I took a few turns, methodically checking out the area for people sitting in cars or lurking in shadows before parking outside Eddie Leclerc’s.
I moved into an alleyway behind the store and waited to see if anyone was following me up the hill. I just stood as if I were taking a piss between two large Dumpsters full of cardboard boxes, and let ten minutes go by.
I could still hear vehicles on the main drag as I walked up the hill, but at this time of night it was no longer a constant drone. Otherwise, there was just the occasional burst of music from a TV, or a dog barking.
There were lights on in a couple of the apartments on Greaseball’s floor. I checked traser. I was a couple of minutes early, but it didn’t really matter. I hit the bell with the cuff of my sweatshirt over my thumb. I heard crackling, and a rather breathless “Hello, hello?”
I moved my face nearer the small grille and said, “It’s me, it’s eleven.”
There was a buzz at the door. I pushed it open with my foot, then pressed the intercom again. The door buzzed once more and the intercom crackled again. “Push the door,” he said.
I gave the handle a rattle, but didn’t move. “Nothing’s happening. Come down, I’ll wait here.”
There was a moment’s hesitation, then, “Oh, okay.”
I slipped into the hallway and closed the door gently behind me, then moved to the side of the elevator, by the door to the stairs, and drew down the Browning, making myself feel better by checking chamber before packing it back into my jeans.
The elevator rattled its way up the shaft. I eased open the door to the stairs and hit the light switch with my elbow, just in case he had friends waiting to move in behind me once I’d gotten up to the apartment.
The stairwell was empty. I closed the door as the light went out and waited where I was for the elevator to come back down. It stopped and Greaseball walked out, expecting me to be at the front door. There were no keys in his hand. How did he plan to get back into his apartment?
I drew down in preparation, and whispered, “I’m here.”
Greaseball spun around. He could see the weapon down at my side and his eyes flickered in alarm.
I said, “Where are your keys?”
He looked confused for a second, then smiled. “My door is open. I rushed down to meet you.” He looked and sounded genuine enough.
“Is anyone with you?”
“No, non.” He gestured. “You can see.”
“No. Is there anyone with you upstairs?”
“I am alone.”
“Okay, let’s go.” I ushered him into the elevator and, just as before, stood behind him in a cloud of aftershave and alcohol. He was dressed as he had been earlier in the day, except for the pashmina, and still had his leather jacket on. He wiped his mouth nervously. “I have the — I have the—”
“Stop. Wait until we get inside.”
The elevator stopped and I moved him out. “Off you go. You know what to do.” He headed for apartment 49, with me three paces behind, the weapon held alongside my thigh.
Chapter 20
He hadn’t lied: the door was still open. I touched him gently with the pistol on the side of his arm. “In you go, and leave this as it is.” He did as he was told, and even opened the door that led into the bathroom and the bedroom, to prove the place was deserted.
I stepped inside and it was immediately obvious that the magic cleaning fairy hadn’t paid any surprise visits since this morning. I turned the light off above me with the Browning’s muzzle, then pushed down the button that released the deadbolt so I could close the door with my heel. I raised the Browning, ready to go into the room.
The moment the door was shut, I reactivated the deadlock. I didn’t want anyone making entry with a key while I was clearing the apartment.
He was standing by the table. “I have the addresses….” He had to force his hand into his jeans, which were straining to hold in his gut.
“Turn the light out.”
He looked confused for a second, then understood. He reached for his Camels before moving to the switch; then we were plunged into darkness. A streetlight across the road glowed against the old man’s garden wall. Greaseball was nervous; the lighter wouldn’t keep still as he tried to direct the flame toward the tip of his cigarette. The shadows that flickered across his face made him look even more like something out of the Hammer House of Horror than he normally did.
I didn’t want the darkness for dramatic effect. I just didn’t want anyone to see a silhouette waving a pistol about through the net curtains.
“Now close the blinds on these balcony windows.”
I followed the red glow in his mouth as he pulled down on the canvas strap that controlled the wooden roller blinds, and began to lower them. “I really do have—”
“Wait, wait.”
Once the blinds were down I watched the glow of ash move back toward the couch, and listened to him wheezing as he tried to breathe through his nose with a mouth full of cigarette. He knocked into the table and I waited for the sound of him sitting down.
“You can turn the light back on now.”
He got up and walked past me to hit the switch.
I started to clear the apartment, with him in front of me as before. I glanced at the wall unit for another look at Curly. The Polaroids weren’t there. A dog barked its head off on the balcony above us as we entered the bedroom. It looked as if he had decided against tennis, after all. The bags, along with the syringes, had gone from under the bed. The apartment was clear: there was no one here but us.
As I moved toward the living room, I pushed the Browning back into my jeans and stood by the door. He collapsed back onto the couch, flicking his ash at an already full plate.
“You have the addresses?”
He nodded, pushing himself to the edge of his seat and reaching over the coffee table for his pen. “The boat, it will be at Pier Nine, berth forty-seven. I’ll write it all down for you. I was right. There are three collections, starting Friday in Monaco—”
I lifted my hand. “Stop. You’ve got the addresses in your pocket?”
“Yes, but — but…the ink’s bad. I’ll write them again for you.”
“No. Just show me what you’ve got in your pocket.” His excuse sounded too apologetic to be true.
He managed to squeeze his hand back into his jeans, and produced a sheet of lined paper that had been torn from a notebook and folded three or four times. “Here.” He leaned toward me with the sheet in his hand, but I pointed at the table. “Just open it up so I can read it.”
He laid it down on top of yesterday’s Nice Matin, and turned it around toward me. It wasn’t his writing, unless he’d been to neat lessons since this morning. This was very even and upright, the sort that girls in my grammar school used to practice for hours. And it belonged to a Brit or an American. The first address contained the number 617; the one didn’t look like a seven, and the seven didn’t have a stroke through it.
Monaco was marked “Fri.” Nice marked “Sat.” Here in Cannes was labeled “Sun.” “Who gave you these?”
He shrugged, visibly annoyed with himself, and probably shaken because he knew he’d messed up when he panicked at the beginning and got too eager to give me the addresses so I would go away. “No one, it’s my—”
“This isn’t your handwriting. Who gave it to you?”
“I cannot…I would be—”
“All right, all right, I don’t want to know. Who cares?” I did, really, but there were more important things to worry about right now and, besides, I thought I already knew. “Do you know the names of the collectors — or the hawallada?”
