, and plastic sandals. He was at the bar, working on a dry martini and watching the two girls with shy hunger. Or it may have been the boys he was watching. It’s often hard to tell. Sometimes even those who hunger aren’t sure.

  I was at the far end of the bar with André Marchine’s cousin, Josette. Her last name was Beltoise, but Andre’s phone call had put us on a relaxed first-name basis. Josette was a strongly built, pretty woman in her forties, with the kind of dark skin that is stocked with enough natural oils to withstand the ravages of sun and wind. With a few hours to go before her evening customers began filling the Casbah, she was able to give me her full attention.

  She looked at the close-up picture of Odile Garnier for a while before giving me an answer. “If you hadn’t just mentioned Tony Callega, I probably wouldn’t remember. I get so many girls like this one in here, all summer and every summer. But yes—I’ve seen her. With him.”

  “Often?”

  “No. Say four or six times—spread over a couple of years.”

  Egon Mulhausser’s rough try at making Tony Callega keep away from his daughter hadn’t worked too well. Or had worked in reverse. It could be Tony Callega’s way of thumbing his nose at Mulhausser. Odile’s, too. Protecting daughters from predators—and from themselves—gets harder all the time.

  “Did they just happen to run into each other here?” I asked Josette. “Or would they come in together?”

  “Together. Except the last time. That was about a month ago. Tony was with a guy I saw him with a few times before. They’d meet here, have a drink, look over the girls, and then go off somewhere together.” Josette tapped the snapshot of Odile. “This time she came in while they were here. She sat at their table and started arguing with Tony.”

  “About what?”

  “I couldn’t hear. It looked like she wanted something from him—pretty badly. And Tony was telling her no. But finally the other guy started talking to her—and in the end she went out with him. She didn’t look too happy about it. The guy did. And Tony—he watched them go with a funny kind of smile. Like he’d done something he got a nasty kick out of.”

  “You don’t know who this other guy is.”

  “No. A good-looking tough type. Big as you.”

  I described Bruno Ravic.

  “Yes—that could be him.”

  “What about the first time you saw Tony Callega with her?” I asked. “Did they come in together then—or was it a pickup that time?”

  Josette thought about it and gave up. “I don’t remember. He could have come in that time and just seen her and picked her up. That would fit the way he operates. Cruises along the coast in his boat. Anchors off the beach. Comes in with a dinghy and prowls around looking for fresh meat. The fresher ones are what he’s after. Some of them he finds on the beach I wouldn’t let in here. I draw the line at kids under fifteen.”

  “He likes them that young?”

  “I don’t know if he does. But some of his friends do. He’s got friends with all kinds of tastes. Only thing they’ve got in common, I guess, is their money. And being, quote, respectable, unquote. Tony Callega picks up a girl, uses her for a short while, and then passes her to one of the friends. Sometimes he doesn’t even use them himself before passing them on. Maybe that’s his kink.”

  “Or his way of cementing friendships.”

  “That, too, sure. One girl he picked up in here told me about it later. Tony took her out to his boat along with an English girl he found on the beach. A kid of thirteen or fourteen. He gave them some coke to snort. Took them to Cannes. Both girls wound up in a little orgy, high on more coke, with some men who had very special sexual preferences.

  “Another girl I knew, after Tony Callega picked her up she started showing up here the rest of the summer with a man old enough to be my grandfather. He’d sit and watch her dance with the boys. When that got him turned on enough, he’d take her back out to his yacht.”

  “It doesn’t sound like the girls objected to any of this too much.”

  Josette’s laugh was wry. “Of course not. So many of those kids—boys and girls alike—they get down here having spent the last of their money for their fare. What’re they hoping for, after all? Somebody to finance the rest of their vacation. So who’s to complain?”

  “What kind of boat has Tony Callega got?” I asked her.

  “Big cabin cruiser. But not too big for one man to handle. Though he sometimes has another guy helping with it. Comes in with him in the dinghy. Scrawny guy with a bony face and a big beak.”

  That sounded very much like Maurice. “Know the name of his boat?”

  She laughed again. “How could I forget it? Prince Antoine—that’s what he named it. One thing you’ve got to hand Tony Callega, he doesn’t suffer from an overabundance of modesty.”

  Josette didn’t know of anyone, other than Tony, who was acquainted with Odile Garnier. But she’d given me considerable food for thought. I thanked her, went out to my car, and drove back to Cannes.

  Three small airplanes of 1920s vintage were flying low over the Croisette, trailing banners promoting an Italian producer’s next historical sex-and-muscles epic. There was a ten-piece band outside the Palais des Festivals playing numbers from a new Hollywood musical. I walked past the Palais and along the Quai St. Pierre, on one side of the main Cannes yacht harbor. The Prince Antoine was moored near the end of it.

  It would have been interesting to find Maurice there. He’d probably gotten himself another gun by then—but I had one of my own this time. Nobody was aboard, however. I stood there for a while, looking at Tony’s cabin cruiser, speculating on what it could be used for, besides seduction and other forms of amusement.

  It wasn’t as big as some of the floating mansions docked near it—but big enough to suggest certain possibilities.

  The authorities didn’t pay much attention to the movements of yachts they were familiar with. With thousands of them along the Cote d’Azur, it would be impossible to conduct a search every time one of them came back from a half day’s pleasure cruise.

  Tony Callega would run very little risk if he sailed his boat out over the horizon and met a vessel from Italy. And took a shipment of drugs from his big brother. Which he brought back and turned over to someone like Bruno Ravic. Who carried it up to Paris, where it was delivered to Didier Sabarly’s people.

  Pure speculation.

  But intriguing.

  And quite possible.

  I walked back along the quay, past the Palais and the ten-piece band, and went into the nearest bar at that end of the Croisette. I used its rear phone booth to call Tony Callega’s villa. No response. Tony wasn’t there, and neither was Maurice.

  I called
Charles Jacquier at the Martinez. He wasn’t there. He’d left word he would return in a couple of hours. Next I tried Chantal Jacquier. She wasn’t in her suite, but when she was paged she picked up the call in the hotel’s cocktail lounge.

  Giving my French a strong American accent, I identified myself as a Hollywood producer and explained that I was trying to get in touch with either her father or his associate, Antoine Callega, about an urgent negotiation. Her father, Chantal told me, was closeted somewhere with a screen star he hoped to use in his new picture. Tony Callega had gone out of town on business the previous morning. She didn’t know what the business was, but she thought it was in Paris.

  I began calling hotels and asking for Boyan Traikov, trying the best hotels first. I hit it on the fourth try: Traikov had stayed at the Majestic, for one night. He’d checked out the morning before. Leaving no word about where he was going.

  That gave me something specific to worry about. Tony Callega had been seeing Odile Garnier over the last two years. He had to know more about her than I did. His sudden departure from Cannes, along with Boyan Traikov, could mean they had a lead on Odile’s whereabouts.

  I gave the bar’s cashier a fifty-franc note for ten five-franc coins. Going back to the phone booth, I plugged in several of them, dialed the code for Paris, and then dialed the number of Tony Callega’s apartment—one of the items Fritz Donhoff had dredged up for me.

  Tony Callega picked up on the second ring, sounding uptight. I altered my voice just enough and charged it with angry urgency. “Sabarly told me to call and see if you’re making any progress in finding that girl.”

  “I told him we’d—” Tony Callega stopped himself abruptly. There was a short silence, and then another voice came on.

  “Who is this?”

  An unmistakable voice: Boyan Traikov.