French Kiss (3 page)

It's the southwest corner
of 177th Street and Fort Washington Avenue. Maria and Joey Martinez's building. I had never been there before, although Maria kept insisting that Dalia and I had to come by some night for “crazy chicken and rice,” her mother's recipe.

“You'll taste it, you'll love it, and you won't be able to guess the secret ingredient,” she would say.

But we never set a date, and now I am about to visit her apartment while two cops are standing guard outside the building and two detectives are inside questioning neighbors. I was her partner. I've got to see Maria's family.

A short pudgy man opens the apartment door. The living room is noisy, packed. People are crying, yelling, speaking Spanish and English. The big window air conditioner is noisy.

“I'm Maria's brother-in-law,” says the man at the door.

“I'm Maria's partner from work,” I say.

His face shows no expression. He nods, then says, “Joey and me are about to go downtown. They wouldn't let him—the husband, the actual husband—go to the crime scene. Now they'll let us go see her. In the morgue.”

A handsome young Latino man walks quickly toward me. It has to be Joey Martinez. He is nervous, animated, red-eyed. He grabs me firmly by the shoulders. The room turns silent, like somebody turned an Off switch.

“You're Moncrief. I know you from your pictures. Maria has a million pictures of you on her phone,” he says.

“Yeah,” I say. “She loves clicking away on that cell phone.”

I can't help but notice that he calls me by my last name. I don't know why. Maybe that's how Maria referred to me at home.

I try to move closer to give Joey a hug. But he moves back, blocking any sort of embrace. So I speak.

“I don't know what to say, Joey. This is an incredible tragedy. Your heart must be breaking. I'm so sorry.”

“Your heart must be breaking also,” Joey says.

“It is,” I say. “Maria was the best partner a detective could hope for. Smart. Patient. Tough…” Joey may not be weeping, but I feel myself choking up.

Joey gestures to his brother. It's a “Let's go” toss of his head.

“Look, my brother and I are going down to see Maria. But Moncrief…”

There's that last-name-only thing again. “I need to ask you something.”

Now I'm nervous, but I'm not at all sure why. Something is off. The room remains silent. Brother is now standing next to brother.

“Sure,” I say. “Ask me. Ask me anything.”

Joey Martinez's sad and empty eyes widen. He looks directly at me and speaks slowly. “How do you have the nerve to come to my house?”

I feel confusion, and I'm sure that my face is communicating it. “Because I feel so terrible, so awful, so sad. Maria was my partner. We spent hours and hours together.”

Joey continues speaking at the same slow pace. “Yes. I know. Maria loved you.”

“And I loved her,” I say.

“You don't understand. Or you're a liar. Maria
loved
you. She really loved you.”

His words are so crazy and so untrue that I have no idea how to respond. “Joey. Please. You're experiencing a tragedy. You're totally…well…you're totally wrong about Maria, about me.”

“She told me,” he says. “It's not a misunderstanding. She didn't mean you were just good friends. We talked about it a thousand times. She
loved
you.”

Now he pushes his face close to mine. “You think because you're rich and good-looking you can get whatever you want. You think—”

“Joey. Wait. This is insane!” I shout.

He shouts even louder. “Stop it! Just shut up. Just leave!” He shakes his head. The tears are coming fast. “My brother and I gotta go.”

When I get home,
Dalia is waiting for me in the apartment foyer. Her hug is strong. Her kiss is soft—not sexual per se—just the perfect gentle touch of warmth. The tenderness of Dalia's kiss immediately signals to me that she's already heard about Maria Martinez's death. I'm not surprised. The DA's office has access to all NYPD information, and Dalia knows her way around her job.

Dalia is an ADA for Manhattan district attorney Fletcher Sinclair. She heads up the investigation division. The two qualities that the job requires—brains and persistence—are the two qualities Dalia seems to have in endless supply. Nothing and no one stands in her way when she's hot on an investigation.

Every day at work she tones down her tall and skinny fashion-model look with a ponytail, sensible skirts, and almost no makeup. When Dalia's at her job, she's all about the job. Laser-focused. Don't mess with the ADA.

Some evenings, when Dalia's dressed for some ultrachic charity dinner, even I have a hard time believing that this breathtakingly
belle
woman in her Georgina Chapman gown is one of the toughest lawyers in New York City.

“We got word about Maria at the DA's office late this morning,” she says. “I was going to call or text or something, but I didn't want to butt in. I didn't want to nudge you if you didn't need me.…”

“You can always nudge me, because I always need you,” I say.

“I opened a nice Chilean Chardonnay. You want a glass and we can talk?” she asks.

“Yes,” I say. “Mix a glass of wine with a quart of tequila and we'll have a drink that
might
make me forget what a miserable day this has been.”

“Maria, Maria, Maria,” Dalia says. She shakes her head as she pours the wine into two wineglasses. Then she says, “I hate to ask, but…any ideas yet?”

“I sure don't have any guesses. I don't even have all the details yet. Plus Maria's husband is a crazy mess right now.” I decide to skip the details.

“Understandably,” Dalia says.

I cannot shake the mental picture of Joey Martinez's hurt and anger as he spat out the words “She
loved
you.”

Then Dalia says, “But what about you? How are you feeling?”

“How
can
I feel? Maria was my partner, and she was as good a partner as anyone ever had. She was damn near perfect. As my rugby coach used to say, ‘The best combination for any job is the brains of an owl and the skin of an elephant.'”

“What was the name of the genius who came up with that little saying?” Dalia asks.

“Monsieur Pierre LeBec. You must remember him—the fat little man who was always smoking a pipe. He coached boys' rugby and taught geometry,” I say. A reminiscence is about to open up.

Dalia and I speak often about the school in Paris we had both attended. We became girlfriend and boyfriend during our second year at Lycée Henri-IV. And we fell in love exactly the way teenagers do—with unstoppable passion. There wasn't enough time in the day for all the laughter and talking and sex that we needed to have. Even when we broke up, just before we both left for university, we did it with excessive passion. Lots of door slamming and yelling and crying and kissing.

Ten years later, when Act II of
The Story of Dalia and Luc
began, it was as if we were teenagers all over again. First of all, we “met cute.” Dalia and I reconnected completely accidentally three months ago at one of the rare NYPD social functions—a spring boat ride on the Hudson River. I was standing alone at the starboard railing and must have been turning green. About to heave, I was one seasick sailor.

“You look like a man who needs some Dramamine,” came Dalia's voice from behind me. I'd know it anywhere. I turned around.

“Holy shit! It's you,” I said. We hugged and immediately agreed that only God himself could have planned this meeting. It may not have been an actual miracle, but it was certainly
une coïncidence grande.
Two former Parisian lovers who end up on a boat and then…

Dalia reminded me that she was not Parisian. She was Israeli, a sabra.

“Okay, then it's a fairy tale,” I said. “And in fairy tales you don't pay attention to details.”

By the time the boat docked at Chelsea Piers, we were in love again. And—holy shit indeed—had she ever turned from a spectacular-looking teenager into an incredibly spectacular-looking young woman.

She invited me back to her ridiculously large penthouse at 15 Central Park West, the apartment that her father, the film director and producer Menashe Boaz, had paid for. That night was beyond unforgettable. I couldn't imagine my life if that night had never happened.

After the first week, I had most of my clothes sent over.

After the second week, I had my exercise bike and weights sent over.

After a month I hired a company to deliver the three most valuable pieces from my contemporary Chinese art collection: the Zao Wou-Ki, the Zhang Xiaogang, and the Zeng Fanzhi. Dalia refers to them as the Z-name contemporary art collection. She said that when those paintings were hung in her living room, she knew I planned to stay.

But now we have
this
night. The night of Maria's death. A night that's the emotional opposite of that joyful night months ago.

“Will you be hungry later on?” Dalia asks.

“I doubt it,” I say. I pour us each another glass of wine. “Anyway, if we get hungry later on, I'll make us some scrambled eggs.”

She smiles and says, “An eight-burner Garland range and we're making scrambled eggs.”

That statement should be cute and funny. But we both know that nothing can be cute and funny this evening.

“I want to ask you something,” I say.

“Yeah, of course,” she says. She wrinkles her forehead a tiny bit. As if she's expecting some scary question. I proceed.

“Are you angry that I'm so sad about Maria's murder?”

Dalia pauses. Then she tilts her head to the side. Her face is now soft, tender, caring.

“Oh, Luc,” she says. “I would only be angry if you were
not
sad.”

I feel that we should kiss. I think Dalia feels the same way. But I also think something inside each of us is telling us that if we did kiss, no matter how chaste the kiss might be, it would be almost disrespectful to Maria.

We sit silently for a long time. We finish the bottle of Chardonnay.

It turns out that we never were hungry enough to scramble some eggs. All we did was wait for the day to end.

The person responsible for
whatever skill I have in speaking decent English—very little French accent, pretty good English vocabulary—is Inspector Nick Elliott. No one has mastered the art of plain speaking better than he has.

“Morning, Pretty Boy. Looks like it's going to be a shitty day” is a typical example.

This morning Elliott and a woman I've never seen before appear at my desk. Looks like I'm about to receive an extra lesson in basic communication skills.

“Moncrief, meet Katherine Burke. You two are going to be partners in the Martinez investigation. I don't care to discuss it.”

I barely have time to register the woman's face when he adds, “Good luck. Now get the hell to work.”

“But sir…” I begin.

“Is there a problem?” Elliott asks, clearly anxious to hit the road.

“Well, no, but…”

“Good. Here's the deal. Katherine Burke is a detective, a
New York
detective, and has been for almost two years. She knows police procedure better than most people know their own names. She can teach you a lot.”

I go for the end-run charm play.

“And I've got a lot to learn,” I say, a big smile on my face.

He doesn't smile back.

“Don't get me wrong,” Elliott says as he turns and speaks to Burke. “Moncrief has the instincts of a good detective. He just needs a little spit and polish.”

As he walks away, I look at Katherine Burke. She is not Maria Martinez. So, of course, I immediately hate her.

“Good to meet you,” she says.

“Same here.” We shake, more like a quick touch of the hands.

My new partner and I study each other quietly, closely. We are like a bride and groom in a prearranged marriage meeting for the first time. This “marriage” means a great deal to me—joy, sorrow, and whether or not I can smoke in the squad car.

So what do I see before me? Burke is thirty-two, I'd guess. Face: pretty. No, actually
très jolie.
Irish; pale; big red lips. A good-looking woman in too-tight khakis. She seems pleasant enough. But I'm not sensing “warm and friendly.”

And what does she see? A guy with an expensive haircut, an expensive suit, and—I think she's figured out already—a pretty bad attitude.

This does not bode well.

“Listen,” she says. “I know this is tough for you. The inspector told me how much you admired Maria. We can talk about that.”

“No,” I say. “We can forget about that.”

Silence again. Then I speak.

“Look. I apologize. You were trying to be nice, and I was just being…well…”

She fills it in for me: “A rude asshole. It happens to the best of us.”

I smile, and I move a step closer. I read the official ID card that hangs from the cord around her neck. It shows her NYPD number and, in the same size type, her title. These are followed by her name in big bold uppercase lettering:

“So you want to be called K. Burke?” I ask her as we walk back to the detective room.

“No. Katherine, Katie, or Kathy. Any of those are fine,” she says.

“Then why do you have ‘K. Burke' printed on your ID?”

“That's what they put there when they gave me the ID,” she says. “The ID badge wasn't high on my priority list.”

“K. Burke. I like it. From now on, that's what I'm going to call you. K. Burke.”

She nods. For a few moments we don't speak. Then I say, “But I must be honest with you, K. Burke. I don't think this is going to work out.”

She speaks, still seriously.

“You want to know something, Detective Moncrief?”

“What?”

“I think you're right.”

And then, for the first time, she smiles.