A World I Never Made (21 page)

“Yes, but there was another François Duval. My father. He died a month ago.” The man was pale to the point of whiteness, and balding, his wisps of black hair sticking like painted stripes to his naked head in a bizarre gypsy version of a comb-over. His baggy gabardine trousers were held up by suspenders worn over a plaid wool shirt. He wore slippers on his feet.

“I am searching for my daughter. Her name is Megan Nolan. Do you know her?”

“What makes you think I would know her?”

“Your name and address—or your father’s—were written by Megan on a prayer card and left at the Convent of St. Thérèse in Lisieux.”

“Can I see this prayer card?”

“I seem to have lost it:”

“Lost it? I see. Do you have money in your wallet, Monsieur Nolan?”

“Yes. How much do you want?”

“Do you have half of a hundred?”

“Fifty dollars? Of course:”

“No, not fifty dollars.” As he spoke, Duval drew a once white but now crumpled and dirty envelope from his shirt pocket. “Half of this,” he said, presenting Pat with its contents: one half of a hundred-dollar bill.

Pat stood dumb for a second and then realized he was looking at Megan’s half of the hundred-dollar bill he had torn in two at an outdoor café in Prague in 1992. He quickly extracted his half, forgotten these twelve years until now, and held it out toward Duval.

“Yes,” said Duval, taking the torn bill from Pat’s outstretched hand and placing it next to the one he was holding. “A perfect match. You are the father of Megan Nolan:”

“Where is she?”

“I don’t know, Monsieur, but I will find out:”

“You don’t know?”

“No, but as I said, I will find out where she is:”

“Do it now. I’ll wait:”

“No, Monsieur, it is not so simple. Come back tonight,
a dix heures,
ten o’ clock. I should know by then. Do not use the front door. There is an alley on Rue de Caulaincourt, across from the grave of M. Zola, a dirt path. It leads to the back door here:”

“Fine;” Pat said, turning to leave, ”I’ll be here at ten.“ Then he turned back and said, ”Let me ask you, François, Why are you doing this?“

There was rustling and giggling at the curtain, and then the boys” heads appeared. Duval glowered in their direction and they were gone. The televisions were still on, one blaring a Popeye cartoon in French, the other a game show with half-naked contestants.

“My father died of cancer of the stomach, Monsieur Nolan. He refused to see a
gadgo
doctor or go to a
gadgo
hospital. Your daughter took care of him. For seven months, until he died, she took care of him. He had a gift, my father, the second sight. He could see your future and he could curse you if he wished. On his deathbed he gave me Megan’s half of the hundred-dollar bill. He told me how to find Megan if you appeared with the other half. He said he would curse me from the grave if I refused or failed. I do not wish to be cursed. I am a gypsy. A curse from the grave would be worse for me than the danger that is following you. My father saw that danger, and I am afraid of it. After you leave tonight I will pack up my family and go away. Do not be late:”

“You have been very tender,” said Catherine.

Pat remained silent. They were sitting over coffee, after eating dinner, in a quiet corner of a nearly empty bistro a few steps from their nondescript hotel on Rue Gabrielle. Catherine had lit one of her Galloises before making this statement, and Patrick was caught up in watching her movements as she lit up, inhaled, and then exhaled as she spoke. She had said earlier while they were doing some quick shopping that she would smoke three cigarettes in the ten hours they had to kill before their meeting with Duval. This was her second. The first had been after they had made love in their tiny room at the Three Ducks Hotel. Her face then, half in shadow, had been aglow, her eyes glittering, her sadness exiled for the moment by the stronger demands of pleasure. Watching Catherine smoke brought the memory of that pleasure swiftly back to Pat.

“I am not the only one grieving,” Catherine said.“You have lost a grandson.”

“You have been tender as well:”

“Thank you. It has been a pleasure:”

They smiled across the table at each other, then Catherine said, “Tell me about your life, Patrick.”

“My life?”

“Yes, your emotional life. The life of your heart. You know about Jacques. My failure:”

“My emotional life. I see. Well, I can top you. I didn’t have one:”

“Why not?”

“All Lorrie wanted was a house in the suburbs, a couple of kids, to love me. I dragged her to the jungle to die. Then I abandoned Megan. I didn’t deserve anything good after that:”

“You punished yourself.”

“Yes. And was proud of it:”

“There must have been women:”

Pat took a moment to consider this.

“There were women,” he said, finally. “One or two loved me, I’m sure. But no one I would let myself love. Like I said, I was either too proud or too humiliated, or lost somewhere in between:”

“And now?”

“Now?”

“Have you found yourself?”

“I don’t know,” Pat said, smiling. “But I’ve found
you,
and now that I have, I’m not letting you go:”

When they drove past 33 Rue de Matisse at ten that night, Pat and Catherine saw two Arab men in ski jackets and jeans, their hands in their jacket pockets, standing on the entrance steps.

“The prayer card,” Catherine said, turning left on Rue Caulaincourt. “The prayer card,” Pat replied, turning his head to keep his eyes on the two men until they were out of sight.

“We have to go in,” Catherine said. “They may be simply waiting for us outside:”

“I agree:”

They had not heard from Doro. Who knew if they ever would? François Duval was their best, possibly their only hope of finding Megan. They parked on Rue Caulaincourt and stepped quietly into the pitch-black alley, their guns drawn. They did not so much find the back steps as stumble upon them. The small porch was nearly completely covered by a wild vine of some kind. The door was locked. On the brick wall to the right, also covered with the vine, they could make out the faint outline of a window in the dark. Pat jimmied the lock with a pocketknife and they climbed into François Duval’s bedroom, another carpet-covered cavelike room that was completely dark and reeked of incense and tobacco. They stood still for a long second or two, getting their bearings. A very faint light outlined the room’s closed door. They opened it slowly and stepped into a small, dark, pantry-sized room with a mattress on the floor. Here Pat saw the curtain that the two boys had peeked their heads out of, a faint glow behind it. He moved it aside about six inches, his gun unlocked and gripped tightly in his free hand. Catherine joined him and they peered into the front room together. One lonely lamp glowed in a corner. Within its cone of dim light lay the headless body of François Duval. A few feet away the head was propped up against the leg of an overstuffed chair. Blood was everywhere. They took this scene in for a long moment, the silence surrounding them stony and deep and heavy with death.

“I have to search him;” Pat said, thinking of Megan, the idea that this is what could happen to her finally penetrating all of his defenses, encircling his heart like a band of ice. He had heard Catherine gasp, but was only vaguely aware that she was gripping his arm until he made a move to enter the room.

“No,” she said in an insistent whisper, trying to pull him back, her grip like a vice on his bicep, “there is nothing we can do. We must go.” As she was saying this, the cell phone in her shoulder bag rang. She continued to pull maniacally on Pat’s arm, urging him toward the bedroom while reaching into her bag with her free hand to find the phone. But Pat was having none of it. He jerked his arm free, causing the shoulder bag to fall to the floor and its contents to spill out. Catherine fell to her knees to search in the dark for the phone, desperate to silence its irritating chirpy ring.

Pat watched her for a second, then, hearing the front door click and swing open, slid the curtain aside and saw both Arabs from the street coming right at him. Both were carrying drawn pistols, but they did not see him in the dark. He shot the first one in the chest, causing him to crumple to the floor and giving his partner a chance to duck and at the same time point his gun in Pat’s direction. But before he could fire, Pat shot him twice, once in the shoulder and once in the forehead, a lucky shot.

Stepping quickly into the room, Pat kicked their guns away and placed his index and middle fingers against their carotid arteries, making sure both were dead. Then he heard Catherine’s voice and, turning, saw her kneeling and talking on the cell phone. “
Oui, Doro, c’est moi, Catherine. Oui, Daniel est mort. Oui, oui, demain, Champ de Mars, a huit heures:”

They drove in silence back to the Three Ducks. In their room, the things they had bought that afternoon sat forlornly on the dresser: face cream, gloves, and a thick scarf for Catherine, socks and a new shirt and sweater for Pat. Near them was the wine they had bought, thinking of a nightcap. This Pat uncorked, pouring out two glasses. He drank in silence while Catherine undressed and got into bed, leaving her wine untouched. There had been no sign of the children or of Duval’s wife. Whether that was good or bad was a question that hung between them, unasked.

Tomorrow morning they would meet Doro. He would tell them where Megan was. If he really could be trusted. That question also remained locked in Pat’s head, along with the day’s images: Daniel Peletier, legs and arms akimbo, falling to his death; Catherine shooting one of his killer’s in the groin; François Duval’s leering head. Catherine had made sure that they were not being followed on the short ride to the hotel, meandering through adjacent neighborhoods and checking her rearview mirrors constantly. Nevertheless, Pat pushed the dresser against the door before settling into a shabby plush chair near the room’s one window, with its view of the now-quiet Rue Gabrielle.

As he drank and listened to Catherine’s regular breathing, more questions without answers came to his mind.
What had Megan done to lay down such a trail of blood to her door? And how could they possibly prevail against the host of vipers that were arrayed against them?

~20~

PARIS, JANUARY 7, 2004

Catherine and Pat, wary of traps, arrived an hour early at Paris’s Champ de Mars. The weather had turned colder, but the morning sun was bright and the sky above the city was, for a change, a pale and pretty blue. Starkly leafless trees and an occasional ornate lamppost dotted an otherwise wide open and windless landscape. They quickly spotted the meeting place Doro had designated, a bench facing a triangular flower bed in the middle of the park, and watched it from another bench fifty or so yards away. Nearby, a young mother walked a child in a sturdy, hi-tech stroller, and in the distance, near one of the park’s entrances, a kiosk selling newspapers and hot chocolate was doing a brisk business. One or two of its patrons, bundled against the cold in overcoats and scarves, had tucked their papers under their arms and were slowly negotiating the paved paths that dissected the park’s wide winter-blond central field. Promptly at eight, Doro approached the bench alone and sat. Pat and Catherine, their hands on their guns in their coat pockets, walked over and joined him, one sitting on either side of the young gypsy. They nodded in greeting and waited while the boy lit a Gallois, declining his offer of one.