Foreign Affairs (A Nick Teffinger Thriller / Read in Any Order)
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“Michelle Berri.”
“Right, her.”
“Okay.”
“Sorry,” she said.
“No, that’s fine. It’s what I expected. I just got tired of asking myself the same questions over and over and needed a new one—that, and I wanted to hear the sound of your voice, but don’t ever tell anyone because I’ll deny it.”
WHEN HE GOT TO FALLON’S OFFICE, she was at her desk with her shoes off, flicking a lighter and working the computer. A couple of papers with names sat in front of her. “We got a list of the tenants,” she said, referring to the apartment building where the caveman taxi driver led them yesterday after leaving Blue Moon. “I’m running background checks on them as we speak.”
Teffinger took a sip of coffee.
“That’s a long shot,” he said.
“I’ll take a short shot, if you have one.”
He didn’t.
He wished he did, but he didn’t.
A file sat on the corner of Fallon’s desk.
“What’s that?” he asked.
It was the file on Sharla DePaglia, the Blue Moon escort who got smothered.
“That’s been there since Monday,” Teffinger said. “How did you know that Blue Moon was somehow connected to the caveman?”
“A caveman,” she said, “who may or may not be the caveman. But to answer your question, that file’s never left my desk.”
“I thought you said that woman—what’s her name?”
“Sharla DePaglia.”
“Right, her, I thought you said she got killed more than a year ago.”
She nodded.
“Cold cases are like plants,” she said. “They need to stay in the light, otherwise they die.”
Teffinger understood.
He also understood that if he used that approach, he wouldn’t have a desk left to work on.
“Mind if I take a look?”
“Knock yourself out.”
Chapter Forty-One
Day Five—July 16
Friday Afternoon
______________
THE VALLEY OF THE KINGS lies just west of Luxor, not far on the other side of the Nile greenbelt, in the barren and dangerous valley of the Theban hills. For nearly 500 years, from the 16th to the 11th centuries BC, kings and powerful nobles of the New Kingdom chose the valley as their final resting place. The thinking was that the remoteness of the location, together with the craggy cliffs, provided a natural protection from intruders and robbers.
More than sixty tombs had been located in the East Valley over time.
That compared to only one in the West Valley.
DEJA AND ALEXANDRA TOOK A CAB as far into the valley as the roads allowed and then walked west. Right now, midday in July, the sun ruled the world and spit fiery air at every living thing it could find.
Tourists were minimal.
Movement was scarce.
All the sane people in the world were somewhere else.
Alexandra pointed and said, “That’s the new tomb, the one we’re trying to find the treasure of.” Deja thought it would look like a pyramid. Instead, it was something more in the nature of a series of chambers that had been buried underground by the last three thousand years.
They passed through the valley and walked west on a lifeless camel trail wearing backpacks, floppy hats and sunglasses.
“Keep an eye out for snakes,” Alexandra said. “They blend in so you have to make an effort to look for them.”
Right.
Absolutely.
“They really get pissed if you step on them,” Alexandra added.
Deja knew it was a joke and she should laugh but she couldn’t because the heat had her in a stranglehold. “Maybe we should go back and wait until the sun goes down,” she said.
“No time,” Alexandra said. “If you start to feel faint or dizzy or weak or nauseous, let me know right away—or a headache.”
“I’m fine, but just for the record, this is really hot.”
“We just need to stay hydrated and go slow. I’ve been roaming this area since I was eight and, according to most reports, I’m still alive.”
“Eight?”
“My parents brought me here more times than I can remember,” Alexandra said. “They’re the reason we’re here right now.”
“I don’t follow.”
“You will,” she said. “Look over your shoulder every now and then. Be sure no one’s on our tail.”
Deja twisted her body around and scouted the desolate landscape.
She saw no one and said so.
“Good.”
CRAGGY CLIFFS JUTTED UP on their immediate left as well as several hundred meters to their right. A kilometer later, the camel path ended.
They kept going west, into death’s hands.
“Stay with me,” Alexandra said. “Don’t fall behind and don’t get separated.”
“I’m here.”
Twenty steps later, Deja’s foot came down on something; something softer than a rock.
She looked down and found herself standing on the head of a snake, a large snake.
She froze.
The reptile thrashed its body wildly from side to side.
“Don’t move!” Alexandra said. “That’s a viper!”
Chapter Forty-Two
Day Five—July 16
Friday Afternoon
______________
PRARIE CANELLE WAS A WAITRESS at the Laughing Hat Café down the street from Durand’s apartment. With a pale gothic face hidden behind thick black glasses, an ever-present pulled-back-tight ponytail, and a short 25-year-old frame with a round belly, no one ever accused her of being stunning.
Even Durand, as plain vanilla as he was, never paid her much attention.
But today, when he stopped in for a bite, she took his order with a shy smile and said, “I like what you did with your hair.”
He looked at her.
Not at her glasses, as usual, but through her glasses into her eyes, where he saw something he never had before. He surprised himself by saying, “Would you like to get together sometime, when you’re not working?”
She diverted her eyes, then threw him a sideways glance.
“I’m serious,” Durand said.
“Well, if you really mean it, okay,” she said.
“Good,” Durand said. “Are you free tonight?”
She was.
“Great.”
They made arrangements.
Then Durand headed home, sat on the terrace and listened to the street noises as he thought about the case for his newest client, Emmanuelle.
Emmanuelle of Blue Moon.
THE STORY SHE TOLD was simple but brutal. Emmanuelle was in a Rome nightclub called Neo a year ago, searching for new talent, when she spotted an incredibly exotic woman—a woman who was hunting other women, searching for forbidden night pleasures, kissing strangers as if she owned them, tasting their tongues and feeling their bodies.
She finally found one she liked, took her to the dance floor and melted with her. Emmanuelle got wet just watching them. Later, she went up and made a pitch.
Come to Paris.
Make truckloads of money.
The woman took Emmanuelle’s number, kissed her on the lips and said, “Ciao.”
But she called the next day and came to Paris two days later.
Her name was Sharla DePaglia.
ON A SATURDAY NIGHT, a cabbie knocked on the door of Blue Moon, handed Emmanuelle an envelope, and left. Inside was cash—8,000 euros—and a piece of paper with a telephone number and a name.
Franco.
Emmanuelle dialed the number.
A man answered and said he was from Amsterdam.
He was referred to Blue Moon by a friend of his.
He was in Paris for the weekend.
He wanted a woman for a couple of hours, a kinky woman.
Tonight.
“What are you going to do to her?” Emmanuelle asked.
>
“Tie her up, tease her, vibrate her to the point of orgasm but deny her, over and over, until she promises to give me the best blowjob of my life,” he said.
“So you’re not talking about whipping or spanking or pain?”
The man grunted.
“I’m perverted but I’m not sick.”
“Where do you want this to happen.”
He told her.
A building was being renovated.
They’d have privacy there.
Silence.
“I’ll call you back in a few minutes,” Emmanuelle said.
THEN SHE DIALED SHARLA DEPAGLIA, who answered with cocaine in her voice and club noise in the background. Emmanuelle explained the gig and Sharla said she’d take it.
Emmanuelle called Franco back and said it was a go.
A woman would show up in thirty minutes.
“Since this Marco guy didn’t have any history with us, I sent a man named Jean-Pierre over a half hour after Sharla was supposed to get there, just to make sure everything was okay. The doors were locked and the windows were boarded up, but he found a crack big enough to peek through. What he saw he could hardly believe. There were two women there, not just one. They were both tied in a standing spread-eagle position, facing each other, stomach to stomach. One of the women had a plastic bag duct-taped over her head and was thrashing around like crazy. When Jean-Pierre saw that, he kicked the window in. By the time he got there, though, Sharla was dead and the man was gone.”
“Did he get a look at the man?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No, unfortunately—the man had his back to him the whole time,” Emmanuelle said. “Anyway, Jean-Pierre cut the other woman down and then they got the hell out of there.”
“And this other woman, who was she?”
“She turned out to be someone from London, England who Sharla picked up in the club that night,” Emmanuelle said. “They were together when I called. She just went along with Sharla for the ride.”
“What’s her name?”
Emmanuelle cocked her head.
“She was terrified after this happened,” Emmanuelle said. “She made me promise I’d keep her out of it and I intend to keep that promise. But she got a good look at the man. If you find him, she’s willing to come to Paris and confirm whether it’s him or not.”
Durand nodded.
“Good.”
“That way I’ll be positive I’m not having the wrong man killed,” Emmanuelle said.
Durand retreated in thought.
Was there anything else he needed to know at this point?
Yes.
There was.
“Do you still have the piece of paper with the phone number that came in the envelope?”
No.
She threw it away.
“We traced the number, though, early on,” she said. “It was a public phone.”
“Where?”
“Near the Eiffel Tower.”
Durand grunted.
“Sneaky little bastard, isn’t he?”
Yes.
He is.
“And I want him to be a dead sneaky little bastard,” she said. “So do your job well.”
“How’s he going to die?”
“The same way he dished it out, except over and over.”
“Does Fornier know that?”
“No, but he won’t have a problem with it.”
Chapter Forty-Three
Day Five—July 16
Friday Morning
______________
TEFFINGER CLOSED THE SHARLA DEPAGLIA FILE, set it back on the corner of Fallon’s desk and said, “I don’t think the killer let the other woman go on purpose. I think he got interrupted in progress. She intrigued him more than Sharla did. He wanted to have special time with her by letting her watch Sharla die. That increased her terror and correspondingly increased the tingle in his cock.”
Fallon took a sip of coffee.
“You’re such a poet.”
Teffinger nodded.
“It doesn’t come easy, I have to work at it.”
She flicked a lighter.
“So who interrupted them?”
“Probably someone from Blue Moon,” Teffinger said. “If it had been a construction worker, coming back to get tools he forgot or whatever, he would have stuck around to tell everyone what a hero he was. The big question is whether the person who interrupted everything got a look at the killer or not.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Fallon said.
“Why not?”
“Because Blue Moon is a dead end,” she said. “They’re not cooperating.”
“That’s because you haven’t persuaded them to.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning they talk or you drive their clients away,” Teffinger said. “Hit them in the wallet.”
“You mean purse,” Fallon said.
Teffinger nodded.
Right.
Purse.
“I’m impressed,” Fallon said. “That’s a good project for a month from now. But right now I want to concentrate on our caveman taxi driver.”
“Who is somehow connected to Blue Moon.”
“Maybe,” Fallon said. “But if your point is that we should divert our attention to a cold case in hopes that it will throw light on a current one, then I think we’re going too far off course. The connection is too indirect to justify suddenly throwing all our time at Blue Moon.”
Teffinger shrugged.
“All I’m saying is, it takes a certain kind of person to suffocate someone, and it also takes a certain kind of person to gouge someone’s eyes out. It wouldn’t surprise me a bit if both those persons turned out to be the same person.”
“Maybe yes, maybe no.”
THE BACKGROUND CHECKS on the apartment tenants didn’t produce much of interest, other than the fact that two of them turned out to be prostitutes.
Grade C.
Not Blue Moon material.
Whoever the caveman went to see yesterday after he left Blue Moon was a mystery.
“Now what?”
Teffinger shrugged.
“We’ll follow him tonight and see if he ends up staking out the bait, namely your houseboat.”
SUDDENLY A FIGURE APPEARED in the office doorway—Targaux. “Something unpleasant just happened,” he said. “Tourists from all over the world came to see our fair city and paid hard-earned money to see it from one of the best vantage points we have, namely from the sunny decks of one of our tour boats. The problem is, as they cruised down the Seine under a perfect Paris sky, they ended up seeing something that wasn’t exactly on the tour guide’s itinerary.”
Fallon knew where this was heading and winced.
“A floater?”
Targaux nodded.
“Since you love that floater smell so much, I thought I’d let you have the honors.”
“You are pure evil.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re going to hell someday,” Fallon said. “You know that, I hope.”
He nodded.
“And it will be a worse place when you get there,” she added.
Targaux laughed, then got serious.
“Be discrete. This is down by the Eiffel Tower.” He looked at Teffinger and said something in French.
“What’d he say?” Teffinger said.
“He said, Keep her out of trouble.” She gave him a sideways look. “It just goes to show he doesn’t know you that well. Because if he knew you, he would have said that to me about you.”
Chapter Forty-Four
Day Five—July 16
Friday Afternoon
______________
AS THE VIPER THRASHED ITS BODY wildly from side to side under Deja’s foot, Alexandra ripped her backpack off and got down on all fours behind the reptile. She tried to catch it by the tail, but couldn’t. Then she finally got a grip on it and stretched it out. “When I count to three, lift yo
ur foot up.”
“You mean on three?”
“Right, as in one … two … foot up.”
“Okay.”
“Ready?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, here we go.”
One—
Two—
Three!
Deja lifted her foot as Alexandra simultaneously flung the snake with all her might. The reptile twisted in the air as it soared and landed with a thud six steps away. A tiny cloud of dust kicked up. The reptile curled up and made a terrible sound, something in the nature of a rolling FFFFFFFFFF—
Then it slithered at them with amazing speed.
They ran and didn’t stop for fifty steps.
When they turned around, it was nowhere in sight.
Alexandra exhaled and said, “See, I told you they get mad if you step on them.”
Deja knew it was a joke and should laugh but all she could do was say, “It tried to bite you, when you flung it. Did you see it?”
“No.”
“It snapped its fangs when it flew past your face,” Deja said.
ALEXANDRA FIXATED on something behind them. Deja turned to see a man, far behind, but close enough to tell he was watching through binoculars.
“Who the hell is that?”
Silence.
“There’s no way the looters could have followed us here,” Deja said. “Not all the way from Paris.”
Probably not.
But if not, who was it?
“My guess is it’s one of the locals,” Alexandra said. “Everyone around here knows about the missing treasure. When they see someone like you and me walking around, it’s worth the time to follow us, just in case we’re archeologists who know something they don’t.”
“Meaning if we find the treasure, they take it.”
Alexandra nodded.
“We need to abort,” she said.
Deja wiped sweat off her forehead with the back of her hand.
The sun beat down relentlessly.
She could still feel the viper’s head under her foot.