Private Paris Page 9

  The man said something Sauvage did not catch, and then they were gone.

  “Fifteen minutes,” the major said, and rolled to his feet, putting on gloves.

  Down the alley, Captain Mfune was already up and moving toward the door. The captain picked the lock and they were quickly inside a small entry area with work clogs on the floor and white jackets in a large hamper.

  The major took two careful steps and peeked around the corner of a doorway, seeing a large, softly lit commercial kitchen with a high ceiling. A cluster of red enamel ovens and stovetops dominated the room, with gleaming copper pots of all sizes hanging from an overhead beam.

  Sauvage knew at a glance that the kitchen was immaculate. This was a restaurant run with discipline. The major admired it, and almost changed his mind about the target. But when it came to impact, this was the man they wanted.

  They padded through the kitchen. Sauvage glanced through the porthole into the dining area. Pitch-dark. Near the refrigerators and a freezer, they reached a door that Mfune opened, revealing a steep wooden staircase and an exposed stone wall. Light glowed in the cellar below them.

  Keeping their feet to the outside of each step, right above the riser support, they made it to the basement with nary a creak. The light came through an open oak door down a narrow hallway.

  The major led the way, quiet as possible, until they’d reached the doorway. Sauvage drew a pistol and stepped around and through the passage.

  Wine bottles filled floor-to-ceiling racks on all sides of a room about forty feet long and fifteen feet wide. A silver-haired, barrel-shaped man in a white blouse and apron sat at a table with an open bottle of red wine, an almost empty glass, and a plate holding a baguette, cheese, chocolate, and fruit.

  “Chef Pincus,” Sauvage said as Mfune came in behind him.

  The chef startled, saw the gun, and jumped up, knocking the table. The bottle fell over. Wine spilled across the tabletop, dripped on the floor.

  “Who the hell are you?” Pincus demanded.

  “The future,” the major said. “We need you to help us set things right.”

  “Right about what?” the chef asked, stepping back, looking around, seeing that he was cornered. “Is this about the Bocuse d’Or?”

  “We’re about so much more than the quality of French food,” Mfune said.

  “What do you want, then? If it’s money, I’ll take you upstairs, give you tonight’s till.”

  “That’s a start,” Sauvage said, and waved the gun. “You first.”

  Chef Pincus hesitated, rubbed his hands on his apron, and walked by them. Sauvage and Mfune stayed close to the chef as they navigated the hall and climbed the narrow stairs back to the kitchen.

  When Pincus tried to exit out into the dining area, the major stopped him and said, “I read in Bon Appétit that you make chicken stock once a week.”

  Pincus stiffened, nodded. “It’s the last thing I do on Saturdays before having my wine and going home.”

  “Can we see it?” the captain asked, joining them.

  “That is what this is about, isn’t it? The Bocuse? Stealing my secrets?”

  “Believe what you want to believe. Just show us the soup.”

  Sullenly, Pincus jerked his chin at one of the refrigerators. Mfune opened it. On the middle shelf stood a forty-quart stockpot with a lid. The captain grabbed the handles, lifted the pot with a grunt, and carried it to one of the prep tables.

  “Go over there,” Sauvage said to the chef. “Stand right in front of it.”

  Reluctantly, Pincus followed his orders and stood before the stockpot, with Mfune at his left. The captain lifted the lid, set it aside. The major came around to the chef’s right and looked in at fat starting to congeal on top of the liquid.

  “Smells good,” Mfune said.

  “Of course it does,” Pincus snapped.

  “Take a smell. Lean right in there and sniff your masterpiece.”

  The chef frowned and glanced at Sauvage, who said, “Do it.”

  Pincus looked uncertain but stepped closer, and brought his nose over the top of ten gallons of cooling gourmet chicken stock. He sniffed, started to raise his chin, and then squealed with fear and alarm when the officers grabbed the back of his skull and plunged his face into the cooling liquid.

  Terrified screams bubbled up out of the broth.

  Then the chef started to fight, squirming side to side against their grip and throwing his fists wildly. Sauvage took a blow to the ribs and another to his hip before he flipped the pistol in his hand and chopped below the collar of Pincus’s white blouse.

  The flailing stopped. The squirming subsided and then halted altogether when the major hit the chef a second time.

  “There,” Sauvage said, his breathing shallow, rapid. “Not a bad recipe, really.”

  Chapter 31

  8th Arrondissement

  6 a.m.

  MY DREAMS WHIRLED with visions of the blood blooming on the waiter’s shirt, Louis blown off his feet, and the pale gunman tracking the pistol muzzle over me.

  In every vision, in every dream, I kept catching glimpses of Michele Herbert standing at the periphery of the action, and watching it all unfold as if through a glass, darkly. But when I awoke in my bed at the Plaza, my first thoughts were of the art professor laughing at the café the night before, and then climbing her stoop, smiling as if we were already sharing secrets, and telling me I had nice eyes.

  Had any woman ever told me that?

  If they had, I didn’t remember.

  Who cared? Michele thought my eyes were nice and that was all that counted. My God, she was beyond-belief good-looking and off-the-charts smart and creative. And yet she didn’t seem to take herself too seriously.

  She seemed relaxed, good in her own skin, free of issues, someone you wanted to spend time with. In the darkness of my room at the Plaza Athénée, I grinned like a fool, sat up in bed, and turned on the lights.

  There was no chance I’d sleep any more, and given my embarrassing teenage giddiness, I knew I’d just sit there thinking about her unless I gave myself a task that could be taken care of at this early hour. Nothing came to mind until I realized it was only 9 p.m. back home.

  Grabbing my phone, I punched in Justine’s contact. I listened to her cell ring twice before she answered, “I was just thinking about you, Jack.”

  “That right?”

  “I don’t know exactly why, but you’ve been on my mind,” she said. “So, anyway, how are you? Any luck with Kim Kopchinski? Del Rio told me there was a charge to a café in Paris.”

  I told her about my entire crazy day, from losing Kim, to seeing the opera director’s corpse, to finding the secrets of his pied-à-terre, to Michele Herbert’s collage. I took care not to make much of the artist beyond her smarts. I certainly wasn’t going to babble on about Herbert’s beauty and wit.

  Instead, I emphasized her thoughts, her legions of followers, and her belief that someone who’d studied under or emulated a famous dead graffiti artist had painted the AB-16 tag.

  Then I described the scene at Open Café, how we’d closed in on Kim Kopchinski, the gunplay that had ensued, and her escape. I didn’t say a thing about dinner or the world’s greatest fries or the fact that the artist liked my eyes.

  “Sounds like you’ve got your hands full,” she said. “And this Michele Herbert sounds like quite a woman.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Yeah, she’s nice.”

  “Uh-huh,” Justine said.

  “You can’t resist analyzing every word, can you?” I said hotly. “It’s like you can take the therapist out of the therapy room but you can’t keep the therapy room out of the therapist.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said.

  “How’s Sherman?” I asked.

  “They’ve got him in a deep medical coma,” Justine said. “They said it could take a few days for the swelling to subside enough to bring him out of it. I plan on stopping by there in the morning.”

  “Sounds
like you’re all carrying on well without me.”

  “You’ve assembled a strong team,” she said. “You should be happy.”

  “Oh, I’m a happy guy,” I said. “April. Paris. Mysteries up the wazoo.”

  “Hobnobbing with famous French artists,” she added.

  “That too,” I replied. “I’ve got to go. I’ll call tomorrow.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  I clicked off, wondering what I’d said or tone I’d used to cause Justine to home in so quickly on Michele Herbert. It was as if she had an emotional radar or something, an innate sensitivity that had made her so effective as a psychologist for the L.A. district attorney and as an investigator with Private.

  I took a shower, flashing on Michele and finding it nice that she hadn’t spent the night scrutinizing me, trying to figure out what made me tick, or what old wounds I was trying to work out. Instead, she was interested, fun, and easy to be with, and I vowed I would not leave Paris without seeing her again.

  Chapter 32

  I WENT DOWNSTAIRS for breakfast.

  The second the elevator opened, the big, shaved-headed Saudi royal bodyguard with the Texas accent was looking at me.

  He nodded. “Mr. Morgan.”

  “You know my name?”

  “We know everyone who’s staying here.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Randall Peaks.”

  “Need a job, Randall Peaks?”

  “I don’t think you could afford me.”

  “Probably not. Can I go have breakfast?”

  “Just don’t get near the princesses, and you’ll be fine.”

  “So the royals don’t use Saudi bodyguards?”

  “A few,” he said. “The rest of us are contracted.”

  “How long have you been working there?”

  “Seven years,” Peaks said as the elevator pinged behind me. “Have a good day, Mr. Morgan.”

  I left him and went into the dining area, spotting a large table of Middle Eastern women who looked ready for fashion week. Every one of them was wearing a couture dress. Every one of them had flawless makeup, a dramatic hairdo, and stunning jewelry.

  Laughing, chatting, and generally having a good time, they paid no attention to me. But the guards positioned discreetly around the room watched me all the way to my seat.

  I read the International Herald Tribune and had an exceptional breakfast of poached eggs, asparagus, and a dill sauce that I wanted to eat with a spoon.

  The princesses left before I had finished. Only one of them looked even remotely my way as they exited the room. She was the youngest, probably in her mid- to late teens, and by my estimation the most beautiful of them all. It took me a moment to realize that she wasn’t looking at me, but studying a painting over my right shoulder.

  Brought back to earth, stuffed and caffeinated, I was at the offices of Private Paris by seven fifteen and not surprised to find Louis already at his desk drinking an espresso.

  “Do you ever sleep?” I asked.

  “Five hours, every night,” he said, and snapped his fingers. “Five hours and I am ready to go. I have only just heard from Le Chien.”

  “Yeah?” I said, taking a seat. “He find anything on Richard?”

  “Many things,” Louis said. “Including the fact that several times in the last week he ate at a very famous restaurant in Paris, Chez Pincus. By the amount of money he spent, it suggests that he was entertaining a woman. Perhaps the woman in the—”

  Ali Farad, Private Paris’s newest hire, came in. “You wanted to see me?”

  “Yes,” Louis said, leaning over a desktop computer and typing in a command. When he finished, he peered over the screen at Farad and said, “Ali, what you’re about to see you aren’t going to like, and you are to keep what you are about to see completely to yourself.”

  “Okay…” Farad said.

  “Okay, what?”

  “Okay, okay.”

  Louis pivoted the screen to show the hijab and veil that I’d photographed with my phone when we were inside the opera director’s love shack. Farad looked at them with little expression, and then shrugged. “Why are these important?”

  “Because of these,” Louis said, and gave the computer another command.

  The screen blinked, divided into quadrants, and up popped four photographs of the opera director in the Catholic priest’s collar having sex with the fierce-eyed woman in the hijab and veil.

  Farad’s lips thinned. “That’s Henri Richard.”

  “Correct,” Louis said. “He seemed to have a fetish about priests and Muslim girls. He was writing an opera about it.”

  “We think he might have been killed because he was also living out his fantasies,” I said. “Are we off base on that? Could you see a Muslim father, or brother, or uncle finding out about the affair and deciding to kill Richard?”

  Farad nodded without hesitation. “Sure, I could see it. I mean, this is just the rankest porn imaginable. Among radical sects, it would be just cause for revenge on Richard, and perhaps her death as well.”

  “Richard was with a woman last night, before his death. A redhead,” I said. “Maybe this woman.”

  “Any idea how we’d find her?” Louis asked.

  Farad stayed quiet and scratched at his chin while my thoughts tracked to the hijab and veil, and I thumbed through the pictures I’d taken of them on my phone.

  When I found what I was looking for, I sent it to Louis’s e-mail address and said, “Pull this picture up when you get it on e-mail, and blow it up on the screen.”

  The file went through almost immediately, and quickly Louis had the picture up on his screen, where we could all see it well. The hijab and veil were turned inside out, exposing labels in Arabic.

  “What’s that say?” I asked Farad.

  The investigator scooted forward, studied the image, and said, “Al-Jumaa Custom Tailor and Embroidery. I know this place. It’s around the corner from my mosque.”

  Chapter 33

  18th Arrondissement

  12:35 p.m.

  HAJA HAMID SLIPPED in among the other women retrieving their shoes and sandals. She fell in behind three women leaving the mosque, and followed their lead, removing her veil before she passed through the door. She wanted none of the attention she’d received the day before.

  But when she stepped down onto the sidewalk, she noticed that same young man—he couldn’t have been more than seventeen—standing across the street, holding his camera. He spotted her, came her way. She tried to duck behind some other women, but he was relentless and came right up beside her.

  “You are so beautiful,” he said.

  Haja said nothing, increased her pace.

  “Please. My name is Alain Du Champs, and I am doing a project where I am taking pictures of Muslim women without their veil on, showing the world what it and they have been missing. Can I take your picture, please?”

  “No. Never,” she said, and hurried on.

  Hurrying up beside her, the photographer began to sing to the tune of Billy Joel’s “Only the Good Die Young.”

  “Wake up, Fatima, don’t let me wait. You Muslim girls start much too late. Aw, but sooner or later it comes down to fate. I might as well be the one!”

  Haja picked up her pace, trying to get away, but he kept after her, still singing. Three men were coming at her down the sidewalk: an older one with longish iron-gray hair, smoking a cigarette; a younger, athletic, blond, hazel-eyed guy; and an even younger Arab man wearing a black leather jacket and jeans.

  Something about the trio triggered fear in Haja. For a moment she thought they were police. But then they stood aside. The Arab guy said, “Accept my apologies, mademoiselle. Not all Frenchmen are assholes like the kid with the camera and the voice of an ass.”

  Haja smiled, nodded at the men uncertainly, and then hurried on toward Epée and the car.

  Chapter 34

  WE WATCHED HER hurry away with her head down. The kid who’d been singi
ng to her held tight to his camera as he tried to get around us.

  Ali Farad stopped him and said, “That’s enough. Leave her alone.”

  The photographer scowled and said, “Makmood, in case you hadn’t noticed, France is still a free country. We don’t do Sharia law here.”

  “It is a free country, and she has the right not to be harassed.”

  “You a cop?”

  “No.”

  “Then fuck yourself, and eat pork while you’re doing it,” the kid said. But he did not pursue the woman, instead crossing the street and walking away from us.

  “He was right about something,” Louis said when we moved on.

  “What’s that?” Farad said, clearly still pissed at the kid.

  “She was beautiful. Did you see her face? And those eyes? In my opinion, it is a waste of the feminine mystique to have her covered up like that.”

  Farad seemed unimpressed and said, “People have a right to their culture.”

  “Sans doute,” Louis replied. “As long as it does not infringe on my right to my culture, and men of my culture enjoy the female form.”

  We walked on past several young men putting a coat of paint on top of a coat of paint on top of an AB-16 tag, which had bled through. An older man in a long white tunic was watching with his arms crossed.

  “Imam,” Farad said, his face falling. “They’ve defaced the mosque.”

  The imam nodded grimly. “Do you know what this means? AB-16?”

  “No,” Farad said, and then introduced us.

  Imam Ibrahim Al-Moustapha was one of those men who beam with kindness. He shook our hands, looked deeply into our eyes, repeated our names, and said how happy he was to meet us.

  “When was this done?” I asked, gesturing to the tag.

  “Two nights ago,” Al-Moustapha replied. “The police chased him but he caused two police cars to collide up the street as he made his escape.”

  “Imam?” one of the painters said.

  Al-Moustapha excused himself and went over to him.

  We continued on, and Farad said, “The imam is a great man. He stands for a moderate, progressive, and inclusive Islam. And he speaks up for it, and against the radicals.”