The Bookseller (17 page)

 

 

It was dark by the time Hugo left the embassy, an afternoon killed off in his office doing some reading, some administration, and a lot of nothing. He'd wanted to spend a few hours with Tom at home or a café somewhere, but a short phone conversation with his friend had put paid to that idea.

“Sorry, got plans.”

“Writing me a memo on your homework?”

“Nope, seeing a man about a horse.”

“And I thought you'd come to Paris to see me.”

“Don't be such a baby. Where do you think I'm getting your info?”

“No idea, Tom, you haven't given me any answers.”

“Over dinner?”

“I'm seeing Claudia, but join us. I'd like you to meet her.”

“Shit, she doesn't have any answers.”

“True, but she has several things you don't. Can we talk later?”

“You mean if you don't get lucky and bring her home?”

“Funny. And I think we need to take a trip down to the Pyrénées tomorrow, see a woman about a horse. A horse's ass, to be precise.”

“Hmm.” There was a pause. “OK. Well, in that case I need to be done with this project tonight, which means I won't be home before bedtime. You kids have fun.”

Hugo paused briefly on Pont Neuf, staring into the black ribbon of the Seine, then continued through the narrow streets of the Sixth for his rendezvous with Claudia. Another cold walk, somehow made colder by the stark glare of the Christmas lights that hung like icicles from the city's buildings and trees.

He arrived at the intersection before she did and chose the emptier of the two cafés. He found an outside table warmed by one of the nearby heating lamps. He'd noticed that this and other Parisian cafés had started putting up plastic walls at the sides and front to keep their clientele warm in the evenings. He wasn't in the mood to wait for Claudia before ordering, and was halfway through a scotch when he spotted her walking down Rue Mazarine toward him. He stood and waved, and she waved back.

She slid behind the little table, sitting next to him rather than across, giving him a peck on each cheek. “I like to watch the evening unfold, too,” she said, nodding toward the street.

“I never met a journalist or a cop who liked having his, or her, back to the open,” Hugo said. He caught the eye of a waiter and Claudia ordered wine. “I had the pleasure of your father's company this afternoon.”

“Oh? How did that happen?” Her eyes twinkled with mischief for a second. “Was he the mysterious man following you?”

“No,” Hugo smiled, “I'm sure he doesn't do that sort of thing himself. I saw him at the embassy. I didn't realize he was in thick with the SBP.”

“The who?”

“Syndicat des Bouquinistes de Paris.”

“Oh,” she said, “I didn't know that either.”

“Really?” Hugo sipped his drink.

She looked askance at him. “Really,” she said. “So why was he at the embassy?”

“Apparently he doesn't like me poking around asking questions about Max. It upsets the bouquinistes, he says, and that's bad for business.”

She sighed. “He has a lot of fingers in a lot of pies, so this doesn't surprise me. Are you going to back off ? I assume that's what he wants.”

“It is. And no, I'm not. Does he know you looked into this for me?”

“No, I don't usually talk about my work with him. He's happy when he sees my name in the paper, but that's usually all he knows about what I do.”

They sat in silence for a moment, then the waiter swung past with a small bowl of olives. “So, tell me about your work. This new department or division you were trying to get a story about, how's that going?”

“Good, actually.” She nodded thoughtfully. “They don't usually encourage journalists to get involved, or know too much, but I've been around for a while and I think they trust me. Plus, the fight against drugs usually involves a public relations campaign so I'm sure they plan to use me, too. In fact, I told a couple of people that I'd met an American cop, and they may even be needing your help at some point.”

“Oh?”

“
Oui
,” she said, “in an advisory capacity. In the last year or so we've seen a flood of drugs into Paris, two in particular: crack cocaine and meth.”

“Drugs for the user on a lower budget,” Hugo said.

“Yes. And no offense, but we think of them as American drugs.”

He smiled. “Thank heavens for Hollywood.”

“Right. The police know, or suspect, that the meth is being manufactured here. The crack, too, in that it comes into Paris as cocaine and then gets altered here. All of the shipments that they've intercepted so far, and there have been quite a few, have been pure cocaine. Too high in quality to go out on the streets.”

“So what is this new task force supposed to do?”

“Well, in the past they've not had much luck stopping the stuff getting into the city. There are just too many access points. Roads, rail, even the river. For them to monitor or control all of those would bring commerce and tourism to a standstill, it's just not possible.” Claudia sipped her wine. “Plus, they figure that if the bad guys are smart enough to get it across the borders, they can get it into Paris.”

“And if it's getting manufactured here, closing down routes into the city wouldn't help anyway.”

“Exactly.” She nodded.

“So the cops are concentrating on finding out where the stuff is being made?”

“Indirectly, yes,” she said. “The plan is to target drug distribution within the city.”

“I don't know if that's a good idea.” Hugo shook his head. “I'm guessing they'll just end up with a bunch of junkies and maybe some low-level dealers. We tried that approach in the United States, I worked on a few task forces myself, and all it did was fill up the jails. The big fish kept swimming.”

“That's because it's all you did. And they're going to do things a little differently.”

“How so?”

“They don't plan to take the users and small-time dealers off the street, they plan to use them to follow the flow of drugs upstream.”

“I've been arguing for that approach for years,” Hugo said. “It takes a lot of manpower and money though.”

“I imagine that's where I come in. If the public cares enough, the police will have their money. For a while, anyway.”

“Makes sense. And the other thing for this to work: the cops will have to make sure those street dealers are more scared of them than they are of the people they buy from.”

“Now that could be a problem.”

Hugo read something in her face. “What do you mean?”

“Have you heard of Anton Dobrescu? Is that name familiar?”

Hugo thought. “Maybe from the news, but I don't remember…”

“Romanian,” she said. “Looked like Rasputin, all hair and wild eyes. He was one of the most dangerous drug dealers in Bucharest and Timisoara, where he made a fortune before moving his operation to France once the borders opened up. He set up in Paris and was the head of an especially violent organized crime group.”

“He's running the drugs?”

“No, he's dead. Killed quite nastily by the other organized crime group in Paris, the North Africans. Algerians, mostly, they call themselves Les Pieds-Noirs.”

“The Black Feet? Never heard of them.”

“I'm not surprised, they're generally pretty quiet. The name refers to the French and other Europeans who settled in Algeria, I guess they all wore black shoes. Anyway, they were happy enough to divide up
Paris and share the proceeds for a while, but Dobrescu got greedy. He started putting his dealers in the French mob's territory. And he killed people he shouldn't have.”

“North African mobsters?”

“No, cops. Like I said, his people had a kind of alliance with Les Pieds-Noirs, and mob violence was down for a while. But when he started encroaching on their turf and killing cops,” she shook her head. “Everyone knows you don't do that. Ever. Except Dobrescu, who either didn't know or didn't care. Anyway, I think that once he started down that path, Les Pieds-Noirs figured he was threatening their entire way of life and they decided to hit him once, and hard.”

“There was a fire, right?” He remembered the headlines now. “The papers never really said what happened. Not in any detail.”

“Right, that's because the police and media weren't sure ourselves, not at first. We had to piece it all together afterwards, and that wasn't easy after a fire like that. Plus the authorities were pretty tight-lipped.”

“So what do you think happened?” he asked.

“As best we could tell, Les Pieds-Noirs took a handful of Dobrescu's men hostage and somehow got Dobrescu himself. From the positions of the bodies, and their condition, it looked like the North Africans cut up the Romanians. Possibly while Dobrescu was made to watch, but we can't be sure about that. There were reports of a gun fight before the house went up in flames, and there were several Romanians who were shot and not cut up, so we think his men figured out where they were being held and launched a rescue mission.”

“You keep saying cut up, do you mean…?”

“Literally, chopped up. Years before, a member of Les Pieds-Noirs, an informer, turned up in a barrel floating down the Seine. Arms, hands, legs, and feet, all chopped off. We, and the police, wondered then whether it was a play on the name ‘Pieds-Noirs.' Anyway, generally they were not violent, not on a day-to-day basis.”

“Just don't piss them off, I guess.” Hugo took a sip of his scotch. “You were saying, the rescue mission,” he prompted.

“Yes. Big gunfight and someone started a fire. By the time the cops
sorted through the evidence the place was a charnel house, bodies and bits of bodies scattered everywhere, almost all burnt beyond recognition.”

“But the cops identified Dobrescu?”

“They did. They identified him and several of his top lieutenants through DNA and dental records, no doubt about it. Anyway, the Romanians disappeared entirely, which I'm sure was the point of that little exhibition.”

“And with Dobrescu gone, no one to lead a comeback.”

“Right. So, the bottom line is that the police have a good handle on who's running things in Paris now, but proving it is the problem. After that little massacre, and the previous instance of chopping hands and feet, people are afraid to cross them.”

“I'm sure,” said Hugo. “And if the cops have no rival gangsters to use, they will have to start from the bottom and build a case upwards, man by man. And you want to be in on the story from the beginning.”

“
Exactement
,” Claudia said. She picked up a menu. “But enough about drugs and murder. I'm hungry. Share a pizza with me?”

“Is that your way of saying you want to stay a while and talk about us?”

“It's my way of saying I want to stay a while and eat.”

“Then yes.”

“Excellent, I'll choose.” She hummed quietly as she picked out two pizzas for them to share, and when the waiter arrived, ordered them and a carafe of red wine. They sat in silence for a while, watching the evening parade. The café across the street filled and emptied rhythmically, just as theirs did, as office workers dodged traffic on the narrow but busy street, fresh baguettes sticking out of backpacks and shoulder bags. Many of those who passed the café peered into it with a look that said,
I'd be there, too, if I had time
.

“Oh, Hugo,” Claudia said. “I completely forgot to tell you.” She paused as the waiter arrived with their pizzas. It took some rearranging, but he managed to find space on the little table for them, and for the plates and wine. When he left she continued. “I can't believe I forgot.”

“Forgot what?” he said.

“The river police pulled a body from the water today. A bouquiniste.”

“Really?” A knot formed in his stomach, but if it was Max she wouldn't be telling him like this. “Who? What happened?”

“Right now they're treating it as an accident. They say she's pretty well known as a drinker, so she probably had a few too many trying to stay warm, took a turn by the water's edge, and fell in.”

“She?” Hugo felt the knot tighten. “An alcoholic?”

“Yes,” Claudia said. “And wearing a lot of very heavy wool clothing, so once she fell in it would have been hard for her to stay afloat, let alone climb out. Very sad.”

Hugo sat back. “Do you know her name?” he asked quietly.

“No.” She shook her head. “They told me but I can't remember, sorry.”

“Was it Francoise Benoit?”

“Yes, that's it,” Claudia said, surprised. “You know her?”

“Yes,” said Hugo. “I sure did.”

She was the first one to be honest with me, he wanted to say. She was the only one who cared enough about Max to speak up and send me in the right direction. He recalled Benoit's mottled face, watery eyes, and too-sweet breath.
She may not have been healthy, may not even have been long for the world, but this wasn't supposed to happen
, Hugo thought. And with a stab of regret he realized that if, somehow, Max was still alive, when he found out about Francoise Benoit's death the old man would be devastated.