Artist (21 page)

“How the hell does your old lady stand to be around you?” Dupond asked. He could smell the man as soon as he got off the elevator.

“She doesn’t. We have an agreement. I stay at my place during the week, clean up on Saturday. We go out Saturday night, go to church all day Sunday. On Monday I kiss her goodbye and we talk on the phone during the week.”

“I thought you quit drinking,” Adan said. “You smell like the ass end of, I don’t know, a drunken donkey or something.”

“I did quit drinking. Every Monday morning I go to 7-11 and buy a bottle of wine and a bottle of grape juice. I pour the wine on my clothes, dump the grape juice in the bottle. Hey, do you want authenticity or what? I’m the best there is and you know it. If you want to complain, I can take my talents elsewhere. Haute in burglary wants me to stake out a warehouse. I could be sleeping on a nice comfortable lawn tonight instead of a park where the seagulls are shitting everywhere. I can’t even put my bag in the bushes because they’ll find it and eat my cookies.”

Dupond laughed. “No, you’re doing fine. You got everything you need for tonight?”

“Yep. Flynn and Slade will stay till ten, then…..Reese and Kennedy come on. They’ll be in separate cars, Reese at the Robert E. Lee and Kennedy is going to park under those oaks in front of Dominican. That should be good enough. My car is two blocks away. I can be there in three minutes if he moves.”

“He’ll move,” Dupond said. “Sooner or later. Just make sure you don’t fall asleep.”

“I won’t,” Pavone said. “What are you guys doing about the boat?”

“What?”

“The boat he keeps parked in that shed under the house. What do we do if he takes off in the boat?”

“Shit,” Adan said. “I didn’t think of that. If he did, where would he go?”

“Well, anywhere,” Pavone said. “There’s a half a dozen marinas on the south side. If he crossed the lake, there’s even more. Or, he could anchor fifty yards off shore and swim in, change clothes, and be anywhere in the city after that.”

“Yeah, but he’d have to have a car waiting.”

“He could catch a cab.”

“Not likely, what’s he gonna do, ask the driver to keep the meter running while he strangles his girlfriend?”

“Pavone’s right,” Adan said. “We need to think about this.”

“I tell you what I’d do,” Slade said, “If I was inclined to kill women, that is. And if I knew someone might be watching. Take off in the boat, take my time, maybe sail around the lake a bit. Now, I’d have to take a cab somewhere. Unless you think he has a car stashed someplace?”

“He’s got the Beamer registered, nothing else.” Dupond said.

“Okay. I take off in the boat and I end up heading West, toward the Metairie side. There’s a few restaurants back there
. They let you tie up to their dock. My brother-in-law and my sister do it all the time. I tie up, maybe hit the bar, I catch a cab from the restaurant. I hit the Quarter, do the deed, catch a cab back. Get back in the boat and go home. Who’s gonna know?”

“We’d know he was gone.” Adan said.

“So what? I sailed around the lake a few hours. Came back home.”

“And if we went and talked to the restaurants?”

“You think they pay attention to every boat that comes and goes? You ever been out there on a weekend night? It’s like Mardi Gras. Everyone is drunk and nobody cares about anything. I doubt anyone would remember one boat.”

“Hey, what about Reed?” Slade asked.

“What about him?” Dupond said. He was angry with himself. The boat idea hadn’t occurred to him.

“He’s got a kick ass boat. He takes the Mayor out sometimes, and some of the City Councilman. I saw the pictures on his wall the last time I went for a disciplinary meeting. Maybe we could borrow his boat, set it up out at West End where it opens up onto the lake. I bet you could get a dozen guys to volunteer for that duty. Hell, I’ll do it. All I need is radio.
If Pavone sees him take off, he lets me know. I follow him.”

“You can’t follow him in a boat. He’ll see you,” Pavone said.

“So what?” Slade shot back. “It’s better than letting him run around loose. Besides, if it’s night, I can kill the lights on Reed’s boat, follow his lights. We could maybe get away with that. You can see those lights from a long ways off.”

They
all agreed they had to do something to cover the water. Dupond got Reed on the phone, got permission to use the boat. “Hell yes,” Reed said, “You can borrow my wife if it will get the governor off my ass. I’ve dropped ten points in the polls in the last month. Tell Slade if he screws up my boat he’ll be pulling all nighters in the Calliope Projects until he retires though.”

That done, everyone went their separate ways. Pavone went to buy more wine, “In the interests of authenticity,” he said, Slade went home to grab fishing gear and sandwiches, Adan left to get some sleep. He would be pulling late duty with Kennedy and Reese, a fourth wheel if they needed it. Dupond had the feeling things were moving now. It was like sitting in a duck blind, watching as a mallard passed over the decoys, or working a line as a fat red swept in. If Watt was their man.

After Cassie’s call, he was convinced. “That’s six murders over four years that look almost exactly like ours,” she said. She was calling from Charles De Gaulle, her flight an hour away. Macon had driven her to the airport after an all nighter, reviewing every open file.

“And they stopped after he came here?” Dupond said.

“They never stop,” Cassie replied. “Paris has over two million people, more or less, in the city itself or around it. But the dropoff fits. If you see it on the charts the rise in women’s murder’s falls right into his timeframe, falls off when he left for New Orleans. He’s our guy. Now we have to flush him out, one way or another, and deal with him.”

“How do you plan to do that?”

“You’ll see. I’ll be back in the morning. We’ll go over it then. I plan to sleep on the plane. Meet me at my place at about nine. By the way, what do you say to coming back over here sometime? We can spend a few days in Paris, then rent a car and drive around the country for a week or so. Next summer maybe?”

“Only if we book separate rooms,” Dupond said. “If you think you can seduce me with fancy trips and romantic getaways, you’ll be disappointed.”

“Honey,” Cassie said, “You are already bagged and tagged. See you at nine,” and hung up.

Dupond cleared the kitchen table, stacking everything into a single pile on the counter. Cassie had a pot of coffee brewing and Adan was watching it carefully. He was still catching up from a late night shift a few blocks away from Watt’s home. The professor spent the night in, Pavone watching
, and beginning to feel at home in the park, where the bum competition was low and the affluent patrons of the restaurants nearby were generous.

“He told me he collected twenty six bucks last night before everything shut down,” Adan told Cassie and Dupond when they say down in Cassie’s kitchen. “He says if we keep him there much longer he’ll be able to pay off his living room sofa.”

“Tell him to work it hard,” Cassie said. She was spreading out papers, police reports typed in French with whiteout spots standing out on a yellowed background. A few black and white photos of dead girls, their necks bruised and mottled. “If this works, our boy Watt won’t be spending much more time at home.”

She pointed to the papers. “These are all the cases in Paris I believe Watt pulled off. Most were in apartments, some were actually out on the street, in alleys or neighborhoods that were secluded.”

“So what’s your plan?” asked Dupond. He was watching Cassie, struck by the focus. She had forgotten to pull her hair back, slept on the plane, went straight to her apartment where Adan and Dupond arrived an hour later, and still looked good. The intensity was coming off her in waves. She was zeroed in, focused on Watt and all business. It was like watching a bloodhound at work, except she smelled better and wasn’t baying and he thought he’d keep the analogy to himself. Still, it was enough to make him wary, another aspect of this woman he was falling for.

“I’m going to push him over the edge. I’m going to scare the shit out of him. He’ll either pack his things and run, try to get out of the country, or he’ll lash out, probably try and commit another murder to throw us off.”

“If he knows we’re on to him, he’ll probably run,” Dupond said. “That won’t get us any closer to pinning these murders on him.”

If he runs, I’ll track him down and kill him, Cassie thought
. She couldn’t say it out loud but Dupond caught something in her eyes.

“What? Is that what you want? He’ll just lay low for a while and start again someplace else.”

“Maybe,” Cassie said. “It’s kind of a two-edged sword, don’t you think? If he runs, he’s almost admitting guilt and he knows we won’t leave him alone. More than likely, he’ll take it as…I don’t know…a challenge? Or an insult. An insult I think. Which means he’ll be trying to prove he’s better than us, smarter than us.” She turned to Adan.

“Do you think he knows we’re watching him?”

Adan shrugged. “Hard to say. My guess is he might think so but he can’t know for sure. Pavone is good at what he does. If he saw something to make him think Watt had tripped to him, he’d get out of there and try something else. So far, nothing.”

“He didn’t seem to like it when we waved at him in the parking lot,” Dupond said, “Maybe we shouldn’t have done that.”

“Who knows?” Adan said. “Bottom line is, he doesn’t know. He’s probably looking, probably a lot paranoid, but he doesn’t know anything.”

“If he’s not paranoid, he should be,” Cassie said. She checked her watch. “Probably starting about right now.”

Viktor Watt sat in his office, engrossed in planning for his upcoming freshman French History class. The first semester in the fall was always a test of endurance for him. Freshman classes are packed with students mostly fresh out of high school, some eager, others more interested in partying and almost none with a serious interest in history. Most were filling an elective and couldn’t care less if Napoleon conquered half of Europe or Joan of Arc was burned on a barbecue grill. Still, Watt prided himself on running a tight ship. Even the greatest of artists had to make a living.

Renoir spent his early years painting fans, Watt mused, Rodin wa
s a decorator, even Leonardo Da Vinci spent considerable time designing machines and the tools of war to earn a living. If he had to spend time shoveling the fodder of history into the unwilling minds of future store clerks, so be it. It was an honest living. The thought of toiling for the sake of his art, as unappreciated as his art may be, lifted his spirits. He was moving into the second half of the semester, covering the Roman conquest of much of France, when the phone rang.

“Hello?” he said. The connection was bad, or the caller was somewhere noisy. No response. “Hello?” he said again.

“Professor Viktor Watt?” the woman’s voice was frail, cracked, as if it was an effort to speak.

“Yes, this is Viktor Watt. Who is this?”

“I would like the bracelet, please, if you would. It’s the only thing I really want.”

“I’m sorry,” Watt said, “Who is this?”

“The bracelet. The one you got from Izabel. I’d like it back.” The voice grew stronger, almost imperceptibly.

“You must have the wrong number,” Watt said.

“I think not, Professor. You have my daughter’s bracelet. It’s the only thing the police didn’t return to me after you strangled her and left her in her bed. I want it back. I’ll give you my address. You can send it post collect.” The weakness was gone. The voice rang out over the phone, stabbed into his ear. Watt put down his pen.

“I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about, Ma’m,” he said. “I’m going to hang up now.”

“I want that bracelet, Professor. You have it and I want…” Watt slammed the phone down. Therese Macon lit a cigarette and dialed Cassie Reynold in the States.

Three hours later Cassie was wrangling with a student.  “Sur
e, I know Professor Watt,” the kid said. “His office is up on the third floor. I had him for Renaissance History in my sophomore year. “

The sixties never ended for
this guy, Cassie thought. She cornered him in the stairway of the History Building, luring him in with an unbuttoned top button on her shirt and her best smile. His hair was below shoulder length and his t-shirt held the aroma of body odor and the joint he must have just finished smoking ten minutes ago.

“Just hand it to him?” he said. “He’s going to ask who gave it to him. What do I tell him?”

“Tell him it’s an old girlfriend,” Cassie said. “He’ll know who it is when he opens it. Please? It would mean a lot to me.”

“Well,” somewhere in his muddled mind the stoner found enough wit to try and get something for himself. “I get it. You had a thing with him and busted up.”

“Something like that, yeah,” Cassie said.

“Well, if you’re not seeing him anymore, how about we hang around a little bit? Maybe have a beer?”

“Do me this favor and that might happen,” Cassie said. “You ever go to The Barrel?”