French Kiss

Chapter 32

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.”