Joe said, “I really am going to let you go. I’m at the Raphael, and I have an office here. I’ll write the numbers down.” He pulled a business card out of his pants pocket and scribbled on it. “Listen, if you want to talk or anything, or get some food, I don’t want to pry, but you look like a guy who’s not feeling so great. Whatever it is, I could maybe help.”
“You’re still good at fixing things?”
“I try.”
I got up. We shook hands, punched each other on the shoulder like American guys do. I said, “I’ll call.”
“You take care, Artie.”
“Yeah.”
Fallon zipped up his jacket. “Hey.”
“What?”
“You still love Stan Getz?”
5
“Lily?”
There was a muscle that twitched in her cheek. Once I imagined I could see her left eye flicker. Later that morning, after I ate breakfast with Joe Fallon, I sat with Lily. She wanted something from me; I felt she wanted to tell me something. I sat by her bed and stared at her face, but it was blank and she was locked up inside her own body, plugged into life-supports, silent. When I leaned over her, the down on her eyelids seemed to flutter in my breath.
In a corridor near Lily’s room, I found Dr Lariot. I couldn’t meet his eyes, I was too scared of what I might see, so I kept my eyes fixed on the plastic name-tag on his coat and said, “I want to take her home. To New York.”
She wants to go home I told him, but it was me who wanted it. I wanted my life back. Lariot put out his hand and I shook it, and finally I looked up at him, a mild-looking guy, going bald, dark-brown skin. Around us people rushed up and down the hospital corridor.
I dug in my pants for some cigarettes. “Can I take her home?”
“Absolutely not. You can’t smoke in here either.”
“Why not?”
“It’s terribly risky, moving her. Please believe me, this is not a good idea.”
Holding the unopened pack of cigarettes, I stood in the corridor and looked at him.
“Let’s go outside,” he said. “I could use one of those.”
In the hospital courtyard, in a garden where there was frost on the grass, we smoked and walked. It was after eleven, but barely light; only a smudge of gray showed in the sky. Winter.
“What if it helps her? What if it helps to be at home?”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to face it one way or another. I think it’s going to be an enormous battle just to keep her alive. And even then it will be difficult.”
“Even then what?”
“Even then there’s a lot to cope with.”
“You don’t think she’ll make it, you mean.”
“I don’t know.”
“She’ll make it.” I wanted to grab his lapels and shake him and make him agree with me.
“There’s a child? In America?”
“Yes.”
“You’ll need some help.”
“I could use your help.”
“We’re doing everything we can,” he said in an officious voice.
“How?”
He tossed the cigarette into a patch of snow. “I’m sorry you’re unhappy.”
“Everyone’s just sitting around, and she’s lying there.”
“There’s nothing we can do except wait.”
“I can’t do that. I can’t do nothing. Maybe there’s some other doctors I can talk to. There has to be someone.”
He was offended. “If you like,” he said. “That’s fine. Do as you like, Mr Cohen, but it won’t make any difference.”
“That’s pretty fucking harsh.”
“Yes.”
“How the hell do you know what’s inside her head?”
Lariot stiffened. He crossed his arms over his white coat. “It’s all about time, and to tell you the truth,” he said, his voice edgy now, irritated, angry at me, “if she doesn’t come out of the coma soon, she may not come out at all.”
“Just another number to you guys, win some, lose some. Right?” I was mad at Lariot because I knew he was telling the truth.
I left the courtyard and went through the hospital to the street entrance. My phone rang. It was Carol Browne.
Christ, I thought. Just what I need. Carol fucking Browne, European chief for Keyes Security. She worked out of London, where I’d met her, and she was coming to Paris. She wanted a meeting.
She was a frosty little woman and she sounded pissed off. In the street I leaned against the hospital wall and listened to Browne and pictured her at the other end.
She was twenty-nine, small and efficient with big glasses and a faint, patronizing smile. Some of the guys at the Keyes London office referred to her, behind her back, as the Garden Gnome. She talked the language of focus groups and marketing. She looked like a woman who went to the gym every day.
Carol Browne’s smug voice dripped into my ear. Coming out of the hospital where I’d already offended the doctor, I thought: let it lie, man. It’s a job. You need the money. You’re freelance. Suck up a little.
“How are you, Carol?”
“Look, I’m not going to mince words. I’m coming over.”
“That’s nice.”
“Don’t bullshit with me, Artie. I’m terribly sorry about Lily. It’s dreadful. The New York office is sorry. If there is anything we can do to help her, we will. So I thought I’d better say that first of all.”
In my jacket pocket I found another cigarette, lit it with one hand, inhaled it like a drug while I listened to her and watched people mince past cautiously, trying not to slip. The pavement was slick as glass. It was Friday. I’d arrived in Paris early Wednesday morning. I was tired. I tried to focus on the conversation.
“Thank you,” I said.
“We’ve got to close the Levesque case. I had a talk to New York. It’s dragging on. It’s open and shut, this one, isn’t it, Artie? We know how he died, we’ve got his bank statements, all we need is to know who forged his bloody signature. We paid for your trip to Europe. It was a favor to the New York office, you know. We haven’t got anything more than we did when you arrived in London.”
I kept my mouth shut.
“I know it’s not the best time for you, but it’s a business. Our client hired us to check through all the records and find the forger. It’s a simple paper trail, I’d have thought.”
I listened to her, heard the whiney, arrogant British voice and I lost it. “Listen, Carol, just tell me what the hell you’re saying.”
“I’m saying if I don’t get something from you in a week, which is more than reasonable, you’re off this job. Not just here, either. I talked to New York. You can call them yourself if you like.” In the background I could hear her tapping on her computer, hitting the keys hard. Tap tap tap. “I’m sorry,” she added.
I pictured her mean small face again, the pointed chin, the frizzy hair, the supercilious look. But I needed the work to keep me in Paris. I needed the money to take care of Lily and Beth. I needed the company credit card to pay the hotel. For once in my life, I bit my tongue literally, bit it until it stung, tossed my half-smoked cigarette into the gutter.
“I’m on it today,” I bluffed. “Look, I have a lead. I wasn’t going to tell you until I ran it down, but I have a lead.”
“What?”
“I have a lead.”
“Come off it, Artie. You haven’t a thing on Levesque, and I’m putting someone else on it as soon as someone comes free.”
“Carol?”
“What?”
“Who hired Keyes? Who wanted the Levesque thing looked at?” I’d asked in New York, but no one was talking.
“Maybe the bank. Maybe someone private. There was a request for anonymity. We never ask. Anyway, it came through the New York office.”
“So it could be some criminal who hired you, or some Nazi thug or any other kind of creep.”
“Sure. Or some corporation. Or some crazy rich guy. We’re not the police. We’re i
n business.”
“Sure you are,” I said, but I was already walking to the Metro.
“I’m taking you off the bloody case, all right? I called to cut you some slack. You’re not in any condition. I’ll make it nice when I report to New York, but you know what, Artie?”
“What?”
“We’ve got to close this, and you’re just not a closer.” The contempt flowed through the phone.
“You’ll have the goods later today,” I said, switched off my phone and got the subway.
I got lost. I got the Metro to the suburb where the bank was. I got off at the wrong stop, then found myself heading across a small park where bare branches snapped in the wind and leaves crackled underfoot. I was in a hurry. Carol Browne was cutting me loose. Lily needed help; I had to get her home.
In Puteaux there was a hustle of activity: twenty-somethings in great outfits hurrying to modern buildings after lunch; fancy restaurants spilling confident, busy, French people onto the sidewalk. They looked like advertising guys and women who worked at magazines, people with things on their mind and money in their pockets. The weekend was coming up. They had plans. Thin but sleek, they yelled into phones, laughed together, crossed the street against the light. A waiter outside a café stared at the bleak sky, sneaking a smoke. Lunch was over.
The bank I was looking for was in the middle of the shopping street. In the lull after lunch, only a few customers were doing business, writing deposit slips, waiting for a teller, women mostly, an old lady with her middle-aged daughter, a mother and twins, six or seven years old, all three in matching pink parkas.
The tellers worked behind a marble counter. The way the bank was set up, it would be easy to write the check, give it to a teller, then slip out before some manager arrived to ask any questions. I looked at the ceiling. There were no obvious surveillance cameras.
Someone with balls. You had to be pretty arrogant or really stupid to walk through the door, saunter in, write out a check on somebody’s account, give it to the teller. I had already called the branch but no one was talking, so I figured it wasn’t the bank who put Keyes on the job. At the bank, someone would remember. Hard to forget a guy who comes in and forges a check for twenty thousand on a dead man’s account.
I got a deposit slip, filled it out and wrote a check to Eric Levesque. It was a pretty desperate idea, but I thought it might alert somebody high up or get them riled. At least I’d get a conversation.
I found a teller. The marble ledge where I leaned was cool and the girl behind the grille had her back to me, so I pushed the check through and waited. When she finally turned around, she was a tiny, pretty girl who smiled flirtatiously. Glancing at the check and the deposit slip, she punched a few keys into her computer. Her little face puffed out with stupidity as she fidgeted with her hair and fingered the collar of her blue blouse. She asked me to wait.
A few minutes later, a middle-aged man in a blue suit emerged through a door to the right of the tellers. His name was Stuart Larkin, he said in English with a Scottish accent. Branch manager. Shook my hand, then escorted me up a flight of stairs and into his office, industrial carpet on the floor, a tray of coffee on the desk and a TV and video player. For a few minutes we danced around each other.
Larkin, who was around fifty, had the good-natured face of a bureaucrat who looked open and gave away nothing at all.
I told him who I was and who I worked for. He was evasive. He poured the coffee, we exchanged useless information.
“You’re from Keyes?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want to tell me who hired Keyes?”
I was silent.
Larkin laughed. “No names?”
“Sorry. By the way, I didn’t see any surveillance cameras downstairs.”
“We have cameras.”
“You have cameras, how about a tape with pictures on it?”
He said, “I have tapes.”
“But you want to know who hired Keyes.” I wasn’t going to tell him I didn’t know who hired Keyes, so I bluffed. “I can’t tell you about the client. It’s illegal.” It was hot in the office. I needed answers. “Can I smoke?”
“Go ahead.”
“Thanks.”
“It was you who traced the address where Levesque’s statements went? The post office box in California.”
“Yes.”
“Our security people are on it, of course,” he said. “They’re pretty damn good.” He was faking. “We’ve had handwriting experts, we’ve determined the signature was a forgery. I’d like very much to help you, but it’s just not in my gift.”
I couldn’t ruffle him. He had faced down a thousand angry customers, he could out-sit you, out-bore you, could drink coffee without answering anything until you were out of your mind and it was five o’clock and time for him to go home.
I had training, though. I grew up in the capital of bland bureaucracy. I could remember how to wait. In Moscow, even as a kid, you learned to wait. You waited in line, at shops, at school, for everything. In my family, after a while, you waited to leave the country. I could out-wait anyone if I had to. Larkin and me, we sat and drank the coffee and I kept my mouth shut.
He said, “I hate French coffee.”
“You’re Scottish?”
He nodded.
“They make good coffee there?”
“Worse than this.”
“What town?”
“Glasgow.”
“Nice?”
“That depends.”
“What on?”
“Look, Mr Cohen, I know you don’t want my advice on your next holiday destination.” He pulled open a desk drawer, removed a brown envelope, slit it open, pulled out a video cassette, held it up.
“Surveillance tape?”
He nodded. “This bloody coffee’s cold.” He picked up his phone and asked for a fresh pot.
“Can I have the tape?”
“I doubt it.”
“What would it take?”
“I imagine it might be possible to make you a copy at some point.”
“What do you want?”
Larkin’s secretary brought the coffee. He lifted the lid and smelled it. “It would take your telling me what you really know about Levesque.”
I climbed out of the armchair and went to the window. It was snowing. When I turned around, Larkin was perched on the edge of his desk, leaning forward. He was going to confide.
“To tell the truth, we’re fairly stumped here,” he said.
“You haven’t had your people on this long, have you?”
He didn’t answer.
I said, “We, by we I mean Keyes, we’ve done the paper trail. His contacts, business associates, friends. There weren’t many. He was some kind of freelance investment guy, lived out on the California coast most of the time, a loner.” I paused. “But you knew all that because we shared it with you, and you didn’t share anything back at all.” I kept on bluffing. I didn’t know what Larkin knew.
“I admire your ingenuity, Mr Cohen, writing out a check to M. Levesque. That way, rather than some low-level bank clerk, you knew the relevant executive would see you. You knew you’d get my attention.”
“I tried the phone.”
“I’ve been driven more than a wee bit mad by all this to tell you the truth. We can’t have people coming in and trying to rip off twenty thousand dollars from one of our customers even if he is dead. I know Keyes are excellent. I’d be grateful for anything you have.”
I yawned. I was drowning here in doublespeak and unless I put out, he wasn’t going to give an inch. I wanted the video tape.
He looked up. “Am I boring you, then?”
“Yeah. You are. You’re boring me with this cat and mouse stuff, and frankly, I came here to share some information, but you don’t want to share, so I’ll just say so long.”
Slowly, I crushed out my smoke in the saucer of my coffee cup. Larkin took a call about a mortgage.
I excused mysel
f, went to the bathroom, tried to call the hospital where there was no news, and Gourad, who wasn’t at his station house. There was a message from Carol Browne to call her hotel before six. I called the hotel and left her a message, I was making progress, I’d be with her. I knew I was going to have to give Larkin something.
I went back to his office. I smiled. He smiled. I put on my jacket.
He stood up. “You said you had information.”
I nodded.
“Sit down, please.” From his bottom drawer he took a bottle of single malt. “It’s Friday, the end of the week, can I offer you a small drink?”
I sat down. “Make it a big one.”
“With pleasure.” Larkin sat down, found a couple of glasses, poured us both a hefty shot. I could see from the way he knocked it back that he was a drinker. Maybe even a drunk.
I said, “Why would anyone try to withdraw money on a dead man’s account and think he was going to get away with it?”
“Because he wasn’t aware the man was dead?” Larkin said.
“That’s what I thought at first.” The whisky was delicious. “But he had Levesque’s check, he had some idea of the signature. He must have known Levesque to get as far as he did, why didn’t he try faking it right? If he knew Levesque that well, wouldn’t he know Levesque was dead, and he didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of getting any of the dough?”
“I see what you mean.”
“So maybe our forger didn’t really want the money.”
Larkin’s bland façade broke. He refilled my glass, then his own. “That’s bloody brilliant. But why?”
“You tell me.”
“God, our own security people are all bloody worse than useless, desk men, they think you can do it with computers. If they have to get off their fat arses for half a day, it constitutes over-time.” He tossed back his drink. “I’m sorry.”
“I know how you feel.”
“Who hired Keyes, then?”
“It really was on an anonymous basis. I don’t know.”
“Is that the truth?”
“Yeah.”
Larkin ran his hand over the video tape. “If he didn’t want the money …”
Skin Trade Page 6
