French Kiss

Chapter 37

Hotel management and guests in their pajamas almost immediately begin gathering in the hall.

K. Burke emerges from under the bed. We embrace each other the way friends do, friends who have successfully come through a horrible experience together.

“You saved…” she begins. She is shaking. She folds her arms in front of herself. She is working to compose herself.

“I know,” I say. I pat her on the back. I am like an old soccer coach with an injured player.

Burke pulls away from me. She blinks-on purpose-a few times, and those simple eye gestures seem to clear her head and calm her nerves. She is immediately back to a completely professional state. She has become the efficient K. Burke I am used to. We both look down at the body. She moves to a nearby closet and wraps herself quickly in a Le Meurice terry-cloth bathrobe.

The dead man fell backwards near the foot of the bed. He wears jeans, a white dress shirt, and Adidas sneakers. His bald head lies in a large and ever-growing pool of blood. It forms a kind of scarlet halo around his face.

The crowd in the hallway seems afraid to enter the room. A man wearing a blue blazer with LE MEURICE embroidered on the breast pocket appears. He pushes through the crowd. He is immediately followed by two men wearing identical blazers.

I briefly explain what happened, planning to give the police a more detailed story when they arrive.

K. Burke then kneels at the man’s head. I watch her touch the man’s neck. I can tell by the blood loss, by simply looking at him, that she is merely performing an official act. The guy is gone. Burke stands back up.

“Do you know him, Moncrief?” Burke asks.

“I have never seen him before in my life,” I say. “Have you?”

“Of course not,” she says. She pauses. Then she says, “He was going to kill me.”

“You would have been…the third victim.”

She nods. “How did you know that this was happening here, that someone was actually going to break in…threaten my life…try to kill me?”

“Instinct. When I texted you I asked if all was well. So I drank my whiskey.

“But fifteen minutes later, when I am walking back to the hotel, I found myself walking faster and faster, until I was actually running…I just had a feeling. I can’t explain it.”

“You never can,” she says.