Brainquake (28 page)

He initialed the tag. She placed ashtray in bag, clamped it.

Without a word, Michelle pulled off the black wig she was wearing, handed it to him, stepped back in the doorway. The female cop ripped off another bag, wrote on the tag as the Inspector spoke:

“Wig. Michelle Troy.”

He gave her the wig, initialed the tag. She placed it in the bag, clamped it.

“Wait in the other room.”

The female cop with bagged exhibits brushed past Michelle. The Inspector beckoned to someone behind Michelle. A burly cop pushed her aside and entered, followed close behind by a moustached cop.

“Put him on the big table out there.”

The two cops lifted Paul up. The intern gathered his gear, followed Dr. Sully out past Michelle.

“Want him cuffed, Inspector?” the burly cop said.

“Not yet. When Dr. Sully patches him up, don’t move him to the ambulance. Keep him on the table. When he comes to, I’ll talk to him. If he wants the WC, stick with him.”

They carried Paul out to the living room. His limp arm struck Michelle’s body as they passed. She turned, watched them place him on the big round table where they’d had the birthday dinner.

No sound from the baby in the crib meant he was sleeping peacefully. One blessing.

Gautier returned, powering toward her like a runaway locomotive.

“Don’t block the doorway!”

She stepped out of the way and he dashed past, followed by two lab technicians. They slid the adjustable metal table across the bed as Rensonnet swiftly picked up the two boxes. Metal legs on each side of the bed were adjusted firmly.

Michelle moved back slowly, peering in to see Rensonnet placing the two boxes on the metal table.

“
Don’t block the doorway!
”

She moved away like lightning as four lab technicians carried in the big X-ray machine and, under Gautier’s supervision, placed it on the metal table. All the technicians left.

Gautier switched the machine on.

Her view was blocked by the surgeon, the Inspector and Gautier. Again she reassured herself that the machine would be useless…but she started to get a sickening feeling. She forced the feeling away. She hated herself for even permitting the feeling to hit her gut.

She stepped to one side so she could see. Through the X-ray, the region of the heart clouded by blood was brought into view for the surgeon, the Inspector and Rensonnet. Between flashes of Rensonnet’s skeletal finger bones mopping blood, the surgeon caught a glimpse of the bullet.

“See the bullet?”

“No,” the Inspector said.

The surgeon pointed out the spot on the window. When the blood was mopped away:

“I see it!”

“Slightly deflected by that brass button.”

“I see no button.”

“You will.”

Two more balls of cotton filled with blood…then:

“I see it!” More blood was sucked up. “Did it pierce the heart?”

Michelle tensely waited for the affirmative.

“No.”

The floor under her reeled one way, she the other. She fought to maintain her balance. Her mouth was dry, her body shaking.

“The bullet smashed the edge of the sternum.”

“It bruised the heart?”

“Can’t tell yet. I want the heart to fill the window!”

Gautier adjusted.

“That’s as close as we can get.”

“Perfect.”

The stilled heart filled the window.

The Surgeon’s finger tapped the spot. “Looks like a hair distance between bullet and heart.” They stared. Veins and arteries could be faintly seen now.

The Inspector moved. An instant later the flattened bones of his hand came on the window. They were pressing down hard on the heart, lifting abruptly, pressing down hard, lifting abruptly, pressing down hard, lifting abruptly, and the procedure never stopped as they watched.

“Hold it!”

The Inspector did.

The surgeon’s eyes glued on the heart saw a single, very weak movement. It could have been the flash that he wanted to see. But now the heart was still again.

“Keep going.”

The Inspector did. Every time he abruptly lifted his hand, the surgeon and Gautier felt their own hearts jump. But there was no movement at all.

Suddenly they saw the Inspector’s bone fingers clench into fists. He beat down on the heart and, with a steady rhythm, kept beating, pounding, furiously, steadily. When blood gathered it was sponged up by Rensonnet who kept his eye on the blood in the tube.

Still clogged.

“Want me to take over?” Gautier said.

“Hell, no!” the Inspector said, breathing heavily. “I’ll beat him back to life myself!”

Like hell you will
, thought Michelle. The strain was tearing her apart.
Can’t they see he’s dead? Don’t they know? They’re experts. Don’t they know? They couldn’t hear it beat! They can’t see it beat! Are they crazy? Why are they doing this to me? Eddie fucked up! He should have jammed the muzzle against his chest and fired! He should have fired twice! Three times! I felt for a pulse, there was none. So I fucked up, too. I should have made him fire three times. Four.
The sickening feeling in her gut became a fist that seized and squeezed hard and twisted. Then she realized it wasn’t her gut being twisted. It was her heart. She felt it stop beating. She felt it as still as Lafitte’s.

“Hold it!” the surgeon shouted again.

The Inspector stopped. This time the surgeon was sure. He caught another weak movement…and another…and another.

“Good lord. You’ve done it.”

The Surgeon moved closer, bent to give Lafitte mouth-tomouth. The Inspector kept up the compressions.

“I see a very slow beat,” Gautier said.

Who said that? Is he crazy? He’s imagining it! He saw nothing! He saw nothing!

“Getting stronger…”

They continued, their rhythms matched, laboring over the old man’s bloody body.

“Stronger!”

In the color of blood shrieking mutely, she heard Lafitte’s heartbeats growing louder
…

Michelle was ashamed of herself. Sweating. Shaking. Hysterical like an amateur. She was not Paul. She was not sick in the head. The situation had made her lose her grip for a second. Lafitte alive was a monkey wrench, an unwelcome development. But who could say how long it would last? Or if he’d ever regain consciousness? She was in control again. She would make it through, as she always did. So Lafitte was coming back from the dead. It would be very brief.

She took a long deep controlled breath. She knew exactly what she had to do. The Inspector expected it from her.

“Heart’s pumping!” Gautier said.

“
Thank God!
” Michelle screamed.

And she collapsed.

Tonight. It would be tonight.

The stroll to his car parked off Étoile was enjoyable. Sober as a corpse, not a drop of wine with his late dinner at Fouquet’s, Father Flanagan was pleased he wouldn’t have to dodge death like a lunatic on wheels around the Arc de Triomphe to maneuver out of that traffic merry-go-round that had become second nature to drivers in Paris.

For no reason at all, a thought crossed his mind: how much was a hit man paid in the old guillotine days? They must have had them from the time the hill of Montmartre poked its head out of the ocean that covered Paris. The run of kings wouldn’t have made first base if not for the killers they employed.

Hit men helped make history.

That absurd word “assassinate” brought a smile. A king or president was assassinated. Any lower human was killed. Rank in death always amused him. He frowned, unable to believe what some hits went for today. He’d read of a wetnose paid by a jealous girl to hit a high school football hero who had cheated on her. Fifty bucks! It was insulting. The killer was a student. What kind of education had he gotten? Just by reading history you should know that hit men got money, land, castles. Or perhaps the wetnose couldn’t read.

After the double hit tonight he’d leave the baby in that orphanage and get his ass out of Paris. This hit had put a strain on him. It was the only job he could remember that had done that. Once it was over, he would need a vacation. He reached his car and opened the door.

“We beg your pardon, Father.”

At the sound of the woman’s voice he spun around. Two nuns smiled up at him. One about fifty, the other in her early twenties. He had noticed in the last few days how their teams were made up of contrasting ages. For an instant, he saw the older nun nude. Not the younger.

It worried the hell out of him.

“May I help you, Sisters?”

“You’re American,” the older nun said.

“How did you know?”

“You have the American look. We saw you leave the restaurant and we followed you.”

Jesus! If a pair of nuns could follow him without his noticing, he was further gone than he thought. He’d have to take extra care tonight.

“We are taking a poll,” the younger nun said, “of what American priests find the most memorable about Paris…”

He glanced at his watch, frowned. “Forgive me, if I had time we could enjoy a cup of tea and discuss the matter, but I’m afraid I am late for a meeting with a member of my parish—a twentieth-century Mary Magdalene—I swore to her parents that I would meet with her and usher her back to the fold. It’s taken me several months to find her, and…I’m sure you understand?” He didn’t wait for an answer. He climbed behind the wheel, started the motor, closed the door, rolled down the window. “Good night, Sisters.”

He sped down Avenue George V.

Framed in black, the young nun’s face had been ivory…like the widow…the bagman called her “Ivory Face” in those poems he had written; the poems dug up at her apartment by Zara, God rest her soul; poems published on page one of the New York
Post
and
Daily News
; poems read aloud on news programs on TV and radio; poems analyzed by psychiatrists, grandstanding politicians, angry Op Ed bloviators.

He had read the poems, too. They were silly. Juvenile. But the wave of coverage they’d spawned was even worse. He’d heard one Sunday-morning commentator who’d unearthed a statement attributed to Al Capone: “
Love makes a bagman a poet or a madman
”…bullshit…love could never make a bagman a poet. Though it sure as hell could make one a madman.

Only a madman would open the bag for a woman.

He drove along the Seine, keeping an eye out for the landmark he’d sighted earlier. It was going to be difficult to spot the right phone booth with so many blinding lights hitting him in waves from the opposite lane. How many phone booths were there atop those goddam ramps? He had neglected to check. He drove slowly, angering the cars behind him. He was sure he hadn’t passed one on his left yet.

He should have started out at dusk. He shouldn’t have lingered to enjoy that dinner. When he found the phone booth, he would find it impossible to buck those lights. He’d have to keep driving until he found a way to make a U-turn.

Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted the phone booth. It was the one. To his amazement he saw a gap coming, eased into the middle suicide area between the two-way stream of galloping monsters and waited, deaf to the screeching brakes and strident horns behind him. The gap was two seconds away. He sharply turned the wheel, charged between two cars, flew past the phone booth, down the cement ramp, and then braked abruptly, almost snapping his neck. He stopped inches from the French cop’s giant paw, raised high in his beamlights. In the glare the cop with wrinkled face and pendulous ears stepped up to him, saluted politely, spotted the collar, said:

“This road is temporarily closed, Father.”

A cop in this isolated wilderness meant only one thing: they had nailed his targets.

“I’m American. I’m lost.” He said this in French that he deliberately pronounced wrong. “I can’t find the gallery.”

“Gallery
here
?”

“The Church Architectural exhibition.”

“Oh, yes, Father, the one near Passage Pont Neuf.”

As the cop patiently gave him directions back to an exhibition he’d already passed on his way, Father Flanagan looked past him at the blinking police lights, the ambulance, the crowd of cops and vehicles in front of the barge, and all the barge’s lights on. No surprise. He was on their turf now. They had beat him to the punch. But how heavy was their punch?

“Thank you, Officer. I’ll find it now. Was it a bad accident that happened here?”

“Bad, Father, but no accident.”

“I’m willing to help if I can, Officer. I have delivered the last rites in many emergencies.”

The cop showed no reaction.

Father Flanagan didn’t give up.

“When a person is dying, it makes no difference whether a Catholic, Protestant, Jew, Muslim or Buddhist is praying for his soul.”

“That’s how I feel about it, Father.”

“Catholic?”

“Yes, Father, but when my time comes, I wouldn’t give a damn if a Martian was praying for me.”

“Amen.” He cracked his door, got out. “Please. Don’t deny him the love of God.”

The cop waved him toward the barge. “Come along.”

Twenty minutes after having thanked God for the miracle of Lafitte’s revival, Michelle astonishingly found her aborted timetable back on schedule.

She had been carried into her room by the burly cop, revived by Dr. Sully, and comforted by the Inspector, who remained alone with her near the sleeping baby. Michelle had answered his questions with hushed clarity after he brought her coffee and aspirins.

In those crucial twenty minutes, he had left her alone briefly three times at five-minute intervals to check with the surgeon and return with the hopeless news:

Lafitte was dying.

In those three intervals, she had sat on the bed ready for more questions and stolen glances at Paul’s gashes being treated out in the living room, his head being bandaged while Dr. Sully and the two cops waited for the criminal to come to. Paul had not been cuffed. This made the burly cop nervously whisper to his colleague: “Maniacs have animal strength, you know!”

In those twenty minutes, the Inspector’s questions were often out of context, disjointed. At times, he felt it was like interrogating his daughter. Then at times his questions were very professional, fast, impersonal. Those moments forced her to keep her guard up.