Chapter 9 #2
“None needed.” He waved a hand. “I’m still in your debt. What else can I do for you?”
As they followed the French expat, the increasingly loud music thumped her chest.
“Pants and shoes for my friend?” she yelled.
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Tonton pivoted and opened the first door on the left, then ushered them inside his soundproofed office. He spent no time in here. He preferred to be on the floor, keeping watch, while his staff kept eyes on a wall of security monitors.
Tonton shut the door behind them.
“Tell me—you are truly okay?” This beefy tattooed man had a reputation for being merciless with miscreants, but he was a marshmallow to the people under his care.
“Fine,” she said. “Assholes tried to break into our riad. I don’t want trouble from them.”
Tonton smirked. “If my memory’s intact, you’re the one who dishes out trouble.”
“Flatterer,” she said.
“I need to get back on the floor, so I’ll leave you here.” The old softie’s eyes twinkled. “Unless you want to dance? Earn a few dirham? Learn a few secrets?”
She shook her head. “No thanks. I have plenty to do back here.”
“As ever. Lock up after me, eh?” He pointed at John. “And you—be good to my Jeanne.”
John nodded. “Yes, sir.”
After Tonton stepped into the hall, she flipped both dead bolts. A long breath escaped her. This place smelled the same as always. Cocoa butter, cash and fog machine.
“Bathroom’s over there.” She pointed to the door opposite the couch. “Backpack?”
He slipped it from his shoulders and handed it to her. “When did you work here?”
“Six years ago.” She sat at Tonton’s desk and slipped her tablet from the bag, then unfolded the case to access the keyboard.
“Did you buy art, or…”
She broke her gaze from the tablet’s smooth surface tablet and locked eyes with John. “Dude. Does this look like a place where art buyers gather?”
He lifted a shoulder. “I don’t know how things are done here.”
She sighed. “After living in Europe for a few years, Jane Davis was a go-go dancer in Casablanca. It fit her student-loan-debt persona and put me in touch with sketchy people. Everyone loves an art broker with scandal in their past.”
“But you don’t dance.”
“That doesn’t mean I can’t dance. For example.”
She lived to tease John. For ten seconds, she shimmied and twirled in the way that earned her an obscene amount of tips and coaxed intel from stubborn lips back in the day.
“See?” She abruptly stopped, then returned to her seat.
John’s wide eyes, which stayed glued to her as she typed, told her she still had the goods. Even better, his eyes darkened the way they did when he was about to toss her over his shoulder and head to the bedroom.
He might not be back to love, but lust was a start.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“Vivian Flint.” She logged into her Canada-based VPN. “Dancing like that was all part of the job here. Café Americain does a brisk secondary business learning people’s secrets and cashing in on them.”
“Aka blackmail.”
“Correct.” She shot a finger gun at him. “Tonton’s grateful because I learned something that kept this place from being shut down. Pro tip—if you’re the chief of police, never tell your entertainer you fathered the mayor’s youngest child.”
“How did that come up in a nightclub?”
“You’d be surprised what people brag about.” She cracked her knuckles. “Let’s see if we can connect some dots. Want to be my sounding board?”
He leaned back against the couch. “Shoot.”
She typed Lola Vorlicek into her search bar. “Is it a coincidence that Amina recently turned down a handsome offer from another dealer, and after we visited her, we’re targeted by goons in the Central Market? Maybe.”
“That doesn’t sound like a sincere maybe.”
“It isn’t.” She filtered the search results for images. As the thumbnails filled in, her stomach dropped. “Oh, shit.”
“That sounded sincere.” John circled behind her.
“That’s Lola Vorlicek. And that—” she moved her finger from the blonde woman to the fashionable man standing next to her “—is Jean-Michel de Gramont.”
“The infamous ex.” John’s heat radiated her back as he leaned forward. “Is he a model?”
“No, but he acted like it. Vain, prissy and enamored of extravagant lifestyles.”
“What’s the connection between him and the woman trying to buy Amina’s work?”
She paged through photos. “My best guess is she’s the new me.
An assistant/lover he mentors in his grift.
He’s limited in where he can travel due to drug offenses, so he farms out pretty young things to the places he can’t go.
He actually sent me here to assess Casablanca’s reputation as a burgeoning hotbed of visionary art. ”
She left out that she’d also fallen a tiny bit in love with Jean-Michel.
Which was a huge no-no because it could compromise the mission. She’d offered to resign from the operation. MacColl talked her out of it, said bailing would do more harm than good. So instead of quitting, she’d planned to break up with Jean-Michel.
Then she met John.
Wonderful, reliable, funny, uncomplicated John. The man who’d shown her that love didn’t have to be difficult to be real. The man with whom she wanted to build a life. The man for whom she’d burn the world.
A loud knock shook the office door.
“Stay back.” She grabbed Tonton’s gigantic stapler.
“The hell I will.” John followed her.
“At least stay out of my striking circle.” Once she peered through the peephole, relief flooded through her. “Oh, shit.”
“How bad is it?”
“Zero bad.” She flipped the dead bolts.
“Jeanne!” Her squealing friend wrapped her in a hug and a cloud of Chanel No. 5.
“Coco!” Vivian let her friend go. “Coco, this is John. John, this is Coco.”
Fuck, she’d used his real name. Another slipup.
“Jeanne has her John!” Coco peppered him with cheek kisses. “Are you in town long? There’s a fantastic new boutique you’d adore.”
Vivian lifted a shoulder. “We leave at dawn, sadly.”
“In trouble again, eh?” Coco reached into the canvas shopping bag slung over her shoulder and offered Vivian a cigarette from a half-empty pack.
She declined. “I quit.”
“You smoked?” John asked.
“Like a chimney,” Coco answered. “Tell me about your troubles.”
“We were in the Central Market earlier, and a snake charmer dropped a snake on John,” Vivian said.
“Striped fez, scar from his eye to his mouth. Shorter than John, but not by much. An hour ago, someone tried to break into our riad, and the striped fez guy was waiting outside in an SUV. Know anyone who fits that description?”
Coco had an uncanny memory for the faces, names and predilections of Café Americain’s clientele, which was basically every man in a fifty-kilometer radius.
“That sounds like Baaka Adlani,” her friend said. “The snake charmer scam is a family business, but he does a little of everything so he can do mostly nothing. If he was hired to break into your riad, he might’ve brought his burglar friend, Raphael Dubois.”
Vivian wrote the names down on the scratch pad on Tonton’s desk.
“There was another guy at the market,” John said. “Short, curly haired, wore a crucifix necklace. His jewelry choice seemed weird because he was being gross to Jane.”
“Marry this one, Jeanne.” Coco placed her hand on his chest. “For many reasons.”
“Coco,” she warned.
“Okay, okay.” Coco removed her hand. “That sounds like Raphael. He brags about his thieving. Says it’s not breaking and entering if people leave windows open.”
John furrowed his brow. “They sound…not smart…if they told you all this.”
“Men reveal much to a pretty face they underestimate.” Coco fluttered her false eyelashes. “When my tits are out, men confess like it’s Easter.”
Vivian choked back a laugh as she stepped over to the desk to grab her tablet.
“Recognize her?” She flipped the Lola-filled screen toward Coco.
“No,” Coco said. “But she has style. Shall I keep an eye out?”
Damn. She was hoping for more intel.
“Yes, please.” Vivian made a mental note to send Coco a gift basket.
“I need to get back. Mustn’t worry Tonton. But before I go…” Coco thrust a bag toward Vivian. “All the normal send-off gifts for running away with a man.”
She took the bag. “You shouldn’t have.”
“But of course I should. Always celebrate romance, eh? Good luck to the both of you, and I hope your next visit is longer.”
After a flurry of kisses, Coco departed.
“Here.” Vivian tossed the bag to John on her way back to Tonton’s desk.
“Check out the contents—see if there’s anything useful?”
John sat on the couch. After rustling in the bag, he tossed something in the garbage. “Some friend she is. Those were peanuts.”
She’d have to confess her allergy-free status to him soon.
“Money, pain pills, lipstick.”
She bet it was the signature color she’d worn when she worked here—Parisian red.
He held up a citrine cloth. “Last thing’s a scarf. A big one.”
“That’s a pashmina. Those are very handy, actually.” She tapped at her keyboard. “You have time for a nap if you want to use it as a blanket.”
“What about you?” he asked.
“There’s too much happening in here.” She whirled her finger at her temple. “I want to check on connections among Lola, Baaka and Raphael. Then I’ll sleep.”
John stretched. “Promise me you’ll be here when I wake up?”
It hurt that he’d asked. Of course she would be. They were in this together. The important takeaway, though, was he still wanted her to stay with him.
“I’ll be here, I promise.”
“Okay then.” He draped his body over the too-small couch and spread the pashmina over his torso. His ritual fidgets and fusses made her smile. They were comforting, and after a year of sleeping next to him, triggered her own desire to rest.
But there was no risk for the wicked.
Her fingers quietly flew over the keyboard. She messaged Mariam to warn her about the attempted break-in, and not to go to the riad without security or police. Next, she wired her a hefty payment to cover any damage and soothe any heartburn their stay had caused.
With that completed, she turned to the internet.
There must be a connection among the events of the past forty-eight hours. She wasn’t seeing it yet, which meant she needed more information. Gather, gather, gather until the pattern clicked in her differently wired brain.
“One more question,” John said.
She startled. She thought he’d dropped off.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“How’d you get so good at this?”
“I…” Warmth swirled through her like the honey she’d drizzled into her mint tea at Amina’s. “You think I’m good at my job?”
He twisted on the couch to face her. “No, I think you’re great at it.
You always know what to do. Doesn’t matter if it’s bullets or goons or snakes or being chased.
You’ve got backup plans for your backup plans.
Resources stashed everywhere. Friends falling over themselves to do favors for you.
” He flipped onto his back. “You’re just really good at this. ”
Thank God his eyes were closed—no witnesses to her second sob fest today.
Embarrassing for a seasoned CIA officer.