Night Watch (41 page)

“You’re right about the Gineva Import company. It’s owned by the Dantons and Gina Varona.”

“Is it a dummy corporation?” I asked. “Or for real?”

“I couldn’t get much on the phone. The Brooklyn prosecutors will have to subpoena the records on Monday. All the AG would confirm for me were the owners and the fact that the company bought the building a few months ago.”

“Which would be six months after Luc bought the one next door. Is his name anywhere involved with Gineva?”

“Not so far as the AG’s filings show.”

“So this whole thing gets more tangled. You know Luc wants to go back to France, don’t you?”

“And he should, Coop. He’s got stuff to deal with there. I’ll throw this information over to the Brooklyn techs this weekend.”

“Did you call Luc? Did you find out whether he knows about this?”

“Not yet. That’s not for me to do.”

“But what do you think, Mike?”

“I think that you think too much, Coop. Just let it be.”

“I need to know.”

“That’ll happen soon enough. Just take a time-out for the night, will you?”

We left the building and Mike waited while I opened the door and got in my car.

“You okay to drive?” he asked.

“I’m good, thanks.”

“You did the right thing, Coop. About MGD, I mean.”

“I thought so a few hours ago. Hard to believe it now.”

“Get some sleep,” Mike said, as I started up the engine. “Talk to you soon.”

At this time of night, without much traffic, it usually took less than twenty minutes for me to drive straight up Park Avenue to the Seventies and into my garage.

The bar scene in SoHo was busy, and the mild night invited young patrons out onto the streets with their martinis and cosmopolitans. Every time I stopped for a red light, I looked at the Friday night revelers who seemed to have left work behind them for the weekend.

I thought back ten years and wondered if I would ever know what it was like to have a job that didn’t press on your brain—and nerves—24/7. Every now and then I thought it would be worth trying to find out.

I drove through the canyon of tall office buildings—deserted at this late hour—that lined Park Avenue north of Grand Central Terminal.

I couldn’t get the day’s images out of my mind’s eye. Gil-Darsin himself, smiling at me in the courtroom with an air of arrogance that befitted his delight at the abrupt prosecutorial reversal. And then Kali, so serene and yet severe, staring her husband straight in the face as she took aim at his heart.

I was detoured over to Madison Avenue at 59th Street by a Con Ed crew working on an underground repair. When I reached the corner of 68th, several blocks from my apartment, I realized that home was the one place that I didn’t want to be.

I crisscrossed Madison and took 69th Street over to Fifth Avenue, then made a left onto 64th Street.

When I pulled into the space in front of the Plaza Athénée, the doorman came out and asked whether I was checking in. I explained that I was visiting a friend and would be leaving early in the morning. He agreed to have the car valet-parked on the same block.

I had to wait several minutes at the check-in desk for a clerk to appear. It was ten-forty-five in the evening, and the chicly decorated lobby was empty.

“May I help you,
madame
?”

“Yes, I seem to have misplaced the card to my room. May I have another?”

“What is your name?”

“Rouget. My husband is Luc Rouget. Room 409.”

“I’ll have to see some identification, please,” the young man said.

I fished in my purse for my wallet and cell phone. “Actually, my last name is different,” I said, showing my driver’s license to him. “But perhaps these will help.”

I leaned over the desk and scrolled through the scads of recent photographs of Luc and me together—happier days—the last of which were taken at the dinner in white just a week earlier.

“Lovely,
madame
. Quite lovely. I’ve never seen Mr. Rouget,” he said rather sharply, “so these don’t really help me at all. I’ll have to call up to the room.”

I reached out and put my hand on his as he picked up the receiver. “Would you do me a favor?” I asked. “Would you just use your computer and Google Luc Rouget?”

He was puzzled.

“I’m trying to surprise him,” I said. “I hate to do this, but it would mean the world to me. Here’s my government ID.”

The young man checked the photo on my New York County District Attorney’s Office badge, and his entire attitude changed. “Ah,
madame
. I saw you on the television earlier tonight. You had the MGD case, am I right? What a terrible tragedy today.”

He had withdrawn a blank card from his drawer and was keying in the code of Luc’s hotel room.

“You should have said this to begin with, Madame Cooper. Nice to have you at the Plaza Athénée.”

I tipped him, explained I had no luggage, and assured him I knew my way around the hotel.

I got out on the fourth floor and made my way to 409. I slid the card in, lowered the handle, and let myself into the suite.

The lights in the entry and living room were off, but the one in the bedroom was still on. I stepped out of my shoes, left my suit jacket on the sofa, and tiptoed to the door.

When I pushed it open, I could see Luc sitting in the king-size bed, propped up against several pillows, reading a book. He didn’t look up until I was halfway across the room.

“Darling, I can’t believe you’re here,” he said, tossing the book
on the floor and reaching out for me as I climbed onto the foot of the bed. “Who let you in? Are you all right?”

“I just needed to be with you, Luc,” I said, kissing him and letting him hold me as tightly as he could.

“You
are
with me. You’re always with me.”

“It was such an awful day. It’s been such an awful week,” I said, disentangling myself from his long arms and legs so that I could undress. “Can you believe that it was one week ago tonight that I arrived in Mougins?”

“And how different everything looked then,” Luc said. “How different it felt.”

I went into the bathroom and showered, scrubbing my hands and face and hair, as though MGD’s blood had been everywhere. I toweled off and went back to Luc, letting myself be cradled in his arms. It was a time-out, just like Mike had directed me to have, and for once I was determined to enjoy the moment without thinking of any of the sinister machinations swirling around our lives.

Making love with Luc soothed and comforted me. He was strong but gentle—neither one of us in the mood for any athletics—and I closed my eyes and nestled in beside him when we had finished.

I was almost asleep when he nudged me aside and got out of bed. I heard the minibar open and close. “Nothing for me, thanks,” I said, rolling over away from Luc’s pillow. “I’m sated.”

A few seconds later, with Luc beside me, I heard the distinctive pop of a champagne cork. I picked up my head to see him pouring into two glasses from a split that was bubbling over.

“Happy birthday, Alexandra Cooper,” Luc said, offering me one glass and lifting the other.
“À votre santé, ma princesse.”

“Is it after midnight? Is it the thirtieth already?”

“It is, darling. Now you must wish for something.”

I closed my eyes and thought of everything that had happened since I found the pile of bones at the entrance to Luc’s home. If I could have wished away the entire last week of my life, personally and professionally, I would have done it. If I could have wished away
all the problems that were stacked up on Luc’s doorstep, deadlier than the ancient bones, I would have done it. If I could have wished that Blanca Robles had never had the misfortune to enter the hotel room of Mohammed Gil-Darsin before he’d departed, I would have done that, too.

“What is it? What have you wished?” Luc asked.

“I can’t ever tell, Luc. Then none of it will come true.”

“Can I see you again tomorrow, before I leave?”

“What flight are you on?”

“The nine
P.M.
to Paris.”

I took a deep breath and made another wish—that this wasn’t the last time Luc and I would be together.

“Then maybe during the day, if the police don’t need you,” I said. “Maybe they’ll let us meet for lunch.”

“Does Mike know you’re here with me?”

“Nobody knows. It’s the first thing that’s felt good to me since we sat on the beach together in Cannes,” I said.

It’s what I want to remember when you leave here
, I thought to myself.

We sipped our champagne until I was overcome by drowsiness. Luc turned out the light, and we both gave in to the emotional exhaustion that had drained us throughout these long days.

The next time I looked at the dial on the clock-radio, it was 5
A.M.
Luc was sleeping soundly, so I slipped out of bed, took my clothes into the living room to dress, and let myself out to go to the lobby.

The doorman had the keys to my car, which he pointed at halfway down the street. I drove the short distance home and crawled into my own bed for a few more hours’ sleep, certain that someone from the office would be calling me before too long to set up my debriefing about MGD’s shooting.

I was awakened at 9
A.M.
by the loud ring on the landline on my night table.

“Hello.”

“It’s me, Coop,” Mike said.

“Good morning.”

“Is Luc with you?”

“No.”

“Did you spend the night with him?”

Not exactly, I thought to myself. “Why?”

“’Cause I’m here at the Plaza Athénée. Apparently some loopy-looking broad showed up late last evening and tried to break into his room. At least it wasn’t you. You’d never lie to me, would you?”

“I have this vague recollection that you told me to take a time-out last time we talked. I didn’t spend the night. I just dropped in to say hello.”

“Where is he now?”

“Luc? He should be in his room.”

“Did he tell you when he was flying out?”

“Yes. Tonight at nine.”

“Did he have any plans for today?” Mike asked.

“In fact, we talked about having lunch together, once I cleared it with you.”

“I see,” Mike said, his annoyance growing more obvious. “You need permission to grab a meal together, but you figured you’d just use your own discretion about getting laid?”

“Sorry to disappoint you, but I didn’t get—”

“Excuse me. I’m sure the French have a much classier word for it. And I get to tell the commissioner the LKP of Alex Cooper is the suspect’s bed.”

Last known position. Why was anyone at headquarters remotely interested in my LKP, and how long had Mike been reporting on it? “Suspect in what?”

“Nothing, Coop. I misspoke.”

“The Brooklyn cops think Luc is tied up in this in a bad way, don’t they? And you just keep on humoring me.”

“That’s Brooklyn for you. Don’t pay it any mind,” Mike said. “What did Luc tell you he was doing today?”

“I swear to you, Mike. If he had any plans, he didn’t let me in on them.”

“But you let the cat out of the bag about Peter Danton and Gina Varona, didn’t you? You told Luc about your visit to the next-door neighbors and what you thought was going on? A little late night pillow talk.”

“I didn’t say a word to him. We never talked about the case at all,” I said. I didn’t want to tell Mike that we had more important things to tend to last night. “What’s wrong?”

“The detectives were supposed to pick Luc up here this morning. One last go-round in Brooklyn, and then—yeah—they would have had him back here in time for lunch.”

“Isn’t he answering?” I said. “He’s in room four-oh-nine.”

“The concierge says he left the hotel almost an hour ago. Some guy was waiting for him in front in a silver SUV. Luc’s gone, Alex. Your man is gone.”

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.”