“How’s Paris otherwise?”
“Still the most beautiful city in the world.”
“The most romantic too, I hear,” she said.
“I wouldn’t know about that,” I said. “Things are all business here.”
“Uh-huh,” she said as the elevator dinged open and I got out at the eighth floor. “That’s not what Louis just told me.”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, digging for my key card.
“Gorgeous famous artist and graffiti expert?”
I used the key card and pushed the suite door open, saying, “Oh, her.”
“Yes, her,” Justine said. “Louis says you’re smitten.”
“Take that with a grain of salt. The man is smitten himself about six times a day.” I walked the short hallway into the suite’s living area and set the key card on the table.
“Jack, it’s okay to be smitten.”
“I’m well aware of that,” I replied. I entered the bedroom and headed toward the walk-in closet.
Before she could reply, I heard a squeak behind me before something hit me hard right between the shoulder blades, stunned me, blew the wind out of me, and drove me to my knees.
Chapter 38
THE SECOND BLOW between the shoulder blades caused me to drop the phone, and threw me forward on my stomach, grunting, trying to get my breath.
A black tactical boot appeared in my peripheral vision and crushed the phone while someone grabbed my wrists, pulled them behind my back, and locked them together with zip ties. Still gasping for air, I saw a gloved hand come forward, take my chin, and wrench it down. Another gloved hand stuffed fabric so far into my mouth that I gagged and choked.
I was hauled to my feet and tossed on my back on the bed. Two men wearing jeans, black jackets, and panty hose over their heads to smear their features stood there. The dark-haired guy had a big nose. He also had a suppressed SIG Sauer pistol aimed at me.
The other, a blond guy with pale skin, held a ball-peen hammer in his right hand. In a thick accent, he said, “Here’s how it works, Monsieur Morgan. I take the gag out and you tell me where to find Kim. If you try to yell or if you lie, I will break your kneecap. Understand?”
My breath had come back, and already my senses were searching for a possible counterattack. I found it in attitude. Relaxing my face and softening my eyes, I acted as if I somehow had the upper hand in this negotiation.
“Vous comprenez?” the pale guy demanded.
I bobbed my head. The one with the gun reached over and yanked the gag from my mouth.
“Where is she?”
“Don’t know,” I croaked.
He raised the hammer.
“No, really,” I said. “Last time I saw her, she was running from your terrible shooting skills.”
“Fuck you.”
“If I’d been behind the gun, she would have hit the ground, not some waiter,” I said. “What do I call you, anyway? Since the first time I saw you, I kept thinking of you as ‘Pale Guy.’ So what name do you want? Pale Guy or Whitey?”
Pale Guy stiffened. But the one with the gun snorted, and under his breath he murmured something I barely caught before Whitey said in a reasonable voice, “My name is of no consequence to you, Monsieur Morgan. However, the things I can do, my expertise, in fact, is of total consequence to you.”
He slapped the hammer into his gloved palm. “Do you enjoy walking?”
“One of my favorite pastimes, but as I said, Whitey, I don’t know where Kim Kopchinski is. In case you hadn’t noticed, she’s been trying to avoid me as much as get the fuck away from you. Other than that, go ahead and turn my legs into oatmeal. It’s not going to change my tune. What did she do to you, by the way, that’s got you shooting up Paris?”
Whitey said to the one with the gun, “I believe him.”
“Yeah?”
“Oui,” he said, and then lowered the hammer and came closer to me. “Did you hear? I believe you, Monsieur Morgan.”
“Great. Just a little misunderstanding.”
“Exactly,” Whitey said, again in that reasonable tone. “Tell me. In the time when you were with Kim, was she still smoking and using that lighter she has on a chain around her neck?”
What did that have to do with the price of a croissant?
“She smoked like a chimney,” I said. “The pack of Gauloises was never far from her hand, and she still had the lighter.”
Before Whitey could respond to that, someone began banging loudly on the outer door to the suite.
Chapter 39
“JACK!” I HEARD Louis yell. “Jack, open up!”
Big Nose pivoted and moved out fast. Before following him into the outer room, however, Whitey threw his hammer from close range, hitting me hard and high on the flank of my left leg.
The effect was electric and painful, but I gritted my teeth and rolled off the bed and to my feet, barely able to feel my left butt cheek and thigh. No more than ten seconds had elapsed since Whitey and Big Nose had left the bedroom, but already the suite’s living area was empty. The doors to the balcony were open. Even in the dim light I could tell that it, too, was empty.
What the hell had they done? Jumped seventy feet to the sidewalk?
I limped fast to the door, where Louis was still pounding. Turning my back to the latch arm, I hooked the zip tie on it and pressed down.
Louis almost knocked me over, shoving his way inward.
“Justine was right!” he cried, pulling me back to my feet. “Who did this?”
“Our friend Whitey, and his pal, a guy with a big nose and dark hair,” I said. “You spooked them.”
“Where’d they go?” Louis asked, and I felt a blade slip between my wrists and sever the tie.
“They either jumped or they climbed to the roof,” I said, rubbing my wrists.
“The roof! Come, Jack. With luck we can cut them off!”
“They’ll be long gone,” I said, limping after him.
“Maybe not,” he said. “The footing up there is treacherous when it’s wet.”
Several months before, the Plaza Athénée hired Private Paris to do a complete rethinking of its security system as part of a remodeling of the current hotel and an expansion into three adjoining buildings. Louis had inspected the four structures, cataloging all ways in and out of the future hotel, and in the process developed the new system.
My leg was no longer numb but threatened to charley horse now. But I managed to keep several steps back from Louis as he wound his way through the hallways to a stairwell. He stopped on the landing and looked up at a hatch in the ceiling. It was locked. There was a red plastic tag on the lock hasp.
“That’s my seal,” Louis said. “They didn’t get in this way.”
“How many other ways to the roof are there?”
“One other in the hotel. But six others among the three buildings the hotel bought for the expansion. They’re all empty, ready for interior demolition.”
He started up the ladder, got out his knife, cut the seal, and then dialed in the combination he said was the same on all eight hatches. When he pushed the hatch door open, I heard a whoosh. Wind and light rain blasted down on us.
By the time I got out on the roof, Louis was ahead of me in the low light, moving gingerly across the roof, which was copper, ghostly green, slick, and steeply pitched. To the left, it was an eighty-foot fall to the hotel’s power plant, and to the right, a drop of the same distance into the hotel’s famous courtyard. The windows of the rooms overlooking the courtyard were glowing, giving enough light that when I happened to glance back toward the Avenue Montaigne, I spotted two figures moving around air-conditioning compressors.
“Louis. There they are,” I hissed.
“I know where they’re going,” he said, scrambling over to me. “Back into the hotel through that second hatch.”
We scuttled back to the near hatch, climbed back down the steep ladder, and started to run through the hallways aga
in.
“Call hotel security,” I grunted. The pain in my leg had died to a throb.
“And risk a shoot-out in here?” Louis said. “Excusez-moi, but that’s a bad idea that would probably cost us our lucrative contract with the Plaza. Best thing we can do is let them think they’re home free, and follow them wherever they go.”
It made sense, so I didn’t argue. But by the time we’d reached the second hatch, it was open, and the rain was blowing hard into the stairway. We heard the slap of footsteps several floors below us.
We ran to the elevator. It came up from two floors below. We climbed in and hit the lobby button.
“There are only a few exits and all are on the first floor,” Louis gasped.
The elevator dropped, and then opened, and we spilled out into the loggia, which was even more packed than it had been thirty-five minutes before. I spotted Randall Peaks still at his post. Beyond the Saudi entourage some people moved, revealing Whitey and his companion strolling with their backs to us as if they had not a care in the world.
“They’re going to the crystal bar,” Louis said.
He’d no sooner said that than the two men took a right toward open doors. Just before they disappeared into the bar, Whitey happened to look back and saw us staring right at him from fifty yards away.
Chapter 40
THE NEXT FEW seconds seemed to unfold in slow motion.
Even as Louis and I started to move toward them, Whitey reached under his leather jacket and said something to his comrade, and they both twisted our way, pistols rising amid the happy cocktail hour din.
They each touched off two rounds. I’d expected the sound suppressors to still be on, but they weren’t, and the four loud shots shattered a mirror behind us and a large vase to our left.
Beautiful, rich, and powerful people started screaming and diving for the floor. Whitey and his buddy disappeared into the crystal bar. Louis yanked out his Glock and we started to run forward, jumping over patrons crawling for cover.
Before we could get even close to the bar, Randall Peaks and three other Saudi royal bodyguards blocked the way. They were set up in a defensive semicircle, backs to the terrified princesses. Their guns looked a heck of a lot bigger than Louis’s.
“Drop it or I will shoot,” Peaks roared in French, and then English.
“They were shooting at us!” I yelled. “We’re the good guys, Peaks!”
“Drop the gun now, or I will kill you.”
“Screw you,” Louis said. He turned and began running back the other way.
“Don’t shoot him!” I shouted. “We’re going to the street.”
When I spun around and headed after Louis, however, there was an unmistakable prickle at the back of my neck, a sensation that only happens when there’s a gun aimed my way. Ignoring it, I followed Louis through the lobby and out into the street.
I heard screams down the block. Whitey and the Nose jumped an iron fence that surrounded an outdoor seating area off the bar and were sprinting away from us.
We chased them down the Avenue Montaigne, up the Rue François 1er, and then north on the Rue de Marignan. But my hip was killing me, and they were far younger than Louis. By the time we hit the crowded sidewalks of the Champs-Élysées, we’d lost them.
We trudged back to the Plaza Athénée to find six police cars out front with their lights flashing, and a crowd growing on the sidewalk across from the hotel. At first the police tried to keep us out, but when Louis explained that we were not only witnesses to the shooting but the targets, we were allowed entry.
There were ten, maybe fifteen uniformed officers already inside, and four detectives from La Crim, including Investigateur Hoskins, who took one look at Louis and me and said, “Really? The second night in a row you’re involved in a shoot-out? Really?”
“Calm down, Sharen…investigateur,” Louis said. “They came after Jack. One of these men was the same pale guy who shot up Open Café.”
“That true?” Hoskins asked.
“He wore a pair of panty hose over his head, but I’d put money on it,” I said. “They were looking for the same woman they tried to kill last night.”
“Do we know why they’re after her?”
“Something to do with drugs,” I said.
“They didn’t say anything else to you?”
“Uh, no…wait. Yes. They asked if she was still smoking, and I said like a chimney, and then Louis started banging on the door.”
“Well, just so you know, you’ve both caused an international incident,” Hoskins said. “There were Saudi royals in there when the shooting started.”
“We noticed,” I said.
“If they and their bodyguards weren’t there, I might have caught them,” Louis said. “They blocked us. Threatened to shoot me.”
“What about royal family don’t you understand?” Hoskins asked.
“Last time I looked, France was a European country,” Louis snapped.
“And last time I looked, the Saudis were vital allies of France,” she retorted. “I guarantee I’m going to be hearing all sorts of flak over this.”
“My condolences,” Louis said. “What about Pincus?”
“Nothing more than you knew this morning,” she replied. “You’ll need to come into La Crim in the morning to make a statement. Both of you.”
“First thing,” I promised. “Can I go back to my room?”
“They were wearing gloves?” she asked.
“They were, and, like I said, panty hose over their heads. So I don’t think they left much evidence other than the hammer Whitey threw at me.”
“I’ll send an officer up to collect it,” she said, and then turned away.
It was almost eight when I left Louis. Despite all that had happened, I was going to make my date with Michele Herbert. When I reentered the suite, it felt unprotected, strange, and violated. I double-locked the balcony doors, took a shower, changed clothes, and went back out in less than fifteen minutes.
The police had begun letting witnesses leave, and the loggia was emptying out. The staff was clearly out of sorts, and several of them, including fair Elodie, the concierge, glared at me as I walked through the lobby. I guess word had gotten around that the bad guys had been trying to kill me, and somehow I’d become a villain for aiding in a breach of the Plaza’s legendary decorum.
When I got in the taxi and gave the driver the address and name of the restaurant Michele Herbert had suggested, I tried to compartmentalize and clear my mind, tried to look forward to the artist’s company and several glasses of wine.
But something came back to me, something Whitey had said when they had me semi-hog-tied on the bed. He hadn’t just asked about her smoking: he’d specifically mentioned the lighter on the chain around her neck.
What the hell was that all about?
Chapter 41
11th Arrondissement
10:30 p.m.
A LINE SNAKED down the sidewalk outside Le Chanticleer Rouge. Most of the patrons trying to get into the Red Rooster club were well dressed and attractive couples, plus a few single women.
“Unaccompanied males are not allowed in the club tonight,” called a bouncer who was walking along the line with a short, severe brunette carrying a clipboard and studying everyone they passed.
“You,” she said to a woman with a plunging bust. “You four behind her.”
The bouncer stood back to let the woman and two attractive and now happier couples go forward. He ignored the people complaining that they’d been in line longer. It didn’t matter. The Red Rooster was not a first come, first served kind of place. Like at Studio 54 in Manhattan back in the hero days of disco, you had to be selected to enter.
The bouncer and the “hostess” continued to move along the line, dismissing at least twenty people before stopping in front of a brunette with skin the color of fresh crème and a big black guy.
He wore sunglasses despite the hour and a sharp suit with an open-neck white shirt, and
thin black driving gloves. When he smiled, a gold cap glowed on one of his top front teeth. He could have been anything from a rap mogul to a movie producer to a gangsta on holiday, and he certainly looked nothing like Captain Mfune of the French Army, currently assigned to École de Guerre.
The brunette’s attire only added to the couple’s mystery and allure. She wore green cat-eye contacts and carried a black snakeskin purse. Her sleek gray dress was sleeveless, and she wore black elbow-length gloves, black pumps, black hose, and a black pillbox hat with a modest lace veil.
“You two are in,” the hostess said, and the bouncer directed them forward.
“Told you I knew what it takes to get in here,” she said out of the corner of her mouth as they walked along the line, giving scant attention to the envy and resentment in the faces of those who’d been passed by.
“You called it, Amé,” the captain agreed.
A bouncer pulled open the door, and they were hit by a wave of electronic dance music. They entered an opulent lobby, bypassed a coat check, and went to a cashier’s counter, where Mfune paid the forty euro cover charge.
“You have been here before?” the cashier asked. “Or do you need a tour?”
“I’ve been,” Amé said. “I’ll show my friend the ropes.”
“You’ll find those in the dungeon,” the cashier reminded her, and then looked at the captain. “And please, no cell phones. Not even texting when you are inside. This is to protect your anonymity as well as that of the others who enjoy this refuge from the real world.”
“No cell phones,” Mfune said. “Got it.”
The cashier put neon bands on their wrists and said, “We close at four a.m. tonight, but last call is at three.”
“Good crowd?” Amé asked.
“Very sexy,” the cashier said. “Have fun, and please, no means no.”
“Always.”
Amé led the way through plush red curtains and into a vast space decorated as if it were a fantasy harem encampment in the desert, with palm trees and murals of sand dunes and oases on the high walls. Below them stood arabesque tents, all gold and black, some with their curtains open to reveal beds, and others already closed to wandering eyes.