The Wife of Riley

by A W Hartoin

  “Novak called,” said Aaron.

  “What did he say?” I asked.

  He shrugged.

  “You didn’t answer? What the…it could be important.”

  “Your phone.”

  I glared at him and held out my hand, not trusting myself to say anything. Aaron wasn’t always useless, but he was right then.

  “Huh?”

  “Give it to me,” I said between clenched teeth.

  “Hey,” Chuck called up the stairs, “are you coming or what?”

  “Aaron has claustrophobia,” I called over my shoulder.

  “He doesn’t have to come.”

  Aaron gave me the phone and I tucked it in my purse. “Oh, he’s coming alright.” I turned around and smiled. “I gave him a mint. He’s fine.”

  “Mints help with claustrophobia?”

  They do today.

  “Sometimes. Are we all set?”

  Chuck gave us our tickets and checked to make sure no one was following us. We gave our tickets to an exceedingly bored young woman who’d clearly lost her sense of smell long ago. We headed in for the self-guided tour and, I have to admit, it wasn’t so bad. Chuck kept pointing that out and I held my tongue. A line from some old country song Dad liked kept going through my head, “It’s gonna get bad before it gets better.”

  Chuck was having a grand old time reading about how sewers work and Aaron was right there with him. Then we passed through an arch and it was like hitting a wall of invisible stink. One minute it’s bearable, then take one step and it isn’t.

  I dug in my purse for a tissue to hold over my nose and itched to check the Novak phone for messages.

  “Does it smell worse now or is it just me?” asked Chuck.

  I horked a little and pressed the lone tissue I had to my face. “It’s you.”

  “Do you have any more tissues?”

  “No, and I’d kill you before I’d give this one up. Go read your signs,” I said in a strangled voice.

  “It’s not that bad.”

  “Don’t make me kick you.”

  Chuck and Aaron led the way deeper into the stink and I tried to remember how much of the museum was left. I couldn’t remember. I’d blocked it out or maybe it’d been fumigated out. We walked past arches in the walls where you could see rivers of waste rushing by and then into a corridor where you got to walk over the river. With each fenced-off grate, there was a sign telling the history of the Paris sewer and some artifacts, things like swords and whatnot that had been found in the sludge. Of course, Chuck had to read each placard and I saw my chance.

  “I’m going to find a bathroom and vomit a little. Be back in a minute.” I hurried away before he could offer to go with me. I went back through the exhibits, ducked around a wall next to a display of a mannequin sewer worker in some sort of iron cart, and got out Novak’s phone. No bars, naturally, but I had a bunch of texts waiting. Novak had been busy. Some came in at five that morning and I read them in order. He’d identified the second suit and his instinct was right about the guy. He was new to the mafia game. His name was Michel Colonna, a twenty-one-year-old Corsican with various arrests for assault and menacing. Novak couldn’t find any connection between him and Poinaré, so he didn’t think they were working together. It was more likely that I had a set price on my kidnapping and both suits were going after it.

  Colonna’s inexperience was showing. He’d been hanging out on the street outside Novak’s apartment while we were at Les Invalides, not exactly stealthy, and Novak got him on surveillance when he came home. Because of his position, Novak got a fix on his disposable cell. The idiot was sexting his girlfriend while hoping to nab me.

  Novak’s last message came in at eleven thirty, when Chuck and I were leaving the catacombs. Colonna was at the Miromesnil metro stop, the one closest to class. Novak said we shouldn’t go back to the cooking school since the Corsicans were watching the metro.

  Eleven thirty. Aaron was at the school then. I called him and he came to meet us. He probably used Miromesnil.

  Oh shit!

  A muffled yell echoed through the stone tunnels and I instinctively reached for my purse, but my Mauser was an ocean away. But the mannequin had lots of potential weapons. I grabbed a wooden two by four and ran back through the museum.

  I turned into super stink zone and dashed into the display area. Aaron was on the ground, face down next to the second placard on Napoleon. I ran to him and checked his pulse. Alive. A clang echoed off the walls. There were two sets of legs behind the last placard, Chuck and another set in sharply-creased trousers. The men stumbled from behind the placard and around the corner. Colonna had a knife to Chuck’s throat. I chased them around the corner and Colonna, despite being a lot shorter than Chuck, had my guy backed up against the railing on the bridge over a river of sewage.

  Chuck surged when he saw me. He flipped around and Colonna was against the rail.

  “Duck!” I screamed.

  I ran for them with the two by four poised like a bat. Chuck ducked at the last possible second and I got a brief glimpse of Colonna’s face right before I cracked him in the teeth. His head snapped back and then, in what seemed like slow motion, his head came back up, eyes focused on me with a mouth full of blood. The knife slashed at me as I jumped back.

  Then Chuck grabbed him by the legs and flipped him backward into the sewage. There was a sickening thwack as Colonna’s head hit a metal bar that extended over the river and his body hit the brown muck with a splash. Chuck and I looked at each other for a second and then we raced to the other side of the bridge. Colonna’s body floated past, slowly sinking into the waste of Paris.

  Aaron!

  I spun around and ran back to my partner, crouching at his side. “Aaron. Aaron.”

  He groaned and I rolled him over. His throat was slightly red and blood flowed out of his nose.

  “Can you follow my finger?” I asked.

  Aaron followed fine. He was focused and alert. Well…as alert as Aaron gets.

  A sleeper hold and Colonna dropped him on his face. Dad had demonstrated it on me when I was fourteen. That was the closest he ever came to Mom divorcing him. He slept in the garage for two weeks before Mom would let him back in the house. I was fine and Dad claimed he was teaching me how to escape the hold. He didn’t teach me very well, since I passed out.

  Aaron rubbed his throat and coughed before Chuck hauled him to his feet.

  “We have to get out of here right now,” said Chuck.

  “What about the body?” I asked. “What about the police?”

  “It’s self-defense.” He grabbed my hand and pulled me past the placards. “Did you touch anything?”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “Good.”

  We turned the corner and my weapon and Colonna’s knife were lying on the bridge. Chuck kicked the knife over the edge and tossed my two by four after it.

  “We can’t just leave,” I said.

  Chuck spun me around and held me by the shoulders. “I don’t want anyone to know that guy’s dead. Whoever hired him will bring in a replacement. Somebody better.”

  I pointed at what looked like a camera up in a corner. “It’s probably on video.”

  “Good. That proves self-defense.”

  “You’re bleeding.”

  An open, still-bleeding slit extended from Chuck’s ear to just under his jaw. He touched it and looked at the blood on his fingers. “I didn’t feel it.”

  “We can’t hide that,” I said.

  “Sure we can. Don’t you have a scarf in your purse?”

  “It’s a girl’s scarf.”

  “I don’t give a crap.”

  I tied the scarf around his neck and it didn’t look half bad. It was a good thing his button-up shirt was navy. It hid the blood well. Aaron had a black tee on, but blood was all over his face. I whipped off my beret and wiped it away before stuffing the hat in my purse.

  We walked out of the museum like nothing happened. I
have to give it to Chuck. He actually flirted with the bored girl as we left. He went up the stairs first to see if anyone was lying in wait. The area was clear, so we went to the nearest metro. I briefly considered telling Chuck about Novak’s text. But there was no point and it would’ve led to Novak’s phone and Aaron not looking at the texts. Aaron was just being Aaron and Novak didn’t expect either of us to be at the school that day. If he had, he would’ve called me on my regular phone.

  I glanced up at Chuck’s neck and saw the blood oozing through my scarf. I got out my regular phone and googled the nearest hospital or clinic.

  “What are you doing?” asked Chuck.

  “Looking for a hospital.”

  “Are you crazy? We’re not going to a hospital. They’ll report a knife wound to the neck and put me in the system. I’ll have to give an address and somebody could track you through me,” he said. “Besides, I’ve got a nurse on retainer. Don’t you have stuff?”

  “I don’t have sutures and that definitely needs suturing.”

  He grinned at me. “So improvise. Isn’t that what you do best?”

  “Stop using my own words against me and stop smiling. This is serious. You could’ve been the one floating in Parisian poop.”

  “With you around? No way.” Chuck became thoughtful. “You know, I should’ve gone on vacation with you sooner.”

  I wrinkled my nose at him. “‘Cause this is so much fun?”

  “Hell yeah, it is. We stuffed a guy that probably works for the Corsican mob. I call that a good time. If I came here with anyone else, we would’ve toured museums and eaten great food and then gone home. Boring.”

  “There’s something wrong with you. That was not fun.”

  Chuck elbowed me. “Come on. There’s one less bad guy in the world and I didn’t even have to fill out any paperwork.”

  “What about Aaron?” I asked. “Sleeper holds do kill people.”

  We looked at Aaron, whose nose had taken on a Shrek-like appearance.

  “He’s fine and I’m starving,” said Chuck. “Where to for lunch?”

  Before Aaron could take over, I said Tribeca on Rue Cler, but not until I’d worked on Chuck’s neck. Aaron agreed with a shrug. Maybe he felt guilty about not looking at the texts. I’d never know. I bought supplies at a pharmacy on the way home, cleaned and butterflied Chuck’s neck wound closed, and then we went on to Tribeca, the restaurant where Gina had seen her long-gone sister and started me on a wild goose chase that turned out to be plenty wild and where the geese just might kill you.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Blackie sat on Elias’s bed, purring away almost like a real cat, while I got dressed the next morning. I’d dreamt of that unknown man in New Orleans again, but it hadn’t frightened me. I didn’t know who he was and I didn’t much care. I felt oddly safe with the cat there, staring at me with his green eyes. He’d saved me in New Orleans and I was pretty sure he’d protect me in the apartment if it came to that. Outside the apartment was another story, but Chuck had convinced me that we’d handled the sewer situation just fine and that the suit wasn’t trying to kill anyone, not originally, anyway. He’d done the sleeper hold on Aaron and then tried it on Chuck. Not a great plan, since Chuck was so much taller. He failed and that’s when the knife came out. Chuck, like Novak, didn’t believe that killing was on the menu. They wanted me for information. The suits showed up after we found out about the Marais apartment, but if The Klinefeld Group murdered Werner Richter in ’65 after he visited it, presumably they knew about it, too. What in the world did they think I knew?

  Nothing was the answer, but they’d come for me again if that was really the intent. At dinner, I’d expected my old aversion to food to rear up, but it didn’t, surprising me immensely. Colonna was just as young as Costilla and just as dead, but I didn’t feel a bit guilty. What I did feel was anger. He attacked Aaron. He could’ve killed the little weirdo. A person didn’t get much more defenseless than Aaron. Attacking me or Chuck was one thing. Attacking Aaron was quite another. I didn’t wish I found another way. I was glad Colonna was dead. He deserved it.

  Novak agreed. When we’d gotten back the afternoon before, I holed up in the bathroom, filling the tub and telling Novak what happened. It warmed my heart to hear him get upset. I assured him we were fine, which was more than I could say for poop guy as we’d started referring to him. Novak checked his sources and found, to his surprise, that the body hadn’t been found yet. If the surveillance had been working that day, nobody had seen fit to check the footage. We had left a couple of clues to our identity, blood from Aaron’s nose on the concrete and Chuck’s prints on the cash he used to pay for the tickets, but they had to find the body before they started looking for us. Novak didn’t think the Paris police would exactly bend over backward to find out what happened to a dirtbag like Colonna. It wasn’t unusual for dirtbags to show up in the sewer and they might not even realize where he went in. If that happened, they might never connect Colonna to us.

  Novak agreed that a discreet disappearance was good. It would probably take days before anyone realized Colonna was gone and what were they going to do? Report him as missing and say, “Hey, he was in Paris trying to kidnap an American. Somebody must’ve killed him.” I don’t think so. Hopefully, by the time his employer knew he needed another guy, we’d be back in the States and on Calpurnia’s turf.

  While we’d been dealing with poop guy, Novak had been busy. He’d broken through the Swiss firewall and found out that the equivalent of 50,000 dollars was put into an account for Obsidian in 1946. The electric bill and taxes on the apartment were taken out of the account once a year. The interest on the account had sustained it since then and the payments were sent out automatically. Novak couldn’t find anything on Obsidian. The money wasn’t a bank transfer. Someone had personally arrived at the bank with cash and opened the account. That would’ve all been done on paper and he didn’t have access to that. Someone did check in every five years. A bank employee named Claus Sterner had been assigned to the account for the last twenty-five years. Sterner checked the balance and made a notation that the account was in good order. He must be doing it for someone and Novak thought he could find out who if he dug into Sterner.

  He’d made progress on Angela, too. He found her language school in Maryland and the U.S. Government did pay for it. She stayed on campus for eight weeks, not the entire ten, and was, by all accounts, an excellent student. The other weeks were a blank, but she probably spent them getting a nose job and testifying about whatever it was that she knew.

  I asked about Panera guy, but all he had was charges at a local Panera Bread near Angela’s house. He hadn’t had time to do more, what with the Obsidian stuff and figuring out the identity of the second suit. I asked him to send me Angela’s financial records so I could look through them and the rest of what he had. Spidermonkey still hadn’t contacted either of us, but Novak hacked the hospital and found out that he was stable to be released tomorrow. That was a relief, but I really needed him. Novak sent me the files but looking at them on the phone gave me a screaming migraine. I didn’t really get anywhere before the water got cold and Chuck came banging on the door wanting to go out. We had dinner at Monsieur Barre’s apartment because Chuck was right. Monsieur Barre recognized Aaron from his Paris cooking days and was living the sweet life of constant food that was usually mine. After dinner, Chuck finally admitted that his neck hurt and I gave him some Norco, which knocked him out cold for the night.

  I’d gotten plenty of sleep without Norco and managed to get myself out out of the bed pit on the third try. I got dressed quickly and pulled on the cloche before checking Novak’s phone. No messages. Chuck was still sacked out in the other bedroom. I could leave him a note and dash over to Angela’s hotel room for a quick search, but Monsieur Barre said Aaron was still asleep. Normally, I would just do it alone, but I did need a partner with Poinaré after me. Instead, I ventured as far as Monsieur Barre’s apartment and stole his cof
fee, curling up on his comfy fainting couch and going back to Angela’s life on the small screen, complete with headache.

  Monsieur Barre left me alone as he did his rounds in the building, taking care of the more normal inhabitants. When he came back, he brought almond croissants and fresh fruit. He sat opposite me, drinking coffee from a little espresso cup and watching me.

  “Thanks for the croissant,” I said.

  “You’re welcome. When will you be telling me what you’ve been up to?” he asked.

  Hello. Never.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I said, avoiding his penetrating gaze.

  “Miss Watts, I’ve been a part of this building for fifty years and we’ve had all sorts of people here and they’ve done all sorts of things. There’s nothing you can say that will surprise me.”

  “I seriously doubt that.” I took a second croissant. They were so good, I felt all melty and peaceful.

  “Herr Licktenfeld killed two men in his bathroom by exsanguinating them.”

  Wrong again.

  “When was that?” I asked.

  “1972. He was a drug addict and he owed them money.”

  “How’d the cops catch him?”

  Monsieur Barre smiled and took a small sip of his coffee. “As I said, he was a drug addict and not the most intelligent of men. Inherited wealth often has that effect on a bloodline. Not the Bled family, obviously. Herr Licktenfeld tried to flush one of the heads down the toilet and it didn’t work out very well for him.”

  “I can imagine. Did he flood the apartment?”

  “He did.”

  I poured myself some more coffee. “Well, I haven’t exsanguinated anyone.”

  “I certainly hope not.” He looked at me over the rim of his cup. “I may be able to help.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Monsieur Barre took a croissant for himself. “I can keep a secret, as most of the men in this building could tell you.”