I grabbed the cordless phone off the back counter, a landline, picked it up, and kept walking with the receiver, never breaking stride, heading down the steps into the labyrinth of the busy kitchen.
“Monsieur!” the manager called after me.
I dialed 17—the French version of 911—knowing it’d be foolish to pass up the only phone I might be accessing for quite a while, with the line connecting immediately.
“Dix-sept Urgence.”
I struggled to hear the operator. French is a rough language in person, let alone on a call, let alone against the backdrop of a one-star kitchen. “Salut, je suis Américan,” I said. “I’m calling because I know where a key witness is in the arson incident last night at the Astoria sur Seine.”
“Pardon, Monsieur?”
“Arson. Last night. Fire.”
“C’est dix-sept. Quel est votre urgence?”
“Yeah, I need to talk to Detective Élodie Michel. Je m’appelle Adam Macias. Arson. Urgent.”
“Uh, it’s . . . Do you have . . . some emergency, sir?”
“Yes. I’m her arson suspect but I have proof that I’m not her suspect.”
The operator didn’t understand most of this but he seemed bewildered enough to break protocol and connect me to her. “One moment, sir, I will try to tran—”
Wham! I was shoved from behind.
Sent stumbling into the wall directly in front of me.
The head chef had arrived, delivering a heavy blow to my back. I’d held on to the phone and stayed ready to square off, but when I looked back, I was facing a massive, two-hundred-fifty-pound boulder of a guy, along with that tight-bun manager flanking him. There wasn’t enough room in the hallway for me to avoid confronting this rhinoceros, yet as soon as I finally turned to fully face them, they both froze. Both of them.
I forgot I still had the dinner knife in my hand.
I absolutely didn’t threaten him with the blade, I swear. But he saw it and saw the crazed look in my face and kept himself still.
Just as a female voice came on the phone in my hand. “Hello, this is Detective Michel.”
No one was sure how to react to the weapon, seeing it wielded by someone like me who’d lost all sense. I stayed there a moment before deciding fuck-everything and waltzed into the narrow bathroom, entering one of the toilet rooms and locking the door while I listened as hard as I could to the handset.
“Hello?” said the detective.
“Am I wanted by the police, Madame?” I said to her. “Are you sending police after me? A man is chasing me in the eighth arrondissement, but I have no way to be sure who he is.”
“Mr. Macias, I instructed you to come into the local station. Why are you telephoning me?”
“Because I can help you get what you want! But first I need your assurance that I’m okay. I acted in self-defense.” I had to stop being passive. “I know where she is. The girl. And I know where this girl can be found.”
“What girl?”
“She can clear me of suspicion. The girl I told you about. I’m not part of any arson. You can take me off the list. Somebody broke into my hotel room. This man, he broke in and he chased me. I had to jab him with a pen.”
“You assaulted someone?”
“No. He tried to hit me with a rock. He said he was a cop. He’s lying.”
“What do you mean you—?”
Bwoosh! The chef slammed himself against the bathroom door. Loud. Jarring as hell. Must’ve been using his shoulder. I didn’t fall over this time because I was braced for it. Staying on this call was all I had left.
“What was that noise?” said the detective. “You need to listen very clo—”
“NO, YOU NEED TO LISTEN! You need to listen. I am being pursued because he’s angry at his prostitute. This girl is a prostitute—you can interrogate her, and you can confirm she was at the hotel and that she accessed the elevator and never met me prior to last night, and I know where you can find her.”
“Mr. Ma—”
“I’m prepared to give you key information about the criminal behavior of the heads of Euro Mutual Bank, which I know sounds insane but I’m talking about: girls rented, girls abused, financial embezzlement, fraud, all connected. I can expose it, a lot of it, but the first step is clearing my name, which is you and me working together to find this girl.”
“The girl isn’t my concern. You’re going—”
“No!” I pressed myself against the door to prevent the chef from edging in. “What do you mean the girl isn’t your concern? She’s a sex worker. That’s what I can prove about our company. That we have a history of engaging—”
“Mr. Macias, if you try to leave the city, you’ll be charg—!”
“How do I know I can count on you?! You want me to come in but you got a guy out here pretending to be a cop! Faking it! He assaulted me!” Every video of every police beating I’d ever seen had come screaming to mind, showcasing the potential of what could go wrong here. “And I’m getting no assurance from you that you see the complications. That’s why this girl’s relevant. Listen! I’m up against a former employer who’s using leverage against me. People high on the food chain are clearly—and I don’t have proof—but I will—I will—clearly trying to paint me into a corner and cover up illicit activity and this girl is a disgruntled part of it, or a victim of it, or a catalyst, I don’t know, but she can confirm I’ve never met her before!”
“I repeat: if you try to leave the city, you’ll—!”
“ARE YOU LISTENING?!” I hung up the phone on her and shoved the door open to find the big guy standing in front of me, now staring at my knife. I didn’t advance on him. My pulse was racing in three different directions but handling this guy was the most straightforward of all the things I had to deal with.
I didn’t move.
“Ça va,” I said calmly. “Ça va . . .” Assuring him it’s all good. We’re good. Making a truce gesture, I gently crouched down, never breaking eye contact with him, bending gently, like facing off with a wild dog, gently placing the knife on the ground in front of me along with the phone, which these people seemed to regard as only half the disarmament necessary to feel safe, still suspecting I had yet another weapon hidden on me.
“You win,” I said slowly. “I’m leaving . . . quietly . . . quietly, okay? Nous pouvons le fair avec la . . . la . . . paix.”
There was a moment where they could’ve bull-rushed me. They could’ve. They had that edge.
They didn’t.
Everyone remained in position. “Go,” said the manager, infuriated. “Yes. Okay? You just go.” She took a step back to let me complete the act of abandoning the knife on the ground, with all three of us nervous that one of the three of us might actually lunge for it—both of them letting me then proceed backward to the steps that led to the rear exit—going slowly at first, then faster, then running.
Running.
The chef didn’t follow. He watched from the hallway, just wanting me to get the hell out of his world. I ran out through the alley as hard as I could, crisscrossing two busy streets full speed. I couldn’t take a chance on anyone in a beige jacket seeing my route. I couldn’t trust anything to go as planned. That was the lesson here—the distrust—the fact that the big players involved didn’t give a shit about you. Not even the cops were quick to help. I mean, Jesus, what the hell did I just say to that lady on the phone? What kind of puffy bullshit did I just spout out? Even if I could prove any of it, how exactly would it help me survive even the next hour?