2:00 AM.
I was at home in a very deep and contented sleep when I was awakened by an indignant Esmée.
“What are you doing asleep?” she asked.
“It’s been a pretty big day, actually.” I didn’t mention the fistfight with the cross dresser or the strenuous sex with said tranny’s estranged wife, as this wasn’t the kind of information that would soothe Esmée, but I did allow as how I’d purchased a gun for self-defense.
“Excellent,” she said. “It’s going to be a big night, too. Come on, get dressed.”
I was hoping the big night wasn’t going to involve more than one ejaculation, since I’d already done that twice and was approaching my limit. “Can whatever it is wait until morning?”
“Tonight’s the night. Claude’s last.”
Shit. Despite the purchase of the gun I hadn’t thought about its eventual use all night, really, which was sort of a blessing. My ability to compartmentalize has been a boon to me as an actor; no matter what turmoil is affecting my personal life, I’m always in the moment onstage or on set. “You know, I’m pretty beat. Could we do it tomorrow?”
“Get out of bed. It’s tonight.”
I got out of bed and got dressed without showering, presuming that she wouldn’t be too keen on my taking the time for it. In the kitchen I ate an apple to make me alert (better than coffee, at least in my case), and I let her leave first in case we were spotted.
Ten minutes later I left the building myself and, as luck would have it, hanging around outside the nightclub next door was the guy I’d beaten up the week previous. He looked just as drunk as he had that night, and he stared at me with a look of intense but befuddled concentration while his buddies laughed at him.
I turned the corner in a hurry and caught up with Esmée’s mint-condition ’67 Karmann Ghia a few hundred meters up the Boulevard St. Germain. With her at the wheel we raced down the near-empty boulevard over to the Cluny and then up the Boulevard St. Michel while she lectured me about taking things more seriously. Then she admitted that my ability to face such a situation with aplomb, even boredom, was one of the things that drove her mad with desire. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that my attitude wasn’t insouciance or indifference or anything of the sort; it was just sexual exhaustion, ascribable to one of her rivals.
We drove well past the dormitory, all the way up to the Boulevard du Port-Royal, where she parked on the sidewalk and we walked down a side street to where a baker’s truck sat. She pulled out a set of keys and we drove it in silence to the rue de l’Abbé de l’Épée.
• • •
The mood in the basement was dismal, funereal even. Annick and Fred had been drinking wine and were both telling sad tales of love gone wrong, and before we got started with the main business of the night, Esmée joined in.
“Wait until you’re older,” Esmée said. “Believe me, whatever heartbreaks you’ve had you’ll have worse before you’re through.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Seems to me the main thing is not to take these things so seriously and just try and have fun.”
All three of them looked at me as though I were an idiot or a bastard, but I was the only one of the four of us not whining about long-gone, unfaithful lovers. Hadn’t I ever had my heart broken? Sure I had; the difference was that after a brief period of sadness I stopped giving a shit. And that’s why, romantically speaking, I am one of the happiest sons of bitches you will ever encounter.
After five minutes of listening to them I realized that Esmée was no longer in command, that in the presence of the others she was deferring to my authority. So I told them to knock it off. It was time to transport Claude. When we opened the door to the meat locker and turned on the light he squealed through the gag at the sight of Esmée, or more precisely at her predatory expression, and when he saw that steamer trunk we were going to put him in he panicked and began struggling for real. Weak though he was from nearly a week in restraints, the fear of death stimulated his adrenal glands and I thought he was going to bust that chair into pieces.
“For God’s sake, be a man,” Esmée said. That was a bit harsh given the circumstance, but I didn’t want to have to fight him into the trunk. So I went into another part of the old kitchen carrying a flashlight and grabbed a big cast-iron skillet off the wall.
When I came back he was still thrashing, wide-eyed, and the chair had fallen over on its side. I knocked him unconscious with a single blow and then with some revulsion stuffed his nearly nude, barely breathing body into the trunk and locked it. It was harder this time, perhaps because of the smell of him, and in any case a great deal more difficult than the movie I mentioned earlier would have suggested.
The mood in the bread truck was oddly jolly, as though the four of us were on our way to the Bois de Boulogne for a picnic or a day at Longchamp instead of a murder and a body dump. Esmée and Annick were telling stories about their respective adolescent forays into sexual experimentation, and Fred took advantage of a conversational tangent in the direction of zoophilia to describe one of the many subplots of the novel he’d interrupted in order to work on the movie.
“This guy’s in love with a dog,” he said, and he got a little incensed when the girls laughed. “No, it’s a serious examination of the emotion. What does it mean when a man loves, fully and completely, his neighbor’s German shepherd?”
More gales of raucous laughter, followed by more rationalizing, followed by more laughter, until finally Fred himself joined in.
“Maybe you could have the dog fall in love with a cat,” Annick said. “A triangle is always interesting.”
I looked in the back where she and Fred were seated and I couldn’t help noticing that she was sitting closer to him than the limitations of space necessarily dictated, and I felt good for both of them. Fred needed a woman, and a young and beautiful one would turn his morbid attention away from his ex-wife; in addition it was difficult to see how Annick could stay in a relationship with Bruno now that she was a giggling accomplice in his father’s murder.
We drove the bread truck some distance into the park, past vast empty spaces and patches crowded with whores and johns, past Longchamp racetrack until finally, having driven such a circuitous, labyrinthine route that I wasn’t sure I could have found my way out alone, we stopped. There was no one in sight, and the four of us unloaded the trunk and carried it into the woods.
Someone had dumped a load of old television sets there in the middle of the Bois. I shone my flashlight around and counted more than thirty of them, their round, green glass picture tubes shattered. They all looked to date back to the 1970s at least, and I thought it would make an interesting publicity shot, me standing before all those derelict televisions in the Bois at night, but before Fred could snap a picture with my little Canon Annick reminded us quite rightly that we didn’t want to be connected to the spot, in terms of evidence.
I unlocked the trunk and dumped Claude on the ground. He was starting to come around, and the subject came up for the first time of who was to commit the crime itself, and in what manner.
Esmée wanted to tie a noose around his neck and attach it to his feet so that he would slowly strangle himself, but I pointed out that this might take a while and we didn’t have the time to stick around and make sure he was dead before some passerby noticed him. She pouted but admitted that I was right, to the obvious relief of Annick and Fred, neither of whom was entirely sanguine about the prospect of having to watch such a death. I have to admit I didn’t like the idea much either, even taking into account Claude’s crimes against humanity. So I extracted from my inside jacket pocket the very pair of latex gloves Gégé had given me, and then I grabbed the gun and placed it against Claude’s temple and fired.
The others stood there in stunned silence, and I ran to the pile of televisions and threw up inside the chassis of an old Thomson, through its shattered glass screen.
After a minute or so Fred spoke up. “Maybe we should leave in case someone heard the shot.”
“Shots go off here all the time,” Esmée said, but she was moving in the direction of the bread truck. Fred and I took the trunk and followed.
• • •
We drove in silence through Boulogne-Billancourt and I told Esmée to stop on the Pont de St. Cloud. I got out and, still wearing my blood-spattered latex gloves, tossed the gun into the Seine. I had spent the exorbitant sum of five hundred euros on it, double what it was probably really worth, and it seemed a shame to be letting it go after only a few short hours of ownership and a single shot fired, but that was the way it was.
• • •
The first order of business was to drop Esmée off at her Karmann Ghia so she could be at home when the police called. Fred took the wheel and we left the bread truck where Esmée had picked it up, and I tossed the bloody latex gloves into a storm drain. Then we repaired on foot to the basement of the dormitory where we spent a good deal of time removing any traces of Claude’s captivity there. In the meantime Annick was kind enough to take my bloodied shirt upstairs and wash it in the laundry room. By the time it was clean and dried, Fred and I had done a pretty good job on the meat locker, to which only the faintest odor still clung. He and I left on foot via the rear entryway while Annick went upstairs to sleep.
It was almost five in the morning, but neither Fred nor I was sleepy. We walked down to the river and crossed the bridge onto the Île de la Cité and proceeded to walk its periphery twice before heading over to the Île St. Louis for more mindless circular wandering. We’d been at it for more than half an hour before Fred finally spoke.
“Is that the first time you ever killed someone?” he asked.
“It was, but it wasn’t the first time I ever tried.”
He let that one lie, and we made another half-orbit of the island before he spoke again. “It didn’t bother me as much as I thought it would.”
“Does that worry you?”
“Not especially.”
“You know, I think Annick’s developed a soft spot for you.”
“Annick?” He sounded pleased but disbelieving. “She’s beautiful. And twenty-three. What does she want with a guy like me?”
“Don’t sell yourself short. You’re a writer, and on the verge of being a very successful one. And I think she saw qualities in you this last week that she admired. She saw you nurturing, taking care of another human being, and becoming emotionally connected to that person despite the circumstances.”
“You really think she’s interested?”
“Fred, there are lots of subjects where you can safely ignore anything I have to say. But where women are concerned, you can take it to the bank.”
He didn’t answer, or look back at me, but spent the rest of our walk lost in happy reverie.
• • •
Fred and I went our separate ways shortly after the sun rose—his mood having markedly improved to the point that he was almost giddy—and upon my return to the apartment I showered and quickly thereafter fell into a deep, refreshing sleep that was not interrupted until well past noon by the doorbell. I threw on a clean pair of pants and shirt and opened the door to a lugubrious Inspector Bonnot, who entered the apartment unbidden.
“Can I offer you some coffee?” I asked him.
“Unnecessary,” he said. “Did you hear from Mme. Guiteau yesterday?”
Which day was yesterday? My sleep schedule was so far out of joint that I wasn’t sure, but assuming that the answer was supposed to be yes, I said I had. Then it struck me that I didn’t know whether she was supposed to have confided in me or not about the kidnapping. Pretending I didn’t know about the affair seemed more dangerous than frank curiosity, though, and I acted accordingly. “She was distraught about her husband’s abduction. If there’s anything I can do to help, Inspector—”
“Claude Guiteau is dead. Executed.”
Once again, feigning shock is one of those things that separate the real actor from the hammy amateur. The latter will let his jaw fall open, ask when, my God, how? it’s so unfair, et cetera. He’ll look away, maybe at the ground, maybe into the distance, shake his head, all kinds of histrionic crap. I just stared the inspector in the eye.
“Holy shit,” I said. “You’re fucking kidding.”
“Not in the slightest. I assume Mme. Guiteau also told you that his kidnappers used the name Krysmopompas in their communications with the press.”
“She said something like that. I thought she must have had it wrong.”
“What was the nature of your business with M. Guiteau?”
“I was trying to get him to invest in a film. His wife is an actress.”
“Yes,” Bonnot said in a tone that suggested he wasn’t entirely convinced of the legitimacy of Mme. Guiteau’s acting career. “So she says as well.”
“She was in a Dutch film last year that got good notices,” I said.
He grunted and shrugged. “And M. Guiteau, did he seem favorably disposed toward financing this film of yours?”
“It was hard for me to say. Esmée—Mme. Guiteau—kept telling me he was all for it, but I only met him once, and since then he’s been out of the country.”
“Not quite. He reentered Europe via Lisbon over a week ago, and according to his business associates he wasn’t heard from after that. You know what he did for a living, I presume.”
“I know he had his fingers in a lot of pies, but mostly he was an arms dealer, according to Esmée.”
“You’re also acquainted with his son Bruno.”
“I met him once or twice.”
He looked up from his file. “Kid says you beat the shit out of him in his father’s nightclub. Is that right?”
“He attacked me and I defended myself.”
“He attacked you. Any particular reason?”
Again a dilemma: to cop to the fact that I was fucking Bruno’s girl or risk getting caught in a lie. “He found out I was screwing his girlfriend.”
Bonnot nodded. “I wasn’t sure it was true, but that’s what he told me. So that’s how you got mixed up with all these people?”
“More or less.”
“He’s also quite jealous of his stepmother. Claims they had a two-year affair he’s never quite gotten over.”
“Really?” I didn’t have to pretend to be surprised. Somehow I’d assumed that Esmée had been cockteasing the boy all along, but the idea of her actually taking her husband’s son to bed was off-putting to say the least.
“And he’s not the only one jealous of Mme. Guiteau. His father was convinced that she was screwing someone, and Bruno thinks it was you.”
“Inspector, I’m nothing if not a careerist. I’ll fuck just about any attractive woman between the ages of sixteen and seventy, but when it stands in the way of getting a movie made I go home, as you say, la bite sous le bras. Anyway, I’m involved with a couple of other women at the moment and they keep me busy.”
“So I understand. I looked at your girlfriend’s website.”
“Ginny. Yeah, she’s quite a number.”
“So she is. The night man at her hotel had an interesting story, incidentally, about you chasing an intruder out of her suite last night.”
My God, was that just last night? “Some fellow got the key by claiming to be her ex-husband. Did you talk to her?”
“She says she didn’t get upstairs until you’d already chased him away.”
“That’s right. Presumably a deranged fan,” I said.
“Presumably,” he said, looking down at his notes. “One more thing before I go. Would it be too much to ask for a signed photograph?”
“For the wife of the divisionnaire? Certainly.” I rose to get one and he spoke again.
“Actually, I’d like three, if you don’t mind. My wife and daughter, you see. . . .” He shrugged and, for the first time in my presence, smiled.
In my briefcase I carry a stack of different glossies—in costume as Dr. Crandall dressed for surgery, another dressed for the doctor’s hobby, polo, and a head shot wearing a tuxedo and a smoky, jaded look. I signed all three, personalized them for each lady in question, and bade the inspector goodbye.
• • •
The murder was all over the news, and now that Claude was dead, that photograph Fred had taken was on every paper’s front page and website. Esmée called me to inform me that in addition to the official funeral, which would be attended in the hundreds and heavily covered by the media, a private memorial would be held the next night for close friends and family at the Hanoi Hilton, and she hoped I’d attend. Perhaps I’d like to bring my friend the porn star, she suggested without the least hint of malice in her voice, which clued me in to the fact that she thought the phone might be bugged.
“I’ll bring her if she’s available,” I said.
• • •
While I ate my lunch—a green salad with a macédoine and some smoked salmon—Marie-Laure called, distraught at the news.
“What does this mean for the film?” she asked.
“I haven’t really thought it through,” I said. “I suppose it’ll be up to Esmée. Of course I don’t know how much money he really had, or what shape the estate will be in once it’s settled. And widowhood may dampen Esmée’s burning desire for stardom.”
That was bullshit, of course. Nothing, least of all the death of Claude, was going to diminish Esmée’s ambitions.
“Yes, you’re right,” Marie-Laure said. “It’s too soon to know anything, isn’t it?”
“I feel like a rat even talking about it so soon after.”
“Don’t be an asshole,” she said. “Want to see me tonight?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t get much sleep last night, I was thinking I might stay in.”
“Don’t lie to me. Look, I’m married, right? I’m spoken for. I get it, you fuck other women, and I really don’t care. But don’t lie to me, okay? That pisses me off.”
The irritation in her voice turned me on. There’s nothing like sex tinged with a little hostility, so I agreed to meet her at eight o’clock for a drink and dinner.
• • •
I wandered down to Fred’s bookstore in search of something diverting, not really knowing whether Fred would be there or not. He was, and given the state he was in, I was glad he hadn’t called.
“The police were here,” he said.
“Okay. What did you tell them?”
“Nothing. They wanted to know why I hadn’t been in to work all week.”
I hadn’t even considered Fred’s day job when I assigned him to guard duty, and I wondered now whether I shouldn’t reimburse him for his lost wages. Probably not, since that would likely complicate any future case that might be made against us, not to mention the movie deal. “What did you say?”
“I said I was working on the script. Which was true. They wanted to see it.”
“Did you let them?”
“I told them I’d have to ask you first.”
“Good for you. Well, it’s all right with me if they want to have a look. Any idea how they got the idea to talk to you?”
“From Marie-Laure. They wanted to know about anybody associated with this film project.”
“Hmm. I wonder why that is.”
Fred seemed genuinely distressed by my failure to add things up. His voice went up an octave and his eyes fairly popped out of their orbits. “Why? Because it’s the only thing linking the two Krysmopompas cases.”
“Oh.” Trust a writer to make that leap. I should have consulted with him at every stage of the affair, though to be fair the whole business had been improvised and markedly free of any careful planning. In retrospect it was a miracle we’d gotten this far. “Maybe Krysmopompas needs to strike again.”
He shook his head, in disbelief rather than as a negation of my suggestion. “You’re insane.”
“Look, it’s great publicity. Maybe we could write this Krysmopompas into the script.”
“No. Krysmopompas needs to disappear.”
“Ah, but if he disappears right after Guiteau dies, doesn’t that make it seem as though he or they were just a cover for someone with a grudge against him?”
He nodded, thinking hard. Being detail oriented probably helps when plotting out books and movies, but in daily life it seems to add to the stress.
“Meanwhile what’s the word with Annick?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“For Christ’s sake, give her a call. She’s not going to do all the work, she’s a girl.” Of course she’d been plenty aggressive with me, but I was a celebrity, and the rules were different.
“I don’t have her number,” he said, looking very much like the kind of guy who never gets the kind of woman he really wants because he convinces himself he’s not worthy.
I wasn’t buying it. “Give me your cell phone,” I said, and when he reluctantly handed it over I programmed Annick’s number into it and hit DIAL, then handed it back to him as it started ringing. Then I slapped him on the shoulder and left.
• • •
At Palais Royal I picked up my usual assortment of newspapers and sat down in a café to do the Herald Tribune’s crossword puzzle. There was a major story about poor Claude on the front page above the fold, but I’d had enough of that for a while.
Having finished the top and bottom of the puzzle, I got stuck, as was often the case on one of the clues in the middle, and having been interrupted no fewer than four times by fans—two of whom sought medical advice, and only one of whom sympathetically mentioned my injury—I turned on my phone to check my e-mail. The only one of any significance was from my agent:
The role on Blindsided went to Dean Flax, the worst actor of his generation, who will thus be making money for his agent and increasing his visibility. The gig was yours if you wanted it and I couldn’t even get you to show up for the audition. This is it, pal, the end of the line. I wash my hands of the whole business.
—Ted
I composed a quick reply:
Nice hearing from you, Bunny. Attached are some news articles about me. They’re in French but someone in the office should be able to translate. What do you think? I’ve been targeted by the same terrorists who killed this famous arms dealer here (more articles attached, but the L.A. Times should have something too). He was the investor in my movie, which should have you salivating at all the possibilities. I know you had your heart set on me as third or fourth banana on your crappy network show, but trust me when I say this movie is going to do boffo business over here. If you can forgive me I will shortly have contracts for you to negotiate. Why don’t you come on over and have yourself a little vacation?
I didn’t really care whether he kept me on or not; the fact that he was so ready to drop me as a client after a single missed audition was hurtful, and since I’d come to France my career was going great guns without his help. But we’d been friends for a long time, and he’d helped me out in my hungry early days in Hollywood, and in the end I decided to leave it up to him.
I went back to the puzzle. The clue that was vexing me, 27 Across, was nebulous: “Protozoans in low places.” I had an m and a v and an l, but the surrounding Down clues told me nothing, and without 27 Across I would be struggling with the damned thing all afternoon.
I called Fred, and he picked up on the first ring, the panic rising steadily in his voice. “What is it?”
“Relax, it’s just a crossword problem.” I laid it out for him, and I could feel him calming down on the other end as he pondered it.
“Try ‘Trichomonas vaginalis,’ if that’s not too many letters.”
It fit perfectly, and suddenly the intersecting Down clues made sense. “Thanks, pal. Your repertoire of obscure facts is pretty amazing.”
“It’s not that obscure. In fact . . .”
“Listen, I gotta go. How soon before we have a finished script?”
“Soon. I’m cranking through the thing.”
“Good. Keep me posted. We’ve got some momentum despite it all, let’s get it made.”
“Right, chief,” he said, and he hung up.
• • •
Marie-Laure and I settled on sushi in a little place near Les Halles. We sat at the bar and watched the chef at work, and it turned out that Marie-Laure wasn’t quite as adventurous in the sashimi department as she had implied. She bristled at the sight of the sea urchin, which to me is the heart of any sushi meal, and stuck mostly to freshwater eel (smoked) and various rolls. I didn’t tease her about it, sensing that the ends I sought would be more easily met via other means.
“Script’s almost done,” I told her as we neared the end of the meal. It was time to talk some business, as it was the network paying for dinner.
“Wonderful. Have you spoken to Esmée?”
“Not since the police told her about her husband.”
“When are you going to see her?”
“There’s a memorial tomorrow at the Hanoi Hilton, if you want to come along with me.”
She sniffed, an almost imperceptible note of jealousy clinging to the sound. “I would have thought you’d want your porn star on your arm. Anyway, shouldn’t we be thinking of getting you a bodyguard? Who knows when this Krystalvision or Kriskringle or whatever he’s called is going to come after you again.”
“I really hate the idea of being surrounded by goons,” I said, smiling kindly at a half-crippled old lady limping across the dining room for an autograph and possibly a diagnosis. “I like the idea that my fans can get to me.”
“Suit yourself,” she said, and turned her attention to the remainder of her California roll as I began conversing with the pain-wracked senior. The old dear didn’t want medical advice and in fact wanted to discuss my methods of preparation. She was a stage actress herself, with a number of film roles to her credit, and she had admired my work. I was delighted at the chance to talk shop with an old pro, and as we spoke I started thinking about whether or not there was a part for her in the movie. Perhaps an elderly shepherdess who leads our man to safety. Of course I’d have to consult with Fred about altering or adding a character, but I didn’t think that would be too much to ask.
When she waddled back to her own table, Marie-Laure spoke up. “You know who that was?”
“She’s an actress.”
“She used to be. She jumped out of the window of her apartment over a married politician who stopped returning her calls. She’d been out on the balcony for hours before she finally jumped.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah, wow. So of course there were TV cameras, and everybody saw the jump. She hasn’t worked since, she’s completely bonkers.” She leaned over to whisper the tragic end of her story: “She thinks she’s still a star.”
On the way to Marie-Laure’s apartment Annick phoned. “Fred called, he wants to see me. You have any idea what it’s about?”
“I think he just wants to sleep with you.”
“Really? I thought it was maybe something about . . .” She stopped herself, to my immense relief. “About something else.”
“No, I’m quite sure. I got the impression that’s what you wanted as well.”
“I suppose . . . if it doesn’t bother you?”
“Why would it bother me?”
“No reason.” There was a defiant lack of disappointment in her tone. “I suppose I’m going to have to break up with Bruno before long.”
“Do it gently. The boy’s just lost his father.”
“You’re right. Still, life goes on, right?”
“Right.”
I hung up and put my hand between Marie-Laure’s knees, and for just a moment I became self-conscious about Balthazar’s being up front. Then I remembered that Balthazar knew all about it, probably knew a lot worse things about Marie-Laure than her sexual habits.
And of course he knew I’d bought a gun.
• • •
After a quick, not to say perfunctory screwing, I left Marie-Laure in her apartment. Balthazar had had the good sense to wait for me downstairs, and less than an hour after going up he was driving me back to the apartment in the sixth.
“So you have any more trouble with that fuck tried to brain you the other week?”
“Not a bit,” I said, reasoning that my encounter with him in Ginny’s suite didn’t really qualify as “trouble.”
“That’s good,” he said.
• • •
I was tired when I got into the apartment but not terribly so given my lack of sleep over the last twenty-four hours. I was still a little horny, even, and so it was with mixed emotions that I greeted Esmée, stark naked in the salon watching television and absently pleasuring herself with what appeared to be a vibrating egg.
“This would look very bad if anyone were to find out, you know,” I told her.
“I know,” she said. “Doesn’t that make it that much more exciting?”
• • •
So it did. Fucking Esmée that night was one of the most thrilling sexual experiences I’ve ever had, coming as it did with the knowledge that we were risking serious jail time (of course it would have been even more exciting back home in the States, where we both would have been putting ourselves at risk for lethal injection). Never mind that I’d already screwed Marie-Laure earlier in the evening; I felt as though I hadn’t ejaculated in a month, and Esmée writhed on the bed like a creature possessed. If you ever get the chance to fuck someone with whom you’re complicit in a recent murder, I highly recommend it.