I Was Waiting for You

by Maxim Jakubowski

  The stranger grimaced as he drank his first small mouthful of wine.

  Jack stirred too much sugar into his coffee cup. The embarrassed silence persisted.

  “Tell me,” he suggested.

  The Italian man looked up at him once again, nervously tugged on his collar and launched into his explanation.

  “I am a doctor. I specialise in gastro-enterology. I am from Rome where I work in a big hospital. Maybe you know it, it’s San Filippo Neri, on the banks of the Tiber. I run the Digestive Endoscopy Department.”

  Jack naturally knew nothing about gastro-enterology. But there was a flash of recognition down in the pit of his stomach. A doctor from Italy? Surely not. His face deliberately impassive, he nodded sympathetically as best he could. It was visibly not his turn to ask questions right now. The other man continued.

  “I have two children. A girl and a boy. My daughter is called Giulia. She is now 23. I know I shouldn’t be saying this but she was always my favourite. She was a wonderful baby, always happy and cheerful. Dark curly hair from an early age and bright, oh so bright. We have tried to bring our children up right. I am very liberal, but she was always the apple of my eye and of course she soon knew it all too well and quickly became an expert in manipulating me to obtain almost everything she wanted. I didn’t mind, of course.” He wiped a thin tear away from the corner of his left eye. “When she became older, a teenager, both my wife and I were scared she might become too wild and unmanageable. There were a few difficult years, but we scrambled our way through them. In her late teens, she would almost never spend any time at home, apart from sleeping, you know. She was like a gypsy, flitting from friend to friend, playing tennis, studying, seeing films, theatre plays and opera. So that she should not run risks like so many of her classmates riding on a Vespa, we even bought her a small car, even though we knew that some years later we would have to do the same for her younger brother when the time came; a major expense. She became so independent. Yes, we argued a lot. She was spoiled and selfish at times, but I know we were closer than most fathers and daughters usually are, even in Italy, you know.”

  The doctor caught his breath, picked up his glass to take another sip, even though it was now empty. He called for another one.

  “No, maybe white this time,” he said. “It wasn’t very nice, I must confess… Algerian, I think.” He smiled weakly.

  “Blanc, cette fois, s’il vous plait,” Jack corrected the order.

  “Thank you,” the Italian man said.

  “Do you know why she left?” he ventured.

  “If only,” he answered. “She wasn’t that much into boys, I know. She found most friends her age too superficial. Remember, she was… is terribly bright. Completed her degree at 21, spoke 5 languages, even began writing film reviews for a small magazine where my wife knew the editor.”

  “The reason girls usually leave home is because of love or infatuation,” Jack suggested.

  “I know,” the man facing him said. “She seemed to be happier going out with girlfriends or as part of larger groups. Really. But then I suppose all fathers prefer not to think of real life and forget the fact that young girls cannot help but be attracted to sex. It’s our modern society, isn’t it? My wife and I met at college when we were only eighteen and sixteen respectively and married ten years later when we both had jobs and some form of security. She and I have never known others. Newer generations are different, I realise… Anyway, from time to time after she was seventeen or was it eighteen, Giulia would sometimes spend nights away from home, but she would always inform us in advance and we knew where she was staying most times, at a friend’s or some other safe place. If she had a boyfriend, she would never tell us and we just hoped that, once it happened, it would be someone nice that she would bring home in her own time to meet us. But she never did bring a young man home. She was a creature of secrets. I tell you, she had all the opportunities, but she followed her own counsel. Once a year, we go on a camper van holiday somewhere in Europe, all together — Giulia would even help out with the driving — and then spend the rest of the summer in the country house we have an hour away from Rome. She never minded; never suggested she should vacation on her own, or even with friends.”

  He took a deep breath, anticipating the next question.

  “She never wanted for money. I would always give her enough for her needs, and then she earned a bursary for her studies and worked a few hours a week at the university library. Somehow money never meant a lot to her. She seldom asked for more, unless she had a serious reason for doing so. Later she did suggest she could find a flat for herself and we argued a little about it, but she soon realised that with Rome property prices these days, it was something neither of us could really afford. It’s then I think that she met this man. An older man. I knew nothing about it, of course. She would never tell me. But she did confide in her mother. Although, even to my wife she would not provide any details. Age, name, nationality, profession, all those sort of basic things. I have now learned it lasted over a year. I suspect he was the first proper man in her life, also. Before him, just cheap infatuations and clumsy fumblings but no close… relationship.” He blushed. “But then something went wrong. Neither of us knows exactly what.”

  He fell silent, rehashing the events and memories in his mind.

  “And?” Jack asked.

  “It was visible something disturbing had happened to her. She was no longer the soul and life of the party. She began spending hours alone in her room. Became introverted and anxious, defensive whenever we would try to speak to her. Evidently, there was something wrong.”

  “What did you do?”

  “What could I do?” he said. “She was doing a postgraduate course in journalism and publishing and had mentioned the possibility of an Erasmus exchange with a matching institution in Paris. I wasn’t too pleased with the option of her being on her own in a foreign city, but she had done so a few years earlier when she had spent six months on a language course in Barcelona where I had made sure she stayed in a Catholic hall of residence, supervised by nuns; at any rate, this time I was the one who encouraged her to go to Paris on this course. Maybe I reasoned a change of place would do her good and the Giulia I had always known and cherished would return to us. I was wrong. Within a few weeks of arriving in Paris, she moved out of the apartment of the friend’s family where we had agreed she should stay. Since then, we’ve been trying to reach her on her mobile phone number but she never answers. I still try four or five times a day. Maybe she’s lost it. Or refuses to answer, I don’t know what to think.”

  A veil of shadow lowered across his eyes.

  “And you want me to find her?” Jack confirmed.

  “Yes,’ the Italian doctor said.

  “You do know I’m not a private detective, Doctor, don’t you?” Jack said.

  The other man briefly looked away, as if this was a subject he would rather not discuss. He took a deep breath, then turned to Jack again, a note of pleading in his voice.

  “Please,” he asked. “If I went to the police, they would just tell me she is old enough to make her own decisions, and I have no evidence of anything criminal having happened. Just another young girl wanting to live her life. But, somewhere inside, I just know that’s not the case. Not Giulia.”

  A curtain of silence swept across the two men, both sitting there in a bubble in the far corner of the Parisian bar.

  “Why me?” Jack enquired.

  Fearing the answer.

  “She was always reading your books,” the Italian replied. “I was always asking her why. I’ve never understood her interest, or for that matter anyone’s interest in mystery stories. I used to read Agatha Christie and Giorgio Scerbanenco when I was still at the faculty, but never since. Normal people grow out of it, I thought.”

  “I see.”

  “And I read that short interview she did with you for her friend’s magazine. She admired you.”

  “Did she?”

/>   “Yes, it was always Jack Clive this and Jack Clive that.”

  “So?”

  “So, I thought you might have some idea where to look for her. I just couldn’t face employing a real private investigator. It’s stupid, I know. But, at the back of my heart, I thought that was what Giulia might have wanted me to do…”

  Jack stayed silent. He had expected another explanation. A more personal one.

  Before departing the bar, the Doctor left Jack a folder with photographs and a mass of other details concerning his missing daughter and made him promise to keep in touch. Inside the file, there was also a thick wad of euros. They hadn’t, of course, even discussed a fee.

  He was missing a daughter and Jack was missing all the women from his past.

  It was a sorry state of affairs.

  Or, looking at it from a different perspective, could it be the way to begin a new book? He’d always liked the simplicity of Raymond Chandler’s books, when a client found Marlowe and launched him on his investigative ways. And didn’t Marlowe invariably come across a woman or two along the way? Some might even have called this a challenge. Only time would tell.

  L’AMÉRICAINE

  CORNELIA TOOK THE RER from Roissy-Charles De Gaulle. A taxi would have been easier and more relaxed after the seven-hour plane journey, but she knew she had to remain as anonymous as possible. Cab drivers have a bad habit of remembering tall, lanky blondes, particularly so those who did not wish to engage in needless conversation and reveal whether it was their first time in Paris or was she coming here on holiday?

  Because she knew there were countless CCTV cameras sprinkled across the airport and the train terminal, she had quickly changed outfits in a somewhat insalubrious toilet shortly after picking her suitcase up from the luggage carrousel, and by the time she walked on to the RER train, she now had a grey scarf obscuring her blonde curls and wore a different outfit altogether from the flight. It was far from foolproof, but at least would serve its purpose in muddying the waters in the eventuality of a later, thorough investigation.

  The commuters on the train to Paris looked grey and tired, wage slaves on their mindless journey to work or elsewhere. A couple of teenage Arab kids listening to rap or was it hip hop on their iPods glanced at her repeatedly, but her indifference soon got the better of them and she wasn’t bothered until they reached the Luxembourg Gardens stop where she got off.

  She had booked herself on the Internet into a small hotel there the previous day. She checked in under the false name on her spare passport, a Canadian one she’d seldom used before. She took a shower and relaxed before taking the lift to the lobby around lunch hour, noticing someone new had taken over at the registration desk from the young woman who’d earlier checked her in. Cornelia then calmly walked back to her room and stuffed some clothes into a tote bag she had packed into her small suitcase and went down to the lobby again and left the hotel. Fifteen minutes later, she registered at another hotel, near the Place de L’Odéon, this time under her real name. This booking she’d openly made by phone from New York the day before. She was now the proud tenant of two separate hotel rooms under two separate names and nationalities. Both rooms were noisy and looked out onto busy streets, but that was Paris, and anyway she wasn’t here for a spot of tourism. This was work. She settled in the new room, took a nap, and just before the evening walked out and took a cab to the Place de L’Opéra. There was a thin jiffy bag waiting for her at the American Express Poste Restante. Here, she retrieved the key she had found back in Brooklyn at the Russian grocery Ivan occasionally used as a dropout. She then caught another taxi to the Gare du Nord, where she located the left luggage locker which the key opened. The package was anonymous and not too bulky. She picked up a copy of Libération and casually wrapped it around the bundle she had just retrieved from the locker and walked down the train station stairs to the Métro and took the Porte d’Orléans line back to Odéon. In the room, she unwrapped the package and weighed the Sig Sauer in her hand. Her favourite gun. Perfect.

  * * *

  The Italian girl had always preferred older men. Some of her friends and other fellow students at La Sapienza, Rome’s University, had always kidded her she had something of a father fixation, and indeed her relationship with her gastro-enterologist Dad was prickly to say the least, seesawing between devotion and simmering anger. At any rate, he also spoiled her badly.

  But boys her age seemed so clumsy and uninteresting, coarse, superficial, so sadly predictable, and she found herself recoiling instinctively from their tentative touches all too often. Not that she knew exactly what she wanted herself.

  Whenever asked about her plans for the future, she would answer in jest (or maybe not) that she planned to marry an ambassador and have lots of babies. When Peppino — the jokey name she would use in public circumstances for her much older, foreign lover so as to make him impossible to identify for her parents– queried her about this, she would add that the ambassador would also be a black man, a big man in both size and personality. He would smile silently in response, betraying his own personal fears and prejudices, only to point out that she’d be wasting so many opportunities by becoming merely a wife. After all, this was a young woman who by the age of 22 had a degree in comparative literature, spoke a handful of languages, and would surely make a hell of a journalist or foreign correspondent one day.

  Her affair with the man she and her few friends aware of his secret existence had affectionately called Peppino had lasted just over a year and he had been the first man she had fucked. To her amazement, he had become not just a lover but her professor of sex; unimaginably tender, crudely transgressive, and the first time she had come across a guy who understood her so well their contact when apart became almost telepathic. However, he was also more than twice her age, lived in another country and happened to be married, which sharpened her longing and her jealousy to breaking point. The affair had proven both beautiful and traumatic, but eventually the enforced separation from Peppino could not be assuaged by telephone calls, frantic e-mails and mere words any longer. For her sanity, she was obliged to break up with him. Even though she also loved him. She had a life to live, adventures to experience; he had already lived his life, hadn’t he? Now was her time. The decision was a painful one and he naturally took it badly. Not that her state of mind was much better, wracked by doubts, heartache and regrets by the thousands as both she and Peppino could not help recalling the days and nights together, the shocking intimacy they had experienced, the pleasure and complicity, the joy and the darkness. Sleepless nights and silent unhappiness followed in her wake and she had agreed to stay with a girlfriend from her exchange months in Barcelona who lived in Paris — ironically, a city he had always wanted to take her to.

  It was a wet spring and the thin rain peppered the Latin Quarter pavements with a coating of grey melancholy. Flora had departed for the countryside and her grandparents’ villa where a family reunion was taking place and left Giulia on her own in the apartment for a few days. Initially, she had looked forward to the prospect but now felt herself particularly lonely. When she was not busy and frantically exploring the city with other casual acquaintances, memories just kept on flooding back.

  She was sitting reading a book at the terrace of Les Deux Magots, sipping a cappuccino, half-watching the world pass by, women who walked elegantly, young men who looked cute but would surely prove dull in real life, she thought, when she heard the seductive voice of the bad man across her shoulders.

  “That’s a quite wonderful book, Mademoiselle,” he said. “I envy you the experience of reading it for the first time. Truly.”

  Giulia looked up at him.

  He looked older. How could he not be?

  Cornelia much preferred ignorance. A job was a job and it was better not to have to know any of the often murky reasons she was given an assignment.

  Had the target stolen from another party, swindled, lied, killed, betrayed? It was not important.

&nbs
p; Cornelia was aware she had a cold heart. It made her work easier, not that she sought excuses. She would kill both innocent and guilty parties with the same set of mind. It was not hers to reason why.

  She had been given a thin dossier on her Paris mark, a half dozen pages of random information about his haunts and habits and a couple of photographs. A manila folder she had slipped between her folded black cashmere sweaters in the travelling suitcase, to which she had added a few torn out pages from the financial pages of The New York Times and a section on international investment from The Wall Street Journalto muddy the waters in the event of an unlikely snap examination of her belongings by customs at either JFK or Roissy. He was a man in his late forties, good-looking in a rugged sort of way which appealed to some women, she knew. Tallish, hair greying at the temples in subdued and elegant manner. She studied one of the photographs, and noted the ice-green eyes, and a steely inner determination behind the crooked smile. A dangerous man. A bad man.

  But they all have weaknesses, and it appeared his was women. Younger women. It usually was. Cornelia sighed. Kept on perusing the information sheet she had been furnished with, made notes. Finally, she booted up her laptop and went online to hunt down the ‘clubs échangistes’ her prey was known to frequent on a regular basis. They appeared to be located all over the city, but the main ones appeared to be in the Marais and close to the Louvre. She wrote down the particulars of Au Pluriel, Le Chateau des Lys, Les Chandelles and Chris et Manu, and studied the respective websites. She’d been to a couple of similar ‘swing’ clubs back in the States, both privately and for work reasons. She’d found them somewhat sordid. Maybe the Parisian ones would prove classier, but she doubted it. Cornelia had no qualms about public sex, let alone exhibitionism — after all she had stripped for a living for years now and greatly enjoyed the sensation, but still found that sex was an essentially private communion however effectless it could be. But then she’d always had an uneasy relationship with and perception of sex, and at a push would readily confess to decidedly mixed feelings about it.