The Crypt Thief

by Mark Pryor

  “Bien. Raul it is. I’m afraid lunch will have to wait. My boss has summoned me. But if anything interesting happens, I promise to let you know.”

  They sat outside at a café in the Latin Quarter, a basket of bread between them and their pizza orders given. Tom opened a small pill bottle and swallowed two tablets with water.

  “A good reason not to order wine,” Hugo said.

  “Too late. Be rude to change the order now.”

  “He’d get over it.”

  “This may be a working lunch, but it’s still lunch.”

  “Now you’re my boss, any chance you’ll act like it?”

  “Fuck no,” Tom said. “Here’s my idea. Two-pronged approach. One is the hunt for Al Zakiri, the other is a more direct investigation into the Père Lachaise murders.”

  “And the second break-in there.”

  “No reason a terrorist would steal a bag of bones.”

  “Exactly, Tom. That’s exactly why none of this has anything to do with your precious terrorists.”

  “Shh,” Tom said. “If you call them precious, they win.”

  “I mean it. You’re launching a worldwide manhunt for a guy because he’s the son of some other guy and the traveling companion of a dead girl. Seems a little over the top, no?”

  “Not if, like me, you have fuck all else to do and don’t mind the paycheck.” He leaned back to allow the waiter to put a carafe of red wine on the table. “Merci.”

  “This isn’t about a paycheck for you. It better not be.”

  “No, it’s about several things, Hugo, and if you could pull your head out of your ass long enough to look beyond that frigging cemetery maybe you’d see that. It’s about appeasing a powerful senator who lost his son. It’s about finding a guy who we’re pretty damn sure is a terrorist and doesn’t tend to travel places just to visit museums. Blow them up, maybe, but not buy postcards and admire the brushwork. You think anyone really cares if he killed those kids? It ain’t about that any more. It’s about letting every one of those ragheads know that we’re not taking chances any more. Not ever again. They pop up where they’re not wanted, using fake passports and false names, they can expect the hammer. A big fucking hammer.”

  “Ragheads?”

  Tom glared at Hugo over the rim of his wine glass. “A lot better than calling them precious.”

  “You going to leave me alone to catch the real killer?”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, dumbass. I doubt very much Al Zakiri had anything to do with it. We will be checking that angle out, by the way. And I mean that. But we’re going big-picture here, and I’m fine with you focusing on the murders themselves.”

  “Very gracious of you.”

  “I know. Just don’t find the fucker too fast, I need some beer money.”

  The pizzas arrived in a cloud of garlic and cheese and Hugo tucked in. When he looked up, he saw that Tom’s wine glass was empty and his plate still clean.

  “Eat. If only to suck that wine up.”

  “On a diet. And I’m a big boy, Hugo, quit nagging me about the booze, OK?”

  “No.” Hugo reached over to the platter and pushed a slice of pizza onto Tom’s plate. “So tell me what we know about Al Zakiri. I’m curious.”

  Tom poured himself more wine, the lip of the carafe unsteady in his hand, rattling against his glass. They both pretended not to notice.

  “Pierre Labord, now,” Tom said. I’ll tell you right now, we have no idea where he is. Abida Kiani’s apartment didn’t tell us much at all. It’s not even clear they were staying together, and my bet is they weren’t. Hers was a shithole in Montmartre and likely his will be a shithole somewhere else. That way if one gets busted the other might not.”

  “What about his background? Do we have intel on him?”

  Tom rubbed his chin. “Again, not much. But you have to understand that’s not unusual. What we look for is, well, what we see in his case. Kid influenced by religion, and he was from an early age, and then disappears into the mountains, goes off the grid for a year. We know for sure he was in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir six months ago. We can thank our Indian friends and their paranoia about the region for that.”

  “And you know what he was doing.”

  Tom admired his wine glass. “He sure as hell wasn’t picking grapes and stomping them into wine.”

  “Any legitimate reason to be up there?”

  “Goat herding. That’s a legitimate reason to be up there.”

  Hugo shook his head and smiled. “OK, I get it. Just trying to make sure we’re going after a guilty man.”

  “‘We’? You leave him alone. Your job is to make damn sure nothing is missed at the other end of the hunt.”

  “Père Lachaise.”

  “Right.”

  They ate in silence for a moment, enjoying the warmth of the day and watching people pass by. Hugo noted how fast Tom was drinking, though, and filled his own wine glass up, drawing from the well so that Tom would have less.

  “Your next move, then,” asked Hugo. “What is it?”

  “A nap, by my reckoning.”

  “Great way to run an investigation.”

  Tom’s face, already red from the drink, colored more. “This isn’t some pissant murder, Hugo. I have resources and I’m using them to find that bastard. It’s CIA shit, which means that when the man at the top pushes buttons, other people do shit.” He sat back, glaring angrily at the passers-by. “And while they are, the boss gets to take a nap. You have a problem with that?”

  Hugo shrugged. “I’m not paying your salary, so do whatever you like. Boss.”

  “Just make sure you do your shit right. That’s all you need to worry about.” Tom reached for his wine glass but, when he saw it was as empty as the carafe, he grabbed at Hugo’s, spilling half on the paper table cloth before getting it under control.

  “Tom, listen.” Hugo leaned forward and kept his voice low. “You have to stop. Or at least slow down. You can’t clock out at noon every day, someone will notice. Someone who matters. If you want to keep this consulting gig, and I’m guessing you do, you have to turn it around.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “No, you’re not. You let a hooker have the run of my apartment the other morning because you were passed out. You’re drunk and angry at the world before most people have had their second coffee. You’re the best investigator I’ve ever known, Tom, I mean that. But you can’t hide here forever, coasting on your reputation. It can’t last. You said it yourself, this is the CIA.”

  Tom stared over Hugo’s shoulder, silent. Hugo went on.

  “You’re also my best friend, and I’m worried about your health. I’m no Adonis but you used to be able to run me into the ground.” Hugo tried a smile. “Couldn’t do push-ups to save your skinny life, but you could run like the wind.”

  “Yeah?” Tom said, turning wet eyes onto Hugo. “Not much need for running these days. Not much need for any of that action-man crap.”

  “Times haven’t changed that much, Tom. Point is to be ready when you need to be. You’re not ready, not even close.” Hugo’s phone buzzed in his pocket and he looked down at the display, glad for the interruption. It showed Claudia’s name, so he answered. “Hey,” he said, “what’s up?”

  “You free right now?”

  “Is this business or pleasure?”

  “Business, sadly. But important.”

  “Sure. What have you got?”

  “I found out a little something about your dead girl, Abida Kiani, and her boyfriend.”

  “Maxwell Holmes?”

  “Nope. Al Zakiri. Turns out they have a connection to Jane Avril after all. You might want to tell Tom.”

  Hugo looked at his friend, slumped low in his chair, a frown on his face and his eyes drooping. He looks like an old man, Hugo thought.

  “I might indeed,” Hugo said. “We can meet right now if you want. Where are you?”

  Hugo got his instructions and hung up. He
paid the bill, stirring Tom into insincere protests that he never would have made if he’d been sober.

  “We could stay and have another carafe,” he mumbled, as Hugo stood.

  “Love to, but I have a lead to chase down.”

  “Oh? Something I should know about?”

  “If it is,” Hugo said, “I’ll wake you.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  This was the Paris Hugo had not seen, not once in the three years he’d lived here. The part of the city that existed for a different kind of foreigner, the kind who spoke little French and who scrubbed the streets for his money, prying tin cans and plastic bottles from the gutters, tugging dropped coins from the cracks in the sidewalk, and, as a treat for himself, picking up half-smoked cigarettes that promised several good lungfuls after that first bitter drag.

  Hugo sat in the back of a taxi, letting the driver find the little street where Claudia waited. A laundromat that sold coffee, she’d said, her interview would be done by the time he got there. Hurry, she’d said, telling him by her tone what he could now see with his own eyes: this part of the city was no place for a native Parisian.

  The cabbie was a stranger, too, and so drove slowly, hunched over the steering wheel looking for the place as Hugo watched a band of three young men prowling the sidewalk, their faces expressionless with boredom or lost hope.

  He’d seen that look before, in other cities, and knew that if he dared look closely he’d see their lion eyes, watchful, wary, predatory. This was Paris but it could have been Berlin, London, or South Central Los Angeles. Even the street signs were gone, torn down in fits of anger, boredom, or perhaps for weapons.

  The car passed through a tunnel, fifty yards of graffiti that scrolled in and out of patches of yellow light. Out of the tunnel and Hugo saw that most of the streetlamps were broken and the remaining ones, he sensed, were useful not for the light they gave out but for the shadows between them. Here, in this part of the city, the good people sat behind curtained windows, afraid and wondering how their neighborhood had come to this. Outside, the pavement belonged to the young men, and a few women, who had nothing to lose, little to gain, and despite the bleak streets and boarded-up buildings, guarded their territory jealously.

  The cabbie took Hugo’s money without counting it, as if showing cash here were inviting danger. Hugo watched the car peel away from the curb and wondered how he’d get home, where the nearest metro stop was. The sidewalk was empty except for the slim figure of a young girl, her head down, scurrying as if merely being seen would cause her pain. The girl slowed as she reached a ten-foot-high poster of a beautiful brunette bedecked in sequins and feathers. Hugo recognized the picture. The woman’s face was all over the city, the dancer known as “Mimi.” Everywhere else she was an advertisement for the entertainment district of Pigalle, but here she was a touch of much-needed beauty, and maybe even hope, in a dirty, bleak, world.

  Hugo turned and walked into the laundromat, seeing the relief on Claudia’s face as she rose from her little table at the back of the room. He looked around at the rows of industrial washers, to his left, and dryers, on his right, the hum and thump of the cleaning process a sound he’d not heard since college. He moved forward to hug Claudia, catching the eye of a wizened man with dark skin who watched them as he stacked coffee cups into a pyramid on the bar. Behind the old man, a coffee maker hissed steam. A cigarette hung from his lower lip, smoke spiraling in front of his face.

  “Nice joint,” Hugo said in Claudia’s ear.

  “I thought you’d like it,” she said, drawing him back to her table. Hugo glanced at the proprietor again, but the man looked away, seeming not to care whether Hugo wanted coffee or not.

  “So who were you interviewing?” Hugo asked.

  “A dancer.”

  “A real dancer, or someone who takes her clothes off and also dances?”

  “Yes, Hugo, I was interviewing Mikhail Baryshnikov.”

  “Wow, he launders his own clothes?”

  She laughed. “And he wears women’s underwear.”

  “Well, so do you.”

  She squeezed his arm and gazed into his eyes. “Not always.”

  “OK, you didn’t bring me to this drab little hellhole to tease me, did you?”

  “No. To give you a scoop.”

  “That’s the wrong way around. I’m supposed to tip you off.”

  “Ah well. I have good sources, you don’t. Just take the information and be grateful.”

  “Which has something to do with a connection between our dead girl, Al Zakiri, and Jane Avril. I’m all ears.”

  “Right, but first about Jane Avril’s grave being robbed. I have a friend, no details, who works at the lab that French police use.”

  “Lab?”

  “She’s a forensic pathologist. Anyway, she says that only half of Jane Avril’s skeleton was taken. Lower half. She says no way someone randomly grabbing bones would come away with what he took.”

  “Interesting. What else?”

  “Well, you know why Jane Avril was famous, right?”

  “The Moulin Rouge, she was a . . .” Hugo trailed off.

  “A dancer. That’s right. Here’s the connection: so was Abida Kiani. At the Moulin Rouge.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “She started a month ago. Apparently very good, though had a tendency to moonlight after performances with customers in a way that management didn’t approve of.”

  “Is that how she met Maxwell Holmes?”

  “Right again.”

  Hugo pictured the thin girl walking up the street as he’d exited the taxi. “Your source is another dancer. A reluctant source.”

  “Most are. And yes, she is.”

  “And no doubt you can’t give me her name.”

  Claudia gave him a thin smile. “No doubt at all. You know the rules.”

  “Of course. Does she know anything about Al Zakiri?”

  “No. Never met him, never even heard Kiani mention him. The only man she ever saw Kiani with was Maxwell Holmes. Apparently she was crazy about him.”

  “Senator Holmes isn’t going to like that. OK, I need to get over there, start talking to people. When is your story running?”

  “As soon as I can get to a computer.”

  “Then I’ll walk you to the metro. If you know where one is.”

  They stepped outside and Hugo looked up at the sky. Dark clouds had formed overhead and the air had become still, the street as empty as it was before he walked into the laundromat. They turned right, the metro stop not even a mile away according to Claudia. As they walked, Hugo kept watch on the buildings either side of them, shuttered stores and silent tenements that might once have teemed with life but now crouched at the curb like abandoned pets, solemn and sad, waiting for a master’s return.

  It was from a doorway that the two men came, the first people Hugo had seen on the street, leaning like pillars at the top of three stone steps, watching like owls in the night. Hugo had taken Claudia’s arm as they passed the men, boys really, and she’d held tighter to him, too, not worrying so much about the purse that was hanging from her right shoulder.

  The boys had skipped down quietly, Hugo later assumed it was a plan they’d executed more than once, their timing told him that. The first kid sprinted between Hugo and the road, brushing shoulders with him, drawing his attention as the second boy trotted past Claudia and yanked at her purse, tearing it away from her before she knew what was happening.

  Hugo took off after them, Claudia close behind, four sets of feet pounding the sidewalk. Hugo was faster than they’d bargained, Tom had said that much two decades earlier at Quantico during the sprints, and he made ground on them, street thugs dressed for the part of thieves but not athletes, tugging at baggy pants and billowing shirts that acted like sails to slow them down.

  The leader, ten steps ahead of his accomplice, shouted, “Cata . . .” the word drifting apart before it reached Hugo. Five seconds later, an invisible signal sna
pped the kids left, across the road toward an alley between a rundown grocery store and an abandoned movie theater. As he crossed in pursuit, Hugo checked to make sure Claudia was close behind. She was, her face the picture of determination and outrage, her eyes not on him but on the men who’d robbed her.

  Hugo slowed as he tilted into the alley. A brick wall less than thirty feet away told him the boys had taken a wrong turn, would be hiding in the shadows.

  Claudia thumped into his back. “Merde. Where are those bastards?”

  They peered along the narrow space, Hugo’s eyes drawn to the two dumpsters that backed up against the cinema’s wall. He reminded himself that his targets were young, looking for money or maybe a thrill, but probably not looking to hurt anyone. Drawing his gun wasn’t an option.

  He moved slowly toward the dumpsters, Claudia an arm’s length behind him. Twenty yards away he knelt to look beneath them but saw no feet. He hurried and Claudia hurried with him, but when he rounded the stinking metal containers they both saw that they hid nothing. The alley was empty.

  “Here,” Hugo said, shifting a four-foot-square plywood board that covered a hole in the theater’s wall.

  “Be careful,” Claudia said.

  “Always.” He stuck his head through the hole but saw nothing, only blackness. He waited and his eyes adjusted. The room was small, maybe an office but empty of furniture. It had a wood floor that, in the far corner, had been ripped up. It looked to Hugo like the entrance to a cellar.

  He eased his body through the hole into the room and peered into the black space in the floor.

  “Use this,” Claudia said, handing him a lighter.

  “I thought you’d given up smoking.”

  “I had. I’m rethinking that position.”

  He flicked the lid open and sparked the lighter, holding the flame into the splintered hole. The light bounced off limestone walls and he could see that it was no cellar, more like a tunnel. A well-used one, judging by the beer cans and plastic bags that littered the floor. The flame leaned away from him, then whipped upright and flickered uncertainly as a breeze flowed across Hugo’s hand. He closed his eyes as an image fought itself into his mind, an image of two young men covered in dust, tired but content, riding the metro out of the city center back to the suburbs. He turned to Claudia.