Paris Ransom

by Charles Rosenberg

  “Désolé,” he said. “I was held up by many phone calls.”

  “Doesn’t matter, General. I don’t have a lot of pressing things to do. In fact, I’m thinking of going back to Los Angeles, where my behavior will no doubt be more to your liking.”

  I said it because I thought threatening to leave might gain me some leverage.

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Well, there doesn’t really seem to be much I can do here. I’m just sitting around, you know. Mostly, I just talk to you on the phone. I can do that from home, and I have things to do at the law school.”

  “I looked you up on the UCLA website, Professor, and I see you are on sabbatical this semester.”

  “Sabbatical isn’t a vacation. I have two law review articles I’m researching and writing, and it’s easiest to do that there, where I have access to a law library where most of the books are actually in English.”

  “I really can’t permit you to leave.”

  “Do you have the power to stop me?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “How?”

  “I will ask a judge to detain you as what you call in your legal system a ‘material witness.’”

  “Well, I guess I have to stay, then. But I hope you can speed up the search.”

  “We are working hard on it.”

  “With no results.”

  “Let’s order,” he said.

  He ordered a croque madame, and I ordered a croque monsieur, sort of a sandwich gender switch.

  The food was taking forever to come, as Mom and Pop continued to hector one another. While we waited, I finally asked the general about the message from the kidnappers.

  He reached into his jacket pocket and produced a single sheet of paper, which he handed to me, saying, “This was texted to my cell phone—which is itself very concerning since my number is private—but it is addressed to you.” He handed it to me and I read it:

  Jenna James, we lose two days with you and are tired wait. We give you four days find and deliver book. Today is the Day 1. Place book in box and leave front desk of your hotel.

  If not there by sunset Day 4 you never see this friend Oscar again. Tomorrow and every day we send you text message and you respond to number we give you in and confirm you receive message. If we no receive text back in three hours, we assume worst and dispose Oscar without wait more. NO MONEY. WE WANT BOOK.

  P.S. We can send additional souvenirs Oscar. We hope you enjoy finger.

  When I had finished reading, he asked, “What do you make of that, Jenna?”

  “It’s scary.”

  “And beyond that?”

  I took the note and read it again. “Well, for one thing, the person speaks English, but not well.”

  “Yes. We have had a linguist analyze the language pattern.”

  “And?”

  The general smiled a broad smile. “Likely written by a Russian.”

  “Like your niece, General,” I said.

  “Yes, but her English hardly rises to the level of ‘Where is the toilet?’ so I don’t know how she could possibly write that.”

  “General, how do they know where I’m staying? And anyway, if someone tries to pick the book up at my hotel, won’t we see him?”

  “I do not know how they know where you’re staying. But I can only protect you if you tell me where it is. That way I can post someone at your hotel to watch over you. He can both protect you and keep on the lookout for the pickup person—assuming, of course, that you ever find the book.”

  “Won’t you just find out by running my name through whatever database you have of who’s staying at each hotel?”

  “It’s a myth that we have an instant database like that. We have to go through the hotel reports by hand, and since you only checked in today, we won’t even have those until late tonight or tomorrow morning. And you could simply move every day, and we’d have a problem tracking you. We don’t have endless manpower to follow you around Paris.”

  “Oh.”

  “It would be so much easier if you just told me. Frankly, you are being childish. Again.”

  “The problem is, General, that I don’t trust you.”

  “You have no basis for distrust.”

  Just then the waitress appeared and put our respective croques in front of us, along with a very small green salad for each of us.

  “My basis for distrust, General, is, among other things, the fact that you also collect antiquarian books, and I think you should have told us that. For all I know, you are the kidnapper.”

  He actually drew back, startled, or at least he put on a good show of being startled. “This is insane. It is true I collect rare books, but only from 18th-century French authors, and only in French. I have no interest in a 19th-century book in English, even if it is by a French author and even if it is inscribed.”

  “You could be hoping to start a collection of that kind.”

  He took a huge bite of his croque madame, chewed for a while and said, “Madame, you do not understand collectors.”

  “What do I not understand?”

  “Collectors are obsessives. Once they begin to collect something, they rarely change the focus of their obsessive love. And that is especially so as we grow older.”

  “So if someone gave you that book, you wouldn’t want it?”

  “Oh, I would want it. But only so that I could sell it and buy more of what I really want. And then only if I could obtain the book legally.”

  “I will think about what you have said, General, but I still don’t trust you.”

  “Then you had better change hotels tomorrow morning or we will find you, and this time you will not slip away by climbing over the garbage cans.”

  “That will be a drag. But let me change the topic.”

  “Change if you wish, Jenna.”

  “Have you made any progress in finding Oscar or the kidnappers?” I asked.

  “No.”

  It was my turn to chew on my food for a while. And to wonder why technology couldn’t solve the problem of where they were, like it could on TV.

  “General, if they send me a text, can’t you track where it came from?”

  “Yes, but it takes some time and is not very precise. We can narrow it to within a few kilometers in a rural area and within a couple of blocks in an urban area, but not to an individual building or room within a building. It is not like you see on TV. And by the time we trace it, they will be long gone from that area.”

  “I thought you could find someone as soon as the signal leaves his phone.”

  “Your NSA can do that, but only if it has a drone or plane overhead nearby. The police, with whom I am working, have very good technology, but it is not quite that sophisticated. And, in any case, the kidnappers will change phones every day and use each phone only once.”

  “Can’t the police trace where the phones were bought?”

  “Yes. But the kidnappers probably planned this a while ago and were smart enough to buy each one in a different place and look for places to buy them that don’t have security cameras.”

  “If you haven’t made any progress in finding Oscar and the kidnappers, have you at least made some progress in finding the book?”

  “No.”

  “So, General, you have done nothing.”

  “Working with the police, I have done much. We are close to finding the complete money trail, and that will lead us to both Oscar and the book. But if we join forces, we will get to both goals more quickly.”

  “I will think about it.”

  “I hope you will,” he said. “Now a question: How are you going to respond to the text message?”

  “Do I actually have a choice in that, since it was sent to your cell phone?”

  “Under French law, you do.”

&nb
sp; “Which reminds me, since we’re on the topic of your cell phone, why did they send the text to you instead of to me?”

  “To show that they know a lot about what’s going on on our side—that they know, for example, that we are working together. Their knowledge of that is supposed to make you afraid.”

  “I see. Well, since we’re working together, do you have any advice on how I should respond?”

  “As you know, I would not respond at all.”

  “And as you know, I don’t agree with that approach.”

  “Yes, I understand. Will you at least let me know what you do say?”

  “Can’t you just read it when I send it?”

  “Yes, but if you call me, it will be a better way of keeping in touch. And one more thing, Jenna.”

  “What?”

  “Be very careful. You can get yourself and Oscar killed. Whoever these people are, they are not amateurs.”

  “I thought you said, not long ago, that they were amateurs. Which is it?”

  “We are changing our minds as we watch how they operate.”

  That made little sense to me, and the needle in my suspicion-o-meter was pushing against the far side of the dial. But there seemed little point in pressing it, since I was just going to be on the receiving end of more BS.

  We finished eating, skipped dessert and parted. I was concerned enough about being followed that I took the metro to the Opéra, bought a ticket, spent some hours wandering in the nearby giant department store Galeries Lafayette, with its neo-Byzantine glass dome, treated myself to a pastry in its dome-top café, returned to the Opéra and merged myself with the crowd going into the 8:00 p.m. performance. Then I slipped out a side door and took a cab back to the Hôtel des Antiquaires.

  I got back around nine, and walked slowly to my room. As I passed by Oscar’s room, I looked at the lock on his door as carefully as I could without stopping, trying to imagine, by looking at the shape of the keyhole, what type of tumblers and lock cylinder lay behind that keyhole. I did the same thing when I reached my own door, feeling the way the key slid into my lock, which looked to be the same as Oscar’s lock. I also tried to get the feel of the tumblers as I turned the key. After that, I waited until it seemed very quiet in the hotel. It was ten thirty, but Robert wasn’t coming until eleven. If I could do it at all, it wouldn’t take long to pop the lock, and I’d be back in my room before Robert got there. Then we could go out to a midnight dinner. I suspected that in Paris you could do that.

  CHAPTER 22

  I took the nail file and the bobby pin in hand, dropped my travel flashlight into one pocket, stuffed a small washcloth from the bathroom into the other, and slowly opened my door. I peeked outside, saw no one, and moved quickly and quietly to Oscar’s door. For a second, I thought I saw motion at the end of the hall, but concluded it was only headlights reflecting off a window.

  The lock proved a lot more difficult than I had hoped—the tumblers kept slipping away from the bobby pin—and it took me almost two minutes to pop it. By the time I was done, sweat was dripping from my forehead onto my hands. I let myself in and swiped the washcloth over the doorknob to wipe off my damp fingerprints. Not wanting to turn on the lights, I began to look around by the narrow beam of my tiny flashlight.

  The room looked pretty much like my own, except reversed in plan. The bed was made up, and all the surfaces were bare. No books, no paper, no nothing. I put the sleeve of my blouse over the handle to the closet, opened it and looked inside. There was a single suit hanging there. I ran my hand around the inside of each of the outside pockets. There was nothing in them. I had just started on the inside pockets when I heard a slight noise behind me. As I turned my head, the room lights came on, illuminating three uniformed cops—a tall man, a short man and a muscular woman who looked like she could pound me through the floor—plus the elderly hotel owner.

  “Arrêtez! Mettez vos mains dans l’air!” the tall cop said.

  I didn’t understand the exact words, but I got the gist of it from the tone, turned fully around and put my hands in the air. I was on the edge of tears, whether from the shock of being caught or regret at being caught I couldn’t tell. But I was damned if I was going to cry, particularly in front of the hotel owner. Somehow I willed the tears not to come, although if someone had touched my lower eyelids, they probably would have found them wet.

  The old hotel owner pointed at me. “I could tell that you were up to no good here,” he said.

  The muscular policewoman stepped forward and patted me down from head to toe. When she was done, she looked at the others and said, “Rien.”

  The tall policeman said some other things I didn’t understand, put his hand on my shoulder and pushed me toward the door. I was marched like that down the elevator and through the lobby—thank God no one else was there—and then into a paddy wagon that was waiting outside. I was pushed down onto a bench in the back, whereupon the short policeman got in with me, the back doors were slammed shut, and the wagon began to move, picking up speed.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “No anglais,” the short cop said.

  I noted that they hadn’t handcuffed me, but, whether the cop was an English speaker or not, I decided it wasn’t prudent to inquire about the cuffs lest he somehow penetrate the language barrier and change his mind.

  We rode the rest of the way in silence. After about twenty minutes, I felt the van tilt, as if we were going down a hill. Shortly after that, we came to a halt, the rear doors were thrown open and I was pushed down a long corridor, the tall cop’s hand gripping my shoulder. Along the corridor, we passed other men and women looking out at me with curiosity—the cell doors were some kind of glass or Lucite framed in metal. Finally, we got to an empty cell, and I was unceremoniously shoved inside. The door clicked shut, and the tall cop turned and said, “Translator soon.” Everyone left. I sat down on a bench and waited. And cursed myself out for being an out-of-my-depth moron.

  I was left in the cell for what seemed like an eternity. I didn’t even have my cell phone with me. I had left it in my room when I went to pick the lock. Finally, I dozed off, then woke up with a start when I heard a noise outside the cell. When I looked up, there stood Officer Omaha.

  “Well, if this isn’t the cat’s pajamas,” he said.

  “That’s from the 1920s,” I said. “And you’ve used it out of context.”

  “I was in a Jazz Age play in Omaha.”

  “Were you the lead?”

  “Hey, I was. I was!”

  “So to what do I owe the pleasure of your company?”

  “I’m your translator.”

  I wanted to groan, but decided against it.

  “What do I need translated, exactly?”

  “Well, to start I’m going to tell you your rights. But I need another policeman present to do that. He will be here in a moment.”

  Sure enough, the tall cop showed up and Officer Omaha began to speak.

  “You are in garde à vue,” he said, “which means you have been arrested and are being held for investigation. You have the right to an attorney if you want one. You also have the right to remain silent if you wish.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Yes.”

  “What am I accused of?”

  “Not accused, suspected.”

  “But suspected of what?”

  “Vol,” he said.

  “What is that?”

  “Theft.”

  “But I didn’t steal anything.”

  “That remains to be seen, and I’m sure other things will be added later for investigation.”

  “When can I get bailed out?”

  “For the first forty-eight hours there is no bail.”

  “That’s outrageous.”

  “That is how we do it here in France. The forty-eight hours is
for an investigation, and while we are doing it, you cannot flee and by doing so interrupt the investigation.”

  “And I get out after forty-eight hours?”

  “Usually. Unless you are charged with terrorism or something like that, in which case you might be held in preventive detention.”

  “Am I entitled to call someone?”

  “Yes, a relative or your lawyer.”

  “I don’t have any relatives here and I don’t know any French lawyers.” I thought to myself that I could call Robert, who could ask Tess, who could call somebody, who could . . . but I never got to finish the thought because, suddenly, I heard footsteps coming down the hallway, and, after a few seconds, the general appeared.

  “You pick locks?” he said. “Like a common street criminal?”

  “I am choosing to remain silent.”

  “Do you pick pockets, too?”

  “Like I said, I’m not talking.”

  “Well, there will be time to talk later.” He turned to the cops and said something in rapid French. They listened in silence. Then he handed them a piece of paper, which they scanned.

  “Ouvrez la cellule, s’il vous plaît.”

  The only word I caught in that was “cell,” but he must have asked them to let me out, because a few seconds later, the tall one produced a large ring of keys and unlocked the door.

  “Follow me,” the general said.

  We ended up in his car. “I’m going to take you back to your hotel, now that I know where it is. And when we get there, we are going to have a talk. You need to keep in mind that this is not your country, this is not a game, and you are not doing yourself or Oscar any good.”

  “How did you get me out?”

  “I talked to the public prosecutor and explained that this was all a giant mistake. I hinted that you were helping us with a major investigation.”

  “Thank you.”

  The thank-you was heartfelt because I was relieved to be out of jail. But I also knew that on some level I was now in debt to the general. I hated being in debt to anyone.

  “Well, don’t thank me too much, Jenna, because that was a one-time get-out-of-jail-free card.”