by Lex Lander
It was fair comment, I did have a lot of cheek, barging in here expecting a big wheel racketeer to help me out.
‘I’m not looking for trouble,’ I responded.
‘No, but you’re looking for a favour. It’s the same thing.’
I gave Petit a quizzical look. ‘Does he do all your talking? I came here to see the top man, not his lap dog. Still, if you’re not willing to help …’ I made to rise.
‘Wait a minute.’ His tongue passed lightly over his lips, leaving a sheen on them like the trail of a slug. ‘Allow me to give you some advice, Warner. Make no threats, or you will not leave here alive. ‘
‘I come in peace,’ I rejoined, sinking back into the well-upholstered chair. ‘All I want is a little knowledge. For a little knowledge, I will be forever in your debt.’
‘Ah, yes … knowledge. A dangerous thing, knowledge. Too much knowledge can get a man killed.’
‘And too little leads to misunderstandings. Between us, Monsieur Petit, there should be no misunderstandings.’
‘I agree.’ Without bringing his right hand out of hiding, he rotated his chair a few compass points in each direction. It squeaked. He stopped with a frown. ‘Tell me why you come to me for this … knowledge.’
‘Obviously because you have it.’
I was gambling on Petit’s amenability to reason. Like any gang boss, his every move would be guided by the abacus of profit and loss. In this case he would quickly learn the immediate gains were not gains at all, only losses to be avoided. Loss through strife, loss through damage, possibly loss of lives, including his own.
Not unimportant losses, then. On the plus side, I would owe him a favour, to be called in at his pleasure. A favour owed by a hit man is hard currency in underworld circles.
‘Explain your needs,’ he said finally, ‘and I will help you if it is within my competence.’ His smile was twisted. Nevertheless, it was a smile. Prospects were improving.
Surprise had spread across Gabrio’s face, as if he were seeing a new side to his master.
‘Quite recently,’ I said, ‘you supplied a certain sex movie, possibly one of a batch, to a Stephen Bloore, of Chelsea, London. The movie was entitled …’ I tried to repel the evocation of a naked Lizzy, prancing under the camera’s pitiless eye, ‘ “Five-to-One.” I have reason to believe it was produced in Holland within the last few months.’
Petit made tapping sounds with his tongue. ‘Bloore is my exclusive distributor in England.’
‘I know. He sent me to you. He happens to be an old friend of mine. Can I take it that you know the origin of the movie?’
‘Not so fast.’ Petit made a pacifying motion with his free hand. ‘Monsieur Bloore makes a lot of business for me in England. I will not disturb my relationship with him. Not even for someone like you, Warner.’
‘Forget Bloore. I’m not interested in him.’ I leaned forward to slap my hand on the desk top. ‘It’s the producer I want.’
‘Might I ask why?’
‘It’s personal.’
‘Listen, Warner, I know about you. I know your history. If you are pursuing some kind of vendetta against my, ah, associates, this is not good business.’
‘We’re talking about a supplier, not a customer. Suppliers are ten a penny.’
‘Not so. The supplier you speak of could not easily be replaced. His material is highly specialised.’
That word again – “specialised.” Only now was I beginning to grasp its meaning.
‘Oh, sure,’ I said with a sneer. ‘Like porn is scarce, huh? Look, Petit, I don’t give a fuck for the morals of your business. My private opinion is that you and your kind represent the human race in its lowest form, but I’m not on a crusade. Just give me the works on the people who supplied the movie, and I’ll get out of your hair for good. Deal?’
He didn’t answer at once. His temples contracted as he toyed with his dilemma. To play ball with me was to lose a valuable and possibly irreplaceable source of supply. The alternative was to eliminate me, or at least to try. Yet even here in the 9e arrondissement, murder is not taken lightly, is still avoided if less drastic solutions can be found.
When Petit spoke again it was to Gabrio.
‘Can the source survive without our friend?’
‘In my opinion, it would survive, yes.’ Gabrio wasn’t going to stick his neck out too far. ‘Even if not, there are others making movies in the exact same category, as you know, but they are unknown quantities.’ He gesticulated, smoke from the cigarette between his fingers describing whorls. ‘But, yes … supplies would not necessarily be interrupted.’
Another period of absolute quiet ensued. The room was well insulated, not so much as a murmur of the thumping bar music penetrated.
Petit’s sigh was long and spelled resignation.
‘So be it. But I expect something from you in return. I have business to transact with some, er … business associates from Marseilles tomorrow. We meet in Fontainebleau. Regrettably these people are of dubious goodwill and certain precautions will be required.’
‘You must take great care, patron,’ Gabrio cautioned, looking troubled. ‘You will need a couple of torpedoes at least. Those Midi escrocs are no respecters of general rank unless it’s backed up by a division of artillery.’
‘You are right, my dear Gilles.’ Petit’s eyes swivelled to me. ‘But I am not concerned. I shall have my division of artillery, Warner, shall I not?’
I was dumbfounded. ‘Will you? Do you mean you’re looking to me for protection?’
‘Why not?’ He sounded almost hurt. ‘Protection is a small price to pay for the considerable sacrifice I am about to make.’
It had a certain perverse appeal, I had to say.
‘All right, Petit, you just hired yourself a guard dog. So long as you don’t expect me to stick around holding your hand beyond tomorrow.’
‘Understood.’ With a moistened fingertip he smoothed his eyebrows, an effeminate gesture that made me wonder about him. ‘You may leave on Saturday and your debt will be discharged.’
He stubbed out his cigarette and stood up, tugging the wrinkles from his dinner jacket. I stood with him.
‘Come with me,’ he said.
He led the way out. Tom-Tom was standing opposite the door. As I appeared behind Petit, he took a step forward, fists balled.
‘Take it easy, Tom-Tom,’ Petit said, patting him on the shoulder. He almost had to stand on tiptoe to reach.
‘Everything okay, chief?’ Tom-Tom said, eyes like agate chips travelling over me.
‘Ça va, mon brave,’ Petit said softly, and his tone was affectionate. Tom-Tom was clearly more than mere employee. ‘Mr Warner is a friend. In a manner of speaking.’
We left Tom-Tom with his wall-to-wall shoulders glowering in our wake, and mounted a staircase to the second floor. Here a short corridor and another bouncer, very black, smaller than Tom-Tom but still with the silhouette of an American footballer, protective padding and all. Only on him the padding was built in.
The black bouncer was guarding a door, which he flung open as we approached. Petit nodded to him. On the other side of this door, instead of the expected office, was a nightclub in miniature, complete with bar, fancy crimson drapes, concealed and dimmed lighting, and a stage just about big enough to hold a couple of performers and their props. The furniture was over-stuffed imitation hide, and all black. The late Michael Jackson whined from some hidden speaker, “I am the one …” On our side of the bar sat a man in shirtsleeves: a man with a hook nose and a hairless cranium that gleamed snow-white under the concealed lighting. He was plinking away at a laptop keyboard, his face creased in concentration. Our entry had gone unheard, and when Petit called a greeting the man started, instinctive annoyance at the interruption at once converting to bland servility.
‘Ah, c’est vous-même, patron.’ He slid off the stool for the hand-hugging rites. ‘I was not expecting you.’ He spoke the “pure” French of the Parisian, lightly dra
wled, the enunciation clear and precise so that even I could follow it without straining.
‘Jean-Guy,’ Petit said, ‘shake hands with André Warner. Warner, this is Jean-Guy Magnol, mon comptable.’
His accountant. Magnol wore an inscribed gold bracelet on his right wrist. His hand was small and damp, and his grip loose. I was glad to return it.
‘Enchanté, monsieur,’ he murmured, his grin as fake as a Chinese Rolex.
‘Glad to know you.’ Leaving aside my distaste for bracelets on male wrists, there was an oiliness about him that I didn’t take to. He also had a tic in his right eye that I found disconcerting.
‘Monsieur Warner will be accompanying me tomorrow,’ Petit elaborated. ‘In return, he requires a little information from us.’
Magnol lit a cigarette and left it in the corner of his mouth, as the French are wont to do.
‘Anything to oblige, hein?’ Magnol reached behind the bar and faded the music to a drone. ‘How can we help the gentleman?’
‘He seeks information on DeB.’
‘Ah, bon?’ Unbidden, Magnol rounded the bar to organise drinks. While he clinked bottles and glasses, I absorbed more of my surroundings. The wallpaper in particular was in a class of its own, a frieze of black-and-white photographs, the sickest of sick porn, all subjects and objects portrayed in graphic close-up.
The drink Magnol brought me was dark amber. The whiff of malt hit my nostrils long before the glass hit my mouth. I had spotted the label on the bottle: Balvenie. Whatever else he may have been, Petit was no cheapskate.
‘DeB, you said, patron.’ Magnol removed the cigarette to create space for his glass. He made short work of the contents. ‘They are our best suppliers. They could double their output, and it still wouldn’t satisfy the market demand.’
‘I am not unaware of this.’ Petit spoke with some acidity. ‘Other arrangements will be made.’
‘If we are to give him what he asks, we must know why.’
Petit fixed me with a questioning look.
‘Jean Guy’s experience in the pornography market goes back twenty years. His advice will be of inestimable value to you.’
I hesitated. The request was not unreasonable, but merely to talk of it was painful.
‘Good enough,’ I conceded at last, and proceeded to relay the gist of my relationship with Lizzy and her abduction by de Bruin.
When I had finished, the man who had wallowed in filth for twenty years regarded me through streamers of smoke.
‘The girl has been in de Bruin’s hands for five months, you say?’
I nodded.
‘And she has … performed in movies?’
Muscles in my body knotted.
‘All I’ve seen so far is one movie. It was more than enough.’
Magnol laughed without mirth. ‘This I do not doubt. Also …’ He glanced at Petit, as if seeking permission to go on.
‘Also?’ I said, wanting yet not wanting to hear.
‘They get them hooked, you know, to keep them dependent. Cocaine mostly: it helps relax the body and induces well-being and sexual awareness, removes inhibitions. Sometimes crack cocaine or Ecstasy. Only last week I watched a movie featuring this very young girl, ten or eleven, I should think. Her performance was something to see.’ He shook his eggshell head in a kind of wonderment. I was arguably more sexually adventurous than most. But the act Magnol went on to describe would have been outlandish between consenting adults, let alone with a child, who was unlikely to have consented.
Mentally, I switched off. Magnol’s voice blurred to a meaningless rumble.
Cocaine. Was that what de Bruin had pumped into Lizzy that night in Andorra, when they took her away? If Magnol was right, if she was being fed the drug on a continuous basis, what would be the extent of her dependence after five months?
Total, was my guess.
Magnol was still extolling the high spots of his celluloid masterpiece.
‘… then they wheeled on a second mec …’
‘Leave it!’ I said, in a voice that to my ears sounded like a rock crusher at work.
‘I do leave it,’ Magnol assured me, showing no offence. ‘We have a house rule not to use such young girls in our organization.’ He said this with a perverse pride. ‘Never under the age of twelve.’
Never under twelve. Sweet Jesus.
‘Is it feasible,’ I asked Petit and Magnol jointly, trying to get the conversation back on track, ‘that de Bruin would kidnap a girl simply to put her in a sex movie? Would he really commit a major crime just for that?’
‘In the ordinary way, probably not,’ Magnol said. ‘It would depend on the girl. I have heard rumours that de Bruin supplies girls to the Middle East, oil sheikhs and the like, and that he is paid fabulous sums for this service.’
Maybe Petit made warning signs behind my back, because Magnol switched abruptly to another topic, namely the practical difficulties of my mission.
‘It will take a commando-style operation to break into the DeB building, if this is what you intend. It is in the Zeedijk district of Amsterdam – a very tough part of town, I can tell you. Have you ever been there?’
I hadn’t. ‘It’s a thrill I’m looking forward to.’
‘It’s not as bad as it was, but the police are greased to stay clear of it. Last year some eager-beaver flic got it into his head to arrest every junkie in sight, which makes for a lot of arrests. He was found floating in the Oosterdok next morning. Bodies are found floating in the Oosterdok most mornings.’
‘Skip the tourist pitch,’ I growled. ‘Tell me how I get in without using a battering ram.’
Magnol chain-lit another cigarette. ‘A battering ram may be what is needed. At DeB the doors are thick as a tank’s armour. The only way to get in, as I see it, is to wait around until someone arrives and go in on their coat tails. You will need a gun.’
It seemed incredible to me that such an operation could exist and conduct its sordid business in a well-policed city like Amsterdam. I said as much.
Petit explained, ‘Apart from the payoffs, the Dutch attitude towards pornography of all kinds has always been very liberal. Officially it is banned, yet you can buy it at any sex shop. It’s even a major foreign currency earner for the Dutch.’
‘You don’t say. Is child porn itself really so lucrative it’s worth breaking the law in just about every country in Europe? Ordinary porn, yes, that I can understand is a money-making racket. It’s legal. But this stuff with kids, the demand can’t be so great as to be worth risking a prison sentence.’
Petit’s slender eyebrows climbed his forehead.
‘You think? There is far more money to be made from child porn relative to the volume of output than from conventional porn. For one thing, the supply of material is limited and constantly changing; after all, children become adults. For another, they are under parental control and less accessible, though parents do sometimes connive in their exploitation and even actively participate. The average child, however, will have to be secretly bribed. Her or his parents will usually both be working, and consequently neglectful, allowing their children to watch sex DVDs or play in the streets after dark. You know how it is.’
Not being a parent, I didn’t know how it was but I understood what he was saying. I nodded.
‘Then there are the risks,’ he went on, ‘which you yourself have mentioned. In most countries, certainly throughout Western Europe, child pornography is illegal and the penalties are severe. The Internet is being increasingly policed and where once the producers could remain anonymous, Interpol now has the ability to trace the source of a site and introduce a virus to disable it. Shutting down sites is only part of the story, though. What they are really after are the identities of the producers, in order to arrest them. Not so easy, but it’s getting tougher and tougher to operate the sites. Soon the producers will have to re-think their strategy, operate from more permissive pastures, such as the Middle East or North Africa. They will need ever more sophisti
cated antivirus systems, and these do not come cheap.’ He smoothed an imaginary stray lock from his forehead. ‘Which brings me to your original question – is it lucrative. I can tell you that, despite the rising cost of antivirus protection and avoidance of arrest, a gross profit margin of a thousand per cent would be considered moderate.’
That shook me. Translated into actual money, an Internet video costing, say, £100,000, to produce would be expected to gross a million sterling. Impressive and horrific.
It was Magnol who turned the conversation away from statistics and back towards my private project, saying, ‘Would you like me to draw you a floor plan of the DeB building?’
‘It would be useful. Thanks.’
While Magnol sketched, Petit went over the timetable for his meeting with the Marseillais.
‘We start early in the morning,’ he informed me in conclusion. ‘Be here at eight. D’accord?’
He had played ball with me. Now it was my turn.
‘I’ll be here,’ I said.
‘Have you brought a gun into France with you?’
‘Not this trip. I’m behaving myself.’
‘If you’re going to be my bodyguard, you’ll need to be armed.’ He nodded to himself, not needing my confirmation. ‘Leave it to me.’
His goodwill even extended to having me driven back to the Mercure in a black Cadillac with a well-stocked bar. I helped myself to a little hospitality as we wended through the wet streets.
Back at the Mercure, I looked in on Emilia. She was in the shower. I walked in and stood by the bathroom door watching her pale shape behind the obscure glass.
‘That you, André?’ she called out, no false modesty. Or real modesty.
‘It’s me. Feeling okay?’
‘Wonderful.’ She certainly sounded more lively. My guess was her new-found sparkle came out of a hypo, but that could just be the cynic in me.
‘Glad to hear it. Meet me for breakfast at seven tomorrow and I’ll tell you where to find lover boy.’
‘Seven!’ The shower door shot back. She stood on the threshold, blinking water out of her eyes. ‘Is that seven in the morning?’
In the raw she was even skinnier than I had expected. She had no tits whatsoever.