Paris Noir - Aurelien Masson [4]
He started to stroke my thighs when Tommy Lee Jones gets shot. Then he explained to me how I was to live from tomorrow on.
“I’ve figured the whole thing out. I’m gonna post your contact info up on the Internet. Contacts by e-mail only. After that I’ll drop a card like, Vania, all positions. Leave a messageat… to all the rich ones. I’ll get you a second cell just for tricks; I have a pal at Orange. You give up the street, you buy yourself new clothes and wait for the john. You’re like a star, see. You’ll do home delivery but you’ll limit pussy delivery to Paris. Not bad, eh?”
“Yeah. How much do you take?”
“I take everything and I leave you enough to live nicely.”
“What? You’re out of your fucking mind!”
“I had the coke bags analyzed, your fingerprints are all over them. What’s that you were saying?”
Shit, shit, shit.
After that, I worked and shut up.
I bought my panties at Chantal Thomas: fifteen grams of muslin and tons of fantasies.
Sometimes I took the subway across Paris, other times when the dough came in big, I’d take a cab. Three weeks later, as I was leaving the duplex of a producer on rue de Ponthieu, I got beat up by two scumbags. The dough and my youth disappeared in five minutes.
Nico didn’t like the fact that the bread had evaporated.
He got me a chauffeur.
Keller.
The six-foot, two-hundred-pound type. He looks like the killer with the pipe in Charley Varrick.
Keller picks me up at home, rue des Lombards, and drops me off at my client’s place. While I’m performing, he waits in the car, smoking stinky cigarillos and catching neo-bop jazz on the radio. One day, before I got out of the car, I leaned over him behind his wheel.
“Hey, Keller, don’t you get ideas, sitting in your Italian coach while I get screwed front and back by all these guys?”
“I try not to think about it.”
I looked at his eyes. They were red and took great care to avoid turning toward me. I was such a jerk! The only guy ready to die for me. I put my hand on his forearm and pressed it for a while. Talking would have killed me.
This is all coming back to me tonight. Keller just saved me from the clutches of two Brazilian crackheads behind Beau-bourg and we’re catching our breath in the car.
“Don’t take me back right away, Keller. Drive along the Seine for a bit.”
Two a.m. We’re gliding along near the Pont des Arts. The granola crowd: guitars and goat cheese. The Louvre, lopsided barges. I tap his shoulder when we hit rue du Bac.
“Stop here, I’m gonna have a smoke.”
I get rid of my high heels and proceed barefoot on the bridge, sucking on a Camel. Keller, who’s walking a little behind me, hasn’t pulled his Davidoff pack out. The last tourist boat lights up the embankments.
Jolly Brits.
Autofocus Japs.
Nauseated broads.
Without turning toward him, I ask: “How long we been working together, Keller?”
“Six months.”
“How does Nico control you?”
“I could leave.”
“Why don’t you then?”
He looked down at the water wriggling under our feet, black as a bad dream.
“I like the job.”
We stare at each other for a whole century. I go on.
“I ride in a car, I get laid on gorgeous rugs, but I don’t have much money at the end of the month. I can hardly support my family in Martinique with the money that bastard leaves me. I gotta get out of this mess, Keller.”
“Turning tricks or Nico?”
“Nico first.”
Finally, he lights up a cigar. I wonder what kind of first name he has.
“I know an honest cop. Well … I think he is.”
“It’ll go too far. The word of a whore against the word of a police captain, there’s no way. I don’t want this to be official, I don’t feel up to it. I’m gonna think it over, I’ll find something.”
“If you need me, just say so.”
“I know, Keller.”
May 30 in this crazy city. Nico, flanked by his slave (Lhostis, two hundred pounds of rotten meat), honks at me on rue du Louvre. The central post office is closing, the regular folks are heading home. A couple of steps toward the black Picasso.
“Hi, Nico.”
“Here’s your share. You didn’t work too