19 Purchase Street (27 page)

Definitely coming in on it now.

Felt a pleasant tightening behind the bridge of his nose and inside his rectum. He approached Kardec's tomb from the back, changed his mind about going along the protected side of it, he would do the unexpected. He used a small crypt to knee himself up over the back edge. Not much time left, not much light either.

He crept across the roof of Kardec's tomb to the front edge, stuck his head up for only an instant, but in that instant took everything in. As he had been trained to do in combat. And then once again.

Satisfied that he had seen nothing, now doubting his instinct, he stood upright on the stone roof, surveyed the area. Stepped forward to climb off.

His left foot and all his weight came down on something squishy.

The squeal of kittens.

The mother cat, the dun-colored cat with the silk ribbon and bell at its neck, leveraged her haunches, her tail helping to balance her so the muscles of her hindquarters could spring. All twenty of her claws were extended when she dug them into Becque's face. One claw pierced his eyelid and went on into his eyeball. Another went all the way through his left cheek.

Becque tried his best not to cry out. Tried to pull the cat away, but its curved claws had hold of him and it kept slashing.

Gainer fired.

Three times.

The first 9mm slug hit Becque just above the navel. Doubled him over as it drove him back, tore through the intestines, nicked a branch of the abdominal aorta and continued on to lodge near the middle of the third rib, shattering vertebrae.

In the next instant Becque snapped up stiffly and spun, his arms flailing grotesquely, as though his sleeves were stuffed with rags. He fell backward off the tomb.

Gainer extricated himself from between the mausoleums.

The dun-colored cat was still on Becque's face but on seeing Gainer it released him and leaped to the roof of Kardec's tomb.

Gainer examined the spreading splotch of blood on Becque's lower shirtfront. That was the shot he had carefully squeezed off. He'd jerked his second and third so badly they must have missed.

But there, higher up on Becque's chest, was another entry wound, just left of center, where it must have blown away half the man's heart.

Hell of a shot, Gainer thought.

He took the ten thousand from Becque's jacket pocket, as well as his wallet. He turned all Becque's pockets inside out. There was nothing in them but a few francs.

He twisted the silencer off the ASP, put it away and put the ASP in its holster. He then ran full out down the main walkway as straight as possible to the office of the conservateur.

Leslie was where he had left her.

But she was out of breath and trying hard not to show it. Her hair was kinked with perspiration around her forehead. Her suit was soiled with dust. She emptied a pebble from her shoe.

Gainer was so glad to see her he scarcely noticed. Or maybe he was too pumped up. He said nothing except, “Come on.”

The main gate was still open. Becque was supposed to have closed it later.

Gainer and Leslie walked at a leisurely pace out of Cimetière du Père-Lachaise as though they had just paid some late respects to a late friend.

B
ACK
at the Avenue Foch house, first thing, Leslie squirted a double dose of Rescue Remedy into Gainer's mouth and then drew a bath. She put a cupful of powdered ginger into the bath water and swooshed it around. The water looked to be suffering from old plumbing and had somewhat the odor of a restaurant in downtown Calcutta. Nonetheless, Leslie removed her clothes, let them drop wherever they came off and got in up to her chin.

Gainer paced. From the bathroom through the bedroom to the sitting room and back. Like a marathon runner cooling down.

He hadn't expected such a reaction, but then he'd never killed anyone before or been so close to being killed. His adrenal gland had squirted some of its own sort of Rescue Remedy into his stream and he was still feeling the high of it. He thought of having a drink, a double straight, the way most heroes got out of such a state, but he felt if he did his head would surely leave him.

“Poor love,” Leslie said, when he paced into the bathroom for the fifth time.

She got out of the tub, mindless of dripping ginger water. Stopped him. Undressed him. Took off his holster harness and ASP and hung them on a towel hook. He sat on the edge of the bidet so she could yank off his trousers.

She noticed he was half hard.

The tub was an oversize European fixture, long and deep. Leslie got into the slanted end, spread her legs for Gainer to sit between them, his back to her. She put her arms around and brought him to her, so that the top of his head was just beneath her chin.

“I'm heavy on you,” he said.

“Relax darling. Relax.”

The water buoyed him as, little by little, he let go. Maybe it was the ginger, but more likely the caring of her got to him, calmed him.

“What was at that first address?” she asked.

“Hmm?”

“The one on Rue de la Cerisaie.”

“Nothing.”

“You were in there too long for nothing.”

“Okay. It was a whorehouse.”

She was not surprised. “Never know what's happening behind innocent-looking doors in this town.”

“Or anywhere.”

“I suppose there were fat old whores with cellulite and everything flopping around.”

“What makes you think that?”

“I was in a whorehouse.”

“Doing what?”

“Working.”

A skeptical grunt from Gainer. “When?”

“Years ago, doing a fashion spread for British
Harper's
. I think the place was on Rue Saint Denis. The idea was to use it for atmosphere with the whores just as they were. The whole thing ended up pretty obscene.”

“And you walked out.”

“If that's what you believe, that's what I did.”

“Rue de la Cerisaie wasn't that sort of place.”

“What did it have, men for sale?”

He told her about the very young girls.

She dropped the subject, reached with her toes to turn the porcelain tap designated
chaud
just enough to cause a steaming dribble.

Gainer could almost hear her mind doing some fast arithmetic about relative ages. Anything that he might say at that moment to reassure her would be too obvious, he decided. Besides, as usual she made a quick recovery.

“Tomorrow,” she said, “what we ought to do is go shopping.”

“For what?”

“Whatever. Maybe you'd let me buy you something at Ceruti. How about a whole outfit? … You've stopped grinding your teeth.”

“Was I grinding, really?”

“Like a pepper mill, but the Rescue Remedy took care of it. Every-time you think of it you should take some Rescue.”

“I don't want to get overrescued.”

“You won't, I promise,” she said with a barely discernible edge. She took a deep breath for a new start. “Two things I'd like to do for sure tomorrow. Kiss you shamelessly on the Pont Alexandre and go a little crazy at the Boulangerie Poilane.”

“Did Grocock call?”

“While we were out.”

“
Shit
.”

“He'll call back. Ever been to Poilane's?”

“No.”

“It's on Rue Cherche-Midi, of all places. Cherche-Midi derives from an old French pessimism aimed at people who chase the impossible:
Cherche-Midi a midnuit
, looking for noon at midnight.”

It didn't apply, Gainer told himself. Proof was a dead Becque.

He sat up.

Leslie soaped his back and rubbed it with a loofa.

“Possibly,” she said, “what we should do is settle for what's been done. Take the first Concorde home.”

“Do that.”

“Not without you.”

“I suppose that's what your spirit guide says, run home.”

“Actually I haven't consulted her yet and she doesn't seem to be volunteering anything.”

“I've talked to mine.”

“Oh? You've got one now?”

“Yeah.”

“Since when?”

He almost said since last week, but maybe the truth was since the day he was born.

Leslie turned his head to her, to make sure he was serious. She was pleased when he didn't wink or grin or anything. “Who is he, your spirit guide?”

“She's a she.”

“Do you know why she chose you?”

“It's Norma,” Gainer told her.

Leslie considered it. Decided Gainer might think he was merely saying that without realizing how sensible it was. Often that was the way with spirit guides. “So, what does Norma advise?”

“Norma keeps telling me what I should do is … waste them.”

A quiver started at Leslie's tailbone, climbed her spine and humped down to her pelvis. She had been testing with her remark about flying home. She would have been disappointed if he had agreed.

They got out of the ginger bath, their skins crimson, took a rinsing shower and put on terrycloth robes. Leslie insisted on cleansing Gainer's aura. “Can't have you absorbing any of Becque's negative junk.” She put a lot of effort into her air-scrubbing motions, and Gainer stayed still for it, which was a way of showing his gratitude.

They had dinner in her sitting room at a table by the open french doors. The city humming of Paris was a sort of accompaniment.

Afterward, in just the right amount of light, they lay on the bed. Side barely touching side, silent but with overlapping thoughts. A little while to create a chrysalis that might keep out crematoriums and ASPs.

Leslie was asking things to please be easier on him, to allow once again, soon, the normal easy flow of his emotions, feelings. Whatever he had to go through she'd go with him. Even if it meant walking on shards all the way to one of his old-time genuine smiles.

Gainer was trying to recall Norma as he had last seen her alive, his very last instant of her. The impression should have been easy and clear for him, he thought, but he couldn't get it without getting Leslie too. Leslie and Norma, composite, like two slides together in a projector.

He reached down.

Touched his cock.

His cock was full, hard. It occurred to him that maybe it was a reaction from the excitement of killing, a way of verifying he was still alive, vital.

Leslie's hand traveled down to him, to it.

He intercepted her hand, replaced it on the pillow near her face, as though it were a valuable, fragile object. He rose above her, and without touching any other part of her, placed his open mouth on hers. He asked nothing of her, kept his mouth merely lightly pressed for a long moment and then said into her: “I love you.”

Words left unsaid, Leslie thought. She remained dead still. He could do what he needed to do with her.

He was particularly gentle now. The enormous energies of his rage and his love, intermixed and contained within a sort of emotional funnel, came from him by way of only a delicate pinpoint opening. His fingertips phrased his worship, were like whispers, so weightless wherever they traced or skipped on her. His tongue was like a wet brook stone that rolled down the inside of her arms, over her ribs, around the knubs of her ankles.

He did not want her to move for him.

He would move her.

He lifted her legs into arches, pushed aside left and right, their tension gone, so she could not be more open. Her thighs were like thresholds that he shaped his hands to and stroked again and again up to her center, as though accumulating her there.

She had gone wet and was parted long before he traveled her exactly and parted her more.

Please.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

T
HE
green Bentley turned off the auto route to the west at Cocheret. From that point on Route 181N it would be only five miles to Vernon, across part of the plateau between the River Eure and the Seine, countryside flat and growing, punctuated mostly by cows that could munch nearly anywhere they put their heads down.

Early that morning Grocock had, at last, phoned with the information and Leslie had scribbled it on a bedside notepad, with her eyes closed. As soon as she hung up she covered her eyes with the embroidered edge of a pillowcase to keep the day from beginning. She wanted to snuggle and drift until at least ten and then get up to nothing more pressing than some impetuous spending along Saint Honoré. Last night Gainer had loved a lot of the go out of her, had kept her coming and coming. Not that she complained, but she vaguely recalled having mumbled to him just before falling off that too much of anything could be toxic. Maybe even lovemaking.

With the first ring of Grocock's call, Gainer was out of bed, as though he'd been lying there awake just waiting for it. Leslie did not get up until she heard the mechanical sounds of Gainer checking his ASP, inserting a fresh full clip and clicking a round into the chamber. He was already showered and dressed and had to wait while she did her face and fussed some with her hair. She remarked that the suit she had worn the day before had been too damned confining. For today she got headfirst into a dress of sheer linen gauze that was abundant and free.

And vulnerable to backlight, Gainer noticed.

She shoved the sleeves up and let the front plunge. Took her ASP from its holster, tossed it and the sheaf of ten thousand dollars into her canvas carryall.

12 Chemin des Coquelicots.

That was the address Grocock had come up with for the Vernon telephone number. Also a name:

“Emil Ponsard, Expert.”

Humble fucker, Gainer thought. How could anyone come right out and advertise himself as a know-it-all.

“It's a profession, being an expert,” Leslie said.

“What is he, a tout?”

“An appraiser.”

“What kind?”

“Probably antiques or art.”

With that in mind, before leaving the house, Leslie removed two paintings from the upper gallery:
Road to Honfleur in Winter
, signed Claude Monet 1865, and an 1881 Edgar Degas
Portrait of Mary Cassatt
. Both paintings had been acquired by Rodger several years earlier through the Wildenstein Gallery, and there was no doubt as to their authenticity. It was a simple matter for Leslie to unsnap the canvases from their frames. She wrapped them in a cashmere car robe and put them in the trunk of the Bentley. She had no plan, just a notion that the paintings might somehow serve in getting to this Ponsard.