Get Off At Babylon

by Marvin H. Albert

  I could see him making an effort to keep his own tone casual—and to think carefully as he spoke. I asked, “When did you pick her up from that apartment?”

  “Late Thursday night. She had all her things ready when I got there. We put them in my van, and I drove the rest of the night. I got to Menton in the morning.”

  “There was a man in that apartment,” I said. “Medium height, sharp face. He had a gun with a silencer on it. His name was Maurice Bolec, and he worked for Tony. Which one of you killed him?”

  I shouldn’t have asked it at that moment. The Peugeot was doing 130 kilometers an hour, and Gilbert had it in the far left lane to pass slower cars. I saw his spasm of shock, and the car swerved for one horrible instant. It came within an inch of crashing into the concrete barrier that divided our northbound traffic from the southbound lanes.

  He straightened the Peugeot in the last possible second and slowed down abruptly, still in shock. The horn of a car directly behind us blared wildly as the panicked driver applied his brakes to keep from ramming us.

  “Speed up,” I snapped at Gilbert.

  He did so automatically.

  I looked back. “You’re clear on the right. Start swinging over toward the shoulder—without slowing down.”

  Again he obeyed like a robot. When he reached the far right lane he followed my next instruction, pulling off the autostrada and stopping the car on the paved emergency shoulder. He set the hand brake, cut the ignition, and turned to look at me with terrified eyes.

  “He’s dead.”

  There was no doubt about it, Gilbert’s surprise and fear were genuine.

  “Very.” I told him how I’d found Maurice over twenty-four hours after Gilbert and Odile had left the apartment.

  Gilbert was beginning to come out of the shock. I watched him start to think coherently again. Finally he said, “I didn’t mean to hit him that hard. I didn’t know I had…hard enough to kill him. We thought he was just unconscious…”

  I believed his last sentence.

  “Whatever was intended,” I asked, “it was you who hit him with that candlestick?”

  “Yes. I told you that.”

  I kept any disbelief out of my voice. “Nobody’s going to cry over the death of a thug like Maurice. He was a professional killer, and he liked the work. He wanted to kill me not so long ago. And I know you must have done it in self-defense, or to protect Odile. How did it happen?”

  He answered, slowly: “When I went to pick up Odile there, that night… I got there and heard her scream something inside…and I heard this man’s voice, threatening her. The door was locked. I banged on it and yelled for them to let me in…

  Gilbert paused to think about what he was going to say next, I let him take the time.

  “This man opened the door and let me in,” he resumed. “Ordered me to come in. He had that gun, and he made me stand beside Odile. She was terrified. He was saying what his friends would do to her, if she didn’t tell him where to find what she’d taken from them.”

  That confirmed what I’d suspected about Maurice’s reason for coming after Odile alone. He’d wanted to be the one who found that heroin. What he’d have done after he got it was a question I couldn’t answer, because the answer had died with him. Maybe he’d intended to cover himself with glory by single-handedly showing up with Odile and the dope. Or maybe he would have killed her, hidden it, and later tried to peddle it himself.

  “I knew,” Gilbert went on, “that once they took Odile away I would never see her again alive. So I jumped him, grabbing his gun hand so he couldn’t shoot me. We struggled and fell against the fireplace. I picked up that candlestick and hit him with it. He fell down, and…we thought he was only unconscious. And we were scared his friends might show up any minute. We grabbed Odile’s things and got out of there as fast as we could. We didn’t know he was dead. Anyway, it was self-defense.”

  “Yes,” I agreed, “it was.”

  It hadn’t happened the way he told it, though. I believed the last part: that they’d fled in panic, thinking Maurice was only knocked out and would come to later. But there was no way Gilbert could have jumped a pro like Maurice when they were standing face to face without getting shot before he could reach him.

  The earlier part of what Gilbert had told me fitted what I’d found there. His hearing Maurice and Odile inside the apartment. And banging on the locked door and yelling. That would have startled Maurice, twisting him toward the door.

  Which had put Odile behind Maurice—just long enough for her to grab that candlestick and club him with it. His finger had squeezed the trigger as he fell and died, firing the bullet into the door frame.

  “Oh my God”—Gilbert suddenly whispered in horror as a thought struck him—“I didn’t wipe the fingerprints off that candlestick! It didn’t occur to me. But if he’s dead—”

  “It’s all right,” I told him gently. “I wiped her prints off it.”

  He stared at me, not denying now that Odile had done it.

  I told him, also, what I’d done about Maurice’s body—so the cops would shrug it off as a gangland kill.

  He went on staring at me—relieved, but puzzled. “You took a chance like that… Why?”

  “Her father hired me to help her,” I said. “I told you, that’s my business.”

  * * * *

  We crossed the frontier and reentered France without incident. Gilbert turned sharply north onto Route 566, a mountain road that twists up into the Maritime Alps above Menton.

  I said, “This safe place where Odile is holed up—”

  Gilbert interrupted tightly, “I’m still not going to tell you where it is until we get there.”

  “I just hope it’s not a hotel room.”

  “Of course not. It’s a cabin in the mountains up there.”

  I had a bad feeling. “The same cabin you used when you came down with her from Paris in February?”

  “It’s exactly what we needed—that time and now. A place off by itself. Nobody else anywhere around it.”

  “How did you come by this cabin?”

  “It belongs to one of my customers. He owns a boutique in Paris, and he has this cabin for summer holidays. He let me have the key to it.”

  I thought about all of Gilbert’s business records—the ones the opposition had lifted from his place a few days ago. My bad feeling got worse.

  Chapter 28

  The Val Des Merveilles sprawls across a vast area at an altitude of seven thousand feet, encircled by blocky, barren crags rising two thousand feet higher. A rugged and almost entirely uninhabited region some thirty miles inland from Menton. As soon as Gilbert turned into the left-hand road after the hamlet of St. Dalmas, just above the Roya gorges, I knew that was where we were going.

  That road doesn’t lead anyplace else. And like the few other approach roads to the high valley, it ends before penetrating the heart of it.

  I knew the area. My mother had taken me on a three-day camping trek through it when I was thirteen. Babette had wanted a firsthand look at the mysterious prehistoric symbols chiseled on the cliffs there. And I’d made a couple of trips since, with friends who’d wanted to see them.

  No evidence has been found that any people ever lived in that area. Yet there are those symbols—almost forty thousand of them, by archeologists’ count—made by unknown hands long before recorded history, for purposes no one has been able to fathom. Therefore the name it now bears: the Valley of Marvels.

  The road we took toward it climbed steadily through steep, forested slopes via one sharp bend after another. We were above one side of a turbulent mountain stream that battered its way noisily down through a succession of fallen boulders. There were a few houses close together after St. Dalmas, then cabins spaced further and further apart; and then none for a couple miles.

  We came to a clu
ster of fairly new alpine-style buildings beside a lake. It was a base for people to stay at when they came up into that area to hike or fish or investigate the prehistoric mysteries. But only one of the buildings was open now: a small cafe. Most visitors came to Val des Merveilles during the warm months of July and August. Now it was cold up there, in spite of a strong May sun beating down from a cloudless sky.

  After passing the buildings we stopped the car to get warmer clothes from our bags. Gilbert had a sheepskin jacket. All I had was a wool turtleneck pullover. He watched thoughtfully when I took off the gun in its shoulder rig so I could pull on the sweater and then strapped it back in place before putting my jacket on over it. Then we drove on, always climbing.

  The paved road ended, and we were on a gravel track. The trees around us thinned out, giving way to brush. There was an occasional cabin off to one side of the track or the other, each out of sight of the others. Above, the black rock formations of the Val des Merveilles came into view, almost denuded of vegetation. A region whose austere features bore evocative names: Devil’s Peak, Black Lake, Malediction Pass.

  I told Gilbert, “This is a hell of a place for her to be stuck in till you get back.”

  “It’s not much further,” he said, “and she’s not stuck there. I rented her a little motorbike in St. Dalmas. She can get down there on it any time, in half an hour.”

  That was true. But the empty silence of this terrain made St. Dalmas seem much further away than that. The gravel track gave way to a wide path full of deep ruts and potholes—and stretches of mud where rivulets ran down from high springs. The Peugeot ground its way along through that for another mile. Then Gilbert pointed. “There it is.” A cabin squatted at the top of a narrow path that climbed around dark boulders off to our left. It had thick stone walls, a steep corrugated metal roof, heavy wooden shutters. There was smoke rising from its chimney and a motorbike leaning against the wall beside the closed door. I felt a surge of relief: there was no car but my own anywhere in sight.

  Gilbert stopped the Peugeot at the bottom of the narrow path to the cabin. There was no way to get it any closer. As we got out Gilbert said, “Please let me go first. I want to prepare her before she sees you. So she won’t get scared.”

  I nodded. “But make it fast. Every hour we stick around gets more dangerous.”

  He hurried up toward the cabin, climbing the path with long strides. He knew the urgency now. I’d explained about the opposition taking his business records. The man who owned this cabin was prominently listed among them.

  Gilbert was almost to the cabin when Odile came out of it. She was wearing a lumber jacket, corduroy trousers, and short hiking boots. I watched the way she ran to meet him, laughing as she threw her arms around him.

  They were still holding each other when she saw me down beside the car. Her head jerked back as though she’d been slapped. The joy washed out of her face in a spasm of shock and terror. She tried to twist away from Gilbert. He seized her arms and began talking to her, swiftly and firmly.

  When she stopped fighting him I began climbing the path, taking my time. Gilbert continued to speak to her, gradually relaxing his hold. She didn’t run. He turned to face me with her, taking her hand in his.

  By the time I reached them most of her fear had drained away. She stood beside Gilbert, staring at me with a mixture of confusion and hope. But the hope was obviously something she didn’t believe in much.

  It was my first slow, close look at Egon Mulhausser’s daughter. I could see what Gilbert had fallen for. She had the look of a besmirched fairy princess, her eyes haunted, with dark smudges under them. But all the more touching for that—fragile and hurt, in need of someone to rescue and protect her.

  “My…my father sent you… she said in wonder.

  “He’s the one,” I assured her. “We can talk it all out later. Right now we’ve got to get away from here. Before Tony Callega’s associates show up.”

  Quickly Gilbert explained to her about their stealing his business records—and that, with those to work from, they were sure to get to the cabin’s owner sooner or later.

  I saw panic rise in Odile’s eyes again—and I deliberately stoked it. “Not later. By now they know about this place. And they know you two used it before, in February. They’re on their way while we stand here talking. So if you’ve got stuff to pack, do it fast.”

  I did want her to get ready quickly. But I wanted more than that. I wanted her to grab what was most precious to her. But it didn’t work.

  She stood where she was for several moments, thinking hard. And she looked up at the dark, looming formations of the Val des Merveilles. Then she nodded—to herself as much as to us—and walked back inside the cabin.

  I went in close behind her, with Gilbert following. It was a snug room, warmed by a couple of small logs burning in the brick fireplace. A large bed and an old leather wing chair, a bureau and a rustic table with a couple of kitchen chairs. A standing closet next to a tiny kitchenette that took up one corner. A door to a small bathroom.

  A canvas suitcase was open on the table, with some of Odile’s things in it. She hadn’t completely unpacked. I watched her snatch a worn leather shoulder bag off the bed and go into the bathroom with it, shutting the door behind her. I had a look inside her open suitcase while Gilbert doused the fire.

  She came out quickly, dumped her shoulder bag on the bed again, and began tossing the rest of her clothes into the suitcase. Closing it, she picked up her shoulder bag again. “All right, I’m ready.”

  The shoulder bag was big enough to hold perhaps a couple of week’s supply of heroin and additives for diluting it. Plus the usual addict’s accessories: hypodermic needle, syringe, matches, makeshift cooker, tourniquet—the works. The rest of that heroin she’d hijacked was definitely not in the suitcase. She had out-thought me—with all the quick cunning of the desperate.

  The way she figured it, in a couple of weeks it would be safe for her to slip back here to pick up the rest. She had enough to last her until then. And by then the men after her would have come and gone.

  She wasn’t afraid of them finding that big load of heroin. So it wasn’t in the cabin or close to it. I thought about the way she’d looked up at the black, disordered expanse of the Val des Merveilles—but that was too many miles to search.

  “Where is it?” I asked her quietly.

  Odile met my stare without flinching, her face gone tight and fierce—and suddenly not pretty at all. That was the other facet of her showing itself: the part created by the drug and the insatiable craving.

  I asked Gilbert, “Was she carrying anything else when you brought her here? Besides that suitcase and shoulder bag. A knapsack—or anything else that size.”

  He knew what I was talking about. He said, “Odile…please.” His voice was tormented by his helplessness in the face of a power that held her more strongly than their love.

  She looked at him. Not the hard, ungiving look she’d turned on me. But still she wouldn’t speak. She only gave him a single negative shake of her head. With absolute finality to it. His strong shoulders slumped, and he turned away.

  “Odile,” I said, “listen to me carefully. Really listen. They won’t stop hunting for you as long as you have that stuff. Ever. You have to let me get rid of it—in a way that’ll make them know you don’t have it any more.”

  “They’ll still kill me when they find me. For stealing it.”

  “I think I can handle that,” I told her. “But not if they think you still have their merchandise. Do you understand that?”

  “I understand one thing”—her voice had gone ragged—“if I give it away, how will I ever get more? And if I can’t get more, what will I do?”

  I knew the answer to that. It lay in locking her away in a place I knew where they had a fair record of curing addiction. She was legally an adult now, which meant it woul
d be illegal to put her in there against her will. But it could be done if her father was willing to ignore the illegality—and take the chance that his daughter would go back to hating him for doing it.

  But this was not the time to tell her I had that in mind for her. The first order of business was to get her away from there. And to stash her where I knew she’d be safe—and couldn’t escape me. Once I had her there—and got rid of Gilbert—I could apply the kind of pressure that would make her tell where she’d hidden that big cache of heroin. Three days of not letting her have her fix should do it. It was going to be brutal—but there was no other way.

  “You win,” I told her. “Let’s go.”

  I watched the brief flicker of triumph in her haunted eyes—and the way it was almost immediately drowned in a deep, knowing sorrow.

  Gilbert followed me out of the cabin, carrying her suitcase. Odile came out after him. He was locking the cabin door when I heard it. I motioned for them to be quiet and I listened, looking toward the source of the sound, back along the rutted path Gilbert and I had used with the Peugeot.

  It emerged around a tight bend. A Jeep. The right kind of vehicle for this region. Narrowing my eyes to slits, I could make out four men in it. Two in front, two in back.

  We could reach my car before the jeep did. But there was no way to escape with the car. We couldn’t go back the way we’d come. The jeep was there. In the other direction the path we’d driven led nowhere. And in this terrain the Peugeot had no chance of outdistancing a jeep.

  “Drop the suitcase,” I snapped at Gilbert, and I pointed toward the dark heights of the Val des Merveilles. “They can’t follow us up there with that jeep. On foot we’ve got a chance.”

  Gilbert said shakily, “Maybe they’re not after Odile. They could be just looking around the area, or—”

  “We’ll know that if they don’t come after us,” I snapped. “Move it!”

  He threw aside the suitcase, grabbed Odile’s arm, and started up the steep slope with her. I didn’t tell her to throw away the shoulder bag. She would sooner have left her arm behind. I went up after them. They were young and strong, already climbing swiftly. I looked back.