Central Park

by Guillaume Musso

  That was when they saw it.

  A cast-iron footbridge arching gracefully over the lake, long and cream-colored, subtly decorated with arabesques and flower urns.

  A familiar sight, glimpsed in hundreds of movies.

  Bow Bridge.

  They weren’t in Paris. And they weren’t in Dublin either.

  They were in New York.

  They were in Central Park.

  3

  Central Park West

  JESUS CHRIST!” GABRIEL breathed, while Alice’s face was a picture of astonishment.

  It might have been difficult to admit the reality, but there could no longer be any doubt. They were in the Ramble, the wildest area of Central Park—a genuine thirty-eight-acre forest stretching out north of the lake.

  Their hearts pounded in unison. They approached the bank and arrived at a busy path, typical of the park’s early-morning energy. Joggers coexisted harmoniously with cyclists, tai chi enthusiasts, and people walking dogs. The sounds of a big city seemed to explode in their ears: rumbling traffic, honking horns, screaming fire-engine and police-car sirens.

  “This is insane,” Alice muttered.

  Disoriented, she tried to think. While she and Gabriel had both been very drunk the night before, to the point where they could not remember everything they’d done, it was inconceivable that they could have been put on an airplane against their will. She had often come to New York on vacation with Seymour, her colleague and best friend. She knew that a Paris–New York flight lasted just over eight hours, but given the time difference, one seemed to land only two hours after takeoff. Usually, when she and Seymour flew together, Seymour would book the 8:30 a.m. flight from Charles de Gaulle airport that arrived in New York at 10:30 a.m. The last international flight left Paris just before 8:00 p.m. But at that time the previous evening, she had still been in Paris. Which meant that she and Gabriel had been flown over on a private jet. Assuming they had been put on a plane in Paris at 2:00 a.m., they would have arrived in New York at 4:00 a.m. local time—early enough for them to wake up in Central Park at 8:00 a.m. On paper, it wasn’t impossible. But in reality? Even for a private jet, the red tape involved in entering the United States was complicated. Something did not add up here.

  “Oh, sorry!”

  A young man on Rollerblades had just bumped into them. Mid-apology, he shot a surprised and suspicious look at their handcuffs.

  An alarm went off in Alice’s head.

  “We can’t just stay here like this, in plain sight,” she said. “We’ll be arrested in under a minute.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “Quick, take my hand!”

  “Huh?”

  “Hold my hand—pretend we’re a couple,” she said brusquely. “Now, let’s cross the bridge.”

  This was what they did. The air was crisp and dry. The outlines of Central Park West’s luxurious buildings stood out against the pure blue sky: the two towers of the San Remo, the legendary façade of the Dakota, the art deco apartments of the Majestic.

  “Don’t you think we should tell the police anyway?” Gabriel asked, continuing to move forward.

  “Oh yeah, great idea! Let’s throw ourselves to the lions!”

  “You should listen to the voice of reason, babe—”

  “Call me that again and I’ll strangle you with these handcuffs! I’ll crush your throat until your face turns blue. You won’t spout so much crap when you’re dead.”

  He ignored the threat. “You should at least check in with the French embassy.”

  “Not until we’ve worked out what really happened last night.”

  “Well, don’t count on me to play along with your little game. As soon as we’re out of the park, I’m going to the first police station we see and telling them everything.”

  “Are you really this dumb or are you just pretending? In case you haven’t noticed, we are handcuffed together, you moron! We’re inseparable! So until we find a way to break the chain, you will do as I do.”

  Bow Bridge was a gentle transition between the wild vegetation of the Ramble and the neatly arranged gardens south of the lake. At the end of the bridge, they took the path that ran along the lake up to the granite dome of the Cherry Hill Fountain.

  “I don’t understand—why won’t you go to the cops with me?” Gabriel asked.

  “Because I know what the police will do.”

  “But what gives you the right to drag me into your mess?” the musician protested.

  “How is it my mess? I may be in shit up to my neck, but so are you.”

  “Not at all. I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “Oh yeah? How can you be so sure? I thought you couldn’t remember what happened last night.”

  This reply seemed to throw Gabriel off balance. “Are you saying you don’t believe me?”

  “Why should I? All that bullshit about being in a bar in Dublin? It doesn’t make any sense, Keyne.”

  “It makes about as much sense as your story about going out on the Champs-Élysées! And anyway, you’re the one with blood on your hands. And a gun in your pocket. And—”

  “Yeah, well, at least we can agree on that point,” she interrupted. “I’m the one with the gun, so shut your mouth and do exactly what I tell you, okay?”

  He shrugged and let out a long sigh of irritation.

  Swallowing, Alice felt a burning sensation in her chest and tasted acid at the back of her throat. Stress. Exhaustion. Fear.

  How was she going to get out of this fix?

  She tried to think straight. In France now, it was early afternoon. The guys on her team must have been surprised when she didn’t show up at work this morning. Seymour would have tried calling her cell phone. She had to get in touch with him as soon as possible; he was the one she wanted to investigate this thing. In her head, she began to formulate a checklist: (1) get a hold of the security-camera footage for the Franklin-Roosevelt parking garage; (2) make a list of all the private airplanes that had left Paris for the United States after midnight; (3) locate the place where her Audi had been abandoned; and (4) do a background check on this Gabriel Keyne and find out if he was telling the truth.

  The prospect of this investigative work calmed her down a little. For a long time now, the adrenaline rush she got from her job had been her main fuel. In the past, it had been like a drug, and her addiction to it had wrecked her life, but these days it was the only real reason she had to get out of bed in the mornings.

  She took a deep breath of the cool Central Park air.

  Relieved that the cop inside her was now taking charge, she began to hone her plans: Seymour, under her orders, would investigate the story in France, and she would find out what she could on this side of the Atlantic.

  Still walking hand in hand, Alice and Gabriel reached the triangular garden of Strawberry Fields and exited the park on the west side. The cop kept stealing glances at the musician. She absolutely had to find out who this man was. Was he the one who had cuffed them together? And if so, why?

  He gave her a brazen look. “So what exactly do you have in mind?”

  She replied with a question of her own: “Do you know anyone in this city?”

  “Yeah, actually, one of my best friends lives here—a saxophone player named Kenny Forrest. Unfortunately he’s on tour in Tokyo at the moment.”

  She rephrased her question: “So you don’t know anyone who can help us get out of these handcuffs or give us a place to shower and change our clothes?”

  “No,” he admitted. “How about you?”

  “I live in Paris, I already told you that!”

  “I live in Paris, I already told you that!” he mimicked in a snooty French accent. “Listen, lady, I don’t see how we can avoid going to the police. We have no money, no change of clothes, no way to prove our identities—”

  “Oh, quit whining. Let’s start by getting a cell phone, okay?”

  “And how are we supposed to do that? We don’t have a ce
nt between us!”

  “Simple. We just have to steal one.”

  4

  Handcuffed

  LEAVING THE PARK behind, Alice and Gabriel came out onto the stretch of road known as Central Park West. After only a few yards, they felt like they had been sucked into the whirlwind of urban life—the yellow taxis speeding toward Midtown with their horns squealing, the hollering of hot-dog vendors, the battering of jackhammers.

  No time to lose.

  Alice scrutinized their surroundings. Rising above them on the other side of the avenue was the imposing sand-colored façade of the Dakota, the apartment building in front of which John Lennon had been murdered more than three decades earlier. The edifice looked out of place; with its turrets, gables, dormer windows, and balconies, it was like a Gothic intruder into the Manhattan skyline, a medieval fortress in the middle of the twenty-first century.

  On the sidewalk, a street vendor was selling T-shirts emblazoned with the former Beatle’s face.

  Alice spotted a group of teenagers a dozen yards ahead of her, noisy Spanish tourists taking pictures of themselves with the building in the background. Thirty years later, the legend was still going strong.

  After observing them for a few seconds, she decided on her target and worked out a basic plan of attack. She gestured with her chin at the group. “You see the boy talking on his phone?”

  Keyne scratched the back of his neck. “Which one? Half of them are on their phones.”

  “The little fat one with glasses in the Barcelona shirt.”

  “Seems kind of mean to attack a kid.”

  Alice exploded. “You don’t seem to realize how serious this is, Keyne! He’s at least sixteen and we’re not attacking him, we’re just borrowing his phone.”

  “I’m starving,” he said. “Couldn’t we steal a hot dog instead?”

  She gave him a murderous look. “Stop being such a smart-ass and listen. You are going to walk very close to me. When we’re right in front of the kid, you push me into him, and as soon as I grab the phone, we get the hell out of here. Understood?”

  Gabriel nodded. “Sounds easy enough.”

  “Easy? You’ll see how easy it is to run when you’re handcuffed to someone.”

  Everything went according to plan—while the teenager was still off balance, Alice snatched his phone, then yelled at Gabriel, “Run!”

  The white Walk signal was flashing. They took advantage of this to cross and disappear down the first side street. Running in handcuffs turned out to be even harder than Alice had feared. Not only did they have to try to match their strides, but there was a considerable height difference to deal with. And with every step they took, the steel bracelets dug painfully into their wrists.

  “They’re following us!” Gabriel shouted, looking back over his shoulder.

  Alice turned and saw the group of Spanish teenagers hot on their heels.

  Damn it!

  She nodded and they increased their pace. They were running down Seventy-First Street, a typically calm Upper West Side block lined by elegant apartment buildings and brownstones. The sidewalks were wide and free of tourists, enabling them to move quickly. The teenagers were not giving up, though, continuing to sprint after the thieves and yelling at passersby to help them.

  Columbus Avenue.

  More crowds—shops opening for the day, cafés beginning to fill up, students filing out of the neighboring subway station.

  “Go left!” Gabriel shouted, veering suddenly to the side.

  The change of direction took Alice by surprise. Knocked off balance, she cried out as the handcuffs cut into her skin.

  They ran south down the avenue, pushing past other pedestrians, overturning several display stands, and almost crushing a Yorkshire terrier.

  Too many people.

  Dizziness. Head spinning. A stitch tearing at her side. To avoid the crowd, they tried running a few yards along the road.

  Bad idea.

  They were nearly hit by a taxi. Brakes screaming, the driver leaned on his horn and yelled a torrent of insults at them. Attempting to get back on the sidewalk, Alice caught her foot on the curb. Again, the handcuffs sliced into her wrist. Her momentum sent her flying headfirst to the ground, dragging Gabriel down with her. The collision took her breath away and she dropped the cell phone that had been the cause of all this trouble.

  Shit!

  Moving fast, Gabriel grabbed the phone. “Get up!”

  They got to their feet and glanced back again at their pursuers. Most of the group had fallen behind, but two of the teenagers were still racing after them, undoubtedly hoping to come out victorious in a chase through Manhattan that would amaze all their friends back home.

  “Those little bastards can run, I’ll give them that!” Gabriel hissed. “I’m too old for this shit.”

  “Keep going!” Alice urged, forcing him to match her stride.

  Every yard was torture, but they ran through the pain, hand in hand. Ten yards, fifty yards, a hundred yards. A jerky series of images flashed past them: steam rising from manholes, metal ladders leaning against brick façades, children making faces through a school bus’s windows. And always that succession of glass-and-concrete buildings, that profusion of store logos and advertising billboards.

  Sixty-Seventh Street. Sixty-Sixth Street.

  Their wrists were bleeding, their lungs burning, but still they kept running. Driven by the adrenaline in their bloodstreams and the kids on their heels, they found their second wind. Their movements started to synchronize and become more fluid. They reached the point where Columbus met Broadway. Here, the avenue was transformed into a gigantic intersection of three roads and multiple lanes of traffic. They only had to exchange one look.

  “Now!”

  Taking their lives into their hands, they ran diagonally across the intersection amid a cacophony of screeching tires and car horns.

  Between Sixty-Fifth and Sixty-Second Streets, the entire western part of Broadway was occupied by Lincoln Center, built around the Metropolitan Opera House. Alice looked up to get her bearings. Several stories high, the glass-and-steel prow of a gigantic ship protruded over the avenue.

  She recognized the Juilliard School; she had been here before with Seymour. On the upper floors, behind glass walls, ballerinas practiced and musicians rehearsed.

  “The parking garage!” she exclaimed, gesturing at a concrete ramp that sloped down.

  Gabriel nodded. Stealthily, they went down the ramp, standing aside whenever a car climbed past them heading for the exit. One level belowground, they used a final burst of energy to run across the entire lot, then took the stairs to an emergency exit that came out three blocks away, in the little enclave of Damrosch Park.

  Emerging at last into the open air, they were relieved to discover that their pursuers had disappeared.

  Leaning against the low wall that circled the esplanade, Alice and Gabriel felt as if they would never get their breath back. Both were sweating and crippled with pain.

  “Hand me the phone,” she said, gasping.

  “Oh, shit, I…I must have dropped it!” He groaned, hand searching his pocket.

  “I can’t believe it! You—”

  “Just kidding.” He grinned and passed her the cell phone.

  Alice gave him an icy stare and was about to launch into a tirade, when her mouth was suddenly filled with a metallic taste. Her head spun and she felt nauseated. Bending over a window box, she spat out a thin trickle of bile.

  “You need water.”

  “What I need is food.”

  “I told you we should have stolen a hot dog!”

  They walked carefully to a drinking fountain to quench their thirst. Bordered by the New York City Ballet and the immense glass arches of the Metropolitan Opera, Damrosch Park was busy enough that nobody took any notice of them. Workers were putting up tents and podiums on the main square in preparation for an event.

  After drinking a few mouthfuls of water, Alice look
ed at the phone, checked that it was not protected by a code, and called Seymour’s cell.

  While she waited for him to answer, she trapped the phone in the hollow of her shoulder and massaged the back of her neck. Her heart was still hammering in her chest.

  Pick up, Seymour…

  Seymour Lombart was the second in command of the investigative team that Alice led. Alice, Seymour, and five other cops made up the “Schafer squad,” which shared four small offices on the third floor of 36 Quai des Orfèvres.

  Alice checked her watch, calculating the time difference. It was 2:20 p.m. in Paris now.

  The cop picked up after three rings, but the clamor of voices behind him made conversation difficult. If Seymour was not in the office, he must still be eating lunch.

  “Seymour?”

  “Alice? Where are you? I left you a bunch of messages.”

  “I’m in Manhattan.”

  “What? Are you kidding?”

  “I need your help, Seymour.”

  “Sorry, I’m having trouble hearing you.”

  It was the same for her. Bad connection. Her deputy’s voice sounded distorted, almost metallic. “Where are you, Seymour?”

  “At the Caveau du Palais, on Place Dauphine. Listen, let me go to the office and I’ll call you back in five minutes, okay?”

  “Okay. You have the number?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Great. But hurry up. I’ve got work for you.” Frustrated, Alice hung up and held out the cell phone to the musician. “If you want to call someone, do it now. You have five minutes.”

  Gabriel looked at her strangely. In spite of the urgency and the danger, he couldn’t help smiling. “Do you always order people around like this?”

  “Don’t start,” she warned him. “Do you want the phone or not?”

  Gabriel took it from her and thought for a few seconds. “I’m going to call my friend Kenny.”

  “The saxophone player? I thought you said he was in Tokyo.”

  “If we’re lucky, he might have left the keys to his apartment with a neighbor or a super. Do you know what time it is in Japan?” he asked as he typed in the number.