Authors: Scott Phillips
Rake (21 page)
But first she wanted to christen that big bed. The thing about Ginny was, she really was horny just about all the time. And what the hell, she’d left word for David to join her at five in the evening, and it was only two-thirty now.
We had left word at the desk that if M. Steinke appeared, he was to be let up immediately. Members of the press would again be waiting outside the hotel and strategically placed in the corridors outside the room to record whatever transpired, and they all knew to be in place by four-thirty just to be on the safe side.
So we all got caught with our pants down, in my case and Ginny’s literally so, when the lunatic son of a bitch burst into the room at three-fifteen and found me balls-deep in his estranged wife. Ginny screamed at the sight of him, and he came at me with a butcher knife, bellowing a cuckold’s pain and an avenger’s joy as I rolled off the bed and onto the floor.
I had foreseen any number of scenarios I might have to deal with today, but fighting a knife-wielding assailant while I was naked wasn’t among them. He was an unskilled knife-fighter, but he was high on adrenaline and who knows what else and therefore unpredictable. I grabbed for his wrist, but he sliced my forearm and I retreated. I was a little bit ashamed, to tell you the truth, at allowing a civilian to slash me like that, and I vowed it was the last time.
He was laughing like an idiot, his eyes red and wide, and I had a bad feeling he’d scored some meth or, even worse, some angel dust. “This is a snuff film, baby, and you’re the star,” he said.
To my dismay I saw that Ginny was actually operating a video camera from the bed. “Damn it, give me a hand here,” I yelled.
“Fight, you fucking pussies,” she yelled back, and I had the sinking sensation that I’d been had. This was indeed a snuff film she was making, whether it was her ex or me that died, and I vowed that if I survived I’d see to it that she never worked outside of porn again.
I was backing away from him when he lunged suddenly, knocking me into a side table laden with a large pitcher full of flowers. His teeth bared, he lunged at me and I rolled to the side just in time to avoid being cut by a large sliver of broken crystal.
From my prone position I kicked him in the face and felt the cartilage in his nose crunch. He dropped the knife, and I plunged it into his throat. He made a truly horrible noise as the air from his lungs escaped through it, and his carotid artery spurted bright red onto the creamy white carpet as Ginny filmed. The blood began leaking rather than pumping from the wound in his neck, and his eyes lost focus.
“Turn off that fucking camera,” I said.
•
•
•
It didn’t take long for the photographers to arrive, and the police followed shortly. By that time I’d planted enough incriminating evidence on the corpse to establish definitively his identity as Krysmopompas: a page referring to
Kamikaze 1989
, torn from a book in Fred’s bookstore on German New Wave cinema, and a typewritten letter ostensibly from David Steinke explaining his need to kill me, Claude Guiteau, and anyone else who might facilitate Ginny’s reentry into legit show business, thereby hurting his chances of getting her back.
“It’s a good job you managed to overpower him,” Inspector Bonnot said. “Myself, I’d hate to be naked and face-to-face with a knife-wielding homicidal maniac.”
“It’s no picnic, Inspector,” I agreed, and when he’d wrapped up his duties and the body had been shipped off to the Institut Médico-Légal, we repaired to the headquarters of the Police Judiciaire, where I had the rare honor of a visit from the divisionnaire himself, who was kind enough to have sandwiches and beer sent up from the café on the Place Dauphine to thank me
for the autographed picture, which had delighted his wife. After I’d made my official statement, Inspector Bonnot joined me for an apéritif at that same café.
•
•
•
“It’s funny,” he said, after one of the inevitable interruptions, this time by an elderly couple who wanted, as usual, to know why I sounded so different in person than on the TV. “You’re very good-natured about the whole thing. That old bitch interrupted you in midsentence.”
“How can I be mean when they’re so happy to meet me? It’s thanks to people like her that I don’t have to wait tables or drive a truck.”
“True. Nonetheless, she was out of line.”
“Maybe. People get flustered when they meet someone famous.”
“So what are your plans now? Staying in France?”
“I certainly hope so. I just gave up a good TV role to stay here and push to get this movie made.”
“Ah, that’s right, your movie. The one the late M. Guiteau was going to finance.”
“Exactly.”
“I suppose you’re out of luck there, now that he’s dead.”
“Maybe, maybe not. If the estate’s settled quickly enough, I’m sure Esmée will step in for her husband as financial backer.”
“I suppose that makes sense. Of course the whole film business is quite oblique to me.”
“It’s oblique to people who’ve spent their lives in it. Every film gets set up differently, and every television show. There’s only one rule that never changes.”
“And what’s that?”
“Every man for himself.”
•
•
•
We shook hands outside the café with an invitation on my part for him to visit the set once the filming was under way and walked off in opposite directions as the sun began to set. Everything had gone as planned, and it was hard to argue that the world was any the worse off without either of the men I’d killed. The movie would get made, and all involved would get what they wanted. In the distance, the lights of the Eiffel Tower sputtered on, and I felt as though Paris had been my home forever.
A
FILM SET IS A SEEMINGLY CHAOTIC PLACE, if you don’t know what’s going on. If you do, you see that everyone is going about his business quickly and in such a way as to avoid disturbing anyone else’s. First-time visitors rarely perceive this, however, and can usually be recognized by their timorous resemblance to small children crossing a busy intersection.
During our second week of production, Inspector Bonnot made, as I had invited him to, such a visit. We were on location near Paris, shooting a scene in a warehouse full of supposedly stolen artworks (Esmée had put Fred in touch with one of her late husband’s contacts, a high-end art fence, who had supplied him with a wealth of useful information). I introduced Bonnot to the production assistants, to the director and cinematographer, to some of the actors he hadn’t already met. He greeted Esmée solicitously and Ginny warmly (yes, I’d forgiven her for her willingness to see me killed on camera—one night with her
and you’d understand why) and sat with us for lunch, after which he asked for a moment of my time, alone.
As luck would have it the scene being shot after lunch was one of the few I wasn’t in. We walked along the banks of the Seine in silence for a while, and then he cleared his throat to speak.
“You know, you could have been more careful.”
“How’s that?” I asked.
“You left the rubber ball in his mouth, for one thing. Your prints were on the strap. So were Mme. Guiteau’s. So were those of M. LaForge. And those of an unidentified fourth person, as well as those of M. Guiteau himself. His prints are explained by a second dental imprint on the ball itself—those of Mme. Guiteau.”
“How did you come to get our prints?”
“There are various means of getting those, if you’re not worried about it holding up in court. In your case, I swiped a drinking glass from the Guiteaus’ apartment.”
“I see.”
“In addition, you bought a gun for five hundred euros from a certain Gégé, who likes to stay on good terms with the police. When he heard that you were involved in the Krysmopompas case he came to me.”
“I did no such thing.”
“You should have had your friend LaForge buy the gun. Your attempt at discretion left a good deal to be desired, my friend. Because Gégé identified the gun’s previous owner, we have its ballistics, and they match those of the bullet that killed Guiteau.”
We both slowed down at the sight of something in the water. I saw a thin ribcage floating in the weeds, and for a horrifying moment I thought it was a child.
“Look at that,” Bonnot said. “A dead swan.”
And then I saw the white feathers and the remains of the webbed feet. “So it is,” I said, and we continued on our way.
“Finally, there’s that name. Krysmopompas. There’s the film,
Kamikaze 1989
, of course, and I found a rock group that had taken its name from the film. But you know what my first hit was when I plugged the word into Google? The
New York Times
crossword puzzle.”
“Is that so?”
“Which runs every day in the
International Herald Tribune
. The word appeared as an answer therein the very day you were attacked. If, indeed, you were attacked. On several occasions I’ve noticed you working on the puzzle in your spare time.”
The funny thing at that moment was, I’d always wondered why he hadn’t picked up on those things. All of them had occurred to me as possible keys to my downfall, and I honestly never underestimated the man. I was almost relieved to find that he was as sharp as I’d thought.
“So why bring this up now, now that there’s a film in production and people counting on me to make a living? Surely you knew all these things months ago.”
“That’s true. I suppose I wanted to come up and see a film being made. I’ve never been on a movie set.”
“Are you going to arrest me now?”
He laughed. “If I were going to arrest you, I’d have done it before Guiteau was in the ground. He was a pig. Shall we start back?”
We turned around and walked in silence until we reached the carcass of the swan. “Seeing it like that, you realize what a large animal a swan really is,” he said.
“That’s true. Whereas the skeleton of a lion or a bear, stripped of flesh and fur, seems quite small by comparison to its living form.”
“You’re a philosopher,” he said.
“So won’t you be in trouble, failing to solve the murder?”
“Not every murder is solved. And speaking of trouble, I believe I mentioned that the divisionnaire’s wife . . .”
“Right.”
We walked along, and the already beautiful day seemed to have taken on a new glow. I was a lucky man and I knew it, but this was beyond luck.
And then he cleared his throat.
“Ah, there’s just one more thing. I almost forgot.”
I wondered if he did this in all his interviews, or if he’d been saving the Columbo routine for just such an occasion as mine. “What’s that?”
“My daughter Jeannine, she’s twenty-three years old, went to drama school, hasn’t had much luck getting cast since. I was just thinking, maybe . . .”
“You know, that’s funny,” I said as we approached the set. “There’s a role we haven’t cast yet, that of a young girl.” Actually it hadn’t been written yet, but Fred was quick and he would understand the urgency of the matter. “Have her come by with a head shot.”
“It so happens I brought one with me,” Bonnot said, and from his jacket pocket he produced an eight-by-ten glossy of a young woman of considerable beauty, the kind who would be just fine onscreen even if she couldn’t act her way out of a paper bag, the kind whose performance in the sack would redeem any kind of hamming on-screen.
We shook hands as though we were the best of friends, and he took off to watch the scene being shot. I climbed into my trailer for a brief nap, a massage, and a quick blowjob from Ginny before my next scene.
•
•
•
It’s good to be the star.
Fin