Free Echo of War by Grant Blackwood Page B

how the tread patterns on the first five look random—chaotic?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œThey cross-hashed the soles—my guess is with a hacksaw blade. It’s gonna make identifying them a bitch.”
    â€œYou said five,” McBride replied. “What about the sixth?”
    â€œThe sixth is a whole different story. It was cross-hatched like the others, but not as heavily, and the underlying tread pattern is different. It looks new, too.”
    â€œHow new?”
    â€œA couple weeks, I’d say.”
    â€œAnd the tread pattern?”
    â€œA gem. See the overlapping dollar sign shape to them? That’s pretty uncommon.”
    Oliver said, “Uncommon enough to—”
    â€œYep,” Steve replied, then tapped the keyboard. A website’s homepage popped up on the screen. In the center was an animated GIF of a rotating boot. “Meet the Stone walker, gentlemen, the Cadillac of hiking boots. Starting price: three hundred bucks. Number of retailers within a hundred mile radius: twelve.”
    Oliver clapped Steve on the shoulder. “Great work.”
    â€œNow what?” McBride said.
    â€œNow we canvass and pray our guys did their shopping locally.”

7
    Paris
    Whether by choice or by assignment Tanner didn’t know, but Susanna Vetsch had chosen to live in Paris’s worst neighborhood. Called the Pigalle, it was located in the Montmartre quarter, north of Rue de Provence and south of Boulevard de Clichy. Though safer than it once was, the Pigalle was still considered the city’s red light district, with block after block of burlesque clubs, sex shops, and heavily made-up—and often heavily medicated— putain only too happy to service customers in the Pigalle’s warren of shadowed alleys and deep doorways.
    However Susanna had come to the Pigalle, the choice did make sense. Not only was it the home of all things carnal, but the Pigalle also boasted the city’s highest rates in street narcotics traffic, strong-arm robberies, burglaries, sexual assaults, and gang violence. If Susanna had been trying to submerge herself in the underworld of Paris, this was the best place to do it.
    As dusk settled over the city, Tanner and Cahil left the St. Beuve and boarded the 13 Metro at the Sevres Babylone exchange and rode it north across the Seine to the Gare St. Lazare exchange, where they got off. They were at the southern edge of the Pigalle and Tanner wanted to walk the area as evening fell. Nothing spoke better of a neighborhood’s subculture than how its character changed from day to night.
    They walked up Rue St. Lazare to Square de la Trinite then turned north onto Rue Blanche. One by one the streetlights began to flicker on, casting the sidewalks in pale yellow light. Garish neon signs above the clubs and taverns glowed to life. The apartment buildings were tall and narrow, looming over narrow sidewalks and blackened doorways. The alleys were dark slits between the buildings, most no wider than a man’s shoulders. Trash and empty bottles littered the gutters. Echoing up and down the streets, voices called to one another, mostly in French but with a smattering of Arabic, Chinese, and English thrown in.
    As Tanner’s eyes adjusted he could see movement in the darkness of the alley two figures joined together, pressed against the brick; the scuffed tip of a gold sequined boot. From behind the glowing dot of a cigarette a voice called, “Veut quelques-uns ?” Want someone?
    â€œJe n’ai pas envie, ” Tanner called back and kept walking.
    â€œWhat’d she want?” Cahil asked.
    â€œI’m not sure she was a she.”
    â€œWhat did it want?”
    â€œI think it liked the cut of your jib.”
    Cahil grimaced. “Oh, man.”
    Tanner chuckled.
    As they turned right onto Rue Pigalle proper, a half dozen smiling and waving Gypsy teenagers skipped across the street toward them. “Don’t let