“I know.” Tom belched into his sandwich. “Look, his son is dead and he wants the world to know how angry he is, he wants the killer to know he’s going to take revenge.”
“Thanks, Dr. Phil, I’m sure you’re right.” Hugo absently took a bite as he kept reading. “But still, this is unbelievable. Ridiculous.” He tapped the page in front of him. “‘The public is asked to be ever more vigilant and to assist the authorities in locating Mohammed Al Zakiri.’ How about we give the authorities a few days to catch the guy themselves. Assuming he’s even the sinner, here. And tell me we’re doing this to humor the senator, not because we’re seriously thinking of sending this crap out to the media?”
“Not gonna lie to you, sorry. I know for a fact Holmes is intent on it going out, whether we like it or not.”
“And Taylor?”
“An awkward position for him. I imagine he’s trying to find reasons not to. Can we give him a few?”
Hugo threw the paper onto the table. “How about the fact that we don’t let politicians run our investigations? How’s that for starters?”
“Weak. What else?”
“I thought we’d agreed to play this tight, to try and get our hands on Al Zakiri without him even knowing he’s a suspect?”
“Yeah, well,” Tom said, taking a long drink of wine, “depends on who ‘we’ is.”
“I don’t like keeping secrets, Tom. And I’m keeping secrets from a Frenchman I like, and he’s one we need. Meanwhile, Holmes is splattering our case across the front pages, letting our supposed suspect know we’re after him. If we’re going to get the wrong bad guy, can we at least do it properly?”
Tom held up both hands in surrender. “Don’t yell at me, I’m with you all the way. Finish your sandwich and let’s go complain to someone who might listen.”
“You’re drunk. I’ll go by myself.” Hugo felt his phone buzz, and answered it. “Marston here.”
“Hugo, glad I got you,” Ambassador Taylor said. “You’re not going to believe this.”
“If it’s about the damn press release, that nasty little surprise has been spoiled.”
“What? Oh, no, something else.”
“Just what we need, more excitement.” He shrugged in response to Tom’s raised eyebrows.
“Oh, indeed,” Taylor said. “So you were at Père Lachaise this morning?”
“With my old friend Capitaine Garcia, yes.”
“Notice anything unusual?”
“Alive people taking photos of dead people. I find that pretty unusual.”
“You might be right about that. And I was being facetious because there’s no reason you’d have spotted what the security people missed.”
“Which is?”
“Another break-in.”
“At Père Lachaise? You have to be kidding me.”
“Nope. Sometime last night. Capitaine Garcia’s wrapping something else up and will meet you there in an hour.”
“I’ll be there,” Hugo said, thinking for a moment. “Another break-in. That’s very quick, very unusual. Don’t tell me we have another victim, too?”
“We do, actually, yes.”
“Dead?”
“Very.”
“You mind telling me what happened rather than being coy, Mr. Ambassador? I’ve got an antsy Tom Green opposite me and you know how patient he is.”
“Sorry, didn’t mean to mess with you,” Taylor said, though the smile in his voice said otherwise. “Our victim is female, like our first.”
“Let me guess. Popped with a.22 near Jim Morrison’s grave.”
“No. As a matter of fact, not even close.”
“How, then?”
“You know, I never got around to asking.”
“You might want to next time. We in the investigation business find cause of death to be useful information.” Hugo tried to keep the impatience out of his voice.
“I’m sure, except that this won’t be a murder investigation.”
“Confused here,” Hugo said. “Do we have a victim or not?”
“We do. But, if my math is right, she’d been dead for seventy years before our mystery man knocked on the door of her crypt.”
Chapter Nine
Hugo left Tom at the bar, heading for the exit when his friend stumbled toward the bathroom. At the doorway, Hugo stopped and looked back inside, feeling a pang of guilt. Maman was watching him, not pretending to do otherwise. Hugo smiled and closed the door behind him.
Outside, he heard a familiar voice and turned.
“Claudia,” he said. “Salut. This a coincidence?”
“No.” She smiled, always reserved so it was faint, the amusement displayed in her striking green eyes. She kissed his cheeks, a hand on his upper arm. She spoke in English, her accent slight thanks to expensive private schools many years before, and plenty of practice since. “Tom told me you’d be here. Said you needed to get laid.”
“I see. How considerate.”
“I thought so.”
“I was under the impression we weren’t doing that anymore,” he said. But she looked good, tight jeans and a plain white T-shirt. A bracelet, silver or maybe platinum, swung in circles when she moved.
“I guess no one told Tom.”
“I’m pretty sure I did,” Hugo said. “Several times.”
“He’s a man, so probably not a great listener.”
They started walking, away from the river, down one of the many narrow streets that angled into the Latin Quarter.
“How’s the newspaper business?” Hugo asked. He saw her name at least once a week, usually close to the front page, if not on it. A result of the uptick in crime as much as anything, he suspected.
“Sucks,” she said. “I used to think being a name on a page was fleeting; try being a name on a web page.”
“Can’t even wrap fish and chips in it.”
She laughed and put an arm through his, friendly, the way girlfriends might.
“Tom really call you?”
“Yes, actually.” She paused. “I think it was a wrong number, though. I think he meant to dial someone else, he sounded surprised to hear my voice.”
“Yeah, he’s been a little … out of sorts lately.”
“We break up and it drives him to drink?”
“He’s sweet like that.”
“So, you getting laid?” she asked, her voice light.
“You tell me.”
“Not tonight, silly. I mean generally.”
“Generally, no.”
“You not going to ask about me?”
“None of my business.” True, but that was only part of it.
“The uptight American, how I’ve missed that.”
“I bet.” He stopped to look into the window of a small gallery, one he’d not seen before. Canvases of all sizes dotted the tiny space, explosions of color, formless but somehow mesmerizing. He looked at her. “What else?”
She studied the paintings too, her head tilted. “You’re a cynic. Why should there be something else?”
“Because I’m a cynic. And I’ve spent a lot of time around reporters.”
“Avoiding them, I bet.”
He allowed a smile. “Not all of them.”
“Coffee? I can expense it.”
“So this is business.”
“For now.” They moved off, rounded the corner and settled into a café on Rue de Buci, taking a table on the sidewalk but under the shade of the awning. She ordered two cafés. “I’ve been writing about the Père Lachaise murders.”
“Now there’s a coincidence, I’ve been solving them.”
She leaned forward. “Really?”
“Not really. I’ve been looking into it, with some other people.”
“Tom?”
“No comment.”
“Fair enough. Got anything new I can use?”
“We have a media division, I think. So do the cops. Tried them?”
“Yes. They all suck. They hand out press releases to the media sheep, they’re more about containing information than providing it.”