Jim McGill 02 The Hangman's Companion

by Joseph Flynn

  The place was dimly lit, but that was to be expected.

  Canned brasswinds crackled out of cheap speakers.

  On a stage no bigger than a ping-pong table a stripper wearing only high heels, looking not too bad by available lighting, was grinding her bod against a pole for the amusement of a half-dozen men who leaned forward for a better view. Thing was, the dancer looked like she had sore feet, a bad back and maybe some other infirmity. None of the coeds the two jocks had slept with had ever made a face like that.

  “Hope that’s not what ecstasy looks like over here,” Hockey said.

  The stripper snapped a heel, cursed and kicked off her shoes, almost beaning a couple of onlookers. Her feet now as bare as the rest of her, she looked like she felt better, except maybe her back was still stiff.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Lacrosse said.

  His GPA was a full point higher than his friend’s, but he was still a beat slow. An older woman, not real old, more like a mom who’d kept her figure up and didn’t mind showing a lot of cleavage, appeared between them and the door.

  “You gentlemen will need a table,” she said.

  “We’re just leaving,” Lacrosse told her.

  “Very well, but a table fee of one hundred euros and a two-drink minimum at one hundred euros per drink is still required.”

  “We just got here,” Hockey said, getting hot.

  “As may be. You have still seen Claudine dance.”

  The stripper, in fact, had stopped moving. She stood leaning against the pole with one hand, her other hand pressed against the small of her back. She was watching them. What the lacrosse player didn’t like was the mean little smile the stripper had on her face.

  Lacrosse told the tight-bod mom, “All we have are dollars. Maybe a hundred dollars all together. You can have that.”

  Hockey looked at him. “Are you crazy? We aren’t giving this bitch a dime.”

  The woman ignored him and told Lacrosse, “A credit card will do.”

  “Don’t have any credit cards.”

  “Fuck this,” Hockey said, “let’s get outta here.”

  The tough broad looked off toward a dark corner and nodded. A chair creaked, a floorboard groaned. Something big had just gotten to its feet.

  The hard-faced woman gave it one last try.

  “You may leave your passports with me until you return with five hundred euros.”

  The stripper was smiling wide now, two gaps in her teeth showing.

  “We don’t have our passports with us,” Hockey said, right up in the tough broad’s face.

  Lacrosse jerked him back when he saw a knife appear in the woman’s hand.

  “This is very bad,” the now evil-looking mom said.

  Hockey finally got the idea they were in trouble. The gawkers were retreating from their nearby tables. Still, Hockey thought, there were two of them and … he felt it before he heard it. The floor started to bounce. There was a low rumble. Something really huge was getting close, and then the smell hit him.

  “Jesus!” Hockey said, wrinkling his nose. “What the hell is that stink?”

  The Hideaway, Paris

  23

  McGill lay in his borrowed bed, thinking about the case. In particular, he thought about Glen Kinnard telling him that the mystery woman had provoked the attack on her by telling Thierry Duchamp he was underendowed. Belittling a sports star’s manhood was a damn good way to … get your finger chomped in this case. Followed by a severe bruising.

  Why would a seemingly sober woman do that to herself?

  The only answer he could come up with was that she hadn’t expected to suffer greatly. Nor for very long. Chances were she had seen Kinnard nearby when she’d delivered the cheap shot. Or her cruelly accurate assessment, as the case may be.

  If the blonde were a Frenchwoman, or at least familiar with French law, she would have known that Kinnard would be obliged to come to her aid in some way. At that time of the night, with no one else around, what form could that aid have taken except personal intervention?

  Had Kinnard chosen to do nothing more than call the French equivalent of 911, the woman could have died before help arrived. So had the woman judged Kinnard to be a man who would jeopardize himself to help her? If McGill had to guess, he’d say yes. But had she thought Kinnard would be able to hold his own against a professional athlete? If so, what was the basis for such a conclusion? If the woman were still alive, and Thierry Duchamp also had survived, would the blonde have come forward and brought charges against the soccer star?

  Maybe not if Duchamp had been injured and were unable to pursue his sport. Now, with the soccer star dead, the sporting public would be happy to see the blonde get the chop along with Kinnard. You took a slightly different angle on the situation, though, maybe the missing woman was seriously misanthropic, had hoped to see two men beat themselves bloody. Make Duchamp suffer for whatever he’d done to piss her off and have another sap take his lumps just on general principles.

  McGill considered the damage Kinnard had suffered. An experienced brawler like him should have known several defenses against kicks. But maybe, initially, he’d been put off his game by having his wife’s ashes in hand. And if he’d been caring for a dying woman for any length of time, his head-busting skills had probably gotten rusty.

  McGill’s ruminations were interrupted when his cell phone sounded. “Hail to the Chief.” Patti was calling.

  She said hello by asking, “Is France still our ally?”

  “As much as ever.”

  “Nice ambiguity. You might have a future in politics.”

  “My only future in politics is following your every command.”

  The president laughed. “Good one. You’re the only person who keeps me humble. I couldn’t do without that.”

  “Okay. But I can keep on being your henchman, can’t I?”

  “I’d never have anyone else. How’s the case going, Jim?”

  “Won’t be easy to find a missing person in a place you’ve never visited before.”

  “Are the French cooperating?”

  McGill said, “This guy Pruet, I’m told he’s in a no-win situation. Damned domestically if he lets Glen Kinnard go; damned by the U.S. if he locks Kinnard up and throws away the key. His best hope is for me to do something dumb.”

  “Which, of course, you won’t.”

  “It’s not part of my plan. Once I have a plan.”

  “Ms. Casale is being helpful?”

  “Yeah. Provided transportation, food, shelter and … aw, damn.”

  “What?” the president asked.

  “I left England in such a hurry I didn’t bring my clothes.”

  “What’s the address where you’re staying?” Patti asked.

  McGill didn’t know.

  He said, “I’m in a flat above an Irish pub. On the Left Bank, I think.”

  “A flat above a pub?” the president asked.

  “It’s called The Hideaway, just like at home,” McGill said. “No one will find me.”

  “This pub and flat are owned by?”

  “Ms. Casale’s kid brother, Gianni, a loyal American and the next Thomas Edison.”

  McGill felt he’d been interrogated long enough.

  He asked, “How are things in London?”

  “This is the calm before the storm. I’m going to change the status quo tomorrow.”

  “Always a serious business,” he said. Said it so she’d know he meant it. “I miss you, Madam President. I’d enjoy Paris much more if you were here with me.”

  “I miss you, too, loyal henchman.”

  McGill was just about to say goodbye when his dear wife told him, “I’ll have your clothes sent ‘round.”

  He had no doubt they would be on his doorstep before he awakened.

  Chapter 5

  Wednesday, June 3rd — Paris

  1

  Gabbi pulled her Peugeot to the curb in front the Hideaway at 5:15 a.m. Harbin and McGill were wai
ting for her, and so was her parking spot. The two men shook hands, and McGill slipped into the car. Harbin went back inside.

  The RSO waited until McGill was buckled in and extended a paper cup of coffee to him. It was almost too hot to hold. There was a lid on it to avoid accidental spills. As good as the coffee smelled it was a challenge to leave the lid in place. But being too eager would scald his mouth.

  “There are packets of sugar and containers of cream in the console, if that’s the way you like it,” Gabbi said.

  That was just how McGill took his coffee, but with this cup he thought he’d try it black. Once it cooled a little. He set the cup in a holder.

  “I’ll get to it in just a minute, thanks.”

  Gabbi nodded and pulled out. The traffic at that hour was light, vans making commercial deliveries to boulangeries, cafés, and other retailers. Sunrise was about a half-hour off, but the predawn light was more than enough for McGill to see the outline of the city emerging. The air held just a hint of coolness. Paris was making quite the first impression on him.

  To avoid getting giddy, he said to Gabbi, “Tell me the winters here are miserable.”

  “Can be,” she said. “Paris doesn’t get really cold the way Chicago does. It’s more of a wet and dreary time, chilly enough to make you want to sit by a cozy fire. Days are blink-of-an-eye short; nights go on forever. Winter here makes you want to jump on a plane and spend a month in Tahiti or the Caribbean.”

  McGill would bet little brother Gianni had a home in Bora Bora or St Bart’s.

  But it wasn’t his place to pry—at least about that.

  He said, “Harbin tells me he was in the Légion étrangère.” The Foreign Legion.

  Gabbi glanced at him. “I didn’t know that. And your accent really is quite good.”

  “Merci,” McGill said. He picked up his coffee, removed the lid and sipped. “Delicious,” he told Gabbi. He took a longer drink and added, “Harbin also told me he usually doesn’t spend the night at the pub, but last night he did.”

  The RSO kept her eyes on the road.

  “Is that all right with you? I asked him to do it because, if nothing else, it helped me to sleep better.”

  It rankled McGill when people worried about him. You put in twenty-five years as a cop, you had cat-quick reflexes, and you were the only living master of Dark Alley in the world, you liked to think you weren’t an easy mark.

  But as his mother had always told him, “If someone wants to do something nice for you, Jimmy, let them, and say thank you.”

  He’d always been a good son.

  “Thank you for your concern, Ms. Casale,” he told Gabbi. “I suppose if I’m going to get you up early, you’ll need to sleep soundly.”

  Quai Branly, Paris

  2

  They parked in a public lot adjacent to the Seine, a short distance from the crime scene. McGill finished his coffee and said, “Gotta be something more than coffee beans in this cup.”

  Gabbi said, “Sure. But you don’t ask French chefs how they work their magic.”

  They walked in companionable silence along the concrete left bank of the river. Ahead, they saw a dark-haired boy, maybe in his early teens, walking toward them. He gave them a glance, not lingering on either of them, but sizing them up all the same. McGill could tell the kid had some sort of game in mind.

  He’d seen young con artists before. Alert to every person and possibility on their side of the horizon line. The really bright ones became the hackers and phishers who stalked their prey worldwide.

  “That kid’s up to something,” McGill told Gabbi.

  Studying the boy, she said, “He’s Romany, a gypsy.”

  McGill and Gabbi kept their eyes on the kid. He met their gaze for a second, then lowered his eyes and moved out of their way. He tensed a little as he passed by. Both McGill and Gabbi turned to watch him, saw him bend down, extend his right hand to the pavement.

  The kid cried out, “Bonté divine!” Good heavens!

  He turned to face McGill and Gabbi, took an involuntary step back when he saw they were already looking at him. Nonetheless, he showed them what he held in his hand: a gleaming gold wedding band.

  “You are Americans, yes?” he asked.

  “Sommes-nous?” Gabbi asked. Are we?

  Her accent had the kid fooled.

  “Désolé,” he said. Sorry.

  As the kid turned to go, McGill asked, “Would you like to make some money? Not by selling us a ring, but another way.”

  The kid eyed them suspiciously. McGill knew what he was thinking.

  “Not sex,” he said. “We need help finding someone.”

  The kid’s bland expression said he could deal with that.

  “How much money?”

  McGill looked at Gabbi, “Sawbuck now, C-note if he comes through?”

  The young gypsy tried to puzzle out the slang.

  Gabbi nodded. She produced a 10-euro note, showed it to the boy. “This for now, ninety more if you succeed.”

  The kid’s eyes sparkled, but otherwise he maintained a poker face.

  “Who must I find?”

  McGill told him about Kinnard’s fight, and the woman who had been involved. He described her in outline.

  Looking pensive, the kid recapitulated. Then he nodded at Gabbi.

  “Like madam only younger?”

  Gabbi said, “Et plus frais.” She cupped her hands in front of her chest, which got a smile out of the kid. He took the ten euros from her.

  McGill told him, “There will be an additional hundred-euro bonus if you find this woman in the next three days.”

  The kid bobbed his head, all business again, taking in the terms of the deal.

  McGill spelled out the final details. “If you bring us just any woman with blonde hair, you will be wasting our time, and the bonus will be reduced by twenty percent for each wrong woman. Bring us three wrong women and the whole deal is off.”

  That didn’t seem to worry the kid.

  “You’ll need a number to call,” Gabbi told him. She wrote her office number at the American Embassy on the back of a Monsieur Henri business card and gave it to the kid.

  He looked at both of them and asked McGill, “You are sure you do not wish to buy the ring for madam?”

  The president’s henchman said, “I’m sure.”

  Pont d’Iéna, Paris

  3

  As McGill and Gabbi drew near the bridge, they saw two figures were already standing under it. A moment later, they recognized them as Investigating Magistrate Pruet and his bodyguard, Odo Sacripant.

  “Bonjour, M’sieur McGill, Mademoiselle Casale,” the magistrate said. “I see our common interest has drawn us together this morning.”

  Without consulting with Gabbi first, McGill asked “No one has fished the body of a young blonde woman out of the Seine since the fight, have they M’sieur Pruet?”

  The magistrate said, “Not to my knowledge, no.”

  He looked at Odo, who shook his head.

  “Forgive me for asking, sir,” McGill continued “but is there any chance a body might have been found and the news was kept from you?”

  Rather than be offended, Pruet was grateful to hear a point raised that he hadn’t considered, though he didn’t say so. After another glance at Odo, he told McGill, “I will see if perhaps someone has been negligent in his reporting duties.”

  Then Pruet took a sheaf of photos from Odo. For the first time, McGill and Gabbi got to see Thierry Duchamp’s dead body in situ lying next to Glenn Kinnard’s unconscious form. They walked over to the spot, looked at the pavement, tried to imagine the fight as it had occurred.

  McGill asked, “Would you object to a little role-playing, m’sieur?”

  “Not at all,” Pruet responded. “What do you have in mind?”

  “I’ll be the distraught American, Kinnard. Ms. Casale can play the mysterious blonde. Your colleague M’sieur Sacripant, if he doesn’t mind, can play M’sieur Duchamp.”r />
  Pruet caught the spirit of the idea and liked it.

  “I’ll look on, an invisible observer.”

  They set it up so McGill stayed under the bridge with Pruet. Gabbi and Odo moved downstream a hundred feet or so and began arguing, their voices growing louder as they drew near. Pruet, following his own particular line of speculation that some passerby might have overheard the bickering voices and scurried over to have a look at the source of the unrest, kept an eye out for anyone on the adjacent Quai Branly.

  On the opposite side of the street, he saw two pedestrians striding along and a man making a delivery from a commercial van. A young woman passed by on a motorbike. On the other side of the river, the Avenue de New York was empty. No one seemed to be paying any attention to the little melodrama being acted out next to the Seine.

  As Gabbi and Odo neared the underpass of the bridge, Gabbi, by prearrangement, raised her voice. She shouted the insult that had set off Thierry Duchamp. Pruet looked around again. Both the girl on the motorbike and the man with the delivery van were gone. One of the pedestrians walked on, oblivious. But the other, a thin man with a youthful face but graying hair, dressed in business attire came to a stop and cocked his head.

  McGill, playing Kinnard, standing under the bridge, had a ringside view of what appeared to be Odo biting Gabbi’s index finger. Then, per Pruet’s request, Gabbi screamed for all she was worth. Her projection was worthy of a diva, so shocking to Pruet that he thought he might indeed have heard it had he been on his balcony. Surely, someone closer must have taken notice.

  The young, graying businessman, to Pruet’s great approbation, was running toward the scene with his mobile phone in his hand. He was coming to the aid of a person in need, as the law required. So was McGill, as Kinnard, who yelled in a very American voice, “Hey, dickwad, knock it the hell off!”

  McGill ran at the couple as if carrying an object in his left arm. The wife’s urn, Pruet remembered. He was shocked once more as McGill, still advancing, yelled, “Police! Get the hell away from her!”