Queen of the Masquerade (Rosie Maldonne's World Book 3)

by Alice Quinn

  “I’m simplifying here. She’s kinda hard to understand when she speaks. This all took some time.

  “Finally, she agreed to come to a pharmacy with me. I bought some basic stuff to try and fix up her face a little. After that, we went to a snack bar. I wanted her to sit down while I cleaned her up. I disinfected the cuts and bruises. I did my best. I tried out a few jokes on her to get her to smile. She didn’t.

  “There was a guy sitting at a table nearby reading a newspaper, and I noticed she kept staring at the front page. She seemed real focused on the photo. I read the headline. It said: ‘Shooting at Border! Child Found Dead!’ And then something about a smuggler and a truck? The writing was too small.

  “Anyway, she stood up suddenly and gave me a look like she knew it was the last time she’d ever lay eyes on me. She ranted, ‘You no try see me no more! Never! Never! Agree?’ But I didn’t agree. I can tell you exactly how the conversation went—almost word for word! It’s engraved on my heart forever. She said I was in danger. She said the lady and children were in danger too. I assume she meant you. It all came pouring out that she believed she’d be killed if she continued to see me. All she wanted was for me to agree not to see her.

  “I explained there was no way I could agree. Absolutely not! I asked her why she felt this way and explained she could come with me. That there was no need to be so afraid. I wanted her to understand there are laws to protect people here, you know? But she just laughed. She shouted about France. I think she was using bad words in her own language to talk about this country. I tried to tell her about the laws to protect asylum seekers, but she started crying and said something about a French guy who works with Murrash.

  Honestly, I couldn’t get her to stop crying. I wanted to know who Murrash was. Was it her dad? She told me the whole story. Or some of it, at least. Murrash isn’t her father. She says her father is a kind man, but not all that bright, apparently. Her father is back in her home country, and he trusts this Murrash guy, but Murrash is a liar. He’s the bad guy. She says he takes kids. Kholia. I guess Kholia is some little kid. I think you’re right about that. And she wants to save him.

  “She was yammering away at top speed. It was hard for me to grasp everything she was saying, but she did say I’d never understand. She said I was selfish. That my life was great. That I didn’t know what problems were. That we aren’t the same. We don’t have the same way of life. It was upsetting to hear. She told me I was just a boy. And that I know nothing about real life. I got so mad. Unhinged. I may not know much about life, it’s true, but I know I could crack open the skull of whoever did that to her face. She wouldn’t admit that it was that Murrash guy.

  “In the end I promised her I believed her. I couldn’t think what else to do. I suggested we go see a social worker together. But this just sent her way over the edge. I think she thought I was suggesting we go to the cops. She’s very worried about the pigs. She spat on the floor at the thought of cops!

  “That’s about it. Everyone was staring at us, so we left, and that’s when she told me I was too kind—kind, but stupid, like her father. And then she ran off! It took me a couple of seconds to realize what she’d done, and by that time she was off in the distance. She turned at one point to glance back. Then a bus stopped in front of me and I couldn’t see where she was. By the time I’d stepped around it and dragged my ass over to the other side of the road, she was gone. I ran in every direction looking for her. But it was pointless. I headed over to her crib, but she was a no-show there too. I waited, but I got sick of hanging around and sick of the smell of piss. I was thinking maybe a rat would eat me. I cracked. I feel ashamed now.”

  “Well, don’t,” I said. “You did everything you could. We’ll find her. You’ll see. We need to come up with a POA. A tragedy. Like in the war, right?”

  “Do you mean a strategy?”

  “Exactly. That’s what I said.”

  I thought the best thing to do would be to go see my law-enforcement buddy, Borelli. I trusted him and he trusted me. Well, there was this one time he suspected me of murder, but he’d always given me a chance. We were good friends. I sometimes thought our relationship was unlikely (and I often needed him to save my ass), but we were the winning team.

  I wanted to tell Borelli about Erina and her story. He could be counted on to not let the immigration people know about her. He was a good guy like that. Plus, he owed me one. He knew I knew that he’d kept hush about some powerful bigwig who wasn’t paying for the crimes he’d committed. So, Borelli needed to scratch my back. He’d be able to check out what the bad guy was doing and protect the girl at the same time. And that’s just what we needed here.

  Léo didn’t want the cops involved at all. But in the end, he came to understand that from our side, on our own, there wasn’t much we could do.

  I called Gaston and invited him to Amar’s joint for a big meal with Bintou, Laroche, and the bambolas. I also asked him if he could make his way over to the trailer in an hour’s time to pick me up. There were a few thingamabobs I needed from home. He desperately wanted to know whether or not I’d learned the words to his poem. I stammered as I told him I’d explain everything later. I made a mental note to remember to call Mimi and wish her all the best for her surgery.

  So we had an hour to go and see Borelli.

  As we made our way to the cop shop, we looked up and down the streets, every which way, trying to spot traces of Erina. It wasn’t the most organized search, but it was worth a shot. It wasn’t like she was simply going to materialize out of thin air in front of us.

  We went the same route she took on her deliveries, but she was nowhere to be seen. And we didn’t uncover a single clue either.

  When we arrived at the station, we were told Borelli was out on a call. Luck was clearly not on our side.

  I thought about leaving a message for him at the front desk. But I don’t really enjoy hanging out in those types of places, so I decided to leave a voice mail on his cell instead.

  Yeah, I have the personal phone number of a big cop boss. Cool, right?

  28

  On the way to my trailer, we passed a newspaper stand. Léo grabbed me by the arm.

  “Hey! That’s it! That’s the article!”

  He showed me the front page of one of the local rags. There was a photo of a cargo truck and a stretcher with a body on it. The whole scene was surrounded by officers. I read:

  Shooting at Border! Child Found Dead! Truck Containing Smuggled Children from Albania Attempts to Flee

  Poor Léo was in a total state and I had a lot of trouble bringing him the heck back down again.

  I didn’t want him hanging around or even near the bad guy’s place, especially on his own. And I didn’t want to go back there myself either, at least not without the green light from Borelli. I told myself that we could make this thing a whole lot worse if we kicked up too much of a fuss in Erina’s neighborhood or got this guy worried in any way. Especially as he’d already clearly threatened me and said he’d do shit to me and my dolls if I went anywhere near his pad.

  We went anyway. We just made sure we took a few precautions. We made our way to the shabby old building and did our best spying act, taking turns to peek through the filthy window.

  Nothing. We couldn’t even hear any noises coming from inside.

  Just as we were leaving, ahead of us on the sidewalk, a hundred or so yards away, I spotted a flurrying movement. It was the looker. The nasty man. He had his stylish suit on again and he was making his way home. Murrash.

  And he wasn’t alone. There were three men altogether and a kid. A young boy, maybe around ten, with blond hair and little cheeks all smeared with what I guessed were jam and tears. He was weeping, following the adults but dragging his feet. The men appeared sour.

  “That’s him,” I snorted, pointing at the suit.

  “Do you think it’s her father or not?” asked Léo.

  “I don’t know. She said not, didn’t she?”
>
  “What do you think we should do?”

  “We can’t do anything at the moment.”

  They spotted us. As the three men got nearer, I knew the good-looking bastard recognized me. And he knew that I knew it too! But he didn’t do a thing.

  We darted past the four of them and carried on. Just normal people walking in opposite directions on a normal sidewalk on a normal day. I felt relieved because, to be honest, the guy gave me the creeps, and I feared a little (a lot!) that if the three of them had decided to give the two of us a good thrashing, we’d have been easy pickings.

  We suddenly heard footsteps behind us—someone running. When we turned around, we saw something that was quite simply unbelievable. It was Erina, sprinting toward the men and child. Just as Léo had described, half of her face was puffy and covered in bruises.

  She didn’t say anything when she reached them, but her demeanor was so defeated. Humiliated. The man raised his arm, almost automatically, to hit her, but he stopped himself. Léo was to the point of tears, his anger showing on every inch of his face. I was close to dying from the urge to scream out. That bastard needed a few hard truths—but I had to stop myself and literally hold Léo back with all my strength to keep him from getting involved. This was a crowd we didn’t want to mess around with.

  Erina took the kid’s hand. The boy grabbed her like his little life depended on it. The men lost interest in the girl and child and headed to the house. They must have known that the children wouldn’t have dared do anything else but follow them.

  Erina scanned the scene, and her sense of anguish was palpable. She saw us at the end of the street. The look in her eyes changed—it turned lighter, more hopeful, and there was just that little bit more sparkle in them. It broke my heart. We started creeping toward her, but she gave us a panicky gesture. She obviously wanted us to get out of there, to leave her alone, to not interfere.

  She ran with the little one toward the scraggy excuse for a house. The kiddie went first through the rotten window, and just before she was out of sight, she held her hand up, spreading her fingers. Five. Was it a sign?

  She followed this up with a couple of other quick gestures and mimes. She was pretty good! We understood!

  The fountain. Tomorrow. Five o’clock.

  Phew!

  The whole thing was like a weird dream. She was gone.

  We headed around to the back of the house. We could hear the muffled cries of the small child. We peeked in through the dirty window, trying again to see whatever we could through the flimsy fabric.

  The little boy was trembling in the corner. Scared stiff. Poor little mite. Erina was sitting next to him. The three guys were around the table chowing down on sandwiches. The food looked pretty good!

  Murrash threw a piece of bread at the small fry, maybe in an attempt to stop his sniveling. He then continued to munch on his sandwich with a satisfied grin.

  “You hungry, ’Rina?”

  She nodded slowly.

  “Come! Here you go!”

  She scurried over to the table and held out her palm to receive the scraps. He handed her what was left of his sandwich. The others were in stitches. Murrash took her chin and held her face up. He directed her head to the other two men.

  She was totally trapped. Totally under his control.

  Léo was desperate to break in and help her.

  “Smile, ’Rina.”

  She didn’t react.

  “She’s very beautiful, you know? You can’t really tell right now. What happened to you, ’Rina? How did you do that to yourself?” he asked, laughing.

  She whispered something, but we couldn’t hear.

  “Stupid little bitch!” He shook her violently. “You’re going to show Kholia your route tomorrow. All week, you’ll do that. I want you to teach him a few recipes too. Understand?” He let go of her, but she was frozen to the spot. “Move! What are you standing there for? Get to bed! And take him with you!”

  She took the little one by the hand and they both went to the space under the stairs.

  Murrash grunted to his buds. “She’ll heal up pretty quick, you’ll see. She really is a stunner! I’m telling you. She’s worth what I’m saying. You tell your boss that.”

  Léo and I stared at each other in shock.

  What were we getting ourselves involved in? Should we go in and smash the place up? Would we get ourselves killed? Did we just have to swallow what we were seeing? Not make a move? Not intervene? Go home with our tails between our legs? Feel powerless?

  I thought back to what Bintou said during our therapy sesh. She’d grumbled that she couldn’t do her work, she wasn’t coping all that well, and so she just let it all drop. She felt ashamed.

  And me—Mademoiselle Rosie Maldonne—always with a brave face, not bothered, big mouth . . . I was doing nothing. I chose to protect my own little moppets.

  I didn’t have the courage. All I wanted to do was to protect me and my own. I had to keep my wits about me. I had to react calmly to what I’d witnessed and try to get through this latest episode life had thrown at me without getting killed.

  Did this mean I was growing up? Was I becoming reasonable? Was I maturing? OMG! Was I getting old? And what if I did let things drop? Did it mean I was closing my eyes and ears to it all? That I was acting like everyone else? Acting with only myself in mind?

  “Let’s go back to the station and let the officers know what’s happening,” suggested Léo, his voice breaking.

  “No! You know what she said! She’s scared of cops! It won’t be the same with my friend, Borelli. We’ll wait for him to get back to me.”

  We got out of there.

  All the way back to the trailer, Léo and I came up with a bunch of theories to try to make sense of what we’d seen and who the little kid was. I’d been thinking of them all as illegal immigrants, maybe, but I hadn’t realized the gravity of this sitch. I’d had a friend from the Philippines who was in France without all the right papers. I hadn’t ever really considered what it must have been like for her on a daily basis, the way she’d got into France in the first place, or the reality of her journey. But it looked like it had been even worse for these kids. They weren’t just illegals . . . they’d been smuggled.

  “It’s just like the article we saw,” I said to Léo. “She’s as illegal as they get. She’s been smuggled! God, she must have been through hell! Imagine the conditions in one of those truck thingies!”

  “But why has she been smuggled exactly? What’s she doing with those men? And the kid? Has he been smuggled over here too?” asked Léo.

  “I’m sure of it! Maybe he was even one of those kids who crossed the border in the truck we saw in the paper.”

  “Life must be awfully hard where they’re from, if they’re willing to risk their lives coming here—even in conditions like that,” reasoned Léo.

  I knew about this stuff. It was a big risk. Many illegals know what they’re getting into, but some don’t. Many women and children are trafficked against their will.

  “They’re going from one hellhole to another,” I snarled.

  Léo added, “And I bet there are so many people profiting from all that . . .”

  On that jolly note, we continued our way home in silence.

  Léo was relieved to have found Erina but worried to death for her. He later explained how he didn’t think he’d sleep a wink that night, that he couldn’t wait to see her again the next day.

  Gaston was already waiting at the trailer with his Jag. This bucked up Léo and his solemn mood. Not a lot, but a little. You show any man or boy a Jag and the results are pretty astounding. Something magical happens.

  Gaston was going into great detail with Léo about what the car had under the hood (the famous MK2 engine—his precious “Mark Two”) while I packed up some random clothes, toiletries, toothbrushes, books, and whatnot so that the squirts and I could spend a few days at Rachel Amar’s place. I heard a bike bell. Weird. I glanced outside. The ho
od was now open, and all I could see were Gaston’s and Léo’s butts sticking up in the air, their heads stuck in the MK2.

  Then I saw it was Antoine from Tony’s place who’d made the ding-dong dangy noise. He rode up to the trailer and I stepped onto my makeshift stairs.

  “Evening!” I said. “What are you doing around here? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in this neighborhood before! You get everywhere on that bike of yours!”

  “I was looking for you! I’m having a big birthday party! Would you like to come along? Your kids are invited too, of course!”

  “Heck, why the hell not?”

  “I sure hope you’ll come! You’re such a funny duck! I’ll let you know when it is, but it’ll likely be a Sunday.” His eyes darted around the place. He was a nosy one. “Well, your way of living is certainly original,” he said, smiling gently. “And you’re absolutely sure you don’t want to buy a condo?”

  That was twice now he’d made that rather heavy-handed joke. He could tell from a mile off that no bank would ever loan anything to the likes of me.

  He rode off. Ding-dong, ding-dong.

  I put the bags of clothes and shit in the trunk and taped a note to the front door. I wrote the address of where folks could find me if they needed me. I realize it’s not the best idea to let burglars know you’re not home, but there isn’t all that much to burgle in our place.

  I picked up Pastis and got into the back of the car with him. He settled on my lap within seconds. They say a Jaguar engine purrs, but I swear my Pastis purred louder that day. He was so pleased to see me.