THUGLIT Issue Twelve (4 page)

"
It's an institution."

"
When did you arrive?"

"
Two hours ago."

"
How long do you stay?"

"
That I don't know. Probably not long." Ruben gazed around the store that hadn't changed since the first time he'd stepped inside fifteen years earlier. "How's business?"

"
Sales are down," Ruben said with an expression approximating a pout. "Carole does not come in to buy things she does not need simply for the company, like you did."

"
You could open an annex in her apartment," Ruben said. "There's still a closet full of unopened gadgets up there."

Patrice pursed his lips as
he noted how Ruben referred to the apartment as exclusively Carole's. He had been the one person Ruben felt he could talk to about Anne in the months after the avalanche.

He told now about the package Carole had received. Patrice was truly pained.
"The poor woman. There is twisted, and there is twisted, my friend," he said. "How would someone know what your daughter wore if this boot is not hers?"

"
There were photos in the papers taken that day that the other girl's family released."

"
What will you do when you locate this fiend?"

"
I was thinking of lighting a bag of dog shit on his front step and ringing the bell."

Patrice looked at Ruben. He had always sensed that his joking gentle friend was familiar with unspoken violence
.

"
He will be lucky if that's all you do."

"
Does your uncle still live in Grenoble?"

"
Unfortunately, for my uncle Max, he died two years ago. Fortunately for me he left me his apartment. I go down there some weekends now. It is yours for as long as you need it."

"
Do you still have your car?"

"
It also is yours," Patrice said, instinctively understanding Ruben might want a clean apartment and transportation that couldn't be traced directly back to him, if things turned ugly.

It wasn
't faultless, but close enough for Ruben. He nodded his thanks.

"
This is perfect," Patrice said. "You take the car. I will come down by rail on Friday and bring the car back on Sunday if you do not need it any longer." He clapped his hands happily, as if pretending they were arranging a vacation rental. "How does that sound?"

"
It sounds perfect," Ruben said. "Are there still pay phones around here?"

Ruben climbed to the fourth floor, two flights above Carole
's. He stood next to the stairs for a moment and listened to the midday quiet. He opened a pocketknife he just bought from Patrice, who tried to push away the Euros Ruben had placed on the counter. Crouched by the circular staircase, he eased the blade under the edge of a wood panel surrounding the gap under the stairs and pried until it came loose. He reached in and felt under the fifth riser from the bottom until he found a lump attached with masking tape. He pulled at the tape until the entire package ripped loose, and came out with a tightly wrapped plastic freezer bag. He opened the bag and removed a Smith & Wesson M&P 9mm pistol.

He paused as the door to the compact elevator closed on the ground floor. The elevator rose through the shaft in the center of the circular stairway. Ruben waited and watched as the elevator rose through the fourth
floor and stopped on the fifth.

He reached back under the stairs as he listened to someone emerge from the elevator, unlock a door, and enter an apartment above. From the seventh riser he untaped another baggie holding a full seventeen round magazi
ne.

The panel eased back into place, held by the putty
—bought at Patrice's—he had beaded around the groove five years earlier.

Carole was out. He found a pair of thin rubber gloves with the cleaning supplies, pushed
the package aside, laid a three-day-old copy of
Libération
on the table and cleaned the pistol with a rag and oil he found in a closet. He took comfort in the ritual and recalled the international irony involved in taking the American pistol from an Iranian in a narrow street behind the Embassy of the United Arab Emirates on the Quai d'Orsay several years earlier. He pondered no further on the outcome of that incident.

Ruben removed and examined each round from the magazine. The baggies had kept the weapon and ammo dry. He checked the spring on the magazine and wiped each round before he slotted it inside. He wiped the entire pistol clean as he reassembled it, then loaded it and racked a round into the chamber. He wrapped it in a handkerchief and placed it in his coat pocket.

There was a framed photo of Anne on the computer desk in the foyer. He hadn't noticed it earlier. She wore a t-shirt and the background was a beach. Ruben didn't remember being there when it was taken. The photos killed him. He kept his filed away in a box in the RV and brought them out when he wanted to sear himself.

He found what he wanted in Carole
's grocery bag collection and placed the ski boot in it. He wrote a note saying he would be in touch and left her keys on top of it.

Ruben skirted Lyon on the A432 and came into Grenoble on the A48, the gray mountains looming above. He tuned to Jazz Radio when he could find a clear signal, Europe 1 the rest of the time. Patrice's Saab was no rocket, but never faltered in the six hours he had it on the road. He drove her gently, like the middle-aged lady she was.

He filled the Saab with fuel, was appalled at what it would cost to run the RV here, parked it on Rue Monge across from Patrice
's uncle's building and pocketed the keys. He would not use it again.

He walked past the build
ing where he'd stayed at the Agency-owned apartment in the month after the avalanche. The balcony had flowerpots now and looked lived in. They had to sell it when he was photographed coming out of the building after his third trespass arrest on the mountain.

The man he was meeting was closing in on fifty and looked like someone you
'd find parked on a weeknight at the bar of an Irish pub in Queens.

"
Dan Fiddler," he said, extending his hand.

"
Really?" Ruben knew his face, but not from where. An operation.

"
Couldn't make it up, could you? I was on foot patrol in Brooklyn North in the bad crack days before I made the leap to the agency. When we came into the buildings, the crackheads always ran up. Half the time they'd end up stuck on the roof. A few would try to jump across the buildings. The ones that weren't too out of their minds would usually make it. I was the youngest, so I'd usually go up after them."

Ruben could see the punch line coming a kilometer away.

"A skell would rabbit up the stairs and the Sergeant would yell: 'Fiddler! On the roof!' Then he'd piss himself laughing while I busted my hump up five flights."

"
You couldn't make that up."

"
I know, I know." Fiddler finished his Amstel with a flourish and signaled for another. "Knox told me to help you out."

"
Can you get me a list of men with American connections living within a reasonable distance of the La Poste on Avenue Jean Perrot?"

"
That's it? I can do that. I can tell you who the assholes are too. Who's up to what. That kind of thing. You've got carte blanche far as Knox is concerned."

"
I don't know if the guy's an asshole."

"
He is if you're looking for him."

"
Okay. I'll take that list too."

Fiddler looked at him over a fresh Amstel.
"Knox speaks highly of your talents."

"
That was a while ago." Ruben sipped his coffee and looked out on the street. "It takes something from you."

"
Is this about your daughter?" Fiddler didn't shy from the hard question. Ruben liked him for it. He nodded.

Fiddler twisted his free palm up, indicating anything he
could do.

They met the next day in a different café. Fiddler had a thin envelope from which he removed two sheets of
paper with names and addresses.

"
I whittled it down a little. Eliminated geezers and droolers. We can revisit that if you need to."

He
'd thoughtfully marked the sheets at the top in red ink. One was labele
d
Asshole
s
and the othe
r
Possible Asshole
s
. "Just to keep things straight," Fiddler said.

He pointed to a name he
'd underlined.

"
This guy's more of a dirtbag than an asshole. From Hoboken, followed a boy over here a few years ago. Writes obscene e-mails to the agency from different supposedly anonymous e-mail addresses. Uses public Wi-Fi's all over town. Harmless stuff. Seems to have no point. No overt threats yet. He thinks they can't get onto him because he varies the Wi-Fi's. The dumbshit uses his own laptop though."

"
How do you know it's coming from him?"

"
Once we suspected him I accidentally spilled coffee on his keyboard in a café. Being a contrite person, I paid for the repair at a shop owned by a friend." Fiddler grinned. "We plugged in some sneaky Trojan software. I can tell you everything the guy does including what time he spanks his squirrel to Aussie lifeguard porn every day. We're just waiting to see how far he goes with the vitriol before we have the French rope him in."

"
What's he doing in Grenoble?"

"
Teaching English."

"
So his main motivation is he hates the agency?"

"
Hates the entire government. Was an interpreter until he lost his clearance on account of stalking a congressman's nephew," Fiddler said. "I know it's thin. I'm working on other leads. Until then this guy lives in a house on Rue Kruger that he painted lemon-lime Haitian colors. The neighbors hate him for it. It's a dead-end. Quiet street."