“Don’t they test for people like you anymore, Charles? I mean, when we signed on, the first thing they gave us was a test to see if we were ass-holes. In my generation.”
“Cold War’s over, boss. They’re putting the old assholes out to pasture, not hiring new ones.” The phone rang. It was Sam, back again for more punishment.
“Hey, bro.” They’d been in Cambodia together, in Laos. Paul Ward and Sam Mazur were allies of the blood and soul.
“Tell me something. Where’s a good place to get sick on the food in — where are we, again, Beck?”
“Montparnasse.”
“Montpissoir.”
“There’s thousands of restaurants out there.”
“Good.”
“Very.”
“Cheap.”
“Not very.”
“McDonald’s?” “What’re you doing in Montparnasse, anyway?”
“We’re billeted in one of the shitty little hotels.”
“God, you’re low. You’re so low that it worries me even talking to you. I have ambition. I want to be a big-timer back at Langley. Got my sights set on the Lesotho/Chad/Botswana desk. Can’t swing something like that if people realize I’m tangled up with a liability like you.”
“The French said Mrs. Tallman was believed to have taken a taxi into the city. They give you any details?”
“Well, actually, yes.”
Paul tried not to hope, but did.
“The taxi is believed to have been French.”
Had he not hated the vampires so much and been so obsessed with them, he would have been ready with a comeback. All he could do was plead. “I need French cooperation, Sam. You gotta get it.”
“Whatever this is, they think it’s some kind of crazy American bull-shit, or maybe we’re trying to make assholes outa them or whatever. What’s that noise, anyway?”
“The rain.”
“Really!”
“Really.”
“’Cause it’s beautiful here.”
“Oh, shut up. Something’s bothering me, and lemme tell you what it is.”
“I’m all ears.”
“Well, this should look to the French like an Interpol operation. So why are they being so damn shirty?”
“Because they know it isn’t.”
“And why would they know that?”
“Because Interpol told them.”
“Clever boys. Okay, Sam — and guys, both of you listen up. Because I do have a suggestion. I think that we ought to detail a fluent French speaker to liaise with the police on the pretext that we have a missing national —”
“All hell will break loose.”
“No, listen to me. Tell them it’s a matter of the heart. We just need to search around a bit — very discreetly — because this lady has run away from home, and it’s politically sensitive. The French will buy this. It’s the kind of thing they understand.”
“The French will buy. They will not understand. They’ll want the name, rank, and serial number; then they’ll tell you whether she’s d.o.a. or not. That’ll be the extent of their cooperation.”
“What we need — look, Charlie, quit fucking with that — what is that?”
“A cigarette maker I bought in Bangyercock. It’s neat.”
“Bangkok, you sexist bitch,” Becky said.
“Put the toy away. What we need — are you still there, Sam?”
“Patiently waiting.”
“What we need, and I am talking about right now, the next few minutes, is we need to find the vampires she has come to see. We’ve lost her. No description except what looked like a Chanel suit circa about 1975 and real blond hair that was probably a damn wig. With no cooperation from the locals, we gotta shift gears. We use the same basic technique we’ve been using since Tokyo.”
“Which is?”
“We cull police records for patterns of disappearance. My guess is that they’ll cluster around the lairs, just like everywhere else we’ve been. Here in Paris, we’ll be able to get good maps — sewer lines, wire conduits, building plans, drainage pipes, all of it. It’ll be easier than Singapore. A hell of a lot easier than Shanghai.”
“Boss?”
“Yeah, Beck?”
“Ask him, who keeps crime records here? Is there a missing persons bureau?”
Paul found a button on the phone next to a grill that was hidden on the side. When he pressed the button, he discovered that he had a decent speakerphone.
“Sam? You’re on speaker.”
“Hey.”
Becky asked her question again.
“Prefecture of Police, Hall of Records,” Sam replied. “There are going to be ordinary murders and disappearances mixed in,” he continued.
“Meaning?”
“You’re gonna have to read the description of each crime to find out if it started as a disappearance. You read French?”
“I read French,” Charlie said.
“Sam,” Becky asked, “when is a missing person declared dead in this country? If there’s no presumption of foul play, say.”
“Nine years.”
“Are those records held separately?”
“I don’t truthfully know. We’ll need to ask the French.”
“Shit,” Becky said carefully.
“What if we tell them it’s a historical survey,” Paul suggested. “Becky’s a student from Harvard. She’s got a powerful daddy, and the embassy’s been asked to help her do research for her thesis.”
“That’ll work,” Sam said. “I can have her in the Hall of Records within the week.”
“Tomorrow, Sam, first thing.”
“There’s bureaucracy, man. This is France.”
“Do it, Sam.”
“Is this stuff computerized?” Becky asked.
“You’ll be looking at everything from the best databases you ever saw in your life to big black books that weigh forty pounds and make you sneeze.” It was agreed that they’d meet at a bar called Le Lapin Robuste on Rue du Sommerard tomorrow at noon. By then Sam would know exactly how the records were organized. From there, they’d go to the Prefecture of Police, which was nearby, and see how far they could get.
As soon as the conference call ended, Charlie and Becky began looking through a Paris Zagat’s guide for a restaurant for dinner. Paul watched them. He felt once again the awful, frantic feeling that had been coming over him from time to time ever since he’d seen the grotesque remains of poor Kiew Narawat.
For a while, the knowledge that vampires were real had depressed the hell out of him. He’d tried to find some special meaning in the fact that it had happened to his father, but all he’d found was special hate.
There was something ghastly about discovering that you weren’t at the top of the food chain. It was like discovering that you had a hidden and fatal disease. You were left feeling horribly out of control. It entered your dreams . . . it was a cancer of the mind.
“Uncle Paul,” Becky said, “since there’s nothing we can do tonight, could me and Charlie please, oh please, take you out to some cheap-jack hole-in-the-wall for some onion soup and wine?” That snapped the twig that had been about to snap ever since he’d lost track of the damn vampire. He looked at them — two kids made arrogant by too many easy victories.
“Do you think we’ve won? Is that why you’re so damn smug, with your goddamn toys —” He swept the cigarette making machine out of Charlie’s hands. Charlie, who was wound tight by training and had a hair trigger, just barely managed to restrain himself, stopping his flying fist with a sudden jerk of effort. Paul looked at him. “Do it,” he said with an easy smile that he did not feel, “and I’ll lay you out.”
“Paul?”
“And as for you —” He grabbed her purse, which had been on the floor beside a chair. He held it up to the desk lamp. “What the fuck is this made out of?” He knew damn well. They all had this stuff — purses and wallets and belts, God only knew what else. The skin of the vampire was more delicate even
than calfskin . . . probably than human, for that matter.
He emptied the purse on the desk and stuffed the damn thing into the trash can. “If they saw this skin, God only knows what they’d do.”
“I’m not exactly planning to take it with me into some fucking lair. I’m not that stupid.”
“Don’t you understand? Even yet?” He looked from one surprised face to the other. “No. You don’t. So you listen up, children, and you listen close. Something has changed. Big time. We’ve been dealing with something that’s very old and very slow to react, and so far it’s been easy. Like killing big bugs. You surprised ’em all, didn’t you? Token resistance — gnashing teeth, hissing. It was fun! It got to be, anyway. The professionals. Fuck! Fuck us, we’re assholes.”
“Not me,” Charlie said. His face was burning up. His eyes were beads. He was not trained to take abuse, and he did not take it well.
“Not you, little boy. Little, innocent boy. Lemme see your wallet.”
“What the hell for?”
“Lemme see the goddamn thing!”
Charlie held it out. “They use human skin,” he muttered.
Paul emptied it and threw it away with the purse. “Belts, shoes, anything?”
“That stuff is valuable!”
“If they see you with their goddamn skins in your hands, they’re gonna know exactly who you are.”
“They are not going to see us.”
“Listen to me. One of them has gone up to the fifth floor of a hotel, killed one of your peers, and then flown from Bangkok to Paris on a god-for-damned airplane! I’ve seen it and it looked like some damn lady. Very human! So they don’t all spend all their time hiding in lairs, do they? We’re up against something new! Something we know not one damn thing about! They may be as old as damn Methuselah and they may be slow to respond, but they’ve taken a blow to the gut, and they are now responding! So you better watch your backs, because they are strong and they are smart and now they know!”
In the silence that followed, he became acutely aware of the humming of the little electric clock that stood on the table beside the bed. Charlie went to the window. Becky sat staring at her hands. Then she looked up. He saw tears gleaming in the edges of her eyes. He saw, also, that they were not tears of pain or embarrassment, but tears of rage. That was good. He liked that. Let her burn.
Dad was calling him from the back porch, “Paulie, Paulie let’s make ice cream!” Dad smelled of the raw earth that was his livelihood. He smelled of the leaves of summer.
After Dad had disappeared, Paulie had walked on his knees all the way down the pasture road to the river and all the way back. He had done that while begging God that if Dad was found, he would never stop praying forever.
Mom had worked the farm until her bones stuck out, and been scared all the time, because if she did not get her crop in, she said, this family was gonna hit the road. There was no bank in North Carolina, and probably not anywhere, that would give her a crop loan.
“What’re we supposed to do?” Becky asked.
“Your jobs!”
“I mean right now, Paul. Right this goddamn second, Paul! Because I don’t see one damn thing we can do. We got a vague description of a woman who apparently looks nothing — not one thing — like the creatures we’ve been killing. I mean, I wouldn’t make a damn handbag outa some lady. I saw little, shriveled monsters coated with dirt. I didn’t see anything that looked even remotely like a tall, blond woman.”
“We’ve known about these creatures for just a few years. They’ve been around for centuries and centuries. They’ve had a lotta time to think up a lotta things —”
“Not my point. My point is, you’re having a goddamn hissy fit because Charlie and I — who happen to have been risking our lives in a filthy, horrible, and completely thankless job for three hellish years — wanted to sneak a couple of hours of downtime when there wasn’t another goddamn thing we could do!” She folded her arms. “Explain yourself.”
“Simple. I’m a field supervisor and you’re not.”
“So, what do we do, boss? Right now?” Charlie was trying to put his smashed cigarette machine back together.
“Whatever you damn well please. Go to Tour d’Argent and blow a month’s pay. Moulin Rouge. The Slow Bar. Paint the goddamn town red, that’s what Paris is for.”
“I just want a good bouillabaisse.”
“I’d like a nice steak frites.”
Charlie and Becky went out into the rain. Paul listened to it hammering the damn skylight for about five minutes. And he began to think that maybe he should’ve gone with them. Maybe he could find a liquor store open somewhere; who the hell knew? He’d buy himself a quart of Stoli and toast himself into a stupor. Do him a world of good to wake up tomorrow with a hangover.
He went down in the tiny elevator, jammed his hat over his head, and set out into what might as well become an all night bar crawl. Maybe he’d even break up the tedium with a few fights. He loved to use his fists, always had. Just loved it. Probably be pretty easy to pick a fight with a frog. Hopefully, he’d find somebody with good enough moves to make it fun. Guys who liked to fight, they could spot each other in a bar. There were signals — some heavyset asshole glares at you for no damn reason, that’s an invitation. Practiced bar fighters lived in their own secret world, and he was very much part of it. Nothing like beating the shit out of each other to make a couple of guys friends for life.
He set out along the Boulevard Montparnasse. There were lots of theaters, more than he remembered from when he was last here. Too bad it was night; he could have slipped over to the Orangerie and seen some fuckin’ Monets.
Maybe the thing to do was go to a movie and brush up on his French. But there were also lots of bars. He went into one. Fulla damn tourists, wouldn’t you know. Nervous Arabs sipping glasses of wine; Americans loudly demanding martinis.
There were a few Frenchies at the bar huddling over drinks or coffee. He slid up and managed, with some effort, to get a Stoli.
It was small and overpriced, but it worked okay, so he ordered another. He wondered if the whores around here were as overpriced as the liquor. He’d been spoiled by the Asians, who worked their asses off for a few bucks, massaging, blowing, sucking, fucking, combing, tickling, licking, and then handing you off to the social director for another round with a fresh face.
He said to nobody in particular, “You know why the predator is always smarter than the prey?” Nobody answered.
“He has to be. The prey lives by work — crop the grass, till the field, whatever. The predator lives by his wits. That’s why the gazelle hardly ever sees the lion. It’s why the damn deer doesn’t see us.” He paused, then raised his glass. The barkeep did him. He knocked it back.
He’d come in here to fight, let’s face it. But he was damn forty-eight years old; what was he gonna do? Also, you couldn’t insult people who didn’t understand your goddamn lingo.
He left. Rain hit him in the face. Striding along, he wished to God he had something to do that mattered. Why hadn’t anybody taken a picture of the woman? Why hadn’t they confiscated the damn passport? You couldn’t even dragnet for her!
He was going so fast that he was practically running. The rain came down in sheets, in torrents. He watched the droplets sailing through the streetlights out of a low, rushing sky. He realized that he was running because he was scared. How must it feel to be eaten alive that way? They were parasites. Big, filthy suckerfish.
How the fuck had she eluded them? You don’t sneak past customs when they have you caught. You can’t! But she had.
Intelligence, of course. She was brilliant, obviously. So what did that mean? How many steps ahead was she? Ten? Fifty? A thousand? “Goddamnit!”
Then he thought, what if she knows about me? He couldn’t see how, but he didn’t have any two hundred and fifty IQ, either. She could be three feet away right now and he would have no way of knowing.
He found a little shop where they ha
d some wine stuck in the window along with the displays of Orange Crush and Evian water. There was what looked like it might be a nice muscatel for about nine bucks. He shelled out and took it home under his arm.
Back in the hotel, he realized that he had no corkscrew. So he busted the neck and lay back on the bed drinking out of the jagged hole and staring up at the office building. All those dark windows and not a single human figure anywhere.
It wasn’t muscatel, not by a long shot, but the wine did him okay, especially on top of the vodka. Maybe toward dawn he slept, and maybe not.
He awoke to gray, sad light and music coming up from the street — some kind of wild Arabic tune. The office building towered like a monster ghost above his skylight. He got up, wanted a cigarette, and went through the goddamn motions with the goddamn gum. He chewed it brutally, stuffed in another piece, and bore down until his jaws hummed.
He’d been rough on the kids last night. But that was nothing new. They’d gotten their frogs’ legs anyway. Thing was, he loved his kids. He wanted them to get their fucking frogs’ legs whenever they could.
The phone went brrt-brrt brrt-brrt. Neat sound, he thought.
“Yeah?”
“We got three places, boss. Three arrondissements.”
“Beck?”
“Yeah, boss.”
“Where are you?”
“Prefecture of Police Department of Records.”
“Am I wrong, or is it six-fifteen in the morning?”
“Shit, they’re gonna be opening this place up in an hour. We gotta get moving.”
“But how the hell did you get in there? That’s what I want to know.”
“They got a lotta skylights in this town.”
SIX
Martin Soule
Miriam had done her screaming and her weeping, and now sat in a little café seeking with increasing urgency for a victim for Martin. She had called Sarah again and again, and still had not gotten an answer. But she could not let this problem, as disturbing as it was becoming, intrude on her urgent mission. She did not know exactly what had happened to Martin, except that he was starving, and it was the most horrible thing she had ever seen.