by R. J. Jagger
DEJA AND ALEXANDRA WOKE Thursday morning before dawn, showered, and headed for the nearest place that sold caffeine and croissants. Last night had been good in that the looters weren’t lurking inside with the lights off as part of a trap. But it had been bad in that they had abandoned the house and had taken all of Remy’s research and papers with them.
Gone.
Gone.
Gone.
There were two possible explanations.
They might be worried about the police finding Pascal Lambert’s body and then showing up at the man’s house as part of an investigation.
Or they might have found the map and headed to Egypt.
“Either way,” Alexandra said, “we’re screwed.”
That was last night.
Deja hoped she’d be in a cheerier mood this morning.
The sleep and the coffee helped but not as much as she hoped.
ALEXANDRA TOOK A LONG SLURP OF COFFEE, got serious, and looked at Deja. “Do you have a passport?”
Deja nodded and already knew where the question was headed.
“What are you saying? Egypt?”
Alexandra nodded.
“I don’t see any other options at this point,” she said. “We’ll never get our hands on Remy’s source documents. Our only hope now is to recreate his footsteps. We know what his theory was. And we know that his last trip was to Cairo. That was the trip that you said he got all excited about.”
Right.
It was.
“That’s where he found what he was looking for,” Alexandra said. “So if we’re going to find it, that’s where we need to be.”
YVES PETIT FROWNED when Deja told him she needed to take an emergency trip to Cairo.
She was too important to be gone.
“What’s in Cairo?”
She was sorry.
She couldn’t tell him.
It was a private matter.
“I’ll still work eight hours a day or whatever it takes,” she said. “I’ll be fully accessible 24/7 by email and phone. You won’t get a drop in either the quality or quantity of my work. I promise.”
He studied her.
“I don’t know what’s going on,” he said. “But if there’s anything I can do—money or support or whatever—just say it.”
Deja hugged him.
“All I need for you to do right now is indulge me.”
He patted her on the back.
“Consider yourself indulged. And don’t worry about work. Just take the time off.”
She was almost out of his office when she turned and said, “There is one more thing you can do. Don’t tell anyone where I am. Especially if someone calls up trying to find me.”
He nodded.
“I won’t even tell anyone in the office,” he said.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Day Four—July 15
Thursday Morning
______________
MARCEL DURAND WOKE Thursday morning to bad news, very bad news, namely a sketch of his face in the newspaper and an article reporting that he was a suspect in the murder of a man named Luc Trickett.
A picture of the victim was also shown.
The boxer.
Damn it!
The neighbor at the back door—the one Durand had to punch in the face and jump over Tuesday night after someone mangled the boxer’s head with bullets—must have gotten a better look at Durand than he thought. Too bad he didn’t know it then. He would have kicked the guy’s eyes out.
He studied the sketch harder and the more he did, the better he felt.
He knew it was him but doubted anyone else would.
The likeness was remote, at best.
Just to be safe, though, he pulled out a pair of scissors, stepped to the mirror and chopped his hair.
Then he went out and bought a bottle of dye.
Raven black.
An hour later even he didn’t recognize himself.
Then he called his client and told him about the development. “Don’t worry about it,” the client said. “If it ends up getting intense, I’ll vouch that you were on a project for me. In the meantime, find the guy who killed the boxer.”
The client chuckled, as if he just heard a joke.
“What?” Durand asked.
“I mean, your life is actually pretty sweet when you stop and think about it. You’re getting paid to find the one person who can get you out of a mess.”
Durand saw the irony but wasn’t amused.
HE TOOK HIS ORDINARY FORGETTABLE FACE outside for a walk under the Paris sun and shifted his thinking to the tattooed woman with the houseboat, Fallon Le Rue.
Durand had been lucky last night.
The man chasing him either slipped on the wet pavement or made a mistake in the dark by lunging too soon.
Good thing, either way.
The man was strong and intense.
Where did he come from?
That was the big question.
Was he just some passerby who saw Durand acting suspicious? Was he inside the boat, sleeping with the woman, heard the cell phone ring and ran out? Or was he someone hiding in the shadows, actually expecting Durand to show up?
He kept walking.
The Paris sky was perfect.
So was the temperature.
The city buzzed.
He made a quick stop at a café bar, got an espresso to go, and sipped as he headed farther south. Suddenly something happened that he didn’t expect. Several police cars were parked up ahead. Durand crossed to the other side of the street as he walked past.
What he saw he could hardly believe.
The cops were in the alley, at a dumpster, pulling out a black plastic bag—the very same bag that Durand stuffed his bloody clothes in after he left the boxer’s house.
Damn it!
Chapter Thirty-Four
Day Four—July 15
Thursday Morning
______________
THE CAB DRIVER—ANTON FORNIER—MADE his way to the Luxembourg Quarter in the southern section of Paris, where the buzz was slightly less intense, the chestnut trees were more plentiful and the crowd was younger.
There must be a university nearby.
He disappeared into a nice house on Rue Erasme Brossolette. Teffinger raked his hair back with his fingers and said, “What’s a cab driver doing in a place like that?”
“I know that house,” Fallon said.
“Really?”
“It’s the headquarters of an international sex operation called Blue Moon.”
“What kind of sex operation?”
“Escorts,” Fallon said. “Very pricey escorts.”
“How pricey?”
“Five thousand a night, or more,” she said. “For that you get the best of the best. They recruit the women from all over—London, Munich, Vienna, you name it.”
Teffinger shook his head.
“Five thousand,” he said. “I can’t even imagine. Why would anyone in the world pay that kind of money for a few minutes of pleasure?”
“Because the women are gorgeous and they’re willing to get kinky,” Fallon said.
“Kinky, huh?”
Yes.
Kinky.
Very kinky.
Fallon cocked her head and said, “Have you ever paid for it?”
“What do you think?”
“I think not.”
“Okay, then, that’s my answer.”
She punched his arm.
“Come on, have you?”
“And I’m sticking to it,” Teffinger said. “Five thousand is a lot of money. More than a cabbie can afford, that’s for sure. So what the hell is our friend doing there?”
Good question.
“WANT TO KNOW HOW I KNOW about this place?” Fallon asked.
Yes.
He did.
He did indeed.
“It actually involves that cold case I was telling you about this morning,” she said. “The woman who got smothered was so
meone named Sharla DePaglia. She worked for our friends in the house over there.”
Meaning what?
She was an escort?
Fallon nodded.
“We were pretty sure she was working at the time she got murdered and that the person who did it was a Blue Moon client. But the company wouldn’t cooperate.”
Teffinger grunted.
“Bastards,” he said.
“Bitches, actually,” Fallon said. “Blue Moon is owned and operated by two sisters—Anastasie and Emmanuelle Atwood.”
Teffinger paced.
“Maybe our cab driver friend is the one who killed your cold case woman.”
Fallon shook her head.
“No, that would be too easy,” she said. “My life doesn’t work like that.”
FIVE MINUTES AFTER HE WENT INSIDE, Anton Fornier the taxi driver came back out and walked north. Teffinger and Fallon followed fifty steps behind.
“Well, he wasn’t there for a session.”
“They don’t do them there. They do them offsite.”
“Where?”
“Wherever the client wants,” Fallon said. “That’s part of the reason it’s so pricey. The women have to go into an uncontrolled and unsupervised environment.”
“And get kinky at the same time,” Teffinger added.
Exactly.
“No wonder they end up dead. I wonder if Mr. Cab Man was laying five big ones on the table just now and arranging for a session. Maybe he was looking at pictures of the women who were available tonight. Reading the menu.”
“That makes sense,” Fallon said. “But where does he get the money?”
Teffinger grunted.
“That’s a question I’m getting more and more interested in,” he said. “Tell me more about your cold case. I’m starting to get the feeling it’s somehow connected to Tracy White and Michelle Berri.”
“Why?”
“Because Tracy White is connected to a caveman and a caveman is connected to Blue Moon. Tracy White died an ugly death. So did your cold-case woman—”
“—Sharla DePaglia.”
“It could be the same person.”
“That’s thin.”
FALLON FILLED HIM IN AS THEY WALKED. The victim, Sharla DePaglia, was a wild-since-birth brunette bombshell from Rome. Her cell phone records showed numerous calls to and from Blue Moon, starting a week before she came to Paris. She had only been in town five days before she got murdered.
So sad.
“The guy tied her up in a standing spread-eagle position in a vacant building that was being renovated,” Fallon said. “The construction workers found her like that the following morning, with a bag over her head, duct-taped around her neck.”
“The little freak,” Teffinger said.
“Here’s the weird part,” Fallon said. “There was a second set of ropes both up top and down below, empty. We believe that there was another woman hanging there spread-eagle with the victim.”
“So he had two women?”
“Yes,” Fallon said. “One he killed and one he let go.”
“Why’d he let one go?”
She shrugged.
“The best we can figure is that he was playing some kind of a death game with them. The loser gets killed and the winner doesn’t.”
Teffinger frowned.
“I’ve seen some freaky things, but that’s right up there.”
Yes.
It was.
“But the good news is that you have a witness out there somewhere,” Teffinger added.
Right, except they haven’t been able to locate her and she probably wouldn’t talk even if they did.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Day Four—July 15
Thursday Evening
______________
DEJA AND ALEXANDRA touched down at Cairo International Airport just as the sun dipped below the western curvature of the earth. Heat radiated from every pore of every square inch of sand and rock and asphalt and building and vehicle and human being and dog in the city.
Deja pulled her hair into a ponytail and said, “How can anyone live here?”
Alexandra chuckled.
“This? This is nothing, this is an artic ice storm,” she said. “Enjoy it while you can. Tomorrow is going to be a lot hotter.” Deja must have had a look of disbelief on her face because Alexandra added, “I’m serious.”
They hopped in a cab.
It headed into traffic that got more aggressive and dangerous as they got deeper into the throes of the city. On the way, Alexandra explained a few things. “Cairo has over 17 million people. It’s 90 percent Muslim, so most of the women will have their faces covered, at least when they’re in public or in the presence of a man. The women who don’t cover up are either non-Muslims or tourists. Egypt is still very much a caste system, with women finishing a distant second. Men are still allowed to have more than one wife and a lot of them do.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
Wrong.
She wasn’t.
“Some have three, four, or even more. Since we won’t be in traditional Muslim dress, men will try to figure out where we’re from. It’s not uncommon for them to propose almost immediately to an American woman, because they think all Americans are rich. Don’t be surprised if someone comes up and offers you a thousand camels to marry him.”
They came to a major intersection.
The cabbie paid attention, serious attention.
“Where are the traffic lights?” Deja asked.
The cabbie skirted through, narrowly avoiding getting clipped. “There aren’t that many,” Alexandra said. “It’s basically first come, first serve. Whoever’s the least afraid of dying has the right of way.”
“Nice.”
THEY CHECKED INTO A HOTEL that was safe enough to not be killed in and slightly less hot than outside when they blasted the air conditioner on full.
Deja took a cold shower.
There.
Better.
Almost human again.
When she got out, Alexandra was in bed on top of the sheets, wearing a T-shirt and panties, with the lights out and her head in a pillow. “Get some sleep, darling,” she said. “Tomorrow’s going to be a long day.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Day Four—July 15
Thursday
______________
DURAND HEADED HOME from the police scene at the dumpster and thought about getting out of France. Even though he didn’t kill the boxer, the police now had Durand’s bag of clothes in addition to a witness placing him at the scene. Those clothes had both Durand’s blood on them together with the blood of the back door guy that Durand had to punch.
Not good.
If the police somehow got Durand’s name—say a call from someone who recognized him from the newspaper—they would have both a witness and physical evidence tying him to the scene.
Sure, he had an excuse.
It wasn’t me.
It was someone else in the house the same time as me.
“Yeah, right. Maybe it was my mother. Is she the one who did it? Wait right here, I’m going to call her in for questioning, the little bitch—”
What to do?
Disappear to Amsterdam?
London?
Madrid?
Suddenly someone knocked on the door.
The cops?
DURAND LOOKED THROUGH THE PEEPHOLE, exhaled when he saw the cabbie-slash-hitman Anton Fornier and let him in. The man did a double-take on Durand’s hair and said, “Do you have any idea how lucky you are to have a friend like me?”
Why?
What’d he do?
“I paid a visit to my client this morning, the one who’s going to hire me for that hit I was telling you about,” Fornier said.
“On the guy who smothered the woman?”
Right.
That guy.
“Anyway,” Fornier said, “I conveyed your offer to help find the guy. And I vouched
for you. I told them you could be trusted and knew how to keep your mouth shut. They’re going to think about it.” The man grinned. “I’m pretty sure they’re going to go for it.”
Durand slapped him on his back.
“Way to go.”
Fornier got serious.
“If you get it, don’t just spin your wheels and take their money,” he said. “Remember, I don’t get anything out of it unless you actually find the guy.”
Durand nodded.
Understood.
“You know I’ll do my best,” he said. “And I’ll tell you what I’ll do. If it turns out that I can’t find the guy, I’ll kick over to you a third of everything I get paid, for getting me the gig.”
Fornier smiled ever so slightly.
“Fair enough,” he said. “But find the guy.” On the way out the door he turned. “What’d you do to your hair?”
“It’s a long story.”
Fornier wrinkled his forehead.
“It looks weird.”
Fornier was almost gone when Durand said, “Hey, wait a minute. What’s the woman’s name?—the one who got smothered.”
“Why?”
“I need to be sure I don’t have a conflict.”
Fornier hesitated.
Then said, “Your only conflict is the same as mine, meaning the check doesn’t clear.” He paused and added, “Sharla DePaglia, that’s her name.”
“She sounds Italian.”
“She’s from Rome but got killed here,” Fornier said. “Take care, my friend.”
“You too.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Day Four—July 15
Thursday Morning
______________
TEFFINGER AND FALLON followed the caveman taxi driver, Anton Fornier, from Blue Moon to an apartment building and waited down the street. “Now what’s he up to?” Fallon asked.
Teffinger shrugged.
“He could be a Blue Moon pimp.”
“Meaning what, exactly?”
“He feels out his passengers, connects the promising ones to Blue Moon and gets a kickback,” Teffinger said. “Or he could be a mule, meaning someone who collects the money from clients and takes it to Blue Moon. That makes sense in a way, because most guys aren’t going to write a check or use a credit card. Nor are they going to want to be seen knocking on Blue Moon’s door to make a cash payment. But there’s no suspicion attached to taking a taxi ride. Then they get to trust the caveman and shorten things up by letting him knock on their door and make a pickup. Either way, the caveman gets in the middle of the action. That would explain his mystery money.”
