Corsican Death

by Marc Olden

  Corsican honor. A lot of people died because of it.

  “You’re right,” said Bolt. “The more I think about it, the more I feel Remy’s going to make the first move, and he won’t care who gets hurt. From what I’ve learned about him, he’s not the calm, level-headed type.”

  Edith, reaching for her third croissant, stopped. She didn’t like this. Remy Patek. She knew who he was, everybody in France knew who he was, and she was frightened at some of the stories she’d heard about him from Roger. A sick man, Remy. She didn’t want Roger mixed up with him, just because the American had something to take care of. No, she didn’t like it.

  But there was nothing she could do about it, at least not here. Maybe when she and Roger were together tonight at home, just the two of them, she could talk to him and maybe push some sense into his head. John Bolt. So what if he spoke good French? That’s no reason for her husband to risk his life, was it?

  Edith said, “I still don’t see why you just don’t tell the police you’re here. I’m sure they would help you, wouldn’t they, Roger?”

  Christ, was she going to start that again? Roger shook his head from side to side in forced patience. “I’ve told you again and again, chérie, the police—not all of them, but some of them—the police are not to be trusted. Some work directly for the Corsicans, others do favors for them because they are forced to by certain politicians who owe the Corsicans. John would probably get nowhere, or if he did, it might be too late. Lonzu might be in hiding by the time John got the cooperation he needed.”

  John also might get his ass shot off, thought Bolt, if the wrong people find out who I am and why I’m hanging around. Edith, Edith, you’re not being smart. You fell in love with the man and married him for what he is, and now you’re trying to make him over into something else. Don’t you know that if you succeed in changing him you’d have a different man, an unhappy man, a man who’d eventually want to step on your face because you stepped on his and cut his balls off at the same time?

  You married a cop, baby, not an insurance salesman. Staying awake nights goes with the territory. Which is one reason I never married. My job’s a bitch, and I wake up loving it and hating it at the same time. But I can’t wake up worrying about how somebody else feels about it, because then I become that much weaker due to that particular worry. So I travel alone. It’s faster that .way, even if it does hurt sometimes.

  Edith said nothing. She’d heard the argument before about corrupt cops. She didn’t believe it; well, not all of it But why argue? She shoved part of the croissant into her mouth, enjoying the light, perfectly done piece of pastry. Jean-Paul was a fantastic cook, even if he was a bachelor leading an immoral life with all those loose women.

  “When do you see Cloris?” asked Jean-Paul.

  Bolt looked at his watch. “Thought I’d surprise her, drop in early, like eleven o’clock. Say, that’s in twenty minutes. Damn, time sneaks away, doesn’t it? Hey, I forgot to ask. I see you’ve got a couple of new dogs. Puppies, too. Any new girls’ names?”

  Bolt grinned. Jean-Paul named his dogs after his ex-girlfriends. Male or female dogs made no difference. The dog got a woman’s name, and some of the women involved didn’t like it.

  Jean-Paul frowned, thinking, then smiled sadly. “That one over there, the collie. He is new. His name is Francine. She was a television newscaster,”

  Edith frowned, twisting her mouth in moral indignation. She hadn’t known about that one. Franchie G. was one of the most famous women in France, beautiful, young, rich, and she could have any man she wanted. How did Jean-Paul ever …?”

  “That one there, the dachshund, his name is Elke, and the small one with the brown and black spots, that’s Josephine. She’s a she.”

  “Sooner or later it had to turn out that way,” said Bolt. Fucking Jean-Paul. A funny man. You know something, thought Bolt, that’s not a bad idea. Get yourself an animal and name it after a woman you used to know. Serves her right. Considering some of the women Bolt had been mixed up with in his life, he ought to go out and buy an armadillo, a platypus, and maybe a sabertooth tiger.

  He stood up. “O.K. Off to see Cloris and learn if she’s the type Alain would come home to. If she is, she’s going to have company until the ship lands. Anything else from Le Havre?”

  Roger took a quick sip of coffee, then placed the cup back on a saucer held in his left hand. “No. Same thing. We’ve got men ready to leave for the port the day before the ship lands. And we hear from our grapevine that both the Count and Remy, might have their own men there, each for his own reasons.”

  “To be expected,” said Jean-Paul, his thick arms hanging down, a puppy’s tiny pink tongue flicking at his fingers. “There’s going to be more people on the coast when that ship comes in than landed on D day. I could go there, sell cigarettes and postcards to everybody, and retire.

  “Make some more croissants before you go,” said Roger Dinard, reaching for the last one.

  Ahmed counted his change, grinned, turned, and walked out of the liquor store. Gripping the bottle by its neck, the brown paper bag crushed tight around the champagne, he stood on the sidewalk looking up at the sky. He shivered a little under his gray suit jacket.

  He couldn’t get used to this damn French weather. Chilly most of the time, except for August, when it got hot as hell and everybody left the city and went somewhere else.

  Africa. Now, there was a warm place. Algeria. Yes, he missed it sometimes, and one of these days he was going back, with lots of money and a new car and maybe even a Frenchwoman sitting beside him.

  That ought to impress them. Ignorant people in his village back in Algeria. Always criticizing him for wanting more, for wanting to be somebody. Telling him he couldn’t do it, he couldn’t amount to anything because he was Algerian in a French world and there was no place for him to fit in.

  Well, they were wrong, because he’d found his place. Working for the Corsicans, for Remy Patek, and getting paid well. Beating people, killing them, maybe driving Remy around when he had to collect money. It paid well, and money was all that mattered in a tough world.

  Ahmed, big, not too bright, twenty-eight years old, had found his place and was proud of himself. Like many Algerians, he found violence to be natural, and he never questioned many things others might have found upsetting or unnatural.

  Like what he had done to the woman last night, Cloris. A nice name. First he had cut off her hair, then he had torn off her gown, and he had showed her—yes, by Allah, he had showed her. She never had a man do it to her like that before. Ahmed knew. Sure, she screamed and screamed, and she bled, but Ahmed had enjoyed it, enjoyed every damn minute of it.

  That’s why he was going back. There was something inside of him, something strange, something that yielded him his greatest sexual excitement when he hurt a woman badly, the way he had hurt Cloris last night.

  He stopped walking for a few seconds, the memory of his brutal sex with Cloris suddenly strong in his mind. That’s why he was going back this morning with the champagne. He wanted her again, wanted to fuck her again, to see her frightened face weeping and looking up at him, begging him, yes, begging him not to do it.

  He felt good then, so damn good then that he just couldn’t explain it to anyone. They wouldn’t understand.

  Paris was quiet now, just waking up. He walked past the open door of a small bakery and smelled the freshly baked long loaves of bread. He watched shopgirls come out front and unroll awnings to keep the sun out of windows, and he saw street cleaners, Algerians like himself and Africans, sweep the running water along gutters, using the old traditional brooms of thick brown straw tied to a stick.

  That wasn’t for him, not for Ahmed. Sweeping streets. Shit work, work for Algerians and Africans who weren’t as lucky as he was.

  To hell with them. Ahmed had money in his pocket, champagne in his hand, and he was going to see the woman Cloris. Cloris. He thought of her, licked his lips, feeling his cock grow stiff and strong
in his pants, and he walked faster.

  Beg me, Cloris, go on and beg me. …

  CHAPTER 1O

  JESUS, THOUGHT BOLT, SOMEBODY did a job on you, baby. A job and a half.

  He was in Cloris Carroll’s small, untidy apartment, sitting in a stuffed yellow-and-pink chair directly across from her, watching her light a cigarette with trembling hands and keep her face turned sideways to him to hide what had been done to her. Dark glasses couldn’t hide all of the bruises, multicolored against her pale skin. Purple, yellow, and ugly red—the bruises were a rainbow of horror, a reminder of what must have been done to the twenty-four-year-old nightclub dancer.

  The narc watched her small hand touch her face, saw her draw back from her own touch. What is it, baby? he thought. Teeth, jawbone, what? No matter how many times you see it and try to be cool, you still feel a special pain when it happens to a woman. It had happened to this one in a big way.

  Her face wasn’t the worst thing. Her hair. Christ. He’d seen it, a part of it anyway. It was a lovely color, soft platinum, but he saw what the blue kerchief didn’t cover, and it wasn’t very nice. Somebody had cut it off, butchered it, and Bolt knew the hair had gone with the beating and maybe a lot more that she probably didn’t want to remember or talk about.

  Using Alain’s name had gotten him in the door. What else would it get him?

  Let’s find out. “Who did that to you?” He kept his voice low, speaking in French because she hadn’t said much in French, English, or any other language. She wasn’t much—just a girl with a lot of bad luck who had gotten caught in something too big for her to understand.

  “Remy Patek, did he …?” Bolt let the sentence die without finishing it. He didn’t have to. When he said Remy’s name, Clori?’ head had snapped toward him, then turned back to where she had been staring at the floor.

  Remy. That meant it had to do with Alain Lonzu. Remy was playing it hard now, trying to find out about Alain and the four million. And Cloris was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It must have cost her a lot.

  “Have you heard from Alain’s friends?” Don’t have time to be silently understanding. Less than four days. I’d better have it all together by then or be damn close, else Alain’s liable to run into me and point me out to his big bad brother, the Count.

  She shook her head no. She was too tired and burned out inside to resist. That’s why she had opened the door when this man had mentioned Alain’s name. She was too tired and empty inside. She felt sick and strange, and she wished, God how she wished it had all been a bad dream. Alain was mean sometimes, and he hit her, but never, never had he done to her what the Algerian had done.

  The Algerian. When he finished, he had put his lips to her ear and whispered, “I’ll be back, chérie. I promise I’ll be back.”

  The sound of his voice, the warm touch of his lips on her ear. Oh God, how she remembered, and how she hated to remember. These were the kind of men you never told the police about; she knew that. What could the police do now, put her back together again? Make her forget what the Algerian had done to her? Heal her body and her mind?

  She turned to look at the American, the man who had said he had met Alain Lonzu in America. “No,” she said in a voice that was so tiny Bolt had to lean forward to hear it.

  “Did he say anything to you about his American trip, before he went, I mean?”

  “No.”

  “I know he has a brother, but suppose he had trouble, suppose Alain had to go somewhere and hide out, does he have friends who would hide him?”

  She shrugged, the ash on her forgotten cigarette getting longer. “Girls. His friends are women.” She sighed, then suddenly stiffened with sharp pain and bad memories. Frowning, she began to weep quietly, tears rolling down her face as her chin trembled with her struggle not to weep out loud. Horrible. Oh God, it had been horrible.

  Don’t come apart now, baby, thought Bolt. Hang on. “His, uh, his women friends, are they all in Paris?”

  She shook her head, tears clinging to her chin, lips pressed tightly together. When she spoke, her voice broke as she forced the words out. “Ro-ome, Gene-neva, London.”

  Bolt frowned. The bastard could hide out anywhere. Lonzu was using his cock for a compass. Wherever the four winds blow, Lonzu had grabbed some nookie, and that gave him a hole to crawl into in more ways than one. Shit, why couldn’t Lonzu have been a fag or a priest? Then it would have been a lot easier to track him down.

  Bolt shrugged. What the fuck? “Who does he know in London?”

  “Gir-girl. Shana Johns. Dancer at a nightclub. Penguin. Penguin Club.”

  Screws his ass off, then comes back and tells her about it. A sweetheart. And she puts up with it. True love? Who the fuck knows?

  Shana Johns. Well, let’s file that one, thought Bolt. But Alain’s coming to France, not England, right? Right so far. Something started to push its way through a hidden part of Bolt’s mind, when the front doorbell rang and Cloris Carroll swung around as though she had just heard a gunshot.

  Bolt said, “Easy, easy. Take it easy. They’re not coming back.” He hoped he was right.

  He leaned his head toward the door, signaling her to get up and answer it. Jabbing what was left of the unsmoked cigarette into an ashtray, she stood up, smoothed her white dressing gown down, touched the kerchief on her head, and looked at Bolt. He smiled, winking once and nodding toward the door.

  She looked at him for a few seconds longer, then crossed the room quickly, as though if she hesitated she’d decide not to do it. Bolt watched her. If you come from a small town, baby, go back there and marry the boy who owns the gas station. Bright lights and the big city ain’t everything.

  She opened the door and her fist went to her mouth and she stepped back, eyes wide, heart in her throat. The hell was on her again.

  The Algerian.

  Oh God, he was …

  Ahmed, smiling, pushed her slowly back into the apartment, eyes on her face and enjoying her fear. She’s scared of me. That’s good, that’s good.

  Kicking the door closed behind him, he held up the bag with the champagne. “See, chérie, I told you I would come back. And this time I brought you a little present. I …”

  Ahmed stopped, freezing in place, eyes flicking to the man sitting quietly and staring at him. Who …?

  Bolt didn’t need to know any more. This is the one, the animal who put his Marc on her last night. One of Remy Patek’s boys. Ugly son-of-a-bitch. Swarthy. Algerian, probably. Face looks like somebody jabbed it with a fork forty times. No brains, all muscle, and probably has a piece under that expensive jacket.

  I got one, too, but I don’t want to use it. Still, it would be nice to dance on his face for a while. I don’t like apes who lay pain on a woman.

  Ahmed, arrogant and strong with the knowledge of who he worked for, asked, “Who are you?” This one didn’t look French, and that scar on his forehead—it made him look like he was a tough guy. American. He looks American, but it’s hard to tell.

  “Santa Claus,” said Bolt. “I come once a year.” Fuck you, greaseball. He stood up, getting ready for whatever had to be done.

  Ahmed sneered. American. They always thought they were amusing. They weren’t. “Time for you to leave, Santa Claus. Now.” Ahmed placed both hands on Cloris’ shoulders, effortlessly moving the small woman to one side.

  She’d been pretty once, thought Bolt. A few hours ago she lived in a world she knew and understood. Right now she’s got less than a handful of shit, and lover here, he’s come back for seconds.

  Ahmed unbuttoned his jacket. His gun, a Luger, was in a shoulder holster on his left side, and he wanted to be able to get it in a hurry. American wise guy. If Ahmed didn’t have other things on his mind, he’d work this guy over just for the fun of it. Just for the fun of it.

  Bolt shrugged, both hands palms-up in resignation and polite defeat. “Guess you’re right. I’ve run out of toys anyway.”

  He smiled at Cloris—”Pleasure
to have met you”—and his eyes still on her, walked slowly toward the door.

  Cloris held her breath, her mind screaming for him not to go, not to leave her alone with the Algerian. Sensing her reaction, Ahmed roughly grabbed her arm, gripping it hard and painfully, whispering, “I told you I would return, chérie, didn’t I?”

  The American brushed by Ahmed, who ignored him, his eyes still on Cloris.

  Spinning around, Bolt faced Ahmed’s back and swung hard, driving the barrel of the .45 into the Algerian’s skull, sending pain and swift blackness racing across his brain. Ahmed, folding at the knees, went down, dropping the champagne on the floor, falling forward and spinning, landing on his left side.

  Tucking the .45 back into his belt, Bolt looked down at the unconscious man. Yeah, that felt good. It ain’t much, but it’s all I can give you, Cloris. He turned to her. “You have friends out of town?”

  She nodded, still frightened but forcing herself to speak. It was all happening so fast. This American and Ahmed, and the American had …

  “Pack a bag and go stay with them for a while, a week at least.” Reaching over, Bolt took out Ahmed’s wallet and gun, removing the money and giving it to Cloris. “He won’t mind. Go on, quick, quick. We’ll wait for you. Remember, stay out of town for a week, O.K.?”

  She nodded, turning to run toward the bedroom, to pack, to leave. A week. She was going to stay longer, much, much longer.

  “Anything, monsieur, anything. You pay, we do. Anything.” A sales pitch. A promise. From two teen-age French whores working as a team.

  Christian Lombard smiled, nodding yes, red-rimmed, bloodshot eyes narrowing as he stood in the cheap hotel room imagining the girls naked in bed with him. Both of them. Yes. He sighed, happy at the thought of it.

  With whores, you paid in advance. Two hundred francs for the girls, one hundred francs for the room, ten francs for the ugly maid who left clean white towels and stood silently with her hand outstretched until she got her tip. No matter. These girls would be worth it, every penny. Monique, the dark-haired one; Suzanne, the blond one.