Trader of Secrets: A Paul Madriani Novel (31 page)

The sudden bright lights scared two itinerants leaning over a blue bundle on the ground at the foot of the distant building. Bending over, they both looked back, white faces and stark eyes; they stared for a second into the blinding headlights. Suddenly they both turned and took off. They disappeared into an opening on the left side of the alley at the far end. It looked as if it might be a garage, but the opening was too small for a car. The two men had left their bundle behind.

Harry sat there for a moment looking, wondering what it was that he was seeing. The second he hit the bright beams he realized; there was a shoe with a foot in it sticking out of the end of the blue bundle.

*  *  *

Bruno’s two men scrambled down the steps of the passage du Clos Bruneau and clambered into the white van parked at the curb. The second they were inside, one of them slid the door closed.

“Where’s the body?” said Liquida.

Bruno translated. One of them answered in Russian as he pointed back toward the steps and the alley that ran behind several of the small hotels, including the Saint-Jacques. Then he pointed and said, “Politsiya!,” something for which Liquida did not need a translation.

Bruno said something to the driver, and the man stepped on the gas. The van pulled away from the curb and down the rue des Écoles headed for the A6, which would take them south through Lyon and on to Marseilles, where the private jet was waiting.

*  *  *

Harry had no cell phone. He considered whether to back out and take the car back to his hotel to get Paul and Joselyn or simply go into the café and have them call the police from there. He did neither. Instead he got out, locked the car, and began hoofing it back to the Hotel Claude Bernard. It was only a short block away. Harry was afraid if he took the car, he would have trouble finding a parking space once he got there.

Running part of the way and walking, he took less than three minutes to get to the room. By the time he knocked on the door he was breathless.

When Joselyn opened the door, she was already dressed and had her shoes on. She took one look at Harry and said, “What’s wrong?”

Harry had his hands on his knees, bent over, trying to catch his breath. He lifted one hand to point, but he couldn’t speak. Finally he said, “Body in the alley!”

“What? Where?”

“Hotel,” said Harry.

“Paul!” Joselyn turned and yelled toward the bathroom.

Chapter
Forty-One

B
y the time we reach the car parked in the alley, it is still dark. Harry asks me if I want him to turn on the headlights, but I tell him no, not until we get up close and see what is there.

“Why don’t you take the keys and stay in the car,” I tell Joselyn.

“Why don’t you?”

“I’ll do it,” says Harry. “There’s an opening down there to the left. Do you see it?”

I can barely make it out in the dim light.

“That’s where they went,” says Harry. “I don’t know where it goes, but if they come back out, try to stay clear. I’ll use the headlights to blind them. Cream ’em against the wall with the car if I have to.”

“OK.” Joselyn and I step slowly toward the end of the alley as Harry gets back in the car. We can see the long rolled bundle lying on the ground. It is sort of crumpled against the foot of the building. As we draw closer, I can tell, whatever it is, it is wrapped in one of those blue plastic tarps that you can buy in any hardware store in the world.

I can’t see the foot until we get closer. Harry was right. As we get within a few feet, I can tell that the running shoe sticking out of the bundle has to belong to a man. It is too big for a woman.

“Maybe we should call the police,” says Joselyn.

“In a minute,” I tell her.

The bundle is tied with twine. Neither of us has a knife or anything sharp enough to cut it. I am left to find the end and try and untie the knot. I pull my hands inside the long sleeves of my sweater and roll the bundle toward me looking for the end of the twine. Each time I try to roll it, the bundle seems to want to roll back the other way. Lividity has taken over the body, and the blood has settled to the lowest point and solidified, creating a counterweight.

“What are you doing?” says Joselyn.

“I’m trying to untie the knot.”

“Leave it alone. Let’s get out of here.”

“Go and sit in the car with Harry,” I tell her.

“Not unless you’re coming.”

“Watch the alley. Make sure nobody comes in behind us,” I tell her.

It takes me a good two minutes to find the knot and to push the heavy cotton twine backward, using my thumb and my fingernails to untie it. Once the knot is undone, it becomes easy to unwind the string from around the outside of the bundled tarp.

As I am doing this I am looking overhead to see if there are any surveillance cameras in or near the alley. It doesn’t look like it, but I can’t be sure. Using the inside of my sleeves, I pull the edge of the tarp and roll the body out.

The inside of the tarp is covered in blood, some of it clotted, some dried.

Joselyn looks away and covers her mouth with her hand. “Let’s get out of here. Why are we doing this?”

“Because I need to know what’s going on. Why don’t you go back to the car,” I tell her.

“No. I’m OK.”

The victim looks to be maybe forty years old with dark hair. The body is matted with blood. His flesh is the color of a bleached cotton sheet, pure white. There is a puncture wound in his throat, traces of blood still seeping from it.

He’s wearing a buttoned dress shirt and light-colored cotton jeans of some kind. I can see that there is nothing in the breast pocket of his shirt. I feel the pockets of his pants, front and back. They are empty.

“Who do you think he is?” says Joselyn.

“I don’t know. There’s no identification. No wallet, no watch, no rings. Whoever dumped him stripped the body.” I lean over and carefully turn down the collar on the back of his shirt. I don’t like touching the body any more than I have to. But it is the only chance I have to find out who he is. There is not a doubt in my mind that Liquida killed him. His shirt collar is covered with blood and there is a hole just under the label, but it is readable: “Kenneth Cole.”

“What are you doing?” she asks.

“Can’t be sure, but I’m guessing his clothes were bought in the States.”

“You think he’s American?”

“I don’t know.” Then something catches my eye. “Do you have a handkerchief?”

Joselyn feels around the pockets of her pants and her jacket. “No, but I have some Kleenex.”

“That’ll do.”

She takes out a small pocket pack of tissues and hands it to me. I take five or six and create a thick pad. “Don’t look,” I tell her.

I lift his shoulder with my left hand and reach down under the body toward the bottom of the plastic tarp underneath him.

“What is it?” Joselyn has her back to me.

“Looks like a pair of glasses. They must have missed them.” As soon as I pick them up I realize why. The neck strap has been pulled free from one of the temple tips, the part of the frame that hooks over the ear. If I had to guess, I would say that whoever murdered him dropped him onto the tarp as he was dying. This would account for all the blood inside the tarp. His heart was still pumping. “I am guessing that Liquida probably tangled his hand in the strap as he was dropping him onto the tarp. The glasses fell off and he never noticed them.”

“You’re sure Liquida did this?”

“Look at his throat.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” she says.

“That’s a puncture wound. Caused by something narrow and sharp. Herman has one just like it in his back. You know anybody else uses a stiletto like that? That’s his calling card.

“I’ll call the French police as soon as we get back to the hotel. Tell them about the body, give them Liquida’s name, tell them to check the FBI’s list for the poster and to search the hotel.”

“You think he’s still there?”

“No. But the French police, once they have the poster and a name, at least they’ll start watching all the airports.” I throw the edge of the tarp over the body. “Let’s get outta here.”

Chapter
Forty-Two

I
make the call to the local authorities, not from the room but from a pay phone in the lobby of one of the adjoining hotels. I don’t leave my name, but I tell them about Liquida and the poster with his picture and give them the name of his hotel. Even if they don’t catch him, I am assuming that someone at the front desk will recognize his picture. They might be able to tell the cops when he left so that the French authorities will know how much of a head start he has.

When I’m done, I hang up the phone and head back to the room. Before I get there, I hear the alternating high-low pitch of the sirens from the French police cars as they arrive in the dead-end alley down the street.

By the time I get back to the room in our hotel, Harry is already there with his bags packed.

“Time to go home,” he tells me.

“Yeah, I suppose I’m going to have to call Thorpe and tell him what we found and hope he doesn’t turn us over to the French police. If he does, we’ll be here for a month answering questions. Thorpe sent me an e-mail. Told me that if we weren’t back by late tomorrow he was gonna put us on the no-fly list.”

“Nice of you to tell us,” says Harry.

“I didn’t want to worry you,” I tell him.

“Well, then, let’s get our asses in gear before he slams the door and locks us out of the country,” says Harry.

“Where’s Joselyn?”

“She’s in the other room checking her e-mail. She looked a little queasy,” says Harry.

“Yeah, I don’t think she’s used to seeing dead people,” I tell him.

What I mean is, unlike the two of us who have spent a lifetime getting off on morbid victim photos from various medical examiners in capital cases.

The door to the bedroom opens. Joselyn is standing there with a puzzled look on her face. “Hey, you guys. There’s something going on in here I think you need to see.”

“What is it?” I ask.

“Something on my computer. I just noticed. Not sure what it is.”

Harry and I follow her into the bedroom. We stand looking over her shoulders as she sits in front of the laptop.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“It’s this.” She moves the cursor so that the little arrow stops on an item over on the left-hand margin of the screen. “See that?”

The cursor has landed on something called “Specs.”

“What is it?” asks Harry.

“It looks like an external drive,” she says. “The problem is I don’t have anything plugged into my machine.”

“Then where is it coming from?” I ask.

“I don’t know. I suppose it’s possible it could be coming from another room, but that would be highly unusual.”

“Why is that?” says Harry.

“It’s possible you might pick up a Wi-Fi hot spot, you know, a neighbor’s Internet signal. That can travel a little ways. But an external drive, that’s usually hardwired. I’m no hardware whiz kid, but I suppose there are drives that work off Bluetooth. Although the range on that would be real short.”

“How short?” I ask.

“I don’t know, four or five feet. The signal won’t pass through a wall. I’ll tell you that. Give me a second.” She moves to a different screen, the control panel on her laptop, and finds the Bluetooth connection. She toggles it off. When she returns to the original screen, the external drive has disappeared.

She looks over her shoulder at me.

“Turn it back on.”

She does, and the drive appears once more.

“It wasn’t on your computer last night?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “No.”

Then there is only one place it can be coming from. I am looking at the bloodied glasses sitting on the bureau a few feet away. They are still partially wrapped in the tissue where I left them. I pick them up and walk toward the door.

I don’t get more than three steps when Joselyn says: “It just disappeared.”

I walk toward her.

“It’s back.”

I look at the glasses. I’d love to wash them, but I don’t dare just in case there are prints. Instead I peel off some of the tissue and hold the lenses up to the light. “That’s funny.”

“What?” says Harry.

“It’s window glass,” I tell them. “I don’t see any correction at all.” I look at the heavy tortoiseshell frames and thick temples like two pieces of lumber. When I catch them in the light, I can see that one of the temple pieces is translucent, but the other has something solid inside. “I think I found it. Watch the screen,” I tell them. Keeping my fingers on the tissue, I fold both of the temple pieces closed.

“It disappeared again,” says Harry.

“That’s cute.” I open them again.

“It’s back.” They both speak at once. Joselyn wants to know if she should open it.