Elodie took us to a service elevator and punched the button for the eighth floor.
“At Monsieur Langlois’s request, Monsieur Morgan, we have moved your things to a new suite with two bedrooms and a generous sitting area,” she said. “You’re lucky we had it available. Several Saudi princesses are arriving with their entourage tomorrow and will take over the entire seventh floor.”
“That work?” I asked Kim.
Hugging her chest as if suddenly cold, she nodded, but it was with little enthusiasm. We got out on eight and trailed Elodie to a door.
“A beautiful suite,” Elodie said, sliding an electronic key card.
She pushed open the door and we entered a spacious living area with black-and-white art deco furniture and French doors that opened onto a small balcony.
“You have a view of the Eiffel Tower from the balcony and your bedroom,” Elodie told Kim.
“Storybook,” I said.
Kim said, “This looks like the room Carrie stayed in during the last few episodes of Sex and the City.”
The concierge laughed. “No, that’s down on seven, and almost always reserved, I’m afraid. The Saudi women love staying there.”
Elodie quickly showed us the suite’s features, and left us with assurances that we could call her anytime during the night, and that room service was available twenty-four hours a day. After she left, I went through the place again, checking the windows and doors, including a locked one that Elodie said led to a third bedroom, should we need it.
Kim, meanwhile, had gone to the minibar and opened two splits of Stolichnaya vodka. She poured them both in a glass, took a long draw, shuddered, and carried it and her knapsack out onto the balcony.
I used the toilet, picked up a menu, and heard a knock at the door. Louis lumbered in, scratching at his salt-and-pepper beard, looking as though he’d just been roused from sleep instead of jacked up after a high-speed car chase.
“She say anything yet?” he asked quietly.
“Just giving her a little space,” I replied.
We went to the open doors to the balcony, finding Kim looking at the Eiffel Tower and putting an unlit cigarette to her lips. She unsnapped that silver rectangular jewelry piece from the chain around her neck and pressed at it with her thumb. A lid shot back, revealing the workings of a lighter.
She thumbed it to a flame and took two deep drags off the cigarette before Louis said, “You want to tell us about it?”
Kim turned and looked at us with that glassy, faraway stare I’d seen on marines I was airlifting out of combat.
“I’d rather not tonight,” she said. “I just need to sleep.”
I said, “If you don’t tell us what’s going on, we can’t protect you.”
She drained the vodka and said, “In the end, no one can protect me, and if I tell you, no one will be able to protect you either.”
“But no one knows where you are now,” Louis said.
“It doesn’t matter,” Kim said, pushing by us. She got both splits of Glenlivet scotch this time.
“You made it sound as if police are involved in your problem.”
“If you get them involved, I’ll have another problem.”
I sighed in exasperation. “You’re not looking out for yourself.”
Her laugh was hard and short. “That’s where you’re wrong, Jack. I most definitely am looking out for myself. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to go enjoy my view of the Eiffel Tower, take a shower, and get some sleep.”
She went into her bedroom and shut the doors behind her.
Chapter 10
FOR SEVERAL MOMENTS I thought about barging in on her and demanding that she tell us what was going on. We’d damn near died coming to her rescue. We had a right to know.
I saw Louis’s frustration and said, “Why don’t you go home, my friend? I’ll take the night shift.”
“I have a man outside, and I’ll be back first thing in the morning,” he said, handing me a new loaded magazine for the Glock and then leaving.
The shower was still running on Kim’s end of the suite when I ordered a strip steak and pommes frites from room service. I’d no sooner hung up than my cell phone rang. Sherman Wilkerson was calling.
“Do you have her?” he asked, sounding anxious.
“I do. She’s fine. Taking a shower.”
“She’s terrified, Jack. Am I wrong?”
“No, you’re right.”
“Did she say why?”
“Not yet.”
“Can you protect her?”
I chewed the inside of my cheek, and considered informing him of the gun battle and car chase that had ensued after we took Kim from Les Bosquets housing project, but I knew it would only worry him.
“We can, but how long are we talking about?”
“As long as it takes,” Wilkerson said. “In Paris, and back here in Malibu.”
“Sherman, with all due respect, that could get very expensive.”
“I don’t care what it costs,” he shot back. “For that I’ll pay anything.”
“Okay, Sherman,” I said. “I just needed to understand the ground rules.”
“Is there anything I can do on this end to help?”
“I’ll call tomorrow once I’ve had a chance to talk to her.”
“Don’t worry about the time difference. And tell her I love her, Jack.”
“I’ll do that, Sherman,” I said, and heard the line click.
I checked my watch. It was 10:30 p.m., which was 1:30 p.m. back in Los Angeles. I hesitated, punched in Justine Smith’s number, and waited.
Justine used to work as a psychologist on contract with the criminal justice system in L.A. But a few years back she came to work at Private, where she has become one of our best investigators. And once upon a time, before I screwed it all up, we were lovers. Now she was seeing Emilio Cruz, another of my operators in Los Angeles. It had been awkward between the three of us for nearly six months now, and the second I heard Justine’s voice I realized nothing had changed since I’d been overseas.
“Jack?” Justine said.
Even over the static on the international connection, her voice filled me with a sense of regret, of things that could have been if I hadn’t been such a stubborn idiot and let her walk out of that part of my life.
“Hey,” I said. “You holding down the fort?”
“No barbarians at the gate, if that’s what you mean,” Justine replied. “I finished up the Dawson case. And Del Rio is handling the CTI thing.”
Rick Del Rio was my closest friend. We’d crash-landed together in the marines and he’d been with me from the day I launched Private. Del Rio broke his back the previous fall, and had only just returned to work.
“How’s he doing?” I asked.
“You can see he’s still in some pain, but damned if he’ll tell anyone,” Justine replied.
“Cruz?”
There was a moment of silence before she said, “He’s in Phoenix. His mother has breast cancer.”
“Tell him my prayers are with him and his mother.”
“I’ll do that,” she said. “Thanks.”
I told her about Sherman Wilkerson and his granddaughter.
“Sounds like she’s been through something traumatic,” she said.
“Yeah, I wish you were here, to see if you could get her to open up.”
“You telling me to pack my trousseau and fly to Paris?”
“Sorry,” I said. “I need you there to work the L.A. end of this. I want you to take a team to Sherman’s home and office. Look for signs he could be under surveillance.”
“By who? French drug dealers?”
“Honestly, Justine, I’m still trying to figure that out.”
When I hung up, the shower was still running at Kim’s end of the suite. She’d been in there almost thirty minutes. But then again, I could see her wanting a long hot shower before crashing.
A knock came at the door. Room service. The attendant wheeled in a cart, and made a racket lifting the metal covers over the plates, showing me a prime steak with béarnaise sauce, fresh asparagus, and crisp shoestring fries.