Black Notice

37

The streets of Paris were waking up and getting lively as Talley and I walked to the Cafй Runtz. The air was cool and felt good on my face, but I was anxious and full of doubt again. I wished I'd never come to France. When we crossed the Place de I'Opйm and he reached for my hand; I wished I had never met Jay Talley.

His fingers were warm and strong and slender, and I never expected that such a gentle form of affection would jolt and revulse me when what we'd done in my room hours earlier had not. I felt ashamed of myself.

"I want you to know this matters to me," he said. "I don't have flings, Kay. I'm not into one-night stands. It's important you know that."

"Don't fall in love with me, Jay." I looked up at him.

His silence said everything about how thosй words made him feel.

"Jay, I'm not saying I don't care."

"You'll really like this cafй," he said. "It's a secret. You'll see. No one in here speaks anything but French and if you don't speak French, you have to point on the menu or get out your little dictionary, and the owner will be amused by you. Odette is very no-nonsense but very nice."

I was scarcely hearing a word.

"She and I have a dйtente. If she's pleasant, I patronize her establishment. If I'm pleasant, she lets me patronize her establishment."

"I want you to listen to me," I said, slipping my hand up his arm and leaning against it. "The last thing I ever want to do is hurt anyone. I didn't want to hurt you. And I already have."

"How could I feel hurt? This afternoon was incredible."

"Yes, it was," I said. "But…"

He stopped on the sidewalk and looked into my eyes as people flowed around us and light from shops unevenly shoved back the night. I was raw and alive where he had touched me.

"I didn't ask you to love me," he said.

"That's not something you should have to ask."

We started walking again.

"I know it's not something you freely offer, Kay," he said. "Love is your loup-garou. The monster you fear. And I can see why. It's tracked you down and hurt you all your life."

"Don't try to psychoanalyze me. Don't try to change me, Jay."

People bumped us as they jostled past.

Several teenagers with body piercing and dyed hair bumped into us and laughed. A small crowd was staring and pointing at an almost life-size yellow biplane attached to the side of the Grand Marnier building advertising a Breiding watch show. Roasting chestnuts smelled burnt.

"I've not touched anyone since Benton died," I said. "That's where you are in my food chain, Jay."

"I wasn't trying to be cruel:.."

"I'll fly home in the morning."

"I wish you wouldn't."

"I have a mission, remember?" I said.

Anger slipped out of hiding, and when Talley tried to hold my hand again, I slipped my fingers away from him.

"Or should I say I'll sneak home in the morning," I said. "With a briefcase of illegal evidence that's also, by the way, a biological hazard. I'll follow my orders, trooper that I am, and get DNA from the swabs if possible. Compare it to the unidentified body's DNA. Eventually determine that he and the killer are brothers. Meanwhile, maybe the cops will luck out and find a werewolf wandering the streets and he'll tell you guys everything about the Chandonne cartel. And maybe only two or three other women will be savaged before all this happens."

"Please don't be so bitter," Jay said.

"Bitter? I shouldn't be bitter?"

We turned off the Boulevard des Italiens onto the Rue Favard.

"I shouldn't be bitter when I was sent here to solve problems-when I've been a pawn in some scheme I knew nothing about?"

"I'm sorry you look at it that way," he said.

"We're bad for each other," I said.

Cafй Runtz was small and quiet, with green checked cloths and green glassware. Red lamps glowed and the chandelier was red. Odette was making a drink at the bar when we walked in. Her way of greeting Talley was to throw her hands up in despair and chastise him.

"She's accusing me of staying away two months and then not calling before I come in," he translated for me.

He leaned over the bar and kissed her on both cheeks to make amends. Regardless of how crowded the cafй was, she managed to fit us into a choice corner table because Talley had that effect on people. He was used to getting what he wanted. He picked out a Santenay red burgundy since he remembered I'd told him how much I liked burgundies, although I didn't recall when I'd said that or if I really had. By now I wasn't sure what he already knew and what he'd gotten directly from me.

"Let's see," he said, scanning the menu. "I highly recommend the Alsacienne specialities. But to start? The salade de gruyйre-shaved gruyere that looks like pasta on lettuce and tomato. It's filling, though."

"Maybe that's all I'll get, then," I said, with no appetite.

He reached inside his jacket pocket and pulled out a small cigar and clipper.

"Helps me cut buck on cigarettes," he explained. "Would you like one?"

"Everybody in France smokes too much. It's time I quit again," I said.

"They're very good." He snipped off the tip. "Dipped in sugar. This one's vanilla, but I also have cinnamon and sambuca." He fired a match. "But I like the vanilla the best." He puffed. "You really should taste this."

He offered it to me.

"No, thank you," -I said.

"I order them from a wholesaler in Miami," he went on, flourishing his cigar and throwing his head back to blow out smoke. "Cojimars. Not to be confused with Cohibas, which are wonderful, but illegal if they're Cuban versus those made in the Dominican Republic. Illegal in the U.S., at any rate. And I know that because I'm ATF. Yes, ma'am, I know my alcohol, tobacco and firearms."

He had already finished his first glass of wine.

"The three R's. Running, Running and Running. Ever heard that? They teach it in the school of hard knocks"

He refilled'his glass and topped off mine.

"If I came back to the States, would you see me again? For the sake of argument, what would happen if I transferred… let's say, back to Washington?"

"I didn't mean to do this to you," I said.

Tears touched his eyes and he quickly looked away.

"I never meant to. It's my fault," I softly said.

"Fault?" he said. "Fault? I didn't realize there-was fault involved, as in something to be blamed. As in a mistake."

He leaned into the table and smiled smugly, as if he were a detective who'd just tripped me with a trick question.

"Fault. Hmmm," he pondered, blowing smoke.

"Jay, you're so young," I said. "Someday you'll understand-"

"I 'can't help my age." He interrupted me in a voice that caused glances.

"And you live in France, for God's sake."

"There are worse places to live."

"You can dance around words all you want, Jay," I said. "But reality always has its way with people."

"You're sorry, aren't you?" He leaned back. "I know so much about you, and then I go and do something as stupid as that."

"I never said it was stupid."

"It's because you aren't ready."

I was getting upset, too.

"You can't possibly know if I'm ready or not ready," I told him as the waiter appeared to take our' order and then discreetly moved on. "You spend far too much time in my mind and maybe not enough in your own."

"Okay. Don't worry. I won't ever try to anticipate your feelings or thoughts again."

"Ah. Petulance," I replied. "At last you're acting your age:'

His eyes flashed. I sipped my wine. He'd already finished another glass.

"I deserve respect, too," he said. "I'm not a child. What was this afternoon, Kay? Social work? Charity? Sex education? Foster care?"

"Maybe we shouldn't talk about this here," I suggested.

"Or maybe you just used me," he event on.

"I'm too old for you. Please lower your voice."

"Old is my mother, my aunt. The deaf widow who lives next door to me is old"

I realized I had no idea where Talley lived. I didn't even have his home telephone number.

"Old is the way you act when you're overbearing and condescending 'and a chicken," he said, raising his glass to me.

"A chicken? I've been called a lot of things, but never a chicken:' "You're an emotional chicken." He drank as if trying to put out a fire. "That's why you were with him. He was safe. I don't care how much you say youloved him. He was safe.,»

"Don't talk about something you know nothing about," I warned him as I began to tremble.

"Because you're afraid. You've been afraid ever since your father died, ever since you felt different from everyone because you are different from everyone and that's the price people like us pay. We're special. We're alone and we rarely think it's because we're special. We just think there's something wrong with us."

I placed my napkin on top of the table and pushed back my chair.

"That's the problem with you intelligence-gathering assholes;" I said in a low, calm voice. "You appropriate the secrets, the treasures and tragedies and ecstasies of someone as if they are your own. At least I have a life. At least I don't live voyeuristically through people I don't know. At least I'm not some kind of spy."

"I'm not a spy;" he said. "It was my job to find out as much as I could about you."

"And you did your job extraordinarily well," I said, stung. "Especially this afternoon."

"Please don't leave;" he quietly said as he reached across the table for my hand.

I pulled away from him. I walked out of the restaurant as other diners stared. Someone laughed and made a comment I didn't need to translate to understand. It was obvious that the handsome young man and his older lady friend were having a lover's spat. Or maybe he was her gigolo.

It was almost nine-thirty and I walked with determination toward the hotel while everyone else in the city, it seemed, continued to venture out. A woman police officer wearing white gloves whistled traffic through as I waited with a great crowd to cross the Boulevard des Capucines. The air was bright with voices and cold light from the moon. The aromas of crepes and beignets and chestnuts roasting in small grills made me heartsick and dizzy.

I hurried like a fugitive evading apprehension, and yet I lingered at street corners because I wanted to be caught. Talley did not come after me. When I reached my hotel, breathless and upset, I couldn't bear the thought of seeing Marino or returning to my room.

I got a taxi because I had one more thing to do. I would do it alone and at night because I felt reckless and desperate.

"Yes?" the driver said, turning around to look at me. "Madame?"

I felt pieces of me had been rearranged and I didn't know where to put them because I couldn't remember where they'd been before.

"Do you speak English?" I asked.

"Yes."

"Do you know much about the city? Could you tell me about what I'm seeing?"

"Seeing? You mean now?"

"Seeing as we drive," I said.

"Am I tour guide?" He thought I was very funny. "No, but I live here. Where would you like to go?"

"Do you know where the morgue is? On the Seine near the Gare de Lyon?"

"You want to go there?" He turned around again and frowned at me as he waited to insert himself in traffic.

"I will want to go there. But first I want to go to the Ile Saint-Louis," I said, scanning, looking.for Talley as hope got dark like the street.

"What?" My driver laughed as if I were the premier crazy. "You want to go to the morgue and he Saint-Louis? What connection is that? Someone rich die?"

I was getting annoyed with him.

"Please," I said. "Let's go."

"Okay, sure. If that's what you want."

Tires over cobblestone sounded like kettle drums, and lamplight flashing off the Seine looked like schools of silver fish. I rubbed fog off my window and opened it enough so I could see better as we crossed the Pont Louis-Philippe and entered the island. I instantly recognized the seventeenth-century homes that once had been the private hotels of the noblesse. I had been here before with Benton.

We had walked these narrow cobblestone streets and browsed the historic plaques on some of the walls that told who once had lived here. We had stopped in outdoor cafйs, and across the way bought ice cream at Berthillon. I told my driver to circle the island.

It was solid with gorgeous homes of limestone pitted by the years, and balconies were black wrought iron. Windows were lit up, and through them were glimpses of exposed beams, bookcases and fine paintings, but I saw no one. It was as if the elitist people who lived here were invisible to the rest of us.

"Have you ever heard of the Chandonne family?" I asked my driver.

"But of course," he said. "Would you like to see where they live?"

"Please," I said with great misgivings.

He drove -to the Quai d'Orlйans, past the residence where Pompidou died on the second floor, the blinds still drawn, and onto the Quai de Bйthune toward the eastern tip of the island. I dug in my satchel and got out a bottle of Advil.

The taxi stopped. I sensed my driver didn't care to get any closer to the Chandonne home.

"Turn the corner there," he pointed, "and walk to Quai d'Anjou. You will see doors carved with chamois. That is the Chandonne crest, I guess you would call it. Even the drainpipes are chamois. It is really something. You can't miss it. And stay away from the bridge over there on the right bank," he said. "Underneath it, that is where the homeless and homosexuals are. It is dangerous."

The hotel particulier where the Chandonne family had lived for hundreds of years was a four-story town house with multiple dormer windows, chimneys and an 0eil de Boeuf, or beef's eye, which was a round window at the roof. The front doors were dark wood ornately carved with chamois, and fleet-footed goats held on tooth and tail to form gilded drainpipes:

The hair pricked up on my flesh. I tucked myself in shadows and stared across the street at the lair that had spawned this monster who called himself the Loup-Garou. Through windows, chandeliers sparkled and bookcases were crowded with hundreds of books. I was startled when a woman suddenly appeared in the glass. She was enormously fat. She wore a dark red robe with deep sleeves, the material rich like satin or silk. I stared, transfixed.

Her face was impatient, her lips moving fast as she talked to someone, and almost instantly a maid appeared with a small silver tray bearing a liqueur glass. Madame Chandonne, ~ if that's who the woman was, sipped.her drink. She lit a cigarette with a silver lighter and walked out of view.

I walked fast to the tip of the island, less than a block away, and from a small park there I could barely make out the silhouette of the morgue. I guessed it was but several miles upriver, on the other side of the Pont Sully. I scanned the Seine and fantasized that the killer was'the son of the obese woman I just saw, that for years he had bathed nude here without her knowing, moonlight shining on his long, pale hair.

I imagined him emerging from his noble home and wandering to this park after dark to dip into what he hoped would heal him. How many years had he waded in that frigid, dirty water? I wondered if he ranged about the right bank, where he watched people who were as estranged from society as he was. Maybe he even mingled with them.

Stairs led down from the street to the quai, and the river was so high it lapped over cobblestones in murky ruffles that smelled faintly of sewage. The Seine was swollen from unrelenting rain, the current very strong, and an occasional duck flowed past even though ducks weren't supposed to swim at night. Iron gas lamps glowed and dashed flakes 'of gold in patterns over the water.

I took the cap off the bottle of Advil and poured the pills on the ground. I carefully ventured down slick stone stairs to the quai. Water lapped around my feet as I swished the plastic bottle clean and filled it with frigid water. I snapped the cap back on and returned to the taxi, glancing back several times at the Chandonne home, halfway expecting cartel criminals to suddenly spring out after me.

"Take me to the morgue, please," I said to my driver.

It was dark, and razor wire not noticeable during the day reflected light from cars speeding past.

"Pull into the back parking lot," I said.

He turned off the Quai de la Rapйe into the small area behind the building where vans had been parked and the sad couple had waited on a bench earlier in the day. I got out.

"Stay right here," I said to my driver. "I'm just going to walk around for a minute."

His face was wan, and when I got a better look at him, I realized he was very wrinkled and missing several teeth. He looked uneasy, his eyes darting about as if maybe he was thinking about speeding away.

"It's all right," I said to him as I got a notebook out of my satchel.

"Oh, you're a journalist," he said with relief. "You're here working on a story."

"Yes, a story."

He grinned, hanging halfway out his openwindow.

"You had me worried, madame! I thought maybe you were some sort of ghoul!"

"Give me just a minute," I said.

I wandered around, feeling the damp cold of old stone and air blowing off the river as I moved around in the darkness of deep shadows and took interest in every detail, as if I were he. He would have been fascinated by this place. It was the hall of dishonor that displayed his trophies after his kills and reminded him of his sovereign immunity. He could do whatever he wanted, whenever he pleased and leave all the evidence in the world and he wouldn't be touched.

He probably could have walked from his house to the morgue in twenty or thirty minutes, and I envisioned him sitting in the park, staring at the old brick building and imagining what was going on inside, what work he had created for Dr. Stvan. I wondered if the odor of death excited him.

A faint breeze stirred acacia trees and touched my skin as I replayed what Dr. Stvan had said about the man who had come to her door. He had come to murder her and had failed. He returned to this very spot and left her a note the next day.

Pas la police…

Perhaps we were trying to make his modus operandi far too complicated.

Pas de problйme… Le Loup-Garou.

Perhaps it was as simple as a raging, murderous lust he could not control. Once the monster in him was aroused by someone, there was no escape. I was certain if he were still in France, Dr. Stvan would be dead. Perhaps when he fled to Richmond, he thought he could control himself for a while. And maybe he did for three days. Or maybe he had been watching Kim Luong the entire time, fantasizing until he couldn't resist the evil impulse any longer.

I hurried back to my taxi and the windows were so fogged up I could not see through them as I pulled open the back door. Inside, the heater was blasting, my driver half asleep. He sat up with a start and swore.