French Kiss (8 page)

“This way, Luc,”
K. Burke says. Both Burke and Nick Elliott guide me by the elbows down a corridor—painted cement blocks, an occasional bulletin board, a fire-alarm box, a fire-extinguisher case.

The usual cast of characters is standing nearby: police officers, forensics, the coroner's people, two firemen, some young people—probably students—carrying laptops and water bottles. A very large sign is taped to a wall at the end of the corridor. It is a photograph of four people: a white male officer, an Asian female officer, a black male officer, a white female officer. Above the big grainy photo are big grainy blue letters:

Burke and Elliott steer me into a large old-fashioned lecture hall. The stadium seating ends at the bottom with a large table at which a lecturer usually stands. Behind it are a video screen and a green chalkboard. In this teaching pit also stand two officers and two doctors from the chief medical examiner's office. On the side aisles are other officers, other detectives, and, as we descend closer to the bottom of that aisle, a gurney on which a body rests.

K. Burke speaks to me as we reach the gurney. She is saying something to me, but I can't hear her. I am not hearing anything. I am just staring straight ahead as a doctor pulls back the gauzy sheet from Dalia's head and shoulders.

“The wound was in the stomach, sir,” she says.

She knows I need no further details at the moment.

Need I say that Dalia looks exquisite? Perfect hair. Perfect eyelashes. A touch of perfect makeup. Perfect. Just perfect. Just fucking unbelievably perfect.

How can she be so beautiful and yet dead?

In my mind I am still screaming “No!” but I say nothing.

I look away from her, and I see the others in the room backing away, looking away, trying to give me privacy in a very public situation.

I must touch Dalia. I should do it gently, of course. I take Dalia's face in both my hands. Her cheeks feel cold, hard. I lean in and brush my lips against her forehead. I pull back a tiny bit to look at her. Then I lean in again to kiss her on the lips.

The room is silent. Deadly silent. I have heard silence before. But the world has never been this quiet.

I will stand here for the rest of my life just looking at her. Yes, that's what I'll do. I'll never move from this spot. I stroke her hair. I touch her shoulders. I stand erect, then turn around.

Nick Elliott is looking at the ground. K. Burke's chin is quivering. Her eyes are wet. I speak, perhaps to Nick or K. Burke or everyone in the room or perhaps I am simply talking to myself.

“Dalia is dead.”

“Do you want to
ride in the ambulance with her?” Elliott asks. And before I can answer he adds, “I'll go with you if you want. We've got to get Dalia to the research area.”

The research area
. That is the NYPD euphemism for “the morgue.” It is what they say to parents whose child has been run over by a drunk driver.

“No,” I say. “There's nothing to be done.”

K. Burke looks at me and says what everybody says in a situation like this: “I don't know what to say.”

And me? I don't know what to say, either—or what to think or feel or do. So I say what comes to mind: “Keep me posted.”

I walk quickly through the lineup of colleagues and strangers lining the cement-block hallway. I jump over the giant stone barricades that encircle the police academy in case of attack. I am now running up Third Avenue.

“May I help you, monsieur?” That is the voice I hear. Where have I run? I don't recall a destination. I barely remember running. Did I leave Dalia's dead body behind? I look at the woman who just spoke to me. She used the word
monsieur.
Am I in Paris?

She is joined by a well-dressed man, an older man, a gentleman.

“Can I be of some help, Monsieur Moncrief?”

“Où suis-je?”
I ask. Where am I?

“Hermès, Monsieur Moncrief. Bonsoir. Je peux vous aider?”

The Hermès store on Madison Avenue. It is…was…Dalia's favorite place in the entire world to shop.

“Non. Merci, Monsieur. Je regarde.”
Just looking.

On the glass shelves is a collection of handbags, purses, and pocketbooks in red and yellow and green. Like Easter and Christmas. I feel calm amid the beauty. It is a museum, a palace, a château. The silk scarves hanging from golden hooks. The glass cases of watches and cufflinks. The shelves of briefcases and leather shopping bags. And then the calm inside me dissipates. I say,
“Bonsoir et merci”
to the sales associate.

I have neither my police phone nor my personal cell. I do not have my watch. I do not know the time. I know I am not crazy. I'm simply crazed.

It's early evening. I walk to Fifth Avenue. The sidewalks are crowded, and the shops are open. I walk down to the Pierre. I was recently inside the Pierre. Was I? I think I was. I continue walking south, toward the Plaza. No water in the fountain? A water shortage, perhaps? I turn east, back toward Madison Avenue, then start north again.

Bottega Veneta. I walk inside. No warm greeting here. A bigger store than Hermès. Instead of a symphony of leather in color, this is a muted place in grays and blacks and many degrees of brown. Calming, calming, calming, until it is calming no longer.

I leave. My next stop is Sherry-Lehmann, the museum of wine. I walk to the rear of the store, where they keep their finest bottles—the Romanée-Conti, Pétrus, Le Pin, Ramonet Montrachet, the thousand-dollar Moët. The bottles should all be displayed under glass, like the diamonds at Tiffany.

I am out on the sidewalk again. I am afraid that if I don't keep moving, I will explode or collapse. It is that extraordinary feeling that nothing good will ever happen again.

A no-brainer: I cannot return to Dalia's apartment at 15 Central Park West. Instead I will go to the loft where I once lived. The place is in the stupidly chic Meatpacking District. I bought the loft before I renewed my life with Dalia. I sometimes lend the place to friends from Europe who are visiting New York. I'm pretty sure it is empty right now.

Will I pick up the pieces? There is no way that will ever happen.

Move on, they will say. Mourn, then move on. I will not do that, because I can't.

Get over it? Never. Someone else? Never.

Nothing will ever be the same.

As I give the address to the cabdriver, I find my chest heaving and hurting. I insist—I don't know why—on holding in the tears. In those few minutes, with my chest shaking and my head aching, I realize what Elliott and Burke and probably others have come to realize: first, my partner, Maria Martinez; then my lover, Dalia Boaz.

Oh, my God. This isn't about prostitutes. This isn't about drugs. This is about me.

Somebody wants to hurt me. And that somebody has succeeded.

A loft. A big
space; bare, barren. Not a handsome space. It is way too basic to be anything but big.

I lived here before Dalia came back into my life. Even when I lived here, I was too compulsive to have allowed it to become a cheesy bachelor pad—no piles of dirty clothing; no accumulation of Chinese-food containers. In fact, no personal touches of any kind. But of course I was spending too many of my waking hours with the NYPD to think about furniture and paint and bathroom fixtures.

I turn the key and walk inside. I am almost startled by the sparseness of it—a gray sofa, a black leather club chair, a glass dining table where no one has ever eaten a meal. Some old files are stacked against a wall. Empty shelves near the sofa. Empty shelves in the kitchen. I have lived most of my New York life with Dalia, at Dalia's home. That was my real home. Where am I now?

I stretch out on the sofa. Fifteen seconds later, I am back on my feet. The room is stuffy, dry, hot. I walk to the thermostat that will turn on the air-conditioning, but I stare at the controls as if I don't quite know how to adjust the temperature. I remember that there is a smooth single-malt Scotch in a cabinet near the entryway, but why bother? I need to use the bathroom, but I just don't have energy enough to walk to the far side of the loft.

Then the buzzer downstairs rings.

At least I think it's the buzzer downstairs. It's been so long since I heard it. I walk to the intercom. The buzz comes again, then once more. Then I remember what I'm expected to say. A phrase that is ridiculously simple.

“Who is it?”

For a split second I stupidly imagine that it will be Dalia. “It was a terrible joke,” she will say with a laugh. “Inspector Elliott helped me fool you.”

Now a hollow voice comes from the intercom.

“It's K. Burke.”

I buzz her inside. Moments later I open the door and let her into the loft.

“How did you know where to find me?” I ask.

“I called your cell twenty times. You never picked up. Then I called Dalia's place twenty times. You weren't there,
or
you weren't picking up. So I found this place listed as the home address in your HR file. If I didn't find you here, I was going to forget it. But I got lucky.”

“No, K. Burke.
I got lucky.
”

I have no idea why I said something so sweet. But I think I mean it. Again, an idea that comes and goes in a split second: whoever is trying to destroy me—will he go after K. Burke next?

She gives me a smile. Then she says, “I'm about to say the thing that always annoys me when other people say it.”

“And that is…”

“Is there anything I can do for you?”

I take a deep breath.

“You mean like brewing a pot of coffee or bringing me a bag of doughnuts or cleaning my bathroom or finding the son of a bitch who—”

“Okay, I got it,” she says. “I understand. But actually, Nick Elliott and I did do something for you.”

My forehead wrinkles, and I say, “What?”

“We tracked down Dalia's father. He's in Norway shooting a film.”

“I was going to call him soon,” I say. “But I was building up courage. Thank you.” And just thinking about father and daughter begins to break my already severed heart.

“How did he accept the news?” As if I needed to ask.

“It was awful. He wailed. He screamed. He put his assistant on, and he eventually…well, he sort of composed himself and got back on the line.”

My eyes begin filling with tears. My chin quivers. I rub my eyes. I am not trying to hide my emotions. I am merely trying to get through them.

“He sends you his love,” K. Burke says. I nod.

“He is as fine a man as Dalia was a woman,” I say.

“He asked me to tell you two things.”

I can't imagine what Monsieur Boaz wanted to tell me.

“He said, ‘Tell Luc that I will come to America tomorrow, but he should bury Dalia as soon as possible. That is the Jewish way.'”

“I understand,” I say. Then I ask, “And the other?”

“He said, ‘Tell Luc thank you…for taking such good care of my girl.'”

This comment should make me weep, but instead I explode with anger. Not at Menashe Boaz, but at myself.

“That's not true!” I yell. “I did
not
take good care of her.”

“Of course it's true,” K. Burke says firmly. “You loved her totally. Everybody knows that.”

“I…let…her…die.”

“That's just stupid, Moncrief. And it smells a little of…” K. Burke abruptly stops talking.

“What? Finish your thought. It smells of what?” I say.

“It smells of…well…self-pity. Dalia was murdered. You could not have prevented it.”

I walk to the floor-to-ceiling windows of the loft. I look down at Gansevoort Street. It's this year's chic hot-cool place to be—the expensive restaurants and expensive boutiques, the High Line, the cobblestone streets. It is packed with people. I am disgusted with them because I am disgusted with me. Because Dalia and I will never again be among those people.

I turn and face Detective Burke, and suddenly I am more peaceful. I am truly grateful that she is here. She has stopped by to offer the “personal touch” and I was hesitant at first. Afraid I would feel nervous or embarrassed. But K. Burke has done a good thing.

I walk back toward her and speak slowly, carefully.

“There is one thing we need to discuss very soon. You must realize that these two murders had nothing to do with prostitutes or Brazilian drug dealers or…well, all the things we have been guessing at.”

“I realize that,” she says. I continue speaking.

“The first murder, at a rich man's home, was to confuse us. The next murder, at a school where people learn to be police professionals—that was to torment us.”

K. Burke nods in simple agreement.

“These murders have to do with
me,
” I say.

“In that case,” K. Burke says, “these murders have to do with
us.
”

“What the hell is
the story with these two murders?”

This question keeps exploding off the walls of NYPD precincts. It is the commissioner's question. It is Nick Elliott's question. And—obsessively, interminably, awake or asleep—it is my question.

The question is asked a thousand times, and a thousand times the answer comes back the same.

“No idea. Just no goddamn idea.”

Forensics brought in nothing. Surveillance cameras showed us nothing. Interviews at the scene turned up nothing.

So it is now time for me to do the only thing left to do: turn inward and rely entirely on my instincts. They have helped me in the past, and they have failed me, too. But instinct is all I have left.

I confront Nick Elliott. I tell him that the answer to the murders is obviously not in New York. The answer must be in Paris.

“Paris?” he shouts.

Then I say, “I need to go to Paris—look around, nose around, see if I can find something there.”

Nick Elliott gives it a long pause and then says, “Maybe that's not a bad idea.”

Then I tell him that I want to take K. Burke with me.

He pauses again, another long pause. Then he speaks. “Now,
that's
a bad idea.”

“Inspector, this is no holiday I'm planning. This is work. K. Burke and I will be examining cases that—”

“Okay, okay, let me think about it,” Elliott says. “Maybe it'll help. On the other hand, it might end up being a waste of time and money.”

I think quickly and say, “Then it will be a waste of
my
time and
my
money. I'll supply the money for the trip. I only care about getting to the bottom of these murders.”

“I guess so,” says Elliott.

I say, “I'll take that as a yes.”

A minute later I am telling K. Burke to go home and pack.

Her reaction? “I've never been to Paris.”

My reaction? “Why am I not surprised?”