“How do you know he wasn’t scoping for you?”
“You know the answer to that. With where I’m sitting, he could see my face from outside the restaurant. Besides, my enemies aren’t from that part of the world. Yours are.”
“Isn’t that profiling?”
“It is if you’re doing it right.”
“Or it could be about someone else in the restaurant. Or it could be just a coincidence.”
She was smarter than that and her resistance was really beginning to agitate me. “Look, maybe I’m wrong, I’ve been wrong plenty of times before. But only on the side of caution. You really want to bet your life on ‘maybe it’s a coincidence’? You want to bet your life to prove a point in a stupid argument with me?”
She looked at me for a long moment, then nodded, her expression suddenly sober. “What are you thinking? A hit?”
I was glad to see she was finally taking this seriously. “Maybe, but I’d guess no. If it were a hit, they could have waited to make the positive ID outside. If it wasn’t you, they just walk away. Hell, they wouldn’t even need to wait outside. The hitter could just walk into the restaurant in light disguise, march up to the table, get the ID, bam, two shots in the head, then back outside beating feet before witnesses even have a chance to process what just happened.”
“You know why I’m so attached to you?”
“No.”
“Because most people wouldn’t consider something like that fit dinner conversation.”
I smiled tightly, liking that even though she was taking the situation seriously now, she was still cool under pressure. “But if it’s something other than a hit, and they need to set up carefully, they’d want to know it was you before committing. The only thing is, that guy didn’t feel like a pro to me. And anyone who really knows you wouldn’t send an amateur to do the job.”
“Well, it could be someone who doesn’t really know me.”
“Why would anyone who doesn’t really know you want to kill you?”
She smiled, a little sadly. “Remember the kind of work I do. The target wouldn’t have to know of my professional affiliations to develop a grudge. What he thought was personal would be enough.”
That was a good point. I said, “Well, whatever it is or isn’t, I’d rather not find out. But there’s no rear entrance to this restaurant. They take deliveries straight through the front door.”
She didn’t have to ask. She knew I never went into a room I didn’t know every way out of.
“How do you want to handle it?” she said.
I considered. “Ask the waitress if you can bum a cigarette. Woman-to-woman, she’ll be more likely to want to help out.”
“You’re going to have a smoke?”
“Just outside the door. Like any well-mannered Parisian.” Paris had gone no-smoking, thank God, forcing smokers to head outdoors to indulge.
“I don’t like it. You don’t know what’s out there.”
“That’s why I want to have a look. They’re not after me, remember? Anyway, if I see something I really don’t like, I’ll head back in and we’ll reconsider.”
Delilah told the waitress that Zut!, she really needed a smoke but had forgotten her cigarettes; could she hit the waitress up and thank her in the tip? The waitress smiled understandingly and produced a Gauloise Blonde. Delilah requested a lighter, and that was forthcoming, too. I put four twenty-Euro notes on the table, which would cover the meal if we had to bug out, nodded to Delilah, and went to see whether there was anything to my suspicions.
I kept as far left as possible as I headed out of the restaurant, maximizing my view of the street to the right, then cut the other way just before I got to the door, widening my view left. I saw nothing, but any reasonably competent surveillance would have accounted for a maneuver like mine before taking a position.
At the threshold of the door, I could see there were no immediate problems to my left, so I immediately swept right. Twenty meters down the street, on the opposite side, I saw Ferret Boy, leaning with his back against the dark stone façade of the École de Garçons, bathed in shadows.
Houston, we have a problem.
This was the quiet end of Rue Saint-Louis-en-l’Île, far from the gravitational force of Notre Dame. There were few stores down here, just some galleries, all of them closed and almost all of them dark, and the opposite side of the street was occupied entirely by the lightless monolith of the École. The only illumination came from a few widely spaced yellowish streetlights affixed to the façades of the old buildings on one side of the narrow street and the École on the other. The nearest cross street was Rue Poulletier, sixty meters to the left. When we departed, we wouldn’t just be walking out into the dark. We might as well be entering a tunnel.
Well, that’s the thing about the dark and tunnels. They work both ways.
I noticed another guy walking toward Ferret Boy. They did nothing to acknowledge each other, but they both looked the same to me: young, Arabic, somehow jumpy. I fired up the cigarette and gave no sign that I had particularly noticed them or particularly cared.
To my left, ten meters down on the opposite side of the street, was a panel truck. Could have been a coincidence, but I didn’t like it. I couldn’t see on the other side of it, but I had a feeling someone else was leaning against a stone wall in the dark there.
I tracked a few degrees further left. All the way down at the corner of Rue Poulletier was another guy. I didn’t think it was a hit before, but now I was nearly sure it wasn’t. No one needed this kind of manpower for a hit. And with that panel van parked where it was, I was starting to think it might be a snatch. Overall, compared to a hit, I rated a snatch as a positive. More people to deal with, true, but they would be constrained in their actions.
Also, as I’d told Delilah about Ferret Boy initially, these guys didn’t feel like pros to me. In which case, Delilah must have been right. Whoever had hired them didn’t know who she really was, or what she was capable of. They’d be assuming they were here to grab a helpless woman, maybe after knocking down her feeble dinner date.
Dinner for two at Auberge de la Reine Blanche? Eighty Euros. Being underestimated by the punks outside? Priceless.
I puffed on the cigarette for a few minutes without inhaling. I hadn’t smoked since I was a teenager, and a coughing fit would have been bad for my cover. When I judged I’d been there long enough, I pinched off the filter, which had my DNA on it, and shredded the rest of it on the sidewalk with the sole of my shoe. Then I went nonchalantly back inside. I handed the waitress her lighter. If she was annoyed that I had smoked the cigarette Delilah had asked for, she gave no sign of it.
I sat down and said to Delilah, “It’s not a hit. I’m guessing a snatch.” I told her about the panel truck and the disposition of forces.
She listened quietly. When I was done, she said, “It doesn’t make sense. How could they have found me? No one followed me here. I’m certain of that.”
I glanced at the python shoulder bag slung over her chair back. “Your cell phone?”
“But you said they look like amateurs. How could they have tracked my cell phone?”
“Maybe they’re working for someone a little more sophisticated than they are. Someone who provided your whereabouts and turned the risky part over to them. What I don’t get is, why would someone want to snatch you? I mean, if they want to take you, it’s because they know who you are. If they know who you are, they don’t outsource it to a handful of punks from La Goutte. They bring in professionals.”
A moment passed, then she said, “I think I know what this is.”
“What?”
“I can’t tell you.”
I felt the blood drain from my face. “Delilah. I’m about to walk out that door with you into I don’t know what. I don’t care what. Now you don’t have to thank me for that. But Goddamn it, you do have to tell me what you know so I can be as prepared as possible for whatever it is I’m about to deal with.”