Brainquake (26 page)

Michelle quickly switched the light on as Paul helped him up. Lafitte was in fact too drunk to recognize him and shoved him away, staggered into his room, kicking the door shut. They heard a thud and the ringing of the alarm clock. Michelle swung his door open.

In the soft blue light, Lafitte was sprawled on the bed. Michelle switched on the overhead light. He lay on his back, his shoulders and head against the wall. His eyes were shut. Out of his sagging open mouth came the growling snores of a man dead to the world. His eyes under their lids looked untroubled. No nightmares were hounding him now.

Michelle picked up the ringing clock from the floor and turned it off. Paul picked up the big stone ashtray and straightened up the overturned night table. Michelle put the clock back on it as he put down the ashtray. Paul reached to help Lafitte out of his grotesque position.

“Don’t touch him. He likes sleeping off absinthe like that.”

She switched off the bright light.

In the soft blue light she said, “When I was ten, I tried to move him and he took a swing at me.”

She pulled Paul out, closed the door, glanced at her watch.

The baby was crying louder. Paul carried it from the highchair to their room. The baby squirmed violently and was difficult to keep from wriggling out of his hands. Paul placed the baby on the small table. Michelle put the monkey on the table and held the baby’s flailing hands as Paul removed its diaper. The baby promptly stopped flailing and crying. Paul reached for a clean diaper.

Michelle picked up the trash bin, threw the dirty diaper in and again glanced at her watch. She carried the trash bin to the window in the galley, pulled aside the curtain. Eddie was waiting.

She swiftly moved to the front door, unlocked and opened it. She pointed at her room, then at Lafitte’s room. Lafitte’s door was still closed.

She returned to the living room, dumped broken dishes and glasses in the trash bin, carried it back to the galley, glancing into their bedroom on the way. Paul was gently placing the baby in the crib. Paul stroked the baby’s belly. It giggled.

Eddie entered with a life-sized rubber baby doll, diapered and swaddled in a blanket. He stole along the wall, keeping out of Paul’s line of sight, waiting for a signal from Michelle. Standing in the galley, she could see Paul readjusting the blanket, then holding up the monkey by its tail, lowering it. The baby’s hands reached for it. Paul raised the monkey again, lowered it. The baby seized it.

Paul was too close to the baby. Michelle wanted space between them. She didn’t want to chance the baby getting hurt when all hell broke loose. She waited.

Eddie waited.

The Luger was burning Paul’s thigh as he stood close to the baby, staring at how happily it was sleeping with its monkey. But Paul wasn’t happy. He felt sick. He hated to do what he had to do. The burning became red hot. He had made up his mind to commit the mercy killing, but he was beginning to have doubts. He couldn’t share his terrible decision with Michelle. He couldn’t betray Lafitte.

He dropped on his knees and kept looking at the baby. He had to talk to someone. He spoke in a whisper to the baby for reassurance.

“I’ve got to do it.”

Don’t
.

Barney’s voice was an echo a million miles away.

“Pa?”

Don’t do it, Paul
.

“Pa?”

Yes
.

“Is Mom with you?”

I’m with him, Paul
.

He hadn’t heard her voice in twenty years. His tears burned as much as the Luger.

“I’ve got to ease his pain, Mom…”

It’s wrong
.

He felt a strange pressure in his brain. He was confused. He had eased her pain. Why was it wrong to ease Lafitte’s pain? Why must everything have a reason? He had to know.

“Why is it wrong?”

Think
.

He didn’t hear their voices anymore. He thought hard. He thought harder. The reason it was wrong was the reason. It was that clear now. It was wrong to murder in cold blood. Lafitte was good but what he did against Bourgois to save his own life was bad. Killing him likewise would be bad, even if he wanted it.

He knew now what to do. He stood up and paced away from the baby and felt relieved. He’d throw the Luger in the river. He felt the strange pressure in his brain go away.

He turned and saw Eddie holding up the baby by one foot.

No flute.

No rumble in his brain.

No tremor.

The brainquake came without warning. The flute shrieked. In brighter reddish-pink Eddie was smashing the baby against the wall. Paul whipped the Luger out and pulled the trigger. It was frozen. Safety on. The baby was shrieking louder than the flute. Paul clicked the safety off and fired point blank and the room shook and spun and pictures fell from the walls and his brain cells were pulling the baby into the crevice and Eddie vanished but Michelle lunged at him, raking his face with her fingernails and tearing the Luger out of his hand and the flute stopped, the brighter reddish-pink gone, the brainquake over
.

But the baby was crying.

“You shot at my baby!”

“Eddie…smashing baby…against…wall.”

She pulled him to the baby crying in the crib.

“Do you see a smashed baby? Do you?”

The room spun. The floor moved. Part of this was brainquake. Part was not. No blood on the wall. No blood on the floor. She pointed at the bullet hole in the crib.

“You missed my baby by a hair!”

He started toward the door. She spun him around. “You’re not running anywhere, you bastard! Out there alone you’ll shoot at another baby and you’ll kill it!”

Holding the gun in one hand, she beat his face with the back of her fists, the barrel just missing his eye. He stood there, took the beating, knew she had the right to do it, the right to shoot him if she wanted. But she was no killer. Blood covered his face.

* * *

Michelle stopped suddenly, the hand holding the gun raised, poised for another brutal swipe. Her manufactured hysteria boomeranged.
He had a gun.
He’d been waiting for Eddie. Who’d prepared him? She stared at the gun, recognized it. Her plan collapsed.

“Where did you get his Luger?”

“Lafitte.”

“Why did you steal it?”

“Gave it to me.”

“Why?”

“To shoot him.”

“Why?”

“Stop his pain.”

“What pain?”

“…Cancer.”

“Oh, my God!” She broke into tears. “Oh, no! Did he tell you that? He’s sick?”

Paul said nothing.

She put the Luger on the table, lifted the crying baby, comforted it, put it back in the crib.

They both stared at the gun. Paul reached for it, but she got it first. “No, Paul. He’s my responsibility, not yours. I’ll stop his pain.”

He followed her out into the galley, but she stopped him at the sink. “Here.” She ran water over two towels, wiped blood from his face, stuffed the blood-splotched towels in the cardboard cake box on the counter. “You stay here. Please, Paul.”

She went into Lafitte’s room, closed the door.

In the soft blue light, Eddie and his gun were shaking.

“The bastard’s armed!”

“Shh! Keep it down, Eddie. Pocket your gun.”

He did. She thrust out the Luger.

“Use this one.”

Eddie took it. A snore from Lafitte made Eddie jump.

“Dead drunk,” Michelle said.

“Where’d he get this Luger?”

“From him. It’s a godsend. What’re you waiting for?”

Eddie pointed the Luger at Lafitte. Eddie couldn’t fire.

“Shoot him!”

“You shoot him.”

Through dizzying fog of pain, Lafitte heard:

“He’s like my father. Goddam it! Haven’t you got any feelings?
Shoot him!
”

Eddie shot him.

The bullet impact in his chest shook Lafitte. Blood covered his brass buttons. His hand spasmed. Eddie stared at Lafitte’s open eyes.

“He’s looking at us!”

She felt for a pulse under Lafitte’s ear.

“No. He’s dead.”

“What makes his eyes stay open?”

Lafitte saw the fuzzy Michelle staring at him.

“Reflex,” Michelle whispered.

“They give me the willies.”

She opened the door calling out “
Paul!
” She picked up the big stone ashtray from the small table, positioned herself behind the door, raised the ashtray high.

How hard should she hit him? He still had the wig on, which would soften the blow. He might come out of it too soon. But too hard a blow could kill him
. Jesus Christ, how hard should I hit him to keep him alive?

Lafitte saw the white turtleneck sweater opening the door. Paul hesitantly walked in. Smashed on the back of his head with the ashtray, he fell, hitting the edge of the chest, and crashed to the floor. She dropped the ashtray next to him and ran out.

With handkerchief around the barrel of the Luger, Eddie wiped off his prints from the butt, fitted it into Paul’s hand, pressed hard on the fingers, made sure one was on the trigger. He wiped the barrel clean.

Where he lay, his vision fading, Lafitte saw the shadow that was Michelle reappear, carrying the baby, a cardboard box and the leather bag. Eddie scooped up the baby doll from the floor, took the bag from her. They vanished.

A thousand miles away, Lafitte heard a car starting up and roaring off.

* * *

In the car driving down the waterfront road, Eddie was still sweating. She felt good.

“I still can’t forget his open eyes,” Eddie said.

“Maybe a muscle snapped. I heard about a man shot in a steam room…fell naked on his back and his cock stood up and saluted after he was dead.”

The car roared up the cement ramp, braked at the phone booth. She got out. The car waited. She called Police HQ and asked for Inspector Sainte-Beuve in Homicide.

“Your name, please?”

“Michelle Valour.”

“He’s on the phone. Can I help?”

“It’s urgent. A man’s been shot!”

After ten seconds Sainte-Beuve was on the line.

“Michelle! Last week Lafitte told me you were in New York!”

“Lafitte’s been shot. Just minutes ago, on his barge. A man broke in. He’s unconscious. I hit him. Please come. You must come!”

“We will, stay there,” he said, and she heard him shout something to someone in the room with him. “The man? Do you know who he is?”

“Yes. It’s Paul Page, the taxi driver wanted for murder in New York. They want me for the same murder, but it’s not true, he did it. My baby is with me! I need help!”

She hung up to sell panic, jumped in the car. Eddie backed down the ramp and returned her to the barge.

“Dump that cake box in a sewer, Eddie. Stay glued to the phone in your hotel. After I get a clean slate from the New York cops, I’ll phone you in Paris.”

She got out with the baby, slammed the door, ran aboard the barge. Eddie drove away. She found Paul still unconscious, put her baby in the crib, pushed the backpack under the bed, flopped on the mattress, still tasting the miracle that Inspector Sainte-Beuve had been there, not out on another case. From the start she had planned to use him, and only him, as her unwitting ally. He was an old friend. He’d question her gently. How did she get mixed up in murder? She would never mention Paul’s brainquake. She’d give him the facts she wanted to and no more. Lafitte was dead, and Paul couldn’t talk, especially under the stress of a police interrogation. Nobody would be able to untwist the facts she presented. Sainte-Beuve had dealt with homicidal maniacs. He’d grill Paul, hoping to drag out a coherent phrase to bring before a judge. With the blow on his head and under pressure of questioning, Paul would have a brainquake, convict himself. Sainte-Beuve would buy her story. She had delivered the first blow.

That was half the battle won.

After Michelle hung up abruptly, Inspector Sainte-Beuve searched for Interpol’s “Wanted List.” Nine fugitives, including the baby.

My baby is with me!
Whose baby was it? Her husband’s? Paul Page’s…?

Staring at Paul’s photo, he saw a cipher face, eyes opaque gray, unmemorable.

He looked at Michelle’s blurred face in the photo taken through the ambulance doors in Central Park. Would he have recognized her if he hadn’t known her years before? He doubted it.
Michelle Troy.
He certainly hadn’t recognized the name when Lieutenant Zara had told him about the case she’d come across the ocean to work on.

Alerting his team to get to their cars immediately, the Inspector swiftly went over the report as he rose, slipped one arm into his jacket, then the other, shifting the report from hand to hand as he did so. Poker-cheating husband shot by gun concealed in baby carriage…bomb…$10,000 involvement with some black psycho…the gunshot murder in her apartment, the flight with the taxi driver…

He’s unconscious! I hit him!

A week after Lafitte delivered baby Michelle, Sainte-Beuve had toasted him as the absinthe-drinking midwife on the Seine.
Help me!
How? The New York police said she had murdered a man and run. The child he had picked up after school whenever Lafitte was working had grown up to be a wanted murderess…

In his car, followed by horns clashing with sirens, the Inspector was speeding along the Seine toward the
Jean Bourgois
. He was behind the wheel himself. He hated being driven. It made him nervous, he felt he wasn’t in control. Of course, how could you feel in control when you were driving into a nightmare involving dear friends? He idolized Lafitte. He loved Michelle as a daughter.

He checked his rear-view mirror. Tailgating him with blinding headlights through traffic were the ambulance, mobile lab, lab crew van, and minibus with eight cops. A year ago at the Anchorage Bar he’d told Lafitte about his idea to speed up investigations and cut down red tape. He requested a fully equipped mobile crime lab with him in the field. He got it.

Now it was racing to help Lafitte.

The Inspector had bought Zara’s story that Page was connected with organized crime, probably as a bagman. He had to have some shady connections to raise $200,000 in cash for the charter pilot to fly them to France. The pilot’s partner had been tortured and killed in the manner of a known organization hit man. And now Zara’s brutal murder in Paris before the police could find the fugitives…