Paris Ransom

by Charles Rosenberg

  “Yes.” He scribbled a name on a piece of paper and handed it to me. “Here is the man to talk to about Hugo. Henri Moreau. You may tell him I sent you.”

  “And Dickens?”

  “The experts on Dickens are in London and America, not in France, and I am not able to recommend someone.” He looked at his watch again.

  It was clear I was wearing out my welcome. But I did not want to fail to buy something from him, as Tess had suggested.

  “Before I go, I must say that I have become interested in this whole area of collection—I am myself a collector of ancient coins—and I would like to buy something from you to start a collection of my own. It will be my first ancien livre.”

  “Ah, Monsieur, you are very kind to suggest this. But do not feel compelled to purchase something. And if you are truly interested, I would suggest that we make another appointment and we can discuss what might interest you most to collect. Perhaps, if you will forgive me, you might be interested in collecting English-language books.”

  I ignored what I took to be a very polite brush-off and another insult to my French language skills, thanked him for his time and his advice and got up to leave. We stood at the door and exchanged the usual French departure pleasantries (merci, au revoir, à bientôt—goodbye, thank you, see you soon). Just as I started to walk through the doorway, he put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Oh, there is, come to think of it, something else I did want to ask you.”

  “What?”

  “Do you know from whom your friend purchased the book?”

  “No, sorry, I don’t. He never mentioned it. Why?”

  “Perhaps he would have some things your friend did not buy that I would be interested in.”

  “Why would you want to buy from someone who has just sold my friend a forged inscription?”

  “I am an expert. I could tell the difference between a fake one and genuine one.”

  That made no sense to me, but I decided not to challenge it.

  I was soon back out on the street and realized I had failed to ask him what the book might be worth on the off chance the inscription and the drawing were real.

  CHAPTER 11

  Just as I was considering whether it would be too rude to go and knock on Monsieur Deutsch’s door again in order to query him about the possible value of the book, my cell rang with Jenna’s special ring. I had chosen the overture to the opera William Tell for her. I thumbed “answer.”

  “Hey, listen, Robert, I need to check out of the George V before one o’clock or I will get charged for a late checkout or an extra day. I’ve booked a smaller, cheaper hotel in the Marais. Do you want to meet me near there for lunch? I can give you the address.”

  The Marais was the old Jewish quarter of Paris, now among the hottest of hot places to live, especially for the young and trendy. Jenna would fit right in.

  “Jenna, I’d actually like to see you sooner. This thing is getting ever-more complicated. Why don’t I just meet you in the lobby of the George V, and we can go over to your new hotel together and get started on the conversation without any delay?”

  “Okay. I’m on my way there now.”

  “See you shortly.”

  I grabbed a cab, and told the cabbie to take me to the George V. I could tell that he was impressed. Or maybe I just felt like he ought to be impressed. The George V, which dates from 1928, is one of Paris’s swankiest and most expensive hotels. At Christmastime its rack rate is more than a thousand dollars a night for a starter room. Located in the 8th arrondissement, the hotel is only a few blocks from the glittering Champs-Élysées, close to the Arc de Triomphe and within a short walk of the elegant presidential residence, the Élysée Palace, the interior of which makes the White House look like someone’s country home.

  When I got to the hotel, Jenna was already in the marbled lobby, sitting in a posh red velour chair, right next to a bouquet of bright-red flowers set in a three-foot-tall black onyx vase that looked like it had come directly from Versailles. She was wearing a bright green dress, a black beret, and three-inch patent-leather heels.

  “Well,” I said, “don’t you look soignée?”

  “I know that’s an English word, too, but I can’t recall exactly what it means.”

  “It’s kind of a combination of neat, cool and well-dressed. It’s a compliment.”

  “Well thanks, then. Do you want to see my room before I check out?”

  “I’d love to. They’ve redone it since the last time I stayed here, so I’d be curious.”

  As we passed the reception desk, the man behind the counter said, in English, “Ah, Madame James, there is a delivery for you. One moment, please.”

  “Are you expecting anything?” I asked.

  “No.”

  The desk clerk handed her a package about the size and shape of a large Kleenex box, wrapped in Christmassy paper and tied with a red ribbon. A white card was stuck under it. On the elevator, I began to brief her on what Deutsch had told me. Once inside the room, I looked around while Jenna worked the gift card open. The decor was all understated elegance: arm chairs upholstered in subtle floral fabric, an armoire, bureau and desk in inlaid rosewood, and a waist-height round glass table with a spray of flowers in a glass vase in the middle. Jenna had clearly not chosen the hotel’s most modest room.

  “The card’s not signed,” she said.

  “Well, what does it say?”

  “It says, ‘Hope you enjoy this Christmas present, honey. Sorry it’s a bit late.’”

  “Do you know anyone who calls you honey?”

  “My boyfriend back in the States.”

  “Dr. Nightingale?”

  “The very one, although I usually call him Bill.”

  “Are you going to open it?”

  “Sure, although it’s kind of odd, since he gave me a Christmas present before I left.” She unwrapped it, revealing a small wooden box in dark wood with a hinged lid, much like a cigar box. She opened it, looked inside and screamed.

  I had never heard Jenna scream before. I rushed over, pulled her aside and looked in myself. It was, quite clearly, a human finger, severed at the base with two knuckles showing. The bottom was still bloody, although the blood was old enough that it was brown, not red. Most sickening, the finger was torn, with pieces of skin, blood vessels and bone poking out, as if it had been ripped off rather than cleanly cut away. There was dry ice underneath the whole thing, giving off a spray of cold fog.

  “Oh my God,” Jenna said. “I think I’m going to throw up.”

  “There’s a note taped to the inside bottom of the lid.”

  “What does it say? I’m not looking in there again.”

  “It says: ‘We know you have book. If do not want more pieces Oscar to arrive in bigger box, text us at this number and tell you will give us book. We will send instructions how deliver.’”

  There was a phone number scrawled at the end of the note.

  “Could be someone who speaks Russian as their native language,” I said. Then added, “Or like someone trying to sound like someone who speaks Russian. But then again, could be some other language where they drop the article before the noun.” My analytical comment was, of course, an attempt to distract myself from what I’d just seen and my revulsion and fear—revulsion at the sight of it and growing fear for Oscar’s safety. I felt almost as if I were trembling inside.

  Jenna wasn’t listening anymore, though, and she was visibly trembling. I went over and put my arm around her shoulder. “It’s okay, Jenna. We’ll get the police. Calm down.”

  “They think I have the book, Robert. Why the hell do they think that? I don’t have the damn book!”

  “I know, I know. And I don’t know why they think so. Do you have any idea?”

  “No.”

  “I’m calling hotel security. That’s a better bet than t
he police, I think.”

  The phone was answered on the third ring, by a male who identified himself as “Bruno.”

  “Hi,” I said in French. “I’m in Madame James’s room with Madame James. A mysterious package just arrived for her and it appears to contain a human finger.” I listened for a moment. “A joke? I don’t think so. Please send security up here right away.”

  Not two minutes later, two men, both beefy beneath elegant suits, entered the room and scanned it. One was tall, the other short.

  The tall one pulled out his wallet, flashed a George V ID card at us, and said, in English, “I’m Bruno Bourdal, hotel security. My colleague is Monsieur Fronert. Are you the only two people here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Please show us the finger.”

  As he spoke he continued to scan the room. I wondered if he thought there might be someone under the bed. It was the only place in the room someone could possibly hide, and even then, they’d need to be thinner than a runway model.

  I pointed to the table. “It’s in that box over there.”

  Both of them went over and peered inside. “Could be a prosthetic,” Bruno said. “Like in the movies.”

  His partner bent over, put his nose inside the box, sniffed and said. “Pas d’odeur de pourriture.”

  “What did he say?” Jenna asked.

  “He said ‘No smell of decay,’” I answered. Then I addressed Bruno. “Madame does not speak French. Can you and your partner speak in English?”

  “I can, but my partner, not so well. Like you speak French, if you will pardon me. But I think what he is trying to say is that, normally, for something like this, if it is real, there would be a smell, even from something so small. So my guess is that it is a clever prosthetic and this is some kind of sick joke.”

  “I see,” I said.

  “What does this note about the book mean, Monsieur?”

  In a millisecond, I decided to lie. “I don’t know,” I said.

  “If you do not think this is a joke, you should take this to the police.”

  Jenna spoke up. “Shouldn’t the police come here? This is the crime scene.”

  Bruno looked horror struck. “Oh, no, no, no, Madame. The hotel, it does not wish the police to come here when no crime has been committed here.”

  “Well, the box was delivered to me here.”

  “It was left at the front desk?”

  “Yes.”

  “So really, it has nothing to do with our hotel except that you had the misfortune to receive this joke here and to open it here.”

  “That’s not the way crime scenes work.”

  “Ah, in America, perhaps. But here in France, this is not a crime scene. I was a police officer for many years and I know.”

  Jenna’s mouth twisted in a way that I knew, from our many years of practice together, meant that she thought what he had told her was bullshit.

  “If you say so, Bruno,” she said.

  “Madame, we will take you directly to the police if you wish. And I will carry the box.”

  I saw by her body language that Jenna was about to reject the offer, and I intervened. “We will be delighted to do that.”

  Jenna gave me a dirty look.

  I ignored her because it had occurred to me that if the police came to the hotel, the whole thing was much more likely to become a matter of interest to the press. And we were trying to avoid that.

  “Please wait here,” Bruno said. “I will call for a car.” He withdrew a pair of blue plastic surgical gloves from his suit coat pocket, skinned them on, picked up the box and exited the room. Fronert remained, standing discreetly in a corner.

  “How do we know that we are not about to be kidnapped ourselves by these guys?” Jenna asked in a low voice.

  “We don’t, but we’re going to risk it.”

  Ten minutes later, we were in the back seat of a black Mercedes, with Bruno and the box in the front seat. Fronert was driving.

  “Which police station are you taking us to?” I asked.

  “The one in the 8th arrondissement, on the rue Clémenceau.”

  “We insist on being taken instead to 36 quai des Orfèvres.”

  “Ah, non, Monsieur. This is not the right place to go. It is the headquarters. We need to go to the local police station.”

  “Please raise the privacy shield and give me a minute.”

  I watched as the glass slid up and dialed Captain Bonpere. Luckily, she answered. I described the situation to her for a moment, then rapped on the glass partition. It was lowered immediately, and I handed the phone to Bruno.

  “Someone would like to have a word with you.”

  He listened for a moment, said something about a box that I could not make out, handed the phone back to me and said to Fronert, “Emmenez-nous au 36 quai des Orfèvres.”

  As the car moved slowly down the hotel driveway, he turned around, handed the phone back to me, stared at us for a moment and said, “Who are you people?”

  I saw Jenna flip her right hand over, one step away from serving up her finger. I put a restraining hand on hers, and we sped off down the street.

  CHAPTER 12

  The car sped through the streets at break-neck speed, and we pulled up in front of 36 quai des Orfèvres in what seemed like no time, coming to such an abrupt halt that I was thrown forward against my seat belt. If I hadn’t known that Jenna was an honored guest of their hotel, I would have thought that these guys were anxious to be rid of us.

  The last time we’d been to the quai, it had been in a paddy wagon, which had taken us down a ramp into a garage. This time we were being delivered to the main entrance, which featured a set of tall, wooden double doors recessed into an arched stone doorway, a cop posted on each side. To the right was a glassed-in guard shack not much bigger than a phone booth. A small French flag fluttered overhead.

  I tried to open my door, but it wouldn’t budge. “It’s stuck.”

  “Child lock,” Bruno said. “Fronert will unlock it.”

  I wondered if they had been worried we might escape, return to the George V and bring the police to their treasured hotel that knew no crime.

  Jenna was already rounding the back of the car, heading for the entrance, when Captain Bonpere emerged from the stone doorway. She, too, was wearing blue vinyl gloves. She took the box from Bruno, looked briefly inside, wrinkled her nose and handed it off to the plainclothes officer who had accompanied her. Just then the cop from the night before, whom I’d come to think of as Officer Omaha, emerged from the same doorway and led Bruno and Fronert away. We then followed Bonpere to a conference room on the second floor.

  The conference room had a polished wood table and six swivel chairs. There was nice art on the walls and fruit juices and coffee on a sideboard. It was a cut well above the office in which Bonpere had met us on New Year’s Eve.

  “I will speak English today,” Bonpere said. “I hope you will pardon mistakes I make.”

  “Of course,” I said. “And in any case, your English seems quite good.”

  “I want to interview both of you about what happened today. Please do not leave something out. I have arranged for our conversation to be recorded. In the ceiling, there is a microphone.” She pointed up.

  Jenna did most of the talking. I interrupted occasionally with a correction or an addition. When we were done, Bonpere asked a few questions, and I assumed we were finished. Instead, she turned to me and said, “Have you learned anything else in these last two days about this whole histoire—sorry, I mean this whole story—that you will wish to share with me?”

  I noticed that she hadn’t said we had to tell her. She had asked me what I wished to share. On one level, I didn’t really wish to share anything, but decided that if we were to save Oscar, we needed to share what we’d learned in our own investigation wit
h the police. They had so many more resources than we did. I knew I kept flip-flopping about how I felt about them.

  So I told her about my visit to the bookshop. She nodded from time to time but otherwise seemed uninterested. Finally, when I was done, she said, “We know Monsieur Deutsch.”

  “You do?”

  “Yes, he consults with us on special projects.”

  “I see.” And I did see. Deutsch was a police spy, apparently, and his whole elegant speech that morning about confidentiality had been a cover for the simple fact that he intended to report our entire conversation to the cops. I was about to ask Bonpere if Deutsch had already related it to her when, after a perfunctory knock, the door opened, and a woman’s head peeked around the edge.

  “Capitaine, puis-je vous parler en privé?”

  “Please speak English, Claudette. One of our friends does not speak French, and there is no need for privacy before them. And please come in.”

  The woman, who was middle-aged with graying black hair, stepped fully into the room. She was wearing a white lab coat and carrying a small briefcase.

  “What did you find out?” Bonpere asked.

  “It is a real human finger.”

  Jenna jerked back in surprise. “How do you know?” she asked.

  “When I picked it up I squeezed it to sense its—I’m sorry, I do not know the word in English . . .”

  “Consistency,” I suggested.

  “Yes. Its consistency. And a very little blood dripped out. Fake fingers do not have some blood in them.”

  “Blood?” Jenna asked. “Hadn’t it dried?”

  “Well, okay, not really blood, but a red ooze.”

  “That’s disgusting,” Jenna said. “It almost makes me sick.”

  It wasn’t “almost” for me. I jumped up, raced over to a metal wastebasket in the corner, leaned into it and vomited. After about a minute, I stood back up. “I’m sorry. The image of you squeezing ooze out of it just got to me somehow.”

  “It happens to every person at some point,” Claudette said. She picked up a glass, filled it with juice and handed to me. “Try this. It will take away the bad taste.”