3
JJ walked back to the hotel, the city’s metabolism building and night creeping up from the pavements, darkness wrapping itself around the people and cars on the streets, shards of noise and light, expectation mounting.
They were tourists mainly, entwined couples separating for no one, middle-aged ones clutching their bags and camcorders, all of them locked into their own personal highs. The Parisians were easy to identify; they were the ones who saw him, who made fleeting eye contact in the seconds they took to pass.
And none of them would remember his face. That was what he liked about city streets; there was no remembering the faces. He could walk like a wraith between worlds and be untouched by both of them. It was good too that those worlds rarely crossed into each other, that the pedestrians flowing around him would never know and never need to know why someone called Viner was dead.
That was only on the streets though. In the hotel he could feel himself slipping back into it, the corridors desolate except for a baby crying somewhere in one of the rooms, a stealthy silence draped over the functional sounds of the building. It was places and times like this that Viner was dead, out on the blank edges of other people’s daily existence.
The room said it too, oppressively calm, desperate, suffocating, like it was wrong to be there at that time of the evening. He sat on the bed, phoned room service to order something to eat, but changed his mind, the woman at the other end barely masking her irritation. He checked his watch, thinking it better to get the lowdown from Danny and then move on straight away.
He dialed and as soon as the answering machine clicked in said, “It’s JJ, pick up.” For a few seconds the message continued before Danny lifted the phone, at first competing with his own recorded voice. “Hey, JJ, it’s good to hear from you. I suppose you wanna know what’s happening?”
“Something like that. I’m in Paris.”
That threw him for a second, his reply cautious. “On business?”
“No, a private matter, but I took the opportunity of visiting an old friend, and I have to say, he wasn’t looking too good.”
Danny sighed and said, “Yeah. I had some traffic that Viner was down. You have to admit though, he would have been whacked anyway sooner or later.”
JJ smiled at the terminology, Danny’s fixation on the Mob.
“It’s not just Viner though, is it?” He was guessing, but Danny always gave more to people who sounded informed in the first place. He still responded as if to a massive understatement.
“No, no, no.” There was a pause. He was eating, his voice like cotton wool when he spoke again. “You’re just about the only one of Viner’s people left. I’m hearing Townsend’s down, so is Hooper. Berg’s down, of all people. Only person ahead of the game looks like Lo Bello. Him and his people have been bermuda since last Friday—not a trace.”
“That doesn’t surprise me—Lo Bello’s a shrewd operator.” But so were some of the other names he’d reeled off. “What about Berg’s people?”
Danny laughed, saying, “The beautiful Esther’s gone to ground if that’s what you’re wondering, but of the immediate crew the only other one still unaccounted for is David Philips. Exciting stuff, isn’t it?”
JJ didn’t acknowledge the question, but he could feel small surges of adrenaline firing off in his bloodstream. “Who is it?”
“Well as to who’s doing all the killing, your guess is as good as mine. London’s just found out it’s been in bed with the Russian Mafia for the last four or five years—something I think we could have guessed four or five years ago. So I’d say London’s overreacting, the Russians have panicked and started closing people down themselves, and our friends in Arlington have probably joined in because they’ve got nothing better to do. There’s just a real meltdown going on out there. It’s crazy; they’re gonna regret some of the people they’ve hit in the last couple of days.”
“Not half as much as the people they’ve hit.”
“Yeah, but stiffs don’t vote.”
“Not as a rule. What about me, Danny?” Another mouthful of food. “Obviously, it doesn’t make sense for anyone to take you out, but that doesn’t mean you’re not on a list. I’d say the big thing in your favor is your, er, contractual status—you’re not as easy to track. If you were an employee and they wanted you dead, you’d be dead by now.”
“So it seems.”
“Too true. So play your advantage, disappear for a week or so till it’s blown over. Once they’re all thinking straight you’ll be okay. I mean, you whack the pimps, not the hookers.”
JJ smiled and said, “You seem pretty relaxed.”
“Please,JJ, a retired pimp isn’t worth the price of a bullet.”
“Nor the airfare to Sweden.”
Danny laughed, saying, “Exactly. So anyway, go on holiday, relax, call me in a week, ten days, and I’ll let you know the score.”
“Sure.”
“Oh, and it should go without saying, but don’t go back to Geneva.”
“So I’m gonna have to buy new beach clothes?”
Danny came back at him confidently. “You can afford it. And in a few weeks I’d say you’ll be able to renegotiate your fee.”
“An interesting thought. Speak to you soon, Danny.”
“Hey, I’ll be here.”
JJ put the phone down and checked his watch. Then he thought of Aurianne and immediately felt his stomach turn as what Danny had said hit home: don’t go back to Geneva. They’d know about her, had to know about her by now.
He picked the phone up again and dialed, smiling at first when the machine clicked in at the other end. She was ill at ease with her answering machine, one of those people who tried too hard to make her voice sound relaxed, the result, if anything, ending up strangely stilted. Slowly though he found the smile straightening out, the awkwardly voiced message he’d heard so many times before suddenly troubling him. He didn’t want to speak but did anyway. “It’s me. I have to go away for a couple of weeks. Don’t call. Don’t come round to my place. Don’t even leave a message. I’ll call you as soon as I get back.”
It was wasted. He could feel it in his gut, a creeping nausea; she was already dead. He kept trying to dismiss it, but it was there like a certainty. Like Danny had said, there was a meltdown in progress and it had taken Aurianne with it, just like it had taken Viner, like it had taken the kid in the alley. It didn’t make sense that anyone would choose to kill her. But that was exactly what happened at times like this, innocent people got killed.
He looked at the room, too small, a hotel he wouldn’t use again. And he tried to piece together what he was thinking because a part of him was still clinging stubbornly to the idea that she was alive, that she was simply out or sleeping. He phoned again from the station for the same reason, let the message run its course, ignoring the cold logic of it with the thought that if he wasn’t a target she wouldn’t be one by association.
But he was a target. Someone had been sent to Geneva just as surely as someone had been sent to Paris for Viner. They’d failed to find him though, so they’d gone to Aurianne’s, had no doubt tried to get something out of her before killing her. They’d still be there somewhere, in her apartment or his, waiting on station but no longer believing he’d show, particularly now, the contents of his call to Danny already distilled and drip-fed back to them.
Once he was on the train he thought again about what Danny had said, but there was no choice, he had to know for sure. And he’d have the element of surprise on his side. The train would get him there first thing, and he’d be out on an early flight before they even realized he’d been there. He’d take her with him if she was okay, but with the night drawing on that thought was already failing in his mind, becoming just a token response to an unpalatable truth.
He stared at the window, a softly lit version of the car reflected against the night, his own face visible from the corner of his eye. There were only a handful of other people reflected there: an elderly woman reading, the rest traveling students: two girls sleeping, a small group talking at the far end, a guy on his own looking bored.
JJ wished he could be like them, wished he could just be a person traveling, no mental baggage, of no interest to anyone else. Some of them probably felt the same way, he was aware of that. He resented it though, resented that he was in so deep and that, despite what Danny had said, it was never just a question of disappearing for a while. He was tied in too tight.