Ahead, the light turned yellow. At the intersection, cars nosed forward. Nikki feathered the throttle, the bike’s throaty engine urging her forward, daring her to make a move. The light turned red. She punched the gas and rocketed across the intersection, horns blaring to either side. She looked over her shoulder, thinking it was closer than she might have liked, but not caring. Inside her helmet, she smiled. It was the first jolt of excitement she’d had all day.
For as long as she could remember, Nikki had enjoyed going fast. Maybe “enjoyed” wasn’t the right word. She enjoyed a nice quiche Lorraine or a crisp Sancerre. She loved going fast. She lived for the moment when the needle on her speedometer crossed two hundred kilometers an hour and the world got a little fuzzy around the edges and there was only the asphalt beneath her tires and the white line running down the center of the road.
Nikki turned onto the Boulevard Barbès. The neighborhood changed dramatically. There were no more banks and pharmacies and electronics stores. The streets were decorated with colorful awnings, vendors offering kebabs and plantains, stalls full of T-shirts and leather goods. The sidewalks coursed with a dark-hued humanity. This part of the 18th arrondissement was called the Goutte d’Or—the Drop of Gold—and it belonged to the immigrants who’d migrated to France since Napoleon III had begun colonizing West Africa in the nineteenth century. If she weren’t looking at the dome of the Sacré-Coeur, sparkling at the top of the hill, she’d have thought herself in Dakar, not Paris.
She parked the bike two blocks from Aziz’s and locked her helmet in the rear case along with her leather jacket. Taking care, she untucked her T-shirt to cover her firearm. Aziz did his business out of a clothing boutique called Fleur d’Afrique that offered dashikis, swatches of colorful fabrics imported from Senegal, Niger, and Guinea. She stopped across the street and spent a minute observing the noontime foot traffic. A few women dressed in native garb left the store. Nikki crossed the street and continued to the alley running behind the store. Halfway down, she saw a door open and a thin white man in a black leather jacket emerge from Aziz’s back room and jump into the passenger seat of a waiting Mercedes. She grabbed the license and ran a check. The result came back in real time. Nikki shook her head. Aziz was being a bad boy. No wonder he wasn’t answering his phone.
She checked the back door and found it locked, then walked around to the main entrance. She walked past the counter, through the racks of clothing, and passed through a bead curtain. A pall of pot smoke hung in the air. She opened a door marked PRIVATE and stepped into Aziz’s office. A large muscular black man sat behind a desk piled high with folders and loose papers.
“Come on,” she said, waving a hand in front of her face. “It’s barely noon.”
“Wake and bake, sergeant,” said Aziz Fran?ois, exhaling twin streams of smoke through his nose. “Help yourself.”
“Put it out,” she said.
Aziz gave her a sour look and stubbed it out in the ashtray.
“Thank you,” she said.
Aziz Fran?ois sat up straighter. “How can I help my favorite police officer this fine morning?”
As always, she was intimidated by his size, the notion that he could be across the desk with his hands around her neck before she could do a thing to stop him.
“Who was that guy I saw coming out the back?”
“Of my place? No one.”
“Sure about that?”
“I’ve been alone all morning.”
Nikki let it slide for now. “I’m looking for two men. Salvatore Brigantino and Tino Coluzzi.”
“Why are you asking me? Do I look Italian?” Aziz threw his head back and laughed.
Aziz Fran?ois was a native of Senegal. Head shaved, a gold hoop decorating one ear, and wearing his favorite mirrored Ray-Bans, he stood six four with the physique of a heavyweight boxer. He did not look Italian.
“They’re Corsican,” she said. “You know why I’m asking. It’s the reason you’re not sitting in a cell in La Santé doing twenty to life.”
She’d busted Aziz two years earlier as he made a buy of a hundred kilos of Colombian marijuana—“l’herbe,” in the parlance. The volume of the buy guaranteed him a long stretch in prison. She had dropped the charges to a misdemeanor and made sure he was out in three months. Ever since, he’d been her eyes and ears on the street. The fact was, most criminals used drugs on a regular basis, be it marijuana, coke, meth, or, more commonly these days, opioids like OxyContin that mimicked heroin’s narcotizing effect. Aziz carried them all.
“What did they do?” he asked.
“Let me worry about that.” Nikki crossed her arms and gave him the look. She wasn’t about to say they stole a letter. She preferred not to be laughed out of the place.
“Brigantino’s dead. Long time now.”
“I hadn’t heard.”
“Cancer. He was in Germany getting some experimental treatment. His son was in here last year looking for some painkillers for the dad.”
“Last year?”
Aziz nodded.
“And Coluzzi?”
“Don’t know the man.”
“Sure you do. He took down a shipment of ten thousand OxyContin a year ago. There’s no way he could have moved that amount without you hearing about it.”
“Russians control that market.”
“So if I needed a few pills for my back, you can’t help me?”
“I can ask around, you really want. These days it’s just weed, meth, and a little coke if it’s good.”
“But you had some painkillers for Brigantino?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“And that Mercedes that I saw leaving here about fifteen minutes ago, the one registered to Vladimir Kuznetsov…” Nikki waited a minute, letting Aziz know not to screw with her. “You don’t know anything about that either?”
Aziz stubbornly shook his head.
“I bet if I look around I’ll find something other than weed and ‘a little coke…if it’s good.’”
“Be my guest.”
Nikki stood and slipped her folding knife from her back pocket. She left Aziz’s office and made her way through a storeroom that was a maze of boxes and bales of fabric piled nearly to the ceiling. She chose a box at random and cut into it. Inside was bright orange cotton.
“Come on,” said Aziz, who had left his desk and was standing at her shoulder. “You’re ruining good merchandise.”
Nikki disregarded him and continued through the storeroom. She rammed the blade into another box. More fabric.
“Tino Coluzzi,” she said. “I’m waiting.”
One of Aziz’s men was standing by the back entrance, cradling a submachine gun, the barrel pointed at her.
“Watch it.” Nikki walked past him, pushing the barrel toward the ground before turning into another row. It was darker here, the overhead lights too dim to reach the farthest recesses. She stopped, retreated a step, and thrust the knife into a box. The cardboard was newer, darker, and did not look as if it had been thrown around on an airport freight conveyor or packed tightly in a twenty-foot BEU. When she pulled the blade out, a drizzle of white powder fell to the floor. She looked at Aziz, then ran her finger along the blade and tasted the residue.
“We had an agreement,” she said, turning to face Aziz.
“First time. I swear. The deal was too good to pass up.”
“You know how I feel about heroin.”
“I know, Nikki. Your brother…”
“Don’t talk about my brother,” she said, standing on tiptoes, getting in Aziz Fran?ois’s face.
“It’s only a couple keys,” he said plaintively. “How’d you find it, anyway?”
“Must be my lucky day. Turn around. Hands behind your back. I can’t let this one stand. I’m disappointed in you, Aziz.”
Suddenly, the guard was standing in front of her, the barrel of the machine gun prodding her chest. “Let him go,” he said.
The guard was young, maybe twenty years old, but hardened by his time on the streets. She had no doubt he’d hated the police since before he could walk. His finger was inside the trigger guard and he was sweating. Five pounds of pressure—barely more than you needed to tap a letter on a keyboard—was enough to fire a round. His unblinking gaze said he’d shoot her if given the chance.
“Tell him to fuck off,” she said, unsnapping her cuffs from her belt.
Aziz sighed mightily and told the guard to leave them alone.
“But…” the guard protested.
“Leave us,” said Aziz. “Go to my office. Shut the door.”