Central Park Guillaume Musso (read along books .TXT) 📖

to a stranger; and finally stealing the cell phone so she could call him.

“Oh, come on, Alice, enough with the joke! We’re busy here, we don’t have time for this. And the judge wants to see you—he refused our wiretap request in the Sicard case. And as for Taillandier, she—”

“Listen to me, goddamn it!” she yelled. There were tears in her eyes and she was close to losing it. Even on the other side of the Atlantic, her deputy must have noticed the desperation in her voice. “I am not joking, for fuck’s sake! I’m in danger and you’re the only one who can help me.”

“Okay. Calm down. Why don’t you just go to the nearest police station?”

“Why? Because I have a gun that doesn’t belong to me in my jacket pocket, Seymour. Because there’s blood all over my shirt. Because I don’t have any ID. That’s why! They’d throw me in jail without a second thought!”

“Not if there’s no body,” the policeman pointed out.

“How do I know there isn’t? First of all, I need to find out what happened to me. And find a way to get out of these damn handcuffs!”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Your mother’s American. You have family here, you know lots of people.”

“My mother lives in Seattle, as you know perfectly well. The only family I have in New York is one of my great-aunts. A little old lady living on the Upper East Side. We visited her the first time we went to Manhattan together, remember? She’s ninety-five years old—I kind of doubt she has a hacksaw on hand. You need to find someone else to help you.”

“Who, then?”

“Let me think. I have an idea, but I need to make a call first. Otherwise I might give you the wrong address.”

“Okay, call me back. But please, do it quickly.”

She hung up and balled her fists. Gabriel looked into her eyes. He could feel her body quivering with anger and frustration. “Who is this Seymour guy?”

“My deputy in the Criminal Division. And my best friend.”

“Are you sure we can trust him?”

“Absolutely.”

“My French isn’t great, but I didn’t get the impression he was exactly rushing to your aid.”

She didn’t reply. He went on: “What about the hotel? No luck?”

“No, as I’m sure you know, since you were listening to my conversation.”

“It would be difficult not to at this distance. Please, madame, I hope you will forgive my indiscretion in light of the current circumstances,” he mocked in a posh French accent. “And anyway, as you’ve already reminded me, you’re not the only one who’s up shit creek without a paddle!”

Exasperated, she turned away to avoid his gaze. “Jesus, stop staring at me like that! Don’t you have someone else to call? A wife, a girlfriend…”

“No. A girl in every port, that’s my motto. I’m a free man. As free as the air I breathe, as free as the music I play.”

“Yeah, right. Free and alone. I know the type.”

“So what about you? Got a husband or a boyfriend?”

She avoided the question with an indecipherable movement of her head, but he sensed that he had touched a nerve.

“Seriously, Alice, are you married?”

“Go fuck yourself, Keyne.”

“Okay, I get it,” he said. “You are married.” As she didn’t deny it, he pressed on. “Why don’t you call your husband?”

She balled her fists tighter.

“Relationship on the rocks, huh? Can’t say I’m too surprised, given your charming personality.”

She stared at him as if he had just plunged a dagger into her belly. Then her shock gave way to anger.

“I can’t call him because he’s dead, you piece of shit!”

Gabriel’s face showed his discomfiture at this clumsy faux pas. But before he could offer an apology, an awful ringtone—some improbable mix of salsa and club music—poured from the stolen cell phone.

“Yes, Seymour?”

“I’ve figured out how to solve your problem, Alice. You remember Nikki Nikovski?”

“Remind me.”

“When we went to New York last Christmas, we visited a contemporary artists’ collective…”

“In a big building near the docks, right?”

“Yeah, in Red Hook. We had a long talk with an artist who did silk-screen printing on sheets of steel and aluminum.”

“And you ended up buying two of her pieces for your collection,” she remembered.

“Yep, that’s her—Nikki Nikovski. We stayed in touch and I’ve just talked to her. Her studio is in an old factory. She has the right tools to get you out of the handcuffs and she’s agreed to help.”

Alice sighed with relief. Clinging to this good news, she laid out her battle plan to her deputy.

“You have to start an investigation, Seymour. Start by getting hold of the security-camera footage from the underground parking garage on Avenue Franklin-Roosevelt. Find out if my car is still there.”

“You told me all your things were stolen, right?” Seymour said. “So I can put a trace on your cell phone and check any movements in your bank account.”

“Good. And find out about any private jets that left Paris for the United States last night. Start with Le Bourget, then widen the list to all the business airports in the Paris region. Also, try to dig up what you can on a Gabriel Keyne—he’s an American jazz pianist. Check whether he was really playing a concert last night in a Dublin club called Brown Sugar.”

“You’re investigating me?” Gabriel interjected. “You’ve got nerve!”

Alice signaled him to shut up and continued instructing her deputy. “Question my friends too—you never know. Karine Payet, Malika Haddad, and Samia Chouaki. We were in college together. You’ll find their phone numbers on my office computer.”

“Okay.”

Suddenly, another idea crossed her mind. “Oh, and just in case, see if you can trace a gun for me. A Glock twenty-two. I’ll give you the serial number.”

She read out the series of letters and numbers engraved on the side of the pistol.

“Got it. I’ll do everything I can to help you, Alice, but I have to tell Taillandier about this.”

Alice closed her eyes. The image of Mathilde Taillandier, the chief of the Criminal Division, flashed in her head.