Night Watch

FORTY-SEVEN

Twenty minutes later I pulled over in front of the Plaza Athénée and parked.

Mike was on the sidewalk in front of the hotel, talking to two men I assumed were from Brooklyn South Homicide. The French and American flags flying above their heads, and the cheerful red awnings over each ground-floor window, made it appear more like a Parisian boulevard than an Upper East Side street.

He introduced me to both of the other men, and they examined me from head to toe like a doctor reading a patient’s CT scan. I imagined they were thinking that this was the crazy woman Mike had been telling them about.

“You two always dress alike?” one of them asked.

We were both in jeans and collared white polo shirts, with cable-knit crewneck sweaters. “Yeah,” Mike said. “She’s my evil twin. Separated at birth so she could have all the advantages of a superior education. Me? I got lucky. I got street smarts instead.”

“Okay, Detective Chapman. You’re right. I did a stupid thing. What else do you want to know?” I asked.

“Other than this here doorman, who came on at seven this morning, Mike says you were the last person to see Luc Rouget.”

“That’s probably true.”

“How long were you with him?”

I could feel the color rise up the sides of my neck and into my cheeks. “I’d say I got here about eleven last night, and it was five A.M. when I left.”

“That could be the longest ‘dropped-by-to-say-hello’ in history,” Mike said. “What else did you talk about? And spare us the love story.”

“There was very little conversation. I was wiped out from yesterday’s drama-the killing of Mohammed Gil-Darsin,” I said, talking to the pair of detectives. “I-uh, I hadn’t been with Luc all week, and I expected him to leave the country today. I just needed to-well, wanted to see him. We hardly talked at all.”

“Did he ever tell you about our questioning of him this week?” one of the cops asked.

“No. Not a word. Mike made it clear I wasn’t to speak to him.”

“Not all that clear apparently, was I?” Mike was running his fingers through his hair, agitated that I had broken the rules last night.

“Did Luc tell you what he was doing today? Did he say where he was going?”

I shook my head. “We talked about maybe having lunch together, and Luc said he’d have to see what the detectives wanted him to do. That he was on the nine P.M. flight back to Paris. When I left the hotel room, he was sound asleep. We haven’t spoken since.”

“What do you want to do?” Mike asked the older of the two detectives.

“I’m going back to the office. My partner can hang out in the hotel room. See when Mr. Rouget hoofs it on back here. Frankly, Mike, I don’t think it’s any big deal. He’s probably just sick of us. I’ve been hung out to dry by more important people than him.”

“Have you checked-?”

“Been there, Ms. Cooper. All his luggage is in the room, along with his passport and plane ticket. Could be he’d had enough of us for one week. I wouldn’t twist myself up in knots over this.”

“Has he called or e-mailed you, Coop?” Mike asked.

I took my phone out of my pocket and looked at it, but there were no new messages of any kind.

I scrolled down to Luc’s name and speed-dialed his cell number. It rang once and went immediately to voice mail.

I took a few steps away from the three men and lowered my voice, trying to sound as relaxed as I’d felt at midnight. “Bonjour, Luc. Ça va? I’m still hoping we can have lunch this afternoon. I’m going to go to my Saturday morning ballet class to stretch for a bit, but call me. Grosses bises.” Big kisses, I’d said to him, anxious and curious about his well-being.

The younger of the two detectives went into the hotel, while the older one said good-bye to us and started walking off to his car.

Mike was leaning against my dark blue SUV, rubbing the toe of one of his loafers against the leg of his jeans to get some dirt off it.

“Want me to apologize to you again?” I said.

“Not if you have to ask.”

“I am most sincerely sorry. Really I am. You’ve been such a great friend to me all week,” I said. “What do you think we should do about this?”

“It’s probably nothing. Go take your ballet lesson. Give me a buzz if Luc calls. And if you’ve got a Ulysses, let’s give it to the snitch.”

“Fifty bucks?”

“Yeah, let’s put that dead president right in the mitt of this doorman.”

“Why?”

“’Cause he gave me the make and model of the car Luc left in, as well as a partial plate.”

“Then what are you standing here for?”

“No need for those guys from Brooklyn to get in my way. I’d rather find Luc before they do.”