Swindler & Son Page 5

  “You’re going to fire on the police?” Sara asks and as soon as she says it out loud, the absurdity of the idea is obvious.

  “She’s not with me, she’s not armed or involved,” I remind them.

  “She’s your wife.”

  “She’s divorcing me. We had a final hearing yesterday. And, in case you care, I didn’t bring a bomb into Paris either.”

  “Of course, you didn’t do it,” Rene says. “I said that.”

  “Fine, we’re agreed I’m not a mass murderer.”

  “You’re not even a single murderer,” Proto snaps, defending the honor of his profession.

  “Well, they think I am—and they’re after me.”

  “I don’t get this, Nicky. You’ve got friends on high.”

  “Which is good until they decide to bring you in. Then you just have enemies who know your habits.”

  “You took your time mentioning it.”

  “I thought you were really kidnapping us, like you were going to stash us someplace. Why are we just wandering, Rene?”

  Rene shrugs but the move is an admission. “I’d tell you if I could,” he apologizes, his tone all professional courtesy. The sirens get loud for what feels like a very long moment and then fade into the distance.

  “I’m just saying, this isn’t how things are done, Rene. You’re a professional—I wouldn’t hire you to do a kidnapping like this.”

  “You never hired me once.”

  “I’ve never needed anybody kidnapped. You know you’d be the first...”

  “Window-shopper! You lie on the floor.” I duck down between the seats and he pulls back out onto the street. Proto turns on the radio and starts hunting news stations.

  “I’m just saying you should stash us off the street and check out what I’m telling you. For your own sake. And seriously, let her go, she’s not part of this.”

  The two of them start whispering, which would be more effective if I wasn’t lying right behind them.

  “We have to.”

  “Where—?”

  “My sister’s?”

  Seven minutes later, Proto pulls up the driveway of a whitebox veterinary hospital and pushes us in through the back door at gunpoint.

  “My apologies, Nicky but now I show you I know how things are done.”

  Down a hallway of cages, past three dogs, nine cats and a large, cawing crow that keeps pecking at the bars as though he’ll eat his way out. Three chairs stand in the office at the end of the hall; Rene waves us in to sit and closes the door behind us. Proto peers in through the door window and then takes a seat in the hallway.

  Sara waits just long enough to be sure Proto is comfortable, then jumps to the cabinet against the wall, sorting through multiple shelves filled with bottles and pills with indecipherable labels.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “An edge,” she says. “You should be doing this. Why are you letting them imprison us?”

  “This isn’t such a bad deal for us.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “We’re off the street, in a place professional criminals—far more professional than me (she frowns at this)—trust as a hideout. Better than anything I could find myself.”

  Bottles and boxes come off the shelf, not carefully. Finally, she wags a bottle in the air. “Ketamine.”

  “What’s that?”

  “PCP—Special K. A date-rape drug.”

  “What’s it doing here?”

  “Vets use it for anesthetic.” She pulls a paper cup out of the stack on the counter, pulls the cap off the bottle, empties it into the cup and fills it from the water fountain. “Ask Proto if he wants some water.”

  “Sara, these guys are—”

  “I’ve been held by Columbian rebels and Hezbollah. You want to mansplain me or wait to see if Rene turns you in?”

  When I peek through the doorway at an angle, to avoid showing myself to Proto, he’s nowhere to be found. I move closer for a wider field of vision. “He’s not there.” For no particular reason, I try the door handle—and it turns.

  “What are you waiting for?” she says but it’s too easy.

  “Step back from the door, just in case.” She does. I take a deep breath and pull it open.

  The hallway runs from rear car park to front reception. A young woman answers the phones; otherwise, the place is silent but for barking and cawing. The Cadillac is nowhere to be seen.

  We tread up the corridor toward reception, with me carefully checking each intervening office—until Sara blows right past me.

  “Rene around?” she asks the receptionist—is this Proto’s sister? There’s no resemblance but a female version of Proto is too grisly to imagine. “Or Proto?”

  The front door buzzes loudly behind her. “Joyeux Noël!” the receptionist says, handing Sara back her cellphone. “The door will lock behind you.”

  Out in the street, the wind tosses filtering lines of snow off the edges of nearby warehouses, dark boxes cut from the starry sky. The road is narrow and empty, alternating pockets of streetlight glare and deep shadow but the drum and hiss in the distance speaks of nearby highways. I thought I knew roughly where we were but maybe I was conflating this neighborhood with one we drove through ten minutes ago or twenty or thirty. This far outside Paris, we might be anywhere.

  I march away, not worrying about direction. Our first job is to put distance between us and the vet hospital, in case Rene changes his mind and calls the police.

  Four blocks away, the warehouses thin out, I can see open land ahead and a few main roads intersecting. Sara’s watching me, noting the things I pay attention to and the decisions I make. She did the same thing when we started dating.

  “Go home now and stay there,” I tell her. “If anybody asks, you ran into me at Harry’s, Rene kidnapped us but didn’t take us anywhere, dropped us off at the vet hospital and I took off. You don’t know why they dropped us off or where I’ve gone. Don’t change anything that happened, just leave out knowing anything about my situation.”

  “What the hell just happened?” she demands, as though a dam is breaking. “They just decided to stop kidnapping us?”

  “That was not a kidnapping. A kidnapping has demands, someone to pay off, a goal. These guys drove around like tourists.” A siren wails just up the road—I pull her into a doorway, holding her close for a moment and the car passes. The feeling between us is familiar and doesn’t pass so quickly. “Just go home. Be glad to be rid of me. If the police don’t come, get on with your life.”

  We reach an incongruous gingerbread house, a farmhouse for a hundred years, surely, until the land was sold for window frames, propane tanks and a ticket to someplace far away and cheaper. Twenty yards of railroad track cut through the street and then vanish. Once, not long ago, those tracks went somewhere. A roundabout sits on the other side of the house, a four-lane road cutting through what must have been the farm, with just a few cars whistling by.

  Maybe I can get a cab.

  Moment of truth: can I risk a cab? Is my face all over the news? Have they named me to the public? More importantly, who are they? Who’s fingered me for something I didn’t do? Who’s behind all this?

  Stomach churning, regret burning my cheeks, I think maybe I know.

  The Party

  Harry must have everyone around Christmas Eve. It is his holiday, D’Azur is his cathedral and—

  -Wait! This is a memory again? We’re back to Christmas Eve?

  I told you—everything happened all at once. I returned to Paris Christmas Eve, went directly to the divorce hearing, then back to the office, where I found out Harry was running on three cylinders and, that evening, which is what I’m talking about now, we had our Christmas Party.

  -And then?

  Well, once I tell you about the party and the meeting that came out of it, you’ll be caught up through Christmas evening, when I got mugged and stumbled onto GIGN watching my windows.

  -From here on, try to keep it clear,
please.

  I’ll try for your sake but it sure wasn’t clear when it was happening. My head was spinning.

  -(under his breath) Your head—

  Anyway, like I said, it’s Christmas Eve and Christmas Eve is Harry’s holiday, D’Azur—the nouveau cuisine restaurant down the block—is his cathedral and our staff are his choir. No delicacy will be passed up, no course rushed or skipped, everyone must have a wonderful time or he will know why not.

  This year’s festivities are notable for two unusual occurrences, events that seemed peripheral at the time but stick out now like the Hazmat suit in the dumpster.

  The Christmas Party participants list has grown over ten years to include the Chief of Police, the Mayor, the Prime Minister and Le President (at different times, to avoid each other), ambassadors, film actors, the occasional opera star and a duo Harry chatted up on the Metro, who now perch happily in the corner doing a very good imitation of Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli.

  Anybody Harry knows may have been invited and any smart human being, invited to a Harry party, shows up; in this case, an Assistant Minister of Something is fuming in the vestibule because Harry hadn’t invited him, but, in seconds, he and his mistress (maybe she’s even his wife!) are sucked into the festivities and assured it was all a mistake. “Someday soon, in the way of things, he won’t be an Assistant anymore,” Harry winks.

  We raise our glasses. “What do we really celebrate every Christmas?” I ask.

  “Being alive,” Harry answers. “Being in this place, able to pay the bill—and sometimes, not actually having to pay it.”

  Harry set up a charge for us at D’azur in the early days and, whenever they were about to dump us for non-payment, he would charm another restaurant critic into dinner there, followed by an ecstatic review. Our second December 24th extravaganza coincided with a visit from a Michelin writer high on ecstasy; Harry thanked D’azur loudly for ‘the fantastic Christmas Party they’ve thrown for us.’ After the Michelin star appeared in the window, they stopped pushing us for payment.

  On this night, each platter brought by the waiters prompts cries of approval and gusts of applause. Yves, the maitre d’, well into the spirit of the evening, cries, “You like that? I have something better!” and sends something better until they’ve run through the menu and are making shit up in the kitchen.

  After an hour, the table is a wreckage of canapes, squid, sausage, anchovies and eggs and pimentos and eel and prawns and scallops and avocados, melon and berries, three kinds of wild rice, pasta, roasted potatoes, boar, lamb, venison, buffalo and more. That’s what’s still left after eating and who can take it all in? Entrees are superfluous but several appear, just in case, followed by speculative desserts and uncounted bottles of brandy.

  Meanwhile, the crowd along the wall is debating Art and cooking, the IMF rape of Greece, the best old comic books that now suck, the insane cost of apartments and the best wine to drink with the wine we’ve already drunk. The Hot Club de France duo is sprinting through an amazing ‘Honeysuckle Rose’ and all the world’s disappointments are distant and irrelevant, like God.

  And I cast my eyes around and realize, I could never do this. I never would and never could collect such an assemblage of people, bring them all together in such a way that the artists become obliging and the politicians almost human. I would never know how to have this much fun on my own. That’s what I owe Harry.

  And then, around the fifth round, Millard Hastings joins the celebration.

  -Hastings? The State Department spokesperson?

  That was years ago. Now Vice President of some management consulting firm—a management consulting firm no one heard of five years ago (although they insist they were founded in 1948), somehow with offices in fifty major cities and billions in assets. We’ve maintained a steady but low-key business with him for several years, arranging shipments to and from Beirut, Dubai, Basra, Singapore, Guam, Panama and other locations. Generic containers shuttling from one gigantic warehouse complex to another, the whole interlocking machinery controlled by him, ownership tunneling through multiple shell corporations.

  -So he’s a client.

  Sure, if Joe’s Hardware can call Amazon a client. It’s bizarre to see him at the Christmas party. My impression was he wanted to be not just a silent partner but an invisible one. I can’t recall him ever showing up at any of our shindigs before, yet here he is.

  “Which wine?” Harry asks, always the host.

  “What’s the difference?” Hastings says, waving the red flag in front of the bull.

  “Excuse me?” Harry blanches. “Have you never noticed the red wine glass is larger than the white?”

  Hastings just stares. “I assumed there were just two sizes—”

  “Absolutely not. The choice is canonical. Red wine glasses are larger because red wine is superior to white.”

  Clarice groans—she spends the week listening to Harry spout—which only makes him grin the wider. His cheeks bunch up around the ears, his teeth bulge so prominently you think he’s going to take a bite out of someone’s forehead.

  The maitre’d appears magically—I’d swear he wasn’t in sight a moment ago—and Harry challenges, “Yves, why is a red wine glass larger than the white?”

  “Reds are bolder wines,” Yves explains, without a suggestion of a set-up. “The bouquet and the flavors require more space to reach their full potential.”

  Hastings looks unimpressed, even (!) uninterested. He sips at his drink (red) and keeps eyeing me.

  “What about this?” Sonya challenges, pushing her fluted champagne glass in front of Harry. “Why is this different?”

  “Well, that…” Harry gulps a breath and we await a lengthy pronouncement, “uh, that is, as they say, there’s never…ahh…just one way to…these things…”

  “What things?” Sonya asks. Diamante elbows her but too late. The panic creeps across Harry’s face. The conversation falters and then picks up again, a bit too loud this time. The entire staff turn their attention to anything and everything other than Harry. He’s shaken, white as the tablecloth. He’s faltered in front of witnesses.

  “The grooves channel the bubbles,” I say loudly. All he has to do is tell me I’m wrong and he’s back in the conversation.

  But he can’t do it. Harry won’t be placated or rescued, he wants to recover, to rebound like he always has. He remembers quite clearly who he’s always been. That man, unfortunately, isn’t available at the moment.

  And then, casting about, Harry’s eyes open wide and a smile big as the Western sky bursts across his face. He shoots out of his chair, loping toward the bar like an Olympic sprinter.

  “Darling!” he erupts, arms wide open as he sweeps over…to Sara, who’s just entered the room and recoils, seeing us against the far wall, her expression as stricken as Harry’s was a few moments ago. As stricken as my expression is, seeing her.

  Our group hasn’t just stopped talking—I swear they’ve ceased to breathe. Both Hastings and the Chief of Police know about my divorce. The Chief, to his credit, just looks embarrassed. Hastings looks like a lion stumbling on a wildebeest carcass.

  Harry grasps Sara’s arm and sweeps her over to the party. “We’ve been waiting for you, darling, you’ve just missed the most lovely wine.”

  “Harry, I don’t—”

  Sara’s totally conflicted but won’t—can’t—contradict him, though clearly she would prefer to be anywhere else in the world.

  “Nicky my boy, make way for your lovely bride.”

  I pull out a chair and, graciously, she takes it, glaring as though this is a plot of mine. Our group bursts into boisterous, competing discussions, each trying to bury the moment before it can breathe.

  “He doesn’t know,” I stage-whisper at Sara as soon as Harry turns away.

  “Of course he does! You are pathetic! You’d say—” Her voice cuts through the chatter and the volume drops by half, the whole group (Harry included) staring at us for
an incredibly uncomfortable moment before picking up where they left off.

  “Remember the story you told me about your father? At the end, when he was…living in the moment?”

  That penetrates. Sara’s father was a major force in NATO foreign aid, orchestrating relief efforts, food here, construction equipment there, developing new sources of funding as the old ones dried up. His dementia was almost impossible to keep private but Sara knew if it made the papers, it would be front-page news (she was right about that) and that, once he saw it in print, his resistance would collapse. Right again—the man retreated to a bare southern bedroom, watching the light change, ignoring anything that required more knowledge than could be found in a look.

  She stares at Harry now and returns to me several times, lingering in suspicion. It’s only when she soaks up the terrified looks on staff faces, realizes how they’re ignoring the blank spots in his conversation, maneuvering to protect his dignity, that her anger transforms to pain. She may not believe me but she can’t help but believe them.

  “How?” she hisses. “I just spoke to him —”

  “Three months ago,” I fill in. “I spoke to him two weeks ago and there was no problem then, either. We’re trying to get him to see a doctor but he’s not real cooperative.”

  “So what,” she asks, glancing around guiltily, “do we do now?”

  All I can think to say is, “Eat.”

  The table conversation—the group now comprising Hastings, the Trade Minister, the aforementioned Beltoise of the Surete and me—has turned to the question of how to ship artwork that might not be too legitimate across borders.

  -Which isn’t legitimate—the artwork or the shipping across borders?

  For our purposes, it doesn’t matter. It’s the same game as with Dame Helena—HARRY’S RULES at work—a pleasant, supposedly theoretical discussion of how to get around their security precautions, so that, if the subject ever arises again, they will guiltily remember the Christmas Eve they taught us how.

  At the moment, however, it’s my game—Harry lingers on the periphery, timid and reticent, knowing he should contribute but not trusting himself to.