by Joseph Flynn
McGill nodded and said, “He adores his big sister, and he got rich.”
“He went to MIT and showed them what a genius really is. Started inventing things while he was still in school, has about a dozen patents by now. Wanted to cut me in on his stock holdings. When I said that wouldn’t look good for a government employee, he found other ways to gild my lily.”
“How?” McGill asked.
“Well, he made me his official ‘Consultant of Cool.’ He’s always thought of me as being sophisticated. You know, his artist sister, living in Paris. His friends were always falling in love with me, and he appreciated that I never made fun of them.
“Instead, I gave Gianni and his pals pointers for getting along with their female classmates. I still get a thank you card whenever one of them gets married. Anyway, Gianni came to Paris and saw my old one-point-five room apartment. He wanted to buy me the Versailles Palace. I told him it would be cool for him to own his own French restaurant, and I knew a terrific young chef who needed a backer. He said great. Then he and Henri went out and found this place, and they both insisted I have the use of the two flats above the store. The title would stay in Gianni’s name.”
“You get free carryout from downstairs?” McGill asked.
Gabbi grinned. “Anything I want, and you wouldn’t believe the service. Well, maybe you would, living in the White House.”
They ordered dinner. It came quickly, grilled chicken au gratin. So good McGill immediately wanted to share it with Patti, his kids, and everyone else he loved. He insisted on writing a thank you note to the chef.
Ever the professional, Gabbi said she’d deliver it after McGill left town.
The conversation then turned to the case.
“You think the French authorities would bury a body?” McGill asked.
“What do you mean?” Gabbi asked.
“Kinnard said the missing blonde woman got beat on pretty good. She might have suffered a concussion, fallen into the river and drowned. If she had been found floating somewhere, wouldn’t the cops try to identify her? If they did and found she’d had a relationship with Thierry Duchamp, that would support Kinnard’s story. On the other hand, if they disposed of the remains quietly, they could let the foreigner who killed their sports star go to prison for life.”
Gabbi considered the possibility. In general, she had a great affection for the French, but she knew that politics everywhere favored pragmatic solutions. And nothing was more convenient than finding, or creating, a scapegoat.
“Maybe,” she said. “Let me think if we should bring up the idea with Pruet.”
McGill nodded. “Moving on. Do you ever remember seeing Thierry Duchamp’s photo in the newspapers?”
“Not the ones I read.”
“But the paparazzi thrive here?”
“Sure.”
“So let’s see if we can find some photos of Thierry Duchamp with a blonde on his arm who looks something like you.”
“Only younger and chestier,” Gabbi added.
McGill let that one lie. He’d thought she hadn’t heard Kinnard’s comment. He made a mental note that Ms. Casale had excellent hearing. He also got a message from his cerebral cortex. You haven’t had much sleep lately, pal. Better shut it down soon.
He said, “Do I need to find a hotel room or is there a rollaway cot in the embassy’s attic?”
Gabbi told him, “This isn’t the only place in town baby brother owns.”
Hart Senate Office Building, Washington, DC
19
President Patricia Darden Grant’s chief political nemesis, Senator Roger Michaelson (D-OR) sat behind his office desk and asked his chief of staff Bob Merriman the question of the moment.
“Were you able to plant a spy in the president’s traveling party?”
Merriman nodded.
“And has there been anything to report?”
“Not yet.”
“When, damnit?” the senator asked.
He’d loathed the president ever since she’d beaten him in a race for a House seat in Illinois, sent him back to his native Oregon with his tail tucked between his legs. He’d recovered nicely, winning a Senate seat, a far more prestigious position than being one of the 435-member mob sitting in the House. But then she had left him in her dust again by winning the presidency.
If that wasn’t bad enough—and it was plenty bad—her husband James J. McGill had duped Michaelson, a former college athlete, into playing a game of one-on-one basketball. The contest had been so brutal Michaelson had wound up in the hospital.
Now, if possible, Michaelson despised McGill even more than the president.
The senator reminded his hatchet man, “There’s not much time before the bitch announces her plan, whatever it is.” Michaelson’s informal intelligence network had learned the president had asked her G8 counterparts to arrive in London a day early so she might confer with them on something that didn’t fit within the parameters of the usual international trade discussion. Just what the president was up to, Michaelson’s underlings had been unable to determine. But he was sure she was going to spring something big on the world. And why not? So many saps in so many places still loved the infernal woman. “If we’re going to leak, distort, and sabotage her plan, we have to find out what it is, goddamnit. We can’t have much time left.”
Merriman nodded. “We probably don’t, but rushing things won’t help. The only thing worse than not hurting the president would be to hurt ourselves.”
Michaelson ground his teeth, but had to agree. His machinations had come out second-best to Galia Mindel’s too many times to take any unnecessary chances.
“There’s no way this person you’re using can be traced back to me, is there?” he asked.
Merriman shook his head. “No way to be traced to either of us.”
Michaelson took a deep breath and released it slowly. He hated to be kept waiting, but in this case he would have to look to make trouble for the president elsewhere.
And Merriman came through for him.
“McGill took a train to France.” Merriman’s spy had learned that.
“What’s he going to do there?” Michaelson asked. “Is there any way we can use this to poke a stick in his eye?”
Merriman smiled at his boss. “You know, I was just thinking about that. Getting him in trouble with the frogs, that would be fun, wouldn’t it?”
Paris
20
Investigating magistrate Yves Pruet was back on his balcony softly playing his guitar with only his carefully tended floral arrangements to hear him. Someone had once advanced the theory that plants grew larger and healthier when exposed to classical music. It was an interesting concept, but he hadn’t noticed any difference in the size or vibrancy of his flowers. He did think, usually when tired or having indulged in a second after dinner drink, that when his playing was especially quiet some of the blooms leaned in his direction, the better not to miss a note. He wondered if he should advance a theory of audiotropism among impatiens.
A clicking of heels, out of time with the piece he was playing, told Pruet his audience had become more diverse. He put his instrument on its stand. He looked around to see his beautiful, impeccably dressed, oh so cold wife, Nicolette, step out onto the balcony.
A small, rueful smile appeared on the magistrate’s face. “Have you found a way to divorce me and make my father pay your alimony, ma chère?”
She shook her head. She had given exactly that matter a great deal of thought but remained stymied. Thus far.
Pruet said, “You would like nothing better than to dispossess me of this apartment and a few million euros, wouldn’t you?”
She sneered at him. “I would put you and your guitar on the street corner in an instant, if I could. You could play for your supper there or on the Metro. Perhaps I would let you take a cup to collect your coins.”
“I have been a disappointment to you?”
Yves Pruet had been rising steadily through the
French legal system, until the Gautier case had come his way. After that, his career prospects had vanished … and the magic had left the Pruets’ marriage.
Pruet told Nicolette, “I am thinking of making peace with my father. Begging him to take me into the family cheese business. After five or ten years, perhaps I will have risen to the point where it will be worth your while to divorce me.”
His wife’s look of disgust became deadly. Possibly threatening to turn Pruet to stone. She said, “I have just come from drinks with a very important man in the government. He has asked me to give you guidance on the matter of the American who killed the footballer.”
Unlike so many of her countrymen, Nicolette held no interest in any sport that took place outside the boudoir.
“This very important man?” Pruet asked, “are you sleeping with him?”
“Would you care if I were?”
“I would cheer the fellow on if he were to charm you away permanently.”
Madam Pruet looked as if she would like to strike her husband, but she didn’t.
“For once, do what is good for you, Yves. Pretend you don’t have your father’s money to cushion your fall. Do what a man who needed to make his own way would do. I will leave notes instructing you on how to proceed with this case. Read them. Follow them. Then burn them.”
Pruet waited until his wife had left before he smiled. Notes were written. Documentary evidence of an attempt to corrupt him, to have him break the law. It was only great arrogance, either Nicolette’s, her very important lover’s, or theirs together, that allowed them to think he would never act against her. But if he could send his wife to prison, along with her lover, then he could be the one to initiate their divorce. Without the risk of financial penalty.
Holding that thought wondrous in mind, he listened to the traffic rushing past below him. Come the depths of the night, though, there would be relative quiet. The Pont d’Iéna was not so far away. If he’d had trouble sleeping on the night Thierry Duchamp had been killed, would he have heard the struggle? Would he have heard the football star beating the woman, the missing blonde the American had claimed to have aided? He would have to ask M’sieur Kinnard if the woman had made any outcry. If she had—if she were real—perhaps someone nearby had heard her.
Pruet picked up his guitar and resumed playing to his appreciative flowers.
La Rive Gauche, Paris
21
McGill rode with Gabbi through the narrow, winding streets of the Left Bank.
He was on his mobile phone with Glen Kinnard. He asked, “Did Thierry Duchamp know how to defend himself?”
“I got in the first punch.”
Meaning Kinnard had sucker-punched the guy, McGill thought.
“Then I got in a nice combination,” Kinnard added.
“He didn’t know enough to keep his hands up?” McGill asked.
“Yeah, he did. He just didn’t keep them high enough. Mostly, though, he did all sorts of crazy shit with his feet. Things I never saw before. Fucker had strong legs, too. That’s why he hurt me as bad as he did.”
McGill took a moment to recall his meeting with Kinnard.
He says, “I didn’t see any sign that he hurt you.”
Kinnard told him, “That’s because I covered my head better than he did. But under my clothes I’m still a mass of bruises. The fucker cracked three of my ribs. Left my thighs and ass so purple I half look like an eggplant. Pain got so bad, the fucker put me down for the count without ever landing a shot to my kisser.”
McGill thanked Kinnard for the information and clicked off.
Gabbi pulled the Peugeot up in front of an Irish pub, of all things. The sign on the window said The Hideaway. A muscular black man stood in the doorway.
“We’re stopping for a Guinness?” McGill asked.
Gabbi gestured upward. As with the building housing Monsieur Henri’s restaurant, there were two flats above the public space. As with the building where Glen Kinnard was being held, there had been a convenient parking space out front. And a tough guy at the door.
McGill was beginning to think Gabbi had the whole town wired.
“A cool place for Gianni to hang when he hits town?” McGill asked.
Gabbi nodded. “The flat is safe, quiet, and all yours for as long as you need it.”
“The pub’s name,” McGill said, “you know, I have a room in the White House residence the president calls my hideaway.”
The RSO smiled. “Maybe it’s something you inspire in women.”
“They want to tuck me out of sight?”
She laughed. “Or keep you all to themselves.”
There was enough light remaining in the night sky for McGill to see Gabbi consider the implications of what she had said and blush.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
McGill waved it off. “We’ll chalk it up to all your years in France. So tell me, I’m upstairs and my stomach growls, can I call down for a sandwich and a beer?”
“Whatever you like.”
“Great. Listen, there’s something I forgot to ask Pruet. What time were Glen Kinnard and the late M’sieur Duchamp discovered by the police? Do you know?”
“Five fifty-five a.m.,” Gabbi told him.
“Let’s get over to the scene of the crime at five forty tomorrow. Take a look.”
Gabbi nodded. “I’ll bring some coffee from my place. Before I go, let me introduce you to Harbin. He’ll take you upstairs.”
She beckoned and the black man at the door to the pub walked over.
Quartier Pigalle, Paris
22
The come-on guy outside the strip club on the Boulevard de Clichy in the red-light district of Paris wore a T-shirt that made the two young jocks from North America laugh. The one from Quebec laughed upon reading the shirt’s message; the one from New York laughed when he heard the translation.
The shirt said: Je suis le type que contre lequel votre guide de touristes vous a mis en garde. I’m the guy your tourist guide warned you about.
The come-on guy saw that the one jock, a hockey player, was fluent in French, but decided to speak English for the benefit of the other, a lacrosse player.
“Gentlemen, ten euros will get you inside and buy you a beer.” He gestured to a doorway that looked like someone had pissed in it recently. “A lap dance is but twenty euros, and if you enjoy that, a fee can be negotiated for other things.”
Lacrosse shrugged. “Sorry. All we have are dollars.”
“American dollars?”
“Canadian,” Hockey said, joking.
The come-on guy spat on the sidewalk.
The hockey player, a patriot, normally would have clocked the greasy little creep, but being in a foreign land he allowed his friend to pull him up the street.
“You broke that dumb fuck’s nose,” Lacrosse counseled, “he’d probably have bled AIDS all over you. With your new deal, you don’t need that.”
The hockey player, a bruising defenseman, had been drafted by the Calgary Flames of the NHL. He and the lacrosse player, an unstoppable attacker, were visiting the City of Light on the hockey player’s signing bonus.
The two of them were best friends, having been college roommates in Boston and having found out they’d been born on the same day, exactly 21 years ago. Each of them was six-feet-two and two hundred and twenty pounds. They both had black hair and brown eyes. Their private joke was that one of their fathers had visited both of their mothers.
There weren’t any big-money lacrosse leagues, so law school and professional sports management were the lacrosse player’s plan. And here he was already, making sure his friend didn’t bust a valuable hand on a frog’s head.
The come-on guys up and down the Boulevard de Clichy often went so far as to grab passersby to get them to enter their dives. With the two big young North Americans walking shoulder to shoulder, however, more diplomatic approaches were tried. None was successful. Insults from the scorned pitchmen were i
gnored.
The two jocks had been schooled by upperclassmen. Go to Pigalle for a giggle. But if you actually wanted to get laid, go to Holland or Germany. Prostitution was legal in those countries; the beer was better, too. Following further words of wisdom, Lacrosse and Hockey had limited themselves to carrying a hundred dollars — American — each. Passports, credit cards, drivers licenses and other things that would be a pain in the ass to lose had been left in their hotel’s safe.
So far they hadn’t had any trouble spending dollars.
If they got screwed on the exchange rate, fuck it.
They were young and going places. Losing a few bucks wouldn’t matter.
They’d almost left the red light district behind when the Hockey said, “Maybe we should check out at least one of these joints, so we can say we did.
Lacrosse shrugged, figuring he’d have to get used to indulging his clients’ whims. Off to their right was a side street. Darker than the main drag. Ooh, dangereux, Hockey said, laughing. Yeah, scary, Lacrosse said. Down the side street lay yet another strip club, this one with a neon palm tree and a hula girl flickering in the window.
The two of them headed that way. There was a little man sitting on a barstool outside the entrance. Unlike all the other come-on guys, all he said was, “Bonsoir.”
The two jocks looked at each other. Smiled. Knew they’d found something different.
Hockey told the little man, “My friend and I have been walking up and down the street for an hour. We’re looking for college girls from Denmark, but nobody has any. How about you?”
The man on the stool said, “Come back tomorrow, m’sieur. We will have college girls then. But, alas, all ours come from Norway.”
The two jocks laughed. The little shit had a sense of humor.
“What do you have tonight?” Lacrosse asked.
“Polish, Russian, and Algerian.”
Three ethnicities unvisited by the young North Americans. They went inside. The comedian at the door didn’t even ask for a cover charge.