Skin Trade by Reggie Nadelson Page A

pubs, kebab stalls where huge lumps of meat turned on a spit.
    A van pulled up next to Gourad’s car. Through the windows I could see three cops in uniform, young guys in dark-blue jumpsuits. The driver had gelled hair and the focused prettiness of a storm-trooper in a Fascist recruiting poster. He saluted Gourad and pulled away. We turned into rue Blondel, where there were hookers old enough to be my mother.
    We pulled up for a red light. Enormous breasts popping out of her white leather coat, one of themleaned against the car. She had on war-paint an inch thick.
    In front of an ancient church, five or six guys loitered.
    â€œPrescription drugs,” Gourad said. “They get free meds on the national health service, sell them at three bucks a pop. Good business.”
    â€œIt’s organized?”
    â€œNo. This is small stuff.”
    I made conversation. “What about the big stuff? Heroin? Cocaine?”
    â€œOther districts. Not so much on the street here. You see that McDonald’s, man, the other side of the place Clichy?” He nodded in the direction of the restaurant. “It’s a supermarket. You want to see? You can get anything. Dope. Ecstasy. Hash. What the kids call Mitsubishi.”
    He stepped on the gas, put on the siren, then drove me the wrong way around the square and pulled up in front of the lighted glass box that was McDonald’s. Inside, people were slumped at tables, picking over their burgers, slurping up the Coke and coffee.
    â€œYou want something, Artie?”
    â€œI’m not hungry.”
    â€œI wasn’t talking about food.”
    I took it like a joke, but he was already out of the car into the street, looking through the window, working the pavement.
    A couple of teenagers leaned against the window, cigarettes hanging out of their surly faces. One talked into a phone. The other watched him. Gourad came back to the car, mumbling about the Arabs.
    â€œI thought you were Moroccan,” I said and wished I’d kept my mouth shut.
    â€œWhat’s that got to do with it?” he said. “I’m not some fucking Arab.”
    â€œLighten up.”
    â€œYou know all us cops are racists, right, Artie? Everyone, good cops, bad cops, black, white, we’re all fucking racist pigs, don’t you agree? Isn’t that the sociology? Isn’t it?”
    â€œSure, Momo. Whatever.”
    I said, “Show me where the girls work off the trucks. The prostitutes. Show me where I can find the American. Burnham. Her shelter.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œI want to see.”
    â€œWhoever ordered the attack on Lily didn’t come from around here.”
    â€œHow do you know?”
    â€œThey don’t mess with Americans. They don’t go off-turf like that. It doesn’t work that way.”
    â€œYou must have some fucking idea who did Lily?”
    He didn’t answer. He drove on, out of the square, away from the neon lights and sex clubs and tourists traps. The streets were darker here, wherever the hell we were, and it was hilly. It was snowing harder. People slipped in and out of doorways like ghosts.
    This wasn’t Paris the way I had imagined it; dismal, hopeless, the ugly walls pitted with holes, scratched with graffiti, the streets slimy with garbage, this was another place. At the end of a narrow street, a ramshackle building was lit up by a couple of bare bulbs over the doorway.
    â€œBurnham’s shelter?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œIt was for the homeless. She took it over for the bitches. Sorry, prostitutes. I should be politically correct with you around.”
    I didn’t answer. I needed some air.
    â€œThere’s nothing here, Artie.”
    â€œLet me off, OK?” I put my hand on the car door. “I’ll be fine. Drop me at the McDonald’s. What the fuck can happen to you at a McDonald’s, right?”
    Gourad turned the car around.
    â€œBurnham makes you plenty nervous,