Paris Love Match - By Nigel Blackwell Page 0,62
his dirty work.”
“My face is connected with a string of dead bodies.”
Large paused. “We’re not hit men, if that’s what you think.”
Little started talking excitedly in the background. Large covered the mouthpiece, and when he came back, Little was silent.
“We do cars,” Large said. “That’s all we do. We don’t even work for Morel. My friend is a distant relative. He just hired us to follow you for a while.”
Piers hummed.
“What’s he going to do with Sidney?” said Large.
“I don’t know. He didn’t show any hesitation when he shot Morel and his two men.”
“He shot both of them?”
“You know them?”
“Just by reputation. They weren’t the sort of people you’d want to cross.”
“Brunwald had several men.”
“We can’t take them on. Like I said, we just do cars.”
Piers bit his lips. “I need a car.”
“You going to get out of the city?”
“No! I need to get Sidney back.”
“What sort of car?”
“Something used. Medium size. Something that doesn’t stand out.”
“Old blue Citroën. I know where we can get one with a big engine.”
“Thanks.”
“Do you have a plan?”
“Not sure. Can you get a boat?”
“Where?”
“The Seine.”
Large exhaled. “Could do. Boat’s not a good idea. Too easy to get caught. Nowhere to hide on the water. Not like with a car.”
“Okay.”
“Be about an hour for the car.”
Piers hung up and looked down at the Seine. Large was right, it wouldn’t be easy to escape from a madman with a gun at boat speeds. He breathed out deep and corrected himself. It was madmen, not madman.
His phone bleeped as the web interface timed out on the second crane. The stupid dog ran off the side of the screen, nothing like Rover’s exuberant obedience.
He turned the phone over in his hand and despised the animation’s creator one more time, but the cranes were an amazing power to be controlled from something so small.
He pulled up a map of the area. The embankment road was there, the bridges were there, the Seine was there; even the small road was there. A dilapidated building stood where the building site and cranes now stood.
He shone the flashlight out into the night, straight along the massive frame of the jib, then down to the end of the thick cables. He recognized the dual-pronged device on the end as the attachment that connected to the dumpsters. He grinned. The cranes had been used to move the giant dumpsters into position. With the right instructions, they could move them again.
He redialed Little and Large’s number.
Little answered. “What?”
“I’m going to need something else.”
“What do think we are? Amazon.com? Ow—”
Large came on the phone. “Got a plan now?”
“Yes, but I need something else. Scuba gear. A mask, oxygen, and flippers.”
“One lot or two?”
“Just one.”
“When do you need it?”
Piers thought for a moment. “Before dawn.”
“No problem. Where do you want to meet?”
“Near Notre Dame.”
“There’s a twenty-four hour café on Rue de Gascony. Terry’s All Time. Go inside. Meet you there at 4am.”
“Thanks.”
“Watch your back.”
Piers hung up, lowered the cabin to the ground, and clambered over the temporary wall and back out of the building site.
The dead end street was as dark as ever. He ignored his sense of foreboding and pulled up the map on his phone. His GPS position appeared in the corner and he counted off the northings and eastings as he walked back and forth past the center of the dumpster. Satisfied, he worked his way around the block to where the second dumpster lay and went through the same routine.
Across the river, Notre Dame was lit up. He found the small road and noted the GPS position of the sloped entranceway. A dirty sign read Petit Quai. The road was really just a poor man’s dock, a good ten feet lower than the main road. A rusty chain ran along most of the edge with two gaps, obviously intended for embarkation. The road was concrete, covered with equal parts oil, gravel, and moss. Its neglect contrasted jarringly with the care taken over its famous neighbor, but as Piers stood in the darkness he knew it was perfect.
He walked downstream to Pont au Double. The bridge’s central stone support had a ledge a couple of feet above the water. The Seine burst into a small wake as it flowed around the support. Even in the lurid glow of the street lamps the water looked thick and dirty. A foam of green scum piled up against the stone of the bridge.
He timed his walk from Pont au Double downstream to Pont Saint-Michel at four minutes.