Swimsuit (24 page)

I wished I could do it now. But I couldn’t walk away.

I pressed the Play button and watched the moving pictures on my computer screen: Henri telling the woman that she cared only
about her own pleasure, laughing, saying, “Always a price.” He picked up the remote control and turned on the TV.

The hotel welcome screen flashed by, and then an announcer on
BBC World News
gave a sports update, mostly football. Another announcer followed with a summary of various international financial markets,
then came the breaking news of the two girls who’d been killed in Barbados.

Now, on my computer screen, Henri shut off the TV. He straddled the naked woman’s body, put his hands around her neck, and
I was sure that he was going to choke her — and then he changed his mind.

He untied her wrists, and I exhaled, wiped my eyes with my palms. He was letting her go — but why?

On screen, the woman said to Henri, “I knew you couldn’t do it.” Her English was accented. She was Italian.

Was this
Gina?

She got out of the bed and strolled toward the camera, and she winked. She was a pretty brunette in her late thirties, maybe
forty. She headed to an adjoining room, probably the bathroom.

Henri got out of the bed, reached down, and pulled a gun from a bag that looked to be a 9-millimeter Ruger with a suppressor
extending the muzzle.

He walked behind the woman and out of camera range.

I heard muffled conversation, then the
phfffft
sound of the gun firing through the suppressor. A shadow passed over the threshold. There was a soft, heavy thud, two more
muffled shots, then the rush of running water.

Except for the empty bed, that’s all I saw or heard until the screen went black.

My hands shook as I played the video again. This time I was looking for any detail that could tell me where Henri had been
when he had surely killed this woman.

On my third viewing, I saw something I’d missed before.

I stopped the action when Henri turned on the TV. I enlarged the picture and read the welcome screen with the name of the
hotel at the top of the menu.

It had been shot on an angle, and it was damned hard to make out the letters, but I wrote them down and then went out to the
Web to see if such a place existed.

It did.

I read that the Château de Mirambeau was in France, in the wine country near Bordeaux. It had been built on the foundations
of a medieval fortress founded in the eleventh century, reconstructed in the early 1800s, and turned into an expensive resort.
Pictures on the hotel’s Web site showed fields of sunflowers, vineyards, and the château itself, an elaborate fairy-tale construction
of vaulted stone, capped with turrets surrounding a courtyard and formal gardens.

I searched the Web again, found the football scores and the market closings that I’d seen on the TV in Henri’s room.

I realized that this video had been shot on Friday, the same night Amanda had brought home Cornish game hens and I had learned
about the deaths of Sara and Wendy.

I put my hand over the bandage against my ribs and felt the banging of my heart. It was all clear to me now.

Two days ago, Henri was in France, about a five-hour drive from Paris. This coming week marked the beginning of September.
Henri had told me that he always went to Paris in September.

I had a pretty good idea where he might be.

I SLAMMED DOWN the lid of my laptop, as if I could actually shut out the images Henri had left to my imagination.

Then I called Amanda, talking rapidly as I threw clothes into a suitcase.

“Henri sent me a video,” I told her. “Looks like he killed Gina Prazzi. Maybe he’s doing cleanup. Getting rid of people who
know him and what he’s done. So we have to ask ourselves, Mandy, when the book is finished, what’s he going to do to us?”

I told her my plan, and she argued with me, but I got the last word. “I can’t just
sit
here. I have to
do
something.”

I called a cab, and once we were rolling I ripped the adhesive tape from my rib cage and stuck the tracking device underneath
the cab’s backseat.

I CAUGHT a direct flight to Paris — midcabin coach, next to the window. As soon as I put the seatback down, my eyes slammed
shut. I missed the movie, the precooked meals, and the cheap champagne, but I got about nine hours of sleep, waking only as
the plane started its descent.

My bag shot down the luggage chute like it had missed me, and within twenty minutes of landing I was sitting in the backseat
of a taxi.

I spoke to the driver in my broken French, told him where to take me: the Hôtel Singe-Vert, French for “Green Monkey.” I’d
stayed there before and knew it to be a clean two-and-a-half-star lodging popular with journalists on location in the City
of Lights.

I walked through the unmanned lobby door, passed the entrance to the bar called Jacques’ Américain on my left, then crossed
into the dark inner lobby with its worn green couches, racks of folded newspapers in all languages, and a large, faded watercolor
of African green monkeys behind the front desk.

The concierge’s nametag read “Georges.” He was flabby, fiftyish, and pissed that he had to break off his phone conversation
to deal with me. After Georges ran my credit card and locked my passport in the safe, I took the stairs, found my room on
the third floor at the end of a frayed runner at the back of the hotel.

The room was papered with cabbage roses and crowded with century-old furniture, jammed in wall to wall. But the bedding was
fresh, and there was a TV and a high-speed Internet connection on the desk. Good enough for me.

I dropped my bag down on the duvet and found a phone book. I’d been in Paris for an hour, and before I did another thing
I had to get a gun.

THE FRENCH TAKE handguns seriously. Permits are restricted to police and the military and a few security professionals, who
have to lug their guns in cases, carry them in plain sight.

Still, in Paris, as in any big city, you can get a gun if you really want one. I spent the day prowling the Golden Drop, the
drug-dealing sinkhole around the Basilica of Sacré-Coeur.

I paid two hundred euros for an old snub-nosed .38, a ladies’ pistol with a two-inch barrel and six rounds in the chamber.

Back at the Green Monkey, Georges took my key off the board and pointed with his chin to a small heap on one of the sofas.
“You have a guest.”

It took me a long moment to take in what I was seeing. I walked over, shook her shoulder, and called her name.

Amanda opened her eyes and stretched as I sat down beside her. She put her arms around my neck and kissed me, but I couldn’t
even kiss her back. She was supposed to be home, safe in L.A.

“Gee. Pretend you’re glad to see me, okay? Paris is for lovers,” she said, smiling cautiously.

“Mandy, what in God’s name are you thinking?”

“It’s a little rash, I know. Look, I have something to tell you, Ben, and it could affect everything.”

“Cut to the chase, Mandy. What are you talking about?”

“I wanted to tell you face-to-face —”

“So you just got on a plane? Is it about Henri?”

“ No —”

“Then, Mandy, I’m sorry, but you have to go back. No, don’t shake your head. You’re a liability. Understand?”

“Well, thank you.”

Mandy was pouting now, which was rare for her, but I knew that the further I pushed her, the more obstinate she’d get. I could
already smell the carpet burning as she dug in her heels.

“Have you eaten?” she asked me.

“I’m not hungry,” I said.

“I am. I’m a French chef. And we’re in Paris.”

“This is
not
a vacation,” I said.

A half hour later, Mandy and I were seated at an outdoor café on the Rue des Pyramides. Night had blotted up the sunlight,
the air was warm, and we had a clear view of a gilded statue of Saint Joan on her horse where our side street intersected
with the Rue de Rivoli.

Mandy’s mood had taken an upturn. In fact, she seemed almost high. She ordered in French, put away course after course, describing
the preparation and rating the salad, the pâté, and the
fruits de mer
.

I made do with crackers and cheese and I drank strong coffee, my mind working on what I had to do, feeling the time rushing
by.

“Just try this,” Mandy said, holding out a spoonful of crème brûlée.

“Honestly, Amanda,” I said with frank exasperation. “You shouldn’t be here. I don’t know what else to say to you.”

“Just say you love me, Benjy. I’m going to be the mother of your child.”

I STARED at Amanda; thirty-four years old, looking twenty-five, wearing a baby blue cardigan with ruffled collar and cuffs
and a perfect Mona Lisa smile. She was astonishingly beautiful, never more so than at this very moment.

“Please say that you’re happy,” she said.

I took the spoon out of her hand and put it down on her plate. I got out of my chair, placed one hand on each of her cheeks,
and kissed her. Then I kissed her again. “You are the craziest girl I ever knew,
très étonnante.
”

“You’re very amazing, too,” she said, beaming.

“Boy, do I love you,” I said.

“
Moi aussi. Je t’aime
you to pieces. But are you, Benjy? Are you happy?”

I turned to the waitress, said to her, “This lovely lady and I are going to have a baby.”

“It is your first baby?”

“Yes. And I love this woman so much, and I’m so happy about the baby I could fly circles around the
moon.
”

The waitress smiled broadly, kissed both my cheeks and Mandy’s, then made a general announcement that I didn’t quite understand.
But she made wing motions with her arms, and people at the next table started laughing and clapping and then others joined
in, calling out congratulations and bravos.

I smiled at strangers, bowed to a beatific Amanda, and felt the flush of an unexpected and full-blown joy. Not long ago I
was thanking God that I have no children. Now I was lit up brighter than I. M. Pei’s glass pyramid at the Louvre.

I could hardly believe it.

Mandy was going to have our child.

AS QUICKLY AS my expanding love for Mandy sent my heart to the moon, my happiness was eclipsed by an even greater fear for
her safety.

As we trekked back to our little hotel, I told Amanda why she had to leave Paris in the morning.

“We’ll never be safe as long as Henri is calling the shots. I have to be smarter than he is, and that’s saying something,
Amanda. Our only hope is for me to get out in front of him. Please trust me about this.”

I told Mandy that Henri had described walking with Gina around the Place Vendôme.

I said, “It’s like looking for one needle in a hundred haystacks, but my gut is telling me that he’s here.”

“And if he is, what are you going to do about it, Benjy? Are you really going to kill him?”

“You’ve got a better idea?”

“About a hundred of them.”

We took the stairs to our room, and I made Amanda stand back as I drew my dainty Smith and Wesson and opened the door. I checked
the closets and the bath, pushed aside the curtains, and looked out into the alley, seeing popup monsters everywhere.

When I was sure the room was clear, I said, “I’ll be back in an hour. Two hours at most. Sit tight, okay? Watch the tube.
Swear to me you won’t leave the room.”

“Oh please, Benjy, call the police.”

“Honey. One more time. They can’t protect us. We’re not protectable. Not from Henri. Now promise me.”

Mandy reluctantly held up the three-fingered Girl Scout salute, then locked the door behind me as I headed out.

I’d done some homework. There were a handful of first-class hotels in Paris. Henri might stay at the Georges V or the Plaza
Athénée. But I was betting on my hunch.

It was an easy walk to the Hôtel Ritz on the Place Vendôme.

HENRI POPPED his knuckles in the backseat of a metered Mercedes taxi heading north from Orly toward the Rue de Rivoli and
from there to the Place Vendôme. He was hungry and irritated, and the ridiculous traffic was barely crawling across the Pont
Royal on the Rue des Pyramides.

As the taxi idled at a traffic light, Henri shook his head, thinking again about the mistake he’d made, a genuine amateur
boner, not knowing that Jan Van der Heuvel would be out of town when he visited Amsterdam earlier that day. Rather than leave
immediately, he’d made a decision on the fly, something he rarely did.

He knew that Van der Heuvel had a secretary. He’d met her once, and he knew she’d be locking up Van der Heuvel’s office at
the end of the day.

So he’d watched and waited for Mieke Helsloot, with her cute little body and her short skirt and lace-up boots, to lock Van
der Heuvel’s big front door at five on the nose. Then he’d followed her in the intense silence of the canal district, only
the sound of church bells and seabirds breaking the stillness.

He followed quietly, only yards behind her, crossing the canal after her, turning down a winding side street. Then he called
out, “Hello, excuse me,” and she’d turned to face him.

He’d apologized right away, falling in step beside her, saying he’d seen her leaving Mr. Van der Heuvel’s office and had been
trying to catch up to her for the last couple of blocks.

He’d said, “I’m working with Mr. Van der Heuvel on a confidential project. You remember me, don’t you, Mieke? I’m Monsieur
Benoit. I met you once in the office,” Henri had said.

“Yes,” she said doubtfully. “But I don’t see how I can help you. Mr. Van der Heuvel will be back tomorrow.”

Henri had told her that he’d lost Mr. Van der Heuvel’s cell phone number, and that it would really help him if he could explain
how he’d gotten the date of their meeting wrong. And Henri had continued the story until Meike Helsloot had stopped at the
front door to her flat.