They were descending flights of stairs, their steps producing no noise, the American’s painful breathing grating through the quiet though, and the sports bag finding obstacles in the walls and banisters. The police siren was gone, silence in the building around them, no televisions, no arguments, nothing to suggest they were passing through people’s lives.
And a few minutes later they were in a back courtyard, darkness already falling among the surrounding walls, the visible street empty. JJ stood looking at the kid, bent double again, coughing up heavy phlegm, drooling. They hadn’t run hard or far, so either he was ill or it was nerves.
Then perhaps he had a right to be nervous. Fifteen minutes before he’d probably felt like the luckiest loser in town, money in his pocket for running some mindless errand, and now he was just scared of dying too soon or being locked up or even hurt. JJ would have been scared too at that age. Not anymore though; at some point in the years between he’d had most of his nerves nickel-plated.
They were tingling now but for all the wrong reasons. It was the thought of what must have happened. If London had shut down the channels there must have been a mother security breach, and if Viner being killed was part of it then there was some sort of purge or turf war going on. It was that possibility that excited him. He wasn’t sure why but the idea of the system suddenly spinning out of control appealed to him.
The American had recovered enough to stop coughing, but he was still leaning over, hands on knees, muttering curses. JJ wasn’t certain why he’d brought him. He’d been caught in the middle of some other train of thought and had wanted to help the kid out of a fix. Possibly, given longer to think, he’d have left him there.
As it was, he supposed he could give him a few thousand francs, tell him to lose the weapon, get out of Paris. He had the look about him anyway of someone who just wanted to get out of Paris, out of Europe, back home to wherever it was he’d wanted to escape from in the first place. There was no real risk of him talking.
It crossed JJ’s mind to ask again about the men who’d paid him, but even if the kid knew anything, it was hardly information JJ could use. And if things had shut down it would be only temporary; it wasn’t like he’d be out of business for good. For all his flights of fancy, the chances were within a few days everything would be back to normal. The only thing he needed to know for sure was that it was actually happening. After that it was just a question of keeping out of the way till things had calmed down.
Collecting his thoughts, JJ pulled his gun and shot the kid twice, first through the side of the ribs, then in the head just above the ear, the second shot after he’d slumped to the ground. He went quietly, still drooling, and thinking about it JJ didn’t know why he’d ever considered any other option. After all, what kind of person took money from strangers? A desperate person maybe, a kid, still not somebody he wanted walking the streets with an imprint of his face.
The kid looked quite graceful now on the hard stone floor, like the kill in a hunt, like a leopard or cheetah. It didn’t matter how pathetic or otherwise his life had been, he was beautiful now, composed. And within a few days he’d probably make the papers and move people here and there in the suburbs of America, and it would seem quite exotic, that he had gone to Paris and been killed there.
3
JJ walked back to the hotel, the city’s metabolism building and night creeping up from the pavements, darkness wrapping itself around the people and cars on the streets, shards of noise and light, expectation mounting.
They were tourists mainly, entwined couples separating for no one, middle-aged ones clutching their bags and camcorders, all of them locked into their own personal highs. The Parisians were easy to identify; they were the ones who saw him, who made fleeting eye contact in the seconds they took to pass.
And none of them would remember his face. That was what he liked about city streets; there was no remembering the faces. He could walk like a wraith between worlds and be untouched by both of them. It was good too that those worlds rarely crossed into each other, that the pedestrians flowing around him would never know and never need to know why someone called Viner was dead.
That was only on the streets though. In the hotel he could feel himself slipping back into it, the corridors desolate except for a baby crying somewhere in one of the rooms, a stealthy silence draped over the functional sounds of the building. It was places and times like this that Viner was dead, out on the blank edges of other people’s daily existence.