Jim McGill 02 The Hangman's Companion Read online

  “Margaret, I start feeling faint, I’ll get a protein shake. I would appreciate Mr. Shady’s help with background checks and the like, seeing as he’s so well connected.”

  Sweetie looked at Putnam, who nodded.

  “We’ll keep all this from your mother, all right?” Sweetie asked.

  Deke said, “No problem there. Anything else, Margaret?”

  “Just this. If there are other nice hardworking families in the other houses Bao’s thugs bought…”

  “Yeah?” Deke said.

  “See if all their kids go to Catholic schools.”

  Hôpital Saint-Antoine, Paris

  30

  Arno Durand had suffered a concussion, two broken wrists, two dislocated shoulders, and two fractured knees. His doctors considered it a miracle he was alive and had incurred no spinal damage. But with all four limbs encased in plaster casts and his head bandaged, he looked like what he was: a man who would be a long time healing.

  After he regained consciousness in his private hospital room, he had not only Gabbi for company, but also McGill, Pruet, and Odo. Durand chose to look at the Americans and avoid the eyes of his countrymen.

  Gabbi asked, “You fought the law of gravity, and the law won?”

  Everyone saw that Durand wanted to shrug, but that was beyond him.

  He said, “Gravity was by far the lesser of my opponents. I tried to land like a cat. I extended my hands and arched my back, but I couldn’t manage to point my toes.”

  “You survived,” Gabbi said.

  “Yes, thanks to you, I am told. Merci.”

  McGill said, “Just to be clear, it was The Undertaker who broke into your apartment?”

  “Oui. I would hate to think there was another like him.”

  Pruet said, “Please describe the incident as it happened.”

  The idea of visiting that memory made the reporter shudder under the weight of his casts.

  “M’sieur, it was a nightmare from which there was no waking. I am alive, in part, because hunger visited me shortly before the monster did. I was in the kitchen at the rear of my apartment. I had only just taken an iron pan in hand to make an omelet when I heard what sounded like a clap of thunder. Moments later, there was another explosion and my front door burst from its frame.”

  McGill said, “Once you saw who’d broken into your flat, you had no doubt your life was in jeopardy?”

  Taking things very slowly, Durand shook his head.

  “To see that face, m’sieur, was to understand there would be no mercy. For one lunatic moment, I thought I might bash the brute with the pan I held.”

  “You discarded the idea?” Odo asked.

  “I improvised on it. I threw the pan at the bastard. It bounced off his head, possibly denting the pan but drawing not a drop of blood.”

  “Why didn’t you run out your back door?” Pruet asked.

  “There are three locks on it, m’sieur. I had no time to open them all.”

  “So you jumped,” McGill said.

  “I did, happy to have a window big enough to permit me to take flight. When I hit the ground, the pain literally blinded me, and I don’t remember hearing anything either. But I knew I was still alive. I could feel blood bubbling out my nose as I breathed. But I thought I must have presented a fairly good likeness of a corpse, so I did my best to hold still. Sometime after that, I lost all awareness, and for all I knew I had died.”

  The reporter took a deep breath.

  “It was an experience to make a man reflect on his life.”

  Gabbi’s mobile phone sounded: Stars and Stripes Forever.

  “Excuse me,” she told the others. “I’ve got to take this.”

  She stepped out of the room. McGill moved closer to the reporter.

  “If you’d had a chance to run,” he asked, “do you think you could have outpaced him?”

  Despite his injuries, the question amused Durand.

  “I very much would have preferred running to jumping, and I cannot imagine a cheetah catching me, as frightened as I was.”

  McGill nodded. “A guy as big as that, I can’t see him running too far before losing steam, either.”

  The sports reporter considered. “He might have a burst for twenty meters. He might keep up a slow run for half-a-kilometer. I don’t see him going past that. His own mass would be the one opponent he couldn’t defeat.”

  McGill and Odo exchanged a look. They both filed Durand’s words in memory.

  Gabbi came back into the room, concern clear on her face. She gently took McGill by the arm and pulled him into a far corner of the room.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  She whispered, “The president has put the prime minister of the UK in the hospital.”

  “And the president herself?” he asked.

  “A sore elbow.”

  McGill repressed a smile.

  Gabbi added, “And a sore backside.”

  McGill drew his head back, hearing that.

  “There’s video playing nonstop and worldwide,” Gabbi told him.

  Before he could respond to that, Gabbi turned to Pruet.

  “M’sieur le magistrat,” she said, “the United States embassy received a call today asking for Mr. McGill. The operator who took the call assumed he was still in the United States. When she told the caller that, he informed her that he’d kidnapped the woman for whom Mr. McGill is searching—the missing Diana Martel, I presume. He said if Mr. McGill doesn’t pay him handsomely for the woman, he will throw her into the Seine.”

  Durand’s eyes bugged out. Here was the story he’d been hoping to get.

  And now he had no way to write it.

  Gabbi took notice and moved to his bedside.

  “We’ll work out something, maybe not the whole story, but you’ll get something to publish.” She looked at McGill and Pruet and got nods of approval. Turning back to the reporter, she said, “But I have one more question about The Undertaker. When I came to your apartment, there was an awful stench. How could he smell that badly and work in a strip club?”

  Durand said, “He possessed no foul odor there.”

  “Then why did he stink to high hell at your place?”

  “I have heard a story,” Durand said. “I gave it no credence. That is why I did not mention it to you.”

  “What story?” McGill asked.

  “It is said that The Undertaker, when he becomes frustrated for lack of a fellow his own size to fight, sometimes he grapples with bears.”

  “Bears?” Pruet asked in disbelief.

  “It would explain the rank scent, n’est-ce pas?” Durand asked.

  “Well, that’s great,” McGill said. “Grizzly Adams goes French.”

  31

  McGill and Pruet stepped out of Durand’s hospital room and moved down the hall, away from the two flics guarding the reporter’s door.

  The magistrate asked McGill, “Who is Grizzly Adams?”

  “An American frontiersman of the nineteenth century. He lived in the mountains of the West and kept grizzly bears for pets.”

  Pruet asked, “This is a myth?”

  “Supposed to be true. He’d wrestle the bears for fun. But one of the animals got cantankerous and split Adams’ head open, exposing his brain.”

  “He was killed?”

  “Not until later. Another head injury, incurred while training a monkey for P.T. Barnum.”

  “Now, you jest,” Pruet said.

  McGill shrugged. “I’m not saying that’s what happened, but that’s the way it’s written.”

  The magistrate sighed. He walked farther down the hall, McGill keeping pace. The doors to all the other rooms were closed, and there were no medical personnel bustling about. The place was silent, peaceful. McGill got the feeling this was a wing reserved for very important patients, not doing much business at the moment.

  “I am considering having you withdraw from this affair, m’sieur,” the magistrate told the president’s henchman.


  McGill said, “Fine. Release Glen Kinnard, rescue Diana Martel, and my job here is done.”

  Pruet looked at McGill and frowned. “It would be premature to release M’sieur Kinnard at the moment.”

  “Yeah, but asking was worth a try, as long as you’re trying to get rid of me.”

  The magistrate smiled. “It is not that I do not enjoy your company, but I worry what would become of me if I let you meet your end in Paris. I do not think even Jean-Louis could save me.”

  “You’re probably right. My wife might bring some pressure to … I was going to say bear, but that would have been a terrible pun.”

  Pruet nodded, smiling again.

  “Do you think,” Pruet asked, “that this Undertaker fellow truly tests himself against wild animals?”

  “Not with any success. But it’s a good story; look how anxious it’s made you.”

  “A brute with wiles.” The magistrate shook his head.

  “Yeah, it’s better when they’re dumb,” McGill agreed. “You have to hand it to the guy. Who’d want to get in the way of someone who smells like a seven-foot pile of manure?”

  Pruet’s expression turned rueful. “I fear you would.”

  “Maybe with a ten-foot pole,” McGill said.

  “You have experience using such an object to defend yourself?”

  “I’m pretty good with anything that comes to hand.”

  “You do not make things easy for me, m’sieur.”

  They came to the end of the hallway and stopped. A window looked out on the city. McGill thought Paris was quiet compared to big American cities. Fewer helicopters, sirens, cars roaring by with the stereo cranked high. Of course, the French blew up unattended bags left in public places. There was always something to disturb people’s sleep.

  Pruet told McGill, “Besides my concern about losing you, I also worry about having another American kill another Frenchman, even one who is an obvious villain.”

  McGill asked, “And what would you do in my place, m’sieur le magistrat?”

  Pruet looked at his American counterpart. “Your accent really is quite good. As for me, I am also quite stubborn. That is why I am in my current predicament.” He started walking back toward Durand’s room, and McGill fell in step with him once more. Pruet said, “I will sleep on the matter. Perhaps I will awaken a glimmer more brilliant than I am today.”

  McGill extended his hand and Pruet shook it.

  “Et je, aussi, mon ami,” McGill said. Me, too, friend.

  The Hideaway, Paris

  32

  Regional Security Officer Gabriella Casale insisted that she sleep over at McGill’s borrowed apartment. Her reasons were entirely pragmatic.

  “For one thing,” she told McGill on the drive over to the Hideaway, “it might take the two of us to gun down The Undertaker, if he comes to pay a visit.”

  “And you could claim to have fired the fatal round?” McGill asked.

  “I will claim to have fired all the rounds.”

  “Two-gun Gabbi? An American legend is born. Can I play the part of McGill in the movie?”

  “Sorry, you look too French.”

  McGill laughed. “I’m told I can do a good Rory Calhoun.”

  Gabbi had to smile. “We’ll see. There’s another reason we should stay together.”

  “Okay.”

  “You don’t want to know what it is?”

  “I’m sure you’ll tell me.”

  “I will. The embassy is going to forward any new call regarding the ransom of Diana Martel to me. If the kidnapper insists on talking with you—”

  “I’ll be right at hand.”

  “Exactly. You know who has to have her, of course.”

  “Gypsies. Our kid probably found her, then the grownups screwed things up.”

  They pulled up in front of the pub. It was closed now, but Harbin stood watch behind the front door, waiting for them. At Gabbi’s suggestion, he’d supplemented his customary escrima sticks with a bit more firepower: a Benelli Supersport shotgun. Harbin’s precaution and Gabbi’s presence were deemed necessary in case Arno Durand, in an exercise of reporter’s guile, had learned where McGill was staying, and a written record of that information had passed to The Undertaker when he’d come calling.

  Harbin opened the door for them and said, “M’sieur, ma’amselle.”

  “Bonsoir,” McGill said.

  Gabbi asked if everyone else at the pub had gone home.

  “Oui.”

  McGill told Harbin, “We don’t know if The Undertaker will come tonight, but if he does, use the gun. Don’t try to use the sticks.”

  Harbin only nodded. McGill could see he didn’t like the idea that there might be someone he couldn’t put down with his favored weapon.

  “Seriously,” McGill said, “use the gun. Shoot him from behind, if you have to.”

  Harbin stiffened at the perceived insult. Gabbi placed her hands on Harbin’s shoulders and whispered something to him in French. He relaxed visibly. He nodded again, and Gabbi kissed him on both cheeks.

  McGill and his government chaperone headed upstairs. He waited until they were inside the flat and had the door closed and locked before he said anything.

  “You told our friend down there that he wouldn’t want any of The Undertaker’s B.O. rubbing off on him?”

  Gabbi smiled. “You really are smart, aren’t you?”

  “More than just a pretty face.”

  “I thought you might give me an argument about staying with you.”

  McGill shook his head. “You can even have the first shower. Just leave me some hot water.”

  “But make it long enough for you to make a phone call?”

  “You’re pretty sharp yourself.”

  Gabbi kissed McGill on each of his cheeks. That alone, McGill thought, would have been enough to calm him down, had he been displeased.

  But as an extra measure of comfort, Gabbi told him, “There’s another shotgun in the kitchen.”

  Magistrate Pruet’s residence

  33

  “You don’t wish me to come up with you, Yves?” Odo asked Pruet.

  The two of them sat in Pruet’s Citroën in front of the magistrate’s residence on the Rue Anatole France. Passing traffic was light, a trickle of gourmands heading home from their favorite haunts.

  “I will be all right, and you should spend at least a few minutes with your family.”

  “That would be pleasant. You are carrying the gun I gave you?”

  The magistrate pulled the weapon part way out of his coat pocket, a Ruger SR9. Pruet hadn’t wanted to carry a gun, but Odo said it would reassure him, let him do a better job protecting Pruet. Odo had been wise enough to select a weapon that was slim, light and stylish. Let his friend rationalize he was carrying a fashion accessory rather than a firearm.

  But style had come with a caveat: “In normal circumstances,” Odo had said, “a 9mm cartridge doesn’t have the best stopping power.”

  “We certainly can’t have that,” Pruet had responded with a straight face.

  “Which is why the cartridges for your gun will come from me and not the factory.”

  “You are in the munitions business?” the magistrate asked.

  “Since I was a boy,” the bodyguard replied. “Would you prefer an explosive round or one tipped with poison?”

  Remaining deadpan, Pruet asked, “I can’t have both?”

  “You have a point. I will alternate the loads in the magazine.”

  “A perfect compromise.”

  Pruet had been joking, and he’d humored Odo further by taking target practice until he could hit the figure of a villain in the chest with regularity at a distance of five meters. Carrying the gun had filled the magistrate with a sense of regret rather than one of power. That the world and his place in it should have come to this … quelle honte.

  What a shame.

  Tonight, though, his misgivings were mixed with the cold comfort of feeling the gun
in his hand. Monsters were afoot, and he lived at a greater remove from the pavement than Arno Durand did. If he were to take flight from his balcony, likely there would be no resurrection for him. Better to—

  “Remember,” Odo said, “before you fire, you must disengage the safety.”

  Pruet nodded soberly. “I will try not to shoot myself in the foot.”

  The bodyguard frowned. “I hope to have you speak at my funeral; if I let you die, I would be far too embarrassed to speak at yours.”

  The magistrate said, “Perhaps M’sieur McGill might say a word or two.” Getting out of the car, he added, “Jusqu’a demain, mon ami.”

  Until tomorrow, my friend.

  34

  The stink rushed out to assault Pruet the moment he pushed opened the door to his building’s lobby. He took a half-step back and turned to call Odo, but the bodyguard had driven off down the street, his car already turning onto the Boulevard St. Germain. The magistrate waved frantically, but Odo did not see his gesticulations.

  “Merde,” Pruet muttered.

  He turned his head back to the entryway. His nose wrinkled as the stench hit it full on … but he sniffed an underlying odor as well. He stepped back outside and let the lobby door swing shut. The smell of fresh air was almost intoxicating. The stink was gone, but the underlying scent was still present. In his mind, at least.

  The familiar fragrance defined itself. Cacharel Liberté. His wife’s choice of perfumes. Nicolette had been wearing it for as long as he could remember. She would be wearing it, he imagined, long after she had left him.

  That was, if she hadn’t already encountered The Undertaker.

  The admixture of reek and bouquet suggested she had.

  Pruet was surprised when he took notice that the Ruger was already in his hand and pointed at the entrance to his building. He was further amazed to see that he’d thumbed the weapon’s safety off. Having done so blindly, he considered himself lucky not to have hit the nearby magazine release, scattering Odo’s lethal projectiles all over the sidewalk.