Personal (11 page)

The woman with the computers was on her knees, groaning rather than screaming, scrabbling her way back inside to the dining room, head down. The old cop in the blue battledress uniform was standing stock still, exactly where he had been all along, exposed from the waist up. Which I thought was OK, because I was sure the rifleman wasn’t about to stick around for any length of time. Not in the centre of Paris. I knelt up and peered over the parapet and tried to fix where I had seen the muzzle flash. I closed my eyes and saw it again, just left of the old hospital, therefore even further away, in a roof window maybe six flights up.

I opened my eyes and checked. Either the Boulevard de Latour-Maubourg, or a small street behind it, a grey mansard roof, and what would inevitably be an oval Beaux Arts window, intricately framed with stone. Sixteen hundred yards away, maybe. Close to a mile. A seventeen-minute walk, at normal speed. I spun around and got up and hurdled the computer woman, who was still on her knees, and I hustled through the dining room and the salon and the hallway and the lobby, and down all the stairs to the courtyard, and out to the street.

I didn’t head for Les Invalides. No point. I figured the shooter had already left, and for every minute I spent getting there, he would have the same minute to get further away. I heard sirens in the distance, the staid and plaintive
beep boop
the French still used, lots of them. So where was the guy heading? Not north, I thought. And not in a car. Because of the sirens. The river bridges were bottlenecks. No way off them, except the water. And the police had boats, too. So he would come on foot, south, or west of south. Not east of south, because the Gare Montparnasse railroad station lay in that direction, and public transportation was the second thing the cops would flood, right after the bridges. For the same reason the guy would avoid the Métro. He was on surface streets, on foot, by now a couple hundred yards into it, alongside the Ecole Militaire, maybe, which would put him on either the Avenue de la Motte-Picquet, or the Avenue Lowendal.

I used the rue de Sèvres, not running, because passing cops would be jumpy, but certainly striding out with pace and determination. Much faster than the other guy would be going, for sure. He would be sauntering, no hurry, no particular place to go, the picture of innocence. But carrying what? No proven .50-calibre sniper rifle broke down into separate components. Not without a saw and a blowtorch. Most were about five feet long and weighed north of thirty pounds. A Persian carpet? A bolt of cloth? Or had he hidden it somewhere?

I turned on to Boulevard Garibaldi, and figured by that point the guy must be about three hundred yards ahead of me, crossing my path in the far distance, so I pushed on hard, three fast minutes, until I came to the rue de la Croix-Nivert, which was the continuation of the Avenue Lowendal, which meant a long block ahead was the rue du Commerce, which was the continuation of the Avenue de la Motte-Picquet. The guy must have gone down one of them, southwest, into the heart of the 15th arrondissement, where all was safe and comfortable.

I chose the first turn, because in the end I figured Lowendal would have felt better than the Motte-Picquet, because it put the bulk of the Ecole Militaire between the guy and the loudest sirens, which would have been the fast-response crews coming from the Eiffel Tower. So I turned and accelerated and stared ahead into the grey distance and cannoned into a small guy hurrying in the opposite direction. I caught a glimpse of him before I slammed into him and got the impression he was Asian, maybe Vietnamese, much older than expected from his lively pace, and then on impact he felt wiry and solid and surprisingly heavy.

I slowed a step to let him bounce off, hoping he would stay on his feet, whereupon I could just beg his pardon and move on with minimum delay. But he didn’t bounce off. He clung on tight, folds of my jacket clenched in his hands, pulling downward, like he was weak in the knees. I staggered forward a step, bent over a little, trying not to tread on his feet, and he pulled me in a counterclockwise part-circle, and then he kind of leaned on me and started pushing me towards the kerb.

Then he hit me.

He detached his right hand from my jacket and drew it back and folded his fingers into a classic rabbit-punch shape and aimed it down towards my groin. Which could have been a major problem, except that I flinched fast enough and the blow caught me just inboard of my hip bone, which was a sensitive spot in its own right. It spiked some kind of a nerve jolt down my leg, and my foot went numb for a second, and the guy must have sensed it, because he started shoving me again with all his strength, which was not inconsiderable. Behind me I could hear traffic, real close. A narrow Paris street, average speed about forty, nine drivers out of ten on their cell phones.

Enough.

I caught the guy by the throat, one-handed, and I pushed him away, arm’s length, further than he could reach with his fists. He could have kicked me, but then, I could have been squeezing harder, and he seemed to understand that. I started to march him backward.

Which is when the cops showed up.

EIGHTEEN

THERE WERE TWO
of them, both young, just regular street cops in a small car, in cheap blue uniforms not very different from the sanitation workers or the street sweepers. But their badges were real, and their guns were real. And the scenario unfolding right in front of them was indisputable. A giant white man was choking a small Asian senior and frog-marching him backwards across the sidewalk. Which was what politicians would call bad optics. So I stopped walking, obviously, and I let the guy go.

The guy ran away.

He dodged left, and dodged right, and was lost to sight. The cops didn’t go after him. Which made sense. He was the victim, not the perpetrator. The perpetrator was right there in front of them. They didn’t need the victim’s evidence, because they themselves had been actual eyewitnesses. Done deal, right there. I had a fifth of a second to make up my mind. Should I stay or should I go? In the end I figured the power of O’Day would protect me either way, and just as fast. And by that point the rifleman was long gone for sure. And staying would avoid getting all out of breath. So I stayed.

They arrested me there and then, on the sidewalk outside a tobacconist’s store, for what seemed to be a variety of offences, including assault, battery, hate crimes, and elder abuse. They crammed me in the back of their car and drove me to a station house on the rue Lecourbe. The desk people searched me and took away Scarangello’s cell phone, and my new passport, and my toothbrush, and my bank card, and all my American cash, and Casey Nice’s empty pill bottle. Then they put me in a holding cell with two other guys. One was drunk and the other was high. I made the drunk guy give up his spot on the bench. Better to establish the pecking order early. It would save him trouble in the long term. I sat down in his place, and I leaned against the wall, and I waited. I figured I would be in the system inside twenty minutes, and I was sure Scarangello would be looking hard by then.

It took her an hour to find me. She came with the silver-haired guy in the good suit, who seemed to be a known quantity in those parts. All the cops in the place leapt to attention. A minute later I had my stuff back in my pockets, and a minute after that we were out on the sidewalk. I was free and clear. Such was the power of O’Day. Scarangello got in the back of the same black Citroën she had used from Le Bourget, and I climbed in after her, and the guy in the suit stayed on the sidewalk and closed the door on us, and he called out to the driver in French and said, ‘Take them straight to the airport.’ The car took off fast and I craned around and saw the guy watch us go for a second, and then duck back inside the station house.

Scarangello said, ‘Why did you run?’

I said, ‘I didn’t run. I don’t like running. I walked.’

‘Why?’

‘I’m here as your cop. I was looking for the guy. That’s what cops do.’

‘You were nowhere near. You were in the wrong neighbourhood entirely.’

‘I figured he hadn’t stuck around.’

‘You were wrong.’

‘So what happened?’

‘They got him. And his rifle.’

‘They
got
him?’

‘He waited right there.’

‘Which one was it?’

‘None of them. It was a Vietnamese kid about twenty years of age.’

‘And what was the rifle?’

‘An AK-47.’

‘That’s bullshit.’

She said, ‘In your opinion.’

I started to say something, but she held up her hand. She said, ‘Don’t tell me anything. I don’t want the raw data. There could be subpoenas flying around by tomorrow. Safer for me not to know. I’m going to wait for the official statement.’

I said, ‘I was going to ask if you mind if we take a little detour.’

‘The plane is waiting.’

‘It can’t leave without us.’

‘Where do you want to go?’

I leaned forward and said to the driver in French, ‘Head for the Bastille and turn right.’

The guy thought for a second and said, ‘On Roquette?’

‘All the way to the end,’ I said. ‘Then wait at the gate.’

‘Yes, sir,’ he said.

Scarangello turned to quiz me again, but her focus fell short, on the shoulder of my jacket. The red and grey slick, now dark brown and purple, and on closer examination flecked with fine shards of white bone. She said, ‘What’s that?’

I said, ‘Just a guy I used to know.’

‘That’s disgusting.’

‘It’s raw data.’

‘You need a new jacket.’

‘This is a new jacket.’

‘You have to get rid of it. We’ll go buy you another one. Right now.’

‘The plane is waiting.’

‘How long can it take?’

‘This is France,’ I said. ‘Nothing in the stores is going to fit me.’

She said, ‘Where are we going?’

‘Something I want to do before we leave.’

‘What?’

‘I want to take a walk.’

‘Where?’

‘You’ll see.’

We crossed the Seine on the Pont d’Austerlitz, and hooked a left on the Boulevard de la Bastille, and headed up towards the monument itself, fast and fluent through the traffic, as if the driver was using lights and siren, although he wasn’t. The monument was the hub of a crazy traffic circle, called the Place de la Bastille, just as bad as all the others in Paris, and the fourth of its ten exits was the rue de la Roquette, which led basically east, straight to the cemetery gate.

‘Père Lachaise,’ Scarangello said. ‘Chopin is buried here. And Molière.’

‘And Edith Piaf and Jim Morrison,’ I said. ‘From the Doors.’

‘We don’t have time for tourism.’

‘Won’t take long,’ I said.

The driver parked at the gate and I got out. Scarangello came with me. There was a wooden booth that sold maps to all the famous graves. Like Hollywood, with the stars’ homes. We walked in, on a wide gritty path, and turned left and right past elaborate mausoleums and white marble headstones. I navigated by memory, from a sullen grey winter morning many years previously. I walked slow, pausing occasionally, checking, until I found the right place, which was now a strip of lawn, green with new spring grass, studded with headstones, broad and low. I found the right one. It was pale, and barely weathered at all, with two lines of inscription still crisp and precise:
Joséphine Moutier Reacher, 1930–1990
. A life, sixty years long. I had arrived exactly halfway through it. I stood there, hands by my side, with another man’s blood and brains on my jacket.

‘Family?’ Scarangello asked.

‘My mother,’ I said.

‘Why is she buried here?’

‘Born in Paris, died in Paris.’

‘Is that how you know the city so well?’

I nodded. ‘We came here from time to time. And then she lived here after my father died. On the Avenue Rapp. The other side of Les Invalides. I visited when I could.’

Scarangello nodded and went quiet for a spell, maybe out of respect. She stood next to me, shoulder to shoulder. She asked, ‘What was she like?’

I said, ‘Petite, dark-haired but blue-eyed, very feminine, very obstinate. But generally happy. She made the best of things. She would walk into some dumpy Marine quarters somewhere and laugh and smile and say,
’Ome sweet ’ome
. She couldn’t say the letter
H
because of her accent.’

Scarangello said, ‘Sixty is not very old. I’m sorry.’

‘We get what we get,’ I said. ‘She didn’t complain.’

‘What was it?’

‘Lung cancer. She smoked a lot. She was French.’

‘This is Père Lachaise.’

‘I know.’

‘I mean, not everyone gets buried here.’

‘Obviously,’ I said. ‘It would get pretty crowded.’

‘I mean, it’s like an honour.’

‘War service.’

Scarangello looked at the headstone again. ‘Which war?’

‘World War Two.’

‘She was fifteen when it ended.’

‘They were desperate times.’

‘What did she do?’

‘Resistance work. Allied airmen shot down in Holland or Belgium were funnelled south through Paris. There was a network. Her part was to escort them from one railroad station to the next, and send them on their way.’

‘When?’

‘Most of 1943. Eighty trips, they say.’

‘She was thirteen years old.’

‘Desperate times,’ I said again. ‘A schoolgirl was good cover. She was trained to say the airmen were her uncles or brothers, visiting from out of town. Generally they were disguised like peasants or clerks.’

‘She was risking her life. And her family’s life.’

‘Every day. But she took care of business.’

Scarangello said, ‘This information wasn’t in your file.’

‘No one knew. She didn’t talk about it. I’m not even sure my father knew. After she died we found a medal. Then an old guy came to the funeral and told us the story. He was her handler. I assume he’s dead now, too. I haven’t been back since we buried her. This is the first time I’ve seen the stone. I guess my brother organized it.’

‘He chose well.’

I nodded. A modest memorial, for a modest woman. I closed my eyes and remembered the last time I had seen her alive. Breakfast, with her two grown sons, in her apartment on the Avenue Rapp. The Berlin Wall was coming down. She was very sick by that point, but had summoned the will to dress well and act normal. We drank coffee and ate croissants. Or at least my brother and I did, while she hid her lack of appetite behind talking. She chattered about all kinds of things, people we had known, places we had been, things that had happened there. Then she had gone quiet for a spell, and then she had given us a pair of final messages, which were the same messages she had always given us. Like a motherly ritual. She had done it a thousand times. She had struggled up out of her chair and stepped over and put her hands on my brother Joe’s shoulders, from behind, which was all part of the choreography, and she had bent and kissed his cheek from the side, like she always did, and she had asked him, ‘What don’t you need to do, Joe?’