It All Began in Monte Carlo (26 page)

“Monsieur Reilly?”

Danielle Soris was wrapped in a black woolen trench coat, wore flat black suede boots, a Russian-style fur hat and sunglasses. The scars on her face were a dark pink.

She had entered from the square on the other side of the boulevard, the one with Paris's oldest church, l'Eglise St. Germain des Pres. Mac wondered if she had been praying.

“Of course I know it's you,” Danielle Soris said, in English. “I recognize you from your TV show. I admire you very much, Monsieur Reilly.”

Mac got to his feet and shook her hand. He said he was glad she could come and held a cane chair to the tiny bistro table for her. He looked at her face then quickly looked away. Surprisingly, she laughed.

“Don't worry, everyone does the same thing. I'm getting used to people not looking at me anymore.”

“Then do you mind if I ask you about the surgery? What exactly happened?”

“What happened, Mr. Reilly, was that my right cheekbone was fractured into tiny pieces. Some of the bone splinters penetrated the orbital area. I don't remember the pain because I have deliberately chosen not to, otherwise I would not be able to get on with my life.” She put a hand to her eye where the delicate tissue was pulled upward so the eye could close.

“I have bone grafts in my cheek,” she said. “They tell me that
one day it will all smooth out and the right side of my face will begin to resemble the left again. Until then, this is how I look.”

She took off her dark glasses and faced Mac. He looked back at what was obviously once a very pretty woman. Despite the grafts, the right side of her face had a caved-in appearance.

Danielle Soris brushed her long brown hair forward, replaced her sunglasses then pulled her fur hat lower over her forehead.

“Like this,” she said with a smile, “I can almost get away with it.”

“You're still a beautiful woman, Madame Soris.”

She shrugged. “That's what my friends tell me. I'm allowing myself to believe it might be true, because you see,
monsieur
. . . Oh please allow me to call you
Mac.
And of course I am Danielle. You see, Mac, it's the only way for me to get through this
event,
as I call it now. I have to put it out of my mind, away from my sleeping thoughts, forbid the bad memories, the dreams, the fear. I cannot allow the fear to have access.”

“I understand.”

A waiter came and she ordered a glass of champagne. “You don't mind, do you?” she asked, raising her glass in a toast. “I feel the need for something festive. After all, in a few days it will be the New Year.”

“Then may I be the first to wish you a Happy New Year.” Mac raised his coffee cup. “You are a remarkable woman.”

She laughed. “No, I'm simply a woman attempting to keep her sanity. And sometimes succeeding. But you see now, don't you, Mac, that I cannot talk about what happened. I cannot revisit that event. I never want to hear about it, think about it, allow my mind to wander into it. I simply cannot.”

“I understand,” Mac said. “But there's something I need to tell
you,
Danielle. About a young woman, like yourself, who was not so lucky when the robbers came calling in their Marilyn Monroe masks. Yvonne Elman had no face left. Someone shot her, took her life the way they almost did yours. Yvonne left a two-year-old son and a husband who is mourning her. I promised I would do my best
to find her killer, and so far all I have to go on is what you can, or cannot tell me.”

Danielle put down her champagne glass. The air was cold and she had kept on her bright red gloves. Now she took them off and lay them on the table, smoothing the soft kid leather. Mac noticed that her fingers had a slight tremor and that she wore no rings.

“Believe me, I understand,” he said gently, putting his hand over hers to stop the trembling. Hers was cold.

“You are so kind,” she said, still not smiling. “To warm me up.”

“It's the least I can do.”

“Human contact is very necessary, very . . . soothing,” she said, sighing. “And you have made me feel very selfish when I suppose I should be feeling grateful.”

“You need never feel grateful for what happened to you.”

“Then I am bewildered. What
should
I feel, Mac? Guilt, for the poor dead Yvonne? You know I do. I just don't know how to deal with it.”

He held her hand tighter across the table. “You are not compelled to do anything. I will understand.”

She nodded, brushing her hair back again. “I can tell you only one thing. It comes into my mind when I'm not thinking about it, when I'm in my kitchen preparing coffee, or a sandwich, it's behind my eyes when I close them to sleep. I'm not even sure if what I think I saw is true, or a figment of my imagination, which is why I have never spoken of it to the police. It's all a haze, a blur . . . But the Marilyn Monroe woman was holding the gun, pointing it at me. It was a very small, very shiny gun. Steel, or perhaps chrome. I remember thinking, the way you stupidly do when you are looking disaster in the face, how very pretty it was.” She smiled sadly at Mac. “You must remember I am in the jewelry business. I notice things like that.”

“I'm glad you told me. Yvonne's family will appreciate your help.”

“One more thing.” Danielle took her hand away. She pulled on
her gloves, then drained the champagne. “I'm remembering it now, I can see it perfectly in my mind's eye. There was a long-stemmed rose engraved on both sides of the barrel of the gun, cut very deep into that shiny steel. It stood out, that's why it's coming back to me. A black rose picked out in gold. It was quite beautiful. Really, quite lovely.”

Her eyes linked with Mac's as she stood to leave. He got up and took her hands in his. “Yes, now I am sure that is what I saw and I'm not simply dreaming. I imagine it must be a connoisseur's piece,” she added quietly. “And that is all I can tell you.”

Mac stared into the face of this once-lovely woman, now scarred for life. “You are very brave, Danielle. And I thank you.”

She nodded, and gave him a little goodbye smile. The right side of her face did not move.

“
Bonne chance,
Mac Reilly,” she said, turning and making her way through the forest of small tables, out onto the street, where she was soon lost in the crowd.

Ron came up behind Mac. “Any luck?”

“Better luck than poor Madame Soris.” Mac sat back at the table and ordered another espresso. His nerve ends jangled with the stress of unanswered questions, unsolved problems, the sight of a woman's ruined life.

He said, “The gun was a Kahr Black Rose. The PM 9 I'd bet. It's exactly the kind of gun a woman would like, small, easy to handle, powerful as hell and with little recoil. That black rose stands out against the steel, shiny as a mirror, so shiny in fact a girl could fix her lipstick in it. The rose is picked out in twenty-four carat gold. Exactly what a fashionable woman would enjoy.”

“A gun like a piece of jewelry,” Ron said.

“Exactly,” Mac replied.

Later, Ron and Mac were having dinner at the bar at La Coupole, not in the main dining room with the tables with the white cloths. They ordered oysters—Belons—Ron's favorite and beers, not champagne.

“Goes much better,” Ron said, tilting back his head and sliding a silvery mollusk from a pearly shell down his throat. “Oh God, the brine is wonderful, I feel I've just eaten the sea.”

“At least it was protein,” Mac said. “You can discount the salt factor, it's natural.”

“More where they came from,” Ron said, ordering up another dozen. “These creatures must multiply worse than rabbits.”

“I wasn't aware that mollusks had a sex life,” Mac said, grinning.

“You should be such a lucky mollusk.” Ron grinned back. “But I can see you no longer have problems on that score. Sunny's got you by the balls again.”

“Jesus, Ron! If you weren't such a friend I'd be tempted to ram that mollusk down your fuckin' throat.”

Ron shrugged, he took a sip of his beer, making a pleased face. “God that's good. Now all I need is a good cheese, some good bread and a glass of deep dark red wine that tastes better than the stuff I'm producing at the moment, and I'm a happy man. Meanwhile, no
need to lose it, Mac. Sunny's your woman and that's all there is to it. It's the only reason I'm here with you, and my wife is there with her, and now, mission completed, I'm on my way home.”

“Home? Why? We have a crime to solve.”

“That's your job, not mine. Never was. I'm no longer a mogul business tycoon, I'm a vintner. I'm not a detective.”

Mac glared at him. “I thought you were in this to the end.”

“I've got a wife to go home to, friend. And you have a woman you were always going to put first. What happened to that little idea?”

“Sunny does come first. She understands about all this, about the senseless murder, about the two-year-old with no mother . . .”

“Understand
this,
Mac. They're
all
like that.”

Mac downed his beer. He nodded. “I understand. And Sunny understands too. We have come to an agreement. She comes first and my job comes first.”

“First of equals, huh?” Ron nodded back, knowing what he meant.

“The Black Rose is an American gun,” Mac said, “made in Worcester, Massachusetts. It had to have been imported.”

“Legally? Or illegally?”

“That's the question, but my bet would be illegally.”

“Mine too. So how do we find out who bought it?”

“We ask illegal questions,” Mac said with a grin.

Mac's phone vibrated. He took it from his pocket, checked it. It was the Inspector.

“Ça va, mon vieux,”
he said, hoping for good news.

“Mac, I have something to report. As you already know there are rumors, more than rumors,
indications
I should say, that the center of illegal diamond selling has moved from Amsterdam and Istanbul, to the Balkan countries, specifically, Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic.”

“I'd heard that.” Mac was looking at Ron who was looking questioningly at him.

“There's news, undocumented, that perhaps Prague is the new center, that all the robberies are organized from there. My informant is a member of a gypsy tribe. No doubt he will be killed if he is discovered to have told.”

“Is he involved directly?”

“He claims not to be.”

“And do you believe him?”

“I do not. But you understand there is nothing I can do. I want the information, he wants freedom. He was picked up dining in a very grand restaurant, very well-dressed, flashing money, big tips, champagne . . .”

“He's hot stuff,” Mac said dryly. “And by the way, was he alone?”

“No. Not alone. And by the way, just so you know, our gypsy is a woman. She had a male guest, someone she'd picked up in a bar, a rent-boy, ready for anything as long as he was paid.”

“Charming couple,” Mac said.

“Looked like a million bucks,” the Inspector said. “Or maybe even more.”

“And you've set her free?”

“To my regret, yes.”

“Any idea where she went?”

“Our gypsy woman took the next flight out to Prague. And by the way, gypsies like her no longer live in caves or caravans. Our gypsy lives in an apartment in New Town, Prague.”

The Inspector gave Mac the address. He noted it down.

“I'll be there tomorrow,” he said.

Then he told the Inspector about the Black Rose gun and what Danielle Soris had to say, and the Inspector said he would get right onto it.

Mac closed the phone and looked at Ron. Ron's eyebrows were in his hair. “So?”

“So. We have a lead. A gypsy woman, lives in Prague, says that's where the robberies emanate from.”

“Emanate,” Ron said, thoughtfully. “A big word for a bunch of killers.”

“I'm going there tomorrow,” Mac said

“And I'm going home,” Ron said. “Sorry,
mon vieux,
” he laughed. “See, I speak French just as good as you do.”

“Just as well as I do,” Mac corrected him.

Ron gave him an annoyed shove so Mac almost choked on his beer. “Oh, have another fuckin' mollusk and shut up,” Ron said. “I have to go home. My dog needs me. My horse needs me. My wife, if she ever decides to leave the love of your life, hopefully still needs me.”

“She always will.” Mac knew.

“I'm a lucky man.” Ron wasn't grinning now. “Thanks to you, Mac Reilly. And listen, I'll fly home tomorrow, first thing. I'll go back, check on my animals and my vines, see the cottage hasn't burned down, talk to my woman. Then I'll meet up with you in Prague the next day. How's that?”

“A true friend,” Mac said, high-fiving him. And then Ron ordered a cheese platter that stank to high heaven and tasted like paradise. The red wine was deep and dark and good. They had a clue; a destination; life was looking up.

Just one thing. Mac had to tell Sunny he wouldn't be back the next morning.

 

 

Sunny stood in front of the bank of French doors leading to the terrace in Allie's Sun King suite. Allie and Pru sat on the edge of the bed, skidding on the slippery silk comforter, stopping their slide by jamming their feet, heels down, toes up, then looking expectantly up at her.

Sunny was on the phone with Eddie Johanssen. Or at least she had called his number and now she was listening to his message. She had not realized before that Eddie had such an accent; his voice was charming, soft-spoken, clear, calm. Like the man himself.

She fiddled nervously with the end of a massive tassel that clasped the golden silk taffeta curtains, wondering what to say. She could not tell him she wanted to see him, though in truth, she owed Eddie that courtesy. But it was better for everybody, for her and Mac and Eddie too, if she did it this way.