Chapter 81
THE HILLY TERRAIN on the other side of the wall was covered in dense rows of stained grave markers, ornate mausoleums, and marble and limestone statues set amid leafy hardwood trees that made it difficult to see far. So I jumped.
I landed in a crouch inside Père-Lachaise cemetery and scanned all around me. I didn’t see him at first. But then I caught sight of his head and shoulders about a hundred yards ahead. He was weaving through the tombs, heading northwest at an angle away from me. Had he seen me?
I ran forward to the nearest large crypt and peeked around the corner. Piggott hurried on, but no longer sprinted. He hadn’t seen me come over the wall.
Had he seen me back there? He’d definitely seen Louis, but me? Once he had committed to fleeing Louis, I never saw him look back. He’d never hesitated because he’d scouted his escape route, and knew that the wall to Père-Lachaise cemetery would be a barrier to most pursuers.
Epée had not gotten a good look at me, I decided. But I couldn’t take any chances. I had to change my look and I had to do it fast. Stripping off my jacket, I tossed it on a grave, leaving me in jeans and a pressed white dress shirt as I hustled to keep him in sight.
I soon spotted him again, continuing northwest. He kept checking his back trail, but I’d gone off it by fifty yards or so, paralleling him through the gigantic graveyard for ten minutes, maybe more.
Then he stopped to take a sweeping look around. I had no place to hide, so I just went to my knee and acted grief-stricken before the nearest gravestone.
Epée turned and walked on. He had to have seen me there, but to my relief, he had not bolted. Still, with the white shirt, I was sure he’d recognize me the next time he checked for followers.
I wasn’t wearing an undershirt, so stripping a layer was not an answer. I’d almost surrendered to the idea that he was going to spot me at some point when he led me to the answer.
Epée skirted a large group of people gathered at a grave I remembered. I kept the crowd between us as I hustled toward the mourners, already hearing the music of the Doors playing.
Fifty pilgrims of all ages, sexes, and sizes surrounded Jim Morrison’s grave this time, so I had my pick of disguises. I chose a beefy guy with an Irish pie face who looked fairly drunk on his bottle of Jim Beam.
“Son of Fenway?” I asked, whipping out my wallet. “I’ll give you a hundred euros for your Sox hat and sweatshirt.”
“Nah, man. We’re talking Boston Strong here.”
“Three hundred euros,” I said, pulling out a wad of bills.
He shrugged, took the money, and handed me the red hat and matching hoodie. I had to jog to catch up this time, tugging the sweatshirt on over my shirt and pulling the cap down tight over my blond hair.
For several nerve-racking minutes I thought I’d blown it, that Epée had doubled back or used some other technique to shake me. Then I spotted him far ahead, moving northeast.
Using that parallel trailing technique, I followed him to a gate that opened out onto Rue des Rondeaux. He crossed the street and continued on the Avenue du Père-Lachaise, with me hanging well back in pedestrian traffic until I saw him enter the Place Gambetta and circle toward the Métro stop.
I sprinted after Epée and was less than twenty yards behind him when he went through the turnstiles. I waited until he was well down the stairs to jump the stiles and race after him, a Métro worker ranting behind me.
I got on the subway car behind the tagger, heading east on the 3 train, and then managed to loosely trail him through the Père-Lachaise Métro station to the 2 train northbound. I got into a car in front of him. He got off five stations later, at Jaurès, which also serves the S line.
Jaurès was a small station, but I’d bought a dark blue Windbreaker from a college kid on the train and wore it as I exited after Epée, and got on the same car going in the direction of Bobigny.
I stood with my back to Epée, and never looked his way.
Epée got off at the fifth stop, Église de Pantin. I waited until the last second to toss away the Red Sox hat and get out the door. There were no more than seven people leaving the train, so I wasn’t going to hide easily. I improvised, picking up a discarded newspaper and putting it under my arm.
Exiting the station, I spotted a clear public trash bag, went to it, and fished out a plastic bag filled with the remains of a meal. The light was fading now, and I hoped I’d be able to avoid detection if I just kept switching up the things I carried or wore, and stayed back.
Epée turned left out of the station and then left again onto a pedestrian mall that wandered north. Trees made the mall a place of shadows and a surprisingly popular hangout for the youth of Pantin.
Using the shadows and the thirty or forty teenagers smoking and posturing in the area, I was able to stay in visual contact with Piggott until he reached the far end of the mall and took a right onto a footpath.
The footpath ran along a canal. There were many joggers on the path. Still, I felt uneasy as I followed Epée past construction sites toward abandoned factories and warehouses along the canal’s south side.
Light was fading. We were a solid eighty yards apart, but I didn’t think I could remain below his radar if he led me to a less frequented spot. Piggott neared a bend in the path and an old building covered in brilliant graffiti. The tagger didn’t give the art a second glance.
He did, however, stop to look back along the footpath, and there weren’t enough joggers in the way to shield me. He saw me ambling along for sure.
But I didn’t seem to pose a threat because he calmly pivoted and strolled on beneath a pedestrian bridge that spanned the canal. The closer I got to the bridge, the more I thought about the fact that he had ignored the graffiti on the building. Even in the streetlight, the colors were impressive.
Then it hit me. He knows this place. He comes here often enough that he wouldn’t give the artwork a second glance. Epée was close to his destination.
A jogger went by me, and up the stairs to the pedestrian bridge. I followed him. The bridge had high steel-mesh walls to keep people from jumping off into the canal, which stank.
I walked out onto the bridge and casually glanced back along the footpath. Piggott had turned toward a large four-story building. It was old, perhaps the oldest of all the abandoned buildings in the area, and the only one that seemed to have been constructed entirely out of wood.
The roof had once been tin like the others, but it looked as though the metal had been stripped for salvage. There were stacks of it leaning up against the front of the building, partially covering faded white paint and the word linen.
Walking on across the bridge toward the north bank of the canal, I saw Epée go to a door that had a condemnation notice on it and knock. A moment later, the door opened and he disappeared inside.
Chapter 82
Pantin, northeastern suburbs of Paris
6:15 p.m.
HAJA CLOSED THE door behind Epée, saying angrily, “You’re not supposed to be here. We’re just about to leave.”
He noticed that she and Amé were wearing robes.
“What’s going on?”
“What’s going on is you’re not supposed to be here.”
“Why are you wearing robes?”
“Forget the robes,” Amé said. “Why are you here?”
The tagger said nothing for several beats before blurting out, “Louis Langlois-the head of Private Paris-he came after me as I was leaving my flat.”
Haja’s expression soured. “What do you mean, came after you?”