by Alice Quinn
A hurricane or a tornado or whatever it was on the Côte d’Azur? What was the world coming to? This sort of thing never, ever, ever happened here! I imagined what it must be like downtown with all the sirens and panic. It would be a bit like Miami Vice but with fewer competent cops.
The guy on the phone sounded like he was panicking, even though I didn’t understand what he was saying. I came out of my cabinet and went to check out where he’d gone. He was in a hallway that wrapped around a large rectangular platform with doors leading off it. They call it a mezzanine, I think. I stood in one of the doorways. The mezzanine overlooked the body shop below. The whole of the downstairs was now flooded. I peered down and watched as all sorts of different pieces of machinery and engines and God only knew what bumped into each other below. It was car-part soup down there.
I tried to assess what the bad man was doing. He was just a couple of yards away, but luckily he didn’t spot me. He was too busy with his phone call and too preoccupied with the mess below. Maybe he’d just learned that Murrash was going down? I hoped so. Or was it something else?
I had to get out there for a better look around. I needed to find 1) wherever they were hiding Erina, if Erina was really there, and 2) wherever they were keeping Léo prisoner, if Léo was really there.
The man shuffled into a nearby room. This was my chance to start making my way around the building. All these rooms needed checking out. I squished out of there, leaving huge puddles behind me. I could sense that he’d stopped. No more footsteps, no more talking.
Oh crap! He’d heard me! Well, he’d certainly find me if he wanted to! Just follow all the water and that’s where I’d be.
61
I slipped inside the nearest doorway. If the guy came back, I didn’t want to be standing there like a fucking twit. If I was in a room, there at least might be someplace to hide or something I could use in self-defense.
It was a pretty bedroom that had had a woman’s touch at some point. A bed with purple satin sheets, delicate lighting, a pretty armchair with floaty fabric. It was sweet. Sexy. Ah, I knew what this place had been used for!
I spotted a bedside lamp made of some sort of metal—copper, bronze, steel, I don’t know—but it was heavy, so it was mine!
I stood to the side of the door, ready to pounce. I froze as the handle turned and the door slowly opened. Shiiiiit! What was I going to do?
It was him. He pushed the tip of the gun through the door and then his big frame followed. He inched into the room, but his back was turned to me. Thicko.
I let out a yell—a real war cry! “Léo! Erina! Don’t come out! Stay where you are! Stay!” Then I smacked the man’s hand with my lamp, using every bit of strength I had. A good effort!
He hollered out in pain, and his gun dropped to the floor. I kicked it and it slid far away toward the bed. I was doing a mean-ass job and I was more than a little pleased with myself! I let out a victory whooooop (well, in my head).
He bent down to look at his hand. It was messed up. I gave him a kick in the neck. I didn’t want to kill him, but I needed him seriously out of the game. It didn’t really work. In fact, I bet it was no more than a tickle for him.
He shook his head and slowly turned to face me.
I couldn’t risk him seeing my face, so I jumped on his back and tried to smack him in the eye with the base of the lamp. The angle was awkward. It wasn’t the great success I’d expected. I just couldn’t manage it. He flicked me off him and threw my makeshift weapon in one direction and me in the other. Ouchy.
“Watch it, would you! That really hurt. Throwing me around like a goddamn laundry bag.”
The lights went out. Christ. The luck I have! Total electricity failure was exactly what I needed. But it was no surprise, given the rain out there.
The two of us stayed still for a couple of seconds while what had happened sank in, and then he gave me a cracking kick in the side. I slipped along the floor, my head smacking into a hard object. I only understood what it was when I felt it with my hand. It was his gun.
I didn’t see whether he’d noticed me grab it, but the next thing I knew, he was running out of the room to the car wash below. What a heavy-footed buffoon he was!
I pulled the safety off the gun, Clint Eastwood–style. Then I pulled the trigger. Maybe I’d gotten a little overexcited. The sound was immense! It nearly burst my eardrums. The gun had been pointing upward, and now big pieces of plaster were falling down on me.
I wanted to show him who was boss. Maybe that had worked.
I stood up and left the room, but I couldn’t see him down below. I could hear someone splashing around down there, though. It sounded like he was swimming. Surely it couldn’t have gotten that deep? He must have been trying to make it to the exit. The noises certainly made me wonder about my exit strategy.
Léo and Erina were somewhere in that hellhole and I had to find them. It would be a bonus if I could find them before the cops arrived. It was true that there was a good chance the police wouldn’t be coming now because of the flooding, but what if they did? I had to make sure Erina wasn’t around.
I called out to my babies over and over again, barely pausing for breath. I searched every room upstairs and held up my cell phone through the door like a flashlight.
And that’s how I found them.
They were holed up in the same room, an office, as far as I could tell. Both were tied to the same table. It must have been some time since the place had been used as an office. There were cables, boxes, mouse pads, monitors, and God only knew what, strewn all over the floor. Total health hazard. Could it be the rain that had done this? No, we were still upstairs. Dry as a bone (well, I wasn’t, but still). There was no paperwork that I could see, and no actual computer or hard drive or whatever you call it either. All gone. It might have been handy evidence. If it had been there in the first place. My cell light wasn’t doing the best job, so maybe I’d missed something.
The kids recognized me right away when I shouted, “Hide and seek! Coming, ready or not!”
After untying them, I fumbled through the room, opening drawers and grabbing anything I could find that I thought might come in useful at a later date. I got a ton of paper clips, rubber bands, some rolls of sticky-backed plastic, and an old cell phone. I pocketed it all. There was some good stuff for Sabrina.
From below, surprise of surprises, we heard Borelli yell, “Just stay where you are, dumbbell!”
Then some weird noises followed. Hollers. Insults. A shot.
Christ. The big boys had arrived.
Léo couldn’t stop laughing. “Oh, Cricri! You know how to keep folks waiting, don’t you?”
Borelli called again from downstairs. “Maldonne? Maldonne? Was that you I heard a couple of seconds ago? Did you find them? Where are they?”
62
Borelli had arrived just in time to catch the bad boy trying to swim out the front door. I hadn’t heard any car engines, but maybe they’d come in a boat? No exaggeration. The rain really was that bad. Had they come on foot? Waded in?
I put a finger to my lips to silence Léo. I tried to listen in on what was happening downstairs, but with the rain hammering on the roof, it was next to impossible. I signaled to the teens to follow me.
I put my head around the door and could just make out Borelli ordering his men to search the building. His arms were flailing around like a maniac.
I headed back into the room and placed the gun down in plain sight on the desk. I wiped my prints. I’ve seen as much CSI as everybody else.
We all left the office and stepped onto the mezzanine. I listened for Borelli. I could see light from a flashlight below. Beams moving around, searching. Cops didn’t have to rely on stupid cell-phone light.
I moved in the opposite direction, back toward the room with the window I’d used to get into the building in the first place. And that’s how we got out.
We found ourselves up on the rooftop of the double garage. In under two se
conds we were all drenched. It was how I imagined it would be inside a washing machine. That’s how wet we were.
“Let’s try to find someplace to hide until this downpour stops.”
There were no oink cars outside. There were plenty of civvies’ cars, though. The rainwater level had gone down some, and I saw cars floating on their roofs. Cars that had somehow managed to get locked together. Cars stuck in manholes. Cars on top of each other. But no drivers. They’d done this to themselves—or, more accurately, the rain had done it to them. Nobody, cops or otherwise, would be getting through this mess anytime soon.
So we weren’t getting a ride out of there! Oh, who cared? We hadn’t come in a car.
We waited a little longer.
Léo explained how he’d used the same window to get in the building once the rain had started. He’d been searching for Erina when the nasty-ass bumped into him and threatened him with a gun.
Erina nodded to back up the story. She was looking toward the body shop with worried glances. The poor thing was so agitated. We could still see flashlight beams through and around the building below. The cops were going over the joint with a fine-toothed comb.
I thought I heard something. A scream. It was difficult to know where it was coming from in all the commotion. We crawled along the roof to check out what was happening behind the building.
On an adjacent street corner, a whirlpool water-vortex thing had appeared. It was horrible! There was a man on the very edge of it, hanging on to a window frame. The water was a powerful torrent around his legs, almost waist high. He was screeching. The water was going to carry him off!
“Hilfen! Helpen me! SOS!” He had a weird accent. Not French. He looked washed out (no pun intended). He was pale and terrified.
I gaped openmouthed at Léo and Erina. “That guy’s not going to be able to hold on! What should we do?”
Just then, three people came out of another ground-floor window in the next building. Two men and a young woman. They made their way to him. The three of us scooched down the metal drainpipe and doggy-paddled the short distance to join them.
“Did you just hear shots?” the woman asked me.
“No,” I said. “It was the thunder. Don’t worry about it right now. What are we going to do about that man? He won’t be able to hold on for long. Maybe he can’t swim!”
One of the men took charge of the situation. I didn’t usually like that, but there you go.
“I know what we can do,” he announced. “Human chain.”
He knocked on a few of the houses along the street. We needed more courageous neighbors on our side. Not everyone felt like opening their doors to let more water in, but some accepted. Léo, Erina, and I were already about as wet as a person can get. So what was a little more? In for a penny, as my grandmother would have said.
We all linked arms to make a human bridge so we could cross the “river” to reach him. Luckily, the cars all seemed to be staying put. It didn’t look likely that any of them would be swept in our direction.
It was pretty hard work for me. My wrist was killing me, but my neighbors on both sides were linked to me by the elbows, so it wasn’t bearing the brunt of the operation.
It was incredible to see people who’d never had anything to do with one another linked together to save someone they had probably never met. In times of crisis, people can really surprise you! The kindness of strangers. There was one mission here: save the guy with the weird-ass accent who nobody knows. He looked over to us with hope in his eyes. I was praying we’d be able to get him to safety without the chain breaking.
We did it. The first link in the chain wrapped his arm around the guy’s waist. They gripped each other. The rescued man was sobbing and sobbing.
By the time we got him back to where the water was less of a danger, we started chuckling with relief. We were amazed. It had only taken a couple of minutes and a few helping hands (or arms), and we’d maybe saved the guy’s life.
It turned out he was a German tourist. Could any of us speak German? Nope. He kept saying, “Danker shern! Danker shern!”
There was an old grandmamma who lived a little farther up the street. She called out to us that she had cookies and hot coffee for everyone. Sounded great. Most of the human chain went back to their own homes, but the German guy and the three of us joined the old dear to warm up and dry out.
She lived in a second-floor apartment. More importantly, she had cookies. You’ve got to love anyone who has cookies. Ah! I had cake too! I took out Laroche and Bintou’s cake from my pocket. It was sludge. Just brown mud. You couldn’t pay someone to eat that.
We decided to wait inside the lady’s house until the rain stopped. But how long might that be? Noah went forty days and nights on that ark thing, didn’t he? Or was that the number of thieves Ali Baba hung out with?
Whatever. We were in it for the long haul.
I looked out the window sometime later (it felt like days, but it wasn’t even an hour) and noticed that the river had become more of a gurgling brook. It was still raining, but nothing like the earlier downpour.
“OK, it’s time to bust a move,” I said, eyeballing Léo and Erina for support. If we waited too long, we could wind up with the cops on our back. They were still milling around the body shop.
Our new German friend came out with noises that sounded like, “Ik bleiber ein venig langer. Passen zee owf zik owf.”
Hmm. It sure sounded nice, but none of us had a clue.
His voice cracked when he added, “Danken you. Danken you very much.”
We nodded, shook hands with the old lady who’d sugared us all up so well, and then left.
63
What a mess things were outside. It was truly devastating. There was mud all the way up the walls of the buildings. Some people had opened their front doors and were standing in eight inches of muddy water inside their houses. The ground was sodden. We were still ankle deep in places.
As we climbed back toward the center of town, the water level descended. Folks were out on the streets checking what damage had been done to their property. The thunder continued to growl ahead. It was getting farther away, though, and the lightning bolts less and less frequent. The rain was still coming, but it was nothing to write home about by that point. Just a good, strong, steady rain.
Around a half an hour later, the rain had gone.
It was as if the town had been hit by a tidal wave. It had started and finished in under two hours. It came, it kicked our asses, it went.
We crawled through the streets. They were destroyed.
Léo told me that just before he’d climbed through the window, he’d seen at least seven guys make a run for it from the body shop. Some of them went off on foot carrying bags and briefcases, others made their getaways in cars. Big black cars that had been parked farther up along the street. Big black gangster cars, by the sound of it. Why did they always have to have those cars?
“I guess that was when they arrested Murrash, then,” I said. “They must have somehow gotten word and then scrammed.”
“Could be. I thought they’d all gone. That’s why I decided to climb in through that window, check the place out, see if I could find Erina. Because I hadn’t seen her leave, I could only assume she was still inside. That’s when I came face-to-face with that guy. I tried to put up a good fight, I really did. But I never stood much of a chance. He worked me over pretty good. When I came to, I was tied to that table with Erina. I’d found her! And then you came along.”
So that’s how it had all gone down.
Léo stopped talking. We picked up the pace. As I saw street upon street and house upon house of utter destruction, I became worried about my trailer. It was the king of trailers, but I didn’t know how it could have withstood a torrent of that magnitude.
Erina and Léo didn’t have anything left to say. They were shattered. I’d really hoped for the happiest reunion ever, but in the end, it was one hell of a sorry walk home.
> My brain started going over some of the shit we were in. I didn’t have a degree in psychobull, but you didn’t have to have gone to the Sorbonne to know that Erina wasn’t ready for our everyday life. We were all about rice and beans and loud babies and a trailer and rolling in the aisles and singing our heads off. She really needs someone who knows how to help her through all the trauma she’s been through. We’re too crazy a bunch to deal with this. Bingo! Rachel Amar! That’s who I need.
I was going to take the two teens over to Gaston’s place, as there wouldn’t be enough room for everyone in the trailer, but I needed to see my own babykins first. And Kholia. Oh, the poor little boy. We all had something to go back to, even if it meant salvaging whatever we had from the water and mud, but Kholia had nothing. Truly nothing.
I tried to reach them by phone. It went straight to voice mail. Maybe Bintou didn’t have any battery left. It was always a possibility. But it was the same with Gaston’s phone and Laroche’s. Oh crap. I couldn’t handle it.
“Come on, gang! We need to go faster!” I yelled. I’m a good yeller when I need to be. I startled the pair of them out of their lethargic state.
“What? How? Why?” asked Léo.
“I can’t get through to them on their phones. None of them are picking up! I’m a basket case here! I have to get to my trailer. I need to see my little ones. Then I’m going over to Gaston’s. I’m going to leave you two there. Is that OK? I don’t think I can even begin to explain how whacked out I am after all of this. It’ll be a goddamn miracle if I make it to the end of today in one piece. I feel like giving up, I really do.”
They didn’t have anything to say in response, but they were now almost running. Spent, but running. And they were doing it to help me out. Bless them. As we neared the site of where my beloved trailer was parked up, I could see immediately that something wasn’t quite right. Jeez.
I saw all the concrete blocks around my pitch, but my trailer was on its side. On its goddamn side and totally covered in mud!
