A World I Never Made

by James Lepore

“No, not fifty dollars.” As he spoke, Duval drew a once white but now crumpled and dirty envelope from his shirt pocket. “Half of this,” he said, presenting Pat with its contents: one half of a hundred-dollar bill.

  Pat stood dumb for a second and then realized he was looking at Megan’s half of the hundred-dollar bill he had torn in two at an outdoor café in Prague in 1992. He quickly extracted his half, forgotten these twelve years until now, and held it out toward Duval.

  “Yes,” said Duval, taking the torn bill from Pat’s outstretched hand and placing it next to the one he was holding. “A perfect match. You are the father of Megan Nolan:”

  “Where is she?”

  “I don’t know, Monsieur, but I will find out:”

  “You don’t know?”

  “No, but as I said, I will find out where she is:”

  “Do it now. I’ll wait:”

  “No, Monsieur, it is not so simple. Come back tonight, a dix heures, ten o’ clock. I should know by then. Do not use the front door. There is an alley on Rue de Caulaincourt, across from the grave of M. Zola, a dirt path. It leads to the back door here:”

  “Fine;” Pat said, turning to leave, ”I’ll be here at ten.“ Then he turned back and said, ”Let me ask you, François, Why are you doing this?“

  There was rustling and giggling at the curtain, and then the boys” heads appeared. Duval glowered in their direction and they were gone. The televisions were still on, one blaring a Popeye cartoon in French, the other a game show with half-naked contestants.

  “My father died of cancer of the stomach, Monsieur Nolan. He refused to see a gadgo doctor or go to a gadgo hospital. Your daughter took care of him. For seven months, until he died, she took care of him. He had a gift, my father, the second sight. He could see your future and he could curse you if he wished. On his deathbed he gave me Megan’s half of the hundred-dollar bill. He told me how to find Megan if you appeared with the other half. He said he would curse me from the grave if I refused or failed. I do not wish to be cursed. I am a gypsy. A curse from the grave would be worse for me than the danger that is following you. My father saw that danger, and I am afraid of it. After you leave tonight I will pack up my family and go away. Do not be late:”

  “You have been very tender,” said Catherine.

  Pat remained silent. They were sitting over coffee, after eating dinner, in a quiet corner of a nearly empty bistro a few steps from their nondescript hotel on Rue Gabrielle. Catherine had lit one of her Galloises before making this statement, and Patrick was caught up in watching her movements as she lit up, inhaled, and then exhaled as she spoke. She had said earlier while they were doing some quick shopping that she would smoke three cigarettes in the ten hours they had to kill before their meeting with Duval. This was her second. The first had been after they had made love in their tiny room at the Three Ducks Hotel. Her face then, half in shadow, had been aglow, her eyes glittering, her sadness exiled for the moment by the stronger demands of pleasure. Watching Catherine smoke brought the memory of that pleasure swiftly back to Pat.

  “I am not the only one grieving,” Catherine said.“You have lost a grandson.”

  “You have been tender as well:”

  “Thank you. It has been a pleasure:”

  They smiled across the table at each other, then Catherine said, “Tell me about your life, Patrick.”

  “My life?”

  “Yes, your emotional life. The life of your heart. You know about Jacques. My failure:”

  “My emotional life. I see. Well, I can top you. I didn’t have one:”

  “Why not?”

  “All Lorrie wanted was a house in the suburbs, a couple of kids, to love me. I dragged her to the jungle to die. Then I abandoned Megan. I didn’t deserve anything good after that:”

  “You punished yourself.”

  “Yes. And was proud of it:”

  “There must have been women:”

  Pat took a moment to consider this.

  “There were women,” he said, finally. “One or two loved me, I’m sure. But no one I would let myself love. Like I said, I was either too proud or too humiliated, or lost somewhere in between:”

  “And now?”

  “Now?”

  “Have you found yourself?”

  “I don’t know,” Pat said, smiling. “But I’ve found you, and now that I have, I’m not letting you go:”

  When they drove past 33 Rue de Matisse at ten that night, Pat and Catherine saw two Arab men in ski jackets and jeans, their hands in their jacket pockets, standing on the entrance steps.

  “The prayer card,” Catherine said, turning left on Rue Caulaincourt. “The prayer card,” Pat replied, turning his head to keep his eyes on the two men until they were out of sight.

  “We have to go in,” Catherine said. “They may be simply waiting for us outside:”

  “I agree:”

  They had not heard from Doro. Who knew if they ever would? François Duval was their best, possibly their only hope of finding Megan. They parked on Rue Caulaincourt and stepped quietly into the pitch-black alley, their guns drawn. They did not so much find the back steps as stumble upon them. The small porch was nearly completely covered by a wild vine of some kind. The door was locked. On the brick wall to the right, also covered with the vine, they could make out the faint outline of a window in the dark. Pat jimmied the lock with a pocketknife and they climbed into François Duval’s bedroom, another carpet-covered cavelike room that was completely dark and reeked of incense and tobacco. They stood still for a long second or two, getting their bearings. A very faint light outlined the room’s closed door. They opened it slowly and stepped into a small, dark, pantry-sized room with a mattress on the floor. Here Pat saw the curtain that the two boys had peeked their heads out of, a faint glow behind it. He moved it aside about six inches, his gun unlocked and gripped tightly in his free hand. Catherine joined him and they peered into the front room together. One lonely lamp glowed in a corner. Within its cone of dim light lay the headless body of François Duval. A few feet away the head was propped up against the leg of an overstuffed chair. Blood was everywhere. They took this scene in for a long moment, the silence surrounding them stony and deep and heavy with death.

  “I have to search him;” Pat said, thinking of Megan, the idea that this is what could happen to her finally penetrating all of his defenses, encircling his heart like a band of ice. He had heard Catherine gasp, but was only vaguely aware that she was gripping his arm until he made a move to enter the room.

  “No,” she said in an insistent whisper, trying to pull him back, her grip like a vice on his bicep, “there is nothing we can do. We must go.” As she was saying this, the cell phone in her shoulder bag rang. She continued to pull maniacally on Pat’s arm, urging him toward the bedroom while reaching into her bag with her free hand to find the phone. But Pat was having none of it. He jerked his arm free, causing the shoulder bag to fall to the floor and its contents to spill out. Catherine fell to her knees to search in the dark for the phone, desperate to silence its irritating chirpy ring.

  Pat watched her for a second, then, hearing the front door click and swing open, slid the curtain aside and saw both Arabs from the street coming right at him. Both were carrying drawn pistols, but they did not see him in the dark. He shot the first one in the chest, causing him to crumple to the floor and giving his partner a chance to duck and at the same time point his gun in Pat’s direction. But before he could fire, Pat shot him twice, once in the shoulder and once in the forehead, a lucky shot.

  Stepping quickly into the room, Pat kicked their guns away and placed his index and middle fingers against their carotid arteries, making sure both were dead. Then he heard Catherine’s voice and, turning, saw her kneeling and talking on the cell phone. “Oui, Doro, c’est moi, Catherine. Oui, Daniel est mort. Oui, oui, demain, Champ de Mars, a huit heures:”

  They drove in silence back to the Three Ducks. In their room, the things they had bought that a
fternoon sat forlornly on the dresser: face cream, gloves, and a thick scarf for Catherine, socks and a new shirt and sweater for Pat. Near them was the wine they had bought, thinking of a nightcap. This Pat uncorked, pouring out two glasses. He drank in silence while Catherine undressed and got into bed, leaving her wine untouched. There had been no sign of the children or of Duval’s wife. Whether that was good or bad was a question that hung between them, unasked.

  Tomorrow morning they would meet Doro. He would tell them where Megan was. If he really could be trusted. That question also remained locked in Pat’s head, along with the day’s images: Daniel Peletier, legs and arms akimbo, falling to his death; Catherine shooting one of his killer’s in the groin; François Duval’s leering head. Catherine had made sure that they were not being followed on the short ride to the hotel, meandering through adjacent neighborhoods and checking her rearview mirrors constantly. Nevertheless, Pat pushed the dresser against the door before settling into a shabby plush chair near the room’s one window, with its view of the now-quiet Rue Gabrielle.

  As he drank and listened to Catherine’s regular breathing, more questions without answers came to his mind. What had Megan done to lay down such a trail of blood to her door? And how could they possibly prevail against the host of vipers that were arrayed against them?

  ~20~

  PARIS, JANUARY 7, 2004

  Catherine and Pat, wary of traps, arrived an hour early at Paris’s Champ de Mars. The weather had turned colder, but the morning sun was bright and the sky above the city was, for a change, a pale and pretty blue. Starkly leafless trees and an occasional ornate lamppost dotted an otherwise wide open and windless landscape. They quickly spotted the meeting place Doro had designated, a bench facing a triangular flower bed in the middle of the park, and watched it from another bench fifty or so yards away. Nearby, a young mother walked a child in a sturdy, hi-tech stroller, and in the distance, near one of the park’s entrances, a kiosk selling newspapers and hot chocolate was doing a brisk business. One or two of its patrons, bundled against the cold in overcoats and scarves, had tucked their papers under their arms and were slowly negotiating the paved paths that dissected the park’s wide winter-blond central field. Promptly at eight, Doro approached the bench alone and sat. Pat and Catherine, their hands on their guns in their coat pockets, walked over and joined him, one sitting on either side of the young gypsy. They nodded in greeting and waited while the boy lit a Gallois, declining his offer of one.

  “Doro,” Catherine said, “do you know a man named François Duval? A gypsy?”

  “Yes, he is of my vitsas, my tribe. Megan stayed with his father in Paris for several months. What of him?”

  “He is dead. We found his body last night, just as you were calling. It was the Arabs again:”

  “Dead?”

  “Yes, beheaded:”

  “Beheaded ... And his wife and children?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “How did you find François?”

  “We were given his name in Lisieux, at the convent. Megan had written his name and address on a prayer card and left it with the child.”

  “Did you find the child?”

  “The child is dead:”

  Doro looked at Pat. “Ah ... I am sorry, Monsieur:”

  “Thank you:”

  “Did François tell you where your daughter is?”

  “No, we were too late:”

  Pat had been listening to Catherine and Doro, but also scanning the park, his right hand gripping his Beretta in the pocket of his leather jacket, the same weatherbeaten bomber jacket he had worn since his arrival in Paris. He gripped the gun as much as a defense against Doro as against Islamic fanatics charging at them across the park. The population of people in the world he trusted had dwindled to one: Catherine.

  “His father agreed to help Megan;” Pat continued, ”to lead me to her. He must have left information with his son.“

  “So now the barbarians know where Megan is:”

  “Probably.”

  “That is good.”

  “Good? Why?”

  “Because I also know where she is. We will go there and we will kill them:”

  “Where is she?” Pat and Catherine said simultaneously.

  Doro did not answer. He too had his right hand in his jacket pocket, and he too now scanned the park.

  “The Nazis killed a million gypsies, Monsieur Nolan,” Doro said, completing his scan and returning his gaze to Pat. “Did you know that?”

  Pat took a breath and looked from Doro’s darkly handsome eyes to the trail of smoke he was exhaling through his flared nostrils. The Nazis? he thought. Where’s Megan? But he bit his tongue. The boy, probably not yet twenty, was his last chance of finding his daughter.

  “Yes,” he replied. “I knew that.”

  “You may think one or two more are of little significance:”

  “I don’t think that:”

  “There is no holocaust museum for us, no homeland.”

  “No.”

  “But that is as we want it. We are gypsies. Do you understand, Monsieur Nolan? We do not want a museum, we do not want a homeland. We want no records kept of who we are and where we go and what we do. We do not assimilate. We have our ways and we have each other, and that is all:”

  “I understand:”

  “I don’t think you do:”

  Pat did not reply. He glanced at Catherine, but she was quietly scrutinizing the young man sitting between them and he could not read her eyes.

  “Where is Megan?” Pat said finally.

  “She is with my uncle Corozzo in the Czech Republic:”

  “Will you take us to her?”

  “Yes, but we must use her to draw the barbarians to us. If you cannot agree to this, then I cannot help you:”

  “I understand, but Megan may have something to say about that:”

  “You will talk to her. Tell her of Annabella and the others:”

  “I will try. That’s all I can do. You have my word I will try.”

  “Good. That is enough. We are agreed:”

  “We must hurry,” said Catherine. “The Arabs have a ten-hour head start:”

  “No gadgo can approach Corozzo’s camp without him knowing it,” Doro said.“If they arrive in force, he will run and we will catch up with him. We will meet in Waldsassen, in Germany, and from there cross into the Czech Republic. Corozzo and his people, and your daughter, are in an abandoned mining camp in the forest near Kolin, a small city of no importance:”

  “Where in Waldsassen?” Catherine asked.

  “Do you know Waldsassen?”

  “No.”

  “It is near the Czech border. Outside the town there is a small amusement park, on the banks of the river Ohře. It will be closed for the winter. Go to the carousel at six tonight. If I am not there, come back at midnight. I will call you if there is a problem:”

  “What kind of problem?”

  “I have to find a place to cross the border. It should be easy, but sometimes there are patrols. We may have to wait one, maybe two nights:”

  Doro began to rise from the bench, but Pat took hold of his arm and stopped him. As he did this, the two men in overcoats carrying newspapers that Pat had seen earlier veered sharply toward the bench. Both Pat and Catherine drew their guns. Doro, using his free arm, held his hand up, palm forward, to the two men, who stopped about twenty yards away. Both had their hands in their pockets, ready to draw weapons. They were not, Pat realized, Parisian businessmen, not men at all, but the two teenage boys who had been with Doro at the house in Rambouillet three days ago.

  “Yes, Monsieur Nolan?” said Doro.

  “What about your word, Doro? Is it any good?”

  “Monsieur Nolan, I could have killed you in Rambouillet three days ago. I could have had the police here when you arrived. I am going to kill the men who killed my grandmother, with or without you. I am bringing you to your daughter because Annabella would have wished me to.
Not all gypsies are liars and cheats. Most, but not all. I will see you tonight in Waldsassen.”

  On the way out of the park, Catherine and Pat were passing the kiosk when Catherine stopped suddenly to stare at the neat stacks of newspapers lining the top of its tiered counter. Reaching down, she picked up a copy of Figaro and began rapidly reading a front-page story. Over her shoulder Pat could see the headline, Diplomat Slain on Paris Street. Below it were two black-and-white pictures side by side. On the left was an effetely handsome, well-dressed man in his late thirties behind a desk, smiling as he talked on the phone. On the right was the same man lying face up on a sidewalk, his legs twisted under him, blood staining the front of his stylish camel hair overcoat. The caption read: Charles Raimondi in bis office in 2002 and as found yesterday near his apartment on Boulevard Capucine.