Get Off At Babylon

by Marvin H. Albert

  I kept the flashlight and Beretta on him as I followed him to the partition and watched him obey the order. “Back your feet toward me and spread them.” He did. “Further,” I snapped. He did that, too. Now he was stretched out with all his weight on his hands. I holstered the Beretta and patted him down. No other gun. I went through his pockets.

  According to his ID, he was Christophe Bucher, thirty-four years old, born in Strasbourg, now resident in Paris, profession: chauffeur. I found two snapshots, the same ones of Odile and Gilbert Lucca. I put them in my pocket, found a switchblade knife, and stuck that in my pocket, too. The next thing I found was a small address book.

  I went through it quickly, looking first under “S”. No Didier Sabarly. No Callega, neither Tony nor Fulvio. I tried “T”. Boyan Traikov was there: a phone number, but no address. No other names that meant anything to me. I pocketed the little book for possible future reference and moved back a step, drawing the Beretta again.

  Bucher asked, “Can I straighten up now? My arms are starting to hurt.”

  “Nothing’s going to hurt you much longer if I don’t get some fast and straight answers. Who do you work for?”

  “Anybody that pays us.”

  “Us being you and your partner back there at the Passage du Prado.”

  “That’s right. We’d work for you if you hired us to. So no reason for you to—”

  “What’s your partner’s name?”

  “Rheims. Alain Rheims.”

  It was one of the names in his little book. “And right now you’re working for Boyan Traikov and Tony Callega.”

  He hesitated just a bit. “No, a guy named Planel. Robert Planel.”

  That wasn’t in his little book. I let it pass for the moment. “Are you the ones who searched Gilbert Lucca’s place?”

  “No, we were never inside there.”

  It was possible that their assignment had followed the search. “What were you supposed to do there outside his place?”

  “Just watch it. In case Lucca or the girl showed up there. Or if somebody else came there, one of us was supposed to follow him. Like I did with you. Just to find out where you went. Nothing else, no rough stuff.”

  “If Lucca or the girl came back there,” I said, “then what?”

  “Call this guy and let him know, that’s all.”

  “Planel?”

  “Planel, sure.”

  “Give me his phone number.”

  Bucher told me a number.

  I said, “Nobody’s ever going to know what you tell me down here. But lie to me again and nobody will know anything about you again, ever.”

  “I don’t know the number!” Bucher’s whisper had become strained. “My partner’s got it. Rheims has it.”

  I sighed and said, “You can straighten up now.”

  He looked surprised as he did so, rubbing his aching biceps and forearms.

  “Now we take a walk,” I told him, and I gestured at the doorway on the other side of the bunker. “You first.” With apparent docility, Bucher walked ahead of me into the passage. I followed two steps behind. When we reached the place where the passage forked I directed him to the left-hand passage. As we neared the point where it ended at the subterranean reservoir he began to shorten his steps. Just a little, so I’d be closer behind him. I didn’t say anything. What he had in mind could establish a better relationship between us. From my viewpoint.

  The instant we stepped out of the end of the passage he sidestepped and spun around to grab my gun arm. Since I’d been waiting for it, I had time to shoot him exactly where I wanted to. His reaching hand.

  Bucher squealed, stumbled backward, and fell. He screamed again when his wounded hand struck the rough rock beside the black pool. He rolled, and his legs slid into the water. I think the water’s being there shocked him as much as the agony in his smashed hand. He yanked his dripping legs out and sat up abruptly, holding his hurt hand with his other and cradling it between his chest and upraised knees.

  The wound would have been worse if I’d shot him with his own .45. But even a 9mm bullet going through the palm of a hand doesn’t leave many bones unsplintered.

  Bucher looked around fearfully at the black surface of the water and the crumbling arches. His whisper was wracked with pain. “What is this place?”

  “You wanted to know where I was going. This is it. That water is deep. It runs under the rock and keeps going underneath the city for miles. Nobody knows where. And nobody will ever find your body.”

  I felt the muscles of my face stretching so tight it almost hurt. A kind of smile. I’d been told it wasn’t a joy to look at.

  His whisper became clogged with terror. “I didn’t do anything to you!”

  I took aim at the spot between his eyes. “The next time you lie to me I’m going to shoot you in the head and dump you in there,” I said tonelessly. “Who are you working for?”

  Bucher was in no shape by then to call my bluff. He was bleeding and hurt and scared. “Boyan Traikov,” he told me.

  That felt right. Bucher was too small to deal with Didier Sabarly directly. “What number were you supposed to call him at, if Gilbert Lucca or the girl showed up?”

  He rattled off a number. I looked up Traikov in Bucher’s little book. It was Traikov’s number—at his second residence, the one Fritz hadn’t been able to locate. Bucher’s knowing the number by heart meant he worked for Boyan Traikov with some regularity.

  I said, “He’s sticking to his place while he waits for the call?”

  “Not just from us. He’s got a lot of other people out looking for those two kids.” Bucher moaned softly, bending his head over the injured hand as though he wanted to kiss it.

  “Is Tony Callega still with him?”

  “Not anymore. He went back south to take care of some other business.”

  “What kind of business?”

  “I don’t know… Jesus, my hand is—”

  “Finding the girl? Or getting another supply of heroin for Didier Sabarly?”

  “I don’t know!”

  I believed him. And he only had two other items of any interest to me.

  One: Bucher and his partner had been assigned to watch Gilbert Lucca’s place early that morning. By which time it must have been searched. That meant Gilbert Lucca had been away from his place since before then. It didn’t tell me whether Odile was with him or not.

  Two: One of the opposition’s searchers had disappeared two nights ago. Bucher didn’t know which one. I figured that had to be Maurice.

  I dropped Bucher’s revolver into the dark pool. “You can dive for that if you want. But don’t leave here for at least fifteen minutes.” I left him hunched beside the water, fastening his necktie around his wrist as a tourniquet.

  * * * *

  “What took you so long?” Fritz asked when I entered his apartment.

  I told him and gave him Bucher’s address book.

  He looked through it and said, “It may prove of some use—if not on this assignment, perhaps in some future one.” Fritz kept a stock of items like it, acquired over the years by various means. He regarded me dubiously. “But other than this, I wouldn’t say you learned enough to justify all that effort.”

  “Not much,” I agreed. “But I couldn’t know that before I tried it. What did you get from Menton?”

  “The waiter with Gilbert Lucca in that snapshot,” he told me, “is Dominique Veran. He’s known Gilbert since he was a kid. And he knows our Odile, by name. Gilbert introduced her to him, as his girlfriend, the day those pictures were taken. During a visit Odile and Gilbert paid to Menton this February.”

  Fritz paused. But I’d detected the faint undercurrent in his tone, so I kept silent and waited until he answered the question I hadn’t asked.

  “The last time Dominique Veran saw them down
there was yesterday.”

  Chapter 24

  Late that afternoon I was back on the Cote D’Azur.

  The newspaper I’d bought before catching the flight from Paris carried a story about the finding of Maurice’s body. A small item, on an inside page. The police reported that he was known to be a member of the underworld milieu in southern France. Since the gun found in his hand had been fired, it was probable he had been killed during a fight with a rival gang in Paris. Nothing to worry normal, peaceful citizens. I breathed easier, a normal, peaceful citizen.

  I’d left my Peugeot in the parking garage under the airport terminal when I’d flown up to Paris. Before driving it out I got the H&K from its hiding place and holstered it under my Levi jacket. Then I drove east along the coast road.

  There were a good three hours of daylight left. But the sun was becoming obscured by a cloud cover like the one over Paris. Over the sea, however, it had its own kind of beauty. Shafts of sunlight stabbed through holes in the clouds and created bright gold disks on the slate-gray surface of the Mediterranean. There was a fairly strong breeze, but it lacked the chill of the north. Sailboats and windsurfers were out there taking advantage of it. The water was too placid for any storm to be brewing.

  I drove past my house without stopping and went on to Menton.

  Coming from that direction, you first enter its modern section, stretching for about a mile along the shore from Cap Martin to the old fishing port. Beyond that the casbah-like older part of town rises across a slope surrounding the multicolored steeple of Saint Michel.

  The Place aux Herbes is tucked between the old and new sections, next to the covered market near the port. Dominique Veran, the waiter in the snapshot with Gilbert Lucca, wasn’t there when I arrived. He’d just finished his day’s work and had gone down for a swim. I strolled the long pebble beach, looking for him.

  The air and sea were warm enough for the beach to still be crowded, in spite of the clouds. But it wasn’t the St. Tropez sort of beach crowd. St. Tropez and Menton are at opposite ends of the Rivera, and they are opposite in most other ways. St. Tropez is frenetic and hip; Menton quiet and conservative, with a large enclave of elderly retired people. You don’t see any full nudity on its beaches, even among the young set. Topless has made inroads but still draws stares. Some find Menton boring, others regard it as restful—depends what you’re looking for.

  Dominique Veran was coming out of the gentle surf when I spotted him. He wasn’t difficult to spot. In his early twenties, he had a tubby body and a cheerful face like a full moon, with skin that had the stretched shine of an overinflated balloon. While he washed off the sea salt at one of the showers under the Promenade du Soleil I explained about trying to find Odile Garnier for her ill and anxious father.

  He was eager to be helpful but had no idea where Odile and Gilbert Lucca were. Nor even whether they were staying in the Menton area or had just been passing through. All he’d seen of them was a brief glimpse.

  “I was taking a walk during my lunch break yesterday,” he explained, “and I saw Gi-Gi’s camionnette stopped for a traffic light. Gi-Gi—that’s what we all called Gilbert in school. He was behind the wheel and Odile was sitting beside him. They didn’t see me. I hurried over, but I’m not the fastest walker in the world. By the time I got there the light had changed, and they were driving off.”

  “You’re sure it was Odile with him.”

  “Sure.” Dominique grinned. “I couldn’t miss that face. That’s one really pretty girl he finally got himself. And just what he needs. Gi-Gi was always too serious. No time for anything outside of making a living and building himself a solid business. Odile’s full of life and fun. She perks him up.”

  “How well did you get to know her when they were down here in February?” I asked as I walked him back to his beach bag.

  He picked up his towel and began drying himself. “I only met her the couple times they dropped into the Lido when I was there.”

  “But you like her.”

  “Hard not to. A girl like that. Pretty, full of life, and with a warm heart. Gi-Gi hit lucky.”

  “Did she seem worried about anything?”

  The question surprised him. “Not that I noticed.”

  “Where did they stay when they were here in February?”

  “With Denis Boyer. He was one of our classmates, too. And he’s got a spare room in his apartment. His wife left him and went back to her parents. Took their baby with her. Denis was definitely not lucky in his choice.”

  Dominique Veran gave me the names of some other friends of Gilbert. He only knew a couple of their addresses offhand. I jotted down the names, thanked him, and went back up to the Lido to check the names in its phone book.

  Denis Boyer and two of the other names were listed. The rest apparently didn’t have phones. I called Denis Boyer first and got him in. But Gilbert and Odile weren’t staying with him this time. He didn’t even know they were back in the area. The only other help he was able to give me were the addresses of those friends of Gilbert’s not listed in the phone book—by looking them up in his personal address book.

  I called the other two who had phones but got no answer at either number. Then I began hiking around to the other addresses. By nine that night I’d talked to several of Gilbert’s friends in person and gotten one of the other two on the phone. None of them had seen Gilbert and Odile since February, and none had anything much to tell me. Except for an interesting pattern of disparate opinions of Gilbert’s girlfriend.

  Dominique Veran had told me Odile was a lively girl full of good humor. Another of Gilbert’s friends described her as very quiet and introverted. A third said she was extremely tense, her nerves jumpy, her temper edgy. Denis Boyer, the one they’d stayed with in February, had found her moods to be unpredictable: sometimes up, other times way down. He couldn’t come up with any reason for her drastic shifts.

  I could. It would fit the uncontrollable phases experienced in heroin addiction. Anyone deeply hooked rides an emotional and physical roller coaster. A fix produces a rush of euphoria. When the high diminishes the result is sleepiness, lethargy, and finally depression. As the need for the next fix builds the nervous system begins to scream for it, painfully and insistently, blocking out any other concern.

  A pattern that sounded very much like what I was being told about Odile Garnier.

  * * * *

  I tried the remaining phone number again. It belonged to Paul Delouette, a former schoolmate of Gilbert Lucca. He was now a clerk in a local bank. His apartment was in Carnolès, at the western end of Menton’s modern section. But he still wasn’t home.

  Another of Gilbert’s friends whom I hadn’t found at home worked as a bartender not far from Delouette’s address. In the Piccadilly: a large brasserie with a relaxed atmosphere and the best inexpensive food in town, which made it Menton’s favorite hangout for the young crowd.

  I drove there and had a talk with the bartender. He was slim and handsome, and he’d been working there ever since I’d first begun dropping in for an occasional meal or drink. But this was the first time I’d ever heard his last name. I’d always known him as Freddie, and he always called me by my first name. It was that kind of place.

  Freddie wanted to be helpful, but he couldn’t tell me anything at all, except that Gilbert and Odile had been there for dinner twice in February, not at all since then. His opinion of Odile: “Gorgeous and good-natured, and in love with Gi-Gi—what more could a man ask for?”

  I asked him about the address of the bank clerk, Paul Delouette, because it was in one of the newer streets I didn’t know, recently built at that end of town. Freddie told me it was a few blocks away, off Rue Morillot. “But if Paul isn’t answering his phone, you might as well wait for him here. He drops in every Saturday night.”

  With a wave of his hand that indicated the large proportion of female client
ele in the brasserie, he added with an indulgent smile, “Looking to pick up a girl, naturally. Paul’s a bachelor.” Freddie himself looked twenty-five but was thirty-six, with a wife and three children.

  It was past my dinnertime by then anyway. I settled at one of the few unoccupied tables and ordered the Piccadilly’s most popular meal: roast gigot with spaghetti Bolognese and green salad. Some of the tables near me were taken by young couples, but most were taken by groups of boys or groups of girls, with a certain amount of joking chatter between the two. And an occasional boy shifting from his group for closer conversation with one of the girls. Paul Delouette wasn’t the only young man who found the Piccadilly a good place to meet girls.

  You could tell the local boys from the ones doing their military service at the fort on the upper edge of town. The draftees were out of uniform but had short haircuts. They were there hoping to pick up a date for the night, and the girls were there hoping to be picked up by someone new and interesting.

  It wasn’t like what went on around St. Tropez. These were local girls, and they weren’t after a fast and furious taste of the rich life. They were interested in connecting with a young man of their own economic and social level, someone who might turn out to be a steady boyfriend and potential husband.

  It worked out that way surprisingly often. A lot of the soldiers returned after their service was finished and settled down to jobs and marriage at that end of the Cote d’Azur. I was having an additional glass of wine after my meal when I saw Freddie point me out to a stocky young guy who was going prematurely bald. He came over with a drink and introduced himself: Paul Delouette, the bank clerk friend of Gilbert Lucca.

  I invited him to sit down. He cast a thoughtful eye at six girls gathered around a nearby table as he did so. Then he said, before I could ask him anything, “If you’re looking for Gilbert, he’s not around here. Not now. He drove over to Italy yesterday.”