Luc was attempting a very bold move in a difficult financial market. With silent partners backing him, he had purchased a building on the east side of Manhattan and planned to re-create the elegant restaurant his father had started so many decades ago, the one that almost every critic on both sides of the Atlantic had for years and years declared the finest dining in the city: Lutèce.
I had a loyal group of friends in the district attorney’s office who would be only too happy to submit themselves to the haute cuisine of the new Lutèce kitchen. Luc was a restaurateur, an executive chef who owned and managed the restaurant here and would do the same in New York. He had his father’s sense of style and creativity, but wasn’t the guy in the kitchen, holding the food to the flame.
The waiter was back to refill our glasses and offer an amuse-bouche-something to excite our palate-in this case a medley of seafood, courtesy of the chef. Luc sat up and put his feet in the sand, readying himself for the delicious meal to follow.
“I thought the catacombs had been closed,” I said. “I didn’t realize you could still go down there and root around.”
Luc groaned. “Get this all out of your system-bones and bodies and burial vaults-before the langouste is set in front of me, darling; I’d like to enjoy eating it, if you don’t mind. Have you ever been inside the catacombs?”
“I made the mistake of accepting the invitation of a friend who’s a medical examiner in Paris, five years or so ago. A tour was his idea of an excursion, I guess, but it’s one of the creepiest places I’ve ever been.”
We had entered through a narrow spiral staircase to the dark chamber way below the street surface that led to miles of tunnels beneath the city. The only sound breaking the silence was the gurgle of a hidden aqueduct coursing through an adjacent cavern wall. There was hall after hall of carefully arranged remains, floor to ceiling-centuries of dead Parisians who had been moved here in mass burials after widespread contamination of the city’s cemeteries. Rusty gates barred visitors from reaching areas that were too unsafe-or perhaps too gruesome-to be part of the tour.
“They were closed temporarily after some vandalism three or four years ago. Then reopened. That happens now and then.”
“You’ve been there, too?”
“Many times, Alexandra. And no, I’ve never been tempted to carry off any bones.”
He was licking his fingers to savor every last bit of the marinade.
“Did you ever go to the catacombs with Lisette?”
“No and no and no and no to all the ridiculous things that cross your mind.”
I thought for a minute. “What if there’s any significance to the numbers?”
“Which numbers?”
“Three skulls in front of Le Relais,” I said. “And you’re the only restaurant in town that’s got three stars.”
“And you’ve got a wonderfully fertile imagination that you should use to think about all the things we can do the next time you can sneak off for a visit here.”
We had started to eat in earnest when the maître d’ hurried to our chairs with a portable phone in hand.
“I’m so sorry to interrupt you, Luc, but it’s the police. He says it’s very important.”
Luc stood up. “Damn Belgarde. He’s determined to make himself look more stupid than Inspector Clouseau at this point.”
“Not for you. It’s for madame,” he said, extending his arm with the phone. “It’s American police.”
Luc threw his hands in the air. “I can’t believe this. You’re on holiday, Alexandra. Doesn’t anyone in your office get that? There are five hundred other prosecutors for Battaglia to lean on. Surely someone else is competent enough to do what you do?”
“Anyone and everyone on my team.” I blushed as I put down my glass on the small table between our chairs. I had promised Luc that I wouldn’t even charge my cell phone during the week here, so that we’d have a real chance to experience life together, without a professional interruption.
“Hello, Coop?”
Not even the static on the small phone that had been carried too far from its base could muffle the distinctive voice of NYPD homicide detective Mike Chapman.
“Yeah, Mike.”
“Did I catch you in the middle of a foie gras or anything? Is your profiterole melting?”
“Make it quick.”
“Forgive me for skipping the ‘bonjours’ and all that, but I had Luc’s secretary run you down.”
“Obviously.”
Luc folded his arms and walked away, but the maître d’ wasn’t ready to relinquish the phone to me at the height of the hour his reservations were calling in. He remained at my side.
“You’ve got to come home, Coop. Pronto. Next plane out of paradise.”
“Not this time,” I said, and though I was bursting with curiosity, I knew Luc would be furious if I even asked Mike why he had called.
“Mercer needs you. It’s serious, kid.”
“Something happen to Mercer?” The heightened concern in my voice got Luc’s attention. He knew that Mercer Wallace had covered my back more times than I could count. There was very little I wouldn’t do for him.
“Yeah.”
“He’s hurt?”
“Calm down, kid. He’s just fine, physically. What happened to him is that he’s saddled with the biggest case of his career and he wants you to help him. At the moment, it’s your archenemy who’s calling the shots.”
“Pat McKinney?” The chief of the Trial Division spent much of the average workday trying to stab me in the back with a serrated knife. “What does McKinney want with a rape case?”
“Visibility, I guess.”
I took Chapman’s bait. “What makes it so big?”
“I caught the squeal. Collared the guy in the first-class cabin on a flight to Paris.”
“The perp is French?”
Luc’s eyes were riveted on me as I started to talk and show interest. Now I was the one who took a few steps back.
“Lives in France, but he’s West African. Rich as Croesus. Son of an exiled African leader and he’s rumored to be the next president of the Ivory Coast, give or take a revolution or two in between. Head of the World Economic Bureau-called the WEB. You know who that is?”
“I have no idea.”
“I thought you specialized in Frenchmen.”
“You’re beginning to break up on me, Detective. You might find yourself disconnected if you get too snarky.”
“Mohammed Gil-Darsin,” Mike said. “Go on line and check him out. The French call him Baby Mo, even though he’s in his fifties, or they just use his initials-MGD. Anyway, a maid at the Eurotel Hotel down in SoHo claims he raped her.”
Everyone in the South of France knew Papa Mo, the overthrown dictator of the Republic of the Ivory Coast, who had gone into exile here-following the example of Haiti’s Duvalier-with millions of dollars stolen from his country’s cocoa-rich coffers. I didn’t realize he had a son who was a figure in the international economic community.
“Did you say a maid is the accuser?”
“Yeah, a housekeeper at the hotel. Best suite in the joint, at three thousand clams a night. She was doing turndown service in the room and he came out of the shower starkers. She tried to back out and he threw her onto her knees.”
“Nobody dead, Mike?” He was probably the best homicide detective in the city, assigned to Manhattan North, but he had never worked special victims cases.
“Nope. Alive and kicking back.”
“So what are you doing with a rape case?
“Working Night Watch, Coop. All the craziest shit happens on Night Watch.”
SIX
Luc was toweling down after a swim in the bay by the time I got off the phone with Mike. His voice was as ice-chilled as the champagne. “I’ll take you back to the house to pack up, Alex. You can fly up to Paris late afternoon and connect to home.”