C'est la Vie (Raja Williams Series)

by Jack Thompson

  “Not me,” said Raja. “Vinny is a wild spirit that I doubt any man could tame. I don’t think any man should. Some things need to be free.”

  “Perhaps, but we have a saying in France. L’amour est une force majeure de nature. Love is a force of nature.”

  “Vinny is quite a force majeure all by herself,” said Raja.

  “Perhaps, my friend, however, Quand on veut, on peut. When one wants, one can.”

  “You know, Pierre, we have quite a few sayings in American English, as well,” said Raja. “Love conquers all. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Don’t eat the yellow snow.”

  “And where do you think the best ones come from?” said Gilliard. “France, of course.”

  Everyone laughed at that exchange, and they all drank and had a great time.

  Chapter Thirty-eight: Final Fallout

  Two of Vinny’s least favorite people from the club were the two young men she called the Czechoslovakian brothers, Luc and Marcelo. They were both pigs who took advantage of the girls and hid in the protective shadow that Bruno provided. Nonetheless, Luc and Marcelo turned out to have redeeming value after all. The two of them had accumulated a tome of information on a number of leading citizens who, besides frequenting the club’s third floor, had been involved in everything from receiving bribes to providing police protection for criminals. Luc, in particular, was more than willing to provide the details for a reduced prison sentence and the chance to see daylight while he still had some of his precious golden curls left.

  Included in the arrests was an inspector-general of the Gendarmes who had been responsible for, among other things, the terrorist red alert on Raja that had almost gotten him killed. Captain Milan had insisted on making that arrest herself. In the end, another five low-level policemen on the Paris police force who had provided information to Bruno were arrested. The worst of the corrupt policemen, including Baston and Revel, were now dead.

  The wide net that Didier had cast during his investigation caught several low-level local Paris politicians who had been paid to look the other way when crimes were committed. And when the gendarmes finally arrived at the home of Jacques Normandeau, the worst of all the corrupt politicians got what he deserved. As a deputy for the Minister of the Interior who held sway over both the National police and Gendarmerie, Normandeau had taken over five million Swiss francs in bribes for helping certain criminals circumvent the immigration regulations, all deposited to a private numbered Swiss account. As if that wasn’t enough, Normandeau had greedily profited directly from the human trafficking ring and heroin trade. Needless to say, Jacques Normandeau would be spending a long time in the French national prison.

  While these and other shake-ups were happening, Raja and Vinny were winding down their activities. There was something to be said for karma. Despite suffering injuries of both a physical and psychic nature, Raja and Vinny were feeling relatively good. Vinny spent time with Yvette helping the girls from the cabaret find new work, and Raja burned a lot of gas driving his Porsche through the country outside Paris taking in the atmosphere.

  Finally, Raja made special arrangements for what had become a tradition. He and Vinny strolled along the Quai des Tuileries, not far from where he had followed Gilliard to his clandestine meeting with Didier Perrin. Whenever his investigation was completed, Raja liked to do what he called an aesthetic cleanse. He would find an appealing art experience that would be intense enough to allow him to let go of whatever unpleasant things he had experienced during the case, rather than having them stuck to him forever. Tonight would be a private after-hours tour of the Musée de l’Orangerie, a museum known as the Sistine Chapel of Impressionism. The museum itself was actually built around and featured the six-foot-high collection of Monet’s Waterlillies that filled two galleries, and included an array of works by other impressionist masters and French artists like Renoir, Picasso and Matisse. Although Vinny didn’t often appreciate Raja’s taste in art, she had consented to come along tonight. The two had been forced to work separately for so much of the case in Paris that Vinny needed the chance to renew the bond that made them such a dynamic duo. That connection had helped solve cases and saved both their lives more than once.

  The two of them walked together through the museum silently, Raja taking the lead. Sometimes he would stop and look at a painting for a long time and Vinny began to duplicate and understand what Raja saw in the artwork, and the power it had to elevate the soul. After hours in the museum, they were finally exhausted but ecstatic, what Raja called aesthetically cleansed. They thanked the curator’s assistant who had opened the museum for them at the insistence of someone high in the French government.

  Epilogue

  After Raja and Vinny arrived at the Le Bourget Airport, they unloaded their bags from the limousine. As they watched the car drive away, Vinny said, “Hey Raj, I wanted to ask why we took a limousine to the airport. I’m certainly not complaining, but why not bring Napoleon? This is where you store him.”

  Raja smiled. “I left Napoleon with a friend.”

  Earlier that morning, when Remy Montagne had arrived at the police station, and sat down at his desk he found a small envelope with an embossed falcon on it. It was addressed only, Remy. He opened it and pulled out a note. Across the top it read, Follow these instructions, which he did. He went to the police parking level two. Standing in the middle he walked exactly one hundred steps and stopped. He checked the note again, which read, What do you see? He looked around. There stood the orange Porsche. There was a second note tucked under the wiper blade. The note had only one word, Well? Remy tried the doors but they were locked. Likewise the trunk. He walked around the car and then looked at the note again. He smiled. A check of the wheel wells revealed the keys hidden above the right rear wheel. Remy opened the door and climbed into the driver’s seat. There was a letter on the passenger’s seat. It was handwritten.

  Dear Remy,

  It was a pleasure working with you on our smuggling case. I’m sure we saved many lives. You are an excellent detective who will be running the 36 someday, of that I have no doubt. On a more personal note, Napoleon mentioned how much he enjoyed your driving, so I thought you two would be a perfect match. The papers are in the glove box. He is all yours.

  Take care and stay in touch.

  Your friend always,

  Raja

  “I hope it was a good friend,” said Vinny.

  “No doubt about it, Vinny. A good friend, indeed.”

  Vinny and Raja walked to the plane. Mickey stood at the bottom of the stairs waiting to greet them.

  “It’s good to see you two again.”

  “Good to be seen,” said Raja.

  “Ditto,” said Vinny.

  “I’ve been watching the satellite feed on the plane,” said Mickey. “It’s been all over the news. Here and in the states. You two must have been busy.”

  “You have no idea.”

  Mickey looked at Raja’s stitches and the bruise on Vinny’s jaw. “It looks like you both took some heavy hits.”

  “You think?” said Vinny, sounding uncharacteristically snide.

  “You’ll have to excuse Vinny,” said Raja. “She dove three stories onto a hardwood stage floor. Then the whole cabaret building blew up. I don’t think she is back to her good-natured self quite yet.”

  “All I can say is you guys sure know how to party.”

  The three boarded the Hawker 1000 jet, and while Mickey prepared for takeoff, Raja sat back in his seat and sighed. It was the first time he had fully relaxed since they had touched down in Paris. He was tired, and the case had taken its toll. He thought about Corinne.

  After the plane had taken off and leveled at cruising altitude, Vinny sat down across from him. “Penny for your thoughts,” said Vinny.

  Raja didn’t answer for a long time. Then he said, “You know Vinny, there is so much in this world that needs fixing. Sometimes I wonder if what I do will ever make a difference. A real difference.�
�

  “You certainly made a difference with those girls on Assad’s ship.”

  “True.”

  “And with Professor and Mrs. Browning.”

  “I suppose. But I couldn’t help Corinne.”

  “You can’t measure your deeds by whether everything is fixed. Sometimes there is a lot that needs fixing. And that might require a lot more good deeds. Did your deed help someone? That is the only measure, dude.”

  Raja looked at Vinny. Sometimes she surprised him with a wisdom that transcended her years. “You make an excellent point. Which reminds me, Vinny, I’ve been meaning to ask you something. When you were up on the third floor of the cabaret and jumped off that balcony, by all rights you should have died.”

  “Yeah, so what?”

  “So, why did you do that?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I panicked.” Vinny sipped her drink and pretended to be interested in something she saw out the window on the horizon.

  Raja looked at her and smiled. He knew better. She had done it to save him.

  ~~~

  Note from the Author

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  Following is the prologue of Book Three in the Raja Williams Series.

  Swimming Upstream

  Prologue: Lost in the Woods

  Laura Bachman was an excellent skier. She had been skiing since the time she could walk, or so the story goes. In fact, her earliest life memory was her father catching her after she slid down the small embankment near her childhood home on the outskirts of Seattle, Washington. At the time, she was wearing her first tiny pair of skis. She had heard her father tell the story at dinners and parties more times than she could count. To hear him tell it, she was a born natural, ready for competition right from the start. As Laura recalled, she barely managed to stay upright for all of four feet. Now, on a normal day she commanded the skis effortlessly like they were an extension of her body. Today, however, the skis were heavy and awkward.

  Laura was usually very cautious and over-prepared when she ventured on one of her cross country skiing weekends through the hills around Mount Rainier. Preparedness was a characteristic she had always possessed, but one that was honed razor sharp during her days at Stanford Law School. It proved to be one of the reasons she was hired right out of school at the prestigious Seattle firm of Lowenstein, Giraldi & Kraft. She came in prepared and wowed a senior partner in her interview. Know before you go, look before you leap, plan for all possibilities—these were the mantras of Laura’s life.

  Normally she would never go skiing without a buddy, that being the unwritten rule for any excursion into even moderately unfamiliar terrain. She preferred backcountry, a form of cross country skiing done far from the commercial areas of Mount Rainier. There were no trails or lifts, no nearby ranger to rescue you from trouble. You never knew when you might run into an unfriendly animal, step on a snake, sprain an ankle, or encounter any of a hundred other difficulties that Laura had thought out beforehand and fully prepared for.

  On this occasion, when her roommate and co-worker at the firm, Amanda Perkins, had canceled at the last minute, Laura decided to go it alone. She needed the time away from the rest of the world. Ben had been ragging her about her lack of commitment to their relationship, and the walls were closing in. The mountain was always her cure for any troubles, and she had gone skiing on so many occasions over the years that she knew Mount Rainier National Park better than most of the rangers.

  For that reason, it was also unusual for Laura to get lost, and yet she had done just that. Perhaps she was distracted by regret about her fight with Ben, replaying the conversation over and over in her mind and trying in vain to make it end without the harsh words she had spoken. She had also been shaken by something she learned the day before, something that severely unbalanced her normally low center of gravity. She tried to forget what she had seen, but it was a three alarm fire whose bells would not stop ringing.

  Laura felt a strong sense of urgency to get off the mountain as soon as possible. Perhaps it was the expected cold of night approaching. The temperature could shift drastically. Laura had, of course, checked and double checked the weather reports for the area which called for a cold front to settle in later that night. Despite wearing a thermal jacket made of high-tech NASA material, she felt an unpleasant chill seeping into her body. She was in a hurry. That’s why, when she ran out of snow a mile back, she dumped her skis on the ground and continued on foot through the thick woods. An hour later she was still in the woods with no end in sight. Her growing desperation set her pulse racing and her head pounding. About ready to give up, she spotted a light through the trees ahead. Although dim and a long way off, to Laura it was a blazing beacon of hope. Assuming it was a house, she rededicated her muscles to making it at least that far.

  Laura stumbled out of the woods into a clearing that was actually the backyard of someone’s home. With only one hundred yards of ground between her and the light, she could now see it was a spotlight on the back porch. By the time she had closed half the distance to the house she felt numb, and her breathing was labored.

  Laura stopped, gathering her strength for the last fifty yards. When the back door opened and a man stepped out into the light, she was certain her luck had changed. She staggered forward as the man picked up a wheelbarrow full of firewood near the woodpile in his backyard, unaware of her presence. He turned the wheelbarrow toward the house.

  “Help,” she shouted, but it came out sounding much closer to a rasping whisper. Nonetheless, the man heard her cry in the crisp night air and looked up. As Laura staggered toward him his first thought was to wonder what a drunk person was doing in his backyard. She continued moving erratically toward him until she finally stopped in her tracks, stood unnaturally stiff and erect for a fleeting moment, and then pitched forward to the ground like a felled tree.

  The man let go of one handle of the wheelbarrow and it tipped over spilling out all the split cedar logs he had loaded. Barely noticing, he dropped the other handle and ran to her side. Pulling off his gloves, he checked her neck carefully in several spots, but found no pulse.

  The likelihood of a twenty-nine year old woman in her prime and in good health falling over dead was improbable. The fact that she was a near Olympic-level athlete in peak condition made it impossible.

  However, there was no doubt that Laura Bachman was dead. More than likely, the twenty-four inches of a Beman hunting arrow sticking out of her back had something to do with it.

  Receive notification of the release of Swimming Upstream

  About the Author

  Jack Thompson is a professional writer, finding voices in a number of different genres. So far he has written a wide variety, including children's stories, fairy tales, science fiction, paranormal romance, political thrillers and mystery detective stories. He's even written a book of poetry. As an avid reader he has enjoyed an even wider variety from classic Greek literature to modern horror.

  According to Jack, whether reading or writing, what makes a story great is how well it communicates to the reader. Whether presenting him with a hero he wishes he could be or a villain he chooses to hate, the characters must relate to the reader on a personal level. A reader will leave a good story in an improved condition. He may have learned something new about the world or himself, or simply been well entertained. That's why Jack writes.

  Other Kindle Titles from Jack Thompson:

  The Color of Greed (Raja Williams Series, Book 1)

  The Rand Principle (novel/political thriller)

  Godmachine (novel/science fiction)

  Lyrics for Living (book of poetry)

  A Trick of the Eye (short story/adventure)

  Blue is for
Boys (short story/science fiction)

  The Companion (short story/science fiction)

  Hangtime (short story/science fiction)

  Contact Jack

  email: jack@jackwrites.com

  website: JackWrites

  twitter: @jack_writes

  facebook: Author Page