“Allo, allo,” one of the teenagers called.
“Four le camp!” Cahil growled at them. “Casse toi!” Beat it! Piss off!
The group stopped in its tracks, was silent for a moment, then turned and trotted back across the street. Tanner glanced at Bear in surprise. “Been practicing, I see.”
“Only the vulgar stuff.”
The street began curving upward. Here the streetlights were farther apart At the edges of each pool of light Tanner could see figures in huddled discussion; hands would come together then part, and the figures would go their separate ways — money into one hand, drugs into the other.
“Notice the taxis?” Cahil said.
“You mean that there are none?”
“Right.”
Regardless of the country, taxis are often a bellwether of dangerous neighborhoods. Tanner recalled seeing a line of five or six taxis sitting along Rue St. Lazare. Evidently, if residents of the Pigalle wanted a ride, they had to walk to the frontier to find one. “Haven’t seen any gendarmes, either.”
“You know,” Bear mused, “you always take me to the nicest places.”
“I do my best.”
Now in the heart of the Pigalle, they turned onto Rue Blausier, the block on which Susanna’s apartment was located. The building facades were painted in shades of sun-faded pastels and covered in graffiti, most of which Tanner couldn’t decipher.
“Gang sign,” Cahil said. “Last year I ran across a report from the Renseignements Generaux — the gendarmie’s intell division. Seems the ETA and the FLNC have been moving north. Looks like we’ve found their new stomping grounds.”
The ETA was the Spanish acronym for the Basque Separatist Party, a terrorist group that generally operated in southern France and northern Spain. The FLNC, or the National Front for the Liberation of Corsica, also operated in southern France and had gone in recent years from bombing government buildings, banks, and military installations to assassinating French officials in Corsica.
“Christ, Briggs, what the hell was she doing here?”
“Her job.” Tanner replied. With every step they were slipping deeper into the world in which Susanna had chosen to live, and with every step Briggs could feel the dull ache in his chest expand a little more. Perhaps it was best he’d never had children, he decided. To protect them from the dangers of the world, he might have been tempted to lock them in their bedrooms. Of course, there’d come the point when you had to let go, but how could that be anything but gut-wrenching?
Briggs looked sideways at Cahil. “I don’t know how you do it, Bear.”
“For one thing, my girls aren’t dating until they’re thirty-five.”
Tanner laughed. “Does Maggie know that?”
“We’re debating it.”
They reached Susanna’s apartment building. Eight stories tall and no wider than two car lengths, it was painted a robin’s egg blue; in places the plaster and brick had been badly patched and repainted in dark blue. They looked like scabs, Tanner decided. An ancient Citroen sat listing at the curb, its wheels missing, one axle perched on the curb.
“You see him?” Tanner murmured.
“Yep. Ugly fella.”
Sitting on a stool just inside the apartment’s foyer door was a man with great, sloping shoulders, no neck, and a square head. His oft-broken nose looked like it had been reset with a ball-peen hammer. He was, Tanner assumed, the apartment’s informal doorman/concierge/bouncer. It was common in some of Paris’s seedier neighborhoods for residents to donate a percentage of their rent money toward the upkeep of such gatekeepers.
“Let’s see if we can get an invite,” Tanner said. Across the street a pair of prostitutes had been sizing them up. Tanner nodded at one of them, a mid-forties platinum blonde in a clear plastic miniskirt. Her panties were lime green. She cocked her head and jerked a thumb at her chest. Tanner nodded again and she strolled over.
“Emmener Popaul au cirque?” the woman said.
It took Tanner a few moments to dissect the words and reassemble them. He chuckled. “Mon éléphant est trés particulier du cirque,” he replied.
“What?” Cahil asked.
“She wants to know if I’d like her to take my elephant to the circus.”
“Interesting way of putting it. Popaul is the name of your elephant?”
“Evidently.”
“And Popaul enjoys the circus, does he?”
“She seems to think so,” Tanner said.
“What’d you say?”
“I told her my elephant was rather particular about his outings.”
Bear muttered, “Welcome to the nastiest circus on earth, I’d say.”
“Parlez-vous Anglais?” Tanner asked her.
“Non … attente.” She turned and called across the street to the other woman, “Trixie, venir ici!” Trixie, a redhead in a pair of denim shorts the size of a handkerchief, trotted over. “Anglais,” the first one told her.
“Where’re ya from?” Trixie asked in a Cockney accent.
“Canada,” Cahil replied.
“Dog’s bollocks! Canadians are cheap.”
“We’re different,” Tanner replied.
“Care for a bonk, then?”
“I’d rather talk about it off the street, if you don’t mind.”
“Right.”
Trixie and the other woman, whom Trixie called Sabine, led them to the foyer, muttered something to the gatekeeper, then led them up to the second-floor landing. Trixie pushed through a door and gestured them in. The room was lit by a single hanging bulb. In each corner of the room was a bare mattress. A pair of stained and torn armchairs sat before a coffee table made from stacked bricks and planks.
“What’s your pleasure, gov?” Trixie asked.
“Something tells me you’re not from here.”
“Liverpool. Pay’s better here. What’s your pleasure?”
“Information,” Tanner replied.
“Core love a duck!” Trixie turned to Sabine and fired off a few sentences in French. Tanner caught the phrase “Nancy boys” before Trixie turned back. “Information or shaggin’, you still pay.”
Tanner pulled a hundred-dollar bill from his pocket and held it up. “U.S. okay?”
Quick as a snake, Trixie snatched it from his hand. “Brill! Ask away.”
“We’re looking for a friend of ours — Susanna. She lives on the fourth floor.”
“Suzie? Sure, we know her. She your old lady?”
“Family.”
“Haven’t seen her about for a while.” Trixie translated for Sabine, who shook her head. “Non.”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“A fortnight or so.”
“Anyone with her?”
Trixie frowned, scratched her head; flakes of dandruff swirled in the glare of the lightbulb. “Not that I recall.” She put the question to Sabine, listened to her answer, then said, “Right … now I remember. There was a bloke we saw around. Tall, off-color skin. Had this one eye, too, like somebody’d taken a blade to the corner.” Trixie used her index finger to pull down the corner of her eye. “You know?”
Tanner nodded. “Does he have a name?”
“Not that I heard. Nom, Sabine?” Sabine shook her head, then fired off a reply. Trixie nodded, then said to Tanner, “Sabine heard them arguing once and thought he sounded German.” Trixie grinned; one of her teeth looked like a lima bean. “Sabine’s an international girl, ya see.”