The hotel lobby had maps of the town nicely folded in a rack for tourists. I opened a map and looked at it for a minute. It gave me a sense of orientation. I memorized the map and left it there. Walked ten minutes away from the hotel in a random direction and found a French fast food joint. They hadn’t yet caught on to the burger thing. So I ordered a kebab and a soda. There were a bunch of delivery guys on scooters out front. They were sitting on their bikes with helmets half off. Looking at their phones and talking. A lot of them looked like their parents or grandparents might have come over from Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, or any number of French ex-colonies.

Father Bousquet and Simone Vaugeois had spoken about the cité. Social housing with people crammed in tight. First, second, and third generation immigrants living cheek by jowl. Bousquet had called it Les Brosses. That was the name of the place. The word meant The Brushes.

I thought again about the guy with the broken wrist. The one who had scouted the train and found me instead of the Afghan. Him and his buddies had looked like these delivery guys. Same style of clothing, same style of haircut. That’s where they would be. The rat-faced guy would be easy to spot. Find the guy with the broken wrist and see what happens from there. Watch him. See what he does and who he talks to. If I don’t see him, no biggie.

I asked one of the delivery guys directions for Les Brosses. The guy was eating potato chips out of a bag. Didn’t seem to want to bother with talking, so he just pointed west. Said something like, “There.” I left the kebab shop and pulled the Gore-Tex jacket’s hood up. Dumped the food.

I slipped like a ghost through empty streets.

The old town faded away. I entered a light industrial area. Warehouses and low buildings with fenced-off yards. Sodium lights spilled weak orange around hard shadows. Trucks parked for the night behind wire. I was wearing a pair of hiking boots I’d had for a few years. They were quiet for boots. There were a couple of torched cars up on the sidewalk.

The railway was a perpendicular line. North to south. It ran through the place like an obstacle. The tracks were elevated by a massive berm and protected by a high fence. The road turned north running alongside the tracks. After a while there was a turn under the railroad. Then, the street cut hard to the south, running back along the rail line.