B-Ville, Ch 4
In which our hero meets a creep from CARAC and drinks some whiskey, like all the best flatfeet do.
Welcome to B-Ville, a dyke noir novel in progress set in a slightly dystopian, post-plague France where a serial killer forces the flatfoot, Dik, to navigate between the power-sharing neo-Katar functionaries and far left Green Bloc.
Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3
B-Ville, Chapter 4
The man who opened the door was mid-forties, thin, with brown eyes, a pleasant smile, fleshy face, and thick greasy hair pulled back into a tidy ponytail. I noticed his nails were manicured before he casually stuck his hands in the pockets of his casually spotless grey slacks.
“Nice set-up you’ve got here,” I said.
“I like it,” he said, glancing around. He had a corner loft, with one broad window down to rue des Envierges, another down to the park. The street lights there hadn't come up yet, and probably wouldn’t. There was glass on the broken pavement under them. The dealers had been joined by rentboys who didn't bother to look up when I went by. I saw a pimp across the street in a café. Plenty of prey for predators. Plenty of predators for the prey. I wondered again who was getting paid off. Even for this neighborhood, they were shameless.
His loft was spartan and, compared to Marthe’s, expensive and obsessively clean. He had a full kitchen, stainless steel from top to bottom including the two broad sinks and rows of shiny knives. Seamless cupboards hung on blank walls over polished concrete floors. Only an easel betrayed his work, and a large wooden table spotted with paint. I took a couple of steps to the window. It was a fine window, triple-paned and alarmed to the teeth, like the door downstairs.
“You must see some great sunsets.”
“Oh, I do. If it ever quits raining. My father offered me something at the Place de Vosges, but it didn’t have this view.” He smiled. One eyebrow went up, just a little. He was trying to tell me something but I wasn’t sure what, besides that his father was rich and connected and probably Good. “You want coffee? Tea? I’ve had a hell of a day. Let’s try something stronger.”
My ears picked up at that. “What’ve you got?”
“Depends. You’re a client right? Not a cop?” He pasted a smile on his thin, sallow face, walked over to the window, stared out, then flicked a switch that made the windows opaque. “Cops have been watching me for a couple days,” he said, a little amused.
“Really? You? What for?”
“Do they need a reason? All I know is that those boys down there are new. And I had a visit yesterday.”
He picked up a large flat case, flipped it open on the table, and pulled out a chair. “Why don’t you get started on that?”
I settled myself in front of it, while he got out a couple of small glasses and reached into the cupboard and pulled out a bottle of paint thinner, smiling again his joyless smile when he saw my face. What he poured had the rich color of caramel, and when I took a sip, hit me hard with the sultry taste of oak and vanilla and better days.
“You have some interesting stuff here,” I said, turning the large pages of his portfolio, pointing at a photo of one of his works. The painting was less delicate than Marthe’s, the blacks blacker, reds bloodier. It looked like a lung.
“Limited series print,” he said, glancing over. “Two left. If that’s really what you want.” He turned on a lamp. “I don’t think you do. Nobody calls me for commissions like that. It’s all set up through CARAC.”
He laughed a little to show there were no hard feelings. But still wanted me to know he was smarter than me. He shouldn’t have been so satisfied. Almost everyone was—smarter than me. But so what?
I kept turning pages while I thought, wondering if that thing I saw was a heart. If the cover of the portfolio were really vinyl, or leather made to look like an imitation of itself. I decided to lay my cards on the table, some of them anyway, and closed the portfolio. “You’re right. That was just me trying to be clever,” I said. “I’m a private investigator. Somebody else from CARAC got a visit from the cops, too. Wondered if it was just them.”
“Who? Marthe?”
I put on my best blank look. He took it for assent.
“I’ll bet it was her,” a fat finger drumming on the table. He jumped up and strode to the window. “She should have just called me. But she’s timid. Agoraphobic. Hasn’t left the house in years. I felt sorry for her son. Living with a weirdo like that. You know she has a son, right? Kind of a creep himself. Though I haven’t seen him around lately. Anyway, yes, I got a visit, too. But I think I might be the only other one. I asked Lucas, the other guy that lives in the neighborhood, but the cops haven’t bothered him. At least that’s what he said. And I’d know if he were lying.”
“The cops didn’t ask you to keep it to yourself?”
“Fuck them.” He smiled, and threw himself back into his chair, spreading his legs. “They’re all bark.” He tilted the bottle in my direction, asking for assent. ”We'd better kill it now. When the cops come back they'll just pour it down the drain. Or drink it."
"If they come back."
“When." He seemed certain, so we did our best to save the whiskey from its horrible fate. He grimaced a little at the raw rich taste.
“I thought you said they were all bark.”
“Sometimes they nip. Just to show they can.”
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