French Kiss (9 page)

K. Burke and I
are sitting at a steel desk in a small room with bad Internet service at Les Archives de la Préfecture de Police, the dreary building on the periphery of Paris where all the old police records are kept. Here you can examine every recorded police case since the end of the Great War. Here you can discover the names of the French collaborators during the Vichy regime. You can examine the records of the Parisian bakers who have been accused of using tainted yeast in their bread. Here are the records of the thousands of murders, assaults, knife attacks, shootings, and traffic violations that have occurred in the past hundred years in the City of Light.

It is also here that K. Burke and I hope to find some small (or, better yet, large) clue that could connect us to whoever is responsible for the brutal deaths of Maria Martinez and my beloved Dalia.

To find the person who wishes to hurt me so deeply.

“Here,” says Detective Burke, pointing to my name on the screen of the archive's computer.
“L. Moncrief était responsable…”

I translate: “L. Moncrief was responsible for the evidence linking the Algerian diplomat to the cartel posing as Dominican priests in the 15th arrondissement.”

I press a computer key and say to Burke, “Listen: after years of being dragged to church by my mother, I know a real priest when I see one, and no
prêtre
I'd ever seen had such a well-groomed beard and mustache. Then I noticed that his shoes…eh, never mind. See what's next.”

We study my other cases. Some of those I worked on are ridiculously small—a Citroën stolen because the owner left the keys in the ignition; a lost child who stopped for a free
jus d'orange
on his way home from school; a homeless man arrested for singing loudly in a public library.

Other cases are much more significant. Along with the phony Dominicans, there was the drug bust in Pigalle, the case I built my reputation on. But there was also a gruesome murder in Montmartre, on rue Caulaincourt, during which a pimp's hands and feet were amputated.

In this last case my instincts led me to a pet cemetery in Asnières-sur-Seine. Both the severed hands and feet were found at the grave of the pimp's childhood pet, a spaniel. Instinct.

But nothing in the police archive is resonating with me. I do not feel, either through logic or instinct, any link from these past cases and the awful deaths of my two beloved women.

“I think I need another café au lait, Moncrief,” K. Burke says. Her eyelids are covering half her eyes. Jet lag has definitely attacked her.

“What you need is a taxi back to Le Meurice,” I say. “It is now
quatorze heures.…
”

K. Burke looks confused.

I translate. “Two o'clock in the afternoon.”

“Gotcha,” she says.

“Go back to the hotel. Take a nap, and I will come knocking on your door at
dix-sept heures.
Forgive me. I will come knocking at five o'clock.”

I add, “Good-bye, K. Burke.”

“Au revoir,”
she says. Her accent makes me cringe, then smile.

“You see?” I add. “You're here just seven hours, and already you're on your way to becoming a true
Parisienne
.”

We meet at five.

“I am not a happy man,” I say to K. Burke after I give our destination to the cabdriver. Then I say, “Perhaps I will never be a completely happy man again, but I am
un peu content
when I am in Paris.” Burke says nothing for a few seconds.

“Perhaps someday you will be happi
er.
” She speaks with an emphasis on the last syllable. Perhaps someday I will be.

Then I explain to her that because we will have to get back to our investigation tomorrow—“And, like many things, it might come to a frustrating end,” I caution—this early evening will be the only chance for me to show her the glory of Paris.

Then I quickly add, “But not the Eiffel Tower or the Louvre or Notre Dame. You can see those on your own. I will show you the special places in Paris. Places that are visited by only the very wise and the very curious.”

Detective Burke says,
“Merci, Monsieur Moncrief.
 
”

I smile at her, and then I say to the cabdriver,
“Nous sommes arrivés.”
We are here.

Burke reads the sign on the building aloud. Her accent is amusingly American-sounding: “Museé…des…Arts…Forains?”

“It is the circus museum,” I say. And soon we are standing in a huge warehouse that holds the forty carousels and games and bright neon signs that a rich man thought were worth preserving.

“I can't decide whether this is a dream or a nightmare,” Burke says.

“I think that it is
both.
”

We ride a carousel that whirls amazingly fast. “I feel like I'm five again!” shouts K. Burke. We play a game that involves plaster puppets and cloth-covered bulls. K. Burke wins the game. Then we are out and on our way again.

This time out I tell our cabdriver to take us to Paris Descartes University.

“Vous êtes médecin?”
the cabdriver asks.

I tell him that my companion and I are doctors of crime, which seems both to surprise and upset him. A few minutes later we are ascending in the lift to view the Musée d'Anatomie Delmas-Orfila-Rouvière. The place is almost crazier than the circus museum. It's a medical museum with hundreds of shelves displaying skulls and skeletons and wax models of diseased human parts. It is at once astonishing and disgusting.

At one point Burke says, “We're the only people here.”

“You need special permission to enter.”

“Aren't we the lucky ones?” Burke says, with only slight sarcasm.

From there we take another cab ride—to the Pont des Arts, a pedestrian bridge across the Seine. I show her the “love locks,” the thousands of small padlocks attached to the rails of the bridge by lovers.

“They are going to relocate some of the locks,” I tell Burke. “There are so many that they fear the bridge may collapse.”

So much love, I think. And for a moment my heart hurts. But then I hail another cab. I point out the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital, and we both laugh when I explain that it was once an asylum for “hysterical women.”

“Don't get any ideas, Moncrief,” Burke says.

Since our bodies are still on American time, it is almost lunchtime for us, and I ask K. Burke if she is hungry.

“Tu as faim?”
I ask.

“
Très, très
hungry. Famished, in fact.”

Ten minutes later, we are in the rough-and-tumble Pigalle area. I tell Detective Burke that she can always dine at the famous Parisian restaurants—Taillevent, Guy Savoy, even the dining room in our hotel. But tonight, I am taking her to my favorite restaurant, Le Petit Canard.

“Isn't this the area where you made your famous drug bust?” Burke asks.

“C'est vrai,”
I tell her. “You have a good memory.”

She is looking out the taxi window. The tourists have disappeared from the streets. The artists must be inside smoking weed. Only vagrants and prostitutes are hanging around.

“Ignore the neighborhood. Le Petit Canard is amazing. I used to come here a great deal when I lived in Paris. With friends, with my father, with…”

She says, “With Dalia, I'm sure.” She pauses and says, “I am so sorry for you, Moncrief. So sorry.”

Softly, I mutter, “Thank you.”

Then I add, “And thank you for allowing me to take you to the crazy tourist sights. It lifted my spirits. It made me feel a little better, Katherine.”

Burke appears slightly startled. We both realize that for the first time I have called Detective Burke by her proper first name.

I look closely at Burke's face, a lovely face, a face that goes well with such a lovely evening in such a beautiful city.

“Okay,” I say loudly and with great heartiness. “Let me call for the wine list, and we shall begin. We will enjoy a glorious dinner tonight.”

I fake an overly serious sad face, a frown. “Because you know that tomorrow…
retour au travail.
Do you know what those three French words mean?”

“I'm afraid so,” she says. “‘Back to work.'”

Moncrief and K. Burke
return to the hotel. If you were unaware of the details of their relationship, you would assume that they were just another rich and beautiful couple strolling through the ornate lobby of the Meurice.

Much to Moncrief's surprise and pleasure, K. Burke had brought along an outfit that was quite chic—a long white shirt over which hung a gray cashmere sweater. That sweater fell over a black slim skirt. It was finished with short black boots. Burke could
possibly
pass as a fashionable Parisian, and she could
certainly
pass as a fashionable American. Moncrief had told her how “snappy” she looked.

“You look snappy yourself, Moncrief,” she had said to him. This was, of course, true: a black Christian Dior suit with a slight sheen to it; a white shirt with a deep burgundy-colored tie.

Moncrief walked K. Burke back to her room and said good night. He listened while Burke locked her door behind her. Then he walked to the end of the hallway, to his own room.

It was a dinner between friends, between colleagues. K. Burke had expected nothing more. In fact, K. Burke
wanted
nothing more. It had been a spectacular day—the odd museums, then the extraordinary dinner: foie-gras ravioli, Muscovy duckling with mango sherbet, those wonderful little chocolates that fancy French restaurants always bring you with your coffee (or so Moncrief told her).

The night had turned out to be soothing and fun and friendly. He referred to Dalia a few times, and it was with nostalgia, sadness. But there was no darkness when he reminisced about his late girlfriend.

Now, as Burke unscrews and removes her tiny diamond studs, she wonders:
Can you have such a wonderful time with a charming, handsome man and not think about romance?

Of course you can,
she tells herself. But then again, it's impossible to put a man and a woman together—the electrician who comes to fix the wiring, the traffic cop who stops you for speeding, the attorney who is updating your will—and not consider the possibilities of
What if…at another time…under different conditions…

Burke removes her shirt and sweater. She sits on the bench at the white wood dressing table and removes her boots. As she massages her toes she shakes her head slowly; she is ashamed that she is even having such thoughts. Despite the pleasant dinner, she knows that Moncrief has not remotely begun to recover from Dalia's awful, sudden, horrible death.
And yet here I am, selfishly thinking of how great we look together, like one of those beautiful couples in a perfume ad.

“Enough nonsense.” She actually says these two words out loud.

Then she goes into the bathroom, removes her makeup, brushes her teeth, and takes the two antique combs out of her hair. She slips her T-shirt (
GO RANGERS
) over her head, then she removes her contact lenses and drops them into solution. There is only one more thing to do.

She goes to her pocketbook to do what she does instinctively every night before bed: check the safety on her service weapon. Then she remembers—she doesn't have a gun. The French police said that she and Moncrief were on official business for New York,
not
for Paris. No firearms permits would be issued.

She remembers what Moncrief said to her when she complained.

“Do you feel naked without your gun, K. Burke?”

“No,” she had answered. “Just a little underdressed.”

The same cramped and
ugly little room. The same primitive air-conditioning. The same stale air. The same inadequate Internet service. But most of all, the same rotten luck in finding “the fingerprint,” the instinctive connection between one of my past investigations and the tragedies in New York.

Detective Burke and I keep working. We are once again seated in the police archives building, outside Paris. We have been studying the screen so intently that we decided to invest in a shared bottle of eyedrops.

The screen scrolls through old cases, some of which I had actually forgotten—a molestation case that involved a disgusting pediatrician who was also the father of five children; a case of a government official who, not surprisingly, was collecting significant bribes for issuing false health-inspection reports; a case of race fixing at the Longchamp racecourse.

“This looks bigger than fixing a horse race,” she says. “The pages go on forever.”

“Print them,” I say. “I'll look at them more thoroughly later.”

Forty pages come spitting out of the printer. Burke says, “It looks like this was a very complicated case.”

“Not really,” I say. “No case is ever
that
complicated. Either there's a crime or there isn't. The Longchamp case began with a horse trainer. Marcel Ballard was his name. Not a bad guy, I think, but Ballard was weary of fixing the races. So he fought physically—punching, kicking—with the owner and trainer who were running the fix.
And
Ballard had a knife.
And
Ballard killed the owner and cut the other trainer badly.”

K. Burke continues scrolling through the cases on the screen. She does say, “Keep going, Moncrief. I'm listening.”

“I met with Ballard's wife. She had a newborn, three months old, their fourth child. So I did her a favor, but not without asking for something in return. I persuaded Ballard to confess to the crime and to help us identify the other trainers who were drugging the horses. He cooperated. So thanks to my intervention—and that of my superiors—he was allowed to plead to a lesser charge. Instead of
homicide volontaire,
he was only charged with—”

“Let me guess,” says K. Burke.
“Homicide
in
volontaire.”

“You are both a legal and linguistic genius, K. Burke.”

I grab some of the Longchamp papers and go through them quickly. “I'm glad I did what I did,” I say. “Madame Ballard is a good woman.”

“And the husband? Is he grateful?” K. Burke asks as she continues to study the screen intensely.

“He has written to me many times in gratitude. But one must keep in mind that he did kill a man.”

Burke presses a computer key and begins reading about a drug gang working out of Saint-Denis.

“What does this mean, Moncrief?
Logement social.
”

“In New York they call it public housing. A group of heroin dealers had set up a virtual drug supermarket in the basement there. Once I realized that some of our Parisian detectives were involved in the scheme, it was fairly easy—but frightening—to bust.”

“How'd you figure out that your own cops were involved?” she asks.

“I simply
felt
it,” I say.

“Of course,” she says with a bit of sarcasm. “I should have known.”

We continue flipping through the cases on the computer. But like the race fixing and murder at Longchamp, like the drug bust in Saint-Denis, all my former cases seem to be a million miles away from New York. No instinct propelled me. No fingerprint arose.

We studied the cold cases also. The kidnapping of the Ugandan ambassador's daughter (unsolved). The rape of an elderly nun at midnight in the Bois de Boulogne (unsolved, but what in hell was an elderly nun doing in that huge park at midnight?). An American woman with whom I had a brief romantic fling, Callie Hansen, who had been abducted for three days by a notorious husband-and-wife team that we were never able to apprehend. Again, nothing clicked.

We come across a street murder near Moulin Rouge. According to the report on the computer screen, one of the witnesses was a woman named Monica Ansel. Aha! Blaise Ansel had been the owner of Taylor Antiquities, the store on East 71st Street. Could Monica Ansel be his wife? But Monica Ansel, the woman who witnessed the crime at Moulin Rouge, was seventy-one years old.

“Damn!” I say, and I toss the papers from the Longchamp report to the floor. “I have wasted my time and yours, K. Burke. Plus I have wasted a good deal of money. And what do I have to show for it?
De la merde.
”

Even with her limited knowledge of French, K. Burke is able to translate.

“I agree,” she says. “Shit.”