Legally Dead

by Edna Buchanan

  Danny reached for the door handle.

  “Not on the street,” Venturi warned. “Remember, you were on the outs, persona non grata, when she left. Let’s approach her inside where she’s less likely to make a scene.”

  “Makes sense.” Danny’s eyes never left her. “Oh, catch that hip action! It’s killing me.”

  She walked by, no more than a few feet from their tinted windows, and entered the shop.

  “At least we know she’s alive,” Venturi said, worried about Lyle Gates.

  They gave her a few moments, then walked into the shop. Micheline was at the back, donning a silky black bib apron. She tied it at her narrow waist, glanced up, and saw Danny.

  For a moment she looked stunned. They both stared.

  “Bonjour, cherie.”

  “Oh, mon Dieu! Qu’ est ce que sont vous faisant ici? Oh my God! What are you doing here?”

  Venturi watched the familiar heat sizzle between them.

  “You couldn’t stay away. I knew it.” She smiled triumphantly, then turned her back. “Laissez moi tranquille. Je ne veux pas vous parler,” she murmured. “Leave me alone. I don’t want to talk to you.”

  She walked away, chin up, all business, speaking rapidly to an employee she called Emile. They couldn’t hear the conversation, but Emile didn’t seem to notice them.

  “We should have snatched her off the street,” Danny muttered, as they took seats at the counter.

  They ate sandwiches and sampled gourmet salads. She kept her distance, overseeing the kitchen, the bakery, the front, and the cash registers.

  Danny finally asked an employee to pass her a folded handwritten note. Micheline, it is urgent that we speak, scrawled in French on a napkin. Discreetly, so that only they could see, she tore it into tiny shreds and flung them into an ashtray.

  Eventually they left, drove off, then circled, and parked down the block.

  “I don’t get the big attraction,” Venturi said, perplexed. “That is one damn difficult woman. It’s like she has chronic PMS.”

  “I like taming the wild ones. You have to break them, like horses,” Danny said.

  “You’re not having much luck with this one. If she gets the chance, she’ll stomp you to death.”

  Customers and employees began to straggle out shortly after 9 p.m. An hour later, the place went dark and she emerged, accompanied by Emile, who stood by as she locked the door.

  “Crap, who the hell is he?” Danny said. “If he goes home with her…”

  The two chatted for a moment, then walked to their separate cars.

  She paused at hers for a moment, glancing up and down the street, her expression disappointed. As she unlocked her car, a BMW screeched to the curb beside it.

  “Who the hell’s that? Go! Move it! Go! Go! Go!” Danny yelled.

  Before the words were out of his mouth, a man burst out of the passenger side and caught Micheline around the waist and by the hair. Muffling her screams with his hand, he dragged her, kicking and struggling, into the BMW’s backseat.

  Venturi pulled away from the curb without lights as the BMW peeled out and wheeled around the corner.

  “Don’t lose ’em! Damn! We shoulda seen that coming! Don’t lose ’em!” Danny pounded the dashboard.

  The BMW now moved sedately at the speed limit from a less-traveled street onto a main thoroughfare. They were three cars behind as it merged into traffic. Only the driver was visible.

  “She could be dead already. We have to stop them.”

  “Right,” Venturi said, as the car made a sharp turn into the parking garage of a multistory shopping mall. They followed, several cars behind. The first level was full. There were a few open spaces on the second, but the BMW kept ascending through the nearly empty third level and the vacant fourth and fifth.

  “Where the hell are they going?” Danny pulled the body armor over his shirt. He tossed a vest to Venturi, pulled on a pair of latex gloves, picked up a gun and racked one into the chamber.

  The car emerged on the empty rooftop level and stopped in the center, stars overhead, the glow of city lights below.

  Venturi, still without headlights, crept to the entrance.

  “Didn’t know the party would start so soon.” He pulled on the vest, hoping that the men who snatched Micheline off the street were the same two who attacked Lyle in Ireland and that one was the man who had invaded his home.

  “Put the gloves on, man,” Danny reminded him.

  Venturi did so. “Stay low,” he warned.

  “That son of a bitch in the backseat is mine,” Danny said. “You take the driver.”

  On his count of three, they slipped out of the car, leaving the doors ajar. As they approached, guns in hand, the back door on the driver’s side burst open. They heard Micheline scream and saw her legs flailing as she tried to escape but was dragged back into the car.

  Before her abductor could close the door, Danny wrenched it out of his hand. He reached in, caught the man by the throat, yanked him from the car, kicked his feet out from under him, and slammed him facedown on the pavement. He still clutched a gun in his right hand but let go when Danny stomped his wrist.

  Venturi had smashed the driver’s window and jammed his gun to the forehead of the man behind the wheel. “Don’t move! Don’t move! Don’t move!”

  The man replied in Russian and lifted his weapon.

  Venturi fired once, then reached in to snatch the man’s blood-spattered automatic weapon.

  He turned back to Danny, who had his knee jammed into the back of the man on the pavement, as Micheline kicked at her assailant.

  She scrambled back into the car for her shoes and purse.

  “Don’t kill him.” Venturi gestured toward the prone man on the pavement. “He’s all we’ve got. We lost the driver.” He searched the car’s bloody interior, took the keys from the ignition, and unlocked the glove box. No personal effects. Nothing but a rental agreement two days old.

  He checked the dead man’s arms. No tattoos. He removed a cell phone from the body and the ID from a wallet in his pocket.

  “Let’s go, let’s go!” Danny said impatiently. He handcuffed the surviving Russian and forced him into the backseat. As Venturi and Micheline piled into the front, lights swept up the entrance ramp behind them.

  “Crap. The cops!” Danny said. “Let’s roll.”

  Venturi gunned it toward the exit ramp on the far side of the roof as Danny peered out the back window.

  “Uh-oh, these ain’t no gendarmes.”

  A big black Mercedes rolled slowly onto the roof. The doors to the BMW hung open, exposing the dead driver and empty backseat.

  Moments later the Mercedes’ tinted windows lowered and two assault rifles emerged.

  “Shit! Long guns! Get down! Stay down!” Danny dove across the seat and pushed Micheline to the floorboard.

  The handcuffed Russian opened his bloodied mouth and laughed. The ugly sound stopped abruptly when Danny bashed the side of his head with his gun.

  One of the assault rifles let loose a fiery burst of ten rounds.

  Venturi floored it, racing down the winding exit ramp at high speed, the Mercedes in hot pursuit, both cars careening over speed bumps.

  Another burst of gunfire pockmarked the concrete columns and walls, sending debris bouncing off the windshield.

  “Looks like four of them,” Danny said calmly. He opened a window and returned fire as they took a curve. Sparks flew as a slug hit the Mercedes’ grille. Another shattered a side mirror.

  Micheline crouched on the front floor, hands over her ears, as Danny fired.

  “Uh-oh,” Venturi said. Traffic had picked up as they speeded around the fourth level, then the third.

  Some event had apparently ended, and a long line of traffic ahead of them crept slowly toward the open-air single-lane exit ramp.

  Venturi ignored a yield sign and cut off several motorists. Drivers blew their horns in protest. Several cars were now between them and their pur
suers.

  The driver of the Mercedes leaned on his horn, as though warning other drivers to clear the way. They were not impressed.

  On the last two floors, the one-lane exit ramp consisted of a solid wall on the inside and a six-foot wall on the outside, which slowly dwindled to about four feet in height during the descent.

  The Mercedes was five cars behind as they inched downward.

  Something hit the rear window of their car, spiderwebbed the glass, leaving a hole, then crashed through the windshield and kept going.

  The gunman stood in the Mercedes’ open sunroof, his head and shoulders exposed as he aimed the AK-47.

  The panicked motorists in front of him had nowhere to go. Wildly swerving, braking, blowing their horns, they collided with the wall and the cars in front of them.

  The captured Russian in the backseat kept trying to struggle free and reach the door handle. Each time Danny pounded him again with the gun or his fists.

  “Don’t kill him!” Venturi said. “We need his intel.”

  “Time to expedite,” Danny announced calmly. “At the next curve, shut it off, and hit the emergency brake. We’ll lock it, leave it, and go over the side. I take him. You bring her.”

  Micheline gasped. Venturi didn’t like it, but he knew Danny was right.

  In agonizing slow motion, they crawled down and around the next curve, briefly out of sight of their pursuers.

  “Now!” Danny said.

  “No!” Micheline cried.

  “Shut up,” Venturi said. He put the car in park, turned off the key, put it in his pocket, stomped the emergency brake, and hit the trunk release.

  The wall was now down to about three and a half feet high. Danny dragged the still-struggling Russian out of the car, swung, and landed a haymaker square on his jaw. He caught the Russian before he crumpled to the ground, picked him up, flung him over the side to a grassy swale six feet below, then vaulted over the wall after him. The terrified elderly couple in a Citroën behind them began to scream.

  Baseball cap pulled down over his eyes, Venturi darted to the trunk, snatched their duffel bags, and tossed them over the side. He grasped Micheline’s arm. “Take off your shoes. Don’t look behind us. I don’t want people to see your face.”

  She resisted.

  “Don’t be afraid.”

  She stared into his eyes, more defiant than afraid, as he picked her up and dropped her over the ledge. He saw Danny half-catch her, breaking her fall onto the grassy area below.

  He jumped, landed on his feet, and staggered several steps. He almost stumbled over the Russian seated on the ground, still handcuffed and bleeding profusely from the nose. A cacophony of car horns blared behind them.

  Hand raised like a traffic cop, Danny stepped directly in front of the final car to exit, a late-model Volvo that had been in front of them. All the other traffic stood still behind the roadblock they had created.

  “Police business,” he said in French. “Step out please.”

  The driver, a plump, round-faced, middle-aged nanny, studied the gun in his hand, bit her lip, and gestured to her passenger, a dark-haired girl about eleven years old. They exited the car without argument.

  “Wait! Your handbags.” Danny politely handed them their purses. “My supervisor will return the vehicle to you in excellent condition tomorrow. Do not call the police now,” he warned, as he slid behind the wheel and popped the trunk. “We are too busy with grave matters of national security. Foreign terrorists,” he said softly. “Merci.”

  The nanny’s uncertain eyes focused on Micheline, bruised and disheveled, her right eye swollen.

  “He is helping to save France,” Micheline said. “He is a patriot. What he says is true.”

  The woman looked back at Danny and smiled shyly.

  Venturi wrestled the surprisingly strong Russian into the trunk and slammed it shut. Danny gunned the engine and they took off, Micheline beside him, the sounds of car horns and the sporadic pop, pop, pop of rapid gunfire fading behind them.

  “Hope they’re only firing into the air to scare drivers out of their way,” Venturi said.

  “They won’t kill innocent bystanders,” Danny said confidently. “Not when they’re trapped and know the gendarmes are on the way.”

  “How the hell many are there?” Venturi asked. “I wanted it to be just two. But I didn’t see Ivan Kazakov, who broke into my house. One of two who went after Richard in Ireland had a religious tattoo on his right forearm. No tattoos on the two we got.”

  “We had at least four in the Mercedes,” Danny said. “The two we got, two more in Ireland, somebody in England. Your friend, Ivan. Ten minimum, most likely more. With assault rifles, automatic handguns, and silencers.”

  Venturi frowned.

  “We need bigger guns, and more of them,” Danny concluded.

  “Who the hell were those guys?” Micheline asked in English. “They weren’t Colombian.”

  “What did they sound like to you?” Venturi asked.

  “Russian?” She shrugged. “What’s that all about? And who’s Richard?”

  “You don’t want to know.” Venturi sighed. “It’s a long story.”

  “Where to?” Danny turned a corner.

  “My place isn’t far,” Micheline said.

  “Too risky,” Danny said.

  “What do you mean?” she said, suddenly realizing the enormity of her situation. “I can’t go home?” She paused. “For the last two days I felt like I was being watched. Didn’t see anyone but sensed it. Was it you?”

  “No,” Venturi said. “We just got here.”

  He saw the fear in her eyes.

  “We need a quiet place to debrief him.” Danny jerked his head toward the trunk.

  “First we better get rid of this car and pick up another one.” Venturi scanned traffic behind them as sirens yelped in the distance.

  “The driver who gave it to us believed me,” Danny said. “She won’t report it till tomorrow. You see the nice little smile she gave me?”

  “Your charm has its limitations,” Venturi said.

  “It’s very overrated,” Micheline agreed coldly.

  “What about your car?” Danny asked her. “It’s probably still parked outside the shop. The place is empty, neighboring shops are closed now. It’s as good a place as any for a while. The boys in the Mercedes are probably still busy.”

  “Do you have a security guard who checks the premises?” Venturi asked her.

  “We had no need for one,” she said frostily, “before you arrived. Why is this happening? Why are you here?”

  “We don’t know who’s behind it.” Venturi explained about the burglar and the stolen data. “We came to warn you that your security might be compromised.”

  “A little late, aren’t you? We were not to make contact again, ever,” she said bitterly, “so why did you carelessly keep records that could be stolen?”

  “My mistake,” he said. “They don’t know everything. Only your new name and destination.”

  “They know who I was,” she insisted. “Why else would they try to kill me? Your thief probably sold my information to the Colombians who hired them to finish the job.” She buried her face in her hands. “I thought that hell was over forever.”

  Danny drew her close, his arms around her. She did not resist.

  “We’ll figure it out and make it right,” he promised. “That’s why we’re here.”

  “But I like Micheline,” she said wearily, her bruised cheek resting against his bulletproof vest. “I love being her. Don’t make me change again.”

  The street appeared quiet, her car parked in the same spot. They drove to an alley behind the shop and marched the Russian in the back door. “We need running water,” Danny said. “A sink, a tub, or toilet.”

  Danny duct-taped the man’s eyes and mouth, handcuffed him to a pipe in a windowless restroom, then stayed with him while Micheline drove the Volvo to a wooded area several miles away. Venturi followed
in her car, wiped the Volvo free of fingerprints, and backed it deep into the trees.

  Danny was alone in the darkened gourmet shop, eating a croissant when they got back.

  “Excellent,” he told Micheline, and held up the croissant. “You bake this yourself?”

  She stared at him and went to check the bathroom.

  “What did he tell you?” Venturi asked.

  “Name’s Viktor. The driver was Sergey. Both from New York. Foot soldiers for the Russian mob. They were in England for Claire Waterson. Then the boss sent them for Micheline. He wasn’t sure why. They were told to kill her, but only after she answered questions about how and why she got here and what she had to do with you.

  “They were supposed to get the questions from the big boss by phone after they had her. That’s why they took her to the roof. The immediate boss and his people in the Mercedes planned to do the interrogation there. When they got their answers, these two were going to throw her off the roof.

  “Another team went to Ireland. Ivan, your burglar, is one of them. Viktor didn’t know about any others.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Had condoms in his pocket,” Danny offered, almost as an aside. “Didn’t want to leave DNA. They were going to rape her before she went off the roof.”

  Micheline appeared in the doorway. “Where is he? The Russian? He’s gone.”

  “Yeah,” Danny said. “He’s gone.”

  She stared at him. “You’d never know he was there. The room is clean, except for the water on the floor.”

  “Sorry, I meant to take care of that before you came back. You made good time. I’ll do it now.” He got to his feet. “Where do you keep the mop?”

  Micheline gingerly opened a closet not far from the restroom.

  “You’re sure he’s gone?”

  “Absolutely, cherie. He learned his lesson and won’t be back.”

  Venturi followed Danny down the hall.

  “She’s back there checking the freezer, and the big oven,” Venturi said. “He isn’t here somewhere, is he?”

  “Of course not.” He looked offended at the suggestion. “Think I’d do that to her?”

  “So, where is he?”

  “A storage warehouse, three doors down. In a locked unit that looks like it hasn’t been opened in years.”