French Kiss Read online

“Ignore the neighborhood. Le Petit Canard is amazing. I used to come here a great deal when I lived in Paris. With friends, with my father, with…”

  She says, “With Dalia, I’m sure.” She pauses and says, “I am so sorry for you, Moncrief. So sorry.”

  Softly, I mutter, “Thank you.”

  Then I add, “And thank you for allowing me to take you to the crazy tourist sights. It lifted my spirits. It made me feel a little better, Katherine.”

  Burke appears slightly startled. We both realize that for the first time I have called Detective Burke by her proper first name.

  I look closely at Burke’s face, a lovely face, a face that goes well with such a lovely evening in such a beautiful city.

  “Okay,” I say loudly and with great heartiness. “Let me call for the wine list, and we shall begin. We will enjoy a glorious dinner tonight.”

  I fake an overly serious sad face, a frown. “Because you know that tomorrow…retour au travail. Do you know what those three French words mean?”

  “I’m afraid so,” she says. “‘Back to work.’”

  Chapter 34

  Moncrief and K. Burke return to the hotel. If you were unaware of the details of their relationship, you would assume that they were just another rich and beautiful couple strolling through the ornate lobby of the Meurice.

  Much to Moncrief’s surprise and pleasure, K. Burke had brought along an outfit that was quite chic—a long white shirt over which hung a gray cashmere sweater. That sweater fell over a black slim skirt. It was finished with short black boots. Burke could possibly pass as a fashionable Parisian, and she could certainly pass as a fashionable American. Moncrief had told her how “snappy” she looked.

  “You look snappy yourself, Moncrief,” she had said to him. This was, of course, true: a black Christian Dior suit with a slight sheen to it; a white shirt with a deep burgundy-colored tie.

  Moncrief walked K. Burke back to her room and said good night. He listened while Burke locked her door behind her. Then he walked to the end of the hallway, to his own room.

  It was a dinner between friends, between colleagues. K. Burke had expected nothing more. In fact, K. Burke wanted nothing more. It had been a spectacular day—the odd museums, then the extraordinary dinner: foie-gras ravioli, Muscovy duckling with mango sherbet, those wonderful little chocolates that fancy French restaurants always bring you with your coffee (or so Moncrief told her).

  The night had turned out to be soothing and fun and friendly. He referred to Dalia a few times, and it was with nostalgia, sadness. But there was no darkness when he reminisced about his late girlfriend.

  Now, as Burke unscrews and removes her tiny diamond studs, she wonders: Can you have such a wonderful time with a charming, handsome man and not think about romance?

  Of course you can, she tells herself. But then again, it’s impossible to put a man and a woman together—the electrician who comes to fix the wiring, the traffic cop who stops you for speeding, the attorney who is updating your will—and not consider the possibilities of What if…at another time…under different conditions…

  Burke removes her shirt and sweater. She sits on the bench at the white wood dressing table and removes her boots. As she massages her toes she shakes her head slowly; she is ashamed that she is even having such thoughts. Despite the pleasant dinner, she knows that Moncrief has not remotely begun to recover from Dalia’s awful, sudden, horrible death. And yet here I am, selfishly thinking of how great we look together, like one of those beautiful couples in a perfume ad.

  “Enough nonsense.” She actually says these two words out loud.

  Then she goes into the bathroom, removes her makeup, brushes her teeth, and takes the two antique combs out of her hair. She slips her T-shirt (GO RANGERS) over her head, then she removes her contact lenses and drops them into solution. There is only one more thing to do.

  She goes to her pocketbook to do what she does instinctively every night before bed: check the safety on her service weapon. Then she remembers—she doesn’t have a gun. The French police said that she and Moncrief were on official business for New York, not for Paris. No firearms permits would be issued.

  She remembers what Moncrief said to her when she complained.

  “Do you feel naked without your gun, K. Burke?”

  “No,” she had answered. “Just a little underdressed.”

  Chapter 35

  The same cramped and ugly little room. The same primitive air-conditioning. The same stale air. The same inadequate Internet service. But most of all, the same rotten luck in finding “the fingerprint,” the instinctive connection between one of my past investigations and the tragedies in New York.

  Detective Burke and I keep working. We are once again seated in the police archives building, outside Paris. We have been studying the screen so intently that we decided to invest in a shared bottle of eyedrops.

  The screen scrolls through old cases, some of which I had actually forgotten—a molestation case that involved a disgusting pediatrician who was also the father of five children; a case of a government official who, not surprisingly, was collecting significant bribes for issuing false health-inspection reports; a case of race fixing at the Longchamp racecourse.

  “This looks bigger than fixing a horse race,” she says. “The pages go on forever.”

  “Print them,” I say. “I’ll look at them more thoroughly later.”

  Forty pages come spitting out of the printer. Burke says, “It looks like this was a very complicated case.”

  “Not really,” I say. “No case is ever that complicated. Either there’s a crime or there isn’t. The Longchamp case began with a horse trainer. Marcel Ballard was his name. Not a bad guy, I think, but Ballard was weary of fixing the races. So he fought physically—punching, kicking—with the owner and trainer who were running the fix. And Ballard had a knife. And Ballard killed the owner and cut the other trainer badly.”

  K. Burke continues scrolling through the cases on the screen. She does say, “Keep going, Moncrief. I’m listening.”

  “I met with Ballard’s wife. She had a newborn, three months old, their fourth child. So I did her a favor, but not without asking for something in return. I persuaded Ballard to confess to the crime and to help us identify the other trainers who were drugging the horses. He cooperated. So thanks to my intervention—and that of my superiors—he was allowed to plead to a lesser charge. Instead of homicide volontaire, he was only charged with—”

  “Let me guess,” says K. Burke. “Homicide involontaire.”

  “You are both a legal and linguistic genius, K. Burke.”

  I grab some of the Longchamp papers and go through them quickly. “I’m glad I did what I did,” I say. “Madame Ballard is a good woman.”

  “And the husband? Is he grateful?” K. Burke asks as she continues to study the screen intensely.

  “He has written to me many times in gratitude. But one must keep in mind that he did kill a man.”

  Burke presses a computer key and begins reading about a drug gang working out of Saint-Denis.

  “What does this mean, Moncrief? Logement social.”

  “In New York they call it public housing. A group of heroin dealers had set up a virtual drug supermarket in the basement there. Once I realized that some of our Parisian detectives were involved in the scheme, it was fairly easy—but frightening—to bust.”

  “How’d you figure out that your own cops were involved?” she asks.

  “I simply felt it,” I say.

  “Of course,” she says with a bit of sarcasm. “I should have known.”

  We continue flipping through the cases on the computer. But like the race fixing and murder at Longchamp, like the drug bust in Saint-Denis, all my former cases seem to be a million miles away from New York. No instinct propelled me. No fingerprint arose.

  We studied the cold cases also. The kidnapping of the Ugandan ambassador’s daughter (unsolved). The rape of an elderly nun at midnight in
the Bois de Boulogne (unsolved, but what in hell was an elderly nun doing in that huge park at midnight?). An American woman with whom I had a brief romantic fling, Callie Hansen, who had been abducted for three days by a notorious husband-and-wife team that we were never able to apprehend. Again, nothing clicked.

  We come across a street murder near Moulin Rouge. According to the report on the computer screen, one of the witnesses was a woman named Monica Ansel. Aha! Blaise Ansel had been the owner of Taylor Antiquities, the store on East 71st Street. Could Monica Ansel be his wife? But Monica Ansel, the woman who witnessed the crime at Moulin Rouge, was seventy-one years old.

  “Damn!” I say, and I toss the papers from the Longchamp report to the floor. “I have wasted my time and yours, K. Burke. Plus I have wasted a good deal of money. And what do I have to show for it? De la merde.”

  Even with her limited knowledge of French, K. Burke is able to translate.

  “I agree,” she says. “Shit.”

  Chapter 36

  K. Burke sits outdoors at a small bistro table on rue Vieille du Temple. She is alone. Moncrief had asked if he could be by himself for a while. “I must walk. I must think. Perhaps I must mourn. Do you mind?” Moncrief had said.

  “I understand,” she said, and she did understand. “I don’t need a chaperone.”

  She sips a glass of strong cider and eats a buckwheat crepe stuffed with ham and Gruyère. It is eight o’clock, a fairly early dinner by French standards. At one table sits a family of German tourists—very blond parents with two very beautiful teenage daughters. At another, an older couple (French, Burke suspects) eating and chewing and drinking slowly and carefully. Finally, there are two young Frenchwomen who appear to be…yes, K. Burke is right…very much in love with each other.

  Burke’s own heart is still breaking for Moncrief, but she must admit that she is enjoying being alone for a few hours.

  Back in her hotel room, she takes a warm bath. A healthy dose of lavender bath oils; a natural sea sponge. Afterward, she dries herself off with the thick white bath sheets and douses herself with a nice dose of the accompanying lavender powder.

  She slips on her sleep shirt, and she’s about to slide under the sheets when her phone buzzes. A text message.

  R U Back in yr room? All is well? Mncrf.

  She imagines Moncrief in some mysterious part of Paris, at a zinc bar with a big snifter of brandy. She is thankful for his thoughtfulness.

  Yes. K. Burke.

  But then, for just a moment she considers her own uneasiness. She simply cannot get used to not having a gun to check. So she does the next best thing: she checks that the door is double-locked. She adjusts the air-conditioning, making the temperature low enough for her to happily snuggle under the thick satin comforter. Within a few minutes she is asleep.

  Two hours later, she is wide awake. It is barely past midnight, and Burke is afraid that jet lag is playing games with her sleep schedule. Now she may be up for hours. She takes a few deep breaths. The air makes her feel at least a little better. Maybe she will get back to sleep. Maybe she should use the bathroom. Yes, maybe. Or maybe that will prevent her from falling asleep again. On the other hand…

  There is a sound in the room. At first she thinks it’s the air conditioner kicking back into gear. Perhaps it is the noise from the busy rue de Rivoli below. She sits up in bed. The noise. Again. Burke realizes now that the sound is coming from the door to her hotel room. Some sort of key? What the hell?

  “Who’s there?” she shouts.

  No answer.

  “Who’s there?”

  Goddamn it. Why doesn’t she have a gun?

  She should have insisted that Moncrief get them guns. He was right. She feels naked without it.

  She rolls quickly—catching herself in the thick covers, afraid in the dark—toward the other side of the bed. She drops to the floor and slides beneath the bed just as a shaft of bright light from the hallway pierces the darkness. Someone else is in the room with her. She moves farther underneath the bed. Jesus Christ, she thinks. This is an awful comedy, a French farce—the woman hiding beneath the bed.

  As soon as she hears the door close, the light from the hallway disappears.

  “Don’t move, Detective!” a muffled, foreign-sounding voice hisses.

  Then a gunshot.

  The bullet hits the floor about a foot away from her hand. There’s a quick loud snapping sound. A spark on the blue carpet. She tries to move farther under the bed. There is no room. It is so unlike her to not know what to do, to not fight back, to not plot an escape. This feeling of fright is foreign to her.

  Another bullet. This one spits its way fiercely through the mattress above her. It hits the floor also.

  Another bullet. No spark. No connection.

  A groan. A quick thud.

  Then a voice.

  “K. Burke! It is safe. All is well.”

  Chapter 37

  Hotel management and guests in their pajamas almost immediately begin gathering in the hall.

  K. Burke emerges from under the bed. We embrace each other the way friends do, friends who have successfully come through a horrible experience together.

  “You saved…” she begins. She is shaking. She folds her arms in front of herself. She is working to compose herself.

  “I know,” I say. I pat her on the back. I am like an old soccer coach with an injured player.

  Burke pulls away from me. She blinks—on purpose—a few times, and those simple eye gestures seem to clear her head and calm her nerves. She is immediately back to a completely professional state. She has become the efficient K. Burke I am used to. We both look down at the body. She moves to a nearby closet and wraps herself quickly in a Le Meurice terry-cloth bathrobe.

  The dead man fell backwards near the foot of the bed. He wears jeans, a white dress shirt, and Adidas sneakers. His bald head lies in a large and ever-growing pool of blood. It forms a kind of scarlet halo around his face.

  The crowd in the hallway seems afraid to enter the room. A man wearing a blue blazer with LE MEURICE embroidered on the breast pocket appears. He pushes through the crowd. He is immediately followed by two men wearing identical blazers.

  I briefly explain what happened, planning to give the police a more detailed story when they arrive.

  K. Burke then kneels at the man’s head. I watch her touch the man’s neck. I can tell by the blood loss, by simply looking at him, that she is merely performing an official act. The guy is gone. Burke stands back up.

  “Do you know him, Moncrief?” Burke asks.

  “I have never seen him before in my life,” I say. “Have you?”

  “Of course not,” she says. She pauses. Then she says, “He was going to kill me.”

  “You would have been…the third victim.”

  She nods. “How did you know that this was happening here, that someone was actually going to break in…threaten my life…try to kill me?”

  “Instinct. When I texted you I asked if all was well. So I drank my whiskey.

  “But fifteen minutes later, when I am walking back to the hotel, I found myself walking faster and faster, until I was actually running…I just had a feeling. I can’t explain it.”

  “You never can,” she says.

  Chapter 38

  The next morning.

  Eleven o’clock. I meet K. Burke in the lobby of the hotel.

  “So here we are,” she says. “Everything is back to abnormal.”

  Even I realize that this is a bad play on words. But it does perfectly describe our situation.

  “Look,” I say. “A mere apology is unsuitable. I am totally responsible for the near tragedy of last night.”

  “There’s nothing to apologize for. It goes with the territory,” she says, but I can see from her red eyes that she did not sleep well. I try to say something helpful.

  “I suspect what happened a few hours ago is that the enemy saw us together at some point here in Paris and assumed that
we were a couple, which of course we are not.”

  I realize immediately that my words are insulting, as if it would be impossible to consider us a romantic item. So I speak again, this time more quickly.

  “Of course, they might have been correct in the assumption. After all, a lovely-looking woman like you could—”

  “Turn it off, Moncrief. I was not offended.”

  I smile. Then I hold K. Burke by the shoulders, look into her weary eyes, and speak.

  “Listen. Out of something awful that almost happened last evening…something good has come. I believe I have an insight. I think I may now know the fingerprint of this case.”

  She asks me to share the theory with her.

  “I cannot tell you yet. Not for secrecy reasons, but because I must first be sure, in order to keep my own mind clear. On y va.”

  “Okay,” she says. Then she translates: “Let’s go.”

  We walk outside. I speak to one of the doormen.

  “Ma voiture, s’il vous plaît,” I say.

  “Elle est là, Monsieur Moncrief. ”

  “Your car is here?” Burke asks, and as she speaks my incredibly beautiful 1960 Porsche 356B pulls up and the valet gets out.

  “C’est magnifique,” Burke says.

  The Porsche is painted a brilliantly shiny black. Inside is a custom mahogany instrument panel and a pair of plush black leather seats. I explain to Detective Burke that I had been keeping the car at my father’s country house, near Avignon.

  “But two days ago I had the car brought up to Paris. And so today we shall use it.”

  I turn right on the rue de Rivoli, and the Porsche heads out of the city.

  After the usual mess of too many people and triple-parked cars and thousands of careless bicycle riders, we are outside Paris, on our way south.

  K. Burke twists in her seat and faces me.

  “Okay, Moncrief. I have a question that’s been bugging me all night.”

  “I hope to have the answer,” I say, trying not to sound anxious.