Upstairs Fred was scribbling on a sheet of paper, seemingly oblivious to the slobbering, comatose figure seated across the kitchen from him. I left the trunk by the door and stood over his shoulder. He looked up at me, annoyed. “Let me think,” he said.
“Whatever you’re writing down, you’d better be prepared to chew up and swallow,” I told him.
“Don’t worry, it’s all in code.”
“Chew it up and swallow it,” I said. “Prosecuting attorneys love shit like that. I should know, I’ve played a few.”
He dropped the pen. “Look, I don’t know what to tell you right now. I think we’re both in a lot of trouble. You, especially.”
“What if I just call the cops and say he came into my apartment and tried to shoot me? I could untie him and take the gag out and nobody’d be the wiser.”
“I don’t know. It’s his apartment, after all.”
“Doesn’t matter. I’m in possession of it at the moment, that makes it my domicile and I have a right to defend myself therein. It’s a well-established point of jurisprudence.”
He opened his mouth but didn’t speak, and his eyes rolled upward in exasperation at my obtuseness. Fred had no poker face. “American jurisprudence.”
“You mean the principle doesn’t apply here?”
“How should I know? I’m no lawyer. All I’m saying is you should tread very carefully. Anyway, it doesn’t look like you’re planning to call the cops.” He nodded in the direction of the trunk. “Looks more like you’re planning to get rid of a body.”
“Not a body. I can’t keep him here, though. What if he wakes up? What if the neighbors hear him kicking? And Esmée is sure to be back for one thing or another.”
“Which is what got us into this situation in the first place. Okay, where are we going to take him?”
“I’ve got a place, and if we’re lucky we can do it tonight.”
I dialed Annick’s cell phone, and when she answered she sounded wide awake. “It’s me. Where are you?”
“I’ve got the overnight shift at the front desk,” she said, and I felt the hair on my arms prickle as though an electrical storm were about to break out. My good fortune was holding out.
“Can I ask you for a big favor?” I asked.
“How big?” she asked, her voice slow with suspicion.
•••
Fred went down to the taxi stand at Odéon and brought one back to the front of the building where I stood guarding the trunk (though I have to admit that it would have been pretty fucking funny if someone had stolen it). The cab was a station wagon, and the driver and I lifted our burden into the back of it with a single coordinated heave. I was wearing dark glasses and a baseball cap, and I didn’t think he knew me, but I made a point of letting Fred do all the talking, and when we got to the address on the Boulevard St. Michel, Fred handed the driver the fare plus a fifteen percent tip—not so cheap he’d resent it, and not so generous we’d stand out from his usual late-night clientele.
I spotted a sewer grate on the sidewalk, and I took Claude’s pistol from my pocket and tossed it in, noting with satisfaction the splash and clatter of metal against concrete. With the next big rain it would be swept down to the Seine. I remember being quite proud at that moment of having had the presence of mind to get rid of the thing.
I rapped on the door, and after opening the judas to verify my identity Annick let us in.
“What’s in that?” she asked.
“It might be better if you didn’t know. Just something I need to store in that meat locker downstairs for a few days.”
She stood with her arms folded across that lovely young chest. “If you don’t tell me what it is, you can fuck off.”
Fred looked at me in a panic. What the hell, I thought, she’s right. This is her job, and she could lose it if she were to help me in storing heroin or weapons. I leveled with her.
“It’s the arms dealer.”
She frowned, not quite understanding. “I’m sorry? You don’t mean Bruno’s dad?”
I nodded and pointed to the trunk. “He tried to kill me. Can we put him in the meat locker while I figure out what to do with him?”
“A corpse? You want me to conceal a corpse? You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
“He’s alive.”
She thought about it. “He really tried to kill you?”
“Came to the apartment with a gun, fired it into what he thought was my head.” I made a pistol out of my fingers and fired: blam. “You told me nobody goes down there.”
She let out a sigh. “Twenty-four hours. No more. And if you end up killing him you can’t do it here.”
“No problem.”
“And I want a part in your movie.”
Ah, there it was. She had no more business acting than I had performing thoracic surgery, but what could I say?
“Done,” I said.
•••
If the place was spooky in the daytime, it was a regular chamber of horrors at night. Since Annick was on desk duty, we were on our own once she showed us the way down via the freight elevator and turned on the lights. As soon as we got him into the locker I opened up the trunk and found him still breathing, which in and of itself was a cause for celebration, since it hadn’t occurred to Fred or me that we might want to ventilate the lid for him. I grabbed an old cafeteria chair from the kitchen and brought it into the locker, then I stole a scalding-hot light bulb from an overhead socket, tossing it from hand to hand as I took it back to the dangling socket in the locker.
When I was done there was a light on overhead and Claude was securely tied to that chair with the bright blue ball gag in his mouth.
“What happens when he wakes up?” Fred said.
“Nothing happens,” I said. “He’s in a fucking meat locker.”
“I mean what if he starts yelling?”
“That’s what the gag’s for.”
“I don’t know how effective that’ll be.”
“Go inside, I’ll close the door and you yell.”
He hesitated, but he went inside and I locked the door. From within came Fred’s scream, one that would have done an actor proud, so horrific that I wondered for a moment whether Claude had escaped his bonds and attacked him. But I could only just hear it through the steel door, and there was no way anyone upstairs would. I opened the door and told him it was all right.
“What now?” Fred asked.
“I don’t know about you,” I said, “but I could use some shut-eye.”
•••
I awoke at noon to the ringing of my cell phone. It was Marie-Laure wanting to know if I could escort her to a cocktail party, among whose guests was a director she wanted me to meet. “Absolutely,” I said, and having written down the coordinates I hung up the phone and realized I was starving. I dressed and went downstairs and around the corner to the café, stopping to pick up the newspapers on the way. Settled in at my usual table on the sidewalk, I ordered an omelette mixte and a double espresso and started in on the devilishly tricky Saturday crossword in the Herald Tribune.
The omelette was perfect, and I inhaled it like a starving man. The day was cool and most of the passersby looked a degree or two happier than I would have expected. Perhaps I was projecting onto them my own feelings of well-being, my sense that I was finally in the right place at the right time. Once I’d finished the eggs I lingered over the cooling coffee, and when I was done I ordered another.
Once again I found myself with one unanswerable clue in the middle of the puzzle. As I pondered the empty spaces my phone went off again, chiming Fred’s ringtone. I almost didn’t answer, then decided to ask him for help with the puzzle. “Fred,” I said, “what’s a twelve-letter word meaning ‘surgical removal of a patch of skull’? It’s a variant spelling. In English, please.”
He was silent for a moment, then in a burst of enthusiasm spoke up. “Trephination. Variant of trepanation.”
I tried it out, and with that one filled
in, half a dozen other answers suddenly presented themselves. “Excellent.”
“So, have you been yet?”
“Been where?”
Again, silence on the other end of the line. Then, a hesitant tone, as though gauging my seriousness: “To the place we were at before?”
“Which place?” I was still halfway working on the puzzle and in no mood for guessing games.
“The place we left our friend last night?”
And then I remembered. Absolutely amazing, the power of the human mind to sweep unpleasantness aside when the body or the mind is in need of repose. Until that moment I hadn’t given a nanosecond’s thought to last night’s adventure. To be suddenly reminded of it, and of the delicate situation he and I were in, along with Annick, should have sickened me, but it had the opposite effect; I felt as though we were involved in a jolly adventure.
“Ah. No, I haven’t been. Perhaps we should go.”
“We?”
“Well, when he comes to he’s likely to assume he’s being held by some extremist group. If he sees me, he’ll know that’s not the case. And Annick is his son’s girlfriend. You, on the other hand, are unknown to him. Do you see the logic?”
“I suppose I do.”
“We’ll have to arrange it with Annick. Maybe she can let you in some other way than the front door. Take him a sandwich or something, and let me know what happens. And hey, why don’t you take your laptop and work on the script while you’re down there? Maybe you’ll get inspired.”
•••
The party was held at the home of a famous record producer. At least I was told he was famous, the name didn’t mean anything to me. Marie-Laure led me through the crowd as though on a leash, introducing me to various movers and shakers and finally to Roberto Casselini, the director she wanted me to meet.
“Very pleased to meet you,” he said with an Italian accent as heavy as my American one. “I watch your program regularly.”
“We’ve been talking about your project, and Roberto is very interested,” Marie-Laure said.
“Yes, of course, the Venus de Milo, she’s Italian—maybe we can get some funding from Rome as well.”
Pointing out to him that the Venus was actually a representation of Aphrodite, and of Greek origin to boot, would have been counterproductive, so I kept quiet. “What sorts of things have you directed?” I asked.
“Lots of TV movies, a couple of low-budget features back home in Italy. I think this could go theatrical. How far along is the script?”
“It’ll be ready soon,” I said, the thought hitting me that the more time Fred had to waste playing nursemaid to Claude, the less time he had to write our script. I was going to have to reexamine our priorities.
“And I understand you have the lovely Mlle. DeHoving as leading lady.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Esmée,” Marie-Laure said. “That’s her professional name.”
“Ah. Yes.” For obvious reasons I actually preferred to think of her as Mlle. DeHoving rather than as Mme. Guiteau, especially at present.
“And what’s her role, precisely?” Roberto asked.
“Sort of a femme fatale,” I said, and as I said it I was suddenly aware of how meaningless that phrase was.
Because really, aren’t they all?
SAMEDI, QUATORZE MAI
I REALLY SHOULD HAVE HEADED DOWN TO THE dormitory and relieved poor Frédéric, but Marie-Laure had mentioned before our arrival that her husband was out of town, casually adding how exciting she always found extramarital sex in the marital bed. It excited me, too, to be honest, and so around 2:00 AM we got into the company car and the driver, whose name I had finally learned was Balthazar, took us to her apartment in Neuilly.
“I’m right by the American Hospital, in case you hurt yourself,” she said, and I told her the story of how I’d once gone to its emergency room as a young student with a case of food poisoning. “It was the fifteenth of August, my regular doctor was out of town, and his summer replacement wouldn’t see me on a holiday. Violently ill as I was, I wanted something familiar and comforting, so I took a taxi to the American Hospital.
“There was a British doctor on call—he might have been a Scot. He told me I’d eaten something bad and told me to fast until I had a solid bowel movement.”
“Did you?”
“I didn’t eat for four days. I was starving, so naturally I wasn’t shitting at all, solid or otherwise. So I went back. Irish doctor this time. He asks what’s the matter, I tell him. He says no, you can’t eat until you’ve had a solid stool. ‘But I’m hungry,’ I tell him. ‘What do you want me to do, cook you a meal?’ he says, the glib son of a bitch. So I go back to my tiny studio and I don’t eat for another week. Finally I thought, fuck it, I’m eating, and I started eating some white rice, and within a day or two I was fine. When my regular doctor got back and heard about it he was furious, said they never should have told me to fast at all, certainly not for ten days. Told me never to go to the American Hospital again under any circumstances.”
We stopped in front of one of those massive stone buildings from the turn of the twentieth century. An apartment in there must cost a fortune, I thought, and, vulgar, money-obsessed American that I am, I wondered whether Marie-Laure’s husband earned as much as she did.
“Good night, Balthazar,” she said as we got out of the car and the driver pulled away. She pressed her code into the keypad on the door and I pushed the door open. The elevator was tiny, and once inside with the doors closed, we made out like teenagers. I was as aroused and happy as though it were our first time, and sticking my hand inside her skirt and past the elastic of her panties, I started massaging her.
I pushed the ARRÉT button and we hung there, suspended, clawing at one another. “Let’s do it right here,” I whispered into her ear.
Her voice was throaty and hoarse. “Oh, God,” she said, trembling. “I’d love that, but I make too much noise.”
She started the cage moving again, straightening herself up as our upward progress resumed, and by the time the door opened with a metallic clunk she looked like any other haute bourgeoise in Neuilly sharing an aloof, awkward, silent elevator ride with a stranger.
Once inside the apartment she was a savage again, breathing obscenities. I shoved her onto a couch in the living room, lifted her skirt, and started pulling my cock out.
“Not here,” she said. “On the bed.”
Fine with me. I slung her over my shoulder, carried her into the bedroom, and tossed her onto the bed.
“Caveman,” she said. “Primitive.” She pressed her face down to the bedcover and lifted her ass into the air, pulling down her panties to her knees. “Go ahead. I won’t fight.”
•••
Half an hour later we lay under her covers and I was wondering to myself why exactly I’d felt so compelled to fuck Esmée, knowing the trouble it might cause, when I had this stunning and imaginatively randy creature at my disposal. She was going on at some length about a way to structure the deal with another TV network, a film studio, and a private investor, and I wasn’t paying very close attention until she mentioned Claude.
“Of course he’d be the key to the whole thing, since he’ll be putting up first. What’s your take on him? Is he in?”
“I think he is,” I said. “I think above all he wants Esmée happy, and that’s what it’s going to take.”
“I should tell you I’ve heard some pretty unsavory stories about him.”
“Is that right?”
“You know how he makes his living?”
“Import-export, something in that line.”
She snorted. “Something. He’s an arms dealer, one of the big ones. He started out brokering American weaponry and branched out. Now he sells to anybody who can pay, and according to a friend in the Ministry of Defense, the government thinks he deals in smuggled fissionable materials as well as finished nukes.”
“Wow,” I said, feigning surprise.
The truth—that I just wanted to get my movie made—wasn’t a very satisfactory answer, so I came up with something a bit more uplifting. “I guess one way to look at it is we’re leading him toward a better way.”
She was silent for a moment, and then she started giggling. I wasn’t quite sure how to take it, so I chuckled, which sent her into further paroxysms of laughter. It took her two or three minutes to catch her breath enough to speak.
“My God,” she said. “I’m really going to watch myself. I could just about fall in love with you, you know that?”
The thought fascinated and terrified me, because I realized as she said it that the reverse was true. If there was an ideal woman in the world for me, it was her. I took advantage of the lull in conversation to dress, then I kissed her goodnight and called a taxi.
•••
I had the cab drop me off at Odéon, and as I walked I phoned Fred, who was not at all happy to speak to me. “I had to get him a bucket,” he said.
“A bucket? What for?”
“For a fucking toilet. I can’t exactly let him take the elevator upstairs to the shitter, can I?”
“I guess not.”
“And guess who has the privilege of wiping the prisoner’s ass and dumping the bucket in the toilet?”
“Listen, I promise we’ll get this dealt with in a day or two. You get any work done on the script?”
He was quiet for a second, and I braced for an explosion. “I got about fifteen pages.”
“That’s great. What’s the total now?”
“Twenty-five.”
“There you go! Can’t wait to read ’em.”
“Are you coming tomorrow?”
“Sure. I don’t suppose you’ve made any progress in putting together a plan of action.”
“For Guiteau? No.”
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