Dedication

For Elsa

Chapter One

A man was walking the platform, scanning the train as it crept into Alencourt station. I was sitting at the window, watching him as we got closer. The brakes shrieked. The guy moved slow and stiff, his head swiveling like a searchlight as the train inched past. Looking for someone. He walked against the train’s direction, while his head rotated back with it, holding each window in place as his eyes examined it, then circling back to scan again, as the next car came abreast.

The train approached; we got closer. I could see his eyes darting around, the head tracked smoothly. Then the eyes found me, but settled below my eye line. Like he wasn’t interested in my face. Then the guy lifted his gaze to mine and we were looking directly at each other, engaged. The train was moving painfully slow, so there was plenty of time to get a good look.

Looked like he had recognized me, but I didn’t know him.

Then the train stopped with a delayed lurch, and I saw him back off and disengage. Around me passengers were already dragging their bags and children off luggage racks and train seats. Soon they were flooding the platform and the guy was gone.

I was halfway to the entrance hall before I saw him again, over by the ticket desk, trying not to stare at me. He was maybe nineteen or twenty. Close small eyes and a tiny chin, like a rat. Dark hair buzzed to a number two, stripes shaved into one side. Like the Adidas logo. I went over to the information board and examined him in the glass reflection. He couldn’t stop himself from looking at me. Not a professional. Some kind of petty criminal maybe.

I looked up at the clock over the information booth. Quarter to noon, Saturday, June 23rd. It was my first time in France.

The station was busy. People dragged wheeled suitcases around, ran for trains. Footsteps slapped on the concrete, echoing around the big hall. Mothers and fathers pulled their kids. The rat-faced guy I’d never seen before was just standing there looking at my back. I supposed he was planning to mug me.

The entrance to the street was a wide stone arch leading to two-way traffic and a park on the other side. There was a kiosk in the park with newspapers and magazines, and a big coffee cup on the roof. I figured I could cross through the traffic and wait to see if the guy came after me. On top of that I could get a cup of coffee.

I jogged across, weaving between taxis.

I ordered coffee at the kiosk and watched the entrance to the train station. Nobody came, nothing happened. I stretched out and yawned. My joints cracked. Twelve hours on the train. The coffee was dark and bitter. It came in a small paper cup. I drank it in two sips, crushed the cup in my fist and threw it into a garbage can. I didn’t see anyone coming after me.

The weather was gray and so was the town. Gray stone. Gray poured concrete fixtures. Warm droplets of moisture hung in the air, threatening rain.

I noticed the second guy right off the bat. He must have circled around the park to flank me. This guy was bigger than rat-face and wore jeans with a thin leather jacket. He looked like a young thug. Same age as the first guy. The second one had wet-looking hair combed in a side part.

So I figured the first guy would be coming up behind me. They had wanted me to notice the second one. That was the strategy, distract, induce panic, come at me from both sides. I’d been out of the military for only a week. Their little strategy wasn’t going to work.

The park was carved up into little walk-ways. I went off the footpath and cut across the lawn. Using peripheral vision, I clocked rat-face coming off the street and passing the kiosk. He and his leather jacket buddy were moving in sync, wedging me in. Dense evergreens crowded the path where it sunk down in a dip a dozen yards away. The dip would do. I figured less than twenty seconds casual walking.

Laurel bushes blocked out the light. The dip was an intersection. A spider web of narrow walkways converged in its hollow. But the two guys were gone. I stayed there for a couple of minutes to see if they would come. Maybe they were waiting me out. But nobody waits more than a minute. A minute’s a long time if you’re waiting. Young thugs in particular are impatient, nervous and jumpy. You can always wait them out. The two guys didn’t show.

I exited the park and crossed over to the sidewalk. The town center was old and busy. The kind of old that gets preserved by committee. Busy with regular people doing regular things that hadn’t changed all that much in a couple hundred years.

Twelve hours on the train made me want to stretch out. To walk. To loosen the hips and the knees and ankles. But first I wanted to stop by the town hall, see if I could find any record of my mother’s family. She had been French and spent her summers in Alencourt. I was curious about that side of my family because as far as I knew, my mother hadn’t ever come back to France after moving to the United States.

The center of town was a big old medieval square with an ancient church right in the middle of it. The town hall was on the edge of the square. I told the old mustachioed guy at reception what I was looking for and he pointed across the square. He had to push his glasses down off his forehead to look at me. Blue eyes magnified and focused. He said that records were kept in the library, which was on the other side of the church. The old guy looked at his watch and shook his head; chances were the library was already closed for lunch.

But it wasn’t quite closed. I got in the door. A young woman wearing a floral print dress was turning over the sign at the front desk, from open to closed. I made it to the counter a split second before the sign flipped and put my hand next to it. Which made her look up. I gave a winning American smile. The librarian was in her twenties, strawberry-blonde hair, long nose, high cheekbones, slim.

I said, “You’re closing for lunch.”

“Yes, monsieur.”

“Can I bother you for half a minute?” I smiled.

“You can bother me for half a minute.” She smiled back.

So I told her about my mother and how she had spent summers with family in town. I asked the librarian where I could look if I wanted to find traces that her family might have left.

“Your family.”

“Excuse me?”

“You said you wanted to find traces of your mother’s family, but it’s your family as well.”

Which was true, and maybe a better way of putting it. The librarian asked me to write down my mother’s name and date of birth. She told me to stop by in the afternoon, say five. She said she’d see what she could dig up. But there were no guarantees. Some traces remained over time, others got wiped away. Depended on a lot of things.

I wrote the name down, Delphine Vaugeois, and the date of birth. Then I thanked the librarian and walked out.

Five hours. Enough time to have lunch, check out the town, take a walk, stop by the library, and then get the late train out. Maybe there was a sleeper. I was headed south. Spain or Portugal and the beach. Figured I’d stay there for a month or a year, or however long it took to get bored of the beach. For the moment I was thinking about food and more coffee. Otherwise I felt good.

Off the church square, I turned into a series of narrow, crowded streets. The old town. Shoppers jostled in line for the butcher or the baker. The scent of fresh bread and coffee had settled. I squeezed through a knot of people outside the bakery and felt a push from behind. Turned to look. It was the second guy, with the leather jacket and the wet-looking side part. I could smell the stuff in his hair.

So these clowns had waited for me. I had to give them points for persistence. But, what made them think I was a good mark?

Up ahead on the left was a little side-street entrance, even narrower than the one I was on. I looked to the right, across the street. A new guy. Same age as rat-face, similar style. The local young thug look, but this time with longer hair in a ponytail and a manicured stubble beard. These guys were easy to spot because the rest of the crowd was older and dressed conservatively. The ponytail guy was dressed in a track suit like the rat-faced guy from the train platform.

So now there were three. The first guy with the rat-face and Adidas stripe shaved into his head, leather jacket side-part from the park, and ponytail with the facial hair.

Their plan was simple.

Leather jacket side-part was pushing up behind me so I’d move forward, out of the bakery crowd. The new guy with the ponytail was there to push me left, into the side street. I figured rat-face would be waiting there. So that was their plan. They would pen me in and try to rob me. I thought, welcome to France.

I stopped abruptly and let leather jacket side-part guy walk into me belly-first. I felt him grab my shirt above the waist. Which was a mistake, because I used his grab to pull him closer than he wanted. I stomped on his foot with my left heel and crushed his instep. The guy grunted, surprised. The stomp made him lean forward and I whipped my right arm back and nailed him in the nuts with the heel of my hand. I pulled away from his grab and felt the back of my shirt tear as he bent over and fell.

Which pissed me off somewhat. The shirt was new.

The third guy was moving from my right, trying to corral me towards the side street. His ponytail was pulled back tight. His little stubbly beard was carved into a thin shape on a weak face, but he had stunning bright blue eyes highlighted by dark eyelashes, like a male model. He was reaching into his pocket with his left hand, and I was on him in two steps, shutting him down. His right fist came up in a wild flail with no momentum. I stepped into the swing and at the same time transferred body weight from rear to front leg. I bent the knees, sinking low. Moved in close and punched my right elbow into his solar plexus.

The tip of the elbow made contact with a click. He went down in a sprawl.

The solar plexus is a bundle of nerves right above the abdomen, where it meets the chest. It’s nearly impossible to actually hit the solar plexus because it sits too deep inside. But, if you get low and aim up, kind of diagonal, you can impact the nerves enough to fire off impulses to the target’s diaphragm. When you get it right, the shocked nerves over-stimulate the diaphragm, which contracts. The target thinks that they are suffocating.

Which is what happened to the ponytail guy. I didn’t swing my elbow in, I punched it out. The pointy part hit him right in the chest hollow. I followed through like he was made of paper. He hit the ground and started to spasm and gasp. He’d survive. In a few minutes the diaphragm would relax. But he’d get all clammy with cold sweat for at least an hour.

Two down, one to go.

I turned left to face the side street. I was right about the rat-faced guy, the number two haircut man with the Adidas stripe and small, close set eyes. He was coming out of the side street in short steps. This was someone who didn’t do enough walking. Too much sitting around playing video games. I detected hesitation. His plan wasn’t working out. He hadn’t wanted to do it in a crowd.

He had a knife in his right hand. The blade was a Spyderco one-handed opener. All steel. Pretty nasty. But the steel handle isn’t much good because it gets slippery when wet. And if you’re not planning on getting a knife wet, you shouldn’t be taking out a knife. I stepped in quick and caught him off-balance. He found himself too close-in to use the blade. I could feel the guy’s breath on my face, onions and spice. He had a panicky expression, lips drawn back in a distorted scowl. People aren’t generally comfortable with getting up close and personal.

I took control of his knife hand and bent the wrist hard. Living beings move away from pain. So the guy tried to get away, but I kept the pressure on, pushing him back towards the side street. He groaned. His eyes rolled back in small sockets. The Spyderco clattered to the street. I adjusted my body weight and twisted quickly, pushing the trapped hand back towards the arm and up. The little scaphoid bone in his wrist snapped like a dry chopstick. He gave a little shriek.

Shouldn’t have taken the knife out.

There was another high-pitched shriek from my left. Which turned out to be a uniformed policewoman blowing on a whistle. We made eye contact. Hers were hazel with green flecks. She had a police cap on. Her ponytail came out the back. She had little stud earrings, made a couple of steps towards me and grabbed my shirt. “Stay there.”

I relaxed and let my hands hang down, unthreatening.

Chapter Two

The policewoman was too close for her own safety. I could have done anything. I had total freedom of action. French cops use a Sig-Pro. Polymer grip. 9mm Parabellum. It’s alright. Decent bang for the buck. The gun was tucked away in a leather holster at her waist. Although a little thumb snap over the grip made sure she’d never be able to pull it in a hurry.

She dropped the whistle on its lanyard. Her fist clenched my shirt at chest level. Her hair smelled clean and good. She pulled a tactical radio from her shoulder and called backup. Then she looked at me, unflinching. She was way too close.

The policewoman wore a blue polo shirt with a name tag sewed in above her right breast. It said, ‘Nazari.’ The top button was undone. Officer Nazari was in her late twenties, early thirties. She had been in the sun recently. Her skin was gold with freckles below the throat. I looked back at her. She blushed.

I said, “What did you see?”

“I saw you injure two men in an unprovoked attack.”

“Which men?”

She darted her eyes over, but the thugs were gone. The people on line for the bakery gawked at us.

“There were three guys. One of them had a knife. They tried to rob me. Now they’ve gotten away. But it’s not your fault.”

She looked uncertain. I got it. From her point of view I had attacked a couple of guys. She hadn’t seen the knife. Hadn’t seen the leather jacket guy in the crowd. Just the two out in the street.

I said, “It’s alright. Do what you have to do. You can let go of me, I’m not going to run away.”

Nazari relaxed, but she didn’t let go. I liked her. I started feeling the adrenaline afterglow. My hands shook and I felt cold. I said, “Can I take off the backpack?”

She released her grip. I took off my pack and felt the back of my shirt. The tear in the shirt was vertical, all the way up to the shoulder blade. I could feel the air coming through it.

“I liked this shirt. Got it yesterday.”

She looked at the shirt. Sky blue cotton with a nautical wheel logo, embroidered in gold.

She said, “It’s too preppy for you.”

“That’s what I liked about it.”

“You heard the one about putting lipstick on a pig?” I smiled. I could feel her heat. One human being to another. We looked at each other for a while.

Another cop arrived, running. He was tall, and older. Late forties, early fifties. Distinguished-looking, like he might be comfortable in a command position, or sitting in an executive chair. He had good salt and pepper hair with a complete hairline, intact after running for a couple of minutes. The guy was tanned and had deep lines creasing a handsome face. His name tag read, ‘Bonnet’.

He came to a stop in front of me. He was staring me up and down. He said, “Who the hell are you?”

It was a weird question, considering the situation. I answered, “I’m the little guy you’re supposed to be protecting.”

Bonnet barked an abrupt laugh and glanced quickly towards Nazari, then back at me. He was looking at my shirt and I figured he was concerned about the tear. I said, “It got torn by one of the attackers.”

Interest draining from his eyes, he turned to Nazari. “What’s going on?”

“Attempted aggression. This man is going to make a complaint.”

The two cops had the same insignia, which didn’t have very many stripes. Two relative rookies. C-class officers on a beat patrol.

Nazari stepped back. The heat went with her. She let her older colleague take over, but not in a way that indicated deferral. More like she was letting Bonnet do the boring work. Nazari picked at her fingernails while the cop questioned me. I told him what had happened. Three young guys. Scouted me coming off the train. And then this. He asked for ID. I showed him my US passport. He wrote the number down. He drew out my name. “Mister Tom Keeler.” Wrote it down.

The street carried on bustling around us. There were more important things than two beat cops talking to a big American guy with a torn shirt. There was fresh bread to secure before it ran out. Flowers for the table. Meat from the butcher. People were doing their Saturday morning routine.

The cop explained to me that there had been an uptick in mugging attacks. He almost apologized. He asked to see my train ticket. I handed it over. He wrote something down. Bonnet asked about the muggers. What they looked like. I described them. Young, military-aged males, late teens or early twenties.

Bonnet repeated laboriously. “Pulled-back ponytail, well-trimmed beard.” I nodded. “Dark hair?” I nodded again.

The policewoman looked up from her fingernails. “Why did you say ‘military-aged males’?”

They both looked at me with interest.

I said, “Habit. I just received my discharge from the military.”

She said, “You’ve just got that little bag?”

“I have family here.”

Nazari nodded. “Is that why you speak French?”

“My mother was French.” It was like we were on a first date. Nazari was still messing around with her nails and sneaking glances at me.

Bonnet broke it up. “How can we get in touch with you, Mister Keeler?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know.”

There was a dead silence for a moment. Nazari said, “Phone?”

“Nope.” They both looked at me like I was from another planet.

Bonnet made a puffing sound with his mouth. “Bon, ok.”

The policeman looked at his watch. He said, “Twelve thirty-two” and looked at Nazari. She flicked something off her nail and looked up. Bonnet wrote down the time. He wrapped up the little notebook and put the pen away. Then he took a phone from his pocket, walked away a couple of steps and turned his back on us. Nazari looked at him for a second or two. She turned to me. “Need anything?”

A couple of women walked by, arm in arm. One of them gave me a disapproving look. She actually shook her head at me. I was about to take it personally when I saw that her friend was looking at my shirt. I guess the torn shirt made me look like riff-raff, roused by the police.

Nazari saw them looking, and looked at her watch. “Maybe you want to go get a new shirt.”

I said, “Ok, where do I get a new shirt.”

Bonnet had finished texting his wife, or whatever it was and was stepping back towards us. I looked at him. He shrugged his shoulders and blew out air. He said, “I don’t do the shopping.”

Nazari was more helpful. She said, “Go to Fanny’s. Everything else will be closing for lunch now.” She stepped out into the street and pointed away from town. “Maybe a five-minute walk to the departmental road, then you make a right.”

Bonnet turned to his colleague. “Let’s go back.”

She ignored him, said, “Will you be ok?”

I liked that she cared. It was professional.

Chapter Three

Fanny’s was a tiny store on a country road. Cars whizzed by once in a while. Across the road were small fields and then a little river. A sandwich board sign out front had a picture of a fox and the words ‘Fanny’s Friperie’. I opened the door and a little bell rang. The door closed and with it the fresh air. I was hit by the stink of old clothes. Like being suffocated by a stuffed bear.

A cheery voice called out from the back. “Bonjour.”

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