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Vengeance. Mystery Writers of America Presents B00A25NLU4

Vengeance. Mystery Writers of America Presents B00A25NLU4

Titel: Vengeance. Mystery Writers of America Presents B00A25NLU4 Kostenlos Bücher Online Lesen
Autoren: Lee (Ed.) Child
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job, and I would do mine.
    She twisted her hands in her skirt and sighed.
    “I’m sorry, Baptiste. I thought I could help. Top us up a little.”
    Why I had decided to extend a hand to Tatiana I will never know. I had everything I wanted: a city license to play my one-man setup in a rainproof location that sucked in half the tourists in Paris; enough money to pay for my tiny studio in the Eighteenth Arrondissement and for the frozen dinners I bought each night at the Picard store. There was enough to send to my family in the south too, back when I used to do that. Back when I talked to them. Back when I talked. Before my memory told me I should speak no longer.
    I nodded firmly toward the gardens and she knew what I meant: “Leave my customers alone. If people pay you for those stupid rings, they won’t pay me for my music. And they certainly won’t put money in my beret if they find their wallets missing.”
    She shuffled off slowly, cowering as she went. I turned back to my instruments, my anger passing. She needed the money more than I did, and every coin she pickpocketed in the park reduced the number I felt compelled to slip her at the end of the day.
    Maybe I shared with Tatiana because no one else would. Gypsies are human rats, I’d heard the policemen say after they’d chased the beggars, pickpockets, and scamsters from the gardens. Send them back where they came from. Don’t touch them; they’re dirty. Even American tourists, the most gullible of all the nationalities that walked by me, eyed the rings the Gypsies proffered with suspicion, then turned their backs and patted their wallets.
    So Tatiana got a few coins from me each day, coupled with a warning that if she ever stole from me, she’d never see another euro. She understood everything from my face, my gestures. I’d give her a shake of the head when I wanted her elsewhere, a tilt when a good potential mark walked by. I’d bring her the odd bit of
poulet rôti
from my previous night’s dinner, a thin blanket when I had bought a new one.
    What Tatiana mostly got from me was something no one else gave her: an ear. As I packed up each night, she’d come by and tell me in broken French about her life: growing up in a camp outside Plovdiv, making her way with others of her kind in a series of ragtag caravans from Bulgaria, across Hungary, over the Austrian Alps, then here. Camping, stealing, camping. Along the way there had been a man, and a child or two. She didn’t know where they were now.

    I SAW THE little girl again not long after that. It was warmer, but she still wore the white coat. She was with her mother, and so was a handsome black-haired young man — younger than the woman. His arm was wrapped around the waist of his companion. His eyes were on the woman’s face; his hand was atop the little girl’s head, stroking her hair.
    I wasted no time in pulling out the trombone and starting up the polka.
    “Maman!”
    The girl pointed to me and made an excited little jump. The Mother — what else could I call her? — reached for her purse, but the man pushed her hand away. Fishing in his pocket, he pulled out a pink ten-euro note and inserted it in the little girl’s fist. He took her other hand in a firm grip, plastered a big smile on his face, and started walking with her across the paving stones toward my waiting beret. I kept up the beat. Tatiana, happily, was nowhere to be seen.
    The child lost enthusiasm with each step. The farther she got from her mother, the more her feet dragged, the more she tried to turn back. Her face twisted into a pout. The beret was forgotten. The man kept the smile fixed in place and continued forward, pulling on her hand, trying to ignore her reluctance. The tourists were nudging one another and pointing.
    The conflict ended when the girl stopped moving her feet entirely and collapsed on the ground, wailing. The man bent over her, ostentatiously trying to pick her up and get her pointed toward me, wrapping his arms around her and lifting. But she pulled away, dropped the ten-euro bill, and darted toward the Mother. When she got there, she buried her face in the cashmere coat. The woman made a gesture of resignation and picked up the sobbing girl, draping her over her shoulder as the man picked up the money and then rejoined them. They walked up the steps, side by side, the ten-euro note still in the man’s hand. I had warned Tatiana away from the mother, but I wished she were nearby now so that I

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