“And so,” Bonfanti asked, “who betrayed you?”
Simon did not answer. He’d promised himself he would not say. He would keep the name for himself. Revenge would be his and his alone.
“He’s mine,” said Simon, with the vehemence of a wronged man.
The taxi driver looked over his shoulder, startled. “What is it, sir? You are all right?”
Simon shook himself from his haunted reverie. “I’m sorry. Yes, I’m fine.”
The taxi drew to a halt in front of the hotel. “We have arrived. You are at your destination.”
“Yes,” said Simon, still shaky, fighting off the memories. “Thank you.”
But inside him another voice answered. No, it said. Not yet, I haven’t. There’s someplace I still need to go. Someone I need to find.
Chapter 18
Nikki Perez entered headquarters and took the elevator to her office on the second floor. The lieutenant was loitering in the corridor. Before she could turn around, he spotted her.
“Perez, come here,” he shouted, wagging a finger in her direction. “You finish taking statements from the drivers?”
“Three to go.”
The lieutenant was short and chunky and wore white short-sleeved dress shirts all year round. No one called him by his name. “Clock’s running. Get to it.”
“We’re thirteen for thirteen,” said Nikki. “No one’s offered anything useful. Twelve men with machine guns. All wearing black utilities. Combat boots. Faces covered. Plates off the cars. No one said a word except the leader and he spoke only to the prince.”
“And so?”
“It’s like listening to a broken record. I’d be better off spending my time working the streets, talking to my sources, the staff at the hotel. The bad guys had to have had a lookout there.”
“Since when do you dole out assignments?”
“Just an idea, sir.”
“Like the one that got you on administrative duty for ninety days?”
“Better than that.”
“So you say.” The lieutenant stepped close enough that his gut rubbed against her. “I want all the reports on my desk by noon. Including the last three.”
Nikki turned to leave. “Prick,” she said under her breath.
“What was that?” The lieutenant was in her face, eyes bulging.
“By noon. Yes, sir.”
“That’s what I thought you said.”
Nikki continued to her desk. Ten years on the job and still the same nonsense. She’d joined the police a month after passing the “bac”—or baccalaureate—the nationwide examination that determined eligibility for entry into France’s elite universities. With a score in the top two percent, she’d had her choice of the litter: the École Normale Supérieure, ParisTech, Sciences Po, or the Sorbonne. France was very much a hierarchical society. Graduation from any of these universities would have guaranteed her a place in the nation’s ruling classes. But Nikki had never had an interest in joining the technocrats who governed the country from their stately offices on the Boulevard Haussmann, or the corporate warriors with their perfect hair and perfect suits charging across the esplanade of La Défense.
For as long as Nikki could remember, she’d wanted to be a cop. Maybe it was all the Clint Eastwood movies her father used to watch. Dirty Harry, Magnum Force, The Gauntlet. Or maybe it was because she’d always loved guns. Or maybe it was because she enjoyed breaking rules and being naughty just a little too much, and she knew that being a cop was her best shot at keeping that part of her in check. She’d stopped explaining her career choices long ago. It came down to this: She liked carrying a gun and a badge. She liked the feeling she got when she solved a crime. And she liked thinking of herself as someone who gave back more than she took. At the end of the day, she wanted to make a difference.
She sat and perused the statements she’d taken the day before. A stack of pages as thick as a phone book and as much help. Thirty-six hours after the crime, the task force had yet to come up with a single clue. She dropped her head to the desk. So far she’d served ten out of her ninety days on desk duty. She wouldn’t make it through eighty more.
Her latest infraction took as its root an unwillingness to either “obey” or “respect” a statute in the police handbook regarding who was to receive official recognition for making an arrest. Or to put it in language anyone could understand: who got the collar for nabbing a perp.
The perp in question was Elias Zenstrom, an Estonian computer wiz who ran a phony credit card operation in the north of the city. Zenstrom and his gang would buy credit cards from Gypsy pickpockets, copy the data from the magnetic strips, and fabricate duplicates, which they would then sell or use themselves. Nikki had been assigned the case by her superior, a man whose name she refused to utter ever again.
