“Uh, actually, I don’t,” I said.
Louis said, “The people in the same field, they hate you for your success. They think something must be wrong, that you’re corrupt in some way.”
“Of course,” Richard’s wife said. “They plot against you.”
I said, “Was there anyone actively plotting against him lately?”
“The redhead, obviously,” his mistress sniffed.
“Focus on her,” the wife agreed. “A woman will be at the center of it all.”
Chapter 20
18th Arrondissement
Noon
HAJA HAMID EXITED the women’s toilet and went to the fountain in the lobby of the mosque. She performed the ritual of ablution-washing her hands and feet-with practiced ease. When she stepped into the women’s prayer hall, there were already fifty or sixty women inside. Like Haja, they all wore brown or black robes and matching scarves. Some, like Haja, also wore veils.
She knelt at the back, listening to the clicking of worry beads and the voices murmuring surrender to Allah. The sounds brought back so many memories that she was filled once again with strength and resolve.
Facing east, Haja started the physical motions of Islamic prayer, bowing to put her forehead flat on the carpet and then rising with a stiff posture. She wasn’t silently reciting lines from the Koran, however. Her lips curled around vows she’d made long ago.
She waited until Imam Ibrahim Al-Moustapha went to the front of the prayer hall to lead the service. The second his back was turned, Haja got up and returned to the anteroom, searching for her sandals amid all the other shoes.
The imam began his talk just as she snatched up her sandals and went out the door, into the street. Head down, Haja kicked into the sandals and moved past three men trying to paint over the AB-16 tag on the mosque’s outer wall.
Satisfied that the bloodred tag was still bleeding through, she walked by a man sweeping the sidewalk in front of FEZ Couriers, a messenger service next door to the mosque, and then a tailor shop that sold robes.
“Ay, pétasse!”
The call-“Hey, bitch!”-came from the other side of the street.
Haja glanced left and saw him: late teens, pale skin, and brown curly hair. Carrying a camera slung across his chest, he was pointing at her in a rage.
“Can’t wear the veil in public, Muslim bitch!” he yelled.
Haja tore down the veil, turned her head from him, and broke into a trot. When she glanced again, he was angling across the street at her.
That kicked her into an all-out sprint down the sidewalk toward an old green Peugeot sedan. She got there half a block ahead of her pursuer, jumped in the backseat, and said, “Get us out of here. Now.”
Epée already had the Peugeot running. He threw it in gear and squealed out, heading back toward the mosque. The teen stepped from between two cars, trying to aim his camera.
Haja pulled up the veil. In the front passenger seat, Mfune, who was dressed in the green jumpsuit of a Paris sanitation worker, turned his head. Epée jerked the wheel toward the kid as if to run him down.
The photographer jumped back between the parked cars and they were past him.
“What was that all about?” Epée asked.
“My fault,” she said. “When I came out of the mosque, I still had the veil up and he started shouting at me that I was a Muslim bitch.”
“Why the camera?” Epée demanded, turning off the boulevard heading toward the train tracks.
“I have no idea,” she said, taking deeper and slower breaths. “None.”
“Did you get the job done?” Mfune asked.
The tension fell from Haja’s shoulders. She wiped at the sweat on her brow, saying, “Just as we planned. You?”
The captain held up a green translucent plastic bag filled with trash and said, “What do you think?”
Chapter 21
WE LEFT EVANGELINE Soleil’s flat, having received permission from Valerie Richard to search her home. She’d offered to take us there straightaway, but Louis said he wanted to go take a look at her husband’s opera-writing hideaway first.
The Uber car was waiting, and Louis gave the driver the address.
“So is that the norm in Paris?” I asked. “To have a mistress and a wife who are friends?”
“No,” Louis said. “And even to have a mistress now, it is not so common among men younger than fifty.”
“Why’s that?”
“Changing times,” he said with a note of wistfulness. “Now, the young are all in relationships, except when they are-how do you say?-exchanging.”
“Exchanging what?”
“Each other,” he said.
“You mean swinging?”
“That’s the word,” Louis said. “There are clubs, even, for these things.”
As we pulled out into traffic, I stared out the window at people and wondered how many had mistresses, or were mistresses, or were swingers. I live in L.A., and I am hardly a prude, but I found Paris behind closed doors oddly fascinating.
“Are they right?” I asked. “About the redhead being at the center of it?”
“She’s part of it. But the center? I don’t think so.”
“Reason?”
He brooded for several moments before saying, “Just my instinct, Jack. Still nothing hard that I can hold on to yet.”
That seemed to remind Louis of something because he got out his iPhone and started punching in numbers. Before he finished and hit send, my own cell rang. It was Justine calling from L.A.
“How’s Sherman?” I asked.
She sounded exhausted and upset. “He’s in surgery, Jack. They’re removing a piece of his skull to relieve the pressure from brain swelling.”
“That’s awful,” I said, frustrated again that we didn’t have his granddaughter in a safe place. “What’s his prognosis?”
“The doctors won’t tell me,” she said. “I’m not next of kin. But a nurse in the ICU said he’ll probably be held in an artificial coma for the next couple of days. Is the granddaughter on the way home?”
“She ran. We don’t have her.”
“This is bad, Jack,” she said. “There’s no one here to make decisions.”
“Find out who he named as the executor of his living will.”
“After I get a few hours’ sleep,” she promised. “It’s four a.m. here and-Del Rio just came in. He wants to tell you something.”
“Jack?” Del Rio growled.
“You’re up early.”
“Late,” he replied. “One of the great perks of the job.”
Del Rio told me that he’d gone through Wilkerson’s home before alerting the L.A. sheriff about the assault and break-in. The deputies and detectives who arrived weren’t very happy about the delay in notification, but they’d live.
“You figure out what they were looking for?” I asked.
“No,” Del Rio replied. “At least nothing that jumped right out at me. But I did find something you might find useful. Wilkerson still keeps paper bank statements around, and some involve her trust.”
“You’ve got an account number?”
“I do. She uses a debit card and makes cash withdrawals from ATM machines. No checking account.”
“You have records of the withdrawals?”
“Not for this month yet, if that’s what you mean.”
“It is what I mean,” I said. “Even though Sherman’s old-school when it comes to keeping his financial records, his bank won’t be. You should be able to get an up-to-the-minute electronic record of all withdrawals she’s made.”
“It’s a private account.”
“Use your imagination.”
“That’s never been one of my long suits, but I’ll let you know.”
“Get some sleep. The both of you.”
“Nah, we’ll stick around until he comes out of surgery, and charge you double time while we’re doing it.”