by A W Hartoin
“Where is he?”
I stood and spun around. “I don’t know. Call him.”
Aaron was in one of the antechambers with Louis Bonaparte’s tomb. Chuck headed in that direction. Novak and I went out the front door. I couldn’t help but notice all the stares we were getting. We were an odd couple, to say the least.
Once we were out the doors and walking down the steps, I said, “I assume you have something else for me.”
“You assume correctly.”
Novak found a secluded spot on the corner of the café’s small wooden deck. I had a good view of anyone coming around the corner of the dome church and he could watch for anyone coming down the gravel lane behind me. We ordered espresso and croissants. I needed it. I’d managed to twist my ankle on the gravel. My shoes were much worse on rocks than cobblestones.
“So,” I said, eyeing the nearby tables for eavesdroppers, but no one was close enough to hear anything, unless I shouted, “have you found anything out on the suits?”
The waitress brought our order and gave Novak a disapproving once over. She muttered something about Germans as she walked away. Novak grinned and took off his hat. His long, tangled hair fell onto his shoulders in a clump. “She thinks I’m German.”
“Why? You don’t sound German.”
“Who else would wear this outfit to a museum?”
“I’ve seen a whole lot of Germans and none of them dress like you,” I said.
He took a sip of his espresso. “It is a stereotype, one I like to encourage. The French think the Germans have no taste. The Italians say so, too.”
“How does that help you?”
“If someone were to come looking for us and questioned the waitress, she would not remember a Marilyn Monroe lookalike and a Bosnian Serb. You don’t look like yourself. I wouldn’t think you could be so well concealed.”
“I can’t take the credit. A stylist did it.”
“A good job. About the suits as you call them, I did find one.” Novak opened his backpack and put another sheath of papers and his phone on the table.
I took a sip of my espresso and tried to look nonchalant. I was anything but. “How?”
Novak brought up a photo on his phone and pushed it across the table. “Video surveillance on the metro. I got clear shots of both men chasing you.”
I flipped through the shots and they were surprisingly clear of the men on the platforms, coming down the stairs, and, my favorite, me kicking the crap out of one. “Can I have a copy of that?” I asked.
He smiled. “Of course. It is impressive.”
“Thanks. So you’ve identified one of them.”
He pointed to the second suit. “Jules Henri Poinaré, a Corsican.”
“Sounds like a history professor,” I said, looking closer at the angular face on the screen, handsome in a hard, unyielding way. His was a face that didn’t smile a lot. Why was he so familiar?
“Academics are not what Monsieur Poinaré excels in,” said Novak.
“Please don’t say he excels in killing people.”
“Among other things.”
“Like what?”
“Kidnapping, extortion, torture. And he’s not shy. Several murders credited to him were executed in public places at close range.”
My hands shook a little and I put them in my lap, but not before Novak noticed. “Torture? Who does he work for, the French CIA?”
“He works for whoever will pay him.”
“Who’s he connected with most often?” I asked.
“He mainly works for other Corsicans. Germani was his mentor until he was arrested in 2014. It’s believed that he murdered several members of the Brise de Mer gang in retaliation for the murder of Germani’s mentor, Casanova. The other suit may be connected to Germani as well. I’ll keep looking, but it seems he’s a new face.”
I squeezed my hands into fists and then forced them to relax before tearing into my croissant. “That sounds like you’re making it up. Casanova? For real?”
Novak nodded. “Movies have been made about these people, but they are quite real and deadly.”
“You think this Poinaré wanted to kill me?”
“If he wanted to kill you, you’d be dead. He’s not an amateur. Kidnapping is my guess.”
“If he works for The Klinefeld Group, that kind of makes sense. They probably still think I know where that box is that they want.”
Novak polished off his espresso and signaled the waitress for a second one. “You really have no idea what it is?”
“I really don’t, and my godmothers don’t either. Have you found any connection between The Klinefeld Group and Poinaré?”
“No. Nothing yet. He uses untraceable portables and never stays in one place too long.”
“Does he have a family?”
“Parents and three sisters. He’s careful to shield them. Everything they do is monitored by the state in an effort to catch him at something, anything, but they are as careful as he is. I will come at this from you.”
“Me?”
Novak nodded. “He’s hunting you and someone hired him. Who’s connected with you?”
“Well, the Fibonaccis, obviously, but Calpurnia had me in her house. If she wanted to get info out of me, that was definitely a better time to do it.”
“I agree. Who else?” he asked.
I sighed and started listing the people I’d helped catch. Most were still awaiting trial, including the mass murderer. Besides the cases I’d personally worked on, there was my dad. He had thirty-five years of enemies racked up. Somebody could be looking to get at him through me.
As I listed the cases, Novak shook his head, took his phone back, and typed the names into his phone. “Your life hasn’t been a calm one.”
“Not so much.”
“I’ll see what I can do with this, but Spidermonkey would be better. My connections are mainly in Europe.”
“He’s still in the hospital. We can’t bother him,” I said. “Wait. Can I see that picture of Poinaré again?”
Novak handed me his phone and I stared at that sinister face. “I’ve seen him somewhere.”
“In the metro.”
“No. Somewhere else, but he didn’t look like this.”
He nodded. “You have a good eye. Poinaré is a master of disguise. For years, no one knew what he looked like. Even the hair and eye color isn’t certain. His bone structure is how I identified him.”
“Very James Bond,” I said.
“Poinaré would kick Bond’s ass.”
Those cold eyes came back to me. “The Marais!”
“The Marais?”
“I saw Poinaré when Chuck and I were trying to get into the Marais apartment for the first time.” I bit my lip. “I think it was him. He was a pudgy hipster with a beard and glasses.”
“Why do you think it was him?” asked Novak.
“The eyes…yes. He’s the same guy that chased me in the metro. I recognized him then, too. I just couldn’t place him.”
“He was following you for a while before he decided to make a move.”
I sat back puzzled. “Why then? I’d just seen you. Maybe that was it.”
“Could be, but I think it was the unidentified suit who kicked it off. He’s inexperienced and it was him that tried to access your phone in my apartment. As soon as you made him on the street, both he and Poinaré were screwed. Poinaré would’ve checked you out. He’d know that once you knew you were being followed, you’d change up everything and he’d have to reacquire you. He probably thought it would be easier to nab you right then.”
“It wasn’t,” I said with pride.
The waitress brought Novak’s espresso and he affected a German accent. It was really good. Bavarian, if I had to guess. “You were better than Poineré expected. I’ll do what I can without Spidermonkey.
I checked the time. We’d been gone a while, but Chuck’s ability to take forever was well documented. “How about Angela? Did you figure out how she
got that job so easy?”
“No, I couldn’t get any information on that,” he said. “But I got something else equally helpful.”
“What’s that?” I asked before eating the last of my croissant.
Novak unfolded the papers and pushed them at me. “See if you can find it.”
“You’re testing me?” I asked. “That sucks.”
He smiled. “I just want to see if you find it.”
“Swell.” I leafed through the papers. They included Angela’s first lease agreement, copies of her rent payments, done electronically, her job application at the bookstore, and copies of her paychecks. He had her credit card statements for her first six months in Paris and her utility bills. “You’ve been busy.”
“Don’t stall,” he said.
“I’m not stalling.” I was stalling. Everything looked kosher, the opening of the bank account, credit card. Or…no. “She didn’t charge anything for almost three months. That’s a little weird. She used it regularly after that. Not a lot of money. Little stuff, like dinner and wine.”
“Right,” said Novak.
“You’re not going to give me a hint?”
“You’re the detective. I’m tech support.”
I wrinkled my nose. “Yeah, right. That’s what Spidermonkey says, too.”
“He’s right.”
“Whatever.” I went through the papers again, now concentrating on the dates. Angela might’ve had enough cash to get her through those first few months, but that was a lot of cash. “She didn’t make any withdrawals from the bank during that time either.”
“Yes,” Novak said with a smile.
“She would’ve had to have had enough cash to buy groceries and whatnot for nearly three months. That’s got to run into the hundreds.” I looked again. She was in Paris five days after her disappearance. She signed her lease and got the bank account. She started her work. “Oh my god.”
“That was much faster than me. What did you find?”
I pushed the papers back to Novak and pointed to the date on her work application. “The date’s wrong. It’s two and a half months after she disappeared. She made a mistake. She put the date she actually filled it out, not the date she was supposed to have been here like the other applications. She wasn’t in Paris for those first ten weeks. Of course she wasn’t. She had a nose job.”
“The nose was what made me pay attention to the dates. She was being paid and had an apartment, but she wasn’t here,” said Novak. “Thanks to Nine Eleven, flight manifests are forever. I believe that Corrine Sweet arrived the day before she filled out that application. She flew under the name Lauren Thomas, a single woman arriving for a vacation from New York. The card she used was never used again in Paris or anywhere else.”
“So where was she? A nose job doesn’t take that long. Any clue?” I asked.
“Not so far. I don’t know where to look.”
Ten weeks. Ten weeks. Doing what for ten weeks? Duh. French.
“What’s Les Cahiers de Gibert like?” I asked. “Do they carry English editions or is it purely a French bookstore.”
Novak drummed his long fingers on the table. “Only French. Why?”
“I doubt Angela Riley spoke French, but Corinne Sweet does.”
He craned back his head and his Adam’s apple jutted out so far it looked painful. “Corinne is fluent. She had to be.”
“She spent those missing weeks learning French. That’s an immersion program in the States,” I said. “There can’t be that many programs.”
“Spidermonkey would be the one I would go to on this,” said Novak. “Can you call him to see whether he’s better?”
“Er…no. That’s not a good idea. He’ll have to call me, which he might never do.”
“Why not?”
“I think Loretta thinks we’re having an affair. Plus, the only number I have is a secret phone that’s no longer so secret. Spidermonkey is out. But maybe it doesn’t matter where she learned French.”
“What matters is who paid for it.”
I shrugged and asked for an espresso. “I don’t think so. Angela arrived fully fluent. She had to be to do bookkeeping in French. That kind of program isn’t cheap or short. She might’ve been in it for most of the ten weeks. What’s that cost? Ten thousand? Twenty? No lover paid for that.”
“The government, but we agreed that she wasn’t a witness. Nothing happened to the Fibonaccis.”
“Then it’s something else. She has to be a federal witness.”
Novak groaned and I accepted my new espresso. “It’s not so bad.”
“You think not.”
“No, I don’t. You said you have to find out about the suits by looking at me, right?”
He nodded, but was obviously unconvinced. “Let’s look at Angela. It’s safe to say she didn’t want to leave her kids.”
“Is it? Are we sure of that?”
“I’m sure, so let’s go with it,” I said. “Someone made her do this.”
“Your government,” said Novak.
I nodded. “They got something big for putting her in the witness protection program, but right now I’m more interested in the one thing we don’t know.”
“We don’t know a lot of things, Miss Watts,” said Novak.
“I think you can call me Mercy at this point,” I said. “And we know quite a bit, especially about Angela’s life here, except for the identity of the Panera guy. She kept those pictures. He must be important.”
“Panera?” asked Novak.
“The pictures of that guy. Aaron says he’s sitting in a restaurant called Panera Bread”
“That’s not her husband?”
I shook my head. “Nope. Phillip’s the blond, plump one with the kids. I don’t know who the handsome guy is.”
He frowned. “You think he’s handsome?”
“You don’t?”
“He’s somewhat generic.” Novak turned and gave me his profile, running his finger down the bridge of his considerable nose. “He lacks character.”
I chuckled. “You’ve got no shortage of character.”
His eyes twinkled and I got the giggles. Must be the jet lag.
“I know what you Americans say about men with big noses,” he said proudly.
“They use a lot of tissues?” I asked.
He sneered. “That’s not correct.”
“I think you’re thinking of men with big feet.”
Novak held up one of his size fourteens. “I’ve got those, too.”
“You’re the whole package, my friend. If I knew any women in Paris, I’d recommend you,” I said. “Can we get back on point? Chuck might get done sometime this century.”
Speak of the devil. My phone rang and it was Chuck asking where we were. I gave my directions and told Novak to put away all the Angela evidence.
“So you’d like to find this handsome Panera man,” said Novak.
“Can you start with Angela’s credit and debit cards to see if she charged anything there?” I asked.
Chuck and Aaron came around the corner and I waved. Novak grabbed a third chair for us and stood to leave.
“You don’t have to go,” said Chuck, smiling but rather worn out around the edges.
Novak offered his chair to Aaron and said, “I’m afraid Miss Watts has given me a mission and it’s time to go.”
He headed off and Chuck asked, “What mission?”
I told them about Poinaré, Germani, and Casanova and how Novak thought kidnapping was the aim. “He’s going to try to connect The Klinefeld Group with Poinaré and figure out who the second suit is.”
“Novak’s going to be a busy guy.”
You have no idea. Thank goodness.
“He’s going to try and find out who’s behind Obsidian, Inc., too,” I said. “Are we ready to go?”
“Abso-friggin-lutely,” said Chuck.
I gave him a wary look. “You seem awfully excited.”
“Hell, yeah. We’ve got to finish
World War Two and I want to go to the De Gaulle exhibit. I talked to an Aussie and he said it was excellent.”
“I think I need another espresso,” I said.
We all had espressos and sandwiches. Then we closed down the museum, walking non-stop until six. By the time we got back to Elias’s apartment, every joint in my body ached. The only thing on my body that didn’t hurt were my feet. They were numb. I popped a couple Tylenols, put on PJs, and fell into the pit. Chuck and Aaron went out to dinner and brought me back some soup. I think I ate it. I’m not sure. I was sure about my dreams though. I was back in New Orleans, running scared, but the man coming up the stairs wasn’t holding a knife and he wasn’t Richard Costilla.
Chapter Twenty
I woke the next morning with the unsettling feeling that I was being watched. I peeked out from under my lashes, expecting Elias to be there, but he wasn’t.
“Thank goodness,” I said, but the feeling didn’t go away.
There was a rustle to the right of the bed and there he was, sitting on the dresser with a hind leg in the air. Blackie from New Orleans. That damn cat or whatever he was.
“Shoo. Go away,” I said.
Blackie didn’t shoo. He was unshooable.
“Please go away. I really don’t need this right now.”
The cat stopped cleaning and stared at me with those great green eyes.
I waved at him. “Go home, you freak. You belong to Grandma’s house. Go home.”
A gentle knock rattled my door. “Hey, Mercy,” said Chuck. “You up?”
I looked at the cat and he did a big stretch, arching his skinny back and then slinking around the framed portrait of a woman with an enormous amount of hair and a shy smile.
“Yeah, come in.” I winced in anticipation of what Chuck was going to say when he got a load of Blackie. Since New Orleans, he’d decided that the cat was just a cat and the family was messing with me. He didn’t come with the house because that was looney. I agreed, but I still believed it.
Chuck opened the door slowly, probably afraid that I was nude and ready to pounce. “How’d you sleep?”
“Not great.” I glanced at the dresser and Blackie was gone.
Great. Now I’m losing it and I didn’t have much of it to begin with.