They carried the sheets to the other side of the club and buried them in a hamper. Amé went into the women’s toilet, stripped off her gloves, and put them in her purse before washing her hands with scented soap to mask the odor of bleach. Only then did they head for the exit to Le Chanticleer Rouge.
“Going so soon?” the cashier said. “The party’s just getting started.”
“We’ve had our fun,” Amé said without turning back. “And we both have to work in the morning.”
Chapter 43
6th Arrondissement
April 9, 12:20 a.m.
WHEN THE WAITRESS cleared her throat, I startled.
Looking around, I realized that Michele Herbert and I were the only patrons left in the restaurant. It seemed like minutes since we’d walked in the door, but we’d been talking for nearly three hours.
At first our conversation had been directed at the death of René Pincus and the tag. The graffiti expert had been getting pictures of the tag in various places in and around Paris. As of early that evening, she’d received pictures of sixty-two different iterations of the tag, but no explanation of its meaning.
I told her about the men who’d shot up the Plaza Athénée, and their interest in the cigarette lighter that Kim Kopchinski kept on a chain around her neck. Michele agreed that it was an odd thing to ask about.
“There’s a lot of danger in your life, I think,” she said.
“At times,” I said.
“Tell me about your life, Jack.”
Usually I play things close to the vest, but Michele looked so radiant, and acted so, well, empathetic, that I started opening up to her. I told her about my fucked-up childhood and my dysfunctional family, especially my dad, who’d been a cop, a private investigator, a swindler, and a crook before dying as an inmate in a California penitentiary.
I told her about my mom’s death, and about my borderline-psycho twin brother, Tommy, and some of the stuff he’d pulled in the past. I even told her about the marines, my time in Afghanistan, and the helicopter crash that still haunted me.
“How terrible it must have been for you and your friend Del Rio to walk away from it when so many others died,” she’d said.
“It was the worst thing that has ever happened to me,” I admitted. “In some ways I don’t think I’ll ever get over it.”
“We all have such moments in our lives,” Michele said. “These are the times that define us, no?”
“In some ways, I guess how we handle tragedy defines us,” I replied. “Have you had such moments?”
She got sad then, and nodded. “I saw my parents die when I was nine.”
“Jesus. How awful. What happened?”
“A train accident in Italy on their twelfth anniversary,” she said.
Michele was sent to her only living relative, her mother’s older sister, who was divorced and had two children of her own. Her aunt squandered Michele’s inheritance and treated her horribly.
“I found art in school and retreated into it,” she said. “Out of that loss and that mistreatment came my life and my life’s work.”
That’s when the waitress cleared her throat.
“We should go,” I said.
We apologized and left a generous tip. Outside I was more than pleased when Michele put her arm through mine. We walked and talked for another hour. Around two, we were strolling across the Pont Saint-Louis.
“I could talk like this all night with you, but I must go home,” Michele said as we crossed the bridge. “I have an eleven o’clock class.”
A cab pulled onto the bridge and I hailed it. Opening the rear door, I said, “Thanks for the fine company and conversation.”
“I had a wonderful evening.”
“I’ll call tomorrow, see if you’ve gotten any more pictures of the tag.”
“Or I can call you.”
“Either way,” I said, and closed the door, thinking she was a remarkable woman. Gorgeous, yes, but a whole lot more.
After watching the taxi drive off, I headed east, hoping to find another cab on the Boulevard Henri IV. Halfway there, my cell phone rang.
I dug the phone out of my pants, looked at caller ID, frowned.
“Up late, Louis?”
“I was just awoken by Investigateur Hoskins, who needs our forensics help again,” he growled. “AB-16 has struck a third time, and once more they didn’t pull any punches.”
“Who was the victim?”
“Lourdes Latrelle,” he said. “One of France’s foremost intellectuals and best-known writers.”
Chapter 44
6th Arrondissement
2:58 a.m.
WEARING GLOVES, ROCK-CLIMBING shoes, and dark clothes, Epée adjusted the straps on his knapsack as he walked along the Rue Mazarine. His heart was beating wildly because he believed that the greatest act of his life was at hand.
It was audacious. It was daring. It was absolutely in-your-face, and Epée was beside himself with excitement. He hung a right onto the narrow sidewalk that ran between the Rue de Seine and a huge, five-story limestone building. The road ahead curved left. The wall of the building traveled a deeper arc, which created a larger, triangular space between it and the road.
Motorcyclists often parked there during the day, when it was in use almost constantly by pedestrians. But at that hour, the Rue de Seine and the sidewalks that bordered it were empty. Epée broke into a jog toward an arched passage, seeing through it to the bright lights of the Quai de Conti.
Instead of entering the passageway, he looked around one last time before taking two steps to a stout metal downspout that dropped straight down from the eaves and roof high overhead. Hefty metal brackets every thirty inches held the drainpipe solidly to the wall. Epée grabbed hold of the second bracket and then stepped up onto the first, finding that the gummy soft soles of the climbing shoes easily clung to the protruding half inch of metal.
In seconds, Epée clambered up the pipe and onto the narrow second floor ledge, where he paused to take in the scene below him. Still empty. He did the same at the third floor, and was near the top of the drain when he heard voices.
He had to freeze in an awkward position when a couple came through the arched walkway from the Quai de Conti, lingered, and kissed before finally continuing south on the Rue de Seine. Epée’s fingers were cramping before the couple was gone, and for the first time he thought about the long fall to the pavement.
No way. Not when he was this close to becoming a legend.
Epée had rehearsed this climb dozens of times. He’d taken photographs of the route from every angle and pored over them, studying every inch of the building’s face, eaves, and roofline until he believed he could climb it blindfolded.
He shinnied up against the eaves where the downspout disappeared. He got his right foot up onto a ledge about three inches wide.
Epée rotated his body over into a three-point bridge, with his left foot free. His core trembled as he pushed hard against his right hand and right toe before he stabbed up and over the eaves with his left hand, catching the bottom of the roof. He took a strained breath and then transferred his weight entirely to his left hand, and dangled there for a split second before throwing up his right hand and grabbing the roof.
Grunting with effort, he pulled his head, shoulders, and ribs up onto the roof. He scooted sideways into a valley where several rooflines came together and squirmed his hips and legs up into it.
Epée lay there, soaking wet and panting with effort, but also knowing that the worst of it had been conquered. When he’d regained some of his strength, he got up on all fours and used opposing pressure to ascend the roof as a climber would a chimney opening in a rock. He made the ridge a few moments later and sat there, straddling it.
Before la crise, with the spotlights shining on the front of the building, he’d have been easy to spot up there. But the recession had forced Paris to shut off the lights on its famous buildings and monuments after midnight. In the dark like this, he might as well have been a phantom.