My bag shot down the luggage chute like it had missed me, and within twenty minutes of landing I was sitting in the backseat of a taxi.
I spoke to the driver in my broken French, told him where to take me: the Hôtel Singe-Vert, French for “Green Monkey.” I’d stayed there before and knew it to be a clean two-and-a-half-star lodging popular with journalists on location in the City of Lights.
I walked through the unmanned lobby door, passed the entrance to the bar called Jacques’ Américain on my left, then crossed into the dark inner lobby with its worn green couches, racks of folded newspapers in all languages, and a large, faded watercolor of African green monkeys behind the front desk.
The concierge’s nametag read “Georges.” He was flabby, fiftyish, and pissed that he had to break off his phone conversation to deal with me. After Georges ran my credit card and locked my passport in the safe, I took the stairs, found my room on the third floor at the end of a frayed runner at the back of the hotel.
The room was papered with cabbage roses and crowded with century-old furniture, jammed in wall to wall. But the bedding was fresh, and there was a TV and a high-speed Internet connection on the desk. Good enough for me.
I dropped my bag down on the duvet and found a phone book. I’d been in Paris for an hour, and before I did another thing I had to get a gun.
Chapter 103
THE FRENCH TAKE handguns seriously. Permits are restricted to police and the military and a few security professionals, who have to lug their guns in cases, carry them in plain sight.
Still, in Paris, as in any big city, you can get a gun if you really want one. I spent the day prowling the Golden Drop, the drug-dealing sinkhole around the Basilica of Sacré-Coeur.
I paid two hundred euros for an old snub-nosed .38, a ladies’ pistol with a two-inch barrel and six rounds in the chamber.
Back at the Green Monkey, Georges took my key off the board and pointed with his chin to a small heap on one of the sofas. “You have a guest.”
It took me a long moment to take in what I was seeing. I walked over, shook her shoulder, and called her name.
Amanda opened her eyes and stretched as I sat down beside her. She put her arms around my neck and kissed me, but I couldn’t even kiss her back. She was supposed to be home, safe in L.A.
“Gee. Pretend you’re glad to see me, okay? Paris is for lovers,” she said, smiling cautiously.
“Mandy, what in God’s name are you thinking?”
“It’s a little rash, I know. Look, I have something to tell you, Ben, and it could affect everything.”
“Cut to the chase, Mandy. What are you talking about?”
“I wanted to tell you face-to-face —”
“So you just got on a plane? Is it about Henri?”
“ No —”
“Then, Mandy, I’m sorry, but you have to go back. No, don’t shake your head. You’re a liability. Understand?”
“Well, thank you.”
Mandy was pouting now, which was rare for her, but I knew that the further I pushed her, the more obstinate she’d get. I could already smell the carpet burning as she dug in her heels.
“Have you eaten?” she asked me.
“I’m not hungry,” I said.
“I am. I’m a French chef. And we’re in Paris.”
“This is not a vacation,” I said.
A half hour later, Mandy and I were seated at an outdoor café on the Rue des Pyramides. Night had blotted up the sunlight, the air was warm, and we had a clear view of a gilded statue of Saint Joan on her horse where our side street intersected with the Rue de Rivoli.
Mandy’s mood had taken an upturn. In fact, she seemed almost high. She ordered in French, put away course after course, describing the preparation and rating the salad, the pâté, and the fruits de mer.
I made do with crackers and cheese and I drank strong coffee, my mind working on what I had to do, feeling the time rushing by.
“Just try this,” Mandy said, holding out a spoonful of cr
me brqlée.
“Honestly, Amanda,” I said with frank exasperation. “You shouldn’t be here. I don’t know what else to say to you.”
“Just say you love me, Benjy. I’m going to be the mother of your child.”
Chapter 104
I STARED at Amanda; thirty-four years old, looking twenty-five, wearing a baby blue cardigan with ruffled collar and cuffs and a perfect Mona Lisa smile. She was astonishingly beautiful, never more so than at this very moment.
“Please say that you’re happy,” she said.
I took the spoon out of her hand and put it down on her plate. I got out of my chair, placed one hand on each of her cheeks, and kissed her. Then I kissed her again. “You are the craziest girl I ever knew, tr
s étonnante.”
“You’re very amazing, too,” she said, beaming.
“Boy, do I love you,” I said.
“Moi aussi. Je t’aime you to pieces. But are you, Benjy? Are you happy?”
I turned to the waitress, said to her, “This lovely lady and I are going to have a baby.”
“It is your first baby?”
“Yes. And I love this woman so much, and I’m so happy about the baby I could fly circles around the moon.”
The waitress smiled broadly, kissed both my cheeks and Mandy’s, then made a general announcement that I didn’t quite understand. But she made wing motions with her arms, and people at the next table started laughing and clapping and then others joined in, calling out congratulations and bravos.
I smiled at strangers, bowed to a beatific Amanda, and felt the flush of an unexpected and full-blown joy. Not long ago I was thanking God that I have no children. Now I was lit up brighter than I. M. Pei’s glass pyramid at the Louvre.
I could hardly believe it.
Mandy was going to have our child.
Chapter 105
AS QUICKLY AS my expanding love for Mandy sent my heart to the moon, my happiness was eclipsed by an even greater fear for her safety.
As we trekked back to our little hotel, I told Amanda why she had to leave Paris in the morning.
“We’ll never be safe as long as Henri is calling the shots. I have to be smarter than he is, and that’s saying something, Amanda. Our only hope is for me to get out in front of him. Please trust me about this.”
I told Mandy that Henri had described walking with Gina around the Place Vendôme.
I said, “It’s like looking for one needle in a hundred haystacks, but my gut is telling me that he’s here.”
“And if he is, what are you going to do about it, Benjy? Are you really going to kill him?”
“You’ve got a better idea?”
“About a hundred of them.”
We took the stairs to our room, and I made Amanda stand back as I drew my dainty Smith and Wesson and opened the door. I checked the closets and the bath, pushed aside the curtains, and looked out into the alley, seeing popup monsters everywhere.
When I was sure the room was clear, I said, “I’ll be back in an hour. Two hours at most. Sit tight, okay? Watch the tube. Swear to me you won’t leave the room.”
“Oh please, Benjy, call the police.”
“Honey. One more time. They can’t protect us. We’re not protectable. Not from Henri. Now promise me.”
Mandy reluctantly held up the three-fingered Girl Scout salute, then locked the door behind me as I headed out.
I’d done some homework. There were a handful of first-class hotels in Paris. Henri might stay at the Georges V or the Plaza Athénée. But I was betting on my hunch.
It was an easy walk to the Hôtel Ritz on the Place Vendôme.
Chapter 106
HENRI POPPED his knuckles in the backseat of a metered Mercedes taxi heading north from Orly toward the Rue de Rivoli and from there to the Place Vendôme. He was hungry and irritated, and the ridiculous traffic was barely crawling across the Pont Royal on the Rue des Pyramides.
As the taxi idl
ed at a traffic light, Henri shook his head, thinking again about the mistake he’d made, a genuine amateur boner, not knowing that Jan Van der Heuvel would be out of town when he visited Amsterdam earlier that day. Rather than leave immediately, he’d made a decision on the fly, something he rarely did.
He knew that Van der Heuvel had a secretary. He’d met her once, and he knew she’d be locking up Van der Heuvel’s office at the end of the day.
So he’d watched and waited for Mieke Helsloot, with her cute little body and her short skirt and lace-up boots, to lock Van der Heuvel’s big front door at five on the nose. Then he’d followed her in the intense silence of the canal district, only the sound of church bells and seabirds breaking the stillness.
He followed quietly, only yards behind her, crossing the canal after her, turning down a winding side street. Then he called out, “Hello, excuse me,” and she’d turned to face him.
He’d apologized right away, falling in step beside her, saying he’d seen her leaving Mr. Van der Heuvel’s office and had been trying to catch up to her for the last couple of blocks.
He’d said, “I’m working with Mr. Van der Heuvel on a confidential project. You remember me, don’t you, Mieke? I’m Monsieur Benoit. I met you once in the office,” Henri had said.
“Yes,” she said doubtfully. “But I don’t see how I can help you. Mr. Van der Heuvel will be back tomorrow.”
Henri had told her that he’d lost Mr. Van der Heuvel’s cell phone number, and that it would really help him if he could explain how he’d gotten the date of their meeting wrong. And Henri had continued the story until Meike Helsloot had stopped at the front door to her flat.
He thought of her now, holding the key in her hand, impatience showing on her face, but in her politeness and willingness to help her employer she’d let him into her flat so that she could make the call for him to her boss.
Henri had thanked her, taken the one upholstered chair in Meike’s two-room flat that had been built under a staircase, and waited for the right moment to kill her.
As the girl rinsed out two glasses, Henri had looked around at the sloping bookshelves, the fashion magazines, the mirror over the fireplace that was almost completely covered with photos of Mieke’s handsome boyfriend.
Later, when she understood what he was going to do, she’d wailed, no-no-no, and begged him, please not to, she hadn’t done anything wrong, she would never tell anyone, no, never.
“Sorry. It’s not about you, Mieke,” he’d said. “It’s about Mr. Van der Heuvel. He’s a very wicked man.”
She’d said, “So why do this to me?”
“Well. It’s Jan’s lucky day, isn’t it? He was out of town.”
Henri had bound her arms behind her back with one of her own bootlaces and was undoing his belt buckle when she said, “Not that. Please. I’m supposed to get married.”
He hadn’t raped her. He hadn’t been in the mood after doing Gina. So he’d told her to think of something nice. It was important in the last moments of life to have good thoughts.
He looped another bootlace around her throat and tightened it, holding her down with his knee in the small of her back until she stopped breathing. The waxed shoelace was as strong as wire, and it cut through her thin neck and she bled as he killed her.
Afterward, he arranged the pretty girl’s body under blankets and patted her cheek.
He was thinking now, he’d been so angry at himself for missing Jan that he hadn’t even thought to videotape the kill.
Then again — Jan would get the message.
Henri liked thinking about that.
Chapter 107
STILL SITTING IN THE INTERMINABLE SLOG of traffic, Henri’s mind turned back to Gina Prazzi, thinking of her eyes getting huge when he shot her, wondering if she’d really understood what he’d done. It was truly significant. She was the first person he’d killed for his own satisfaction since strangling the girl in the horse trailer more than twenty years ago.
And now he’d killed Mieke for the same reason. It wasn’t about money at all.
Something inside him was changing.
It was like a light slipping beneath a door, and he could either open it to its full blinding brightness, or slam the door shut and run.
The horns were blaring now, and he saw that the taxi had finally crept to the intersection of Pyramides and Rivoli, and then stopped again. The driver turned off the air-conditioning and opened the windows to save gas.
Disgusted, Henri leaned forward, tapped on the glass.
The driver took a break from his cell phone to tell Henri that the street was jammed because of the French president’s motorcade, which was just leaving the Elysée Palace on its way to the National Assembly.
“There’s nothing I can do, Monsieur. My hands are tied. Relax.”
“How long will it be?”
“Perhaps another fifteen minutes. How should I know?”
Henri was more furious at himself than before. It had been stupid to come to Paris as some kind of ironic postscript to killing Gina. Not only stupid, but self-indulgent, or maybe self-destructive. Was that it? Do I want to be caught now? he wondered.
He watched the street through the open window, desperate for the absurd politician’s motorcade to come and go, when he heard shouts of laughter coming from a brasserie at the corner.
He looked that way.
A man wearing a blue sports jacket, a pink polo shirt, and khakis, an American of course, made a comic bow to a young woman in a blue sweater. People began clapping, and as Henri looked more closely, the man seemed familiar and then — Henri’s mind stopped cold.
In fact, he couldn’t believe it. He wanted to ask the driver, Do you see what I see? Is that Ben Hawkins and Amanda Diaz? Because I think I’ve lost my mind.
Then Hawkins wiggled the metal frame chair, turning it, sitting so that he faced the street, and Henri knew without a doubt. It was Ben. When he’d last checked, Hawkins and the girl had been in L.A.
Henri’s mind flashed back over the weekend to late on Saturday night, after he’d shot Gina. He’d e-mailed the video to Ben, but he hadn’t checked the GPS tracker, not then. Not for a couple of days.
Had Ben discovered and discarded the chip?
For a moment, Henri felt something completely new to him. He was afraid. Afraid that he was getting sloppy, losing his hard-won discipline, losing his grip. He couldn’t let that happen.
Never again.
Henri barked at the driver, saying that he couldn’t wait any longer. He pushed a wad of bills into the driver’s hand, grabbed his bag and briefcase, and got out of the cab on the street side.
He walked between cars, before doubling back to the sidewalk. Moving quickly, he ducked into an alcove between two storefronts only ten yards or so from the brasserie.
Henri watched, his heart racing, as Ben and Amanda left the restaurant and walked arm in arm, east up Rivoli.
When they had gone far enough ahead, Henri fell in behind them, keeping them in view as they reached the Singe-Vert, a small hotel on Place André Malraux.
Once Amanda and Ben disappeared inside, Henri went into the hotel bar, Jacques’ Américain, adjacent to the lobby. He ordered a Scotch from the bartender, who was actively putting the moves on a horse-faced brunette.
Henri sipped his drink and viewed the lobby through the bar’s back mirror. When he saw Ben come downstairs, Henri swiveled in the stool, watched as Ben handed his key to the concierge.
Henri made a mental note of the number under the key hook.
Chapter 108
IT WAS ALREADY half past eight p.m. by the time I reached the Place Vendôme, an enormous square with traffic lanes on four sides and a tall bronze memorial to Napoléon Bonaparte in the center. On the west side of the Place is Rue St.-Honoré, shopping paradise for the wealthy, and across the square was the drop-dead-fantastic French Gothic architecture of the Hôtel Ritz, all honey-colored stone and luminous demilune awnings over the doorways.
I found the house phones in an alcove and asked the operator to ring Henri Benoit. My heartbeats counted off the seconds, and then the operator came back on and told me that Monsieur Benoit was expected but had not checked in. Would I care to leave a message?
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