The Prisoner's Wife (6 page)

“You're worried.”

“I told you, not greatly. A little, of course. Would you not be, if it was your wife?”

“I don't have a wife. Did he go away, or was he taken away?”

“Darius? How would I know?”

“You could ask. Does this place have a janitor?”

“I told you. A concierge.”

“Can I mention something?” Shawn asked. “I mean, I still think you seem, what would you say, kind of cool? You know? Your man missing and all.” He made air quotes. “You're a little worried?” He was watching her. “If it was me, I'd be calling people. I don't know. Doing stuff.”

She was quiet for a time. Then she said, “It is you who thinks he is missing. I think he is maybe doing what he always does. Working over some patch of desert in Afghanistan, looking for artifacts.” She got up and came back with biscuits for the dog. Her loose shirt made it hard for him to tell the shape of her breasts. Ellen had smallish boobs. Shawn hadn't minded that; he'd never gotten off on top-heavy porn.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay. If that's what you think, we'll ask the janitor, concierge, whatever he is. Those guys, they snoop. It's what they do in life, pretty much. Don't miss a lot.”

“It's a woman, the concierge. Tell me, why are you interested in Darius?”

He thought about how to answer that. “I'll be honest with you.”

She smiled.

“I know,” he said. “I know. You think that means I'm going to lie. Well, I'm not. I'm just working on a need-to-know basis.” Maybe not lying; just not telling the whole truth. He was not yet ready to mention Ayub Abbasi, his paymaster.

She brought her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them.
“D'accord.
Okay. Tell me what I need to know.”

“Far's I recall, we tracked your husband. Tracked him through the North West Frontier, Wana, Miranshah, Khyber, into Peshawar, then back to Afghanistan. He got to meet some people we know about.”

“You thought he was doing something he should not?”

Shawn shook his head. “He didn't act that way. Satellites, Predator drones, these days, over there, we see pretty much anyone that's not hiding underground. We see where they go. Your man must've known that. So if he's out in the open, we figured he was doing something else.”

“He was doing research. I told you. That was his job.”

Was?

“Could be,” Shawn told her. She had Ellen's musky aura, like a woman in heat. He wanted to touch her. “Let's say I believe that. We were listening to his phone traffic. Maybe he didn't call you. He called other people.”

She stood, brushed past him, opened a window on the light well, and sat down again. “Is that a crime? Making calls?”

“Depends who you're talking to. Anyway, my agency lost interest. I didn't. I'd still like to talk with your man.” He paused, then said, “I find him, I get paid.”

She walked her fingers across the tabletop toward him, the way you do with a child. “You said you were suspended.”

“What that means, I can do what needs doing, long as I have cash. Don't have to do what some Yalie fuckwit tells me. Excuse my French.” He stood, putting his hands lightly on her shoulders as he squeezed behind her. “Come and have lunch, meet a buddy. We'll talk to the janitor on the way out.”

She hesitated. “I can't leave the dog too long. Where would we go?”

“Place des Vosges. How far's that?”

She shrugged and pointed. “Seven minutes, maybe eight, that way.”

He hesitated, wondering whether to say what he was thinking of saying. “I guess people tell you you're beautiful.”

She nodded. “Some do.” She pulled on boots, then a coat. “If we're going, let's go.” To the dog she said, “Artemis,
reste. Je vais revenir. Promis.
”

On the stairs, when she'd locked the door, Shawn said, “You don't sound American. You sound like you've lived there.”

“I went to school in Connecticut. New Haven. One of the fuckwits.” She went out onto the street, turned, and ran down another flight of steps, descending to a shadowy pit, below pavement level. Shawn followed, more slowly. Steps were beginning to bother him. Oil-stained water pooled below.

“People live down here?”

She knocked on a cracked glass door embossed with tiny stars.

“Don't be provincial.”

To the squat and ageless person who answered the door, Danielle said in French, “Madame, I am looking for my husband.” She showed a photo: one taken for a passport, then enlarged. “He calls himself Darius Osmani. I think he was staying in this house.”

The concierge had piled her hair in a shock the color of straw. Her mustache was bleached to an approximate match. She wore a flowered cotton dress but did not look, at first sight, like a woman. She glanced back at a dark-skinned younger man who sat at her kitchen table. With rapid, concentrated movements, he spooned a thin gray soup to his mouth, splashing a little. His shaven head was bent low to the plate.

The concierge scratched in the region of her waist. “You?” she said to Danielle. “Woman like you? French? You married an Arab?”

“In fact, he was Persian. Not Arab.”

Wincing, the concierge stopped scratching. She flexed her finger joints. “Arthritis,” she explained. “
Un cafard.
It's living in this cursed marsh.” Danielle translated. The woman gestured into space. “He's gone, your man. Arab, Persian, whatever he was.”

Shawn had understood this. “Ask where he's gone.”

Danielle glanced at him. To the concierge she said, “Madame, how exactly did my husband leave?”

“He was, I am sorry to tell you this, mamselle, your pretty man was criminal. A crook.”

The man spooning up soup said,
“Terroriste, non?”

“Cops came,” said the concierge. “The CRS, I think, they have taken him. They hit him, bof”—she struck the side of her own firmly coiffed head—“they put on cuffs”—she showed veined wrists—“a thing in his mouth, they put on him a bag, the head, you understand, then in a car. The back of a car. Pouf. Gone.”

“In which direction?”

The concierge pointed east.

“What kind of car?”

The concierge shrugged. “Black.”

Without looking up from his plate, the man at the table said, “
Suédois.
Volvo.”

“Darius was kidnapped,” Danielle told Shawn. “Or someone was. Cuffed, bagged, gagged. Driven away.”

“Okay,” Shawn said. He wondered about the words she used. “If that's all this witch knows, tell her thank you. We have a lunch date.” He put a hand on her arm. “It's okay. Don't be like that. We'll find him.”

Danielle looked at him, expressionless. She thanked the concierge.

“Who does he say is a witch?”

“You speak English?”

“Elle, un peu,”
said the man at the table.
“Plus que moi.”
He'd finished his soup and was eating a dry baguette while reading a racing page. He marked something with a pencil.

“Good luck with your Arab,” the concierge said. “It's true, not all are thieves. But most.”

“You need to feed the dog,” said Danielle.

She led the way back up to street level. “Could have been anyone,” she told Shawn. “The man kidnapped.”

In a gutter still full of water, a pigeon struggled to breathe. One wing was torn off, leaving a bloodied stump. The other wing flapped. Shawn bent to wring the bird's neck.

Danielle pulled him back. “Don't.”

“Come on,” he said. “It's in pain.”

“You think pain ends with death?” Ignoring the handkerchief he offered, she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “Leave me alone. It's okay. I can find him without you.”

“Not if the Agency has him. He could be in any one of a dozen countries. You'd never even find the damn jail. We have them all over—like, seventeen countries.” He pointed his right thumb downward. “No chance, Danielle.”

It was the first time he'd said her name.

She took a deep breath, thinking that through. “Who is this lunch date? Who do you know in Paris?”

He was reading a text on his phone. Wondering, too, when he might share a bed with this girl. How much that might set back his recovery program.

He said, “Bobby Walters. That's my buddy. Based at the embassy.” He paused, then said, “We grew up together.”

“In America?”

“Mmm. Alabama. Turkey Forge. Neighbors. Bobby was one of those fat, sad kind of kids. People used to hit him, on principle. He didn't play sports. First time he's left off the team, right there on the field, starts crying. After that, no one used his name. He wasn't Bobby anymore. He was the kid who cried.” Shawn paused, thinking back. “Used to walk him to school, you know? Stop guys beating up on him.”

“And you,” she said. “Of course you were, what is the word?
Sportif
?”

“Played football,” Shawn said. “I was on the team back then. Hard to imagine, I know.”

Danielle led the way into the traffic-free rue de Béarn.

“Yet this sad, fat boy,” she said, “he is the one who has work.”

“Moral in there, someplace,” Shawn said. “That's why we're meeting him. Bobby has access to a database, Main Core. Just don't cry on me if you don't like what you hear.”

She was walking fast now, down rue Saint-Gilles.

“I wouldn't cry in front of you. Tell me again, the proper name? Your friend?”

“Robert Hamilton Walters.”

“Will I like him?”

Shawn said, “Will you like Bobby? Who gives a damn? It's not what matters.”

“So? Confide in me—what
does
matter?”

“We want to sound him out. See if he'll help find your husband.”

She glanced up. “I still don't know about you, Mr. Maguire—why you look for Darius.”

“Told you,” Shawn said. “Full disclosure. I find him, I get paid.”

Ahead lay the ordered beauty of the place des Vosges.

“You are paid to track him? Darius? Who would pay for that?”

“Who'll pay? Pakistani guy. Businessman, in a little trouble. Name of Ayub Abbasi.”

“Why?” she asked. “Tell me, why does he pay?”

From the north, they entered the
place
: the old city's oldest square.

“You're asking me why?” said Shawn. “Why Abbasi wants your husband? Long story. Not sure I even know it all.” He pointed toward Ma Bourgogne. “We meet Bobby, you'll hear some of it.”

 

9

PARIS, PLACE DES VOSGES, 21 MAY 2004

Like a couple, like lovers, Shawn and Danielle walked together down the rue de Béarn, on the north side of place des Vosges and entered a cloister on the square's perimeter. An old woman in a patterned headscarf played a violin, small as a toy, the music a slow, haunting dance. She'd placed a man's hat, holding five coins, on the tiles at her feet.

“Be honest, now,” Shawn said. “The concierge—”

Danielle shrugged. “Come on, Mr. Maguire. The man she saw—”

“—being kidnapped—”

“—he could be anyone. Woman like that, she will think any dark-skinned man is an Arab. What she calls an Arab.
Les beurs.
Of course, all are thieves. Maybe it was Darius. Maybe not.” She paused, then said, “Let me tell you, we have a strange marriage, I and Darius. All the time I've known him, he's been disappearing.” She turned to look at Shawn. “If I don't hear in the next few days, okay, I shall be worried. More. Now, not so much.”

Beside them, the old woman played her slow music: a waltz. Danielle spread her arms. “Do you dance?” she asked. “Darius would dance.”

Shawn shook his head. “Never learned.”

Stopping, glancing at Shawn, Danielle dropped coins in the old woman's upturned hat. “I thought everyone could dance. Really? You never learned?”

“I was in school,” Shawn said, “they made me go to dance class. I'm talking small-town Alabama. Turkey Forge.” They were walking westward now, along the cloister. “Boys and girls, Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes. In a parish hall, this was. Cured me.” After a moment, he added, “That's where I met Martha. My wife.”

She stopped in the cloister, facing him. “You met—you met in dance class? It's true?”

“Well,” he said, “sure. I met her there—she wasn't my wife back then. We were kids. Three other wives before Martha, but she was the first I met. Last one I married.”

“You told me you don't have a wife.”

“I don't. Martha died. Cancer.” He took her arm. “Come talk with Bobby Walters.”

 

10

PARIS, PLACE DES VOSGES, 21 MAY 2004

Watching the street outside Ma Bourgogne, Bobby Walters believed, for a moment, he'd found again the girl he'd met on the boulevard Haussmann: the one who told him all was for sale, except love. Then he saw that this girl, though different, was another of the women he wished to meet. Not cover-girl cute, but cool. Confident. Unaggressive, he'd guess. (His second wife, the actress, had displayed all the female aggression he could suffer in this life.) Thick, shoulder-length hair, this girl outside in the
place
. Minimal ass, wide mouth in just the kind of feline face Bobby fancied. Wearing jeans, and boots with heels. Looking elegant with it. They could do that in this town: low-rent elegance.

Inspection finished, Bobby checked out the girl's man. By definition, this kind of arm candy needs a male arm to be the candy on.

Bobby saw that the arm here belonged to his buddy, Shawn Maguire. Absorbing that fact—knowing that Shawn was three years older, and, for Christ's sake, a human train wreck—Bobby felt fate had dealt him a losing hand. He'd thought this before, in connection with Shawn and women. He leaned across the table and pulled out two chairs.