To my right, the boulevard headed gently uphill, getting steeper as it passed two or three miles of car dealerships and unattractive apartment buildings before hitting Autoroute 8, which took you either to Nice and Italy, about an hour away, or down to Marseille and the Spanish border.
To my left, and about five minutes’ walk downhill, lay the train station, the beach, and the main Cannes tourist traps. But the only part of town I was interested in today was where I was right now. In about fifteen minutes the source should be turning up wearing a red pashmina shawl and a pair of jeans; she was going to sit at a table and read a month-old copy of Paris-Match, one with a picture of Julia Roberts on the cover.
I didn’t like the physical setup for this meet. I’d had a coffee and croissant inside the café yesterday for a recce and could see no escape route. It wasn’t looking good: large, unobstructed windows letting the world see what was happening inside, and an exposed sidewalk outside. I couldn’t leap off a fire escape at the back, or go to the bathroom and climb out the window if anyone came barging through the main door. I would have to go for the virgin ground of the kitchen. I had no choice: I had to make contact with the source.
The dryer door behind me opened onto a batch of very flowery patterned sheets. I shifted my weight onto my left buttock and adjusted my fanny pack, which hung over the fly of my jeans and contained my passport and wallet. The pack never left me, and to help make sure it stayed that way I’d threaded a wire through the belt. Pickpockets in the crowds down here used Stanley knives to slit belts and straps, but they’d have had a tough job with this one.
The old woman was still mumbling away to herself, then raised her voice to me, looking for my agreement on the crap state of the machines. I turned and did my bit, “Oui, oui,” smiled, and turned my eyes back toward the target.
Tucked down the front of my jeans was a worn-out 1980s Browning 9mm with a thirteen-round mag. It was a French black-market job, which, like all the team’s weapons, had been supplied by a contact I had yet to see, whom I’d nicknamed Thackery. I hadn’t laid eyes on him; I just had this picture in my head of a clean-shaven thirty-something with short black hair. The serial number had been ground out, and if the Browning had to be used, ballistics would link it to local Italian gangs. There were enough of them around here, with the border so close. And, of course, I had bought myself a Leatherman. I’d never leave home without one.
As I checked up and down the road and across once more at the café, the world was buzzing around me and my new girlfriend in the laundromat. Teenagers raced around on motor scooters, some with helmets, some without, just like the police on their BMWs. Small cars were driven like ballistic missiles in both directions. Christmas decorations were rigged up across the boulevard; the most popular number this year was white lights in the shape of stars and lighted candles.
I thought about how things had moved on since Logan.
“All the people that you care about live here.” George had known exactly what he was doing even before he got me to take Zeralda’s head. Blind watchmaker, my ass.
I scanned up and down the boulevard for the hundredth time, looking for anybody wearing red on blue, checking to make sure no one else was lurking around waiting to jump me once I’d made contact.
I had a contingency plan if there was a problem before the meet. My escape route was out of the laverie service door, which was open. It was lined with bags of unclaimed laundry and lost socks and underwear, and led through a small yard into an alleyway. At the end was a low wall, which led into the backyard of the perfumery on the boulevard to my left. From there I’d slip into an adjacent apartment building and hide in the basement garage until the coast was clear.
I checked traser. Four minutes to eleven. To my left I caught a flash of red among the pedestrians on the curb, waiting to cross in the direction of the café. I hadn’t seen it before; she must have come from one of the shops or the other tabac farther down the hill. She’d probably been sitting having a coffee, doing pretty much what I’d been doing. If so, it was a good sign; at least she was switched on. I kept the patch of red in my peripheral vision, not searching for the face in case there was eye contact.
There was a gap in the traffic and the pashmina made a move. It was a man; he had a magazine rolled up in his right hand and a small brown porte-monnaie — or fag-bag, as a few of my new fellow countrymen called them — in his left. If I was wrong, I’d soon be finding out.
Once over the road he went up to an empty pavement table and took a seat. As in all French cafés, the chairs were facing the road so the clientele could people-watch. He got settled and laid the magazine out flat on the table. I continued to watch through the traffic. A waitress in a vest went over and took his order as he brought a pack of cigarettes out from the fag-bag.
I couldn’t see much of his face, owing to the distance and the volume of traffic between us, but he was wearing sunglasses and was either dark-skinned or had a permatan. I’d find out later. I didn’t look at him anymore now. My gaze shifted elsewhere; there were more important things to check. Was it safe to approach him? Was anyone else around, waiting to ruin my day?
I ran through my plan once more in my head: to go and sit near him, order coffee, and, when it felt safe, come out with my check statement. I was going to point to Julia Roberts and say, “Beautiful, isn’t she?” His reply would be, “Yes, she is, but not as much as Katharine Hepburn, don’t you think?” Then I was going to get up and go over and sit by him and start talking Katharine. That would be the cover story: we just met and started talking about film stars because of the cover of the magazine. I didn’t know his name, he didn’t know mine, we didn’t know each other, we were just chatting away in a café. There must always be a reason for being where you are.
I still felt uneasy, though. Meeting inside the café would have been bad enough, with nowhere to run, but outside was even worse. He could be setting me up for a snapshot that could be used against me, or maybe a drive-by shooting. I didn’t know this character, I didn’t know what he was into. All I knew was that it had to be done, no matter what was out there; if everything went according to plan, I would come away with the information we needed.
I stood up, adjusted my sweatshirt and fanny pack, and nodded to the old woman. She folded some jeans and mumbled something as I set off left, downhill toward the town center. There was no need to watch Pashmina Man. His window for the RV was thirty minutes, he was going to be there until eleven-thirty.
Everything seemed normal as I passed the perfumery. Women were doing their sniff tests on overpriced bottles, and young men with plucked eyebrows and waxed-up hair were wrapping their purchases in very expensive-looking boxes. The tabac farther along wasn’t that packed. A few old guys were drinking beers and buying lotto tickets. I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary.
I reached the pedestrian crossing about fifty yards farther downhill and, once on the RV side of the road, I headed back up toward the red pashmina past the newsstand and pâtisserie. Only in France could a man wear one of these things and not even get a second glance.
As I approached I got a glimpse of him in profile, sipping espresso, smoking and watching the world pass by a little too intently. He looked familiar, with his slicked-back hair, slightly thinning on top, and round, dark face. I got a few paces closer before I recognized him, and almost stopped in my tracks. It was the greaseball from Algeria.