A Boy Who Came In from the Cold Ch. 14

That made him think of Wagon Wheels but a cursory inspection of the vending machine revealed that either these chocolate treats were now obsolete or had never reached this far flung outpost of Europe. He returned to the bench and took another slurp from his can, thinking to himself how good it felt to actually be alone. Rayne was not solitary by nature but this little stretch of personal space was delicious. It felt wicked, like bunking off school and riding up to London on the train without a ticket.

Some of his friends were incapable of doing the smallest things without someone to hold their hand but he had never minded being on his own. It gave him thinking space and he had been doing a lot of thinking just recently.

When they were children, he and Skye had been eternally perplexed by their father's habit of locking himself in the bathroom with the newspapers on a Sunday morning. Sometimes he was in there for almost an hour and when asked what he did in there that took so long he always answered; "I'm contemplating, son. I'm contemplating."

For years Rayne had confused contemplation and constipation as a result of this habit but now he thought he understood it.

When someone dropped down next to him on the bench he initially blanked the guy. Only when his companion attempted to say hello in about five different languages did Rayne finally turn to look at him. He found himself facing a tall, half-caste fellow with a wisp of dark moustache and a straggly goatee beard. Jewellery dripped from his ears and nostrils, neck and wrists, all of it cheap and home-made. His clothing was a similar rag bag assortment in a rainbow of mismatched colours, some of it fitting tolerably well, other parts, like his baggy yellow trousers, hardly at all.

"You smoke, oui?" the fellow said to him, pointing to his nearly exhausted roll up.

"Yeah," Rayne exhaled, this being obvious.

"English?"

"Mmhmm," Rayne nodded. "You want a light or somink?"

Pale grey eyes, the colour of mercury, stared back at him impassively. Just as he was about to try another tack, thinking he was not making himself understood, the guy said; "You want weed, English? Skink, non?"

"Skunk?" Rayne corrected him cautiously, though his spirits rose a little. "No... no thanks."

The stranger made a non-committal sound that did not part his lips. He touched the back of Rayne's hand, artlessly moving his loose shirtsleeve back along his forearm. At once the boy pulled away from him.

"Oi!" he warned.

"You cut?" the scarecrow said, shaking his head a little, then pulling back the sleeve of his multicoloured sweater to the elbow. The scars and track marks criss-crossed his forearm as if some rabid animal had clawed him.

"Jesus!" Rayne exhaled, taking another pull on his cigarette to hide some of the mingled pity and empathy in his voice. "That's... something else!"

"Feels good, non?" his companion sighed, leaning back on the bench and stretching out as if they were discussing nothing more disturbing than the beautiful day. "We smoke and shoot the breeze, oui?"

Rayne passed him the half-smoked roll up wordlessly and his new friend took a long, contented pull, holding the smoke deep then blowing it out through his nostrils.

"C'est bien," he commented approvingly. "You like to smoke? Understand?"

"Yeah," Rayne said again, taking back the remnants of the cigarette and sucking on the damp roach. He leaned closer and murmured; "You got some weed then?"

"You like?" His companion beamed at him.

"Nah..." Rayne put a hand on his arm before he could pull away, the confusion plain on his face. He passed back the roll up and as the Frenchman sucked in the welcome smoke, he whispered; "You got any pills? Junk?"

The stranger stared back at him for a moment with wide, over-zealous eyes.

"Dschunk?" he repeated in an undertone.

"He-ro-in," Rayne said atonally, keeping his voice low.

"Is much money," the skinny fellow told him at once.

"I can afford it," Rayne held his gaze. "Do you have it or not?"

"Much money." The other stared back at him intently as if he was some bizarre new life-form.

"How much?"

"How much you want?" Silver eyes met pale, peridot green ones without blinking.

"Couple of grams," Rayne said, holding that look.

"One thousand francs."

For a moment neither man moved then Rayne shook his head.

"You are havin' a laugh, right?"

"One thousand," the scarecrow repeated solemnly.

"Fuck. Off." Rayne sucked the remaining life out his roll up and flicked the roach away with another shake of his head. He emptied the soda can and tipped the empty tin into a nearby bin, then pushed himself to his feet and walked away.

"Nine hundred," said a voice close by his right ear as he reached the bus stop and checked his pockets, pretending to study the timetable. A small, humourless smile tugged at his lips and he did not look round.

"Don't waste my time," he said quietly. "You think I come in on a banana boat or somink?"

"Banana...?" He sensed the fellow's puzzlement now and turned his head to look into those peculiar, silver eyes.

"Go. Away."

"How much money you have?" the rainbow lunatic persisted, ignoring this.

There was a moment when Rayne wondered just how many of this mad bastard's friends were watching him. He regretted the cereal and the crisps because he thought he was actually going to be sick.

"That's for me to know and you to find out," he said, keeping the quiver out of his voice.

"Nine hundred," the scarecrow repeated, walking around the shelter and sitting down on the deserted bench within. A bus had just come through and for the moment they were alone on this small, perspex island.

Rayne wandered around casually to join him but remained standing, leaning against the plastic adshell, framed by a gigantic ice-cream Snickers bar.

"Six," he said resolutely, folding his arms across his chest and focussing on not throwing up.

"You are a funny boy," his companion told him solemnly. "Eight hundred franc, no less."

"Seven," Rayne persisted, still shaking his head. "Eight hundred is too much."

"You cannot afford?" The lanky foreigner rose to his feet and moved closer, looking down on Rayne, reminding him that he was taller and probably faster and stronger to boot. His spidery fingers skated over the boy's denim clad crotch then cupped and squeezed his balls gently. "You can pay other ways, non?"

Rayne's hand caught his wrist, pushing the groping digits away at once.

"I can 'afford' it, it's just too much, okay?" He looked up seriously into those shrewd silver eyes. This close he could smell nicotine and marijuana on the dealer's stale breath. He was not stoned but he was quite mellow. With a clear head, he might have persisted in his attempts to grope Rayne but he did not do so now.

"Seven hundred," Rayne breathed slowly and determinedly.

"Seven fifty... last chance," the scarecrow whispered back. His clammy hand moved to Rayne's face, cupping and stroking it as if they were trysting lovers. This time Rayne held his ground and let the guy touch him. Anyone looking would automatically think they were coming on to one another and probably look away just as quickly.

"Seven hundred and fifty," he sighed at last, reaching for his jeans pocket. "Okay."

The hand left his face, stopping him at once.

"Not here," the dealer warned, shaking his head. "Too public; too many police." He glanced towards the edge of the concourse where a patrol car had just pulled up.

They watched the uniformed men get out and walk into the station buildings, then the dealer pointed back towards the avenue he had walked up from the river.

"Down there," he said quietly. "Two streets... a' gauche." He gestured to his left and Rayne nodded at once "Four doors..." Again he made that waving motion with his left hand.

"Second street, fourth door on the left," Rayne repeated, still nodding. "I understand."

"You wait ten minutes," the dealer counted out the time period on the face of his watch in case this was not clear.

"Okay." Rayne glanced over his shoulder. There was a clock on the front of the station building. It was almost ten am now.

"You knock and ask for Armand," his companion told him.

"Armand, okay," Rayne agreed eagerly. He could feel the familiar shiver starting up in his veins at the thought of the fix. Rayne did not like drug-dealers, generally. You could never trust them, but the idea of the deal, the allure of that first sweet hit of smoke, was all too much. He nodded his head again seriously and the fellow patted his cheek as if he was a child and scurried off in the direction he had just indicated.

It was one of the longest ten minutes of Rayne's young life. He paced back and forth in the shelter for a while, watching the clock, keeping his hands on the money in his pockets and waiting for the seconds to crawl by. And the more he waited, the more anxious he became.

Johnno sorted out the dealers back home. Occasionally one of them wanted a bit more than the cash and then John would leave Rayne alone with him for a while. He had never struck a deal for heroin in his life until that night in London, just before Ant brought him to France. Even then he had managed to get himself arrested, although it was only for soliciting in the end. Telling the cops he was only fifteen generally worked and he got off with a caution. Normally, Johnno would come and pick him up from the station with a ready-made excuse. Rayne was not naïve enough to imagine that the police believed he was John's little brother, any more than they believed that he had missed his bus and was waiting for a lift home in a notorious red-light district where men came regularly to pick up young boys for sex.

Unfortunately for them, they had no more evidence that he was lying than he had that he was telling the truth.

He paced back and forth again, then looked up at the clock. Three minutes past ten! He stared at it for a moment, counting to sixty slowly, sure that it had stopped, then walked down the pavement to the far corner of the concourse and stared along the boulevard towards the entrance that was second on the left. It looked no different to any other street around here; no better, no worse.

"I'm looking for Armand," he whispered under his breath, trying the words for size. "I was told to ask for Armand... shit no, that sounds lame!"

He walked back towards the station and bought a bottle of water from the machine. The two cops passed him on the way out and one of them looked him up and down but they did not stop. Rayne shivered in spite of the gathering heat and unscrewed the cap from his bottle, draining it gratefully.

"I want to see Armand," he murmured to himself, imagining a more purposeful tone of voice as he leaned in the doorway, waiting for the police car to pull away. That only sounded pushy; a bit too cocky, perhaps.

He checked the time again, this time on the flicker-board readout above the ticket kiosks. The numbers flickered down, changing as he watched them; white on black panels; 10:05.

"I've come for Armand," he said to it, shaking his head at once and turning away.

A tune came into his head and he wandered out again, humming quietly to himself, snatching fragments of the lyrics; "I'm... waiting for the man... twenty five dollars... in my hand."

His brain played with some school boy mathematics at the same time. Lou Reed had written that song maybe fifteen or twenty years ago and twenty five dollars was, what? Sixteen pounds maybe? Even with inflation he figured that the seven hundred and fifty francs he had just been charged was a bit steep! Maybe Heroin was more expensive in France than it was in New York. Maybe Lou Reed just knew a friendly dealer!

He wondered if the scarecrow was Armand or just the messenger. If he had to ask for Armand then it stood to reason that he would not be the only person there. Was it a crack house? Rayne took a deep breath and contemplated smoking the half joint in his shirt pocket, then ruled it out severely. He needed to keep his wits about him if this place 'was' a crack house. John and Surrey Dave sometimes went down to one of their regular Dealer's places in Shoreditch to lend the guy some muscle. Johnno always carried at least a couple of knives and Surrey had a pistol; a neat little Beretta that he claimed to have taken from a cop at the Whitewater Farm riots.

Rayne never knew whether to believe any of Surrey's blagging, but at least the guy was not interested in his arse at all. That was a blessing!

He sighed, weary of waiting. Scarecrow Man was right about one thing, there 'were' too many police around. Another car passed him as he walked back to the bus stop and he deliberately avoided looking at it, lighting the other fag to settle his nerves, eyes on the station clock. When it ticked down to 10:08, he turned and set off back towards the boulevard, under the whispering planes and limes, eyes fixed on the second turning on the left. His heart was beating double time when he reached it and flicked away the roach from his exhausted roll up.

The fourth door on the left was set back in a deep alcove with four buttons in a battered looking intercom grille, fixed to the wall. There were no names or numbers next to any of them so he pressed them all, one at a time. When nothing happened, he stepped back into the street, looking up at the house. It was three storeys tall, with a loft window above that. Floors one and two had small iron balconies and louvered, full-length shutters with peeling paintwork. Both were closed but there were some withered pot plants on one of the balconies and a towel hanging over the balustrade to dry. On the next balcony there was nothing at all.

Rayne glowered at the door irritably, wondering if this had all been some kind of elaborate joke. Across the street a skinny, shirtless, richly tanned youth was watching him from another doorway, pulling languidly on a cigarette. Now he called out, a meaningless tattoo of words and Rayne shrugged his shoulders and shook his head in response. The smoker raised his hand and mimicked a swift rapping motion.

Feeling stupid, and quite ready to turn and walk away empty handed, Rayne Wilde stepped back into the alcove and knocked hard on the peeling red door. For a moment there was a profound silence, no voices, no footsteps, nothing at all; then, just as he was about to give up completely, the lock clicked. He heard a bolt slide back behind the door and it opened, framing a tall, beardless, broad-shouldered, black skinned man in a well-fitting suit. The fellow's hair was cropped close to his skull and shimmering with oil and he looked down at Rayne with dark, impassive eyes and a closed, expressionless face.

"I... I've come to see Armand," Rayne choked the words out, seriously wondering if he had the wrong address. This guy did not look like any dealer or crack-whore he had ever met.

"English?" the man queried. His accent was heavy and the single word dripped from his lips like melting chocolate.

Rayne nodded, struck dumb. That was one hell of a sexy voice!

"You come, English," the guy invited, stepping aside so that he could walk past into the dimly lit hallway beyond the door.

As he took his first tentative steps inside, Rayne thought that the place felt unused, as if no one actually lived here. There was a stale, damp, dusty smell to the place that was utterly at odds with his host's appearance and manner. His senses all prickled at the wrongness of that. Sure, from time to time, dealers had to move around. Their whole game was about making a profit and staying a couple of jumps ahead of the cops, but even so, Rayne's instincts were screaming at him to get out of here.

The big guy closed the door behind him and he managed not to jump as he felt a large, warm hand come to rest in the small of his back, steering him firmly but not roughly along the empty hallway, past a couple of closed doors on his right, towards another portal at the farthest end. A flight of bare, paint-spattered stairs to his left ran up to the next floor and Rayne was conscious of the squeak of his rubber-soled sneakers on the ancient parquet underfoot. The click of the black guy's boot heels echoed ominously in the empty hall.

The door at the end of the corridor stood ajar and he was ushered through it now into a room dominated by a huge, dirty window with bars on the outside, dimly visible through the grime. His gaze took in another door set into the far wall to the left; a big, iron door with three heavy padlocked bolts on it. A bare bulb hung from a worn, braided pendant in the ceiling over a pitted wooden table that might have seated ten people, although there were no chairs in the room. In fact it was the only piece of furniture he had seen in the house, full stop. Set into the right hand wall was an enormous, filthy-looking fireplace with a stone mantel and the charred remnants of some feeble attempt at a fire in the iron grate. A number of plain, wooden packing cases were stacked haphazardly under the window.

At the head of the long table stood another man, silhouetted in grey against the light from the dirty panes. He too wore an immaculate dark suit with a pale, lightly woven, roll-neck sweater beneath it. His hair was trimmed short and neat around his ears, framing his head like a dark skullcap, flecked with grey at the temples. He was white and, Rayne guessed, probably about forty five; a little older than the black guy who had let him in. And he made the boy's skin crawl.

There was no sign of Scarecrow Man anywhere in the room.

He wanted to leave more than anything but one thing held him in place. At the head of the table, in front of the creep in the suit, was a small, chromium-plated, digital scale and a shrink-wrapped, plastic package about the size of a man's fist. Next to it lay a couple of polythene baggies and a large tablespoon. The scale gleamed in the dull light from the flyspecked bulb; clean, pristine, brand new.

"Are you Armand?" Rayne asked him huskily.

"Let us say, for simplicity's sake, that I am," the man replied in faultless, barely accented English. "What is 'your' name?"

He was not sure what made him decide, but in that instant the very last thing he wanted was to reveal his identity to this man, or even give him a clue.

"James," he said decisively, settling for his father's name. "James... Wright."

"Come closer, James," Armand beckoned, crooking his little finger in Rayne's direction.

The other man's hand was on his back again, pushing him gently forward in case he thought to change his mind. That pressure remained as the man in front of him cupped his chin in one strong, smooth-skinned hand, lifting his face to the light. Colourless eyes bored into him. Armand was not traditionally handsome, but he was still good looking in an arrogant, middle-aged, Mediterranean way. He smelled incredible; a liberal dousing with expensive aftershave on that carefully exfoliated chin, no doubt.

"You are a pretty little thing, James," he said solemnly, swallowing Rayne with his eyes in a way that made the boy shiver. "How old are you?"

"I'm twenty," Rayne said, clearing his throat nervously. He wanted to pull away but he was scared now. They were both big guys and it would be no great task for them to hurt him badly if that was what they chose to do.

"I think you're probably younger than that, aren't you?" Armand suggested silkily. His hands moved to Rayne's wrists and he pushed back the boy's sleeves casually then said; "No matter. Take off your shirt and vest, then drop your pants for me, James."

Rayne froze, unable to move. Briefly he was paralysed by those fixed, impassive eyes; snared like a mouse in front of a cobra.

"Pasqual, strip him!" Armand instructed when he did not obey automatically.