Central Park

by Guillaume Musso

  “What, already? Don’t you want dessert? You should see their cheesecake!”

  “You’re getting on my nerves, Keyne.”

  They went into the station through the entrance at the corner of Park Avenue and Forty-Second Street, finding themselves in the vast main hall with its rows of ticket windows and machines.

  In the center, above the circular information kiosk, was the famous four-faced clock in brass and opal glass, used by lovers as a meeting place for more than a hundred years.

  They weren’t here as tourists, of course, but Alice couldn’t help admiring the station. It’s nothing like the Gare du Nord or Saint-Lazare, that’s for sure, she thought, looking around. An autumnal light, soft and peaceful, poured through the large side window, painting the lobby in shades of gold and ocher.

  On the immense vaulted ceiling, 125 feet high, thousands of painted stars gave the impression that you were looking up into a clear night sky. It was from here that Cary Grant fled to Chicago in North by Northwest, here that Robert De Niro met Meryl Streep in Falling in Love.

  “Follow me,” she said, loud enough to be heard above the roar of voices around them.

  She fought her way through the crowd, with Gabriel following, then climbed the steps that led to the eastern balcony of the main concourse. From here, they had a commanding view of the entire hall, which seemed even more monumental.

  It was in this majestic, almost open-air setting that a major firm had installed one of its stores. Alice weaved between the pale-wood tables displaying the brand’s flagship products: cell phones, MP3 players, computers, tablets. Although secured with anti-theft devices, much of this equipment was freely available to use. The store’s visitors—most of them tourists—came here to check their e-mail, go online, or listen to music on state-of-the-art headphones.

  They had to act fast; there were police and security guards everywhere. Alice managed to avoid being collared by any of the army of employees wearing blue T-shirts who patrolled the space, and approached one of the display tables.

  She handed her satchel to Gabriel. “Grab the coaster,” she told him.

  While he did this, she touched a key on the keyboard of a MacBook Pro that looked similar to the one she had at home in France. With a click, she activated a program that used the computer’s built-in camera, grabbed the coaster from Gabriel, held it up to the screen, and took several photographs of the fingerprint. Using the computer’s retouching software, she manipulated the contrast and brightness levels until she had the clearest image possible. Then she connected to her e-mail in-box.

  “Can you go buy our subway tickets?” she asked Gabriel.

  Waiting until he had disappeared toward the ticket machines, she began writing an e-mail to Seymour, her fingertips flying over the keyboard.

  To: Seymour Lombart

  Subject: Help

  From: Alice Schafer

  Seymour,

  I need your help more than ever. I’ll try to call you sometime in the next hour, but before then you really have to speed up your investigation.

  1. Have you gotten access to the security cameras in the parking garage and the airports?

  2. Have you found my car? Traced my cell phone? Checked the latest activity in my bank account?

  3. What have you found out about Gabriel Keyne?

  4. I’m attaching a photograph of a fingerprint. Could you get it analyzed ASAP?

  I’m counting on you.

  All best,

  Alice

  11

  Little Egypt

  Astoria, Queens

  Noon

  THE SQUARE OUTSIDE the station was a blaze of fall sunlight. Alice and Gabriel left this bright esplanade and disappeared into the crowd of customers at the market that had been set up under the elevated railway. The two fugitives had caught a train from Grand Central to Lexington Avenue, then taken the local line to Astoria Boulevard. The trip took only about twenty minutes, but the difference in their surroundings was incredible. Small brick buildings had replaced the steel-and-glass skyscrapers, while the hectic energy of Manhattan had given way to an almost village-like calm.

  The air was thick with the exquisite odors of olive oil, crushed garlic, and fresh mint. The stalls were filled with grilled squid and octopus, moussaka and souvlaki, baklava, grape leaves, and spanakopita. These appetizing specialties left no room for doubt—this part of Astoria was New York’s Greek neighborhood.

  “Do you know the address, at least?” Alice asked, seeing Gabriel hesitate over which direction to take.

  “I’ve only been here once or twice,” he said defensively. “All I remember is that the apartment’s windows overlooked Steinway Street.”

  “Perfect street name for a musician.” Alice smiled.

  They asked the way from an old man who was selling skewers of beef and bay leaves grilled in a firepit.

  Following his directions, they walked down a long street edged with trees and semidetached houses reminiscent of certain areas of London. They turned onto a lively, cosmopolitan shopping street packed with Greek caterers, vegetarian delis, kebab stalls, Japanese restaurants, and Korean groceries—a genuine melting pot of gastronomy concentrated within a few blocks.

  As they walked farther down Steinway Street, the borders shifted again. This time they were on the other side of the Mediterranean—in North Africa, to be precise.

  “For a few years now, this place has been known as Little Egypt or Little Morocco,” Gabriel explained.

  In fact, with a little imagination, Alice could easily have believed she’d been miraculously transported to a souk in Cairo or Marrakesh. Delicious scents of honey and tajine floated through the air, and in this part of Queens, there were more hookah bars than Greek taverns. They walked past a golden-painted mosque, a halal butcher, a religious bookshop. In the conversations they overheard, Arabic and English mingled almost naturally.

  “I think this is it,” Gabriel said, arriving at a brownstone with a pale façade and sash windows that rose above a barbershop.

  There was no intercom and no elevator. They walked quickly upstairs and stopped on the fourth-floor landing to pick up the keys from Madame Chaouch, the building’s owner. Kenny had phoned her to let her know they were coming.

  “Pretty nice here, huh?” Gabriel said as they entered the loft.

  Kenny’s bachelor pad was a vast and mostly open-plan duplex, with exposed metal girders. Alice looked around at the brick walls, high ceiling, polished concrete flooring, then stood still in front of the large bay window with its view of the street.

  She looked out for a good minute before tossing her satchel onto a large, solid-oak table surrounded by two mismatched armchairs and a brushed-metal bench.

  “Ugh, I’m wiped out.” She groaned, collapsing into one of the chairs.

  “Hey, you know what? I’m going to run you a bath!”

  “What? No, don’t bother. We have better things to do than—”

  But Gabriel, ignoring her protests, had already disappeared upstairs.

  Alice sighed and for a long moment remained motionless, curled up in the cushions. Her tiredness was suddenly resurfacing. It took her several minutes to recover from the aftereffects of the mental stress and physical strain she had been under since that hallucinatory awakening in the middle of the park. When she felt better, she stood up and rummaged around in the kitchen cabinets in search of a teapot. She put some water on to boil and, as she waited, looked unthinkingly through the books on the shelves (Harry Crews, Hunter S. Thompson, Trevanian…), the magazines on the coffee table, the abstract and minimalist paintings on the walls.

  Light-filled and spacious, the apartment was suffused with a thousand shades of gray and beige, a reasonable compromise between the industrial style and the Scandinavian all-wood look. The ascetic and stripped-down décor, the soft lighting…all this came together to create a protective, cocoon-like atmosphere.

  She looked around for a computer, a router, or a landline p
hone.

  Nothing.

  In a small dish, she saw a car key attached to a key ring decorated with a galloping silver horse. A Mustang? she wondered, picking up the keys.

  Back in the kitchen, she found some genmaicha, a Japanese green tea mixed with roasted brown rice. She prepared a cup. The beverage was original—the fresh notes of the green tea contrasting with the rice’s aroma of hazelnut and cereal—but undrinkable. She poured it out into the sink, then opened the glass door of a wine cabinet next to the fridge. Apparently their host was a wine buff. Apart from a few Californian pinot noirs, his collection consisted entirely of French grands crus. Thanks to her father, Alice knew quite a bit about wine. She spotted a Château Margaux 2000, a Cheval Blanc 2006, a Montrose 2005…she was about to open the Saint-Estèphe, when she changed her mind and opted for a burgundy instead, a Romanée-Conti La Tâche 1999—an extremely expensive vintage she had never tasted. She rejected every rational reason not to drink this wine, then opened the bottle and poured herself a large glass. A good garnet color, a powerful nose with notes of roses, red berries, and chocolate.

  This is what I need—not a cup of tea!

  She drank a mouthful of the burgundy, appreciating every nuance of red fruit and spice. The wine caressed her palate and warmed her chest. She drank the whole glass and then poured herself another right away.

  “If Madame would care to come upstairs, her bath is ready,” Gabriel declared from the mezzanine above.

  “Shall I pour you a glass?”

  “What! You opened one of his bottles?” he said, alarmed, running down the spiral staircase. He looked at the bottle and exploded with rage. “Are you insane? Do you know how much this wine costs?”

  “Oh, chill out, Keyne.”

  “You have a strange way of thanking my friend for his hospitality!” he insisted.

  “All right, that’s enough. I’ll pay him back for his stupid wine!”

  “With what? Your cop’s wages?”

  “Yes! Actually, while we’re on the subject, do you know if your friend has a car?”

  “Kenny has an old beater, yeah. I think he won it in a poker game.”

  “Any idea where he keeps it?”

  “Nope.” Suddenly inspired, Gabriel crossed the living room and stared through one of the back windows, which overlooked a gravel courtyard. There were a dozen or so cars parked around a central concrete island. He squinted to make out the different models. “It might be that one,” he said, nodding to a white 1960s-era Mustang Shelby with blue racing stripes.

  “Why don’t you go down and check?” she said, throwing him the keys.

  He balked at this. “Why don’t you stop giving me orders? I’m not one of your minions!”

  “Hurry up, Keyne. We really need a car.”

  “And you, go take your bath, girlfriend. You really need to relax!”

  “I am not your girlfriend,” she shouted, but Keyne didn’t hear her. He had already left the room, slamming the door behind him.

  Upstairs, in the master bedroom, Alice sat on the bed and opened her canvas satchel. She took out the new cell phone and removed it from its plastic packet. It came with a charger, a hands-free device, and a user’s manual. She also found a plastic card containing the phone’s serial number.

  She plugged in the phone. An icon appeared on the screen showing a credit of ten minutes. She pressed Call and was put through to a recorded message asking her to enter the serial number.

  She did this, and the robotic voice asked her to type in the area code of the zone where she planned to use the phone. Almost instantaneously, she was sent a text assigning her a phone number. Once her phone had been activated, she entered the number of the prepaid card, which immediately gave her 120 minutes of communication.

  She called Seymour’s cell phone, but it went straight to voice mail.

  “Call me back at this number as soon as you can, Seymour. I really need your help. Please be quick.”

  Alice then went into the bathroom, which was separated from the bedroom by a glass-brick wall. It was decorated in a retro style, very 1950s: black-and-white-checkerboard tile floor, cast-iron bathtub with brass feet, antique sink, vintage ceramic faucets, painted wooden cabinet with moldings.

  Keyne had done what he’d said he would—beneath a thick cloud of foam, a steaming bath scented with lavender awaited her.

  What a strange guy.

  Alice undressed in front of a large, adjustable mirror with a wrought-iron frame, then slipped into the water. The heat increased her blood flow and woke all the pores in her skin. Her muscles relaxed, and the shooting pains in her joints diminished. She took deep breaths. Alice had the pleasant sensation of being swept away by a burning-hot beneficent wave, and for a few seconds she abandoned herself completely to the bath’s voluptuous languor.

  Then she held her breath and plunged her head underwater.

  With the alcohol in her bloodstream and the temperature of the water, she felt herself floating midway between somnolence and numbness. Contradictory thoughts flashed through her mind. Her memory loss made her impatient. Once again, Alice tried to reconstruct the previous evening, but still she ended up in that same black hole, without access to her memories. For the early part of the evening, the pieces of the puzzle slotted into place easily enough: the bars, the cocktails, her friends, the parking garage on Avenue Franklin-Roosevelt. Then walking to the car. The bluish-green artificial lighting. She feels groggy, staggers as she walks. She distinctly sees herself open the door of the little Audi and sit down behind the wheel…and there’s someone sitting next to her! She remembers now. A face emerges from the darkness, taking her by surprise. A man’s face. She attempts to make out his features, but they vanish under a milky fog.

  Suddenly, the flood of memories sweeps her further back in time, like a river rushing to its source in the heart of pain.

  I remember…

  Two years ago

  I remember.

  Or rather, I imagine.

  November 21, 2011.

  A rainy day, late afternoon, in my husband’s office. An appointment with a patient is interrupted by a phone call:

  “Dr. Paul Malaury? This is the surgery department in the Hôtel-Dieu hospital. Your wife has just been brought here. She’s in critical condition…”

  In a panic, Paul grabs his coat, stammers a few words of explanation to his secretary, and runs out of his office. He sits behind the wheel of his old Alfa Romeo Giulietta, parked, as always, straddling a little bit of sidewalk in front of Paris’s public-housing agency. The rain has reduced his daily parking ticket to a pulp. He starts the engine, drives around the square, and turns onto Rue du Bac.

  Night has already fallen, after a grim, wet fall day—the kind of day that makes you loathe Paris, this cancerous, polluted, overcrowded hell engulfed in misery and madness. Traffic is crawling on Boulevard Saint-Germain. Paul uses his sleeve to wipe condensation from the inside of his windshield. Then he uses the same sleeve to wipe the tears from his cheeks.

  Alice, the baby…please don’t let this be true!

  He has been euphoric ever since he discovered he was going to be a father. Already he is looking forward to it all: baby bottles, walks with the stroller in the Jardin du Luxembourg, sandcastles on the beach, the first day of school, soccer fields on Sunday mornings…a series of moments now dissolving in his mind.

  He forces away these morbid thoughts and tries to remain calm, but the emotion is too powerful and his body is shaken by sobs. His pain becomes mixed with anger. He bawls like a kid. Stuck at a traffic light, he smashes his fist against the steering wheel. He can still hear the nurse’s words describing the horror: “I’m not going to lie to you, Doctor: It’s very serious. She was attacked with a knife. She has several wounds in her abdomen…”

  The light turns green. He speeds away and jerks his wheel to the side to take the bus lane. He wonders how this could have happened. How could his wife—with whom he ate lunch that very day i
n a little bar on Rue Guisarde—have been stabbed in a squalid apartment in west Paris when she was supposed to be spending the afternoon with her midwife, preparing for the birth?

  Images flash through his head again: Alice lying in a pool of blood, the ambulance arriving, the paramedic making the first report: “Patient unstable, systolic pressure dropping, weak pulse, heart rate one hundred. We’re going to intubate her.”

  Paul flashes his headlights, passes two taxis, and is about to turn left, when he sees that Boulevard Saint-Michel is cordoned off by cops because of a protest march. He clenches his jaw. Fuck! I don’t believe this!

  He lowers his window to talk to the police officers, hoping they will let him through, but he comes up against the brick wall of their inflexibility and drives away angrily, yelling insults at them.

  He turns back onto Boulevard Saint-Germain without signaling and a bus driver honks his horn.

  He has to calm down. Focus all his energy on saving his wife. He has to find a doctor capable of performing miracles. He wonders if he knows any of the doctors at Hôtel-Dieu.

  Pralavorio, maybe? No, he works at Bichat. Jourdin? He’s at Cochin, but he knows everyone. He’s the one I should call. He reaches for his phone, which he left on top of his coat on the passenger seat, but he can’t find it.

  The old Alfa Romeo drives along narrow Rue des Bernardins and joins the Pont de l’Archevêché, the “lovers’ bridge,” its guardrails covered with thousands of padlocks shining in the night.

  Paul switches on the dome light, looks around, and finally spots his cell phone on the floor. Keeping one hand on the steering wheel, he leans down to pick it up. When he sits back up, he is dazzled by a headlight and realizes, to his shock, that a motorcycle is coming right at him on this one-way bridge. It’s too late to brake. Paul jerks the wheel right to avoid the collision. The Alfa Romeo skids onto the sidewalk, takes off, and collides with a streetlamp before ripping open the bridge’s metal barrier.