Private Paris Read online

  Peaks’s eyebrows rose, and he said, “Exactly.”

  “She’s covered in her blood,” Hoskins said.

  “Because she was trying to help her,” I said.

  “I’d rather hear this from the princess,” Fromme said.

  “I’m sure,” Louis said, glancing at the princess, who was curled up fetal and sucking her thumb. “But from the looks of it, you might wait hours before she is in any condition to talk again.”

  The magistrate fumed, but Hoskins said, “Out with it.”

  Louis and I recounted the story we’d gotten out of the princess. On her way home from the nightclub Le Baron, she saw the light on in the workshop above Millie’s shop, knew she was going there with her mother in a few hours anyway, and, on impulse, wanted to take a sneak peek at her new dresses. She knew the location of the rear entrance from an earlier visit, hit the buzzer, and got no reply. She tried the door and found it unlocked.

  “When she came into the workshop, she saw Millie hanging upside down, with her back to her,” Louis said. “She ran to Millie, and tried to lift her body, which explains the blood on her hands and blouse. Then she started screaming, which is when Jack and I heard her.”

  Fromme squinted. “Why would she try to lift her?”

  “Millie was special to the princess,” I said. “Her favorite designer. Drunk as she was, she was just trying to help a friend in need.”

  “There,” Peaks said. “You have it, then. Now can we avoid an international incident here? I’m sure the princess’s father will be more than grateful if we can keep her name out of the press. Please: that would smear her reputation at home for years, and home is Riyadh, not Paris. She doesn’t deserve what would happen to her there.”

  Hoskins and Fromme exchanged glances. The investigateur said, “I’ll need some kind of statement from her.”

  Louis waved his iPhone. “You’ll have it. I videoed our conversation and her physical condition with her consent.”

  “Wait. What?” Peaks protested. “She can’t consent. She’s a drunk minor. Whatever she told you is inadmissible.”

  “What do you care?” I asked. “She’s on the record, but the record stays private because she’s a minor. Correct?”

  Juge Fromme said, “I can live with that.”

  “I can too,” Hoskins said, sighing. “Clean her up. Take her back to her mother.”

  Peaks looked at Louis and me with an expression that said, I owe you both in a big way. We nodded, and he went to the princess’s side and tried to wake her. She groaned and threw an arm over her head.

  There was a commotion downstairs, and I could hear Laurent Alexandre arguing with the police officers securing the crime scene.

  “That’s Millie’s personal assistant,” Louis told Hoskins.

  The investigateur leaned over the railing and called down to the officers, telling them to allow Alexandre to come up. He did a few moments later, dressed in a bespoke blue suit with high-water pants and yellow socks that matched his tie. The outfit was totally at odds with the expression on his face as he climbed up from the shop: he looked like a scared little kid being forced into a haunted house at a carnival.

  “She’s dead?” he asked in a quavering voice full of disbelief.

  Louis gestured in the direction of the designer’s corpse, which still hung from the rafter. Alexandre didn’t seem able to turn that way.

  Instead, he said, “Noulan? Did he kill her?”

  “Doesn’t look that way,” Hoskins said. “AB-16.”

  “What?” he whined before pivoting to face the workshop.

  His trembling right hand came arthritically to his mouth, which gaped in horror. “Oh, dear God, Millie,” he whispered. “What have they done to you?”

  Then his knees buckled, and he fainted dead away.

  Chapter 60

  DAWN WAS COMING on while Randall Peaks cleaned Princess Mayameen with water and paper towels, and Hoskins revived Alexandre, who came around choking and weeping as he answered questions.

  The designer’s assistant said he had left the workshop at around eight the previous evening. Millie had still been working feverishly on the princess’s dresses.

  “She said she would sleep here on the daybed,” he said. “She did it all the time when she had clients coming, and wanted me here at six fifteen sharp to wake her. If the princess hadn’t…I would have…”

  Peaks got the princess to her feet, but she didn’t like it.

  “I want to sleep, Randy,” she groaned.

  “Back at the Plaza,” Peaks said.

  “No,” Maya grumbled. “I want to sleep here.”

  The bodyguard hesitated, and then hauled off and slapped her hard across the rear.

  “You’re going to the hotel, Maya,” he said. “Now.”

  That got her wide awake, and she shouted, “You’ll lose your job for that! I’ll make sure of it!”

  Peaks grabbed her tightly about the wrist and dragged her toward the rear hallway, saying, “I figure I’ve already lost the job because of you, but I will get you to your mother’s room safe and sound whether you like my methods or not. You’re a princess, for Allah’s sake! Start acting like it!”

  When they’d gone, Alexandre’s lower lip quivered, and he said to Hoskins, “Can I go downstairs, please? I can’t stand seeing her this way.”

  “Of course,” the investigateur said.

  Strong lights bathed the window.

  Louis went over and looked out. “Television cameras. Four of them.”

  The designer’s assistant went to the stairs, wiping his eyes with his suit sleeve. “Am I free to inform her family and friends?”

  Fromme said, “Yes, but don’t talk about the crime scene.”

  “No, I couldn’t.”

  As Alexandre trudged down the stairs, I studied the room again.

  “Why is the body positioned differently?” I asked. “Her arms, I mean. They’re not spread to the side like with the others.”

  Louis said, “Maybe someone from AB-16 was in here about to do that when the princess opened the door downstairs.”

  “We can’t suppose that until we get a time of death,” Hoskins said.

  “Where is our forensics team?” the magistrate asked.

  “They’re wrapping up another scene.”

  “Once again, I offer Private Paris’s aid,” Louis said.

  Fromme shook his head. “We will wait for our people, and the both of you should leave. Now.”

  He stated this all flatly, without the rancor and innuendo he’d shown after he’d seen the letter sent to Ali Farad.

  “Juge?” I said. “Has our associate, Mr. Farad, been released?”

  The magistrate stiffened and said, “He has not.”

  “What?” Louis said. “Why not?”

  “As I indicated last night, Monsieur Langlois, AB-16 is a direct threat to our national security, and—”

  “So Farad is a suspect because AB-16 sent him a letter?” I asked, incredulous. “Are you going to arrest people at all the news outlets that received copies of the letter?”

  Fromme glanced at Hoskins, who was stone-faced.

  At last the magistrate cleared his throat and said, “There is more to it than just the letter, Monsieur Morgan, I assure you. Beyond that, I—”

  Phones buzzed, alerting Fromme and Hoskins to incoming texts. They got out their cells and read them. The detective’s breath caught in her throat. Fromme went deathly pale for several beats, and then pointed his cane at us.

  “You two: out. Now,” he growled. “Back door. And no talking to the media under promise of arrest. Are we clear?”

  Louis’s eyebrows knitted in anger. “You’ll arrest us if we—”

  “Without hesitation,” Fromme said. “Now out and silent.”

  “You act as if there’s been another AB-16 murder,” Louis said.

  “An assassination,” Hoskins said, shock in her tone.

  “Investigateur Hoskins,” Fromme said
in warning.

  “Who’s the victim?” I asked.

  “Madame investigateur,” Fromme said.

  The detective ignored the magistrate and said, “Guy LaFont. Minister of culture.”

  Chapter 61

  LOUIS WAS NOT himself as we circled through the streets from Millie Fleurs’s shop to the Plaza. A light drizzle fell and people were already heading to work, heads down and balancing their umbrellas.

  “I fear for France, Jack,” he said grimly. “AB-16 assassinated not only a sitting member of the president’s cabinet, but one of the staunchest opponents of letting Muslims from our former colonies continue to immigrate here. There will be repercussions, I’m sure. This could easily spin out of control.”

  On that disturbing note, we entered the hotel lobby, which was crowded now. Another member of Peaks’s security team stood watch outside the breakfast room. He nodded to us, giving us a one-finger salute.

  Upstairs, we walked in heavy silence to the suite door. I was going to take a shower and Louis was going to order breakfast before we called our attorneys to work on getting Ali Farad released from custody.

  “They seem to think they have evidence implicating him,” I said, passing the key before the lock.

  “I don’t believe it,” Louis said. “Not for a minute. I vetted Farad myself. Ali is—how do you say?—squeaky-clean.”

  I pushed the door open and knew something was wrong. The drawer to a desk in the suite’s hallway had been tugged open. I got out my gun and motioned to Louis to do the same.

  We snuck into the living area, seeing that the French doors to the balcony were ajar and that the suite had been tossed in our absence.

  Every drawer was open or on the floor. The mattresses had been thrown aside and my personal belongings searched and strewn about. Both safes were unlocked and empty, as I’d left them. When I’d taken the lighter to Petitjean for examination, I’d also brought along my cash and passport and left it all in a safe at Private Paris.

  “I’ll call housekeeping,” I said, and headed toward the phone by my bed.

  Louis grunted in reply, and then his cell phone rang. He answered, listened, and cried, “Merde! We are coming!”

  He stabbed off the phone and shook it at me. “Hoskins and Fromme—they had to have known! And they say nothing to us!”

  “Calm down. What’s going on?”

  “It’s bad, Jack. Government agents are searching our offices, taking our computers, and seizing all evidence in the lab.”

  Chapter 62

  15th Arrondissement

  10:40 a.m.

  WHEN WE CLIMBED from the Uber car, there were black vans parked in front of our building and plainclothesmen wearing body armor and carrying submachine guns standing guard.

  “Shit,” Louis said. “They’re carrying MP5Ks. Those guys are anti-terror.”

  This was bad—very bad for Private Paris, and for me. The suggestion that Private was tied to terrorism was probably the worst thing that could ever happen. Clients would flee us like rats off a sinking ship.

  Louis walked up to the nearest officer, his identification out.

  “May I inspect the warrant?” he asked.

  The officer played it professional and retrieved the document. While Louis studied it, Marc Petitjean and Claudia Vans were shown out the door by two more anti-terrorists.

  Petitjean was enraged. “Thrown out of my own lab!”

  Vans said, “You act like we’re criminals.”

  “Maybe you are,” one of the officers said laconically. “That’s what we’re here to find out. If so, you will most definitely be hearing from us.”

  “This is slanderous,” the scientist said.

  “But legal,” Louis said with a sigh, handing back the warrant. “When can we reenter?”

  “Couple of hours?”

  “Please lock it when you leave,” he said, and turned to me. “We should go, Jack. The press will get word of this, and it does not help us to be photographed in connection with a terrorism investigation.”

  The four of us walked away.

  When we were well down the street, Petitjean said, “Given the letter and the initial reports we sent to La Crim yesterday, it didn’t surprise me that we were raided.”

  “What reports?” Louis asked.

  Vans frowned and said, “We ran DNA on the cigarette butts left at Chez Pincus and the pubic hairs we found at the sex club, and got enough to know that we are dealing with seven different people: five male, two female, and all of Middle Eastern or North African descent.”

  “Farad?” I asked. “Is he a match?”

  “He’s from the same general gene pool,” Petitjean said. “I could know more definitively in a couple of days, but they took the samples.”

  Vans said, “We did get a match on the newsprint used to compose the letter. They were all cut from Algerian and Tunisian newspapers.”

  “You can tell something like that?” Louis asked.

  “It’s technical,” Petitjean said. “But yes.”

  We rounded the corner, and I realized something else and groaned.

  “What is it?” Louis asked.

  “Kim’s lighter was in the lab. My passport and my money too.”

  “No,” Vans said. “I’ve got your passport and cash.”

  “And I have the lighter here with my cigarettes,” the scientist said, patting his breast pocket and smiling. “By the way, I know what it really is.”

  After making sure we weren’t under surveillance, we found a café, went inside, and ordered double espressos and croissants that were good, but they didn’t splinter like the Plaza’s.

  “So, what is it?” Louis said after the waitress had left. “The lighter?”

  Private Paris’s head scientist dug in his breast pocket and came up with a blue box of Gitanes cigarettes and the stainless steel lighter that had caused havoc all over the city in the past few days. He held the lighter, admiring it.

  “Quite a piece of technology,” Petitjean said. “Must have cost a small fortune to engineer. Very James Bond. Took a bit to figure it out, but I did.”

  He turned the lighter upside down. He used a paper clip to press against the bleeder valve at the center of the flame control dial.

  “There was actually butane in it the first time I tried,” the scientist said. “And that kind of threw me, until I…”

  He used his thumbnail to turn the dial clockwise. Setting the paper clip aside, Petitjean took the lighter by both ends and tugged. It separated into two pieces, and revealed, sticking out of the bottom piece, a USB micro-B connector similar to the one that attaches a charger to my camera.

  “It’s a data storage device,” Vans said.

  “And heavily encrypted,” said Petitjean, who looked irritated that she’d spilled the beans. “I tried to hack my way in, but it was beyond my skills.”

  “And mine,” Vans said.

  I looked at Louis. “Le Chien?”

  He smiled and said, “Excellent idea. We’ll put the Dog on it.”

  Chapter 63

  11th Arrondissement

  11:35 a.m.

  THE BRAIN-INJURED HACKER cradled an iPad connected to the memory stick and went into slow orbit around the perimeter of his apartment, completely ignoring Louis and me as he probed the method of encryption.

  Louis shifted gears and put in a call to our French legal team regarding Ali Farad. I got on the phone with a Palo Alto, California, company that provides twenty-four-hour data backup services for Private offices around the globe, and authorized it to move a copy of all of Private Paris’s files to a secure virtual office where we could access them.

  I called Justine, too. It was 2:35 in the morning, L.A. time, but she picked right up. The Dog orbited past me while I got her up to date on Kim Kopchinski’s kidnapping, the lighter, and the raiding of Private Paris.

  “Private the focus of an anti-terror investigation,” Justine said. “A disaster.”

  “Tell me abou
t it,” I said.

  “What about Farad?”

  “Louis swears by him. And his record is immaculate. Not even a rumor of Islamic radicalism.”

  “But you said the police hinted that they had more than a rumor?”

  “Yes.”

  “What is it?”

  “I honestly have no idea,” I said, glancing at Louis, who was in the Dog’s kitchen intently listening to his cell phone.

  “Has news of the raid gotten out?” Justine asked.

  “Not that I know of,” I said.

  “Could be time to hire a publicist who specializes in crisis management,” Justine said. “Have something ready in case it does come out.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “How’s Sherman?”

  “Slightly better,” she said. Wilkerson had remembered her when she visited the night before. He also remembered that three men wearing masks had assaulted him in his house. They had wanted to know where Kim was.

  “Sherman kept asking me if you had her safe,” Justine said. “I told him you were working on it, and that seemed to undo his progress. He got very agitated and angry with me—shouting, even—and the nurses asked me to leave.”

  “Great,” I said, watching the Dog leave the cluttered living area and orbit into a back hallway.

  Shaking his head, Louis hurried from the kitchen, glanced at me in deep distress, and said, “The lawyers, Jack. They say to watch the news. Life is getting worse for us and for Farad.”

  Before I could reply, he snatched the remote off a coffee table.

  I told Justine I had to go, and hung up in time to see the flat-screen on the wall blink and then jump to a Parisian street scene I recognized immediately.

  “That’s Barbès,” I said. “The mosque. FEZ Couriers.”

  “And Al-Jumaa tailors,” Louis said as the camera angle shifted to show officers wearing bulletproof vests and carrying MAT-49s as they led the tailor out of his shop in handcuffs.