Paris Noir - Aurelien Masson [90]
“For you, maybe. Anyhow, I wouldn’t have had time.”
“Why not?”
“The thug from the stairway showed up in the club with another guy, same type only older. Ilona saw them first, me just after. They were quick to spot us and elbowed through the crowd to catch up with us.”
“That’s where they cornered you?”
“No.” I closed my eyes and rubbed a hand over my face to ward off the memories. Suddenly I snickered.
“What?”
“There was a concert later that evening at the Nouveau Casino, and they were spinning the British band Franz Ferdinand to keep people from getting impatient. ‘Auf Achse,’ you know it?”
Sydneyshook his head.
“Okay, forget it. There were three black guys sitting next to us at the bar. They’d been checking out Ilona since we’d arrived, so she went to ask them for a smoke. The two Russians turned up, and the first grabbed her by the wrist to yank her around. She slapped him.”
After that, everything went very fast. The thug had wanted to slap her back, but one of the black guys gave him a violent shove. They all started fighting, and Ilona and I slipped out, taking advantage of the confusion.
Outside, there was a black Mercedes waiting with a third man. Fortunately, it was parked on the other side of the street, pointing in the wrong direction. He’d seen us, but by the time he reacted and got out of his car, we were already far away, hurtling down Oberkampf in the middle of the Saturday-night partygoers. I remembered that Ilona had taken off her Jimmy Choos to run and we had gone through side streets, then down toward the Cirque d’Hiver to get the scooter. A mistake. In the meantime, the Russians had regrouped and, without a hitch, seeing the direction we’d taken, had made a quick return to the Pop’in.
The Mercedes had shot up rue Amelot just as Ilona was starting her scooter. Without missing a beat, she’d jumped it up on the sidewalk to try to shake off the car.
“Then I got really scared. I had no helmet and we were taking lots of small one-way streets in the wrong direction. We almost hit several people.” I shook my head. “I think we broke the speed record for crossing the 11th. but we couldn’t shake them, and they were going to catch us any minute. At some point, on one of the boulevards, I can’t remember which …” I stopped in the middle of my story to search my memory, in vain. “Well, I can certainly find it on a map. Anyhow, I saw a public works van parked near one of those huge metro air vents planted in the sidewalks. It was wide open, with several cables and pipes running from it into the ground.”
Then I told Ilona to go around the block the wrong way. This time we got lucky, a car heading toward us from the other end of the street forced the Russians to slow down. We went back to the van and I told her to get off the scooter. I dumped it into the vent opening, and we jumped right after it onto a large conduit. The scooter was wrecked, but we were invisible. No one saw our maneuver, not even the poor guy doing the maintenance on the vent. He only saw us climb back up thirty minutes later, a little dirty, once we were sure the coast was clear.
Sydneystared at me in disbelief.
“Go check it out, the scooter’s probably still in the hole. We caught a taxi back to Marc’s place. I thought we’d gotten out of the jam we were in. I was wrong.”
The phone started ringing in the next room. Ralphpicked up. I sighed. This didn’t escape Sydney.A second call, a few seconds later. They were asking for Ralphagain.I closed my eyes. The second conversation, in English, was more laborious. Italy. When Ralphhung up and joined us, his voice was less assured, more concerned. “I have bad news.”
I lowered my head, sniffled. “Yelena’s dead.”
“How did you know?” The cop in the polo shirt wasn’t so condescending anymore.
I knew it because of what had happened afterwards. Ilona and I had arrived at Marc’s very annoyed with each other. Especially me with her. The adrenaline was subsiding, giving way to a more muted tension.
“What time was it?”
“Two-thirty in the morning, maybe three.”
I remember yelling