It All Began in Monte Carlo (34 page)

 

 

“Prudence, this is Eddie Johanssen.”

Pru caught an astonished breath. She'd thought it would be Sunny, calling at last.

“My friend,” she said with a pleased tone to her voice that she knew he could not mistake. She didn't care, she
was
pleased to hear from him, even if it was ten-forty at night. “Where are you calling from?” she asked, expecting him to say Glasgow or Berlin.

“Room nine-thirty-three.”

“You mean right here?
In this hotel?
”

“That's what I mean.”

“Ooh,” Pru said again.

“Prudence . . .”

No one but Eddie called her Prudence, not since her father died when she was six years old.

“Yes?”

“I was wondering . . . Well, I wonder if you would take a walk with me.”

“Tomorrow? Of course I will.” She was thrilled, already thinking perhaps they would have lunch, she would invite him, she would wear her jeans again.

“Not tomorrow.
Now.
”

“Oh.” Taken by surprise, she stole a glance in the mirror, saw her empty night-creamed face. She couldn't go anywhere without at least her eyebrows on. And what about the nude lipstick that she was convinced had made Eddie kiss her?

“Why?” The question came from the insecurities deep in her soul.

“Because I need you,” Eddie said. The simple words sounded like magic to Pru. “I need to talk to my friend. It's important. Serious.”

Pru was already out of bed. “I'll meet you downstairs in five,” she said, flinging off her pink cotton pajamas as she ran to the closet. There was no time for niceties and she pulled back on the panties she had just taken off, the same bra, a sweater, the jeans that even as she hurried she noticed were easier to fasten. Not perfect yet, but maybe soon . . . She ran into the bathroom, blotted her face with a tissue, penciled her eyebrows, flicked the nude Saint Laurent across her lips, ran a brush through her tousled blond hair, pushed her feet into ballerina flats, took a look at Tesoro still fast asleep on the bed, thought about taking her and decided against it, grabbed her key and made a run for the door.

The elevator was slow, stopping at every floor. Nervous, she paced back and forth, hurrying in when it finally pinged to a stop. She was down in four minutes but Eddie was there before her, a tense look on his handsome face.

He strode toward her, put his arms around her, held her close. “Prudence! Thank God,” he murmured in her ear.

She smiled, thanking God too. This was too good to be true. She recalled all the dire warnings she had ever heard about “Too good to be true.” It never was. Still, hope flared as Eddie held her away from him, looking at her. Could that be desperation she saw in his eyes? Alarm bells rang in her head as he took her hand and they walked together from the hotel.

The night was quiet, calm, so different from the night of the robbery with the wail of police sirens and the emergency fire trucks.
They walked, hand in hand, in silence, past all the yachts, some lit and festive, others silent and dark; past the still-open cafés where smiling people sat over drinks; down the fashionable boulevard and past the jeweler's, La Fontaine, where the woman had been murdered.

Pru could bear the silence no longer. She stopped, and still holding on to his hand, said, “What is it, Eddie? Something is very wrong, I can feel it. I'm your friend, you can tell me.”

Eddie shook his head. He had been wrong to call her. How could he tell a woman like her about this sick scenario? He would have to show her the photos, see her shocked face, be disgraced in front of her. He sighed deeply; it was that or looking at disgrace for his children, his family.

“This is about Kitty Ratte,” he said, facing up to it.

Pru nodded, but her heart sank. He was going to tell her he wanted to be with Kitty, not her. She could feel it coming.

“Kitty is a bad woman,” Eddie said, still searching for how to begin.

“Evil.
And
corrupt,” Pru corrected him. “Maha said so.”

She caught his startled glance under the light of a streetlamp. The air was soft with just enough of a cool wind to stir their hair. Unthinking, she put up a hand and stroked Eddie's back from his eyes. To her astonishment he clutched her hand, held it to his cheek. He shook his head, eyes scrunched in a kind of agony she had not expected.

“But what is it, Eddie,” she cried, frightened now. “What is it about Kitty Ratte?”

“She's trying to blackmail me,” he said. “Oh she claims it's someone else and that they are trying to blackmail her, but why would anyone bother to try to blackmail a woman like that? A swingers'-club woman, a small-time cheap escort . . .”

“A whore,” Pru said.

Again he nodded in agreement. “A whore.”

Tucking her hand through his arm, he walked with her along the boulevard. The lights of a café overlooking the water beckoned, reflecting in the black sea. A waning moon shone down on them.

“Let's have some coffee.” Pru guided him to a table under the awning. She ordered for them, waiting for him to speak. When the coffee came, steaming, dark, aromatic, she poured hot milk into hers while he drank his fast, and black. She signaled the waiter for another. And then Eddie began his story.

He told her exactly what he remembered; exactly what he did not remember; exactly what he believed had happened. Then he took the envelope from his pocket and laid it on the table between them.

Music filtered softly into the night air, laughter came from other tables, halyards clanged on the moored yachts, and the moon shone down just the way it had on the murder the other night, as Eddie opened the envelope, took out the ransom note and handed it to Pru, then laid the photos next to her on the table.

“I have to show you these because it's the only way you'll know what I mean, and how bad this really is. I understand if you choose not to look at them. I understand if you choose never to see me again. But I'm asking you, as a friend, to help me decide what to do.”

Pru stared down at the photograph on top of the small pile. She was looking at a half-naked Kitty Ratte, a vibrator held to her hairless crotch while she straddled a completely naked and—Pru noticed—unexcited Eddie. Eddie's eyes were closed and there was a look of triumph rather than ecstasy on the Ratte's face.

Pru stared for a long time. Then without looking at the rest, she handed the batch of photos back to Eddie. His eyes met hers.

“Cunt,” Pru said. The C-word just came out. She figured it was appropriate.

To her surprise, Eddie laughed.

“At least now you can laugh,” she said, smiling at her own daring.

“It's just that I never expected to hear that word from you, Prudence.”

She raised a freshly penciled eyebrow. “Am I wrong?”

He laughed again. “You are so right. But now what am I going to do? Look at me. In those photos I'm guilty as hell. And will the tabloid readers give a damn whether I was drugged? Whether I'm innocent? Of course not, they'll call me a fool, an idiot, a pervert. A guilty man. My children will be scarred by my actions forever. My wife, a good woman even though we are divorcing, disgraced. And I? Well, nothing good will happen to me, I can assure you of that. I lived all my life for my business. Now it will be gone.”

They looked at each other across the little faux marble table. The cane chair creaked as he leaned into her, and their eyes linked.

“There's nothing else for it,” he said. “I have to pay her.”

Pru was silent. She knew blackmailers never gave up; once you paid they came back for more, and then more . . . She thought about her friend Allie, and about Allie's husband, Ron, who knew about things like this, a world where evil things happened. She thought about Sunny, lost somewhere in Mumbai and panic rose like bile in her throat. She thought about Mac, the man who truly understood people like Kitty Ratte and the corruption and evil they wore around them like an aura. And about Maha who had seen it all, right from the beginning.

“There's only one thing to do,” she said, taking Eddie's hand in hers. “We must call Mac Reilly. Only he can help us.”

Snow swirled over the steel-gray River Vltalva, minuscule flurries at first, of iced water that almost imperceptibly turned into flakes of crystal, competing with the silver Christmas decorations and tiny white lights strung across the Charles Bridge.

It was, Mac thought, stopping to admire the view, a thing of great beauty. A Californian, he rarely got to see snow unless on a special trip to the local mountains, to Big Bear, or farther into Tahoe or Sun Valley. Aspen was not a favorite, too smarty-boots for its own good; nature got lost in it. And if you wanted nature you were not going to find it here either, in the urban sprawl of old and new that was the lovely terra-cotta-roofed city of Prague. A city of spired medieval churches and gilded rococo theaters and pastel houses; of narrow cobbled streets that wound upward and skidded down again toward the river; of outdoor cafés protected now from the cold by heavy plastic shrouds, lit by glowing heaters that sizzled the head and left the toes weak with damp; of grand old-fashioned restaurants with waiters in tailcoats and snug local places steaming from the kitchen heat, red velvet walls closing round you and lamps like golden cherubs. And the food? Sublime, the simpler the better. The people? Friendly, handsome; classy-looking women in furs and tall boots; dark-haired, beak-nosed men in heavy green loden coats
with small collars and a swaying pleat at the back, Dracula-like as they hurried purposefully, heads down, along the boulevards to secret assignations.

Why, Mac wondered, did he think everyone was on their way to a secret assignation? The reason could only be envy because he was missing Sunny so badly he'd almost gotten on a plane that morning and given up on this whole La Fontaine robbery case. Only the memory of Yvonne Elman's shattered face encrusted in shards of diamonds had kept him here. He could not,
would not
let this dead woman down. He owed it to her husband and to her two-year-old son. He did not want that child to be left with the memory of his mother killed senselessly, for no reason. Not that there was ever a true reason to kill anybody. But this kid was not going to remember his mother as a victim. He deserved the truth.

Justice was very much on Mac's mind as he crossed the bridge, beneath the towers, hurrying past the
alleé
of saintly statues that lined the balustrades, dodging the traffic as he crossed the road and turned into one of those charming cobbled streets in Old Town. Music came from the great wooden doors of a church. Its façade was crusted with the faces of angels, chiseled into the stone, and gargoyles floated over the roof. The snow led a pristine path to great wooden doors. Someone was playing the organ.

Intrigued, Mac climbed the shallow steps, leaving his own trail of dark footprints in the already-melting whiteness. He pushed open the door, stepped inside and was instantly enveloped in the smells of incense and musk; of heavily used worn hassocks, of vestments and candles and the roar of a great organ overall, thundering Bach's
Passion
into the soaring twilight, to the rafters forty feet above.

The sound of the powerful organ vibrated through Mac's body making him part of the music, part of Bach's vision, part of the organist's magical rendering. Up front, to the left of the altar, a row
of young choirboys waited, white cassocks over their everyday sweaters, frilled collars with black velvet bows at the neck, gleaming hair neatly combed, hands clutching the open score, waiting their turn to sing.

When it came, their voices soared over the organ, delicate, penetrating, beautiful. A moment of peace, and yet of passion, in a strange city. A moment away from the ugliness of Mac's mission.

He left quietly, unseen, unheard. Back on the narrow street the snow was settling into tiny drifts, pristine, unshoveled, untouched yet by the blackness of trucks and cars. Just the way it must have looked a century, two centuries, ago. Prague was a city with a history, not all of it good, but it had survived wars, its people had survived, its buildings, its beauty, its great bridge. But Mac was not here for that.

He consulted the map given to him by the concierge at the hotel, checked the name of the street. It was a pretty street, charming in fact, its leafless trees rimmed with white, lights shining from the tall eighteenth-century buildings, red flowers shimmering behind glass in the florist's window; a pretty boutique, all space-age modern, steel and glass; pretty girls inside in short skirts and black tights, wondering no doubt if there would be any customers, and whether they might leave early so they could get home before the storm really hit.

The building he was looking for was plain, of a later vintage than the rest of the street, set slightly back. Three steps led to a black lacquered door next to which was a brass-encased list of names, each with a buzzer. Mac took the business card from his pocket and checked the name. The Barnes Model Agency was on the third floor. Mac pressed and was buzzed in immediately.

He pushed open the door and was confronted by another, glass-fronted one. Beyond that was a small foyer with one of those tiny ancient cage elevators he particularly disliked. He recalled getting stuck in one like it. Was it in Paris? Rome? The kind of elevator where
a notice said
ONE PASSENGER AND ONE PIECE OF LUGGAGE ONLY
, or
TWO PASSENGERS OF LESS THAN 250 KILOS.

Bypassing the cage, Mac strode briskly up the steps. This was a town house and the only windows were on the front of the building. There were merely yellow too-bright lights on each landing and the worn steps were gray marble. This was not one of your memorable Prague buildings. He wished Ron were with him, but broken legs seemed to be catching and now both he and Allie were on crutches.