Don Winslow - Satori

HAVERFORD SQUATTED beside the surviving attacker, put a cigarette in his mouth, and lit it for him. “You speak French?”

The terrified man nodded.

“Good,” Haverford said. “Look, here’s the thing, mon ami, I can pull you out of the shit you’re in – I have no hard feelings, I know it was only business, yes? Or I can just walk away let these Binh Xuyen boys have you. It’s your choice.”

“What do I have to do?”

“You don’t have to do anything,” Haverford said. “Just tell me something.”

“What?”

“Who paid you?” Haverford asked.

“The Corsicans,” the man rasped.

“Who?” Haverford asked again, because this was a surprise.

“La Corse,” the man said.

“I HAVE PUT MY LIFE in your hands,” Nicholai said as he set De Lhandes down.

He knew it was gross and offensive to have lifted the dwarf off his feet that way, but there was no choice.

“By the chancred twat of a Marseille whore…”

“Many people,” Nicholai said, “would pay a good price to learn my whereabouts.”

“That is true,” De Lhandes sputtered, still angry at the rough handling. “Why have you, then, put your life in my hands?”

“I need a useful ally that I can trust,” Nicholai answered.

“I agree that I am useful,” De Lhandes replied, “extraordinarily so, in fact. But why do you think you can trust me?”

Nicholai knew that everything depended on his answer, so he thought carefully before he spoke. Finally he said, “You and I are the same.”

De Lhandes looked up at the tall, broad-shouldered, handsome man, and Nicholai saw his spine stiffen. “I hardly think so.”

“Then think further,” Nicholai replied. Having started this, he couldn’t go back. Both his life and De Lhandes’s were on the line, because the dwarf would leave here an ally or not at all. Nicholai would have to either befriend him or kill him. “Look beyond the obvious differences and you will see that we are both outsiders.”

Nicholai saw this catch De Lhandes’s imagination, so he continued, “I am a Westerner raised in the East, and in the West you are…”

He knew he had to choose his words carefully, but then De Lhandes finished the thought for him. “A small, ugly man in a world of large, beautiful people.”

“We are both forever on the outside looking in,” Nicholai said. “So we can either stand on the periphery of their world, always looking in, or we can create our own.”

“Create our own world?” De Lhandes scoffed.

But Nicholai could see that he was intrigued. “Of course, if you’re happy with the one you currently have, if you are content with the odd turn with a high-class whore, or the occasional fine meal tossed to you like a bone to a dog, very well. But I’m talking about becoming rich, the sort of wealth that allows you to live a dignified life with, how shall I put it, quality.”

“How?” De Lhandes asked.

“It’s risky.”

“What have I to lose?”

Nothing, Nicholai thought. But I have everything to lose, including my life. If I let you walk away from here and am mistaken in you, then I am a dead man. But it’s too late for second thoughts now. He said, “I need you to do something.”

He gave Voroshenin’s papers to De Lhandes and asked him to contact Solange.

BERNARD DE LHANDES LEFT the brothel and hailed a cyclo-pousse to take him back to the city.

By the bloated buttocks of a bishop, it was a difficult choice.

Guibert’s whereabouts would be worth a Sri Lankan girl, perhaps even a woman from the Seychelles, renowned for their abilities and sexual secrets, and a dinner, with wine, at Le Perroquet. His mouth watered at the memory of the wine list that the sommelier had let him peruse that once.

Magnificent.

Of course, one would have to be alive to enjoy it, and from the look on Guibert’s face, that seemed far less than a certainty. All of Saigon was jabbering about his escape from the assassins and how he had left several dead on the street.

This was not a man to betray.

Still, he thought, if you broker this particular piece of information, you needn’t worry about his revenge. The question, really, is who to approach, and that really depends on who had made the futile attempt.

Oh, the rumors abounded.

Some had it that Bao Dai himself had ordered the assassination in retribution for Guibert’s win at the gaming table; better yet, others said that Guibert had succeeded in breaching the long white thighs of the emperor’s mistress and the attack was Bao Dai’s attempt to remove the horns from his head.

By the absent arms of the Venus de Milo, it would have been worth dying to sample the charms of La Solange.

He returned his thoughts to business. If he were to sell Gui-bert’s location, to whom would it be? Anyone would pay good money, knowing that they could resell the information to the highest bidder. But why should I sell wholesale, when retail would be so much more lucrative? In that sense, Guibert was right. Why should I settle for the crumbs off the table?

He sat back and thought it over.

The cyclo-pousse puttered across the bridge back into Saigon.

ANTONUCCI WATCHED the blonde woman sit on the stool and hook her stockings to her garter belt.

It almost made him hard again.

But he was sated.

The girl had indeed played a good saxophone, then he had bent her over the desk and had his way with her, and now she knew who was boss and didn’t feel neglected. Waiting for her to finish dressing and leave, he locked up the office and went out the back way.

Antonucci didn’t hear the man.

He did feel the pistol, pressed hard against his back.

“How are the kidneys, old man?” the voice asked in French with a heavily American accent. “You still piss okay? How would they feel if I pulled this trigger?”

“You don’t know who you’re playing with, minet ,” Antonucci growled. “I eat punks like you for lunch.”

The pistol butt came down hard on his back and doubled him over. Then the man pushed him hard into the wall, spun him around, and stuck the pistol barrel in his face.

“Why?” Haverford asked.

“Why what?”

“Why the hit on me?” Haverford pressed. “Was it your idea or did someone come to you?”

Antonucci spat on the ground. “You’re a dead man.”

“Maybe,” Haverford said. “But not before you.”

He pulled the hammer back.

Antonucci looked into his eyes and saw that he meant it. Who cared, anyway, what les amerloques did to each other? An oath of secrecy to another Corsican? He would die for that. To these people, forget it. And he took some pleasure in answering, “One of your own people.”

Haverford knew the answer before he asked the question. “Which one of my own people?”

“He used the name Gold.”

Diamond, thought Haverford, is a congenital dolt. “And what did ‘Gold’ tell you?”

“He said you were going to interfere with our business.”

“Your dope business.”

“Of course.”

Antonucci enjoyed the look of consternation on the American’s face. He laughed and said, “Don’t you get it, mimi? Your man Gold has a piece. Every kilo of heroin that goes into New York, he gets his taste.”

Haverford felt a cold rage come over him.

“The Guibert contract,” he said. “Cancel it. Stop it.”

“Too late.”

“What do you mean?”

Antonucci lifted his hand and wiggled it in a waving motion. “The Cobra,” he said, “is already loose.”

SOLANGE SAT on a stool in front of the mirror and carefully applied her eyeliner.