Night Watch

FIFTEEN

“There are thousands of these boxes that Luc had made,” I said, practically shouting at Mike. “What’s the big deal that this dead man had one in his pocket? Why do you think it would upset me? Why would you think Luc is involved?”

“Take it easy, Coop. Nobody’s accusing Luc of anything. But don’t you think this is going to raise a few eyebrows at headquarters?”

“I can’t imagine why it would.”

“Don’t yell at me, kid. I’m on your side. It’s not my case, remember? As of eight A.M., it got handed over to Brooklyn Homicide. I’m just the messenger.”

“Keith Scully won’t even know what Lutèce is.”

“Are you joking? It was hands-down the best restaurant in the city for a couple of decades. If you walked the beat in the Seventeenth Precinct, you still know that presidents and kings and captains of industry made it their clubhouse at lunchtime and dinner. Maybe I never got to taste the crumbs, but you know how many security details I worked there over the years? Keith, too. He didn’t get to the top being stupid.”

“That’s the old place. That Lutèce has been shut down since 2004,” I said, my arms flailing in the empty space as I started to pace around the room. “How would Keith have a clue? There is no Lutèce at the moment.”

“Which is why it’s even stranger if you give it some rational thought,” Mike said. He put his hands on my shoulders and forced me to sit down. “How many of these little boxes could there be, Coop? The restaurant doesn’t even exist yet.”

“I told you it’s about to open. These are-they’re-” I paused, flustered that I couldn’t even think of the word that Luc used to describe them. “It’s a prototype. He and his partners had hundreds of them-maybe thousands of them-made up as a promotional thing. They’re being passed out in restaurants and bars and who knows where else.”

“In France, Coop, or here in New York?”

I looked up at Mike and took a deep breath. “I don’t know. For sure around Mougins.”

“Want to see if you recognize the dead guy?” Mike said, pulling up the photograph on his cell phone. “It’s not exactly his yearbook picture, so it may be hard to tell.”

A slit throat and time in one of the world’s foulest waterways wouldn’t do much to turn anyone’s features into a money shot. I stared at the man’s head from several angles before I answered. “I’ve never seen him. Was there anything else in his pockets?”

“Not a thing.”

“So someone took everything out-wallet and cash and identification-but either left this in place if it was actually his, or planted it there.”

“It’s not your case, Coop. Spinning wheels in that anxious little brain isn’t going to help anything. I’m just giving you a heads-up.”

“I’m grateful for that.” I’m not sure I really was grateful. I felt like I’d been standing in quicksand since the earliest hours of Sunday morning, and now it had covered my ankles and was pulling me down as it aimed to swallow my kneecaps.

“Is Luc involved in any trouble that you know of, any business problems at all?”

I shot Mike a glance, confident he would recognize the mix of pain and anger I was trying to express, without my saying a word.

“I’m not being funny, kid. I’m not being mean to you,” he knelt in front of me and put one hand on my knee.

“I know that.” I focused on the phone, which was the only thing still left on the old wooden desk. “I don’t think that he is. It’s a huge undertaking, opening a business like this in New York. It’s very risky.”

“Does Luc talk about it with you? Would you know if there was a problem?”

“I just arrived in Mougins on Friday, so we never got around to discussing business. We weren’t even together for forty-eight hours before the woman’s body was pulled out of the pond. And that was after I found the bones.”

“What bones?” Mike stood up in front of me.

“Old ones. Some kind of joke, the cops think, from the catacombs in Paris.”

I knew I needed to tell Mike that the same type of matchbox was recovered from the floater in the pond, but I couldn’t make myself do it. I didn’t want Luc to be dragged any deeper into the quicksand beside me.

“You mean there are people with worse senses of humor than me?” Mike asked.

I smiled and nodded.

“Now I know you’re in a bad way, Coop. You didn’t correct my grammar.”

“That’s a full-time job,” I said, as I got up and walked to the desk. It was three in the afternoon in Mougins. Luc was probably in his office. “Who’s going to handle the case for Brooklyn Homicide?”

“You have to forget I was even here today. Don’t ask questions like that. Read the story in the tabs like everyone else. You don’t know about the matchbox, you’ve never seen a photo of the corpse. Play dumb, kid. It could be a refreshing change.”

“Don’t worry. I’m not going to burn you with the brass at One PP. I’m thinking about Luc and all the pressure on him now. He’s trying to figure out how to spend so much time away from his kids, whom he adores, and he’s already put a ton of money into this deal.”

“And you should be back in your office with the team. There’s as much pressure on you as there is on Luc. I’m almost sorry I came by,” Mike said. “No good deed, as the saying goes.”

“Thank you. I really mean that. Go on your way and just give me a minute to compose myself. Tell Mercer I’ll be right there.”

Mike watched me for a few seconds, then turned to leave. “I’ll talk to you later.”

When he closed the door, I waited twenty seconds then lifted the receiver and dialed the DA’s office switchboard. “Hi, Mona. It’s Alex Cooper. Would you please give me a line for an international call, and charge it to me personally?”

She asked for the number, so I slowly recited the country and city codes for Mougins.

The door opened and I swung around. Mike charged at the desk and grabbed the phone from my hand, slamming the receiver into its cradle. “I told you to play dumb, Coop, not be completely stupid. Do I have to cuff you to a chair till the evening news breaks the story, or can you just sit tight on this little secret for the rest of the day like I’ve asked you to do?”