He turned and walked away.
But the rapid tapping of hurried footsteps followed him along the street. He glanced back.
A man followed him, not much older than he was, with curly black hair above a black T-shirt and battered leather boots, and a small cigarette dangling from his lips.
“Voulez-vous une femme?”
And that was how Logan met Jacques.
Full-time pimp and part-time drug dealer, selling a few minutes of release to the desperate inhabitants of Paris Section 19, in whatever form his customers desired.
The French called it a ZUS, Zone Urbaine Sensible, a walled-off section of the city where they dumped those who couldn’t be made to fit into their society, and left them to fend for themselves. There was only one gate in and out through the wall, and permission to pass through the guard post there could be revoked for anyone at any time for any reason.
Such as being found outside the ZUS during curfew. The aristos didn’t want the riffraff of Paris messing up their evenings out on the town.
The police mostly stayed outside the wall, except when they came through for a sweep now and again to remind the inhabitants that they were still there, and still watching. Or when they decided that an inmate was too much of a threat to those outside in Paris and had to be disposed of.
So that was where Logan ended up, in the ZUS, working for Jacques.
It was where the police had tossed him, just one more piece of garbage dumped in the social waste dump to rot. And, with no ID, he couldn’t safely leave.
There was no UBI in France, or, if there was, it certainly didn’t extend to the ZUS. Those who lived there had to make their money any way they could.
He protected the girls from their competitors and customers, while Jacques sold his drugs. Logan might not have known enough French at first to talk them out of trouble, but he was tall, and rugby lessons at school had built up enough muscles to scare away most men who might try to rob or hurt the girls.
The men who weren’t scared of him… well, he got into some fights and earned some fresh scars, but, when a man threatened the girls, Logan only had to imagine Alice’s face as Morgan’s men led her away, and he’d give them much worse than he got.
Jacques found him a place to stay, and kept him fed, if only on stolen rations through the black market. After a few months, he started paying Logan for his work, giving him enough money for a few of the good things in life.
And some of the girls would show their gratitude, now and again. Most of them had grown up living rough on the streets, running and hiding from the worst the ZUS could throw at them, and not always escaping. Most were just glad to finally having someone to look out for them.
One of the girls, Angelique, took a liking to him, and him to her. She’d left home in rural France and come to Paris to find a new life. And ended up dumped in the ZUS, just like him.
They became kindred spirits, both still dreaming of escaping to a better life.
Logan might be a criminal, but he was happier than at any time in his life. If happiness required him to become a criminal, then so be it. He hadn’t made that choice, they had.
Jacques had started small, living rough and making money with petty thievery in and out of the ZUS, as so many did until the cops caught them, just the beginning of a long career in and out of jail that would eventually lead to their execution.
But Jacques was smart enough not to get caught, and had found other, more profitable, business than stealing. He a was rising star of the underworld now, with over two dozen girls working for him, and good connections to the gangs who manufactured drugs in the basements, abandoned factories and offices around the ZUS.
In a few years, he was planning to be one of the big men of Section 19. One of the successful criminals the others all looked up to, and aspired to be.
“Things will change around here,” Jacques said one moonlit summer night as they strolled home along the dark streets of Section 19 after a hard day’s work. “When I’m in charge, I’ll clear up the streets. The vicious little thugs who prey on the weak might not be afraid of the flics, but they’ll be afraid of me. And you’ll be with me. I won’t forget the people who help me on the way up.”
Red and blue lights flickered on the walls ahead of them.
Cops. Or the flics, as most inmates of the ZUS called them.
Jacques grabbed Logan’s shoulder, and pulled him into the shadows at the side of the street. Then along a dark alley, where they could hide among the piled-up garbage as they peered over the crumbling brick wall at the end, toward the police vans parked in the street beyond.
Two cops lounged beside the vans, hiding their identities beneath their helmets and armour, and holding short, bulbous submachineguns at their hips. The red and blue lights on the vans reflected from the shiny metal of the guns as the cops watched the surrounding buildings.
Four more cops with guns, helmets and shields pushed a couple of dozen teenage girls and boys toward the open doors at the back of the vans. The girls stared down at the street as the cops shoved them, or at each other. The boys struggled with the cops, who thumped them with the shields, or the butts of their guns, until the boys stopped complaining and moved on toward the vans.
“Hey, flics,” a tall, muscular boy wrapped in a leather trench-coat yelled from the alley across the street.
The cops turned toward him as he flung a fist-sized rock at them. It clattered as it bounced off one cop’s shield and fell to the pavement.
Another raised his gun and fired a burst toward the boy, lighting the darkness with his muzzle flash and filling the night with the chatter of gunfire. Shards of concrete flew from the corner of the building beside the boy as he ducked back into the alley.
One of the boys in the crowd barged past the cops as they stared toward the alley, and ran away from them along a street that was now silent and empty aside from the thumping of his shoes on the concrete.
Until a cop raised his submachinegun, and fired. Blood spurted from the boy’s back, and he fell to the ground, then slid to a stop. The other kids watched in silence as the cop strode to the still-twitching body, then smacked the boy’s head with his truncheon until bone cracked. The boy stopped moving.
Logan ducked down behind the wall. He’d never seen someone killed before, especially not like that. He could almost taste his dinner of gooey black-market rations coming back up his throat as his body shook at the sight.
“What are they doing?” he whispered.
Jacques held his finger against his lips, warning Logan to stay quiet. Then leaned closer and whispered back.
“New toys for the aristos.”
“What do you mean?”
“Every few months, the flics round up a bunch of kids, and hand them over to the aristos.”
“Why would the aristos want them?”
“Mostly, they hunt the boys for sport. And the girls for…” Jacques grunted and thrust his hips back and forwards. “You know. Maybe some of the boys too, if they’re pretty.”
Logan almost smiled. This had to be a joke. The aristocrats couldn’t really be that bad, could they?
Then he remembered Alice’s face as she climbed slowly into Morgan’s car. Of course they could. Toffs and bosses were the same the world over, weren’t they?
Arrogant, ugly, and ready to use anyone or anything for their entertainment. Because they could, and there was no-one to stop them.
He should have guessed the rest of the world would be no better, before he sailed across the sea. It would have saved him a lot of time, and a lot of pain.
“Why doesn’t someone do something?”
“You wanna get shot to save them? Go ahead. The rest of us just try not to get caught.”