CHAPTER 14

 

14a.

Claudette waved to the girls from the small red Peugeot.

“Bonjour Claudette, you remember Gina?”

“I couldn’t forget her, especially after that long weekend in New York. Tres, tres, rigolade,” Claudette said kissing the girls on both cheeks. “Traffic is starting to build, even if we are going into Paris so vite, vite.”

Like her previous ride into Paris with Claudette so many, many months ago, Sharon took the rear seat and gave up the front to Gina who was a lot more comfortable than Kevin Bryan was after he folded his six-foot-six inch frame into the tiny car last time they were in France. Within forty minutes, they arrived at Alain Dumont’s house in the 7^th arrondissement. Unlike the last two times she had stayed at this apartment, while suffering from jet lag; she and Gina were awake and ready to explore.

“A simple request, a glass of Chablis at Les Deux Magots,” Gina said.

“Done, it’s a short walk, I’ll tell you about tomorrow then,” Claudette said as they strolled through one of the more delightful neighborhoods on the Left Bank. Small shops and stores lined the narrow streets, a restaurant or café sat on each corner and tourists filled the streets to overflowing. If Venice has her canals, Paris has her streets. Great trees lined Saint-Germain-des-Près and the small plaza, across from the restaurant made famous by Hemingway and the lost generation, was full of the usual students and tourists.

They were lucky; four Chinese tourists were just getting up to leave as they reached the tables and chairs that spilled chaotically across the broad sidewalk in front of the restaurant. The ubiquitous Parisian plastic cane chairs were squeezed and twisted amongst a tangled mess of bags and backpacks. For some, this was the fulfillment of a lifetime dream, just to sit at this restaurant, none gave quarter. Others were busy checking it off their bucket list. Sharon ordered a glass of burgundy, Gina, her Chablis.

Claudette sipped her coffee and said, “I have to work tonight, a client expects his software the day after tomorrow and grand-père would not approve of me getting it to the client late; even due to his own memorial service. Sharon, I miss him so much.”

“So do I,” Sharon said.

“Tomorrow is simple. The government has taken control of the whole ceremony. You two, Evelyn and I will be with a small group of his friends who will essentially be observing. After a brief introduction and a few short speeches, the president will say a few words…”

“The president of France,” Gina interrupted.

“Yes,” Claudette continued. “He never misses a chance to be photographed and this is a very uncontroversial opportunity. Unlike a state funeral or something similar, this will go quickly. It’s more fuss than grand-père would have permitted but he didn’t have much to say about it, other than his request to be buried near Jim Morrison at Père Lachaise Cemetery. He said Morrison was not just a wreck but an insanely creative wreck. He told me that he went to three of the Doors concerts in Los Angeles in the late 1960s, grand-père was in his fifties then and Morrison was maybe twenty-five.”

“Evelyn, is she here?” Sharon asked.

“No. She has meetings with her family in Florence; she will fly in and out tomorrow. Then she heads back to the states next week, they are sorting out their spring line for next year, we are updating their software. She’s added three new stores, Beijing, Rio, and Sydney. Their leather goods are in demand everywhere and she tells me they are raising the prices.”

“My car’s not worth as much as one of her handbags,” Gina said.

“I’ve been in your car, you’d be lucky if it was stolen for the gas in the tank,” Sharon said with a smile.

“That may be true but it’s paid for and the thought of a loan for a purse is counter-intuitive. So we have the evening to ourselves?” Gina inquired.

“Yes, a car will pick you up at the apartment at 11:00, the service is at noon, then I’m buying the four of us lunch at Le Bristol. After that, you are on your own and I’m back to work. And regrettably, I have to send a car to take you to the airport, it seems work is like Paris, when it rains its pours.” As if cued, the thick afternoon clouds burst into a heavy late summer Parisian deluge.

The evening was not as late as the girls hoped for. The events and chaos of Venice caught up to them and even though Gina begged to stay up to walk the streets till dawn, by midnight they were exhausted, both mentally and physically. When Sharon walked into the kitchen the next morning, she found Gina ready with a tray of Parisian pastries and cups of rich thick coffee.

“You’re up early,” Sharon said taking a bite.

“Slept some but told myself I’ll sleep on the plane when we go home. So I walked around this morning and watched the street cleaners and the bakeries open. Those just came out of the oven. This city is so fresh and clean, I’ve always wondered what it would have been like a hundred years ago.”

“Absolutely awful,” Sharon said. “There were a million horses in this town, they washed everything into the Seine and poverty was rife. Sometimes the good old days weren’t so good.”

“Spoilsport. You take out all the romance; speaking of which, what did you and JF do after I left. Me, I went straight to bed.”

Sharon looked at her friend and raised an eyebrow.

Gina blushed, “Well I did. And he was the perfect gentleman. Don’t know about those Russians but they do have a fire burning deep in their souls. He told me he would call before he comes to California which may be late this fall; we made kind of a date. Did you sleep well?”

Now it was Sharon’s turn, she coyly bit into another croissant and sipped her coffee.

“Sharon O’Mara, you didn’t,” Gina exclaimed. “You didn’t bed that Frenchman, did you?” There was a pause; Gina did not relent. “And you call me a wench.”

“If you tell a soul, I’ll kill you and they will never find your body.”

“Was he good? Was he like Frenchmen are supposed to be, he had big shoes you know, tell me everything.”

“No. And I mean it, you will never be found.”

“Please, just a taste, this is like a solar eclipse, for you having sex is so rare.”

“How would you know that?”

“I’m a bartender and a psychic, it comes with the liquor license. I can instantly tell when someone has had sex. And you, my comely lass, have not imbibed for many, many years, this I know.”

Sharon’s smile grew into nasty grin.

“I knew it, I knew it. Sharon O’Mara has a boyfriend.”

“I’ll give you some of that but he is a friend and, sadly, a client. We both needed each other. It was a long day; getting shot at and then shooting back does get the blood flowing.”

“It certainly did in Fidor’s case,” Gina said.

“It isn’t always about you, Gina Cavelli,” Sharon said, the grin still evident.

“Well I can and will keep a secret, rule six or seven of the bartender’s code. Are you happy?”

“Now that’s a question that I’ve asked myself a lot recently, not sure. But right now, life is better than it’s been in a long time. A few more clients and a dollar or two more in the bank and we’ll see. Basil always needs his bones and mom always needs her friends.”

With that, she kissed Gina on the cheek, squeezed her hand and headed off for a shower.

The speeches, even for the French, were over the top. Alain would have been embarrassed. Not one politician, of the hundred or so who stood in the rain in the cemetery, had been born when Alain Dumont, in the late summer of 1945, drove the repainted Nazi SS truck with its half ton of gold and collection of Impressionist paintings into the garage of the apartment where Sharon and Gina were staying. That grubstake, a fake French identification and passport, and a burning desire to succeed began a life that changed the kid from Pennsylvania named Robert Dupont into Alain Dumont, billionaire, financier, high tech investor and now, food for worms. As he had said, “No one gets out alive.” Evelyn Lucca, Alain’s goddaughter, stood close to Sharon under her umbrella; she had recommended Sharon to help Dumont return four of those paintings that arrived with Dumont in Paris soon after the war. Two Pissarro’s, a Monet, and a Toulouse-Lautrec were eventually returned to the grandchildren of the original Jewish owners and Sharon, while doing so, also foiled an attempt by an old Nazi to resurrect the Third Reich and retake the world.

Lunch, as one must expect in Paris, was wonderful; Sharon was amazed, they could take a simple chicken and turn it into a miracle. The herbs, the sauce and the small stack of sliced potatoes just melted in her mouth. Claudette ordered a Sancerre from the private cellar that Le Bristol kept. It was a bottle from Alain Dumont’s own vineyard along the Loire.

“This is the last bottle Alain made, it’s only fitting for today,” Claudette said. “They have asked for more but it is the last, the owners were very disappointed. I still have a number of cases of his reds but this, my dears, is the last of his Sancerre. All the vintages will have been made by others; this was the last to be bottled with his own hands.” She paused a moment to gather her thoughts, “To my grandfather, Alain Dumont, the last soldier left standing. May he now rest in peace.”

The girls all stood and raised their glasses, even the noisy restaurant quieted. The four women, all smartly dressed even after standing in the rain, commanded the attention of the patrons and the staff.

“S’il vous plaît partagez notre toast à mon grand-père, au revoir Alain Dumont, bon voyage,” Claudette said.

Bon voyage and a votre santé, echoed through the room, for a moment each patron thought of their own mortal frailty and then quickly ordered another drink. Their lives were not going to end today.

“Salute,” Evelyn said as she sat.

“What happened in Venice?” Claudette asked innocently.

“You have to go back to work,” Sharon answered.

“I can take some time out, what happened?”

An hour later and two bottles of Sancerre from the vineyard next to Alain’s, Evelyn and Claudette sat stunned. Claudette patted Gina’s hand, “Are you okay?”

“If it weren’t for the almost dying from a stray bullet part, racing down the Grand Canal at forty miles an hour is was spettacolare. Sharon kept us safe; she’s very cool under fire, you know.”

“Don’t we know it,” Evelyn and Claudette said in unison.

“So the memory stick is gone,” Sharon said. “But I don’t think Karg has it, that’s why she was so upset and she sent the Iranians after us. She was so sure I had it. Claudette, you were the engineering part of the code, Mike says that the genius was being able to blend the parts into a dynamic whole. Yet each part, on its own, is almost worthless. Is that true?”

Claudette thought for a moment. “When Catherine asked me to assemble my particular piece of the code, she told me it dealt with turning switches on and off. I didn’t know what kind of switches but they were either on or off, I assumed it was for her boat. She said the other pieces would tell my code when and for how long. To make the boat work the way she wanted it to, you would include wind speed, anticipating changes in the wind, temperature, the tightness of the sails and everything from the height of the waves to the weight of the boat and the number of passengers. It’s complicated but, then again, it’s easier than flying an airplane by computer. The wrong result won’t kill you.”

“It killed Catherine,” Sharon said.

“I thought it was an accident.”

“No, someone has stolen the boat and wants the computer code to make it sail, there are at least two dead, we were almost killed and I still don’t know why. It’s just a boat, a Goddamn toy.”

 

 

14b

Sharon had to admit she was exhausted. Someday, she told herself, she would take a vacation that was relaxing. These four and five day trips to Europe to get shot at were, almost literally, killing her. She looked at Gina in the first-class seat next to her and true to her word, she was asleep. She swirled the ice in the tumbler and thought about the last few days. A lot had changed, she knew the how and the when and the who; but what was really bugging her was the why; the most elusive part of an investigation was always the why, the motive.

“Wake up,” Gina said, shaking Sharon’s arm. “Five minutes and we’re home.”

Sharon shook her head clear, merciful sleep hit somewhere over Canada. The steward handed her a glass of ice water and a warm towel. It’s always the little things that make travel better and first-class is always better.

Timing and schedules had been confirmed. Sharon had texted Kevin Bryan that they were on their way, he would confirm arrival times. He left a text to call him; he would be waiting at the cell phone lot. They grabbed their bags and after the obligatory feeling of being treated like a Pakistani immigrant going through customs, they walked through the sliding doors of the International Terminal into the cool fog rolling over the San Bruno Mountains and blowing through the San Francisco airport. A very tall good-looking guy leaned against a beige non-descript sedan.

“So you couldn’t get the limousine,” Sharon said to Kevin. “Are you on duty?”

“Double duty,” Kevin said as he loaded their bags in the trunk. “The captain had me drop some things off at SFPD on the way, so from delivery boy to chauffer. Your ride, ladies.”

Gina kissed Kevin on the cheek and climbed into the back, Sharon took shotgun.

“How’s my boy?”

“Basil’s just fine,” Kevin said. “Somehow that dog knows when you’re on your way home. For the last three days, all he did was lay about; this morning he was up and anxious, maybe what they say about dogs and being psychic is true.”

“Wouldn’t doubt it, someone has to take care of us humans and dogs have been doing just that for a long time,” Sharon answered as she wistfully looked across the bay.

“I hadn’t heard from you, so I assume the trip was uneventful.”

There was a long pause, neither girl said anything.

“I also assume, from that loud silence, that I’m wrong. You know I’m a trained investigator, I can spot these things.”

“Do you really want to know what happened?”

“Fire away; you’re both alive so it couldn’t have been too serious.”

The late afternoon commute traffic was jammed at all the usual places. First, the backup over the Bay Bridge added thirty minutes, then the line at the Caldecott Tunnel added thirty more as it snaked up the hill from Oakland. Gina and Sharon needed the whole hour to tell Kevin everything, or at least almost everything. Girls have to have their secrets.

“Good God, a speedboat race through Venice, how cliché, I would have loved to have been there except for the getting all dressed up part.”

“How did your trials go or are they still on?” Sharon asked.

“During one, the man pleaded out after the jury was selected, they scared the hell out of him, so at least he won’t bother kids for a long time. The other is still ongoing. Maybe a week tops, that family is a piece of work. It was worth staying just for that. The jury is hearing the prosecution’s case today, I testified yesterday so I should be done but I need to stay close.”

“Gina,” Kevin asked as they neared Lafayette. “Where?’

“I guess the bar; it’s still early but I want to make sure it’s still standing and that my staff hasn’t stolen everything and run off to Mexico. I can get a ride home from Bobby.”

“It was still there last night when Santinni and I stopped by for a nightcap, that new manager is cute.”

“You stay away from her, Kevin Bryan; she has enough troubles without you adding to them.”

“Me? What did I do? Besides, Santinni is the one who’s really interested.”

“Damn, that’s even worse. Since his divorce, that man’s become insufferable.”

“Since?” Sharon added.

“He’s okay, a little full of himself to be sure, but he’s a good cop,” Kevin said. “I’d take him as backup any day.”

“You two stay away from Bobby, it took me a long time to find a manager I could trust; she’s got the experience and the smarts. If either of you mess that up, I will ban you from every bar in the county and you know I have that power.”

Kevin looked in the rear view mirror and smiled, “Yes, ma’am.”

Standing in front of Geno’s, Gina gave Sharon a hug and a kiss on both cheeks, “I’m beginning to like this European kissing thing and it’s so civilized. Goodnight Kevin, and Sharon, my dear, you really know how to show a girl a good time.”

Basil almost exploded into the back seat when they stopped at Kevin’s house; he was all over his mistress, sniffing the seats, the back of her head, everywhere. His tail tried to rearrange the knobs on the dashboard.

“Calm down now,” Sharon ordered.

It was like trying to tie down a four-year-old on a sugar high.

Basil led the way to the door of her bungalow; Sharon threw her bag inside and turned back toward her best friend.

“No mail piled on the floor, Post Office on strike?”

“I collected it. Damn, I forgot, it’s at home in a bag. Want me to bring it back over?”

“No, not tonight, couldn’t be anything that can’t wait. Anyway, thanks for the ride.”

“No problemo. You okay? You seem a little distant.”

“Jet lag and I’m tired. It was a long string of days, reminded me of our three-day Paris adventure.”

“Now, that was a trip! But then again, from what I heard, you and Gina may have one-upped it.”

“Not my intent.”

“Anything else?”

“I don’t know yet, too many things in the air. I’m just exhausted. Gina wants me to stop by tomorrow evening. She had a great time, not what she expected but it was good for her.”

“And for you?”

“Not sure so good night, Kevin Bryan.” She kissed him on the cheek. “See you tomorrow.” She ran the tips of her fingers softly across his face, turned around and went back into her cottage.

 

 

14c

The next morning, Sharon did something she rarely ever did, she slept in. She took Basil out for a quick backyard visit, then crawled back into bed and promptly fell back to sleep. After twelve hours, even she had to admit it was far too decadent to stay in bed any longer. There was nothing on her calendar; she had no appointments, nothing. She could not remember the last time she had a day with no commitments. She made coffee and found some frozen bread; it made her dream of croissants and Italian pastries. Peanut butter covered the marginally acceptable slices of toast. She was starved. Basil almost swallowed his bowl with his kibble, “Doesn’t that man feed you when you’re there?” she asked.

Basil stared up at her, then at the bowl, then back up to her, she dumped in another cup of food; it disappeared faster than she could pour. “It’s good to be home.”

A long shower, allowing her to finally wash her hair with clean California water, made a huge difference in her attitude. She brushed out her red hair, rubbed body lotion all over her skin and did some of the other usual feminine things that women do. The few days she spent in the Italian sun had warmed her tan; the Parisian rain did little to change it. Jeans and a striped top finished the upstairs, orange sneakers set the foundation.

She spent the next few hours running errands, restocking the larder, picking up dog food and bones and, on a whim, buying three huge bundles of roses. She used them to fill a large blue vase that sat on the small table in the center of the living room. The room just exploded with color. She loved art; small amateur paintings that she had bought over the years filled the walls. Many were reproductions, especially the copies of the ones she returned for Alain, she didn’t mind, they were all good memories.

She spent some time making a fresh marinara sauce with Roma tomatoes and all the usual fixings, the house was perfumed with garlic and Italy. No one called to wreck her afternoon reverie. At six, she loaded Basil into the Jaguar and headed to Lafayette and Geno’s. It was turning out to be one of those rare perfect days.

An empty parking space sat directly in front of Geno’s; Sharon could only remember one or two times when she didn’t have to walk a block or two, perfect. Basil bolted from the car and disappeared through the open door of the bar. She followed his lead.

The contrast, from the bright light of the early evening, made the interior look absolutely black. She heard Gina telling Basil to get down and laughter and jokes that started with “a dog walked into a bar.” Only one man would be saying that and she wanted to know why he was here on her perfect day.

“Santinni, what the hell are you doing here?” Sharon asked one of the men sitting at the bar. “Everything was going so well today. Now you show up.”

“I was here first, O’Mara, and besides, I was invited by this fellow Mick of yours,” Tony Santinni said. “He invited me for a drink and thank you for that, Kevin. Gina has been regaling us with your adventures in Venice. Damn, if you did half of what she said, I would still be impressed. Sixty miles per hour down the Grand Canal.”

“It was only forty,” Sharon said correcting him. “I tried to go faster and I had the throttle wide open, the bullets flying by made it seem faster.”

A crystal tumbler slid across the bar, stopping exactly in front of Sharon, she smiled at Gina, “Thanks.”

Gina smiled back, “No, thank you, you wench.”

Sharon cocked her head and started to ask a question.

“No and never,” Gina said as she turned back to the bar and started to pull glasses from the dishwasher. Basil suddenly appeared on Gina’s side of the bar, his huge paws directly across from Kevin like he was ready to take his order. Kevin scratched his head; the dog looked at Sharon and harrumphed, then disappeared.

“Civvies, Tony? Don’t think I’ve ever seen you in civvies,” Sharon said. “You are always in uniform.”

“Got a date and Kevin is helping me to get the courage up,” Santinni answered.

“A date, who the hell would date you? You’re not raiding the senior center again, are you?”

“Very funny, O’Mara. No, in fact, she works in San Francisco and lives out here. Her husband disappeared a year ago with two million in funds from a small brokerage here in town. That’s how I met her. Her divorce was just last month. So she’s single, lives in a nice house and has no kids.”

“You hit the lottery,” Sharon said.

“You two cut it out, if you took the time you might actually get to like each other,” Kevin said.

“Next time it snows,” Sharon said, still pissed that her perfect day had been wrecked.

She pulled a stool over to Kevin.

“Sorry about Alain,” Kevin said. “He was a great guy, not many of us get to leave a legacy like his.”

“Thanks,” Sharon said. “I’ll miss him. By the way, Claudette and Evelyn say hi, we had lunch with them after the service, they are both doing great. Claudette says that you just have to come to Paris, this time, alone.”

“Yes, you do a have way of cramping peoples’ style. Anything more on the missing boat?”

“More than the boat is missing; seems that the software that drives the onboard computers is also missing; it was on a memory stick. They murdered the man they thought had it; I saw the stick around his neck the day he was killed. Now they think I have it. But I don’t, I haven’t got a clue,” Sharon said. She finally had the chance to really look at Kevin; he seemed tired; he turned the glass around in his hand nervously.

“Someone is trying to kill you?” Santinni said.

“Seems to be the case, that’s what the boat chase was all about,” she answered, still looking at Kevin. “They wanted what they thought I had. Claudette says the whole combined software program is somewhere on a computer or a laptop. She doesn’t have it. Catherine Voss was the only one who knew where it was. Even her brother doesn’t know. So the memory stick is the only copy of the complete program and it’s missing.”

Gina continued rearranging the glasses behind the bar while she listened. She also moved the old Louisville Slugger to make room for a bunch of mint leaves for the Mojito’s she was famous for. The steam still rose from the open dishwasher and the mirror behind the bar started to fog over. It was getting dark out and the street light that hung over Sharon’s car cast a soft light over the window glass painted with ‘Geno’s’ on it. A man’s shadow passed by the window quickly.

A second later, the bar door burst open almost breaking away from its hinges; a man, swarthy complexion, bearded, short military haircut stood at the door, the automatic pistol in his hand suggested that he was not here for one of Gina’s Mojitos. Five seconds later, another man came through the back of the bar, past the restrooms and stood still, braced with an AK-47. He was a shorter facsimile of the first man.

The first man waved his pistol at O’Mara. “Everyone stay seated, do not move. I am only here to make sure that woman does not leave. No one else move.” The accent was Middle Eastern; Sharon heard a hint of Farsi in the vowels, Iranians.

Sharon looked at Kevin and Santinni.

“They friends of yours?” the first thug asked.

“No, never seen them before, just sitting here when I came in.”

“Her,” the misogynist tone was unmistakable.

“She owns the joint; I came in for a drink. Why are you’re following me? I saw you at least three times today, driving by my house twice. I have you on at least three different cameras. God damn, you guys are just incompetent.” It was all a lie but they didn’t know it.

The hinge on the door squeaked like a strangling rat.

“It’s the best I could do on such short notice, O’Mara. Good help is so hard to find.” The unmistakable Boer-accented voice of Eva Karg filled the bar. “Yes, competence is always an issue. I see that Jean-François chose wisely when he hired you. Ever since that night at the Compton, you have been a pain in my ass. So now, please hand over the memory stick and I will be leaving. My friends may stay for a drink but I have a plane to catch.”

Karg took three paces toward the bar and then pulled a Gloch, she pointed it at Sharon.

“If you don’t have the memory stick, what will your Iranian partners say then?” Sharon asked.

Karg tilted her head. “That is not your concern; all I care about is the stick. We were able to find Miss Voss’s laptop, the one she used to combine the lines of code. But one of our clumsy technicians tripped a security trap and the whole drive wiped itself clean. That stick is all there is now so, Miss O’Mara, the stick.”

“I realize that you are either dumb-as-a-brick or deaf, I haven’t made up my mind. But please listen carefully, I DO NOT HAVE IT!. Mike Stroud didn’t give it to me.”

“You are a liar, he had it when he talked to you earlier that day, I saw you talking to him.”

“Still no prize, nada.”

Karg slowly move the Gloch from Sharon to Gina, its laser sight left a red pimple on Gina’s forehead. “Now, the stick, where is it?” she screamed.

Sharon watched the red dot dance on Gina’s face. “At my house,” Sharon said, trying to buy a minute. “You were right, he gave it to me, it’s at the house. You think I’d carry it around with me?”

“That’s better, you and I are leaving. These boys will help me finish our conversion. I really don’t want it to be repeated so they will try to entertain the patrons.”

Sharon knew what that meant, before the boys could draw their weapons, they would be cut to pieces. The only alternative was a distraction or even something worse.

“Basil, STAND!” Sharon yelled.

“What?” Karg said, looking around.

“Basil, ATTACK!”

The huge Sheppard-Rottweiler appeared as if thrown from the gates of hell. The first Iranian thug barely had time to turn before the dog had him by the arm; Karg heard the sound of breaking bone almost as soon as she heard the man scream. The second man, stunned by the dog’s surge forward, swung his weapon toward the bar. Both Bryan and Santinni had drawn their service weapons as soon as Sharon said attack; they fired at the same time. The man flew against the booth behind him, two slugs in his chest; his weapon stitched a line of bullets across the ceiling.

Karg screamed something in Afrikaans and swung her pistol toward the defenseless Sharon. She heard Gina scream “DUCK,” she dropped like a stone to one knee, the Louisville Slugger just missed her head by two inches as it flew like a Sidewinder missile into the face of Eva Karg, splitting her nose and leaving a permanent groove across her forehead. She dropped, like the brick she was, to the bar floor, out cold.

“Basil, OFF, HEEL.” The dog released the man’s arm and went to his mistress, the man’s pained whimpering forced Santinni to crack, “They just don’t make terrorists as tough as they used to.”