Jim McGill 02 The Hangman's Companion Read online

  Un moment, ma chère. One moment, my dear. I will be up to rescue you the instant I have collected all my bullets.

  Pruet as hero was the stuff of farce, Pruet told himself. He took his iPhone out of his pocket. Odo was on speed dial. Regretfully, the bodyguard’s reunion with his family would have to wait. Of course, if the Corsican bastard had turned off his mobile, he would have to—

  His iPhone informed him its battery was all but depleted and it shut down.

  The magistrate thumbed it back to life, a period lasting no more than three seconds before it shut down again. Pruet was ready to hurl the damn thing into the Seine, except it was even more stylish than his Ruger and had been a birthday gift from his favorite niece. He jammed the phone back into his pocket, and looked up at his balcony.

  Darkness prevailed there. No light from his apartment filtered outside. Nicolette was not screaming bloody murder, which she would be doing unless she was already dead. But if she were dead, there would be no point rushing inside to meet what would likely be his own demise. As to his possessions, there was nothing he really couldn’t do without.

  Except his guitar.

  The instrument had been with him longer than his wife, and their relationship had been happier, even when he broke a string. He would hate to lose his guitar.

  Pruet looked up and down the block. Not a pedestrian in sight on either side of the street. The few cars that passed by took advantage of the light traffic to drive as though they were trying to qualify at Le Mans. If he ran into the street, especially with a gun in hand, he would leave the better part of himself in the treads of the car that ran him over.

  Another farce.

  With a sudden pang, Pruet wished he had the president’s henchman with him.

  The irony of wanting to dismiss McGill only an hour earlier was palpable.

  To have to face The Undertaker alone was no less than he deserved. He pushed open the door to the lobby with his left hand. As Odo had trained him, since his gun was not on a target, his finger was not on the trigger. It really wouldn’t do to shoot himself in the foot. Not with the rounds Odo had loaded into the Ruger.

  Moving into the building, Pruet asked himself: How would James J. McGill do this?

  The Hideaway

  35

  As soon as McGill heard Gabbi’s shower come on, he called the President of the United States. If Patti wasn’t off saving the world, she’d pick up by the fourth ring, or he’d hang up and try back later. That was the current protocol. As it was, she picked up on the third ring…

  A heartbeat after Gabbi started singing in the shower.

  “La Vie en Rose.” In French. On key.

  Before McGill could say hello, his wife asked him a question.

  “Is that Edith Piaf you have with you?”

  “I believe she passed on some time ago,” he said.

  “You’re right. So who’s the chanteuse?”

  His wife’s hearing was acute, McGill thought.

  “That would be one of your underlings, my State Department bodyguard.”

  “A singing bodyguard, now there’s a multi-tasker. But what’s that static?”

  So her hearing was excellent but not infallible.

  “That would be the water from her shower.”

  “Ah,” the president said. “The Secret Service hasn’t used that tactic with me yet.”

  “She left me a shotgun for company.”

  “To supplement the fellow downstairs with the sticks.”

  McGill said, “He has a shotgun now, too.”

  There was a pause before Patti asked, “Anything you care to tell me?”

  “My relationship with Ms. Casale is strictly platonic.”

  The president snorted. “I was referring to the need for shotguns.”

  “Well, there’s this fellow.” He told her about The Undertaker. “Magistrate Pruet is thinking of sending me packing.”

  The pause this time was far longer. Long enough for McGill to fill the silence.

  “The guy is big as a house,” he told his wife. “I’m sure I can outrun him.”

  “If you say so. But running really isn’t your style, is it?”

  “No, but if you don’t mind my saying so, I think I know what’s bothering you.”

  “And what might that be?” the president asked.

  “You once told me you don’t want to bury another husband. And I know my kids would hate to see me go. Even my ex-wife would shed some tears.”

  Sweetie, on the other hand, McGill knew, would come seeking vengeance.

  “You’re a well regarded fellow, that’s for sure,” Patti said.

  “I won’t do anything stupid. And I tend to see things coming from a long way off.”

  McGill was thinking how his first wife, Carolyn, had left him because she couldn’t take the stress of being a cop’s wife, and she hadn’t lost her first husband to violence the way Patti had. But as long as Patti held the presidency she’d have more people gunning for her than McGill would ever have hunting him. He had to live with that.

  But for each of them there were times that sorely tried one’s faith.

  Patti cleared her throat and said, “The singing has stopped, and so has the shower, I believe.”

  McGill hadn’t noticed. Maybe someone could sneak up on him.

  But he said, “Ms. Casale is a diplomat. She won’t interrupt our conversation.”

  As if on cue, a hair dryer began roaring. McGill had to put a finger in his open ear.

  The President of the United States told him, “Jim, I’m sorry if I wasn’t encouraging just now. You do what you need to do. You have my unqualified support.”

  “Thank you. And you have mine. By the way, how’s your elbow?”

  He was pleased to hear her laugh. “It hurts like hell, but not as bad as my backside.”

  “Like that, is it? Maybe even with our magic phones we’d better save this conversation until we see each other next.”

  “That would be best, but you left a message for me with Galia, remember? So you must have something you can tell me now.”

  “I do.”

  McGill told her the source of the rumors about her and Jean-Louis Severin.

  Nicolette Pruet, the alienated wife of Magistrate Yves Pruet.

  Pruet, the longtime friend of the president of France.

  Pen-pals, in fact, during their college days.

  One last pause followed. McGill could imagine Patti putting a hand to her head.

  “Jean-Louis wrote letters?” she asked. “While he was at Yale?”

  “While the two of you were there,” McGill said.

  Magistrate Pruet’s apartment

  36

  Yves Pruet took the elevator up to his apartment. The choice involved a number of considerations: shooting angles—straight on was better than shooting up a flight of stairs; lighting — the elevator car was brightly lit, the staircase more softly illuminated; most of all, the elevator car smelled of cut roses — the stairway stank of … unwashed bear, if American legend were to be believed.

  The elevator was operated either by a key from the lobby or sent from the top floor, inside Pruet’s dwelling. There were no stops in between. Augustin Pruet had economized wherever he could, and at age 80 didn’t mind climbing the stairs to the lower floors. The two flats below the magistrate’s were used by family when they visited central Paris for an evening or a weekend, but they were currently unoccupied.

  Pruet’s plan was to take the elevator to his apartment’s level and wait there with the doors closed. If The Undertaker were nearby, he would certainly hear the elevator’s arrival, and when the doors didn’t open, the brute would become curious. Likely, he would consider the closed car an ominous thing; he might even begin pounding on the doors in an attempt to break in.

  In that case, Pruet would immediately send the car down to the lobby. Where he would wait with the doors closed. If the monster followed him down the stairs in pursuit, the magistrate woul
d send the car to the top of the building again. If pursuit continued, down he would go again. Pruet’s plan was to run the fetid fellow ragged without ever confronting him directly. At least not until he was exhausted.

  Hardly a heroic plan, but it had the virtue of preserving Pruet’s skin.

  Except it did not work out at all as he envisioned.

  The elevator car rose to the level of his apartment, whirring loudly enough for anyone inside the flat to hear, came to a stop, and nothing happened. Pruet waited … and waited … and no oversized fists beat against the car doors. Not a floorboard creaked under the weight of a 200-kilogram miscreant. There was no stentorian breathing nearby. No stink pervaded the magistrate’s refuge. No menacing trill of violins portended the coming of doom.

  Pruet considered the possibility that The Undertaker had the animal cunning to outwait his prey. If that were the case, he would have a long wait indeed. Pruet was a patient man. He’d stared down many a suspect, maintaining a stony, unblinking silence until the villain confessed.

  But this time was different. He didn’t have Odo’s forbidding presence close at hand; he was alone. In an elevator car that seemed to grow hotter by the moment. Holding a gun that grew heavier by the second. Fear infiltrating his mind that somehow a hulk of a street criminal was outsmarting him.

  And then he thought he heard Nicolette whimper.

  At once, the scene became a fantasy conjured by the devil. The treacherous, faithless wife, constantly threatening divorce, lies at the mercy of a fiend. All one has to do is wait for fate take its course. The shrew is gone and being rid of her costs not a sou. What more could a fellow ask?

  Perhaps to level one’s gaze at a mirror without cringing from that day forward.

  Sacré bleu, but the cost of maintaining one’s self-esteem was high.

  With his left hand, the magistrate keyed the elevator doors open. Doing so, he backed off and dropped into a crouch. If the monster wanted to seize him now, he would have to bend to do it. Pruet, meanwhile, would fire at least two rounds — one poisonous, one explosive — into The Undertaker. With his luck, he would kill the beast, which would then fall on him and crush the life from him. Or, worse, vengefully pin him and asphyxiate him with its stench.

  But no vision from a nightmare presented itself to Pruet as the doors opened. All he saw were the shadowed outlines of his home and its furnishings. The door leading from the stairway to the foyer was open, soft light coming from a sconce on the staircase wall. The Undertaker’s point of entry had not been subject to any brute violence … which meant that a door normally kept locked had been unbolted, perhaps even left ajar.

  The Undertaker had buzzed Pruet’s apartment? Nicolette had thought it was her deficient husband, having forgotten his keys, and she’d decided to let him climb the stairs rather than send the elevator? Must have been quite the surprise when she’d found out who had come calling.

  Nicolette whimpered again. This time there was no doubt the sound was real. One of self-pity, not of terror or pain.

  Pruet wanted to tell the damn woman to be quiet. He had more important sounds for which to cock his ear. The thump of heavy footfalls, a hair-raising snarl. But he could not silence Nicolette without giving himself away. Even at a time like this, his wife was a source of frustration to him.

  The magistrate crept out of the elevator car, looking quickly to his left and to his right. He saw no intruder, large or small. But the smell was so bad now his eyes began to water. He blinked furiously to clear them. He placed his left hand over his nose and began breathing through his mouth, hoping his throat wouldn’t close.

  He moved out of the foyer into his living room. The glass doors leading to the balcony were open. Ambient light from the city presented a sight that pierced the magistrate’s heart. His beautiful Alhambra guitar, bought when he was still a student, earned by working for Papa, by saving money from eating but once a day, lay in a thousand jagged shards of cedar and rosewood, strings broken and curled as if in agony. The sense of loss Pruet felt was greater than—

  Nicolette whimpered yet again, and Pruet knew: She had done this.

  Not The Undertaker. Her.

  He moved through the apartment at an almost reckless speed now. There was no way the monster could conceal himself. If he were present, the closer one came to him the more vile the reek would become. If at any point Pruet felt his gorge begin to rise, he would empty his gun in the appropriate direction. Out of simple diligence, the magistrate went from the living room to check the dining room, the kitchen, the pantry, the wine room, the study, the library, both bathrooms, and all three bedrooms. No Undertaker in any of them, though his vile emanations lingered everywhere. The villain had been thorough in his trespass of Pruet’s home.

  But he hadn’t wrecked anything other than the air quality.

  The Undertaker was a killer but not a vandal.

  The only physical damage he had done was to dent the door of the safe room.

  Adjacent to the master bedroom, the safe room lay behind what looked like a closet door, only the door and its frame were five centimeters thick and made of steel. The structure was bullet and blast resistant. Papa originally had insisted that the room be built in case les Boches turned militaristic again. After decades of peace with Germany, Papa said the room might still be useful in the event of a terrorist attack, and while it was unlikely The Undertaker was motivated by either politics or religion, there was no doubt he inspired terror in his victims.

  Bravo, Papa.

  Nicolette whimpered once more. Pruet looked to his right. The sound came from the speaker of the phone answering machine on the nightstand adjacent to the magistrate’s bed. What used to be his and Nicolette’s bed. When Pruet had first shown his wife the safe room and she had seen that it was equipped with two cots, a chemical toilet, dehydrated rations, and bottled water, she had turned up her nose.

  “I would rather die with a glass of wine in my hand,” she’d said.

  Upon The Undertaker’s arrival, she obviously had changed her mind. And now some part of her was pressing against the intercom button that let those inside the room speak with those outside. This communication channel was a safeguard in case the door mechanism malfunctioned, turning the safe room into a cell.

  For The Undertaker not to have pinpointed the direction of Nicolette’s mewling, the man had to suffer from a hearing deficit of some sort. Perhaps a useful thing to know.

  Pruet said in a quiet voice, “I have come for you, my dear.”

  A heartbeat of silence was followed by a shriek of fear that lifted Pruet a foot into the air.

  “Yves, please, I am so sorry…” Nicolette was all but hysterical.

  He could guess why: “You smashed my guitar.”

  “Yes, yes. That and everything else!”

  Everything else? Snooping his files, he knew about that. Destroying his guitar, she had just made that confession. But what else?

  “Please, Yves, don’t let that thing kill me. I never would have suspected you’d send such an animal to devour me. I am your wife!”

  She thought he had sent The Undertaker? Très intéressant. But he didn’t like the note of indignation in her voice when she had reminded him they were still married.

  How would McGill respond to that? What would an American say? Oh, yes.

  “A man must do what a man must do.”

  The whimpering flowed in a steady stream from the safe room.

  “You will destroy me, Yves?”

  “What is my alternative?”

  For a moment, there was silence. Then: “I will tell you everything.”

  Pruet sensed there was a rare opportunity to be claimed here.

  “You will also give me a divorce and make no claim on me whatsoever.”

  “Oui.”

  “And you will put everything in writing,” he added.

  Silence.

  “Very well,” Pruet said, “I’ll leave you to my friend.”

  “No, Yv
es, no! I will write everything down. Sign it and seal it with my blood.”

  Pruet smiled. He had been a man of almost infinite forbearance with Nicolette, but she never should have touched his guitar.

  “Very well.” He lifted the phone receiver from its answering machine base and tapped in the code that opened the safe room.

  A minute later, Nicolette sat in Pruet’s study writing out her confession.

  And narrating it for the magistrate’s audio recorder.

  Georgetown

  37

  Try as she might, and Margaret Mary Sweeney tried mightily, she didn’t live a life as free from sin as she would have liked. She was having serious second thoughts about bringing Deke Ky into the case. There was no question in her mind that either Horatio Bao or Ricky Lanh Huu would kill a federal officer if he thought it necessary. If Deke were in top form, he’d be more than a match for either or both of them. But the question nagging Sweetie was whether she was bringing Deke back into the field too soon.

  She had taken the task of tracking down the identity of the young woman she had seen doing Horatio Bao’s mail run from Deke and given the job to Welborn. Maybe she should have the two of them work as partners. The young Air Force captain was soon to be married, and Sweetie feared that if she put him in harm’s way he might not make it to the church on time, or ever. But if she didn’t use Welborn, Deke would have to take more risks.

  She could back up Deke, of course, but that would take her away from working the clerical angle — Father Francis Nguyen and Bishop George O’Menehy — and she didn’t want to do that.

  The dilemma was enough to make her curse or at least want to.

  On top of all that, there was Putnam and his crack about being abandoned by his family. The remark had been off the cuff, but she had the feeling he was telling the truth. Probably about being raised by black people, too. Her feelings for her landlord, despite her best intentions, were becoming increasingly … unplatonic. He was too young for her, too glib, likely too kinky if she let things develop in that direction, but he was smart, caring, and occasionally courageous. If she were ever to have a man in her life at all, she could do far worse.