Aftershock

by Andrew Vachss

  “So why the big red dot?”

  “Like I said, that gang has an admission charge. It’s sex. No girl would get a second look from them unless they knew she’d be willing to … to do whatever. Not like the Lovers’ Lane when that striped truck pulls in—I’ve heard that trick doesn’t always work. There’s been times when a girl just ran away once she realized what the real deal was.

  “But this place is different. It’s eyes-wide-open. Nobody gets played into coming there. They don’t even give girls a ride. And sex isn’t enough—the girls would have to be willing to do other things, too.

  “Nobody just happens to wander into the back of a parking lot where all the lights have been cut down. There’s plenty of parking space right up close to the center during the day. So, if you drive around to the other side, where it’s always dark, it’s the same as … well, you know.”

  “Yeah. That car, I’d want one as soon as I could get it. If they don’t want to lend one to you, there’s plenty of other ways, but they’d take more time.”

  “I’ll be right back,” Dolly said. Meaning, she wanted any call she made to be private. “Why don’t you take Rascal out in the yard?”

  She came into the backyard in less than ten minutes.

  “You can pick up the car tonight.”

  “That’s great. Should I leave something for security, or would I be insulting them?”

  “You’d be insulting them. But that won’t come up, anyway—I’ll drive you over in our Jeep, then just come back home later.”

  “Do you know which one they’ll lend me?”

  “No. I didn’t ask. And I think they have others, too. Does it matter?”

  “Not really. I mean, I wouldn’t want something that really stood out, but, outside of that …”

  “It’ll be fine,” she said, sounding confident. Then she made a soft whistling sound, and Rascal came bounding over to us. She asked him if he wanted to take a ride, and he went half crazy, like he always does when she asks.

  They had three cars in their garage. A charcoal Lexus SUV, a red Mini Cooper, and a faded blue Facel Vega coupé that was mostly in pieces.

  “That’s a real beauty,” I told them.

  “You know what it is?”

  “A Facel Vega, right? Can’t be that many of them left in the world.”

  “Now you’re never going to abandon your project,” the taller one said to his partner. He turned to me. “Are you some kind of car nut, like Martin?”

  “No,” I said. “I’ve just seen a car like this before. It looked new, the one I saw, but one of the guys I was with told me what it was. He said it had to be at least fifteen, twenty years old.”

  “A fully restored one?” the guy who must be Martin asked me.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know much about them. The guy I was with told us it was a French body with an American engine. Very special, very expensive.”

  “Where did you see it?”

  “Paris.”

  “Oh. Well, I guess if you were going to find one in original condition, that would be the place to look.”

  “It was a long time ago.”

  “I’ll just bet,” he said. “Did you know that Albert Camus died in a Facel Vega?”

  I shook my head. What I did know was that some of my comrades developed that esprit de corps so deeply that they loved the whole idea of a Facel Vega. To them, it represented the best of an era, that postwar period when gangsters ruled Paris. To a legionnaire, they represented true hard men. They walked their own road, and answered to no authority. The more flamboyantly, the better.

  Their idol was Mesrine, probably because he shared some of their early experiences: when he was conscripted, he asked to be sent to Algeria, and won medals for valor in battle. But Mesrine’s real specialty was robbing banks, taunting the police, and escaping from prisons. When he was finally killed in a police ambush, he was mourned by many.

  Buisson was from an earlier time than Mesrine, but had the same bloodlines. He, too, served in North Africa, in a penal battalion, and also won the honors for bravery in battle. As a gangster, he was known for using Sten guns in holdups, for which they forgave him, because he would drive no car other than a Citroën.

  Another critical connection was his breaking his brother out of jail, just as Mesrine had helped comrades escape.

  Perhaps the final irony of Buisson’s life was to be guillotined at the same “escape-proof” prison from which Mesrine fled, armed with handguns that must have been smuggled in. How the pistols got inside that prison varied with press accounts, but to legionnaires, the aid must have been supplied by members of the OAS, those vrais guerriers who had been betrayed by de Gaulle’s search for a “political solution” in Algeria. As they saw it, the ground there held too much of their comrades’ blood for them to give it up to anyone, ever.

  And, to a man, everyone I served with worshiped la cinéma. It was accepted that only the actor Alain Delon could “represent” Mesrine, and that only a special car could possibly capture the flamboyance required. Their exemplar was Le Samouraï. I never saw that movie, but I knew that “Delon préfère la Citroën” was, to them, proof within proof, as if the movie were looping back around Buisson.

  Maybe it seems bizarre to you that men trained to kill would glorify movie stars or cry over an Édith Piaf record. To me, it always made perfect sense. Men who have to leave their feelings behind when they go to war would need a way to reclaim them when they returned.

  “Which one would you like?” his partner asked, clearly trying to change the subject.

  “Would that one be okay?” I asked, pointing to the Lexus. Even though it was really my only option, I was okay with it. Its SUV configuration would look right at home in places I had to go—it could play off as luxury or menace, depending on what I needed.

  “Absolutely,” he said, handing over a key fob. He gave me a business card with a number written on the back. “If you get stopped, tell the police to give us a call. Either one—it’s registered in both our names. The number on the back is my cell. Martin has the same number, but I’m the one who seems to always answer the calls.”

  “Thank you,” I said, extending my hand.

  “You are more than welcome,” he answered. His grip was a practiced one, under control.

  “You’re a sweetheart, Johnny,” Dolly said, kissing him on the cheek.

  “After you explained, how could I say no?”

  “I didn’t think you would,” she said.

  “And I’m—what?—not involved?” the other one said.

  “Oh, just stop, Martin!” Dolly said. She kissed him, too. “I’m in time for tea, aren’t I?”

  I took my black duffel out of the truck bed, put it on the floor of the front seat of the Lexus, fired it up. I watched the temp gauge before I put it in gear—I didn’t think Martin would appreciate a cold-start move.

  I backed slowly out of their garage, turned carefully, and pulled out very gently.

  I knew Dolly wouldn’t be following behind me, but I kept right near the speed limit anyway. I wasn’t in a hurry.

  Normally, I’d start fishing where I’d most expect to get a bite. But the place that was marked off limits to Dolly’s girls might get more action later on, so I tried the supermarket.

  Whoever told Dolly that you could buy “anything” at that place had never spent any time in places where “anything” ranged from counterfeit bills to real children.

  I parked the Lexus at the edge and just sat there and watched. As near as I could tell, the cars were like signs at a flea market. The only thing that told them apart was their color—every one seemed to be a big-winged, high-gloss front-driver, with deep-tint windows. What they call “tuner cars” on this coast, probably because they were all powered by tiny engines and huge turbochargers with adjustable boosts—that’s how you “tuned” those cars, with a laptop you plugged into the engine.

  The car that got the least play was a dull-gray Evo. Same kind of
buzz-bomb as the others, but this one was a four-door, with all-wheel drive—a world-class rally racer you could buy right off a showroom floor.

  The hand-to-hand marijuana dealers wouldn’t need to check out anyone too close—probably only dealt with the people they knew, anyway. But a firearms merchant would be a different story.

  If my watching through the windshield of the Lexus spooked any of them, I couldn’t see any sign of it. I didn’t see any prowl cars, either.

  The small-time dealers had probably reached a détente with the local cops. I guess the lawmen figured they might as well have marijuana traffic all go down in the same place. That way, they could watch it randomly to check the plates of anyone leaving that they might want for something else.

  But as I watched, I could see the pattern. It wasn’t one car dealing the marijuana, it was a whole crew. Every time I saw a window come down, it would be followed by a quick headlight flash. Then a guy would get out of one of the other cars, and toss a small packet into the open window on the other side of the dealer’s car.

  I figured the state probably had some “personal use” exception, so getting caught with a half-ounce or so wouldn’t draw more than a fine. With enough cars in the chain, they could probably sell off a couple of pounds a night without any real risk.

  But “anything” still had to include more than marijuana. And this was an expensive operation, especially in a state where you could buy just about any kind of weapon legally. So either they were moving heavy ordnance, or they were losing money.

  Whatever they had going, it was no experiment. Buyers always went to the same car, but the guy with the resupply might come out of any of the others. And that guy would always walk over to the Evo. Sometimes he’d carry a package away, sometimes not.

  My night glasses showed me the Evo was slotted between a pair of rust-bucket American sedans. Crash cars. No ATF agent was going to run back to wherever he was parked before the Evo could blast out of there, with the crash cars jamming up the back exit to a dirt road, which split into a dozen others just like it.

  On those roads, no federal agent’s car was going to catch that Evo.

  I’m not good with accents, but I can tune my voice to sound like I’m anything from smart to stupid. Or hard to soft, if that’s more useful.

  I didn’t study this. I didn’t even think about it until another legionnaire pointed it out for me. You never asked a man where he was from, but some wore it on their sleeves, like chevrons.

  I had picked “Jacques Héron” for my nom de guerre. “Jacques” was the most common first name I could think of, so even if I slipped it wouldn’t be a long fall.

  That’s how I figured “Patrice” wasn’t such a big jump from “Paddy.” He was way older than me—even older than I’d told the recruiter.

  “I don’t mind,” he told me one night. It had cooled down a bit, and we were still far enough away from “engagement” to smoke.

  “Don’t mind what?”

  “This new name I had to pick. Once my time is up, I’ve got a place to go back to. I just needed to be away for a while. Far away. Can’t think of a better place than this one. Not for a man without vast money, anyway.”

  “They pay us here.”

  “That’s not money, lad. There’s a dozen places around the world where a man could earn a hell of a lot more doing just what we’re doing right now.”

  I didn’t say anything. I had learned that, if you just nod to show you’re listening, that’s enough to keep most people talking.

  “I miss being home. Like some of the others, maybe. Not all of them, mind. But I left my wife before I even had a bairn of my own. And I left my best mate, too. Mickey, he was like my own blood. We were almost exactly the same age, him and me. We were one and the same—folks called us ‘the Twins’ even when we were tykes.

  “Mickey was no ArmaLite expert; he was a street soldier with nothing but a fire-bottle in his hand when they gunned him down. Then they rolled one of those bloody Saracens over him like he was rubbish standing in their way.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Ah, don’t be slick with me, boyo. I’m trying to help you out. You ain’t a Brit. I can smell a Brit at a hundred yards. And you damn sure ain’t Irish. Not raised there, that much I know. And one thing you can’t be is French. What’s that leave?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Okay with me, son. I wasn’t trying to pull any info out of you. Just tipping you that it wouldn’t be all that hard. If a numbskull like me could do it just by listening a little, anybody who wanted could do it even easier.”

  I shrugged.

  “You came a long way,” he said.

  “I don’t know,” I told him, fighting my envy of all those who did know. At least Patrice could mourn the loss of a childhood friend. How could I mourn the loss of a childhood?

  Patrice went real quiet when I said that. We were each on our third smoke when he said, “You really don’t know, do you? Damn! It’s sorry I am. Truly sorry.”

  “Ne signifie rien.”

  He smiled at that. “You learned their talk quick, huh?” He looked at me for what felt like a long time.

  Then he said, “Well, I can tell you two things for sure. One, if you’d come from Ireland, you’d have been a Tinker. Probably you didn’t think so at the time, but that broken beak of yours is a blessing now. The whole Gypsy clan has big noses, and yours sticks out a lot less now.

  “And, two, no matter what you ever heard, or where you heard it, the curse of the Irish isn’t booze, it’s revenge. Believe me on that.”

  “I do.”

  “Just like that.”

  “I don’t think you would lie to me.”

  He started to say something, then he stopped himself. “I guess you’ll be leaving for the same reason as anyone with half a brain on them would. Like serving a five-year sentence, this is. They’re happy enough to use you for their dirty work, but don’t fool yourself into believing you’ll ever be good enough for them. Men who fight for cause or country, they’ll always look down at a man who fights for pay.”

  “I won’t be going to any home.”

  “Don’t ever say things like that to anyone here. Only Gypsies say they don’t have homes, and the French hate them almost as much as they hate the Jews.”

  “Thank you. I will not make such a mistake again.”

  He crushed the glowing embers of his cigarette between thumb and forefinger—the officers made all the recruits they caught smoking learn to do that; it only hurt the first few times. Even in the dark, I could see his eyes were wet when he said: “Ah, que le bon Dieu te garde, mon petit.”

  I don’t know if the saints have been watching over me, as Patrice had asked. He never made it back to where he said he’d always be welcome. I know, because I’d carried his shredded body for more than three kilometers until we were both back with our unit.

  The officers praised me for that. And by then, I’d learned enough to say only, “J’ai fait mon devoir, monsieur.”

  Sure, my “duty.” In truth, had it been anyone but Patrice, I would have left them where they fell. I didn’t understand then, but later it came to me—finally having someone to mourn was more important to me than my own life.

  It had been Patrice who had explained to me that this whole esprit-de-corps thing was what he called a “user’s lie.” It was another whispered conversation, under the blanket of darkness, far away from the other men, but still well inside our perimeter. “You look at any operation, I don’t care if it’s the Legion or the Unione Corse, loyalty only flows in one direction—up. Loyalty from the men who risk their lives, that all belongs to the men at the top. You rarely even get the privilege of meeting the man who owns your life.”

  “You guys enjoying yourself?” It was a man who called himself Hondo, a big, beefy Rhodesian who never stopped bragging about how his country knew the right way to deal with “original” Africans.

  “I always enjoy a conversation wit
h one of my mates,” Patrice said, his voice as light as a titanium knife.

  “Well, when you get done mating with that kid, I hope you’ll let me have a turn.”

  “I’m done already,” Patrice said, as he got to his feet. “Mind your training,” he said to me.

  Hondo turned to watch Patrice leave. His last mistake. I had my dagger planted in his kidney before he realized that turning his back on me had cost him his life. He never made a sound.

  Patrice spun around, flick-knife open in his hand. When we finished slicing up Hondo, Patrice pulled out a pint of rotgut and told me to cut a couple of pieces of cloth from the dead man’s uniform.

  “Always make sure you clean your steel, boyo,” he said, pouring a little bit of the alcohol on one of the rags and wiping down his blade. Then he held his knife pointed upward, poured another few drops into the place where the blade met the hilt, and lit them afire. I copied his every move.

  “When they find him in the morning, they’ll know it was one of us who did him for. But nobody will have a word to say.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “The man’s been watching us—watching you, especially—for weeks. There’s only one way something like that ends, so I took a little precaution.”

  “Yes?”

  “I made sure all the other lads knew he was grassing on us. That’s how the bosses always seem to know stuff that’s none of their business. Nobody’s going to miss an informer. And who ever heard of giving a rat a funeral?

  “It’s no secret that I don’t love the Brits, so you’d think I wouldn’t be saying such a thing about a man from another country like mine—one that the Brits refuse to recognize. That gave my talk what they call the ring of truth, see? Remember that always. It’s a treasure I was taught as a boy—if you have to lie, make sure the icing on that cake is the truth.”

  “Aren’t they going to put us each in one of the hot boxes until somebody talks?”

  “Why do you think I bashed him all over every single wound with that edged piece of rock? I got my knife off a fellow in a pub. He said it was Filipino—they’re the best knife-men in the world. That little curve to the blade makes it go in easy and come out hard, so it leaves a real distinctive trail. But now there’s no way for them to tell who did it, or even what weapon they used. All we have to do is strip down and carry him a few hundred yards. That way, there won’t be a drop of blood on our uniforms to give us away. Hell, they won’t even know that sick dog is gone until the count. And even then, they’ll probably think he deserted.”