“Okay,” said Simon. “I’ll bite. Why did you buy it?”
“So you’ll show me just how the hell you did what you did last night.”
“Goodbye, Lucy.”
The headquarters of the Paris police department, better known as the Police Judiciaire, or PJ, was located at 36 Quai des Orfèvres in a nineteenth-century stone building that ran the length of a city block along the Seine. Men and women hurried up and down the broad limestone stairs. New recruits in their royal-blue uniforms climbed aboard a bus to the academy. Police cars ferried in and out of the lot, beginning a shift or returning after a long day. The rest of Paris might have shut up shop and gone on vacation, but the police were afforded no such luxury. Certainly not after a high-profile robbery that had made headlines around the globe.
Simon presented himself at the reception and received his visitor’s badge and instructions to Commissaire Marc Dumont’s office on the fourth floor. He walked past the elevator and entered the interior stairwell, running up the three flights, partly to ease his anxiety, partly because he liked elevators even less than police stations.
Reaching the fourth-floor landing, he paused to straighten his jacket, then passed through a swinging door into the main hall. His timing was good and he spotted Marc Dumont heading toward him. “Marc.”
Dumont saw him and frowned. “Don’t you ever gain any weight?”
“English cooking.”
“Still no woman?”
“What are you? A cop?”
“No ring,” said Dumont, pointing at Simon’s left hand. “Besides, you look too happy.”
The two shook hands warmly and Dumont led the way into his private suite. Two secretaries sat at desks in an anteroom. “I’m expecting Detective Perez,” he said to one. “Send her in as soon as she arrives.”
The secretary’s expression soured. “As if I could stop her.”
Dumont continued into a large corner office overlooking the river. He dropped the dossiers he was carrying onto his desk and sat in a tall padded chair. “Coffee? Tea? I don’t usually drink in the office, but I’ll make an exception in your case.”
“Tea’s fine.”
Simon remained standing, taking in the room, the view. Life had been good to Dumont in the years since he’d last seen him. The French policeman was a little grayer, a little heavier. His suit was nicer and he wore a better wristwatch, though nothing compared to the Patek Philippe. Simon was pleased to note that the bullets Dumont had taken on his behalf had not left him with a limp.
The two had forged a tenuous friendship years earlier when Simon had enlisted his help in tracking down the daughter of an English financial executive. They’d found her in the drug den of her Serbian boyfriend in Paris. She didn’t come without a fight.
“So, Monsieur Riske, still chasing rich runaways?”
“Once was enough,” said Simon. “I’ve moved on to bigger and better things. Looks like you have as well.”
“I left anti-gang last year,” said Dumont, referring to the division charged with handling important robberies and kidnappings. “Like you, I have moved up in the world. I’m part of l’État-Major these days. I’m officially a bureaucrat.”
“Don’t tell me the bad guys finally got to you.”
“Twenty years was enough. I got sick of being shot at by stoned teenagers. And you, Riske, staying out of gunfights?”
“As best I can. I still owe you one.”
“I thought it was the other way around.”
“I didn’t take the bullet.”
Dumont laughed or grunted. With the French, it was hard to tell the difference.
Simon had phoned before leaving to provide Dumont with a few details about the man he was looking for. He’d purposely kept the description short and vague. A professional criminal active in Paris. Someone from the south. Bouches-du-Rhône. Côte d’Azur. Possibly a Corsican. His preferred targets were art, jewels, and historical artifacts. Worked with a team.
“Mind telling me what he did?” Dumont had asked.
“He stole something that belonged to a client. Something valuable.”
“In Paris?”
