Scott Mariani - House of War

Ben ruminated on his problem by brewing up another pot of Lavazza. In his experience, solutions often presented themselves just by virtue of drinking more coffee. There was no such thing as too much.

And experience proved right when, halfway through his second cup, the phone buzzed with Thierry’s number on the screen.

Ben answered, expecting to hear the forger’s familiar raspy, whispery tones. But it wasn’t Thierry calling. It was a woman, and she sounded pissed off. Even more so when she heard Ben’s voice.

She said, ‘Shit. I thought it was him.’

‘Thierry?’

‘You a friend of his? Because if you are, tell him Abby wants his fucking junk out of her fucking place, or she’s gonna torch the lot of it. Okay?’

Ben presumed he was talking to Abby. It sounded like Thierry’s life had gone through some changes since Ben had last been in touch. No girlfriend had ever been mentioned before.

Ben said, ‘You don’t know where he is?’

‘No, I fucking don’t know where he is. Who’re you, anyway?’

‘My name’s Ben. I need to find him.’

‘I get the picture. You’re one of them. Well, if you’re gonna fuck him over, just make sure he clears his junk out of my place first, okay? It’s so jam packed in here you can hardly fart.’

Abby was evidently a classy sort of gal. Ben asked, ‘Is Thierry in trouble?’

She paused. ‘Would you be asking me that if you were one of them?’

‘I’m not. Cross my heart and hope to die.’

‘Thierry is trouble,’ she sighed. ‘Story of my life.’

‘What happened?’

‘Same old, same old. Except this time he went too far. I told him, “Thierry, you get in debt to those people, you’ll regret it.” Did he listen to me? Did he ever?’

‘Who did he borrow from?’

Abby made a grumphing sound. ‘The kind of people who break your arms and fuck up your knees up with hammers, if you don’t pay them back pronto, with interest.’

‘How much does he owe?’

‘Enough to piss them off that he hasn’t repaid a cent of it.’

‘So now he’s hiding from them.’

She paused to take a noisy drag on a cigarette, then grumphed again. ‘Skipped out two weeks ago. Not heard from him since. So fucking typical, you know? That’s it this time. We’re finished. You tell him that, if you see him. And I want—’

‘His junk out of your place. I get that. Listen, Abby, I really do need to find him. Maybe I can help him.’

‘I don’t give a shit if you can help him or not. He’s got it coming.’ She sucked on the cigarette again, and seemed about to hang up the call. Then she blew out an exasperated sigh and said, ‘You could try that slimeball Pierrot. They hang out together. He might be lying low there. I don’t want to call, because Pierrot is such a creep. The way he pervs on me makes me want to fucking puke.’

She gave Ben an address for the creepy slimeball. He wrote it down, thanked her and promised to remind Thierry about the junk. She said, ‘Whatever,’ and hung up.

Ben slugged down the last of his coffee, grabbed his car keys, locked up the apartment and was on his way.

Paris is divided up into twenty arrondissements or municipal districts each with its own number, which to the casual visitor seem to be scattered randomly about the city but are actually arranged in a rather quirky helix pattern, spiralling out from the centre to form something like a snail shell within the rough circle of the Boulevard Périphérique, Paris’s ring road. The address that Thierry Chevrolet’s ex-girlfriend had given Ben was situated on the border of the tenth and nineteenth districts, where the helix unwound itself towards its outer edge in the north-east of the city, about one o’clock on the clock face of the circle.

Ben cut across the city in the Alpina and drank in the many changes since his last visit of any duration to the place. He hacked along Boulevard de la Chapelle, following the path of the raised viaduct Métro line, and reached the Place de la Bataille de Stalingrad, where Abby’s directions told him to head further north-east up Avenue de Flandre, parallel with the river. Everywhere beneath the Métro viaduct were migrant camps, spread out like a post-apocalyptic settlement of makeshift tents and shanty dwellings, with garbage choking the pavements, washing lines strung up between trees and signposts, bits of outdoor furniture scattered here and there. Hundreds of Afghans occupied one stretch near the Stalingrad Métro station; further up along the street were the Sudanese and the Somalis, the Eritreans and the Ethiopians, all clustered into their own separate camps. So much for multiculturalism. The scene was about as far from the picture-postcard tourist image of Paris as it was possible to get. The government could send in the troops to clear the place up, as it had done before and no doubt would do again, but the tents would soon return, over and over.

Welcome to the new Europe, Ben thought. These were problems that couldn’t easily be fixed, and he was glad that wasn’t his job.

Thierry Chevrolet seemed to have landed himself with a problem that wouldn’t easily be fixed, either. Ben didn’t know who he’d borrowed money from, or how much, or why, but it didn’t sound good. And if Thierry had been in hiding for two weeks already, there was a decent chance the bone-breakers might catch up with him any time. In which case the job Ben had come here to do might turn suddenly unpleasant, too.

The earlier sunshine had disappeared behind grey clouds. It began to rain as he headed up Avenue de Flandre, passing high-rises and shops, a lot of them with shuttered, grafitti’d windows. After a couple of blocks he spotted the side street where Thierry’s buddy Pierrot lived. He found a parking space for the Alpina and walked the rest of the way to Pierrot’s building, which made Romy Juneau’s place look like the Luxembourg Palace by comparison.

On his way Ben noticed the chunky black Audi SUV parked in front of the building, which looked much newer and shinier than most of the other cars along the kerbside, including his own. He didn’t think it belonged to Pierrot. This could be a bad sign.

He pushed inside the building, checked his notebook for Pierrot’s apartment number and climbed the dirty staircase checking doors as he went. Pierrot’s door was third on the right along a hallway on the second floor. Standing outside it was a definite confirmation of the bad sign parked in the street below.

The two very large men were leaning against the wall either side of the doorway, like two bouncers flanking a nightclub entrance. The one closest to Ben probably tipped the scales at about seventeen stones, which was three stones heavier than he was. From the guy’s shape, it looked like most of that bulk was lean muscle, cultivated through countless hours in the weights room. The one on the right was larger still, but he’d invested his time differently and was as fat and round as a baby orca. Both of them were standing to attention with their thick arms folded across their swollen chests. Both staring at Ben as he walked towards Pierrot’s door. Neither showing any degree of friendliness. They were white, with some kind of Mediterranean ethnicity like Greek or Armenian. Black hair razed to a stubble, dark trench coats, leather gloves, shiny shoes. They looked like a couple of extras auditioning for parts in a new Godfather movie. And their presence outside Pierrot’s door left Ben in little doubt that Thierry’s creditors had indeed already managed to track him down.