Dance of the Angels (12 page)

Nikita followed the sign to La Fourchette d’Or, shifting into first to drive through the gate of the three-star restaurant. Strange. There was nobody in sight. The restaurant looked deserted. Everyone should have been busy getting ready for the dinner rush at this time of day. The Toyota came to a halt in the empty parking lot.

“That bitch tricked me.”

From his hiding place, Bruno kept his eyes on their “guest.” But his instructions were to let the visitor enter the house.

Sawn-off shotgun in hand and a grenade in each pocket, Hervet’s henchman walked toward the front steps, ready to blast anything that moved. Nikita advanced cautiously, his finger on the trigger. The door opened smoothly. He instinctively flattened himself against the wall and scrutinized the dimly lit dining room.

“Freeze, Nikita!” came Tavernier’s voice from behind.

Nikita spun around and blasted both barrels of the shotgun. Tavernier didn’t have time to take cover and felt the slugs whiz past his face and heard them bury themselves in the wall, showering him in a white cloud of plaster dust and shards of glass from the mirror.

Manotti, followed by his eldest son, rushed into the dining room to back up the commissioner. Vincent jumped on Nikita just when he was reloading his gun and bludgeoned his face with a truncheon. Stunned, Nikita had no time to respond. Vincent immediately pinned his arms, while Tavernier handcuffed him.

“I’ve got some bad news for you,” said Le Goënec as he approached Nikita from out of the shadows. “The girl you grilled is still alive.”

“Take him to the outbuilding,” ordered Manotti. “Let’s see how big his balls are.”

“But we should be the ones to grill him, boss,” Le Goënec said to Tavernier. “This is our investigation.”

“Let Manotti do his work. There’s no subtlety between gangsters. We can be sure he’ll spill the beans.”

“Don’t worry,” said Manotti. “We’ll give him back to you in one piece, as meek as a little lamb.”

Vincent and Manu took Nikita to the outbuilding at the bottom of the garden. A home improvement heaven, the place was cluttered with all kinds of tools, from pincers to hammers, saws to electric planes. In no time at all, Nikita was trussed up on a garden chair. The cord was so tight it cut into his wrists. Manu splashed a bucket of cold water in his face to bring him to. The killer coughed and sputtered like a man with bronchitis.

“Who do you work for?” asked Manu in a sinister voice.

Inside the restaurant, Le Goënec and Tavernier paused their conversation as a scream made their blood run cold.

“Cheers,” Bruno simply said, serving his guests a martini.

Nikita was in agony, but he was determined not to talk. It was unthinkable for his brother to have died for nothing. The hand weighted with a huge signet ring smashed relentlessly into every sensitive part of his face, which was soon no more than a raw wound.

“You see this?” Nikita contemplated the pruning shears that Vincent held up for him to see. “Who sent you?”

The killer remained silent.

“Maybe you do have some balls, but I guarantee you’ll talk!”

The young Manotti took Nikita’s right hand, slipped the forefinger into the shears, and neatly severed it, leaving just a bloody stump. Pain exploded in Nikita’s head. He screamed so loud it shook the hut’s wooden sides. He convulsed, as if they’d hooked him up to an electric chair.

“You’ll never play piano now,” the backyard surgeon said. “You still got nothing to tell me?”

“I work for myself. There’s nobody to rat out,” said Nikita, gasping.

Vincent burst out laughing, picked up a long, rusty screwdriver, and inserted it beneath Nikita’s left eye with no apparent emotion. Nikita made the mistake of turning his head too quickly. The long piece of metal went straight through the eye socket and deep into his brain. His body shook violently, then flopped still. The handle of the screwdriver protruded from his eye like some monstrous outgrowth.

“Shit,” said Vincent. “He shouldn’t have moved, the idiot!”

The door opened, the screams having roused the two cops and the rest of the family. Little Gold Hands saw immediately what had occurred. Mistakes were never acceptable in his eyes. Even less so when it was one of his sons.

“That shouldn’t have happened,” said Vincent, as pale as a sheet. “The bastard slipped.”

Le Goënec was already searching the dead man’s pockets, looking for the slightest clue.

“I think the twin will still be of use to us,” said Tavernier, hiding his dismay.

“How so?”

“We’ll dump his body in a parking lot off the Champs-Élysées. Then we’ll ring Europe 1, RTL, and the rest of the media circus. Hervet will understand.”

Le Goënec found nothing on the body.

“Go search the car, son,” Tavernier said.

Before leaving the hut, Le Goënec’s gaze met the dead stare of Nikita. His one intact eye was frozen in indescribable terror.

It is well known that twins can never stay apart for very long.

C
HAPTER
XIV

Tavernier braked to a halt in front of the apparently uninhabited house. When searching the 4x4, Le Goënec had come upon an envelope from Romania on which he could make out Nikita’s name, as well as his address. Trusting his instinct, Le Goënec had directed the commissioner to drive to Saint-Brice.

The house was an appalling mess.
He wasn’t a fan of house cleaning, either,
Le Goënec thought to himself, running a finger over a shelf covered in a fine layer of gray dust. Not everyone was fortunate enough to have a Madam Marthe at home.

“Looks like Blondie had been leading an eventful life,” said Tavernier ironically.

“If only you knew how right you are, boss.”

Le Goënec had just noticed a reddish stain near the sofa bed that spread across the parquet floor. He knelt down to examine it, and as he did so he noticed a scarf rolled into a ball. It was definitely Martin Boudon’s. Le Goënec had a sufficiently keen eye to remember that kind of detail.

“Look at that,” he said, pointing at the scarf. “Boudon must have told Malet about my visit before he died. Then the information got back to Hervet. The ballet teacher was becoming too much of a risk. It doesn’t make our job any easier. We’re back to square one again.”

An unbearable smell filled the house, a mix of rancid cooking and death. Next to the bed there was a plate containing some leftover sauerkraut and tinned sausages and a nearly full pack of cookies. A few fitness magazines, with Schwarzenegger doubles on the cover, lay scattered about, along with bottles of antiseptic and bloodied gauze. Le Goënec opened the drawers and pulled out all the clothes, chucking them on the floor. Then he walked toward the study. The wardrobe door was locked. Le Goënec gave it a good kick, smashing the lock.

“Come see, boss. I think we’ve hit the jackpot!”

The two friends removed a stock of cartridges, jacketed rounds, and grenades from the cupboard. But that wasn’t the most interesting discovery. On the shelf above, they found a stack of porn mags. Tavernier leafed through one called
Sweet Baby
. The glossy pages depicted little boys and girls subjected to the sexual whims of a man and woman dressed as doctors. The man exhibited a member of quite impressive size. The woman playing the nurse, however, was past her prime. She posed salaciously throughout the pages as she introduced the children to some decidedly adult games. The photographs were of a rare lewdness, particularly the close-ups. Tavernier threw the pedophilic literature across the room in a rage.

“I don’t think we’ve seen it all,” said Le Goënec, pointing to a box containing around twenty identical videocassettes. The movie was called
Little Perverts
. “Our visit wasn’t entirely useless. I think we have some serious evidence here.”

“Come on. Let’s split, son. We’ve got nothing more to do here.”

As they crossed the living room, Le Goënec noticed the answering machine. The green light was still flashing. He rewound the tape a bit and pressed “Play.” The voice was instantly recognizable: Paul Hervet.

The two cops listened to each message patiently, trying to piece together the puzzle of events.

“Nikita’s codename was 021,” said Le Goënec. “You hear? It appears on all the messages.”

Both men jumped when they heard Hervet demanding their heads. It was no surprise, but hearing it like that, in Hervet’s own words, was enough to turn even the toughest guy cold. The police chief had clearly said he wanted both of them. Better dead than alive.

C
HAPTER
XV

The stands of Longchamp horse racing track were packed with serious gamblers hoarding worthless tips for the upcoming event. The excitement grew to a fever pitch. Betting had just been closed, and the crowd waited for the start, eyes glued to their binoculars. Paul Hervet sat in the front row, wearing the expression of an undertaker short on customers. This day was supposed to wipe away all the cares gnawing at his stomach. This was the first race for Crazy Boy, his latest thoroughbred. Sired from Spirit of Madness, a horse that had won all the major competitions several times, Crazy Boy had arrived from the stud farm in Deauville the previous evening and was in excellent form. “Dynamite on legs,” according to his trainer, Pierre Leclerc, who had sworn to make him worthy of his begetter.

Charlotte Hervet, wearing an elegant, lemon-yellow Chanel suit, scanned the bevy of VIPs sitting around her in search of a familiar face. A few of her nightclubbing friends and a journalist from the celebrity magazine
Gala
had come to witness the birth of a future star with flaring nostrils.

“What’s got you looking so grim?” she asked, turning to her sour-faced husband. “After all, it’s not like it’s the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe. I’m sure Crazy Boy will amaze us.”

“We’ll see about that,” said the police chief icily, jumping to his feet as if propelled by a spring.

“Where are you going? The race is starting any second now.”

The bewildered wife watched her husband make his way to the exit. This was the first time Hervet had ever missed a start. For weeks he had been hopping with impatience at the thought of seeing his horse cross the finish line a few lengths ahead of the field. But he’d hardly opened his mouth during their lunch.

The chief of police walked briskly down the stairs leading to the ticket counters, in search of a discreet corner, and pulled out his mobile phone.
Nikita better have left me a message,
he thought anxiously as he tapped in his voicemail code. A short beep and then . . . nothing! Still no call. A catastrophic scenario exploded in his head as he considered the obvious reason for the lack of news. What if Nikita had been nabbed—or even bumped off? Now that Malet was on permanent vacation in Montparnasse cemetery, Hervet’s last hope rested on Nikita—if he was still around.

There was no mystery in this business. Silence generally meant either prison or death. Leaning against a signboard, Hervet heard the roaring of the frenzied crowd from the stands. He had just missed the finish. But today he really couldn’t give a flying fuck whether Crazy Boy won or lost. Another much more deadly race—a race against time—was under way. There was no possibility of pushing back Scheller’s deadline yet again. If the video wasn’t shot before the end of the following week, a bullet in the head would be the only solution.

Upon returning to his large apartment on Avenue Binet in the swanky suburb of Neuilly, Hervet slumped into a Louis XV chair, ravaged by anxiety. To make matters worse, Crazy Boy, his darling thoroughbred, had only finished fourth. It felt like his entire world was collapsing.

After an endless series of commercials, the opening credits of the early evening news finally appeared on the screen. The presenter announced the day’s headlines in a neutral tone. Suddenly, fateful words hit Hervet like an axe: “A man’s body has been found in the trunk of a car. He has been identified as Nikita Bolovitch. The corpse was discovered in a parking lot off the Champs-Élysées following an anonymous telephone call. And now the results from Longchamp . . .”

“We’re going to see the finish again,” whooped Charlotte. “Just watch how he was caught on the final turn.”

“Shut the fuck up,” yelled Hervet, his eyes wild. “Shut your fucking trap, you stupid woman.”

“You’ve gone completely nuts, my poor Paul, completely nuts,” said a stunned Charlotte. “What on earth is going on?”

Unable to take it anymore, Hervet stood up in a rage, nearly knocking over the tea service as he stalked off. An icy hand clutched at his heart. He could barely breathe.

As the naked children were passed around, the obscene caresses inflicted upon them by a small group of men and women with faces hidden by feathered masks were enough to make the men sick to their stomachs.

“I asked an old colleague from the vice squad to undertake a discreet investigation,” said Tavernier. “We’re sure that the three kids found dead are the same ones who appear in this video.”

The Baron didn’t blink. He considered the frozen image on his television’s giant screen. There was real disgust in his gaze.

“I’ll spare you the rest. It’ll never screen at Cannes, that’s for sure.”

The two men remained silent for a moment.

“Now that we have proof of his guilt,” said Tavernier, “we can think about a serious operation.”

“Easy, Jean. The tape from the answering machine you brought me won’t suffice. Don’t forget that our man enjoys protection at the highest level. His lawyers won’t be slow in coming up with some kind of charade and turning the situation against you. What I want is to catch him red-handed, buried in shit up to his neck.”

“What do you suggest?” asked the commissioner, already imagining Hervet in jail for the rest of his days.

“Now that Nikita is dead, our man will have to get reorganized, hire a new crew. Given the current unemployment figures, any two-bit hood is prepared to work for peanuts.”

The silver-plated clock on the Louis-Philippe cabinet chimed five o’clock with crystal clarity.

“We need to surround him on all sides,” said the Baron. “Leave him not a moment of peace. Find someone new to blackmail him. That’ll force him to make a wrong move.”

The Baron and Tavernier fell back into disgusted silence as the tape popped out of the VCR with a whirr and a click.

Ensconced in his usual table toward the rear of the bar, Aristotle pored over the runners and riders for that day’s races at the Auteuil track. The pimp had been going through a rough patch since the start of the week. With this cold snap that had hit Paris, the hookers were bringing in next to nothing. Even the most loyal clients had stuffed their fantasies in the cupboard until it warmed up a bit. Very few tricks being turned meant very little money for him. His financial health was in dire straits. The line outside the Salvation Army soup kitchen beckoned.

“Here,” said the bartender, dropping a hundred-franc note on the table. “Put this on number five for me.”

“Why five? You got a tip?”

“It’s my lucky number. I’m counting on you to see that my luck holds.”

“Luck? I’m plum out of it at the moment.”

Just then, Le Goënec appeared in the doorway.

“Punctual as ever, Inspector,” said Aristotle.

“A hot toddy,” said a cold Le Goënec to the man behind the bar.

“So, supercop, you got some business for me?”

“Call it what you like,” said Le Goënec. “It’s of a rather special nature.”

The bartender set a steaming toddy down on the table. The scent of the hot rum tickled Aristotle’s nostrils.

“Another one for my buddy,” said Le Goënec before turning to the pimp. “I’ll be straight with you. It’s not entirely legal.”

“You want the both of us to go rob a bank? Or knock off little old ladies?”

“Shut it. This is a very serious job. I need you to blackmail a very high-placed individual. I want you to harass him on the phone, day and night. Make his life miserable. He’s the worst piece of crap you can imagine.”

“Who is this son of a bitch?”

“Paul Hervet, the chief of police.”

Aristotle’s eyes widened, and he paused for a moment before asking, “Why you asking me to do this?”

“Because you’re perfect for the role. We need someone he doesn’t know. Hervet won’t have any idea where this is coming from, so he’ll respond right away. If you do your job well, we can nab him, no sweat.”

“What do I get out of it? I’m not doing charity work for an inspector who’s no longer in the department.”

“Yeah, I figured you might know about that.”

The pimp’s eyes radiated an arrogance that Le Goënec had never seen before. For the first time in their strange relationship, Aristotle felt he was on equal terms with Le Goënec. He would squeeze him for everything he could.

“You’ll get a commission on whatever you can extract from your client,” Le Goënec told him, knowing he had no other choice.

“What happens to the rest of the dough?”

“Police charity.”

Aristotle said nothing for a few moments. His twisted brain had gone into overdrive, trying to work out the flaw.

“It’s pretty risky business, your thing here. I think I’m going to need a little extra bonus.”

“OK, Aristotle. A ten percent bonus, but that’s my final offer. I can look elsewhere.”

“We have a deal, Le Goënec.”

It was the first time in ten years that the pimp had called him by name, but Le Goënec didn’t bat an eye. It was like the world had been turned on its head. Aristotle now saw Le Goënec as a common hustler.
This better work and get me back on the force,
Le Goënec thought. All this being stuck out on the sidelines was starting to get on his nerves. The whole of the underworld would be thrilled to learn that Le Goënec was nothing but an everyday asshole splashing around with all the other fuckups.

“I also want to know who’s selling this filth,” said Le Goënec, pulling from his backpack one of the tapes found at Nikita’s place. “It’s urgent. I’ll call you in forty-eight hours.”

Aristotle could barely contain his glee. The idea of grifting a fuzz bigwig excited him. Blackmail wasn’t really his cup of tea, but he knew that this job was right up his alley, and anyway, it was tough enough making ends meet these days. It would have been immoral to turn up his nose at such easy money.