Private Paris Page 24

  Chapter 90

  12th Arrondissement

  8:30 a.m.

  IN THE BEDROOM of Haja Hamid’s small apartment, she and Amé watched the television footage of the linen factory collapsing upon itself and the giant winged warhorse surrounded by burning timbers, smoke, and ash. The beast was so hot that the feathers and some of the skin were going molten and falling away, revealing the skeleton.

  “It’s brilliant!” Amé cried. “My God, what a statement, Haja! That image will never be forgotten in France—ever.”

  As an artist, Haja was pleased with the overall effect: sculpture and fire as performance art. The whole had been better than she’d hoped, and iconic as well—a symbol of her adopted nation’s inner, hidden turmoil.

  But at the same time, Haja’s satisfaction was tempered by the memory of Jack Morgan staring at her from outside the bus in Sevran. Had there been a flash of recognition in his expression?

  She wasn’t sure.

  But if so, Morgan had probably followed them to Sevran after he’d followed Epée to the linen factory. Haja had not told Amé of her suspicions and certainly not Émile Sauvage. As much as the major craved her, she knew his unwavering commitment to the cause. If he ever thought that she had become a liability, he would sacrifice her the same way he’d sacrificed Epée. She wondered whether it was time for her to slip off, and leave the country until things had shaken out.

  “How did you do it, Haja?” Amé asked. “Make it burn like that?”

  “Math, thermodynamics, and magnesium,” Haja said.

  “Translation?”

  “A wood fire can burn up to four hundred degrees,” Haja said. “Throw gasoline in, and a wood fire can create temperatures well over five hundred. Magnesium ignites at roughly four hundred and seventy-three degrees, and can then burn as hot as four thousand degrees. I made the horse’s skin with sheets of magnesium, which caught when the first fire was at its hottest.”

  Amé shook her head. “How in God’s name did you figure that all out?”

  “God had nothing to do with it. I looked it all up on the Internet.”

  Her burn phone rang.

  Sauvage.

  “Your art,” he said. “It’s all they’re talking about. Your masterpiece is raising a revolt, chéri. I’m seeing it with my own eyes.”

  Haja smiled at last. “I’m glad you’re pleased.”

  “Beyond pleased,” he said, and paused. “Did you see Jack Morgan there?”

  “The Private guy?” she said. “No.”

  “He told me he saw you through the bus window, but didn’t recognize you.”

  Haja had gone from a state of relative calm to desperate alertness.

  “Why would he?” she asked. “That one time I walked by him I was wearing a robe, head scarf, and contact lenses—a totally different woman than the one on the bus.”

  Sauvage paused and then said, “Destroy your burn phone and lay low for a while. It’ll be a few days before I can come see you.”

  “Done,” Haja said simply, and hung up.

  She went to the bedroom window, breaking the phone and removing the SIM card. There was scaffolding outside the window. The building’s owners were having the exterior plaster replaced and painted.

  Haja opened the window and looked down through the scaffolding, past a flower box on a lower floor, to a Dumpster in the alley below. She tossed the phone parts, watched them fall, all the while wondering whether she should be in a hurry to be long gone from Paris.

  Chapter 91

  18th Arrondissement

  10 a.m.

  “WE ARE HERE to see my nephew,” Louis said when we reached the nurses’ station outside the intensive care unit at Bretonneau Hospital. “Alain Du Champs?”

  The nurse on duty grimaced bitterly and said, “Doubt they’ll let you in to see him. He’s got a police guard. They think he firebombed the mosque before he was beaten by people trying to save it.”

  “A horrible thing,” Louis said. “I don’t know how he came to this. But perhaps I should talk with the police officer? I used to work for La Crim.”

  She shrugged and then gestured with her chin down the hall. “Down the hall, left, then first door on your right.”

  I hung back while Louis spoke with the officer sitting outside Du Champs’s room. At first I thought he was going to turn us down, but then Louis gestured to me. The officer had changed his mind.

  “Merci,” he said, nodding at me as we went by him toward the door.

  “What’d you tell him?” I whispered to Louis in English.

  “The truth,” Louis said. “You saved that police officer in Sevran last night. It was enough to get us a few minutes.”

  We went through hospital curtains and found Alain Du Champs lying in a bed, looking as though he’d been everyone’s favorite punching bag. His face was swollen almost beyond recognition. A few of his front teeth were missing, and his arm had six or seven pins jutting out of it.

  “Detectives?” he slurred. “I’m not saying nothing ’til I talk to my attorney.”

  “We work for Private Paris,” Louis said. “You’ve heard of us?”

  Through the swelling, Du Champs’s eyes moved to study us.

  “I’ve heard,” he said.

  “Speak English?” I asked.

  “Little,” he said.

  “How long have you been a photographer?” I asked.

  “Not about the mosque?” he said.

  “No,” Louis said.

  “Ten years,” Du Champs said, running his tongue along the gums where his teeth had been. “Since I got my first camera, when I was nine. Loved it.”

  “Take a lot of photographs?” I asked.

  “Can always throw the bad ones out.”

  “Remember the girl you sang to last week near the mosque?” Louis said.

  “I don’t sing.”

  “Really?” I said, and then sang, “‘Wake up, Fatima, don’t let me wait. You Muslim girls start much too late’?”

  The kid broke into a painful smile and laughed as if his ribs were broken. “I remember now. She was hot.”

  “Any chance you took a picture of her?”

  “Who is she?”

  I said, “She may have been involved in the Sevran bombing last night.”

  “Yes?” he said, the gears of his brain meshing and spinning. “So a pic of her could be a get-out-of-jail-free card? ’Cause I did not set that mosque on fire. I was in the area taking pictures and got attacked.”

  “Did you get a picture of her?” Louis demanded.

  “Had to,” he replied, grinning painfully. “That sweet Fatima was one of a kind.”

  Chapter 92

  17th Arrondissement

  11:15 a.m.

  OUTSIDE A CAFÉ near the headquarters of La Crim, we found Investigateur Hoskins and Juge Fromme drowning their sorrows in a bottle of wine.

  “Kind of early to be drinking on the job,” Louis said.

  “We’re off the job,” Juge Fromme said miserably.

  Hoskins nodded. “Counter-terror and the military are taking over.”

  “Guess you’re not the people we want to show this to then,” Louis said, sliding his iPhone across the table.

  “It’s her,” I said. “The woman on the bus.”

  Fromme set his wine down and fumbled for his reading glasses. Hoskins peered at the photograph, and then used her fingers to blow it up.

  Du Champs had caught her from an odd angle: looking up and in three-quarter profile, from the chest of her brown robe to the top of her brown head scarf.

  “You said the woman on the bus was a redhead with nickel-gray eyes,” Fromme said. “This woman has dark hair and brown eyes.”

  “Contacts and rinsable dyes,” Louis said.

  “It’s her,” I insisted. “There’s no doubt in my mind.”

  “How can you be sure from this angle?” Hoskins said. “You can barely see the right side of her face.”

  “When I close my
eyes, I know they’re the same person,” I said. “This picture should be given to every media outlet in the country.”

  “That won’t happen,” the magistrate said. “This woman has rights. If you’re wrong and we say she’s a suspect, we could be destroying her reputation.”

  “And putting her in harm’s way,” Hoskins agreed.

  Incredulous, I said, “So you’re not going to use this?”

  Fromme said, “We’ll pass the photograph along, and your thoughts on it, but I highly doubt this will become a focus of the investigation unless some other evidence comes forward to support it.”

  “Like what?” Louis demanded.

  “Another picture would help,” Hoskins said. “And it would be better if she was caught climbing off the bus somewhere. But again, there are not many public security cameras in France.”

  “Someone should check all the cameras around Sevran, at least,” I said.

  “We’ll recommend that as well,” the magistrate said, and picked up his glass of wine again.

  “That’s it?” I said.

  “For us,” Hoskins said. “I’m going home and sleeping for as long as I can.”

  “You’re making a mistake,” I said.

  “We don’t make the laws,” Fromme said. “We just enforce them.”

  I was still furious when we were a block away, and I noticed Louis lagging behind me and limping hard.

  “Have you had that knee checked?” I asked.

  “It will pass,” Louis said. “It always does.”

  “Go get it checked. That’s an order. You’re no good to me like this.”

  He looked ready to argue, but then nodded. “I have an old friend, Megan, who specializes in knees.”

  “Go see Megan,” I said. “Or at least go somewhere where you can get it elevated and on ice.”

  “It does feel like shit,” Louis said.

  “Get a taxi. I’m going for a walk.”

  “How can I contact you?”

  “I’ll buy a phone and text you the number,” I said, and left him there.

  Chapter 93

  I WANDERED OUT of the Batignolles neighborhood and headed south toward the river. The sun had broken through the clouds and it had gotten quite warm—easily in the high seventies. Coming upon a phone store a few blocks later, I bought a disposable Samsung and texted Louis the number. I also asked him to send me the picture. It appeared almost immediately, along with the news that Megan, his doctor friend, was going to see him at once.

  “Good news,” I texted back. “Keep me posted.”

  Given the violent events of the prior night, a surprising number of Parisians were out walking or jogging along the Seine. I didn’t know if they were defying AB-16 or just ignoring the group and its threat.

  Twenty minutes later, I stopped across the river from the Eiffel Tower. Calling up the picture, I looked at the woman and wondered if she and AB-16 wanted to topple the Eiffel Tower and all the great monuments of Paris. It had been Hitler’s plan once. Were they really out to obliterate French culture like that? Were they really out to see Paris burning?

  Those questions put me in a foul mood and I walked on, thinking that I needed to eat. The Plaza was a few blocks away, and there were several cafés from which to choose. But before I decided, the phone I’d just bought rang.

  “Louis?” I answered.

  “Louis told me to call, Jack,” Michele Herbert said. “I hope that was okay.”

  “More than okay,” I said, feeling tension drain from my shoulders. “Would you like to have lunch?”

  There was a pause, and then she said, “I’d like that very much.”

  I hailed a taxi, giving the driver the address of a café that Michele Herbert had suggested in the 6th Arrondissement, not far from L’Académie des Beaux-Arts.

  We got there at virtually the same time. Just seeing her made me forget all about terrorists and bombs and burning horses. For an hour, anyway, I wanted to put it all aside and find out more about her.

  But when we took a table, all she wanted to talk about was the night before and what I’d seen and done.

  “You were a big help, by the way,” I said. “That guy, Epée? I followed him to the factory that burned down last night and that horse statue. Did you see it?”

  “All of France has seen it,” she said. “Is he in custody?”

  “Not that I know of,” I said.

  Between breaks to order food, I told her the rest of it.

  “You saved that cop’s life,” she said, shaking her head.

  “Anyone would have,” I said.

  “This is not so,” Michele said with a dismissive flick of her fork. “So what then? You went back to the factory? You saw the horse burn in person?”

  “I did.”

  “Though I hate to admit it, I thought the sculpture and the way it burned were brilliant. Was it as spectacular in person as it was on-screen?”

  “Awe-inspiring, and unforgettable,” I said. “I guess that was the point.”

  “Point taken,” Michele said. “So what will happen tonight? Will AB-16 attack again?”

  “The police and army better assume so.”

  That seemed to upset her. “I want to fight them, but I don’t know how.”

  “I hear you, but this is a national security deal now.”

  “The government pursues leads?” she asked. “That is the word, isn’t it?”

  I nodded. “I’m sure they are. But they should be looking for this woman.”

  Getting out the phone and calling up the picture, I said, “Even though she looks a lot different here in the robes and head scarf, I think she was the same woman I saw on a bus just before the Sevran explosion.”

  Intrigued, Michele took the phone. She looked at the picture blankly at first, but then her facial muscles twitched and she enlarged the phone so the face of the woman filled the small screen.

  For several moments, the art professor gazed at the picture, blinking as her other hand came slowly to her lips.

  “My God,” Michele whispered. “Why didn’t I see it last night?”

  Chapter 94

  12th Arrondissement

  1:10 p.m.

  A TAXI DROPPED us down the block from our destination.

  Michele looked nervous. “What if I’m wrong?”

  “Then we walk away,” I said.

  “And if I’m right?” she said.

  “I take a picture, we walk away, find the police.”

  The art professor chewed the corner of her lip.

  “You said you wanted to fight them,” I reminded her.

  That pushed her over the top. She led the way to a four-story apartment building that had recently been sandblasted. She rang a bell and waited. She rang again, looked back at me, and made a “What do I do?” gesture.

  An older man exited the apartment building. Barely giving us a glance, he walked away, the door closing slowly behind him.

  I grabbed the door before it closed.

  “I can’t be part of a break-in,” Michele said quietly, looking after the old man.

  “All you’re doing is knocking on a door,” I said, and then told her what I had in mind.

  She was doubtful, but went inside the building and started up the stairs. I went back up the street, counting doors—seven—and hung a left and then a quick left again into an alleyway I’d seen on the Google Maps app on Michele’s smartphone during the taxi ride over from the restaurant.

  I counted rear exits and found scaffolding set up behind the seventh building. The workers appeared to be on break, so I started climbing. As I did, I noticed a Dumpster beneath the scaffolding and flower boxes behind it.

  When I reached the fourth floor, I texted Michele. “Knock.”

  I heard a dull rap-rap-rap coming from one of the windows. The shade was drawn. The window was shut and locked.

  I checked the alley again and looked over my shoulder at the building behind me. I had the place to myself.

 
; I drew the Glock and used it to bust in one of the windowpanes. Reaching in, I tore down the shade and undid the latch.

  Then I climbed inside, gun first.

  Chapter 95

  THE APARTMENT SEEMED to be a home for hoarders. I stepped in on a toolbox wedged between stacks of newspapers and magazines. A hodgepodge of broken furniture was piled along the walls. There were dozens of lidded five-gallon buckets too—stacks of them.

  Rap-rap-rap.

  I picked my way through the mess, threw the bolt, and opened the door.

  Michele slipped in and I shut the door behind her.

  “I don’t like this,” she said. “I shouldn’t be here.”

  “All we need is a picture that confirms it. And then we go. But all this crap? Does it make sense? It feels like a storage unit for a slob.”

  “Think of it as a supply warehouse,” Michele said. “These are materials.”

  “You’re the artist,” I said, and then found the kitchen, which was tidy and uncluttered.

  There were still droplets of water on the insides of glasses sitting upside down in a rack. Used very recently, probably within the last hour.

  But beyond that, there was nothing on the counters or cabinets, and no pictures—no touch of home at all. For all the junk in the outer room, the mind behind this was ordered and operating in a stripped-down fashion. Whatever this place was, it was not a home.

  That feeling hung with me when I returned to find Michele in the storage area with the lids off several buckets filled with metal parts, nails, and short lengths of iron rod. Seeing the contents, I became single-minded and walked down the hallway to the bedroom and the bath. I was positive we were in the right place; now we just needed to prove it.

  In the bedroom I found stripped twin beds, two empty dressers, and bare walls. Except for a few hangers, the closet was also empty. And there was a bleach smell in the air. This was either the lair of someone who swept tracks or more likely someone who’d just cleared out.

  “Merde,” I said.

  “Gone?” Michele asked as she came into the room.