Back in my office later that night, I opened my laptop and went to work. My novel was now more than four hundred pages in length. The doubts that haunted the early months of writing had been replaced by a fierce momentum—and the sense that the novel was starting to write itself. This was another reason why I was loath to run away from this small nocturnal cell. Its claustrophobic bleakness had become almost talismanic to me; the place where, free from all outside distraction, I pounded out the words and moved the story on. And I feared if I suddenly left this room, the writing would stop. So despite all the creeping doubts about everything to do with this job, this quartier, I was determined to stay working here until the novel was finished. Then, one day, I’d simply pack up my things and slip away. Until then—
Why is somebody screaming downstairs?
The scream was loud, shrill, alarming. It had an almost animalistic intensity—like that of a wild beast caught in a trap and howling in torment. After a moment it fell silent. Then I could hear the same voice engaged in loud supplications, followed by other voices shouting him down, and then . . .
The scream this time was agonizing. Pain was being inflicted in a merciless manner. When a further howl pierced the concrete walls of my room, I found myself on my feet and unbolting the door. But as soon as I yanked it open, the howling stopped. I peered downstairs into an empty corridor. I walked down several steps and stared at the door at the end of the corridor on the ground floor. A voice in my head whispered, Are you out of your fucking mind? I dashed upstairs, closed the door and bolted it again, trying my best to secure it quietly. But it still made a decisive thwack when I pushed it home. After a minute, the howling started again. This time, the other voices started to shout, the howls became hysterical, a word—Yok! Yok! Yok!—was repeated over and over again by the man who was screaming. There was further shouting, then one final appalling screech . . . then a deep, eerie silence.
I sat at my desk, chewing on a finger, feeling helpless, terrified. Don’t move, don’t move. But if you hear footsteps coming up the stairs, grab your laptop and make a dash for the emergency exit (not that I had any idea where that exit might actually bring me).
Ten, fifteen, twenty minutes went by. I kept staring at the television monitor. No one appeared on its fuzzy screen. Twenty-five minutes. Silence. Then, suddenly, I heard the downstairs door open and footsteps in the corridor. The front door opened. A man came out into the lane. He appeared short—but it was hard to discern anything about him, as he had the hood of his parka pulled up around his head to conceal his face. He also had a broom in one hand. What the hell is he doing with that? I wondered—until he thrust the broom handle at the camera hanging above the door. I flinched—because the image that appeared on the monitor made it seem like he was jabbing the broom handle directly at me. With the first blow the camera just shook. With the second, he scored a bull’s-eye on the lens and the screen went black. Then I could hear whispered voices and low grunts accompanied by the sound of something heavy being dragged along the corridor. The dragging sound stopped, there were more whispers—Were they checking that the coast was clear before hoisting the body?—then the sound of further dragging before the front door closed with a dull thud.
Don’t panic. Don’t panic . . .
But say they come back for you . . .?
If I left now, they could be waiting for me outside. I’d see who they were . . . and that would be, at best, unfortunate. If I waited here, at least I’d be sending a signal that I was playing by the rules. I wasn’t going to ask questions, go to the cops, make trouble.
I was desperate to flee. I couldn’t flee. But as soon as my watch read 6 AM, I was gone. Though I wanted to take a long walk by the Canal Saint-Martin to try to calm down, I sensed that it was best to stick to my usual routine, just in case somebody might be watching my movements. So I hung on until 6 AM, went to the boulangerie and bought my pains au chocolat, then returned to my room, where I found a new note stuck under my door:
I GIVE YOU TWO MORE DAYS, NO MORE. 1000 EUROS OR I TELL.
I crumpled up the note and shoved it into my pocket. Then I went inside and took a Zopiclone and crawled into bed.
Up as usual at two. At the Internet café thirty minutes later. But as soon as I walked in, I could tell that Mr. Beard knew all about last night. Because he came out from behind the bar and locked the front door, then motioned for me to follow him into a back room. When I hesitated, he said, “You do not leave here until we have a talk.”
“Let’s talk here,” I said, thinking if some stooges emerged from the back room, I’d have some minor chance of throwing myself through the glass of the front window and getting away with mere major lacerations.
“It’s quiet in the back.”
“We’ll talk here,” I said.
A pause. I could see him staring out at the street, looking just a little paranoid.
“What you see last night?” he asked.
“I saw some vandal smash the television camera.”
“Before that?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“That’s right: nothing.”
“I don’t believe you. You opened the door. They heard you.”
“They heard wrong.”
“You lie. They heard. They know.”
“I didn’t hear a sound all night. I never left the room all night. The only thing out of the ordinary was the clown who threw something at the camera—”
“You see his face?”
“He had a hood pulled up over his head, so it was hard to—”
“Why you think he broke the camera?”
“How should I know?”
“You lie.”
“Lie about what?”
“You know what happened. And if the police ask you what you heard?”
“Why would the police do that?”
“If the police ask you . . .”
“I’d tell them what I told you: I heard nothing.”
Silence. He reached into his jacket pocket and tossed my pay envelope on the floor. I decided not to raise objections to this little act of aggression, and instead played the subservient role demanded of me and leaned over to pick up the envelope. As I stood up again he said, “They know you heard the screams. They know you left the room—because they heard you leave the room. You don’t do that again. Understand?”
“Yes,” I said quietly.
I tried to go about my business that day. But as I sat down in a restaurant for lunch, as I took the metro out to Bercy for a screening of Kazan’s Splendor in the Grass, as I sipped a coffee afterward in the little brasserie opposite the Cinémathèque, I couldn’t help but wonder, Is someone watching me? I kept scanning people near me to see if I noticed the same recurring face. Walking down a street, I’d stop and spin around in an attempt to catch the man tailing me. But I saw no one. Still, I was taking no chances. I resisted the temptation to use a phone kiosk and call the walk-in clinic to get the results of my HIV test—out of fear that someone would report back to them that I was seen on the phone and, ergo, to the cops. So I decided to go there myself, my apprehension about the result somewhat tempered by everything else that had happened in the past twenty-four hours.
The clinic was open until eight. I arrived half an hour before closing time. The doctor I had seen was in the reception area as I walked in.
“What brings you back here?” he asked.
“I just came by for the test results.”
“You could have phoned.”
“I’d rather hear them in person.”
He shrugged, as if to say, If you insist. Then he turned to the receptionist and told her my name (I was impressed that he remembered me). She riffled around an inbox until she found the necessary file and handed it to him. He motioned for me to follow him into his office. I shut the door behind us. He settled into his desk chair and opened the file and started to read. I studied his face—in a manner similar to a defendant staring at the forema
n of a jury as he returns holding the verdict envelope in his hand.
“Please sit down, Mr. Ricks,” the doctor said.
“Bad news?”
“No need to be a fatalist, monsieur. The HIV test came back negative. However, I must inform you that you did test positive for another sexually transmitted disease: chlamydia.”
“I see,” I said.
“It is not a serious condition, and can easily be treated with antibiotics . . .”
“I thought only women got chlamydia.”
“Think again.”
He started scribbling something on a script pad.
“You will need to take these four times a day, and drink at least three liters of water daily. And no unprotected sex for three weeks.”
Three weeks! Margit would be thrilled to hear this—though the fact that I might have also given her a sexually transmitted disease would probably overshadow that minor detail.
“It is also advised that you do not drink alcohol during this course of antibiotics. It diminishes their efficacy.”
Better and better. Three weeks without booze. How could I get through this life of mine without booze?
“Naturally, you will also need to inform all your sexual partners of this condition.”
How do you know that I have “partners” and not just a partner? Or is my ever-growing sleaziness that apparent?
“I would also strongly advise you to return after the course of antibiotics for another blood test—just to be certain that there is no ongoing ambiguity.”
Doctor, there is always ongoing ambiguity . . . not to mention ongoing worry, as the past few days have shown.
“Fine,” I said. “Just fine.”
After stopping off at a late-night pharmacy on the boulevard de Sébastopol and handing over an exorbitant thirty-eight euros for the prescribed tablets, I decided to get the first bit of nasty business over with. I returned to the rue de Paradis and walked into Yanna’s bar. It was a slow night. There were only three other customers there—and they were conveniently installed in a table toward the back. Yanna’s eyes grew wide as I sat down at the otherwise empty bar.
“I thought I told you not to come here anymore,” she hissed.
“Did you speak to your husband?”
“He was delayed. He comes back tomorrow.”
She glanced nervously at the customers at the back table.
“Order a drink,” she whispered, “otherwise they will get suspicious.”
“Water.”
“Water?”
“Not my idea of a good time, believe me. But I am on antibiotics.”
“For what?” she asked.
That’s when I told her. She turned several shades of white.
“You fucker,” she hissed. “You gave me—”
“I gave you that? Think again, madame. It’s a female condition that’s passed on to the male.” I had no idea if this was true. “And since I haven’t been sleeping around—”
“Liar.”
“I caught this from you. And who knows where you caught it. Maybe your husband—”
“Get out,” she said.
“Not before you see this,” I said, and passed her the crumpled note that Omar had left under my door. She opened it up, glanced at it, then handed it back to me.
“Cochon,” she said.
“You’ve got to tell your husband as soon as he arrives.”
“Believe me, I will. And I’ll also tell him that Omar raped me and gave me this condition.”
“Now hang on . . .” I said, thinking if she told her husband that, it would result in an automatic death sentence for Omar.
“I hope he kills him,” she said. “And if you don’t get out now, I’ll also tell him that you tried to interfere with me as well.”
I stared at her furious face—and knew that I should not pursue this discussion any further.
Some hours later, staring at the screen of my laptop, ticking off the hours until 6:00 AM, I wondered, Why do I have this singular talent for making women angry at me? Or, to cut to the heart of the matter, Why do I always seem to fuck it up? But this was superseded by a larger concern: Omar. The sonofabitch was a blackmailer and a moron who wouldn’t think anything of selling me down the river. Still, the scheme that Margit devised for tripping him up would now result in . . . well, a fast death might be the mildest of punishments once Yanna’s husband and his collection of goons got their hands on the man who had “raped” his wife and given her a disease (even though Yanna’s husband probably picked it up from one of the whores he frequently slept with). The twisted morality of all this—do I endanger somebody who is threatening to endanger me?—preoccupied me all night. Then dawn came and I was out in the street, walking back to my chambre de bonne, a bag of pains au chocolat in hand.
I mounted the stairs to my room. When I reached my floor, my bladder felt full from all the water I had been drinking that night (doctor’s orders), so I turned toward the hallway toilet.
I opened the door and suddenly jumped back in horror, a scream leaping out of my throat. There before me was Omar. He lay slumped on the toilet seat. His throat had been cut. There was blood everywhere. And a toilet brush was sticking out of his mouth.
FIFTEEN
INSPECTOR JEAN-MARIE COUTARD was a flabby man. He was in his fifties and short—maybe five foot six—with a double chin, a large gut, and a red face that made him look self-basting. His clothes were a jumble of contrasting styles and patterns: a checkered sports jacket, gray trousers, a striped shirt dappled with food stains, a paisley tie. His lack of sartorial interest mirrored his general air of unhealthiness. He had a cigarette screwed into his mouth, and he seemed to be puffing away on it in an attempt to wake himself up. It was only seven fifteen in the morning, and he looked like he had been summoned directly from his bed to this crime scene.
When he arrived, there was already a crowd of people around the tiny bathroom. Three plainclothes policemen, two forensic guys in white coats and latex gloves, a photographer, and a medical man examining the grotesque mess that was Omar. Two plainclothes inspectors then showed up, one of whom was Coutard.
The uniformed cops had been the first on the scene. They came within ten minutes of me racing downstairs and calling them from the phone kiosk at the end of rue de Paradis. Running out to phone them had been an instinctual reaction—and one made in the complete shock of the moment. As soon as I had done so, the thought struck me, They are going to ask where I was when the crime took place. As I couldn’t tell them about my “work,” I raced back to my room and “unmade” my bed, hoping that it looked like I had slept there that night. Then I started thinking fast, trying to construct the alibi I would give the cops when they arrived.
I charged downstairs again to let the police in: two young officers who followed me upstairs and tried hard not to blanch when they saw the bloody state of Omar in the toilet. Within moments they were calling for backup. One of them posted himself outside to make certain nobody left the building. The other stepped into my room with me and asked to see my papers. When I handed over the American passport, he looked at me quizzically.
“Why do you live here?” he asked.
“It’s cheap.”
Then he began to ask me some basic questions. What time did I find the body? Where was I last night? (“I couldn’t sleep, so I went out for a walk.”) What time was that? (“Around two.”) And where did I go? (“I just walked along the canal Saint-Martin, then eventually crossed the river and followed the Seine as far as Notre-Dame, then headed back here, stopping at the local pâtisserie for pains au chocolat.”) Did I know the deceased? (“We were merely passing acquaintances.”) Did I have any idea who might have done this? (“None at all.”)
After this brief Q&A, I was told to wait here in my room until the inspector arrived. The cop held on to my passport—and left me alone to my thoughts. My alibi sounded flimsy, full of holes . . . though, at least, they’d be able to confirm with the guy at the pâ
tisserie that I was there around six this morning. I lay down on my bed and shut my eyes and tried to expunge every grisly detail of Omar on that toilet: the splatter-effect crimson blood, the deep oozing gorge around his throat, the fact that his trousers were down and he must have been in mid-bowel movement when the attack happened. Two people must have killed him: one held him down while his partner shoved the toilet brush in his mouth to stifle his screams before slitting his throat. Had Yanna somehow managed to call her husband that night in Turkey to tell him about the “rape,” and then he phoned some friends who . . .?
No, that was completely implausible—as Yanna told me he was on the night flight back to Paris yesterday. Which meant he would have been out of contact. So rule out Yanna’s husband. But knowing Omar—and how he pissed off everyone who ventured into his path—he must have had a lot of enemies.
That was Inspector Coutard’s first question to me.
“Did the deceased have any ongoing disputes with anyone?”
I had figured this question would arise and decided to play dumb.
“I didn’t know the man.”
“Even though he lived next door to you?”
“We didn’t speak.”
“You shared the same floor, the same toilet.”
“You can share a communal toilet and still not speak with someone.”
Coutard reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out my passport. I tried not to look surprised. He flicked through its pages, stopping at the two sole entry stamps.
“You entered France on December 28 of last year, via Canada.”
“That’s right. My connecting flight was from Montreal.”
“From where?”
“Chicago.”
“That is where you last lived in the United States?”
“No, I lived in . . .”
And I named the town in Ohio.
“And what made you come to France on December 28 of last year?”
I was prepared for this.
“My marriage had fallen apart and I had lost my job at the college where I taught, and I decided to flee my problems, so . . .”
“There are no direct flights from Chicago to Paris?” he asked, and I could see the subtext behind that question: if you flew here via another country, perhaps you weren’t just fleeing a failed marriage.
The Douglas Kennedy Collection #2 Page 54
