The Parisian Codex

19 - Do you have a conscience?

I sat down opposite Mathieu without waiting for his invitation. This guy had me by the short hair, but that was no reason to be polite. Men like him take any sign of respect as an admission of weakness.

Mathieu stared at me with his squalid gaze: black eyes devoid of emotion, under eyelids that blinked too rarely.

"I want to know where Tamara is," he said.

"Who?"

He pushed a sheet of paper toward me. It was a photograph of a young woman in a sequined bikini. She had huge, slightly sad brown eyes and auburn hair down to her buttocks. The name Tamara was printed at the bottom of the shot in fancy letters.

"You've lost a stripper," I said, placing the picture back on Mathieu's desk.

"Exotic dancer," Mathieu corrected. "And I didn't lose her: she disappeared. Part of my entourage thinks you killed her."

"I haven't killed a woman in decades."

The good thing about Mathieu was that I didn't have to hide my nature. He knew what I was, and nothing I could say would shock him. If he hadn't tried to exploit me, our relationship could have been quite relaxing.

"I can't really take your word for it," said Mathieu, "can I?"

"But that's not really my problem, is it?"

"It could be. Last night, you assaulted two of my men."

"Clarification: last night, two of your men assaulted me. They shot at me—you owe me a shirt—and the only reason I let them live was so you wouldn't have to recruit two more penguins from the Vincennes Zoo."

The corner of his mouth twitched. In a normal person, it could have been mistaken for a smile.

"My dear Germain, do you have a conscience?"

"Mathieu, you wouldn't know a conscience if it hit you in the face with a shovel. What's on your mind?"

"If I find out you've killed Tamara, I'll be very upset," Mathieu declared in a mechanical voice.

With me, he didn't even bother to mime human emotions. He must have thought that between monsters, it wasn't necessary.

"I don't know this girl, I've never seen her, and I certainly didn't kill her. Now I'll let you get back to work, because I've got a wild beast to feed at home."

I tried to get up, but Mathieu gestured to me not to.

"In that case, you're going to find her," he ordered.

"One hundred euros an hour, plus expenses, with a deposit of two thousand euros to start the search."

"Come on, we're among friends here," said Mathieu.

"You're confusing blackmail with friendship."

"That video of you..."

"... is quite charming, but it won't pay for my food cost. So unless Medhi volunteers to quench my thirst, you'll have to pay me. Don't tell me I'm too expensive for you?"

He stared at me for a long moment with that look of a predator on Lexomil. I gazed at his forehead just between his eyebrows and, for fun, counted his blackheads. He didn't have any and obviously took great care of his appearance. After a few moments of this silly game, he opened a desk drawer and, without taking his eyes off me, pulled out a wad of bills. He proceeded to count the money with the gestures of a traveling salesman, making quite a show of his display of wealth.

"Here's two thousand euros," he said, waving the bills. "Plus five hundred to replace your shirt."

You'd have thought he was about to perform a magic act. But he simply slipped the money into a large Kraft envelope and put the rest back in the drawer. He took Tamara's photo and added it to the envelope before sliding the whole thing towards me.