Paris Ransom

by Charles Rosenberg

  I realized Jenna was staring at me. “Bottom line, Robert, I’m not doing it. And by the way, weren’t you the managing partner of a thousand-lawyer law firm? Doing that for all those years must’ve given you some backbone. Just suck it up and do it.”

  “Okay, okay. I’ll do it.”

  Captain Bonpere had been listening to our exchange with interest. “As long as one of you does it,” she said. “Tell us if you reach her.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Captain Bonpere called a cab for us. I guess when the police call, even at three in the morning on New Year’s Day, the cabs come. At first, the cab driver didn’t want to let us get in, because our clothes were still soaking wet. But the policeman at the gate told him that he would take us, and he did. Tess got in front, and Jenna and I squished our way into the back.

  “You need to call her,” Jenna said.

  “Maybe this isn’t the best place.” I motioned toward the cab driver. “Even the walls have ears.”

  “This wall speaks English,” the cab driver said. “But this cab is equipped with a privacy shield. Do you want me to raise it?”

  “Tess, you won’t be able to hear if we do that,” I said. “Do you mind?”

  “No, go ahead.”

  “Wait,” I said. “Before we do that, what did you say, Tess, to Captain Bonpere in super-rapid French? I assume so I wouldn’t be able to follow it.”

  “Eh, I explained that if she looks the two of you up on the Internet she will find that you were accused of murder, Robert. Of a partner. And Jenna was suspected of murder at UCLA. Of a student.”

  “Did you have to tell her that?” I asked.

  “Yes. Or she will find it herself. In this way I get to tell her it is nonsense.”

  “Still . . .”

  “Leave it, Robert,” Jenna said. “She’s right.”

  “I suppose. But it is so irritating to have that junk follow us all over the world.”

  “Get over it,” Jenna said.

  “Wow,” the driver said. “If you didn’t need to be private about that, I wonder what you’re going to talk about next that you consider really private.”

  I ignored him and said, “Please raise the partition.”

  It slid up in front of us.

  I found Pandy’s number in my contacts and dialed her. The call dropped into voice mail after only two rings. All it said was, “This is Pandy. Leave a message.”

  Oddly, I hadn’t considered that I might need to leave a message, or what it should say if I did. Did it make sense to tell her the blunt truth? Hi, it’s Robert Tarza. Just thought I’d let you know that your husband’s been kidnapped, and the police think he might be involved in money laundering. I chose instead something that I thought more nuanced. “Hi, it’s Robert Tarza. Serious problems here in Paris. Oscar’s not hurt or anything, but I need to talk to you as soon as possible. Please call me.” I left my cell number.

  “Don’t you think, Robert, that being kidnapped is a form of being hurt?”

  “You’re over-lawyering it, Jenna. I didn’t want to upset her too much.”

  I rapped on the glass, and the cab driver lowered it.

  “How did that go?” Tess asked.

  “It went into voice mail. I left a message.”

  We reached Tess’s place in only a few minutes. “Jenna, do you want to stay here tonight or go back to your hotel?” I asked. “I’m not even sure where you’re staying, come to think of it.”

  “I’d like to stay here.”

  “Great.”

  I was glad the concierge was not on duty. I’m sure he would never have permitted me to come in wearing soaking-wet clothes. Once we got inside the apartment, I went to our bedroom to change, and Tess directed Jenna to the guest room and went to find some dry clothes for her to wear.

  After a while, we all gathered in the living room. Tess had found dry clothes for Jenna that seemed to fit.

  “I think the question of the hour is what we are going to do now,” Jenna said. “Do we just sit here and wait for the police to find him, or do we look for him ourselves?”

  “I think we should look ourselves,” I said.

  “Agreed, but since we don’t even know where he was staying, how do you suggest we go about that?”

  “No clue.”

  At that point, we both looked over at Tess, who had been sitting across the room, somewhat removed from us, saying nothing.

  “Why are you regarding me?”

  “Well, for one thing, you seem to have some kind of connection with the cops,” I said. “You got into that police fortress in the middle of the night, and Bonpere not only seemed to know you, but stood up when you came into the room.”

  “I do know her.”

  “How?”

  “You do know, do you not, that I became rich in the tech business in the ’90s?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well my business had certain duties in the security of the nation. And during these times, I came to know many police.”

  “High-up police or regular police?”

  “Both.”

  “Do you still work for them?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Can I ask exactly what you do?”

  “If we are married, I can tell you some things. But I am not permitted to tell her”—she nodded at Jenna—“even then.”

  I wasn’t sure whether that was intended as a put-down of Jenna or just a statement of fact. In any case, Jenna ignored it and turned herself into classic Jenna—organized and focused. “I think,” she said, “that we can break the problem down into two parts.”

  “Which are?”

  “Part one: If we can find out where Oscar was staying, we can get a good lead on who took him.”

  “Why?” Tess asked.

  “Because, wherever he was, he was probably there for over a week. And when you stay in a hotel for a week you leave clues. Hotels are filled with spies—doormen, valets, desk clerks, maids, you name it.”

  “You must first find the hotel,” Tess said. “And you assume him to stay in a hotel and not with a friend.”

  “Tess,” I said, “do you remember when Oscar and Pandy visited us here in Paris last year?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you recall his mentioning any other friends in Paris, or wanting to see them?”

  “No.”

  I looked at Jenna. “When he was here for dinner, do you remember his saying anything about that?”

  “No.”

  “I just remembered,” I said. “When he got in a cab right after he was mugged, I heard him tell the cab driver to take him back to his hotel, but the cab pulled away as he was saying it, so I never heard the name of the hotel.”

  “Okay, he is therefore in a hotel, but we do not know how to find it,” Tess said.

  “Right. Thus, we must use the second approach, which is to find out where he got the book. If we learn that, it might help lead us to the kidnappers, which will lead us to him.”

  “I can help with this,” Tess said. “I have a good friend here in Paris who is a dealer in rare books. We can talk to him to start. He will know where one might buy such a book.”

  “Excellent, Tess. Let’s call him.”

  “Robert, it is the middle of the night. We must all go to bed and wake up in the morning and begin the search then for the hotel and the book.”

  “What if they are going to kill him?”

  “If the plan is for him to be dead, he is already dead. If he is not dead, he will be alive in the morning.”

  She was right. Jenna headed to the guest room, and we retreated to our bedroom. Once the light was turned out and we were in bed, I turned to her and said, “Are you a cop?”

  “No.”

  “In the military?”

  “No.” />
  I tried to think what else there might be. “A spy?”

  There was a long pause. She turned on her side in the bed so that she faced me, although it was so dark I could hardly see her. “Pas exactement. I help my country when it asks my help. Which is not so often.”

  “I think I need to know more about this.”

  “Marry me and I can tell you much more.”

  “Is this why you want to get married?”

  “C’est parce que je t’aime, Robert.”

  I was struck by the fact that she had switched to French to say “I love you.” It seemed so much more intimate in her own language.

  “I love you, too, Tess.” I paused. I knew where I was about to go was not very romantic. “But is being able to tell me these things the primary reason you want to marry me?”

  She actually laughed out loud. “You are always the lawyer. I admit that it has bothered me, to always be hiding this thing from you for much time. Donc, yes, if we marry each other, I can talk to you of this. But it is not any part of the reason I wish to marry you. If I had not so much love for you, I am able to hide this from you for more days and years.”

  “Will your position, whatever it is, help us find Oscar?”

  “I hope this.”

  Tess fell asleep almost immediately after that. I did not. Instead I tossed and turned thinking about the fact that Tess’s secret life had been revealed accidentally, not because she decided on her own to tell me. And wondering, if she had hidden so important a thing from me all these years, what else had she not told me?

  CHAPTER 9

  An hour later, I was still awake, thinking, not anymore about Tess, but about my friend Oscar—thinking if he was not already dead, he was being held somewhere against his will, and God knew under what conditions. I felt guilty just for being safe in a warm bed. Eventually, I realized that I was not going to go to sleep. I got up, went into my study and began to surf the Net again, looking for information on first editions in English of Les Misérables. A floorboard creaked behind me, and I whirled around. It was Jenna, wrapped in one of Tess’s bathrobes.

  “Hi, Robert. I’m sorry for startling you. I couldn’t sleep, thinking about Oscar and what he must be going through.”

  “Me neither. Do you think they’re torturing him to get information?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “They could be. And he’s getting old, you know, so he probably can’t take much of that. But what are you doing, Robert?”

  “Like we talked about earlier, I’m trying to learn more about the rare book Oscar bought. So maybe we can figure out what’s going on and have a better chance of finding him.”

  Jenna went over and snuggled into my big leather easy chair. “I know we said that. But maybe that’s not the right approach. Maybe we should just let the police take the lead.”

  “I don’t trust the police to make finding Oscar a priority. They seem like they have other fish to fry.”

  She said nothing for a moment, then said, “As I think about it, you’re probably right, Robert. And I want to help.”

  “Good. But we don’t have much to go on.”

  “I know,” she said. “Hey, can I put my feet up on the coffee table?”

  “Sure, even though your feet are bare. But how are we going to start our search?”

  “I’m not sure,” she said. “But I guess I’m going to try to go back to sleep.”

  After she left the room, I puttered on the computer for another half hour. The only things I learned of interest were that old books were called anciens livres in French, that first editions were called “firsts” and that there were, unfortunately, at least a hundred antiquarian bookstores in Paris and at least that many in other parts of France. It would be a long search if we had to talk to each and every one. Then I went back to bed myself and finally managed to fall asleep.

  When I woke up, at about nine, Tess was no longer in our bed.

  After noting her absence, I stretched, admired the dazzling sunshine pouring through the windows—the rain had clearly ended—and started to get out of bed. Then the temporary amnesia that had been forced on me by sleep lifted, and I remembered with a start what had happened.

  If I was right that finding Oscar was not a high priority for the police, I needed to get a move on with our own investigation. I showered, dressed hurriedly and went out into the apartment.

  Jenna was sitting at the kitchen table, staring into a cup of tea. Tess was nowhere to be seen.

  “Good morning, Jenna. Have you seen Tess?”

  “She went out.”

  “Have you heard anything from the police?”

  “Not a thing.”

  “Want me to make you some eggs?”

  “No thanks. I’m just trying to think how to find Oscar. Food will get in the way of thought.”

  “In my case, I think it will help.”

  I busied myself scrambling some eggs. When I sat down to eat them, Jenna looked over at me. “Can I have some, too?”

  I got up, grabbed another fork and a second plate and shoveled half of my eggs onto it. “There you go. But I thought eating was going to get in the way of your thinking.”

  “It would, except I just came up with an idea. Now I need to feed the idea.”

  “What’s the idea?”

  “Find the cab that brought him here.”

  “When he arrived for Christmas Eve dinner?”

  “Yes.”

  “There are thousands of cabs in Paris.”

  “I bet the police can find it if they want to,” she said. “Cab companies in the US keep logs of where passengers are picked up and dropped off, and the police can access them. I bet that in a country as snoopy as this one, they do that here, too.”

  “You might get some argument about which country is snoopier.”

  “I suppose. But why don’t you call your new friend Captain whatever-her-name-is and make sure she’s looking for it.”

  “Captain Bonpere, you mean. It’s a good suggestion. But it’s New Year’s Day.”

  “She gave you a card. See if it has her cell number on it. Maybe she’ll pick up despite the holiday. After all, she was there last night.”

  I started searching my pockets for her card, with no luck.

  “Try the breast pocket of the shirt you were wearing yesterday. You always stuff things in that pocket.”

  Back in the day, before I retired, when I was still a big-time civil litigator at my old law firm in Los Angeles, Jenna had been my best-ever associate. We’d tried seven long cases together, and by the end of the first one she knew my work habits almost as well as I did. Thus it wasn’t surprising that when I went back to the bedroom to dig the dirty shirt out of the laundry basket, Bonpere’s card was right there in the pocket.

  I didn’t feel like being overheard when I made the call—maybe I’d become sensitive about my French, which was stupid since Jenna didn’t speak French. I went back to the bedroom to try to reach Bonpere.

  “So what did she say?” Jenna asked when I returned.

  “She said, ‘Je ne suis pas née de la dernière pluie.’”

  “Which means what?”

  “I wasn’t born in the last rain.”

  “Oh. The French version of ‘I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck’?”

  “Yes. They’re already looking for the cab number.”

  The turnip truck idiom was one of our favorite expressions. Jenna and I used it often over the years to respond to people who urged the obvious upon us. Now the cart or the rain or whatever had been turned back on us.

  “What else did she say?”

  “That they started looking at the cab records last night, but that it’s a long task because it’s not automated, and there are a lot of cab companies. Plus Oscar might have taken a limo or used Uber, whose re
cords are harder to search, or he could have been dropped off by a friend. She also said that some cab drivers skim fares from the company by not recording every fare and not every company has functioning GPS on their cabs.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Uh-huh. I asked her if they were looking for the bookstore at which Oscar had bought the book. She said no, that even if they identified the store—and it could be anywhere in southern France from what Oscar had said—the owners would probably just deny any knowledge of anything. They’d say Oscar was just a customer like any other who wanted to buy a book. She said the police would instead concentrate on where the money came from to buy the book, since Oscar wasn’t rich.”

  “Did she say anything else?”

  “Yes. She said that they are working hard at this, and that if we learn or remember any new facts at all, we should call her, but that we should absolutely not try to investigate this ourselves.”

  “So are we going to follow her advice?” Jenna asked. Based on our late-night conversation, we both knew the answer without having to speak it out loud.

  We got started by trying to catalog what we already knew. We rounded up several pieces of paper. Then Jenna put them on the dining room table and labeled them “Where is Oscar’s Hotel?” “Where Did He Get the Book?” and “What Do We Know about Oscar?”

  “We don’t,” she said, “have any information about the hotel or how to find it, so we’ll leave that one blank for the moment. We can fill in a little information on the Where Did He Get the Book page, though. He told us he got it in the South of France from a store that had a large collection of old books and was run by a very old guy.” She wrote that all down.

  “We know a lot more about Oscar,” I said.

  But in the end, after we’d filled in Oscar’s sheet, it turned out all we knew about him was that he’d gone to Southwestern Law School in LA, had briefly been an assistant District Attorney in LA, had practiced criminal law there for more than forty years, and was on wife number six, Pandy. It was not a lot. We didn’t even know Pandy’s last name and address or the names of any of his earlier wives. All we had was Pandy’s cell number.