A Stranger Paris at Night

I just entered in a Noir writing contest on Worth1000. If you sign up you can vote on it. I am posting it here as well so feel free to critique. Thanks for the read!

I stepped out of the loft apartment as I told my girl that I was going to La Culotte Mauvais. We had rented it for a month. This wasn’t my first time in Paris, but the last time I was putting lead buttons on Nazis. That was just a few years ago and they were still rebuilding. This was her idea, to get me out of the Ol’Apple, away from those cases that have been driving me crazy. It was starting to rain as I got on my bicycle. It wasn’t my favorite mode of transport, but they couldn’t get the Studebaker on the boat. It was a decent ride down cobblestone streets to the bar.  I had frequented this establishment quite a bit back after the war. As I topped the hill I noticed an old drunk stumbling out of the place. I tried to slow down, as his erratic shuffling concerned me. I thought I was clear of him, when he lunged right at me at the last minute. I was regaining my bearings when I was helped to my feet. It was a couple of goons, and they made sure I understood them. They started on my gut like a boxer pounding on a side of beef. I called out to the drunk, but he just wandered off up the cobblestones. They pulled me back into an alley, tied me up and threw me into the back of a delivery truck. My mind was racing, this wasn’t just your average mugging, and I didn’t know anyone here who would want to kidnap me. What was going on? I tried to keep track of what direction we were going by counting turns. We were heading North and between time and the condition of the roads, I would say we were heading for the woods. This didn’t look good, but I had been in a few scrapes like this before, and I lived to tell the tale. I was just trying to put my finger on the motive.

The truck pulled to a halt about an hour later, they opened the doors and dragged me out against a tree. Their English was bad and my French was rusty, so it made our conversation a bit rough. They kept asking me, why I did it to her? I told them I didn’t know what they were talking about I had done nothing. They didn’t like my answer, so the pistol whipped me. I told them I had done nothing wrong. They chuckled at my defiance. They told me that rape was wrong, no matter what a sicko like me thinks. My mind wandered as they continued the beating. How was I being accused of rape, I had been with my girl the whole time until I left for the bar tonight. When they were done having their fun they put me in a metal box not much bigger than a refrigerator. They had it hooked up to a chain and they lifted me up by a tree branch. There the let me hang. This goon squad was just judge and jury, and I was figuring they would let mother nature be the executioner.

I sat in that box all night freezing, thinking that maybe they might come back in the morning to interrogate me. They didn’t, and I could hear the carrion crows circling the next afternoon anxious for their next meal. The box was pitch black and their caws reverberated through my head with sickening echoes. I sat and rubbed my body to keep warm throughout the next night. Sometime a couple of days later I was disturbed from my increasingly twisting thoughts of my oncoming death by the sound of a truck. I heard a few men talking below then I suddenly dropped to the ground. When they opened the box the midday sun blinded me. I started proclaiming my innocence, and they laughed as they strung the chain around my feet. I was brought to eye level hanging upside down. They continued to ask for my confession, this time saying she had died from what I had done. I told them with every punch that they had the wrong man, but they just continued with their onslaught. As my eyes adjusted to the bright light I noticed a sedan pulling up. They stopped as an older man rolled down a window. Another man I hadn’t noticed the other night walked over. After a few minutes he motioned to the thugs to let me down. They were told to get me a change of clothes and drop me back off at the bar. Then he said to me in perfect English that if I would help them find the real criminal, this would all be forgotten. Normally I would just tell them to hit the road with such an offer, but I was in no condition to argue, and frankly just grateful to still be alive. They said they would point him out to me at the bar. I was then loaded back into the truck and driven the hour or so back into Paris. It started to rain as we got out at the bar. We sat in a back corner and they bought me a few brandys while we waited, they explained to me that all I had to do was knock him to the ground, and they would take care of the rest. I they got him I was free to go. If not, they would get a confession out of me somehow. They said he was coming and so I was motioned to the front door. I was stumbling pretty bad after having been cramped in a box for a few days. The brandy wasn’t helping. I saw someone coming towards me on a bicycle as he came closer I lunged towards him and knocked him clean off. I saw them coming out of the alley as he was getting up. I started up the cobblestone street, ignoring his calling for help. That kind of criminal scum deserves what’s coming to him. I couldn’t wait to get back home to the rough streets of that rotten apple I call home.