The Same River Twice (37 page)

One of the four came forward, greeted Odile, and shook her hand. She recognized the wispy-mustached boy as one of those she’d let take refuge in her studio the day the policeman had come. “She’s upstairs with Josée and Anne,” he said, “drying her feet.”

“We had a plumbing mishap,” Chantal explained apologetically. “Let me get her.”

Left alone with the boy, whose name was Fabien, Odile asked him about the computers.

“All recycled,” he said, “castoffs. Now we use them to attack the forces they once served.”

“Really? What forces are those?”

“Banks, multinational corporations, instruments of state.”

“La Santé prison?”

“Who knows? Even La Santé.” He smiled. “Of course, that would require them to install a computer system first. One shouldn’t hold one’s breath.”

Odile was about to inquire further when Allegra appeared, descending the stairs at a pace meant to communicate decorous puzzlement. “I told you where I was going,” she said sullenly when she reached the bottom.

“I know. But I thought you’d like to come with me to Monsieur Ibrahim’s.”

“Monsieur Ibrahim?”

“To pick out fabric for your dress,” said Odile.

Chantal arrived at the head of the stairs. “We’ll look for you tomorrow,” she called down. “Three o’clock, don’t forget!”

“We’ll try,” Odile said, taking Allegra by the hand.
“Ciao!”

Once they were outside, Allegra snatched her hand away. “I’m not a child. You shouldn’t embarrass me in front of my friends.”

“Friends already! Well, I wouldn’t have had to if you’d answered your phone.”

“It didn’t ring!”

Deciding not to debate this, Odile steered her out of the mews into the street. “Look,” she said, “they mean well, Chantal and her group, and I agree with a lot of what they say. But the police are investigating them. It would be a very serious matter if you got caught up in their trouble, okay?”

“You think I’m stupid.”

“Not at all. The opposite, in fact.”

“Besides, what do you care? You’re just
babysitting
me while my father makes his idiotic
movie.”
She began to cry. “I shouldn’t even
be
here.”

“Darling.” Odile put her arm around the girl’s shoulders. “Your father loves you. You know that. He can’t always choose his shooting schedule.” Allegra’s tears continued unabated. “We’ve both been looking forward to your visit so much.”

They walked together to the bus stop. Allegra’s canvas-topped shoes were sodden, presumably from the plumbing problem Chantal had mentioned, but Odile didn’t want to know about it and didn’t ask.

Later, on the bus, when she’d stopped crying, Allegra said, “Are we really going to design a dress together? One just for me?”

And later still, at Monsieur Ibrahim’s, sorting through fabric samples beneath the Tunisian’s indulgent eye, she looked at Odile and said, “My friends are
not
going to believe this.”

THE ONE CALLED SERGEI
approached him, took his chin in one hand, and peered clinically into his eyes. “Ah, so you are with us again.”

Turner’s head hurt. He was seated in a straight-backed wooden chair with his wrists handcuffed behind him, and except for his undershorts he was naked. “Us?” he said.

Sergei and the other one, Volodya, laughed at him. He was extremely confused. “Where am I?” There were newspapers spread everywhere and an empty syringe by his feet. Industrial hooks, chains, and winches hung from the ceiling timbers, but there were also domestic furnishings: an upholstered easy chair, a table, a chessboard, lamps with shades, a daybed. “What happened to … Where’s Nikolai?”

“Mister Kukushkin is unable after all to join you for lunch. I tell you this at least—how many times, Volodya?”

“Four minimum. It becomes tedious.”

“But fortunately we are easily entertained,” Sergei told Turner. “So, where is she?”

He felt very hot, and the things around him seemed to pulsate. Inside them, other things were trying to get out. “Where is who?”

Shaking his head, Sergei turned his back to Turner and walked a short distance away. Simultaneously Volodya stepped forward. He wore a row of heavy gold rings on his left hand and, after studying Turner for a second, slapped him across the face, right and left in quick succession. Both blows
hurt, but the second seemed to lift him partway out of his chair onto a plateau of blinding white pain entirely new to him. He spat blood.

“What, please, is the name of your assistant?” Sergei asked.

“Gabriella,” Turner managed to say. “Gabriella Moreau.”

“Excellent. And you saw her last when, exactly?”

“Last Friday, at the auction house. She asked for the afternoon off.”

“Did you give it to her?”

“Yes.”

“And where did she go, please?”

“I have no idea.”

“Really, Turner, this is most hard to believe.” He looked at his companion, who seemed about to intervene again. “Volodya,” he said, “why you don’t put on some music, something with maybe a little feeling, okay?”

Volodya snarled a few words in Russian but went over to the stereo deck in back.

In a quiet voice Sergei said, “Confidentially, he is psychopath. You notice the smell?”

Turner said nothing. He had noticed the smell.

“I require him to wear cologne, but, you know, with hormone imbalance like his …” He shrugged. It seemed to Turner that Sergei’s lupine features were only temporarily human and that at any moment—any
second
—he might actually turn into the wolf he resembled. The phrase “Don’t sell me no wolf tickets” streaked across Turner’s mind. It was an expression from his childhood.

“So,” said the Russian, clapping his hands together in a brisk return to business. “How long your assistant Mademoiselle Moreau has been consort of Thierry Colin?”

“Consort?” Turner’s heartbeat took off on him, just up and away.

“Mistress, girlfriend, fuck.” Sergei appeared angry. “What is wrong, please, with
consort?”

“Nothing. I just didn’t—” And then he grew truly frightened. “Oh, no, that’s not right! Not at all! I would have known.”

“Too bad for you, this
is
right.” The Russian began to pace. “And they are together now, yes?”

“No! Impossible!” In his panic, Turner was trying to stand up while still handcuffed to the chair. It was made of oak and quite heavy. “They don’t even know each other!”

From the back of this strange space came the lush orchestral opening of an updated 1920s pop ballad. It stopped abruptly, and Volodya cursed.

Turner was struggling to throw his weight forward onto his feet when a
wonderful thought occurred to him. “Besides!” he told Sergei. “Thierry Colin was already delivered! To you! At that theater!” Emboldened by the beauty of his logic, he actually managed to stand, bent over beneath the chair’s weight, and walk a few steps toward Sergei. “On Friday, remember?”

The Russian turned and contemplated him without expression. “There was fuckup.” After seeming to think about it, he took a running step and kicked him full in the groin. Turner screamed, fell over sideways with the chair, and began retching onto the newspapers. “Now is good time to share,” Sergei suggested.

“But I don’t know where they are! I thought you had them! Had
him!
Colin!”

Sergei nodded unhappily. “Volodya!”

Turner’s thoughts began to coast, and he fainted.

When he came to, the chair, and he in it, had been hauled upright again. Music issued from large speakers—Sinéad O’Connor singing “You Do Something to Me”—and Volodya was affixing one of the ceiling hooks to the back of the chair.

“You are reader, Turner?” Sergei had pulled the easy chair into the center of the room and sat facing Turner, holding in his lap a slim book lavishly bound in leather. There was a glass of water on the floor beside him. “Pushkin, maybe?”

“Pushkin.” Turner was trying desperately to see over his shoulder. The hook, though blunt, was large, poking him in the back.

“This very beautiful edition of Pushkin, original Russian, we find in your assistant’s apartment,” Sergei continued. “The
Queen of Spades
. You are familiar?”

“No. I mean, yes, I knew she had it. A client gave it to her. But neither of us reads Russian.” Volodya, the hook in place, had again escaped Turner’s line of sight.

“Pity.” Sergei opened the book and at the same moment seemed to fall rapidly away, diminishing to barely half his previous size. To his intense dismay, Turner found himself suspended, still manacled to the chair, several feet off the floor. “Is famous book. Tchaikovsky made opera. You want to hear?”

The forward tilt of the chair, hanging nearly motionless from the ceiling, caused the handcuffs to dig hard into Turner’s wrists. “Anything!” he cried. “Please. Just let me down!” Volodya could be heard in back, rattling through hardware and cursing.

“Plot summary only,” said Sergei, “since you are non-Russian speaker.” He leafed through the book, then looked up pleasantly at Turner as if
happy to have his company. After a moment of comradely inspection, he returned to the text. “Okay. Ordinary guy, works hard, saves money, is good citizen like you. Then one day he hears about certain countess—ugly old whore with shitty temper, but also most desirable gift. She can predict, in game of faro, three consecutive cards dealer will lay down. Or so local gossip says.” He paused. “Tell me, you know that Thierry Colin is compulsive gambler?”

“No,” replied Turner. He yawned convulsively.

“So this bastard decides to find out countess’s secret. Charms her granddaughter, gets into house, hides in bedroom, and waits for this old bitch to get home from ball. She comes back, he shows himself. Too bad for him, she dies of fright without telling him secret. Nice touch, no?”

Turner wracked his brains for something he could say that would make this whole scene go away. Possibly it wasn’t real.

“Guy feels guilty, goes to countess funeral, despite deceiving granddaughter before, et cetera. But when praying over corpse, he is shocked: countess winks at him. Scared shitless, right? Yet that night he has dream in which countess tells him three cards to play: three, seven, ace. Just like that, one a night, then never again.”

Volodya reappeared carrying a red metal cylinder. The music was very loud.

“First night, guy bets on three and wins. Second night, he bets on seven and wins. Third night, puts all his winnings down on ace.”

There was a whoosh as Volodya got the nozzle at the end of the metal cylinder to ignite. A propane torch. Turner began to struggle wildly in his chair.

“Okay,” said Sergei, tossing the book to the floor, “story time over. Where we can find your assistant and Thierry Colin?”

Volodya tested the heat of the torch, holding one calloused hand a couple of feet from its jutting blue flame.

“I swear I don’t know! I didn’t even know they were together. Gabriella didn’t show up for work today, didn’t call in. I have no idea what to think.”

“What of Odile Mével?”

“Odile? She told me she saw you go into the theater where Thierry Colin was. She tracked him down for you! We thought you got him.”

Stepping forward, Volodya grabbed one of Turner’s flailing ankles, brought the torch slowly up under the sole of his foot, and held it there. Turner screamed. When Volodya let go of the ankle, he turned to Sergei and shrugged. “Could be he is a
little
ticklish, I think.”

From what seemed to Turner like another world, Sinéad O’Connor sang
on, her voice a miracle of insinuation.
“Do do that voodoo that you do so well.”

“You must understand, Turner,” said Sergei, “we no longer have time to fuck around. Serious people are missing things. Your assistant and Thierry Colin are both involved, maybe Odile Mével, maybe even you. We need to know what it is you know. Right now. Or you will not enjoy rest of afternoon, I promise.”

Turner’s foot hurt him very much. “But you know everything already! Everything!”

Wearily Sergei lifted a finger to Volodya, who came forward again with the blowtorch. At the sight of him, Turner struggled so violently in the chair that Volodya was forced to steady it with one hand while he brought the blowtorch up under the seat, directly beneath his testicles. The seat was sturdy oak and maybe two inches thick, but it began to smoke immediately.

“How long has Gabriella Moreau worked for you?” asked Sergei.

“Three years.”

“And she is often absent like today?”

“No, never!”

Sergei got to his feet and approached Turner, arms folded across his chest. “To your knowledge, please, she was acquainted with Thierry Colin before you hired him as courier?”

“No! I didn’t know she knew him
now
. I told you that.” The heat from the blowtorch was rapidly coming up through the chair seat. “Please.”

“What are habits of this girl?”

“Habits?”

“Drugs, sex clubs, expensive clothes? Or is good clean French girl who goes to visit mother on Sunday?”

“I don’t know! Both! Oh, God! Shit!” A column of intense heat was rising through the chair now, smoke curling up on either side of him, and he struggled to shift his body away from the advancing burn. The handcuffs cut into his wrists. He began to cry from fear.

“You are trying to save this girl’s ass, Turner?”

“No! I couldn’t!”

“Exactly. You couldn’t. But you could maybe make it your most urgent business to find her, yes? Between now and Thursday, maybe before auction?”

“Yes! Yes!” he shrieked as a searing burst of pain rose from his groin to inhabit every particle of his being. Tears streamed down his cheeks. “Please!”

Sergei appeared embarrassed. He put up a hand to Volodya, who lowered the blowtorch. Turner’s undershorts were on fire and he was screaming at a pitch that even the music couldn’t cover. Sergei took the glass of water from beside the easy chair, poured it over Turner’s crotch, and said, in a voice not devoid of sympathy, “You bring it on yourself, you know.”

Volodya lowered the chair to the floor. He unlocked the handcuffs, and Turner rolled away from the still-smoking chair. The two Russians began to talk, then argue, their voices inaudible over the music. Seeing a stack of cardboard boxes to his right, Turner dragged himself in that direction, thinking he could hide behind them and avoid further provoking his hosts. He was halfway there when, abruptly, consciousness deserted him.